Chapter XVI: The Four-In-Hand Club

One of the chief, if not the only, pleasure of Alison's life of routine was, on sunny days, to take her little charges into Kensington Gardens, and set them by the margin of the blue Round Pond, and watch its tiny fleet of toy ships skimming to and fro, with the hideous, Dutch-looking palace of Kensington as a background--a palace, the rooms of which are only remarkable for memories of William of Orange (and, let us add, of Glencoe) and Elizabeth Villiers, the hideous, one-eyed Countess of Orkney; but stately, even grand, are the avenues of old trees that grow thereby. 'How many secrets have been overheard by these ancient elms since Heneage Finch built the boundary-fence of his pleasance! Could their experience be set forth for the behoof of modern lovers, would they be apt,' asks a writer, 'to encourage or to warn?'

The old palace is still there as it was when the home of the Finches, with its three irregular quadrangles, built of red brick, ornamented with columns, quoins, and cornices of indifferent stone, unchanged as when Solmes Blues mounted guard and the early Georges swore and blustered in broken English and guttural German; but how changed are all its surroundings, for miles upon miles of streets stretch far to the westward, southward, and northward of it now.

When James VI., accustomed to old Edinburgh within its 'Flodden Wall,' was so startled with the size of the petty London of his time that, in his famous speech in the Star Chamber, in 1616, he declared that its size made it a nuisance to the nation, that he would have all new edifices pulled down, and the builders committed to prison, he could little foresee the London of the days of steam!

And, often as she sat there under the stately trees, Alison loved to ponder over the days when the old Court suburb was remote from London, for in 1750, where now we find busy Westbourne Grove, stood a solitary house, called Western Green, three miles distant from Hyde Park; and so lately as 1830, on the Bayswater side of the Gardens, were Kensington Gravel Pits, facing the Broad Walk, stretching away to what is now called Bayswater, which was formerly renowned for the springs and conduits for which the city was then indebted for pure water. It was famous then for its tea gardens, there called the Flora, extending the whole length of Lancaster Gate.

So, book in hand, while the children played near her on the grass, Alison would sit in Kensington Gardens for hours lost in reverie, while the bees hummed in the hot air at the flower-beds near the Serpentine, and the sun blazed without mercy on the sheet of shining water that stretched away towards the Albert Gate; but, when certain thoughts of the past occurred to her, there would seem no beauty in that summer scene, nor warmth even in the sunshine, for there was a dull, weary, and aching crave at her heart, with the ever-recurring question--Where was Bevil, and why did he not make an effort to seek her out?

She knew not that the only person who could enlighten him as to her movements--the vicar of Chilcote--had steadily refused to do so.

On such occasions old Archie was generally hovering about for a sight of her; and, if he could exchange a word with her, would steal away to his dingy lodgings 'as happy as a king,' to use his own phrase; and muttering--'The Lord will watch owre her--the Lord will watch owre her--like ilka blade o' grass that keps its ain drap o' dew.'

One day she extended her walk beyond the boundary of the Gardens, and, crossing the bridge near the powder magazine, watched with feverish eagerness the crowds of fashionables who were gathering in their thousands there; for it was the 17th of May, when there was to be a muster of the Four-in-Hand Club, and she had a strange presentiment that she should see Bevil Goring--one of those presentiments which come unbidden to the mind, perhaps more often to the Scottish mind than any other--why or how, we know not--but which seem to speak of that which is to come as powerfully as ever did those oracles of old that whispered through the mist of Delphi, or by the black doves of Dodona; and she was not doomed to be--in one sense at least--disappointed.

Amid the fast gathering crowds and the general excitement of the scene she was careful not to lose sight of her little charges, whose tiny hands she clasped in her own, and kept them close by her side.

She saw Cadbury ride past, accompanied by Gaskins his groom; and, while the sight gave her a kind of shock, she shrank behind a tree lest he should perceive her, and some minutes elapsed ere she ventured from her hiding place.

Natheless his peerage, aware of his plebeian descent and certainly not distinguished appearance, instead of appearing fashionably attired like a London park rider, Cadbury affected the style of a country gentleman; and on this day--though a most indifferent horseman--he wore Bedford cord breeches, and black polished boots, an ordinary cut-away coat buttoned over the chest, a hat rather low in the crown, and carried a light hunting whip, affecting the air of one who flew over his fences 'like a bird' though not unfrequently he was landed on one side, while his horse remained on the other; and he rode over the hounds and committed many similar unpardonable faults in the field.

At this narrowly escaped rencontre she felt her colour come and go--come and go--quickly. The man's appearance brought brought back with a rush, and vividly, a host of painful and annoying memories; and then there was the thousand pounds cheque sent anonymously and the marble cross so mysteriously erected at her father's grave.

Oh, was she right or was she wrong in avoiding him?

Nowhere in Europe can such a sight be seen as that presented on such a day beside the Serpentine when the meet of the Four-in-Hand Club takes place. All London seemed to be looking its brightest and best, and all London--at least, the fashionable world thereof--seemed to have found some excuse for being in the vicinity of the Serpentine Bridge and the powder magazine which stands thereby.

