HEW MAKES A VOW.
For the next few days Cecil Falconer continued to give Hew a 'gey
wide berth,' as the old keeper phrased it, at the covers, where each
day's shooting was precisely like that which preceded it. If Hew,
thought Falconer, were capable of such mad jealousy and dastardly
cruelty after a few hours' acquaintance, of what might he not be
capable and guilty in the time to come?
Was it his blundering stupidity which, as the gamekeeper said, had
nearly cost Sir Piers his life once before, or a spirit of infernal
malevolence to revenge the petty dispute about the cock-pheasant,
that made him fire his gun in the way he had done?
At times Cecil was inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, and
as he was not of a resentful temperament, he gradually either forgot
the event, or remembered it only as a mistake, that might have proved
more serious than it did. So each day's shooting passed pleasantly
over, and the evenings were devoted to music in the drawing-room,
where Mrs. Garth dispensed tea at a pretty little oval
table--fragrant orange Pekoe, out of tiny eggshell cups, without
handles--and where Sir Piers fell fast asleep over his _Scotsman_;
and the night wound up by Hew luring Falconer into what he termed 'a
little mild play' in the smoking-room--play from which the latter
always rose a loser, without being able precisely to know how.
Save for this kind of thing, which he could ill afford, Falconer
thought the brief term of his leave would be delightfully spent at
Eaglescraig. A 'green yule' had come and gone, without skating or
curling, and the owl whooped nightly on the old tower-head, where the
winter wind shook the masses of ivy on the time-worn walls; and the
New Year was ushered in with well-bred joviality, rather than the
hearty old-fashioned uproariousness of the olden time, though in the
drawing-room the chorus could be heard from the servant's hall, where
Mr. Tunley led it with joyous vociferation, singing,
'Here's a health to the year that's awa'!'
And precisely as the house-clocks struck twelve--midnight--the
house-door was unbarred with great formality, and thrown open to let
the Old Year _out_, and the New Year _in_; and rising from his
elbow-chair, Sir Piers kissed his niece Mary, and then old Mrs. Garth
in a courtly fashion, an example Hew Montgomerie was not slow to
follow on the soft cheek of the former, while Falconer looked
laughingly, yet perhaps enviously, on, and dared only press her hand
as he did that of Miss Erroll; and then there was a general
handshaking with Mr. Balderstone and other old friends who had been
invited to join the social circle.
The rubicund Mr. Tunley offered, in the name of all the servants, to
drink their old master's good health, and the health of all the
family; and Sir Piers, natheless all his pride, cordially shook the
old butler's hand, and each wished the other many happy years to
come; and he went through the same ceremony with all in the servants'
hall.
In all this homely warmth, mutual kindness and goodwill, there was
much that charmed Falconer; for though belonging to a Scottish
regiment, and one famous in history, educated as he had been far away
from his native country, and under peculiar circumstances, he knew
little or nothing of the ways and customs of the latter.
He had been much a wanderer, and never knew a home, save such as he
had found with his regiment; so there was much in the little circle
at Eaglescraig to delight him. Save with Hew, he won golden opinions
from all there; his genial manner, spirited good-humour, handsome
bearing, and facile mode of adapting himself to those among whom
chance threw him--a mode that came, perhaps, of his having been
educated abroad--all seemed to make him a prime favourite.
He could speak much, and pleasantly, of what he had seen and where he
had been; he was a reader, too, and the fruit of his reading cropped
up pleasantly from time to time in the course of conversations that
Hew could take little or no part in, greatly to his own wrath.
'What a place this is for gammon and spinach!' thought Hew, who
viewed all this with extreme distaste, and still more the intimacy
that progressed between this 'interloper,' as he deemed him, and Mary
Montgomerie; for they nightly played together the mazurkas of Chopin
and selections from the songs of Mendelssohn and the operas of Verdi,
while Hew looked darkly and dubiously on, thinking there was in all
this far more than met the eye; and Sir Piers thought, with a smile,
that a Cameronian of _his_ time would certainly not have shone much
as a pianist.
Mary was always so happy in herself, that she usually made all others
equally so; thus, in her society, the hours, with Falconer, seemed to
fly like minutes.
Hew had--unknown to Sir Piers--become so seriously involved in
monetary matters during his sojourn in India, that it was next to
impossible for him to return there; and his chief hope for retrieving
himself and doing well for the future lay in a marriage with Mary
Montgomerie, rather than the prospective succession to the baronetcy
and to the acres of Eaglescraig, for Sir Piers was a hale old fellow
and might live for twenty years yet. Indeed, everyone said so.
