'SOME DAY.'
The sale of Ellinor's landscape for a sum beyond what she had
expected for it, came like a gleam of hope to the two lonely girls,
and the place in the window where it had hung so long was now empty.
'I wonder who bought it?' said she.
'That matters little,' replied Mary; 'his fancy, however, will give
you encouragement, nevertheless.'
Ellinor blushed with pleasure. Her picture was sold, but she little
knew to whom.
She was now convalescent, able to go abroad, and, like Mary, she had
also the coincidence of a strange and unexpected meeting.
One day, when the weather was clear and sunny for the season, she
went to Hyde Park with her sketch-book, encouraged to fresh efforts
by her success, to make another drawing. The subject was to be some
quaint old trees she had noticed, and which she hoped might find a
purchaser in some one who knew the locality.
October had given these old oaks its choicest tints, and, while some
of their leaves were russet-green, others were like burnished bronze,
and were red of many hues; and, all the better for artistic purposes,
the chief of these venerable and gnarled trees had a story, for under
it Horace Walpole, as he tells us, was robbed in the winter of 1749
by the fashionable footpad Maclean.
'One night in the beginning of November,' he writes, 'as I was
returning from Holland House by moonlight, about ten o'clock, I was
attacked by two highwaymen in Hyde Park, and the pistol of one of
them, going off accidentally, razed the skin under my eye, left some
marks of shot on my face, and stunned me. The ball went through my
hat, and, if I had sat an inch nearer to the left side, it must have
gone through my head.'
This event occurred within half-a-mile of Piccadilly, and Ellinor,
thinking how it would enhance the value of her little landscape, set
to work in sketching the group of trees.
So intent was she with her pencil that for some time she was unaware
that she was observed, or that anyone was near her in that part of
the then usually deserted Park, till she suddenly saw a soldier--a
hussar--standing before her.
'Robert--Robert Wodrow!' she exclaimed, in a strange voice all unlike
her own, as the pencil dropped from her nerveless hand. 'What does
this dress--what does all this mean?'
'Ask yourself, Ellinor.'
Tears started to her eyes at the familiar voice, and so glad was she
to see his familiar face that, but for his too probable misconception
of her feelings and the eyes of passers-by, she would have thrown her
arms round his neck and kissed him.
All unaware that he was so near her, Robert Wodrow had been strolling
through the Park, thinking the while of a song that Ellinor had been
wont to sing to him often in past days--
'Some day, some day I shall meet you--
Love, I know not when or how--
Only this, only this, that once you loved me:
Only this, I love you now, I love you now!'
The tender and passionate refrain was in his mind, and actually
hovering on his lips, when the face and form of Ellinor came suddenly
before him.
'So you can amuse yourself thus,' said he, picking up her pencil,
'and in spite of all the misery that has fallen on me.'
'I am working thus for daily bread, Robert; and, oh, I knew not that
you had taken this terrible step.'
'Becoming a soldier?'
'Yes.'
Robert Wodrow was again face to face with the girl he loved with a
love so unselfish and passionate, and so ungrudgingly given in all
its fulness and tenderness, yet he made no attempt to take her hand.
She thought that he never looked so handsome as he did then, in his
smart hussar tunic--blue, faced with red and braided with yellow.
Club drill and sword exercise had developed every muscle, while
setting-up drill and the riding-school had given him that air and
bearing our light cavalrymen alone possess.
'Why cast away thus your prospects in life?' she asked, sadly.
'I have none--I lost them with you.'
'What dear friends we might have been--nay, were, if with friendship
you would have been content, Robert!'
'A view you only adopted after Sir Redmond Sleath came.'
Her pale face coloured deeply, and perhaps guiltily, at this
response, and he regarded her earnestly. She was pale certainly, and
her lips had a pathetic little droop in them, though their wonderful
sweetness of expression yet remained, but her cheeks had lost some of
their girlish roundness and bloom.
The atmosphere of most unclassic Paddington, with its frowsy canal
and fœtid churchyard, was truly somewhat different from the breeze
that swept the Ochil ranges and down through the Birks of Invermay.
Robert realised at that moment how dear, how inexpressibly dear to
him, was the girl he had lost, and between whom and himself he had
now opened a complete social gulf, and how their past friendship and
love had crept into his heart and settled there, making her still
more precious to him than life itself.
When he spoke again his voice was strained and husky, and the tones
of it were as those of a man in mortal pain.
'How is dear Mary?'
'Well--very well.'
'From a remark you let fall about daily bread, Ellinor,' said he,
playing nervously with the lash of his riding-switch, 'I can gather
that you are not married to that man.'
'Most certainly not. I have never seen him since we left home--for
to us home is not here.'
'Thank God for your assertion! I have heard a good deal about him
among our fellows; he is a deuced bad lot, and may yet find you out.
If he does, I beg of you to pause, however brilliant his offers of
marriage may be. He dare have no other view; if he had, if he had,'
continued Robert Wodrow, with his teeth set under his dark moustache,
'and the grave had me, I would come back to have vengeance on him!
Remember my words, I implore you, Ellinor, by memory of the pleasant
past, when we were boy and girl together. It is the last favour I
can ask of you, and too probably this is the last time we shall meet
on earth!'
'What do you mean, Robert?' she said, in an agitated voice.
'I am only here for a day from Hounslow Barracks, and in about a week
the regiment embarks for India--for Afghanistan, thank God!'
'How bitterly you speak!'
'I gave up father, mother, home, peace, and profession when I lost
you; but, pardon me, I did not mean to upbraid.'
'Forgive me for all I have made you suffer,' said Ellinor, humbly; 'I
feel how unworthy I am of all this great regard,' she added, taking
his hand caressingly between hers; and then, conscious of how her
touch thrilled through him, she withdrew her clasp, and both seemed
on the verge of tears, and might perhaps have indulged in them but
for the vicinity of one or two observant and inquisitive nursemaids,
who marvelled at the interest the young lady evidently took in the
handsome hussar.
'And now I must go,' said the latter, but lingered still, and, cut to
the heart with sorrow for him, Ellinor pressed her hands upon her
breast, as she yielded to her better nature, but felt that now it was
impossible to retrace or reverse the past.
'And you leave England for that far-away land so soon?'
'The sooner the better.'
'Won't you come and see Mary ere you go?'
'I should indeed like to see dear Mary once again--she was always
true to me,' said Robert.
'Do come, then,' urged Ellinor, heedless of the deduction.
'Not now, for I am almost due at Hounslow; but when I come, I must
be--in uniform.'
'That matters nothing; no one here knows us or cares for us. Oh, how
happy she will be to see you in one sense, and so sorry in another!
The uniform is but a trifle in one way.'
'Moments make the year, and trifles life,' said Robert, with bitter
smile, quoting Young's satire.
Ellinor gave him their address--they shook hands like friends, these
two who might have been all in the world to each other, though in the
world their paths in life would lie far apart now--there was a
minute's pause, and in a moment more Ellinor was alone.
Her drawing was effectually marred for the day; her head swam and her
hand shook, and forgetting all about Horace Walpole's tree, she
slowly quitted the park.
'Poor fellow!' she thought, as the hitherto restrained tears flowed
under her veil, 'I have used him ill--and yet how soft and gentle he
is with me!'