CROSS PURPOSES.
'Good morning, Fotheringhame,' said Sir Piers, as his guest entered
the breakfast-room betimes, in shooting-costume, and ready for the
preserves; 'I trust that Eaglescraig air and Eaglescraig claret and
whisky brought you pleasant dreams.'
'There are other and better adjuncts here to suggest pleasant
dreams,' replied Fotheringhame, as his eye rested for a moment on the
two young ladies, and he gave his hand to Mrs. Garth, after which an
animated discussion about sport ensued between him and the general,
while Mary and Annabelle idled over their letters.
Leslie Fotheringhame was one of those kind of men of whom little is
usually seen when staying in a country house; thus, short though his
visit was to be, and important the object which brought it about, all
the day subsequent to his arrival he was beating the covers, and
after the partridges, with old Sandy Swanshot the keeper.
Was Annabelle disappointed in this? we are forced to admit that she
was piqued by it, however.
Like many social monomaniacs, Mrs. Garth considered herself an able
tactician, and thought to set matters right between these sundered
twain; but in this instance she failed signally, especially with
Annabelle; there seemed something mysterious in the quarrel, their
relation to each other, and their mutual sentiments, which the old
lady could not fathom.
Annabelle was very bitter on the subject.
'His presence here is an insult to me, Mary,' said she, after
watching him cross the lawn, and disappear with the keeper and the
dogs; 'and every time his eyes meet mine, they seem to be examining
me, as if to learn how I bear his defection.'
'If I can read eyes aright, they wear a very different expression,
Annabelle,' said Mary; 'but his presence here with you is indeed a
singular coincidence.'
'After what happened in Perthshire, Mary, I made myself too cheap in
Edinburgh, when we met again; and truth to tell you, darling, though
I cannot hate--but love him still,' she continued, with her eyes
flashing through unshed tears; 'I must hate myself for doing so--and
despise myself for my infatuation. That my regard should be too
lightly, too easily won, and re-won, by one who valued it not! But,
if his majesty thinks he has but to throw the handkerchief, he is
mightily mistaken,' she added haughtily.
'To me it seemed as if his eyes wore almost an imploring look as he
bade his adieu to you and left the breakfast table,' urged Mary, in
her gentle manner; but though the idea was pleasant and soothing to
Annabelle's angry pride, she replied that she felt only astonishment
and indignation at his _hardiesse_ in looking at, or addressing her
at all.
'Am I to be a fool like the fair Elaine, who wasted all her life in
caring for one man? But then there are no Sir Launcelots of the Lake
now.'
Yet Annabelle, while sedulously schooling her heart to be
indifferent, felt to the full, as far as Leslie Fotheringhame was
concerned, how, mind and manner apart, 'one human being is felt to be
more attractive for mere bodily reasons than all the rest of the
world besides.'
Though a little provoked that he had gone forth to shoot, and waste,
as she deemed it, a precious day in the coverts, Mary was grateful to
Fotheringhame for the object which brought him to Eaglescraig---his
interest in Cecil Falconer--or Montgomerie, as she had taught herself
to call him now.
In her mind he was every way associated with the days when life
became to her an Eden--when loverlike she discovered that secresy and
silence were sweet to cultivate; when the garden, the woods and
fields, the moon, the stars, the sky, had all new charms, beauty, and
brightness they had never possessed before, and her intercourse with
Cecil became a system of emblems, metaphors, parables, whispers, and
pressures of the hand.
How far away that delicious period of her life seemed now; and
he--where was he? In a land to her less than half known, wholly
barbarous, and where he was hourly menaced by a violent death.
'How large your ring seems for you now!' said Annabelle, as she toyed
with Mary's hand.
'How much smaller my finger has become since Cecil placed it there!'
replied Mary, turning the diamond engagement hoop wistfully; 'I am so
afraid of losing it, that I wear mamma's wedding-ring as a
guard--many have done that.'
Fotheringhame returned late from the coverts, and long after the
keeper had brought in his bag.
'Did you lose your way?' asked Mary.
