'Sir!' exclaimed Bevil, with some heat.
'Goring—Goring,' muttered the vicar, eyeing Bevil's card; 'it is strange that the young lady never spoke to me of you, though in her grief she several times mentioned another friend.'
'Ah!—who?'
'Lord Cadbury.'
'Cadbury!' exclaimed Goring, with a contemptuous inflection of voice that did not escape the listener.
'Yes; who, by a very ample remittance—a thousand pounds, I believe—did much to ease and soothe her poor father's last days on earth.'
'Indeed!'
Whew! here was intelligence. His birthday gift had been attributed to, and evidently adopted by, that reptile Cadbury! And, finding that there was nothing to be made of the suspicious and over-wary vicar, he withdrew.
Scarcely had Goring, disappointed and dispirited, taken his departure, when Lord Cadbury, accompanied by Gaskins, having found Chilcote deserted, arrived at the vicarage to make the same inquiries, but with very different intentions. Impressed by the years and rank of his second visitor, the vicar admitted that he was cognisant of Miss Cheyne's movements, and, on consideration, promised to send her correct address to Cadbury Court when she wrote to him from London; for, knowing the helplessness of the young girl, even with Cadbury was the vicar wary.
Dalton remained at Chilcote Grange to be nursed by Laura; Jerry departed on sick leave to Wilmothurst, while Bevil Goring remained with the battalion at Aldershot to undergo the drudgery of the spring drills in the Long Valley, and await in a kind of silent desperation with hope to hear something of Alison.
How terrible to endure was this period of an inaction that was enforced by circumstances over which he had no control, and many a hearty malediction he bestowed upon the close old vicar of Chilcote.
Often he opened the clasp of her ring—Ellon's ring—and gazed upon her tiny lock of hair, now faded and withered by the heat it had undergone when 'up country' in the Land of the Sun, and on her pictured face he gazed till his eyes ached and burned with the intensity of his longing to see the features smile, the lips unclose, in fancy.
We are told that if a man, 'overborne by any grief or pain—not the more endurable because no outward sign can be discerned—should go forth into a crowd to seek for solace, the chances are that he will return in a more discontented frame of mind than that in which he set out, simply from realising the fact how infinitely little his own sufferings affect the most of the world at its work or play.'
Amid the bustle, gaiety, and business of the crowded camp at Aldershot, Bevil Goring realised all this to the fullest extent.
Day after day went by and brought no news of Alison, either to Goring or to Laura Dalton, whom he saw frequently, and hope deferred was making the heart of the young officer very 'sick' indeed; but, though he wrote a very important letter to his solicitors at Gray's Inn Square concerning certain properties at Chilcote, he went there no more.
In the words of L.E.L., he could no more
'To the loved haunt return,Love's happy home; and touch the tender chord,And softly whisper there the little word,The name whereat fond memories shall burn,That parting vows record.'
Lady Julia Wilmot had been in hope that when the Ashantee 'affair' was over, Jerry would settle down, 'marry money,' free his ancestral seat from encumbrance, and take a proper pride in it; but for a time after the capture of Coomassie it had seemed that she was to be afflicted by a double calamity—that the estate was lost, and Jerry might never return.
It was not in her aristocratic nature to be very much moved about anything. Excitement or enthusiasm of any kind was 'bad form,' she deemed. Thus, if she was not plunged in profound grief when she heard of the poor fellow's supposed death, neither was she greatly excited with joy when she heard that he was safe and coming home again. To this noble daughter of twenty earls, an only son more or less in the world really seemed of no great consequence, unless it were, if he 'married money,' to serve her own ends.
When tidings of Jerry's death came, she had attired herself most becomingly in fashionable mourning of the requisite depth of wear, as understood by the drapers in Regent Street. Round her white throat were narrow tuckers of yellowish-white lace, and a rustling train, spread over a crinolette, floated behind her. Now that he was safe, her mourning was relinquished, almost with a sigh, we fear, it was so becoming; and Floss's mother-of-pearl basket, which had been duly lined with black silk, was now refitted with blue satin.
She received Jerry in her usual stately fashion; gave him her cool, slim hand to press, which he did heartily, while his eyes moistened; and accorded her smooth and unlined cheek for his salute, and then his welcome ended. So ere long Jerry began to think, as Mrs. Gaskell's novel has it, that John Thornton's mamma might be wrong when she says, 'Mothers' love is given by God, John. It holds fast for ever and for ever. A girl's love is like a puff of smoke, it changes with every wind.' But then there was nothing aristocratic about stalwart John Thornton's mother.
Mr. Chevenix had always loved Jerry for his father's sake, and for the sake of the 'Wilmots of Wilmothurst,' who had been of Wilmothurst, 'and that ilk,' as the Scots would say, for time out of mind; but there his regard ended; he had small care for Lady Julia, and, when tidings came of Jerry's death, after a moderate time had elapsed he resolved to take the mortgages in hand and assert his rights—in short, to make the property, what it now almost virtually was, his own, and to request Lady Julia to leave the place, to crush her false and insensate pride in a heart that seemed without any other human sentiment.
'He has formally announced the foreclosure of the mortgages, this man Chevenix, Emily,' said Lady Julia, with some consternation—at least for her—as she opened her letters one morning. 'The crash has come at last!'
'What does that mean, aunt?' asked the young lady.
'My lawyer tells me it means the act of foreclosing—cutting off the equity of redemption, and that the money would not be taken in payment, even were poor Jerry alive and had it to pay.'
And Mr. Chevenix had chuckled as he gave these instructions, for he had endured enough of Lady Julia's aristocratic caprice, and knew how she had often treated his Bella, a girl certainly second to none, 'as if she were the dirt of the earth,' as he said, bitterly.
But Bella had deplored these sharp measures, for she felt that a strange but tender and undefinable tie bound her to Jerry Wilmot, dead or alive.
As children she and Jerry had been permitted to be playmates, and she had been somewhat of a pet with his father, the old Squire; but it was not until they had grown up, till he had been at college and then joined the Rifles, that Lady Julia felt that the intimacy was—well, unfortunate, and to be finally snubbed.
The shock given to the sensitive Bella by the perils encountered by Jerry—first the report of his death, and subsequently the account of the precarious condition in which he had embarked at Cape Coast, caused her many terrible nights and days, and nearly threw the poor girl into a fever, as she had none in whom to confide her sorrow, or her secret love; but sorrow rarely kills, and though at first fretful and resentful, with the memory of Lady Julia's want of proper affection, she was very gentle, quiet, and patient, and besought her father not to foreclose the mortgages yet a while; but he, out of all patience with non-payment of interest on one hand, Lady Julia's hauteur and insolence on the other, with the great doubt entertained of Jerry ever coming home to keep the fragment of Wilmothurst that yet accrued to him, had put the matter in the hands of his legal agents, who, curiously enough, were Messrs. Taype, Shawrpe, and Scrawly, of Gray's Inn; and things were at a serious crisis when Jerry returned home to find a deadlier enmity than ever in his mother's heart at 'that creature Chevenix and the forward minx his daughter.'
