'I hope not,' said Fotheringhame, sadly and fervently; 'by Jove, I hope not!'
'Why?'
'Why? Because I would not go under any circumstances or pressure, from what you tell me.'
'As to what, or whom? Hew Montgomerie?'
'Hew be hanged! No.'
'Who then?'
'Annabelle Erroll,' said Fotheringhame, uttering the name sadly, softly, and with unction.
'So, thereby hangs a tale.'
'Yes, old fellow—a devil of a tale I would rather not unfold.'
'Then you have had your little weakness too?'
'Of course; I've been in love like other—fools; who has not?'
Cecil Falconer, however, was too full of his own affair to ponder long over the mysterious intimacy that existed, or had existed, between Annabelle Erroll and Leslie Fotheringhame.
Though grievously disappointed that his late guest should have proved the gamester Hew described him to be, and not ill-pleased to have a rival of the latter at a distance from Eaglescraig, Sir Piers, to do him justice, in the kindness of his heart, missed his friend, the genial young officer, who had been so patient a listener to those dreary Indian reminiscences, over which Hew openly groaned and secretly swore.
Mrs. Garth and Annabelle Erroll missed him for his musical accomplishments and conversational qualities, and poor Mary missed him more than all, while her aversion to Hew became more undisguised than ever, and he spitefully retorted by saying more than once in her hearing that 'a deuced good lesson had been taught Sir Piers never again to invite, without a due and accredited introduction, any chance-medley fellow to Eaglescraig.'
Her manner to his heir at last drew upon her the animadversion of Sir Piers.
'My dear girl,' said he to her one day, 'I must remonstrate with you, as the betrothed wife of Hew.'
'Betrothed! by whom?' asked Mary, with mingled gravity and anger.
'By me, my darling; as such, I say, you owe him some duty, and some respect, and a deference to his opinions. School yourself to love him properly in the time to come, and not distress your poor old grand-uncle and guardian, who loves you so well for your dead parents' sake.'
'I do not, and cannot love him!' said the girl, wearily.
'Not now, you think; but in time, Mary, in the good time to come,' he continued, stroking her rich, dark hair caressingly, as if she were yet a little child; and when he adopted a pleading tone and manner, rather than those of authority and command, she felt a deeper emotion of pain and annoyance.
'There is no necessity for having romantic notions, or being desperately fond of your intended husband. The notions and the love will come in due time after marriage,' said the old man, who had well-nigh forgotten all about his own early love and marriage, which had come to pass so long ago. 'You have wealth, Mary.'
'What is wealth, if linked with unhappiness?'
'Hew will make you a good husband; if he did not—if he did not!' and the general paused, and grasping the knob of his arm-chair, looked unutterable things at the idea of such a contingency. 'As I have said a hundred times since he came from India, with your fortune added to what I shall leave—all going to Hew as heir of entail—the future baronet of Eaglescraig will, in wealth, be second to none, richer by far than half the peerage; and marry you cannot, without my permission.'
'But to marry when one cannot love is—is——'
'What, girl?' asked Sir Piers, peevishly, for he had not again referred to the suspected fancy for Cecil Falconer, though his mind was full of it.
'Falsehood and dishonesty, rank injustice, and shameful!'
'Well—anything more?' he continued angrily.
'Yes—destruction of soul and body, perhaps.'
'Mary, you do not look beyond the present,' said Sir Piers, with growing sternness, to find his pet scheme so vigorously opposed; 'hence it is my imperative duty to do that for you, and with a firm will and resolute hand to scheme out a happy future.'
'How miserably had he schemed out the future of his poor dead son!' thought Mrs. Garth, as she led Mary away in tears and anger.
Meanwhile, if Hew looked upon himself as the future lord and master of Mary Montgomerie and her thousands, still more surely did he look upon himself as the future laird, lord, and master of Eaglescraig and all that appertained thereto; and while impatiently looking forward to the day of his succession, gave himself, unknown to Sir Piers, such airs with old and valued adherents, such as John Balderstone the factor, Tunley the aged butler, whose taste in wine he scouted; Pate Pastern the head groom, who was cognisant of some of his tricks on the turf; old Sandy Swanshott the head keeper, with even Mrs. Garth and others, that, certes, he won anything but golden opinions from all!
Between him and John Balderstone there was a species of smouldering feud. The latter loved and revered Sir Piers, and always winced when Hew showed, as he had the coarseness and ill-feeling to do, that he actually prayed for the sudden or premature arrival of the time when he should figure as Sir Hew Montgomerie; premature it could scarcely be now, though the hale old man seemed to have years of life in him yet.
Mr. Balderstone was not slow in perceiving how Hew disliked their late visitor, Cecil Falconer, and thus was disposed to vaunt his praises in the mere spirit of opposition.
'I can't perceive the fellows' merits in any way,' growled Hew with an oath, as they entered the smoking-room one evening.
'That I can very well believe,' replied the old gentleman, drily.
'How—why?' demanded Hew, suspecting something in his tone.
'Plainly, then, to do so would argue the existence of what you do not possess.'
'What is that—perception?'
'No.'
'What then?'
'Some refinement of taste,' replied Mr. Balderstone, his dark grey eyes beaming as he made a home-thrust, for which Hew quickly revenged himself in a fashion of his own, causing the portly Mr. Balderstone, as he seated himself, to spring up with a malediction.
'What the devil is the row?' asked Hew.
'Only this, sir, that you have placed a pair of sharp jack-spurs upon the chair you so politely accorded me!'
'And you have a sanguinary sense of sitting down on the rowels—eh?' said Hew, laughing heartily, and not even attempting an apology, while his shifty eyes now beamed with delight.
'I presume these spurs are a present to you, from your friend Mr. Welsher Twigg, the gentleman rider, whose peculiar riding so favoured you at Ayr and York last year,' said Mr. Balderstone, with some contempt of manner, while Hew's parti-coloured eyes now gleamed with rage, for it was averred on the turf, that bribed by him, the rider in question, when pretending to give a horse a bucket of water, daubed his nostrils with blood, to make people believe the animal had broken a blood vessel, and had secretly loosened the nails in the shoes of another, at a hurdle-race, to prevent him winning.
As these black rumours had never reached the ear of Sir Piers, Mr. Balderstone felt that he had 'scored one' by the taunt; but in a time to come, and by both unforeseen then, he was to run up a terrible and crushing score against Hew Montgomerie, with a result that neither could have imagined.
Slowly passed the days now with Mary. The spacious house was full of new guests, and pleasant ones too, but it seemed dull and dreary, sincehewas no longer there. His place was vacant. The click of balls came from the billiard-room, and the sound of merry voices, but his was no longer there, or at her piano now. All seemed changed to Mary. Sir Piers never adverted to his visit, his name or his existence; and scarcely ever to the old and invariable topic of the Cameronians.
Why was this? Did he suspect their secret, or was Hew the spirit of evil? She could not doubt that; and her sympathetic friend Annabelle Erroll, who was a close observer of affairs, and had all Mary's confidence, thought so too.
But Annabelle Erroll had thoughts that were peculiarly her own, over the departure of Cecil Falconer.
