Chapter XXII · WHAT THE MORROW BROUGHT FORTH.

Cyril found that a note had come from Lady Ernescleugh, inviting all at Willowdean to dine with her, en famille, to talk over their plans for the future season in London, when it came. "As for Edinburgh," she added, "with its eight assemblies, and a few club balls, all so mixed, it is not to be thought of in these railway times. What suited our grandmothers won't suit us, who have young folks to introduce in society."

So Cyril found that the carriage and pony-phaeton had been ordered, as all were going to the Cleugh, save poor little Miss M'Caw, whom Lady Ernescleugh had omitted, notwithstanding her long pedigree; but then it was only a Highland one, as her ladyship thought, "and those people all boast of such, whether they are Peers of the realm or street-porters."

Ere long we shall have more startling events to describe than dinners, drives, or luncheons, and so shall only say that the "festive board" at Ernescleugh, a fine mansion facing the sea, and perched on a lofty eminence, was like any other in a wealthy and noble family.

Before the windows, stretched away in distance the vast extent of the dark blue German Sea, with here and there a white sail, or the long wreathed smoke of a steamer visible; and just as the company sat down to dinner, they might have seen, had not the curtains been closely drawn, the light on the Isle of May, about five-and-twenty miles distant, at the mouth of the Firth of Forth, twinkling redly out upon the waste of waters.

Save the wines, everything on the table was Scotch: the fish were from the adjacent sea or the Leader; the beef and mutton bred and fed on the Lammermuir hills; the vegetables and flowers were reared by the gardener at Ernescleugh; but all these figured in the bill of fare under French names, as potages, poissons, relevés, and entrées—a source of sore bewilderment to plain folks like the Rev. Gideon M'Guffog, parish minister; Dr. Squills, the Lawyer, and the Baron Bailie of Willowdean, when once or so in the year they were invited to a state dinner at Ernescleugh.

Everard Home, the Master, a fashionable looking young man of a very good style, in absence of the Lord, his father, who was on diplomatic service in the Ionian Isles, placed Lady Wedderburn on his right. Sir John handed the hostess to her place, and Cyril, to his mother's satisfaction, led in Gwenny; but then no other lady was present.

When Cyril looked at the unexceptionable wife his mother urged upon him, with her delicate neck and arms, so snow-white when contrasted with her black dress and jet ornaments, her rich Indian shawl of alternate black, gold, and scarlet stripes, diamonds flashing out here and there, as bright as her own eyes, his mind wandered away involuntarily to little lonely Mary, in her plain stuff attire; her sole ornaments a brooch and collar.

Lady Ernescleugh, a more showy, dowager-looking, and though fair-haired, an older and haughtier style of woman than Lady Wedderburn, with very good taste, wore a black dress of the richest velvet, trimmed only with silver grey grebe, as all her guests were in mourning, and both families had been intimate for years.

As three of the gentlemen present belonged to the service, a little "shop" would creep into their conversation, which ran chiefly on the approaching war, and the mustering of armaments by sea and land; for by the London papers of the previous day it was fast becoming apparent, as the Master said, "that matters were looking less and less rosy in the East;" and Lady Ernescleugh, who had recently got him transferred from the Line to the Scots Fusileer Guards, in the hope that he might soldier only in London, and never encounter harder service than might be seen at Windsor, in the Wellington Barracks, at the Bank, or the Tower, was both alarmed and disgusted to find that several battalions of the Household Brigade were detailed to form a portion of the army of the East—the force destined to protect Turkey from the Russians; "those barbarous Russians!" she added, "whom she and Ernescleugh, when he was Ambassador at St. Petersburg, found to be little better than their forefathers are described to have been under Catharine."

"The Semiramis of the North," said Robert Wedderburn.

"And we all know how wicked her times were," said Lady Ernescleugh.

How little could Cyril foresee to what this conversation was to lead; when the young host said, laughing—

"By Jove, mother, there is more wickedness now in the world than ever existed then. Yes, even among ourselves," he added, wiping the champagne froth from his fair moustache, "only we don't always see it."