The latter knew of Jerry's arrival; her heart had beat responsive to the clangour of the village bells, the music of the volunteer band which preceded the carriage in which he came, and the cheers of the warm-hearted rustics, who unharnessed the horses and drew it along; and ere long she heard with pity and anxiety from Mademoiselle Florine, whom she chanced to meet, that he was confined to his room—even to his bed—by a return of the treacherous jungle-fever, which is apt to recur at times unexpectedly for months after recovery is thought certain; and while in this condition, helpless and incapable of action, he was galled and tormented, and his jealousy was roused by his mother and cousin Emily with the real information of how the matter of the mortgages stood; that Lord Twesildown had heard of them, and with an eye to possessing Wilmothurst and Langley Park intended to degrade himself by proposing for Bella Chevenix, now that she would be a Hampshire heiress, as his mother, Lady Ashcombe, had the very bad taste to inform them.
And Jerry writhed in his bed when he heard of these things, and times there were when he wished that after all he had found his grave, like many more, on the wooded banks of the Prah.
Twesildown had an estate, though a rather encumbered one; but he had also a title and undeniable good looks. Jerry was now well-nigh a landless man. Bella had suspected, he feared, the purity and disinterestedness of his love, and thus circumstances, he thought, were all against her viewing him with favour.
If the worst came to the worst, and he were sold up, he would effect an exchange for India, and think of her no more.
No more—how hard it was!
Just then, in his soreness of heart, Jerry was not sorry that a legitimate fit of illness detained him in the house at Wilmothurst, and separate from Bella; for he was hourly stung by tidings—exaggerated in some instances—that Lord Twesildown was daily giving her drives with his mother, and mounts of his best horses; and, as he was known to be rather impecunious, and quiteau faitof the fact that Bella Chevenix was her father's heiress, Jerry felt jealous, mortified, and bitter. He even sorely regretted the 'gushing' farewell letter he had written to her before entering Coomassie; and could little conceive that even now, in a silken case, she wore that letter in her bosom!
It was quite evident how hotly jealous he was of Twesildown, and this sentiment Cousin Emily left nothing undone or unsaid to fan.
'How you chatter, cousin,' said he, impatiently.
'I am like the brook, you think, on this subject,' said Emily, with one of her sweetest smiles.
'What brook?'
'I go on for ever.'
'By Jove, you do—and with a will, too!' said Jerry, who was now stretched at full length in a hammock netting between two trees on the lawn, lazily enjoying one of the last box of cigars he might open in Wilmothurst, as his family were contemplating a removal therefrom, and for where was quite undecided.
Mr. Chevenix had courteously left his card for Jerry, so Bella knew that, come what might, the latter in common civility would call ere long; and to that event she was looking forward now; but days passed, and Jerry came not.
And so while Bella, remembering the tenor of her last farewell meeting with Jerry, and that of the treasured letter, which amounted to a declaration, was eating her heart out with disappointment that he made no effort to see her, he was daily being 'primed up' by Cousin Emily with jealousy of Twesildown; andthiswas the time to which he and she had both looked forward so eagerly!
The bitterness of this situation was enhanced to Jerry by the knowledge that his ancient inheritance of Wilmothurst was Bella'sdotand known to be such by Twesildown, to whom it was a lure quite as much as her undoubted brilliance and beauty.
'There is the devil to pay and pitch-hot here about the mortgages,' he wrote to Bevil Goring; 'and moreover, old fellow, I am sorely disappointed in my love affair. I have read that what "drives one man to drink drives another to thedemi-monde." Whether of the two is worse, the immortal gods can tell. Either remedy is worse than the disease, I fancy! But anyway a few months more will see me again broiling up country, and going in for iced drinks and Chinsurah cheroots.'
'Twenty years old to-day—twenty years!' murmured Alison, as she glanced at herself in the little mirror, and thought how pale and how much older than her age she looked in her plain black mourning dress, which was destitute of other ornament than smooth white cuffs and a ruche or frill of lace, or some such soft material, round her slender throat.
Vividly came back to the girl's memory her other birthdays, ere poverty fell upon her father, and ere she was—as now—alone in the world, and when each recurring anniversary found her loaded with caresses, congratulations, and pretty presents. And she could recall her fourth birthday at Essilmont, when she was a little child in a white embroidered frock, with a broad sash matching the colour of her dark blue eyes, with her brothers, Ranald and Ellon, eating strawberries off a huge salver held for them by Archie Auchindoir, who seemed an old Archie even then.
Never more would the kisses or caresses of father or mother touch her brow or cheek; and now she was in the ranks of those who have to earn their daily bread as a governess on thirty pounds per annum, teach French, English, and music to two little girls of the ages of nine and ten respectively.
And sadly on this day she thought of all that had befallen her, and how completely Bevil Goring had passed out of her life, apparently for ever! Wearily too her eye went round the bare school-room in that stately house in Pembridge Square, Bayswater—a long, low-ceiled apartment, with two windows that overlooked Westbourne Grove, a grove only in name now.
The vicar of Chilcote procured her this situation, and, beyond her name and his recommendation, her employer, Mrs. S. De Jobbyns, knew nothing of Alison Cheyne and cared not to inquire. The vicar had written lately to state that a handsome marble cross—a Celtic one he believed it was called—had lately been placed by a friend above her father's grave, and Alison's heart swelled with gratitude as she read of it.
It must have been done by Lord Cadbury, she thought. Who else could have done so?
She had now been two months in Pembridge Square—two whole months—and despite the unwonted drudgery of teaching, and the dreariness of routine—despite slights, almost insults, that were offered, perhaps unconsciously, by the cold-hearted and the underbred, the time had slipped quickly away.
Thus condemned to the dull drudgery of daily teaching a couple of troublesome, peevish, and ill-tempered brats in that bare and comfortless school-room, was Alison, a loving and passionate girl, made more passionate, loving, and tender by the sore griefs she had known, but all unsoured by these and the doubtful prospect—yea, the utter blank of her future.
Though the change of condition was not much to Alison, the change ofpositionand that vacuity of the future were frightful to the poor girl; and in taking the situation for the sake of her father's name and his old family pride, though he was now in his grave, she had besought the vicar of Chilcote, in recommending her to Mrs. S. De Jobbyns, to conceal what she had ever been—nay, was still—the daughter of a baronet of Nova Scotia, whose diploma dated from 1625.
The family of Mrs. Slumpkin De Jobbyns consisted of three daughters, the eldest Miss Victoria, of whom more anon, was in her nineteenth year, and Alison's two pupils, Irene and Iseulte. Like the rest of the snobocracy of the metropolis she believed in double names, thus she figured in the royal Blue-Book as Mrs. Slumpkin De Jobbyns, a style of address which would have astonished her late husband, worthy old David or D. Jobbyns, as he called himself, when for many a year he was acquiring wealth as an industrious soap-boiler in Bow East, and when he married pretty little Sally Slumpkins, the barmaid at the 'Black Swan' in Mile-End Road, and when she little foresaw how wealthy a 'relict' she would be left.