'He has gone from me to Leslie,' she said to herself; 'to Leslie Fotheringhame, to tell him that he has spent a whole month with me—a month in my society, and I have given no sign that Leslie's existence was ever aught to me—at least, I hope so—and yet there was a time when I was all the world to him! Yes—yes—it is indeed over and done with, the love that was once ours. Will Leslie ask him how I am looking?' (she glanced at her soft blonde beauty in the mirror). 'Or how I am comporting myself—sadly or merrily?—if I am unchanged from the Annabelle of the time that can come no more?'
For some mysterious reason she had not taken her friend Mary into her confidence at first, when Fotheringhame's name was spoken of; and now she shrunk from doing so, lest she might seem wanting in candour; and, as the love she referred to was 'over and done with,' what mattered it now?'
And yet often Mary might have drawn such a confidence from her.
'Oh, Annabelle,' she would sometimes say, 'so quick is fancy, that occasions there are when I see a figure like Cecil's in the distance—the figure of some one else, whose walk or gesture recalls him vividly to me—that I feel something like a sharp pang in my heart.'
As days passed on and became weeks, Mary's movements and manner became languid, and all her old occupations, if not neglected, were pursued with a weary indifference. She had lost interest even in being dressed to perfection, as she had always been, and spent hours in the seclusion of her own room, or exclusively in the society of Annabelle Enroll.
Her eyes lost their clear brilliance and became heavy in expression; her usually gentle and playful manner was changed for petulance and irritability, all signs of where and how her thoughts were—signs which Hew watched with jealous rage, and loving, old Sir Piers with unaffected solicitude, mingled with bitterness at Falconer, and at himself for that which he now deemed his own fantastic idea ofcamaraderieand old military hospitality.
'Never again,' he would mutter to himself, 'never again will I play the fool! Hew is right—Hew is right!'
His pet from her orphan childhood, his artless, father-like experience of her, had, until quite recently, prevented him from remarking that she was no longer a baby-faced girl, but a grown woman—a bird that might leave him for another nest—and then a kind of nervous thrill went through his heart, when he thought a love for another might take possession of her; and thus he became doubly anxious to secure her for Hew.
'How pale and ill you look, my darling!' said Mrs. Garth to her, at the close of a day that had seemed a long and dreary one to Mary.
'What matters it?' said she, petulantly; 'Cecil cannot see me now,' she added mentally, as her eyes wandered through the window to the wooded walk that led to the grotto—the grotto where Cecil had first told her of his love, and where his lips had touched hers for the first and last time, and the host of tender recollections that hallowed the place flowed full upon her memory. 'Why are some people sent into this world only to be miserable!' sighed the lovely heiress, while surrounded by every luxury that world could furnish. 'I wonder if we ever lived before and were happy—or if we shall live again, and be happier still! Who can tell—who knows?'
Then tenderly and fondly she recalled the words of Cecil, when he spoke to her of the mysterious sympathy that, in his solitary moments, had seemed to link his soul, or existence, with that of another, and could she doubt now that it was her own!
And with this idea, a tender and loving expression would steal over her delicatemignonneface.
'Rouse yourself, my darling,' Mrs. Garth would say, 'ride or drive—read or work.'
'Read—read! I hate books now—I hate crewel-work, music, everything!' she replied, almost snappishly; 'dear old Garthy, I am no longer a schoolgirl, and I never, at any time, was one cut to the Hannah More pattern.'
She had learned from his own lips how Cecil loved her; but now Cecil was gone and never could return, and all her little world seemed sunless and cold—dark and desolate. She was no longer alternately amused and petulant, coquettish and light-hearted, for a settled moodiness had come over her—the gloom of sorrow, not anger; and though no one, not even Annabelle, surprised her in tears, her eyes sometimes bore unmistakable traces of recent weeping.
A wild longing would, at times, come over her to see Cecil again—to hear his voice—to know what he was doing, or with whom he was at that particular moment; but the days passed vaguely and drearily on, while she thought of him, dreamt of him, talked in fancy to him, and wove such romances about him and herself, as only a young girl can weave.
He was not very distant from her after all, and yet he might, so far as their intercourse was concerned, have been at the Antipodes; for no tidings, no news of him, ever came to Eaglescraig, and at last, to Mary, it began to seem as if the sweet bright chapter in her life, about Cecil Falconer, was utterly ended!
And probably she would never love again, she thought; for that she had given him was the one love of a lifetime.
But the general and Mrs. Garth thought they knew better; and that her ailment was only a girlish fancy, that naturally would pass away and be forgotten.
Now Leslie Fotheringhame, though disposed at first to be somewhat reticent on the subject of his previous intimacy with Annabelle Erroll, after a time confided their mutual story to Cecil Falconer.
Thrown together as he and the latter were, in that lonely and isolated fort, the whole garrison of which, besides their own detachment, consisted only of a master gunner and a few old pensioners, it was natural that they should have their mutual confidences over their after-dinner cigars, and thus Falconer heard all about it from Fotheringhame.
'You see, old fellow, it came to pass in this way.
'My troop of Lancers was quartered in Perth Barracks, while the head-quarters were stationed at Piershill. I soon tired of all the little gaieties afforded by the Fair City; but the season was summer, and the Tay afforded me endless amusement for fly-fishing and boating; and, as one of my subs was on leave and the other on the sick-list, I was somewhat thrown on my own resources.
'I had a swift light shallop, in which I used to pull daily, when the tide or stream served, from the bridge upward past the wooded slopes of Kinnoull, and away for miles amid the loveliest and most luxuriant sylvan scenery in the world.
'One day the heat was very great, and, ceasing to row, I lay back in the stern-sheets of my boat, with a cigar between my lips, and let her float, lazily, on the current of the stream, which flowed between its wooded banks deeply, silently, and majestically. On every hand around me were a long series of varied hills covered with picturesque foliage of every shade of green, the vista everywhere terminated by the more remote mountains, the rich tints of which were softened in the blue haze and by the distance.
'At a bend of the river my boat partially grounded, but I felt too lazy to shove off, and lay there under the shadows cast upon the bright stream by the overreaching elms, oaks, and silver birches, among the blended foliage of which the blue doves were cooing, and where the wild violets and jasmine grew close to the water's-edge. On all the river I thought there could be no lovelier spot than this. Save the stillness of its flow, and the hum of the mountain honey-bee among the wild flowers of the wood, in and out of the gueldre-roses and foxglove-bells, there was no sound in the air, as I lay there in a kind of daydream, with my arms resting idly on my sculls, till the voice of a girl, singing close by, roused me at once to attention.
'Sweetly she sung, and seemed to give her whole soul and pathos to the song. She thought no ear save her own was within hearing; but for a time the singer remained unseen by me.
'"'Love me always—love me ever,'Said a voice low, sad, and sweet;'Love me always—love me ever,'Memory will the words repeat."
'And in truth, Falconer, I give them by an effort of memory now, it is so long since I heard and read them:
'"While in fancy still beside me,Is her fair and graceful form;And I hear the murmured love-words,Gushing from her heart so warm."
'"From her heart, subdued by sorrow,In its fond and trusting youth,Till she trembles lest the morrowRob some idol of its—truth?"
