Chapter VII: Lovers

The early days of the spring subsequent to the events we have narrated, found the Aberfeldie family located at Maviswood, a handsome modern villa to the west of Edinburgh, whither they had removed from Dundargue, that Allan, on whom a kind of protracted illness had fallen, might avail himself of the great medical skill which is always to be found in the Scottish Metropolis.

By what means Allan was discovered and got out of the vault into which he had been flung, and, as Hawke Holcroft hoped, was entombed for ever, the latter never knew, from the plan adopted by the family, but the public prints had informed him more than once, that 'the Master of Aberfeldie had met with an accident--a fall--from the effects of which he was slowly recovering; wounds received when on service with the Black Watch retarding his progress to health.'

Evan Cameron, Carslogie, and others of the regiment, then in the Castle of Edinburgh, heard of Allan's affair or illness in a vague way, as Lord Aberfeldie shrunk from all gossip, publicity and surmise; and the first-named learned that Eveline's marriage had been delayed in consequence of that illness, chiefly through a letter written to him by Olive, at Allan's request.

So the early days of spring were passing on, and no particular change had taken place in the relative positions of our characters since we last saw them at Dundargue.

Eveline was alone one afternoon in a room at Maviswood--a room of vast proportions. The ceiling was divided into deep panels of oak colour; a dado of dead gold tint was carried round the walls to within eight feet of the cornice, and the chairs and ottomans were upholstered in blue maroquin leather, studded with elaborate gilt nails. The hangings were blue, with yellow borders, lining and tassels; great china bowls, full of conservatory flowers, stood on ornate tables and pedestals, within the recess of a great triple bay window, beyond which spread away southward the lovely landscape that is bounded by the Pentlands.

Spring is a lovely and joyous season everywhere, but nowhere is it lovelier than in the fertile Lothians; and nowhere may the eye rest upon a more varied and beautiful landscape than that which spreads from the southern slope of Corstorphine's wooded crags to the base of the green and undulating Pentlands, the highest summits of which range from sixteen hundred to nearly nineteen hundred feet.

There are corn-fields teeming with fertility, rows of stately trees, pretty cottages, stately white manor houses, and cosy farms embosomed among old woods and orchards; the picturesque rocks of wooded Craiglockhart, wherein the kites and kestrels build their nests; the rich alluvial land, where for ages a great loch once spread its waters; the quaint old village church, on the spire of which the red sunset loves to linger; and westward the Queen of the North, in all the glory of castled rock, and hill and crag, spire, tower, and countless terraces; and on all of these the wistful eyes of Eveline Grahame were wandering dreamily.

A golden glory was cast along the eastern slopes, the fleecy clouds were every moment assuming new forms and lovelier colours; the woods were budding forth; the Leith and its tiny tributaries were brawling along as if their waters had no time to toy with the brown pebbles. Seated, at times, sideways on their horses, the happy ploughboys were already going home from their labours. The early-yeaned lambs were frisking about the ewes, and cloud and sunshine seemed to chase each other over the tender grass, where the wild white gowan was opening its petals, and old folks were remembering that 'a peck o' March dust was worth the ransom o' a king.'

Of late, Eveline's bursts of girlish merriment had been few and far between. She was fretful--unusually so for a girl who by nature was so sweet and gentle, and at the mere mention of the name of Sir Paget--to whom she felt herself doomed, as it were, or allotted--she became more fretful, silent, and abstracted.

She shrank from smiling people, turned her back upon inquisitive ones, and often was found to answer briefly and beside the point.

In short, the pretty Eveline's heart or mind was quite unhinged.

The tenth day of her residence at Maviswood was creeping slowly on, and she was pondering, full of thought, alone in that stately room, when a servant startled her by announcing and ushering in 'Mr. Evan Cameron,' and, though her mind was full of him--of the evening of the carpet-dance at Dundargue, and the hour of joy in the half-lit corridor, a kind of gasp escaped her as she rose from her seat to receive him.

But why should he not call, reason suggested to her.

The Grahams had been for ten days, we have said, at Maviswood; and Cameron, who had been counting every hour of those ten days, and watching the villa with his field-glass from his quarters in the distant castle, had now ventured to make an afternoon walk, and found, beyond his hopes, that Eveline was alone.

Allan and Olive were out together in a pony-phaeton; Lord and Lady Aberfeldie were he cared not where; anyway, they were absent too.

Olive, feeling that she was in some way responsible, by her past thoughtlessness, petulance, and flirting with the daring and unworthy Holcroft, for much that had befallen Allan, now 'waited on him hand and foot,' as the old nurse Nannie phrased it. She was with him from hour to hour, and, though their marriage was delayed, how happy they seemed to be!

Fearing interruption as before, Cameron, too tender and true not to be a timid lover, found a difficulty just then in taking up the thread of the old story, and they stood in the bay-window talking commonplaces, while heart was speaking to heart and eye to eye. But 'what is speaking or hearing when heart wells into heart?'

Cameron heard all she chose then to tell him about Allan's 'accident,' the bewilderment and alarm of the family, and so forth. Many friends were spoken of, but Sir Paget was of course referred to by neither.

Eveline, though so young, had the frank and perfect air of repose in her manner that came of gentle breeding, and made her seem older than she was, but gave an assurance that whatever she said, or whatever she did, was said and done in the right way. Without coquetry, her manner was full of simple fascination; but it was undeniably nervous now, for she read by Cameron's softened voice, and in his brightening eye, the clear necessity for something else than common-place talk, when he discovered by a casual remark that Lord and Lady Aberfeldie were not in the house.

