CHAPTER III.
IN THE PRINCES STREET GARDENS.
Among those invited to the house of Sir Piers Montgomerie was Leslie Fotheringhame, of course; but he knew, from Falconer, that Annabelle Erroll was still a guest of the family, as she and Mary were a pair of inseparables; and compunction for his past treatment of her, and doubt of how she remembered him now, with a great fear of being contemptuously ignored by her, led him to decline, on every occasion, the invitation accorded, on various pretences.
Annabelle Erroll knew of this, and was piqued accordingly, so the old breach between these two grew wider, if possible. Cecil and Mary, as 'a fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind,' had a great desire to make peace between them; the former had told her of the love-making and quarrel by the river, and her sympathy was readily enlisted in the matter.
'You do love him still!' said Mary, as the two were exchanging confidences in the seclusion of their mutual dressing-room at night; 'at least I know, by your changing colour whenever his name is mentioned, that you have not forgotten how to do so.'
'One cannot forget having loved—or having loved him, at least,' replied Annabelle, in a soft voice.
'Would you marry him if he asked you now?'
'Decidedly not!' exclaimed Annabelle, whose golden hair was floating over her snowy neck, while, unaided, she was plaiting it up with deft fingers and throwing it this way and that, in masses, turning her graceful head sideways to see how they fell, and perhaps to admire the charming curve of her own white shoulders.
'You do not believe me?' she said, as Mary laughed at her reply.
'No—because, as I said, at the very mention of his name, even by me, your cheek flushes and your voice trembles.'
'If they do, it is with just anger,' said Annabelle, 'and you are mistaken, dear Mary; and I have read, that when an estrangement begins between two who have loved each other, it is like a tiny stream of water, which goes on widening and deepening day by day, until it becomes a river no bridge can span.'
'Will I ever be estranged from Cecil?' thought Mary. 'Oh no—no—no!'
Various pretty and amiable little schemes formed by Mary to bring them together, with Cecil's aid, failed, and yet their meeting ultimately came to pass in the most commonplace way imaginable.
With the opening season come the weekly promenades in the beautiful Princes Street Gardens, where the regimental bands play in the afternoons, for the delectation of the fashionables and idlers of the West End.
Bordered on one side by the most magnificent terrace and promenade in Europe, and on the other by the emerald-green bank of the Castle Hill, with all its waving trees, and by the mighty mass of the beetling rock on which stands the hoary fortress of a thousand memories, and more than a thousand years, these gardens are altogether unique; and already they were in almost their summer glory, for the air of the valley in which they lie was fragrant with the perfume of mignonette, of clove-carnations, roses, and heliotrope.
The carefully kept shrubberies were gay with borders of brilliant flowers, and amid this varied foliage the laburnum stood up in all the glory of green and gold. In swarms the happy children were gambolling and playing about on the velvet sward or chasing in zigzag fashion the bees and butterflies.
The fair promenaders were in all the bright gaiety of their spring costumes, and the grand echoes of the castle rock were responding to the music of the band under our friend Herr von Humstrumm, when Falconer and Leslie Fotheringhame came sauntering through the throng arm-in-arm, the former watchful for the figure of Mary, and the latter languidly indifferent of all on whom he cast his critical eyes, in one of which a glass was fixed.
Suddenly Fotheringhame, who was rather a nonchalant personage, started, and the glass dropped from his eye, for, sooth to say, perhaps he could see better without it.
A young lady passed near him, with other two—an elder and a younger—unseen by Falconer, who was looking in an opposite direction; and there can be no doubt Fotheringhame looked after her with a yearning in his gaze, so sudden, passionate, and tender, as must have touched her heart had she seen it; but Annabelle Erroll, for it was she, was all unconscious of his presence. Her companions, we need scarcely say, were Mary Montgomerie and Mrs. Garth, an old lady who still dearly 'doted on the military.'
Fotheringhame's first inclination was to quit the promenade and effect an escape; his second thought was to stay, and see her once—only once again. And in sudden silence he continued to walk slowly to and fro with Falconer, till the abrupt turn of a narrow shrubberied avenue brought them both face to face with the three ladies, and there was no retreating; for as Hew disliked society of this kind, and was never present, Mary felt perfect confidence, and welcomed Cecil with one of her brightest smiles, while he—reading her wish at a glance—hastened to utilise the occasion by presenting 'his friend, Fotheringhame of Ours,' to Mrs. Garth and 'Miss Erroll.'
'In for it, by Jove!' muttered Fotheringhame under his heavy black moustache, as he lifted his hat, and saw before him, in her rare blonde beauty and magnificence of style, now fully developed by a few short years, the girl whose artless heart he had won only to cast it at her feet—unclaimed—unprized!
