THE HOTEL ST. ANTOINE.
At the very time that Bevil Goring, unconscious of mischief being
worked against him, was discussing his cutlets and Chablis at the
Hôtel du Parc, Mr. Gaskins was having an interview with his master,
Lord Cadbury, at the adjacent Hôtel St. Antoine.
'Captain Goring in Antwerp!' exclaimed the latter. 'How the devil
has he discovered that we are here, for that circumstance alone can
have brought him at a season when no one travels, and I have
sedulously kept my name out of the London papers.'
'It is the greatest lark out!' said Gaskins, bursting for the third
time into an explosion of laughter.
'What _is_ the greatest lark--what do you mean, Gaskins?' asked the
peer, with some asperity, while staring at his dependent.
'You remember the arrest of one of these Belgian rigger fellows, who
were repairing the yacht, as a Liberal communist, or something of
that kind, my lord?'
'Perfectly well.'
'He threw into a locker of the cabin some printed revolutionary
manifestoes, which were found yesterday by Captain Llanyard, who
meant to destroy them, so as to have no bother about the matter; but
I slipped them into the railway rugs of that ere Captain Goring, gave
the straight tip to a _jangdarum_, and I have no doubt that before
night he will be arrested.'
Cadbury actually joined in the explosion of merriment with which his
valet concluded this revelation of rascality.
'Egad, you are a genius, Gaskins,' said he; 'but did Llanyard see you
do this?'
'No, my lord.'
'Or anyone else?'
'No, I took jolly good care of that.'
'On this charge he will be kept close till we can clear out of
Antwerp by sea if the yacht is ready in time, or to Brussels, if only
Sir Ranald would get well. But you spoke to a gendarme, you say.'
'Yes, my lord.'
'Your evidence will be wanted--perhaps you did not think of that?'
Gaskins' nether jaw dropped at this suggestion.
'These Belgian and French police are the devils to have anything to
do with!' said his master; 'and _my_ name must not be mixed up with
this affair.'
'Of course not, my lord,' said Gaskins, with a cough.
'Put off your livery at once, change your clothes, and take an early
train to Brussels. Keep out of the way till I send for you--and
write to me your whereabouts.'
And, highly tickled by the whole affair, he gave a handful of money
to Gaskins for his expenses.
'Thank you, my lord, I am off like a bird,' said that worthy, and he
departed singing the music hall ditty, 'Love is like a cup of tea.'
'By Jove! Captain Goring won't find it so!--
"Lovely woman is the sugar;
Spoons we poor men often be--"
'_La-la-de-da!_ Miss Cheyne,' and, chuckling over the mischief he
thought he had put in motion, Mr. Gaskins took his departure from the
Hôtel St. Antoine in a cab for the station of _Chemin de fer de
l'Etat_, near the Zoological Gardens.
Cadbury's jealousy was roused again; he was most thoroughly enraged
by the idea of Goring being at Antwerp when he was beginning to think
he had Alison almost as much to himself as she had been when in the
yacht; and yet he did not see much of her, as she was so constantly
in attendance upon the sick-bed of her father.
Cadbury's fancy for her was a peculiar one. It was not love, we have
before said; not that his day for what he thought that sentiment to
be, was past, 'because,' as a writer says, 'till the grave has closed
over him, it is impossible to say of any man that his day for that,
or its _fac-simile_, infatuation, is finished.'
All his life he had been engaged in _affaires du cœur_--affairs
more or less coarse; but never before had he found a girl of such
refinement, beauty, and character as Alison Cheyne thrown by the mere
force of circumstances almost on his mercy; and now, after all the
trouble he had taken, the expense of taking up the bills collected by
Solomon Slagg, her aversion and resistance piqued and perhaps
exasperated him, and he longed for the time when he should feel that
he triumphed over and humbled her, he cared little how.
'How long--oh, Lord!--how long is this life of weariness and anxiety
to last and be endured?'
It was Alison who said this, in a whisper to herself, as she sat in
the half-lighted room, in which her father lay a-bed, ill, and sick,
and faint, his head still suffering from the blow he had received on
the night of the collision--a blow that nearly gave him concussion of
the brain, and might yet prove serious at his years, and with his now
broken constitution.
He lay in the plain but not unluxurious bed-room of a Belgian
hotel--the St. Antoine. The walls were lofty, papered with
sage-green paper; the bare and uncarpeted oak floor was varnished and
polished like the face of a mirror; a cheerful fire was in the square
black iron stove that stood in front of the carved oak mantelpiece,
whereon was an elegant French clock, above which rose a lofty mirror,
and on each side of which were large vases full of flowers, arranged
by the hands of Alison--chiefly roses, which at that season are
brought all the way from Nice to Antwerp--by railway, of course.
She heard the carillons sounding pleasantly in the evening air high
overhead apparently, and ever and anon the horns and bells of the
passing tramway-cars as they glided through the Place Verte.
