HEW'S LOVE-MAKING.
During the few days that passed before the arrival of the expected
guest at Eaglescraig, Hew was more than usually attentive to the
general's wealthy ward; and one forenoon when they were idling in the
long avenue, which led through the Dovecot Park down the woodland
slope towards the highway, he resolved, if possible, to bring matters
to a successful issue with her.
For fully a month past, since his appearance at Eaglescraig, Mary had
been used to this love-making of his, apparently, as she treated him
half coquettishly, and yet so 'chaffingly,' that--but for his extreme
vanity, or obtuseness--he must have seen that he had no chance of
success.
Mary valued his attentions at their real worth, and times there were
when he eyed her gloomily--yea, angrily, for he trusted more in Sir
Piers' influence, wishes, and authority, to bend her to his will,
than to any merit of his own.
Thus his love-making was a curious combination of earnestness,
banter, and sullenness; earnestness caused by the girl's great
beauty, which he certainly valued, and her great wealth, which he
valued much more, on one hand; and on the other, genuine dislike of
India, with his own impecunious circumstances, and a knowledge of Sir
Piers' wishes. The banter came at times, because he was really
incapable of loving any girl truly; and the sullenness was born of
his lack of success, with a chronic jealousy of every other man who
addressed her.
On this forenoon in the Dovecot Park, Annabelle Erroll did not
accompany them, so Hew proceeded to utilise the occasion.
Mary looked bewitchingly beautiful and piquante in her rich brown
sealskin, a grey skirt and a coquettish black velvet hat with a
scarlet feather. She kept her hands obstinately in her tiny muff;
thus Hew had no pretence for capturing one of them in any way as a
suggestive preliminary to something more, and could only walk by her
side and utter his soft nothings from time to time, to which she
listened, half amused and half bored the while, and not helping him
in any way.
The winter day was clear and bright, and the keen gusty breeze that
swept from the sea over Eaglescraig imparted a rosebud tint to Mary's
usually pale cheeks that enhanced her beauty by adding a fresh light
to her eyes. The gusts of wind whirled showers of yellow and brown
leaves across the sward, and drifts of stormy clouds through the sky
over land and Firth, yet Mary's spirits were a high pressure, and
though but little sunshine lit the December landscape, she was full
of merriment and the _espièglerie_ that were natural to her.
The dovecot they were approaching, like most of the ancient edifices
of that kind in Scotland, was built in the form of an enormous
beehive, some twenty feet high, and full of columbaria for the
pigeons, which were flying in clouds around it, or perched on the
summit thereof. It was, in due conformity to an ancient act of the
Scottish Parliament, placed in the very centre of the Montgomerie
estate, so that the birds should not prey upon the corn of other
proprietors; and the reason why so many of these antique dovecots in
Scotland survive the mansions to which they belonged, is supposed to
be an old superstition, that if the dovecot is destroyed, the lady of
the land dies within the year.
Near that of Eaglescraig are two large yellow rings or circles
strongly marked in the green-sward (like those on the hill of
Craiganrarie), drawn by the sword of an evil Montgomerie, who had
trafficked in Satanic influence, and thus had formed round him an
orbit of protection, before summoning his sable majesty, and round
which the latter had to keep running, so long as he was visible to
mortal eyes.
'You do worry me, Hew,' said Mary, with something of a saucy laugh,
'and I have every mind to stand in the conjuror's circle and defy you
to approach me.'
'Do you deem me, then, so distasteful, so odious, and such an
incarnation of evil?'
'No; but seriously, what is the aim, the object of all this
attention, Cousin Hew? for though the tie is a remote one certainly,
I may call you cousin, I believe.'
'Do, dearest Mary.'
'Well?' she asked, curtly and impatiently.
'The aim and object, you say?'
'Yes, yes.'
'To marry you, of course; that is--that is, if you will have me, and
please Sir Piers,' he replied, with perfect deliberation and more
apparent coolness than he usually felt.
