MARY'S NEW TERROR.
Some weeks elapsed after this, and yet Mary heard nothing of Cyril;
even the lingering hope that he would write to her died away; she
knew not where his regiment was stationed; where it was to sail from,
when, or for where; and still full of deep and tender interest, as
her heart was for him, this ignorance of all concerning him was most
tantalizing, till one evening she was startled by a sudden visit from
Captain Chesters, who had been for some time absent in London; and
with all her horror of him, she hoped to glean in the course of
conversation some tidings of the absent and the loved.
The month was April now, but the day had been rainy and gloomy, and
Lonewoodlee, with its weather-beaten walls, its masses of dark green
ivy and group of stern old pines, had worn its most grim aspect.
The live-long day the rain had been sowing moor and lea, gorging the
watercourses and runnels, while masses of cold white vapour were
rolling slowly upward from all the lower portions of the pastoral
landscape. The desolate face of Nature around the Tower increased
the desolation of Mary's heart, for she was at all times an
impressionable creature, and the whole of that dreary day she had sat
by her father's bed-side sewing, or reading to him, and thinking of
Cyril Wedderburn; where was he--on the land or on the sea--and did he
ever think of her now!
On this day it had seemed to Mary that when her father spoke, a
strange brightness and smoothing out of wrinkles spread over his
withered face; his brow became stern at times, his eyes sparkled with
a new light, and she saw something of what his features must have
been in the days of his youth, and in the time of her dead mother's
bridal--in the happier years that had gone for ever.
Then as she watched and saw how the brow seemed to become broad and
open, the cheek to flush, and a younger appearance to steal over all
his face, she trembled in her heart lest the last great crisis and
the Shadowy Hand were approaching, for most of the day he had raved
of his dead son, and the now almost forgotten Indian war in which he
fell. "It is always dreadful even to the accustomed watchers of the
sick, when the mind wanders" writes the charming authoress of "Lost
and Won;" "when the soul goes on some wild journey of its own, away
from direct human associations, fighting with imaginary dangers,
yearning for impossible delights, living among distorted shadows and
amazing pictures that have their origin in some magic-lantern
reflection of past or present life." So it was with poor Oliver
Lennox. Sometimes he mistook Mary for her mother, who was in the
grave; then came scenes in the hunting-field; for he had been a keen
and fearless sportsman, mingled oddly with terror and hatred of duns,
and the fancied presence of his dead son Harry, to whom he had been
tenderly attached. To these occasional aberrations of intellect,
Mary never became used, and they always filled her with the keenest
anguish and dismay.
And so for a long and weary day Mary had been enduring all this, till
she thought her own brain would turn, when Alison Home announced that
Captain Chesters was in the dining-room, where she found him booted
and spurred, and warming himself before the large fire of coal,
roots, and peat, and perfectly dry, apparently, his overalls and
ample Inverness cape, which he had left in the hall, having protected
him completely from the rain.
The same old portraits that had looked down on Cyril
Wedderburn--portraits of the Lennoxes of past times, "seeming
ghostly, desolate, and dread," were looking down on him, but they
suggested no other idea to his mind than that they were "uncommonly
seedy, and were in appearance only fit for Wardour Street."
Her father was slowly, but surely, passing away, and Mary, in the
utter loneliness of her heart--she had so few visitors and fewer
friends--now felt compelled (despising herself the while therefor) to
receive politely this unwelcome visitor, for, save her father, she
knew no human being to care for, or who seemed to care for her; thus
a kind of sullen desperation had been stealing over her since Cyril's
sudden departure.
Aware that it was Chesters who had injured her with her betrothed,
Mary regarded him with a secret fear, equalled only by her loathing,
and summoned as she had been from the bedside of her ruined and
impoverished parent, whom she knew to be in this man's power, made
these emotions all the stronger.
To the _roué_ Chesters there was something altogether delightful in
the freshness and presence of this young girl, so plainly and
modestly attired, and with her rich hair so beautifully dressed, as
she came near him, and brought an odour of the dried lavender (from
plants in the old garden), amid which all her handkerchiefs, collars,
and cuffs were folded; and in her bosom, fastened by her solitary
little brooch, were some of the first violets of the season, which
Alison had gathered for her, singularly enough, near the stile at the
old triple thorn.
Mary had not been without many a mortification since Cyril's
departure, and since the story had gone abroad. Lady Wedderburn,
Lady Ernescleugh and others--even the unpretending Mrs. M'Guffog, the
minister's wife--had eyed her coldly and curiously from under their
parasols; and some even had ventured to survey her more boldly than
had been their wont--or she nervously fancied they did so--and all
this she owed to the scheme and tongue of Ralph Rooke Chesters!
