On partially recovering he found himself in bed, but he knew not where, and dimly seen, as in a glass, he thought he saw Evan Cameron bending over him—Evan looking pale and wan as when he buried him in the sand.
'Oh, God,' sighed Allan, as he closed his eyes to shut the vision out, 'is this madness or delirium that has come upon me?'
Lady Aberfeldie was a Scottish Episcopalian of the first class; one whose boast it was that she always distinguished Christmas and Easter by mince-pies and cheesecakes; and who rather looked down on English Ritualists and Tractarians as 'second chop;' and who never saw a Michaelmas without its goose; but she forgot the Michaelmas of this year, and with good reason too.
The sudden arrival in the hospital at Ismailia of Captain Graham, the missing officer of the Black Watch, who had been carried off by Bedouins at Matarieh, and who was supposed to have shared the terrible fate of Professor Palmer and his companions, was duly 'wired' home, like many other items of Egyptian news, and caused no small excitement among the inmates of Puddicombe Villa, Southsea. The telegram added that he was without a wound, but was supposed to be dying of enteric fever, the result of all he had undergone when in the desert.
'Dying!' exclaimed his mother, pale as a lily; 'oh, it cannot be.'
And Olive looked the picture of mute misery.
Lord Aberfeldie telegraphed to the chief of the medical staff at Ismailia for distinct intelligence, and the reply—waited for with intense anxiety—came in its usual orange-tinted envelope.
'Not dying yet, but recovery very improbable.'
Lord Aberfeldie, with the promptitude of an old soldier, and full of affection and anxiety, wished to start at once for Egypt, and alone; but the three ladies of his family insisted on going also, so he yielded to their tears, entreaties, and importunities—especially those of Olive, whose misery was very great; and he had much sympathy with a young and loving heart. 'Let no one decry the suffering of the young because they are young,' says a writer; as we grow older we get used to pain, both mental and bodily.
Olive passed the hours, previous to departure, pretty much as we do those which precede a funeral; everything was done as a duty, dressing, undressing, sitting down to meals, and so forth—seeming to have no interest in anything, as if for the time, life and all its interests was over and done with.
'Oh, Eveline,' she exclaimed, 'what advantages men have over us in this world.'
'Of course they have,' replied her cousin, 'but to what do you refer in the present instance?'
'Now, if we were men, we could start for Egypt alone; as it is, we can only go with your papa.'
'If you were a man, Olive, you would not think of going at all.'
'Indeed—why?'
'Little goose! If a man, would you be engaged to Allan? Are you going to become an advocate for women's "rights"—whatever they may be?'
'No—but it is tiresome to have to run in the grooves of life that men lay down for us. Poor creatures, we are only in their eyes the weaker vessels after all.'
'But weaker vessels they make a great fuss with; but how we chatter! Oh, heavens, if Allan's peril—dear, dear Allan—should be so great!'
Olive shivered at this exclamation, as she alternated—like all girls of a delicate and nervous organization—between high spirits at the prospect of going eastward and the awful dread of what tidings might await her there.
'Going to the East—actually to Egypt! Darling papa, how shall we ever be able to thank you?' exclaimed Eveline, as in her energy she locked her slender fingers so tightly together that the great diamond in one of her rings—a gift of Sir Paget—was cutting into her delicate skin, and yet she felt it not.
And great was the disgust of Sir Harry Hurdell, when eventually he heard of this sudden disposition to travel, the precise object of which he failed quite to understand.
Apart from anxiety about her brother, Eveline had another thought, and she kept repeating to herself,
'I shall see the land where Evan died—the land that holds his grave! It is a pilgrimage of love—but one that is without deceit to him.'
'Him,' meant Sir Paget, or 'Old Pudd,' as Sir Harry called him.
Allan might die ere they arrived, or after they did so. In either case, the famous will of Olive's father would be as only so much waste paper, so far as the Aberfeldie family was concerned; but at this time of trial no one thought of that feature in the terrible contingency.
Their whole idea was to see him; to be with him; to know the best or worst; to nurse him well, and to bring him home with them to the soft breezes of the Sidlaw Hills, and his native place, Dundargue.
