He was aware that his family pretensions, when judged by the lofty heraldic and genealogical standards of Sir Piers Montgomerie, were as meagre as his monetary could be, and the double consciousness thereof, though failing to influence his heart, had almost utterly fettered his tongue.
These were the reasons why Cecil Falconer did not declare himself as yet, or try conclusions with Hew Montgomerie, but now he had others—more solid and more cruel. It was, however, the old story of the moth and the candle. Mrs. Garth had done much to crush and damp all hope in the heart of Cecil, but could not prevent him from indulging in the perilous charm of Mary's society to the last hours of his now-expiring leave of absence—leave granted 'between returns,' as the technical phrase is.
So that night the duet was not sung, greatly to Mrs. Garth's satisfaction, and somewhat to the surprise and disappointment of Mary Montgomerie, to whom Cecil urged that he was afflicted by a sudden cold, a hoarseness and so forth; so to his seductive tenor she was unable to make the usually tender soprano replies.
Hew returned suddenly from Bickerton—Hew of the shifty eyes and cold, fish-like hands—more indignant than ever with 'Old Pipeclay,' as he irreverently called Sir Piers.
Old Mr. John Balderstone, the family factor, who had been enjoying some shooting at the Bickerton covers, had incidentally and laughingly mentioned having seen Cecil Falconer and Mary Montgomerie twice in her pony-carriage at a considerable distance from home; and thus Hew had returned full of ire at the folly of Sir Piers in having 'invited that fellow to Eaglescraig,' at the presumption of the latter, and with his heart full of secret rage, jealousy, and no little rancour for the result of the last game at écarté.
Before this time, Cecil perhaps cared little what Hew said or thought of his manner with Mary Montgomerie, so far as friendly intercourse went. Thus Hew had more than once seen him bending caressingly over Mary as he addressed her, bending till his dark-brown moustache almost touched her darker glossy hair. But then, his whole manner to her might be described as one long caress, though he was ever courteous to all women, even the old and plain-looking; while Mary thought it new and charming, and something that even in society she was unused to.
But now there was a sudden change. The result of Mrs. Garth's friendly advice was, that doubt, reserve, and smothered irritation—born of a suspicion that he had been trifled with, or played with—tinged the manner of Cecil Falconer, infusing therein a peculiar strangeness that piqued Mary Montgomerie, and made their intercourse more perilous, for, being somewhat of a little coquette, it was one of her idiosyncrasies, when so piqued, to avoid a reconciliation that was too openly affected, and shyly, or slyly, to take refuge in those which were merely, and silently, implied.
The communications of the old lady had forced upon him the necessity for sedulously seeking to forget, as soon as possible, the existence of Mary; and how far such an effort was consistent with spending the hours of every day in her society, may be imagined.
In the first fever of his spirit he felt inclined to quit Eaglescraig at once, ere his leave was up, and to get Fotheringhame to telegraph for him; but anon he resolved to linger till the last moment, and sun himself in the eyes of Mary; and in the midst of all this Hew now returned, like the shadow of evil, to Eaglescraig, suddenly, and not finding either Mary or Cecil in the house, had his spleen further roused on being told by the watchful Mrs. Garth, that they were rambling somewhere in the grounds together.
'In the grounds,' said Hew, viciously; 'where?'
'I know not,' replied Mrs. Garth; 'but if you will absent yourself shooting here and there, Mary must avail herself of the courtesy of others.'
'Of course—to help her to water her ferns, which she does indefatigably, although a staff of gardeners are kept here at Eaglescraig.'
'And to feed her favourite pigeons at the dovecot.'
'How touchingly domestic; how d——d Arcadian!' said Hew, more viciously than ever. 'Are they on the lawn?'
'No; I think they took the path that leads to the grotto,' replied Mrs. Garth, not unwilling to pique the jealousy of Hew, who muttered an ugly word, and at once left the house to seek them in their ramble.
For this circumstance Sir Piers was in some measure to blame, as he had desired Mary to show Falconer a curious grotto, or cavern, partly natural and partly artificial, under the old tower of Eaglescraig, in which tradition said some centuries ago, when the wall which had concealed it fell, a so-called magic lamp had been discovered hanging from a chain in the rocky roof. The flame, when first seen, was thought to be a Jack-o'-lantern, but was found to proceed from what was supposed to be an ancient sepulchral lamp, prepared with matter spontaneously combustible on the accession of air, and which, instead of burning for centuries, had only taken light when the grotto was opened.
Be all that as it may, neither Cecil nor Mary troubled themselves much about the archæology of the place, though they certainly lingered there, they scarcely knew why, and she clung to his arm, for the mouth of the grotto opened inwards from the rock on which the mansion stood, and overlooked the Firth of Clyde, three hundred feet below.
Alone with Mary there, Cecil felt that he was becoming more devoted andempresséevery moment, in spite of his recent resolutions and the warnings of Mrs. Garth.
Their conversation was somewhat disjointed and desultory, especially so far as Cecil was concerned; for the eve of his departure was drawing near; he knew not when, or if ever, he might see Mary Montgomerie again, and the great secret of his heart loaded his tongue. But the faltering accents and broken language of love are generally expressions of the fullest eloquence to her who hears them; and now, filled by all the charm her presence inspired, while gazing into her face which had all the soul-like beauty that radiates fromwithin, Cecil Falconer felt his heart flying to his head, and while pressing to his side the little hand that leant upon his arm, he said:
'Another day—only one short day more—and this time of joy, so sweet to me, will have become a thing of the past—a dream—but a past never to be forgotten!'
'I am glad that you have been happy with us—we live so quietly here at Eaglescraig,' she replied, affecting to misunderstand what he so evidently referred to.
'Happy indeed! But who could fail to be happy here? I am much of a day-dreamer, Miss Montgomerie, and often it has seemed to me, in my solitary moments and thoughtful moods, that some mysterious sympathy or bond was linking my existence with that of another, but who that other was I knew not.'
'A strange idea!'
'You will smile at my folly, as you no doubt deem it. So, too, have I thought there was something singularly sweet in the idea, but sweeter still now that I know, the soul that I dreamed of was you.'
Mary's hand trembled on his arm, but she made no reply, and stood with half-averted face.
'My lips have been silent,' he resumed, bending over her, as she still further averted her face and looked down; 'yet you must have guessed the cherished hope of my heart, and learned, even from my glance—that I—that—that I love you!'
So Mrs. Garth's friendly warnings all came to nothing, and even Hew's existence was forgotten!
'I saw from the first,' said Mary, in a low and agitated voice, 'from the first, that you admired me, but—but, I never thought that——'
'That I loved you?'
'I know not what I thought.'
'Oh, Mary—may I call you so?—I have no words to tell you, Mary, darling, how fondly, how deeply and tenderly I love you!'
Her hands were in his now, and her long lashes were cast down, during a little pause that ensued, and he could see her soft bosom heaving under her dress.
Then she looked up with a coy, shy smile of great brightness, as she asked:
'Am I the first you have loved—the very first?'