And now with the first glance, Mary discerned, to her alarm, that her
visitor was, as the saying is, "flushed with wine," or too probably
something more potent, as his face was almost purple in some places,
his green eyes were bloodshot, and his utterance was somewhat
uncertain. He held out his hand, without drawing his thick riding
glove off, and regarded her with one of his cool, leering, and
insolent smiles.
"Bravo, Miss Lennox! How goes it with you?" he asked. "Dull enough,
I suppose, in this atrocious weather?"
"Pray be seated," said Mary, retreating back a pace, after barely
touching his hand.
"Thanks," he replied, continuing to eye her smilingly, and to twirl
and untwirl the lash of his short riding whip.
Ignorant of all that passed at Willowdean between Lady Wedderburn and
Cyril, or knowing only that the latter was gone, the advent of Gwenny
gave Chesters some courage to renew his attempts to gain a place in
Mary's heart, or at least to bend her to his purpose; and when tired
of her--for tire he knew he should--why, then in Cyril's absence, he
might have a chance of winning the heiress, if he met her in London;
for Chesters was a man of the most unbounded assurance.
"So Wedderburn is off to join his regiment at last--ha! ha!--after
engaging himself to his pretty cousin?" said he, bluntly.
"You are surely misinformed," said Mary, faintly.
"I am not. He told me all about it in London."
This, of course, was utterly false; but Mary could not know that it
was so, and he was resolved on making her miserable by inspiring her
with jealousy and mistrust.
"And where is his regiment lying at present?" she asked.
"'Tisn't lying anywhere just now," he replied, in a mocking tone,
which, like his smile, was replete with insolence.
"I do not understand you, sir," said Mary.
"You're dying to know all about it, though. Well, after our mutual
friend Wedderburn had been going it, as usual, among the girls at
Chatham and Rochester--oh, I know the style perfectly--the Fusileers
sailed from Southampton on the fifth of this month."
"For where?" asked Mary, in a low, breathless voice.
"Oh, Malta, Turkey, or somewhere thereabout. What can it matter to
you now? Come, Miss Lennox--or may I not call you Mary?
"'See the mountains kiss high Heaven,
And the waves clasp one another.'"
And he proceeded to quote again his favourite and almost only piece
of poetry, drawing nearer her as he did so; but Mary arose, with lips
compressed and eyes flashing, and so Chesters, whose ideas of
love-making had not been acquired in the society of ladies generally,
became correspondingly irritated.
"Well, if you won't be jolly, but are determined to be unpleasant,"
said he, with an insolent laugh, "suppose we talk about business?"
"I am more and more at a loss to understand you, sir."
"You can understand this, I presume, Miss Lennox, that I took up the
old gentleman's bill--not for his own sake, but yours?"
"Though you have been so often his guest in better days? Yet, from
whatever motive you freed my poor papa from the terror of it, you
performed an act of great kindness and charity, for which I shall
ever thank you and remember you in my prayers."
"Bah!" said he, with gloomy scorn, "who pray nowadays? You treat me
more like a dog than a gentleman, Miss Lennox; but," he added, as the
fumes of what he had taken were beginning to mount upward, "do you
know that for all the grand airs you give yourself, I could have your
father arrested and marched off to Greenlaw Gaol; and if you continue
as obdurate as you are now, what the devil is to hinder me from doing
so?"
Terror of the man, and of his new and unwonted bearing, got the
better of Mary's anger, and compelled her to dissemble. But she
said--
"You talk daringly, sir; for what reason could you, or any such as
you, have Oliver Lennox of Lonewoodlee arrested?"
"Debt. Have you already forgotten the bill I took up for him?"
"Never shall I forget your kindness. But has not the bill expired?
I think the phrase is."
"No; it can never expire. I had it protested and renewed; so it
grows daily in value--interest upon interest. The world is divided
into two classes--at least, I have found it so--fools and scoundrels,
or dupes and despots. Now, by Jove! I prefer being the last named;
anything is better than being a fool or a dupe."
Mary was speechless. The bill! that fatal bill! She remembered how
she had bathed her father's trembling hand in Rimmel and iced water,
before he had achieved the signing and indorsation of it, with a
signature so all unlike what his own was wont to be, that the bank
people had eyed it dubiously for a time.
"How did your father ever expect to meet this bill, unless some
good-natured fellow like myself had come forward? He is a veritable
old goose, who seems to have thought his pasture land of Lonewoodlee
a perfect California, a Golconda, or El Dorado, that no end of money
could be got out of."
"And what have you thought of Chesterhaugh?" retorted Mary.
"Pretty much the same, by Jove! But though Chesterhaugh is entailed,
I have contrived to make all the timber march, and something more."
