For the first time in his very prosaic life, Gideon Gainswood began to indulge in some very brilliant day-dreams, out of which he wove a future, even as Alnaschar did out of his basket of glass.
He felt certain that Dove's beauty had made a favourable impression on the young lord, whose monetary necessities he knew, and any monetary advances he made from thenceforward were simply as the means to an end—to get the young heir of Viscount Kilsythe in his power. The name and title of the latter were Scottish, of course; but so far as nationality went, he was no more a Scot than Gainswood himself, and he was about as much one in sentiment as a Fiji Islander.
Apart from the reversion of the estates in both countries, Campsie's belongings were not much. His wardrobe was unexceptionable, and so was his jewellery.
He had four horses at Piershill, besides his charger; a dressing-case that might suit a duchess, and was believed to be the gift of one, and he had a betting-book, bound in gold and morocco, that cost him more thought, certainly, than ever Euclid did.
"No—Campsie doesn't gamble," said Mr. Gainswood musingly, "but he makes his racing pay."
"How?" asked Gillian, who was near.
"Why he won £20,000 on a horse last year."
As it was Gillian who spoke, Mr. Gainswood knit his brows and turned away.
We have referred to the adulation of rank that exists in the Scottish metropolis—a feature almost unknown in London, where the vast community, linked together from the most exalted in station to the most humble, in a graduated scale, gives unto every man his place; but in Edinburgh it is totally different, and there the legal profession, who are generally sprung from the humbler classes, actually assume to themselves the place of the old Scottish aristocracy.
"When royalty went to London," wrote one who knew the subject well, and is now in his grave, "nobility followed; and in Edinburgh the field is left now, and has been so left for a long time back, to Law, Physic, and Divinity. The professions predominate: than these, there is nothing higher! In Edinburgh, a Lord of Session is as a Prince of the Blood; a Professor, a Cabinet minister; an Advocate, an heir to a peerage. The University and the Courts of Justice are to Edinburgh what the Court and Houses of Lords and Commons are to London."
Proh pudor! Yet, elsewhere he admits, that in no other city will we find so general an appreciation of books, music, and art. "It is peculiarly free from the taint of the ledger and counting-house; it is a Wiemar without a Goethe—a Boston without its nasal twang."
Gideon Gainswood was second to none there in his profound admiration of the peerage, though in politics a most uncompromising whig-radical; and now—now, the slender chance, the fond hope, the dazzling prospect of securing by any means such a son-in-law as Lord Campsie, the future Viscount Kilsythe, made him totally oblivious of Dove's own wishes in the matter and his mode of dealing with his nephew. The peerage, attainted in 1715, after the battle of Dunblane, had been restored by George IV., before his famous visit to Scotland in 1822.
He took down the Peerage, and read with a fervour exceeding any he had ever felt when reading the Scriptures perhaps, the pedigree of the Livingstones of Campsie and Kilsythe, from Sir William who fought under James II. at Roxburgh, William, fourth of his title, killed at Flodden, William, sixth, knighted with the Duke of Albany in 1565, and so on to others who fought for the Stuarts in all their struggles, loyally, gallantly, and truly (the popish and bloody house of Stuart, as Gainswood was wont to call it), till in fancy he saw it coming down to "the present peer, A. E. Viscount Kilsythe, Captain in the Prince's Hussars (and seventeenth of his line from Sir John Livingstone of Callender) who married Dove, only daughter and heiress of Gideon Gainswood, W. S., Edinburgh."
This would be indeed a fish-torpedo to explode among the gossips of "the village in the North," as Thackeray named it.
In his over-vaulting ambition, he already foresaw that which poor little Dove, all unconscious of the net that was weaving, certainly did not—his grandson—the Master of Kilsythe—seated on his knee—the picture of himself, as such pictures are alleged to be reproduced in the third generation; and, as for the old Viscount, he already counted as nothing in the lawyer's fervid day-dreams.
But the Colonel—the Colonel was coming home! More than all, my Lord Campsie had not yet proposed; and if he did, Dove might not have him. Dare she refuse?
But the Colonel! He glanced from his desk to the green charter box; his hands clenched till the fingernails were buried in the palms, and then, more than ever, did the dark, terrible, and hunted expression, before mentioned, cloud all his sordid visage.
Mr. Gideon Gainswood declined the invitation to dine with the Hussar mess at Piershill. He had dined there once with the son of a client, a lieutenant of Lancers, and drank so much wine of various kinds that he remembered nothing of leaving the table, and was oblivious of everything till next morning, when he was found by the Rough Rider and his squad in the Riding School, tucked up to the nose in tan and painted pea-green.
Of this insult he took no notice—wisely, it was said, as an ugly story concerning how he had figured in some heavy bill transaction was whispered about at the time; so Gillian, who was fond of military society, proceeded to the barracks alone.
They are, or were until lately, considered the best accommodation for cavalry in Britain, and stand in the plain immediately below the northern base of Arthur's Seat, within a mile of the Forth, and in a locality rich in such scenic attractions as comport well with the vicinity of a city so picturesque and magnificent. The actual name of the place is Jock's Lodge—as it was so called in the time of Charles II.—but the barracks are named Piershill, in honour of a Colonel Piers, whose residence stood there, and who commanded a corps of dragoons in the days of George II. On one side towers the great mountain that overlooks the city. On the other opens the firth, with its islets and steamers, and the wavy outline of Fife beyond.
Though Gillian was the only stranger, the band was playing at intervals in the barrack square, and all the trophied plate of the mess—the towering and costly vases and epergnes, the accumulations and presentations of past years, added to the magnificence of a luxurious and well-ordered dinner table, to which Gillian was welcomed by Lord Campsie, Sir Hayward Carrington, and others, and treated with every hospitality; and yet, as the evening wore on, he had much reason to regret that he had accepted the invitation at all. He heard some things that he would rather not have heard.
The troops of the left wing had just come in, and the officers, who had never been in these quarters before, were inquiring what sort of a place Edinburgh was—if there was any "society" and so forth; but, headed by Lord Campsie, the first arrivals were unanimous in voting that Piershill was an awful and melancholy change after Hounslow, where they had been within a few miles of the Row, the Parks, Regent Street, Lillie Bridge, the Opera, and a thousand other things unknown to the modern Athenians; and the first Lord Campsie, who so stoutly defended his castle of Kilsythe against Oliver Cromwell, had he been within hearing, would have been sorely troubled and perplexed by the style, ideas, and conversation of his noble descendant, especially his somewhat contemptuous opinion of the "grey metropolis of the North," and of the "upper ten dozen," whom he affirmed to be the society inquired for. Having been quartered at Piershill before, and moreover, being the son of a Scottish peer, he was naturally looked upon as an authority.
"The women want that finish and delicacy which those in London have, and their fashions are always months behind their time," said his lordship.
"But they have weekly assemblies here—daunces?" lisped Lieutenant Lavender.
"Yes—of course, in what they call the season, and patronised by some sixth-rate lady of the aristocracy, who maybe here en passant; but they are bad form, very; all legal and shop-people; their wives in cotton velvet, imitation lace, and French jewelry; and, like the men, all displaying the most dreadful air of self-assertion in the world. But it is great fun."