'Fancies I have had—as what lad has not—but I never loved till now, Mary,' he replied, with great tenderness, 'unless it was the love I bore my poor mother, who is now in her grave.'
'I am so confused—so startled, Mr. Falconer.'
'Do say "Cecil," I implore you!'
'Well, then—Cecil.'
No need to say more just then, as their lips met, passionately for an instant, and Cecil felt that she was his own. Then Mary shrank back a little, and blushing deeply, said:
'Oh, what would Sir Piers say if he knew of this?'
There was something of terror in her tone—alarm, at least, as Cecil thought.
'When I tell him of my love for you——' he began.
'Oh, that you must not—must not do—yet awhile, at least!' she exclaimed earnestly.
'Why, my darling?'
'Don't ask me—do not ask me! Be content that—that——'
'You love me?'
'Oh, Cecil—yes. But your love for me—when did it first begin?' she asked, looking up with the same fond yet shy smile again on her soft face.
'Heaven only knows—when I first saw you, without a doubt,' replied Falconer, drawing her towards him. 'But now tell me, darling——'
Ere he could say more, she shrank from him. A step was heard on the gravelled path, Snarley growled and showed his teeth, and Hew appeared close by them, at the mouth of the grotto—Hew, with a very dubious and mingled expression on his face.
'Have you not heard the gong sound for luncheon?' he asked, curtly and sulkily.
'Hew—returned already!' said Mary, blushing deeply.
'So soon—yes,' said he.
'Had good shooting at Bickerton?' asked Cecil Falconer, feeling that it required a double effort to be complaisant to Hew just then, and to slide into the commonplaces required by society.
'Pretty fairish—knocked over a few rocketters or so. There were ten guns out. But how do you two come to be here?' he asked bluntly and almost rudely.
'Sir Piers requested Miss Montgomerie to show me where an ancient lamp had been found,' replied Cecil, with some annoyance of manner.
Hew muttered something unpleasant under his moustache, as he thought that the 'ancient lamp' had thrown more light on their proceedings than he anticipated, and drawing Mary's arm through his own, he said sharply and curtly:
'Let us go back to the house, or we shall be late.'
Cecil's handsome mouth was compressed with sternness at the abruptness of Hew's bearing, tone, and words. His small and well-cut nostrils quivered, and his eyes flashed with the anger which, despite his recent joy, he felt a difficulty in restraining.
Hew was sharp enough to see this; but feeling himself somewhat master of the situation, and a species of marplot, he gave one of his strange smiles, and said something that might mean anything or nothing, as he appropriated Mary and marched off with her towards the house.
How long he might have been eavesdropping, and how much or how little of their conversation he might have overheard, or what he might have overseen, it was impossible for them to conjecture; but extreme annoyance clouded the fair face of Mary, and bitter chagrin was but ill concealed in that of Falconer.
'Pray do not quarrel with Hew,' Mary found opportunity to say in a rapid whisper; 'you know not his power in the art of scheming, manœuvring, and mischief.'
Cecil felt his heart beat lightly again at the interest in him implied by her words, and the secret understanding they suggested and created.
Though we doubt very much if Mr. Hew Caddish Montgomerie ever heard of the Bard of Twickenhem, yet we are certain that he believed with him, that 'every woman is at heart a rake;' and thus he was the more irate with Mary, as he was prone to take the worst view of every one and everything.
As they pursued the circuitous path that led from the grotto to the house, Hew maintained a somewhat sulky silence, as he had neither the good feeling nor the good taste to conceal his annoyance. He, perhaps, loved Mary; but if so, it was after a selfish fashion of his own, and as much as it was in him to love anyone. He knew her fortune to a shilling; he had a passionate, an inherited, and avaricious love of wealth, and he knew right well the vast importance that attached to the possession of it; thus he took Mary to task, the moment Falconer left them—with a glance, which Mary read, though to Hew it was all unseen, or misunderstood.
'Were you and that fellow long in the grounds to-day?' he asked bluntly, and with anger in his eyes.
'What if we were?' was the defiant reply.
'I asked you a question, cousin.'
'One you have no right to ask.'
'No right?'
'None!' said she, with decision.
'Come, I like that! I am your cousin.'
'Nothing more, thank goodness!—and scarcely even that, save by name; and you are not my mentor.'
'If I were so——'
'Well, sir; if you were?'
'I should say that I was extremely sorry to meet you and Falconer together, as I met you just now. I consider it most unseemly!'
'Are you my guardian, Hew?' asked the little beauty, with growing irritation.
'Would that I were so, legally!'
'I cannot agree with you,' responded Mary, with a merry laugh.
'I regret to see how this intimacy has grown between you and an utter stranger.'
'Pray what can it matter to you who my gentlemen friends are?'
'How can you adopt this tone to me, knowing what you do of Sir Piers' intentions, Mary? As for this fellow——'
'Fellow? What has he done to offend you, Hew Montgomerie, that you speak of him in this style?'
'I was only about to remark that, like Oliver Twist, I have no doubt that he can trace his genealogy all the way back to his parents—to his mother, at least, for I suppose he has, or had, such a relative,' was the coarse and bitter sneer of Hew; 'but that measure of ancestry will scarcely suit the standard of Sir Piers Montgomerie.'
Mary remembered the little episode of the 'Birthday Book,' and her heart for a moment sank, and her countenance fell.
'Whatdoyou mean?' she asked.
'I know—what I know—that is all,' replied Hew, malevolently.
'And I know that you are extremely rude and ill-bred,' said Mary, as she swept away from him, and with difficulty restrained her tears, while Hew looked after her with a scowl that was strangely mingled with a triumphant smile.
He did not knit his eyebrows, for he had little or nothing in that way to knit; but his closely-set eyes twinkled viciously and furtively, as he began to feel that the power he once possessed, or hoped to possess, over Mary, and more especially over her fortune, was slipping away; and the emotions of wounded pride, disappointment, avarice, and an odious passion for her that was not love, grew keenly and stingingly in his heart.
Next day Cecil's leave would be up, and in the interval, so sedulously did Hew keep guard, that never again had Cecil a chance of addressing Mary alone; but the rival, while thus employed, could see with growing rancour that they looked suspiciously amiable and happy, and could talk confidentially enough with their eyes, if prevented from doing so with their tongues; and now, to preclude any fresh invitations on the general's part, or any further extension of the hospitality of Eaglescraig, Hew resolved, ere their guest departed, to do him all the mischief he could with his host.
Finding, as we have shown, that any appeal to Mary Montgomerie was vain, Hew determined, as he muttered, to give the general 'an eye-opener on the subject.'
He knew that 'a jilted suitor is hopelessly and irreparably ridiculous, and that the jilt is apt to score the honours.' Without an engagement existing between them, there could be no jilting in the case of him and Mary, but in his blind, unmeaning hate of Falconer, his jealousy and avarice, he never thought of that; and only considered that the wishes of Sir Piers and himself, and the object for which he had been deliberately brought home from India, were on the point of being baffled, or set utterly aside, by the intervention of an unexpected interloper, to blacken and defeat whom was but just and right, he deemed on his own part, and in his own behalf.
