For the next few days Cecil Falconer continued to give Hew a 'gey wide berth,' as the old keeper phrased it, at the covers, where each day's shooting was precisely like that which preceded it. If Hew, thought Falconer, were capable of such mad jealousy and dastardly cruelty after a few hours' acquaintance, of what might he not be capable and guilty in the time to come?
Was it his blundering stupidity which, as the gamekeeper said, had nearly cost Sir Piers his life once before, or a spirit of infernal malevolence to revenge the petty dispute about the cock-pheasant, that made him fire his gun in the way he had done?
At times Cecil was inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, and as he was not of a resentful temperament, he gradually either forgot the event, or remembered it only as a mistake, that might have proved more serious than it did. So each day's shooting passed pleasantly over, and the evenings were devoted to music in the drawing-room, where Mrs. Garth dispensed tea at a pretty little oval table—fragrant orange Pekoe, out of tiny eggshell cups, without handles—and where Sir Piers fell fast asleep over his Scotsman; and the night wound up by Hew luring Falconer into what he termed 'a little mild play' in the smoking-room—play from which the latter always rose a loser, without being able precisely to know how.
Save for this kind of thing, which he could ill afford, Falconer thought the brief term of his leave would be delightfully spent at Eaglescraig. A 'green yule' had come and gone, without skating or curling, and the owl whooped nightly on the old tower-head, where the winter wind shook the masses of ivy on the time-worn walls; and the New Year was ushered in with well-bred joviality, rather than the hearty old-fashioned uproariousness of the olden time, though in the drawing-room the chorus could be heard from the servant's hall, where Mr. Tunley led it with joyous vociferation, singing,
'Here's a health to the year that's awa'!'
And precisely as the house-clocks struck twelve—midnight—the house-door was unbarred with great formality, and thrown open to let the Old Year out, and the New Year in; and rising from his elbow-chair, Sir Piers kissed his niece Mary, and then old Mrs. Garth in a courtly fashion, an example Hew Montgomerie was not slow to follow on the soft cheek of the former, while Falconer looked laughingly, yet perhaps enviously, on, and dared only press her hand as he did that of Miss Erroll; and then there was a general handshaking with Mr. Balderstone and other old friends who had been invited to join the social circle.
The rubicund Mr. Tunley offered, in the name of all the servants, to drink their old master's good health, and the health of all the family; and Sir Piers, natheless all his pride, cordially shook the old butler's hand, and each wished the other many happy years to come; and he went through the same ceremony with all in the servants' hall.
In all this homely warmth, mutual kindness and goodwill, there was much that charmed Falconer; for though belonging to a Scottish regiment, and one famous in history, educated as he had been far away from his native country, and under peculiar circumstances, he knew little or nothing of the ways and customs of the latter.
He had been much a wanderer, and never knew a home, save such as he had found with his regiment; so there was much in the little circle at Eaglescraig to delight him. Save with Hew, he won golden opinions from all there; his genial manner, spirited good-humour, handsome bearing, and facile mode of adapting himself to those among whom chance threw him—a mode that came, perhaps, of his having been educated abroad—all seemed to make him a prime favourite.
He could speak much, and pleasantly, of what he had seen and where he had been; he was a reader, too, and the fruit of his reading cropped up pleasantly from time to time in the course of conversations that Hew could take little or no part in, greatly to his own wrath.
'What a place this is for gammon and spinach!' thought Hew, who viewed all this with extreme distaste, and still more the intimacy that progressed between this 'interloper,' as he deemed him, and Mary Montgomerie; for they nightly played together the mazurkas of Chopin and selections from the songs of Mendelssohn and the operas of Verdi, while Hew looked darkly and dubiously on, thinking there was in all this far more than met the eye; and Sir Piers thought, with a smile, that a Cameronian of his time would certainly not have shone much as a pianist.
Mary was always so happy in herself, that she usually made all others equally so; thus, in her society, the hours, with Falconer, seemed to fly like minutes.
Hew had—unknown to Sir Piers—become so seriously involved in monetary matters during his sojourn in India, that it was next to impossible for him to return there; and his chief hope for retrieving himself and doing well for the future lay in a marriage with Mary Montgomerie, rather than the prospective succession to the baronetcy and to the acres of Eaglescraig, for Sir Piers was a hale old fellow and might live for twenty years yet. Indeed, everyone said so.