"How, Everard? I do not understand."

"It is more subtle, more refined, more cunning, and much better bred."

"The latter is certainly some advantage," said Cyril.

"Besides, Wedderburn, we don't call our little peccadilloes by such deuced hard names as our rough ancestors did—that is all."

"I do not quite understand you, Everard," said Lady Ernescleugh, smiling, but with a little air of pique; "you seem to be aiming at something or some one."

Cyril, who had been talking to Gwenny, now became aware that the Master was bending over his wine glass, and saying something to Horace Ramornie, in a low tone, but laughing and confidentially. He detected the name of "Mary Lennox," and after a time those alarming words, "By Jove, Ramornie, it could not be termed a summer flirtation, as he was driving her home through the snow, at midnight, too. Queer, is it not? for we all know the fellow's character: but then the poor girl is so left to herself, in that old house by her ailing father, that"—here his voice sank lower—"but it is a pity, for she is so pretty!"

What had happened? To whom was he referring? Cyril felt his ears tingling, his heart grow still, and his face turn pale; all the more so that the clear keen eyes of his mother were on him, and he remembered the conversation in her boudoir.

He burned with impatience until the three ladies withdrew to the drawing-room; and the moment they had been bowed out, and he and the other gentlemen resumed their seats, ere closing up towards their young host, he very plainly asked, "what they had been talking about?"

"The strangest thing in the world," replied Horace, with a serious expression in his quiet dark eyes; "a scandalous story concerning the daughter of old Oliver Lennox, of Lonewoodlee. Of course, you know the girl; by sight, at least."

"Scandalous!" repeated Cyril, making a violent effort to control himself, though there came a flash from his eye, lurid as that from a cannon's mouth, and there came a terrible frown from his brow, which he concealed by resting it on his hand. "And this story?"

"Is, that she spent a night in the house of Chesterhaugh."

"Take care, take care," said Sir John; "she represents one of the oldest families in the Merae."

"A fact!" persisted the Master of Ernescleugh, in a low tone; "she spent there a night, or nearly so, about the time you were so mysteriously missing, Wedderburn. I was riding home from Greenlaw, accompanied by a groom; there had been a severe fall of snow, and just as we drew near the gate of Chesterhaugh, it was opened by old Tony Heron, the keeper, and out came Rooke Chesters, in that bang-up waggonette of his, with Miss Lennox seated by his side. I could swear to her, though she was well muffled up in a railway-rug. The time was past twelve, and he was evidently driving her home! Now we all know that ladies, old or young, don't visit Rooke Chesters. It is an ugly story, and I would rather not have known it."

Cyril's voice sounded strange, even to himself; but he asked, calmly—

"Did you see her face, Home?"

"No. She was closely veiled; but I know her little hat with the golden pheasant's plume."

Cyril remembered that he had shot that pheasant.

"Did you speak with her?"

"No. We passed each other at a hard trot."

"Then what proof have you, beyond mere suspicion, that the lady was Miss Lennox at all?"

There was something categorical in Cyril's tone which made Everard Home tug his moustache; but he replied—

"My groom got a match for his cigar from the gatekeeper, Tony Heron, whose information put the matter beyond a doubt, and Chesters' groom, Trayner, confirmed the story next day, with many a joke Miss Lennox would not like to have heard. But pass the wine, the decanters stand with you, my Royal Fusileer."

What horrible mystery, worse even than that of his own disappearance, lay concealed under all this? Was Rooke Chesters ordained by fate to be the evil genius of them both? Heron, the gatekeeper, the groom of Chesters, and Ernescleugh were cognizant of the story, and Mary's name and honour were a joke and a source of vulgar and malevolent speculation in every servants'-hall and household in the Merse! A stunned sensation came over him. Even were the story utterly false it was a terrible one, and the most degrading deductions would be drawn from it; and even as he sat and thought over it, mechanically passing the decanter, and filling and emptying his glass, an age seemed to have elapsed since yester-evening by the stile—a mighty gulf to have opened between him and Mary Lennox.

