Chapter XIV: The Young Widow

So one of the closing scenes of a sudden tragedy had been acted in that fine old English manor-house, standing amid its richly-wooded chase, the undulating sward of which was of such a brilliant emerald that it reminded those who saw it that Hurdell Hall stood in the most fertile part of Hampshire.

When Sir Harry invited Sir Paget to visit him and join him in the fatal--as it eventually proved--cub-hunting, his object had been a nefarious one, but quite adapted to the tone of a _blasé_ man about town like himself, the hope of engaging the beautiful young wife of his elderly club friend in a very decided case of flirtation--so ignorant was he of Eveline's character, and how her ill-assorted marriage was brought about.

Now he hoped by a more honourable course to secure both her purse and person.

By will, however, it was soon known that Sir Paget, to prevent a younger successor enjoying any of his pelf through her, had stripped her of everything but what he had been compelled to settle upon her for life.

However, Sir Harry thought she was every way a most desirable widow to win, but her sorrow and sadness were a sore worry to Lucretia.

'Don't weep, dear,' she would say, in that hard, sharp tone peculiar to some selfish women. 'It is the worst possible thing for one's eyes in every way.'

And, sooth to say, Miss Hurdell's cold, steely orbs did not seem even to have been much afflicted with the weakness of weeping.

'Ah--we all have our trials, dear Lady Puddicombe,' she resumed, after a pause. 'Do try to bear this patiently, and believe it all for--all for----'

'All for what?'

'Well--the best.'

'The best--how, Miss Hurdell?'

'Well--he was so old and you so young, don't you see,' replied this very matter-of-fact person.

Free--for whom and to what extent? Eveline never viewed the dispensation of Providence thus; but till Olive came with her soothing presence, every night amid the darkness of her room, the pent-up tempest in her bosom--the tempest of unavailing regrets--would burst forth with loud whispers and sobs till sleep came, as it always did, at last.

Before Olive arrived, Lucretia was ever by the bed-side of her 'sweet Eveline,' sitting for hours together, putting Eau-de-Cologne on her handkerchiefs and Rimmel on her temples, arranging her pillow or her footstool if she left her couch for a chair, telling her stories of foreign life at Naples, Homburg, and Monaco, and so forth, for she believed that Eveline had been left with a splendid jointure, and a Scottish estate by a former lover; while Sir Harry lounged about impatiently in the stables and kennels, with his briar-root, and thinking 'when will all this end? And _how_ can she go on as she does about that old pump?'

But a little time before Eveline had been unconscious of any special blessedness in her life; _now_--with regard to the fate of her brother and Evan Cameron--it seemed as if the restoration of the past, even while encumbered with captious, fretful, and jealous old Sir Paget, would be worth years of happiness.

'Oh, my brother--my brother Allan? Were there not wicked people enough in the world to be taken, that you must be reft from us?'

And these words found a terrible echo in the heart of Olive. More weary and empty than ever did life look to both, these girls. Everyone seemed to have some one to love them--some object in life to engross them--but neither of them had any now.

'If I could only die--if I could only die!' Eveline would murmur, as she tossed her sweet face and dishevelled hair on her pillow, and thought of that grave in the desert, and betrayed a frame of mind beyond the conception of mundane Lucretia Hurdell.

And her mind would go back to the old days with all their brightness at Dundargue and in Mayfair, before Sir Paget came into the family picture, and when pleasure seemed all her thought and occupation, and care quite beyond her province!

And the girl lay there thinking--thinking--it was impossible for her not to think and surmise. But for this sudden accident, how long might Sir Paget have lived at his years: and how long would he have tormented her about Evan?

As if to infer that she desired his death, how often had he said in the bitterness of his heart, before the news of Cameron's fall in action came, that 'he would cheat her yet, and live as long as she could do!'

She was free now, and not past her girlhood; and, if in life, Evan would be loving her still. But she thrust that natural thought aside; why brood over it now, when Evan was no more, for somehow there seemed in it a species of treason to her dead husband--little as she had loved him--now that he too was in his grave.

If this was her mode of viewing Evan Cameron, how little chance had Sir Harry Hurdell of affecting her heart!

Now that Sir Paget was gone, Eveline repented that his last thoughts of her as a wife had been bitter, and tried to think of him as a friend who had been kind at one time, a husband whose settlements had been generous, and would have been greater but for the jealousy that made him alter his will.

She now recalled with something like an emotion of pleasure, or certainly of satisfaction, that though she did not love, she had ever respected him, though his references to Evan Cameron had always made her wince and shiver.

'Poor man!' she exclaimed; 'and his soul went out into the night--in a moment--without time for a prayer or supplication to God!'

'So did the souls of our brave fellows at Tel-el-Kebir and elsewhere,' replied Olive, who had rather more metal in her composition than the softer Eveline.

