'ASHES TO ASHES.'
When she opened her eyes with a sob and a gasp, she found herself in
the arms of Archie and Rebecca Prune, and while her little white hand
wandered in bewilderment across her brow, she moved her head from
side to side, and looked vacantly, wearily, and inquiringly around
her.
At last she realised it all, and rushed to the bedside.
'He has left ye, my bairn,' said Archie, in a broken voice, 'but God
bides wi' ye yet.'
'Oh, papa, come back to me--I cannot live without you, papa! Do not
leave me thus, all alone, all alone!' she wailed out, as she buried
her face in the bedclothes, and threw her arms across the stiffening
form, till the old man, by an exertion of strength that was great for
his years, bore her bodily away to her own room, and left her there
with Mrs. Prune.
Fast as the storm drops without, the tears rolled over her pale
cheeks, while she sobbed as though her heart would break; nor did the
kind old woman who hung over her, and caressed her poor aching head
by pressing it against her maternal breast, attempt to check Alison's
passionate weeping, which proved alike a safety valve to her brain
and heart, till, worn out with all she had undergone for days and
nights past, a heavy sleep came upon her.
Old Archie hung over her for a minute ere he left her, and thought
what a lovely face hers was to look upon, pale and exhausted though
it was in expression. The forehead low and broad, the eyebrows dark,
yet delicately marked; the waxen-like eyelid fringed by long lashes
that lay lightly on the cheek; the rosebud mouth so full of sweetness
and decision.
We must hasten over this gloomy portion of our story, and get, with
Alison, into the busy world once more, for her father's death led to
many changes.
In connection with that event, the real or fancied sound she had
heard preyed deeply on her mind, and the only person to whom she
could speak, brokenly and with quivering lips, on the subject--Archie
Auchindoir--believed in the existence of the supernatural so
thoroughly that he left nothing unsaid to confirm her in the belief.
All people are now incredulous of everything, and to none other but
Bevil Goring would she have spoken on the subject--and yet with her
it had much of the superstition of the heart in it. Men of science
assert that there is no evidence that the ordinary course of nature
is ever interrupted. According to their theories, 'there never have
been, there are not now, and there never will be, either miracles or
opposition. Between the orthodox, who doubt modern supernaturalism,
and the men of science, who are sceptics all round, the strange thing
is that anyone should arise to express a belief which is so contrary
to the spirit of our time, though we have by analysis and
investigation laid our hands on many things hitherto sealed'--to wit,
gas, electricity, the telephone, and so forth.
Be all this as it may, we tell the tale as it was told to us, and
hope the hound of Essilmont, if it bayed at all, did so for the last
time.
At Chilcote the first day of death stole quietly on. Prostrate with
grief, Alison remained in her own room, leaving all that was to be
done with the vicar, the doctor, and Archie, who, plunged in sorrow
great as any could feel who shared not the blood of the dead man,
hovered about her in a helpless kind of way, as if he would have
striven to console--yea, almost to caress her. Was she not the child
he had carried often in his arms? but, as he phrased it, 'he wistna
what to do.'
And as the girl sat in her room, careless of who came to the house or
left it, with the one awful conviction upon her that he had passed
away 'to that unutterable mystery and greeting which mortal eye hath
not seen, nor ear heard.' Her beautiful face grew all lined and
haggard, and her dark-rimmed eyes, in their peculiar glitter, told of
many a sleepless night and of much mental anguish.
Lord Cadbury, as we have elsewhere said, hated sick-rooms, 'and all
that sort of thing;' still more did he hate death-beds, funerals, and
all connected therewith. And when last at Chilcote, seeing that the
end was not far off--indeed, the doctors had said so--he went back to
town to await the final catastrophe, 'the double event,' that would
rid him of a querulous friend, and place that friend's daughter more
completely at his mercy--yea, and the mercy of Fate!
In reply to the posted announcements of the death, his card came to
Alison in a black-edged envelope, sealed with his coronet in black
wax. He did not attempt--even with all his pretences and past
protestations--to indite a sham letter of condolence, nor did she
miss it.
