A HAUNTED LIFE

BY

JAMES GRANT

AUTHOR OF 'THE ROMANCE OF WAR'

LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL NEW YORK: 9, LAFAYETTE PLACE

1883

JAMES GRANT'S NOVELS,

Price 2s. each, Fancy Boards.

The Romance of War The Aide-de-Camp The Scottish Cavalier Bothwell Jane Seton: or, the Queen's Advocate Philip Rollo The Black Watch Mary of Lorraine Oliver Ellis: or, the Fusileers Lucy Arden: or, Hollywood Hall Frank Hilton: or, the Queen's Own The Yellow Frigate Harry Ogilvie: or, the Black Dragoons Arthur Blane Laura Everingham: or, the Highlanders of Glenora The Captain of the Guard Letty Hyde's Lovers Cavaliers of Fortune Second to None The Constable of France The Phantom Regiment The King's Own Borderers The White Cockade First Love and Last Love Dick Rooney The Girl he Married Lady Wedderburn's Wish Jack Manly Only an Ensign Adventures of Rob Roy Under the Red Dragon The Queen's Cadet Shall I Win Her? Fairer than a Fairy One of the Six Hundred Morley Ashton Did She Love Him? The Ross-shire Buffs Six Years Ago Vere of Ours The Lord Hermitage The Royal Regiment Duke of Albany's Own Highlanders The Cameronians The Scots Brigade Violet Jermyn Jack Chaloner

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER

I. THE MEET OF THE COACHING CLUB II. TREVOR CHUTE'S REVERIE III. HIS VISIT TO CLARE IV. IDA V. HOW WILL IT END? VI. SIR CARNABY COLLINGWOOD VII. A PROPOSAL VIII. 'THE DESIRE OF THE MOTH FOR THE STARS' IX. DOUBTS DISPELLED X. FOR WHOM THE JEWELS WERE INTENDED XI. A ROMANCE OF THE DRAWING-ROOM XII. IN THE KONGENS NYTORV XIII. BY THE EXPRESS FOR LUBECK XIV. AN IMBROGLIO XV. 'LOVE IS STRONG AS DEATH' XVI. 'JEALOUSY CRUEL AS THE GRAVE' XVII. A QUARREL XVIII. THE EMEUTE AT LUBECK XIX. SIR CARNABY'S GRATITUDE XX. CARNABY COURT XXI. CHRISTMAS EVE

A HAUNTED LIFE.

CHAPTER I. THE MEET OF THE COACHING CLUB.

'Be patient, Trevor Chute; they are sure to be here to-day, old fellow, for Ida told me so.'

'Ida?'

'Yes, Mrs. Beverley; does that surprise you?' asked the other, with a singular smile—one that was rather sardonic.

'No, Jerry, I have long ceased to be surprised at anything. As I have told you, my special mission in town is a visit to her; but—so you and she are good friends still?'

'Yes, though she has been six months a widow, we are on the same strange terms in which you left us last—friends pure and simple.'

'And nothing more?'

'As yet,' replied Jerry Vane, lowering his voice, with something of despondency perceptible in his tone, and to a close observer it might have been apparent that he, though by nature frank, jovial, and good-humoured, had, by force of habit, or by circumstances, a somewhat cynical mode of expression and gravity of manner.

The time was the noon of a bright and lovely day in May, when the newly-opened London season is at its height; and it was the first meet of the Coaching Club in Hyde Park, where the expectant crowd, filling all the seats under the pleasant trees, or in occupation of handsome carriages, snug barouches, dashing phaetons and victorias—in everything save hackney cabs—covered all the wide plateau which stretches from the Marble Arch to the somewhat prosaic powder magazine beside the Serpentine, and waited with the characteristic patience and good-humour of Londoners for the assembling of the coaches, though some were seeking to while away the time with a morning paper or the last periodical.

The speakers, though young men, were old friends, who had known each other since boyhood in the playing-fields of Rugby.

Jervoise, or, as he was familiarly called, Jerry Vane, was a curly-pated, good-looking young fellow of the genuine Saxon type, with expressive, but rather thoughtful eyes of bluish grey, long fair whiskers, and somewhat the bearing of a 'man about town;' while the other, perhaps in aspect the manlier of the two, Trevor Chute, in figure compact and well set-up, was dark-haired, hazel-eyed, and had a smart moustache, imparting much decision of expression to a handsome and regular face, which had been scorched and embrowned by a tropical sun; and where the white flap of the puggaree had failed to protect his neck and ears, they had deepened to a blister hue.