Eveline felt that she had given herself to Evan, and that the tenor of their interview in the corridor amounted tacitly to an engagement.

An engagement! But to what end? It all seemed but a dream, a delicious dream, of which there was nothing to remind her, not even a ring, a lock of hair, or the tiniest note.

Unlike Cameron, Eveline, while loving him dearly, had, singular to say, no thought of marriage with him in the ordinary sense of the word; for, hemmed round as she was, and destined as she was, the idea was a hopeless one, judged from her parents' point of view. She only felt, poor girl, that she loved, and was full of sad joy--if we may use the paradox--in the belief that she was truly loved in return.

'How silent you have become,' she said, in a low tone, after a nervous pause.

'I know not what to say; but love has no need of words, Eveline, nor needs he many at any time,' he replied, drawing closer to her. Then he took a conservatory rose from a vase and exclaimed, 'Eveline darling, you love me well and truly, don't you?'

'Well and truly, you know, dear Evan,' she replied, as his arm went round her, and her head dropped on his shoulder. 'What need to ask me?' she whispered, in a breathless voice.

'Because I cannot hear the beloved assurance too often.' He kissed her tenderly, we cannot say how many times, nor would it matter, while she lay passive in his arms, and then he said, 'Shall we try our fate with this rose?'

'How?'

'By plucking it, leaf by leaf, saying each time "Lucky, Unlucky," till the last leaf comes.'

'Something _à la Marguerite_.'

'Yes.'

'No, decidedly no, dearest Evan.'

'You are superstitious. Well, so am I.'

'Thus an omen would only torment us, and surely we have enough--enough----' Tears choked her voice, and she could only add, 'Trust, dearest Evan, trust.'

'In what, my darling?'

'The great goodness of God.'

The spell of a great love was on both. Their lips met in a long and silent kiss, and the rose fell at their feet between them.

A sound roused them--nay, startled them. They had only time to separate and affect a sudden interest in the artistic effects produced by light and shadow on the landscape, when Lord and Lady Aberfeldie entered the room together, a pretty palpable cloud of annoyance resting on the brows of both as they politely, but far from warmly, greeted the visitor.

The peer, who had evidently been out riding, appeared in a black morning coat and white cords, whip in hand, and the lady, who had been in the grounds, wore her garden hat and shawl. She had seen a visitor ride up to the door from a distant part of the lawn, and had hurried home, her heart foreboding truly who that visitor was.

And now, while their hearts were vibrating with tenderness, and with their lips yet tremulously sensible of the sweetness of kisses--the first kisses of a new and early love--they had to talk enforced commonplace--or, at least, Evan did so, while Eveline remained silent--of the news of the day, the expected plans of the ministry, the probable despatch of a fleet to Egyptian waters, of the chances of an army following it, of Arabi Pasha and the Khedive, the plot formed by the Circassian officers, and so forth, till it was time for the lingering Cameron to resume his hat and depart at last.

Cameron tried to ignore that which, under other and more prosperous circumstances, would have galled and roused his haughty Highland spirit--Lord Aberfeldie's coldness of manner when he spoke even of the regiment, and how certainly it would go to the East, 'as the Black Watch, thank God, was always in everything, and always with honour,' while Evan's eyes irresistibly wandered to the face of Eveline, and memory went back to the twilighted corridor at Dundargue.

But so did the memory of my Lord Aberfeldie.

The peer must have undergone a good deal of training or "drilling" lately at the hands of Lady Aberfeldie before he could have brought himself to behave so coldly to one he really liked so well as young Stratherroch, and one of the Black Watch especially; but then, perhaps, he was just a little soured by the sequel to the hospitality and kindness accorded to "the son of his old friend," which son had contrived by skilful lettering and figuring to add the sum of eighty pounds to his cheque.

As he bade them adieu Stratherroch observed that Lord Aberfeldie did not ask him to call again at Maviswood, and keenly did he feel the omission and all it implied, and with it came the conviction that he must call no more!

Slowly he rode back to his quarters full of alternately exultant and bitter thoughts--exultant that Eveline loved him and would never cease to love him, but bitter ones as he asked himself, to what end!

If poor Cameron had vague and lingering hopes to which he clung (and doubtless he had)--hopes when seeing Eveline, of proposing or hinting of meeting elsewhere in the future--they were doomed to blight, for no such bore fruition; and they had now parted, and her father and mother thought they should part, as mere friends, who might meet casually in society, but at all events had better _not_ meet again.

And Cameron feared that, so far as monetary matters stood with him, his friend Allan might endorse the same view of the situation.

'Stratherroch is a gentleman by birth and position, but poor, miserably poor,' said Lady Aberfeldie, after he had gone; 'so was that precious Mr. Holcroft, and when a declension takes place in tone, manner, and habits, as in his instance, we never know where it may end,' she added pointedly to Eveline.

'How can you speak of the two men in the same sentence!' exclaimed the peer, with an asperity for which his daughter thanked him in her aching heart.

At anytime when Eveline looked south-eastward from Maviswood she could see the Castle of Edinburgh, and the towering mass of the western barrack, with all its windows shining in the sun, and she always did so with tenderest interest, as she knew that _he_ was there; but, natheless, her experience of at least one London season, there was much of the guileless child and mere girl in Eveline still, and she was so sweet and soft, so pliable, and so impressed with her mother's will and her father's authority, that--that how could Evan Cameron tell what pressure might be brought to bear upon her, to make her seem to transfer the allegiance of her heart to another--even to the wealthy old English baronet, Sir Paget Puddicombe?

Alas! there was to be, in time, a pressure that none could then foresee.