'By-the-by, I have a letter from Goring, who is again in town, and cutting quite a figure, I hear, in the world of fashion.'
'Has he heard aught yet of Miss Cheyne, poor girl?' asked Bella, who naturally took a deep interest in all love affairs, especially just then.
'He says that he has not. Here is his epistle; but that he is bored to death by a soap-boiler's widow and her daughter, an absurd couple, whom, for his sins, he met at the house of Taype, his solicitor, and who have made a dead set at him—waylay him in the park with their carriage, haunt the vicinity of his club, and pester him with invitations.
'"They are shameless in their mode of teasing me, these devilish women," he continues, "and seem to possess the power of ubiquity, and bid fair to run me to earth. I must either cut them or hook it, and come back to the camp." Only fancy, Bella, what odd creatures they must be.'
'But everyone has not the wealth and handsome person of Captain Goring.'
'Yes; and Bevil is one of the right good sort.'
So there were two sides to the picture drawn by the fervid fancy or vanity of Miss Victoria De Jobbyns; and Alison Cheyne, had she known all, need not have wept so bitterly far into the hours of the night, as related.
With Alison events were fated to follow each other fast now.
On the day subsequent to the dinner-party at Pembridge Square she felt too ill to leave her bed till the afternoon was well advanced. She was, however, visited by Miss De Jobbyns, who gave her a very inflated account of Goring's attentions to herself, how she completely 'snuffed out the three Le Robbynson girls,' and gave him credit for many flattering, and certainly peculiar, utterances that Alison thought very unlike the Goring that she knew. Still she was painfully uncertain what to think, and was very glad when her garrulous visitor, after readjusting her frizzled hair in the mirror and inspecting the few trifles that lay on the toilet-table, took her departure.
Alison, we have said, could not throw herself in Goring's way; her pride and delicacy, all love apart, revolted at the idea and she now actually trembled lest the chance mention of her not very common name by any of the De Jobbyns' family might lead to the discovery of her identity in her present humble position.
And now a letter, on the envelope of which a coronet figured, was, after being long inspected, and the cause of much surmise by Mrs. and Miss De Jobbyns, handed to her by a servant. She opened it and read. It would seem that, though Bevil Goring had failed to obtain from the vicar of Chilcote the London address of Alison and a clue to her circumstances, the 'Right Honourable Lord Cadbury' had succeeded in obtaining both, in virtue of his rank, we presume; and the result was this letter, most subtily and cunningly worded, and dated not from his club or from Cadbury Court, but from the villa of his 'lady friend' at St. John's Wood, offering her a home there, and containing what she conceived at first to be another offer of marriage; but, on re-reading it, the real meaning of and nature of the document came before her, in all its insulting form and truth, as it fell from her hand ere she tore it into minute fragments with trembling fingers. She grew deadly pale, but her lips became firm and set; her bosom heaved, and all the purity of her nature, her pride of old position and race,l'esprit de famillewhich her father had inculcated rose within her, she covered her face with her hands as if to thrust back her tears, and exclaimed, in a low voice,
'Oh, papa, papa! It wanted but this insult to complete the humiliation of my life!'
So the parvenu peer sought—but in vain—to put a keystone to the edifice of his own innate rascality.
At last she rose from her bed and proceeded to dress herself with the intention of visiting the vicar without delay to beseech him to find her another home; but—on looking about her toilet-table, where she had certainly left it over night—she missed her locket—the locket with the likeness of Bevil in it!
She instituted a strict if hurried search over all her little room, but no trace of it could be found.
The servant who had brought breakfast to her on a covered salver had never approached the toilet-table she was certain; but Miss De Jobbyns had, as she remembered, lingered before the mirror, and trifled with the little etceteras that lay thereby.
Could she be the abstractor, the delinquent, the thief?
Impossible! Yet Alison had barely completed attiring herself for the street, with the intention of asking permission to go out for a little time, when a maid appeared, sent by Mrs. De Jobbyns, to request her presence in the drawing-room.
'In the drawing-room,' thought Alison; 'what does that import?'
On entering, the first object that caught her eye was her locket in that lady's hand, and she had a perfect conviction that the latter and her daughter were inflamed with keen resentment.
'Jealousy,' we are told, 'smacks of low life and the drama.' Be that as it may, Alison was now fated to a sample thereof.
'Is this your property, Miss Cheyne?' asked Mrs. Slumpkin De Jobbyns, frigidly, yet tremulous with passion.
'It is; and how came it in your possession, I demand?' exclaimed Alison.
'You demand?'
'Yes.'
'That matters little.'
'It matters very much indeed,' said Alison, her spirit rising to the occasion; 'a theft has been committed, else my locket would have been where I left it, on my toilet-table.'
