CONCLUSION.
So she was out in the world once more, with apparently no earthly tie
to bind her to it.
'Could I but see Bevil's face once more and then die!' was her
thought, as, blinded with the hot tears that flowed under her veil,
she was driven through the sunny and crowded streets of pleasant
Bayswater.
We have said that the vicar of Chilcote was now in town; he had
brought his family with him, and was residing in private apartments
not far from Pembridge Square, and overlooking Kensington Gardens.
Thus Alison's first thoughts--indeed her only resource--was to throw
herself upon him as she had before intended; but now she was
terrified that, if he naturally made inquiries of Mrs. De Jobbyns, in
the spirit of sourness or malevolence she might give a very distorted
account of the late episode; and, indeed, the worthy old man was
greatly disturbed when she told him her simple tale, as the same
ideas occurred to himself, and he saw all the peril of giving the
name of that irate matron as a reference to anyone else; and thus for
two entire days he remained in sore perplexity what to do.
On the third he began again to question Alison, whom he kept with his
family.
'And the portrait which caused this grotesque disturbance--the
portrait of this gentleman is that of your _fiancé_?' he asked.
'Yes.'
'Were you engaged to him with your father's consent?' asked he,
suspiciously, while he regarded her keenly, but not unkindly, under
his shaggy, white eyebrows.
'No--to my sorrow be it said,' replied Alison, with a little
hesitation.
'That seems wrong--why?'
'He was not rich enough then to suit papa's views, having little more
than his pay.'
'_Then_--is he rich now?'
'Yes--more than rich--even wealthy.'
'And has he since sought you out?'
'No,' sobbed Alison.
The vicar shook his white head and groaned.
'What is his name?' he asked, and Alison told him.
'Goring--Goring,' said he, pulling his nether lip thoughtfully; 'I
have heard the name. He called on me more than once to ask your
London address, as also did Lord Cadbury of Cadbury Court; but
suspecting his object, I declined to give it.'
'Oh, why?'
'He is an officer--and officers are often wild and unscrupulous
fellows. You are young, more than most attractive, and are without a
protector--you understand?'
'Oh, sir, how you have wronged him!'
'I am sorry you think so, but----'
'Good heavens, you may have parted me and Bevil for ever!' she
exclaimed, in a voice of intense pathos and sorrow.
'Not so, my darling--I am here!' said Bevil Goring, who had entered
unannounced by the boarding-house servant, and in a moment his arms
were round her and her head upon his breast.
The darkest hour is always that before the dawn, it is said, even as
clouds are a prelude to sunshine.
It is chiefly in novels and on the stage, but seldom in real life,
that people start and scream, or faint and fall; so Alison, on
finding herself suddenly face to face with the object of all her
dearest and tenderest thoughts, felt only her colour change and her
heart give a kind of leap within her breast; while power so
completely seemed to leave her limbs for some moments that she would
have slid on the carpet but for the support of Bevil's caressing
arms, and for more than a minute neither spoke, for great emotion
induces silence.
So she remained folded in his close embrace--content, safe in the
shelter of his arms, with her white face nestling on his breast,
while he showered kisses upon it and her hair.
'Captain Goring,' said the vicar, 'how did you discover that she was
here--with me?'
'She wrote to her old servant whither she had gone, and he informed
me without delay at my club. He did not distrust me, as you, sir,
did.'
'I trust, Captain Goring, you will pardon that now, "as all is well
that ends well," replied the vicar, with a smile, and thinking,
wisely, that he might be rather _de trop_ just then, he withdrew to
another apartment.
Goring now then held her at arm's length to survey her face, it was
so long since he had last looked upon it, and then drew her close
again to his breast. After a time, he asked,
'What is all this that I have been told about your being a
governess--Alison, love, tell me?'
'I am one now--at least, I was one, in a house in Pembridge Square.'
'With a family called De Jobbyns--absurd name!'
'Yes.'
'Is this a riddle--a joke, or what?' said he, giving his moustache an
almost angry twitch.
'No riddle or joke,' replied Alison, sweetly. 'I seemed to have no
friend in the world to aid me, and I had my bread to earn.'
'My poor darling!'
'Yes--poor indeed.'
'And you have left that woman?'
'No.'
'How?'
'She dismissed me bluntly and coarsely.'
'Why?' asked Goring, striking the floor with his spurred heel.
'I was dismissed with a month's salary, because I had been detected
wearing your likeness--here, in my locket.'
A smile that rippled into a laugh spread over the face of Goring,
who, recalling the mode in which he had been hunted by mother and
daughter, took in the whole situation.
Calm speech and connected utterance came now to both, and many mutual
explanations were made, and mutual tender assurances given more than
once; for both had much to relate and to hear; nor with both--Alison
especially--without false impressions that required removal.