"Come, come, Campsie, that is too bad!" said Sir Hayward; "I have heard that these entertainments—the weekly assemblies—are a very good style of thing, and that Red Coats there are always at a premium."
"Yes," replied Campsie; "there you are right, as the girls are pretty sure that the wearers of them are gentlemen, which the Young-reekies may not be."
"Then, I suppose, the General Assembly must be a very gay one," said Lavender, "given, I suppose, by the Commander-in-chief?"
Campsie laughed outright at this, and then said,
"Congratulate yourself that you have escaped it, my boy, with its swarms of Black-coats, and think of the Scotch paper-lords in the train of the High Commissioner, in cabs, or carriages, with coats armorial that outshine their father's signboards. It's very funny; but it is a yearly nuisance here, of which I shall move for the abolition, if ever I am a representative peer. I have been quartered in this hole before, don't you know, for my sins."
"You are very unpatriotic!" said Sir Hayward.
"I have my own ideas on these matters, don't you know," drawled Campsie. "Mixed though his race is, that becomes true nationality in an Englishman which is mere querulous provincialism in the Scot or Irishman."
Gillian was decidedly annoyed by the derogatory remarks of the young lord; but was loth to quarrel with him, loth to risk a scene, and especially with one of his uncle's principal clients; and, oddly enough, he was the more annoyed because he knew that some of Campsie's remarks were but too true.
The music of the band partially drowned conversation for a time; the evening being calm and serene, all the mess-room windows were open, though twilight had fallen and the gasaliers were lit. By this time the cloth was removed, and the wine had been circulated pretty freely, so much so, that Campsie's utterance had begun to get a little "feathery," as he phrased it.
"Yes, I agree with you," he was saying to Stafford Martingale; "she is a jolly little girl, and with lots of tin!"
"And utterly without the patois of Edinburgh."
"You are right, Staff, my boy; but, by Jove, the old pater—what's his name—Gainswood possesses it in perfection. A girl with such an instep should be a good waltzer."
"You have been noting her points pretty closely," said Martingale.
"Are you speaking of Miss Gainswood?" asked Gillian, somewhat sharply.
"Hope you are not sweet upon her, Lamond?" said Campsie.
"Why?"
"Because I have half a mind to be so myself."
"Sir—-she is my cousin."
On this the banter instantly ceased; the burst of laughter in which the young lord indulged at his own conceit passed away, and there was an adjournment made to the smoking-room, where, amid the smoke and odour of manilla cheroots, bland weeds said to be slightly opiated and hence more than usually soothing, and full-flavoured regalias, much "horsey" talk was engaged in, as every officer present rode, hunted, and betted freely on all the coming events, and Campsie, perhaps to remove the unpleasant impression his careless remark might have made upon Gillian, plunged at once into matters of which he knew nothing; the Derby and Oaks, which were just at hand; how it was a wonder he had not killed himself at the last Liverpool steeplechases; but he was a fellow, don't you know, who took a vast deal of killing, and ever and anon referred to his favourite mare on which he had won so much last year, adding,
"I have entered her at Punchestown for the Great United Service Handicap, and at Goodwood too. If she wins both I am a made man."
"If not?"
"Don't think of it, old fellow, for then I shall be in a precious hole!"
After a time the name of Gainswood fell again on Gillian's ear. This time the speakers were Sir Hayward Carrington and Lavender, who were smoking outside one of the open windows. Their voices came distinctly to his ear, hence it was impossible for him not to listen.
"And you actually dined there—by Jove!" said Lavender.
"Campsie took us. You are right—Gainswood—that is the name; he is deuced bad form—a most disreputable old rascal. I know now that it was he who played here at Piershill, such a trick to O'Connor of the Irish Lancers."
"How?"
"O'Connor and he did a bill for five thou. (he had a loss on the Epsom) at inordinate percentage, you may be sure, though he had many religious scruples about advancing money for a racing debt; but the security was unexceptionable. It fell, of course, inexorably due. O's long-suffering parent stumped up like an old Irish brick as he was, but omitted to have the beastly bit of blue paper returned."
"Well?" asked Lavender, tipping the ashes off his long regalia.
"And what does old Gainswood do?"
"Put it in the fire, I suppose."
"Not at all; he had it noted, protested, and paid away, and on its being presented a second time, O'Connor had to pound his commission at Greenwood's, and quit the Lancers for ever."
"Sharp practice, that!"
"Dodson and Fogg couldn't beat it."
"And what became of O'Connor—took to the wine-trade or a secretaryship, I suppose."
"Poor fellow—he took her Majesty's shilling in the 11th Hussars, and was shot through the heart, a private soldier, in the Balaclava charge!" said Sir Hayward with emphatic bitterness. "It nearly broke the heart of the poor old man in Galway. He never meant to drive Pat to that resource. But what did it matter to the Scotch Shylock who had received, twice over, his pound of flesh?"
"I shall not dine here again," thought Gillian, as he took his way homeward soon after hearing these terrible remarks, which made his heart sick, more than all, when he thought of Dove.
He walked slowly onward, cigar in mouth, and lost in thought. The genuine snobbery of the young lord's remarks at mess he had utterly forgotten in the bitterness of the revelation made by Sir Hayward Carrington. Before him rose the green outline of the Calton Hill, with the great open columns of the intended Parthenon darkly defined against the broad bright disc of the summer moon; on his right lay the pretty village of Restalrig, with its quaint cottages and ancient church of the thirteenth century, covered with ivy and embosomed among orchards; and Gillian looked around him dreamily as he walked leisurely homeward.
All that he had overheard concerning Mr. Gainswood—her father—galled and stung him. Could such things have been? Dark, vague, and terrible suspicions and anticipations, born of this and of his uncle's peculiar bearing for some time past, began to haunt and appal him in spite of himself. For the first time in his life he was most unhappy, in having overheard that which he sorrowed to have heard at all.
Perhaps it was all a mistake. Anyway, he resolved to be silent on the subject. He strove to thrust distrust of his uncle's honour (Honour!) from him; but the story would come up again and again, for was he not the father of Dove!
But events, unforeseen, were to happen thick and fast now.
It chanced that one afternoon Lord Campsie came to the conclusion, that with regard to Dove, of whom he had evidently become as much smitten as it was in his languid nature to be, he must do something to place himself on a solid footing with her.
On that afternoon he had been dangling, as usual, about her in the drawing-room; but she had been provokingly cold and distant to him; spoke thrice to Gillian—who resolutely kept his post—for each time she addressed the visitor, and when pressed to sing something, she allowed him alone to turn the leaves of her music, and by her mode of treating Lord Campsie, left nothing undone to show him that Gillian was her affianced and accepted lover, to whom she felt that the attention of one whom she conceived to be only amusing himself, must be eminently distasteful. Matters had come to such a pass, that some such demonstration as this was necessary; and thus pique brought his lordship suddenly to a point, that he was, perhaps, not yet quite prepared for, so as he turned his horse's head eastward to the barracks he began to reflect.
It was not a common process with him, and usually made him taciturn—-even sulky with his best friends.