'No, Miss Montgomerie; but I lost a locket from my chain--a locket
that I would not lose for any sum of money.'
'And you found it, I hope?'
'Yes--here it is--but after a long hunt among the gorse and brake.'
'Is it so valuable, then?'
'To me it is.'
'May I ask what it contains?' asked Mary, laughingly, as she saw it
dangling from his watch-chain.
'Well--a lock of hair--and----'
'What more?' she continued, archly.
'If you insist on knowing, the likeness of my--future wife,' said he
in a whisper, yet not so low but that it reached the ears of the
startled Annabelle; and Mary was so shocked, so pained and full of
pity for her, that she grew very pale indeed, and questioned him no
more, and he laughingly retired to dress for dinner.
'So--so,' thought Annabelle; 'the locket I gave him actually contains
the portrait of a woman--doubtless, she of the hazel eyes!'
Fotheringhame felt that he loved, or had loved, this proud girl
earnestly and deeply; and that she with equal earnestness and depth
resented something on his part which had, perhaps, driven her to
loving some one else; thus the new emotion of jealousy was infused in
his mind, imparting a constraint to his manner, while Annabelle felt
that she had been merely the plaything of his idle hours. Thus each
shut up their real feelings; and to a greater extent than either
knew, they were at cross purposes.
Annabelle thought that she had overheard and discovered enough to
cure her even of regret, and to steel her heart and make her seem
what she wished to be, studiedly calm and indifferent to all
appearance; but this resolution was rather severely tested when after
dinner, instead of joining Sir Piers in the smoking-room,
Fotheringhame came lounging deliberately out to the terrace before
the house, where she was lingering alone, with a Shetland shawl
thrown over her head, and when he joined her, and--as she thought
with singular coolness and effrontery--made some commonplace remarks
upon the warmth and beauty of the autumnal evening, to which she
assented coldly and briefly.
'Chance has thrown us together again--a chance for which I had ceased
to hope,' said he, in a low and earnest voice; 'and, Annabelle--if
you will once more permit me to call you so--I would wish to talk
with you calmly and dispassionately over that estrangement which has
been a source of great bewilderment and the keenest sorrow to me.'
She was amazed at his hardihood; but said, quietly and gently, while
keeping her face averted, as he continued to walk by her side:
'If you are disposed to take a philosophical view of what has
certainly crushed my pride--if I ever had any--and sorely wounded my
self-esteem--nay more, has caused, I am willing to own, a great pang
to my heart--so am I, Captain Fotheringhame. Our acquaintance, to
call it by its least name, has been a most unfortunate one; so, if we
talk at all, perhaps we may find another subject.'
And she continued to look straight before her, with her face half
averted, and thankful that she had a veil--at least the Shetland
screen--to conceal the proud and passionate tears that welled up in
her blue and handsome eyes.
Meanwhile Mary, remembering Fotheringhame's awkward revelation so
recently, was watching the pair with more anxiety than hope or
exultation, and was perhaps a little surprised to see them gradually
quit the terrace and descend to the shrubbery walk in the garden
below.
'When will our consultation about Cecil begin!' she thought, a little
petulantly and impatiently. 'If a separation from one we love,
though short, is hard to bear, what must such as mine from Cecil be?'
He might die in that distant land--how dreadful to consider such a
contingency!--and in dying, never know of the good fortune that
awaited him at home, of who his family were, and the bright hope that
now smiled upon his love for her!
Meanwhile those she had been watching were now in a sequestered walk.
'You have suffered, Annabelle,' said Fotheringhame, in an agitated
voice, as he turned and confronted her; 'I can read it in your face.'
'If I have suffered, sir, it has been through you.'
'Oh, say not so,' he exclaimed in a prayerful way.
'Sir--your manner--your mode of conduct, bewilder me!' she exclaimed,
as she was about to sweep away, when he strove to take her hand, but
she withdrew, it sharply and defiantly.
'Annabelle!' he said reproachfully.
'How dare you--how can you be so persistently cruel?' she cried
haughtily, while cresting up her head. There were no tears in her
eyes or voice now.
