Chapter XIX: The Foreclosure Effected

While Dalton, under Laura's care and nursing, had been fast recovering health and strength, on leave of absence, at Chilcote Grange; and Jerry Wilmot, though less tenderly cared for at Wilmothurst, surrounded as he was then by every luxury and comfort still, was also fast learning to forget all he had endured in Ashanti, and all the natural buoyancy of his spirits was returning, Lady Julia was as full of unspeakable animosity at Mr. Chevenix as the languid character of her aristocratic nature would permit her to be.

A regular breach had replaced the cool indifference with which she had viewed that personage. In the profundity of his plebeian insolence he had at last taken full measures to obtain the interest on his mortgages, and more, he had foreclosed them, and ruin now awaited the house of Wilmot!

And again and again, while tenderly carressing Flossie, or having her long tresses brushed out by Mademoiselle Florine, she languidly bewailed to Cousin Emily, or to Jerry, who lingered near her with the cigar in hand he dared not light in her presence, that 'the artful pillager of the Wilmot estates would drive her to a beggar's grave in a foreign land.'

Though Jerry thought life was too short 'for all this sort of thing,' and was making up his mind to 'cut the whole thing' and go to India, he was still on friendly terms with old Mr. Chevenix, but nevertheless was greatly ruffled by stories that reached him of Lord Twiseldown's attention to Bella, and was once, as he phrased it, 'awfully cut up,' when coming upon them riding together without even a groom in attendance, and nearly overtook them in a green lane--yea, would have done so, had he not timely drawn the bridle of his own horse.

They had been laughing and talking amicably--certainly more like friends, it would seem, than lovers, as gossip averred them to be; and with aching heart, and eager and admiring eyes, poor Jerry Wilmot--poor in more ways than one, for he was a ruined man now--observed the air and bearing of the handsome girl, in her dark blue riding habit--a costume so fitted for the display of every womanly grace--while from her slender waist she moved with every movement of her horse, the very action of which seemed to assert that he was proud of having such a rider.

Still more was Jerry 'cut up' and then perplexed when, soon after, he met Mr. Chevenix, who, with a twinkle in his eye--whether of pride or mischief the said Jerry failed to detect--informed him, somewhat unnecessarily as he thought, that Lord Twiseldown had proposed to Bella.

'Proposed!' repeated Jerry, in a rather breathless voice.

'Yes.'

'And when does the--the marriage come off?'

'It won't come off at all.'

'Why?'

'She has refused him.'

'Refused him!'

'Yes; odd, isn't it? Can't make Bella out at all,' replied Mr. Chevenix, as he nodded, smiled, and trotted away on his cob.

Jerry was, we say, perplexed on hearing of this. Bella's refusal of Twiseldown's hand delighted him greatly, but was it born of regard for himself or regard for someone else? He had not gone near her for some time past, and knew not how many might have been hovering about her, now that, with all her beauty and brilliance apart, she was known as the virtual heiress of Wilmothurst.

It filled him with many thoughts that were difficult of arrangement and of analysis. He resolved to pay her a farewell visit anyway, and told his lady mother that he would do so.

'That girl again!' said Lady Julia, as he rode off. 'I did not think that he had actually involved himself with her.'

'Nor has he, perhaps, auntie,' sighed Cousin Emily, though her heart made her suspect otherwise.

'I believe Jerry to be, like many young men of the present day,' resumed Lady Julia, still obtuse as to the new situation, 'one of those who think they can--especially with a girl of her position in society--go to the utmost confines of love-making--can look, say, and do what they please, and yet do and say nothing that will quite compromise them, or involve their honour; and girls such as the Chevenix quite understand the matter. But that there should be more in it passes my comprehension, and yours too, darling Flossie,' she added, taking the cur out of its mother-of-pearl basket and kissing its nose tenderly.

She spoke, as usual, languidly and softly, for she was ever one of those who deem that 'feeling, or any betrayal of it, is a sure sign of an ill-bred person'--bad form, in short.

Meanwhile Jerry was _tête-à-tête_ with Bella Chevenix in her pretty little drawing-room overlooking the ivy-clad church and the village green.

Jerry was rather grave, for Bella had been piqued by his absence, and received him, he thought, rather coldly, which led him to fear there 'was some other fellow in the field;' but anon Bella began to rally him, for she could not but remember that the letter he had written on the night before Coomassie was entered, amounted quite to a declaration.