Pretty Sally, who had, of course, preferred the worthy soap-boiler to his rival the potman, had now, amid ease and much good living, expanded into a stout, blousy, and coarsely-featured matron, greatly puffed up by wealth, success, pride, and vanity.
She always wore the richest materials and the most massive jewellery, and never omitted to figure in her open carriage in the Row, when weather permitted, and strove hard in everything to ape all the manners of the 'upper ten,' in which she was fully seconded by her eldest born, Miss Victoria S. De Jobbyns, a rather pretty, but very insipid girl, who wore her hair frizzed into her eyes, and had a nose more than retroussé, for though she was pretty, as we have said, her features were nevertheless of the genuine Cockney type.
Alison took all her meals in the schoolroom with the children, and at the early hours which were directed for them. She was never in the drawing-room—'the British drawing-room,' that sanctum sacred to Mrs. De Jobbyns and her 'swell' visitors, as she called them, and when she thought it was 'rather the thing' to have afternoon tea in dragon blue and white crockery on a beautiful Chippendale table.
And so, for thirty pounds per annum, Alison underwent this life of mortification.
'Thirty pound a-year, and her laundry work, my dear,' as Mrs. De Jobbyns informed her friend, Mrs. Popkins-Robbynson.
'That is very cheap for one evidently so accomplished,' said the latter.
'Very cheap, indeed; but she is such a good style for the children, you know; and really I think she must have been some one of—of—well, means once.'
'Why?'
'The richly laced under-garments she sends to the laundry would quite surprise you, my dear.'
'But won't her Scotch haccent spile the young 'uns?' observed Mr. Popkins-Robbynson.
'Not at all; and she seems to get on so nicely with the servants. They all adore her.'
'Indeed!'
'My last governess, Miss Smythe-Smythe was always at war with them.'
'How?'
'They never paid her sufficient deference. Oh, what a nuisance that woman was; yet we paid her forty pounds a year—actually what we pays the cook, my dear.'
To be near his young mistress, to watch over her, as he thought, and to be able to see her from time to time, old Archie had located himself in a humble lodging in Moscow Road, not far from the square, where he lived with the strictest frugality, fearing that a time might come when his 'three hunner pounds,' or what remained of them, might be of service toher, 'as hained gear helps weel,' and often, with more patience than even a lover might have had, he promenaded the square for hours, watching for a sight of her at the school-room windows, or till she came forth with her pupils to walk in Kensington Gardens—watching for her till he in turn was watched, as one bent on something nefarious, by the policeman at the corner.
And ere long the two little girls began to wonder who the funny old man was that so often hovered near them in their walks, who treated their governess with such profound deference and devotion, and was never unprovided with chocolate creams and so forth for them—'sweeties for the bairns,' as he called them.
But often Alison sat up in her little white bed, in her bare and rather comfortless room, in the darkness of the silent night, and, looking at the stars, would ask why she was so lonely in the world now—she who was born with the prospect of a very different state of existence! Then would come all her dream-memories of the past, with those other dreams of whatmight be, did fortune prove more kind. How long it seemed ago since she had her father to nurse and Cadbury to shun—longer still since she had known the joy of Bevil's love, and the stolen meetings under the solemn and whispering beeches of Chilcote.
Chilcote was lonely; but how lovely it seemed to her in memory now! She even found herself at times now indulging in the two conundrums—the modern pessimist's speculations—Is civilisation a failure, and is life worth living?
The monotony of the school-room was now occasionally broken by visits—few and far between, certainly—of the eldest daughter of the house, Miss De Jobbyns, who had returned from a sojourn with some friends at Hastings—a young lady rather loud in tone and fast in manner. She had early discovered that Alison was dexterous in the way of embroidering, and thus kept her little hands busy, when not otherwise occupied, in tracing out her monogram and crest—for she had that, of course—in the corners of handkerchiefs, interspersed with forget-me-nots, rose-sprays, and fern-leaves.
Miss Victoria De Jobbyns (she had originally been christened Sarah, but that name was dropped now as vulgar) had from the first felt an emotion of pique that her little sisters' governess should be so lady-like, so perfectly patrician in air and bearing, and, more than all, so uselessly handsome; for, of course, she thought, of what use is beauty to a governess?
Her mother's first idea had been, what a perilous inmate in a house if there had been a grown-up son; but, apart from her being a paid dependant, her very loveliness was an all-sufficient reason for secluding her in the school-room, and never permitting her to be seen by guests or visitors, especially of the male sex.
'You are Scotch?' said the young lady, abruptly and interrogatively, on the occasion of her first visit.
'Yes.'
'And yet you don't look a bit Scotch, or talk like them either.'
Alison smiled as she wondered what the young lady thought the natives of the North were like.
'Where do your people live—in the Highlands?'
'My family are—all dead.'
'I see you are in mourning—all dead—everyone?'
'Yes,' replied Alison, curtly.
'How funny!'
Alison stared at this peculiar remark.
'What was that you were playing when I came in?' asked her visitor.
'A mazurka of Chopin's.'
'Shopang—who is he? And how well you sing, too.'
'I am glad you think so,' replied Alison, who sometimes accompanied herself on the old, ill-tuned, and twangling school-room piano.
'Ma will be having you to play at her weekly receptions.'
Alison shivered at the bare idea of figuring thus among such people as were there.
'Were you trained for the stage, or was your father a professional? of course he was.'
'He was not' said Alison, sharply, and at this blunt remark her soft violet eyes seemed to become hard and blue as a steel sword-blade; the little colour she had died out of her face, and she looked ten years older; but her blunt visitor—she of the frizzed, sandy hair, and snub nose—mistook the cause of her emotion, and said,
'You have had private trouble, I suppose?'
Alison was silent.
'Tell me,' continued the irrepressible Miss De Jobbyns, 'have you ever been in love?'
'In truth—I have been.'
'And your young man—he is dead, too, I suppose?'
'He I refer to is dead, at least, to me,' replied Alison, wearily; 'but here come my pupils, so please to let me resume their tasks.'
One of the chief, if not the only, pleasure of Alison's life of routine was, on sunny days, to take her little charges into Kensington Gardens, and set them by the margin of the blue Round Pond, and watch its tiny fleet of toy ships skimming to and fro, with the hideous, Dutch-looking palace of Kensington as a background—a palace, the rooms of which are only remarkable for memories of William of Orange (and, let us add, of Glencoe) and Elizabeth Villiers, the hideous, one-eyed Countess of Orkney; but stately, even grand, are the avenues of old trees that grow thereby. 'How many secrets have been overheard by these ancient elms since Heneage Finch built the boundary-fence of his pleasance! Could their experience be set forth for the behoof of modern lovers, would they be apt,' asks a writer, 'to encourage or to warn?'