'Do not attempt to bandy words with me,' said the lady of the mansion, assuming a bullying tone. 'But how is it that the likeness of a friend of this family—of a gentleman visitor—a stranger to a person in your position, of course—is in your possession?'
'And how do you dare to wear it?' added Miss De Jobbyns, in a shrill voice of passion, as her mother tossed the locket to the feet of Alison, who regained it, and deliberately placed it in the bosom of her dress.
'What would he—what must we—think of you?' asked Mrs. De Jobbyns, in a louder key.
Alison disdained to make any reply.
'You are unfit to teach my darlings—if you have not corrupted their angel minds already—and I request you to quit Pembridge Square at once. The housekeeper will give you what is due in lieu of a month's notice.'
Alison had not been unprepared for this dictum. She had heard it without a shock, and, though certainly dismayed by the sudden turn her affairs had taken, at once prepared for and took her departure.
She kissed and bade adieu to her two little pupils, Irene and Iseulte, whose names had no doubt been suggested by theLondon Journal—a periodical much affected by Mrs. Slumpkin De Jobbyns in her youth, and then drove away.
The daughter of the house, enraged and bewildered, knew not preciselywhatto think of the affair, but she had a gloomy fear that so far as Bevil Goring was concerned her hopes were vanishing into thin air, or on the eve of being shattered like the crystal in the basket of Alnaschar, of whom no doubt she never heard.
As the cab quitted the square, Alison shrank back on perceiving Sir Jasper Dehorsey (or 'Captain Smith,' as she supposed him to be) ambling his horse slowly along, and watching—as she had before known him to do—the windows of the house she had just quitted for ever; and this incident, with the memory of Cadbury's cruel and cowardly letter, filled her heart with horror, bitterness, and dismay. She felt so well-nigh penniless and helpless, too.
The summer sunshine was in all its brightness and glory, but Alison felt as if a mist surrounded her, and as if the surging of great waters was in her ears, and she feared that she might faint.
Almost at the same moment she quitted Pembridge Square, Bevil Goring entered it to leave his card, like a well-bred man, on the De Jobbyns family, whom he devoutly hoped to find 'not at home.' Indeed, he selected the time when he knew that the mother and daughter were generally 'hairing' themselves, as they called it, in the Row, and as he drew near the house he came suddenly upon a well-known form and figure.
'What, Archie! faithful old Archie Auchindoir—you here!' he exclaimed, as he shook the old man's hand with ardour. 'Can it be you?'
'By my certie it is, sir,' replied Archie, 'and pleased I am to see a kent face in this unco human wilderness o' brick wa's.'
'And what are you doing here now that poor Sir Ranald is dead?'
'Just what he wad hae dune—watching owre missie, sir.'
'And where is she, Archie—where is she?'
'Where her forbears wad little like to see her.'
'How—where—what?' asked Goring, impetuously.
'Governess to some brats in the square up bye.'
'What square?'
'Paimbrig Square,' replied Archie, adapting the name to his own vernacular.
'And whose children?'
'A Mrs. De Jobbyns she ca's hersel',' replied Archie, with a contemptuous smirk on his wrinkled visage.
'My God!' exclaimed Goring, growing red and pale alternately; 'my darling reduced to this, and all unknown to me! When came this about?'
'A week or two after the master gaed to his lang hame, sir. Puir Sir Ranald!' said Archie, with a break in his voice; 'after a' he had possest and tint, a kist and a sheet was a' he needed in the lang rin.'
'And you have been watching over her, you say?' asked Goring, again taking the old man's hand in his own.
'I had a wee pickle siller saved, and I thought—I thought—but never mind; a' the men in the Mearns can do nae mair than they may.'
'And she is in Pembridge Square now?'
'Yes, sir.'
He slipped a card with his address into Archie's hand, and hurried to the house, where the startling ring he gave the bell brought an indignant housemaid to the door speedily as a genii of the Lamp.
'Mrs. and Miss De Jobbyns,' she answered, 'was not at home, having just driven off to the park.'
'Thank heaven!—and Miss Cheyne!'
'The governess?'
'Yes—yes—is she at home?'
He was rather curtly informed that she had been dismissed from her 'sitivation,' and with her trunk had left the house a short time ago.
'Dismissed and gone—where?'
'No one in the house knew.'
He turned away in great agony of mind; and he had in his haste forgotten to ask Archie where he lived. He looked about him in every direction, but the old man was nowhere to be seen.
And so she would be utterly homeless now.
Homeless, and in London—and she so young, so tender, and beautiful!
Alas! more evils than ever the fatal Black Hound of Essilmont forebode might be in store for his Alison now.