"I usually make it a legal rule," said Robert Wedderburn, "only to believe the half of what I see, and nothing that I simply hear. These groom fellows may have been mistaken, after all; but it is passing strange!"

Cyril could have embraced his brother for these words; but still the story had gone abroad.

Cyril now remembered of Mary admitting that Chesters had addressed her in the language of love; and yet she had ventured to spend some hours—gossips said a night—in the house, the house of a man with a reputation so tainted.

He also remembered her strange emotion when they last met. Was it compunction for her own perfidy, or affected doubt of his love, or neither, or what was it? Alas! he knew not what or whom to believe in now.

Her doubts must have been of herself and of her own faith; not of him or his faith! His Mary, so pure and gentle in eye and manner, to be subjected even to the glances of a man like Rooke Chesters was exasperating. What then was he to think of the companionship of hours? He knew that Chesters visited occasionally her bedridden father, hence an interview could be nothing novel to either; but fast in his passionate and impulsive heart, the emotions of jealousy, doubt, and mortification became predominant.

He almost loathed the Master of Ernescleugh for his unwitting communication; but he concealed all he felt, for the bitter conviction forced itself upon him, that if Mary Lennox were unworthy of his love, there would then be more reason than ever to hide that love from all. So those who saw him, as he sat at table chatting of politics, the coming war, the points of this horse or that terrier or pointer, could little have dreamed of the volcano that was in his heart, through which a hundred varying emotions were sweeping.

There were utter perplexity and keen distress; shame and doubt, jealousy and wounded self-esteem. Could it really be the case that she had encouraged the advances of two—of Chesters and himself—as lovers, and on hearing of the loss of one had gone, actually gone to the house of the other? He had known of such things. There was his old flame at Canterbury, who had beaded the cigar-case; but, pshaw! she was a garrison-hack of ten years standing, and was known to every corps from Chatham to China.

What did it all mean, or what would it all mean? To be the rival of Chesters would be humiliation enough. He was grieved and maddened by the whole affair; for his secret love, the light and joy of his soul, was about to be quenched now.

His family—his mother, at least—had heard of it; and knowing, as they and she did, the reputation of Chesters, could he speak now of making her his wife; and yet he loved her so! Surely she would be able to explain it all; but still the ugly cause for explanation existed.

Why had she concealed the whole circumstance from him? Why such reticence? There was something in this fact that filled him with dire and dark suspicion, and but yesterday he had placed a ring on her wedding finger, a token of their solemn betrothal before God, and amid the silence of the starlight and the dewy evening he had tenderly taken her to his breast and called her his wife—"the wife of his heart;" and yet she had acted thus in the time of his absence—of his supposed death—and made her name and honour the sport of gossips, of grooms and gate-keepers!

If so artful, why decline on any terms or pretence the proposal of marriage he had made her? Chesters had insinuated something to her of himself (Cyril) and Gwenny, something to excite her jealousy and to pique her by her own admission; thus they must have been talking confidentially, and to what purpose?

So did he torment himself, viewing the circumstance in all its worst points. Glass after glass of strong, deep-coloured, and heady old Madeira did Cyril imbibe; and then others of Grande Chartreuse and Curaçoa, by way of chasse-café, ere the gentlemen took their coffee and joined the ladies; indeed Cyril, though invariably most temperate, on this night seemed not to care how much he drank, provided he drowned, or even deadened, care for the time.

On entering the drawing-room he was painfully conscious, by a peculiar expression, almost a radiant one, in his mother's face, that Lady Ernescleugh had told her the whole of this obnoxious story, this horrible esclandre, about the girl he had hoped or meant to marry; to whom he was solemnly but secretly plighted, and whom he loved with inexpressible tenderness.

There was a steady glitter in his mother's eye that provoked him, and he turned to Gwenny, who was idling over the keys of the piano, as if waiting for some one to speak with her.

