'ALICE!'
My Lady Aberfeldie was all unconscious of the little romance that had
been going on for some weeks past in the green lanes and wooded paths
near Maviswood; while Eveline seemed now but to live for the purpose
of meeting Evan Cameron, and her loving heart and busy little head
were full of cunning schemes and contrivances to escape detection and
achieve their meetings, which now seemed to make the whole sense of
her existence; and when not with Evan, or if they failed (which was
seldom) to see each other, even for a few minutes, her manner became
abstracted and triste.
But a rude awakening from her joyous dreams was at hand, and certain
past events that seemed trivial in themselves were doomed to be
recalled to her with a new and terrible significance!
They had one more than usually tender meeting and tender parting,
because Sir Paget Puddicombe--the _bête noir_, the bugbear of
both--was certainly coming to Maviswood, and Eveline was weeping
bitterly.
'Take courage--take courage, my darling,' said Evan, as he kissed the
tears from her eyes and strained her to his breast before he leaped
on his horse; 'for my sake and your own have strength to resist, and
all may yet be well--for my sake and your own, dearest Alice,' he
added, with quivering lips, and was gone.
'_Alice!_'
Another's name uttered by his lips involuntarily while his heart
seemed to be teeming with tenderness for herself--uttered in that
moment of supreme sorrow, passion, and endearment--escaped him
mechanically, as it were, yet too evidently by use and wont!
What did it mean--what could it mean, but one thing?
Her heart stood still for a moment and then beat wildly; she did not
hear the noise of his horse's hoofs dying away in the distance, nor
did she see his lessening figure, for the powers of hearing and of
vision seemed to fail her.
She had received a cruel and terrible shock. Had she heard aright,
or was it all a delusion of her ear, yet she repeated to herself with
pallid face and quivering lips the word 'Alice!' while memory flashed
back to the girl she had seen thrice--twice with Evan, and once
evidently waiting for him at what seemed their trysting-place.
She remembered that the second time she had seen them they were
walking silently together--full of their own thoughts apparently--and
making no effort to entertain each other, and she had read that it is
only 'the nearest and dearest' of kinships--the closest and sweetest
of human intimacies that could explain such "wordless proximity."
Strangers, acquaintances, when thrown together _must_ politely talk;
brother and sister, husband and wife, may be confidently, blessedly
silent!'
She remembered now, with ready suspicion, that, when she and Evan
first met suddenly afterwards, he scarcely evinced surprise. We have
said that it was because his heart was full of her image, but this
idea, this hope, did not occur to Eveline then--her mind was a chaos.
How she got through the remainder of that day she never knew; she had
but one wish: to shun her mother's eye. To seclude herself in her
own room would attract attention; thus she remained in the
drawing-room and affected to read. She opened a book at the page and
point where she had last left off.
Alas! it was beyond the power of books to soothe or win her from
herself now. The Lethean power of the novelist had departed, and her
whole mind seemed out of tune.
She threw aside the volume and took up another, but a cry escaped her
as it fell from her hands. It was Bulwer's 'Alice, or the
Mysteries;' the name seemed to enter her heart like a knife, and she
rushed away to her room.
The dressing-bell for dinner, when it rang, found her very pale, and
wrestling, as it were, with a strange and unusual pain that was
eating its way into her heart.
She bathed her face again and again, but failed to hide the dark
shadows under her eyes or the inflammation of their delicate lids.
And at dinner-time that evening an additional stab was given to her
in the most casual and unexpected way. Her father had brought from
his club to Maviswood Carslogie of the Black Watch, a heedless and
thoughtless young fellow, of whom she overheard Allan making some
inquiries concerning Cameron of Stratherroch.
'Oh, Strath is jolly as a sandboy,' replied Carslogie, 'but he has
some mysterious affair of the heart on just now.'
'How?'
'In the usual way. There is a pretty girl he goes about with to all
public places, but introduces to no one. She is without a chaperone,
and no one knows whether she is maid, wife, or widow; funny, by Jove,
isn't it?'
Carslogie said this in a low voice to Allan, yet not so low but that
it reached the ears of Eveline, who had some difficulty in concealing
her agitation.
With instinctive tenderness Allan glanced at his sister and skilfully
changed the subject to the then invariable topic of Arabi Pasha and
'the coming row in Egypt.'
Times there were when she had thought that she would condescend to go
once again to their trysting-place, and seek an explanation; but now,
after what Carslogie had said, wild horses should not drag her there!
She would never upbraid Evan with his baseness, never more would she
go there; she would simply tear his image out of her heart, and let
the matter end. But this was easier to say than to achieve.
Her soul seemed to have become numbed within her--frozen, if we may
use such terms.
Even in the matter of Sir Paget, she was conscious now of feeling
neither repugnance nor ridicule, though she felt a little repentance
at her opposition to the wishes of her father and mother, and for the
duplicity of which she had been guilty towards them in her love for
an unworthy object, and meeting him in secret, as if she had been a
sewing-girl or waiting-maid, and not the daughter of a peer, and
putting herself, perhaps, in an equivocal position.
She confided in Olive; otherwise her heart, she thought, would burst.
