Novelist

Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 2647, 29 June 1889, Page 1 (Supplement)

Novelist

[all kights rksff.ved.] Love's Labour Won: AN EVENTFUL STORY.

BY JAMES GRANT. Author of "Tlio Romance, nf War," "The lilack Watch," " .Fairer than a I'aiiy," &c., &c.

CIIA PIER XVI. —Reconciled,

In justice to Montague Lonsdale, we must state that his temporary irritation gave place to anxiety, and next forenoon ho hastened by the private path through the woods, to call at the cottage ; but on finding from Dick who were visiting there in succession, he retired, to avoid any unpleasant complications.

The knowledge gained did not add to his good humour. The baronet at the cottage already, he thought—already, after his revelations and suggestions the other night —and his own avowed enemy, Mrs. Chillington, too. Tt looked like a preconccrtcd affair, and Lonsdale's heart, for a time, grew hard again.

For the first time in his life, perhaps, his favourite briar-root failed to soothe or comfort his dejected spirits, and with a gesture of worry he knocked out its contents on the the stern of a tree, and turned from his loved " Birds' Eye for there are times when even good tobacco will fail to soothe the smoker's tribulation, and with Montague Lonsdale this was one of them. But under all the circumstances, he deemed it better to see Melanie than write to her, and hence it was that to growing mistrust and grief, no letter came, and with much of humiliation in her heart, on the second day she sought their usual meetingplace. Then, witli fresh annoyance that she had come first, and with a violent inclination to steal away, hide herself and watch his approach, she sat, angrily slipping her engagement ring up and down, but never off, her slender finger, whilst over her soft, sweet face there was an expression never seen there before; hot, crushed tears suffused her eyes, and a little diamond brooch that Lonsdale had given her in London, sparkled in her bosom with every long-drawn sigh. " Love," thought the girl, bitterly; " I have read of one who boasted of doing very well without it for nineteen years, but I certainly do not see why I, like that person, should not do without it for ninety, if it comes to that, for it seems to me a gigantic heart-ache for nothing—a great deal of trouble, and very small profit." ""•She heard stops, and in another moment Lonsdale was by her side, looking provokitigly handsome ; his deep hazel eyes full of soft light and clad in a tweed suit of the lightest grey ; that well became his dark complexion. He put an arm around lior, but she turned half asido, and averted her quivering face, while her full white eyelids drooped and lowered, till the shade of their long dark fringes rested on her cheek ; but her broad hat concealed much of all this, and all Lonsdale's heart went out to her.

"Molanio ?" said he questioning, but she avorted her face yet more, and remained obstinately silent, while seeming' to writhe under his touch.

