Chapter IX: 'alice!'

My Lady Aberfeldie was all unconscious of the little romance that had been going on for some weeks past in the green lanes and wooded paths near Maviswood; while Eveline seemed now but to live for the purpose of meeting Evan Cameron, and her loving heart and busy little head were full of cunning schemes and contrivances to escape detection and achieve their meetings, which now seemed to make the whole sense of her existence; and when not with Evan, or if they failed (which was seldom) to see each other, even for a few minutes, her manner became abstracted and triste.

But a rude awakening from her joyous dreams was at hand, and certain past events that seemed trivial in themselves were doomed to be recalled to her with a new and terrible significance!

They had one more than usually tender meeting and tender parting, because Sir Paget Puddicombe--the _bête noir_, the bugbear of both--was certainly coming to Maviswood, and Eveline was weeping bitterly.

'Take courage--take courage, my darling,' said Evan, as he kissed the tears from her eyes and strained her to his breast before he leaped on his horse; 'for my sake and your own have strength to resist, and all may yet be well--for my sake and your own, dearest Alice,' he added, with quivering lips, and was gone.

'_Alice!_'

Another's name uttered by his lips involuntarily while his heart seemed to be teeming with tenderness for herself--uttered in that moment of supreme sorrow, passion, and endearment--escaped him mechanically, as it were, yet too evidently by use and wont!

What did it mean--what could it mean, but one thing?

Her heart stood still for a moment and then beat wildly; she did not hear the noise of his horse's hoofs dying away in the distance, nor did she see his lessening figure, for the powers of hearing and of vision seemed to fail her.

She had received a cruel and terrible shock. Had she heard aright, or was it all a delusion of her ear, yet she repeated to herself with pallid face and quivering lips the word 'Alice!' while memory flashed back to the girl she had seen thrice--twice with Evan, and once evidently waiting for him at what seemed their trysting-place.

She remembered that the second time she had seen them they were walking silently together--full of their own thoughts apparently--and making no effort to entertain each other, and she had read that it is only 'the nearest and dearest' of kinships--the closest and sweetest of human intimacies that could explain such "wordless proximity." Strangers, acquaintances, when thrown together _must_ politely talk; brother and sister, husband and wife, may be confidently, blessedly silent!'

She remembered now, with ready suspicion, that, when she and Evan first met suddenly afterwards, he scarcely evinced surprise. We have said that it was because his heart was full of her image, but this idea, this hope, did not occur to Eveline then--her mind was a chaos.

How she got through the remainder of that day she never knew; she had but one wish: to shun her mother's eye. To seclude herself in her own room would attract attention; thus she remained in the drawing-room and affected to read. She opened a book at the page and point where she had last left off.

Alas! it was beyond the power of books to soothe or win her from herself now. The Lethean power of the novelist had departed, and her whole mind seemed out of tune.

She threw aside the volume and took up another, but a cry escaped her as it fell from her hands. It was Bulwer's 'Alice, or the Mysteries;' the name seemed to enter her heart like a knife, and she rushed away to her room.

The dressing-bell for dinner, when it rang, found her very pale, and wrestling, as it were, with a strange and unusual pain that was eating its way into her heart.

She bathed her face again and again, but failed to hide the dark shadows under her eyes or the inflammation of their delicate lids.

And at dinner-time that evening an additional stab was given to her in the most casual and unexpected way. Her father had brought from his club to Maviswood Carslogie of the Black Watch, a heedless and thoughtless young fellow, of whom she overheard Allan making some inquiries concerning Cameron of Stratherroch.

'Oh, Strath is jolly as a sandboy,' replied Carslogie, 'but he has some mysterious affair of the heart on just now.'

'How?'

'In the usual way. There is a pretty girl he goes about with to all public places, but introduces to no one. She is without a chaperone, and no one knows whether she is maid, wife, or widow; funny, by Jove, isn't it?'

Carslogie said this in a low voice to Allan, yet not so low but that it reached the ears of Eveline, who had some difficulty in concealing her agitation.

With instinctive tenderness Allan glanced at his sister and skilfully changed the subject to the then invariable topic of Arabi Pasha and 'the coming row in Egypt.'

Times there were when she had thought that she would condescend to go once again to their trysting-place, and seek an explanation; but now, after what Carslogie had said, wild horses should not drag her there!

She would never upbraid Evan with his baseness, never more would she go there; she would simply tear his image out of her heart, and let the matter end. But this was easier to say than to achieve.

Her soul seemed to have become numbed within her--frozen, if we may use such terms.

Even in the matter of Sir Paget, she was conscious now of feeling neither repugnance nor ridicule, though she felt a little repentance at her opposition to the wishes of her father and mother, and for the duplicity of which she had been guilty towards them in her love for an unworthy object, and meeting him in secret, as if she had been a sewing-girl or waiting-maid, and not the daughter of a peer, and putting herself, perhaps, in an equivocal position.

She confided in Olive; otherwise her heart, she thought, would burst.

