'THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO.'
'Young Stratherroch seems to have accepted the situation. He is much
too sharp and well-bred a man not to have seen that he was--well--in
the way rather,' said Lady Aberfeldie to her husband one afternoon.
'One thing is certain at least, he has ceased to visit here.'
'Dropped out of the hunt--yes,' assented the peer, as he filled and
lit his briar-root. 'Poor fellow! he was--or is--undoubtedly fond of
our little girl.'
'Such fondness was folly in one so poor; and now, as Sir Paget comes
to-day, I do not see why we should not have the two marriages at
once. I am most anxious to have all this fuss ended and done with.'
'There are several deeds to draw and so forth in the matter of Allan
and Olive; and as for Eveline she has not yet consented.'
'She must do so now, I presume,' said Lady Aberfeldie, impatiently
wafting aside with her white hand a cloud of smoke the peer was
creating.
'Both marriages,' said he, reflectively; 'but how if the regiment
goes on foreign service--and the corps expects orders of readiness
daily, I understand?'
'Allan can send in his papers.'
'Impossible! You do not consider what you say.'
'He is not well enough to go abroad.'
'He is too well to remain behind; and if well enough to marry I fear
that F.M. the Commander-in-Chief will deem him well enough to march.'
'Anyway it will secure Olive's fortune in the family.'
'It is secured as it is by her father's will so long as Allan is
willing to consent; but as our loving daughter-in-law, there will be
no necessity for the enforcement of the clause that is so grotesque.
As regards Sir Paget and Eveline----'
'Leave me to manage Eveline,' said Lady Aberfeldie, bluntly and
loftily.
The result of her management was soon apparent, though she knew not
that circumstances, of which she was as yet unaware, were playing
into her hands, and would yet more completely do so.
'Sir Paget, as you know, Eveline, will be here to-day,' said she,
with an arm round her daughter's neck, 'and we--that is, your papa
and I--trust, child, that you will receive him as you ought, and wear
the jewels he sent you.'
Lady Aberfeldie used her softest yet firmest voice as she spoke to
Eveline, but it sounded to the latter as the voice of one who was a
long, long way off.
She made no immediate reply; but with her hands tightly interlaced,
as if thereby she would quell emotion, seemed to be gazing down at
her nicely pointed little foot that rested on a velvet fender-stool.
'Why mope here, growing pale and thin, for a thing without
substance--a dream--a shadow, Eveline; you understand me?'
'A dream--a shadow, indeed, mamma!'
'You hear me, child?' said her mother.
'Yes, mamma,' replied Eveline, who seemed to shiver with cold as her
mother left her, but with a long backward glance that had more of
menace than entreaty in it.
'He never loved me,' Eveline was thinking. 'I have given my heart
for nothing, and am now cast aside for another, like a broken toy
discarded by a child. He dared to trifle with me--my father's
daughter! It is clear now that he fancied, or merely pretended to be
in love with me, while all the time his heart was given to--_Alice_!'
And she would have been either more or less than human, if with her
just indignation there did not mingle a certain sentiment of revenge
that bore her up in the part she meant to act now; though she shrank
as yet from the conviction that, when esteem dies, love dies with it.
So that evening Eveline wore the suite of jewels--such jewels as Bond
Street alone can furnish--and Sir Paget, as he sat by her side,
jerked his little bald head about, in the exuberance of joy, and in a
way that was really alarming.
Olive was looking radiantly beautiful, in a brilliant dinner costume,
with Allan's Maltese suite of diamonds and pearls sparkling on her
neck and arms, which Lady Aberfeldie had urged her to don in honour
of Sir Paget, and in defiance of a _moue_ and pitiful glance of
Eveline, who had no small difficulty in acquitting herself at dinner
in her new role of _fiancée_, but nearly broke down when she heard
Sir Paget raise his voice and say to her father something that he was
not sorry he might say with a clear conscience, and as a
matter-of-fact.
'Oh, by the way, Aberfeldie, when I arrived at the rail way-station
this morning I witnessed a very tender leave-taking between a young
friend of yours and a most charming girl--gad, the fellow has
taste--a girl whom he was seeing off, to London, I presume, by the
Flying Scotsman, it was quite pathetic, by Jove!'