He began to fancy himself very much in love, and naturally suspected Gillian; but the chief infirmity of his character was a suspicion of motives in every one, a fault created by his mode of education and the circumstances of his position in society.
Though one of the fastest men in the Prince's Hussars, and in his set in town, it was an understood thing, that Lord Campsie must, sooner or later, "commit matrimony," as he would have said, whenever the eligible female came to hand. His father and mother had said so, and everybody else except himself. The charms of a little box at St. John's Wood, with the inevitable outlay, in sealskins, diamonds, bouquets, and tiny brougham, had been, as yet, quite enough for him, especially while the tents of the Hussars were pitched at Hounslow, Aldershot, and other pleasant places within a moderate distance of the metropolis.
In the supposed bride certain qualities were deemed indispensable: beauty, grace, dignity, good birth, and unexceptionable position.
Poor Dove had the first of these three requisites, and many more, that were lovable, estimable, and adorable; yet she had neither good birth, position, nor anything else in these ways, coming up to the high standard required by the family of Viscount Kilsythe. But, like the daughters of Cottonopolis, she had money. That it was not acquired by honest hard work and genuine industry mattered not.
Campsie knew, or supposed that she would have a handsome dowry; for when asking advances, had not the lawyer said casually, "I must be careful of my little girl—I must not leave her less than eighty or a hundred thousand;" and so now, it seemed high time that he, Campsie, was married and settled at last.
The heir to an old title, taken from the now ruined castle of Kilsythe, in Stirlingshire (about which he cared no more than if it was in Timbuctoo or Dahomey), with already burdened estates in more than one English county, he could not go down to his grave unwed, especially with all his debts, so here was this taking little Dove (though he detested her suave, canting, vulgar father) at hand to make all comfortable, and to be had—he never doubted it—for the asking.
Such were the views of my Lord Campsie, as he slowly made up his noble mind to come to the point and "chuck himself away," whatever the mess and his "set" might think.
Dove would make a very creditable-looking little wife, and—-
"Though from a humble stock, undoubtedly
Was fashioned to much honour."
Her father was a nobody, and her grandfather, no doubt, a myth. These were bitter pills to swallow; while, after all Campsie had seen and known of life in London and elsewhere, it did seem rather a grim joke that he should be proposing at last to the little provincial, this Scots lawyer's heiress; but, once transplanted elsewhere, and placed among the upper classes, he had no doubt that, with her father's ill-gotten gains—he was certain they must be so—she would pass very well as the future Viscountess Kilsythe.
"Eighty or a hundred thousand, incumbered with such a wife, will be a very tolerable investment of myself," thought Campsie; "but the pater—the awful father-in-law, ugh! he will require to be kept utterly and permanently in the background or on his native heath. I wonder if the old beggar wouldn't take some of his own money and emigrate!"
He had once, when under the influence of sundry brandies and sodas, sounded Martingale to ascertain his views of such an alliance.
"I have lost fearfully, on one or two late events, old fellow, don't you know; and at the Derby, my trainer tells me that it is even betting my mare don't start at all; so Martingale, by Jove, I think I'll marry the little Gainswood."
"The devil you will!" drawled the captain, as he lounged back in an Indian chair, with a leg over each arm thereof, watching the smoke from his cigar, as it curled upwards; "why she is only a provincial attorney's daughter, and you know the adage."
"What is it?"
"Brazen pots and earthen vessels ought not to float down the same channel."
"Old Gainswood already holds so many of my acceptances, that in one sense, I am as much in his power as he could wish me to be."
"But old Six-and-eightpence will be certain to see that every penny his girl may have is settled upon herself—everything, even to the Maltese terrier and the pony phaeton, and she might request her lord and master to leave even that, if they quarrelled."
"I would then get a seat in the little one's brougham at St. John's Wood," said Campsie, grimly.
"Gainswood is bad form—very! and without position in society. Take time, old fellow, something else may turn up, even here."
And with the recollection of this not very cheering advice fresh in his mind, Campsie dismounted at the door of Gainswood's office, and even then paused for a moment, as he tied his reins in a knot. He was selfish; for any man brought up as he had been could not—like too many of his class—escape being so, more or less.
"Well," thought his lordship, "hang it—here goes!" and on being ushered into Mr. Gainswood's business-room, he lost not a moment in announcing his object.
"My lord—you really take my breath away!" exclaimed Gainswood, inserting a thumb in each arm-hole of his vest, and regarding with pretended amazement, but with intense secret delight, the young lord, who seated himself jauntily on the edge of his writing-table, and flicked his glazed boots with the lash of his jewelled riding-whip. He thought that Campsie had come, as usual, for an advance, or loan; but not to this issue so suddenly.
"I have, indeed, Mr. Gainswood, thought of proposing au serieux, for your dear daughter," he repeated.
"You do her and me a high honour, my lord!"
"I do her none," was the rather pointed response.
"Who ever has the good fortune to marry my girl, will find with her as much goodness as beauty, and as much money as either."
"A vulgar, purse-proud snob!" thought his intending son-in-law.
"You are the heir to an ancient and honourable Scottish peerage, though not so rich a title as it might be; and you, my lord, pardon me, have many incumbrances; but, oh, my lord, what matter earthly riches; we shall all, I hope, meet one day in Heaven, where no riches are required, save those of the soul, my lord—save those of the soul!"
"But while on earth, and in the Prince's Hussars, a man must have money or credit, or he is safe to go to the dogs and the devil before his time."
"In this matter you are in earnest."
"As earnest as if it was the Derby day, and I heard the saddling bell ring!" said Campsie, impatiently.
"Dove will have a most creditable portion in cash—besides"——
"Besides what?" thought Campsie, while the lawyer was eyeing him acutely out of one eye; and it never seemed necessary to either of these two men, to say one word concerning love, admiration, affection, or such emotions as Dove might be supposed to excite. With the lawyer, whose heart trembled with exultation and ambition, it was simply a magnificent piece of business; while Campsie was much cooler than he had often been when chaffering for a nag at Tattersall's.
"Have I then your permission?" he asked, thinking he had bothered long enough upon the matter.
"Of course, my dear lord—of course, my dear young friend; but can we reckon upon that of Viscount Kilsythe?"
"As he never consulted me in his matrimonial affairs, I don't mean to consult him," was the somewhat flippant response. "The governor may cut up rusty at first; but he'll learn to like Miss Gainswood in time. No one could know her, without liking and loving her." (His lordship thought it was time to say something of this kind now.) "Her manners are doocid good form—her temper sweet—her loveliness undeniable; and as to title——"
"It is the last thing she or I would set store on, my lord!" interrupted Mr. Gainswood, with great fervour.
"Very like a whale!" thought my Lord Campsie.
"My dear daughter," said the lawyer, now deeming it necessary to do a little pathos, "has had a godly upbringing, as beseemed the child of an elder of the kirk and a Christian man. She is a religious and God-fearing young woman, and will be as a pearl above price—yea, as a crown of glory to her husband. I give her to you, my lord, with the fondest blessing of a loving and tender parent, and the heart-felt wishes of an honest man. May God bless you both!"
