MISS CHEYNE OF ESSILMONT

BY

JAMES GRANT

AUTHOR OF

"THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "THE CAMERONIANS," "THE SCOTTISH CAVALIER," ETC., ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1883.

All rights reserved.

Contents

Chap.

I. Out with the Royal Buckhounds II. At Chilcote III. Ellon's Ring IV. Laura Trelawney V. Alison's Luncheon Party VI. 'The Old, Old Story' VII. Jerry and the Widow VIII. 'For Ever and for Ever' IX. A Reprieve for a Time X. Dalton XI. A Written Proposal XII. In St. Clement's Lane XIII. An Enigma XIV. 'Something as About to Happen!' XV. Evil Tidings XVI. Cadbury's Plan or Plot XVII. More Mystery XVIII. Wilmothurst XIX. Mr. Chevenix's Business XX. The Firefly

MISS CHEYNE OF ESSILMONT.

CHAPTER I. OUT WITH THE ROYAL BUCKHOUNDS.

'And your name is Alison,' said the young man, looking tenderly in the girl's eyes of soft grey-blue, that long, dark lashes shaded. 'Yet I hear some of your friends call you Lisette.'

'It is, I believe, the same thing—an old Scoto-French name, long peculiar to our family—the Cheynes of Essilmont—as papa would say if he were here,' she added, with a soft smile. Then after a pause she asked, 'How did you learn, Captain Goring, that it was Alison?'

'By looking in Debrett after I first had the pleasure' (he had well-nigh said the joy) 'of meeting you at the General's garden-party in Aldershot.'

This simple avowal of an interest in her (but it might only be curiosity) caused the girl to colour a little and nervously re-adjust her reins, though her horse, pretty well blown after a long run, was now going at an easy walk, pace by pace, with the larger and stronger bay hunter of her companion, and she glanced shyly at him as he rode by her side, for Bevil Goring, in his perfect hunting costume—his coat, buckskins, and boots, his splendid strength and engaging debonair expression of face, his soldierly set up, born of infantry service in India—was all that might please a woman's eye, however critical; and he in his turn felt that every pulse in his frame would long beat to the slight incidents of that day's glorious scamper together on horseback.

Gathered into a tight coil under her smart riding hat and dark blue veil, Alison Cheyne's hair was of that bright and rare tint when the brown seems to blend with or melt into amber, and these into a warmer tint still in the sunshine, and with which there is generally a pure and dazzling complexion.

'It was so kind of you, Captain Goring,' said Miss Cheyne, after a pause, 'to invite down papa to dine at your mess at Aldershot.'

'Not at all. Dalton, Jerry Wilmot, and all the other fellows were most glad to see the old gentleman. I only fear that he thought us rather a noisy lot.'

'It delighted him—we live but a dull life at Chilcote.'

'And you have had two brothers in the service, Mrs. Trelawney told me?' resumed Goring, by no means anxious to let the conversation drop, or his companion begin to think of friends who might be looking for her.

'Yes—two, much older than I, however—poor Ranald and golden-haired Ellon.'

'What a curious name!'

'It is a place in Aberdeenshire where much of papa's property once lay. Ranald died of fever, and was buried in the lonely jungle near the Jumna.'

'Illness there does its work quickly—four and twenty hours will see the beginning and the end, and the green turf covering all. I have seen much of it in my time, Miss Cheyne—often buried the dead with my own hands, by Jove!'

'How sad to die as my poor brother did—so far away,' said the girl, her soft voice breaking a little. 'We have a saying in Scotland, "May you die among your kindred."'

'In the service one's comrades become one's kindred—we are all brother soldiers.'

'Ellon was thrown from his horse near Lahore, and impaled on his own sword, and so—and so—poor papa has now only me! I don't think he has ever got fairly over Ellon's death, as it left the baronetcy without an heir. But let me not think of these things.'

'I remember the unfortunate event of Ellon Cheyne's death,' exclaimed Goring, the colour gathering in his bronzed cheek. 'It occurred just close by the Cabul road, the day after we marched in from Umritsur; and, strange to say, I commanded the firing party at the poor fellow's funeral, on a day when the sky was like molten brass, and the wind swept past us hot and stifling like the blast from an open furnace.'

'You?' said Miss Cheyne, her eyes dilating as she spoke.

