Chapter XII: Bevil Goring's Resolution

In his bitter anxiety Bevil Goring condescended again to apply to Mr. Solomon Slagg as to the movements of Lord Cadbury; but ignorant perhaps of the peer's actual whereabouts, and that the applicant was now the possessor of twenty thousand per annum, he never vouchsafed the slightest reply.

Alison had promised to wait for him a year--and well he knew that, if left to herself, she would have waited for several. Would she be true to that promise? Could he but find her now, he would have no compunction in carrying her off, whatever her father might say, though it would seem that the brave old Scottish days of Lochinvar and Jock of Hazeldean are over and for ever.

The corps was gone now, and he felt dull and lonely with the dépôt, which would probably soon be taken from the camp to Chatham or elsewhere, and the little duty he had of it consisted chiefly of drilling and training green hands, and taking them through a weary course of musketry, while his thoughts were elsewhere, and he soon began to feel that, if he did not soon learn tidings of Alison, he would 'leave no stone unturned' to get away from Aldershot--to get away to fight the Ashantees or any other folks; and the next moment he would be thankful that he was left behind to search for her.

To search for her--but where?

Ay, where? He was soon to receive a terrible rouser!

One day he visited Mrs. Trelawney to inform her that the transport with Dalton and the regiment on board had been spoken with by a vessel some sixty miles westward of Ushant, when he found her in the act of writing a note to himself, and looking somewhat nervous and disturbed in manner.

She received him with unusual kindness, and with a kind of sympathy in her manner that puzzled him.

After a little pause, while eyeing him closely, she said,

'You have seen this morning's paper, I presume?'

'Yes,' said he, and his heart seemed to flutter, as it was evident that she had seen something therein that he had not.

'Did you not see the announcement of----'

'Of what?' he asked, impetuously, as Mrs. Trelawney paused, her lips apparently unable to tell to what she referred, and with tremulous hands she took up a morning paper and searched for a particular paragraph or passage, while Goring felt his heart sickening, as he never doubted it referred to the marriage of Alison, who, he feared, had yielded to her father's iron influence at last.

'Read this--but nerve yourself first, my dear friend,' said Mrs. Trelawney, in her sweet low voice.

'It is confidently asserted that the English yacht reported as having been sunk some weeks ago in a midnight collision with the lugger _Le Chien Noir_, of Ostend, off the mouth of the Maese, is Lord Cadbury's beautiful brigantine the _Firefly_, so well known at the Cowes Regattas. Sir Ranald Cheyne of Essilmont and suite were on board.'

He grew deadly pale and reeled, but, recovering, read the fatal paragraph again and again, till the letters seemed photographed on his brain, and he was scarcely conscious. Mrs. Dalton, as we must call her now, was in tears, and had taken his left hand caressingly between her own.

'Shocked as I am by this news, which I trust in heaven may be untrue, I am shocked,' said she, 'to be first to break it to you; but you must have learned it in time, and perhaps even more abruptly, and from those less able to sympathise with you.'

He covered his eyes and did not speak.

'You observed,' said Laura, 'that the writer says it is _reported_--which leaves room for hope--and we were told that the yacht had gone to the Mediterranean.'

'Which I began to suspect was a ruse, and this awful intelligence seems to prove that I was right,' said Goring, in a very broken voice. 'My poor Alison--my poor Alison.'

He threw himself into a chair, and a silence for some minutes ensued.

Separation and opposition were to be looked forward to, and had been encountered and effected. Even a marriage with Lord Cadbury was not improbable; had not his own heart told him so but a few minutes before? But a catastrophe like this--death--death by drowning--was altogether unlooked for!

Sad and broken was the conversation now between him and Laura Dalton, and they could but surmise and conjecture in vain, while he lingered long with her, as he clung to her presence and society for sympathy.

Drowned--gone--out of the world--away from him, and for ever! It seemed incredible, unrealisable!

He recalled more powerfully than ever now her loving words, her tender and winning expression of eye; again he felt in memory the pressure of her soft little hand, her gentle kisses, and the sea seemed to give up its dead at the only exorcism it will obey--that of a bereaved and faithful heart--and his beloved was with him as on that last time he saw her face.

'Drowned--lost!' he struck his hands together, and often passed one across his eyes, as if to clear away a mist before him.

And he thought--he could think of nothing else--of her delicate and beloved form being the sport of the cold, dark waves--it might be the prey of the dwellers therein--that awful grave, without turf or flowers, which no sunshine would ever brighten to his eyes--the cruel sea that had taken her from him for ever!

