Prior to this startling event, the reels, usually a great figure in such balls at Edinburgh, had been attracting the attention of Mary, who did not join in them; and the long line of more than a hundred dancers facing each other, presented a gay spectacle, from the number of uniforms, clan tartans, and occasionally the green uniform and great gold epaulettes of the Scottish body-guard, worn by some of the male performers.
The 'Cameronian Rant' was struck up by the orchestra in the Assembly-room, and old Mrs. Garth, who deemed herself quite as much a part of the Cameronians as the adjutant or the big-drum, and who had been vibrating, bubbling, and brimming over with pleasure all night, now felt her satisfaction culminate when the aged Sir Piers, with the courtly gallantry of the old school, led her forth as his partner, and looked round in vain for Hew and Mary, as avis-à-vis, whose place was speedily supplied by Dick Freeport and a young lady whose interest he was exciting on the subject of his ring with the blue stone.
The reel over, the general had retreated breathlessly to his place, where he proceeded to button-hole the commander-in-chief—another old fogie like himself; and they were deep in reminiscences of the land of palms and punkahs, tigers and precious stones, when Cecil, discovering Mary with Annabelle and Fotheringhame in one of those flirtation nooks which are to be found in the corners of the Music-hall at such times, approached, and whispering that Hew had disappeared, and the general was busy, suggested that they might have one waltz together, as the double rooms always make a total confusion in the mutual engagements.
She murmured something, mechanically, about the heat of the room, the crowd, and so forth; his arm went round her; thrillingly her little hand returned the pressure of his own, having to the full as much effect upon him as any words she might have uttered; and in a moment they were lost amid the whirling crowd of hundreds of waltzers. Her great self-control nearly gave way in the delight of dancing with Cecil, 'under the temptation' which, as Wilkie Collins has it, 'no woman can resist—the temptation of touching the man she loves.'
Thus the soft pressure of the hand, which silently said so much, was mutually returned again and again, as Cecil guided her unerringly amid the mazy circles, till she paused, palpitating, blushing, and half-reclining, breathlessly on his shoulder.
'I have not had such a waltz to-night, Cecil,' she whispered; 'so delightful, I mean.'
'Nor I, darling—one turn more!' And away they went again, but at a slower pace, which enabled them to converse at intervals.
They were not unseen, however, now, for Hew, who had been fraternising with one of the pretty waitresses who superintended the luxurious supper-tables in the wings of the hall, was watching them with a heart full of growing hatred of Falconer; he longed to do him a mischief of some kind—vaguely, savagely, and Mary too, for violating thus the express orders of her guardian. And how radiantly (disgustingly, he thought) happy they looked!
'I'll mar his wooing, and more!' muttered Hew, who possessed in an eminent degree that quality which is to be largely found in the least intellectual natures—low cunning.
As if she had some intuition of themal occhiounder which they were, she whispered:
'Hew has some deep scheme of mischiefin pettoagainst us—I am assured by quiet smiles I have read in his face to-night.'
'He is gone, I think.'
'I hope so; he is so cruel, coarse, and unscrupulous—one, in short, to beware of.'
'Don't bother about Hew, darling; I fear more Sir Piers—and his never consenting.'
'I don't care for what Sir Piers says,' whispered the dear voice; 'I can never, never care for anyone but you, Cecil; I'll wait for you till I'm a hundred.'
At this cheerful prospect he pressed her little gloved hand again.
'I'm sure you'll wait as long as I—but oh, Cecil, I'm so wretched at times!'
But the brightmignonneface that smiled back to his didn't look wretched a bit, and in the glittering crowd at times, through which they were sweeping to the intoxicating crashes of the regimental band, while with each other thus, they felt as much alone as if the world contained no other couple than themselves.
'Is not love a thing worth living for, Mary, even for its own sake?'
'It is indeed, Cecil!' whispered Mary, with her brightest smile.
'A dream that comes, I am sure, truly and purely, but once in a lifetime.'
'And love, it is said, works miracles.'
'I wish it would work one with that dear old fogie, the general! When last he spoke to me it was somewhat like the stern parent in Allan-a-Dale, for he literally
'"Lifted the latch, and bade me begone."
His arm was still encircling her; his left hand pressed her right; her cheek half sunk on his shoulder, their breath mingling as they swept on, intoxicated alike by the measure of the dance and the music of Strauss; in their souls unmindful of all ways and means—of marriage and the general; of houses; of equipages; of society and the world—unmindful of all, save that they loved each other, and were together alone—alone even in that brilliant throng, till Mary could spin no more; and he led her well-nigh breathless to the most sequestered seat he could find, between two great vases of flowers near the curtained gallery, under which some of the supper-tables were, and his own servant, Tommy Atkins, who was in attendance there, promptly brought them some iced champagne.
On the third finger of her left hand, Mary had a ring that Cecil had placed there—a diamond cluster, and which she was fond of drawing off her glove to contemplate, with a self-conscious aspect and tender smile—a ring unnoticed by all save Annabelle, who now wore a nearly precisely similar emblem.
She had drawn off her glove now, and as she sat fanning herself, while Cecil bent over her chair whispering little nothings, dear only to themselves, Hew Montgomerie, unseen by both, came near.
We have told in our first volume that Hew was a 'good hater'—one precisely after the heart of the great Lexicographer—and how he had made a vow to revenge himself on Falconer—a vow all the deeper for being an unuttered one; and the time to redeem that vow had now come!
Hew's hand passed for a moment lingeringly over Cecil's goblet of champagne. A close observer might have remarked that Hew's hand suddenly opened and shut, and that as he did so the wine frothed up anew and curiously; but no close observer was there, and Hew withdrew some paces, and laughed his noiseless, joyless laugh, as he watched Cecil, while replying smilingly and fondly to some laughing remark of Mary, put his hand to the goblet, lift it from the table, and finish its contents at a draught, like a heated and thirsty young dancer as he was.
Hew then withdrew from their vicinity; but all that followed, followed fast indeed!
Cecil became deadly pale, and an expression of agony came into his face. The lights in the domed roof above, and the figures of the whirling dancers below, seemed to multiplyad infinitum; the music sounded as if receding to a vast distance; the four corners of the hall seemed to be in swift pursuit of each other, as if it revolved on an axis: he read a strange expression of utter dismay in the face and dilated eyes of Mary, who had started from her seat; he made a wild, but futile clutch at the table to support himself, while a half-stifled cry escaped him, and he fell with a crash on the waxed floor, when a crowd instantly gathered round him, and voices in alarm rose on every side.
'Make way there—poor fellow taken ill—the heat—the ventilation here is horrible!' cried one.
'Stand back—stand back, please—air!' said an officer of Lancers, authoritatively.
'Lift him up,' cried another; 'he has fainted.'