'Yes; my voice gave the orders for the three funeral volleys.'

'How strange—and now I meet you here!'

'The world is a small place now-a-days.'

Her eyes were full of a tender interest now, that made the heart of her companion thrill; nor did hers do so the less that this event caused a bond of sympathy—a subject in common between them.

A sad expression stole over the features of Alison Cheyne, and so regular were these, that with the fine outline of her profile they might have been deemed insipid, but for the variable expression of her very lovely eyes and sensitive mouth; and now, when flushed with the exercise of fast riding, the excitement of following the hounds amid such a stirring concourse, and over such an open country, they seemed absolutely beautiful.

Attracted by each other's society, she and the Captain were now somewhat apart from all the field, and the brilliant hunt was waxing to its close.

The day was a bright and clear one early in October, the regular opening day of the regular season with the Royal Buckhounds. The country wore the aspect of the month; swine were rooting in the desolate cornfield, eliciting the malediction of many a huntsman as he tore over the black and rotting stubble; geese were coming draggled and dirty out of the muddy ponds and brooks; the hedges looked naked and cold, and the blackened bean sheaves that had never ripened were rotting in the ground. An earthy odour came from the water-flags, and every hoof-print was speedily filled with the black ooze of the saturated soil the moment it was made; but the sky was clear, if not quite cloudless, and the sunshine bright as one could wish.

The time-honoured meet had duly taken place at the old village of Salthill, the scene of that tomfoolery called the Eton Montem, till its suppression in 1848; and we need scarcely inform the reader that a certain sum is devoted annually to maintain the stables, kennels, and establishment of the Royal Buckhounds, and that with each change of Ministry the post of their master is an object of keen competition among sport-loving nobles; but the opening meet is said to be seldom a favourite one with lovers of hard riding.

There is always a vast 'field,' and every one who 'by hook or crook' can procure a mount is there. Salthill thus becomes an animated and pleasant spectacle to the mere spectator, while it is a source of unmixed excitement to all who go to hunt—perhaps some five hundred horsemen or so, all anxious to be first in the chase, and jostling, spurring, and struggling to be so.

All know what a scene Paddington Station presents a short time previous to the meet, when the Metropolitan corps of huntsmen begin to muster in strong force, and well-known faces are seen on every hand—staunch followers of 'the Queen's'—going down by special train, the present holder of the horn being the observed of all; and the train, with a long line of dark horse-boxes starting with sixty or seventy noble horses for Slough, whence, after an eighteen miles' run, the long cavalcade of horsemen and people on foot pours on to Salthill, huntsmen and whips bright in brilliant new costumes of scarlet laced with gold, their horses with skins like satin, and the hounds the perfection of their breed.

There may be seen young guardsmen from Windsor, cavalry men from Aldershot, which is about twenty miles distant, in spotless black and white, side by side with old fellows in tarnished pink with the old jockey-cap, horse-dealers in corduroys and perhaps blucher boots; city men, and apparently all manner of men, and here and there a lady such as only may be seen in the Row, perfect in her mount, equipment, and costume.

On the adjacent road a lady's pretty little victoria may be jammed between a crowded four in hand and a still more crowded costermonger's cart; and so the confusion goes on till some well-known deer is quietly taken away to the front; and punctually to time the master gives the order to advance, when the huntsmen and hounds scurry into an open field, where the yeomen prickers in their Lincoln green costumes have uncarted the quarry.

Anon the line is formed, and away over the open country stream the hounds like a living tide, with red tongues out, and steam, issuing from their quivering nostrils, and all follow at headlong speed.

Here it was that Alison Cheyne, Bevil Goring, and others of their party lost some of their companions in the first wild rush across a hedge with a wet ditch on the other side. Jerry Wilmot's saddle-girth gave way, and he fell in a helpless but unhurt heap on the furrows; Lord Cadbury—a peer of whom more anon—failed utterly to clear the hedge; and Tony Dalton, of Goring's regiment, though a keen sportsman, came to grief somehow in the ditch, and thus ere long Alison Cheyne had as her sole squire the companion we have described, and together, after charging with many more a gate beyond the hedge, they had a splendid run over an open country.

Together they kept, Goring doing much in the way of guiding his fair friend, who though somewhat timid, and not much practised as an equestrienne, had now given her whole soul to the hunt, and became almost fearless for the time.