Thus he viewed with extreme bitterness and jealousy the visit of Falconer and some of the details attendant on that visit, and his closely-set and parti-coloured eyes twinkled dangerously as he muttered:
'Devil take me if I don't bowl that fellow out yet!'
If Hew had been tender and true, less brusque and coarse—had really loved Mary with a loving heart—she might have felt some compunction for her laughing indifference to his suit; but she knew well his avarice, his monetary hopes, and suspected some of his vices; and, more than all, her proud spirit revolted at the idea of being made by her father's will the mere puppet of a family compact, and compelled to marry any man.
'I heard you arranging a riding-party to-morrow, Mary,' said he, during a pause (or while Falconer was being accompanied in an Italian song by Miss Erroll), and bending over Mary till his moustache nearly touched the white and close division in her rich dark-brown hair, while she idled over an album of Indian photographs.
'Yes—you will go, of course, Hew?' said she, looking up at him with her sunny hazel eyes bright with a smile.
'I would rather be excused,' he replied, sulkily.
'Why?'
'Why? because I should be only in the way.'
'Please yourself, Hew; but I do not understand you,' said Mary, colouring with annoyance; 'what do you mean?'
'I mean,' said he bluntly, and in a low, concentrated voice, 'that before this Cameronian fellow came, you and I were—were——'
'Were what?' asked Mary, sharply.
'Well, friends, at least.'
'And are we not friends now?' she said, laying her hand on his arm. He looked lingeringly at it—a lovely hand it was, round and white, with a golden bangle clasping the dimpled wrist—and he said in a low voice:
'I had hoped we should in time be something dearer——'
'Oh, stuff! Dear Hew, don't begin that sort of thing here,' replied Mary, laughing to conceal her annoyance; 'you will forget all about it when you go back to India again.'
Hew's face darkened ominously.
'But you don't like India?' added Mary, somewhat teasingly, while a roguish smile dimpled her cheeks.
'I hate it, as you know well; yet I may have to return there, for all that you care about it, or me.'
'There are tigers there, and snakes, and all those sort of things, Hew?'
'Yes, and perhaps you would like them to eat me?' he asked, viciously.
'Oh, Hew! how can you speak thus!' she exclaimed, laughing. 'I never said so.'
'But you thought it, all the same.'
She laughed louder at this, for Hew's peculiar love-making, if it annoyed, always excessively amused her at the same time—a fatal element for him.
The morning of the proposed ride proved a beautiful one, clear, bracing, and sunny, and the horses were betimes brought round from the stables to the stately perron in front of the house, where Hew was smoking a cigar, when the girls came forth in their riding-habits, attended by Cecil Falconer.
'And you are resolved not to accompany us, Hew?' asked Mary, coaxingly, desirous to please him.
'Yes,' he replied, bluntly.
'What a pity the season is not summer,' she said to Falconer, 'we could have such pleasant sketching expeditions, picnics, afternoon tea on the lawn, croquet-matches and lawn-tennis; but our picnics are so jolly, and we always use the big omnibus, in which the servants drive on Sundays to the kirk of Eaglescraig.'
'Croquet is only good for one thing,' muttered Hew; 'it enables a fellow to loaf with some girl he is soft upon; otherwise I never could see anything in it,' he added in his growling tone.
Slender and willowy looked the figure of Mary in her tight, well-fitted habit, even more so than that of Miss Erroll, who was undoubtedly a very handsome girl.
Hew, having been in India, had been compelled to learn riding; but he was a timid and indifferent cavalier, afraid of a horse, indeed, and he could never have done what he saw Mary doing, tickling, patting, and kissing the nose of her favourite pad, ere she was swung into her saddle so deftly by Cecil, to whose care and companionship, together with those of Annabelle Erroll, he was now compelled to relinquish her, as the three departed, merrily and laughingly, to visit the ruined castle of Kilbirnie, amid its stately parks and beautiful gardens.
Down the long avenue they went under oaks and elms that had been growing since the field of Pinkecleugh was fought and lost; and between a pair of grand old carved iron gates, surmounted by a coat-of-arms and supported by massive stone pillars covered with grey lichen and green moss, and past the lodge, the occupant of which, an old wooden-legged Cameronian, stood at 'attention' as they issued out upon the roadway, watched by the evil eyes of Hew, to begin a two hours' 'spin' through a rich and pastoral country.
