CHAPTER XI.
HEW MAKES MISCHIEF.
Finding, as we have shown, that any appeal to Mary Montgomerie was vain, Hew determined, as he muttered, to give the general 'an eye-opener on the subject.'
He knew that 'a jilted suitor is hopelessly and irreparably ridiculous, and that the jilt is apt to score the honours.' Without an engagement existing between them, there could be no jilting in the case of him and Mary, but in his blind, unmeaning hate of Falconer, his jealousy and avarice, he never thought of that; and only considered that the wishes of Sir Piers and himself, and the object for which he had been deliberately brought home from India, were on the point of being baffled, or set utterly aside, by the intervention of an unexpected interloper, to blacken and defeat whom was but just and right, he deemed on his own part, and in his own behalf.
Without a just cause he had been from the first instinctively the foe of Cecil Falconer; and ill-founded enmities, it is said, are ever the most obstinate and bitter.
He found Sir Piers in the library, lounging in an easy-chair, smoking a beautiful hookah which he had brought with him from India, and deep in the pages of the Field.
'Can I have your attention for a little time, Sir Piers?' he asked.
'Yes, my boy; fire away. About what do you wish to speak?'
'A subject very near my heart, as you know,' replied Hew, leaning on the back of the old baronet's chair: 'Mary Montgomerie.'
'God bless the dear girl!' exclaimed Sir Piers, as his brightening eyes were raised inquiringly to Hew's face. 'It is time some arrangement were made by you and her; for Mary deserves the purest and best love the heart of man can offer her.'
'Such love is mine, dear Sir Piers,' whined Hew.
'I hope so.'
'But I come not to speak of that.'
'Of what, then?'
'Of Mary and your new friend, Falconer.'
'Falconer!' exclaimed Sir Piers, staring blankly at Hew through his gold eyeglasses.
'Seriously, sir, it seems to me that, thanks to the propinquity your unwise hospitality has afforded them, Mary is drifting, with that fellow Falconer, the way that many other young ladies have drifted before her.'
'What does this mean?' exclaimed Sir Piers, wheeling his chair sharply round. 'Worry, of course; and, d—n it! I am getting too old to have any worry—had enough of it in my time, up country! Has propinquity not helped you? Gad, sir, in my day, I should like to have seen the biped that could turn my flank with any girl; but why the devil don't you push the trenches yourself?'
'But don't you think they have become too intimate?' asked Hew, with growing irritation.
'Why? How?'
'With all this singing, music, and philandering.'
'Pooh! not at all. Let them amuse themselves. I was once their age. It is no use making a fuss; but why the deuce don't you cut in, and sing, play, and philander too, as you call it? Besides, Falconer in a few hours now returns to Dumbarton, or to headquarters, and there is an end of it all! To me, Hew, it seems natural enough that young Falconer should be attracted by our Mary; but aware of her position, of my views and your wishes, and more than all, your prospects and rank when I am gone,' he added, glancing at a portrait of his dead son, 'I should very much doubt if she encouraged any particular attention on his part.'
'There I don't agree with you; and when once a girl's heart becomes warped, or interested in a fellow, she cares little what his rank or position may be; and of this Falconer's family or antecedents we know nothing.'
'True, by Jove!' said Sir Piers, whose pet weakness was now interested. 'He seemed not to know, himself, which I thought odd. I wonder what arms he uses? The Halkertoun family carried azure, a falcon argent crowned with a ducal crown.'
'Arms!' said Hew, with a mocking laugh. 'If all I suspect be true, his have been quartered and attested by the Blue Bottle Herald and Pimlico Pursuivant. But apart from his dangling after Mary, I have my own reasons for feeling glad that Eaglescraig will soon be rid of him.'
'He is a presentable young fellow—a Cameronian too, and bears her Majesty's commission,' urged Sir Piers in favour of Falconer, whom he really liked; 'but what are the personal reasons you refer to?'
'Because in a little time he would have rooked—ruined me!'
'How?'
'At écarté.'
'At écarté?'
'Yes. Before I went to Bickerton—to keep out of his way, in fact—he inveigled me to play, night after night, when all others had retired. My play is always mild—but his was wild! His constant phrase was that it was so ennuyant to play for low stakes, so we always doubled, and even trebled, them—I always losing.'
