Chapter XXI: Conclusion

So she was out in the world once more, with apparently no earthly tie to bind her to it.

'Could I but see Bevil's face once more and then die!' was her thought, as, blinded with the hot tears that flowed under her veil, she was driven through the sunny and crowded streets of pleasant Bayswater.

We have said that the vicar of Chilcote was now in town; he had brought his family with him, and was residing in private apartments not far from Pembridge Square, and overlooking Kensington Gardens. Thus Alison's first thoughts--indeed her only resource--was to throw herself upon him as she had before intended; but now she was terrified that, if he naturally made inquiries of Mrs. De Jobbyns, in the spirit of sourness or malevolence she might give a very distorted account of the late episode; and, indeed, the worthy old man was greatly disturbed when she told him her simple tale, as the same ideas occurred to himself, and he saw all the peril of giving the name of that irate matron as a reference to anyone else; and thus for two entire days he remained in sore perplexity what to do.

On the third he began again to question Alison, whom he kept with his family.

'And the portrait which caused this grotesque disturbance--the portrait of this gentleman is that of your _fiancé_?' he asked.

'Yes.'

'Were you engaged to him with your father's consent?' asked he, suspiciously, while he regarded her keenly, but not unkindly, under his shaggy, white eyebrows.

'No--to my sorrow be it said,' replied Alison, with a little hesitation.

'That seems wrong--why?'

'He was not rich enough then to suit papa's views, having little more than his pay.'

'_Then_--is he rich now?'

'Yes--more than rich--even wealthy.'

'And has he since sought you out?'

'No,' sobbed Alison.

The vicar shook his white head and groaned.

'What is his name?' he asked, and Alison told him.

'Goring--Goring,' said he, pulling his nether lip thoughtfully; 'I have heard the name. He called on me more than once to ask your London address, as also did Lord Cadbury of Cadbury Court; but suspecting his object, I declined to give it.'

'Oh, why?'

'He is an officer--and officers are often wild and unscrupulous fellows. You are young, more than most attractive, and are without a protector--you understand?'

'Oh, sir, how you have wronged him!'

'I am sorry you think so, but----'

'Good heavens, you may have parted me and Bevil for ever!' she exclaimed, in a voice of intense pathos and sorrow.

'Not so, my darling--I am here!' said Bevil Goring, who had entered unannounced by the boarding-house servant, and in a moment his arms were round her and her head upon his breast.

The darkest hour is always that before the dawn, it is said, even as clouds are a prelude to sunshine.

It is chiefly in novels and on the stage, but seldom in real life, that people start and scream, or faint and fall; so Alison, on finding herself suddenly face to face with the object of all her dearest and tenderest thoughts, felt only her colour change and her heart give a kind of leap within her breast; while power so completely seemed to leave her limbs for some moments that she would have slid on the carpet but for the support of Bevil's caressing arms, and for more than a minute neither spoke, for great emotion induces silence.

So she remained folded in his close embrace--content, safe in the shelter of his arms, with her white face nestling on his breast, while he showered kisses upon it and her hair.

'Captain Goring,' said the vicar, 'how did you discover that she was here--with me?'

'She wrote to her old servant whither she had gone, and he informed me without delay at my club. He did not distrust me, as you, sir, did.'

'I trust, Captain Goring, you will pardon that now, "as all is well that ends well," replied the vicar, with a smile, and thinking, wisely, that he might be rather _de trop_ just then, he withdrew to another apartment.

Goring now then held her at arm's length to survey her face, it was so long since he had last looked upon it, and then drew her close again to his breast. After a time, he asked,

'What is all this that I have been told about your being a governess--Alison, love, tell me?'

'I am one now--at least, I was one, in a house in Pembridge Square.'

'With a family called De Jobbyns--absurd name!'

'Yes.'

'Is this a riddle--a joke, or what?' said he, giving his moustache an almost angry twitch.

'No riddle or joke,' replied Alison, sweetly. 'I seemed to have no friend in the world to aid me, and I had my bread to earn.'

'My poor darling!'

'Yes--poor indeed.'

'And you have left that woman?'

'No.'

'How?'

'She dismissed me bluntly and coarsely.'

'Why?' asked Goring, striking the floor with his spurred heel.

'I was dismissed with a month's salary, because I had been detected wearing your likeness--here, in my locket.'

A smile that rippled into a laugh spread over the face of Goring, who, recalling the mode in which he had been hunted by mother and daughter, took in the whole situation.

Calm speech and connected utterance came now to both, and many mutual explanations were made, and mutual tender assurances given more than once; for both had much to relate and to hear; nor with both--Alison especially--without false impressions that required removal.