Amid all the difficulties, monetary and otherwise, that Mary had
undergone, no man had ever before dared to address her in the tone
and manner now adopted by this bold reprobate. A clamorous anxiety,
a strong sense of weary confusion, a terrible, yet dull oppression of
the heart and aching of the head, a sensation as if she was all
pulse, pervaded her. She made a struggle to appear calm, and only
after a time became conscious that Chesters was speaking again, but
with thicker utterances than ever.
"Give me one kiss, Mary dear, and a promise of a little hope that you
will love me in the time to come, and I shall be patient, though I
want money horribly. Once I had only to draw upon my banker, now I
have to draw upon my wits--a devil of a difference, you'll admit. So
just one kiss, my sweet----"
"Stand back, sir, I command you!" exclaimed Mary, raising her hand to
the bell.
"Why, hang it! you don't mean to mourn for ever about that selfish
muff, Wedderburn, who has discarded you--cast you off for a richer
engagement?"
"He could not well have made a poorer one," sighed Mary.
"Had he been a man of honour, he would never have concealed from his
family the fact that he loved you."
This was perhaps the most stinging remark Chesters had made, and
having some truth in it, Mary felt it more keenly; so if fear made
her tolerate the presence of Chesters, wounded pride now caused her
to loathe him more and more. Remembering all the trickery of which
Cyril--her absent Cyril--had suspected him, hinting even at intended
murder, perhaps; his sharping at cards, and the apparent snare into
which he had lured herself, indignation for a moment got the better
of her fear and policy, and with invincible hauteur in her face and
manner, she said--
"I have to request, sir, that you never again mention the name of
Captain Wedderburn to me. Indeed, I am astonished that you dare to
speak of him to any one."
"Why? by Jove!"
"When you know that his horse was drugged on that terrible night."
"By whom?" he asked, with a frown.
"Your worthy groom, or yourself."
"Dare you say so to me--a gentleman?" he asked, making a stride
towards her, and laying a hand heavily on her arm.
"I do. A gentleman? Take your hand away, Captain Chesters, or,
though a girl, I shall----"
"Do what?"
"Summon aid, and have you expelled," replied Mary, feeling again all
her own helplessness.
Her words and bearing had, however, the effect of completely sobering
her tormentor, who took up his hat, and, while a cruel white glitter
came into his green eyes, said, with a mocking bow, "As you please,
Mary Lennox; as you please. But I warn you, that if you are not more
complaisant when next we meet, my protested bill shall go into the
hands of Grubb and Wylie, my solicitors. If you have no mercy on me,
why the deuce should I have any on your father? And so I wish you
good evening."
Mary made no reply to the unmanly threat of this would-be lover; but
turned her back upon him and rang the bell, that Alison might usher
him out. And as the sound of his horse's hoofs died away in the rain
that lashed the windows, she felt as if her heart was dying within
her, for never before had she undergone an interview so singular and
insulting; and she felt, moreover, an intuitive foreboding that she
had not seen the last of Rooke Chesters. "Sufficient unto the day is
the evil thereof," saith the old Scriptural proverb. But she could
not help dreading evil and gloom, misery and desperation, beyond the
present; and that Chesters might, in his baffled rage at herself, be
infamous enough to attempt to arrest her father, place him in prison,
and so kill him outright, came on her soul like a new and hitherto
unforeseen terror.
But strange events were to happen ere Mary and her tormentor met
again. And after a few weeks she learned, incidentally, from Dr.
Squills, that Chesters had left the neighbourhood once more, and
betaken himself to London. All that remained of Chesterhaugh, being
entailed, had been put under trust for the behoof of his long-patient
creditors; the house and grounds were advertised to be let by Messrs.
Grub and Wylie; so Mary and the district were alike freed from the
annoyance of his presence for a time.
But she found her home gradually growing more and more intolerable to
her. Cyril's sudden and unwonted visit just before his departure,
and her subsequent anxiety for letters which never came, all
betokened some mystery. Her rather stormy interview with Chesters,
overheard, doubtless, by vulgar ears that were at the keyhole, and
the total cessation of his visits afterwards; together with the great
local _esclandre_ of the snowy night at Chesterhaugh, had been made
subjects for discussion at the village tap, the blacksmith's forge,
and even beside her own kitchen-hearth.
Mary could gather much of this from the manner of Alison Home and her
other domestic; and they had seen much that Mary wist not of, for,
like all their class, they could read the faces of their superiors as
one may read a book; and in hers they saw only trouble and sorrow,
distraction and care.
She felt that Cyril had deserted her, and she would say in her heart--
"His love for me was but one thought, one fancy, it may be, among
many; while mine, alas! it was the die on which I staked my all--the
chain whereon all the links of my life were strung."
END OF VOL. I.
LONDON:
SAVILL, EDWARDS AND CO., PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET,
COVENT GARDEN.
[Transcriber's note: Inconsistent and archaic spelling is as printed.]