'Screwed as an owl, you mean,' said a voice there was no mistaking.
'Silence, sir!' exclaimed Captain Acharn, sternly.
But Hew, with his cruel cold smile, and an ill-suppressed gleam in his parti-coloured eyes, thought,
'If there is any nonsense still in her head about this fellow, surely it must end for ever now!'
So Cecil, in a state of utter insensibility, was borne away by the hands of kind comrades, placed in a carriage, and conveyed home to his quarters by Acharn and Dick Freeport, who were in an intense state of concern and bewilderment; yet 'all went merry as a marriage bell' at the regimental ball, and the dancing continued till the morning sun began to redden the castle towers and Arthur's rocky cone; for hundreds in the rooms knew nothing of the matter; a few red-coats were suddenly missed—some engagements broken—and that was all.
Mary danced no more that night, of course—or for the remainder of the morning, rather—and all that passed seemed a horrible dream, in which, however, Hew, singular to say, bore no part as yet in her mind, notwithstanding the significance of her words of warning during the dance. No suspicion so utterly monstrous as the reality was likely to occur to a mind like hers.
The general and his party retired. He was horribly perplexed and shocked by an event so utterly out of his ken and experience, and he could recall no parallel case in all the long course of his military career—an officer takenthusin a ball-room; for of course, such is human nature, that the worst construction was instantly put upon it.
'Hah!' muttered Hew, as the carriage bowled through the empty but magnificent streets to the westward; 'this comes of taking too much cognac with his soda-water. He'll be drummed out of society, and the regiment too, I suppose, for this,' he added with a grin to Mrs. Garth, who sat back in a corner of the carriage and sobbed sorrowfully.
Finding that no answer was made to his ill-natured remarks, Hew said again:
'This Falconer, used to laugh at the colonel's jokes and toady to his betters; but, by Jove, he won't have a chance of laughing at the colonel's jokes after this!'
'Silence, Hew,' said the general, grimly; 'but I am thinking more of the honour of the regiment than of him.'
'She will either marry me now quietly, or she willnot,' thought Hew, triumphantly and pitilessly; 'if she does not, I suppose her tin will come to me anyhow, thanks to her father's will and this old fool, Sir Piers—shame to call the old fellow a fool, though, for being so deuced friendly to me!' he added mentally, with a hiccough.
It has been said truly, that there are times, which come into the lives of some of us, in which the agonies of years are compressed into a few minutes—yea, it may be a second.
And thus it was with Mary!
Annabelle Erroll had her own cause for secret unhappiness—the strange episode of the closely-veiled woman in the vestibule—but at present all her sympathies were absorbed in the great catastrophe of the ball, and the unavailing sorrow of her friend Mary.
The mind of Cecil, next forenoon, when he partially awoke, and seemed to grope his way back to life and to the world, was a species of chaos. He was ill, sick, abed in the doctor's hands—too ill to think—too weak to rise. He found himself in his quarters in the castle, and the events of the past night confused themselves grotesquely and hideously with the prosaic features of the apartment in which he lay: the joy and rapture of his being with Mary, mingled with the remembered horror that seemed to envelop him, as darkness descended on his eyes and the ball-room whirled round him, and amid the circles of the dancers, the crash of the music and the murmur of many voices, he fell heavily on the floor, as all sense passed away, and he seemed to sink into a sea!
When he did begin to come round and rouse himself, he was sensible of a hum of voices, and considerable odour of vinegar and of cigars, in his huge room—for a large one it was; and there were Acharn, Leslie Fotheringhame, and Dick Freeport and the doctor, refreshing themselves with brandy-and-water, talking about the ball and surmising about himself, sympathisingly, and in low tones.
'I cannot comprehend it,' he heard the doctor say; 'a curious case, and not like imbibing too much. He must have eaten or drunk something poisonous at the supper-table. There was no sudden transition from heat to cold—he had undergone no great fatigue or excessive weakness to cause such a fit as overtook him; but I have known strong and healthy persons, abounding in blood, seized with sudden faintings after violent exercise——'
'But, man alive, doctor, Falconer is one of the best round dancers in the regiment,' said Freeport.
'It must have been the closeness of the room,' said Acharn.
'It looks a deuced deal more like half-poisoning,' exclaimed the doctor, with a finger on Cecil's pulse. Then turning to Falconer's servant, Tommy Atkins, and a hospital orderly who were in attendance, he ordered his hands to be rubbed, and his head to be bathed with brandy, salts to be held to his nostrils, and a little wine, as soon as he could swallow it, to be given him—for he was unwilling to accept the idea that was forcing itself upon him, that Cecil had, perhaps, taken too much champagne over-night; and then he withdrew.
In defiance of the doctor's injunction, which was that he was to lie with a low pillow, Cecil struggled up into a sitting posture and looked rather wildly around him as he greeted his friends.
He felt that he was in a dreadful emergency—a coil—yet in his pale face there was that faint indication of a smile that is sadder by far than none; for he felt that however well-meaning and attached to him his brother officers were, they were certain to have but one fatal suspicion in the matter.
'What on earth has come to you, Falconer, old fellow?' said Fotheringhame. 'I never knew of your getting into a scrape like this, even when a greenhorn, who was fined a dozen of Moselle for first drawing his sword, or a ditto for the sergeants' mess on first carrying the colours!'
'By Jove! it knocks me into a cocked hat,' added Freeport; 'I can't reason over it—the whole thing seems so unnatural—so horribly unreal! This is a worse scrape than mine with the three daughters of the depôt commandant.'
'There was safety in the trio,' said Acharn.
'Yes—he couldn't marry them all, certainly,' said Fotheringhame, 'though I am not prepared to say that if the law of Scotland permitted it he might have tried to do so.'
'How can you fellows jest thus?' said Falconer, faintly.
'True—I beg your pardon,' replied Fotheringhame; 'but chaff and fun are such habits with us.'
'I fear that this affair will be no "fun" for me. Have I talked much nonsense, Dick?'
'Well—being screwed—Cecil, you certainly did talk a lot of stuff; but people do that at all times, and even when quite sober.'
Falconer felt his heart sink at the view his best friends were taking of this catastrophe. He felt that he was the victim of some hidden and mysterious circumstance over which he had no control; but how was that to be proved? and he knew that in the chief city of Mrs. Grundy the public always took the worst possible view of everything.
'You do not think—you dare not think,' he exclaimed half-entreatingly and half-defiantly, 'that I forgot my position and the honour of the corps, and took too much wine last night—in uniform and at a public ball too, in presence of the general commanding and all the staff?'
'I fear, my dear Falconer,' said Fotheringhame, 'that it only looks too much like that very mistake.'
'By heavens! I was never near the supper-tables but once—and had but one glass of Moselle!' cried Falconer impetuously.
