James Grant

“ A sad expression stole over the features of Alison Cheyne, and so regular were these, that with the fine outline of her profile they might have been deemed insipid, but for the variable expression of her very lovely eyes and sensitive mouth; and now, when flushed with the exercise of fast riding, the excitement of following the hounds amid such a stirring concourse, and over such an open country, they seemed absolutely beautiful.
Attracted by each other's society, she and the Captain were now somewhat apart from all the field, and the brilliant hunt was waxing to its close. ”

“ Goring followed up the stately, richly-carpeted, and warmly-lighted staircase the valet, who conducted him to his room, where he found his clothes already unpacked, his evening costume placed on a clothes-rail before a blazing fire, and, as he turned to the great mirror and magnificent toilette table, he thought, with a repining sigh, if something like these luxurious surroundings of which Jerry made so light were his, how different might be the fate or fortune of his engagement with Alison Cheyne. ”

“ No—no! better our obscurity in Hampshire; who cares about us here, or thinks about us at all, unless it's Cadbury, who—who——'
'What, papa?' asked the girl, passionately.
'Would gladly make you his wife, my darling, and render my old age easy, with some of the luxuries we possessed in other times.'
Alison shuddered at the suggestion, and again pressed her engagement ring to her lips, as if its presence were a charm, an amulet, a protection to her.
'It is his dearest hope that you may yet journey together through life,' urged Sir Ranald. ”

“ Jolly, good-hearted Jerry would never condescend to be mercenary; he felt that he would rather a thousand times share poverty with a loving little girl like Bella than wealth with another. Matters had not yet come to poverty—far from it; but now, and after all that had transpired, and he had learned who the holder of these fatal mortgages was, how could he speak to her or her father of love or marriage without being most cruelly and degradingly misunderstood, and having his object utterly misconstrued? ”

“ Jerry Wilmot was eminently a handsome fellow. From his well set-up soldierly head to his slender well-moulded feet no fault could be found with him; but though his manner and conversation were full of that subtle flattery and earnestness which, if it does not make its way to a woman's heart, at least appeals to her vanity, he made no progress apparently with Mrs. Trelawney, who on this occasion listened to him with less patience than usual, and without even her generally amused smile.
'Are all men precisely alike to you?' whispered Jerry. ”

“ There was no other lady present. 'Why?' she asked herself; did not ladies affect the society of the wealthy and titled bachelor? It almost seemed so.
During the meal and dessert, Alison, though her sweet face wore forced smiles, had a bitter and humiliating sense of how her father, when his peevishness subsided under the influence of good wines, changed in manner, and, with all his inborn and inordinate pride of race and utter contempt for parvenus and nouveaux riches, seemed to make himself subservient to Lord Cadbury, assenting in the end to his views on everything. ”

“ Over the sideboard, which was loaded with massive plate, hung a great portrait of Sir Timothy Titcomb, the City Knight and first peer, in all his bravery of robe and chain, and aldermanic obeseness of habit; and Alison, as she looked at it, thought of some of the stately portraits at Chilcote of the Cheynes of other days, and of the manly beauty of the two Cavalier brothers who fell in battle for the king—pale, proud, and scornful, with their lovelocks and plumed beavers, and the moment dessert was over, she stole away to the solitude of the drawing-room. ”

“ Alison was officiating at the tea-board in her plain but pretty morning-dress, and was thinking smilingly of the tête-à-tête in the twilighted garden the evening before, when Archie laid some letters before her father, who glanced at them nervously. All that were in blue envelopes he knew instinctively to be duns, and thrust aside unopened. One in a square cover, that had thereon the initial C. surmounted by a coronet, he knew to be from Lord Cadbury, and opened, and read more than once, with a pleased, yet perplexed face, his brows knitted, yet his lips and eyes smiling. ”

“ Cadbury, whose head was stooped towards her, erected it, lest her glance might be falling on the little bald patch which he was so terribly conscious of being apparent now, and he shivered with annoyance, and felt wrathful at the girl he was so desirous of pleasing.
'Will you sing for me?' said he, after a pause, 'I am so fond of music.'
'What shall I sing?' asked Alison, seating herself at the piano, and glad to change the tenor of a conversation in which she felt herself ungracious. ”

“ But Alison could only think of Bevil Goring, and interlaced her fingers tightly beneath the tablecloth.
'There is nothing in this world like riches,' exclaimed Sir Ranald, glancing at the unopened blue envelopes, and tightening the silk cords of his sorely frayed dressing-gown. 'What riches give us let us first inquire.'
'Meat, fire, and clothes. What more? Meat, clothes, and fire,' said Alison, with a sickly smile.
'Alison—Miss Cheyne,' said her father, with increasing asperity. ”

“ Through the large square entrance-hall of Cadbury Court, which was panelled with oak, and hung round above the panelling with the old family portraits of former proprietors, and had tall jars of curiously painted china standing in the deep old window bays, with a great lantern of stained glass shining overhead, they were ushered into the magnificent drawing-room, where Lord Cadbury, in evening costume, hobbled from an easy chair to receive them with no small empressement, for, though his age of ardour was past, he had not survived that of covetousness ”

“ Wilmot,' said Chevenix, who had genuine respect and love for the listener, and really had the well-being of the old family at heart; 'it is a serious thing for a young man like you, the inheritor of a good old name, bred with expensive tastes and so forth, to find yourself hampered and trammelled thus at your very outset of life, but so it is.'
'We live and learn, Mr. Chevenix,' said Jerry, with unusual bitterness for him. ”

