Chapter XXIII · THE DAWN OF LOVE.

Prior to all this the intimacy between Horace Ramornie and Gwendoleyne Wedderburn had been ripening with a rapidity that her aunt, had she known of it, would have deemed "frightful" as well as fatal to all her hopes; but still love had never been spoken of between them.

Busy about his estate and the farms thereon; busy too about country matters, and the affairs of the little Burgh of Barony which owned him as patron and superior, Sir John Wedderburn spent much of his time out of doors, and a deal of it in his saddle. Cyril had been entirely occupied by his own secret passion, while Robert was sulky, and affected to be deep in his legal studies, reading up for a forthcoming examination, and frequently went alone fishing. As the household was in mourning there were few invitations given, and few visitors at Willowdean; hence, in spite of all Lady Wedderburn's plans, Horace—not Cyril—and Gwenny were generally thrown together; and what could be more natural than that the young people should learn to love each other?

Yet he dared not speak of the passion that was growing in his heart.

Lady Wedderburn had not been without a dread that the Master of Ernescleugh, young Everard Home, who was every way an agreeable and remarkably good-looking man, might "cut out" both her sons. Gwenny knew that he was the heir to a peerage, and rank would have much weight in the mind of an Indian-bred girl; so she was thankful when his leave of absence expired, and he was recalled to London. She did not speak again to Cyril of Mary Lennox, either tauntingly or otherwise; but once she said to her husband—

"Cyril has been looking pale and unhappy of late, and I know it must be caused by that artful girl at Lonewoodlee. What does the foolish fellow go on about? Absurd! It is only a girl's pretty face, after all."

"Have you forgotten the days of your own youth, and what your face was then to me as Kate Douglas? Ay, and is so still," said the good-natured Baronet, pinching her chin.

"True; but I didn't gad about the country alone on snowy nights with men like Rooke Chesters. Cyril is conscious of her unworthiness; so it is only the memory of a face that disturbs him."

"Don't worry poor Cyril; once with his regiment, he may forget all about her. Yet what does a poet say?—

It was at a ball of the Caledonian Hunt we first met, Kate. And never forget you were once young."

Gwendoleyne Wedderburn thought there was some analogy in the destiny of herself and Horace from the fact of his being so young, and having come, like herself, to Willowdean in his boyhood, without father or mother. Horace was a smart subaltern in the Line now, and had quite considered himself a man in all respects for a few years past; but Gwenny loved to think of him as the lonely boy he had been; for his manner was grave and gentle, and his voice and smile were ever sweet and pleasant to her.

Cyril, we have said, was pre-occupied, and Robert had enough of the student in him to be somewhat brusque, so Horace she preferred undisguisedly, to the infinite chagrin of Lady Wedderburn; and, if truth must be told, somewhat to the amusement of Sir John, who, though he would have been pleased enough to see his son with a bride so suitable and wealthy, was an enemy to all match-making.

The large and stately house of Willowdean, with its shady library, its galleried conservatory, its long corridors hung with valuable pictures, and its spacious garden, was a pleasant place for such sweet companionship; and whatever young Ramornie did, when not with Gwenny, was always done as if in a kind of dream to occupy the blank of time when he could not be with her.

How would time be occupied when they should be parted, perhaps to meet no more!

The garden was older than the house, having belonged to its predecessor, the ancient mansion, "the peel and fortalice of Willowdean;" thus its yew hedges and boxwood borders were thick and dense beyond any to be seen in gardens of more modern date; and in the centre stood the ancient sun-dial, by the gnomon of which Sir John's forefathers had set or regulated their round silver watches that were like turnips in shape, and had perhaps wooden wheels that were worked "by thorl and string."

As yet the garden was only in bud, and there for the first time Gwenny heard with wonder the voice of the cuckoo when she and Horace were planting some rare Indian seeds which she had brought from the Choultry; and she sighed when reflecting that he must be so far away when these seeds became flowers in all their tropical glory; and when (then so bleak and bare), with its famous ribbon-borders of every imaginable colour, the hedges of azaleas and drooping fuchsias under the shelter of the older rows of privet and yew, the clusters of beautiful shrubs and beds of geraniums, verbenas, and calceolarias were in all the bloom and splendour of summer.

And many a delightful drive they had in the park, when Gwenny usually took the reins of the pony-phaeton, for there the grass was smooth as a billiard-table, having been carefully rolled and mowed in season, ever since clover-seeds had first been sown in it, in 1708, by Sir Cyril Wedderburn—the same Baronet who drank the health of James VIII., sword in hand, at Greenlaw Cross, when the Comte de Fourbin's fleet, with the Scots and Irish Brigades on board, was off the Isle of May; who nearly rabbled out the Union Parliament, and played many other political pranks in his time.

The month was still March; but already the park—or "policy," as the Scots called it—was sheeted with pale yellow primroses, where, in the next month the Lent lilies would be in all their golden bloom.

But their drives were not confined to the park, for frequently they had the open carriage. Then Lady Wedderburn and Miss M'Caw were always present; and, as the large and handsome vehicle bowled along the smooth roads, Gwenny would laugh, and like a happy child, clap her hands to the two white-and-black spotted Dalmatian dogs, which bounded along on each side, caracoling amid the dust, and seeming to exult in the dignity of being outriders to such an equipage, reminding her of the bare-footed suwaries she had often seen running beside the elephant of a native prince on the plain of the Choultry.