'But people will be sceptical in such matters,' said Acharn, pulling his long black moustache angrily; 'and from much of what I heard on parade this morning there is a devil of a row impending.'
'Over me?'
'Yes.'
At that moment there came a single knock smartly on the door, and the adjutant entered with an expression of grave concern on his face. After a few words of kind inquiry, and half apology, he said:
'I am so sorry for you, my poor fellow, but the chief is furious, and, by his order, I have come—foryour sword.'
The words seemed to sink into Falconer's soul. He knew all this implied, and that, too probably, it was the beginning of his destruction—the beginning of a bitter end!'
So his sword was taken away, and he found himself under arrest—but arrest at large, as the adjutant informed him that he was at liberty to take exercise within defined limits, within the barracks, but not to go beyond the barrier-gates of the fortress, and not to quit his room otherwise than in uniform, minus a sword and sash.
All this was not new to him, of course, yet he had listened to the adjutant as one in a dream, and saw him take away the sword. After the departure of this important official—the grand vizier of the colonel—the gravity of the situation became painfully apparent to all, and it may well be supposed there was no more jesting then, and Falconer felt all the horror of the new position.
His mysterious illness seemed to grow worse now; a dreadful ache racked his head; his heart grew heavy as lead, and his spirit seemed to die under this disgrace and all it implied and all it imperilled, and as yet he had not the most remote idea that he was the victim of a wretch's revenue: thus the well-meant efforts of his friends to rouse him and inspire him with the hope that he would yet get over it—that all would be explained—that all would be well in the end, and so forth, were made in vain.
Dick Freeport, Leslie Fotheringhame, and the entire corps were bewildered by the catastrophe, and poor Tommy Atkins, who doted on his master, was in despair—got very tipsy on the head of it, and had given him, therefore, three days in the black hole, to contemplate the unstability of human—and more especially of military—affairs.
Events followed each other fast now; and when again the adjutant most reluctantly visited him, it was to announce that he was in orders for a general court-martial, and to furnish him, by the colonel's instructions, with a copy of the charge preferred against him, 'for conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman at the ball,' together with a list of the witnesses for the prosecution.
All the bright, youthful, and enthusiastic hopes—the hopes cherished for years; all the visions of glory and honour conjured up on the day he first donned his uniform, were crushed and gone now, like the dear love of yesterday, for the love of Mary had—in one sense—come into his heart but yesterday; and yet, how strong and keen, how tender and true it was!
So bewildered was poor Falconer by his mysterious illness, the sudden giddiness and unconsciousness in the ball-room, and his symptoms since, that he actually began to believe at last, or adopt the idea, based perhaps on the remarks of his medical attendant, that he had been guilty of what was unwillingly imputed to him.
And yet, howcouldit be? Utterly unconscious as he was of Hew's vicinity to him on that occasion, the idea that he had been vulgarly, yea brutally, hocussed, never occurred to his simple mind, though the doctors hinted that he must have partaken of something deleterious.
Apart from his comrades of the mess, there was an intense interest in the regiment for Cecil; the soldiers, and even their wives, paid him surreptitious visits of condolence; and the children of his company, who had been the recipients of so many Christmas-boxes and bonbons, lingered with hushed voices under the windows of his room—the girls curtseying and the small boys coming to 'attention' and saluting him quite gravely as their fathers would have done; and Cecil felt all this keenly and gratefully.
In the barracks and guard-house, his affairs were under constant and serious consideration, through the medium of much birds'-eye, and among many stories of kindness and generosity, connected with Cecil's popularity among the Cameronians, was one which they recalled prominently now: how, on one occasion, after a long day's march of heat and thirst, far up country in India, when commanding an advanced picket before the position of a hill-tribe, he had found, on visiting his sentinels, one of them, Tommy Atkins, worn with toil, sound asleep—a crime which was death by the Articles of War, if reported.
But instead of making poor Tommy a prisoner with the quarter-guard, he had shouldered his musket and kept the post in person, watching over the sleeping soldier on the one hand and the hill-camp on the other, till the movement of armed tribesmen in front compelled him to fire and bring the picket under arms.
He saw less of his chief friend Leslie Fotheringhame than he might otherwise have done, for the time of the latter—despite anxiety for the affair of his friend—was much occupied by Annabelle Erroll, and in dangling after her.
At last there came a day which Cecil never forgot, from the emotions of mortification and humiliation it occasioned him, It was a Thursday—the usual 'march-out' day for the regiment. From his window he watched its departure, with bayonets fixed and colours flying, in heavy marching order, and in all the pride and bravery of the service, while he remained behind a prisoner, disgraced, deprived of his sword and sash, with a terrible ordeal before him, and too probably a doom—to him—worse than death!
And he heard the drums grow fainter and fainter, till their last notes died away in the distance, and he heard only the beating of his heart, that followed them with painful yearning it had never known before.
Anon, when the regiment returned, Freeport told him that when passing the house of Sir Piers Montgomerie, it had been halted in column, when the fine old soldier came out on the balcony and was received with a general salute, which he beheld with swelling heart and glistening eyes, and then he attempted to make a speech, but his voice failed him—yet he made a short one—so short as only to be equalled by that of the Duke of Wellington to the Household Brigade, when, after keeping silence for some time, he said, 'Guards! you know me, and I know you—stand at ease!'
'Was—was Miss Montgomerie on the balcony?' asked Cecil, after a pause.
'No; there was only old Mrs. Garth waving her handkerchief vigorously, and alternately mopping her eyes with it, poor old soul, as she thought, I have no doubt, of old John Garth of our Grenadiers. I thought it strange that the belle of our unlucky ball was not there.'
But Mary had been watching the regiment, sorrowfully, from her own room, and missing an absent face sorely indeed.
To her this was a time of great horror and dismay; each night that she laid her sweet face on the pillow, she thought:
'If I could only waken in the morning to find it all a dream—all a dream!'
But alas! it was a dream from which there was no awakening. Blended with great pity and sorrow, she knew and felt now, in all its intensity, the love she had thought about, read about in romance, but never knew till she had met Cecil Falconer; the love, that is, whether found or not, ever a young girl's day-dream.
To all, save Annabelle Erroll, she had to act the part of apparent unconsciousness of, or indifference to, all that was in progress. Abed, it seemed to her that she heard every hour struck by the adjacent clocks, and yet she must have slept a little, as the memory of more than one torturing or tantalising dream told her.
People, however, do get through everything somehow.
In the petty circle of Edinburgh society, themalheurof Falconer spread with many exaggerations, and with much rancour; he was a great bibber, avaurien, and it was not the first time, by many, that he had been in such a scrape; and there was much lifting up of hands and eyes among the self-righteous who abound in the northern city of the Seven Hills.