The old palace is still there as it was when the home of the Finches, with its three irregular quadrangles, built of red brick, ornamented with columns, quoins, and cornices of indifferent stone, unchanged as when Solmes Blues mounted guard and the early Georges swore and blustered in broken English and guttural German; but how changed are all its surroundings, for miles upon miles of streets stretch far to the westward, southward, and northward of it now.
When James VI., accustomed to old Edinburgh within its 'Flodden Wall,' was so startled with the size of the petty London of his time that, in his famous speech in the Star Chamber, in 1616, he declared that its size made it a nuisance to the nation, that he would have all new edifices pulled down, and the builders committed to prison, he could little foresee the London of the days of steam!
And, often as she sat there under the stately trees, Alison loved to ponder over the days when the old Court suburb was remote from London, for in 1750, where now we find busy Westbourne Grove, stood a solitary house, called Western Green, three miles distant from Hyde Park; and so lately as 1830, on the Bayswater side of the Gardens, were Kensington Gravel Pits, facing the Broad Walk, stretching away to what is now called Bayswater, which was formerly renowned for the springs and conduits for which the city was then indebted for pure water. It was famous then for its tea gardens, there called the Flora, extending the whole length of Lancaster Gate.
So, book in hand, while the children played near her on the grass, Alison would sit in Kensington Gardens for hours lost in reverie, while the bees hummed in the hot air at the flower-beds near the Serpentine, and the sun blazed without mercy on the sheet of shining water that stretched away towards the Albert Gate; but, when certain thoughts of the past occurred to her, there would seem no beauty in that summer scene, nor warmth even in the sunshine, for there was a dull, weary, and aching crave at her heart, with the ever-recurring question—Where was Bevil, and why did he not make an effort to seek her out?
She knew not that the only person who could enlighten him as to her movements—the vicar of Chilcote—had steadily refused to do so.
On such occasions old Archie was generally hovering about for a sight of her; and, if he could exchange a word with her, would steal away to his dingy lodgings 'as happy as a king,' to use his own phrase; and muttering—'The Lord will watch owre her—the Lord will watch owre her—like ilka blade o' grass that keps its ain drap o' dew.'
One day she extended her walk beyond the boundary of the Gardens, and, crossing the bridge near the powder magazine, watched with feverish eagerness the crowds of fashionables who were gathering in their thousands there; for it was the 17th of May, when there was to be a muster of the Four-in-Hand Club, and she had a strange presentiment that she should see Bevil Goring—one of those presentiments which come unbidden to the mind, perhaps more often to the Scottish mind than any other—why or how, we know not—but which seem to speak of that which is to come as powerfully as ever did those oracles of old that whispered through the mist of Delphi, or by the black doves of Dodona; and she was not doomed to be—in one sense at least—disappointed.
Amid the fast gathering crowds and the general excitement of the scene she was careful not to lose sight of her little charges, whose tiny hands she clasped in her own, and kept them close by her side.
She saw Cadbury ride past, accompanied by Gaskins his groom; and, while the sight gave her a kind of shock, she shrank behind a tree lest he should perceive her, and some minutes elapsed ere she ventured from her hiding place.
Natheless his peerage, aware of his plebeian descent and certainly not distinguished appearance, instead of appearing fashionably attired like a London park rider, Cadbury affected the style of a country gentleman; and on this day—though a most indifferent horseman—he wore Bedford cord breeches, and black polished boots, an ordinary cut-away coat buttoned over the chest, a hat rather low in the crown, and carried a light hunting whip, affecting the air of one who flew over his fences 'like a bird' though not unfrequently he was landed on one side, while his horse remained on the other; and he rode over the hounds and committed many similar unpardonable faults in the field.
At this narrowly escaped rencontre she felt her colour come and go—come and go—quickly. The man's appearance brought brought back with a rush, and vividly, a host of painful and annoying memories; and then there was the thousand pounds cheque sent anonymously and the marble cross so mysteriously erected at her father's grave.
Oh, was she right or was she wrong in avoiding him?
Nowhere in Europe can such a sight be seen as that presented on such a day beside the Serpentine when the meet of the Four-in-Hand Club takes place. All London seemed to be looking its brightest and best, and all London—at least, the fashionable world thereof—seemed to have found some excuse for being in the vicinity of the Serpentine Bridge and the powder magazine which stands thereby.
It was May, and the young green trees were in full foliage, and the parterres of rhododendrons and azaleas were in bloom; and gathering there were the beauty and fashion of the greatest city in the world, with the best horse flesh, the most accomplished drivers, and the most perfect drags, with shining panels and plated harness.
On either side of the drive all the hawthorns, pink and white, were in bloom, loading the morning air with the perfume of the almond; and the waters of the Serpentine were seen at intervals between the flowery shrubs and long avenues of leafy trees in all the fresh greenery of May; but as Alison looked around her she thought of Essilmont in May—Essilmont, which too probably she would never see again, with the pool in the Ythan where the Black Hound appeared when one of her race was drowned in it; where the grey-clad angler loved to linger by the stream in the silvery morning mist; where the black gled crowed overhead as he winged his way across the purple heather, or the cushet doo cooed with bell-like note in the pine coppice, and the high antlers of the stag were seen as he couched amid the cool and fan-leaved bracken.
But the acclamations of the little girls who clung to her hands or skirts roused Alison from her reverie, for the procession had started, and above thirty drags, horsed magnificently, with splendid silver harness blazing in the sunshine, were getting into motion, their drivers—when not clad in the club uniform, blue, with gilded buttons—wearing accurate morning costume, while the dresses of the many ladies who crowded the lofty seats on the roof, were such as only Regent Street can furnish—and for beauty, no other city on earth could have produced such women as were seen there, in carriages or on foot.
Team after team went past, the German Ambassador with his bays, the Guards' drag, with four glossy blacks, the Hussars from Hounslow, chestnuts, greys, and roans, all criticised and critically examined by the onlookers, and surrounded by Hyde Park in all its glory, the route being taken from the magazine to Hyde Park corner, thence by Knightsbridge Barracks, passing the Albert Memorial, and out by the Queen's Gate, where the whole passed away like a phantasmagoria from the eyes of Alison, whose gaze followed the line of drags like one lost in a painful dream, after her heart had given the first bound of bewilderment, on seeing that the leading coach was driven by Bevil Goring!
She had seen a dashing drag drawn by a team of beautiful roans, and certainly her heart beat painfully with joy, amazement, and then with something of mortification, when she recognised in the driver thereof, 'tooling along in a most workmanlike manner,' as a bystander remarked, herfiancé, Bevil Goring, while on the top seats were Jerry Wilmot, Tony Dalton, young Fleming, and others of the Rifles, with Laura, and several ladies, some of whom were seated close behind Goring, and in animated conversation with him, one of them apparently a rather flirty party, who insisted on shading his eyes sometimes with her scarlet silk parasol.
She again shrank behind a tree, as she had done when Cadbury came in sight. Her gaze, and her heart too, followed the gay drag with its roans and brilliant party going away to luncheon, no doubt at Muswell Hill, and she watched it until it disappeared.
