CHAPTER XII.—JEALOUSY

Waikato Times, Volume 2641, Issue 2641, 15 June 1889, Page 1 (Supplement)

CHAPTER XII.—JEALOUSY

Noxt day, as Sir Brisco had to go to town, Lonsdale had promised to take Melanie for a row on the river. A night did not soothe away tho annoyance—it amounted to jealousy now —of Montague Lonsdale : the " trifles light as air" had assumed absurdly colossal proportions ; and, thinking chiefly of how he could contrive to shorten his visit to JRavensbourne Hall, he set out to keep his appoinment with Molanie at their usual place and hour, but with mingled emotions in his heart indeed. How often we exhaust ourselves arming for battles we are never called upon to night! So the worrying thoughts _of Lonsdale coursed through his mind again and again, with provoking iteration ; but either he came too early or Melanie was detained (his watch, he was certain was correct, which it was not), anyway, she was not there, and, in a gust of illusage and ill-temper, mortified and hoart-sore, dreading he scarcely kuew what —all the more so, as but a few daj-s of his leave remained ere he would have to report himself at his depot —to pique and disappoint Melanie, if she should come after all, he took a boat from Sir Brisco's private boat-house, shipped tho sculls, and shot away up the river. Ho had now, he thought, a new and distinct cluo to the reason why his engagement with Melanie had become so eminently distasteful to her uncle. Infirm of purpose, even in his iingov, he paused -with his sculls suspended in the air twenty times as his heart relented towards her and then grew hard again when lie thought of Sir Brisco's bouquet of Gloiro de ])ijon roses and his overnight confidences, and in a really senseless fit of anger he pulled away, and left the vicinity of the Eavensbourne grounds far astern. Could he only have known that, apart from having no control over tho gift of tho bouquet or the revelations of the wine-loosened tongue of the old baronet, the nervous abruptness of tho adieu at the Hall had dwelt painfully in the mind of Melauio, as in his own, that it had cost her tears behind her veil as the carriage bore her home, and that she longed now, with all her soul, to " talk it all ovor" with him ! The scenery of tho river, beautiful everywhere above the ugly locale of London, is varied at that season by many featuros not gonerally seen at others. Between Oxford and the village of Teddington every pretty cottage and mansion is fully tenated, and strawberry feasts and flowers at these and tho quaint, old inns, where signboards still swing about the mossy horsetroughs, ineetthe eyes of those who row up stroain or down ; and every nook seems to swarm with pilgrims of pleasure thrown forth by tho mighty city.

The picturesque old lock-houses, festooned with roses, Virginia creeper, sweetly-scented syringo, and other flowers, are there; the abodes of smart young fellows who long to be able only to sleep in the summer air, and take their morning " tub " in the white, foaming weir below. So, with muscular arms stripped to the elbow, his sunburned neck divested of collar and tie, his broad straw hat girt by a floating white puggree that he had worn many a time round his helmet in Chowringer, and many a march up country Montague Lonsdale, sullenly and nervously pulled up the stream, revenging himself the while, by supposing what Melanie might be thinking when he failed to keep up his tryst (if she kept hers), and finding a species of grim but transient pleasure in the soft breeze that waved the tall grass and the sedgy Hags by the river-side, and rustled overhead the crisp foliage that was so clearly mirrored down in the glassy surfaec below.

Here and there were marry little parties, with children camped out and enjoying all the glory, abandon and independence of a long day a picnic ; but, after a time, in a silent part of tho river, where the voices of the haymakers in the fields, the in the sound of the sharpened scythe, the clank of the sen 11 iron row-low, or the strokes of the hour tolled from the ivied tower of

some old Gorman church, alone broke the stillness: and then for rest and change, he pulled the boat into a deep and shadowy place, where the leaves of the old oaks rustled overhead, and he took a pull at his flask of brandy : and-water, preparatory to going ashore to have a sprawl on the long, scented grass —there to lie, cigar in mouth, and gaze into the blue sky above, and— if possible—let bitter thoughts and all " tho world go slide."

Meanwhile, Melanie had been a little late in arriving at their appointed place, for she had been unavoidably detained in the performance of an act of kindness to Reginald.

Keniembering all that had passed on the preceding night, with a girl's natural desire to please, she had left nothing undone to render herself attractive, in her simple toilette— a white dress that clung about her (but all her dresses had a way of clinging), and sleeves, that fell back from her snowy and taper arms, and, as she gathered a few of the. flowers which she knew Lonsdalo admired, and smiled, as she thought how pleased he would be with even such a trifling gift from her hand, and of the loving words witli which he would meet and greet her.

How well she loved him, and how her heart yearned for him ; and like every other girl under the same pleasant circumstances, she felt certain that Heaven had designed and specially made them for each other.