Mary resolved to avoid hearing aught on the subject of the nine days' wonder; she paid no idle visits, and was at home but to few; yet, as many of the few were connected with the service, the whole affair, the court-martial, and what was certain to come of it, were freely discussed in spite of her.
And he had no one to console him 'up there,' she would think, as she surveyed resentfully the grand old fortress, with its towers, turrets, and black portholes, which seemed to her but as a great trap, or giant lock, barring in Cecil from her and the world. And all her good-natured friends assured her, that the military trial could only end in dismissal, ruin, and disgrace. Would that she could go to him, and see him once again, and assure him that whatever came to pass, she was his own still.
She was tearless and very quiet. She would not even retort upon Hew's bitter exultation over the affair—an exultation which his detestable nature rendered him incapable of concealing. Her sweet face looked blank and white, and nothing seemed to rouse her.
Kind old Mrs. Garth felt intense pity for her.
'Poor darling,' she would say, while caressing her; 'no tears yet—would that I could see you weep!'
'Why?'
'It would at least relieve your heart. You have yet to learn, dearest Mary, that with too many in this world the growth of love is unlike every other growth: it often expands and blooms strongest amid sorrow and gloom and the chill blasts of adversity.'
'I am afraid, Sir Piers,' said Mrs. Garth on one occasion, 'the girl is simply breaking her heart!'
'Simply breaking her fiddlestick!' growled the general, who was terribly worried by the whole situation; 'yet I should not be angry with poor little Mary,' he added in a gentler tone; 'God is very good! He took pity on me, a childless old man, and, seeing an empty corner in my heart, sent her to fill it.'
Mary could hear, incidentally, from time to time, the general in his pure dismay that a Cameronian should cause suchesclandre, Mrs. Garth acting in his interests, even Annabelle in her sorrow, and not knowing very well what to think (as she had her doubts of mankind in general), all inferring by casual remarks that Falconer was quite unworthy of her—that she had made a lucky escape, and so forth; but they 'forgot that' the woman never yet lived who could cast a true love out of her heart, because the object of it was unworthy of her, and that all she can do is to struggle against it in secret; and poor Mary was no exception to the rest of her sex generally.
'Look a little beyond the present, dear Mary,' said Sir Piers, as he caressed her head, that nestled beside his knee, and passed his old shrivelled hand through her rich brown hair; 'I dare say you think Providence very short-sighted in sweeping out of our circle this interloper, who thought to come between Hew and yourself, a ne'er-do-well, an utter black sheep in birth and bearing!' he added, angrily; for in his rage at the probable slur cast on the regiment—hisregiment—he was pitiless with regard to Cecil, who, for a time, had come between the wind and his nobility; and Mary knew not exactly how Hew, artfully, insidiously, and openly, by turns, had succeeded in influencing Sir Piers against the victim of his own treachery, but she replied simply and firmly, as Cecil's love for her seemed something too sacred and too precious to be referred to so bluntly as it too often was:
'Talk not to me of Hew; had Cecil Falconer never been born, I never could have loved Hew Montgomerie!'
Hew was one of the many in this age of refined civilisation, who, though they have no fear of God, have a wholesome fear of the police! Thus, with all his malevolent hatred of Falconer, he shrank from using a dagger or pistol, even secretly; but he had resorted to a means of revenge more subtle and cruel than either.
The great military influence of Sir Piers might have arrested the tide of ruin that was setting in against Falconer, and might ultimately have been brought to bear upon the president and members of a court so honourable and impartial as a military one; but Sir Piers was enraged by the whole affair, and his mind was so full of it that for a time he ceased even to prose about Central India. Thus, for many reasons patent to the reader, his influence, if used at all, was thrown into the opposite scale; and so Falconer was left to his destiny, an inexorable one, by thecode militaire.
'Surely it is sharp work, Sir Piers, resorting to a court-martial at once,' said Fotheringhame on one occasion; 'could not your influence with the general commanding——'
'Don't speak of it, sir,' said Sir Piers, testily, with a wave of his hand.
'Is there no other resort?'
'None,' replied the other, sternly.
'Yet I have heard our lieutenant-colonel tell that when you, Sir Piers, were in his place at the head of the Cameronians, you were less severe on a similar occasion, but of more importance than a ball.'
'What was it?'
'When Lieutenant Piers Montgomerie was placed under arrest.'
The old general blushed scarlet and then grew very pale. The occasion referred to was when the regiment was leaving Edinburgh for the East; he had urged the men to behave soberly and with propriety during their last days in the castle, that all might parade and march forth in perfect order; and nobly did they all respond to the appeal, all save one, his son, who came flushed from some late entertainment to the parade in the early morning, to the great dismay of Sir Piers. A court-martial would have ruined his prospects for life; yet he was put under arrest, and, some example being necessary, it appeared in orders thus:
'Lieutenant Montgomerie, of the Grenadiers, will in future do duty with one of the battalion companies.'
This was in the days before the Crimea, when to be attached to a flank company was equally advantageous and honourable.
'True, Mr. Fotheringhame; the offender was my own son Piers,' said the general with much emotion, yet more irritation at the reminiscence; 'but this affair of Captain Falconer took place in the face of the city, as one may say; so let the arrest and charge take their course!'
How the drum for mess jarred on Cecil's ear when he heard it now! Instead of dining at that jovial table, and sharing in the happiness of its social circle, he had his solitary repast brought to him in covered dishes on a salver, the repast he had neither the appetite nor zest to eat, and which he would rather not have seen nor faced, save for acting a part before his servant, Tom Atkins, a sympathetic fellow, however, who could not help thinking that hadhebeen seen groggy in public, how much more easily he would have got over it than his luckless captain.
The sweetest and the saddest hours must pass away inexorably, and so the sad hours passed with Cecil Falconer.
Day follows day and night follows night—is not human life made up of these?—but nothing lasts for ever, thank God, was his thought, and the end, be it ever so bitter, comes at last. But bitter as those of Marah seemed now the waters of his life! He felt that Mary and he were parted for ever; that she could be his love no more, and that the day-dream of her could be dreamt over never again!
About this time he received a kind and earnest letter of condolence from old Mr. John Balderstone, who had conceived a great friendship for him at Eaglescraig; but the terms of it served to irritate Cecil, as they too plainly hinted, 'from what Mr. Hew had reported, that on the night in question he had been exhilarated a little too much, perhaps.'
He tore and tossed it away with a malediction; yet old John Balderstone meant well and kindly.
Hew's satisfaction at the progress of events was too great for concealment.
'Screwed as Bacchus at the regimental ball!' he thought to himself; 'and this is the cad who tried to take Mary and her money away from me. By-and-by we'll kiss and be friends, as the children say, now that he is scratched for the running. He'll be doing the "blighted being" style of thing now,' he added aloud to Sir Piers. 'How interesting!—it is quite an idyll, whatever the devil that may be. Or perhaps he'll be going on the boards—back to the old trade of his mother before him! I have known more than one broken-down army fellow who came out quite strong in genteel comedy.'