“ Anon the line is formed, and away over the open country stream the hounds like a living tide, with red tongues out, and steam, issuing from their quivering nostrils, and all follow at headlong speed.
Here it was that Alison Cheyne, Bevil Goring, and others of their party lost some of their companions in the first wild rush across a hedge with a wet ditch on the other side. Jerry Wilmot's saddle-girth gave way, and he fell in a helpless but unhurt heap on the furrows; Lord Cadbury—a peer of whom more anon—failed utterly to clear the hedge ”

“ Dalton was about to say something more, when the sudden disdain that replaced the first expression prevented him, and she said, laughingly,
'I can give the ladies a capital addition to the creed, Captain Dalton.'
'What is it?'
'Never to love any man, but make all men love you; as the song has it, "Love not—the thing you love may change;" but here come Miss Cheyne and Captain Goring.'
'A strange woman—an enigma, indeed,' thought Dalton, who had an unpleasant suspicion that she was secretly deriding the avowal he had, perhaps, been on the point of making. ”

“ Still she made no response, for her heart was away in a most unromantic-looking hut in the infantry lines at Aldershot, where, in fancy, she saw a handsome young fellow, his dark hair cropped close, his skin almost olive in tint, and smooth as a girl's, dark eyes and straight black eyebrows with thick lashes, a heavy moustache, and altogether with a dark manly beauty about him that would have become the costume of Titian or Velasquez, like the cavalier brothers in the portraits at Chilcote. ”

“ Trelawney felt an inclination to laugh again. She controlled her lips, but her half-closed eyes were sparkling with a smile.
'I am unworthy the regard I have won. Thrust me from your thoughts, Jerry, and forget me, I pray you, forget me,' said she, emphatically, as she again withdrew her hand.
'I have been a fool!' exclaimed Jerry, bitterly, as he twisted his dark moustache and betrayed considerable emotion, at least for him.
'Oh, no,' said Mrs. Trelawney, patting his shoulder with her fan. 'You are no worse than other men. ”

“ It is an old aphorism which says with truth that a man is usually more inclined to feel kindly towards one on whom he has conferred favours than to one from whom he has received them; thus, barely had Sir Ranald seen the last of his blue paper shrivel up in the flames, and thus felt a load lifted off his mind, when his natural sense of gratitude jarred with his equally natural constitutional pride, which revolted at the idea of being favoured or protected by any man. ”

“ Sir Ranald—all men come from Adam,' added Cadbury, who, though a peer, was somewhat of a Radical in his proclivities.
'In these points you and I differ,' said Sir Ranald, stiffly, as he sipped his glass of dry Moselle.
'In this age of the world, a fellow with a pedigree is exactly like a potato,' said Lord Cadbury, laughing. ”

“ Lord Cadbury remained behind, to the intense annoyance of Goring, who, with his two companions, went back to the camp at a canter to be in time for mess; and while Sir Ranald—Cadbury's senior by some fifteen years—dozed and slept after dinner in his easy chair, Alison, till she was weary and well-nigh desperate, had to undergo the prolonged visit, the society, and the unconcealed tenderness, or would-be love-making, of her odious old admirer. ”

“ In a few minutes Jerry was tooling back to the camp again.
'Her manner is deuced mysterious,' thought he, in great perplexity. 'What can she mean? She spoke of herself as "unworthy," too. Has she a husband somewhere, after all? Oh, the devil! That can't be.'
'Where have you been, Jerry?' asked Dalton, who was again loitering in front of the guard-hut at the camp gate, with a cigar between his lips, and saw his friend coming slowly along, with the reins dropped on his horse's neck.
'I have been at Chilcote Grange,' said Jerry, almost sulkily. ”

“ I might as well attempt to make a river run up a hill.'
'What is before you?' asked the peer, a cunning smile twinkling in his eyes, unseen by his visitor.
'Death or disgrace!'
'Disgrace in what fashion?'
'Arrest or flight.'
Cadbury continued to pull each of his moustaches in a kind of nervous way, and after a minute's silence he said, with a kind of laugh,
'I think I can help you.'
'I am not a man who has been used to seek help from others,' said Sir Ranald, with a little of his old pride of bearing. ”

“ Trelawney once said, Lord Cadbury assumed a kind of right of proprietary in Alison Cheyne that was very galling to the latter before her guests, and under the sense of which Bevil Goring chafed in secret as he drank his wine in silence and gnawed his moustache in sheer anger, for Alison was fast becoming to him more than he might ever dare acknowledge to herself.
'You must have married when very young, Mrs. Trelawney,' said Dalton, who was plying her daughter with grapes and crystallised fruits. ”

“ Nature is not going into bankruptcy; the sun will rise and set just the same; corn will grow, birds sing, and the rain fall just as before. My experience is, that it's a toss up that you are not the better without her, and she not better without you."'
'Likely enough, Tony; but, as "Cœlebs in search of a wife," I need not go there any more,' half grumbled Jerry, as he whipped up his high-stepper and bowled away through the long street of huts to his quarters; while to Dalton's graver mind there seemed to be something intensely comical in the equanimity with which he took his repulse. ”

“ Till the advent of Bevil Goring, how drearily dull her life seemed to have been at Chilcote! It was all very well to cull and arrange bouquets with all an artist's eye to colour and form, to warble the old songs her mother had taught in brighter days at Essilmont and elsewhere, with all that sweetness which she inherited from her, and vary these occupations by attendance on her fowls and other pets, hunting with old Archie for the eggs when the hens had taken to laying under the hedges ”

“ One would think that the old days of sitting below the salt had come again!' exclaimed Jerry, with a somewhat ruffled air. 'As the world goes now, how long do you think this vast distinction of class and class will last? Why, nobility itself will one day pass away—nay, respect for it is nearly a thing of the past already.'
'Nobility pass away!' exclaimed Lady Julia, the descendant of twenty earls and more, her pale face growing paler at such unheard-of opinion. 'Where have you picked up such horrid Radical and Communistic ideas, Jerry? ”