He said something, he knew not what, and she replied without his seeming to hear or understand her; but she immediately began to play with more animation. How nimbly and gracefully her white fingers wandered over the ivory keys, making even them seem almost dull in colour by comparison; and he looked on, and turned the leaves of the music, as one in a terrible dream, ignorant or heedless whether Gwenny was playing a Highland Reel or the "Soldier's March" in Faust, for the soul of him he could not have told, as he heard only the voices of his mother and Lady Ernescleugh, as they lay back in a crimson satin fauteuil, with their heads stooped towards each other, and talking over their glittering fans.

"They are no doubt a strange set," said his mother, "that small family of Lonewoodlee" (small, indeed! thought Cyril). "The father, a quarrelsome old person, has had, as you know, endless law disputes with Sir John; but, luckily for us, has always lost them. A spendthrift, he is now a bankrupt; and his girl, though so quiet and modest in aspect and manner, must be a designing minx."

"But, my dear Lady Wedderburn, quiet ones are always the deepest. 'Smooth waters,' you are aware," said Lady Ernescleugh, with a little laugh.

"And who knows what she may be, if all were known?"

"The esclandre about visiting a bachelor of Captain Chesters' proclivities does not surprise me a bit; no doubt it is the result of her bringing-up, or rather the want of bringing-up."

"She has been motherless for years," urged Lady Wedderburn, gently.

"Hence the result," replied Lady Ernescleugh, a cold and haughty dame, who had never perhaps committed a solecism in her life, and never pardoned one in others. "I am so glad we have never had her here, though the girl is handsome and presentable enough."

"And now that Gwenny has come to Willowdean, my countenancing her, even by a casual bow, is impossible. I have already passed her at church and elsewhere before the story came out; and one cannot be too careful whom one knows, for you are aware, my dear Lady Ernescleugh, that——" and here his mother's voice sank to a whisper, but Cyril was nearly driven mad by what he had heard.

"Dear Aunt," said Gwenny, "I do not know the unfortunate young person of whom you are talking——"

"And must never do so."

"But I am reminded of a maxim of my poor papa's."

"Ah! and this maxim?"

"Was always, 'Sift news first, and swallow it afterwards.' Proverbs are bad taste, I believe; but he often said this when he heard wild stories of Thugs and Dacoits, of stranglings and poisonings, of men being carried off by tigers, and all the odd things that happen in Indian life."

"But, Gwenny," said Cyril, patting her white shoulder, and looking very much as if he would like to kiss her, "this is not India, but prosaic, self-righteous, and censorious Scotland."

"True, Cyril," added Horace Ramornie, who had also drawn near Gwenny: "the world here finds no fault with imprudence, or even wickedness; but great fault with either being found out. So with this girl's rash visit to Chesterhaugh, in which there may have been no harm; but I am sorry for her old father's sake, though I have rarely seen him, and sorry for her own."

"But the fact of spending four or five hours alone with an enterprising fellow like Chesters has an ugly sound about it," said Robert.

"You speak with the natural suspicion of a lawyer; Horace with the generosity of a soldier," retorted Cyril, on whom all these remarks fell like molten lead.

Thus, one of the very ends which Chesters had in view when he took advantage of the snowstorm, and by a special falsehood, framed between him and Trayner, contrived to detain the restless Mary in his house, seemed on the point of being achieved; for there are many men in the world like him—men who seek to blacken the reputation of the very girls they mean to betray, to forward their own purpose by dislocating them from the sympathy, protection, and even compassion of men.

As for the pity of their own sex, that is easily lost!

To Cyril the rest of the evening passed away like a nightmare; and at last, to his infinite relief, the carriage and phaeton came to the door, and Ernescleugh, the frowning rocks, the sea, and the distant light that twinkled on the Isle of May, were all left behind as they drove homeward inland.

Sir John wished to smoke; so he, Robert, and Horace were in the open phaeton, while Cyril sat in the carriage with his mother and Gwenny. Of what had they been arranging for the London season he knew nothing, and cared less. When that time came, he should be, he hoped, face to face with the Cossacks.

He was sternly moody and silent, and both failed to extract a word from him. His mother knew his secret; with her he was past acting, and endurance could endure no more.