The general heard and eyed him sternly, but with silence. What would his emotions have been had he fully knownall?
Hew, however, thinking it would be as well to be out of Edinburgh about this time, took his departure to the country, on pretence of a little fishing; and the eventful day of Falconer's life was close at hand.
On the night before it, to his own surprise, he slept the heavy, yet feverish sleep that follows great tribulation of mind and consequent exhaustion of power; yet not without a dream in which he heard the voice of the adjutant again saying gravely, and with commiseration:
'I have come for your sword.'
St. Giles's clock, the castle clock, and on the dials of every other clock, the hands went inexorably round, and the day and the morning of the eventful crisis came inevitably at last, and Cecil put on his beloved full uniform, as his heart told him, perhaps for the last time—but minus his sword and sash!
He looked round his humbly furnished barrack-room, with the eye of one who was taking a long farewell of something, and a heavy sigh escaped his overcharged breast. Leslie Fotheringhame, who was to act as his legal friend in court, pressed his hand, and said in his off-hand way:
'Take courage, my dear friend. Keep up your pecker, old fellow; Marshal Ney's scrape was a worse one than yours.'
Through a crowd of idlers, witnesses and others, who thronged the antechambers and bare stone passages, they proceeded towards the mess-room, in which the court, composed of officers of the rank of captain and above it, was being constituted and sworn by the president, and all fully dressed in review order, with their swords and sashes, around a table littered with writing materials and a few volumes of military regulations.
The first incident that jarred on Cecil's nerves was the voice of the president, a cranky old Colonel, whose whole life had been passed in sinecure staff appointments, saying:
'Bring in the prisoner!'
And he found himself, after being introduced by Fotheringhame, with whom he sat apart at a writing-table, duly charged with 'conduct unbecoming the character of an officer, in having, on the —— day of ——, 18—,' etc., etc.; to all of which he listened as one in a dream; and still more did it all seem so as the day wore on. How bright the sunshine seemed outside, and how close and dark the ruin within that ill-omened room, which had been so often the scene of hospitality and convivial jollity.
Through the open windows came, as from a distance, the jangle of St. Giles's musical bells, with 'mingling din,' as Scott has it; and their monotony and iteration galled his spirit, and from mere association of ideas he felt certain that he must loath them for ever after.
Of how much Hew Montgomerie was his evil genius, Cecil Falconer knew not, nor had the least suspicion. Yet he looked around the many faces in court more than once, expecting to see his parti-coloured eyes regarding him with exultation; but that worthy was miles away from the spot. Among the spectators he saw many legal men, in black with white ties, who had come up from the Parliament House—that provincial 'gossip shop'—to stare, whisper, and make severe comments, which certainly were sometimes called for; and to draw somewhat invidious comparisons between the modes of administering civil and military law.
When the minds of those who compose any court are fully made up as to the guilt of the prisoner, and know the sentence that must be passed in conformity to certain iron rules laid down by law and custom, the proceedings are usually summary enough, and so it was in the case of Cecil Falconer.
Doubt of his guilt or error there seemed to be none; most of those composing the court had been at the ball in question, and were more or less cognisant of the bewildering catastrophe; but all that Cecil and Leslie Fotheringhame, as his friend and adviser, desired to bring before the listeners, were the simple facts that he had just been dancing—that hence some strange giddiness might have come upon him in consequence; of the wine he had taken but a single glass, as they could easily prove; and they desired to argue these simple points earnestly, in the hope of modifying the opinion of the tribunal, and Fotheringhame wished to put a question to the lieutenant-colonel commanding, as ex-officio prosecutor.
'Stop, sir, please,' said a member of the court—Brevet-Major Hammer of the Royal Artillery, a fiery-eyed little man with grey spectacles and red nose—a man who had crammed at Woolwich, and was up to the ears in military law, though ignorant of all the principles thereof; 'this would seem to be a leading question, and, according to Hough on courts-martial, such questions cannot be allowed.'
On this subject there ensued much difference of opinion, and Major Rammer made some notes thereon with a dry pen.
'Clear the court!' cried the president in consequence, and there was a general exodus of the audience.
'What utter stuff this is!' said Falconer to the adjutant, as they smoked a cigar outside, while the fourteen members of the court, the president and the deputy-judge advocate, seemed to be all speaking and wrangling at once; and after some twenty minutes' deliberation the court was re-opened, and all the audience trooped in again.
The question was voted 'irregular,' though neither Fotheringhame nor Falconer had stated what it was to have been; so, as the former was about to propose another:
'We are here, sir, to try Captain Falconer, not you?' said Major Rammer, snappishly; 'not you, sir, remember.'
'Of that circumstance I do not require to be reminded,' replied Fotheringhame, haughtily; 'yet I do not see why the prisoner, or I as his friend, may not question the prosecutor as to——'
'In Tylter, on court-martial and military law, in Hough and in Simmonds,' began Major Rammer, with emphatic solemnity, and glaring through his goggles round the table, 'it is distinctly laid down——'
'Clear the court!' cried some one else.
It was again cleared accordingly, and all the orderlies, idlers, and wondering advocates, had to make a stampede into the dreary stone passages outside.
The debate, whatever it was about, was a stormy one, and above the voices of all others was heard that of Major Rammer citing Hough and Simmonds. The president had never sat on a court-martial before—and, perhaps, had always hoped he might never do so, and never be called upon to give a casting vote in any question in this world; thus he was induced to comply with the dictum of the fiery-nosed and irritable Major Rammer, in all matters in the present instance, and the charge was eventually brought clearly home.
The two doctors, though both fast friends of Cecil's, when examined as to the after effects of his mysterious illness, only served to make matters worse; and, as doctors proverbially disagree, they did so as to the symptoms on this.
'Clear the court!' once more thundered Major Rammer, and after it was cleared again, the major returned to the attack, flanked by Hough and Simmonds.
In short, the personage who alone could have thrown any clear light on the whole catastrophe, was utterly unthought of by all, and was enjoying himself in the country while waiting impatiently the result of his treachery as reported in the public prints.
When the defence came, the colonel, the adjutant, and others, bore the highest testimony to the goodness of Falconer's character and disposition, his attention to duty, the love borne him by his brother officers and soldiers, and his gallantry on more than one occasion in India.
Hart's Army List was not at hand as to the latter.
'Clear the court!' suggested Major Rammer, who required documentary proofs of the said 'gallantry,' though his own breast was bare of all decorations.
'Well!' exclaimed Fotheringhame, as they were again cooling their heels in the passage; 'if the proceedings of this day are published, they will read rather queerly;' to which he added something not meant for ears polite.