So Tappleton and Mademoiselle Clairette received their orders; packing was proceeded with; the Continental Bradshaw consulted, and all arrangements made for a speedy departure for Egypt,viâParis; by rail then to Marseilles; thence by steamer, Messageries Imperiales Company, to Alexandria, when the train could be taken for Suez.
The night before their departure Olive was so excited that she could not go to bed, but sat listening to the booming of the waves as they rolled on the stormy bluffs of Southsea Castle, while all the past returned upon her, and when she had last seen the face of Allan.
As she was heard moving about in her room, Clairette was sent to inquire for her.
'I have a dreadful head-ache,' said Olive.
'Mon Dieu, mademoiselle, why are you not in bed, instead of shivering there in your night-dress, at an open window, too! This will never do; let me coil up your hair and cover you up.'
'Dear little Clairette, I shall be good and go to bed—yes, to bed.'
Clairette, who knew all about it, kissed her lady's hand; but Olive pressed her lips to the cheek of the French girl, who, in the impulsiveness of her nature, burst into tears, and then, instead of leaving her mistress to repose, had a long gossip with her about Allan, for whose safety she said she gave up a prayer every night.
Appliances for travel are so great and ample now that a few hours after soon saw the whole party on board the Marseilles steamer, and traversing the Mediterranean.
Many officers were in the saloon making their way to join the various regiments, and to these Eveline—so young a widow—was an object of no small interest. She seemed to have ripened into the bloom of early womanhood, though all her girlish manner remained with its softness and grace.
Her figure had become more rounded and developed; her step was firm, though elastic as ever; and she carried her head with an air of stateliness that was somewhat belied by the occasional sadness of her expression and lassitude of demeanour.
To her and to Olive, ever-recurring was the thought, when fairly off the coast of Egypt, how strange it was from the steamer's poop to look upon those places of which they had read so much of late in the newspapers—Alexandria, Suez, Port Said, and so forth—all 'household words' at home now.
At the first-named place they saw ample traces of the terrible bombardment, with the details of which they were more familiar than with those of its marble palaces and porphyry temples of the times of old; or of the golden coffin of its young hero, who emulated being a god; of its streets, two thousand feet in width; and its Pharos, whose mirrors of polished steel reflected from afar the galleys of Cleopatra.
Suez, with its mosques and caravansaries, its houses of sun-bricks, amid, or rather bordering on, a desert of rock, slightly covered with sand, and where trees, gardens, and meadows are almost entirely unknown, was soon left behind as the train bore them on by Shalouffe, Geneffe, Faid, Serapium, and Nefishe, to Ismailia, so named after Ismail Pasha, and which deems itself the most aristocratic or respectable place upon the canal, as the Khedive erected a palace for himself at the east end of it, and the houses have all a substantial appearance, with neat and trim gardens; and the appearance of its harbour reminded Lord Aberfeldie of that of Balaclava in the time of the Crimean war; and still the Lake of Timsah was crowded with vessels of all sorts and sizes.
Despite the deep and keen interest of the matter nearest their hearts—the object which had brought them so far from home—it was impossible for Olive and Eveline not to be occasionally drawn from their own thoughts, and impressed by the novelty of the new sights, scenes, and certain memories of the land they looked on, for the crossing of the Red Sea by the children of Israel took place somewhere near where Ismailia stands, and certain it is that, at no great distance therefrom, it was at El-Khantara-el-Khazneh, the Virgin Mother and the Holy Child passed when Joseph arose by night 'and departed into Egypt.'
The wide lake looked now like a land-locked harbour crowded with shipping. Great steamers, magnificent 'troopers,' all painted white, colossal men-of-war lay like leviathans there, while gunboats, launches, and steam-tugs were for ever shooting to and fro.
In the streets invalid soldiers of every kind, in tatteredkarkeeuniforms or red serges, Guardsmen, Highlanders, Dragoons, Artillery, and Rifles, were creeping about, some propped on sticks and crutches, awaiting their transmission home; and there, too, might be seen, occasionally, stalwart Bedouins, dirty Jews, and sable negroes, howling Dervishes, and many breeds of Arabs, Italians, and Frenchmen; the Turk, with his smart scarlet fez; the Egyptian, with tarboosh and a turban twisted round it; and in some instances Moors, with embroidered jackets, white turban, crimson sash, and trousered to the knee, with yellow shoes, a scimitar and antique gun of enormous length; and though last, not least, the English Jack-tar, rollicking about and eyeing curiously the closely-veiled women.
