THE MASTER OF ABERFELDIE
BY
JAMES GRANT
AUTHOR OF
"THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "THE CAMERONIANS,"
"THE SCOTTISH CAVALIER,"
ETC., ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.
LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1884.
_All rights reserved._
Contents
Chapter
I. Suspicion
II. At Tel-el-Kebir
III. At Grand Cairo
IV. The Telegram
V. Dead and Buried in the Sand
VI. A Skirmish in the Desert
VII. Hurdell Hall
VIII. Sir Harry
IX. The Cub-hunting
X. Allan's Adventure
XI. Among the Dwellers in Tents
XII. Kismet
XIII. The Last of Sir Paget
XIV. The Young Widow
XV. In the Desert
XVI. Eastward Ho!
XVII. At Ismailia
XVIII. Clouds and Sunshine
THE MASTER OF ABERFELDIE.
CHAPTER I.
SUSPICION.
Many a wife, mother, and maid watched the progress of our troops from
point to point in Egypt, from the bombardment of Alexandria, with the
subsequent landing, up to the last telegram which announced that the
army had begun its auspicious night march from Kassassin towards
Tel-el-Kebir, but none could do so with more anxiety than had Olive
Raymond and Eveline.
To them and to how many loving hearts at home were the next telegrams
fraught with terror and anxiety!
Olive was free to rush to the newspapers as soon as they arrived.
But not so Eveline, for so suspicious of her secret interest in one
who was far away had Sir Paget become, that he absolutely kept them
out of her sight as much as possible; and she had a terror in her
heart that Evan Cameron might be killed in action, and, for a time,
all unknown to her.
Great was her craving for intelligence. She could not, like a man,
go to clubs or newspaper offices, when the latest telegrams--often
false ones--were posted up; and often nightly she went to bed with
the agonising yet unasked question on her lips, 'Oh, what has
happened to-day in Egypt?--what is happening _now_?' and she had to
scan the morning papers, if at all, surreptitiously, eagerly, and
feverishly, for what she did not want to see.
How would she have suffered the old Peninsula war time, when news and
battle lists appeared in the weekly and bi-weekly journals more than
a month, yea, sometimes two months, after victories were won (we had
no defeats in those long-service days), and after the grass was green
above the graves of our gallant dead--the men that knew how to die,
but never turn their heel before a foe--when our regiments fought for
the historic glory of their number, as steadily as for king and
country!
Sir Paget knew the source of his young wife's anxiety, and watched
her grimly.
'How dull my life is with _him_, kind though he tries to be,' thought
the girl; 'we have not a thought, feeling, or inspiration in common.
When with Evan, it seemed all inspiration, and thoughts came and went
so fast. He always brought bright ones to me.'
He was her first and only love--the love that leads a girl to see
only ideal perfection in the object so beloved. Their passion had
been like the diva in of a mid-summer night, and now they were to
meet never more--never more!
She recalled the words of the song he was wont to sing to air of
'Rousseau's Dream'--
'See the moon o'er cloudless Jura
Shining in the loch below;
See the distant mountain towering
Like a pyramid of snow.
'Scenes of grandeur, scenes of childhood,
Scenes so dear to love and me!
When we roam by bower or wild wood,
All is lovelier when with _thee_!
And, as she touched the piano, his voice seemed to come to her ear
again.
'Eveline!' she would murmur, dreamily, 'he called me Eveline--his
own--yes, I can hear his voice plainly now--plainly I heard it at
Dundargue, and on that last evening at Maviswood.'
Then her eye would fall on her wedding-ring, and a kind of shiver
passed over her.
She strove to read, but that was almost impossible; her mind wandered
from the story, or sometimes certain passages struck her painfully.
In a novel ('Out of Court') one ran thus:--'she married him; she
ceased to love him, and she died, which, on the whole, was a better
fortune than generally befalls the women who make this
_irretrievable_ stumble on the threshold of life.'
'Oh! would I but die too; but I am too young, and too strong!' she
thought bitterly. 'Our hearts choose for us, in spite of us, and I
chose Evan.'
Bound though she was to a husband beyond her years, uncongenial, and,
in some points, unappreciative, she could respect him, but she could
never love him; that was impossible. Her love was far away, where
the shadows of the Pyramids fell on the sands of Ghizeh, and the
pipes of the Black Watch sent up their wild war-notes in the desert
of Goshen.
She had still the companionship of Olive, who, with her aunt, Lady
Aberfeldie, was lingering at Southsea.
'Take care, Eveline,' said the former, warningly, 'lest this useless
and hopeless regret for Cameron becomes too apparent to Sir Paget.'
'I cannot help it, however wrong and sinful it may be,' she replied.
'I do my best. I let myself love him from the first moment I met
him, and knew that he loved me--loved me well--before the secret
escaped him. Many have admired me, but,' she added, simply and
sweetly, 'no one ever spoke to me before as Evan spoke, and I gave
him all the love of my heart; but to cherish it is, I grant you,
hopeless now.'
'Hopeless as mine; for now Allan, I fear, loathes me, if he thinks of
me at all,' said Olive.
'I am very tired, Olive,' observed the other girl, 'of trying to
compel duty to triumph over sorrow.'
In her soft hazel eyes there was the expression of one who was always
looking far away at some horizon unseen by others. Sir Paget was not
so dull or so slow as not to perceive all this, and to draw his own
deductions therefrom. A change had decidedly come over him since he
detected her emotion on the day the Black Watch marched, and he had
become captious, fractious, jealous, and inclined to be sneering,
while watchful of every expression in her face.