Without a just cause he had been from the first instinctively the foe of Cecil Falconer; and ill-founded enmities, it is said, are ever the most obstinate and bitter.
He found Sir Piers in the library, lounging in an easy-chair, smoking a beautiful hookah which he had brought with him from India, and deep in the pages of theField.
'Can I have your attention for a little time, Sir Piers?' he asked.
'Yes, my boy; fire away. About what do you wish to speak?'
'A subject very near my heart, as you know,' replied Hew, leaning on the back of the old baronet's chair: 'Mary Montgomerie.'
'God bless the dear girl!' exclaimed Sir Piers, as his brightening eyes were raised inquiringly to Hew's face. 'It is time some arrangement were made by you and her; for Mary deserves the purest and best love the heart of man can offer her.'
'Such love is mine, dear Sir Piers,' whined Hew.
'I hope so.'
'But I come not to speak of that.'
'Of what, then?'
'Of Mary and your new friend, Falconer.'
'Falconer!' exclaimed Sir Piers, staring blankly at Hew through his gold eyeglasses.
'Seriously, sir, it seems to me that, thanks to the propinquity your unwise hospitality has afforded them, Mary is drifting, with that fellow Falconer, the way that many other young ladies have drifted before her.'
'What does this mean?' exclaimed Sir Piers, wheeling his chair sharply round. 'Worry, of course; and, d—n it! I am getting too old to have any worry—had enough of it in my time, up country! Has propinquity not helped you? Gad, sir, in my day, I should like to have seen the biped that could turn my flank with any girl; but why the devil don't you push the trenches yourself?'
'But don't you think they have become too intimate?' asked Hew, with growing irritation.
'Why? How?'
'With all this singing, music, and philandering.'
'Pooh! not at all. Let them amuse themselves. I was once their age. It is no use making a fuss; but why the deuce don't you cut in, and sing, play, and philander too, as you call it? Besides, Falconer in a few hours now returns to Dumbarton, or to headquarters, and there is an end of it all! To me, Hew, it seems natural enough that young Falconer should be attracted by our Mary; but aware of her position, of my views and your wishes, and more than all, your prospects and rank when I am gone,' he added, glancing at a portrait of his dead son, 'I should very much doubt if she encouraged any particular attention on his part.'
'There I don't agree with you; and when once a girl's heart becomes warped, or interested in a fellow, she cares little what his rank or position may be; and of this Falconer's family or antecedents we know nothing.'
'True, by Jove!' said Sir Piers, whose pet weakness was now interested. 'He seemed not to know, himself, which I thought odd. I wonder what arms he uses? The Halkertoun family carried azure, a falconargentcrowned with a ducal crown.'
'Arms!' said Hew, with a mocking laugh. 'If all I suspect be true, his have been quartered and attested by the Blue Bottle Herald and Pimlico Pursuivant. But apart from his dangling after Mary, I have my own reasons for feeling glad that Eaglescraig will soon be rid of him.'
'He is a presentable young fellow—a Cameronian too, and bears her Majesty's commission,' urged Sir Piers in favour of Falconer, whom he really liked; 'but what are the personal reasons you refer to?'
'Because in a little time he would have rooked—ruined me!'
'How?'
'At écarté.'
'At écarté?'
'Yes. Before I went to Bickerton—to keep out of his way, in fact—he inveigled me to play, night after night, when all others had retired. My play is always mild—but his waswild! His constant phrase was that it was soennuyantto play for low stakes, so we always doubled, and even trebled, them—I always losing.'
'Why?'
'Because,' replied Hew, deliberately, while a malevolent gleam shot from his parti-coloured eyes, 'it is seldom safe to play écarté, or piquet either, after dinner, and when drinking brandy-and-soda with a fellow who takes nothing—is too wary to do so.'
'And so you have lost?' said Sir Piers, flushing with indignation.
'Fearfully; and I suspect the scoundrel was in the habit of dropping his cards.'
'What!' roared Sir Piers, aghast. 'The devil! Do you say so?' He pinched his gold eyeglasses tighter on his high aristocratic nose, and absolutely glared through them at Hew, as he turned his keen face full round to await what he had to say, and with a face expressive of intense chagrin, disappointment, and dismay.
'I do not say so—I only suspect,' said Hew, afraid that he, in the extremity of his malice, had roused a storm it might be difficult to quell, or see the end of.
'And he is one of the Cameronians!' exclaimed Sir Piers, in an agitated voice. 'Gad! in my time, he would have had his hands tied behind his back, and been drummed to the barrack-gate. Do you actually tell me this? Gambling, in camp or quarters,Inever permitted for a moment—they are strictly forbidden by the thirty-fourth paragraph of the sixth section of the Queen's Regulations. But the idea of gambling and cheating at Eaglescraig! D—me, I'll explode! I remember that, when we were cantoned at Jubbulpore, before we were relieved by the Seventy-Eighth, with bag, baggage, and twelve bagpipes——'
'But our play is ended now, Sir Piers—once and for ever!' interrupted Hew, as he shivered at the idea of an Indian anecdote, which was certain to follow whenever Sir Piers mounted his Oriental hobby-horse.
'Ended; I should think so! But, as we used to say in India, beware of a black Brahmin and a white pariah!'
The point of this aphorism was not very apparent; but Hew, satisfied that he had now completely ruined Cecil Falconer so far as Sir Piers was concerned, was so well pleased that he listened to a sudden Bengal narrative of a thirty days' march, amid the horrors of Dacoits and Thugs, swamps and jungles, tigers and snakes, dismounted guns and broken bones, dead bullocks and swollen rivers; and then, after a pause, during which the baronet had been reflecting with knitted brows, he said:
'But to return to the first subject, Hew. Do you mean to tell me, and do you seriously think, that this—a—a—person, has made any undue impression upon her—upon Mary?'
'From my soul I do, sir, and know it to my bitter cost!'
Another angry malediction escaped the general.
'I cannot desire him to leave my house, though right well disposed to do so,' said he; 'but a little time will see him gone now, thank Heaven! I am deeply concerned by what you tell me, my dear Hew; all the more so, that I have been the unwitting means of bringing all this unforeseen mischief to pass.'
'Only an hour ago I interrupted a little scene in the grotto there could be no mistaking! He was bending tenderly over her, and uttering sighs that would have softened the heart of a pawnbroker.'
'Don't use such odious similes, Hew!' exclaimed Sir Piers. 'Whatever may be the personal merits or demerits of this young man,' he continued, with an angry laugh, 'apart from my firm intentions, your wishes, and Mary's own future welfare, it would never do for her to make amésalliance—to throw herself away upon an ambitious adventurer, on whose name there too evidently rests the stain of obscurity, at least. It is well that he is going, Hew! I want no other catastrophe, no second fiasco, to occur to a Montgomerie of Eaglescraig!' he added, with deep and sorrowful frown, as he referred to a family episode we shall have to relate ere long. 'But here comes Mary, most opportunely. Leave us, Hew, and I shall talk with her alone.'
