CHAPTER XII.
TURNING THE TABLES.
Eaglescraig—wood and wold, field, garden and lawn—was in all the glory of summer now, when June brought with it, as usual, the fragrance of the red and white hawthorn blossoms, the song of the nightingale and the coo of the cushat-dove; May that gave fresh greenness to the young corn on the upland slopes, and studded the grass on the dairy farms of Cunninghame with white daisies and golden buttercups; June that saw the old general clad in grey, whipping the cool dark pools of the Garnock or the Irvine with rod and line, and the skylark soaring high amid the silver clouds—the full-uddered cows standing knee-deep in the heavy pastures, and the bees warring among the velvet buds; but where was he with whom Mary would fain have looked upon Nature and her native scenery in their glory!
Eaglescraig in summer was rather unlike the Eaglescraig to which Cecil Falconer had come in stern winter to shoot over the covers; but Mary's heart could gather no brightness from the locality, which, though changed and more beautiful than in those days, was so full of his presence and associated with him: the lanes through which he had driven her pony-carriage when visiting the poor on missions of charity; the roads by which they had ridden to Kilwinning and elsewhere; the garden wherein they had so often lingered; the ancient dovecot on the lawn, and the grotto where—but why did she torture herself, in the superstition of the heart, by recalling all that was, but never could be again?
As that heart foreboded, she was not very long at Eaglescraig before the old subject of her marriage with Hew Montgomerie was resumed by Sir Piers, who nearly found an ally in Mrs. Garth, who came to the conclusion that everyone loved their first love, as a general rule, and married their second or third; though she was not without her fears that such a marriage would not be conducive to Mary's welfare, and knew well that too generally, in the end, 'as the husband is, the wife is.'
With all the regard that Hew affected to profess for Mary, it did not prevent him from growling heavily over exchanging Eaglescraig for Edinburgh, where yet, so far as its gaieties were concerned, everything was yet, as the Americans say, 'in full blast.'
'Here, in the quiet of the country,' said Sir Piers, 'she will have time to think over the escape she made from that fellow Falconer; and time to think over what she ought to do, Mrs. Garth.'
Time to think! Poor Mary had plenty of that: time to ponder in long and oppressive hours, as she lingered by the dovecot with the pigeons fluttering round her; by the burn that flowed at the garden-foot, with Mudie's last new novel half-cut and wholly unread in her lap; and, lost in a day-dream, saw the bees seek the flowers and the butterflies darting to and fro, while wondering with all the intensity of love and pity where he was, and what doing, now!
Sir Piers did not precisely see his way to acting like the stern parent or fiery guardian of the melodrama; but he thought that the time was approaching when he must do something to bend Mary to his purpose, and compel or cajole her into the acceptance of Hew, his heir of entail and successor.
'You knew that—that young man but a very short time, Mary,' said he one day in reference to Falconer, and playfully pinching her chin.
'True,' she replied, with a sweet sad smile; 'but it does not take years to learn to—love. Was it so with you, grand-uncle?'
'No, by Jove! we were in cantonments at Simmerabad, and expecting the route every day, the route for Jubbulpore, when Lady Montgomerie and I were married, egad! at the drum-head, I may say.'
But as far as Hew's interests were concerned, a visit from Mr. John Balderstone one day gave Sir Piers much occasion to think over them—and pause.
A close correspondence with Annabelle Erroll was Mary's chief solace and support about this time; they had so much in common to commune about. Yet the name of Fotheringhame never once escaped the former, though he was mourning that a girl with such an amount of strength of character and so much loveliness had gone out of his life—for Annabelle was a wonderfully beautiful girl—beautiful with the charms of glittering golden hair, of slightness of form and white purity; tall, slender and full of grace; and though her heart was wrung by the memory of all she had passed through since the night of the Cameronian ball—that night on which she had been so happy—she thanked Heaven for the strength it gave her to cut the Gordian knot and quit the atmosphere of doubt, perplexity, degrading deception, and chaos in which she had latterly found herself in Edinburgh. 'No girl could be expected to undergo that sort of thing over and over again,' as she once wrote to Mary; so well it was, she added, that she had with decision laid the future lines of her life and that of Fotheringhame, so far apart from each other.
Hew was smoking on the terrace one forenoon, deep in the study of his betting-book—a study that did seem a very pleasant one, if one might judge from the expression of his face—when he saw Mr. John Balderstone, the faithful and jolly old factor and friend of the family, coming ambling up the long avenue, top-booted, on his favourite old roadster, an easy-going bay, high in the forehead, round in the barrel, and deep in the chest, as John averred, 'all that a roadster should be;' and he dismounted at the entrance door with the air of a man who felt himself at home and sure of a welcome.