" Melanie," said ho again, " I go to morrow—are we to part in ~~ anger Have you not one word for me to remember, till we meet again on earth, or in heaven ? What does this mean ?" d "Silence, sir, I know all," she J ' replied. g " All what, my dearest girl ?" " Don't call me so," said she, with y pretty asperity, beating the turf with a shapely little foot. I> » Why V' " Because I won't be called girl," she continued, with petulant lips and still averted face ; " and now I know too much." " Of what ?" 1 "Your meeting with Hilda Trei mayne when you should have met J me. Did not I see you caressing her hair, and hear her say how you > might float on the river there for I hundreds of years in happiness, provided you two were together ? Oh,' i it was dreadful to hear her say that, added Melanie with a break in her voice. " Will you listen to me ?" said Lonsdale in dire perplexity now, yet with a curious smile on his face. •' No, I will not. What can you tell mo more than I heard—of what more than I saw 1 No, I will not listen." " Yet you come here, my darling )) "To say all is over between us. I could have forgiven anything but this—anything," she said, weeping in abject misery now, and turning her engagement ring round and round on her finger nervously. " Dearest Melanie," began Lonsdale, who now understood the scope of the scrape in which he had fallen. " Nothing in this world is worth caring for or grieving about," said she, with a heavy sob, belying her own assertion. " Why f" " Because nothing lasts long." " It may last our time, and that, by Jove, is quite enough for us," 1 " Nothing can sever two hearts, however loving, like mistrust." " What am I to say to you, 1 Melanie ?" asked Lonsdale, conning ' over mentally the terms of his necessary explanation. ' " Nothing but good-bye, I think." 1 "Is that all T' said he reproachfully, while bending over her. * "It contains the sorrow of a life- 1 time to me," replied the broken ' voice. "My darling, do not say so; your tears wring uiy heart. You will think more gently of the mistake into which I was befooled—for 1 a mistake it was—tomorrow, when I am gone." " There is no to-morrow for you and me; and this is a just punish- ( ment on me for idolising you so 1 much, Montague." In spite of all this, he drew her to him, caressingly, and, after a 1 little time, succeeded in explaining i the whole affair—his own annoyance and suspicions, the doubly-missed 1 meeting, how he fell in with Miss 1 Tremayne; and he eventually succeeded in pacifying Melanie— 1 but, for a time, she was very resentful. She would not permit him to c adjust her bouquet of wild flowers, c gathered as she came along, take a t thorn out of her finger, or relieve % her beautiful back hair of some € bramble leaves that had got among a it, At last she looked up at him, and smiling coyly through her tears c said : " And so it was all a horrid mis- 1 take, and you really care for met and love me 1" t "As I never did before, or ever c can love any girl again !" I He pressed her closer to him, and kissed her brow, her hair, her c eyes and cheeks, again and again. * At that moment there was a sound close by, a sound as of dry j twigs cracking, and then the odour of a cigar was wafted through tho dense and leafy green shrubbery and underwood that grew round the stems of the trees that overhung their meeting-place beside the river, " Who the deuce ?" muttered . Lonsdale, angrily; but the sound £ ceased, and both thought it must be fancy. But fancy it was not; x someone had been there—an eaves- j dropper—for, soon after, Lonsdale's a quick eye detected a half-smoked { cigar, as if tossed away in haste, still smouldering among the long £ grass, and he thought that he t recognised the aroma and the brand thereof. f

The circumstance, however, was soon dismissed from their minds, full as the latter were of a subject nearer and dearer.

"And you go so soon now," said Melanie, nestling her face in his neck.

" Ah! my own Melanie," he replied ; "it is at a time like this that I repent of being a soldier, and wish that I had been trained to some quiet, and even humdrum, business."

" Like Uncle Grimshaw—anything, if honest, that would keep me at home and not separate me from you ; and yet I dearly love my regiment and its past history. I love my brother officers and comrades ; apd dearly every way do I love my profession, with all its high and glorious concomitants ; yet it parts me from you, my darling."

He looked just then so sad, yet earnest, so handsome, proud and soldierly, that the girl's heart glowed alike with love and admiration. He loved, she knew, to grapple with difficulties, to face perils, to play with death, as it were —his Indian service had fully

proved that; and thus, to her, he was worth ten thousand of the useless fops, the lisping fools; " the white-handed glittering youth" she had met in that artificial and vapid circle called " society."