So she was out in the world once more, with apparently no earthly tie to bind her to it.
'Could I but see Bevil's face once more and then die!' was her thought, as, blinded with the hot tears that flowed under her veil, she was driven through the sunny and crowded streets of pleasant Bayswater.
We have said that the vicar of Chilcote was now in town; he had brought his family with him, and was residing in private apartments not far from Pembridge Square, and overlooking Kensington Gardens. Thus Alison's first thoughts—indeed her only resource—was to throw herself upon him as she had before intended; but now she was terrified that, if he naturally made inquiries of Mrs. De Jobbyns, in the spirit of sourness or malevolence she might give a very distorted account of the late episode; and, indeed, the worthy old man was greatly disturbed when she told him her simple tale, as the same ideas occurred to himself, and he saw all the peril of giving the name of that irate matron as a reference to anyone else; and thus for two entire days he remained in sore perplexity what to do.
On the third he began again to question Alison, whom he kept with his family.
'And the portrait which caused this grotesque disturbance—the portrait of this gentleman is that of yourfiancé?' he asked.
'Yes.'
'Were you engaged to him with your father's consent?' asked he, suspiciously, while he regarded her keenly, but not unkindly, under his shaggy, white eyebrows.
'No—to my sorrow be it said,' replied Alison, with a little hesitation.
'That seems wrong—why?'
'He was not rich enough then to suit papa's views, having little more than his pay.'
'Then—is he rich now?'
'Yes—more than rich—even wealthy.'
'And has he since sought you out?'
'No,' sobbed Alison.
The vicar shook his white head and groaned.
'What is his name?' he asked, and Alison told him.
'Goring—Goring,' said he, pulling his nether lip thoughtfully; 'I have heard the name. He called on me more than once to ask your London address, as also did Lord Cadbury of Cadbury Court; but suspecting his object, I declined to give it.'
'Oh, why?'
'He is an officer—and officers are often wild and unscrupulous fellows. You are young, more than most attractive, and are without a protector—you understand?'
'Oh, sir, how you have wronged him!'
'I am sorry you think so, but——'
'Good heavens, you may have parted me and Bevil for ever!' she exclaimed, in a voice of intense pathos and sorrow.
'Not so, my darling—I am here!' said Bevil Goring, who had entered unannounced by the boarding-house servant, and in a moment his arms were round her and her head upon his breast.
The darkest hour is always that before the dawn, it is said, even as clouds are a prelude to sunshine.
It is chiefly in novels and on the stage, but seldom in real life, that people start and scream, or faint and fall; so Alison, on finding herself suddenly face to face with the object of all her dearest and tenderest thoughts, felt only her colour change and her heart give a kind of leap within her breast; while power so completely seemed to leave her limbs for some moments that she would have slid on the carpet but for the support of Bevil's caressing arms, and for more than a minute neither spoke, for great emotion induces silence.
So she remained folded in his close embrace—content, safe in the shelter of his arms, with her white face nestling on his breast, while he showered kisses upon it and her hair.
'Captain Goring,' said the vicar, 'how did you discover that she was here—with me?'
'She wrote to her old servant whither she had gone, and he informed me without delay at my club. He did not distrust me, as you, sir, did.'
'I trust, Captain Goring, you will pardon that now, "as all is well that ends well," replied the vicar, with a smile, and thinking, wisely, that he might be ratherde tropjust then, he withdrew to another apartment.
Goring now then held her at arm's length to survey her face, it was so long since he had last looked upon it, and then drew her close again to his breast. After a time, he asked,
'What is all this that I have been told about your being a governess—Alison, love, tell me?'
'I am one now—at least, I was one, in a house in Pembridge Square.'
'With a family called De Jobbyns—absurd name!'
'Yes.'
'Is this a riddle—a joke, or what?' said he, giving his moustache an almost angry twitch.
'No riddle or joke,' replied Alison, sweetly. 'I seemed to have no friend in the world to aid me, and I had my bread to earn.'
'My poor darling!'
'Yes—poor indeed.'
'And you have left that woman?'
'No.'
'How?'
'She dismissed me bluntly and coarsely.'
'Why?' asked Goring, striking the floor with his spurred heel.
'I was dismissed with a month's salary, because I had been detected wearing your likeness—here, in my locket.'
A smile that rippled into a laugh spread over the face of Goring, who, recalling the mode in which he had been hunted by mother and daughter, took in the whole situation.
Calm speech and connected utterance came now to both, and many mutual explanations were made, and mutual tender assurances given more than once; for both had much to relate and to hear; nor with both—Alison especially—without false impressions that required removal.