He had but the day before come to town, on leave from his regiment (which had just returned from India), on a special errand, to be detailed in its place.

In front was the great bend of the blue Serpentine rippling and sparkling in the sunshine, with its tiny fleet of toy-ships; beyond it was the leafy background of trees, and the far stretch of emerald lawn, chequered with clumps of rhododendron in full flower, and almost covered with sight-seers, some of whom gave an occasional cheer as a stately drag passed to the meeting-place, especially if its driver was recognized as a personage of note or a public favourite.

'I don't know what you may have seen in India, Trevor,' said Jerry Vane, 'but I am assured that the gayest meetings on the continent of Europe can present nothing like this. I have been in the Prater at Vienna on the brightest mornings of summer, and on gala days at the Bois de Boulogne, and seen there all the élite of Paris wending its way in equipages, on horse or on foot, but no scene in either place equals this of to-day by the Serpentine!'

To this his friend, who had so recently returned from military exile, in the East, warmly assented, adding:

'The day is as hot as my last Christmas was in the Punjaub.'

'Christmas in the Paunjaub, by Jove!' exclaimed Jerry Vane, with a laugh. 'Eating ices and fanning oneself under a punkah, with the thermometer at 90 in the shade, eh?'

Captain Chute laughed in turn at this idea; but as he stood at that time by the inner railings in Hyde Park, waiting anxiously to see the fair occupants of a certain drag, he could foresee, as little as his friend, where they were to spend their coming Christmas, or on its eve to hear, through the stillness thereof, the sweet evensong coming over a waste of snow from an old chapel, amid a group of crystal-shrouded trees, where many soft voices, with hers among them, told again of the angels' message, given more than eighteen hundred years ago to the shepherds of Chaldea, as they watched their fleecy flock by night.

'It seems but yesterday that I last stood here, Jerry,' said Trevor Chute, thoughtfully, almost sadly; 'and how much has come and gone to us both since then!'

'Yes; and here, as of old, Trevor, are the last new beauties who have come out, and the overblown belles of seasons that are past, and, of course, all those great folks whom everybody knows, and others of whom no one knows anything, save that they have swell equipages, and are "like magnificent red and purple orchids, which grow out of nothing, yet do so much credit to their origin."'

'You grow cynical, Jerry.'

'Perhaps; but there was a time when I was not wont to be so. And you, Trevor, are not without good reason for being so too. Why, man alive! when in the Guards, how popular you were with all the mammas of unmarried daughters; a seat in the carriage, a box at the opera, a balcony at the boat-race, whenever you felt disposed. By Jove! there was no man in town I envied more than you in those days.'

'And what has it all come to now, Jerry? I feel quite like a fogey,' exclaimed Trevor Chute.

'Yet this was but four years ago.'

'Only four years, old fellow, and she is not married yet! But here come the party, and on Desmond's drag; he has the "lead," it seems.'

It was now the hour of one; the procession had started, and the eyes of all the onlookers were eagerly engaged in critically examining the various drags, so magnificently horsed and brilliantly appointed, as they passed in succession, with all their silver harness shining in the sun.

About thirty drove from the well-known rendezvous of the Coaching Club along the pretty drive which skirts the Serpentine and ends with the bridge that divides the Park from Kensington Gardens; and though some of the drivers adhered to the Club uniform—blue, with gilt buttons—many appeared in the perfection of morning costume; and as team after team went by, chestnut, white, or grey, with satin-like skins, murmurs of applause, rising at times to a cheer, greeted the proprietors.

The costumes of the ladies who occupied the lofty seats were as perfect as, in many instances, was their beauty; and no other capital in Europe could have presented such a spectacle as Trevor Chute saw then, when the summer sun was at its height in the heavens, gilding the trees with brilliant light, and showing Hyde Park in all its glory.

The leading drag was the one which fascinated him, and all the other twenty-nine went clattering past like same phantasmagoria, or a spectacle one might seem to behold in a dream.

Several ladies were on the drag, including the owner's somewhat passé sister, the Hon. Evelyn Desmond; but Chute saw only two—Clare and Violet Collingwood—or one, rather, the elder, who riveted all his attention.

Both girls were remarkable for their beauty even then, when every second female face seemed fair to look upon; but the contrast was strong in the opposite styles of their loveliness, for Clare was a brilliant brunette, while Violet was even more brilliant as a blonde; and as the drag swept past, Trevor Chute had only time to remark the perfect taste of Clare's costume or habit, that her back hair was a marvel of curious plaiting, and that she was laughingly and hastily thrusting into her silver-mounted Marguerite pouch a note that Desmond had handed to her, almost surreptitiously it seemed; and then, amid the crowd and haze, she passed away from his sight, as completely as she had done four years before, when, by the force of circumstances—a fate over which he had no control—they had been rent asunder, when their engagement was declared null, and they were informed that thenceforward their paths in life must be far apart.