How she got through the remainder of the day in the dull school-room on the attic floor in Pembridge Square, she scarcely knew; but the next was considerably advanced before she saw an account of the coaching meet in a fashionable paper, and read that 'Captain Goring of the Rifles' drag and team were considered by eminent connoisseurs as the most perfect in the park.' A little further on she saw that at his rooms in Piccadilly he had, after the meet, entertained a number of the club at dinner, with many persons of distinction, including H.R.H. the F.M. commanding, and one or two foreign ambassadors.
His drag and team! What a change was here! Poor Alison was indeed sorely bewildered; but on reflection the change failed to give her joy. Here were evidences of great and sudden wealth, and yet he made no effort to discover her. And those ladies on the drag, who were they; and who was she who seemed so familiar with him, and to whose playful remarks he stooped to listen from time to time?
Alas! it seemed as if his neglect of her was quite accounted for now. She suppressed a great desire to sob aloud, and half drew her engagement ring from her finger. Then, with true superstition of the heart, she carefully replaced it, as she did a locket which contained his likeness, and which she wore in the breast of her dress; but the episode of that day and all it vaguely suggested added sorely to the already sufficient bitterness of the poor girl's governess life.
She knew not that though, in accordance with his recently-acquired wealth and position, his own tastes, and the wishes of friends, Bevil had started a drag and joined the Four-in-Hand Club, he had been baffled resolutely more than once in his efforts to trace her by the well-meaning vicar of Chilcote, and that he was in perpetual anxiety to discover her, and was trusting to hope that her father's death on one hand and his own ample means had removed the barrier that the former had raised between them.
It is the fate of true love apparently never to run like a railway. 'But why that proverbial asperity should be confined to what is true we are unable to say,' writes a novelist, adding, 'For our own part, that eternal smoothness has but little charm; and the ripple which reflects sunshine and shade, bright gleams and darkening clouds in love as in Nature, gives brightness and variety to the prosiest poetry in the world.'
But doubtless Goring and Alison Cheyne were beginning to think that they had endured enough of the darkening clouds that seemed as yet without a silver lining.
Had Goring indeed forgotten or ceased to love her? This was the ever-recurring question in the mind of Alison now, and she recalled the lines of the Spanish song,Vanse mis amores, as applicable to herself:
'How could I bear—how bear disdain,Who not the slightest favour everReceived without a blush of pain;How could I bear disdain? O, never!One hour of absence, swift and brief,I could not bear—how should I bearA long and tedious age of grief,An age of grief, of gloom and fear?O! I shall die without relief,For I am young, and—O, sincere.'
If Goring was, as she thought bitterly and repiningly, remiss in attempting to trace her or not caring to do so, as her heart at times began to forebode, she certainly would not and could not throw herself in his way; she could but wait and hope, suffer and endure.
But one day she had an unexpected annoyance to encounter.
While the two little girls with the fantastic names, Irene and Iseulte, played on the grass near her in Kensington Gardens, seated under the shadow of the trees, she was reading—or trying to read, for her mind was ever preoccupied—a railway volume, she became conscious that a man was hovering near, indeed, hanging over her. She looked up and instantly recognized Sir Jasper Dehorsey—or Captain Smith, as she supposed him to be—regarding her with his calm and insolent though admiring and insoucient smile. He lifted his hat, and said, with a bow,
'I knew I was not mistaken; there could not be another like my little runaway of Antwerp.'
Alison blushed scarlet with intense annoyance and then grew pale with alarm, she felt herself so friendless and alone. Finding her silent he spoke again.
'We have met before—you remember me, I hope?'
'Sir—I have no wish to remember you, and still less to renew the acquaintance,' said Alison, quitting her seat.
'Now, that's too bad,' said Dehorsey, deliberately barring her way; 'too bad indeed. If my admiration of you——'
'Please to remember that I cannot listen to your insolence. These children to whom I am governess——'
'Governess—you—here is a game!' said he, mockingly. 'Ahoi, girls—run after this, find it and keep it?'
Taking a crown piece from his purse he spun it along the grass to some distance, and the girls rushed after it to search for and find it, a task of some difficulty.
'Sir, sir,' said Alison, tremulous with indignation, 'you ought not to have done that.'
'Why?'
'I am the governess of these girls, and responsible for them.'
'Absurd—a governess, you! One might as well expect to see a queen or a professional beauty filling the post. Clever this governess dodge of yours,' he continued, with a kind of insolence peculiar to himself. 'I suppose these girls are your nieces—little decoy ducklings to play propriety? And how is our mutual friend, old Cad—I mean Lord Cadbury? Seen him lately? No answer? Quarrelled, I suppose—these things never last long; but you are as charming as ever. How bad of you to leave me as you did that night in the Café au Progrès!'
Alison called the children to her side and walked away. There was in her whole air and manner a conscious dignity that might have quieted the presumptuous coxcomb androuéwho dared to address her, while affliction had touched her features with something in expression that was beyond even beauty; but Dehorsey was one of those men who had a total disbelief in any feminine purity.
'Where do you live, little one?' he asked, while deliberately following her.
Alison made no reply, but looked round to see if Archie was near. He was in sight, but an appeal to him just then would have been unwise, for, old though he was, Dehorsey would have felt the full weight of his walking staff.
'How dare you, coward that you are, to molest me thus!' exclaimed Alison.
'A rough word from such lips as yours,' he said, mockingly, but changing colour nevertheless; 'but as an old friend——'
'Friend!'
'Votre pardon, mademoiselle—acquaintance then.'
Alison quitted the Gardens in haste, and hurried home with her two charges; and she was afterwards compelled to relinquish promenading there, one of her chief pleasures, as Dehorsey was always on the watch for her, and more than once had followed her at a little distance to the door of the house in Pembridge Square.
She was thus obliged to remain more indoors than she was wont to do; and, to add to her annoyance there, she was considerably afflicted by much more than she relished of the society of the loud and fast Miss De Jobbyns; for that young lady had recently found an admirer, or—as she confidently alleged—a lover, and in her vanity and exultation was never weary of expatiating to Alison on his merits and wealth, his looks, his phrases, his dress, the 'button-holes' she made for him, and how she and her mamma contrived to waylay him in the park or the Row and elsewhere, to all of which Alison's listened wearily and without interest, not even caring to inquire his name.
She had her own sad thoughts of love, and they were enough for her.
'I should like you to see him when he comes to mamma's weekly reception,' continued the young lady, as she frizzed up her hair and practisedœilladesat herself in Alison's little mirror, 'but as a rule mamma never intrudes a governess on friends—excuse me saying so.'
'I am aware of that,' replied Alison, softly, and heedless of the cutting rudeness of the speech.
'Since Miss Smythe-Smythe was here, she fancies that governesses require to be snubbed.'
'Why?'
'As a matter of principle, I suppose; but, upon my soul, I think it is rather hard upon you,' continued this slangy young person. 'We met him at Mr. Taype the lawyer's house, in Sussex Gardens, and, as he is rich, mamma fastened on him at once for me, don't you know; oh, isn't it fun?'