As Hew retired, with disappointed passion and gratified revenge curiously mingled in his face, the thought flashed upon the mind of Sir Piers that expostulation or advice might only prove futile, and, by exciting opposition, make the matter worse (as he had bitterly experienced once before in his life), though he knew not how far the matter had gone, or how deeply love had taken root in the hearts of both Mary and Falconer. Moreover, he thought that as separation, which he deemed a safe cure, was so close at hand, it might be better to ignore the communications of Hew, and let matters, after Falconer's departure, fall into their old routine, yet having the intended marriage of Mary and his heir pressed forward, in spite of all opposition; but now, the sudden and apparently opportune entrance of the fair culprit herself overset his calmer calculations.
Though indignant at Falconer, Sir Piers could scarcely find it in his heart to be angry with Mary, she was so sweet and winning—his dead kinsman's one ewe lamb, committed to his care. She had been to him as the child of his old age, taking the place of that only son whose death he had never ceased to lament; she, who by her affection, in the thousand nameless little recurring trifles of life, as a tender and loving daughter rather than a grand-niece, had made herself so useful and necessary to him.
Mary had come in search of a book, a passage in which she meant to show Cecil, whom she had left with Annabelle Erroll, when Sir Piers summoned her to his side; and though she saw a gloom on his fine old face, the cause of which she dreaded and suspected to have been Hew, who had just quitted the room, she seated herself on a velvet tabouret, near her guardian's own chair, and nestling at his knee as she had been wont to do when a little girl, she drew one of his shrivelled hands caressingly over her handsome head, and, looking up smilingly, said:
'Well, grand-uncle darling, what have you to say to me?'
'Much, Mary—yet a few words may suffice,' he replied, as the lines faded out of his face. He had at first resolved to be very stern and irate with her; but he reserved all his bitterness for Falconer. 'Am I right when I say that I have been given to understand that Mr. Falconer has forgotten his place as a guest in my house, and dared to address you surreptitiously in language other than a mere friend or guest may do?'
At this question, so sententiously put, Mary blushed painfully, and then grew very pale indeed, for her heart was yet vibrating with its new-found joy, and the memory of that kiss, the first that was ever given her by any man save old Sir Piers himself.
'Has he attempted to win for himself that affection which should belong to another?'
'Oh, grand-uncle, what do you mean?' asked Mary piteously, and feeling quite overwhelmed.
'What I ask, Mary; and I wish you to know, further, that he is every way unworthy the consideration of any girl—wholly unworthy the kindness I have wasted on him.'
'Unworthy!' repeated Mary, faintly; and yet her heart rebelled, for she now recognised the malevolent influence of Hew.
'I have other views for your future, as you know, dear Mary—views long cherished and most dear to me, and I am not going to have my plans and prospects marred by a fortune-hunting subaltern and a romantic girl's folly. Understand me, Mary, and the power your father's will has given me over you and your fortune.'
Mary remained silent, but tears welled up in her eyes—tears that sprang from emotions of anger as much as annoyance and intense mortification.
'I don't object to the fellow because he is a subaltern, with little, if anything, more than his pay,' said Sir Piers, as if ashamed of using the military rank as an adjective; 'but I do object to this, Mary, as your guardian and only kinsman, in whose hands the whole of your fortune is vested, to bestow, so far as possible, on my heir of entail, who is to share it with you. But here, if all I am told is true, you have been tempted—you, with beauty and attractions that might win a coronet—you, with an inheritance, and certainly with a name, second to none in Scotland—to cast your lot, perhaps, with one destitute of position, save that which a commission gives him—one without family or friends either, so far as we know,' continued the general, musing, or talking himself into a fit of anger; 'as Hew has hinted, the first of his race—a gambler, too——'
'A gambler, grand-uncle?'
'A gambler—and worse—who has sorely fleeced poor Hew! But I shall amply reimburse him, as it was by my old-fashioned folly our unlucky guest came here. How I shall be able to receive him at dinner to-day I scarcely know, for now I consider his presence in Eaglescraig an insult. You may have been foolish—girlish, Mary; but I know that you won't further vex your old grand-uncle, who loves you so, but will sedulously avoid or shun this person, Falconer, during the few hours he is under our roof: and when he leaves it let his existence be to you as a thing of the past—as that of the dead—but the dead who are forgotten!'
And with this cruel advice, which was all the more cruel and impressive from being coolly, calmly, and deliberately given, the general rose and quitted the library, leaving Mary in a flood of tears and quite overwhelmed with dismay; not at the invectives bestowed upon Falconer, as she knew their source and true value, but at the hostility so suddenly developed by Sir Piers, and the long term of domestic misery she saw before her in the future.
But, as indignation swelled in her heart against Hew, she dried her tears and gathered a courage from her growing anger. Yet she drew her breath with difficulty, and pressed a hand upon her side as if a pang of pain was there.
Unaware of all this scene, Falconer, even in the face of his approaching departure, was chatting away gaily with Annabelle Erroll, and having the full assurance of Mary's love, seemed to tread on air, and feel emotions only of gratitude and joy. He was as sure that Mary was not a girl to love lightly as he was sure that she had given her whole heart to him, despite the fiat, the 'general order' of Sir Piers, that was to assign her as a bride to Hew Montgomerie.
When the little circle assembled for dinner, the last of which he was to partake in Eaglescraig, Cecil became suddenly and painfully sensible that some change had come over all present, save Miss Erroll.
Though all were scrupulously polite, their old cordiality seemed to have evaporated!
Hew was colder than ever; not that Cecil Falconer cared much for that, but he felt that the usually chatty and genial Sir Piers was cold in manner too, and haughty and monosyllabic, for a time; and Cecil recalled the cordial welcome of his first night in that hospitable mansion, when his old host insisted on escorting him to 'his quarters,' as he called his room, singing his old Indian song about 'half-batta' as they went. He felt the change keenly, and angrily too, all the more that he failed to understand it.
'What the deuce does the general suspect—what does he know?' thought Cecil, whose own suspicions certainly pointed towards Hew; but he and Mary were without the means of comparing notes together, or even of taking of each other the tender farewell they would have wished.
At table—with the memory of all that had passed in the library—she was nervous, silent and reserved, while she kept listening to the voice and looking furtively in the eyes that as secretly sought hers—the voice and eyes she had been bidden to forget as those of 'the forgotten dead.'
When the ladies withdrew, the general, who was the soul of hospitality, when pushing the decanters round—for he was vain of his clarets, Chateau Lafitte, Haut Brion, and Margaux—felt half inclined to relax and relent at times. Could Hew have been mistaken in that diabolical story about the cards? But if so, he was not mistaken on the subject of Falconer's admiration of his intended wife: and though such was utterly adverse to the wish of Sir Piers, he felt that he could forgive it, especially as, like Mrs. Garth, he felt that in the look and air, the expression of face, and bearing of Cecil Falconer, there were an undefinable something that brought painfully back to memory the face of another; and yet, between the two faces, that of his dead son—for his it was—and the face of Falconer, there was no especial likeness.
'Had poor Piers been living now, thought the general, 'he would have been nearly fifty years of age, which reminds me that I am getting too old to harbour thoughts of anger now.'