b When Lonsdale, after a time, spoke a little resentfully of the baronet's too evident admiration of i her, poor Melanie blushed painfully f in her consciousness that more than admiration was in the mind of the former ; but she hesitated to tell her ' lover of how matters really stood, i and of the offers he had made " her; loth to send him away to the distant land he had to serve in, with the least cause for alarm or anxiety • in his heart. Yet the seeret was ; very nearly elicited from her—she ' was so candid and open—when he said : "During the whole of tbafc visit —the little dinner affair—you were quite monopolised by Braybrooke, Musgrave's uncle," he added, a little viciously, "and how could I, in my pique, think aught else than that you were willing it should be so." "Oh, Monti, this is ungenerous, unkind," said Melanie, her eyes suffusing again. "If it should be so," said Lonsdale, seeming to follow his own thoughts, while his gaze was bent on the grass. " What ?" " That I may actually stand between you and all the wealth—the position, too, that old Sir Brisco can give you," he continued, still hovering on dangerous ground. " Do not say such things, Montague," urged Melanie, piteously, and trembling at her own reticence. " I must " •' Would you resign me !" she asked, with soft reproach. " No—no, a thousand times no. But when I consider the whole situation, my going so far away for probably a year, and leaving you in the care of a man so cold and repellent as your uncle, and a woman so ambitious as your aunt—so scheming too, my heart sinks within me." So did that of Melanie, whose thoughts and fears, in some measure, echoed his own. " Sir Brisco is disposed to be kind to us," said Melanie, a little evasively. " Sooth to say, I am tired of the game we have had to play here under his eyes, Melanie—but my part is nearly over now." " Yes ; I always feel that when he is present you must not seem so fond of me as you are." " For dread of him V asked Lonsdale. "No—of Uncle Grimshaw." " Fond of you, darling—how can I help it whoever may be present 1" exclaimed Montague, giving his moustache an angry twist upward. " I hope you remembered all that when you had your hands among Hilda's shining hair?" said Melanie, with a pretty little moue." " Don't refer to that again ; could I leave the wasp there to sting her 1" " The action stung my heart, I know." " Surely," said he, as he toyed caresssin«ly with the rings of her curling fringe, " you should know the difference between a flirtation pour passer la temps, even if we had engaged in it—which we did nofr— and real love-making ?" " Which Hilda would prefer, I doubt not." " Neither do I," said Lonsdale, laughing. " I don't lcnow how many men she has had the reputation of being engaged to—Yerinder, of the King's Dragoon Guards; Massey, of the Bengal Lancers; Tom Tytler, of the Rifles —she certainly wears two engagement rings, anyhow, and is as wellknown in the service as the clock at the Horse Guards. Besides, the last rumour is that she is engaged, or as good as such, to a fellow called Musgrave." " Any relation of Amy's friend, the Hussar ?" "I think not; but perhaps he may be," More was to be heard, and unpleasantly so, of this rumour, anon. "My time is so short now that ■we must not quarrel again, my own pet, Melanie," said Lonsdale, after a silent pause that had its own eloquence. The girl could not answer; a great lump rose in her slender throat. Their next meeting was to' be a final, a last one ; and the hearts of both felt exceedingly heavy.

CHAPTER XVII.—" GOOD-bye, Sweetheart." Uncle Grimshaw was just then disposed to be severe upon H.M. Service. " What that empty-headed Hussar fellow can see in your friend Amy Brendon, to look upon her in the light of a wife, surpasses my comprehension," said he to Melanie. "She is very charming and pretty, uncle," urged the latter. " Pretty, perhaps ; penniless, certainly." i " But he has enough, and to spare; and also has expectations." " I never knew a fellow without them," snorted Mr Grimshaw, thinking no doubt of Lonsdale. "If he wanted a plaything he could buy a doll j or a picture, i£ he merely wanted a pretty face to look at. And what can she see in him V' added the old bachelor with a growL

" The one idea of lier heart, no' doubt; and people marry, uncle, to please themselves —not to plaase others." g

" Romantic stuff!" he responded with an'angry glance, that conveyed more than his words.

S© Amy had now a splendid halfhoop of diamonds on the tiniest third finger such a grown girl could shew, and she was always regarding it, smilingly and lovingly.

" How soon may I put the plain one on ?" whispered Musgrave, as lie bent over her.

" Oh, Horace, I hope your people will like me." '' Can you doubt it 1 The mater is the kindest woman in the world; and as for the governor, he is a dear old fellow, and you are quite a girl after his own heart." So everything seemed couleur (h rose, just then, at Stokencross Vicarage. " Before you met Captain Lonsdale," said Amy, as she shewed her ring to her friend, " did you ever draw in your mind a fanciful picture of what you would wish your lover—your husband to be?" " Yes—often ; most girls do, I suppose; and with you, no doubt, Horace Musgrave ' " Oh, far surpasses all that fancy painted of my ideal," interrupted Amy, in her happiness and enthusiasm, with a bright and loving smile in her pure baby-like eyes. " How handsome he must look on horseback in all his Hussar bravery," was her next girlish thought, But Horace was on the wing now. His leave was up as inexorably as that of Lonsdale, and he had to rejoin his regimont in Dublin, and after paying his adieus at the Vicarage he had a last parting with Amy at the rose-embowered and sequestered garden-gate, in the most orthodox manner, while the halfhours chimed enviously from the old church tower, till the bells sang sweetly for evensong, as if warning them to make haste, as time fled.