Why prolong this account—a painful legal farce, for such the ignorance of the president, and the interference of 'the well-read' Major Rammer made it?
To those who knew Cecil well, his handsome face seemed pale—a face always grave and dignified; and his eyes seemed to observe the proceedings with a strange listlessness.
As afternoon drew on Major Rammer offered less opposition; Cecil was allowed to ask a few questions, as the former perhaps found himself in a minority, though most industrious in distributing slips of paper, with observations and quoted 'precedents' all round the table. The tedious proceedings were at length closed—the opinion and finding given—the punishment, whatever it was, meted out, and proceedings on which the existence—certainly the future—of Cecil Falconer seemed to depend, were despatched to the Horse Guards by the swift night mail.
The weary Falconer's room that night was filled with sympathisers, and the proceedings were discussed, and 'that old pump jammer' duly stigmatised, amid the consumption of much tobacco, champagne, brandy and seltzer, long after tattoo, the roll-calling, the last farewell sound of 'lights and fires out' had pealed from the citadel gate and in the Grand Parade, and after silence and the silver moonlight fell together on the vast fortress and its rock.
'I thank all much, very much,' said Cecil with no small emotion; 'but it is no use you fellows talking: there is nothing for me now but to drift quietly away into the dark sea of ruin—it may be death!'
His lips were working convulsively as he spoke.
'Let the worst come to the worst, I'll bear it like a man, and drag out the remnant of my life' (withouther, he thought) 'an adventurer, a beggar, an emigrant—a soldier in some foreign service, perhaps—what matters it how or when the bitter end may come? I'll not shoot myself anyhow—that were the deed of a sinner and coward!'
'For God's sake, Cecil, don't run on this way! It's enough to make a fellow's heart bleed!' said Fotheringhame with much anxiety of manner.
'Who knows what becomes of those fellows who go to the dogs, or are driven there?' he asked bitterly.
'Take heart, man—take heart,' urged Dick Freeport, patting him on the shoulder: 'you'll be, at worst, put at the bottom of the list of captains; and you're not very far above that now.'
'No, no, Dick; I read dismissal in the faces of the President and that artillery fellow who was so infernally well up in Hough and Simmonds.'
The Horse Guards did not seem in haste regarding Cecil's affair; some days passed on, and hope began to flicker up in the hearts of all—even the heart of Cecil—of all save Hew, we should say, as that worthy scanned the morning papers, for what he wished to see, in vain.
Evening was always an intolerable time to Cecil at this period—debarred the mess, and secluded in his room, where, left totally to himself, he was wont to indulge in those dreamy reveries that are engendered by a good cigar.
At six-and-twenty or so, it is indeed a dreary thing, when, as a writer says, 'much of life seems still before us, and a dark unfathomable future lies between us and the grave; when it is a bitter thing to sit alone and ponder on the days to come, and discover no bright spot in the darkness, discern no kind hand to beckon us forward.'
There was an evening which Cecil was fated to remember long, when amid other scenes, and when surrounded by much of peril and suffering.
It was the sunset of a lovely spring day. Beyond the ramparts of that great fortress, to look on which to every Scotsman must seem 'the phantasy of a thousand years comprised within a single moment,' the distant glories of the departing sun threw forward in dark and rugged outline the wooded hills of Corstorphine, bathing in ruddy light the waters of the Forth, with its shores and isles seeming to substitute the hues of heaven for those of earth.
Lost in sad thoughts he sat by the window of his lonely room, dreamily watching the evening haze tinted with gold by the sinking sun, that already involved in obscurity the lower portions of the city, the gardens where of old the North Loch lay, and out of which the castle rock, the spires and fantastic masses, the pillared buildings on the Mound, rose as from a sea, the gathering obscurity, lending a strange witchery to that wonderful view.
Cecil was then in one of his saddest moments. In his hand was a tiny packet, and gently and tenderly he fingered it, for it contained the withered daisies culled from his mother's grave; and his heart grew very full as her image came vividly to memory with all the idolatrous love she had for him, her only son.
'Thank God she knows nothing of all this shame and misery! Yet, who can say—perhaps?' he muttered, and cast his eyes upward for a moment.
An essayist tells us that 'memory is the peculiar domain of the individual. In going back in recollection to the scenes of other years, he is drawing on the secret storehouse of his own unconsciousness, with which a stranger must not intermeddle.' So Cecil felt himself a child again, and into that storehouse he looked back to much of love and sorrow, to many struggles, anxieties, and triumphs, known to him and his mother only—his dead mother, of whom we may learn much more anon; and now by the course of events believing that Mary Montgomerie was utterly lost to him, he clung more than ever to the memory of his mother, for she had been all the world to him, as he to her.
'Could I expect that she would spend all the best years of her life waiting for a fellow who might never be able to marry her?' he had said once to Fotheringhame.
'But, man alive!' responded the other; 'she is able to marry you.'
'Was, you may say; we are separated now for ever.'
Times there were when Cecil thought he should go mad, as the whole situation in all its details of too probable ruin and disgrace, together with the certain loss of Mary, swept through his brain with painful and provoking iteration.
Could it be that he was the victim of some plot? Hew had been near him on that night, he had heard; but that was all. Had twenty nights or twenty years elapsed since that fatal ball? he sometimes thought, for most strange seemed the confusion of time and inversion of events.
So full was he of much and heavy thought, that he did not hear his door open, or was conscious of any one approaching, till a dog suddenly leaped upon him, thrusting its cold nose into his hand, and anon licked it with hot, flapping tongue—Snarley, as if conscious that his friend was in trouble, for Snarley it was, grovelling and abasing himself at his feet.
Tommy Atkins had ushered in three ladies and Fotheringhame, their escort.
'Mary!'
'Cecil!'
The two names on each tongue conveyed a world of tenderness, and tender was the light that shone in the eyes of each—tender and yearning too, as they held each other's hands, poor souls, and oblivious of those who stood by and tried to look unconscious, held their hands fast mutually, as if each had recovered some dear treasure, combined with heart and soul.
'You here, Mary!' exclaimed Falconer.
'Yes, Cecil, with Mrs. Garth and Annabelle.'
'If the general knew that I had chaperoned Mary here,' said Mrs. Garth, tremulously, as she pressed his hand, 'I should certainly be discarded, and find myself homeless in my old age.'
'I thank you, from my soul, Mrs. Garth!' exclaimed Cecil; 'after all the evil that has befallen me, is he still implacable as ever?'
'As ever,' replied Mrs. Garth, while Mary only answered with her tears, but Snarley, in the exuberance of his joy, gambolled about among her skirts, as if a lively young rat was hidden there; and Fotheringhame, thinking that the lovers had better be left to themselves, took Falconer's powerful field-glass, threw open the window at the end of his long room, and invited Mrs. Garth and Annabelle to discover, if they could, the outlines of Ben Lomond, and the lights of Stirling twinkling out at thirty miles distance, thus affording the two aching hearts a little interchange of words and caresses.