In the drawing-room, Cecil found the piano closed; there was evidently to be no music that evening, nor was he in the mood for it, except in so far that it might have served to cloak a few farewell words to Mary, whom he found occupied at chess with Mrs. Garth, and save that she trembled a little and changed colour at his entrance, she seemed unconscious of his presence, as the slow and silent game proceeded in its tedium: and leaving Sir Piers and Hew deep in some matter of local improvements to be made on a certain farm, he seated himself beside Miss Erroll, on an ottoman, a little way apart.
'And so you indeed go to-morrow?' she observed, for lack of something else to say apparently.
'Inexorably, Miss Erroll,' he replied, with a smile that was no smile at all; 'and after all the happiness I have enjoyed here I shall feel doubly lonely at Dumbarton, as it is most probable that the general may invite my brother officer here, to take my place.'
'Mr. Leslie Fotheringhame?' she said in a low voice, while her eyes drooped.
'Yes.'
'What leads you to think so?' she asked, with a little agitation of manner that Cecil could not fail to detect.
'He has once or twice said such was his intention.'
Such, indeed, had been the general's wish, but recent events had made him change his mind.
Miss Erroll was a singularly attractive and bright-looking girl—bright in her manner and blonde beauty. Her fair, golden hair rippled back from her broad, low, snowy forehead; and she had a tender, rosebud-like mouth, and very lovely eyes. In the full preoccupation of his thoughts with Mary, Cecil Falconer had not been quite conscious that on several occasions Miss Erroll had led him to talk of his solitary friend at Dumbarton, Leslie Fotheringhame, as if she had some interest in him; and also, that if he attempted to question her on the subject, she skilfully or nervously changed it, or evaded it.
'You know Fotheringhame, it would seem?' he asked.
'I do—ordid, rather,' she replied, in a low voice.
This implied that there had been a coolness, a quarrel, or a dropping of acquaintance somehow.
'He was not always in the Cameronians,' said Falconer.
'I am aware of that.'
'Perhaps you knew him when in his former regiment?'
'When in his former regiment—yes,' she replied, repeating his words, as if afraid to trust herself to any of her own. 'How long will Mary puzzle over her king?—she is quite checkmated!' she said with a forced laugh, as she moved towards the chess-table, to conceal from Falconer an expression of genuine pain that shot over her soft, fair face.
He noticed now an unmistakable agitation of manner and sudden sadness of eye and tone in Annabelle Erroll; and though he almost immediately forgot this amid the anxiety of his own love affair, he remembered it all at a future time.
The brief evening that followed the late and fashionable dinner-hour passed rapidly—too rapidly for Cecil; yet heavily withal. The evening was so unlike its predecessors, for the once pleasant circle seemed entirely changed. How Falconer's heart would have swollen with just rage had he known the reason why!
And this was his last night at Eaglescraig; it seemed as if he was looking on everything there for the last time, Mary's pale face included, and the time came at last when he had to say to her:
'Good-night, and good-bye, Miss Montgomerie.
Yet Fate was not so cruel as to make them part thus, for through a skilful manœuvre executed by Miss Erroll—in compelling Hew to hold a folio book of Indian photographs while the general explained to her something therein—as Mary gave Cecil her hand, 'her soft, white virgin hand, that had never touched aught to soil or harden it,' he whispered hurriedly, and unheard by all save her:
'Good-bye. Oh, my darling, my own Mary! How am I to live without you, how make the time pass till we meet again—if ever?'
And eye conveyed to eye and heart, a world that was alike unsaid and unseen.
Courtesy compelled him to shake the damp, limp hand of Hew, and the shifty eyes of the latter looked radiant with malevolence and triumph.
Grey dawn was breaking, and save Mr. Tunley, the butler, and a sleepy valet, all the household were sunk in slumber, when Falconer, after an almost sleepless night, and feeling as if it must be some other person and not himself that was about to depart, got into the dog-cart with his portmanteaus and gun-case.
A cold, chilly morning, the last day of January. The crocus formed a golden band along the parterres of the terrace; a few snow-flakes came aslant the dull grey sky, and the robin redbreast, his little heart filled at least with hope, twittered and sung on the bare spray, where the first buds of spring would soon be bursting. All around the landscape looked dank and barren and dreary—unusually so it seemed to Cecil's eye.
Pate Pastern, a groom, drove the dog-cart. Hew had again flatly declined to do so, saying overnight to Sir Piers that he 'didn't care to drive a fellow like Falconer, a fellow so devilish sharp at cards, and all that sort of thing, you know;' and the general had said approvingly:
'Of course not, of course not, my dear boy.'
Cecil's mind was a prey to great bitterness in the conviction that he was leaving Eaglescraig, as it seemed, for ever, and with no definite plans, views, or hopes for the future. Was all this new love, this new joy, to pass out of his life and out of hers as suddenly as it had come to them?
It seemed so!
He had, he thought, done wrong in winning the heart of Mary Montgomerie without the permission of her proud old guardian and kinsman; but now he had little compunction for having done so, as that permission would never have been accorded to him, and he felt that his departure seemed a welcome move to all but her—a departure permitted to pass coldly, and without even a well-bred expression of regret.
A farewell glance at the stately modern villa, and the grim old keep that towered behind it, showed him their walls all reddened in the early morning sun; the window-blinds close drawn, all closed as yet, save one. His heart told him it was that of Mary's room. The sash remained, of course, unlifted, but the blue silk curtain was festooned back, and every pulse vibrated within him when he saw the wave of a white handkerchief, just as the dog-cart went bowling down the wooded avenue towards the highway.
It was Mary's farewell to him.
Would the strains of the sweet old story, that never tires, come to their ears again? How would it all end between him and Mary Montgomerie, or was it ended now?
'I am truly glad for Hew's sake, and for Mary's sake, that he has gone—gone ere it was too late!' thought Sir Piers, as he sat in his easy-chair in the library that afternoon, when nothing remained of Cecil Falconer at Eaglescraig but an aching pain in Mary's heart, and in the avenue the ruts of the wheels that had borne him away.
His recent conversation with Hew about the dread of amésalliancemade the old baronet's mind revert—as it too often did, bitterly and unavailingly—to anothermésalliancein his family, which nearly brought ruin—for such in the vanity of his soul he deemed disgrace—upon the Montgomeries of Eaglescraig, who had for ages been a power in the bailiwick of Cunninghame.
'It seems a pity that we should disturb the stagnant waters of that Dead Lake which men call the Past,' says Miss Braddon; but Sir Piers was rather prone to do so; and now, as he sat gazing into the red, clear, burning embers, they seemed to take divers shapes and forms, quaint and curious pictures, of which, in reality, he saw little, for his thoughts were treading upon each other fast, and in his dreamy yet steadfast gaze there was a fixed, a far-off look—a look in Shadowland.
A childless old man, he was thinking of what was now, and all that might have been, but for his own stubborn will and pride of heart.
Some five-and-twenty years before this time, he had a son who had been the pride of that heart, and valued all the more as being the only child of a young and beautiful wife, after whose death he had never married again, but sought relief from thought amid the wars of British India.
