THE FOUR-IN-HAND CLUB.
One of the chief, if not the only, pleasure of Alison's life of
routine was, on sunny days, to take her little charges into
Kensington Gardens, and set them by the margin of the blue Round
Pond, and watch its tiny fleet of toy ships skimming to and fro, with
the hideous, Dutch-looking palace of Kensington as a background--a
palace, the rooms of which are only remarkable for memories of
William of Orange (and, let us add, of Glencoe) and Elizabeth
Villiers, the hideous, one-eyed Countess of Orkney; but stately, even
grand, are the avenues of old trees that grow thereby. 'How many
secrets have been overheard by these ancient elms since Heneage Finch
built the boundary-fence of his pleasance! Could their experience be
set forth for the behoof of modern lovers, would they be apt,' asks a
writer, 'to encourage or to warn?'
The old palace is still there as it was when the home of the Finches,
with its three irregular quadrangles, built of red brick, ornamented
with columns, quoins, and cornices of indifferent stone, unchanged as
when Solmes Blues mounted guard and the early Georges swore and
blustered in broken English and guttural German; but how changed are
all its surroundings, for miles upon miles of streets stretch far to
the westward, southward, and northward of it now.
When James VI., accustomed to old Edinburgh within its 'Flodden
Wall,' was so startled with the size of the petty London of his time
that, in his famous speech in the Star Chamber, in 1616, he declared
that its size made it a nuisance to the nation, that he would have
all new edifices pulled down, and the builders committed to prison,
he could little foresee the London of the days of steam!
And, often as she sat there under the stately trees, Alison loved to
ponder over the days when the old Court suburb was remote from
London, for in 1750, where now we find busy Westbourne Grove, stood a
solitary house, called Western Green, three miles distant from Hyde
Park; and so lately as 1830, on the Bayswater side of the Gardens,
were Kensington Gravel Pits, facing the Broad Walk, stretching away
to what is now called Bayswater, which was formerly renowned for the
springs and conduits for which the city was then indebted for pure
water. It was famous then for its tea gardens, there called the
Flora, extending the whole length of Lancaster Gate.
So, book in hand, while the children played near her on the grass,
Alison would sit in Kensington Gardens for hours lost in reverie,
while the bees hummed in the hot air at the flower-beds near the
Serpentine, and the sun blazed without mercy on the sheet of shining
water that stretched away towards the Albert Gate; but, when certain
thoughts of the past occurred to her, there would seem no beauty in
that summer scene, nor warmth even in the sunshine, for there was a
dull, weary, and aching crave at her heart, with the ever-recurring
question--Where was Bevil, and why did he not make an effort to seek
her out?
She knew not that the only person who could enlighten him as to her
movements--the vicar of Chilcote--had steadily refused to do so.
On such occasions old Archie was generally hovering about for a sight
of her; and, if he could exchange a word with her, would steal away
to his dingy lodgings 'as happy as a king,' to use his own phrase;
and muttering--'The Lord will watch owre her--the Lord will watch
owre her--like ilka blade o' grass that keps its ain drap o' dew.'
One day she extended her walk beyond the boundary of the Gardens,
and, crossing the bridge near the powder magazine, watched with
feverish eagerness the crowds of fashionables who were gathering in
their thousands there; for it was the 17th of May, when there was to
be a muster of the Four-in-Hand Club, and she had a strange
presentiment that she should see Bevil Goring--one of those
presentiments which come unbidden to the mind, perhaps more often to
the Scottish mind than any other--why or how, we know not--but which
seem to speak of that which is to come as powerfully as ever did
those oracles of old that whispered through the mist of Delphi, or by
the black doves of Dodona; and she was not doomed to be--in one sense
at least--disappointed.
Amid the fast gathering crowds and the general excitement of the
scene she was careful not to lose sight of her little charges, whose
tiny hands she clasped in her own, and kept them close by her side.
She saw Cadbury ride past, accompanied by Gaskins his groom; and,
while the sight gave her a kind of shock, she shrank behind a tree
lest he should perceive her, and some minutes elapsed ere she
ventured from her hiding place.
Natheless his peerage, aware of his plebeian descent and certainly
not distinguished appearance, instead of appearing fashionably
attired like a London park rider, Cadbury affected the style of a
country gentleman; and on this day--though a most indifferent
horseman--he wore Bedford cord breeches, and black polished boots, an
ordinary cut-away coat buttoned over the chest, a hat rather low in
the crown, and carried a light hunting whip, affecting the air of one
who flew over his fences 'like a bird' though not unfrequently he was
landed on one side, while his horse remained on the other; and he
rode over the hounds and committed many similar unpardonable faults
in the field.
At this narrowly escaped rencontre she felt her colour come and
go--come and go--quickly. The man's appearance brought brought back
with a rush, and vividly, a host of painful and annoying memories;
and then there was the thousand pounds cheque sent anonymously and
the marble cross so mysteriously erected at her father's grave.
Oh, was she right or was she wrong in avoiding him?
Nowhere in Europe can such a sight be seen as that presented on such
a day beside the Serpentine when the meet of the Four-in-Hand Club
takes place. All London seemed to be looking its brightest and best,
and all London--at least, the fashionable world thereof--seemed to
have found some excuse for being in the vicinity of the Serpentine
Bridge and the powder magazine which stands thereby.