In a pretty dense clump 'the field' went powdering along the path through the village of Farnham, after which the deer headed off for Burnham Beeches, the beautiful scenery of which has been so often portrayed by artists and extolled by tourists; and then, like bright 'bits of colour' that would delight the former, the scarlet coats could be seen glancing between the gnarled stems of the giant trees, as the horsemen went pouring down the woody steeps.

'Take care here, for heaven's sake, Hiss Cheyne, and keep your horse well in hand, with its head up,' cried Bevil Goring. 'The tree stumps concealed here among the long grass are most treacherous traps.'

'I fear more the boughs of the trees, they are so apt to tear one's hair,' replied the flushed girl, breathlessly, as she flew, her dark blue skirt and veil streaming behind her; and now and then a cry of terror escaped her, as a horse and its rider went floundering into some marshy pool, though generally with no worse result than a mud bath.

At length the beeches are left behind, while the deer shoots on past Wilton Park, anon over Chalfont Brook, till she reaches the stable in a farmyard, and there is captured and made safe, and so ends the day, after which there is nothing left for the breathless and blown, who have followed her thus far, but to ride slowly back some fifteen miles to Slough.

Less occupied by interest in the hunt than with each other, Bevil Goring and Miss Cheyne had gradually dropped out of it, and at the time of the conversation with which this chapter opens were riding slowly along a narrow green lane that led—they had not yet begun to consider in what precise direction.

CHAPTER II. AT CHILCOTE.

'The hounds threw off at half-past eleven, and the afternoon is far advanced,' said Miss Cheyne, with a little anxiety of manner. 'I must take the nearest cut home.'

'Thither, of course, I shall do myself the honour of escorting you.'

'Thanks—so much.'

She could not say otherwise, as she could neither decline his escort nor with propriety ride home alone; yet she gave a glance rather helplessly around her, as all her immediate friends—and one more especially, whose escort her father wished her to have had—were now left miles behind, having 'come to grief' at the first fence, and were now she knew not where.

But then she thought it was not her fault that they had dropped out of the hunt, or out of their saddles perhaps.

'To reach the high-road, we must take this fence,' said Captain Goring, finding that the narrow lane they had pursued, ended in a species of cul de sac.

'Not a gap, not a gate is in sight.'

'And by Jove, Miss Cheyne, it is a rasper!' he exclaimed. 'Allow me to go first, then follow, head up and hand low.'

He measured the distance, cleared the fence, and came safely down on the hard road beyond.

With a little cry of half delight and half terror curiously mingled, the girl rushed her horse at the fence, but barely cleared it, as its hoofs touched the summit.

'What a nasty buck jump,' said Goring. 'Is that an Irish horse, used to double fences, I wonder?'

'And all my back-hair has come down.'

'Glorious hair it is, below your waist and more.'

'And all my own,' said the girl laughing, as she placed her switch between her pearly teeth, and with her gauntleted hands proceeded to knot the coils deftly up; 'all my own, by production, and not by purchase. And now for home,' she added, as they broke into an easy trot. 'Such a hard mouth this animal has!' she exclaimed, after a pause; 'my poor wrists are quite weary.'

'Why do you ride him?'

'I have not much choice.'

'How?'

'I owe my mount to the kindness of a friend of papa's, to Lord Cadbury,' she replied, colouring slightly, but with an air of annoyance.

'Indeed,' said Goring, briefly, and then after a pause, he added, 'you have ridden with these hounds before.'

'Yes, once when the meet was at Iver's Heath, and again when it was at Wokingham, and the deer was caught in a pond near Wilton Park.'

'And did Lord Cadbury on each occasion give you a mount?' he added, in a casual manner.

'Yes, we have no horses at Chilcote; but how curious you are,' she replied, colouring again, and with a sense of annoyance that he did not suspect, though the mention of the peer's name by her lips irritated Bevil Goring, and made him seek to repress the love that was growing in his heart.

Yet he knew not that he had impressed Alison Cheyne by his voice and manner beyond anyone whom she had hitherto met, but she was conscious that her heart beat quicker when he addressed her, and that the very sunshine seemed to grow brighter in his presence; but to what end was all this, she thought, unless—if he loved her—he was rich enough to suit her father's standard of wealth.

As they drew near Chilcote they tacitly, it seemed, reduced the pace of their horses to a walk.