From his infancy young Piers had been petted in every way, and was in some respects the spoiled child of the household. He grew up a bright and handsome lad, full of intelligence and enthusiasm for music and painting; but to dabble in these, even as an amateur, Sir Piers deemed unworthy of his family, so in due time he had his son gazetted to the Cameronians, then in garrison at Gibraltar.
During the unhealthy season, which lasts there from July to November, when the east winds come surcharged with moisture, young Piers was seized with fever, and obtaining leave of absence, went to travel in Italy, and his letters that came from thence to Eaglescraig, detailing his adventures and journeys up Calabrian mountains and through defiles in the Abruzzi, all indicative of returning health and strength, filled the heart of his father with joy, as his son, the heir of his house and name, was the veritable apple of his eye.
His letters from Rome teemed with his enthusiasm about the objects of history, the ruins of the past, and his ecstasies over the treasures of the innumerablestudiiof painting and sculpture; and then came much about a painter whose acquaintance he had made at the Academy of San Luca, and whose daughter was one of the most beautiful girls and accomplished musicians in that city of pilgrimage to all lovers of art.
After this Sir Piers grew painfully and suspiciously conscious of the fact that his son's correspondence became irregular, his epistles constrained and brief, while more than one incidental reference to the artist's handsome daughter caused alarm in the parental heart, all the more as young Piers had said that her father, 'though a man of humble origin, was an emperor among artists.'
'Piers,' said the baronet to his confidential friend and local factotum, John Balderstone, 'refers to this girl oftener than I quite relish or like; and his letters are vague and odd as—if—as if—he had something to conceal. I wish he were back to his regiment at Gibraltar.'
'Young menwillbe young men,' replied the other; 'the girl may have picked up some pretty tricks of foreign manners, and thus interested him.'
'There are four months of his leave to run; surely he will not spend them all among these painter-fellows in Rome?' said the baronet, grimly.
For one moment, however, an idea of what was really the case never entered the haughty mind of Sir Piers Montgomerie. He only feared an entanglement—as a subaltern, he had often been in such scrapes himself—but nothingmore!
And now a month elapsed without any letter from Rome, and genuine anxiety filled the mind of Sir Piers, whom a temporary illness confined at Eaglescraig, and prevented from coming swoop down upon his son in the Eternal City, and seeing how 'matters were' for himself.
At that very time there arrived at a country hotel, within a few miles of Eaglescraig, a young married pair, with a valet and a little French soubrette. Both were singularly handsome—the lady, indeed, was a very beautiful girl with minute and delicate features, dark eyes and rich brown hair; and in her husband, whose face and figure were alike striking, but for the ample beard he now wore, the people of the hotel would have had little trouble in recognising young Piers Montgomerie, for he it was, with his bride, the penniless daughter of 'the emperor among artists!'
He was one who could scarcely fail to make himself agreeable to all women, as he excelled in that half-flirting manner which some young men can cultivate with skill; and borne away by a great love for the girl on one hand, and dreading his father's opposition on the other, he had married her clandestinely, and had now brought her with him to Scotland, trusting that her beauty, sweetness, grace and virtue would open the heart of his father to them both, and pardon the fact of his having had, as he would have phrased it, a 'stolen march made upon him.'
The homeward journey had been but a portion of their honeymoon tour, and safe in her young husband's love, the girl seemed to see only a brilliant and happy, if somewhat vague, future. Aware of his father's temper, spirit, and infatuated pride of family, young Piers was not without some genuine anxiety as to the result, when the issue of his rashness seemed so close at hand.
'If your father is so proud as you say, Piers,' said the young wife—still a bride—as she nestled her sweet face in his neck, and his arm went caressingly round her, 'and if he will not forgive themésallianceyou have made with poor me——'
'Well, my darling, what then?'
'You may repent it,' said she, her dark eyes filling with tears, and her voice trembling with anxiety.
'Never, my own little wife—never! and by this time to-morrow I hope to see you taking your place at his table, as the future mistress of Eaglescraig; though long may the time be ere you are so, for my father is a dear old fellow—twice my age, at all events!'
The girl sighed softly, and hoped that all might be as they wished it.
'Welcome back, my boy!' exclaimed Sir Piers next day, when his son appeared (but alone) at Eaglescraig; 'why have you been so long in writing me? Why do you come thus suddenly? and where is your baggage? But how well you are looking; and, by Jove, you have a beard like a Brahmin!'
'I have a long story to tell you, sir, about all my adventures: one in particular, that may take some time to tell——'
'Then keep it till after dinner: let us have it with the Chateau Margaux,' said Sir Piers, laughing; and being timidly willing to delay till the last moment the revelation that wasinevitable, his son—even with the sweet face of her who, at that moment, was alone in his memory—was glad of the little reprieve.
Anxious to make a good impression, he made a more than usually careful toilette in his own old and familiar room; but when he took his seat at table, the presence of Tunley and the servants, and also of John Balderstone, who had dropped in on business, and whom the baronet had pressed to remain, precluded all reference to his secret for a time, till the cloth was removed, the dessert laid, the decanters ranged in rank-entire before the host, and Tunley was told he might withdraw till rung for.
'And now for your story, Piers,' said the elder Montgomerie: 'the claret stands with you.'
'I must first drink to you, and congratulate you on your promotion,' replied his son.
'Yes, I am full colonel now, Piers, and may fairly hope to be a lieutenant-general some of these days. But now for the story,' he repeated uneasily; 'I suppose John Balderstone may hear it?'
'Of course, sir,' said Piers, coughing nervously, and twice draining his large green claret-glass to gain time, while he felt that his colour came and went, and his father's keen eyes were fixed upon him with equal scrutiny and affection.
Young Piers glanced at the stately table, with its massive plate, glittering crystal, rich wines and luxuriant fruit, and thinking with joy of her who would be the presiding goddess there to-morrow, told his narrative in a manly and honest manner, yet not without some trepidation of tone, while his father sat bolt upright in his chair, staring at him with a face expressive of rage, incredulity, and absolute grief, as if he felt that his only son and heir had gone mad. Worthy John Balderstone also looked scared and bewildered.
'And now, sir,' continued the son, despite the terrible frown that deepened on his father's face, 'I have told you all, except my darling's name.'
'Her name be——! what is her name to me? Zounds, sir! I don't want to hear it—the daughter of a beggarly painter—an adventuress—to become in time Lady Montgomerie of Eaglescraig! No, sir, no; damme, I'll break the entail; I'll—I'll——'
Sir Piers for a few moments was literally choking with rage.
'That my wife is poor and nameless, according to your mode of thinking, father, is no fault of hers; her beauty is great, her goodness and accomplishments are rarely surpassed, and surely you will forgive us, we love each other so?' urged young Piers; and as he spoke his heart was in his voice, and his very soul seemed welling out of his fine dark eyes.
'May the moment that I forgive you and her be my last on earth!' thundered Sir Piers, smiting the table with his clenched hand; 'forgive you—not if I lived for a thousand years! Away—away! quit my sight and never let me see your face again!'
And literally he began to tutor himself to hate his son as much as he had idolised him before.