'A slight impetus which I gave my boat with one of the sculls, brought me quite suddenly to the very feet of the singer, as she stood on the edge of the stream, embowered among foliage, and shaded by the light aspen-like sprays of the silver birches, regarding me with some surprise, for my boating costume, I dare say, was novel in that quarter, and seeming irresolute as to whether she should retire—any way, advance she could not.
'I saw at a glance that the girl was just at that age which is between childhood and maidenhood, that she was perfectly lady-like, delicate in form and figure, and possessed of rare beauty of the fairest, or blonde type; her hair of the lightest brown, and shot with gold that made it brilliant in the flakes of sunlight that flashed between the trees; her eyes, of dark-grey blue, had brows and lashes so dark as to impart great character to her otherwise soft andmignonneface; but you know well who I am describing.
'She had a bunch of wild-flowers in one hand; the other grasped the ribbons of her tiny hat, which she was swinging to and fro, as she had come through the wood bareheaded, and was evidently not far from her home.
'"Pardon me," said I, lifting my cap, "but I am afraid that I am rather a trespasser here."
'"Not at all, sir; the river is free to everyone."
'"But I have been almost ashore, and is not that presuming too far?" I asked again, only for the pleasure of conversing with her.
'"Oh no," she replied, with a charming smile.
'"But I have disturbed you, I fear."
'"How?"
'"I heard you singing—need I say, how sweetly!"
'"An old song, quoted from some old book, but the melody far surpasses the words."
'"Yes, as sung by your voice," said I, gallantly.
'"What a pretty boat yours is! Have you rowed far?"
'"All the way from the bridge."
'"You must be weary, otherwise I would ask you——"
'She blushed and paused.
'"I am not at all weary, and am every way at your service."
'"Oh, thanks; will you row to the other side, and bring me some of the lovely—"
'She mentioned some peculiar kind of fern.
'"Permit me to row you across, and you can select them for yourself."
'Her eyes sparkled with pleasure, but she hesitated.
'"You mistrust a stranger," said I; "and perhaps your papa might be displeased—"
'"Poor papa is dead; but mamma would, I know, be angry. She is full of strict and strange notions; thus I can never venture far alone."
'"But the distance is so short—"
'"And she is always busy at this hour."
'"Come, then."
'She confidingly put her little hand in mine, sprang with charming grace lightly into the cushioned seat astern, and exclaimed with girlish delight:
'"What a lovely boat! How delicious this is! Though we live only a mile from the Tay, I have never had a row on it."
'"Permit me to give you a little one now," said I, assuming my sculls, and shot the boat out into mid-stream. I regarded her beauty with growing admiration and pleasure; but my Lancer experiences caused the thought to occur, could she be so innocent, so utterly guileless as she seemed?
'Some ferns were speedily selected, and uprooted by my knife, also some magnificent water-lilies from a pool under the trees; and, as she seemed thoroughly to enjoy herself upon the sunlit river, I pulled her to and fro, near the silver birches where I first met her, and she chatted away to me as if she had known me for months. That she was a lady in birth and breeding was indisputable; her accent was highly cultivated and her manners refined, and everything about the girl betokened gentle blood; but there was an artlessness combined with girlish abandon about her, that made me curiously and uncharitably suspicious, while deeply and suddenly interested in her. Thus I said, after a pause, while letting the boat drift with the current, and keeping the blades of my sculls just out of the water:
'"You do me great honour, and must have singular confidence in me, a stranger, that you trust yourself with me thus."
'"How we glide!" exclaimed the girl, with childish glee. "Oh, I could sail here for ever!"
'"What would mamma think, if she knew it?"
'"Being with you?"
'"Yes."
'"I scarcely know what she would think; but I know what she woulddo," was the reply.
'"Admonish you?"
'"Yes; and lock me up for days to come. But I can see, of course, that you are a gentleman."
'"Thanks for the compliment."
'"But it is difficult to say what else; your costume is so unlike anyone we see hereabout."
'I wore simply a rowing suit of white flannel, trimmed and faced with blue, with a skull-cap to match.
'"I am a Lancer," said I.
'"A Lancer!" she repeated, while her blue eyes dilated.
'"Yes; I command the troop in Perth Barracks."
'I could see that the information pleased her, for her colour rose and she looked aside; and again I pondered as to whether she was the hoyden by nature I suspected.
'"I must return home now," she said suddenly, as if she read my thoughts in my face.
'"So soon?" I urged, pleadingly.
'"Yes; and thanks, so much, for your row—it has been delightful."
'"I shall be so glad to row you further next time."
'"You talk as if you expected to see me again—as if it were quite a matter of course."
'"I can only hope to do so," said I, handing her ashore and retaining her little, ungloved hand, lingeringly in mine; "but I row past here every day,at the same hour."
'"Good-bye," said she, about to turn away.
'"May I ask your name?" said I, cap in hand.
'"Annabelle Erroll."
'"Why do you start so?" she asked laughingly, and, tripping up the bank, vanished among the white stems of the silver birches, leaving her ferns in the boat behind her.
'Start! Well might I do so; for I now discovered that she was my cousin, the daughter of a widowed maternal Aunt Annabelle, with whom my parents had ever been at enmity, about some money quarrel, with her husband, Colonel Erroll—an aunt whom I had never met, and of whose existence I had but a vague idea.
'My cousin she was, and proud, greedy old Uncle Erroll's daughter! I would rather not have heard this; for the girl's rare beauty attracted me powerfully on one hand, while the transmitted stories of the family feud—stories which in boyhood made me regard the colonel and his wife as an ogre and ogress—on the other, had a fatal effect upon me.
'That her mother yet kept up the feud, was evident from the circumstance that she had never mentioned to Annabelle the fact, which she must have known, that I commanded the Lancers at the barrack within a few miles of their own house. Yet to have done so would have served no end; though I thought not of that.
'Would the young girl understand, or accept, myhint?
'When, on the following day, I betook me to the bend of the river in my boat, she was not there. I waited long, and reluctantly pulled away with a certain emotion of pique. But, on thenextday again, at the same hour, I saw her light skirt flitting among the silver birches, and at once crept inshore. I had cut some fresh fern roots for her, in place of those she had forgotten.
'"Ah, how thoughtful and kind of you," she exclaimed, as she gave me her hand, and allowed me to lead her on board, quite as a matter of course.
'"You will have a little row to-day?" said I.
'"A very tiny one it must be, then; I am so afraid of mamma," she replied; and in another minute we were skimming over the silvery water.
'"Have you mentioned to your mamma your meeting with me?" I inquired.
'"With you—a stranger? Oh, I dare not, Captain Fotheringhame."
'"You know my name, then!"
'"I saw in a newspaper, by the merest chance, that you were a guest of Lord Rothiemay's."
'For certain cogent reasons of my own, I could not help colouring like a great schoolboy at this peer's name, as I had been involved in something closer than a mere flirtation with a daughter of his; but in the present instance, while feeling already inclined to be rather cousinly, I resolved to remain incog. as long as I could. I knew that she would not mention my name at home, and so resolved to abandon myself to the perilous charm of her society during the absence of the Rothiemays in London. I admit freely that I was wrong, selfish in this, and severely was I punished in the end.