" Oh, Horace, how can you ? You know you should not kiss me here, where people may see you," exclaimed Amy, half-ashamed of his caress, and yet entirely happy withal; "do let me go."

" JSTot yet, if I know it. Why should I, little one, when this is my last evening with you for ever so long ?'

But the clock struck again in the ancient tower, and when tho time came that ho must inevitably go, or miss his train, though she

knew that she would probably get a letter from him on the morrow, reiterating all that ho was saying and had said a hundred times before, little impulsive Amy shed a torrent of tears,

"Why, Amy," expostulated Musgrave, "to see you one might suppose that I was going to Egypt again, or, like poor Lonsdale, had service before me on the Rangoon River." "It is so hard to part from those we love," said she; " but we cannot expect life to be full of roses always." " But still, you are happy, darling, even amid your tears?" said Horace, looking tenderly down into the mignonne face he held caressingly between his hands. " Happy and glad, too, that we love each other and are engaged. How strange, how empty, life must have been before I knew you." At last they parted, but Amy was fated to shed many a bitter tear and endure a long, long sorrow ere she saw the dark and handsome face of Horace Musgrave again. And in fond anticipation of a letter on the morrow, Amy fell asleep that night in the delusive hope that she would dream of her Hussar lover, his tender dark eyes, his soft earnest voice, and the halfgallant, half-playful, and wholly loving things he was wont to say to her; while he strove to kill the early hours anyhow, apparently engrossed in the Graphic, the World or Punch, etc., cigar in mouth, as he lounged in the cabin of the Dublin steamer while she ploughed the restless Irish Sea and lights of Castletown were fading out ahead. With Amy Brendon, a new existence had begun—a romance, a life of self-devotion to another ; the turning point of her girlhood had been passed with the acceptance of Horace Musgrave's love, and even the consciousness of Reginald Talbot's hopeless and helpless passion for her could not quench, though it certainly somewhat marred, the new born joy. Ere he left Bavensbourne, had Musgrave been less occupied with her and his own affairs, he must have perceived that which he did not, how anxious Sir Brisco was to supply him with an aunt, in the person of Amy's friend and gossip, Melanie Talbot.

Letters that duly came (for a time), announced that the Hussar had rejoined his regiment, kad bec-n at some vice-regal balls, varied by quelling Irish street " shindies," and so forth j but Reggie never heard of him from Amy, and certainly made no enquiries, though aware no doubt, they corresponded daily. He now saw more of her again; she came about Melanie almost daily as of old, and though the charm of her sister-like intercourse with the poor invalid was broken or clouded and never could be what it was before, it had nearly all its old perils for him.

" How cross you look," she said to liim one day. " Well—one can't be very facetious when left alone, and I have often been left of late," he replied. "By Melanie!" <l Yes—and you too, Amy."

She coloured, and as if to change the subject, somewhat unwisely showed him some fat\ed rose-leaves that had come to her in a letter, she said, but did not add from Dublin. Young Talbot suspected as much, and, crumpling them up contemptuously between liis hot, thin fingers, permitted them to float away on the wind. This drew rather a petulant remark from Amy, the first she had ever made to him, and it stung him deeply; all the more so that she did not come near the cottage for some days. At last she thought to make amends to him, for his fault was small aid excusable. Thus she began softly: " I am so sorry for what I said to you, Eoggie." "When !" he asked, with averted eyes. " About the rose leaves; it was so childish—you remember?" "Yes. I never forget what you say to me," he replied, with a tremor in his voico. " Oh ! pray forget that, at all events." "If I can, and you are actually sorry?" he asked, with a soft smile. " I was in a temper, you know ; and you pardon me ?" " Oh, yes —yes." " Dear old Reggie?" she exclaimed, patting his hand. His heart trembled with secret, but delusive, happiness again. " You are looking so pretty just now," he observed., " Don't flatter mo, Reggie." " I don't, It is a bad plan to flatter a girl, I know; but another will be trying tho same thing with you again " "And when?" " When he comes back ; so I may as well havo my innings, as wo say at cricket —or as I used to say when I did play cricket," he added, as his smile faded away. " Back !—when will Horaco come back ?" thought Am}', for several days had now passed without a letter from him. But hero we have anticipated another portion of our story.

(To be continued.)