Mary's bright little face was dimpling and rippling all over with pleasure, triumph and exultation—all the more so, when she saw that Leslie Fotheringhame was a man of whom any woman might be proud, more than ordinarily handsome, with an unmistakable tone, air, and bearing, that doubtless came of his early Lancer training; and now they were all conversing together with apparent ease; for although Mrs. Garth knew what the wishes and orders of Sir Piers were regarding Mary and Cecil Falconer, she did not conceive that they extended to the precluding of recognition in a public place.
But had even the suspicious Hew been there, not even he, on seeing the quiet and respectful way in which Cecil raised his hat and lightly took the gloved hand of Mary, could have detected that there was between them the soft and sweet and inexpressible charm and link of a secret understanding. And indeed none who saw the apparently cool composure with which she greeted him, and talked of the beauty of the weather, the serenity of the sky, of the music then being discoursed by his regimental band, could have suspected that but an hour or so before, in a shady and sequestered place elsewhere, he had showered kisses on her lips, and hair, and eyes, and pressed her to his breast, 'á la Huguenot,' again and again.
If deceit were practised in all this, it was not their fault, but was born of the pressure that was put upon them.
As the pair now began to promenade together, Cecil of course absorbed Mary, whom Mrs. Garth could not leave; it thus became a matter of course that Annabelle fell to the lot of Fotheringhame, more than perhaps her proud heart assented to. His manner was careful, studied, and deeply courteous. She could not, as yet, detect the slightest sadness in his glance or tone, or aught of tenderness or reproach either, so well did he veil his manner, and yet his heart was full of her; and thus these two, who had been so much to each other—all the world once—were meeting and acting just as those do who have known each other for half an hour, or less.
So they walked slowly on and on, all unaware apparently that they were instinctively seeking the quiet and lonely avenues of the garden, yet talking the merest commonplace all the while, though drinking in each other's voices and tones, till the groups of promenaders were all left far behind, and the music of the band sounded so faint and distant that the hum of the honey-bees could be heard among the flowers.
Then a silence—a long and awkward pause occurred; they felt that platitudes were failing them, and that they had a lack of words—a lack that is said to prove the deepest love, for where 'there is adoration there is paradise,' and Fotheringhame began to feel much of the old adoration in his heart for Annabelle.
'I have been on a long visit to Mary Montgomerie, at Eaglescraig,' said the latter, after a pause, during which she became very pale. 'She would insist upon me coming to Edinburgh with her; but the season here is nearly over, and I go back to mamma.'
'In Perthshire?'
'In Perthshire,' she repeated mechanically.
'Near where the silver birches overhang the Tay?' he asked with a caressing smile.
'Yes—and very soon,' said she, turning as if to retire.
'But not before our ball,' said he eagerly. 'You accepted our invitation?'
'Mary pressed me to do so,' she replied, colouring; 'and now we must hasten back to her and Mrs. Garth, for we are quite losing all that lovely music of Gounod's.'
'Stay one moment—do bear with me,' said he in an agitated voice.
'I do not understand,' she began falteringly, and then paused, yet looking him fully, firmly, and sadly in the eyes; 'have you aught to say to me?'
'So we meet again face to face, after all these changeful years, Annabelle!'
'I am simply Miss Erroll to you, Captain Fotheringhame.'
'I am only Lieutenant Fotheringhame now. If you remember the past——'
'Could I forget it?' she asked with sparkling eyes, while nervously twirling her parasol upon her shoulder, by its handle.
'Then pardon it, I pray you,' he urged in a voice which more than one woman had found it difficult to resist.
'Who is it that says, "Flowers and love have but a season"?' she asked with a little bitterness in her usually sweet tone.
'Annabelle!'
'I repeat to you, sir, that you must know me as Miss Erroll. I have been thoughtless in coming so far from my friends.'
'I am wrong in forcing my society upon you,' said he sadly; 'but that is a matter easily amended. In wronging you, as I did, dearest Annabelle, I wronged myself, and have suffered deeply accordingly.'
'Our meeting to-day has been—on both sides, unavoidable, Captain Fotheringhame. Let us return—if it is the best way to spare you further pain.'
She spoke very calmly and deliberately, yet it cost her a terrible and painful effort. She knew that she loved him still; she felt even the eloquence of his silence, if such a term can be used, and now dared not lift her eyes to meet his gaze.
'Annabelle,' said he again, and took her hand in his; then a quiver passed over her delicate form, but the proud girl accorded no other sign as yet of the power he still possessed over her. 'Do you despise me—do you hate me?'