'This second day on the river was succeeded by many others, during which I gave myself completely up to the fascination of my new companion, who was so bright, quaint, andspirituelle, and full of enthusiasm for music, flowers, scenery, and everything, that she was unlike any other girl I had ever met—more than all, most unlike in style of beauty and manner the stately and patrician daughter of Rothiemay.
The boat, in the blaze of the sunshine, was drifting with the current; my sculls in the rowlocks rested on my knees; my cigar, the place and time, disposed me for luxurious reverie; and opposite me sat this beautiful girl, her hat beside her, her golden hair and fair face shaded by her parasol, while she sang in a low voice her song, "Love me always—love me ever," her eyes fixed dreamily on the wooded shore the while.
'"Annabelle," said I, softly.
'"Who gave you leave to call me by that name?" she asked, pouting.
'"Is it not your name?"
'"Yes, Captain Fotheringhame."
'"And a very pretty one; yet not even pretty enough for you. Why may I not call you by it?"
'"It sounds odd on your lips—already."
'"But not unpleasant, I hope?"
'She laughed, but became silent, and glanced at me shyly under her long lashes—shyly, and yet at times I thought half invitingly, half defiantly, too. Was the girl acting or not? I felt inclined to love her one moment, and simply and selfishly to amuse myself with her the next, heedless, perhaps, of whether the poor girl might learn to love me or not.
'I was a young fellow then, Falconer—save in experience, I am not an old fellow yet—but she was younger still, a very girl, on the borders between childhood and womanhood, the "sweet seventeen" of the inevitable love story. I was playing with fire, and so was she; and in teaching her to love me, I forgot all about an entanglement elsewhere, and gave myself up to the romance and intoxication of the time and the episode. So we met and dreamed on day by day, and she was so brilliantly happy that her soft face at times seemed to be singularly brightened by the very gladness of her heart; for it seems so natural for a young girl to mingle something of idolatry with her first love.
'It did occur to me that our love—hers, at least—was somewhat of the rash and romantic Romeo and Juliet, passionate and unreasoning kind; while she was as young and innocent as I was exacting, and even suspicious that she was perfectly artless. I pondered over the words of Shakespeare: "Love sought is good; but given unsought is better;" and I was cynic, casuist, and egotist enough to doubt this.
'When I kissed her, it seemed each time as if all my soul went out to her with that kiss; and yet—what idiosyncrasy of the heart was it that made me wish to have that kiss recalled!
'"I seem to have no wish or desire in the world ungratified," she whispered to me, as she nestled her head on my shoulder, while the boat drifted with the current under the tremulous shade of the silver birches, and the Tay rippled placidly past them.
'"You are so happy, Annabelle?"
'"I never thought to be so happy as I am now, Leslie; I could even die with your arms round me! But—but are you satisfied to have such an ignorant little girl for your wife?"
'Wife! I had not proposed yet; and the word roused me to a selfish consciousness of the rashness of the whole affair, and so instead of replying I gave her a tender caress, and said:
'"You are too good for me, Annabelle!"
'"I can scarcely believe it—you so handsome, so rich—a captain of Lancers, and all that! Oh, Leslie, God forbid you should ever cease to love me less than you do!"
'This crisis in my river-cruising roused me to think of what I was about; and still more was I roused when at the barracks I found a letter from Lord Rothiemay awaiting me with an invitation to spend a few days at his place. But to leave my troop then was impossible, thus I wrote thanking his lordship, and proposing simply to gallop over on an evening named to dinner, and as I despatched the missive, the face and figure of his daughter Blanche came reproachfully before me.
'I have already referred to an entanglement—it was simply that, though no promise had been given, I deemed myself all but engaged to Blanche Gordon, who, some months before this time had enchanted and spell-bound me. She was, indeed, a beautiful girl, and is a beautiful woman now, tall, slender, and graceful—a finished creature in every way, and wielding every natural and acquired accomplishment with consummate and yet unapparent art.
'She had given me every reason to believe that the passion with which she had inspired me was reciprocated, and we had only parted with the mutual hope, apparently, of meeting again; hence there seemed an absolute necessity for breaking off my philandering on the river. It is said that a man cannot love two women at once; and yet my heart ached for Annabelle and the grief that was before her.
'By some sophistry I nursed myself into the idea that I, rather than she, was the victim of circumstances; and as I went to the trysting-place for the last time I muttered:
'"'Handsome, rich, and a Lancer,'" she said. "Yes—yes, by Jove! she is not so deuced artless, after all; and the very proposal she made to me was in itself unwomanly."
'Unwomanly! I actually had the cruelty to tell her so; and never shall I forget the look of incredulity, grief, dismay, and horror that appeared by turns, and then all blended together, in her beautiful face when I did so; and, already repenting what I had said so capriciously, I would have retracted my words if it were possible to do so.
'The phrase went through her loving heart like a bolt of ice, though she seemed to hear it indistinctly.
'"Oh, Leslie!" she gasped, in an accent of desolation such as human lips can utter but once in a lifetime, while her hands became cold and her face grew livid. She bit her lips till the blood came, and clasped her white hands until a ring I had given her marked her tender fingers; and then remembering it, she tore it off, cast it at my feet, and after giving me one long glance of anguish and reproval, tottered away home; and I, my heart burning with shame, shot my shallop out into the stream, and pulled away from the spot like a madman!
'"She is young, poor girl, and will get over it," thought I; while to nerve myself I conjured up the presence of Blanche Gordon in all her imperial beauty, while, ingrate that I was! she that I had just left possessed and showed all the qualities that win love—and that love had, upon a mere pretence, been coldly and abruptly thrust back upon her heart.
'The black "morrow" of her prophetic song had come indeed, and an idol had been robbed of its truth.
'She was helpless to avenge herself, suffering and so beautiful; so I prayed that God might strengthen her, until some other love consoled her for the loss of mine: and even the thought of that stung me.
'"Yes, yes," thought I, "if so ready to love me, she will with equal facility learn to love another."
'There was no jealousy in the heart of Annabelle, for she knew nothing of any rival; but she was tormented by a sensation of loneliness and utter desolation by day and night, and disappointment was not the least element of that torment. But her time of vengeance was at hand.
'Next day saw me at Rothiemay, and at the feet, if I may say so, of Blanche Gordon, who received me with one of her usual bewitching smiles. My proposal certainly pleased and agitated her, but she told me with considerable confidence and coolness that she was engaged to another, and, indeed, was to be married in three weeks!
'The hollow damsel of fashion had thrown me over for a well-gilded coronet, just as I had thrown over—but coarsely and suspiciously—the girl who only loved me better than I deserved, and whose sweet society I now missed fearfully.
'But I was justly punished, you will say; yet the story does not end here.
'Some weeks after, when family misfortunes came upon me, and I was compelled to sell out—to leave the Lancers—impelled I know not by what emotion or motive, unless it were something like force of habit and a restless craving, I roamed towards the old trysting-place, beneath the silver birches.