Then he wrung the hand of Campsie, and seeming to give way to emotion, covered his eyes with his handkerchief,
"To hide the tears he did not shed."
"Now, that 'the heavy father,' business has been done, I am off like a bird," said Campsie, who had eyed him somewhat dubiously; "so that is arranged—ta, ta, old fellow, I'd look you up to-morrow again."
"Good; what thine heart findeth to do, do it with all thy might."
Again his lordship betook him to his saddle, leaving the lawyer in a very mixed mood of mind, in which exultation, ambition, gratified vanity, and avarice, mingled with much of craven fear and more of hate for Gillian now, as he alone stood in the way, adding to the complications of the situation.
Gainswood had permitted the engagement of Dove and Gillian, and had openly corresponded with the father of the latter on that important subject; and now he had accorded to Campsie permission to address his daughter as a lover! and, as yet, he could not see how the whole affair was to end.
In his vanity and over-reaching ambition, he had not the courage to act in a straightforward manner, besides, none knew what might happen.
If Dove accepted Campsie, and threw over her cousin, as he never doubted she would, then—he seemed to pause even in speculation, and his fishy, shifty eyes wandered unconsciously to the green charter box.
Meanwhile, half regretting and half exulting in what he had done, Campsie rode slowly homeward by the most magnificent terrace in Europe, and yet saw not a feature of it. "What a poem is Prince's Street!" says Alexander Smith. "The puppets of the busy, many-coloured hour crowd about its pavement, while across the ravine, Time has piled up the Old Town, ridge on ridge, grey as a rocky coast, washed and worn by the foam of centuries; peaked and jagged by gable and roof; windowed from basement to cope; the whole surmounted by St. Giles's airy crown. The New is there looking at the Old. Two Times are brought face to face, and are yet separated by a thousand years."
Oblivious alike of the picturesque as of "the stirring memory" of these thousand years, Lord Campsie rode homeward to his barracks, and saw nothing of all that glorious scenery which makes the city of the gallant James's so full of interest, even to strangers—that old, old city, whose massive mansions of stone, weather-beaten, dark, and built, some of them, in years beyond even the stormy middle ages, have teemed with romantic and historical recollections for many generations of men; many painful, many pitiful memories, some of love and more of war, duels, and clan battles, of rancorous feud and foreign invasion, and of loyal hearts that have wasted and well-nigh broken in their passionate faith to religion and a race of kings that are no more.
To Campsie, the scenery and the place were all flat, stale, and unprofitable; and if he had a thought on the subject, as he glanced towards the rugged and wonderful outline of the Canongate, it was simply, that "it was d—— old and d—— dirty."
"I did not think I should have to chuck myself away among the women here, of all places; but needs must, and so, I shall have to make a sacrifice of myself on the altar of necessity!" he muttered as he gave his bay the spur.
All men have their eventful days, it has been said; hence the day after Lord Campsie's visit proved one most eventful to Gillian, who had been—more especially since the dinner at Piershill—apparently somewhat listless and distrait, while in reality full of corroding thought, vague anxiety, and incertitude.
On that morning—Gideon Gainswood never forgot it—there was to be a special meeting of the Presbytery, among whom he was a prominent figure, a shining light and powerful hand at prayer; various kirk extension schemes, and "overtures" of different kinds were to be considered, yet he was absent.
Important cases before the Lords which were to be heard that day were utterly forgotten, or committed entirely to the care of McCodicil, his Parliament House clerk; for news had come concerning the expedition against the Hill Tribes, and that seemed to absorb every thought of Gideon Gainswood.
He was seated in his office betimes as usual, at the leather-covered writing table, whereon lay many doquets of ominous-looking papers and parchments, title-deeds, processes, leases, and so forth, tied up in legal red tape, while around the room were tin boxes whereon were painted the names of his clientela, while a book-case close by was packed with law books and quarto tomes of the "Decisions of the Lords of Council and Session," and on a side-table were somewhat ostentatiously displayed piles of religious tracts and books of prayer.
He was seated, full of thought, pulling his thin under-lip unconsciously, while those cunning eyes of his, which seemed to have the faculty of looking behind him, were idly wandering over the columns of the morning paper, when suddenly he started as if he had received a galvanic shock, and nearly crushed the journal up. Then tremblingly he spread it out upon his desk and turned again to the paragraph which had excited him.
"Unfortunate affair with the Bhoteas—defeat and death of Colonel Lachlan Lamond," so ran the quotation from the "Times" of India. "We have elsewhere stated that an expedition, consisting of 500 Assam Light Infantry, a party of Sowars, and two steel mountain-guns, under that old and distinguished officer, had started from Bengal to punish the marauding Bhoteas. He destroyed their village of Mora and released many of their prisoners, but was compelled to fall back before the hordes that attacked him on every side, who mercilessly slew every wounded man and straggler. Among the slain was Colonel Lamond, who was last seen unhorsed, and fighting bravely, sword in hand, against incredible odds, till he fell pierced by their lance wounds. Thus has the Indian army lost one of its most distinguished officers, for Colonel Lamond served in the Affghan campaigns, including the storming of Ghuznee, the battle of Tizeen, and Sale's defence of Jelalabad."
Thrice did Gideon Gainswood read this paragraph ere he seemed to realise the whole situation; and then his cold, shifty eyes wandered, travelled, unconsciously as it were, to the tin charter-box which bore the unfortunate Colonel's name; anon he cast them upward, as he lay back in his chair, and planted his clenched hands on the desk before him.
"Killed! dead—dead—dead!" he muttered; exultation, savage joy, relief and safety, too, all oddly mingled in his deep and husky tone, and in the expression of his then most repellant visage.
Many emotions passed in a moment through the mind of the lawyer, in the vibration of a pendulum; conclusions, doubts, certainties, and contradictions followed each other thick and fast, while drops of perspiration gathered on his forehead.
To say that he looked relieved, is to give the mildest expression to what his features indicated. The man whose return home might have revealed the secret of a system which he had been pursuing with regard to himself and to his son Gillian, whom he had kept utterly in the dark as to what his heritage really was, had fallen in that distant strife, and the secret of the power he held over him—his brother-in-law—had died within him. He summoned his nephew from the next room.
"Have you seen the morning paper?" he asked, abruptly.
"No, uncle. I was busy with the release in that case of——"
"It contains bad news for you, Gillian. Your poor father is gone—read for yourself. God's will be done! His ways are not as our ways; nor are His thoughts as our thoughts. He slayeth and He maketh to live."
Greatly excited, Gillian read the astounding tidings again and again, and his affectionate heart went back to the days of his own infancy, and to the face of that only surviving parent of whom he had but a shadowy and indistinct recollection, but little more; and yet he had loved him dearly, for all his letters had been full of tenderness and affection; but, as the Colonel, unfortunately, until quite lately seemed unable to realise the fact that Gillian was approaching manhood, and quite capable of understanding his own affairs, all matters that were monetary or of other business, he had confided to Gideon Gainswood alone. And while Gillian was reading, with a very scared and crushed expression of face the fatal news, the former was muttering,
"Gone! gone! poor old Lachlan! alas! there is no peace on this side of the grave. May he find it on the other, far distant though the land be where that grave lies. But take comfort, Gillian; whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth, and thus are you chastened."