'A young friend of ours--who do you mean, Sir Paget?' asked Lady
Aberfeldie.
'Cameron, of the Black Watch, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at
Dundargue--you remember,' said Sir Paget, playing with the stem of
his champagne-glass, and not daring to look at Eveline, whose white
hand he saw trembling as she toyed with her grapes.
'Oh--oh--indeed--and the young lady----'
'Had "Mrs. Cameron" painted on all her luggage--great Indian
overlands, some of it.'
'_Mrs. Cameron_,' repeated Lady Aberfeldie, whose aristocratic face
shone in spite of herself at these tidings, while Lord Aberfeldie
looked flushed and perplexed, and like Allan, who pitied his poor
sister, remained silent.
This astounding intelligence was to poor Eveline as 'the last straw'
to the over-laden camel; she betrayed no outward emotion, though her
heart and spirit were completely broken down, for a phase of
duplicity which she could never have conceived was now suddenly laid
bare to her.
When, with her aunt and cousin, she retired to the drawing-room, the
latter pressed her hand affectionately and caressingly, while the
former, too proud or too prudent to refer to what they had just heard
so greatly to her satisfaction, sat in a shady corner and slowly
fanned herself in silence with a great round feather fan.
An emotion of jealous spite at young Cameron, with rivalry, passion,
and ambition to possess a young, beautiful, and highly-born wife, all
now inspired Sir Paget, who, to do him justice in the anecdote he had
told, had told no more than the truth, and, for the happiness of Evan
Cameron, we are sorry to say it.
But though now permitting herself quietly to drift with the stream of
events, and to become a tool in the hands of others, it was
impossible for Eveline, when with Sir Paget in the grounds, or when
alone in the drawing-room, not to shrink from his now privileged
caresses and attentions; thus once she shocked him by saying, as she
withdrew her hands from his clasp,
'Oh, Sir Paget, do you really mean to marry a woman who does not and
never can love you?'
'Do not say "never can." How can we know what the future may have
for me--for _us_, my dear girl?'
'Who, indeed, save One!' sighed the girl, wearily.
'I would rather have half your heart than the whole of any other
woman's,' said Sir Paget, gallantly, while recapturing her hands, and
jerking out his head in turtle fashion.
'My whole heart,' thought Eveline, 'is--oh, no--was full of Evan, but
can have no vacant corner for any other, especially such a man as
this.'
And even while she thought this she shivered as if with cold, when in
right of his new position he caressed her.
'How, with all their innate pride, papa and mamma are content to
abandon me to this absurd little man Puddicombe, as they do, passes
my comprehension,' said she to Olive. 'Puddicombe--such an absurd
name too,' she added, with a little laugh that was hysterical; 'and
what object can the splendour of his settlements be to them? They
seem to ignore the fact that the Grahams of Dundargue were barons of
the Scottish Parliament when the ancestors of half the British
peerage were hewers of wood and drawers of water--peasantry and
artisans!'
So in the bloom of her youth and beauty, the time 'when the light
that surrounds us is all from within,' Eveline Graham was to become a
victim at the altar after all--after all!
And Cameron seemed to have prepared the path for her, for, stunned by
his too apparent duplicity, she schooled herself for the _rôle_ of
indifference to fate; but this was chiefly by day, for often at night
she would lie where she had thrown herself, across her bed,
forgetting even to undress, her tear-blotted face covered by her soft
arm, and so in the morning the wondering and sympathising Clairette
would find her.
June was creeping on now, with its sunny, fragrant breath; there were
white and purple blossoms in the parterres of the garden; the
graceful laburnums were dropping their golden petals in showers over
the rosebuds and green lawns that were bordered by dark shining
myrtles and deep-tinted laurels and rhododendrons.
From the fields came the rasping sound made by the mower as he
whetted his scythe, before which the rich feathered grass and the
wild flowers are done to death; elsewhere the joyous haymakers were
hard at work, and the dust of June began to roll along the roads
before the wind in the sunshine.
'June!' thought Eveline. 'Where will the winter find me?'