'Are you engaged then?' asked Alison, when Miss De Jobbyns had expatiated on the subject for more than half an hour.
'Engaged—oh, no—not exactly yet—but it is only a matter of time. He showed a great desire to cultivate our family; or rather mamma determined to cultivate him. But, hang it all! He is very shy for an officer, and leaves me to do the spooning actually.'
'He is in the army then?'
'Yes; and hangs out at Aldershot.'
Alison felt her colour change at the name of that locality; but she only said,
'Miss De Jobbyns, you should not use the fast phrases you do.'
'Well, ma uses them; ma always does.'
She did not add, that which perhaps she did not know, that her 'ma' had whilom been most accomplished in 'sherry-glass flirtations' while behind the bar at the 'Black Swan.'
'Isn't spoon English?' she asked.
'It is slang.'
'Is it? Well, if the verb "to spoon" is slang, I like it—that is all! But I wish I could flirt.'
'For what purpose?'
'To draw him on. But simply I can't do it, he is so stand-off in his manner.'
'Why?'
'It is not myforte; I wish it was. There is Miss Le Robbynson, she can flirt with a dozen of men at once, and even make them quarrel about her.'
'But men as a rule dislike flirts, and don't marry them; and flirting is pretending to care for a person when you don't.'
'Ah; but I care a great deal for this fellow.'
'Fellow?' queried Alison, on whose delicate ear this girl's phraseology jarred sorely.
'Well, my military beau?'
'You should not adopt this style.'
'You are not my governess!' retorted Miss De Jobbyns, with some asperity.
'Some day, no doubt, I shall see your intended.'
The daughter of the house blushed with pleasure at the phrase; but thought that, with a governess so undeniably handsome, it might be better that no meeting took place as yet. Suddenly she said,
'You have some fellow's photo that you wear at your neck; you have it on now,' she added, making a clutch at a ribbon which encircled the slender throat of Alison, who instinctively drew back and placed a hand upon her bosom.
'Some fellow's photo!—howcanyou use such a style of language?' she asked, haughtily.
'I have told you before that you are not my governess, and I won't be lectured by you; but as for the photo——'
'It is not a photo I wear to-day.'
'What then?'
'An ornament which I wear because—because——'
'What?' asked Miss De Jobbyns, impatiently.
'It is the anniversary of papa's birth.'
'And you won't show it to me?'
'I have not said so,' replied Alison, gently, as she drew up the object from her bosom. It was her father's badge, and the badge of his father before him, as a baronet of Nova Scotia—a gold oval species of medal, bearing in a scutcheon,argent, a St. Andrew's cross,azure, with thereon an inscutcheon of the royal arms of Scotland, with an Imperial crown, and the motto of Henry, Duke of Rothesay, 'Fax mentis honestœ gloria.'
Miss De Jobbyns, who had never seen anything of the kind before, surveyed it with equal wonder and admiration.
'What a funny thing! I would so like to wear it at a ball to-night,' she exclaimed.
'Excuse me,' replied Alison, as she replaced it in her bosom, 'but I cannot lend it.'
'How greedy of you! Then you will sell it, perhaps?'
'Sell it!' repeated Alison, with an inflection of voice that struck even the dull ear of the soap-boiler's daughter. 'Not for worlds!'
'I thought you said that your father was dead.'
'He is dead.'
'Then who is that queer-looking old Scotsman whom Irene and Iseulte see speaking to you sometimes?'
'He was my father's faithful valet, and is now my faithful friend,' replied Alison, with mingled hauteur and emotion.
'Dear me! how romantic—how funny! But I suppose you will have no place now to spend your holidays in?'
'None,' sighed Alison, who had never thought of them till then, and she looked round the bare, bleak school-room, the scene of her daily toil, and where nearly all her time was passed now; but just then the carriage was announced, and she was relieved of the oppressive society of the somewhat irrepressible Miss Victoria De Jobbyns.
If the children talked thus of poor old Archie Auchindoir, they might speak of the insolent 'Captain Smith.' Thus she might lose her situation and be again cast on the world. Oh, how tempest-tossed was her poor little heart!
The perfect, self-posed, and ladylike manner of Alison was to a certain extent lost upon the rather rough, pampered, and hoydenish damsel who had just driven off to the Row to meet her admirer, no doubt, and who saw in her only a paid dependant, whom her mother might discard like one of the housemaids at an hour's notice or less. Her sweet nature, her natural lightness and cheerfulness, her readiness and wish to oblige, yet never intrusively in any way, were all lost on the coarse natures of those among whom her evil fortune had cast her.
She was glad that on this particular day, inspired by filial reverence, she had substituted the relic of her father for the locket which contained the photo of Bevil Goring, whose face she would have shrunk from subjecting to the off-hand criticism of the young lady who had just left her; and she was not without a stronger fear that the military lover of Miss De Jobbyns—if lover he was—was therouéDehorsey, who now haunted Kensington Gardens and Pembridge Square, though 'Captain Smith' seemed scarcely the kind of man to be captivated by the soap-boiler's daughter.
'You will be good enough to keep the children quiet and amused this evening, Miss Cheyne,' said Mrs. De Jobbyns, 'as we have company coming to dinner. Also have them nicely dressed, as they may be sent for to dessert or to the drawing-room.'
Being now used to be spoken to in this style, Alison merely bowed, on which Mrs. De Jobbyns said, sharply,
'You heard me, I presume?'
'Yes; you certainly spoke loud enough.'
Mrs. De Jobbyns frowned. She would have liked her to add 'ma'am,' like any other paid dependant; but Alison, of course, never thought of such a thing.
'You may withdraw now, Miss Cheyne,' said the lady, with an assumption of would-be dignity that sat rather absurdly on the whilome dispenser of glasses of gin and bitters and pints of stout at the bar of the 'Black Swan.'
'Oh, Miss Cheyne, I wonder when the wedding is to be!' exclaimed little Irene when Alison returned to the school-room.
'Whose wedding, dear?' she asked.
'Why, Vic.'s—don't you know she is going to be married to that rich military swell?'
'Oh, fie, Irene—you must not use such terms!'
'Why not? I heard cook call him so when she told the tablemaid, and said we two girls would be bridesmaids.'
Intent on a book she had procured—by the way, save photographic albums in which the De Jobbyns family were reproduced endlessly, there were no books in the house—Alison thought no more of the matter; but when evening was drawing on she heard the soft rustle of a long silken skirt, as Miss De Jobbyns, arrayed for conquest, swept in, wearing a really beautiful costume of dark blue velvet and light blue silk, smothered with cream-tinted lace.
'He is coming—he is coming to dinner—mamma got him to promise that he would, at last!' exclaimed the young lady, pirouetting about in the extravagance of her joy. 'Tell me how you like my dress?'
'It is indeed exquisite—in material,' replied Alison, who of course had dined in the school-room with her pupils at one o'clock, and felt little or no interest to learn that Miss Victoria's lover, or admirer, was coming to a little dinneren familleat seven p.m.
