CHAPTER XIX.
THE PROGRESS OF EVENTS.
'A company—I am a captain now!' thought Cecil, as he sat alone in his quarters one evening. Promotion brought him, he hoped, a little nearer her; but she was far off from him still, by her surroundings and the influences that were brought to bear upon her.
He recalled the words of a writer who says: 'When a young man wants to marry a girl, he has already made up his mind that she is worthy of him, otherwise he would not wish to marry her. The next thing to do is to make a rigid cross-examination of himself, and see whether he is worthy of her.' Falconer did so, and, of course, deemed himself immeasurably the inferior of Mary, but more than all in worldly prospects and even social position, albeit that he was now a captain of the Cameronians; and yet only that evening, in the mess-room, he had heard rattling Dick Freeport say, that it was 'the duty of every man wearing a red coat to hook an heiress, if he wanted one.'
He looked around the room in which he sat, his 'quarters,' and smiled, in spite of himself, as he mentally contrasted its appurtenances—its 'fixings,' as the Americans say—with such as were deemed absolutely necessary to the existence of one so refined as Mary Montgomerie, and he began to surmise whether or not his love was a selfish one.
The bare floor, scrubbed, however, as clean as his servant, Tommy Atkins, could make it, the walls white-washed, and liable to impart their tint to everything that came in contact with them; a couple of Windsor chairs; a table liable to unpleasant collapses, especially if sat upon, as it often was; an iron camp-bed, wherein to dream of Mary and glory, with a strip of carpet, as a luxury, by its side; a washstand that took the form of a square box when the route came; a tin tub, tilted up on end in a corner; an iron coal-box, or scuttle, royally marked with 'V.R.' and an imperial crown; a fire-grate full of torn billets and cigar-ends; a rack containing sticks, whips, a couple of swords; a little narrow mantelpiece, littered with pipes, cigars, and havanna boxes; but no flowers, and not a single pretty knickknack suggestive of female influences were there. Destitute of all ornament, it was essentially a man's apartment—a very barrack-room.
Yet some feminine memorials of 'auld lang syne' were not wanting; for in Cecil's most secret repositories were the treasured letters of his mother, her photos, a lock of her dark hair, thickly silvered with white, and a bunch of withered daisies that he had gathered on her grave, which she had found in a distant land—mementoes treasured all the more that the story of her life had been a sad one.
If the interior of Cecil's apartment was plain to excess, the view from its windows was second to none in the world. On one side, far down below, spread the Edina of the Georgian and Victorian ages; on the other towered up Dunedin, grey and grim, in all the dead majesty of a grand, historical, and royal past—the Dunedin of battle and siege, yet instinct with life and vitality in all its pulses still; and far, far away, to where the golden sun was setting at the gates of the west, spread the wondrous landscape, till the green Ochil ranges and the pale blue cone of Ben Lomond, sixty miles distant, closed it in.
And anon, when darkness falls, more wondrous still is the beauty of the scene when the broken masses and spiky ridges of the old town sparkle with ten thousand lights. 'High in air a bridge leaps the chasm between,' wrote one who knew it well; 'a few emerald lamps, like glow-worms, are moving about in the railway station below, while a solitary crimson one is at rest. That ridged bulk of blackness, with splendour bursting out at every pore, is the wonderful Old Town where Scottish history mainly transacted itself, while opposite the modern Princes Street is blazing throughout its length. During the day the castle looks down upon the city, as if out of another world; stern with all its peacefulness, its garniture of trees, its slopes of grass. The rock is dingy enough in colour, but after a shower its lichens laugh out greenly in the returning sun, while the rainbow is brightening on the lowering sky beyond. How deep the shadow which the castle throws at noon over the gardens at its feet, where the children play! How grand when giant bulk and towering crown blacken against the sunset!'
Gazing dreamily from his window, Cecil sat lost in thought, with a note in his hand—the acceptance to the ball invitation—a note written, he knew, by the hand of Mary, and which he had rescued from Dick Freeport, who was sacrilegiously about to tear and toss it into the waste-paper basket; and at the time we may suppose that our lover felt as Sir Robert Cotton did when he rescued the original Magna Charta from the shears of the Cockney tailor, who was about to cut it into yard-measures for doublets and trunk hose.
But Cecil roused himself when the drums beat on the slope below the citadel gate, and donning his mess-dress, he betook him to the dinner-table, where the trophied silver plate added splendour to luxury.
'So, as the general is in town, you'll leave a card, of course, Falconer,' said Fotheringhame, with a peculiar smile, as Cecil took a seat by his side.
'I am in duty bound to do so; though, sooth to say,' added Falconer, for their confidences had become mutual, 'the coldness that accompanied my departure from Eaglescraig gives me unpleasant doubts of my reception; yet leave a card, of course, I must.'
Then he thought of Mary on the morning he came away, and the farewell wave of her handkerchief.
'If I call, Fotheringhame, won't you accompany me?'
'Thanks; no. Old fellow, you forget.'