Thus he viewed with extreme bitterness and jealousy the visit of
Falconer and some of the details attendant on that visit, and his
closely-set and parti-coloured eyes twinkled dangerously as he
muttered:
'Devil take me if I don't bowl that fellow out yet!'
If Hew had been tender and true, less brusque and coarse--had really
loved Mary with a loving heart--she might have felt some compunction
for her laughing indifference to his suit; but she knew well his
avarice, his monetary hopes, and suspected some of his vices; and,
more than all, her proud spirit revolted at the idea of being made by
her father's will the mere puppet of a family compact, and
_compelled_ to marry any man.
'I heard you arranging a riding-party to-morrow, Mary,' said he,
during a pause (or while Falconer was being accompanied in an Italian
song by Miss Erroll), and bending over Mary till his moustache nearly
touched the white and close division in her rich dark-brown hair,
while she idled over an album of Indian photographs.
'Yes--you will go, of course, Hew?' said she, looking up at him with
her sunny hazel eyes bright with a smile.
'I would rather be excused,' he replied, sulkily.
'Why?'
'Why? because I should be only in the way.'
'Please yourself, Hew; but I do not understand you,' said Mary,
colouring with annoyance; '_what_ do you mean?'
'I mean,' said he bluntly, and in a low, concentrated voice, 'that
before this Cameronian fellow came, you and I were--were----'
'Were what?' asked Mary, sharply.
'Well, friends, at least.'
'And are we not friends now?' she said, laying her hand on his arm.
He looked lingeringly at it--a lovely hand it was, round and white,
with a golden bangle clasping the dimpled wrist--and he said in a low
voice:
'I had hoped we should in time be something dearer----'
'Oh, stuff! Dear Hew, don't begin that sort of thing here,' replied
Mary, laughing to conceal her annoyance; 'you will forget all about
it when you go back to India again.'
Hew's face darkened ominously.
'But you don't like India?' added Mary, somewhat teasingly, while a
roguish smile dimpled her cheeks.
'I hate it, as you know well; yet I may have to return there, for all
that you care about it, or me.'
'There are tigers there, and snakes, and all those sort of things,
Hew?'
'Yes, and perhaps you would like them to eat me?' he asked, viciously.
'Oh, Hew! how can you speak thus!' she exclaimed, laughing. 'I never
said so.'
'But you thought it, all the same.'
She laughed louder at this, for Hew's peculiar love-making, if it
annoyed, always excessively amused her at the same time--a fatal
element for him.
The morning of the proposed ride proved a beautiful one, clear,
bracing, and sunny, and the horses were betimes brought round from
the stables to the stately perron in front of the house, where Hew
was smoking a cigar, when the girls came forth in their
riding-habits, attended by Cecil Falconer.
'And you are resolved not to accompany us, Hew?' asked Mary,
coaxingly, desirous to please him.
'Yes,' he replied, bluntly.
'What a pity the season is not summer,' she said to Falconer, 'we
could have such pleasant sketching expeditions, picnics, afternoon
tea on the lawn, croquet-matches and lawn-tennis; but our picnics are
so jolly, and we always use the big omnibus, in which the servants
drive on Sundays to the kirk of Eaglescraig.'
'Croquet is only good for one thing,' muttered Hew; 'it enables a
fellow to loaf with some girl he is soft upon; otherwise I never
could see anything in it,' he added in his growling tone.
Slender and willowy looked the figure of Mary in her tight,
well-fitted habit, even more so than that of Miss Erroll, who was
undoubtedly a very handsome girl.
Hew, having been in India, had been compelled to learn riding; but he
was a timid and indifferent cavalier, afraid of a horse, indeed, and
he could never have done what he saw Mary doing, tickling, patting,
and kissing the nose of her favourite pad, ere she was swung into her
saddle so deftly by Cecil, to whose care and companionship, together
with those of Annabelle Erroll, he was now compelled to relinquish
her, as the three departed, merrily and laughingly, to visit the
ruined castle of Kilbirnie, amid its stately parks and beautiful
gardens.
Down the long avenue they went under oaks and elms that had been
growing since the field of Pinkecleugh was fought and lost; and
between a pair of grand old carved iron gates, surmounted by a
coat-of-arms and supported by massive stone pillars covered with grey
lichen and green moss, and past the lodge, the occupant of which, an
old wooden-legged Cameronian, stood at 'attention' as they issued out
upon the roadway, watched by the evil eyes of Hew, to begin a two
hours' 'spin' through a rich and pastoral country.