The novelty of these sights and scenes in the minds of Olive and Eveline became merged at last, especially when they saw our wounded redcoats and bluejackets, in absorption about Allan, who, dead or alive, was then in that place, Ismailia.
And, in dread of the tidings that might await her, Olive already began to pray and wrestle, as it were, with anticipated despair and dread of how Allan, if in life, might receive her. Until now this idea had never occurred to her.
'Oh, my lost love—my lost love!' she whispered to herself; 'what shall I say or do to convince you that I love you, and you only? If gone—oh, my God!—no, no,no—but if gone, I cannot call you back to me—and I cannot go to you. In another hour we shall know all—all!'
Aware, as an old Crimean campaigner, that shocking scenes might meet their eyes in the vicinity of a military hospital, Lord Aberfeldie took the three ladies of his party to the chief hotel, and then, with a heart full of the liveliest anxiety, set forth to make inquiries about Allan, to whom we shall now return.
The putrid water he had drunk on many occasions, the stone-fruit on which he had been compelled to feed, the damp sand on which he had lain under the night dews—the watching, fatigue, and depression of spirits he had undergone—had served to prostrate Allan now, and even his magnificent constitution failed to resist such a combination of evils.
At times he was in a burning fever; at others in cold, shivering fits, as if his limbs would go to pieces. These were succeeded by feeble listlessness and indifference to all around him, and then he seemed as if about to die.
He first became quite conscious of where he was on being roused from a species of waking dose by voices near him.
'Captain,' said an Irish Fusilier, one of Sir Garnet's own, 'I want ten shillings from you.'
'For what purpose?' asked the officer, sharply.
'To bury my brother.'
'Bury your brother, d—n it! I gave you ten shillings for that purpose two days ago.'
'To bury his leg that was, your honour.'
'Well!'
'And now I want another ten shillings to bury the rest of him.'
'Have you a non-commissioned officer with you?'
'Yes, sir—Sergeant Carey,'
'Well, you and Sergeant Carey had better be off, or I'll make the place too hot for you. As for your brother, you can bury him for nothing beside the tent-pegs outside.'
Every other morning some poor fellow was reported as dead in the wards, and they were buried in a little strip of ground near the canal, a tent-peg, with a label fluttering from it, alone indicated, in the meantime, the name and rank of the deceased.
As Allan glanced around him, he saw cheeks that were pale, eyes that were sunk, and forms emaciated by wounds, loss of blood, and fever like his own of the worst enteric form.
A somewhat oppressive odour of hot soup and poultices seemed to pervade the wards of the hastily improvised hospital, where, though wounds were dressed on Lister's antiseptic system, with a care and minuteness never before seen on a large scale in war, yet it was reported, and with justice, in the public prints, that through the meanness, economy, and incapacity of the Government, or the Government officials, 'the enormous hospital at Ismailia was opened without drugs, instruments, provisions, or stores, and was unable to supply the front with any medical essentials, and that there was also an extraordinary lack of hospital attendants. Officers who lay in the wards tell stories which are ludicrous though painful, of neglect and want of common food. All acknowledged themselves grateful for the kindness, sympathy, and skill of the doctors. The fault was not theirs; butred-tapefinished what incompetence began.'
As Allan looked around him, a familiar figure in the undress uniform of the Black Watch caught his eye—it was that of an officer conversing in a low voice with one of the staff-surgeons, and he gave a nervous start as he muttered and closed his eyes.
'It is a chance likeness, and the world is full of chance likenesses.'
He looked again; the figure—the man was still there, and he could see his full face now, with its light brown moustache and head of close-clipped golden hair.
'Great heavens, it is a day-dream of Evan Cameron!' said Allan to himself in a whisper.
The blood in his veins seemed to congeal or to circulate like water that was icy cold. He had heard that we cannot look upon the supernatural and live, and so Allan believed that his hour had come.
Feeling that it might be only a powerful but optical illusion, he continued to gaze at the figure with incredulity and awful dread.
'Cameron!'
The name escaped him, while a strange sensation crept over Allan, and his voice as he spoke sounded thick in his own ears.
But it was no optical illusion—no disembodied spirit he saw, as he thought he had done before, but his friend and comrade still in the body, but pale now and barely convalescent after the dreadful wound he had received.