'Things of love and joy seldom repeat themselves, but my heart leaped on seeing Annabelle seated on the bank of the stream, half hidden by the wild rose-trees. Thither, no doubt, to torment her own heart, she had perhaps been in the habit of repairing to dream over the love that would never come again. She seemed lost in thought, and neither saw nor heard my approach; and I saw the sunlight flashing on the bright, soft, golden hair, amid which my fingers had so often strayed.
'"Annabelle!" said I softly; and she sprang up with a nervous start. "You see I am here again, to crave your pardon and to thank God that life has yet something worth living for—your love, Annabelle!"
'"And yours?" she said disdainfully; then her fortitude gave way, and for a moment she hid her burning face and her hot tears in her white and wasted hands, which, when I attempted to take them, repelled mine.
'"I will try to atone for the past, Annabelle—forgive me," said I, humbly.
'"I do forgive you," she replied with sudden calmness, grace, and a bearing of dignity I had never before seen in her; "but you can never be to me what you have been. You were the very idol of my heart, and with all my soul I worshipped you, Leslie; but that is ended now and for ever."
'"If a life of devotion, Annabelle——"
'"Say no more—I will not listen."
'"You decline my love, because ruin has come upon me at the hands of others, and I am compelled to leave the Lancers?"
'Her eyes flashed, yet not with anger, and her bosom heaved, as she replied:
'"I grieve for what you say; and God knows it is not so—but for the manner in which you reproached me with unwomanly conduct, that roused my proper pride. I did love you tenderly, purely, passionately, then; but in repelling you, my conduct at least is womanly now! Farewell then, for ever; we leave this place to-morrow."
'"For where?"
'"That can be a matter of no interest to you, Captain Fotheringhame," she replied, turning to retire.
'"Do not let us part thus, Annabelle. It is for your sake as much as my own that I sue thus."
'She crested up her little head haughtily.
'"Believe in my love," I urged.
'"I neither believe in it, nor want it—now at least."
'"How pitiless you are!" I exclaimed.
'"Just as you were; so to part is best for us both. I once dreamt of being only too happy; I am sadly awake now."
'Our eyes met for the last time: the expression of hers was passionless and decided. I had nothing to hope from her; but I sighed deeply, with sorrow, pique, and even jealousy, as I watched her departing steps and saw the last flutter of her skirt between the stems of the silver birches, and then pulled slowly away from the trysting-place, never to seek it again!
'I can remember yet how the woods and lawns along the river's bank looked dreamily indistinct in the evening haze, as I pulled slowly and sadly homeward.
'Never since, till you spoke of her, have I heard aught of Annabelle Erroll, but I have since had reason to believe that she heard, in time, of my affair with Blanche Gordon.'
So all this story of Leslie Fotheringhame's was the secret so skilfully concealed under the calm exterior of the beautiful blonde whom Cecil Falconer had met at Eaglescraig.
'That was the way our affair of the heart came about, and was ended by my pride, vacillation, and suspicion,' said Fotheringhame; 'and now I have little doubt that she is quite aware that I—the Lancer lover—was her cousin, though I never told her so.'
'How odd of you to act so!' exclaimed Cecil.
'Odd—I was mad, I think!'
'From her manner and words, I thought that you and she possessed in common some mysterious antecedents.'
'An unpleasant way of putting it,' said Fotheringhame, with a shade of annoyance in his face; 'all that time was one of gloom to me. When I had to leave the Lancers I shall never forget the shock it gave me—though of course expected—to see the 'Army List' without my name in it; nor was I ever satisfied till I saw it there again, as a Cameronian. So you see, Falconer, that with all my general heedlessness of bearing, my life has not been without "its little romance, as most lives have, between the age of teetotum and tobacco," as George Eliot has it.'
'I may yet be the means of relighting this old flame again,' said Falconer; 'though it is said that there is nothing so difficult to revive as an old flirtation.'
'It was no flirtation——'
'Save in so far as you were concerned.'
'Until I lost Annabelle, I never knew how much I loved her, and how dear she was to me.'
'If Annabelle Erroll ever loved you she loves you still.'
'Why do you think so?'
'Because true love never dies,' said Falconer enthusiastically, for his mind was full of Mary's image; 'and I can now recall much that was strange in her mode and manner, if I mentioned you incidentally—of which I thought nothing then, but to which you have now given me a clue.'
'For all that you can tell, Falconer, she may only remember me with hatred, therefore it were better to forget the past and all about it. After confiding the matter to my two other friends—a quiet weed and M. de Cognac—I'll turn in, and so good-night.'
Most uneventfully passed the early days of spring, to Falconer, in the solitary castle of Dumbarton, which shoots up abruptly from a flat level, and stands completely isolated, the most prominent and picturesque object amid the beautiful scenery of the blue and majestic Clyde, into the channel of which it projects—a channel through the clear waters of which on a calm day, one may see whole forests of luxuriant seaweed, waving fathoms deep below.
Perched in the hollow or rift between the two great volcanic peaks into which this singular, mitre-shaped rock is cleft—the highest being five hundred and sixty feet in height—the old-fashioned barracks contain accommodation for only about a company of soldiers, and an ancient armoury (among the stores of which is the blade of Wallace's sword, fitted with a new hilt of a later period), and which is still identified as having been the prison of the Scottish Patriot, after his betrayal by the infamous Menteith. The circumstance of his sword having a hilt more modern than the blade, has led to its identity being doubted by those who are ignorant of the fact, that in the accounts of the Lord High Treasurer in 1505, we find mention made of the 'binding of Wallas's sword (in the castle of Dumbarton) with cords of silk and anew hiltand plomet (pommel), new skabbard and new belt to the said sword, xxvj sh.'
The entrance to the castle is by a barrier-gate at the foot of the rock and fronting the south east. It is defended by ramparts and guns, and immediately within it are the officers' quarters. A steep flight of stone steps gives access to the barracks, the well, and other batteries; from whence, and especially from Wallace's Seat—the highest peak of this stupendous rock—and the circular Roman tower, or fragment, perchance, of the days when Balclutha was the abode of Roderick Hael 'the Generous,' there is a glorious panorama of scenery: the far expanse of the Clyde, the sylvan vale of the Leven, the vast blue mass of Ben Lomond and the mountains of Arrochar, their peaks sometimes veiled in silvery mist.
On the giddy summit Falconer lingered for many an hour, and fancied he could see, more than twenty miles distant, as the crow flies, the hills that looked down upon Eaglescraig. There, when Fotheringhame was absent on some duty or pleasure, he smoked many a solitary havanna in solitude, in the evening and the gloaming, conversing in imagination with Mary Montgomerie, with a fond enthusiasm and a passion inflamed by obstacles and opposition, long after the shadows had deepened in the vale of the Leven, and all around beneath the rocks; after the drum had beaten tattoo, and the lights of the last ocean-bound steamers had faded out beyond the point of Ardmore.
Then he would skilfully torment himself by recalling all that Mrs. Garth, with the best intentions in the world, had said concerning what Sir Piers would be certain to insist upon and carry out—the union of Mary Montgomerie, the heiress, with his own heir of entail; and well Falconer knew how Sir Piers would view his own slender means and want of family rank. And though he hoped much, he could not know how, in the secrecy of her own room, and in the long hours of 'the stilly night,' Mary treasured the memory of the few precious moments spent in the grotto, and thought of him and him only—of the influence he had exerted over her when present, and the memory he had left of himself when gone.
