Chapter III: The Lost One

And where all this time was Alison Cheyne, after whom--as the chief of our _dramatis personæ_--we must needs look now?

When consciousness returned to her, after wildly grasping the bell in the porte-cochère of a large house on that night of snow and terror, and when, fluttering, her white eyelids unclosed, after what seemed a long sleep, she looked round her like a little scared bird, in utter bewilderment, and, believing that she was dreaming, closed them again.

A bell ringing at a distance roused her, and she looked again, and became convinced that what she looked on was no dream, and her eyes wandered about with a dazed expression.

She was in a little room, with whitewashed walls, and a floor of plain polished wood, on which lay a tiny patch of faded carpet. The sunbeams were creeping through the closed blinds, and a fire burned cheerfully in a little black iron stove. She lay in a pretty bed, with the softest of pillows and sheets; it was of plain iron, and without curtains.

Above the mantelpiece, in a simple frame, hung an engraving from Rubens' picture of 'St. Theresa interceding for the Souls in Purgatory,' the three principal souls being--in a spirit of waggery--faithful portraits of the artist's three wives. On one side of this was a little Madonna on a bracket, with a red crystal lamp hung before it; on the other a crucifix, below which was a tiny font of Antwerp china.

Other ornaments--save a few flowers in a vase--the apartment had none, and its furniture--two cane-seated chairs and a deal table--was of the simplest kind.

In one of the chairs sat a young woman dressed like a nun, with a black robe and white hood, a large bronze crucifix and wooden beads at her cord girdle; her down-cast face had a sweet, placid, and even beautiful expression, and she was sedulously working, with the whitest of hands, at a large piece of gold embroidery on cloth of silver--a portion of a priest's vestments apparently, while glancing attentively from time to time down on her patient or up at two pretty little love-birds in a brass cage.

Alison took in all these details at one rapid glance, and great terror seized her that something strange had befallen her, that she was in the care of a nursing sister.

'Where am I?' she said, faintly.

'Thank heaven, you speak, and rationally at last,' said her attendant, casting aside her embroidery and coming softly to her side, laid her cool hand gently on Alison's forehead. 'Pauvre enfant! pauvre enfant!' she repeated, caressingly.

'But _where_ am I, and _who_ are you?' asked Alison, in a weak but impatient manner.

'I am Sister Lisette, and you are safe, safe with friends, and ere long your own people will soon be here to inquire for you.'

'My friends,' she murmured, with a puzzled expression, as her thoughts now went back to her father's sick-room in the Hôtel St. Antoine; to Cadbury, at the thought of which she shivered; to the Bal Masqué at the theatre; the Café au Progrès, and the insolence of 'Captain Smith;' her flight through the snowy streets; her fall at the door of a house, the nature of which she knew not; all these things floated dimly and dreamily before her now, though they seemed to have happened but a few hours ago.

'How fortunate that you had the power to ring our bell before you fainted, child,' said the nun, caressing her and kissing her cheek. 'You might have died in the snow otherwise.'

'Last night?'

'No--child--it was several nights ago.'

'Several?'

'Yes.'

'Oh, papa, papa! has he been here?' cried Alison, feebly, in great anguish of mind, yet unable from weakness to raise her head from the pillow.

'No, for doubtless he knew not where you were.'

'Oh, he will be dead--dead with terror!' wailed Alison. 'Am I in a hospital?'

'No, child, in my house,' said the nun, sweetly.

'Your house?' queried Alison, with very open eyes.

'In the Beguinage, in the Rue Rouge.'

Thus it was that both Sir Ranald and Lord Cadbury had utterly failed to trace her, and fortunate it was indeed for Alison that she had fallen into such good hands as those of the Beguines, who are a religious order, altogether peculiar to Belgium, each nun having a private residence of her own within the general enclosure.