'And _you_ were actually in Antwerp too!' exclaimed Alison, when she heard his story.

'I traced you there, only to lose you again--though many times I must have passed the door of the very place where you lay ill. Oh, my darling, what you must have endured!'

Her transitory emotions of gratitude to Cadbury for his supposed birthday gift made Goring laugh again when he saw her wonder and joy that it had come from himself, and that she learned the erector of the marble cross was himself also. Thus, when Bevil felt her tears and kisses on his cheek, he thought that never were gifts so pleasantly repaid. With Alison, it would all be rest hereafter. 'Trials and troubles might come,' as a writer has it; though further trials and troubles seemed at a low computation just then; 'but nothing would tear her great tree up by the roots again.'

Alison felt just a little emotion of shame, and that she kept to herself. He had never, even for an instant, doubted her love (though he had feared her father's influence), but she had not been without twinges of doubt, especially after the day of the Four-in-Hand meeting by the Serpentine.

'How trivial, at first, seem the events that rule our lives--that shape our destinies--our future,' said Goring. 'Had I not, by the merest chance, met poor old Archie, heaven alone knows when I might have traced you.'

Hour after hour passed by, and she forgot all about the vicar, and even of where they were.

She would recal the past time at Chilcote, when the first vague emotion of happiness in his presence and his society--pleasure that was almost, strange to say, a kind of sweet pain--stole over her; when she was half-afraid to meet his eye, and when each stolen glance at the other led to much secret perturbation of spirit, and when a touch of the hand seemed to reveal something that was new, as the glamour of a first love stole into the hearts of both.

How long, long ago, seemed that day on which they rode with the buckhounds, and took their fences together side by side.

We have not much more to relate, as in a little time they were to glide pleasantly away into the unnoticed mass of married folks; yet to Alison it would be always delightful to think that she had, at her will and bidding, a fine manly fellow like Bevil Goring--one whom brave men had been proud to follow--for she had a keen appreciation of soldierly renown; and he had more than a paragraph to his name in the Annual Army List.

We have said, we think, in a preceding chapter that he wrote to his solicitors at Gray's Inn an important letter concerning the acquisition of certain property at Chilcote; thus when he took Archie Auchindoir into his service as a personal valet (which he did forthwith), great was the astonishment of the old man on first entering his master's rooms in Piccadilly at what he saw there, and a cry of joy escaped him and he almost wept.

There hung all the old family pictures, and there were many a relic and chattel dearly prized by Sir Ranald and Alison too, in that superstition of the heart, which few sensitive or affectionate natures are without.

There on the sideboard was the great silver tankard, the gift of Queen Elizabeth--the Bride of the Bruce--filled with red wine and emptied on hundreds of occasions by many successions of Cheynes, even after the 24th of June, 1314, was nigh forgotten, and above it hung the portraits of the two pale, haughty, yet dashing and noble-looking cavalier brothers, with their love-locks and long rapiers, who fell in battle for the King of Scotland, and Archie, greeting them as old friends, passed his shrivelled hands tenderly and caressingly over the unconscious canvas, as if he could scarcely believe his eyes.

'A' for her, a' for her--God bless him!' he muttered, knowing well why Goring had rescued these objects from Sir Ranald's creditors.

In Piccadilly, Archie, though rather a puzzle to Goring's other servants--his grooms, coachman, and so forth--found himself 'in clover;' and, till the marriage came off, Alison was to remain with the family of the vicar, who was to perform the ceremony, at which little Netty Dalton figured as a bridesmaid.

After all she had undergone, and had feared she might yet have to undergo, she was again with Goring--his strong arms round her, his lips upon her cheek and brow!

She was at times confused, bewildered--unable to comprehend it all. She could but lay her head upon his breast and resign herself to the rapture of the occasion, and close her eyes as if it would be happiness even if she opened them no more.

How joyous was that mute embrace--that love-making without words--the spell that neither knew how--or wished--to break! All her past woes, and all her future hopes, seemed merged in the joy of the present time; while the pressure of Bevil's hand, his impassioned murmur, his fond gaze and studious tenderness, his attention to every wish and want, caused a sense of joy in her soul of which it had never been conscious before.

As Jerry said, in his off-hand way, when he visited them, like Bella and himself, 'they were in a high state of sentimental gush.'

Now she knew that she belonged to Goring, and he to her, and that the life and love of each belonged to each other, that they would be always together till death--a distant event, let us hope--parted them; that his handsome face would never smile on another woman as it smiled on her; and that no other woman's lips would be touched by him as hers had been on the day she ceased to be Alison Cheyne of Essilmont and that ilk.

THE END.

LONDON: PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD BLENHEIM HOUSE