But when she reached the place of meeting he was not there. It was a beautiful spot, with the river flowing on one side, and the vistas through the coppice of grand old trees on the other. She waited and watched with growing anxiety and surprise, yet he came not.

Could either of them have mistaken the time, the place or the way thereto ! Could she have passed him 1 Impossible ! Loth to return, to leave the loved spot without a meeting and explanation, she waited and watched, her fond heart beating anxiously, for a longer period than she knew, till she looked at her watch, and was astonished to find that more than an hour and a half had fled, and then she was turning slowly, sadly, lingeringly away when she heard sounds—voices —sounds that seemed to turn her to stone.

The blush of health and anticipation left her face; her lips grow white and a kind of moan escaped them. Why ?

She saw Montague Lonsdale in boating costume, with neck and arms bare, his face bent over that of a tall and handsome girl. Could she doubt for a moment who that girl was ? Hilda Treinayne—that notorious flirt and coquette, who had spoken of him by his Christian name, and boasted to her of their intimacy in India—Hilda, with her bright golden-brown hair, her long lashes and sleepy yet alluring hazel eyes, her full red lips, her rounded cheeks, graceful and voluptuous form. He was bending over her, his hands, to all appearances, caressingly among her hair, while the boat in which they were seated drifted swiftly with the downward tide and current, till it was borne out of sight by a bend or reach of the river. This was a crushing revelation to Melanie. , " Does he profess to love me. and yet meet her 1 He has duped me —betrayed me !" muttered Melanie. " Oil can it be, as Aunt Chillington says, that all men —soldiers especially—are alike ?"

All the terrible reputation of Hilda Tremayne for coquetry, rnshed upan her memory. So great was the shook that, for a time, all power of thought, of sensation and volition, seemed to leave her, and she stood as if frozen to stone, and angry convictions rushed upon her, with pain that amounted to agony and mortification.

Her slender hands were clasped in front of her, the fingers interlaced, the white palms turned outwards in that manner which certainly tells of the overtension of the mind within, while her very features became hard and distorted by the weight of her thoughts, as she bent her steps slowly homeward.

There, ere long, her dejection, even her tears and abstraction, were detected, and fiercely derided by Uncle Grimshaw, who shrewdly suspected the cause —that Lonsdale had resented the attentions of the baronet even as host. Confound his military impudence to do so !

When taxed as to all this, Melanie could only weep in silence, which her uncle took for assent.

"Well," said he, with a malevolent and triumphant grin, " when you now see what a horrid temper and jealous spirit this military spark of yours has, and the foul duplicity of which he is capable, perhaps you will come to your senses, be inclined to ponder over my good advice, and think better of the splendid future now opening for you at Ravensbourne Hall— eh V

" Sir Brisco might be my grandfather. I am a girl," said Melanie with a shiver of annoyance.

" And like too many girls, don't know your own mind, or what is for your good. Twenty thousand per annum, ye gods! does not often get a refusal—rather more than your beggarly, Anglo-Indian fellow can offer!" he continued, bitterly and coarsely. <( You have been mad, I think, to your own

interests, and most cruel to your brothers. Anyway, just now, be as suave as you can to Sir Brisco —keep him in good temper." " Till Montague is gone, he means !" thought Melanie, with an emotion of scorn. "If I fail to do so 1" she asked, aloud. "Fail! Then you may find, as he will do, that there are plenty of girls far prettier than you who will gladly give themselves in marriage for £20,000 a year. I ant sure he will make a very indulgent husband —moreover, he mayn't live very long—not more than ten years now, probably. Think of Ravensbourne Hall, a house in Mayfair, a box at the opera, carriages, horses, diamonds, and pin-money to any amount, and compare a'l these with the old story of love in a cottage, or worse still; a wretched bungalow in a scorching Indian cantonment! It need not come to an engagement yet, only don't snub Sir Brisco, I say." '• Still the selfish line of ideas !" thought poor Mulnnie " But I must decline," she began. "If you do. we may then see what we shall see—Dick beginning life as a shop-boy, and Reginald ending it in a hospital !" interrupted Mr Grimshaw, and darting a furious glance at the latter ho turned on his heel and withdrew, leaving the girl a prey to utter misery. Dick misconstrued the cause of her grief; though the latter got him off some of his tasks, German especially, which he detested. " Uncle Grimshaw," said he, resenting her tears, "so you have been at some of your old games 1" " What old games 1" " Nagging Melanie—what a fellow you are !" " You area disrespectful follow !" "Yes," said Dick, stoutly. " Sirrah f " You remind me of the story of a highwayman," said Dick, coolly. " A highwayman?" gasped Uncle Grimshaw, thinking uneasily of the misplaced trust money " Oh, Dick !" exclaimed Melanie, in the greatest alarm at this scene.

" Yes," continued Dick ; " when requested by a poor girl, whom he was robbing, to desist,, because she was alone and helpless. ' That is the reason I do it,' said the thief."