Among the decorations of the bed-chamber hung a large engraving of an
English hunting scene, with the dogs in full cry scampering over
fences and ditches, and her eyes often wandered towards it, as, in
her mind, it was associated with the last day she had been out with
the Royal Buckhounds, and rode from the green lane home to Chilcote
Beeches accompanied by Bevil Goring. And then from the picture she
would turn to watch her father's pale and sleeping face. The grim
visitant had more than once seemed nigh; but Sir Ranald Cheyne clung
persistently to earth and earthly things.
Alison sat close to his bedside, for he who lay there seemed--save
some one far away, she thought--all that she had to cling to; she was
in a circle of light shed by a lamp upon a pedestal, and an unread
Tauchnitz volume lay on her lap forgotten--'Tales of Flemish Life,'
by Hendrik Conscience, the Walter Scott of Flanders.
She looked pale, worn, and wan. Sorrow and trouble were beginning to
tell upon her now; wakeful nights, restless days, and incessant
anxious thoughts were all robbing her of the bloom of perfect youth;
the sweetness of lip, the softness of brow, the light of eye, were
all passing away, and even her voice was changing, and becoming
starved and thin, if we may use the expression. While in the yacht
she had escaped her father's peevishness to some extent, and the
misery of her home life in another, with its struggle for appearances
and bare existence, its saving and scraping, and the duns of ever
urgent creditors; but then she had undergone the grief of a rough
separation from Bevil, with the annoyance the presence of Lord
Cadbury gave her.
'If I can only get through all this, nurse papa well, and get back to
Bevil, or to where I can hear of him, how happy--how thankful I shall
be!'
Though absent in body, she was ever present in spirit with Bevil; but
how little could she conceive that he was at that very time so near
her.
One of those horrible bats peculiar to Antwerp, and which begin to
flit about as evening falls, came bang against the panes of the
lighted window and woke Sir Ranald.
'Still sitting there, bird Ailie,' said he, 'and not reading; of what
are you thinking?'
'Of home.'
'What home--Chilcote or Essilmont?--of course you prefer the former
now?'
'Well, I do not care particularly for Chilcote; in my mind it is
associated with gloom and struggles; I had nothing on earth to leave
there but the fowls, the birds I spread crumbs for, the apple-trees
and the flowers, and some little trifles, sketches, books, and
nick-nacks that had become familiarly dear to me.'
But she did refer to the first and piercing thought of her
life--Bevil Goring.
'Poor Alison!' said her father, as she kissed his brow and arranged
his pillows, 'your little hands have quite enough to do for me.'
'They are diminutive members, perhaps, papa, but useful, anyway,' she
replied, with a faint smile.
'Here in Antwerp there are many things you should see, poor
child--the churches, galleries, museums, the Steyne. Cadbury
suggests I should get a nursing sister. This is dull work for you,
darling, and you must go out.'
'I could not bear to see another nursing you. It is not the custom
here for young girls to go out alone, and I have no companion, no
escort--not even poor little Daisy Prune now.'
'Why, there is Cadbury.'
She shivered at the name, and a gesture of impatience and anger
escaped her. Well used as she had grown, in the affection of her
heart, to subdue all emotions in the presence of her ailing father,
to whom she had devoted herself, it was not in human nature but to
feel wroth at the trickery to which she had been subjected, which had
caused Daisy Prune to lose her life, and by which they might all have
perished.
Her father had never ceased to urge Cadbury's suit upon her in the
intervals of his strength, and as in the affectionate heart of Alison
there was a painful struggle between contempt and pity, sorrow and
fear--contempt for his selfishness and avarice, pity for his fallen
pride, sorrow for his condition, and a great fear of her own future,
for if he should die there she would be utterly alone in the
world--alone and penniless in Antwerp!
Once she had thought he was nearly gone, especially on the first
night he had been conveyed to the hotel from the shattered yacht at
the Quai Van Dyck; but thanks to her care, more perhaps than even the
skill of a Belgian doctor, he had drifted slowly but surely back from
the confines of the spirit world to consciousness and what was
comparative strength.
And when the latter came he at once took up the weary and querulous
_rôle_ of which the poor girl was so sick at heart.
She was never weary of pondering over the strange fact that the name
of the vessel by which they had so nearly perished was the _Black
Hound_, of Ostend--the dog of the family tradition. It was
certainly, to say the least of it, a strange coincidence, and many an
instance of its alleged appearance in time of woe occurred to her as
she sat brooding there.
Among others when an uncle of hers--a younger brother of Sir
Ranald--had gone fishing up the Ythan at Ellon, and days passed on
without his returning. A search was made, and Archie Auchindoir saw
a black hound stealthily drinking at a pool in the river, from which
on his approach it disappeared into a pine thicket, and soon after he
saw at the very spot where it had been drinking the pallid face of
her drowned uncle appear, as his body came to the surface. This
uncle had always been fond of gazing into the water, either still or
running, and had often been heard to declare that this pool--a famous
salmon one--had a strong fascination for him; and there he came--none
knew how--to his end.
