Chapter VIII: 'for Ever and for Ever.'

Of a very different nature in its depth and passion was a love-scene which was taking place not very far distant from the Grange at about the same time.

Alison Cheyne, we have said, had ceased to take her walk beside the beeches, though her heart yearned for it, and she knew well who was too probably loitering and watching there; so Bevil Goring, at all risks, wrote her a passionate and imploring letter to meet him once again at the same place and hour, with an alternation of days in case of engagements or interruption; and this missive came to her when Alison, who loved him with all her woman's heart, was wondering hourly how she could get through day after day without him.

'At last! at last!' was the exclamation of each as the tryst was kept, and they met again.

Their hearts were beating fast, and in unison, but in silence, and, if the meeting was a secret and a stealthy one, it was all the more thrilling to both. They were silent for a time, we say, but the silence was not without its eloquence, if the paradox may be used. There was the mystic communion of souls--the touch of hand that closed on hand, of lip that clung to lip--lips that knew not how to utter all that hovered there unsaid.

'You got my letter, darling?' said Bevil, after a time.

'I could not have been here else; but, for heaven's sake, do not write to me again,' said Alison, imploringly.

'Why?'

'For fear of papa; my correspondents are so few, his suspicions might be excited.'

'How hard is this!--surely we might write to each other occasionally,' urged Bevil, caressing her.

'No, my dearest; I dislike the idea of a correspondence that is clandestine, however romantic it may be; and if papa discovered it he would deem it so dishonourable in me--so dishonourable to himself.'

'But you will meet me?'

'I shall try, Bevil--I shall try; oh, I cannot help coming to meet you now.'

'Allow me, darling, till I can place another there!' exclaimed Bevil, as he slipped a ring on her engagement finger.

'Oh, Bevil,'--but whatever she was about to say he stopped in a very effectual manner.

'You will wear this for my sake,' he whispered.

'I will, darling.'

'Say always.'

'Always, Bevil--for ever and for ever--and--and,' she added, smiling shyly through her tears that mingled love, joy, and something of terror caused to well up in her beautiful eyes, 'you will take this from me (I brought it on purpose), poor Ellon's ring--the ring you wore so long without knowing whose face and hair were hidden in it.'

'It was an omen of what was to come, love Alison--an omen that we were to meet, and that you should be mine--mine only!' he replied, embracing her with ardour.

They had now become a little more composed and a little more coherent.

'I have expectations, of course--every fellow has,' said Bevil Goring, as they wandered on slowly hand in hand; 'but mine are perhaps too remote to suit the views, and may be opposed to the ambition, of Sir Ranald; yet I love you so dearly, so desperately, darling, that if you will wait for me only a year--I ask no more--I shall hope to claim you publicly or set you free. A captain with only a hundred or two besides his pay could scarcely hope to wed your father's daughter, Alison. Let our engagement be a secret one, as you dread an open one. It is not honourable in me to tie you thus, but what can I do? Separation now would be a kind of death to me; and oh, Alison, I love you so!'

'And I you, Bevil;' then she added, in a broken voice, 'We have had great sorrow, great trouble, we Cheynes, and they have made papa what he is; but I can remember when things were very different, when we were not so poor as we are now, and when he--poor old darling!--had much more of life and spirit in him.'

And so, while replying to Bevil's downward glances of love and tenderness, she pressed closely to his side, with her fingers interlaced upon his arm, in the assured confidence of their mutual relations to each other, as they sauntered towards a more sequestered part of the coppice.

Let the dark future hold what it might of severance, tears, and futile longings, for that fleeting time Bevil was hers and she was his--his own!

And so they parted an engaged pair, he not at all foreseeing, and she only fearing, the gathering cloud that overhung them both. Her elderly admirer was in London then. Parliament was sitting, and she, freed from his visits, abandoned herself to the full enjoyment of the present.

She now wore a new ring, a handsome diamond hoop with a guard, upon the third finger of her left hand; but this was unnoticed by Sir Ranald, though it did not escape the sharper eyes of Mrs. Trelawney, who more than once caught her young friend toying with the trinket--turning it to and fro round her slender finger, while regarding it with a sweet, loving, and dreamy expression of face which told its own tale.

But, if Mrs. Trelawney was reticent on the subject of her suspicion, Alison was still more so, and locked her secret in her own breast.

With all the joy of the new position, however, there was more than one element in it from which her sensitive nature shrank.

First, a secret understanding had been established between her and a gentleman friend--as yet deemed only a visitor at Chilcote--unknown to her father and to others. Second, it had not been discovered as yet, but might not always remain so, and thus eventually cause an _esclandre_; and to her it seemed that to make and keep successive appointments--sweet and delicious though they were--that must be kept secret was in itself something wrong and unlady-like; but she was the victim circumstances had made her.

At times it seemed very 'bad form,' as the phrase went--a want perhaps of self-respect; and yet Bevil Goring was so tender, so loving, so unlike, she thought, every other man in the world that she must risk it all, he was so dear to her.

And then she would dream of the happiness it would be if he were openly accepted by Sir Ranald as her _fiancé_--the joy of seeing him freely come and freely go a welcome guest at Chilcote, the future member of her own family, the future prop of her father's declining years, taking the place of Ranald and of Ellon; but would such ever--ever be?

On the other hand, Bevil Goring, who was not without a moderate show of proper pride, was not without some similar thoughts, and rather resented the position in which they were placed, giving their solemn engagement the aspect of a rustic flirtation with its furtive meetings; and, after all he had seen of the world, he thought it absurd for him and perilous for the girl he loved so tenderly.

He called at studied or stated intervals at Chilcote, but for Sir Ranald ostensibly; and when in the presence of the latter he and Alison had to act a part and talk the merest commonplaces, with the memory in their hearts and on their lips of passionate and burning kisses exchanged but an hour perhaps before.

They seemed thus to lead two lives--one to the world and another to themselves; but a time was rapidly approaching when a rough end would be put to all their little secrets.

'Captain Goring seems to send you bouquets and music pretty often, I think?' said Sir Ranald, rather suspiciously, one day.

'Yes, papa,' said she, feeling herself grow pale under the glance he gave through his inevitable _pince-nez_; 'our garden yields so little in the way of flowers, at this season especially. I can't afford, you know, to buy much music, cheap as it is, and--and----'

'There you go! reminding me of our poverty again,' said he, in a snappish tone; 'but flowers and music have both meanings--at least, they had in my time,' he added, turning away and thinking, 'I cannot permit her, for a mere girl's fancy--if a fancy she has--to throw away Cadbury Court and thirty thousand a year--egad, no!'

Of the City man's coronet he thought little--the Cheynes of Essilmont required no coronets to enhance their old heraldic glories; but the City man's bank-book and acquired acres were a very different matter for consideration now!