Though grievously disappointed that his late guest should have proved the gamester Hew described him to be, and not ill-pleased to have a rival of the latter at a distance from Eaglescraig, Sir Piers, to do him justice, in the kindness of his heart, missed his friend, the genial young officer, who had been so patient a listener to those dreary Indian reminiscences, over which Hew openly groaned and secretly swore.
Mrs. Garth and Annabelle Erroll missed him for his musical accomplishments and conversational qualities, and poor Mary missed him more than all, while her aversion to Hew became more undisguised than ever, and he spitefully retorted by saying more than once in her hearing that 'a deuced good lesson had been taught Sir Piers never again to invite, without a due and accredited introduction, any chance-medley fellow to Eaglescraig.'
Her manner to his heir at last drew upon her the animadversion of Sir Piers.
'My dear girl,' said he to her one day, 'I must remonstrate with you, as the betrothed wife of Hew.'
'Betrothed! by whom?' asked Mary, with mingled gravity and anger.
'By me, my darling; as such, I say, you owe him some duty, and some respect, and a deference to his opinions. School yourself to love him properly in the time to come, and not distress your poor old grand-uncle and guardian, who loves you so well for your dead parents' sake.'
'I do not, and cannot love him!' said the girl, wearily.
'Not now, you think; but in time, Mary, in the good time to come,' he continued, stroking her rich, dark hair caressingly, as if she were yet a little child; and when he adopted a pleading tone and manner, rather than those of authority and command, she felt a deeper emotion of pain and annoyance.
'There is no necessity for having romantic notions, or being desperately fond of your intended husband. The notions and the love will come in due time after marriage,' said the old man, who had well-nigh forgotten all about his own early love and marriage, which had come to pass so long ago. 'You have wealth, Mary.'
'What is wealth, if linked with unhappiness?'
'Hew will make you a good husband; if he did not—if he did not!' and the general paused, and grasping the knob of his arm-chair, looked unutterable things at the idea of such a contingency. 'As I have said a hundred times since he came from India, with your fortune added to what I shall leave—all going to Hew as heir of entail—the future baronet of Eaglescraig will, in wealth, be second to none, richer by far than half the peerage; and marry you cannot, without my permission.'
'But to marry when one cannot love is—is——'
'What, girl?' asked Sir Piers, peevishly, for he had not again referred to the suspected fancy for Cecil Falconer, though his mind was full of it.
'Falsehood and dishonesty, rank injustice, and shameful!'
'Well—anything more?' he continued angrily.
'Yes—destruction of soul and body, perhaps.'
'Mary, you do not look beyond the present,' said Sir Piers, with growing sternness, to find his pet scheme so vigorously opposed; 'hence it is my imperative duty to do that for you, and with a firm will and resolute hand to scheme out a happy future.'
'How miserably had he schemed out the future of his poor dead son!' thought Mrs. Garth, as she led Mary away in tears and anger.
Meanwhile, if Hew looked upon himself as the future lord and master of Mary Montgomerie and her thousands, still more surely did he look upon himself as the future laird, lord, and master of Eaglescraig and all that appertained thereto; and while impatiently looking forward to the day of his succession, gave himself, unknown to Sir Piers, such airs with old and valued adherents, such as John Balderstone the factor, Tunley the aged butler, whose taste in wine he scouted; Pate Pastern the head groom, who was cognisant of some of his tricks on the turf; old Sandy Swanshott the head keeper, with even Mrs. Garth and others, that, certes, he won anything but golden opinions from all!
Between him and John Balderstone there was a species of smouldering feud. The latter loved and revered Sir Piers, and always winced when Hew showed, as he had the coarseness and ill-feeling to do, that he actually prayed for the sudden or premature arrival of the time when he should figure as Sir Hew Montgomerie; premature it could scarcely be now, though the hale old man seemed to have years of life in him yet.
Mr. Balderstone was not slow in perceiving how Hew disliked their late visitor, Cecil Falconer, and thus was disposed to vaunt his praises in the mere spirit of opposition.
'I can't perceive the fellows' merits in any way,' growled Hew with an oath, as they entered the smoking-room one evening.
'That I can very well believe,' replied the old gentleman, drily.
'How—why?' demanded Hew, suspecting something in his tone.
'Plainly, then, to do so would argue the existence of what you do not possess.'
'What is that—perception?'
'No.'
'What then?'
'Some refinement of taste,' replied Mr. Balderstone, his dark grey eyes beaming as he made a home-thrust, for which Hew quickly revenged himself in a fashion of his own, causing the portly Mr. Balderstone, as he seated himself, to spring up with a malediction.
'What the devil is the row?' asked Hew.
'Only this, sir, that you have placed a pair of sharp jack-spurs upon the chair you so politely accorded me!'
'And you have a sanguinary sense of sitting down on the rowels—eh?' said Hew, laughing heartily, and not even attempting an apology, while his shifty eyes now beamed with delight.
'I presume these spurs are a present to you, from your friend Mr. Welsher Twigg, the gentleman rider, whose peculiar riding so favoured you at Ayr and York last year,' said Mr. Balderstone, with some contempt of manner, while Hew's parti-coloured eyes now gleamed with rage, for it was averred on the turf, that bribed by him, the rider in question, when pretending to give a horse a bucket of water, daubed his nostrils with blood, to make people believe the animal had broken a blood vessel, and had secretly loosened the nails in the shoes of another, at a hurdle-race, to prevent him winning.