Times there were when but for this feature in his loss he might have thanked Heaven that it was death--only death--that separated him from his darling, and not a degrading marriage with that odious old man. And in the extremity of his grief he at times forgot to feel anger at either him or her father for the catastrophe they were the unintentional means of bringing about.

But anger and rage too were coming soon.

When Goring was sitting like a man turned to stone, evincing little sign of life save when he sighed heavily, Laura Dalton kindly laid a hand on his shoulder and said,

'The dépôt is fully formed and in working order now. Leave the command of it to the next officer, young Fleming, and, as you will not be wanted at Aldershot till the spring drills commence, go personally and search for intelligence.'

'Search--where--at the bottom of the sea?' said Goring, huskily.

'The yacht is said to have been sunk off the Maese; people at Maeseland-Sluys or Rotterdam may know something about it. Get leave, go there and inquire, you will be useless here, my dear Goring, and a burden to yourself.'

'Right, I thank you,' he exclaimed, starting up; 'it is a good suggestion.'

'Is not anything better than sitting still a prey to wretchedness and one's miserable thoughts?' she said, feelingly, as she referred, perhaps, to some time or passages in her own past life.

Goring resolved to take measures for trying his too probably useless and hopeless search at once. He promised faithfully to write to Laura Dalton informing her of his progress, and of every fragment of intelligence he could pick up--telegraphing to her in the first place. He pressed her hand, kissed her on the forehead, and in another minute was in his saddle, and galloping back to Aldershot at a break-neck speed--at a rate which would certainly have made his nag remonstrate had it possessed the gift of speech.

He had wealth enough certainly to satisfy all the requirements--the wishes of Sir Ranald Cheyne; but what did it avail him now? It would neither restore the dead nor his own peace of mind. And now he could but do, as he had done a hundred times before, softly open the clasp of her engagement ring--her brother Ellon's ring--and gaze upon her features, and the tiny lock of hair, while his heart was wrung within him.

He dashed off his application for leave, and had it at once despatched. He commanded the inlying piquet that night, and, like an automaton, had to go through the formula of parading it in line with forage caps, great-coats, and side arms, and seeing the camp patrolled between retreat and half an hour after the first post of tattoo.

Never would he forget the gloom of that few hours' duty, which seemed to be done, not by himself, but some one else. He had a curious and perplexing sense of a dual existence.

Would leave be refused him? That was not to be thought of.

He could not rest in his hut alone. Nearly all that night he wandered about the silent camp like an evil or unquiet spirit, challenged again and again by great-coated sentinels, who marvelled whether this officer who passed their posts so often, and to all appearance so aimlessly, was demented or not; and so, for hours and hours of a gloomy and inclement night, he roved about, and heard the wind swaying the tops of the trees. He shivered, and tried to collect his thoughts, but seemed to have none to collect.

He tried to reason with himself, but, whatever idea suggested itself, one was always uppermost--Alison drowned, Alison in the cruel and merciless sea.

'I must get out of this place, do something, pull myself together, or I shall go mad,' he muttered.

Was he dreaming? was all this sorrow a vision of the night that would pass away?

Till the morning gun boomed from Gun Hill, and the sweet low reveille began to steal out on the moistened air, he continued to wander thus, till, drenched with the dews of night, he retired to his hut, and flinging himself upon his bed, endeavoured to sleep for an hour or two--the sleep of utter exhaustion.

From this happy state he was soon roused by an uproarious rattling at the door of his room, and his subaltern, Frank Fleming, in undress uniform--a heedless, noisy young fellow, and a second edition of Jerry Wilmot, but neither revised nor corrected--came bustling in, shouting,

'The black ball is hoisted _alone_ at headquarters. Thank God!'

'What do you mean?' asked Goring, in a weak voice, but angrily.

'Mean, man alive! don't you know? It means that the parade is cancelled.'

'I had forgotten, but, till I dismiss the piquet, parades are nothing to me,' said Goring, turning his face to the wall, and Fleming departed, fully believing from the manner and appearance of his senior officer that 'he was screwed tight as a drum, by Jove!--on duty, too! I wonder the fellow doesn't cut Aldershot now--he's rich enough; can draw cheques galore; not get them, like me, with strong paternal comments, and perhaps well-deserved objurgations.'

And Bevil Goring lay there in his hut, hearing the incessant drums beating and bugles sounding with a dazed feeling, as if he had been shot into another world. With him it was--

'Oh, love for a year, a month, a day,
But alas for the love that loves alway!'

'What the devil is up with Goring?' said Fleming and others of the dépôt; 'within the last few days he has looked older by ten years--worn and worried--not at all like a man who has just come into a fine pot of money.'