At times there was in his manner a passionate dejection, which quite bewildered and provoked the more matter-of-fact Leslie Fotheringhame.
''Pon my soul, old fellow, you're in a bad way,' the latter sometimes said; 'you can't live on this Mary Montgomerie, and nothing but Mary Montgomerie! You must get up a relish for something else when the drum beats for mess, or we shall soon have you on the doctor's list.'
So the days and weeks went by till the middle of March came. Six weeks had elapsed since he left Eaglescraig—six centuries, apparently, as lovers count their time!
The few words so hastily spoken in the grotto were deeply graven in his memory, and graven, too, was the kiss—the unpremeditated kiss—pressed so passionately on her unresisting lips. It seemed to haunt him with joy, for ever and aye.
'If she loves me, as I know she does,' he often thought, 'I am a fool not to carry her off in defiance of her guardian and all the world. Heaven knows, it is not her fortune I value, but of course that charitable world would think otherwise, though it is entirely in the hands of Sir Piers.'
After the impression made upon him at his departure from Eaglescraig, he felt that he could go back there on no pretence whatever, as no welcome, save from one, would await him, and another invitation would never be accorded. He knew that too well.
Times there were when he threw open his desk, and thought he would write to the general on the subject nearest his heart, at all hazards, and cast himself upon his generosity; and then hope died, and his courage failed, as he remembered his own slender exchequer, his humble rank, apart from his commission, and the general's inordinate pride of birth and value of long descent.
So he dared not write to Eaglescraig, and from thence came no word, no news, or sign.
He remembered how Mary had, with much agitation, interrupted his suggestion that he should tell Sir Piers of his love for her. What did she mean, then, unless it were her dread of the latter's power and influence over her, and his future plans with reference to Hew?
But what would he have thought, what would his emotions have been, and how great his indignation, had he known how, thanks to the malignity and perfidy of that personage, the good old general, a mirror of honour himself, viewed him as a trickster at cards, and a scandal to the uniform he wore! Had Falconer been aware of this circumstance, it would simply have maddened him; but fortunately for himself, and the bones of Mr. Hew Caddish Montgomerie, he knew nothing of it.
He was roused from cogitations such as these by an order which recalled the detachment to headquarters.
'We start for Edinburgh to-morrow, Fotheringhame,' he cried, hurrying into his friend's room.
'Hurrah!' responded the latter, springing up; 'thank heaven we are to quit this dull hole! The scenery, of course, is picturesque, and all that sort of thing, but the picturesque, is not in my line. The weekly assemblies and all the gaieties are on just now in 'Scotia's darling seat,' and the regimental ball will soon be coming off, so, with genuine satisfaction, I hail the order to rejoin at last. Well, it is a jolly change, anyway.'
And as such, Cecil welcomed it too, though it increased the distance between himself and Eaglescraig, and he could little foresee the calamities that awaited him in Edinburgh, and the crisis that would come in his affairs.
The departure of the detachment was not so duly chronicled in the local prints as its arrival had been; thus Mary knew nothing of Falconer's movements.
In her own heart she fully conceived herself to be engaged—tacitly engaged—to him, and loved to think she was so. Long engagements are perilous things, even when the pair can see each other at will, or freely correspond, daily or even weekly; tiffs and petty quarrels, even little bitternesses, may come to pass that weaken regard, unless they be like 'lovers' quarrels, love renewed:' but such a tie as that which existed between Falconer and Mary Montgomerie—never hearing of each other, and debarred all correspondence, having only hope for an anchor, was altogether peculiar in its features.
'She is always sad and weary now, Sir Piers,' said Mrs. Garth one day; 'weary at night, and weary at morning, though she tries to conceal it, or deceive us, by occasional bursts of gaiety.'
'Poor little fool! Her mind is still running on that fellow whom I should never have brought to Eaglescraig. But, with all Hew's faults of temper and so forth, she had better think of him and my wishes, Mrs. Garth; so lead her up to it, for that is ourpoint d'appui,' replied the general.
'By Jove!' said the amiable Hew, with one of his ugly grimaces, 'she has no more brains than a hen pheasant, I think, to sit as she does all day long looking like a sick monkey.'
Meanwhile Hew was having no better success with his wooing, a fact which was the more perplexing and even harassing now, as he had resigned his Indian Civil Service appointment, and had no dependence, save upon the purse of Sir Piers, who, as the former grudgingly thought, seemed likely to live for ever; and who hoped, and indeed never doubted, that when Mary got over her girlish fancy for Cecil Falconer all things would come right in the end; and to change the scene, as the Edinburgh season was then in its flush, Sir Piers removed his entire household from Eaglescraig to his town residence at the west end of the grey metropolis of the north, a few days after Falconer's detachment had quitted the castle of Dumbarton.
It was the morning after Cecil Falconer's detachment had come in to headquarters overnight.
In the mess-room about a dozen officers in their blue patrol jackets, all more or less good-looking, even handsome young fellows, each and all having a certain joyous and straightforwardness of manner, were at breakfast, singly or in groups, and all greeted Falconer and Fotheringhame warmly, for both were prime favourites with the corps, and there was much shaking of hands and slapping on the back, with 'Welcome, old fellow!' 'How goes it?' and so forth, while an aroma of coffee and devilled bones pervaded the long room which had windows at each end, and where each officer seemed to be economising time, by reading during the meal, with a daily paper or comic serial—Punch, of course—propped against his coffee-pot or sugar-basin. All were discussing the repast in haste, as the hour of morning parade was close at hand.
'Here you are again, Falconer and Fotheringhame!' cried one; 'the Damon and Pythias—the David and Jonathan of the Cameronians! The very men we wanted; you have just come in time for the ball committee!'
'Heard the good news, Falconer, old fellow?' asked Dick Freeport.
'No—what is it? One of the three girls you proposed to accepted you?' said Falconer, leisurely tapping an egg.
'Ah, you've heard that story; nothing so stupid. But is it possible you don't know?'
'What?'
'That your name is in theGazette; but here you are, as large as life,' added Freeport, reading aloud: '"Lieutenant Cecil Falconer to be Captain, vice Brevet Major Balerno seconded for service on the Staff." I congratulate you.'
'And so do we all!' cried Acharn, a frank, jolly captain, though not yet eight-and-twenty.
'Thanks; I knew not that Balerno was leaving us so soon,' said Falconer, whose first thoughts were of Mary Montgomerie.
'This will rouse your spirits,' resumed Freeport.
'Do they want rousing?'
'Well, you looked rather glum last night. Been spoony on some girl in the West, I suppose?'
'Perhaps I was,' replied Cecil, laughing, with a chivalrous idea that to deny his secret love might prove that he was not worthy of it; 'you know that I varied the tedium of country quarters by a visit to the general—old Sir Piers Montgomerie. But I wish you would fall in love, in downright earnest, yourself, Freeport.'
'What harm have I done you that you should wish me this, Falconer?' asked Dick, drily.