'Why?'
'Because,' replied Hew, deliberately, while a malevolent gleam shot from his parti-coloured eyes, 'it is seldom safe to play écarté, or piquet either, after dinner, and when drinking brandy-and-soda with a fellow who takes nothing—is too wary to do so.'
'And so you have lost?' said Sir Piers, flushing with indignation.
'Fearfully; and I suspect the scoundrel was in the habit of dropping his cards.'
'What!' roared Sir Piers, aghast. 'The devil! Do you say so?' He pinched his gold eyeglasses tighter on his high aristocratic nose, and absolutely glared through them at Hew, as he turned his keen face full round to await what he had to say, and with a face expressive of intense chagrin, disappointment, and dismay.
'I do not say so—I only suspect,' said Hew, afraid that he, in the extremity of his malice, had roused a storm it might be difficult to quell, or see the end of.
'And he is one of the Cameronians!' exclaimed Sir Piers, in an agitated voice. 'Gad! in my time, he would have had his hands tied behind his back, and been drummed to the barrack-gate. Do you actually tell me this? Gambling, in camp or quarters, I never permitted for a moment—they are strictly forbidden by the thirty-fourth paragraph of the sixth section of the Queen's Regulations. But the idea of gambling and cheating at Eaglescraig! D—me, I'll explode! I remember that, when we were cantoned at Jubbulpore, before we were relieved by the Seventy-Eighth, with bag, baggage, and twelve bagpipes——'
'But our play is ended now, Sir Piers—once and for ever!' interrupted Hew, as he shivered at the idea of an Indian anecdote, which was certain to follow whenever Sir Piers mounted his Oriental hobby-horse.
'Ended; I should think so! But, as we used to say in India, beware of a black Brahmin and a white pariah!'
The point of this aphorism was not very apparent; but Hew, satisfied that he had now completely ruined Cecil Falconer so far as Sir Piers was concerned, was so well pleased that he listened to a sudden Bengal narrative of a thirty days' march, amid the horrors of Dacoits and Thugs, swamps and jungles, tigers and snakes, dismounted guns and broken bones, dead bullocks and swollen rivers; and then, after a pause, during which the baronet had been reflecting with knitted brows, he said:
'But to return to the first subject, Hew. Do you mean to tell me, and do you seriously think, that this—a—a—person, has made any undue impression upon her—upon Mary?'
'From my soul I do, sir, and know it to my bitter cost!'
Another angry malediction escaped the general.
'I cannot desire him to leave my house, though right well disposed to do so,' said he; 'but a little time will see him gone now, thank Heaven! I am deeply concerned by what you tell me, my dear Hew; all the more so, that I have been the unwitting means of bringing all this unforeseen mischief to pass.'
'Only an hour ago I interrupted a little scene in the grotto there could be no mistaking! He was bending tenderly over her, and uttering sighs that would have softened the heart of a pawnbroker.'
'Don't use such odious similes, Hew!' exclaimed Sir Piers. 'Whatever may be the personal merits or demerits of this young man,' he continued, with an angry laugh, 'apart from my firm intentions, your wishes, and Mary's own future welfare, it would never do for her to make a mésalliance—to throw herself away upon an ambitious adventurer, on whose name there too evidently rests the stain of obscurity, at least. It is well that he is going, Hew! I want no other catastrophe, no second fiasco, to occur to a Montgomerie of Eaglescraig!' he added, with deep and sorrowful frown, as he referred to a family episode we shall have to relate ere long. 'But here comes Mary, most opportunely. Leave us, Hew, and I shall talk with her alone.'
As Hew retired, with disappointed passion and gratified revenge curiously mingled in his face, the thought flashed upon the mind of Sir Piers that expostulation or advice might only prove futile, and, by exciting opposition, make the matter worse (as he had bitterly experienced once before in his life), though he knew not how far the matter had gone, or how deeply love had taken root in the hearts of both Mary and Falconer. Moreover, he thought that as separation, which he deemed a safe cure, was so close at hand, it might be better to ignore the communications of Hew, and let matters, after Falconer's departure, fall into their old routine, yet having the intended marriage of Mary and his heir pressed forward, in spite of all opposition; but now, the sudden and apparently opportune entrance of the fair culprit herself overset his calmer calculations.