He grasped the hand of Allan, and laughed at the mingled expression of blank amazement and dismay he read there, emotions which were gradually replaced by those of satisfaction and delight.
'I was supposed to be dead and buried in the sand, like Lieutenant O'Brien in "Peter Simple," but, unlike Lieutenant O'Brien, I was not discovered by a pretty girl treading on my nose,' said Cameron, laughing, and in reply to some inarticulate words of Allan, on the side of whose bed he seated himself.
'Tell me—tell me about it,' said Allan, huskily.
'You could scarcely have left me ere I began to recover from the syncope—for a syncope it was—only you and Sergeant Farquharson were not doctors enough to discover that it was so. A sense of suffocation made me struggle up and throw off my blanket and the covering of light sand in which you had so kindly tucked me; and as the blanket fell from my face the dew refreshed me, and I perceived in a moment the fatal mistake into which you had all fallen. Dark though it was, the detachment was still in sight, and I could hear your voices; I tried to call out, but lacked the power to do so, and a horror fell upon me, with insensibility after a time, and, when I recovered, I found a group of mounted Bedouins gazing at me in stupid wonder to see a living man half buried in the sand.'
'But how was it that we totally failed to find all trace of the spot where we interred you?'
'How strange the question sounds as you frame it,' said Cameron, smiling. 'A sandstorm came on, and must have obliterated the landmarks.'
'We heard shots as we fell back.'
'The Bedouins fired at something—I know not what. They proved to belong to a friendly tribe—Bedouins of that kind who become petty merchants wandering over the country, trading in such goods as they can easily transport from place to place, and fortunate—most fortunate—was it for me that I fell just then into the hands of men so peacefully disposed.'
'And your wound?'
'Is healing fast, thank Heaven! They carefully redressed it, put me in a camel litter, and conveyed me to Abu Zabel on the canal, from whence I was sent, with others here, by boat to Ismailia on sick-leave for home. I heard of your having been carried off at Matarieh; some of our fellows who are in the wards told me so; but I was powerless to attempt your discovery in any way—too feeble almost to think, but the idea of your peril and too probably helpless butchery cut me to the heart.'
'Any news from home?'
'Home?' repeated Cameron.
'I mean of my people.'
'None, Allan, how should I hear of them?'
'True,' said Allan, wearily and sadly, and in the miserable weakness of his body, as a paroxysm of shivering came over him, almost doubting the evidence of his own senses.
Hawke Holcroft had turned up in the camp of Zeid-el-Ourdeh—that was startling enough in all conscience; but that Evan Cameron, whom he and Sergeant Farquharson had so regretfully buried in the sandy grave—the grave of which no trace could be found—should be alive, well, and chatting with him there, and manipulating a cigar, outheroded fiction!
The wonderful reappearance of the supposed dead Cameron was the intelligence in the papers which Olive Raymond and Eveline did not see.
Little could Cameron imagine that Eveline was so near to him as she was then!
Often had he dreamt of her face—not when he longed to do so, but when visions of it came upon him unbidden while he lay asleep on the deck of the transport, in the bivouacs in the desert, amid the wards of the hospital at Ismailia and elsewhere, and it always came before him with a sweetness, a loving expression, and a strange spiritual charm impossible to define or describe.
After the mutual revelations of the two friends, the intermittent fever of Allan seemed to become more deadly, and by the time that Lord Aberfeldie arrived at the hospital he almost failed to recognise his son, so much had the latter sunk; for, the temporary excitement consequent to the meeting with Cameron having subsided, Allan's health seemed visibly to retrograde, and each fit of shivering rendered him weaker than the last.
A staff-surgeon had prepared Allan for the visit of his father, who was manifestly shocked when he saw how prostrate he was, and, as they pressed each other's hands, Lord Aberfeldie perceived how thin, bony, and wasted those of his son had become.
'My poor boy,' he exclaimed; 'how is this I find you?'
'Not dying, father, but very near it, I fear,' replied Allan, with a sickly smile.
Lord Aberfeldie gazed lovingly and sadly into his son's wasted face, and thought of all his mother, his sister, and Olive would feel on seeing him thus, and in such a squalid place.