'Clare Collingwood is the same girl as ever, Trevor,' said Jerry Vane, breaking a silence of some minutes. 'You saw with what imperial indifference she was receiving the admiration of all who passed, and the attention of those who were about her.'

'Is she much changed, Jerry, since—since I left England?' Trevor asked.

'Oh, no,' replied the other, cynically; 'she and her sisters—Violet, at least—have gone, and are still going, over the difficult ways of life pleasantly, gracefully, and easily, as all in their "set" usually do. In her fresh widow's weeds Ida Beverley could not be here to-day, of course.'

'I have an express and most melancholy mission to her on the morrow,' said Captain Chute. 'But why is Collingwood père not with his daughters on this occasion?'

'Though girls that any man might be proud of escorting in any capacity, the old beau, with his dyed hair and curled whispers, is never seen with them, nor has been since their mother's death. Though sixty, if he is a day, he prefers to act the rôle of a young fellow on his preferment, and doesn't like to have these young women—one of them a widow, too—calling him "papa." He knows instinctively—nay, he has overheard—that he is called "old Collingwood," and he doesn't like the title a bit,' added Vane, laughing genuinely, for the first time that forenoon, as they made their way towards the nearest gate of the Park, which the glittering drags were all leaving by the Marble Arch, and setting forth, viâ Portman Square, for luncheon at Muswell Hill or elsewhere.

'And has Clare had no offers since my time?' asked Trevor Chute, almost timidly.

'Two; good ones, also.'

'And she refused them?'

'So Ida told me.'

'Ida again; you and Mrs. Beverley seem very good friends.'

'Yes, though she used me shockingly in throwing me over for Beverley.'

'And why did—Clare refuse?'

'Can't say, for the life of me; women are such enigmas; unless a certain Trevor Chute, then broiling in the Punjaub, wherever that may be, had something to do with it.'

'I can pardon much in you, Jerry Vane,' said Chute, gravely; 'for we have been staunch friends ever since I was a species of big brother to you at Rugby; but please not to make a jest of Clare and me. And what of pretty Violet?'

'Oh, Violet is all right,' replied Vane, speaking very fast, and reddening a little at his friend's reproach. 'She has those graceful, taking, and pretty ways with her and about her that will be sure to do well for her in the end; thus, sooner or later, Violet's fortune is certain to be made in a matrimonial point of view.'

'I have heard of this fellow, Harvey Desmond, before,' said Chute, musingly. 'I remember his name when I was in the Household Brigade. He was lately, I think, gazetted a C.B.'

'Of course.'

'For what?'

'In consideration of his great services at Wormwood Scrubs and on Wimbledon Common.'

To see Clare on his drag, even with his sister, the Hon. Evelyn, to play propriety, stung Trevor Chute, and, as if divining his very thoughts, Jerry Vane said, let us hope unintentionally:

'All the clubs have linked their names together for some time past.'

'Well,' replied Trevor, with something like a malediction, as he proceeded in a vicious manner to manipulate a cigar, and bite off the end of it. 'What the deuce does that matter to me?'

His expression of face, however, belied the indifference he affected for the moment, and feeling that he had caused pain by his remark, Jerry Vane said, as they walked arm and arm along Piccadilly, by the side of the Green Park:

'Neither of us have been very successful in our love affairs with the Collingwoods; and with me even more than you, Trevor, it was a case of "love's labours lost." Yet, when I think of all that Ida Collingwood was in the past time to me, I cannot help feeling maudlin over it. We had, time to me, I cannot help feeling maudlin over it. We had, as you know well, been engaged a year when, unluckily, Beverley, of your corps, became a friend of the family. I know not by what magic he swayed her mind, her heart, and all her thoughts, but, from the first day she knew him, I felt that I was thrown over and that she was lost to me for ever! And on that day when she became Beverley's wife——'

In the bitterness of his heart Vane paused, for his voice became tremulous.

'The friend equally of you and of poor Jack Beverley, whom I laid in his grave, far, far away, I felt all the awkwardness of my position when that bitter rivalry arose between him and you about Ida Collingwood,' said Trevor Chute, and the usually lively Jerry, who seemed lost in thoughts which the voice and presence of his friend had summoned from the past, walked slowly forward in moody silence.