The latter rose from his chair; his handsome face seemed as if petrified—turned to stone, and with the colour of stone, his nether lip began to quiver painfully, for he too had a heart of fiery pride.
Sir Piers rang the bell so furiously that he nearly rent the wires.
'What are you about to do, sir?' asked his son.
'I am about to expel you from this house for ever!' replied Sir Piers. 'Order the waggonette which brought Mr. Montgomerie from his hotel round from the stables instantly,' he added to the astonished Tunley, whom the fierce summons—the bell was vibrating still—had brought up like a genius of the lamp; 'never again is he to set foot in the house which he has disgraced!'
In vain did worthy John Balderstone attempt to act the peace-maker; he was silenced by an imperious wave of the hand.
'This vile adventuress, for I am sure she is such, shall not quite gain her ends. I shall break the entail, if I can!' exclaimed Sir Piers, with growing exasperation; 'by the God that hears me, I will!'
'Father, see her once—only once—ere you judge of her so cruelly! And, oh! let us not part thus! One day you may repent it,' urged his son piteously, and yet not without some anger in his heart.
'Repent it? never!' replied his father, with a wild and bitter laugh. 'Now then, Tunley, is that waggonette at the door?'
'Yes, sir,' replied the butler, again appearing, and very much scared.
'Go!' said Sir Piers to his son; 'as God is our judge, here for ever ends all between us!'
He turned and left the room by one door, while his son quitted it by another, and from that moment the father and son met no more. The latter's allowance was cut off; he got into debt, sold his commission, and with his young wife eventually disappeared. Mr. Balderstone was supposed to be cognisant of his movements for a time under a false name; however, the general never inquired, and after a year or so all traces of him were lost.
Proud of his ancient race, incapable personally of a dishonourable thought or guilty plan, his son's rash marriage, without his consent, and with an obscure girl, filled his heart with a species of black fury, and gave his face a look of repellent pride that was long its settled expression.
The fate of Piers became a kind of mystery—hidden; though it is the fate of things in this world that, as a general rule, nothing is hid for ever.
There came a night which the general never forgot! It was the night of an event which he related only to John Balderstone and one or two others, confidential friends, who were now no longer in the land of the living.
On the night referred to, the lonely general, then creeping up the vale of years, was seated in the library, lingering over his last glass of grog, and gazing, as we last left him, into the glowing embers; his thoughts wandered away from present things to the past in spite of himself. He reviewed the things of old—forgotten sayings and doings in camp and quarters, in the field and the Indian jungle; the faces and the voices of the distant and the dead came back to him, and among them, more powerfully than usual, the face and voice of his lost son, Piers.
There was no sound in the room but the steady and monotonous ticking of a great antique clock on the black marble mantel-piece, and the snoring of a Highland stag-hound stretched upon a deerskin before the fire, unless we add that the night wind moaned shudderingly through a coppice of red-stemmed Scottish firs, and the beech-trees swayed drearily in the passing blast.
A sudden sense of some one being near him—something intangible, too—came over him; he seemed to hear a sigh, and brave though he was, his heart felt as if dying within him, and the hair of his head stood up, or a prickly sensation pervaded all his scalp.
Beside his chair a kind of shadow seemed to form itself, and become, with each pulsation of his pulses, more distinct in outline, till the face and form of his son were before him—the former wasted and pallid, his eyes full of sorrow and reproach. His hands seemed unusually white, wan, and the articulations of the fingers were painfully distinct, as those of one who had been wasted by fever, toil, and want.
A thousand maddening and terrifying thoughts seemed to whirl through the general's brain. He strove to start from his chair, but remained in it as if spellbound; he strove to cry aloud, but his voice failed him, or the faint sound he did utter seemed unnatural, and filled him with greater fear.
For a moment or two the upbraiding spirit, if spirit it was, or a creation of his own fevered fancy, stood before him, and then slowly melted away.
Sir Piers started to his feet.
'I have been dreaming,' he said, with a kind of gasping sigh. 'A plague on such dreams and fancies!'
But something seemed to tell him it wasnota dream, and not a fancy, and he remembered that in the pale and wasted hands of the figure were a sheaf of small brushes such as artists use, and a mahl-stick. Had Piers in his dire necessity betaken himself to art to gain a livelihood?
He sat for some time waiting and watching, in a state of awe, terror, and intense anxiety, for the appearance to return, but it came no more; but from that moment an assurance stole into his heart that his son must be dead—that he perhaps died at that particular moment: and then he began to think, and think, and think again, how hard and pitiless he had been; and his handsome face grew older and more lined, and wrinkles seemed to come where none were formed as yet. He might have said with Balder:
'I have lived in the past,As by a deathbed, with unwonted love,And much forgiveness as we bring to thoseWho can offend no more.'
So time passed on, and old age came upon him—a childless old age.
His son was gone—he had no doubt of that! He had no nephew, no cousin, or cousin's son, to succeed him in the lands that had been in his family since the wars of Bruce and Wallace—yea, since Norwegian Haco's banner fell on the field of Largs; and he began to fear that his title would become extinct, when, in the 'Landed Gentry of Grat Britain and Ireland,' he found that Sir Bernard Burke had assigned a place to a certain Mr. Hew Montgomerie, then broiling in the Indian Civil Service, proving that he was the nearest living relative of the line of Eaglescraig.
His lawyers speedily communicated with that amiable personage, whom we have already introduced to the reader, and thus it is that he came to be resident at Eaglescraig as heir of entail, and to the baronetcy.
The poor old general strove his hardest to like Hew, who also strove sedulously, and pretty skilfully, to keep his many bad qualities secret from him; but often when Sir Piers was in his thoughtful or sad moods, he would ask Mary to sing to him certain old songs that were associated in some way with the long-lost Piers, and as her soft voice went to the old man's heart, and her pretty hands strayed over the piano-keys, she 'soothed him to peace,' as Mrs. Garth was wont to say, 'as the harp of David had soothed King Saul with the holy spell of sweet music;' but it was a spell that always sent the thoughts of Sir Piers to wander in Shadow-land.
'Welcome back to Dumbarton, where I have been somewhat rather of a hermit since you left it—welcome back to pipeclay and all the "pomp, pride, and circumstance of glorious war!" The decanter is beside you, and I think there are some prime havannas left in that box. So, now, let us be jolly,' exclaimed Leslie Fotheringhame, as Falconer seated himself in the quarters of the former, a curious-looking, old-fashioned room—the same that had been occupied by the little Queen Mary in her twelfth year (ere she sailed to France, after the battle of Pinkie)—one of the oldest parts of the castle.
Falconer cast himself with an air of weariness into an easy-chair, though his journey from Eaglescraig had not been a very long one.
'What about our fellows, Fotheringhame?' he asked, manipulating a cigar.
'The detachment?'
'Yes.'
'There is not much to report; two fellows are in "the shop" for absence from parade; one in the cells, for being drunk and disorderly; and little Fuddie, the drummer, has cut his stick—or sticks, should I say? Probably finding, as Sterne has it, that "the honour of beating a drum was likely to be its own reward," he has taken French leave and bolted. If caught, we should duck the fellow in the Clyde, but for the seventh clause of the sixth section on "Discipline," which prevents the adoption of punishments in detachments that are at variance with those in use at headquarters.'