" You young whelp !" thundered Mr Grimshaw. "I have a good mind to turn you out on the highroad !"

"That would be indicative of a bad mind, surely," retorted Dick, as he vaulted out of the window, followed by Bingo. " And this military friend of yours," said Mr Grinishaw, referring, in an irrepressible gust of illhuniour, to Montague Lonsdale. Why is he loafing about England at all, just now ?" " Spending his hardly won year's leave," replied Melanic, indignation mingling with her dejection. "You forgot, or perhaps know not, that ho was at the battles of Hamed Khel and Candahar, and that he won his V.C. under Roberts in the fight with the Ghazis at Gundimoolah." "Indeed !" said Uncle Grimshaw, mockingly; "how well you seem up in his biography." Melanie blushed at her own energy, but her eyes were suffused with angry tears. " A year's leave from India !" snorted Uncle Grinishaw—" a year's leave at the ratepayers' expense. When I was at his age in Birkinlane, a week or a fortnight in the year for a run to Brighton or Eastbourne, was all the leave ever accorded to me!"' When left alone, Melanie looked wistfully at her engagement ring. What a bitter farce it seemed just then, in her time of bitter depressiin, woe, and mortification. Should she take it off? —no —not yet; some affectionate superstition of the heart withheld her from doing so. The new situation seemed incredible. The light seemed to have gone out of her life. See Montague and speedily she must ; but where , ? Surely he would write or come to Rose Cottage without delay, unless —but when she attempted to speculate further, her heart died within her.

CHAPTER XII.—A Long Eoad Full or Pain. A blight that seemed .to have fallen upon tho hitherto calm and almost contented existence of her helpless brother, now added greatly to the misery endured by Melanie, as she knew too well the secret source thereof, and yet felt unwilling to approach, the subject, as it was one she was unable to relieve or remove. Out it was impossible for her not to perceive that now the dark eyes of Reggie wore at times a strange and shadowy expression, as if his thoughts she could not fathom, or dream of things she knew not of and yet saw too plainly for her own peace. The lieart is said to have a sun of its own, that can she:l light and beauty around it; but his seemed sot for ever now.

His old brotherly regard for Amy had become a passion now ; but a passion of which he dared not speak, from a bitter sense of its utter madness and iuutility,

Til Horace Musgrave came he had loved hor secretly, fondly, and fearlessly, It scarcely occurred to him with, much forco that ought Would, come to disunito thorn, to

break the spell, or mar the sweetness of their placid intercourse ; or that a time would be when her songs were no longer to fall on his ear, or the melody of her voice when she read to or chatted with him.

Often when she and Musgrave wore present, lie would start up as if he would leave them and shun their society, but only started to sink back, helpless, on the couch he occupied by day. He wished te avoid her presence, and yet welcomed her when she came, for his whole existence seemed a paradox now. _ Amy came, as was her wont, to sit and talk with him when Melanio was absent or busy, but more seldom now, and at longer intervals, and though his usually grave countenance lighted up when he saw her, his manner frequently lost, its old sweetness and became sad, fraction?, eve :i Tnorose, even when she hung over him as her playfellow of the past, and stroked his dark hair as of old with her soft, pretty, and childlike hand.

Then her breath, would bo on his choek her lips so near his own, and yet he dared not kiss them— now especially. Surely he never sinco Tantalus in his agony of thirst saw tho impossible draught of water so near him, and the cluster of lucious fruit that the wind took beyond his reach was there such a pang as tho helpless fellow felt then.

Thoro was a pitiful ache in his heart, with a sense of desolation now —utter desolation—unsatisfied longing, yearning and regret for the happiness that others had and that fate had denied to him ; and he writhed in his wheel-chair,_amid the sunshine and flowers of the garden, when Amy came to him in the evening, after Melanie's bitter mortification, aud in his gloomy spirit he resented the exuberance of her girlish happiness. " What would you have me say, Reggie ?" asked Amy, who began to have, as we have said, a nervous dread or sense of the emotions she was exciting in the poor fellow's breast ; yet, with all her pity, she was a little piqued by his churlish responses. " Say ? I do not know. Of course you cannot caro for what I may think or feol, why should you !" "How can you speak to niethus!" asked the girl, softly, but reproachfully. "If you have made up your mind "

"To what ?" interrupted Amy, while the other's gaze seemed fixed on distance.