'Dead--dead at last!' muttered Cadbury, as he sat in the sunny
bow-window of the club looking out on busy Pall Mall, his ferret-like
eyes glittering cunningly and leeringly as he tugged his white,
horseshoe-shaped moustachios. 'Well, he's a loss to no one but the
girl herself--not even to his creditors now--the vain old Scotch
pump, with his pedigree and his ancestry, his heraldry and his
beggarly bosh! But I would like to know who the devil sent that
mysterious thousand pounds! It may be a trump-card for me yet.'
Cadbury began to consider his plans anew. He would get Alison up to
London and give her a letter of introduction--as companion or
something of that kind--to a now somewhat _passé_ 'lady friend' of
his, who occupied a tiny villa at St. John's Wood, and drove a
brougham, of course, who would 'soon contrive to make it all straight
for him;' and he chuckled as he thought of the success that, through
her, would eventually be his. Anyway, the proud Alison would find
some difficulty in 'cresting up' her haughty little head after her
residence at St. John's Wood.
Lord Cadbury could not come to the quiet and hasty funeral at
Chilcote; he was 'too indisposed.' Certainly Alison did not want him.
She had had quite enough of the peer, and hoped never to see his face
again.
'Better awa', Miss Alison, better awa'; his absence is guid
companie,' said Archie, who could not endure Cadbury, and loathed his
dandified groom Gaskins. ''Od, missie, he's worth nae weal that
canna bide wae. May he dee like a trooper's horse, wi' his shoon
on!' added Archie, through his set teeth.
So as a hateful dream the details of death passed on. 'Ashes to
ashes, dust to dust.' The vicar's voice fell clearly in the calm
spring air on the ear of Alison as she leant on the doctor's arm, for
very few were present at the funeral, and these few, save Archie,
were strangers; but her soul seemed to shrink within her as she heard
the shovelfuls of gravel pattering down on the polished coffin-lid
and the large metal plate, which bore the name and age of
'SIR RANALD CHEYNE, BART., OF THAT ILK
AND ESSILMONT.'
The last of her race, save _herself_!
'Surely, surely, if he is in England, Bevil will come to me now when
he hears of this calamity!' she whispered in her heart, as she sat in
the solitude of her own room when all was over.
But Bevil Goring came not. He had never had explained to him the
cause of her abrupt and mysterious flight or departure from Chilcote,
and the subsequent trip in Cadbury's yacht, and why, or how, she had
neither time nor opportunity to write to him the briefest note of
farewell or enlightenment on the subject; but all that had nothing to
do with his absence on the present occasion, as we shall relate anon.
But she was brooding sadly over it, while--declining the proffered
hospitality of the vicarage--she sat in her loneliness, watching the
stars as they came out one by one, thinking of the bitterness and
brevity of human life, and marvelling how many millions of the human
race these orbs had looked down upon, and would yet look down upon,
in the ages to come.
Her father's spendthrift errors in youth, and his petulance and
selfishness in old age, were all forgotten by Alison now. She
remembered only his love for herself, and even repented that she
could not gratify him by sacrificing herself to Cadbury.
Would she have prolonged his life by doing so? That was a problem on
which she could not--dared not dwell.
His tenants--or rather those who had been his tenants--far away among
the Braes of Aberdeenshire, longer than they might have been, but for
the merciful consideration of his creditors--men who, even in this
advanced age, deemed themselves born vassals of the house of Cheyne,
as their fathers did when the Red Harlaw was fought, or the Brig o'
Dee was bravely manned in the days of Montrose--were stirred with
much genuine grief when they heard of his death. For, though proud
to his equals, he had ever been a friendly and kindly landlord to
them, and thinking of them ever, in the good spirit of the olden
time, as 'my father's people,' he would shake warmly the hand of old
Donald Gordon, the gudeman of a little farm-town, while asking after
his wife and daughters by name; though he would barely nod his
aristocratic head to some 'earth-hungry' commercial man, who had
acquired a fine estate--all won by honest industry.