"Oh give me faith in this!" said Gillian, to Heaven rather than the speaker.
"Show your faith by your works, nephew; and now go break this most woful calamity, this sore dispensation of an all-wise Providence, to poor Dove. It will make some sad alterations in our late arrangements for you and her, I fear me—I fear me!"
Gillian withdrew, leaving Mr. Gainswood with his face buried in his hands, as if to control or conceal his emotions; but scarcely had the footsteps of the young man died away, than the former started up, gave by force of habit a stealthy look around him, and lifted the charter-box from the iron frame to the writing-table. Carefully selecting the key from a small bunch, which he always carried with him, and entrusted to none, he unlocked and took forth several documents.
One of these was the last will and testament of Lachlan Lamond, then a captain, leaving everything of which he might die possessed in money or otherwise to his only son Gillian, whom failing to his niece Dove Gainswood, whom failing to her father, whom failing to an orphan institution for the children of soldiers who died in the service.
The poor colonel's property was all money, amounting to nearly £30,000, remitted for the purpose—or towards it—of recovering Avon-na-gillian.
Of the money thus remitted by the colonel he had kept no separate account; but, in the vague hope that it might all come one day to himself, he had banked it all in his own name; so, but for the existence of this will, the fortune that was in reality Gillian's, but, of the existence of which he had been kept in total ignorance, would go to enhance the dowry of Dove; so, with such a sum as he could then offer as a bribe, Campsie, and even the consent of Viscount Kilsythe, would be doubly secure.
Overcome by the temptation to error and avarice, with the prospect of perfect immunity in case of the colonel's death, he had continued this system, and held these views for years—years that had neither been of regret nor repentance; but only of the hope that he might not, like some others of his kind, be found out.
The colonel was gone; but what evidence was there of the existence of the moneys disposed in the will? The Calcutta attorney who wrote it he knew to be dead; and the names of the witnesses, two brother officers, had long since disappeared from the army list. The document had evidently not been recorded anywhere. Had any one seen it?
The lawyer pondered and paused.
He knew that a will, unlike many other legal instruments, may be revoked by destroying or cancelling it; but he also knew that there had been cases where a will when last seen in the possession of the testator, if it could not be found after his death, the presumption was that he had destroyed it, animo revocandi. He had also known, in such cases, draft copies produced, and given in secondary evidence of the contents of the original.
Since this paper came into his possession, no human eye had seen it.
"Bah! though only so much waste paper, it will be as well out of existence. What thine heart findeth to do, do it with all thy might!" muttered Gainswood, as he turned up the gas jet, at which he was wont to seal letters, and deliberately committed to the flame sheet after sheet of the document, the very ashes of which he scattered and trod over the turkey carpet.
"Now—now," thought he, "to get rid of this hulking fellow, who stands between my daughter's prosperity and honour. I have no longer the colonel to dread; and now my Dove shall be Lady Campsie, Viscountess of Kilsythe, mistress of Campsie Hall, in the Midlands, and a dozen other places. If she doesn't love this young lord now, she shall learn to do so in time; she shall marry him first, and let the love come after when it may!"
And he almost hissed out the words as he relocked the charter-box, shot it back into its place, and had just time to adjust his visage to its usual calm and suave expression, and to affect to be writing intently, with a pen that had no ink in it, when Mr. McCodicil approached him on business, and he listened to what he had to say with half-averted face; for, save when in a rage, or bullying those who were at his mercy, Gideon Gainswood never looked any human being directly in the face, if he could avoid it.
He received with admirable resignation the condolences of his friends and brother elders on the severe dispensation of Heaven that had fallen upon him and especially Gillian,—for whom, he said to all, it would prove a sad and ruinous calamity indeed, poor fellow. For a time, he secretly liked all this; it was a creditable thing to have his brother-in-law, a colonel—he wished he had been a general,—killed in India; but he was nervously anxious that all note-books, papers, and letters of the deceased should be sent to him from Bengal, and wrote, and even telegraphed, for that purpose, but without avail; either no one knew anything about them, or his missives were unanswered.
"Good!" thought the lawyer; "the colonel's papers have perished with him; and I hope the Bhoteas (whoever they may be) have lit their pipes with the last of them!"
To Dove the news from the far-away Indian Hills fell with a sense of dull, aching sorrow that wrung the girl's heart; and she failed to understand the grim, cold, unsympathetic, and at times, quietly exultant bearing of her father when Gillian was not present.
The death, the assumption of mourning, and so forth, caused a few days' delay in the movements of my Lord Campsie; and thus, untrammelled by his presence, Dove was kinder and more tender than ever to poor Gillian, whom she was told in secret by her father, was penniless now—a veritable beggar—but not to mention it to himself. So the soft-hearted Dove was pitiful, exceedingly pitiful, and murmured to herself,
"What matters it? Papa is rich, and can give us enough for two."
Full of her great love for Gillian, and real sorrow for the calamity that had befallen them—for his father's death implied and involved more than the loss of him—Dove had attached but small importance to the attentions of Lord Campsie, and was rather provoked by them than otherwise, as she was under the idea that he was only amusing himself and seeking to kill the hours in a town which he declared to be intensely dull and stupid; but she was fairly distressed and "worried," when, by some remarks of her father, that were rather more than hints, she was given to understand that he had sought and obtained permission to address her.
"Viscountess Kilsythe would sound well, Dove," said he, pinching her chin with a playfulness that was not his wont, and sat ill upon him.
"Perhaps," replied Dove, with indifference.
"The castle is a roofless ruin, though it has entertained some of the popish House of Stuart, been battered by the Blasphemer, and has now been abandoned to ghosts and gleds; but the Viscount has a place like a palace, they say, in England."
"The dowry of a cotton-merchant's daughter, so Gillian says," said Dove angrily.
"What can he, or such as he, know about it?" demanded Mr. Gainswood, his eyes gleaming dangerously under his shaggy, bristling brows. "It is a place that you may be the mistress of one day, Dove."
"Perhaps, papa; but that would depend upon who was the master and how I liked him," replied Dove, laughing to conceal her annoyance, while her father turned away and left her full of anger.
Now old Mrs. McBriar had barely seen a lord, and certainly had never before spoken to one, hence she was greatly impressed by the idea of Dove's new and sudden expectations, and thus felt, perhaps, less compunction for the intended supplanting of Gillian Lamond, and, acting under Mr. Gainswood's orders, sought to bias the girl's mind to suit his own views and wishes; but, as yet, in vain.
"Dove, dearie," said she; "you will offend your good papa; you are too impulsive and don't know how to guide yourself, or the value of your own bright prospects. A coronet is at your feet—or may be. Oh, lassie, you might as well have expected to see the crown of Scotland there!"
"Oh, bother!" was the unsentimental rejoinder of Dove.
"Now, don't you think you could tolerate such a handsome husband as Lord Campsie?"
"No!" replied Dove sharply, as the unctuous way in which Mrs. McBriar pronounced the titled name provoked her.