There are few women in this world who do not resolve firmly and act vigorously when the tender interests of their hearts are affected; thus Mary had somewhat stepped out of her path, at all hazards, to see and console in his affliction the man who loved her, and whom, she had begun to fear, she might never meet again.
What course events might take she knew not, but she knew well that she had been pitilessly told to expect the worst: thus a great pity filled her soul, side by side with her love for Cecil.
Cecil's heart was too full for utterance; he could only whisper to her brokenly, and fold her closely to his breast, while in a soft and cooing voice, yet brokenly too, she assured him of her belief in his perfect innocence, and of her love which would never, never change or pass away but with her life; and a great calm seemed to come over the tortured heart of Cecil as he heard her, and told her again and again how kind, and sweet, and loving—and how merciful too—it was of her to come and tell him all this.
Mary had now her own thoughts of Hew as to the fatal event—suspicions, but they were vague, intangible; and even to Cecil she said nothing of them, nor meant to do so, till the worst came, though she knew not in what form to shape them.
No one among us knows the depth or intensity of the tenderness we have for anyone we love or value, till on the eve of losing them, perhaps for ever; and the great solemn dread that falls on the heart—even as the shadow of death. And Mary, by a deep and solemn presentiment, seemed to feel this, when, after a protracted interview, during which the same broken-voiced and loving assurances were reiterated again and again, at Mrs. Garth's emphatic request she rose to leave Cecil.
Why should they be rent asunder? she thought. She was rich and thus powerful, on one hand; yet how helpless were both, on the other!
'I thank you, Mrs. Garth,' said Cecil; 'bear with us a little, for our burden is a heavy one.'
'It has been truly said, dear Captain Falconer,' replied the old lady, sententiously, yet softly, 'that we must bear the burden of our lives, whatever it be, and content us with whatever lot God is pleased to accord us.'
'True; yet mine may prove a very hard one. But Mary's face, and voice, and tears, I hope will give me strength in the days to come, if they bring greater evil to me.'
'All love you,' said Mrs. Garth, kissing him on the cheek.
And while pressing Mary's hand, Cecil replied by the quotation:
'"The love of all is but a small thing to the love ofone!"
Mary had been possessed by a crave to see and to comfort him, if possible; hence the unexpected visit. Like balm poured upon a wound, it had comforted him, and assured him of her love unchanged whatever happened; but save in that instance, nothing had come of the visit, and the future was as vague and uncertain as ever.
Cecil did not leave his room at the request of Fotheringhame, who had a wholesome or nervous dread of anything approaching a scene or situation, and yet he was soon to bear a part in one himself!
Clinging to Mrs. Garth, how Mary got out of the fortress she scarcely knew; hurrying down the steep stone staircase, past the gun-batteries, on which the great-coated sentinels now trod to and fro, and then through the deep archway (where whilom the double portcullis hung), and under the shadow of the stupendous Half Moon Battery.
Neither, perhaps, did Annabelle Erroll, for she had painful thoughts of her own—bitter, jealous and fiery thoughts—all unlike those of Mary, in whose heart there gushed up a passion of love, sorrow and pity, that filled with hot and blinding tears the gentle eyes her close-drawn veil concealed.
They had not come in the carriage, but by a common cab, and as Fotheringhame, with great tenderness, was leading Annabelle to it, she saw—beyond a doubt—the veiled woman of the ball passinginby the barrier gate.
Beyond a little nervous start as she passed them—a start felt probably by Annabelle, whose hand rested on the arm of Fotheringhame. He gave no other sign of that person's vicinity; but the sign was sufficient to make Annabelle withdraw her hand instantly, and receive his farewell adieux with a brevity and coldness that rather bewildered him.
But the voice of Leslie Fotheringhame came indistinctly to her ears—he seemed to be speaking a great way further off than that barrier gate, where the Cameronian sentinel stood, and she could see the great battery with its cannon and port-holes towering overhead, as through a dull and misty haze.
What did it all mean?
It is said that 'there is nothing so difficult to believe as a certainty, till we have lived long enough to feel that it is a certainty, and not a delusion;' but Cecil Falconer soon realised the fact of his ruin.
With much genuine commiseration of manner and great kindness of tone, the adjutant had acquainted him that he had been dismissed generally—not specifically—and that her Majesty had no further occasion for his services, and that the general order, thereanent, would be out in a day or two!
Cecil had boasted of the strength given to him by Mary's visit; yet, when the crash came, his strength and spirit alike gave way.
'My good name and my commission were all I possessed in the world, and I have lost both!' exclaimed Cecil to Fotheringhame, who grasped his hand impetuously; 'what will life be, henceforth, for me?
Fotheringhame felt for him deeply, keenly, yet scarcely knew, from the depth of his own emotion, and the desperation of the crisis, what to say.
'Think of Mary Montgomerie,' he urged, after a pause.
'I do think of her, but to what end or purpose? She is further removed from me than ever. To marry her would be to deprive her of fortune and position—to place her at the mercy of the general and of Hew; and I—what have I to share with her but disgrace?'
His sun had set—his day of life was over—over at its dawn and flush! His heart failed at the hopeless and penniless prospect before him; and the impossibility of having to reconstruct a whole life for the future on some new plan, and with other appliances—or die!
'My dear Fotheringhame, thanks for your sympathy,' said he; 'but the sooner I am out of this place, the better now.'
'And whither do you mean to go?'
'Heaven alone knows—I do not!' was the half-despairing response.
The news spread fast, and, apart from his brother-officers, the men of his company came by sections and scores to shake his hand and bid him farewell. All felt for him, loved him and sorrowed for him, and the dark dream, seemed to be in progress still. Could it all be real?
The first preparation for departure was to take from his desk the withered daisies culled from his mother's grave, and place them in his breast. An intense longing was in his heart now to be gone—to go, go, go—anywhere!
'I am going away, Tom,' said he to Atkins, who was hovering about him, and mechanically polishing the sword he would never draw again.
'Where to, sir?' asked Tom.
'I don't know where to—as yet—but I'm out of the regiment now!'
'Out of the regiment,' faltered Tom, as if it was an impossible event, even after all that had preceded it.
'Yes; I am, God help me, a broken man!'
There was a sob in Tom's throat, and he ventured to wring his master's hand.
'And you leave, sir——'
'As soon as I can, Tom. Take this note to the paymaster—I'll need all the money I can get.'
Tom saluted, took the note, but hurrying into his kitchen, in tremulous haste took a little packet from his knapsack and returned to place it in Cecil's hand.