'Oh, why does not Bevil come to me; if in England, he must have heard
of papa's death?' was her ever recurring thought.
And he did hear it; but, by a strange contingency, a little too late.
Meanwhile, not much time was given Alison to linger in desolate
Chilcote, and she found that, a day or two after the funeral, she
would have to face the cold and bitter world--yea, and to face it
alone, tender, young, and inexperienced as she was!
Sir Ranald's death brought the last of his creditors swooping down
upon the dregs and lees of his possessions, and, with a heart that
seemed broken afresh, Alison surrendered to them everything, even to
that heirloom which her father deemed the palladium of the
Cheynes--the great silver tankard that had been the gift of
Elizabeth, Queen Dowager of Scotland, to Sir Ranald Cheyne of
Essilmont and Inverugie, the master of her household. And she wept
with the knowledge that to have parted with that would well-nigh have
broken her father's heart.
The mysterious thousand pounds were spent--all save a little sum; but
the last of her father's smaller debts had been paid, and his last
days soothed by many a comfort. So Alison preferred to leave
Chilcote--for ever, and Archie pressed her sorely to accept, in whole
or in part, his carefully treasured 'three hunner pounds,' but
pressed her in vain.
Memories of the Beguinage and of sweet Sister Lisette came over her
now; but no--no--even if they would take her there for what her hands
might do, it would seem like a relinquishment of Bevil Goring and
life too.
'I am sure, Archie, I could teach little children--give lessons in
music or something in London,' said she.
'And I'll gang to London too, missie.'
'For what purpose?'
'Odd's sake, missie, to tak' care o' ye.'
'Poor, dear Archie!' said the girl, softly, with a sob in her slender
white throat.
Accompanied by this retainer, she paid a farewell visit to the
churchyard of Chilcote Vicarage, where, amid the bright sunshine of
spring, the earth seemed at its fairest, and the quaint, old,
picturesque fane of the Norman days, moss-green, ivy-grown, and
tree-shaded, was casting its shadows across 'God's Acre.'
She laid a chaplet of flowers, woven by her own loving hands and
watered by her tears, on her father's grave--that spot which to her
no sunshine could brighten--the spot where he lay, without a stone as
yet, the last of an old, old warlike and historic race; and then she
prayed for the dead--a prayer, it is said, never offered up in vain;
for though the petition may be refused, still the petitioner may be
rewarded in some fashion for the generous and unselfish prompting,
and we are told it is good to pray for them, that they may be loosed
from their sins. So Alison prayed by her father's grave, while her
faithful follower, who stood thereby hat in hand, had his mind full
of prayerful thoughts that could take no form of utterance, for
Archie was a true-blue Presbyterian, and knew not how to pray for
those who could no longer do so for themselves; and then the pair
crossed the churchyard stile in silence and passed away.
Old, wrinkled, sour-visaged Archie Auchindoir, with keen grey eyes,
white hair, and saturnine cast of features, was a strange 'Squire o'
the Dames,' or _Escudero_ (as the Spaniards would have it), for a
handsome young girl, albeit that she was in the deepest mourning; but
no one could be more kind, loving, and reverential, for poor Archie
loved the very ground his young mistress trod, and watched over her
as a father would have done.
And so, with this peculiar attendant, Alison bade adieu to old
Rebecca Prune, quitted Chilcote, and, furnished with a letter of
introduction from the vicar, set out by second class for London by an
early train on her melancholy pilgrimage; and many a poor girl has
thus set forth to earn her bread without the honest consolation and
support of a vassal so tender and true.
Piqued as she was now beginning to be by the knowledge that Bevil
Goring was in London, when he might have been seeking her, especially
amid her sorrow, in the country, she was not without hopes--but oh,
how slender they were!--of perhaps hearing something of him in that
vast human wilderness towards which she was being hurried.