She stole her soft hand into his—the hand that in infancy and youth had never tired of caressing him—and whispered in his ear—

"My beloved Cyril, a noble heart like yours was not meant to be wasted on a worthless girl like Mary Lennox of Lonewoodlee."

Cruel words, though she said them ever so softly and tenderly; but they put a finishing stroke to his misery, and he started as if stung by a wasp.

On arriving at home, he hastened to his own room, and desired Gervase Asloane, the butler, to bring him a bumper of champagne; and with the wine Asloane brought him a letter. He tore it open. It was from Chesters, the first he had ever received from him, and he rapidly perused it, with surprise and rage mingling in his heart. It ran thus:—

"Army and Navy Club, London.

"My Dear Wedderburn,—Glad to hear of your turning up again in this sublunary sphere; but sorry that I could not stay at home to congratulate you in person. I suppose we shall see all about it in the papers—Bell's Life, most likely? I had to leave in haste, as Bill Trayner put me up to a good thing or two, about to come off on the Turf. Sir John cashed up your IOU like a brick; but I mean to let Chesterhaugh—put it out to dry-nurse—and go abroad, or take service in one of the proposed foreign battalions. Have you made up your book? The City and Suburban is the next good handicap set for decision. Eugenie is said to be really a good thing. Those who back her won't regret it. 10 to 30 are taken for Varna; and 1000 to 10 against Baltic." ["What the devil is all this to me!" muttered Cyril. "Bah!"]

"Awful scrape yours was. What the deuce did you do to the bay hunter to render it unmanageable? How excited that little girl at Lonewoodlee was about the affair. I had no end of trouble, one night, before I got her consoled; but consoled she was in the end. And now, with best wishes, old fellow, believe me ever yours faithfully,

"R. R. CHESTERS."

"Insolent scoundrel!" exclaimed Cyril, before whom came in memory the mocking laugh, the sinister smile, and the green-grey, phosphorescent-like eyes of the writer, as he crushed up the jibing letter, and tossed it in the fire; but not before he observed that it was sealed with the onyx ring which bore the arms of Louis De la Fosse, the young French traveller whom Chesters had so unmercifully pillaged at play.

There was a tone of banter in Chesters' letter, and of insolent reference to Mary, that filled the heart of Cyril with fury.

What meant this sudden horror? Cyril asked in his heart: an intrigue with Chesters at the very time when he himself was supposed to have perished by a violent and mysterious death. How could he question her about it without degradation to them both? and yet, as their mutual relations stood, confidence between them was necessary, most necessary. If he should speak of it, what would her answer be, yea or nay? If the former, how was she to explain it away? If the latter, must he believe her? Oh, it was maddening! An intrigue with Chesters—of all men in the world, Chesters!

Perhaps it was about her father's protested bill she had visited him. If so, what terms might not Chesters have made with her for it? So, as jealousy makes the food it feeds on, he wove endless pictures of treachery and duplicity, and vowed to call out Chesters, and shoot him down like a dog, on the first available opportunity, forgetting that even then, in the year we were to storm the heights of Alma, duels had become out of fashion and forbidden.

He thanked Heaven for the prospect of a speedy war, and a hot one, too. Anything was better than enduring what he suffered. Would he resign his leave and rejoin the Fusileers at once, or remain till the last hour, and make fierce love to his cousin Gwenny?

Perhaps it was all some horrible mistake, which might be easily explained. But why had Mary so studiously avoided all reference to the circumstance? Desperately he clung to hope, and resolved himself to see about it. And now he, the heedless young officer, the man of pleasure and amusement, wealth and position, felt for the first time in his life that sickening and gnawing emotion of clamorous anxiety in his heart which Mary had endured during the suspense consequent to his disappearance, since Chesters had engendered in her heart a jealousy of Gwendoleyne Wedderburn, and never perhaps so keenly as on the evening she walked to Chesterhaugh.

Cyril knew that he should have no further opportunity of questioning the Master of Ernescleugh, as the leave of the latter was on the point of expiry, and he was to start by train on the morrow to rejoin his battalion of the Guards in the Wellington Barracks, London.