Chapter XI: The Old Warning

Fondly had Alison Cheyne looked forward to her return to Chilcote, as a chance of reunion with Bevil Goring, as the means to a probable end of taking up the link of their love where it had last been dropped; and now she had to content herself with the scanty intelligence gathered by Archie among the soldiers of his regiment, that he was not in the camp--was in London, but none knew in what part thereof.

In London, thought Alison, and making apparently no effort to write, or to discover her; but she forgot that he must be utterly ignorant of her movements; whether she was at home or abroad; and that she could now receive letters freely and unquestioned, as her father was all but bed-ridden again.

Her bubble seemed to be bursting; and this state of affairs--nothing--was the end of it, after all!

Thus they were both in painful ignorance of each other's movements amid all the ready appliances of post and telegraph, while Laura Dalton, who would have been a certain means of communication between them, was gone from Chilcote Grange, Alison knew not where, but, as it eventually proved, to Portsmouth to await the returning expedition from the Gold Coast.

So Alison's days were passed in nursing and monotony now, and often she and Mrs. Rebecca Prune had their heads together over a cookery-book, studying the decoction or preparation of something 'for papa'--to tempt his appetite; for often _he_ had one dish and Alison another of a more homely kind, or next to none, and though he might have a dainty spring chicken she dared not kill her hens, they were laying so well just then.

Sir Ranald had become, as Lord Cadbury remarked rather unfeelingly to Alison, 'deuced stupid and snoozy now.'

On an evening early in March he sat--as Alison long remembered--for the _last_ time in his old arm-chair listening to the rooks cawing in the lofty beeches, the sparrows twittering under the eaves, and the setting sun was throwing a golden glory over the eastern uplands and a ruddy gleam on the square, ivyed tower of Chilcote Church in the distance; and then, without moving his head, which lay back on a pillow, his eyes, clear and keen though sunken, through the _pince-nez_ balanced on his long thin nose, regarded lovingly and affectionately, the downcast face of Alison, whose pretty hands were adjusting in a vase some fragrant March violets that Archie had brought her--violets which, as Shakespeare says, are 'sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes.'

Once upon a time Sir Ranald had found it a burden--a bore to sign a cheque, to read a letter, or see his lawyer when he had a land steward; now there were no cheques to sign, no letters to read save those of duns, and no lawyer to see, or land steward either; and now, for the last time he began to harp upon the old string, when she kissed him, and asked him of what he was thinking.

'Of what can I think save your future, Alison? who cares what becomes of mine--little as there is left of it, and tired as I am of a life that is too intolerable to be endured for one's-self alone!' was the querulous response.

Alison with difficulty restrained her tears, and in a mechanical way re-adjusted the bouquet of violets.

'Girls--especially poor ones--have only a certain number of chances, Alison, however handsome and attractive they may be,' he resumed. 'You, under great monetary disadvantages, have had one that is every way unexceptionable. What more do you want--what more can you want?' he added, rocking his bald head from side to side, and closing his eyes wearily.

Alison thought she had had two chances, and the most prized of them was now a richer offer than she ever deemed it could be; but this was the one her father chose to ignore as no chance at all.

'I have read, papa,' said she, 'that those "who have neither character nor conscience may drift, or let others shape the course for them; but the great thing is to be true to yourself."'

'Yourself--and some penniless cur, like that at Aldershot! Go--I am disgusted!' exclaimed Sir Ranald, with a sudden gush of querulous anger.

Alison remained silent. She knew not that the fatal end was drawing so near now, otherwise she must have temporised with him more; and she thought--

'But for my love for Bevil, to please papa I might have yielded--so many girls are drawn or thrust into hateful or grotesque marriages by want of money, friends, or a home.'

But when she thought this, Alison was ignorant of what so many knew, and her father should have known--the private character of Lord Cadbury, or rather his want of it, as he was simply an old _vaurien_.

'Novels have turned your head, Alison,' said Sir Ranald, in a low voice. 'You expect to be over head and ears--of a necessity--in love with a hero; well,' he added, through his set teeth, 'this fellow Goring is not one--didn't he shirk the Ashanti affair?'

'Oh, papa, how cruel and unjust of you! He won three medals, and was twice wounded in India.'

'Ah! you know all that?'

'He was "detailed" for the depôt, as it is called--so Archie told me--and had to remain at home.'

'Ah! you know all that too!' exclaimed her father, weakly, but in a sneering tone.

Why did not Bevil attempt to seek her out? she thought. Had a change come over his mind and his plans? and was she left in loneliness to dream over the unattainable?

'It is not medals I would have you to set store upon, but money.'

'I care little about it, papa, and shiver at the name of it.'

'Perhaps so; but we ought to care for what money gets us.'

'Should I accept Lord Cadbury with your permission if he were a poor man?'

'Certainly not,' he replied, snappishly; 'even a poor Lord would be no mate for Miss Cheyne of Essilmont--for my daughter!'

'But if she is poor too?'

'Then the greater madness to think of it. But I am weary of this subject.'

'So indeed am I, papa.'

'And I am weary of life too--oh, so weary--but for you, bird Ailie! Ring for Archie--and--and let me to bed--to bed.'

So he went to his bed that night, and never rose from it, for he was dying--dying partly of a general decay of the whole vital system; for he was a man who had lived high, and with whom life, if easy in one way, had been a species of feverish chase in another.