In the library one day she was looking at a terrestrial globe on a
tall and handsome stand. She saw that, as the crow flies, the
distance was two thousand five hundred miles at least to where the
Black Watch were face to face with the swarthy followers of Arabi;
and, stooping, she pressed her lips to Egypt in general.
'_He_ is there--I here! On the globe, how short the distance seems!'
'What _are_ you about, Lady Puddicombe?' said a voice, sharply,
behind her--the voice of Sir Paget, who was jerking his bald head
forward most alarmingly. 'Kissing a globe!--what tomfoolery--what
strange fancy is this?'
'I was only examining it,' she faltered.
'Only examining it!' he snarled; 'very, closely apparently, and in
what quarter did your geographical studies lie? Why, your lips were
absolutely upon it.'
'A giddiness came over me,' replied Eveline, ashamed alike of her
sudden emotion and enforced duplicity.
He eyed her viciously, and his eyes glittered dangerously.
'At luncheon this afternoon you were more dull and _distraite_ even
than I have seen you before,' said he, peering at her through his
gold _pince-nez_. 'Now, pray, what was the meaning of that? What
ails you--what oppresses you?'
'It is very wrong. I cannot help it,' urged the girl, desperately.
'Like all the rest of the world, you were thinking of--I suppose,
Egypt?'
'I was, Sir Paget.'
'D--n Egypt, and everyone there!' exclaimed the baronet, coarsely and
savagely. 'What is Egypt to you, madam, in particular?'
'My brother----'
'Your brother--bosh, madam, bosh! Don't think to hoodwink me. A
young married lady should always make herself agreeable, especially
to her husband; it is one of the first principles of good-breeding
and of wifely quality.'
Eveline coloured with pain and keen annoyance at what these remarks
implied; but Sir Paget in his anger was not disposed to content
himself with them alone.
'Kissing a globe, indeed! To my mind it is evident that you think
less of your brother than of your brother's friend--that fellow
Cameron,' he exclaimed, giving full swing to his jealousy. 'He
comes, I believe, of a decent stock enough; but that should not have
encouraged him to act like the other adventurer Holcroft with your
cousin, and dare to raise his eyes to you.'
'A decent stock--an adventurer!' repeated Eveline; and then, as she
thought of Evan Cameron's long line of warlike and heroic ancestors,
as compared with the peculiar line of the Puddicombes, she laughed
bitterly, while Sir Paget eyed her questioningly, and said,
'It is fortunate you were separated. Well, I suppose you won't die
of a broken heart, and all that sort of thing, like the girls we see
on the stage and read about in novels.'
Roused at last by these coarse taunts, Eveline said,
'Sir Paget, I thought you were ignorant of the ways and meannesses of
the fashionable world; don't, please, adopt those of sneering and
being jealous--if, indeed, that world is ever jealous, or can love
enough to be so.'
And, turning away, she took refuge in a gush of tears, inspired by
intense mortification, while Olive caressed and strove to soothe her.
'An absurd old man!' exclaimed Olive, angrily--'a widower, too, who
began life by loving and marrying another--how dare he treat you
thus?'
'Oh, Olive, how shall I ever pass all the long years before I die,
and with _him_, not Evan?'
'My darling--hush--this will never do,' urged Olive, who became
alarmed by the chance of some new _esclandre_.
'I don't understand all this, Lady Aberfeldie,' said Sir Paget,
greatly ruffled, when he saw that handsome and always serenely calm
matron; 'your daughter is an enigma to me,' he added, ashamed to
acknowledge what he suspected and she perfectly knew. 'I sometimes
surprise her in tears, and, if I ask the cause, she pleads a passage
in a novel, or that her music made her sad. Stuff and nonsense! I
should like to see the book or hear the music that would wring tears
from me.'
'Try change of scene,' said Lady Aberfeldie.
Daily Eveline's hazel eyes seemed to become larger and brighter,
while her face grew paler, and all the delicate rose-leaf colour and
complexion faded out of it. The lines of her young features, if
sorrowful, were very sweet, and her eyes, if somewhat sad, seemed
calm in expression now. Yet the girl had ever before her the last
_haunting_ look that Evan gave her as he marched past, amid the wild
hurly-burly of the dense crowd that surged around the departing Black
Watch--the long, silent, and indescribable look of those who gaze
their last upon the silent dead; for dead she was to him!
At times, when quite alone, she would linger on her knees, in prayer
for his safety, and that his days should be ever happy--often with
her open Bible before her, but without looking at it, like many
honest folks, as if to have it there would work a spell.
Her life, as yet, was one of constant dread--the effort to hide her
anxiety and sorrow, with her recent love for another, under a hollow
smile. She feared even to sleep, lest in a dream the name of Evan
might escape her.
She would get over all this nonsense in time, her mother thought; for
in time people get over everything.
Sir Paget thought he would take that lady's advice, and try change of
scene; and conceiving, not unwisely, that she would be infinitely
better away from the military associations of Portsmouth--the
incessant arrival and departure of crowded transports, the marching
in and out, the bugling, drumming, and drilling daily and hourly of
'those infernal soldiers' on the grassy common between Puddicombe
Villa and Southsea Castle, he resolved to take her abruptly to his
house in London, though the season was long since over, the town and
the parks empty--not that the latter fact would affect Eveline in the
least.
'He is taking me to London, Olive dear, away from you,' said she,
sadly; for with Olive alone could she commune in secret.
'He is wise. London will not be associated with Evan Cameron. You
cannot think so much there as here by the seashore.'
'I shall think of him, anywhere and everywhere.'
'Change of scene, faces, places, and people will do much. Try, dear,
to forget.'
But poor Eveline only looked yearningly, and kissed the soft cheeks
of her handsome cousin, with much caressing and many tears.