'The heart is said to be "deceitful above all things, and desperately
wicked,"' said Olive, 'but I must confess that this affair passes my
comprehension. He cannot be in love with _two_ at once; yet I have
read of such things. Forget him; you must do that--at least. You
endure too much, Eveline; you believed in him too much, and, I fear,
hoped too much. Even friendship has its limits; how much more so
love.'
'And but yesterday I was so happy--happy in a love the end of which I
could not foresee!' wailed poor Eveline, on her cousin's bosom.
What was she like, this Alice? Her rival--oh, disgrace! Fair or
dark--she remembered that she was pale and pretty. But what did it
matter, thought the now crushed girl, as she tossed feverishly on her
pillow in the gloom and solitude of the night, when even our thoughts
seem to assume distinct outlines that become sharp and vivid.
Night had passed--a new day dawned, and how far, far off seemed
yesterday! The sun had risen in his glory; the blackbirds were
singing in the dew-laden shrubberies of Maviswood; and the pale mists
were clearing off Torduff and Kirkyetton Craig, the highest summits
of the lovely Pentlands.
It was late ere Eveline had wept herself to sleep; but to her it
seemed as if she had not slept at all. Thus it was proportionately
late when she awoke heavily to the morning of a new day.
She had given her whole soul with joy to her hopeless love for
Evan--hopeless, but pure--though any happy end to it she could not
foresee; but this was a bitter collapse she did not anticipate, and
now her 'occupation was gone.'
Was she the same Eveline Graham who but yesterday morning shook off
sleep so lightly, and rose fresh, strong, and full of hope, with the
conviction that her secret lover was true to her and to this hopeless
passion?
Her affectionate heart was crushed; her self-esteem was in the dust;
her proud head lay low indeed; and for the first time in her young
life she had learned what it is to be cut to the soul--to be
completely humbled.
And Alice--who and what was _she_?
'And oh, Olive, how am I to meet mamma?' was the first exclamation
after they had got rid of Mademoiselle Clairette.
She knew she would have to join in the conversation of the
breakfast-table, when all her vigilance would be requisite to prevent
her from pit-falls of suspicious silence or confusion of manner, with
the helpless air and uncertain voice of one who seeks to conceal a
new and hitherto unknown sorrow: and to undergo, with her sad, white,
humiliated face, her mother's critical and observant eyes.
If, in desperation, she did not act a part, that watchful mother
would be sure to detect a change, and that there was something wrong.
Eveline knew well that she would soon detect every flicker of her
eyelashes, every tremor of the heavy white lids, that would droop in
spite of her now; but luckily Lady Aberfeldie was busy in her boudoir
with the housekeeper and Mr. Tappleton, the butler, giving orders;
for Sir Paget Puddicombe would arrive ere long!
Carslogie had gone back to Edinburgh, of course, last night. He
would be with Evan Cameron this morning on parade and so forth; would
the latter question him about his visit to Maviswood, about _her_
perhaps? But what did it matter now whether he did so or did not?
Nothing--less than nothing!
How long the hours seemed now when they were empty--_quite_ empty of
all but bitterness.
Meanwhile days passed on, and Cameron came, as was his wont, to the
usual places of meeting, but Eveline was never there.
What had happened--how was she detained? Had an illness come upon
her? His mind was a prey to the keenest anxiety, which he was
without the means of allaying. He could not write to ask for any
explanation, neither could he call at Maviswood after the somewhat
studied coldness of his last reception there by her father and mother.
At each place and spot where so lately they had met and wandered, the
thoughts that found utterance there, and many a tender caress came
potently and poignantly back to memory now. Where was she, what
doing, how engaged and with whom--in sickness or in health?--he asked
of himself with endless iteration.
Trivialities are often associated with the greatest eventualities in
our lives. Thus long in the memory of Evan would his last visit to
one of these beloved spots be associated with the shrill notes of a
mavis perched upon the topmost bough of a tree.
Ignorant as yet of what he himself had done, ignorant also of the
mischief his friend Carslogie had unintentionally done him by
retailing some mess-room gossip, in the vagueness of his thoughts and
ideas of the whole situation, which we shall ere-long unravel,
Cameron was inclined to attribute the total cessation of Eveline's
meetings with him to some mysterious influence of Hawke Holcroft--if
Holcroft it was whom he saw in the dusk.
From Carslogie he learned that 'she was looking well and jolly,' as
he phrased it. When Allan rejoined he would hear more of her, he
hoped; but Allan's sick leave was protracted from time to time, and
none seemed to know _when_ he would be with the regiment again.
Once these parted lovers saw each other but for a moment only!
Accompanied by a groom, Eveline rode at a canter past him on a lonely
part of the road near Maviswood, her eyes full of unshed tears, her
face pale with resentment, and her veil in her teeth.
Past him, as if he was a stranger!
'Why stop to speak or expect an explanation?' thought the girl. 'In
this world do not actions speak louder a thousand times than words
can ever do?'
She was a Graham of Dundargue, and would show him that she was not of
the kind of stuff that facile Amelias or patient Griseldas are made!
Yet to pass him by thus, cost her a mighty effort, though to Eveline
it seemed that there was nothing left for her now 'but to wrestle
valiantly with that pain which, in the world's eye, degrades the
woman who smarts under it--the pain of an unshared love.'