He was recalling, as he had too often done, the agony of the time when he first began to learn—first became grimly conscious—that the tender eyes of Ida sought to win glances from other eyes than his, and ask smile for smile from other lips too! And when desperately against hope he had hoped the game would change, and oblivion would follow forgiveness—but the time never came.

Jerry could recall, too, the sickly attempts he had made to arouse her pique and jealousy by flirting with Evelyn Desmond and other girls, but all in vain, as the sequel proved.

She had become so absorbed in Beverley as to be oblivious of every action of the discarded one, and almost careless of what he thought or felt.

But now, though Beverley was dead and had found his grave on a distant and a deadly shore, it was scarcely in human flesh and blood for Vane—even jolly Jerry Vane—to forgive, and still less to regret him as Trevor Chute did, though he affected to do so, on which the soldier shook his hand, saying:

'You are indeed a good-hearted fellow!'

But Vane felt that the praise was perhaps undeserved, and to change the subject, said—

'She has been to a certain extent getting over Beverley's death.'

'Getting over it?'

'Of course.'

'How?'

'By becoming more composed and settled; no grief lasts for ever, you know,' replied Vane, a little tartly; 'but now your return, your special visit to her, and the mementoes you bear, will bring the whole thing to the surface again, and—and—even after six months of widowhood—may——'

'Will make matters more difficult for you?' interrupted Trevor Chute, smiling.

'Precisely. I am a great ass, I know; but I cannot help loving Ida still.'

'You will accompany me to the Collingwoods' to-morrow, Jerry?' urged the soldier, after a pause.

'No, old fellow, decidedly not. Ida's grief would only worry me and make me feel de trop. What the deuce do you think I am made of, Trevor, to attempt to console the woman I love when she is weeping for another?'

'Dine with me at the club this evening, then—sharp eight—and we'll talk it over.'

'Thanks; and then we shall have a long "jaw" together about all that is and all that might have been; so, till then, old man, good-bye.'

CHAPTER II. TREVOR CHUTE'S REVERIE.

Protracted by various culinary devices, the late dinner had encroached on the night, just as the final cigar in the smoking-room had done on the early hours of morning; and after a long conversation, full of many stirring and tender reminiscences and many mutual confidences, Jerry Vane had driven away to his rooms, and Trevor Chute was left alone to ponder over them all again, and consider the task—if task it really was—that lay before him on the following morn.

And now to tell the reader more precisely the relation in which some of the dramatis personæ stand to each other.

Four years before the time when our story opens, Trevor Chute, then in the Foot Guards, had been engaged to Clare Collingwood. She was in her second season, though not yet in the zenith of her beauty, which was undeniably great, even in London; and his friend, Jervoise Vane, was at the same time the accepted of her second sister Ida, who had just 'come out' under the best auspices; yet the loves of all were fated to end unhappily.

Monetary misfortune overtook the family of Trevor Chute; expected settlements ended in smoke, and he had to begin what he called 'the sliding scale,' by exchanging from the Guards into a Line regiment then serving in India; and then the father of Clare—Sir Carnaby Collingwood—issued the stern fiat which broke off their engagement for ever.

'Of course,' thought he, as he looked dreamily upward to the concentric rings and wreaths of smoke, the produce of his mild havannah, 'we shall meet as mere friends, old acquaintances, and that sort of thing. Doubtless she has forgotten me, and all that I was to her once. Here, amid the gaieties of three successive seasons since those days, she must have found many greater attractions than poor Trevor Chute—this fellow Desmond among them—while the poor devil in the Line was broiling up country, with no solace save the memory—if solace it was—of the days that were no more!'

Sir Carnaby Collingwood was by nature proud, cold, and selfish. He had married for money, as his father had done before him; and though he seemed to have a pleasure in revenging himself, as some one has phrased it, by quenching the love and sunshine in the life of others, because of the lack of both in his own, Trevor Chute felt that he could scarcely with justice be upbraided for breaking off the marriage of a girl having such expectations as Clare with an almost penniless subaltern officer.

Ida's engagement terminated as related in the preceding chapter. With a cruelty that was somewhat deliberate, she fairly jilted Vane and married Jack Beverley, undeniably a handsomer and more showy man, whose settlements were unexceptionable, and came quite up to all that Sir Carnaby could wish.

Yet Beverley did not gain much by the transaction. Ida fell into a chronic state of health so delicate that decline was threatened; the family physicians interposed, and nearly three years passed away without her being able to join her husband in India, where he was then serving with Trevor Chute's regiment, and where he met his death by a terrible accident.