'What?'
'That Miss Erroll's acceptance for the ball came from the general's house.'
'A pleasant place it will be to visit,' said Dick Freeport, striking into the conversation from the opposite side of the table. 'I have had Falconer's confidential report on the subject; he states that the general's cellar is excellent, the sherry pale and dry, the old port full-bodied, the Chateau Lagrange unequalled, and Moët's Imperial ditto! His cook is a regular French chef, with a salary that exceeds the pay of Sir Piers himself, no doubt; and then there is his ward——'
'Halt, Dick! how your tongue runs on!' said Cecil, with some annoyance. 'His ward is not to be lightly spoken of at any mess-table—ours especially.'
'I saw the general's carriage to-day in George Street,' cried a cheeky sub-lieutenant from the lower end of the table. 'I knew it by the coat-of-arms; and, by Jove, there were two stunning girls in it!'
'Miss Montgomerie and her friend Miss Erroll, no doubt,' said Fotheringhame. 'One dark—a brunette, and the other brilliantly fair?'
'Exactly; I took stock of them both. Dick will be bringing his engagement-ring with the blue stone into action now.'
As this was a regimental joke it caused a little laugh, amid which Acharn, the sporting man of the corps, came in hastily in his mess-jacket and vest, looking rather grim and cross.
'Late for mess, old man,' said Fotheringhame. 'What is up, eh?'
'Wine!' said Acharn sharply, to a waiter, and then replied: 'Only that I am rather up a tree just now.'
'You are rather fond of climbing,' said Fotheringhame. 'Is it lofty?'
'Lofty as a Himalayan pine, by Jove! I say, Falconer, you were at the general's place, Eaglescraig—or what's its name?'
'Yes.'
'Was there a fellow named Hew Montgomerie there?'
'Yes.'
'Hew Caddish Montgomerie, as his pasteboard has it—he is well named! and from whom you won at cards?'
'No; but who utterly rooked me at cards!' said Falconer angrily, while he and Fotheringhame exchanged glances.
'Well, I met him at the United Service Club this afternoon, though he is not a member. We somehow got into play, and I have lost enough to make my governor pull a very long face when he comes to hear of it—a cool £500. He is a fellow whose shifty eyes and thin lips often smile, but never in unison?'
'I know that his face never wears an expression of manly truth—for truth isn't in him!' said Falconer.
'The fellow is a downright cad, I understand,' said Fotheringhame; 'he will go to the devil with the down-train, and never know how to put on the brakes. Why were you fool enough to play with a stranger?'
'And lose?' said Acharn, twisting his thick black moustache.
'By all accounts it would be a miracle if you won.'
'He has promised me my revenge to-morrow.'
'At what game was it you lost £500?' asked Fotheringhame.
'At roulette, piquet, and écarté; but most at écarté.'
'By Jove! I should think so,' said Falconer, remembering Hew's 'mild play.' 'Why didn't you look under the table?' he asked in a low voice.
'For what?' exclaimed Acharn, with surprise.
'The cards he was dropping unknown to you.'
'Good heavens, do you say so!'
'Why, the fellow's a regular leg!' said Fotheringhame; but Falconer contented himself by saying:
'Your promised revenge will never come. Next time he asks you to play, decline, and say you do so by my advice—mine—don't forget.'
Acharn did so, and the fact did not increase Master Hew's goodwill to Falconer; but little indeed could the latter guess how the good old general had been led to view him.
A favourite with the entire regiment he was known to be, even to the very school-children; thus it was with some surprise the commanding-officer, some days after, heard the remarks of the general at the club, made privately to himself, however.
'I have to thank you, Sir Piers,' said the lieutenant-colonel, 'for extending the hospitality of your house to one of the best of my officers.'
'Best—the smartest, perhaps you mean?' said Sir Piers, coldly.
'Smartest and best!' replied the lieutenant-colonel, emphatically.
'Sorry to hear it, sir; sorry to hear it. When we were cantonned at Jodpore——'
'Excuse me, Sir Piers; but I do not understand.'
'He is too fond of cards, sir—too fond of cards for my taste, sir.'
'I never saw a card in his hand!' persisted the other.
'Strange!'
The lieutenant-colonel thought these remarks more than strange, too; but Sir Piers did not choose to inform him of Hew's malevolent reports, and plunged at once into sundry reminiscences of Jodpore and its Rajpoots.
Mary would certainly be the queen of the forthcoming regimental ball, and Falconer was full of the most delightful anticipations concerning it.
'Leslie Fotheringhame will be there!' was the secret thought of Annabelle Erroll; 'how are we to meet? As strangers? Would that I had not come to Edinburgh at all—and yet!'
Yet—what? She scarcely knew.
Mary was in full anticipation also of the ball—its joys and its brilliance, and nightly laid her head on the pillow to sleep and dream, if she could, of a region where all was romance, light and splendour, bands of music, festooned banners and brilliant uniforms, with one central figure—Cecil Falconer!