As these black rumours had never reached the ear of Sir Piers, Mr. Balderstone felt that he had 'scored one' by the taunt; but in a time to come, and by both unforeseen then, he was to run up a terrible and crushing score against Hew Montgomerie, with a result that neither could have imagined.
Slowly passed the days now with Mary. The spacious house was full of new guests, and pleasant ones too, but it seemed dull and dreary, since he was no longer there. His place was vacant. The click of balls came from the billiard-room, and the sound of merry voices, but his was no longer there, or at her piano now. All seemed changed to Mary. Sir Piers never adverted to his visit, his name or his existence; and scarcely ever to the old and invariable topic of the Cameronians.
Why was this? Did he suspect their secret, or was Hew the spirit of evil? She could not doubt that; and her sympathetic friend Annabelle Erroll, who was a close observer of affairs, and had all Mary's confidence, thought so too.
But Annabelle Erroll had thoughts that were peculiarly her own, over the departure of Cecil Falconer.
'He has gone from me to Leslie,' she said to herself; 'to Leslie Fotheringhame, to tell him that he has spent a whole month with me—a month in my society, and I have given no sign that Leslie's existence was ever aught to me—at least, I hope so—and yet there was a time when I was all the world to him! Yes—yes—it is indeed over and done with, the love that was once ours. Will Leslie ask him how I am looking?' (she glanced at her soft blonde beauty in the mirror). 'Or how I am comporting myself—sadly or merrily?—if I am unchanged from the Annabelle of the time that can come no more?'
For some mysterious reason she had not taken her friend Mary into her confidence at first, when Fotheringhame's name was spoken of; and now she shrunk from doing so, lest she might seem wanting in candour; and, as the love she referred to was 'over and done with,' what mattered it now?'
And yet often Mary might have drawn such a confidence from her.
'Oh, Annabelle,' she would sometimes say, 'so quick is fancy, that occasions there are when I see a figure like Cecil's in the distance—the figure of some one else, whose walk or gesture recalls him vividly to me—that I feel something like a sharp pang in my heart.'
As days passed on and became weeks, Mary's movements and manner became languid, and all her old occupations, if not neglected, were pursued with a weary indifference. She had lost interest even in being dressed to perfection, as she had always been, and spent hours in the seclusion of her own room, or exclusively in the society of Annabelle Enroll.
Her eyes lost their clear brilliance and became heavy in expression; her usually gentle and playful manner was changed for petulance and irritability, all signs of where and how her thoughts were—signs which Hew watched with jealous rage, and loving, old Sir Piers with unaffected solicitude, mingled with bitterness at Falconer, and at himself for that which he now deemed his own fantastic idea of camaraderie and old military hospitality.
'Never again,' he would mutter to himself, 'never again will I play the fool! Hew is right—Hew is right!'
His pet from her orphan childhood, his artless, father-like experience of her, had, until quite recently, prevented him from remarking that she was no longer a baby-faced girl, but a grown woman—a bird that might leave him for another nest—and then a kind of nervous thrill went through his heart, when he thought a love for another might take possession of her; and thus he became doubly anxious to secure her for Hew.
'How pale and ill you look, my darling!' said Mrs. Garth to her, at the close of a day that had seemed a long and dreary one to Mary.
'What matters it?' said she, petulantly; 'Cecil cannot see me now,' she added mentally, as her eyes wandered through the window to the wooded walk that led to the grotto—the grotto where Cecil had first told her of his love, and where his lips had touched hers for the first and last time, and the host of tender recollections that hallowed the place flowed full upon her memory. 'Why are some people sent into this world only to be miserable!' sighed the lovely heiress, while surrounded by every luxury that world could furnish. 'I wonder if we ever lived before and were happy—or if we shall live again, and be happier still! Who can tell—who knows?'
Then tenderly and fondly she recalled the words of Cecil, when he spoke to her of the mysterious sympathy that, in his solitary moments, had seemed to link his soul, or existence, with that of another, and could she doubt now that it was her own!
And with this idea, a tender and loving expression would steal over her delicate mignonne face.
'Rouse yourself, my darling,' Mrs. Garth would say, 'ride or drive—read or work.'
'Read—read! I hate books now—I hate crewel-work, music, everything!' she replied, almost snappishly; 'dear old Garthy, I am no longer a schoolgirl, and I never, at any time, was one cut to the Hannah More pattern.'
She had learned from his own lips how Cecil loved her; but now Cecil was gone and never could return, and all her little world seemed sunless and cold—dark and desolate. She was no longer alternately amused and petulant, coquettish and light-hearted, for a settled moodiness had come over her—the gloom of sorrow, not anger; and though no one, not even Annabelle, surprised her in tears, her eyes sometimes bore unmistakable traces of recent weeping.
A wild longing would, at times, come over her to see Cecil again—to hear his voice—to know what he was doing, or with whom he was at that particular moment; but the days passed vaguely and drearily on, while she thought of him, dreamt of him, talked in fancy to him, and wove such romances about him and herself, as only a young girl can weave.
He was not very distant from her after all, and yet he might, so far as their intercourse was concerned, have been at the Antipodes; for no tidings, no news of him, ever came to Eaglescraig, and at last, to Mary, it began to seem as if the sweet bright chapter in her life, about Cecil Falconer, was utterly ended!
And probably she would never love again, she thought; for that she had given him was the one love of a lifetime.
But the general and Mrs. Garth thought they knew better; and that her ailment was only a girlish fancy, that naturally would pass away and be forgotten.