'I begin to sicken of the world and all its bitterness, Bella,' said he, a little irrelevantly, on which she sang, softly,

'Oh, what shall I be at fifty,
If I am then alive,
If I find the world so bitter
When I am barely twenty-five?'

'I wonder if you will be so merry when we meet again, years hence, if ever,' said Jerry, almost angrily.

'Years hence--what do you mean, Jerry--for I must call you Jerry as of old, if you adopt this tone?' said she, regarding his now grave face attentively.

'I go to the Horse Guards to-morrow to arrange about an exchange for India.'

'Why?'

'Can you ask--when you know that I am a ruined and beggared man?'

He was looking doggedly out of the window, and did not see how her sensitive lips quivered, and how her shapely bodice was heaving with the painful pulsations of her warm and affectionate heart; for Bella--impulsive Bella--felt that if she said only a little more she must break down altogether; and the muscles of her slender throat ached with the efforts she made to keep back her desire to weep.

'Ruined--Jerry--you?' she said, after a pause.

'You know how, and why; the past is over--at an end, and for ever; but do think of me kindly, Bella, when I am far away from you--for my own kindred are few and cold--yea, seem to have little heart for me.'

'Jerry, dear Jerry,' said the girl, in a low voice, 'ere this, I thought you would have asked me to marry--to--to marry you.'

'I dared not, Bella.'

'Why?'

'Lest you might misunderstand me.'

'But you--you love me?'

'God alone knows how well!'

'Then, Jerry, will _you_ marry me?' she said, while her sweet voice sank into a pleading whisper; 'I have always loved you.'

Jerry caught her wildly in his arms.

'Bella--my wife--my own little wife at last!' exclaimed Jerry, in a rather broken voice, as they kissed each other solemnly and passionately, for all doubts between them were ended now.

'Oh, Bella darling,' said Jerry, after sundry incoherences had been indulged in, 'though far, far away from you, I often dreamed of such an hour as this--for I was always with you in the spirit.'

'I would rather have had you, as I have you now, you dear, provoking old Jerry, in the flesh,' replied Bella, with one of her arch and waggish smiles. 'It is much more satisfactory.'

So Wilmothurst would return to the old line again, in all its vast extent of fertile acreage, and with the latter would come a bride second to none in brilliance and beauty that had ever come there before, though not--like haughty Lady Julia, the daughter of ever so many earls--but of a hale, stout, and warm-hearted old fellow, who loved Jerry as his own son--though, sooth to say, we fear he will never be able to abide his mother, who eventually took up her abode, in sullen and stately grandeur, with Cousin Emily, at the restored Dower House in Langley Park.

So Jerry did not go up to the Horse Guards after all, but quietly and rapidly set about the arrangements for his marriage, which was very soon to come about; and, meanwhile, as may be supposed, he spent every spare hour--and he had a good many of them--with Bella.

'The joy of my life is a _tête-à-tête_ with you, dearest Bella,' said Jerry, as he lay on the grass at her feet one evening smoking his brier-root. 'My lady mother's manner is so cold and stately that she quite thrusts all a poor fellow's heart back upon himself. By Jove, you should have seen her mode of welcoming me home after our shindy in Ashanti! I would have preferred less etiquette and more love; some of the kissing and clinging some of our poor fellows, like Tony Dalton, received on the day we landed at Portsmouth.'

'Poor Jerry! you will never want for kisses now,' said Bella, laughingly.

'By-the-by, I have a letter from Goring, who is again in town, and cutting quite a figure, I hear, in the world of fashion.'

'Has he heard aught yet of Miss Cheyne, poor girl?' asked Bella, who naturally took a deep interest in all love affairs, especially just then.

'He says that he has not. Here is his epistle; but that he is bored to death by a soap-boiler's widow and her daughter, an absurd couple, whom, for his sins, he met at the house of Taype, his solicitor, and who have made a dead set at him--waylay him in the park with their carriage, haunt the vicinity of his club, and pester him with invitations.

'"They are shameless in their mode of teasing me, these devilish women," he continues, "and seem to possess the power of ubiquity, and bid fair to run me to earth. I must either cut them or hook it, and come back to the camp." Only fancy, Bella, what odd creatures they must be.'

'But everyone has not the wealth and handsome person of Captain Goring.'

'Yes; and Bevil is one of the right good sort.'

So there were two sides to the picture drawn by the fervid fancy or vanity of Miss Victoria De Jobbyns; and Alison Cheyne, had she known all, need not have wept so bitterly far into the hours of the night, as related.