'Hate you—despise you?—why use language so strong? Oh no, no, Leslie, far from either—far from either!' she exclaimed, as if her heart would burst, and tears welled up in her dark blue eyes.
Then the artificial barrier himself had raised between them seemed to give way, and he told her in the tenderest and most earnest of words how fondly he loved her still.
'Let us not cast away the chance of reconciliation that God in His great kindness has accorded us, Annabelle,' he urged, pathetically; 'as I loved you first, I love you now—nay, a thousandfold more, for I have learned the value of the heart with which I so cruelly trifled; and now, I pray you—I beg of you to be my wife, Annabelle, my wife!'
She shook her head, and withdrew her hand.
'Is it to be thus?' he said sadly, but not reproachfully.
She made no reply, but kept her long lashes down and her soft eyes fixed on the gravelled path.
'Let us be now, as we were then, in the sweet summer days, when the silver birches cast their shadows on the Tay; and let us forget my folly, my wickedness—all that estranged me from your loving heart and divided us, Annabelle, when that fair and artful woman of the world, Blanche Gordon, cast her meshes about me.'
'And must I believe that you have loved me all these years, and love me still?' she asked softly, and with infinite tenderness of tone.
'God alone knows how tenderly, deeply and reproachfully, Annabelle!'
'But who knows how you might act if she came with her beauty and her meshes again?' asked Annabelle, who was smiling now.
'Do not be pitiless to me; and as for her—that woman—she is married, so, Annabelle——'
'Hush—we are interrupted!'
'They suddenly found themselves environed by groups of idlers, and among others came Mrs. Garth, with Mary and Cecil, all of whom Leslie Fotheringhame would have wished very far away—at least on the cone of Arthur's Seat—at that precise moment.
Face to face again—at last, after all—after all—with Leslie Fotheringhame, Annabelle was thinking; his smile, his voice and presence, were fast bringing back the old and seemingly buried, yet never forgotten love, to thrill her heart and every pulse as in the bygone time!
Her memory, her whole soul seemed to go back more vividly to those hours which neither he nor she had ever forgot, and now, whilst listening to his voice, she seemed to be out in the bright summer sunshine on the rippling waters of the glassy Tay, in his handsome boat with its crimson velvet cushions; she heard the plash of the sculls, the voices of the birds among the graceful silver birches; she saw the dragon-flies again whizz past, and the brown trout leap from the azure stream; and he too was in dreamland, and seemed to hear her voice; as when he first heard it singing:
'Love me always, love me ever,
Said a voice low, sad and sweet;
Love me always, love me ever,
Memory will the words repeat.'
So they parted happily, these two, with hopes to meet again, at least once, before the all-important night of the regimental ball, now close at hand.
That some mysterious change had come over the once nonchalant Leslie Fotheringhame, was soon apparent to the entire mess.
'What the dickens is up now?' said Dick Freeport to Falconer, on this subject; 'I am sure there is a woman in the case; and I am sure that fellow never had a love affair since he joined the regiment, or sought peril by imploring Maud to come into the garden.'
'All the cause of his being more hardly hit now, Dick,' said Falconer, laughing.
'If it is the case it will be a horrible pity!' said Freeport, as he shut his pet, and carefully-coloured meerschaum up in its crimson velvet case with an angry snap. '"Of all the wonderful things, and there are many," says Sophocles in one of his choruses; "but none more wonderful than man."'
'Except woman, Dick, why didn't the old Athenian add,' said Cecil, laughing; 'so be assured there is a woman at the bottom of this change in Fotheringhame.'
'Shall we have her at the ball?'
'Most probably, so don't forget your magic ring with the blue stone, Dick; but you'll be hooked by a penniless girl some day, Dick!'
'A pity that will be, as manna does not fall from heaven now; but——the fact is,' continued the latter, still pursuing his surmises on the changed habits and bearing of Fotheringhame, 'that matrimony spoils a fellow for the service on one hand, and on the other, one can't think of bringing a tenderly-nurtured and high-bred lady into the meagre surroundings, and rough and round of barrack life.'
'Of course not, Dick,' replied Falconer; and yet—young though he was—he was not without his new day-dreams of a graceful and dove-like girl—of Mary Montgomerie—with tender smiling eyes and white hands, sitting opposite to him in that dingy barrack room, with its plain appurtenances.
But Mary was an heiress, and to wed and bring her there, would involve open war with her guardian, and too probably the loss of her inheritance!
'Would I had never seen her!' thought he; 'and yet—yet how vague and empty now would life be without her!'