'What is this?' asked the latter.
'Not much, sir. You'll excuse me, sir. I can't go away with you, but I may help you, at least.'
'But what is this—money?'
'Only a matter of ten pounds sent me by mother, to make me comfortable a bit. I am sorry it isn't more, sir; but if you'll take it to help you, for poor Tommy Atkins's sake, he'll be a proud man to-night. You've been a kind master to me, sir, and—and——'
But here the private soldier fairly broke down, and wept outright, 'bo-hooing' like a whipped urchin. Falconer was greatly affected.
'Thank you, my dear fellow—thank you: but this can't be,' said he: and he had no small difficulty in getting Atkins to keep the proffered money.
'Look here,' said Acharn to a group next morning in the mess-room, 'Falconer had only his pay, and this sentence is ruin and beggary to him; I have here a cheque for eight hundred at his service, and I know that you fellows, and ever so many more of the mess, will stump up. We must do something to start him, somehow or somewhere; but how or where is beyond me, for poor Cecil is a soldier, and nothing but a soldier.'
'But where the deuce is he?' asked Fotheringhame, who with Freeport came in with genuine anxiety expressed in their faces, to state that his rooms were empty; that he had left the fortress ere tattoo was beaten last night, and Atkins knew not where he was gone.
'He has got from old Blunt, the paymaster, the last money due to him,' Fotheringhame said; 'and he has nothing with him but a small portmanteau and a brace of revolver pistols. Everything else—his uniforms, and so forth—he has, by a note, left with me.'
'Where can he have gone?' said one.
'Oh, we'll trace him somehow,' said another.
But all attempts to trace him proved utterly unavailing.
So he had left the regiment, silently, quietly and alone, and of course, under the peculiar circumstances, without the farewell dinner given to a departing comrade—left it without shaking the hand of anyone formally—quitting the castle in the night, unseen and unrecognised, taking only a few clothes and his pistols.
'What does he mean to do with them?' asked Freeport.
'Where can he have gone—what done with himself?' were the general surmises, while his sorrowing friends looked blankly in each other's faces, and Fotheringhame had a great yearning to see and talk with Mary Montgomerie on the subject, and was not without a lingering hope that she might be able to throw some light on the mystery that enveloped the disappearance of Falconer; but in this matter he was mistaken, for the days passed on and he was heard of no more.
Evil tidings fly fast: thus on the very night of Cecil's departure, through the general, his household became aware of the fate that had befallen the unfortunate.
Looking like a saint in her pure white nightdress, Mary sat on the edge of her bed, weeping bitterly after Mrs. Garth had left her, and refusing all the earnest yet commonplace comfort that Annabelle Erroll strove to give her.
'Oh, what shall we do!' she exclaimed, wringing her slender hands, for in the word 'we' there was an affectionate sense of identifyinghisexistence with her own; and in this action, as in every other, Annabelle could not help admiring a good deal of that elegance and grace which marked every movement, posture and gesture of Mary Montgomerie. 'What shall we do! Crushed, poor and ruined as he is, he is dearer to me than ever. Cecil—Cecil—come to me, Cecil!' she added hysterically, and hid her face in the bosom of Annabelle, who was weeping freely too, and no doubt thinking of the woman with the veil, as she said:
'How unfortunate we are, dearest Mary, to have both become involved with men whose lives are enveloped in some cruel or degrading mystery.'
'Oh, do not say so—so far as poor Cecil is concerned,' replied Mary, with something of indignation in her tone.
Next morning found her face to face at the breakfast-table with Hew, whose features wore their brightest expression, and who was rubbing his cold fishy hands with unconcealed exultation; but Mary had got over her weeping now. She was very pale, and to all appearance heard unmoved the general reading in the morning papers the final details of Falconer's catastrophe—fiasco, as he called it—to Mrs. Garth, who was officiating at the urn. But Sir Piers laid aside the paper as soon as he perceived her. All could see her pallor, and an expression of irrepressible anguish about her delicate lips—the result of mental rather than physical suffering; and in truth Mary had not slept all night.
A letter lay beside her cup—a letter brought by morning post. It was addressed in Cecil's handwriting. Sir Piers was eyeing her firmly and inquiringly as she took it up hastily and placed it unopened in the bosom of her dress; but the moment breakfast was over, she hurried away to her own room to peruse it, with tears that blurred the lines, and hands that shook tremulously.
It told her briefly that he was about to leave his native land for ever, but for where he knew not yet, and cared not; and the concluding words went straight to her affectionate heart:
'Farewell, Mary—farewell, my darling—mine no more! farewell for ever, now. All is over with me. We have both been rash in loving each other so tenderly, without the consent of Sir Piers, your guardian; but our rashness has ended roughly, cruelly, and sorrowfully, especially for me. I have dreamed a happy dream in loving and being beloved by you—a dream the recollection of which will brighten all that remains to me of life, in the desolate path that lies before me.'
And so he was gone, without trace, as Fotheringhame eventually told her.
Again and again she pressed that tremulously written letter to her lips, and murmured,
'My darling—my poor lost darling!—surely he will write to me, or his friend, again!'
But days passed on, and became weeks and months, and no letter or sign came.
The worst had now come to pass; her vague suspicions of Hew's complicity in the affair were useless now, and Cecil seemed lost to her for ever.
'Now,' thought Sir Piers, with grim satisfaction, 'now that this unfortunate fellow Falconer is gone, he will forget Mary, and she will forget him, and, as a matter of course, Mary will return to her senses, and Hew's time will come.'
Perhaps Hew thought so too.
'When she sees him no more she will cease to grieve for him,' said Mrs. Garth, 'and this sore trouble will be lifted off our darling's heart in time—please God, in time.'
But the very mystery that involved Cecil's departure added to the trouble and thought of the girl he left behind him.
A nervous agony of mind and a great terror fell upon Mary—a terror that with Cecil's hopeless and aimless departure, none knew for where, a long and dull life lay before her, without the society of him for whom she seemed only now to have begun to exist—he so winsome, manly, chivalrous, and all her own.
Through the long weary hours of the night she often lay dry-eyed and feverish, without a tear coming to relieve her overcharged heart, for she and Cecil seemed parted now and for ever, as surely as if death had done so. Wild, at times, was the longing to follow him—butwhere?
Would she ever throw her soft arms round him again, and feel his lip meet hers!
Then the warm bright morning of the early summer would come mockingly in, and the routine of life had to be dreamily gone through.
So these two were parted thus, without having knowledge of each other, in sickness or health; and without the hopeful joy of a happy meeting, or reunion at any time, to look forward to.
It is 'when we are left alone with the reality of an anguish that has hitherto been but a dread, there comes the darkness which, like that of Egypt, may befelt.' And such was the dark anguish that fell upon the heart of Mary now.