Conversation of the stereotyped kind, concerning the weather and so
forth, had been long ignored by Falconer and Miss Montgomerie.
'I shall show you some beautiful scenery,' said she, as they
shortened their horses' pace to a walk; 'it is of the pastoral kind,
of course--for this is the land of dairy-farms and Dunlop
cheeses--all hill and dale; and though there are no mountains, we are
very proud of Cunninghame,' she added, laughing. 'Do you draw?'
'Yes.'
'And paint?'
'A little, in water-colours.'
'What a pity it is winter-time! Were the season open, we might
sketch together, and how delightful that would be!'
Cecil Falconer cordially agreed with her.
'You must know that I love all this place dearly, wood, wold, and
water,' exclaimed the girl, with a bright smile, as she looked around
her with eyes the greatest beauty of which was their happy
expression, girlish truthfulness, and the innocence of a nature that
had never sought either to simulate or conceal an emotion; 'but I
fear you will deem me very provincial.'
'Why--for loving your native place?'
'Ah! but this is _not_ my native place. I was born far away from
here; but since poor papa followed mamma to her grave, I have lived
at Eaglescraig, and all the happiest memories of my childhood, and
girlhood too, are connected with it; so I love the bold rocky
scenery, the great bluffs that overhang the Firth of Clyde, and the
green pastoral valleys of Cunninghame. I know every farm and
cottage, every coppice and wimpling burn, in the bailiwick.'
'Is it long since your parents died, Miss Montgomerie?' asked
Falconer, as their conversation began to take a personal turn.
'Yes; oh, so long ago that I can only remember them as if in a dream!'
'That is sad.'
'And yours--was your father in the Cameronians?'
'He died when I was in infancy; and where, I scarcely know.'
'But he, too, was a soldier, of course?'
'I think not,' said Falconer, evasively.
'I am too curious--pardon me; but I am a terrible talker,' she added,
and changed the subject, which Annabelle Erroll perceived had brought
an unwonted colour to the young man's cheeks.
Falconer had often thought that, had his father lived, there would
have been a great difference in his own life somehow, though he could
not distinctly define the nature of it.
'How I wish your friend had been here with you,' Mary Montgomerie
said, after a pause.
'Leslie Fotheringhame?'
'Yes; but Sir Piers said it was impossible.'
'He, too, could not leave our detachment.'
'How lonely he must be, shut up in that dull castle of Dumbarton.
His name is a scarce one; is he one of the old Fotheringhames of
Angus?'
'I believe so,' said Miss Erroll, colouring after she spoke.
'We should have made quite a pleasant quartette!' said Miss
Montgomerie. 'Does he sing?'
'Oh yes--so well!' replied Annabelle, ere Falconer could speak.
'How do _you_ know?' asked her friend, laughing.
Annabelle, usually taciturn and silent, now changed colour more
perceptibly, and replied:
'Surely Mr. Falconer must have said so! How should _I_ know,
otherwise?'
Cecil was perfectly aware that he had never done so, but was puzzled
to think how Miss Erroll was aware of his friend's talent.
'You have met, perhaps?' he began.
'In society--yes; people meet each other everywhere nowadays,' she
replied, and looked another way.
The three riders were still in view of the loftily-situated house and
tall old tower of Eaglescraig, and Hew's eyes, from the terrace, were
following them.
He seemed still to see the skill and grace with which--as if he
caressed her--Cecil Falconer had swung Mary Montgomerie into her
saddle, and the care and tenderness with which he adjusted her
stirrup, her habit, and reins. He seemed to see, too, the light in
the eyes of both as they scampered down the long avenue, ere he
turned away to get a foaming beaker of soda-and-brandy, in Mr.
Tunley's pantry, as a panacea for his bitter thoughts.
He watched the trio disappear over a slope, or braehead, where the
road dipped downward, and he registered a vow of vengeance on Cecil
Falconer if the latter crossed his purposes--a vow all the deeper for
being unspoken--and he achieved it terribly when the time came, and
it was ultimately to assume a form and force beyond even what he
himself could have conceived!
Nature had cursed Hew with a suspicious and jealous disposition;
inherent doubt of everyone was a part of that very disposition.
Thus, his own total want of success with Mary Montgomerie, on one
hand, led him, on the other, to conceive the most exaggerated ideas
of the progress Cecil Falconer must already have made with her.
Hew Montgomerie, when he chose, could be 'a good hater,' and, as
such, would have been decidedly after the heart of the 'great'
English lexicographer, whose hateful addendum was, 'I never forgive
an injury;' but Cecil had in no way injured Hew.