" It would be wrong tmd worse than useless in me to seek to alter your determination, or to make you dissatisfied with what is, perhaps, for your advantage." " Would you not adviso me " said Amy, blushing painfully, as she knew to what he referred so abruptly and mysteriously. " I am neither father nor brother nor relation of any kind," said Reginald, captiously ; "so why should I advise ?" " Not even wish me well, dear Reggie V " You know, Amy I would lay down my miserable life for you !" " Poor Reggie, I think you do care a little what becomes of me." " More perhaps, than you and many more care what becomes of me,"—' such a fine young fellow, too !' as people say pitingly,' , he added, with a bitter, bitter smile. " I know you don't mean half of what you say, when you are in one of your captious moods, my poor naughty boy," replied the girl, sweetly, yet with a break in her voice. " I mean that I can be very little to you, where love for another is concerned," said he, coldly and half aside. Amy changed colour, and feeling that they were on perilous ground, became silent, and began to think she must cease to visit the cottage at all; but then her very absence would excite remark. Young Talbot became silent, too, amid his sad convictions. This man, Horace Musgrave, loved her. Then home to the poor fellow's heart came, more keenly than ever, the knowledge that he was about to lose her through that love, to lose her sweet society, the joy of gazing on her soft face, of listening to her voice; that shy would pass out of his life, that " this' sort of thing " could not go on for ever, and that another was seeking and winning—nay, had sought and won—the place in her heart that he could never hope to hold or attempt —poor wretch that he was—to rival.

His existence was overshadowed ; the sun of his little world was fading out.

" I would not, even if I could, play the dog in the manger," thought he. '• What! am I to play Romeo to her Juliet—fool that I am 1What use am I in life in any way 1 —an encumbrance and bore to all about me, save for Melanie. I cannot even play a waiting game— waiting, for what ? Everyone, it is said, makes or mars his own life ; but how was mine marred 1 By evil destiny !" Then would he dream and ponder, wildly, but prayerfully. Could he but got well—if God in His great goodness only granted him again health and strength—he would go away to sea tigain,even as a foromastman, and look on. home and her no more. But fate: was adverse to him, and the crushing £at of the medical , faculty was tyhat never could he

escape from his helplessness —from the second childhood that had come upou him. " Life is not for ever, that is oue comfort!" he would often mutter.

He remained much at home now on his couch, listlessly reading, or affecting to read, the books that were sent to him from Ravensbourne Hall, and declined to have his wheelchair brought to him, as usual, ou the sunny days. Once Amy observed that a pretty button-hole she had prepared and given him, had a bit of fern substituted for it ; and that he was afterwards so moody and absent that she had to repeat her remarks, when he would start, and say :

"I beg your pardon, —but what did you say to me just now f It used not to be thus with him or her ; but she was not slow to guess the painful reason. "Why did you throw away my poor little flower—the very flower you asked me for—and put a bit of fern in its' place?" she asked. " I did not throw it away," said he, curtly. "What then, Reggie?" " If you must know, it lay next my heart till it withered, then I looked its dead petals away in the place whers my com mission lies, my mother's lock of hair, my Egyptian medals, and the few such treasures I possess.". "To place a mere pretty bouquet in such a repository, was surely foolish, Reggie ?" said she, affecting to ignore all that his words so distinctly implied; but now that she was engaged, the worst he could know was known —the death of all his fond fancies; and death he thought was better than daily dying as he had been, so he straightforwardly questioned her on the subject. « Y es —.Horace has asked me to marry him," said Amy, looking down. « '" And—and you V " Consented, dear Eeggie, of course. I love him so," she replied, with a fond, bright smile, and yet nervously withal. " Don't you congratulate, me !" she asked, after a pause. He was silent and pale —frozen, as it were, for a moment or two. "So it is a settled thing f he asked, calmly, but through his set teeth. " Yes." " And when is the—the happy day ?" he asked again, with the same strangely calm manner, as he produced his tobacco pouch. "Your hands tremble, Reggieallow me to make up your cigarette, as I so often do." " Thanks." He put it between his lips and tried to smoke, forgetting to light it, after she had made it up for him, deftly and prettily, as her slender fingers had often clone playfully in the past. " You asked me something," she said, with growing confusion.

" Yes—when is the happy day to be?" "It is too soon to talk of that; I must have time to think it over— plenty of time—before we fix on anything. Oh ! how strange-—how new it all seems." " Of course," said lie, with a curious smile, " such events don't happen every day." "You must not ask me more just now, I have so much to do—so much to think about;" and then she tripped away, relieved that the ice was broken, that Reggie knew at last—knew the worst now. While he thought: " Oh, why am I spared to live? Why did I not perish at Suakim ? Why spared, as Carlyle has it, to travel A long, long road of pain, my dear, A long road full of pain !" After this lie courted solitude more than ever, and would pass hours in silence, often with a book to cloak it—a book that Melanie detected ho held sometimes upside down ; and her affectionate heart was wrung with sorrow as she watched him. " Unless we can rouse him, Dick," said she to her boy-brother, "he will get further than ever from the chance, if any, of recovery. He seems to become more melancholy and more gloomy every clay !" But in this reference to Reginald Talbot, we are anticipating another portion of our story—the misunderstanding between Melanie and Lonsdale.

(To bo continued.)