'Any fine girls there—at the general's, I mean?' asked a cheeky young sub, of Falconer, who coloured with annoyance, though the boy—a man in his own estimation and that of fast chums, touting tradesmen and money-lenders—was but a boy after all. 'I have heard that his niece, or grand-niece rather, is a stunner. By Jove, he grows absolutely red! Were you writing verses to her eyebrows, and sighing like a furnace, Falconer?'
'You would have sighed like two or three hadyoutried the process,' said Falconer, turning away.
'I do wish you joy, Falconer,' said his friend Fotheringhame, in a low voice; 'and your promotion puts me one step nearer the rank I held when I first knew Annabelle Erroll, and—and—well, played the fool, or worse!'
Cecil thought, would Mary see theGazette? The general, he knew, was certain to do so; and Mrs. Garth too, who read it as regularly as an old Chelsea pensioner; but neither might speak of the event, or deem it wise to revive his name at Eaglescraig.
Falconer was somewhat of a pet among the Cameronians. Excellence in all manly sports ever makes a British officer a favourite with his men; thus, as Falconer could keep a wicket well, was also a prime bowler, a good horseman (though he generally owed his mounts to a friend), and could pull a good oar; moreover, as he joined his men in many a match at tennis, football and shinty, he was popular with them, and the eyes of his company seemed to brighten that morning when he came upon parade, and discipline alone repressed the inclination to give him something like a hearty cheer, and for nearly each and all he had some kind word or inquiry—for the officers and men of a regiment should ever feel as one large family. 'Their hopes and fears are similar,' says a writer; 'their turns of exile will come at the same time. Their good and bad quarters will be enjoyed and endured together, and each one shares, in common with the rest, the proud privilege of perchance some day furnishing in his own person that billet to which, the proverb tell us, every bullet is entitled, or of being "wiped out" by sickness in some pestilential clime, or of going down to the bottom of the sea in some rotten old transport. There is something in their order—a distinctiveness, a speciality about it—which makes them cling together, and stand by one another all the faster; for, although mixing freely with the outer world, there is yet an inner one that is entirely their own.'
All troops like Edinburgh, and the national regiments, from their popularity, more than all. The regimental ball was on the tapis when Falconer and his friend rejoined, and nothing else was spoken of in the fortress, or the gay circle outside it; for the corps, as a national and ancient one, was deservedly popular in the Scottish metropolis, the gay season of which is during the winter, and ends with the opening of summer—a metropolis where the people are all devoted to music and song, and where dancing is a passion with all classes and ages, so that even a baby has been taken from its cradle, that the boast might be fulfilled offourgenerations being on the floor at once.
'Our regimental hop will betheball of the season,' said Freeport; 'so I am glad you have come back, Falconer: the committee could never have done without you. But once it is over, I fear there will be a general flight from town, and we shall be reduced to the melancholy promenade of the Scottish Academy.'
'Is it open?'
'Yes, with the usual kit-kats of local nonentities, and the invariable yearly amount of Bass Rock, Ben Lomond, and the Water of Leith, without which no exhibition of pictures here would be complete.'
So Falconer and Fotheringhame were put on the ball committee, and became forthwith immersed in programmes, invitation lists, and interviews with Herr Von Humstrumm, the German bandmaster, the quarter-master and messman.
The castle of Edinburgh may well be deemed the cradle of the Cameronian Regiment, which received its first 'baptism of fire' amid the fierce and protracted siege endured there by the loyal and gallant Duke of Gordon in 1689. The corps, though now Cameronians but in name, have in that title a glorious inheritance of Scottish and military history, that springs from Richard Cameron's bloody grave in lone and wild Airs Moss, where he fell with Bible and sword in hand, in defence of an 'oppressed Kirk and broken Covenant,' and fell bravely, with his face to the enemy, in July, 1680. As a ballad says:
'Oh, weary, weary was the lot of Scotland's true ones then,A famine-stricken remnant with scarce the guise of men;They burrowed, few and lonely, in the chill, dark mountain caves,For those who once had sheltered them were in their martyr-graves!'
When the landing of William of Orange became known in the West of Scotland, a great body of Cameronians assembled on a holm near the village of Douglas, in Lanarkshire, and, to the number of some thousands, joined the revolted troops who besieged King James's garrison in Edinburgh Castle during the winter of 1688. Out of these, two regiments, now respectively the 25th, and 26th or Cameronians, were constituted in the March and April of the following year. The latter stipulated that their officers should be exclusively men 'such as, in conscience,' they could submit to, as staunch Presbyterians, and great care was taken in the selection of them, while an 'elder' was appointed to every company, so that the whole battalion should be precisely under the moral discipline of a parish, and a Bible formed a part of the necessaries in every private's knapsack. 'It is impossible,' says the Domestic Annalist of Scotland, 'to read the accounts that are given of this Cameronian Regiment without sympathising with the earnestness of purpose, the conscientious scruples and heroic feeling of self-devotion under which it was established, and seeing in them demonstrations of what is highest and best in the Scottish character.'
Their first colonel was James, Earl of Angus, heir of the lordly line of Douglas, who fell at their head in his twenty-second year, at Steinkirk, but a mullet, or five pointed star, in memory of him, is still one of the badges of the regiment. Their first lieutenant-colonel, Clelland, an accomplished soldier and poet, who had fought under the banner of the Covenant at Drumclog and Bothwell, fell at their head, defending Dunkeld; and their first chaplain was Alexander Shiells, a well-known Scottish divine.
They were clad in red, faced with yellow, the royal colours of Scotland; they wore yellow petticoat-breeches tied below the knee, with monstrous periwigs, and hats of the Monmouth cock, and small Geneva bands at the neck. The captains wore gold-coloured breastplates; those of the lieutenants were of white, and the ensigns of black steel. A proportion of pikemen and halberdiers were in every company, and the bayonets were still cross-hilted daggers, till the socket-bayonet, first adopted by the 25th, or Edinburgh Regiment, was introduced by its colonel, Maxwell, in Flanders.
The Cameronians fought with valour and distinction in the wars of William and Anne; James, Earl of Stair, commanded them in the year of the union, and 1720 saw them at Minorca, under Philip Anstruther of that Ilk, three of whose family have been at their head. Under Preston of Valleyfield they fought valiantly in the American War, and how their major, the unfortunate André, perished is well-known to the historical reader. John Lord Elphinstone led them on the plains of Egypt, and Colonel William Maxwell amid the horrors of the retreat to Corunna. In China, under Colonel Mountain, than whom no better or braver officer ever wore scarlet, they won the dragon which adorns their colours, and the scene of their last active service was amid the arid mountains of Abyssinia. And now, as the Cameronians were originally mustered on the holm of Douglas, they are, at this day, linked in brigade with the Lanarkshire Militia.
Though changed in character and impulse, the regiment is 'the Cameronians' still; but its ranks are no longer manned by the sturdy Covenanters—'men who prayed bare-headed as the troopers of Claverhouse aimed at their hearts—prayed a prayer begun on earth and ended in heaven!'
Local and national regard for the corps caused, we have said, a deep interest to be taken in the forthcoming regimental ball; but, while working on the committee therefor, Cecil Falconer could little foresee the effect that festive occasion was to have on his future career.