'If it does not grieve you now to recur to the fate of your brother Ellon,' said Goring, in his softest tone, 'I may mention that I have a little souvenir of him, of which I would beg your acceptance.'

'A souvenir of Ellon!'

'Yes.'

'How came you to possess it?'

'When his effects were sold at Lahore, before his regiment marched again.'

'And this relic——'

'Is a ring with a girl's hair in it.'

'Thank you so much,' said she, with a quivering lip; 'but to deprive you——'

'Nay, nay, do not begin to speak thus. To whom should it belong but to you? And how strange is the chance that gives me an opportunity of presenting it!'

'I cannot decline it; but the girl—who can she have been? Poor Ellon, some secret is buried in his grave.'

'Soldiers' graves, I doubt not, hide many, and many a sad romance. I have generally worn it, curious to say, as my stock of jewellery is not very extensive.'

'Have you it with you now?'

'No, I never wear rings when riding, the stones are apt to get knocked out. I meant to do myself the pleasure of calling on you after the hunt; and shall, if you will permit me. To-morrow I am for guard.'

'For guard over what?'

'Nothing,' he said, laughing. 'There is nothing to see or to guard, but it is all the same to John Bull.'

'The day after, then?'

'The day after.'

They were close to the house now, and, lifting his hat, he bowed low and turned his horse just as a groom, who had been waiting in the porch, took hers by the bridle, and, waving the handle of her switch to him in farewell, Miss Cheyne gathered up her riding skirt and entered the house.

Bevil Goring lingered at the further end of the avenue that led to Chilcote, which was in a lovely locality, especially in summer, one of those sunny places within thirty miles of St. Paul's, and one secluded and woody—a place like Burnham Beeches, where the tree trunks are of amazing size, and the path that led to the house went down a deep dell, emblossomed in a wilderness leafy at all times but in winter.

The ash, the birch, and contorted beeches overhung the slopes on each side, and there seemed an entire absence of human care about them; and there in summer the sheep wandered among the tender grass, as if they were the only owners of the domain; but Bevil Goring had but one thought as he looked around him, and then turned lingeringly away.

'How delicious to ramble among these leafy glades with her! How deuced glad I am that I have that poor fellow's ring, and can gratify her—perhaps myself too. Bother the guard of to-morrow; but I must get it over as best I may.'

He lighted a cigar, and at a trot took the road to Aldershot, but so sunk in thoughts that were new and delicious that he forgot all about his 'soothing weed' till it scorched his thick dark moustache.

Meanwhile let us follow Alison Cheyne into her somewhat sequestered home.

She had blushed with annoyance when resigning the reins of her horse to Gaskins, Lord Cadbury's groom, while thinking that there was neither groom nor stable at Chilcote, though, as her father had told her many a time and oft, there were stalls for four and twenty nags at Essilmont, where others stabled their horses now; and sooth to tell, for causes yet to be told, she was provoked at being under any obligation to old Lord Cadbury, especially in the now reduced state of their fortunes.

She was received with a bright smile of welcome in the entrance hall by their sole male attendant, old Archie Auchindoir, Sir Ranald's man-of-all-work, who looked resentfully after the unconscious groom while taking away the horse, which he would gladly have retained for his young mistress by force if he could, for Archie thought regretfully of the once ample ménage at far away Essilmont, where, like his father before him, he had grown to manhood and age in the family of the Cheynes.

He was true as steel to his old master, to whom, however, he sometimes ventured to say sharp things in the way of advice; and to the 'pock-puddings,' as he called the denizens of the present locality, he fearlessly said sharper and very cutting things with a smirk on his mouth and a glitter in his keen grey eyes, and with perfect impunity, as they were addressed in a language to the hearers unknown; but it gratified Archie none the less to utter them, as he often did in the guise of proverbs.

'Papa at home?' asked Alison.

'Yes, Miss,' said he, receiving her gloves and switch. 'And waiting anxiously for you, though ower proud to show it even to me; but, my certie, it's the life o' an auld hat to be weel cockit.'

Their household was so small now that Alison had no maid to attend upon her, and quickly changing her costume she sought at once the presence of her father, smoothing her hair with her white hands as she hurried to receive his kiss; for, so far as he was concerned, Alison, in her twentieth year, was as much a child as when in her little frocks.