It was May, and the young green trees were in full foliage, and the parterres of rhododendrons and azaleas were in bloom; and gathering there were the beauty and fashion of the greatest city in the world, with the best horse flesh, the most accomplished drivers, and the most perfect drags, with shining panels and plated harness.

On either side of the drive all the hawthorns, pink and white, were in bloom, loading the morning air with the perfume of the almond; and the waters of the Serpentine were seen at intervals between the flowery shrubs and long avenues of leafy trees in all the fresh greenery of May; but as Alison looked around her she thought of Essilmont in May--Essilmont, which too probably she would never see again, with the pool in the Ythan where the Black Hound appeared when one of her race was drowned in it; where the grey-clad angler loved to linger by the stream in the silvery morning mist; where the black gled crowed overhead as he winged his way across the purple heather, or the cushet doo cooed with bell-like note in the pine coppice, and the high antlers of the stag were seen as he couched amid the cool and fan-leaved bracken.

But the acclamations of the little girls who clung to her hands or skirts roused Alison from her reverie, for the procession had started, and above thirty drags, horsed magnificently, with splendid silver harness blazing in the sunshine, were getting into motion, their drivers--when not clad in the club uniform, blue, with gilded buttons--wearing accurate morning costume, while the dresses of the many ladies who crowded the lofty seats on the roof, were such as only Regent Street can furnish--and for beauty, no other city on earth could have produced such women as were seen there, in carriages or on foot.

Team after team went past, the German Ambassador with his bays, the Guards' drag, with four glossy blacks, the Hussars from Hounslow, chestnuts, greys, and roans, all criticised and critically examined by the onlookers, and surrounded by Hyde Park in all its glory, the route being taken from the magazine to Hyde Park corner, thence by Knightsbridge Barracks, passing the Albert Memorial, and out by the Queen's Gate, where the whole passed away like a phantasmagoria from the eyes of Alison, whose gaze followed the line of drags like one lost in a painful dream, after her heart had given the first bound of bewilderment, on seeing that the leading coach was driven by Bevil Goring!

She had seen a dashing drag drawn by a team of beautiful roans, and certainly her heart beat painfully with joy, amazement, and then with something of mortification, when she recognised in the driver thereof, 'tooling along in a most workmanlike manner,' as a bystander remarked, her _fiancé_, Bevil Goring, while on the top seats were Jerry Wilmot, Tony Dalton, young Fleming, and others of the Rifles, with Laura, and several ladies, some of whom were seated close behind Goring, and in animated conversation with him, one of them apparently a rather flirty party, who insisted on shading his eyes sometimes with her scarlet silk parasol.

She again shrank behind a tree, as she had done when Cadbury came in sight. Her gaze, and her heart too, followed the gay drag with its roans and brilliant party going away to luncheon, no doubt at Muswell Hill, and she watched it until it disappeared.

How she got through the remainder of the day in the dull school-room on the attic floor in Pembridge Square, she scarcely knew; but the next was considerably advanced before she saw an account of the coaching meet in a fashionable paper, and read that 'Captain Goring of the Rifles' drag and team were considered by eminent connoisseurs as the most perfect in the park.' A little further on she saw that at his rooms in Piccadilly he had, after the meet, entertained a number of the club at dinner, with many persons of distinction, including H.R.H. the F.M. commanding, and one or two foreign ambassadors.

His drag and team! What a change was here! Poor Alison was indeed sorely bewildered; but on reflection the change failed to give her joy. Here were evidences of great and sudden wealth, and yet he made no effort to discover her. And those ladies on the drag, who were they; and who was she who seemed so familiar with him, and to whose playful remarks he stooped to listen from time to time?

Alas! it seemed as if his neglect of her was quite accounted for now. She suppressed a great desire to sob aloud, and half drew her engagement ring from her finger. Then, with true superstition of the heart, she carefully replaced it, as she did a locket which contained his likeness, and which she wore in the breast of her dress; but the episode of that day and all it vaguely suggested added sorely to the already sufficient bitterness of the poor girl's governess life.

She knew not that though, in accordance with his recently-acquired wealth and position, his own tastes, and the wishes of friends, Bevil had started a drag and joined the Four-in-Hand Club, he had been baffled resolutely more than once in his efforts to trace her by the well-meaning vicar of Chilcote, and that he was in perpetual anxiety to discover her, and was trusting to hope that her father's death on one hand and his own ample means had removed the barrier that the former had raised between them.

It is the fate of true love apparently never to run like a railway. 'But why that proverbial asperity should be confined to what is true we are unable to say,' writes a novelist, adding, 'For our own part, that eternal smoothness has but little charm; and the ripple which reflects sunshine and shade, bright gleams and darkening clouds in love as in Nature, gives brightness and variety to the prosiest poetry in the world.'

But doubtless Goring and Alison Cheyne were beginning to think that they had endured enough of the darkening clouds that seemed as yet without a silver lining.