'Now, what can this old buffer want?' thought Hew, sulkily, as the rider threw his reins to Pate Pastern, who took the bay round to the stables; 'but he is always coming here, whether wanted or not.'
'Good-morning, Mr. Balderstone,' he added, but without offering his cold, damp hand, which the visitor had never taken since the insulting trick had been played him with the pair of jack-spurs.
Between these two there was no open war, but a species of armed truce: a veiled dislike or species of civil suspicion. Mr. Balderstone knew pretty well the secret character of Hew, and cordially detested him. Hew knew the great influence the old factor possessed with Sir Piers, and had mentally resolved that when he 'came to his kingdom,' i.e. succeeded to the title and estate of Eaglescraig, Mr. John Balderstone should receive his congé, and pretty quickly, too; and that old Tunley, and even Sandy Swanshott, the aged game-keeper, together with Mrs. Garth, would have marching-orders, also. But the general 'was so confoundedly hale—seemed as if he would never die!'
'Did I not see Miss Montgomerie on the terrace?' said Mr. Balderstone, with a twinkle in his bright yet dark-grey eyes; 'she need not avoid me—bless her!—eh, billing and cooing as usual, I suppose, Mr. Hew?'
Hew muttered an ugly word under his red moustache, and said, coarsely:
'I'll make my innings now, I suppose, as I have the field to myself.'
'And no red-coated rivals—eh?'
'Look here, Balderstone, I don't like chaff; but I can tell you that Sir Piers did me a deuced lot of mischief by bringing that fellow here from Dumbarton, and petting him, egad! as if he had been his own son. He is a regular old fool, Sir Piers!'
'I can hear nothing said against him, Mr. Hew.'
'At all events, I may indulge in a few bitter thoughts of this base-born interloper, who has caused so much turmoil.'
'Base-born—how know you that he is so?'
'Bah! I heard all about him in Edinburgh.'
'Not all, surely?'
'Yes, as sure as I am the heir to Eaglescraig! What are you laughing at?' demanded Hew, who had been in Tunley's pantry, sharply.
'I do laugh, and heartily too; but pardon me,' said old John Balderstone, whose paunch, enfolded in a deep corduroy waistcoat, was actually shaking, while Hew, by some intuition of coming mischief, he knew not why, eyed him dubiously, even savagely.
'By the way, have you ever heard aught of that unfortunate young gentleman?' asked the factor.
'What young gentleman?' said Hew, sulkily.
'Captain Falconer.'
'Oh! the singing woman's son—dancer, or whatever she was—no; how should I hear of him?'
'A pity—he must be found.'
'Found—for what?' asked Hew, growing pale, as he recalled the event of the ball. 'You'll have to seek him where he has gone.'
'And where is that?'
'The husks and the swine-trough—or the devil.'
'How can you speak so pitilessly?'
'I don't owe him much, I think,' muttered Hew; with an imprecation.
'God knows all you owe him.'
'How—why—in what way?' thundered Hew.
'As reparation.'
'D—n the fellow, I never wronged him!' exclaimed Hew, growing paler than ever, while his shifty eyes wandered restlessly about, and fear seized him that John Balderstone had discovered, he knew not what.
But on this day the latter took all Hew's insolence of manner with wonderful equanimity, while his rubicund face seemed to beam and ripple all over with good-nature, and his eyes were twinkling as if he had something in petto that greatly delighted him.
'Reparation,' growled Hew, scornfully; 'reparation for what?'
'Here comes the general; he will tell you all about it,' said the factor, as Sir Piers, in an old tweed suit, arrived from a morning's fishing, with rod in hand, a full basket, and a venerable wideawake hat, garnished all round with flies and catgut.
'Welcome, John; welcome, Balderstone! you have business with me? Step indoors. A glass of sherry and a biscuit before luncheon—tiffin, as we say in India—and then we'll hear all about it.'
'Business to which Mr. Hew may as well listen, as it interests him very nearly,' said Mr. Balderstone, with a sudden gravity of demeanour that impressed the former unpleasantly, and filled his heart with the alarm of the guilty, and he was the first to assist himself to a glass of the sherry which Tunley placed on the dining-room table; 'and as what I have to relate is not without interest to our dear Miss Mary,' added Mr. Balderstone, 'I would wish her to be present too.'