'Andyouwere actually in Antwerp too!' exclaimed Alison, when she heard his story.
'I traced you there, only to lose you again—though many times I must have passed the door of the very place where you lay ill. Oh, my darling, what you must have endured!'
Her transitory emotions of gratitude to Cadbury for his supposed birthday gift made Goring laugh again when he saw her wonder and joy that it had come from himself, and that she learned the erector of the marble cross was himself also. Thus, when Bevil felt her tears and kisses on his cheek, he thought that never were gifts so pleasantly repaid. With Alison, it would all be rest hereafter. 'Trials and troubles might come,' as a writer has it; though further trials and troubles seemed at a low computation just then; 'but nothing would tear her great tree up by the roots again.'
Alison felt just a little emotion of shame, and that she kept to herself. He had never, even for an instant, doubted her love (though he had feared her father's influence), but she had not been without twinges of doubt, especially after the day of the Four-in-Hand meeting by the Serpentine.
'How trivial, at first, seem the events that rule our lives—that shape our destinies—our future,' said Goring. 'Had I not, by the merest chance, met poor old Archie, heaven alone knows when I might have traced you.'
Hour after hour passed by, and she forgot all about the vicar, and even of where they were.
She would recal the past time at Chilcote, when the first vague emotion of happiness in his presence and his society—pleasure that was almost, strange to say, a kind of sweet pain—stole over her; when she was half-afraid to meet his eye, and when each stolen glance at the other led to much secret perturbation of spirit, and when a touch of the hand seemed to reveal something that was new, as the glamour of a first love stole into the hearts of both.
How long, long ago, seemed that day on which they rode with the buckhounds, and took their fences together side by side.
We have not much more to relate, as in a little time they were to glide pleasantly away into the unnoticed mass of married folks; yet to Alison it would be always delightful to think that she had, at her will and bidding, a fine manly fellow like Bevil Goring—one whom brave men had been proud to follow—for she had a keen appreciation of soldierly renown; and he had more than a paragraph to his name in the Annual Army List.
We have said, we think, in a preceding chapter that he wrote to his solicitors at Gray's Inn an important letter concerning the acquisition of certain property at Chilcote; thus when he took Archie Auchindoir into his service as a personal valet (which he did forthwith), great was the astonishment of the old man on first entering his master's rooms in Piccadilly at what he saw there, and a cry of joy escaped him and he almost wept.
There hung all the old family pictures, and there were many a relic and chattel dearly prized by Sir Ranald and Alison too, in that superstition of the heart, which few sensitive or affectionate natures are without.
There on the sideboard was the great silver tankard, the gift of Queen Elizabeth—the Bride of the Bruce—filled with red wine and emptied on hundreds of occasions by many successions of Cheynes, even after the 24th of June, 1314, was nigh forgotten, and above it hung the portraits of the two pale, haughty, yet dashing and noble-looking cavalier brothers, with their love-locks and long rapiers, who fell in battle for the King of Scotland, and Archie, greeting them as old friends, passed his shrivelled hands tenderly and caressingly over the unconscious canvas, as if he could scarcely believe his eyes.
'A' for her, a' for her—God bless him!' he muttered, knowing well why Goring had rescued these objects from Sir Ranald's creditors.
In Piccadilly, Archie, though rather a puzzle to Goring's other servants—his grooms, coachman, and so forth—found himself 'in clover;' and, till the marriage came off, Alison was to remain with the family of the vicar, who was to perform the ceremony, at which little Netty Dalton figured as a bridesmaid.
After all she had undergone, and had feared she might yet have to undergo, she was again with Goring—his strong arms round her, his lips upon her cheek and brow!
She was at times confused, bewildered—unable to comprehend it all. She could but lay her head upon his breast and resign herself to the rapture of the occasion, and close her eyes as if it would be happiness even if she opened them no more.
How joyous was that mute embrace—that love-making without words—the spell that neither knew how—or wished—to break! All her past woes, and all her future hopes, seemed merged in the joy of the present time; while the pressure of Bevil's hand, his impassioned murmur, his fond gaze and studious tenderness, his attention to every wish and want, caused a sense of joy in her soul of which it had never been conscious before.
As Jerry said, in his off-hand way, when he visited them, like Bella and himself, 'they were in a high state of sentimental gush.'
Now she knew that she belonged to Goring, and he to her, and that the life and love of each belonged to each other, that they would be always together till death—a distant event, let us hope—parted them; that his handsome face would never smile on another woman as it smiled on her; and that no other woman's lips would be touched by him as hers had been on the day she ceased to be Alison Cheyne of Essilmont and that ilk.
THE END.
LONDON: PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD BLENHEIM HOUSE