"Aye, and learn in time to love him?"
"Don't talk of it, Mrs. McBriar, the very idea chills my heart. And you, too, have turned against him?"
"Against whom?"
"Gillian!" replied Dove, her dark blue eyes flashing through their tears, while the rich colour mantled high in her soft cheek; "Elspat McBriar, I am Gillian Lamond's promised wife; my father gave me to him to be so, and his dead father—God rest him in his far-away grave!—blessed us both; and Gillian shall I marry, or never, never marry at all!"
Mrs. McBriar smiled, shook her head incredulously, and withdrew by the way of the inner drawing-room, for, at that moment, a servant announced, "Lord Campsie."
Dove was certainly, at that moment, in the worst of moods to receive him, and, though secretly a little scared, lest what she feared was to come, she made up a kind of "company smile" as she presented her hand, begged him to be seated, and while a few of the usual commonplaces were uttered, he was as usual eyeing her critically and approvingly.
Dove was in deep mourning, and the black silk and crape, relieved only by her collar, cuffs, and a simple silver brooch—the badge of the Lamonds, of Cowal and Avon-na-gillian, the gift of Gillian—set off to the utmost advantage the whiteness of her slender throat and the purity of her complexion. In the sheeny gold of her auburn hair, in the violet-blue of her beautiful liquid eyes, the usual expression of which was one of softness and—if we may so phrase it—partial surprise, in the fine contour of her features and the firmness of her curled vermilion lip, there were all that Campsie could desire, and he felt conscious that she would adorn the sphere to which he fully intended to remove her.
Such a wife as Dove would certainly adorn his home, and put an end to his St. John's Wood expenses on one hand, and to the schemes and pretensions of certain dowagers and their aspiring daughters in Mayfair and Tyburnia, on the other.
"By Jove!" thought his lordship; "how came such an old toad as this fellow Gainswood ever to have such a daughter?"
"Your mourning does indeed become you," said he, rising and placing a hand on the back of Dove's chair, and bending over her admiringly.
"I deplore that I have had reason to wear it," said she. "It is for Gillian's father—you are aware."
"For Colonel Lamond," said Campsie, fitting his glass in his left eye.
"Poor Gillian's father," persisted Dove.
"He was a brave old fellow, it would seem."
"And devoted to Gillian."
This iteration of the same name, by which Dove hoped to protect herself, as by a charm, certainly did pique Campsie, and rather put him out, as he felt that to have such a rival was something contemptible and unendurable; but he changed the subject, and began to pave the way by much small talk and many really earnest compliments, to which Dove listened with a quiet air of resignation, which somewhat baffled him; but, resolved to bring matters to an issue, he very deliberately, and with a greater tone of self-abnegation than he had ever thought to assume, and in, certainly, very well-chosen and well-bred language, made Dove a formal proposal of marriage, which, in a manner as delicate as it was decided—though she secretly trembled, with apprehension, she knew not of what—Dove most distinctly declined.
Though she knew it was coming, she was more fluttered than flattered, and would have given the world, she thought, to have "a good cry over it."
Campsie drew back a pace, and eyed her with a very mingled expression of face, while coolly re-adjusting his eye-glass and buttoning a glove; he was always fussy about his ties, collars, and gloves.
"By Jove!" thought he. Her coldness and indifference piqued and roused in him a spirit of opposition; it enhanced her value, and inspired him with a resolution to conquer, whether he actually cared for her enough or not. It was too absurd that he, "a drawing-room pet" in town, should be baffled thus by a provincial lawyer's daughter—a mere country chit. "It was doocid funny, but doocid unpleasant, to be held so cheap, don't you know!"
"Miss Gainswood—Dove—dear Dove, is there no chance—no hope, that one—in the coming time, perhaps—haw——"
"There is no hope, my lord—I am unchangeable as yonder castled rock!"
"Am I, then, to understand that there is some preoccupation—some foolish fancy——"
"I give you to understand nothing," said Dove, with a decision in her tone that carried conviction with it for the time, and then rose as if the interview was over; and Campsie, his heart, blasé and vapid as it was, swelling more with mortification and anger than it had ever done with love, took the hint, and assumed his hat, saying:
"I do not despair of yet gaining your favour, and even more, your love and esteem, Dove Gainswood; but, for the present, I shall retire, and wish you a very good morning."
"Good morning, my lord," faltered Dove, as she rang the bell, and he bowed himself out, without even touching her hand, and feeling himself rather put down and confused, all the more that he had not a big regalia to hang on to.
"He surely cannot call here again after this," thought Dove (but she was mistaken), as she cast herself into a seat, and murmuring the name of Gillian again and again, gave way to tears and dire apprehension of the future.
Meanwhile, as if to get rid of his annoyance, Lord Campsie, who believed that a good gallop was the best panacea for any evil under the sun, spurred his horse along a lonely road that led into the wooded bosom of the Corstorphine hills, for an hour's rough ride, ere he despatched from the United Service, the Edinburgh "Rag," a brief note to Mr. Gainswood, to report how Dove had rejected him, which meant, to Campsie, the loss of many more thousands than he could think of with patience—especially, when he remembered his betting-book.
Indescribable was the wrath of Mr. Gainswood on receiving the brief note of Lord Campsie. His fury was too great for words and too deep for noisy demonstration, but he hurried home to upbraid, admonish, and rebuke his daughter.
"Refused a lord—you have actually refused Lord Campsie!" he gasped in sheer bewilderment.
"He is a fool, papa."
"You are a fool—an ass, and—and worse!" was the coarse rejoinder, "and little more would make me curse you—yea, curse you—as you deserve—but it beseems not," he added, relapsing into his sanctimonious whine.
"Oh, papa!" urged the weeping girl, holding up her beautiful hands as if in deprecation.
"You underrate the good qualities of Lord Campsie."
"That does not matter much, papa."
"Why?" he hissed through his teeth.
"Because he does not underrate himself at all events."
"I should think not—a lord—a viscount that is to be, with ever so many thousands a year; you are mad, girl—stark, staring mad! You will repent this obstinacy."
"When?"
"When you know him better."
"In that case I am very unlikely to repent it at all, papa," said Dove, trembling excessively, for never before had her father, with all his faults, addressed her in his present tone.
"You have trifled with his lordship's heart."
"I don't think that had much to do with his proposal," replied the girl, smiling through her tears, "and certainly I am not disposed to sell mine."
"Minx and fool! your ingratitude will break mine," he added, with gravity suitable to the assertion.
"Oh, papa," urged Dove, in her most touching voice, "on earth the most despicable thing is surely the man or woman who marries for money, for rank, or anything but pure and true affection."
"This comes of reading novels—Scott, Bulwer, Dickens—and such-like sinful and pernicious literature. It is the very language of hopeless idiotcy. Alas! that kind Providence should put upon me the sore dispensation of having a child, so blind to her own welfare, so undutiful and rebellious, so disobedient and cruel to such a father as I have been!" He threw himself into a chair, and believing himself to be a very ill-used man, glared at Dove with his hard, fishy eyes, and added, "May God pardon you for this day's work—but I never, never shall!"