It was May, and the young green trees were in full foliage, and the
parterres of rhododendrons and azaleas were in bloom; and gathering
there were the beauty and fashion of the greatest city in the world,
with the best horse flesh, the most accomplished drivers, and the
most perfect drags, with shining panels and plated harness.
On either side of the drive all the hawthorns, pink and white, were
in bloom, loading the morning air with the perfume of the almond; and
the waters of the Serpentine were seen at intervals between the
flowery shrubs and long avenues of leafy trees in all the fresh
greenery of May; but as Alison looked around her she thought of
Essilmont in May--Essilmont, which too probably she would never see
again, with the pool in the Ythan where the Black Hound appeared when
one of her race was drowned in it; where the grey-clad angler loved
to linger by the stream in the silvery morning mist; where the black
gled crowed overhead as he winged his way across the purple heather,
or the cushet doo cooed with bell-like note in the pine coppice, and
the high antlers of the stag were seen as he couched amid the cool
and fan-leaved bracken.
But the acclamations of the little girls who clung to her hands or
skirts roused Alison from her reverie, for the procession had
started, and above thirty drags, horsed magnificently, with splendid
silver harness blazing in the sunshine, were getting into motion,
their drivers--when not clad in the club uniform, blue, with gilded
buttons--wearing accurate morning costume, while the dresses of the
many ladies who crowded the lofty seats on the roof, were such as
only Regent Street can furnish--and for beauty, no other city on
earth could have produced such women as were seen there, in carriages
or on foot.
Team after team went past, the German Ambassador with his bays, the
Guards' drag, with four glossy blacks, the Hussars from Hounslow,
chestnuts, greys, and roans, all criticised and critically examined
by the onlookers, and surrounded by Hyde Park in all its glory, the
route being taken from the magazine to Hyde Park corner, thence by
Knightsbridge Barracks, passing the Albert Memorial, and out by the
Queen's Gate, where the whole passed away like a phantasmagoria from
the eyes of Alison, whose gaze followed the line of drags like one
lost in a painful dream, after her heart had given the first bound of
bewilderment, on seeing that the leading coach was driven by Bevil
Goring!
She had seen a dashing drag drawn by a team of beautiful roans, and
certainly her heart beat painfully with joy, amazement, and then with
something of mortification, when she recognised in the driver
thereof, 'tooling along in a most workmanlike manner,' as a bystander
remarked, her _fiancé_, Bevil Goring, while on the top seats were
Jerry Wilmot, Tony Dalton, young Fleming, and others of the Rifles,
with Laura, and several ladies, some of whom were seated close behind
Goring, and in animated conversation with him, one of them apparently
a rather flirty party, who insisted on shading his eyes sometimes
with her scarlet silk parasol.
She again shrank behind a tree, as she had done when Cadbury came in
sight. Her gaze, and her heart too, followed the gay drag with its
roans and brilliant party going away to luncheon, no doubt at Muswell
Hill, and she watched it until it disappeared.
How she got through the remainder of the day in the dull school-room
on the attic floor in Pembridge Square, she scarcely knew; but the
next was considerably advanced before she saw an account of the
coaching meet in a fashionable paper, and read that 'Captain Goring
of the Rifles' drag and team were considered by eminent connoisseurs
as the most perfect in the park.' A little further on she saw that
at his rooms in Piccadilly he had, after the meet, entertained a
number of the club at dinner, with many persons of distinction,
including H.R.H. the F.M. commanding, and one or two foreign
ambassadors.
His drag and team! What a change was here! Poor Alison was indeed
sorely bewildered; but on reflection the change failed to give her
joy. Here were evidences of great and sudden wealth, and yet he made
no effort to discover her. And those ladies on the drag, who were
they; and who was she who seemed so familiar with him, and to whose
playful remarks he stooped to listen from time to time?
Alas! it seemed as if his neglect of her was quite accounted for now.
She suppressed a great desire to sob aloud, and half drew her
engagement ring from her finger. Then, with true superstition of the
heart, she carefully replaced it, as she did a locket which contained
his likeness, and which she wore in the breast of her dress; but the
episode of that day and all it vaguely suggested added sorely to the
already sufficient bitterness of the poor girl's governess life.
She knew not that though, in accordance with his recently-acquired
wealth and position, his own tastes, and the wishes of friends, Bevil
had started a drag and joined the Four-in-Hand Club, he had been
baffled resolutely more than once in his efforts to trace her by the
well-meaning vicar of Chilcote, and that he was in perpetual anxiety
to discover her, and was trusting to hope that her father's death on
one hand and his own ample means had removed the barrier that the
former had raised between them.
It is the fate of true love apparently never to run like a railway.
'But why that proverbial asperity should be confined to what is true
we are unable to say,' writes a novelist, adding, 'For our own part,
that eternal smoothness has but little charm; and the ripple which
reflects sunshine and shade, bright gleams and darkening clouds in
love as in Nature, gives brightness and variety to the prosiest
poetry in the world.'
But doubtless Goring and Alison Cheyne were beginning to think that
they had endured enough of the darkening clouds that seemed as yet
without a silver lining.