'And _you_ were actually in Antwerp too!' exclaimed Alison, when she
heard his story.
'I traced you there, only to lose you again--though many times I must
have passed the door of the very place where you lay ill. Oh, my
darling, what you must have endured!'
Her transitory emotions of gratitude to Cadbury for his supposed
birthday gift made Goring laugh again when he saw her wonder and joy
that it had come from himself, and that she learned the erector of
the marble cross was himself also. Thus, when Bevil felt her tears
and kisses on his cheek, he thought that never were gifts so
pleasantly repaid. With Alison, it would all be rest hereafter.
'Trials and troubles might come,' as a writer has it; though further
trials and troubles seemed at a low computation just then; 'but
nothing would tear her great tree up by the roots again.'
Alison felt just a little emotion of shame, and that she kept to
herself. He had never, even for an instant, doubted her love (though
he had feared her father's influence), but she had not been without
twinges of doubt, especially after the day of the Four-in-Hand
meeting by the Serpentine.
'How trivial, at first, seem the events that rule our lives--that
shape our destinies--our future,' said Goring. 'Had I not, by the
merest chance, met poor old Archie, heaven alone knows when I might
have traced you.'
Hour after hour passed by, and she forgot all about the vicar, and
even of where they were.
She would recal the past time at Chilcote, when the first vague
emotion of happiness in his presence and his society--pleasure that
was almost, strange to say, a kind of sweet pain--stole over her;
when she was half-afraid to meet his eye, and when each stolen glance
at the other led to much secret perturbation of spirit, and when a
touch of the hand seemed to reveal something that was new, as the
glamour of a first love stole into the hearts of both.
How long, long ago, seemed that day on which they rode with the
buckhounds, and took their fences together side by side.
We have not much more to relate, as in a little time they were to
glide pleasantly away into the unnoticed mass of married folks; yet
to Alison it would be always delightful to think that she had, at her
will and bidding, a fine manly fellow like Bevil Goring--one whom
brave men had been proud to follow--for she had a keen appreciation
of soldierly renown; and he had more than a paragraph to his name in
the Annual Army List.
We have said, we think, in a preceding chapter that he wrote to his
solicitors at Gray's Inn an important letter concerning the
acquisition of certain property at Chilcote; thus when he took Archie
Auchindoir into his service as a personal valet (which he did
forthwith), great was the astonishment of the old man on first
entering his master's rooms in Piccadilly at what he saw there, and a
cry of joy escaped him and he almost wept.
There hung all the old family pictures, and there were many a relic
and chattel dearly prized by Sir Ranald and Alison too, in that
superstition of the heart, which few sensitive or affectionate
natures are without.
There on the sideboard was the great silver tankard, the gift of
Queen Elizabeth--the Bride of the Bruce--filled with red wine and
emptied on hundreds of occasions by many successions of Cheynes, even
after the 24th of June, 1314, was nigh forgotten, and above it hung
the portraits of the two pale, haughty, yet dashing and noble-looking
cavalier brothers, with their love-locks and long rapiers, who fell
in battle for the King of Scotland, and Archie, greeting them as old
friends, passed his shrivelled hands tenderly and caressingly over
the unconscious canvas, as if he could scarcely believe his eyes.
'A' for her, a' for her--God bless him!' he muttered, knowing well
why Goring had rescued these objects from Sir Ranald's creditors.
In Piccadilly, Archie, though rather a puzzle to Goring's other
servants--his grooms, coachman, and so forth--found himself 'in
clover;' and, till the marriage came off, Alison was to remain with
the family of the vicar, who was to perform the ceremony, at which
little Netty Dalton figured as a bridesmaid.
After all she had undergone, and had feared she might yet have to
undergo, she was again with Goring--his strong arms round her, his
lips upon her cheek and brow!
She was at times confused, bewildered--unable to comprehend it all.
She could but lay her head upon his breast and resign herself to the
rapture of the occasion, and close her eyes as if it would be
happiness even if she opened them no more.
How joyous was that mute embrace--that love-making without words--the
spell that neither knew how--or wished--to break! All her past woes,
and all her future hopes, seemed merged in the joy of the present
time; while the pressure of Bevil's hand, his impassioned murmur, his
fond gaze and studious tenderness, his attention to every wish and
want, caused a sense of joy in her soul of which it had never been
conscious before.
As Jerry said, in his off-hand way, when he visited them, like Bella
and himself, 'they were in a high state of sentimental gush.'
Now she knew that she belonged to Goring, and he to her, and that the
life and love of each belonged to each other, that they would be
always together till death--a distant event, let us hope--parted
them; that his handsome face would never smile on another woman as it
smiled on her; and that no other woman's lips would be touched by him
as hers had been on the day she ceased to be Alison Cheyne of
Essilmont and that ilk.
THE END.
LONDON: PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD BLENHEIM HOUSE