"Dearest papa," said Dove, with fresh tears that seemed to well-up as from her very heart; "do not quite forget that you promised me to Gillian."
"To Gillian!" repeated Gains wood, with a deep snort of the fiercest passion and concentrated rage, while starting to his feet as if a cobra had stung him; "to Gillian," he added, grinding his teeth till the sound thereof made Dove's blood run cold; "hah!—true—yes; and now to end that folly for ever; and luckily, here he comes. Follow me to the library—I would speak with you—you, who have sown the apple of discord under my roof-tree!" said he to his nephew, who at that moment entered the room, from which Mr. Gainswood departed, looking grim as Ajax.
"What is the matter, Dove?" asked Gillian, looking already crushed in spirit, as the foreboding of evil had come heavily upon him.
She wound her soft arms around him, and pressing her quivering lips to his cheek, whispered hurriedly:
"Papa would speak with you; be brave, gentle, and trusting, whatever he may say, and remember, that tide what may, I love you, Gillian?"
The latter followed his uncle mechanically into the library, when there a conversation ensued that was fated never to be forgotten by either.
"Sit down, Gillian, and compose yourself—I would speak with you," said Mr. Gainswood gravely, and seeking to veil under his usually bland exterior his real dislike and intense irritation—dislike of Gillian—simply because he himself had basely wronged this young man, and irritation, that he was the innocent cause of thwarting this matrimonial design upon Lord Campsie. After a pause, he said, "I told you some days ago, when we first had tidings of that sore dispensation of Divine Providence—your good father's death—that it would materially alter your views and relations with Dove. You remember?"
"Yes," replied Gillian, faintly, and fearing that which was to come next.
"Since then, I have been wrestling, as it were, in prayer with Fate, for strength to tell you more, and painful intelligence."
"Of what nature?" asked Gillian, huskily.
"That you are totally without any means of subsistence, other than what my purse may afford you," said Mr. Gainswood, putting the points of his fingers together, and gazing upward at the ceiling, as if full of sad and pious thoughts.
"How comes this to pass?" asked Gillian, thoroughly startled by such dire intelligence; "my father——"
"Remitted yearly to me a moderate allowance for your maintenance—moderate I say, lest you should be guilty of the sin of extravagance; that allowance dies with him, and you are, in fact, veritably, with pain and sorrow I say it—a beggar!"
The hot blood rushed to Gillian's temples, and for a moment the room seemed to whirl round him. After a pause, he said, in a broken voice:
"But was not my father amassing money?"
"Money!" said Gainswood, sternly, "who could have told you so?"
"For years past I have thought—somehow it was inferred—that he had hopes of repurchasing Avon-na-gillian——"
"A bubble—a vain Highland bubble—folly; he never realised a shilling; all he possessed was his commission, and the pay it procured him. Your allowance, therefore, ceases now; and even if it did not, you could not expect that upon it alone, I could further countenance your views with regard to my daughter. The foolish engagement which, at one time, I was weak enough to countenance, must end here now, and for ever! Moreover, you must leave my house, Gillian, as you must be aware there is an awkwardness in your presence here now; I will hand you the balance of your allowance, for which you will give my cashier a receipt in full of all demands against me; and by to-morrow at latest I shall expect you to go forth and seek your bread elsewhere—out of this city, I hope. God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, Gillian, and if you are earnest, pious, and prayerful, as you could not fail to be, brought up as you have been in my house and under my guidance, you cannot fail to succeed; but be assured of this, that more I cannot, and will not, do for you."
This intelligence was triply crushing, for in a moment the lad found himself deprived of the actual means of subsistence, of a splendid home, and more than all, of the affectionate girl he so tenderly loved. His agitation was great. He turned deadly pale; his lips became dry, his throat parched; but Mr. Gainswood looked at him gravely and utterly unmoved.
Notwithstanding the usual cant with which he closed a sentence that sounded even as a sentence of death to his nephew, the latter detected something false and hollow in his tone; vague suspicions of being deluded flashed, he knew not how or why, upon his mind, but he could give them neither form nor utterance. Moreover, that the speaker was the father of Dove, repressed much that he might have said. That he was about to lose, or had lost her, alone stood prominently and out amid the ruin and chaos that seemed so suddenly to have enveloped him.
"Uncle Gainswood, I am young—Dove is young—we can wait—I shall work, oh, yes, and work so hard; surely, after all your promises, you will not be so cruel as to separate us now?" he asked, almost in tears.
"It would be greater cruelty not to do so, or to foster your preposterous hopes," replied Gainswood, quietly.
"Preposterous?"
"Of course; you have not a sixpence in the world beyond the balance owing you (some few pounds, I think). Would you marry my daughter on that!"
"No, uncle—no," replied Gillian, now thoroughly crushed; "but surely, after the training I have had with you, I might obtain some legal employment——"
"Better not—a lawyer's life is one of sore temptation—all honour be to those who resist the tempter. (He had not, whatever he meant.) The All-seeing-Eye will, I doubt not, watch over you; but leave my roof you must, and Dove must learn to forget the folly in which she has been indulging."
"If—if—Lord Campsie has influenced you in coming to this decision," began Gillian, a sudden gust of jealous rage and suspicion coming to his aid.
"Lord Campsie has not influenced me," replied Mr. Gainswood, assuming a lofty and injured air; "but if his lordship had, what then?"
"By my father's soul, I would break every bone in his lordship's body!" was the furious rejoinder.
"Is this a proper spirit in which to receive the dispensations of a chastening Providence—dispensations, doubtless, meant for your good? Leave my house, I tell you, but tell you sorrowfully; moderate your angry passions, lest you fall into the hands of an angry and avenging God!"
"Oh, Uncle Gainswood, how can you be so cruel, so unjust, and so cuttingly cold to me?" urged Gillian, in a voice that would have touched the heart of any other man but his hearer.
"Enough—that will do; to-morrow at latest—it is a grave necessity—you leave this roof."
"For where?"
"That is your affair; by train I hope, for any place you like. If not, any way Dove Gainswood shall be put utterly beyond the reach of even receiving a letter from you; further communing between you beseems not now."
"So be it," said Gillian, grief mastering and suppressing the passion and indignation that fired his spirit. "My father has dealt hardly and unjustly with me, in keeping me without a profession—even a trade—in feeding false hopes that were never to be realised, and leaving me thus upon a world like a stranded wreck, at the very outset of life—a beggar, as you harshly, but truly, phrase it."
"Your father has gone to his account, Gillian; so judge not lest ye be judged. We part now and for ever—but let us part friends. Go—the record is closed!"
He sighed, and looked heavenward; but only saw the ceiling.
Then, leaving Gillian as if turned to stone, Mr. Gainswood put on his hat and went forth, in the earnest hope that he might never see his face again. His brows were knit, and there was a fierce glitter in his grey eye—the glitter of suppressed rage, hate, and mortification—-rage at Dove, hatred of Gillian, as being the main cause of her contumacy, and keen mortification at the too probable destruction of his ambitious hope; and yet he chuckled with fierce satisfaction that he had amply avenged himself, and acted so quietly throughout the recent interview.