The clatter of the ponderous bell, as the pull left her hand, had soon brought aid to her. She was denuded of her wet and sodden attire, put to bed in the little mansion occupied by Sister Lisette, and, before the angelus bell rang in the chapel next forenoon, she was in a highly feverish state, and in a delirium which lasted several nights and days, with intermissions of fretful sleep, during all of which time nothing coherent could be gleaned from her as to her name, or where she resided, whence she came, and how it was that she was abroad in the streets alone and in such a night.

Her little ravings led them to know that she was English; her costume, and the delicacy and beauty of her person, that she was undoubtedly a lady; but, save a ring or two, she had no purse, card-case, or aught to indicate who she was; but the name of 'Alison' worked upon some of her clothing at once interested deeply Sister Lisette, who was also an Alison, but adopted the French diminutive of it.

The poor Beguines were quite uncertain what else they could do with her, but keep her till she grew well enough to be questioned; so she remained there in her little iron bed, tended by Lisette, unconscious and fever-stricken, while the lengthening days passed slowly over her aching head.

Nearly a fortnight passed before she began mentally to drift back to consciousness, so terribly had all she had undergone of late--the collision at sea with the _Black Hound_ of Ostend, the nursing of her querulous father, her separation from Bevil Goring, and the worry incident to Cadbury's wooing, culminating in that night of terror in the streets--told upon her sensitive nature and delicate frame.

A sweet picture she made, in her little white bed in the plain bare room of the kind Beguine, who never left her even for prayers, but said them by her side on her knees when the angelus or elevation bells rang. Among the huge, soft pillows the slight figure of Alison was half buried, yet the soft tints of her face and hair came out in a species of relief from them; the former was pale--very pale--and there were dark circles under the eyes; and the gentle young Beguine who watched her thought she had never looked on anyone so lovely, and often sat on a tabourette at the side of the couch, keeping her hand caressingly within her own, and counting the jewels in her rings one by one as a child might have done.

'She has a gentle expression in her eyes, such as I have often seen in those of a _Sœur de Charité_, and other nursing sisters,' was the dictum of the reverend mother of the establishment, who came from time to time to visit the fair waif who had been so suddenly cast upon their tenderness; and, truth to tell, there was a great touch of melancholy about the eyes and features of Alison Cheyne now, though certainly melancholy was by no means one of her characteristics naturally.

The Beguines, we have said, are a religious order peculiar to Belgium, and totally unlike any other in so far that they are bound by no vows; they may return to the world whenever they please; but it is their boast that no sister has ever been known to quit the order after having once entered it. They attend to the sick in the Beguinage, and frequently go out as nurses in the hospitals.

They were among the few religious communities not suppressed by Joseph II. or swept away by the furious torrent of the French Revolution. Each Beguinage--more especially in Ghent, where the sisterhood averages six hundred in number--is a species of little town by itself, with streets and squares, having gates, and sometimes surrounded by a moat as well as a wall, especially at Bruges.

The sisters live generally in separate houses, on the doors of which are inscribed, not the name of the occupant, but of some saint adopted as her patron or protectress; and many of them are persons of rank and wealth; hence it was in the private house of Sister Lisette that Alison found herself now.

Many writers ascribe the institution of the Beguines to St. Begga, widow and abbess, daughter of Pepin of Landen, whose husband, mayor of the palace, was killed while hunting, after which she dedicated herself to a penetential state of retirement, and built seven chapels on the Meuse, in imitation of the seven great churches of Rome; and, according to the martyrology, she died so long ago as 698. Others assert that the Beguines were founded by Lambert de Begue or Balbus, a pious priest, of Liege, in 1170, and derive their name from him; but all this lies apart from our story. Suffice it that, fortunately for herself, it was in the spacious Beguinage of Antwerp that Alison found succour, shelter, and protection.