He felt his hand actually tremble as he addressed the invitation cards, handsomely embossed with the crested sphinx of the regiment, to Eaglescraig, for the general and his family. He knew that the former would be certain to appear, but felt doubts if Mary Montgomerie would be permitted to accept for herself; and great was his surprise and joy when, next day, acceptances came promptly from Sir Piers for Mary, Miss Erroll, and Hew Montgomerie, dated, not from Eaglescraig, but from the general's town residence at the west-end of the city.
Shewas to be in Edinburgh for the remainder of the season; balls, assemblies, drums, and parties at which they would be sure to meet, were before her and Falconer, and he contemplated the coming weeks as being pregnant with every enjoyment, with many a charm and source of pleasure.
And greater would his present joy have been had he known how Mary treasured the invitation his hand had addressed, with a wistful yearning for his presence, for the pressure of his hands, and the sound of his love-words over again. For since his advent at Eaglescraig, Mary had begun a new existence—a new life of self-devotion and romance.
'A company—I am a captain now!' thought Cecil, as he sat alone in his quarters one evening. Promotion brought him, he hoped, a little nearerher; but she was far off from him still, by her surroundings and the influences that were brought to bear upon her.
He recalled the words of a writer who says: 'When a young man wants to marry a girl, he has already made up his mind that she is worthy of him, otherwise he would not wish to marry her. The next thing to do is to make a rigid cross-examination of himself, and see whether he is worthy of her.' Falconer did so, and, of course, deemed himself immeasurably the inferior of Mary, but more than all in worldly prospects and even social position, albeit that he was now a captain of the Cameronians; and yet only that evening, in the mess-room, he had heard rattling Dick Freeport say, that it was 'the duty of every man wearing a red coat to hook an heiress, if he wanted one.'
He looked around the room in which he sat, his 'quarters,' and smiled, in spite of himself, as he mentally contrasted its appurtenances—its 'fixings,' as the Americans say—with such as were deemed absolutely necessary to the existence of one so refined as Mary Montgomerie, and he began to surmise whether or not his love was a selfish one.
The bare floor, scrubbed, however, as clean as his servant, Tommy Atkins, could make it, the walls white-washed, and liable to impart their tint to everything that came in contact with them; a couple of Windsor chairs; a table liable to unpleasant collapses, especially if sat upon, as it often was; an iron camp-bed, wherein to dream of Mary and glory, with a strip of carpet, as a luxury, by its side; a washstand that took the form of a square box when the route came; a tin tub, tilted up on end in a corner; an iron coal-box, or scuttle, royally marked with 'V.R.' and an imperial crown; a fire-grate full of torn billets and cigar-ends; a rack containing sticks, whips, a couple of swords; a little narrow mantelpiece, littered with pipes, cigars, and havanna boxes; but no flowers, and not a single pretty knickknack suggestive of female influences were there. Destitute of all ornament, it was essentially a man's apartment—a very barrack-room.
Yet some feminine memorials of 'auld lang syne' were not wanting; for in Cecil's most secret repositories were the treasured letters of his mother, her photos, a lock of her dark hair, thickly silvered with white, and a bunch of withered daisies that he had gathered on her grave, which she had found in a distant land—mementoes treasured all the more that the story of her life had been a sad one.
If the interior of Cecil's apartment was plain to excess, the view from its windows was second to none in the world. On one side, far down below, spread the Edina of the Georgian and Victorian ages; on the other towered up Dunedin, grey and grim, in all the dead majesty of a grand, historical, and royal past—the Dunedin of battle and siege, yet instinct with life and vitality in all its pulses still; and far, far away, to where the golden sun was setting at the gates of the west, spread the wondrous landscape, till the green Ochil ranges and the pale blue cone of Ben Lomond, sixty miles distant, closed it in.
And anon, when darkness falls, more wondrous still is the beauty of the scene when the broken masses and spiky ridges of the old town sparkle with ten thousand lights. 'High in air a bridge leaps the chasm between,' wrote one who knew it well; 'a few emerald lamps, like glow-worms, are moving about in the railway station below, while a solitary crimson one is at rest. That ridged bulk of blackness, with splendour bursting out at every pore, is the wonderful Old Town where Scottish history mainly transacted itself, while opposite the modern Princes Street is blazing throughout its length. During the day the castle looks down upon the city, as if out of another world; stern with all its peacefulness, its garniture of trees, its slopes of grass. The rock is dingy enough in colour, but after a shower its lichens laugh out greenly in the returning sun, while the rainbow is brightening on the lowering sky beyond. How deep the shadow which the castle throws at noon over the gardens at its feet, where the children play! How grand when giant bulk and towering crown blacken against the sunset!'
Gazing dreamily from his window, Cecil sat lost in thought, with a note in his hand—the acceptance to the ball invitation—a note written, he knew, by the hand of Mary, and which he had rescued from Dick Freeport, who was sacrilegiously about to tear and toss it into the waste-paper basket; and at the time we may suppose that our lover felt as Sir Robert Cotton did when he rescued the original Magna Charta from the shears of the Cockney tailor, who was about to cut it into yard-measures for doublets and trunk hose.
But Cecil roused himself when the drums beat on the slope below the citadel gate, and donning his mess-dress, he betook him to the dinner-table, where the trophied silver plate added splendour to luxury.
'So, as the general is in town, you'll leave a card, of course, Falconer,' said Fotheringhame, with a peculiar smile, as Cecil took a seat by his side.
'I am in duty bound to do so; though, sooth to say,' added Falconer, for their confidences had become mutual, 'the coldness that accompanied my departure from Eaglescraig gives me unpleasant doubts of my reception; yet leave a card, of course, I must.'
Then he thought of Mary on the morning he came away, and the farewell wave of her handkerchief.
'If I call, Fotheringhame, won't you accompany me?'
'Thanks; no. Old fellow, you forget.'
'What?'
'That Miss Erroll's acceptance for the ball came from the general's house.'
'A pleasant place it will be to visit,' said Dick Freeport, striking into the conversation from the opposite side of the table. 'I have had Falconer's confidential report on the subject; he states that the general's cellar is excellent, the sherry pale and dry, the old port full-bodied, the Chateau Lagrange unequalled, and Moët's Imperial ditto! His cook is a regular Frenchchef, with a salary that exceeds the pay of Sir Piers himself, no doubt; and then there is his ward——'
'Halt, Dick! how your tongue runs on!' said Cecil, with some annoyance. 'His ward is not to be lightly spoken of at any mess-table—ours especially.'
'I saw the general's carriage to-day in George Street,' cried a cheeky sub-lieutenant from the lower end of the table. 'I knew it by the coat-of-arms; and, by Jove, there were two stunning girls in it!'
'Miss Montgomerie and her friend Miss Erroll, no doubt,' said Fotheringhame. 'One dark—a brunette, and the other brilliantly fair?'
'Exactly; I took stock of them both. Dick will be bringing his engagement-ring with the blue stone into action now.'
As this was a regimental joke it caused a little laugh, amid which Acharn, the sporting man of the corps, came in hastily in his mess-jacket and vest, looking rather grim and cross.