'He will soon be here—how do you think I look?' she asked for the third or fourth time.
As Alison's delicate fingers were adjusting some parts of the lace, the sharp eyes of Miss De Jobbyns observed—as they had often done before—the ring, the engagement ring, which the former had received from her lover, under the whispering beeches, one evening.
'It is very beautiful, and must be valuable,' said Miss De Jobbyns, examining it closely.
'It is valuable.'
'Too much so, I think, for—for one teaching to wear.'
'When it was given to me, teaching was not thought of,' said Alison, in a low, sad voice.
'I have no end of lovely rings; but,' urged the girl, who was by nature covetous, 'you might lend it to me, just for to-night, though you wouldn't lend that funny ornament for the Le Robbynson's ball.'
'Excuse me,' replied Alison, coldly, 'it never leaves my finger.'
'Not even when you wash your hands?'
'Not even then.'
'You will spoil these beautiful stones.'
'It shall never be seen on another hand while I live.'
'Indeed,' sneered Miss De Jobbyns; 'and thereby hangs a tale, I suppose. Upon my Sam you are very romantic! Of course you got it from the fellow whose photo you wear, but will let no one see?'
Alison made no reply, but her colour came and went with annoyance at the girl's brusquerie; and the latter began to chant the praises of her admirer, a subject of which her listener was utterly weary.
'He has we don't know how many thousands a year—think of that; oh my! Talking of love, I heard him say laughingly to mamma, who was chaffing him on the subject, that he would not be in love with anyone again.'
'And what of that?'
'He meant, of course, with anyone again but me.'
'How do you construe his remark thus?'
'Because his eyes met mine as he said so; and I do hope I blushed—I am sure I did.'
'And he is rich, you say?'
'Yes, rich enough to satisfy even mamma.'
'That is fortunate,' replied Alison, with a sigh, as she recalled her father's bitter opposition to her own engagement, and all the wiles and worry of Cadbury.
'Fortunate indeed; but there is about Bevil——'
'BEVIL!' exclaimed Alison, startled by the uncommon name.
'Don't snap me up so! Yes, Bevil is his name—sweetly pretty I think it—Bevil Goring.'
'And he is rich, you say?'
'Yes; has twenty or thirty thousand a year at least.'
It cannot be the same, though the conjunction of name is very singular, said Alison in her agitated heart.
'Is he a merchant,' she asked, 'a city man?'
'City be hanged!' responded this impulsive young woman. 'He is an officer—a Captain in the Rifle Brigade, and, when not in town, hangs out at Aldershot. But there is a carriage; the people are arriving, and I must be off.'
She quickly withdrew, leaving Alison pale as a corpse, trembling in every limb, and rooted to the spot, propping herself by a hand on the table, till she sank into a chair, oblivious of the wonder with which the two little girls regarded her sudden, and, to them, unaccountable emotion.
For some time her thoughts were terrible. She recalled the drag alleged by the public prints to be Goring's—the entertainment, given even to royalty, at 'his rooms in Piccadilly,' all evidences of wealth that must have come to him since the time she was decoyed to the Continent, and in the fact of that wealth—the absence of which was the cause of her father's hostility to the last hour of his life—this girl's remarks now confirmed her!
That Bevil Goring could love or even admire such a girl—a man so refined and delicate in taste and ideas—she never for a moment imagined; but what did the whole situation and that girl's boastful allegations mean? How came he to know such people, despite their great wealth, and permit them to cultivate his acquaintance? Yet matters seemed to have progressed so far that even the servants were canvassing the prospects of awedding!
More than all, why, oh why had he never attempted to discover her, to trace her out, in these her days of poverty and sore trial!
The magnitude and the multitude of her thoughts overwhelmed her; among these were emotions of sharp but just pride, keen disappointment, bitterest doubt, and agonising mortification; but her tears—usually so ready to flow—came not to relieve her now, and she was only roused from a kind of feverish stupefaction by the entrance of a servant to light the candles, and conduct 'the young ladies downstairs to dessert,' an invitation to which they responded with instant alacrity.
Stooping over the stair-bannister, she heard his voice once or twice as the male guests filed off to the drawing-room after the ladies, and it thrilled through her heart. A choking lump rose in her throat, but still not a tear would come.
After a time she was roused by some one addressing her. It was a servant, by nature saucy, under-bred, illiterate, and disposed to be impertinent in general when she could be so with impunity.
'Were you addressing me?' asked Alison.
'Yes; the missus says as you are to tittivate yourself a bit and come down to the drawing-room.'
'I am to—what?' asked Alison, sharply—for her at least.
'Tittivate yourself—it is Henglish; but, bein' Scotch, perhaps you don't know what it means.'
'I am not going to the—drawing-room to-night.'
'You won't obey the missus?' exclaimed the servant, aghast.
'Certainly not in this instance.'
'Don't you know your place? You are honly a guv'ness, and guv'nesses ain't ladies, whatever they may think.'
'What are they?'
'Mock ones.'
'Leave the room instantly—or——'
'Or what?' asked the girl, sharply.
'I'll get you turned out of the house.'
The girl withdrew uttering as Parthian shots some remarks about 'hupstarts hordering their betters about.'
In a few minutes Miss De Jobbyns, with some irritation of manner, appeared to prefer the same request, adding that she was wanted for a hand at whist.
'To come down to play whist? Is not this an unusual condescension?' asked Alison.
'Yes,' was the cool response; 'ma thinks it part of your duty to make yourself generally useful; and, I suppose, you can play whist?'
The girl was too underbred to be aware how heartless was thesang froid, in which she suggested, or commanded, that Alison should make herself useful.
'I would rather be excused.'
'But ma says you must!'
'Must—why?'
'A hand is wanted at the whist table, and I want Bevil at the piano, all to myself.'
'It is utterly impossible. I have a headache,' replied Alison, goaded to desperation.
'Bother your headache!' was the elegant response; 'try sal volatile, Rimmel's vinegar, anything, but come.'
However, Alison remained inflexible, and so far from making herself 'useful' to either Mrs. De Jobbyns and her daughter, by appearing in their circle downstairs, she retired to bed—to think and weep—but not to sleep.
The vicar of Chilcote was, she knew, in town, and to him she would appeal to procure her another home, where she would hear the name of Bevil Goring no more!
While Dalton, under Laura's care and nursing, had been fast recovering health and strength, on leave of absence, at Chilcote Grange; and Jerry Wilmot, though less tenderly cared for at Wilmothurst, surrounded as he was then by every luxury and comfort still, was also fast learning to forget all he had endured in Ashanti, and all the natural buoyancy of his spirits was returning, Lady Julia was as full of unspeakable animosity at Mr. Chevenix as the languid character of her aristocratic nature would permit her to be.
A regular breach had replaced the cool indifference with which she had viewed that personage. In the profundity of his plebeian insolence he had at last taken full measures to obtain the interest on his mortgages, and more, he had foreclosed them, and ruin now awaited the house of Wilmot!