Amid the suffering and misery they were enduring, Lord Aberfeldie thought it strange to hear many expressing regret that the war was over so soon, and 'Arabi snuffed out.'
The realisation of Sir Garnet Wolseley's confident prediction that all would be ended by the 16th of September, put an abrupt and speedy end to all chances of promotion and glory, and now everyone thought only of going home as fast as possible.
In the huge improvised military hospital much existed, as in every such place, that proved rather repugnant to the ideas of a fastidious man, so Lord Aberfeldie resolved upon having Allan removed to another place—a hotel or villa—whither, when the surgeon would permit it, he would have him conveyed by soldiers in a dhooley; and, full of this purpose, he rejoined the ladies, who awaited his return with the keenest anxiety.
His hopes of Allan's recovery proved balm to their hearts, though he spoke more confidently of it than his own observations warranted.
At the story of Cameron, Eveline sprang from her seat, while a little gasping cry escaped her, and Lord Aberfeldie was rather sorry to see her mother's face darken.
'Evan Cameron—Evan Cameron alive!' exclaimed Lady Aberfeldie, incredulously.
'Alive, and well! Old Stratherroch, his father, used to say that the men of the Black Watch were deuced hard to kill, and, by Jove! he was right. For the old man's sake, I am glad that God has spared the boy!'
Unable to realise the situation, poor Eveline felt stupefied!
Olive heard all her uncle had to relate of the condition in which he found Allan, and, stealing away, she assumed her hat and sunshade, and, accompanied by Clairette, undeterred by any risks she might run in a strange place, issued into the somewhat European-looking streets of Ismailia, over which she could see the great palace of the Khedive looming in the distance, about two miles off; and obtaining the guidance of a passing soldier—a Seaforth Highlander—she bent her steps direct to the military hospital.
In the depth of her love, in the keenness of her anxiety—her remorse, too, for all she had, in some sense unwittingly, made Allan endure—she cast the idea of strict propriety and the amenities of society to the winds, and, following the generous impulses of her own heart, resolved to see Allan, if she could, without delay.
She passed the temporary burying-ground, with its rows of labelled tent-pegs, without a shudder, as she knew not what lay there; anon past wards where lay patients suffering from sunstroke and ophthalmia, as she could see by the sufferers wearing blue-veils and dark glasses, till she was ushered into a species of office, where a staff-surgeon in undress uniform greeted her with some surprise andempressement.
He had not seen an English girl—especially one of Olive's style and beauty—for a considerable time past, perhaps, and he looked with genuine interest on Olive, her half-opened mouth, her soft, earnest eyes, her trembling lips, and the tears that clung to her long lashes.
Shyly she asked if it were possible to see Captain Graham, of the Black Watch, who was a patient.
He smiled, and shook his head.
'Do permit me, sir,' she asked, with half-clasped hands and her eyes full of entreaty.
'Do be reasonable, Miss—Raymond,' said he, glancing at her card, which an orderly had given him. 'Your presence would but excite him too much. It will be folly on your part to undo all our precautions simply from a mere desire, however natural, to speak with or see Captain Graham.'
'Oh, sir, if you knew all!'
'All that can be done for him is being done. Besides, there is danger in being near him.'
'Danger!'
'To you.'
'I care not. Why?'
'Enteric fever takes a typhoid form at times.'
'Fear not for me—I am his cousin—his promised wife!' urged Olive, piteously.
'Come with me, then, but softly; this way,' said the surgeon, and, taking her hand, he led her across a corridor, where hospital orderlies, men of the Army Hospital Corps, nurses, and others were hovering, and where Olive narrowly escaped the shock of seeing a fever-stricken and attenuated corpse carried out, and into a plain, white-washed room, where on a camp-bed—one of those brought from Arabi's camp—Allan lay asleep.
Olive, in obedience to a mute sign from the doctor, made no nearer approach, or attempt to touch or wake him, but she restrained her heavy sobs with difficulty, for the sight of how wan and worn, hollow-cheeked and pale he was, and how every way wasted, wrung her loving heart to the core.
Kneeling down by his bedside, she lightly touched with her lips his thin white hand that lay upon the coverlit, a mute action which, in one so charming as she looked, stirred even the heart of the staff-surgeon, and then she stole softly away.
'Is there any hope?' she asked, in a choking voice.