'The heart is said to be "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,"' said Olive, 'but I must confess that this affair passes my comprehension. He cannot be in love with _two_ at once; yet I have read of such things. Forget him; you must do that--at least. You endure too much, Eveline; you believed in him too much, and, I fear, hoped too much. Even friendship has its limits; how much more so love.'

'And but yesterday I was so happy--happy in a love the end of which I could not foresee!' wailed poor Eveline, on her cousin's bosom.

What was she like, this Alice? Her rival--oh, disgrace! Fair or dark--she remembered that she was pale and pretty. But what did it matter, thought the now crushed girl, as she tossed feverishly on her pillow in the gloom and solitude of the night, when even our thoughts seem to assume distinct outlines that become sharp and vivid.

Night had passed--a new day dawned, and how far, far off seemed yesterday! The sun had risen in his glory; the blackbirds were singing in the dew-laden shrubberies of Maviswood; and the pale mists were clearing off Torduff and Kirkyetton Craig, the highest summits of the lovely Pentlands.

It was late ere Eveline had wept herself to sleep; but to her it seemed as if she had not slept at all. Thus it was proportionately late when she awoke heavily to the morning of a new day.

She had given her whole soul with joy to her hopeless love for Evan--hopeless, but pure--though any happy end to it she could not foresee; but this was a bitter collapse she did not anticipate, and now her 'occupation was gone.'

Was she the same Eveline Graham who but yesterday morning shook off sleep so lightly, and rose fresh, strong, and full of hope, with the conviction that her secret lover was true to her and to this hopeless passion?

Her affectionate heart was crushed; her self-esteem was in the dust; her proud head lay low indeed; and for the first time in her young life she had learned what it is to be cut to the soul--to be completely humbled.

And Alice--who and what was _she_?

'And oh, Olive, how am I to meet mamma?' was the first exclamation after they had got rid of Mademoiselle Clairette.

She knew she would have to join in the conversation of the breakfast-table, when all her vigilance would be requisite to prevent her from pit-falls of suspicious silence or confusion of manner, with the helpless air and uncertain voice of one who seeks to conceal a new and hitherto unknown sorrow: and to undergo, with her sad, white, humiliated face, her mother's critical and observant eyes.

If, in desperation, she did not act a part, that watchful mother would be sure to detect a change, and that there was something wrong.

Eveline knew well that she would soon detect every flicker of her eyelashes, every tremor of the heavy white lids, that would droop in spite of her now; but luckily Lady Aberfeldie was busy in her boudoir with the housekeeper and Mr. Tappleton, the butler, giving orders; for Sir Paget Puddicombe would arrive ere long!

Carslogie had gone back to Edinburgh, of course, last night. He would be with Evan Cameron this morning on parade and so forth; would the latter question him about his visit to Maviswood, about _her_ perhaps? But what did it matter now whether he did so or did not? Nothing--less than nothing!

How long the hours seemed now when they were empty--_quite_ empty of all but bitterness.

Meanwhile days passed on, and Cameron came, as was his wont, to the usual places of meeting, but Eveline was never there.

What had happened--how was she detained? Had an illness come upon her? His mind was a prey to the keenest anxiety, which he was without the means of allaying. He could not write to ask for any explanation, neither could he call at Maviswood after the somewhat studied coldness of his last reception there by her father and mother.

At each place and spot where so lately they had met and wandered, the thoughts that found utterance there, and many a tender caress came potently and poignantly back to memory now. Where was she, what doing, how engaged and with whom--in sickness or in health?--he asked of himself with endless iteration.

Trivialities are often associated with the greatest eventualities in our lives. Thus long in the memory of Evan would his last visit to one of these beloved spots be associated with the shrill notes of a mavis perched upon the topmost bough of a tree.

Ignorant as yet of what he himself had done, ignorant also of the mischief his friend Carslogie had unintentionally done him by retailing some mess-room gossip, in the vagueness of his thoughts and ideas of the whole situation, which we shall ere-long unravel, Cameron was inclined to attribute the total cessation of Eveline's meetings with him to some mysterious influence of Hawke Holcroft--if Holcroft it was whom he saw in the dusk.

From Carslogie he learned that 'she was looking well and jolly,' as he phrased it. When Allan rejoined he would hear more of her, he hoped; but Allan's sick leave was protracted from time to time, and none seemed to know _when_ he would be with the regiment again.

Once these parted lovers saw each other but for a moment only!

Accompanied by a groom, Eveline rode at a canter past him on a lonely part of the road near Maviswood, her eyes full of unshed tears, her face pale with resentment, and her veil in her teeth.

Past him, as if he was a stranger!

'Why stop to speak or expect an explanation?' thought the girl. 'In this world do not actions speak louder a thousand times than words can ever do?'

She was a Graham of Dundargue, and would show him that she was not of the kind of stuff that facile Amelias or patient Griseldas are made!

Yet to pass him by thus, cost her a mighty effort, though to Eveline it seemed that there was nothing left for her now 'but to wrestle valiantly with that pain which, in the world's eye, degrades the woman who smarts under it--the pain of an unshared love.'