Would Campsie come to the point again? If not!— At this fear and doubt, he ground his teeth, and with all his assumed blandness and Christian meekness, he felt a gust of wrath that nearly choked him. But he contented himself with bullying some of his drudges, dismissing a footman—thus only compelling himself ere the week was out to advertise for another, who was a "Christian and teetotaller,"—and giving orders relative to some unhappy people whose rents were in arrear—orders which he knew would inflict incalculable hardship upon them; and thus, relieved in mind, attired in accurate black, with a spotless necktie, he went blandly, in his capacity of Elder, to some religious meeting where his speeches and prayers proved as usual very edifying to those who were not as hypocritical as himself, but yet thanked God that they were not as other men.
Without having a word of explanation or farewell, or seeing Dove—Mr. Gainswood had taken some sure means to preclude all chance of that—-Gillian walked forth with a few shillings in his pocket and a change of raiment in a hand-bag, without aim, object, or intention, as yet—forth, as it were, into the world.
He felt as one in a dream might do, or as if all this must be happening to some other person, and not to him, the Gillian Lamond of yesterday.
The city with its sounds and associations maddened him, so he sought the solitude of the country. It was a calm summer evening now, and a scene of rare beauty lay before him, the vast and fertile plain, that stretches westward for miles upon miles nearly to the spires and smoke of Glasgow. Amid clouds of gold and amber the sun was setting; the fields of corn were yellowing on the upland slopes, and the birds were circling in the air, full of life and with no fear of the morrow; and in the distance, with their glens and ravines sunk in shadow and their peaks bathed in rosy light, rose the wavy line of the beautiful Pentland Hills which close the view to the south.
Despairing and broken-hearted though he was, Gillian resolved that he would see Dove once more, and then turn his back upon Edinburgh; but for where? The grim fact stood ever before him. Cast suddenly and roughly on the world at his age, without prospects, or profession, or even a trade, what was there left for him to do. He could not work, and to beg he was ashamed, and he almost shivered as he thought of the Scriptural quotation, as such phraseology was so frequently on the lips of Gideon Gainswood.
Pitiless as a famished wolf, the latter had no commiseration for the lad who had grown up to manhood at his hearth, under his roof and eye, who loved his daughter with his whole heart, and whom in secret he had so foully and terribly wronged, going forth into the cold, hard, and bitter world—into the very darkness thereof, as it were, to push his fortune, to seek his food rather, where, when, or how he best could, and too probably to perish in the attempt.
He saw, or heard of him no more. One circumstance surprised him: that Gillian never asked for the balance of his allowance, and he could not imagine him adopting any line of action without it. Without money he could neither leave the city nor live in it. Penniless and desperate, ardent and full of fiery spirit, would he have committed suicide? Black-hearted though he was, Gideon Gainswood felt somewhat appalled by the idea, and shrunk from it; though there came a time when he might have cared less, had such a calamity actually taken place.
The name of Gillian was seldom or never uttered by Gainswood or by Dove now. Of her sorrow, the former could not fail to be cognisant; but it only fretted and annoyed him, and he watched her pale cheeks and tear-inflamed eyes with a grim smile, as he felt convinced "this sort of thing" would not last long; he could not understand a love that was "never to die," and so forth, and felt assured that now the cause of all this was removed, that Time would effect a cure in the usual way. "A determination to true lovemaking, in this civilised world of ours," says a writer, "is a disease which is always subjected to the management of the pruning knife of papas and mammas, just as much as a determination of blood to the head belongs to the family physician."
On the fifth night after Gillian's disappearance, Dove was found by Mr. Gainswood, abandoned to her grief and weeping passionately.
"Dove, Dove," said he, in a tone of grave reprehension, "you know not what you do in giving way thus, or the true nature of the lad you are so foolish as to mourn for. You have made a fortunate escape, girl. He takes after his father, who hath now gone to judgment. He is one of those who know not the pain they give unto those who, like me, pray and have prayed that they may see the Light, and who mourn heavily over their indifference to the awful realities of judgment and eternity."
Dove shuddered at this farrago and turned away; yet but an hour before Gillian's kiss had been upon her lips, and it came to pass thus.
Old Elspat McBriar had some human sympathies (if her kinsman Gainswood had none), especially for lovers. Gillian she had loved for his sake, and perhaps all the more for the sake of his father, who had been a soldier, even as Quarter-master McBriar, her "own comely Duncan," had been; and when Gillian wrote to her, from the quiet hotel at which he had temporarily taken a room, she—at the risk of losing all Mr. Gainswood's favour, and even the shelter of his roof—arranged a farewell meeting between the cousins, after dusk in the spacious garden, of the square.
Gillian was there betimes. It was to both a familiar spot, long endeared to them by many sweet and tender memories, and the flowering rhododendrons, the azaleas, the feathery disdara, and the trees whose branches swept the smooth green turf, seemed all as old friends on whom he was looking for the last time.
The idea that he had lost the chance of having Avon-na-gillian, fortune and position never occurred to him now; he thought only of his brave father's romantic and honest aspirations ended by murky death and a distant grave; and that he had lost Dove.
There was a sound—the rustle of a dress—a heavy, heavy sob, one of those that seem drawn from the heart, and the girl was clasped to his breast in a long, and, at first, silent embrace—an embrace all the more wild and passionate, that this interview could last but a few minutes, as Mr. Gainswood was on the qui vive.
"I am in despair, Dove!" said Gillian, as his tears mingled with hers.
"Do not despair, my darling, my darling—it is a sin to do so," urged the soft weeper, who clung despairingly, nevertheless, to his breast.
"You must learn to forget me, Dove."
"Never; for I know, Gillian, that you will never, never forget me! And, oh, my own Gillian, if I die before we meet again, I shall come to you in spirit, like the wild Joanna of my song."
"Do not talk so, my love."
After much weeping on the part of Dove, many deep sighs on the part of Gillian, and the utterance of many tender interjections and incoherences,—
"Now," said he, "my darling Dove, I must bury all the old past days and think only of the life that is before me!"
"And where?"
"God alone knows—I do not."
"Gillian—Gillian!"
Tears choked her utterance as he kissed and pressed her hands, for the time had come when they must inexorably part.
"Kiss me once again," she said, in a voice like a broken whisper.
A long, long and clinging kiss was exchanged, and then they were apart—too surely, it seemed, for ever. Old Elspat McBriar led away Dove, who seemed as if turned to stone, while Gillian, stumbling like a blind man, went forth upon his lonely way.
Gillian felt now that he was fairly launched upon the world—committed as it were to the dark tide and turbid waves of Fate.
As he walked moodily and sadly on in the starlight, he gave a farewell glance to all the grand and striking local features that had been so long familiar to him—the mighty mass of the castled-rock towering far and vast in gloom above the city—the dark, ridgy outline of the ancient capital glittering with a thousand lights high above the terraced splendour of the new one; the lion-shaped mountain that for a thousand years and more has looked down darkly, solemnly, and placidly upon the cradle of Scottish history, old Dunedin, "the fort upon the slope"—Gillian, we say, looked sadly round him, as if bidding a mute adieu to all he had ever loved, and then turned his face resolutely to the path before him.