'Now what the devil can all this be about?' thought Hew, in a cold perspiration, as he took another glass of sherry, and thought of the ball and the court-martial that came of it, while Mary seated herself near Sir Piers, with her heart beating quickly and unequally, and her white hands trembling at her Berlin-wool work.
'In this matter I must begin at the beginning, as we used to read in the old story-books,' said Mr. Balderstone, polishing his bald head with his handkerchief, and looking up at the ceiling as if he would draw inspiration therefrom.
'Begin at the beginning!—don't say that,' said Sir Piers.
'Why, general?'
'Because it reminds me how a poor fellow of Ours used those very words when about to relate some secret to me, as he lay dying by the roadside, on the march to Malwah, and though he began at the beginning I never heard the end of his story; so we buried him beneath a palm-tree, in his cotton quilt, the only coffin we could afford him—poor old Sandy Freeport—the father of Dick who is in the Cameronians now; and I remember that John Garth read the funeral service over him by torch-light. Now fire away, Balderstone.'
The latter gazed fondly and admiringly on Mary in all her delicate beauty, clad in a loosely made brown holland morning-dress, relieved only by the spotless white cuffs at the snowy wrists, and a simple collar of the same at her slender throat, and said:
'I have some strange tidings for you, Sir Piers—tidings which may seriously shock your nerves.'
'Never! d—n it, John Balderstone, speak out, sir!' said the baronet with irritation. 'Who the devil ever heard of an old Cameronian with nerves! And these tidings——'
'Concern your son—your only son Piers.'
'What of him—now?' asked the other in a changed and rather broken voice.
'His fate—his story.'
'Piers is dead,' said the baronet hoarsely, as he recalled the shadowy form—the dim, yet distinct outline—he had seen on the night of terror, so long ago.
'I know it,' said Mr. Balderstone, sadly; 'poor Piers—poor boy! for he was but a boy when compared with your years and mine now.'
'Well.'
'How Piers married the penniless daughter of a struggling artist, and was therefore expelled from this house—yea, from this very room, you know,' said John Balderstone, speaking very slowly and deliberately, while the general's wrinkled hands grasped the knobs of his armchair, and he fixed his hollow yet bright eyes firmly on the speaker's face; 'how his commission was sold, and the money went, you know too; but there was much more that you and I never knew, and never shall know, till the long, long day when all things will be known. Piers became an artist, and died in sore penury some years after quitting his father's house.'
'Where?'
'In an obscure street of Rome; but he left behind him a son—the son of the girl he had married.'
'My grandson!'
'And heir.'
Hew fastened his glass in his eye—the green one—and glared at John Balderstone, who said:
'I know nothing precisely, though I can guess of months of penury and struggling to keep the wolf from the door, Sir Piers; but that such was the case I have little doubt from what I have gleaned: of wanderings from town to town—the husband trying to sell his pictures, and the wife to get engagements as a concert-singer—for she was highly accomplished—to support her husband in his last illness, and maintain her little boy. Piers was found dead one night at his easel. Pride prevented the widow from applying to you; and though she felt how sweet and dear it was to have her child as a precious link between her and Piers, she bestowed upon it her own name, which was Cecilia Falconer, and as Falconer the boy grew to manhood. Now you know who I mean!'
Sir Piers was struck dumb, and continued to grasp the arms of his chair with nervous energy, while Hew felt himself grow pale, and hot, and cold; and to the memory of the startled Mary came back the episode of Annabelle's 'Birthday Book,' and the curious admission of Falconer that he had been named Cecil after his mother.
In fact they were all paralysed and absorbed by the strangeness of this revelation.
'The proofs of what I say were sent to me, and thereby hangs another curious story,' continued John Balderstone. 'A woman of indomitable spirit and pride, this Cecilia Falconer (or Montgomerie) resolved that never in your lifetime, Sir Piers, would she seek your friendship or alliance, nor until your death make known the rank and claims of her son; but she died suddenly and unexpectedly, and the secret of who her husband was died with her, so far as Cecil was concerned, for indeed he knows it not even unto this hour.'
'Then how the devil do you——' began Hew, impetuously; but Balderstone silenced him by a wave of his hand.
'Her great musical talents won her powerful and titled patrons, and through one of them she got her son a cadetship, and by a singular chance he was gazetted to the Cameronians, the regiment of his father and grandfather.'
'I believe the whole affair a d——d tarra-diddle, from beginning to end!' exclaimed Hew, while a kind of gasp escaped the general.