And now, as she thought of these things, the girl's memory wandered
fondly away to the pleasant days of her childhood at Essilmont, where
there were no high walls or great houses, as here at Antwerp, to shut
out the pure air and bright sunshine of God, but where all was so
open and free; and so, in fancy, she was again there, amid the white
snows of winter, when the Ythan was frozen between its banks; the
trees were covered with glittering crystalline hoar frost, and the
braes were shrouded with snow; when the primroses and violets of
spring peeped up under the budding timber; when the forests were
leafy in summer; the fox-glove blazed ruddy amid the green underwood,
and when there was a glow equal to dawn through all the short June
nights in the glorious north; and in autumn, when the golden corn
waved on the upland slopes, and beautiful were the fern and heath
that covered the bonnie, bonnie braes she might never look upon
again, and the tears of a great tenderness and love of her old
Scottish home welled up in her eyes at the thought; but she dried
them in haste as she became aware that her father was speaking to her
again, and upon the old obnoxious topic.
'Yes, Alison, as I was saying--and you seemed to assent by your
silence--many marriages turn out very well that have no better basis
than mutual liking.'
'But in this instance there would be none; and on my side there are
loathing and contempt now! How wise the frogs were in Æsop; they had
a great mind to have some water, papa, but they did not leap into the
well lest they might not get out again.'
'This is most objectionable language, Alison,' exclaimed her father;
'how often am I to remind you that the young ladies of the world we
move in--or should move in--seldom marry for what poets and fellows
of that kind call love, but almost invariably for money and position;
and Cadbury is certainly a more than eligible candidate for your
hand.'
'I should like, papa, to have some of the brightness of a girl's life
before I marry.'
'Alison, you could have as much brightness after your marriage as any
reasonable being could desire.'
Alison was silent.
Brightness, she was thinking. Yes, with Bevil Goring, but not with
Lord Cadbury. Oh, why was Bevil so poor that he could not boldly
claim her at once; yet, poor she deemed him to be, gladly would she
have cast her lot in life with him, but for the opposition and wishes
of the poor old man who lay there.
'Think of how good, how kind Lord Cadbury is, and of the expense to
which we must put him,' said Sir Ranald, after a time.
'I think not of that; his kindness is forced upon us; and surely I
may consider my own freedom of action, my own wishes, tastes, and
life.'
'I wish you would be a little more considerate, and think of your old
father at times.'
'Oh, papa!' she exclaimed, reproachfully, and then she sighed
bitterly.
'How often and how long, oh heaven! am I to hear all this over and
over again?'
'Here comes Cadbury to sit with me, I suppose, so you may go to your
own room,' said Sir Ranald, as the suitor appeared at the door in
full evening costume prior to sitting down to dinner, and she gladly
withdrew.
'Sir Ranald,' said he, in a low but excited tone of voice, 'I have
some news for you.'
Now my Lord Cadbury hated sickness, suffering, death-beds, 'and all
that sort of thing,' and he had generally avoided Sir Ranald just
now, so the latter raised himself on his elbow expectantly.
'News?' said he.
'Yes--that fellow Goring is in Antwerp.'
'Goring! How do you know?'
'Gaskins saw him on board my yacht, where he actually had the
insolence to make some inquiries, but Gaskins is a trump, and sent
him on a wrong scent.'
He did not tell the story of this too probable arrest, as the
honourable spirit of Sir Ranald Cheyne would never consent to having
a conspiracy of that kind hatched, which might prove the utter
destruction of an innocent English gentleman, but he knit his brows,
and said,
'We must be careful now, and conceal this circumstance from Alison.'
'Of course, and you must get well as soon as you can, that we may
decamp from Antwerp.'
'Curse this Goring!' thought Sir Ranald. 'A fine fellow truly, who
has only his debts and liabilities, no doubt, to offer in lieu of
solid marriage settlements; but for him and his mal-influence on that
idiot girl, through Cadbury, Essilmont, manor house, tower, and
fortalice, mains and acres might yet all be mine, and my name not be
erased from the roll of country gentlemen in Aberdeenshire!'
He sighed and moaned heavily, and Cadbury, who was a bad hand at
consolation or sympathy, looked on with angry eyes and knitted brow.
That Alison, with a will of her own, should have a fancy for--even
desire to marry--the wrong man was, Sir Ranald at times thought,
natural enough, but that she should fancy a 'beggarly fellow' like
this Goring, as he deemed him, was monstrous, while Cadbury's wealth
and rank were thrown into the opposite scale!
So Cadbury soon withdrew, and Sir Ranald was left to muse sadly and
bitterly on the perversity of his only child and the prospects of his
race.
He was the last baronet, he knew, of Essilmont, and at his death the
last rood that remained to him there--the last of the old, old
heritage of his forefathers--would pass with him, and what then would
become of Alison? His proud, yet selfish and affectionate, soul died
within him at the thought of her future, if she pursued her present
line of conduct.
Ranald was gone, and Ellon too. He must follow soon, and, even if he
had his wish, to him it seemed sad in his family vanity that the
world should be threatened with the extinction of the good old name
of Cheyne of Essilmont, even though the last of the line became Lady
Cadbury.
'Cadbury--faugh--a _parvenu_?' was his next peevish thought; 'and now
here was this fellow Bevil Goring on their trail, in full search no
doubt!' and he knew that
'There never yet was human power
That could evade, if unforgiven,
The potent search and vigil long
Of him who treasures up a wrong.'