As the doctor did not speak, she looked in his face and seemed to see her answer there.
'He cannot recover, you fear?' said she.
'I fear not, Miss Raymond,' said the doctor, in a low voice.
She leant for a moment against the table, and felt giddy.
Then, bowing to the staff-surgeon, she drew her veil close over her face, took the arm of Clairette to steady her footsteps, and quitted the sad place in a tumult of grief and horror.
Night came on—the hot Egyptian night—and Allan as he tossed restlessly on his pillow, all unconscious of who had visited him, as he looked wearily round his bare and strange-like apartment by the subdued light of a shaded lamp, pondered doubtfully whether it had been a dream or a reality that he had that forenoon spoken with and seen his father, Lord Aberfeldie, and, in the weakness and confusion of his mind, he was somewhat inclined to think the whole thing was the effect of fevered fancy.
Ere long Olive was to have him all to herself!
In a beautiful little villa near the Lake of Timsah—one built for the famous Toulba Pasha, the friend of Arabi—in view of all the fleet that lay anchored there, Allan, after a little time, found himself in a luxurious apartment, furnished in European style, yet fitted up and decorated in the Egyptian manner, with gaily-painted arabesques.
The windows opened upon an arcaded verandah, the slender pillars of which were rose-coloured marble, with quaint capitals of purest alabaster, from which sprung horse-shoe arches elaborately carved and inscribed with verses from the Koran.
Palm-trees, feathery-branched bananas, and arched rows of orange-trees shaded the lovely garden walks, all mosaic with polished pebbles; and there, amid the rose-trees and beds of tulip bordered by myrtle, a white marble fountain spouted, the very plash of its ceaselessly falling water seeming to cool the heated air; and, in view of all this, Allan Graham lay on his couch in the care of his mother and sister, but more often with Olive alone, for she had constituted herself by right his nurse, and ere long Eveline found a sufficient occupation for herself. How, the reader may guess.
As for Allan and Olive, their reconciliation came speedily about, as such things never take long in real life if they are to take place at all; and the few minutes that followed are not very describable, as they remained, hand clasped in hand, in silence but with a happiness and content that were inexpressible,—'one of those rare periods in life when we forget our mortality and believe that heaven has begun for us.'
At first Allan, fearful of some infectious nature in his ailment, had implored Olive to leave him.
'Go—go, Olive!' he exclaimed, faintly; 'do not come near me.'
'You dislike me so—so much?' said Olive, more faintly still.
'Oh, no, oh, no—not that, not that, when I now know all.'
'Why then, Allan?'
'Because all the doctors tell me that there is something typhoid in this Egyptian enteric fever, and if it were to affect you——'
'Allan!' she exclaimed, reproachfully; and, pressing her lips to his, added, 'if you die, let me die too.'
'Olive!'
'Do you doubt me now?'
'Oh, no—oh, no, my darling; but do leave me.'
'Why?'
'Because this sick-room is no place for you.'
But Olive in the depth of her love was resolute, and kept her place as a watcher by his pillow, and day after day, with only short intervals of rest, was she there unvaryingly; and as she bent over Allan's sick-bed she felt how true it is that 'all the forces of our nature rush towards the channels of pity, of patience, and of love, and sweep down the choking drift of our quarrels, our debates, our would-be wisdom, and our clamorous, selfish desires.'
Allan's life was for a time hovering in the balance, and Olive, as she sat by his pillow looking out on the Lake of Timsah, recalled the pleasant days of their childhood at Dundargue, where they had plaited rushes beside the trouting stream, and he had garlanded her hair with scarlet poppies and yellow cowslips, and he used to call her his little queen and wifie, while the great clouds cast their flying shadows over the green Sidlaw hills and the bonnie Carse of Gowrie.
'Days gone beyond recall, save in memory!'
But, when she feared he might be going out from her sight for ever, her heart crew cold and seemed to die within her.
She watched him when he lay motionless and asleep, when his irregular breathing stirred his sunburned throat and broad chest, when the perspiration of fever rolled in globules over his forehead, and when the cold shivering of the ague followed, till by watching and confinement her cheek grew pale as Allan's.
There was always a profound and oppressive stillness about the house and room. She heard no sound but his breathing and the ticking of a French clock upon a console table.