'You have not yet heard the end,' said John Balderstone with a quiet laugh, as he drew from his breast-pocket a large envelope or packet, soiled by the dust of many years, and covered with old and foreign postal marks and stamps. 'In this envelope, addressed to me, as her husband's friend, the widow, when her last fatal illness came upon her, sent for safety three papers: the marriage certificate of herself and Piers, performed at Rome; the certified register of the child's birth, endorsed by herself and Piers, and the register of the latter's death at Rome. But the packet on which such interests depended had fallen behind a bookcase in my office; there it has lain for fifteen years, and I never knew of its existence till yesterday. And here is your son's writing, Sir Piers, which I never expected to see again in this world, and it comes to me like a message from the dead,' added Balderstone, with a tremulous voice.
'From the dead, indeed!' added the general, more tremulously still, as he took the documents and strove to read them through glasses that became moist and dim.
On the back of the marriage-register was written in a feminine hand:
'Nov. 5.—He died to-night, speaking of his stern father and not of me who loved him so! Oh Piers! my husband, my husband! how shall I live without you—live on alone in the long years to come, unless it is for our boy! In losing you I lose my all. For me you gave up home, friends, fortune, rank and position—all the world for me—yet, oh my husband, all the wealth of my love was yours!'
The date corresponded with the general's dream or vision! Could Piers' spirit have flashed home at the instant of his departure? Can such things be, and may men see them and live! thought he.
'My poor Piers! my poor Piers!' he groaned. 'John Balderstone, none but God and myself can tell how I have suffered in my soul for my severity to him in the past time.'
And so the long years had gone, and others had come; and behold this was all that had resulted from the old man's pride, petulance, and injustice. His only son had died in penury and obscurity; that son's wife had despised even his vaunted name and had taken her own; and now, their only son, the legal and lawful heir of Eaglescraig, a crushed and ruined creature like his father before him, had been driven forth into the world, in darkness and despair, too surely also to ruin and death!
Sir Piers sighed bitterly, and seemed utterly to forget the existence of Hew, to whom this new state of things came like a prolonged roll of thunder. To the former it seemed as if the irrevocable past was throwing its shadow over his present and his future—a shadow deep as the grave; nay, that past made the future, and its shadow was over him still!
This accounted for the expression of eye that Mrs. Garth had traced in Cecil; and Sir Piers had now a perfect key to that which had so often perplexed him—a something that the voice, face, and manner of Cecil brought to memory out of the mists of the past, causing him much vague and mental exercise—the resemblance to his dead son; clearly accounted for now, when too late—all too late, perhaps.
'Scratched—out of the race!' muttered Hew with an oath, as he slunk away, and betook him to brandy and seltzer in Tunley's pantry, while Mary, her lithe and slender form full of energy, her dark and eloquent eyes filled with joyous light, seemed all unlike the languid Mary of the past month or so, as Balderstone's narrative came to an end.
Could it all really be in earnest, and no dream? Cecil was her cousin—her own cousin, and that lawful heir of Eaglescraig whom Sir Piers, by the powers of his father's will, desired she should marry, while Hew was scarcely even a cousin by Scottish reckoning—little more than a namesake to her; but Cecil—Cecil, where was he?
Here was an astounding discovery; an absorbing topic from the discussion of which, although their minds were full of it, and overpowered by it, they were compelled to cease during dinner and other meals, in that jerky, half-and-half way in which people are wont to adopt when servants are present, though the interest of their whole souls may be concentrated in it for the time.
But menials are close and watchful observers, and it was soon pretty well known to Mr. Tunley and all in the servants' hall, the topic which engrossed those in the dining-room—that Mr. Hew was not heir to the general's title and estate; but some one else was—who they scarcely could define. So the matter was speculated upon, twisted and turned over, eliciting a score of different opinions; but to all it was apparent that Sir Piers was perplexed, was daily conferring with John Balderstone; that Miss Mary—'bless her,' said they all—was radiant with joy; and Mr. Hew, with whom none sympathised—as might be expected—wore a sullen, baffled, and exasperated look.
The tables had been turned with a vengeance; but Hew had one crumb of comfort: Cecil was gone, no one knew where, and might never be heard of again, in which case he—Hew—would resume his old place as heir of entail!
In his anxiety to discover the lost, and make some reparation to the dead, Sir Piers forgot all the dark colours in which Hew had painted Cecil, and felt with regard to his son that, as Dickens says, 'there is no remorse which is so deep as that which is unavailing; and if we would be spared its tortures, let us remember this in time!'
Mr. Balderstone suggested that they should advertise for the lost one; but poor Cecil was now where no advertisements would ever reach him.