THE DAWN OF LOVE.
Prior to all this the intimacy between Horace Ramornie and
Gwendoleyne Wedderburn had been ripening with a rapidity that her
aunt, had she known of it, would have deemed "frightful" as well as
fatal to all her hopes; but still love had never been spoken of
between them.
Busy about his estate and the farms thereon; busy too about country
matters, and the affairs of the little Burgh of Barony which owned
him as patron and superior, Sir John Wedderburn spent much of his
time out of doors, and a deal of it in his saddle. Cyril had been
entirely occupied by his own secret passion, while Robert was sulky,
and affected to be deep in his legal studies, reading up for a
forthcoming examination, and frequently went alone fishing. As the
household was in mourning there were few invitations given, and few
visitors at Willowdean; hence, in spite of all Lady Wedderburn's
plans, Horace--not Cyril--and Gwenny were generally thrown together;
and what could be more natural than that the young people should
learn to love each other?
Yet he dared not speak of the passion that was growing in his heart.
Lady Wedderburn had not been without a dread that the Master of
Ernescleugh, young Everard Home, who was every way an agreeable and
remarkably good-looking man, might "cut out" both her sons. Gwenny
knew that he was the heir to a peerage, and rank would have much
weight in the mind of an Indian-bred girl; so she was thankful when
his leave of absence expired, and he was recalled to London. She did
not speak again to Cyril of Mary Lennox, either tauntingly or
otherwise; but once she said to her husband--
"Cyril has been looking pale and unhappy of late, and I know it must
be caused by that artful girl at Lonewoodlee. What does the foolish
fellow go on about? Absurd! It is only a girl's pretty face, after
all."
"Have you forgotten the days of your own youth, and what your face
was then to me as Kate Douglas? Ay, and is so still," said the
good-natured Baronet, pinching her chin.
"True; but I didn't gad about the country alone on snowy nights with
men like Rooke Chesters. Cyril is conscious of her unworthiness; so
it is only the memory of a face that disturbs him."
"Don't worry poor Cyril; once with his regiment, he may forget all
about her. Yet what does a poet say?--
"'_Only_ the face of a woman;
Only a face--nothing more!
But the memory of that sweet vision
Comes back to my heart o'er and o'er.
Only a woman's soft eyes;
Only a look, that was all;
A glance that I chanced to encounter
Still binds my soul in thrall.'
It was at a ball of the Caledonian Hunt we first met, Kate. And
never forget you were once young."
Gwendoleyne Wedderburn thought there was some analogy in the destiny
of herself and Horace from the fact of his being so young, and having
come, like herself, to Willowdean in his boyhood, without father or
mother. Horace was a smart subaltern in the Line now, and had quite
considered himself a man in all respects for a few years past; but
Gwenny loved to think of him as the lonely boy he had been; for his
manner was grave and gentle, and his voice and smile were ever sweet
and pleasant to her.
Cyril, we have said, was pre-occupied, and Robert had enough of the
student in him to be somewhat brusque, so Horace she preferred
undisguisedly, to the infinite chagrin of Lady Wedderburn; and, if
truth must be told, somewhat to the amusement of Sir John, who,
though he would have been pleased enough to see his son with a bride
so suitable and wealthy, was an enemy to all match-making.
The large and stately house of Willowdean, with its shady library,
its galleried conservatory, its long corridors hung with valuable
pictures, and its spacious garden, was a pleasant place for such
sweet companionship; and whatever young Ramornie did, when not with
Gwenny, was always done as if in a kind of dream to occupy the blank
of time when he could not be with her.
How would time be occupied when they should be parted, perhaps to
meet no more!
The garden was older than the house, having belonged to its
predecessor, the ancient mansion, "the peel and fortalice of
Willowdean;" thus its yew hedges and boxwood borders were thick and
dense beyond any to be seen in gardens of more modern date; and in
the centre stood the ancient sun-dial, by the gnomon of which Sir
John's forefathers had set or regulated their round silver watches
that were like turnips in shape, and had perhaps wooden wheels that
were worked "by thorl and string."
As yet the garden was only in bud, and there for the first time
Gwenny heard with wonder the voice of the cuckoo when she and Horace
were planting some rare Indian seeds which she had brought from the
Choultry; and she sighed when reflecting that he must be so far away
when these seeds became flowers in all their tropical glory; and when
(then so bleak and bare), with its famous ribbon-borders of every
imaginable colour, the hedges of azaleas and drooping fuchsias under
the shelter of the older rows of privet and yew, the clusters of
beautiful shrubs and beds of geraniums, verbenas, and calceolarias
were in all the bloom and splendour of summer.
And many a delightful drive they had in the park, when Gwenny usually
took the reins of the pony-phaeton, for there the grass was smooth as
a billiard-table, having been carefully rolled and mowed in season,
ever since clover-seeds had first been sown in it, in 1708, by Sir
Cyril Wedderburn--the same Baronet who drank the health of James
VIII., sword in hand, at Greenlaw Cross, when the Comte de Fourbin's
fleet, with the Scots and Irish Brigades on board, was off the Isle
of May; who nearly rabbled out the Union Parliament, and played many
other political pranks in his time.
The month was still March; but already the park--or "policy," as the
Scots called it--was sheeted with pale yellow primroses, where, in
the next month the Lent lilies would be in all their golden bloom.
But their drives were not confined to the park, for frequently they
had the open carriage. Then Lady Wedderburn and Miss M'Caw were
always present; and, as the large and handsome vehicle bowled along
the smooth roads, Gwenny would laugh, and like a happy child, clap
her hands to the two white-and-black spotted Dalmatian dogs, which
bounded along on each side, caracoling amid the dust, and seeming to
exult in the dignity of being outriders to such an equipage,
reminding her of the bare-footed suwaries she had often seen running
beside the elephant of a native prince on the plain of the Choultry.