Falconer continued to smoke in silence, so Fotheringhame spoke again.
'England expects every man to do his duty—but as cheaply as possible—for next to nothing, in fact; so, after your late surroundings, the luxury of my quarters will fail to impress you as either being useful or ornamental—as a certain poem has it, here are—
'"Apparatus for washing: a pail and a can,Part of an Army List, half of a fan,A fawn-coloured glove, a lock of false hair—Both highly prized gifts from some lady fair;A case of blunt razors, a shako and plume;A fishing-rod, shot-belt, rifle, and broom;An invite to dinner, the card of a priest,A sketch of the colonel described as 'a beast.'"'
While Fotheringhame ran on laughingly thus, Falconer was silent and pre-occupied, or replied only by a faint smile.
Leslie Fotheringhame was a handsome man, but of a different type from Cecil Falconer. He was taller and more squarely built, with deep-set and grave dark-blue eyes, the expression of which generally belied his merry manner; he was dark-haired, with a firm mouth, a clear dark skin and ponderous black moustache. His manner was ever honest, frank, and pleasant; and though his turn of mind was somewhat cynical—as if he had met with some disappointment in life—his face at times wore a smile that lit it up like a sunbeam.
Though junior to Cecil Falconer in the regiment, he was his senior by some years; for he had once been a captain of Lancers, but sold his troop, no one knew why, and afterwards obtained a non-purchase commission in the Cameronians. He was also greatly Cecil's senior in experience. He was wont to boast that he had, by a fluke, escaped the perilous meshes of matrimony, though the mess rather opined that he had been disappointed, 'thrown over,' by some girl, though none exactly knew the story.
'What is doing at headquarters?' asked Falconer.
'Birkie of that Ilk has sent in his papers.'
'Birkie—why?'
'Lost a pot of money on a hurdle-race at Streatham—it's a step in the regiment; but everyone is very, sorry for poor Birkie. Acharn has got into a scrape with a widow, whose husband suddenly turned up, so he has gone on leave, to be out of the way, and Freeport too.'
'Freeport—what was Dick up to?'
'He proposed to three sisters in one night—all the daughters of a commandant of one of those confounded brigade depots, and hearing that the adjutant might be sent for his sword, Dick was off like a bird by an early train for London. But we all know that Dick has an engagement-ring with a blue stone, which he gives to some girl everywhere, yet contrives to get back in a lover's quarrel when the route comes.'
To Fotheringhame it was apparent that his friend had come back to Dumbarton in a somewhat taciturn mood—cloudy in face and abstracted in manner.
'What the dickens has happened?' thought he.
'Was our colonel—the old general—kind?' he asked.
'Very,' was the curt reply.
'And the ladies—kinder still, I suppose?' hazarded Fotheringhame, lying back in his chair and shooting concentric rings of tobacco-smoke upward. 'No answer—eh? Now, apropos of the subject of your remarkable letter, I hope that you have left Eaglescraig without committing yourself?'
'I played no more with that fellow Hew.'
'I am not thinking of Hew.'
'Committing myself—how?'
'By a proposal.'
'What had I to offer a girl so rich as Mary Montgomerie—an heiress, in fact?'
'All that a girl wants in a husband, I suppose—a deuced good-looking and presentable fellow of his inches.'
'I could never sink to be a dependent on my wife, Leslie. Had Mary been penniless——'
'Oh, come—we have got the length of calling her Mary, have we?'
'Had she been so, I might not have shrunk from asking her to share my poverty—for such it is; but her fortune is an impassable barrier between us—and I would to heaven that I had never set foot in Eaglescraig!'
'This is rather Quixotic,' said Fotheringhame, sipping his brandy and water, and humming—
'"'Tis madness to remember—'twere better to forget."'
'Moreover, if she marries without her guardian's consent, "then in that case," as the will has it, her money passes from her.'
'You seem to have had all the details through hand,' said Fotheringhame, drily.
'Not with her, at all events.'
'And she is attractive?'
'Attractive is not the word—she is downright lovely, and good as she is lovely! But her guardian, the general, has decided on plans for her future.'
'A peerage.'
'Not at all. He resolves that she shall marry the cub called Hew Montgomerie, who is the heir of entail—a kind of distant cousin.'
'Does—Mary affect him?' asked Fotheringhame, with a quizzical smile.
'Not at all! But I cannot tell you how much she has bewitched me.'
'Aware all the while of the plan in store for her.'
'I know what a sceptic you are about women, Leslie; but her face is ever before me, by day and night. I can see it now looking at me, out of that blank barrack wall, as plainly as I see yours. She has indeed bewitched me!'
Fotheringhame looked at the wall indicated, shrugged his shoulders, and said, with a provoking laugh:
'I can't help thinking, old fellow, that the girl has been amusing herself with you, from the details you give me, and that a flirtation was all she wanted.'
'Fotheringhame!'
'Don't get excited. I am sure that, like other dear creatures,
'Her feet are so very little,Her hands are so very white;Her jewels are so very heavy,Her head so very light;Her colour is made of cosmetics,Though this she never will own;Her body's made mostly of cotton,Her heart is made wholly of stone.'
'This may apply to some goddess of yours,' said Falconer, becoming seriously ruffled; 'but as for me——'
'There will be no more larks or rows,' continued Fotheringhame, laughing; 'no more chance medley flirtations at picnics or lawn tennis, or even in the conservatory; our mind, or what is left of it, must run only on one ideal, and on presents of dainty gloves for lovely little hands, books and bouquets, chains, lockets, and bracelets, pressure of the taper fingers, perhaps even a chaste kiss, as Byron has it——'
'By Jove, Leslie, how you can gabble!' said Falconer, but without a smile, for something peculiarly uncomfortable and damping in the closing details of his visit to Eaglescraig haunted him.
Perceiving this, Fotheringhame's banter ceased, and after a pause he said:
'Pardon me, Cecil, if my jokes annoy you; but if she does not wish to marry this fellow Hew, why should she?'
'Why?'
'Yes; no power can compel her. The day is passed when girls can be married against their will, except in novels. There may be, I am aware, a mild system of domestic pressure, a steady and persevering domestic tyranny, quite as mischievous in the end, sometimes, as the brute force of the terrible old baron or stern parent of the Middle Ages; and I have even known more than one case in which the feeble opposition of a girl has been foiled under the powerful home-current, as it flowed on and bore her away with it.'
'By Jove, Leslie, youarea Job's comforter! And now, by-the-bye, there is another girl at Eaglescraig of whom I have not yet spoken—a lady on a visit.'
'And your mind was divided between them?'
'Not at all, though the beauty and style of Annabelle Erroll are indescribable.'
'Whodid you say?' exclaimed Leslie Fotheringhame, as his voice and face changed curiously, he took the cigar from his lips and sat bolt upright in his chair.
'Annabelle Erroll; she knows you, by the way, and I hope the general will, in turn, invite you to Eaglescraig.'