And again and again, while tenderly carressing Flossie, or having her long tresses brushed out by Mademoiselle Florine, she languidly bewailed to Cousin Emily, or to Jerry, who lingered near her with the cigar in hand he dared not light in her presence, that 'the artful pillager of the Wilmot estates would drive her to a beggar's grave in a foreign land.'
Though Jerry thought life was too short 'for all this sort of thing,' and was making up his mind to 'cut the whole thing' and go to India, he was still on friendly terms with old Mr. Chevenix, but nevertheless was greatly ruffled by stories that reached him of Lord Twiseldown's attention to Bella, and was once, as he phrased it, 'awfully cut up,' when coming upon them riding together without even a groom in attendance, and nearly overtook them in a green lane—yea, would have done so, had he not timely drawn the bridle of his own horse.
They had been laughing and talking amicably—certainly more like friends, it would seem, than lovers, as gossip averred them to be; and with aching heart, and eager and admiring eyes, poor Jerry Wilmot—poor in more ways than one, for he was a ruined man now—observed the air and bearing of the handsome girl, in her dark blue riding habit—a costume so fitted for the display of every womanly grace—while from her slender waist she moved with every movement of her horse, the very action of which seemed to assert that he was proud of having such a rider.
Still more was Jerry 'cut up' and then perplexed when, soon after, he met Mr. Chevenix, who, with a twinkle in his eye—whether of pride or mischief the said Jerry failed to detect—informed him, somewhat unnecessarily as he thought, that Lord Twiseldown had proposed to Bella.
'Proposed!' repeated Jerry, in a rather breathless voice.
'Yes.'
'And when does the—the marriage come off?'
'It won't come off at all.'
'Why?'
'She has refused him.'
'Refused him!'
'Yes; odd, isn't it? Can't make Bella out at all,' replied Mr. Chevenix, as he nodded, smiled, and trotted away on his cob.
Jerry was, we say, perplexed on hearing of this. Bella's refusal of Twiseldown's hand delighted him greatly, but was it born of regard for himself or regard for someone else? He had not gone near her for some time past, and knew not how many might have been hovering about her, now that, with all her beauty and brilliance apart, she was known as the virtual heiress of Wilmothurst.
It filled him with many thoughts that were difficult of arrangement and of analysis. He resolved to pay her a farewell visit anyway, and told his lady mother that he would do so.
'That girl again!' said Lady Julia, as he rode off. 'I did not think that he had actually involved himself with her.'
'Nor has he, perhaps, auntie,' sighed Cousin Emily, though her heart made her suspect otherwise.
'I believe Jerry to be, like many young men of the present day,' resumed Lady Julia, still obtuse as to the new situation, 'one of those who think they can—especially with a girl of her position in society—go to the utmost confines of love-making—can look, say, and do what they please, and yet do and say nothing that will quite compromise them, or involve their honour; and girls such as the Chevenix quite understand the matter. But that there should be more in it passes my comprehension, and yours too, darling Flossie,' she added, taking the cur out of its mother-of-pearl basket and kissing its nose tenderly.
She spoke, as usual, languidly and softly, for she was ever one of those who deem that 'feeling, or any betrayal of it, is a sure sign of an ill-bred person'—bad form, in short.
Meanwhile Jerry wastête-à-têtewith Bella Chevenix in her pretty little drawing-room overlooking the ivy-clad church and the village green.
Jerry was rather grave, for Bella had been piqued by his absence, and received him, he thought, rather coldly, which led him to fear there 'was some other fellow in the field;' but anon Bella began to rally him, for she could not but remember that the letter he had written on the night before Coomassie was entered, amounted quite to a declaration.
'I begin to sicken of the world and all its bitterness, Bella,' said he, a little irrelevantly, on which she sang, softly,
'Oh, what shall I be at fifty,If I am then alive,If I find the world so bitterWhen I am barely twenty-five?'
'I wonder if you will be so merry when we meet again, years hence, if ever,' said Jerry, almost angrily.
'Years hence—what do you mean, Jerry—for I must call you Jerry as of old, if you adopt this tone?' said she, regarding his now grave face attentively.
'I go to the Horse Guards to-morrow to arrange about an exchange for India.'
'Why?'
'Can you ask—when you know that I am a ruined and beggared man?'
He was looking doggedly out of the window, and did not see how her sensitive lips quivered, and how her shapely bodice was heaving with the painful pulsations of her warm and affectionate heart; for Bella—impulsive Bella—felt that if she said only a little more she must break down altogether; and the muscles of her slender throat ached with the efforts she made to keep back her desire to weep.
'Ruined—Jerry—you?' she said, after a pause.
'You know how, and why; the past is over—at an end, and for ever; but do think of me kindly, Bella, when I am far away from you—for my own kindred are few and cold—yea, seem to have little heart for me.'
'Jerry, dear Jerry,' said the girl, in a low voice, 'ere this, I thought you would have asked me to marry—to—to marry you.'
'I dared not, Bella.'
'Why?'
'Lest you might misunderstand me.'
'But you—you love me?'
'God alone knows how well!'
'Then, Jerry, willyoumarry me?' she said, while her sweet voice sank into a pleading whisper; 'I have always loved you.'
Jerry caught her wildly in his arms.
'Bella—my wife—my own little wife at last!' exclaimed Jerry, in a rather broken voice, as they kissed each other solemnly and passionately, for all doubts between them were ended now.
'Oh, Bella darling,' said Jerry, after sundry incoherences had been indulged in, 'though far, far away from you, I often dreamed of such an hour as this—for I was always with you in the spirit.'
'I would rather have had you, as I have you now, you dear, provoking old Jerry, in the flesh,' replied Bella, with one of her arch and waggish smiles. 'It is much more satisfactory.'
So Wilmothurst would return to the old line again, in all its vast extent of fertile acreage, and with the latter would come a bride second to none in brilliance and beauty that had ever come there before, though not—like haughty Lady Julia, the daughter of ever so many earls—but of a hale, stout, and warm-hearted old fellow, who loved Jerry as his own son—though, sooth to say, we fear he will never be able to abide his mother, who eventually took up her abode, in sullen and stately grandeur, with Cousin Emily, at the restored Dower House in Langley Park.
So Jerry did not go up to the Horse Guards after all, but quietly and rapidly set about the arrangements for his marriage, which was very soon to come about; and, meanwhile, as may be supposed, he spent every spare hour—and he had a good many of them—with Bella.
'The joy of my life is atête-à-têtewith you, dearest Bella,' said Jerry, as he lay on the grass at her feet one evening smoking his brier-root. 'My lady mother's manner is so cold and stately that she quite thrusts all a poor fellow's heart back upon himself. By Jove, you should have seen her mode of welcoming me home after our shindy in Ashanti! I would have preferred less etiquette and more love; some of the kissing and clinging some of our poor fellows, like Tony Dalton, received on the day we landed at Portsmouth.'
'Poor Jerry! you will never want for kisses now,' said Bella, laughingly.