Her hand it was that was ever ready to give the compounded drinks the doctor ordered, and when ere long he became convalescent, to her joy, she accompanied him in his drives around Ismailia, to Nefische and Serapium, and along the banks of the Great Bitter Lake, where the lofty white Indian 'troopers' could be seen under steam, and boats like those that are to be seen on the Nile at Cairo in hundreds—elegant barques with long sail-yards and fantastic canvas that fly with wonderful velocity, and are so ingeniously carved and painted, fitted up with carpeted cabins, and deck awnings of brilliant colours as a protection from the heat.
So the days stole on, and, as Allan's fever seemed to pass away, he and Olive became supremely happy—she all the more so that she had been his chief nurse. 'Nothing,' says a writer, 'tones down a young girl's passion into apparent friendship like nursing the man she loves in illness. Of course it is there, ready to break out with the old strength hereafter; but for the time the sense of utter weakness on his side, of protection on hers—the perfect unquestioned familiarity, the constant companionship—have done away with all the old reserve, and doubt, and mystery which to unsophisticated young women is the very food of love.'
We have said that while all this was in progress Eveline had found an occupation for herself.
It was very natural that Evan Cameron should call at the villa by the Lake of Timsah to inquire for his friend and comrade, and it was also natural that he should meet, incidentally, Lady Puddicombe, which event came to pass on the very day that Lord and Lady Aberfeldie had taken the train to Grand Cairo, to be present at the St. Andrew Festival, held by the Highland Brigade in the magnificent restaurant in the Ezeb Keyah Gardens.
Evan was suddenly ushered in upon her by old Mr. Tappleton, the butler, who had charge of the household at Ismailia, and whose rubicund face became quite radiant when he saw the familiar uniform of the Black Watch.
A little cap of snowy white lace rested on her soft brown hair; all the rich beauty promised but a short time ago had been amply fulfilled, amid the sorrow she had endured, or in the dignity of her girlish widowhood.
A film seemed to pass over Evan's handsome eyes; a tremulous sensation, hitherto unknown, seemed to thrill over his nerves, and he was for a moment more full of emotion than herself; but he did not, as she expected, hasten to take her in his arms.
'Lady Puddicombe!' he exclaimed, while playing irresolutely with the red hackle in his tropical helmet.
'I am not the wife of Sir Paget now,' said Eveline, sweetly and simply.
'What then?'
'His widow. Is it possible you did not know?'
'He is—dead then!'
'Yes, Evan—killed by a fall from a horse. I am in weeds, don't you see?'
And, if a tearless, a very peerless little widow she looked.
Then a half-stifled cry escaped her as she fell upon his breast, and her white hands groped feebly, as one might do in the dark, about his shoulders, as her arms sought to go round his neck. In her crape dress she seemed to appeal to him and to his tenderness, more eloquently than she had ever done in the past time, and he gazed into her delicate face, as he took it caressingly between his hands, with a growing intensity that showed how he had hungered for the sight of it.
The first strong tide of emotion swept over that parted pair, meeting now so differently from how they had ever expected to meet again.
In the intensity of her joy, Eveline had closed her eyes, as if the light of day had proved too much for them; then their long lashes began to quiver, the lids unclosed, and the dear eyes were again turned wonderingly, searchingly, and lovingly on Evan Cameron's face.
She wasfree.
His pulses quickened at the thought. He had never ceased to love her—never ceased to wish she should be his. Sir Paget was dead—dead as Julius Cæsar—and he, Evan Cameron, had been in possession of a treasure without knowing it—the free and unfettered love of Eveline!
'Dead fires are difficult to re-light,' said she, waggishly, while twirling the ends of his moustache with her fairy fingers.
'But, Eveline, with me the fire was never dead—as I loved you with a love that partook of adoration in the dear past days at Dundargue, so I love you still!'
'My poor, dear Evan!' cooed the girl.
'Yes—poor indeed—without you.'
So true it was that 'the thing we look forward to,' as George Eliot says, 'often comes to pass; but never precisely as we have imagined it to ourselves.'
Could Eveline ever have looked forward to this when at Hurdell Hall—to see Evan Cameron in life again, and feel his tender kisses on her lips and eyes?
Evan had loved Eveline as a maiden; he had trained himself to suffer, endure, and think of her as a wife; but now he thanked God that he had not to think of her as a mother—the mother of a wretched little Puddicombe!