In anxious monotony passed the nights and days. Dr. Kneebone, the Esculapius of Chilcote village, could do nothing for him now; indeed, there seemed nothing to be done but to watch for the end; and as Alison watched, with a heart torn by anxiety, passionate filial regard, and terror of what must inevitably come, again her sweet face, the softness and delicacy of which the pencil of a Greuze alone could have pourtrayed, became sad and pale and livid.

Her eyes grew heavy and inflamed by much sleeplessness, and over all her bearing there spread a soft air of patient suffering with equal evidence of great resolution and fortitude; and yet--yet, withal, with a shudder in her heart, times there were when she began to think of sacrificing herself, if doing so could save her father and prolong his days.

And old Archie Auchindoir moaned to himself as he pottered about his daily work, and often he muttered anxiously:

'It's no for nocht the gleds whustle at nicht!'

Dying--Dr. Kneebone assured Lord Cadbury that the old man was certainly dying, and fully stronger than ever grew the hopes of the peer to possess Alison, the poor and forlorn, beautiful and hunted creature, in the midst of her coming desolation and loneliness. Genuine pity or commiseration he had none.

'Save the puir lassie, he is the last o' the Cheynes o' Essilmont, my lord,' said Archie, in a very broken voice, as he ushered the peer out one day; 'the last leaf o' a lang, lane: ancestral tree!'

'What the devil is the use of a family tree unless one could sell it for timber,' replied the peer, as he took his horse's reins from Gaskins; 'and as for ancestors' (this was rather a sore subject with him), 'if one could raise the wind on them, there is many a fellow who wouldn't even leave himself a father just now!'

And so his lordship cantered off, sitting in his saddle, as Archie said, 'for a' the warld like a pock o' peats.'

Alison was watching her father sleeping, while this would-be lover rode pleasantly home to his luxurious dinner, and, as she watched him, she thought how fearfully wan and gray his face looked; and yet how noble it was in its manly beauty. What a handsome youth he must have been, when he won her mother's heart as a girl.

'How dark it has become!' she murmured in a low voice, as Archie brought noiselessly in a carefully shaded lamp, 'and the sunset was so unnaturally bright,' she added, in a kind of whisper, with a convulsive trembling of her lips and a strange pitifulness and foreboding in heart as she resumed her seat by the bedside, in shadow.

Dr. Kneebone had looked at the sinking patient for the last time, and departed with a very grave face--grave, for his kindly heart was full of pity for the young girl, who now knew that the great change would come before long.

The vicar of Chilcote had read the prayers for the dying, and not without deep emotion, for he was a warm-hearted old man; and after placing the book in Alison's hand, with certain pages marked for her perusal, had departed also; and she--declining all offers of feminine assistance from the vicarage--remained alone, and choked with emotion by the bedside, with one of her father's passive hands clasped in hers, to wait and to watch.

A storm was rising without, but great was the hush of silence in the half-darkened chamber as the hours of the night stole solemnly on; and Archie and Mrs. Rebecca Prune, approaching the door on tip-toe, peeped in from time to time, but were always warned away by a wave of Alison's hand.

On the mantelpiece ticked a handsome little carriage clock, one of the few remaining relics of former wealth and luxury; but the sound it made was soon lost amid the din of the elemental war without.

Once or twice Alison mechanically turned her pale and hopeless face to the window; the bare black branches of the great beeches were tossing on the gale, and dark clouds were hurrying past the white, weird disc of the moon; eerily wailed the blast around the old house, rustling the rain-soaked creepers on its walls, and the great drops swept in gusts upon the rattling window panes.

The patient stirred restlessly; the din of the rising storm--oh, could she but muffle it, shut it out--disturbed him.

Higher it rose, and with each successive gust of the increasing wind the ivy and creepers rattled on the window panes, whilst the great beeches seemed to shiver in anticipation of a fiercer blast.

For many a year to come would a storm be associated with sorrow, gloom, and death in the mind of Alison Cheyne!

The thunder growled, and more than once a gleam of lightning overspread the northern quarter of the sky, showing the tall trees in black outline tossing their branches wildly.

The sound thoroughly roused Sir Ranald, and recalled his dying energies.

'Kiss me, bird Ailie--kiss me,' said he, in a voice like a husky whisper; 'the light has surely gone out, I cannot see you, child.'

Alas, it was the light of life that had left his eyes for ever!

Alison saw how fixed they were in expression as she kissed him softly, most tenderly, again and again, and wiped his forehead with her handkerchief. Then, with hands that were tremulous but firm in intent, he drew down the lids of his eyes--as James VI. of Scotland did, with wonderful presence of mind, when dying, and no other man on record--and they never opened again!

Alison thought he was asleep, and listened to his stertorous breathing, while restraining her own; it grew fainter and fainter, but there was a sound in it that is indescribable, though more significant than any other, that a human soul is on the wing; while his shrivelled hand groped feebly and fatuously about the coverlet as if seeking for another; and, taking it between her own, Alison bent her lips over it.

It trembled in her grasp, and when she looked up he had passed away, and an awful placidity lay upon the livid face. At that moment the thunder was grumbling, and the wind bellowing; so it might be fancy, or it might not, but amid the tumult of sound Alison seemed to hear--what was it?--the wild baying of a hound dying hollowly away in the distance.

'Oh, my God,' she exclaimed, and fell prone, face downward, with arms outspread, upon the floor.

The hound--the hound again! Was it fevered fancy? Could she but think she was warring with shadows--but alas, she could not, then at least.