Olive knew enough of life and of human nature to feel certain that her cousin was too young to relinquish all the hopes and fears, the many vague and brilliant dreams of girlhood. Another would come, but _who_?

Time would show that.

'She'll get over all this nonsense by-and-by, poor little thing,' said Sir Harry to his chum, Pyke Poole, as they knocked the balls about in the billiard-room, trying canons and so forth for practice. 'She is, by Jove, the best groomed woman in the whole stud of our acquaintances--perfect in all her points. I'll go in for her, if I can--but it is too soon to begin the running yet. Girls' fancies are, however, easily drawn from one object to another.'

'And I don't think she could have fancied old Pudd much,' said Poole, as he mixed himself a glass of brandy-and-soda. 'I've seen many a rough spill in the field, but never such a devil of a cropper as he came!'

'You know I might do worse than marry such a sweet girl, Pyke?'

'You might, by Jingo!' replied Mr. Poole, with a knowing wink, and thinking--'Why should not he himself enter stakes for such a prize?'

'Puddicombe's settlements are splendid, I hear, but pass away if she dies without an heir. No chance of _that_, I think; and then some soft-headed Scotch fellow--if there is such a thing in the world--who loved her, has left her a place in the Highlands, where one could knock over the grouse and blackcock every year. We'll get married before the Derby. She'll have had plenty of time to air her grief and her weeds--Jay's "unutterable woe," no doubt--for old Pudd by that time. I've a heavy bet upon Dasher, and I'll have her in the grand stand on Cup Day, with my jockey's colours somewhere about her dress. She'll look, as she always does, a stunner!'

Poole could not help laughing as his friend ran on thus, in perfect confidence, and stroked his long yellow moustache. Though rather a bit of a reprobate, Sir Harry looked every inch a gentleman, a long-limbed sanguine blond, alternately blunt and overbearing; resolute and indolent, with the general air of a man who has seen everything that was to be seen--done everything that was to be done, and 'had found nothing in it.'

'To speak to her for a space would never do. I'll take my time,' he resumed; 'none but a fool meets trouble half-way.'

She would learn to love him in time--hang it all, how could she resist! This comfortable impression made him feel quite easy on the subject, and by degrees the satisfaction that always accompanies a weak mind took possession of him.

Olive never doubted that when Eveline got over the death, not of Sir Paget, but of Evan Cameron, she would marry again. She was too young to treasure a morbid grief; but Olive would not like to have seen her Lady of Hurdell Hall, for, with all a woman's sharp instincts, she had indefinable doubts about Sir Harry.

After Olive joined her, the two girls were never weary of comparing their hopeless notes and sorrows, and of searching the public prints. Eveline could do so freely and unchidden now for any further meagre tidings that might come of the lost one.

An unexpected and startling event--to be detailed in its place--did happen, and was duly recorded, but was unnoticed by them; and those who did see it, cared not to speak or write of it, while others were unaware of the deep and vital interest it possessed for them both.

'Dear Olive, but for you coming to me I think I might have lost my life--my reason--certainly my peace of mind--everything!' exclaimed the affectionate and effusive Eveline, wreathing her soft white arms round her cousin's neck, and nestling her face therein.

The first day she was 'downstairs' was quite an event at Hurdell Hall, so great was the fuss made of her by the baronet and his sister.

In her dressing-room she had been fully attired in her crape dress by Clairette, who might as well have dressed a lav-figure for all the apparent power of volition there was in Eveline. Again and again she had tried to bathe her cheeks into some colour, to smooth her hair, and went with slow reluctant steps to the drawing-room at last; and there the extreme depth of her mourning, her girlish face and figure, and her pure whiteness of complexion--the soft white of the arum lily--made her delicate beauty seem more striking than ever.

Sir Harry was beside himself with pleasure, and when he rejoined the ladies in the drawing-room after dinner, and after all the champagne he had imbibed at table, his attention and extreme effusiveness were such that Eveline was compelled at last to say, coldly,

'Sir Harry, I wish you would go away and leave me--leave me to my own thoughts.'

He urged his extreme joy at seeing her again after her long seclusion.

Eveline had now a horror of Hurdell Hall. It was associated in her mind with three dire calamities--Evan's death--though she had first heard of that from Sir Harry in London; Sir Paget's terrible catastrophe, and, collaterally with it, the strange disappearance of her darling brother.

She must get away, without delay, she thought, as the atmosphere of the place seemed to oppress her. So, in a few days, arrangements were complete for her departure to join her parents, who were still at Southsea.

Well, that was not a thousand miles from Hurdell Hall, thought Sir Harry; and it was too soon to venture on the subject of love or marriage yet; but a time would come, and a jolly one he doubted not it would be.

But, ere that time came, some very unforseen events had come to pass with reference to Eveline.