Alison had often seen nuns, but never spoken to or been intimate with one before, and, as all she knew of such recluses was derived through the medium of novels and romances, when strength returned to her she began to invest Sister Lisette with the halo of fiction, and to suppose that she must have some story--that a lost lover or a broken heart accounted for her sweet sadness of face and her present vocation; and she was nearer the truth in her guess than she imagined, for Sister Lisette had once been--for a brief time--a happy wife, of which more anon; and when Alison grew stronger, and was taken as far as the chapel, she was greatly impressed by all she saw and heard there at vesper time, though the chanting of female voices only--some of them from age far from melodious--was pleasing, and the sight of such a large assemblage of recluses in black robes with white veils--the ancient Flemish _faille_, which they yet retain--dimly illuminated by a few votive lamps, had a strange, weird, and, to her eyes, mysterious effect.

The novices are distinguished by a different costume, and those who have just taken the veil wear a chaplet round their heads.

But in all this we are anticipating, for at present Alison was weak as a child, and prostrate with the effect of the short, sharp fever that had left her, though it was apparent to those who watched her that the lines of her face were fine, and they could see that, when well and happy, she must look very beautiful.

In Sister Lisette Alison found an able nurse, for she had served as one in the German war under the Red Cross; her soft, white hand had dressed many a ghastly wound and closed many a glazing eye, and often amid the horrors of Sedan and elsewhere the heads of the dying had rested on her bosom, and with low, loving words she had soothed their moments of death and agony--words that were sometimes taken for those of mother, or wife, or some young love that was far, far away.

Sister Lisette seemed about five-and-twenty years of age; her face was delicately fair, but the rich tint of her lips and the peach-like bloom of her cheeks relieved it of all paleness. Her features were small and regular, but very soft in their lines, and, at times, a singular sadness stole over them.

Her eyes were of the clearest and darkest hazel, and full of 'soul's light,' imparted to her face a world of expression; but what the colour of her hair (or what remained of it) was, it would be impossible to say, as every vestige of it was closely hidden by her tightly-fitting white wimple.

'And I have been here for days and nights ill,' said Alison, faintly, as consciousness came fully back to her, and Lisette, while propping her pretty head upon her own breast, gave her soothing drink. 'Oh, what a trouble I must have been to you!'

'No trouble at all, ma sœur,' replied the other, letting her head tenderly down on the pillow, and smoothing out the latter.

'So long, so long, and without papa being informed,' exclaimed Alison, as tears of dismay started to her eyes.

'Child, we know not his name--his address--even of his existence.'

Alison sighed deeply. She was too prostrate in body and even mind to regard anything as very extraordinary, even her unusual surroundings in the convent; yet she longed for her father to come to her, or to have tidings of him; of aught else she said nothing.

'Oh, if I should die without seeing papa again!' said she, wringing her hands.

'One can die but once,' said Sister Lisette, placidly. 'You are too strong and too young to die, though those who die are sometimes better off than those who are left in the world. You, at least, have all your life to look forward to.'

'And you?'

'Mine is ended.'

'Ended!'

'In the world at least, as I shall go back to it no more.'

Seeing that Alison was in a fever of impatience to hear tidings of her father, Sister Lisette, on obtaining his name and address at the Hôtel St. Antoine, at once sent a messenger with that letter which, as we have described, so greatly startled and agitated the old man; and Alison remained in a fever of impatience, awaiting the return of that messenger who might perhaps bring her very crushing tidings.

'Dearest papa will not lose a moment in coming to me,' she murmured, partly to her nurse and partly to herself; but how, if he were too weak to come or in despair at her loss had left Antwerp, or perhaps--oh Heavens!--have sunk under it, and--died! And to see him again would be, of course, to see that odious Lord Cadbury; and so she tormented herself till the messenger returned with tidings that her father was well and had been out and about for days, despairingly searching for her, and would be with her very soon.

'Oh, thank God for that!' said Alison, and a hot shower of joyful tears relieved her; and now she started up at every sound, and inquired again and again the exact distance between the Beguinage and the Marche aux Souliers.