Poor Horace, however, saw the views and wishes of his aunt pretty plainly, for she was unskilful enough to show her hand to all but Gwenny.

He knew, and felt keenly conscious, of all he owed to the uncle upon whom he had been cast in boyhood, a penniless orphan: his education, his commission and yearly allowance; and though loving Gwenny passionately, and with all his soul—for she seemed the realization of the wife he could love, the ideal of his dreamy hours—he shrank from any declaration that might, perhaps, mar the plans of those to whom he owed everything in the world, and also mar, it might be, the fortune of his relation, his brother officer and friend, for he was ignorant of the recent ties already formed by Cyril.

It was hard for Horace to know and feel that the love he had longed for, the wife he had pictured in many a vision of fervid fancy, was now daily by his side, and yet that he dared not look upon her as more than a friend; while, at the same time, it was impossible to resist the charm, the delight, the intoxication of her presence, and the craving to seek her society; to listen to her voice, to look into her softly-lidded eyes, that were by turns shy, passionate, and full of child-like surprise; to touch her hand timidly, and think of all that might have been.

Ah, what did it all matter! A little time, and it would be a thing of the past, this delightful companionship. Miles upon miles of land and sea must be between them, and the Russian hordes would be before him.

Yet often was the perilous secret, that he loved her, on the point of his lips, on certain occasions that suddenly seemed to invite it.

Attended by a groom they had ridden one day past the house, the park, and woods of Ernescleugh, to the verge of the cliff over which Cyril had been dragged by his horse. The tide was out, and the isolated rock from which he had been rescued by the crew of the fisher-smack was plainly visible, with the gulls wheeling in circles and the white waves boiling round it.

Gwenny was shuddering as she looked alternately down at the rock and upward at the ruins of Fast Castle, perched on the giddy verge of a tremendous cliff, the fragment of a baronial tower "'twixt cloud and ocean hung," with the blue sky visible through its fissures and gaping windows. Laying his right hand on her reins, as if to steady her horse, which the booming of the waves below and the screaming of the seabirds above had startled, he sought in reality but to touch the pretty bridle-hand, that was cased in its tight black leather riding gauntlet, as he said—

"I think you admire this sample of our grim Scottish scenery, Miss Wedderburn?"

"Before I answer you," said she, looking with a bright smile under her veil, which the wind was blowing out like a pennant, "you must tell me why you persist in calling me Miss Wedderburn? Did I not say once before that you were to call me Gwenny? Miss sounds so stiff! All the family at Willowdean, and even cold and hard Lady Ernescleugh, call me Gwenny."

"And by that name I always think of you—in my heart."

"Then call me Gwenny, I insist, as I once did before."

"I do not like to do so, when, when——"

"Is not the name pretty? It was my mamma's."

"Apart from itself, association will ever render it adorable to me."

"Well?"

"Somehow I don't like to do so when Lady Wedderburn is present; something tells me that she would not be pleased," replied Horace, blushing in spite of himself, and then the girl blushed too, for she began to see something of his meaning and the inferences to be drawn from what he said. "But," he added, retaining her reins and hand in his for a little way, "let us leave this giddy verge; it is dangerous with a shying horse."

The groom drew near to make the same remark, and so the occasion was lost.

At another time the news came that the Queen, in conjunction with the Emperor of the French, had at last declared war against Russia!

Gwenny's dark eyes were upon Horace as he read the Times aloud in the conservatory, with a flush on his cheek and a strange emotion in his heart.

"All leaves will be cancelled now!" said he.

"And you, cousin Horace, you will be quite anxious to find yourself in Turkey!"

"I was anxious," said he, in a low voice.

"And what has made you change your mind; surely not dread of danger?"

Her question was a home thrust; but he only answered curtly, while his heart beat quicker and his cheek grew pale—

"I am a soldier, Gwenny."

"Then what has caused the change?

"Dare I tell you?" he asked, in a low and tremulous voice, as he took her hand; "but no, I dare not," he added.

Nor could he have done so then, for Lady Wedderburn was not far from them, feeding a screaming parroquet, whose neck Horace could have wrung with stern joy. Still he was venturing to say something more in an incoherent and desponding way, when Gwenny came close to him, with her soft, serene, and loving eyes smiling into his, and placing her rapid little hand on his mouth, she said—

"Now, Horace, if you love me, silence; for sadness worries me, and I won't be worried or sad till you are gone; and then Heaven knows I shall be sad enough."

She joined her aunt, and again the secret remained untold.

"IF I love her!" thought Horace, with a choking sensation in his throat; but Gwenny had begun to suspect or feel all that he had left untold, through "that silent method of communion which no crowd can prevent persons who know each other well from interchanging."

To all the beauty we have described, a beauty that was dark and pale, yet sparkling, Gwendoleyne added a manner that came with her Welsh blood; it was full of those nameless and indescribable charms which the French, ever so happy in apt phraseology, term folâtre et caressante, winning and playful; but there is no perfection out of novels and romances, so Gwenny, with all her loveliness, was not perfect. She had a fiery little temper at times, which, like her dark eyes and their long lashes, she inherited with her Welsh blood; but she was all perfection to young Horace Ramornie, and in the core of his heart he idolized her!