Poor Horace, however, saw the views and wishes of his aunt pretty
plainly, for she was unskilful enough to show her hand to all but
Gwenny.
He knew, and felt keenly conscious, of all he owed to the uncle upon
whom he had been cast in boyhood, a penniless orphan: his education,
his commission and yearly allowance; and though loving Gwenny
passionately, and with all his soul--for she seemed the realization
of the wife he could love, the ideal of his dreamy hours--he shrank
from any declaration that might, perhaps, mar the plans of those to
whom he owed everything in the world, and also mar, it might be, the
fortune of his relation, his brother officer and friend, for he was
ignorant of the recent ties already formed by Cyril.
It was hard for Horace to know and feel that the love he had longed
for, the wife he had pictured in many a vision of fervid fancy, was
now daily by his side, and yet that he dared not look upon her as
more than a friend; while, at the same time, it was impossible to
resist the charm, the delight, the intoxication of her presence, and
the craving to seek her society; to listen to her voice, to look into
her softly-lidded eyes, that were by turns shy, passionate, and full
of child-like surprise; to touch her hand timidly, and think of all
that might have been.
Ah, what did it all matter! A little time, and it would be a thing
of the past, this delightful companionship. Miles upon miles of land
and sea must be between them, and the Russian hordes would be before
him.
Yet often was the perilous secret, that he loved her, on the point of
his lips, on certain occasions that suddenly seemed to invite it.
Attended by a groom they had ridden one day past the house, the park,
and woods of Ernescleugh, to the verge of the cliff over which Cyril
had been dragged by his horse. The tide was out, and the isolated
rock from which he had been rescued by the crew of the fisher-smack
was plainly visible, with the gulls wheeling in circles and the white
waves boiling round it.
Gwenny was shuddering as she looked alternately down at the rock and
upward at the ruins of Fast Castle, perched on the giddy verge of a
tremendous cliff, the fragment of a baronial tower "'twixt cloud and
ocean hung," with the blue sky visible through its fissures and
gaping windows. Laying his right hand on her reins, as if to steady
her horse, which the booming of the waves below and the screaming of
the seabirds above had startled, he sought in reality but to touch
the pretty bridle-hand, that was cased in its tight black leather
riding gauntlet, as he said--
"I think you admire this sample of our grim Scottish scenery, Miss
Wedderburn?"
"Before I answer you," said she, looking with a bright smile under
her veil, which the wind was blowing out like a pennant, "you must
tell me why you persist in calling me Miss Wedderburn? Did I not say
once before that you were to call me Gwenny? _Miss_ sounds so stiff!
All the family at Willowdean, and even cold and hard Lady
Ernescleugh, call me Gwenny."
"And by that name I always think of you--in my heart."
"Then call me Gwenny, I insist, as I once did before."
"I do not like to do so, when, when----"
"Is not the name pretty? It was my mamma's."
"Apart from itself, association will ever render it adorable to me."
"Well?"
"Somehow I don't like to do so when Lady Wedderburn is present;
something tells me that she would not be pleased," replied Horace,
blushing in spite of himself, and then the girl blushed too, for she
began to see something of his meaning and the inferences to be drawn
from what he said. "But," he added, retaining her reins and hand in
his for a little way, "let us leave this giddy verge; it is dangerous
with a shying horse."
The groom drew near to make the same remark, and so the occasion was
lost.
At another time the news came that the Queen, in conjunction with the
Emperor of the French, had at last declared war against Russia!
Gwenny's dark eyes were upon Horace as he read the _Times_ aloud in
the conservatory, with a flush on his cheek and a strange emotion in
his heart.
"All leaves will be cancelled now!" said he.
"And you, cousin Horace, you will be quite anxious to find yourself
in Turkey!"
"I _was_ anxious," said he, in a low voice.
"And what has made you change your mind; surely not dread of danger?"
Her question was a home thrust; but he only answered curtly, while
his heart beat quicker and his cheek grew pale--
"I am a soldier, Gwenny."
"Then what has caused the change?
"Dare I tell you?" he asked, in a low and tremulous voice, as he took
her hand; "but no, I dare not," he added.
Nor could he have done so then, for Lady Wedderburn was not far from
them, feeding a screaming parroquet, whose neck Horace could have
wrung with stern joy. Still he was venturing to say something more
in an incoherent and desponding way, when Gwenny came close to him,
with her soft, serene, and loving eyes smiling into his, and placing
her rapid little hand on his mouth, she said--
"Now, Horace, if you love me, silence; for sadness worries me, and I
won't be worried or sad till you are gone; and then Heaven knows I
shall be sad enough."
She joined her aunt, and again the secret remained untold.
"IF I love her!" thought Horace, with a choking sensation in his
throat; but Gwenny had begun to suspect or feel all that he had left
untold, through "that silent method of communion which no crowd can
prevent persons who know each other well from interchanging."
To all the beauty we have described, a beauty that was dark and pale,
yet sparkling, Gwendoleyne added a manner that came with her Welsh
blood; it was full of those nameless and indescribable charms which
the French, ever so happy in apt phraseology, term _folâtre et
caressante_, winning and playful; but there is no perfection out of
novels and romances, so Gwenny, with all her loveliness, was not
perfect. She had a fiery little temper at times, which, like her
dark eyes and their long lashes, she inherited with her Welsh blood;
but she was all perfection to young Horace Ramornie, and in the core
of his heart he idolized her!