'Cruel, Annabelle?'
There was the old charm in his voice, and she could not resist it.
'Why was that letter--my last to you--returned to me unopened?'
'Because, Captain Fotheringhame, I thought it right to do so.'
She was gazing at him now steadily and defiantly.
'Had you read that letter it would have explained all.'
'Who the mysterious "F.F." is, or was.'
'Yes,' said he sadly, with a peculiar inflection of voice.
'Enough of this,' said Annabelle, haughtily; 'I leave you and all
your interests to the--the lady whose likeness is in your valued
locket.'
'You do? If I have been guilty of aught, in your eyes, you will
certainly forgive me when you look upon her face.'
'Your intended! permit me to pass, Captain Fotheringhame--surely I
have been subjected to mockery and insult enough to satisfy even you!'
With tender and observant eyes, Leslie Fotheringhame was watching her
soft features, and saw them all quiver over, as if with a sudden
pang, and his heart was moved, for a lovely face was hers. With much
of reverential tenderness he detached the locket from his chain,
opened it, and then Annabelle beheld a likeness of herself--simply a
finely coloured photo, forgotten by her, but evidently treasured by
him.
Annabelle was startled on seeing this, but not disconcerted.
'And so, sir,' said she, 'while loving another woman, you have in
mockery, and perhaps for the amusement of your mess-room friends,
dared to carry my likeness about with you!'
She spoke firmly, and with difficulty restrained a passionate fit of
tears--of wild weeping, in fact.
'I never loved another woman--or any one but you, and you alone,
Annabelle, as I can swear to you with truth,' said he, earnestly and
tenderly.
'And who, then, was the woman whose initials were the same as your
own, or nearly so, with whom you had mysterious
meetings--correspondence, and all that appeared to be part and parcel
of a deep and concerted intrigue! But it is beneath me now to
inquire!' she added bitterly.
'Annabelle, the returned letter would have told you all--my sister.'
'Your sister!' repeated Annabelle, in a breathless voice, and with
some incredulity of manner.
'My only sister Fanny--the runaway wife of a husband who is now in
India, and to pay whose debts I sold my troop in the Lancers. You
have surely heard of your cousin Fanny Fleming. She had no friend in
the world but me. I thought to conceal her existence from you and
others; but you have wrung the secret from me. A false wife--a
helpless, hopeless creature; but her sorrows, her repentances and all
are ended now, and she is in her grave. God rest her!'
There was a silent pause, during which, he could see how the bosom of
Annabelle heaved with every respiration.
'And this was all your mystery?' said she, looking up with her eyes
full of tears, and her lips quivering.
'All! and more than enough. It was to me a source of great horror,
shame, and sorrow, to find my beloved sister--one whom many women
loved, and all men admired; whose breast was the mansion of goodness
and purity once--she, my gentle and loving sister, the child of the
same father, nurtured by the same mother! and could I forsake her
because she was in adversity, in sorrow, and repentant, and from whom
all else in the world turned?'
'Oh, Leslie!' she exclaimed, as she frankly placed both her hands in
his, and he drew her towards him, saying tenderly:
'Annabelle, let me prove my faith to you--forgive me----'
'I have nothing to forgive.'
'Then let us forget the miserable past.'
She felt his breath upon her half-averted cheeks, and his low and
earnest whisper in her little white ear; and then, while weeping
heavily, she fell on his breast.
'My darling,' she said in a broken voice, 'if I had only known of
this--how different all would have been--how much spared us! Why did
you not tell me--your sister----'
'I was not aware how much appearances were against me; and with you,
I became jealous of some imaginary person. I shrunk from the task at
first, and you--you returned, unread, the letter which would have
explained all. But you are glad now, dearest?'
'Glad! O Leslie, to any other than you, I might refrain from
admitting that I have never--since the day we parted--ceased to love
you; and have now learned to love you more than ever.'
'And I love you, Annabelle, with the passion that comes only once in
a man's life-time!'
And so, for a time, it may be inferred that this pair were pretty
oblivious of the absent Cecil in Servia, and his interests at home.