'I won't consult grand-uncle on _that_ matter, Cousin Hew. Besides,
now that I think of it, I don't want to marry.'
'Indeed! I thought marriage was the sole aim of every girl's
existence.'
'In novels more than in real life, perhaps. Besides, marriage is
only to be thought of when the man and the hour come.'
'It is the end of all anxieties,' urged Hew, who thought no doubt of
his monetary ones.
'I have none to end; and with many girls it is only the beginning of
a set of troubles which none of them expect. But let us drop this
very funny conversation.'
'Why?'
'You surely would not seek a wife with half a heart, or none!'
'The half of your heart, Mary, is worth the whole of any other
woman's!' replied Hew, with more warmth and gallantry than he had yet
shown; but the provoking Mary only laughed, and as she drew near the
dovecot, some of the pigeons, to whom her figure was familiar, and
whom she was wont to bring food for, came wheeling and fluttering
round her, and one, after nestling in her neck--a pretty
sight--alighted on her left hand, and while she stroked and fed it
with the right, Hew could not but remark that the snow-white pigeon
was not whiter than her slender fingers.
'I would I were that pigeon,' said he, sentimentally.
'"Would I were a glove upon that hand!"--now don't be a goose and
attempt to act Romeo, as I cannot be your Juliet,' said Mary,
laughing outright; and now he began to eye her with his gloomiest
expression in his parti-coloured orbs, while she caressed the bird,
and sang, as if to it, part of Lady Anne Lindsay's song:
'"Why tarries my love? Ah, where does he roam?
My love is long absent from me.
Come hither, sweet dove, I'll write to my love,
And send him a letter by thee.
'"Her dove she did deck, she drew o'er his neck
A bell and a collar so gay;
She tied to his wing a scroll with a string,
Then kissed him and sent him away."'
Suiting the action to the word, she kissed the pigeon and tossed it
from her with a merry ringing laugh, for she had ever a light glad
heart, and was full of pretty, yet haughty and winsome ways.
Hew, in the vanity of his nature, could not see how hopeless it was
for him to press his suit with a girl who never listened to him
seriously, and who never tried, even in the least degree, to care for
him; for there was something in Hew Caddish Montgomerie that made
Mary totally indifferent to all he could urge, and so she felt
neither regret for, nor gratitude to him: thus she could hear unmoved
the avowal and proposal from his lips, which seldom fail to stir in
one way or another the hearts of most women, and which, whoever
utters them, are seldom or never forgotten.
'Let us be friends, Hew,' said she, in reply to another appeal; 'I do
not love you--I cannot love you as you wish, and I dare not and would
not marry where I did not love.'
Hew eyed her still more gloomily and almost revengefully, while she
played with the spray of a wild-rose tree, till a little cry escaped
her, as a thorn entered her delicate hand.
'Do permit me, Mary,' he urged, and tenderly enough he extracted the
thorn, and bowing over her hand, pressed it to his lips; but Mary
almost angrily snatched it away, just as the sound of wheels was
heard, and there bowled up the winding avenue a dog-cart, the driver
and the occupant of which must have seen, and no doubt misunderstood,
the whole situation.
'Our new guest with his gun-case and portmanteaus,' said Hew, with
much annoyance.
'Who?' asked Mary, still more annoyed, as she thought of what Hew had
done.
'Have you forgotten?'
'Oh! you mean Mr. Cecil Falconer.'
'Yes, that fellow from Dumbarton. Now don't, please, run off to the
house, Mary; we shall meet him and his military appetite betimes, no
doubt, when the gong sounds for dinner.'
Mary had now an undefined sense of provocation, and in silence turned
away towards the house, accompanied by Hew, who found his chance was
gone for that day, and Mary never gave him another if it could be
avoided.
Thus ere long he began to fear that until Sir Piers' demise, and the
baronetcy and broad acres of Eaglescraig became his by succession, he
might have to face the Indian C.S. again; and seek how to meet his
debts by trying--as he had often done--his fortune at 'the board of
green cloth.'