Lady Aberfeldie, who had fresh views concerning her daughter, was somewhat irate when—on her return from the city of the Caliphs and Khedives—the latter, with perfect deliberation, informed her that Evan Cameron had been at the villa to see Allan, and had paid her a long visit.
'He spoke of his old fancy for you, no doubt?' said Lady Aberfeldie, rather freezingly.
'He did, mamma,' was the candid reply.
'He had not the hardihood to ask you to marry him?'
'Mamma!'
'Already—I mean.'
'Of course not.'
'But I suppose he will presume to do so in time?'
'I have no doubt of it, dearest mamma,' replied Eveline, attempting to kiss her; but my Lady Aberfeldie was in no fit of effusion, and coldly tendered her cheek. 'Was not his escape miraculous, mamma?'
'I admit that it was; and now——'
'Just learn this, dearest mamma; I married a short time ago to please you, and, now that God in His goodness has spared and restored Evan to me, I shall marry next to please myself.'
'It is very strange how some girls get it into their head that there is a special virtue in a man because he is poor.'
'Evan isn't poor now,' replied Eveline, stoutly. 'Stratherroch is nearly free, and, if it were not, I have enough for two.'
'Your jointure dies with you,' said Lady Aberfeldie, sourly.
'Dear Evan will never think of that, mamma; and long beforethatday comes every acre, every tuft of heather in Stratherroch will be disencumbered and free.'
'You have schemed out the whole programme. But as your father's daughter, and the widow of Sir Paget Puddicombe, Baronet, you are entitled to look higher.'
'I don't want to do so, mamma,' said Eveline, coyly and laughingly; 'you see, it is only a case of "heaping up riches, and ye know not who shall gather them."'
Eveline was in a kind of triumphant and defiant mood, such as her mother had never seen her in before, for she added,
'The whirligig of time brings curious things to pass, so Lady Puddicombe will be Mrs. Cameron of Stratherroch after all.'
So the days stole on pleasantly by the Lake of Timsah. Allan grew well rapidly, and, now that she was free and under better auspices, Evan Cameron daily discovered in Eveline some new trait of character that rendered her more worthy of his love and esteem—or indicative that those qualities of passion and tenderness that first excited his interest in her had ripened under all she had undergone—the sorrow and separation that had tried and purified their mutual love, as gold is tried by fire.
We have said that the reconciliation of Allan and Olive came about, and rapidly, too.
'Only love me, Allan,' whispered the girl, as she nestled her sweet face in his neck; 'only love me as you did in the old days at Dundargue, and I shall be so happy. Without your love I could not live.'
'By your strange actions you destroyed my faith in you, darling—and yet I loved you still. Oh, think over it all, and consider if you did not try me sorely, for there was a powerful appearance of deception that was unworthy of us both.'
Her beautiful eyes were moist with tears; her hands stole into his, and he took her in his arms and kissed her passionately, while a torrent of thankfulness and joy overwhelmed her heart.
'And so that wretched photo was the key to your apparently inexplicable conduct?'
'Yes,' replied Olive, weeping, while Allan kissed away her tears.
'Why did you not confide freely in me?'
'I was too terrified—too mortified to do so, and you were so proud, so suspicious of me. I writhed in secret under the imputation that that man had it in his power to cast upon me with the tampered miniature. I was weak, foolish, Allan, and every act of mine seemed to be a mistake and misplaced; but now——'
'All is over, and all forgotten.'
'Thank heaven for its goodness, Allan. You never wrote to me after that parting at Southsea. Save in your letter to your mother after Tel-el-Kebir, you never once referred to me, and then only in terms of scorn and invective. Oh, Allan, Allan, all that was very hard to bear.'
But Allan found ample means of consoling her now.
'How happy I am,' said Lady Aberfeldie, as she nestled both their heads together on her motherly breast; 'ever since you two were little children, how I prayed for this; I reared and taught you to this end, and God has seen fit in His goodness to accomplish it.'
And now, having brought our 'heroes and heroines,' to use the old novelist's phraseology, to this point, need we follow them into the region of wedding-bells, wedding-cakes, favours, rice, and old slippers?
We think not.
THE END.
LONDON: PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD, BLENHEIM HOUSE.