Chapter V: 'some Day.'

The sale of Ellinor's landscape for a sum beyond what she had expected for it, came like a gleam of hope to the two lonely girls, and the place in the window where it had hung so long was now empty.

'I wonder who bought it?' said she.

'That matters little,' replied Mary; 'his fancy, however, will give you encouragement, nevertheless.'

Ellinor blushed with pleasure. Her picture was sold, but she little knew to whom.

She was now convalescent, able to go abroad, and, like Mary, she had also the coincidence of a strange and unexpected meeting.

One day, when the weather was clear and sunny for the season, she went to Hyde Park with her sketch-book, encouraged to fresh efforts by her success, to make another drawing. The subject was to be some quaint old trees she had noticed, and which she hoped might find a purchaser in some one who knew the locality.

October had given these old oaks its choicest tints, and, while some of their leaves were russet-green, others were like burnished bronze, and were red of many hues; and, all the better for artistic purposes, the chief of these venerable and gnarled trees had a story, for under it Horace Walpole, as he tells us, was robbed in the winter of 1749 by the fashionable footpad Maclean.

'One night in the beginning of November,' he writes, 'as I was returning from Holland House by moonlight, about ten o'clock, I was attacked by two highwaymen in Hyde Park, and the pistol of one of them, going off accidentally, razed the skin under my eye, left some marks of shot on my face, and stunned me. The ball went through my hat, and, if I had sat an inch nearer to the left side, it must have gone through my head.'

This event occurred within half-a-mile of Piccadilly, and Ellinor, thinking how it would enhance the value of her little landscape, set to work in sketching the group of trees.

So intent was she with her pencil that for some time she was unaware that she was observed, or that anyone was near her in that part of the then usually deserted Park, till she suddenly saw a soldier--a hussar--standing before her.

'Robert--Robert Wodrow!' she exclaimed, in a strange voice all unlike her own, as the pencil dropped from her nerveless hand. 'What does this dress--what does all this mean?'

'Ask yourself, Ellinor.'

Tears started to her eyes at the familiar voice, and so glad was she to see his familiar face that, but for his too probable misconception of her feelings and the eyes of passers-by, she would have thrown her arms round his neck and kissed him.

All unaware that he was so near her, Robert Wodrow had been strolling through the Park, thinking the while of a song that Ellinor had been wont to sing to him often in past days--

'Some day, some day I shall meet you--
Love, I know not when or how--
Only this, only this, that once you loved me:
Only this, I love you now, I love you now!'

The tender and passionate refrain was in his mind, and actually hovering on his lips, when the face and form of Ellinor came suddenly before him.

'So you can amuse yourself thus,' said he, picking up her pencil, 'and in spite of all the misery that has fallen on me.'

'I am working thus for daily bread, Robert; and, oh, I knew not that you had taken this terrible step.'

'Becoming a soldier?'

'Yes.'

Robert Wodrow was again face to face with the girl he loved with a love so unselfish and passionate, and so ungrudgingly given in all its fulness and tenderness, yet he made no attempt to take her hand.

She thought that he never looked so handsome as he did then, in his smart hussar tunic--blue, faced with red and braided with yellow. Club drill and sword exercise had developed every muscle, while setting-up drill and the riding-school had given him that air and bearing our light cavalrymen alone possess.

'Why cast away thus your prospects in life?' she asked, sadly.

'I have none--I lost them with you.'

'What dear friends we might have been--nay, were, if with friendship you would have been content, Robert!'

'A view you only adopted after Sir Redmond Sleath came.'

Her pale face coloured deeply, and perhaps guiltily, at this response, and he regarded her earnestly. She was pale certainly, and her lips had a pathetic little droop in them, though their wonderful sweetness of expression yet remained, but her cheeks had lost some of their girlish roundness and bloom.

The atmosphere of most unclassic Paddington, with its frowsy canal and fœtid churchyard, was truly somewhat different from the breeze that swept the Ochil ranges and down through the Birks of Invermay.

Robert realised at that moment how dear, how inexpressibly dear to him, was the girl he had lost, and between whom and himself he had now opened a complete social gulf, and how their past friendship and love had crept into his heart and settled there, making her still more precious to him than life itself.

When he spoke again his voice was strained and husky, and the tones of it were as those of a man in mortal pain.

'How is dear Mary?'

'Well--very well.'

'From a remark you let fall about daily bread, Ellinor,' said he, playing nervously with the lash of his riding-switch, 'I can gather that you are not married to that man.'

'Most certainly not. I have never seen him since we left home--for to us home is not here.'

'Thank God for your assertion! I have heard a good deal about him among our fellows; he is a deuced bad lot, and may yet find you out. If he does, I beg of you to pause, however brilliant his offers of marriage may be. He dare have no other view; if he had, if he had,' continued Robert Wodrow, with his teeth set under his dark moustache, 'and the grave had me, I would come back to have vengeance on him! Remember my words, I implore you, Ellinor, by memory of the pleasant past, when we were boy and girl together. It is the last favour I can ask of you, and too probably this is the last time we shall meet on earth!'

'What do you mean, Robert?' she said, in an agitated voice.

'I am only here for a day from Hounslow Barracks, and in about a week the regiment embarks for India--for Afghanistan, thank God!'

'How bitterly you speak!'

'I gave up father, mother, home, peace, and profession when I lost you; but, pardon me, I did not mean to upbraid.'

'Forgive me for all I have made you suffer,' said Ellinor, humbly; 'I feel how unworthy I am of all this great regard,' she added, taking his hand caressingly between hers; and then, conscious of how her touch thrilled through him, she withdrew her clasp, and both seemed on the verge of tears, and might perhaps have indulged in them but for the vicinity of one or two observant and inquisitive nursemaids, who marvelled at the interest the young lady evidently took in the handsome hussar.

'And now I must go,' said the latter, but lingered still, and, cut to the heart with sorrow for him, Ellinor pressed her hands upon her breast, as she yielded to her better nature, but felt that now it was impossible to retrace or reverse the past.

'And you leave England for that far-away land so soon?'

'The sooner the better.'

'Won't you come and see Mary ere you go?'

'I should indeed like to see dear Mary once again--she was always true to me,' said Robert.

'Do come, then,' urged Ellinor, heedless of the deduction.

'Not now, for I am almost due at Hounslow; but when I come, I must be--in uniform.'

'That matters nothing; no one here knows us or cares for us. Oh, how happy she will be to see you in one sense, and so sorry in another! The uniform is but a trifle in one way.'

'Moments make the year, and trifles life,' said Robert, with bitter smile, quoting Young's satire.

Ellinor gave him their address--they shook hands like friends, these two who might have been all in the world to each other, though in the world their paths in life would lie far apart now--there was a minute's pause, and in a moment more Ellinor was alone.

Her drawing was effectually marred for the day; her head swam and her hand shook, and forgetting all about Horace Walpole's tree, she slowly quitted the park.

'Poor fellow!' she thought, as the hitherto restrained tears flowed under her veil, 'I have used him ill--and yet how soft and gentle he is with me!'