Conversation of the stereotyped kind, concerning the weather and so forth, had been long ignored by Falconer and Miss Montgomerie.
'I shall show you some beautiful scenery,' said she, as they shortened their horses' pace to a walk; 'it is of the pastoral kind, of course—for this is the land of dairy-farms and Dunlop cheeses—all hill and dale; and though there are no mountains, we are very proud of Cunninghame,' she added, laughing. 'Do you draw?'
'Yes.'
'And paint?'
'A little, in water-colours.'
'What a pity it is winter-time! Were the season open, we might sketch together, and how delightful that would be!'
Cecil Falconer cordially agreed with her.
'You must know that I love all this place dearly, wood, wold, and water,' exclaimed the girl, with a bright smile, as she looked around her with eyes the greatest beauty of which was their happy expression, girlish truthfulness, and the innocence of a nature that had never sought either to simulate or conceal an emotion; 'but I fear you will deem me very provincial.'
'Why—for loving your native place?'
'Ah! but this is not my native place. I was born far away from here; but since poor papa followed mamma to her grave, I have lived at Eaglescraig, and all the happiest memories of my childhood, and girlhood too, are connected with it; so I love the bold rocky scenery, the great bluffs that overhang the Firth of Clyde, and the green pastoral valleys of Cunninghame. I know every farm and cottage, every coppice and wimpling burn, in the bailiwick.'
'Is it long since your parents died, Miss Montgomerie?' asked Falconer, as their conversation began to take a personal turn.
'Yes; oh, so long ago that I can only remember them as if in a dream!'
'That is sad.'
'And yours—was your father in the Cameronians?'
'He died when I was in infancy; and where, I scarcely know.'
'But he, too, was a soldier, of course?'
'I think not,' said Falconer, evasively.
'I am too curious—pardon me; but I am a terrible talker,' she added, and changed the subject, which Annabelle Erroll perceived had brought an unwonted colour to the young man's cheeks.
Falconer had often thought that, had his father lived, there would have been a great difference in his own life somehow, though he could not distinctly define the nature of it.
'How I wish your friend had been here with you,' Mary Montgomerie said, after a pause.
'Leslie Fotheringhame?'
'Yes; but Sir Piers said it was impossible.'
'He, too, could not leave our detachment.'
'How lonely he must be, shut up in that dull castle of Dumbarton. His name is a scarce one; is he one of the old Fotheringhames of Angus?'
'I believe so,' said Miss Erroll, colouring after she spoke.
'We should have made quite a pleasant quartette!' said Miss Montgomerie. 'Does he sing?'
'Oh yes—so well!' replied Annabelle, ere Falconer could speak.
'How do you know?' asked her friend, laughing.
Annabelle, usually taciturn and silent, now changed colour more perceptibly, and replied:
'Surely Mr. Falconer must have said so! How should I know, otherwise?'
Cecil was perfectly aware that he had never done so, but was puzzled to think how Miss Erroll was aware of his friend's talent.
'You have met, perhaps?' he began.
'In society—yes; people meet each other everywhere nowadays,' she replied, and looked another way.
The three riders were still in view of the loftily-situated house and tall old tower of Eaglescraig, and Hew's eyes, from the terrace, were following them.
He seemed still to see the skill and grace with which—as if he caressed her—Cecil Falconer had swung Mary Montgomerie into her saddle, and the care and tenderness with which he adjusted her stirrup, her habit, and reins. He seemed to see, too, the light in the eyes of both as they scampered down the long avenue, ere he turned away to get a foaming beaker of soda-and-brandy, in Mr. Tunley's pantry, as a panacea for his bitter thoughts.
He watched the trio disappear over a slope, or braehead, where the road dipped downward, and he registered a vow of vengeance on Cecil Falconer if the latter crossed his purposes—a vow all the deeper for being unspoken—and he achieved it terribly when the time came, and it was ultimately to assume a form and force beyond even what he himself could have conceived!
Nature had cursed Hew with a suspicious and jealous disposition; inherent doubt of everyone was a part of that very disposition. Thus, his own total want of success with Mary Montgomerie, on one hand, led him, on the other, to conceive the most exaggerated ideas of the progress Cecil Falconer must already have made with her.
Hew Montgomerie, when he chose, could be 'a good hater,' and, as such, would have been decidedly after the heart of the 'great' English lexicographer, whose hateful addendum was, 'I never forgive an injury;' but Cecil had in no way injured Hew.