'Ma sœur Alison, you must not speak so much and be so impatient,' said the Beguine, holding up a finger.

'What--you know my name?'

'Yes, it is mine also.'

'But how?'

Then the Beguine told her how she had become aware of it; and that she too was an Alison, Lison or Lisette--it was all one--and as she spoke her hearer's memory went back to that day with the buckhounds on which our story opens, when Bevil Goring expressed some surprise at her name, and she had explained that it was an old Scoto-French one, and common to the Cheynes of Essilmont; and as she thought of him she pressed his ring to her lips, as if it had been some sacred relique.

'How well you speak English,' said Alison.

'Because I was educated in the English convent at Bruges,' replied the sister; 'but hark, there is a voiture at the gate--monsieur has come!'

'Papa,' murmured Alison, in a choking voice, as she felt herself become a very child again, and another minute saw his arms around her, and her face upon his breast, while she indulged in a passionate fit of weeping, and he with difficulty restrained his tears.

Alison then, after a little time, looked earnestly in his face, and was shocked to see how wan, and thin, and pinched it had become; for indeed, during the mystery that enveloped her disappearance, he had undergone terrible mental agony and much bodily fatigue, for with all his selfishness he loved Alison as the only link that bound him to earth.

Her narrative of how she missed Lord Cadbury in that crowded place, the Théâtre des Variétés, to which she should never have gone, tallied completely with that of the former; but it was not until next day that she detailed fully the manner in which she had been lured by 'Captain Smith' to the Café au Progrès, and the terror with which she had fled from that place into the snowy street.

'Captain Smith!' exclaimed Sir Ranald through his set teeth, while his eyes sparkled with rage. 'Could I but meet that person, old as I am, I would give him cause long to remember the weight of my cane, the scoundrel. I must write to Cadbury on the subject and inquire.'

'Write!--is Lord Cadbury gone?' asked Alison, timidly and hopefully.

'Yes, back to London; he was telegraphed for.'

Alison gave a sigh of relief.

'Shall we go home now, papa--I mean when I am well enough to be about?'

Sir Ranald paused before replying. Had she relented towards Cadbury with a desire to see him, or was it a longing to be near 'that fellow Goring' which prompted the question? One fact seemed pretty evident, that she and the latter knew nothing of each other's movements, and that she was utterly oblivious of his being or having been in Antwerp.

'Home--to where?' he asked.

'Chilcote, papa.'

Her reply was perfectly straightforward, though it again suggested ideas of Bevil Goring, but Sir Ranald deemed that he must have 'effectually crushed that fellow's presumption by the rough tenor of their last meeting.'

'Chilcote it shall be then, perhaps,' said he.

'Oh, yes, papa; it is so quiet there, even amid our little troubles,' said she, as he left her, when the Beguinage gates were closed for the evening; 'and all I want is peace and rest--peace and rest.'

'Shall you ever get them in this world?' asked Sister Lisette.

Alison regarded her wistfully, and said,

'Why not? Can you have led a stormy life?'

'Far from it. My life in the world was a happy one till one dire calamity fell upon me, and drove me to find peace for ever here; but how true it is "that it is vain to try to knit up the present with the past; each part of our lives has its own pleasures and hopes." But now my pleasure is to do good--my only hope to die soon and well.'

'And the calamity to which you refer?' asked Alison, softly, while greatly interested by the singularly sweet and subdued manner of the young Beguine.

'Was the death of my dear, dear husband,' replied the sister; and so, while she sat stitching away at the shining garment, resplendent with gold--a priest's vestment--for old Père Leopold of the Church of St. André, she told Alison some of her experiences in life, and amid them, curious to relate, there occurred repeatedly a name with which the reader is already familiar.

Alison had a sweetly sympathetic way with her, and her namesake was seized by one of the unaccountable fits of confidence that, come to most of us at times to speak about herself, and tell the story of her own sorrows.