The preparations for her marriage were hurried on with a rapidity
that appalled her; but, dear as the scheme was to Lady Aberfeldie, a
somewhat unexpected event delayed that of Allan and Olive Raymond,
and gave the Aberfeldie family once more something else to think of.
One evening when all the others were in Edinburgh save himself and
Olive--for Eveline's forthcoming marriage kept all rather busy
now--Allan, full of his own happy thoughts, and the joy that would be
his ere long, was smoking in the grounds, when he was startled by a
shrill cry that proceeded from an open window of the house--a French
window that opened to the ground--and swift as light a man dashed
past him and disappeared among the thick shrubberies.
'A thief!' was Allan's first thought; 'but whose cry was that?' was
his second.
The face of the intruder, who passed near him--a pale and familiar
one, seen just as Cameron had before seen it--seemed to be that of
Hawke Holcroft.
'Impossible,' thought Allan, as he hurried towards the house; but it
was not until he had further proofs that he became aware that the
face he had seen--the face of ill-omen--was that of Holcroft!
He hurried into the apartment through the open window, and was
horrified to find Olive prostrate on the floor, with her arms
outspread, and in a fainting condition. He raised her up and laid
her on a sofa, withdrawing the pillow from under her head, and looked
round for water to lave her face and hands, one of which clutched a
pen.
A large sealskin cigar case, with Rio Hondo cigars in it--a case
which he well remembered to have seen in possession of Holcroft--lay
upon the floor.
How came it there, unless the man he saw was, beyond all doubt, Hawke
Holcroft?
Olive's cheque-book--for she had a bank account of her own--lay open
on her davenport, and Allan's eye caught the counterfoil of one,
dated that very day, and almost wet still, for £400.
'Four hundred pounds!' he gasped, and tried to tear open his necktie,
while the room swam round him. 'Oh, God! can it be that she is
playing fast and loose with me and that double-dyed villain?'
That she should have any intercourse, verbal or written, with such a
wretch excited in Allan a gust of rage and bewilderment, disgust,
horror, and intense perplexity.
Yet it might be all quite explainable--even the cheque.
She opened her eyes and closed them again, and pathetically he
besought her to tell him what had happened, but could elicit no
reply. Her slender throat seemed parched, as she failed to
articulate.
'Oh, Olive,' said he, 'if I alarm you, forgive me. You know how I
love you. Why torture me by this silence--tell me all--_what_ has
happened--_who_ has been here?'
But he urged and pled in vain; her teeth were clenched.
'Is it some folly--some girlish imprudence? _what_ is it? Dear love,
only tell me?'
Still she was silent, and Allan's brows knit darkly and ominously,
while, in the excited state of his nerves, he felt sharp twinges in
the arm that had been fractured, and, when consciousness came
partially back to Olive, she covered her face with her hands, and
sobbed heavily and spasmodically.
What had happened? Why was she so suddenly cast down, hurled, as it
were, from the joy, rapture, and repose of an hour ago, to the
apparent agony and shame of the present?
Nothing could be elicited from her, and the next day found her in a
species of hysterical fever, and in the hands of the doctor.
In a short time it was discovered that her cheque--an open
one--payable to Mr. Hawke Holcroft, and duly endorsed by that
personage, had been presented and cashed at a bank; yet no
explanation could be elicited from her about it.
'She had on the ill-omened diamonds, mother,' said Allan,
interrogatively. 'How was this?'
'I lent them to her, as the bride of the house, and doubtless she had
been trying them on when--when----'
'This scoundrel thrust himself upon her presence?'
'I suppose so,' said Lady Aberfeldie, weeping.
'Evil always comes of these accursed stones!'
'It is simply outrageous,' said Lord Aberfeldie, sternly and loftily,
'that even the family of the most humble tradesman should be haunted
by a Frankenstein--a swindler, and worse, like this--but that a house
like mine--the house of a peer of the realm----'
And his lordship in his indignation paused as utterance failed him.
'Mystery is involved here,' exclaimed Lady Aberfeldie, 'and I dislike
it intensely, as vulgar and very bad style.'
'By Jove, I should think so,' added Allan, gloomily; 'but this
affair, like Cameron's marriage, beats the mysteries of Udolpho!'