"O father, I"m so delighted!"
"Yes, boy, and there is one thing I look forward to--ay, and pray for--and that is for you and me, Jack, to be in the same field of battle, and drubbing the French as only British sailors and soldiers can."
"Father, you"ve made me happy.--Why, Tom, this all but reconciles me to the loss of the love--"
Jack stopped, looking a little confused.
"Love--love? Why, Jack, my lad, what is this? Love of whom, boy?"
"Oh, only a pet spaniel, father. No, not dead. Lost though; enticed away--with a bone, I suppose."
"Just the way with spaniels, Jack. Glad it"s no worse. But "pon honour, Jack, though you"re not old enough to know it, womankind are precious little better. I _know_ "em well, Jack; I know "em. A bone will entice them too, particularly a bone with a bit of meat on it."
Jack Mackenzie was not a young man who cared for much nursing. Had Gerty been his nurse it would doubtless have been all so different. However, it was very pleasant for Jack to while away the next month or two down at Grantley Hall, and to be treated like an interesting invalid and made a hero of by old maids and young ones too. The curate of the parish had not a chance now.
Then the country was so lovely all around the Hall. Though lacking the grandeur and romance of our Scottish Highlands, the land of the broads, with its wealth of wild flowers, its dreamy, quiet lakes, its waving reeds, its moors, and its birds, throws a glamour over one in spring-time that no true lover of nature can resist.
Jack"s arm was well in a month, and he was waiting for service. He did not mind waiting even a little longer, and most a.s.suredly Tom Fairlie did not, nor M"Hearty either, who was also a guest at the Hall. Richards also had come down to spend a week or two. He and M"Hearty became inseparables.
A great old tub of a boat belonged to Mackenzie, and this lay on an adjoining broad or lake. Tom and Jack fitted it out as a kind of gondola, and many a pleasant hour did the young folks spend together on the water, sometimes not returning till stars were reflected from the dark bosom of the lake or the moonbeams seemed to change it into molten gold.
A pleasant time indeed--a time that flew all too quickly for poor Tom Fairlie.
One evening, when hanging up his hat in the hall, Jack"s father took him by the hand and led him silently into the library.
"Father, father," cried Jack, "what has happened?"
"A bolt from the blue, my boy; a bolt from the blue."
CHAPTER VII.
"WENT GLIDING AWAY LIKE A BEAUTIFUL GHOST."
"They bid me forget her--oh, how can it be?
In kindness or scorn she"s ever wi" me; I feel her fell frown in the lift"s frosty blue, An" I weel ken her smile in the lily"s saft hue.
I try to forget her, but canna forget, I"ve liket her lang, an" I aye like her yet."
THOM, _the Inverury Poet_.
Richards, the kindly old solicitor, with Jack and his sister Flora and the general--these formed the group in the solemn, dark-panelled library of Grantley Hall on that beautiful summer"s evening. The light of the westering sun stole in through the high stained windows, and cast patches of light and colour on the furniture and on the floor. Mackenzie had already told his son all the story of his troubles, and while he had yet been talking, the curtains in the doorway were drawn back, and Flora appeared, leaning on the arm of her good friend Richards.
The general had lifted up a deprecating hand.
"No need, no need." This from the family lawyer. "Flora already knows all. And bravely has she borne the tidings. Ah, my good sir, Flora is a true Mackenzie."
"But you might have told me long ago," was all she had said as she seated herself on a low stool by her father"s knee. "O father, I could have borne it, and could have comforted you, now that poor mother has gone!"
There was silence for a time, broken by Flora"s low sobbing; broken, too, by the sweet, mellow fluting of a blackbird in the garden shrubbery.
General Mackenzie was the first to speak.
"Children," he said, "I have been for many a day like one living in a dream, call it if you will a fool"s paradise. But I have awakened at last to the stern realities of life. It is better, perhaps, as it is, for we now know the very worst. You will believe me when I say that if I have hidden the truth from you, it was because I feared to vex you, or render you unhappy, while yet there was hope. But now," he added, "all is over, all is lost, or seems to be."
"Nay, nay, my good old friend," cried Richards; "you must not really take so gloomy a view as that of the matter."
"This grand old house," continued the general as if he had heard him not, "this estate, with all its beauty of domains, that was presented to my ancestors by Charles the First himself, with its lands and its lakes, its gardens and its trees, and which was prized by my father almost as much as our ancient home in the Highlands of Scotland, has been wasted, has been frittered away, through my intrinsic folly."
"Sir, sir," said Richards, "you are too hard on yourself now."
"Nay, my good friend, nay; that I cannot be. You have ever been faithful to our family; but I repeat it before you, and before my only son and daughter here: the estates are lost through my own folly, and through the imbecility, the madness, Richards, of my pride. Now in a month"s time, if I do not pay off the mortgage, Keane, your partner, will foreclose."
It was at this moment that Jack sprang up from his seat as though a serpent had stung him. He took a few rapid strides up and down the floor, then, his calmness in some degree restored, he confronted the general.
"Did you say Keane would foreclose, father--Keane?"
"I said Keane, boy--Griffin, Keane, and Co. The old man Keane is my only creditor. But why should the knowledge of this affect you so?"
"Because, father--and oh, forgive me, for I ought to have told you before--because the heartless old man has been playing for your estates; he has won, and he has in a manner ruined you. But his daughter Gerty has been playing a crueller game than even his: she has won my heart, and having won it, having torn it from me, she has trampled it bleeding under foot. I can never love again."
"My boy, my poor boy, is this indeed so? How great is your sorrow and suffering compared with mine! Bah! let the estate go. I could feel happy now without it could I but believe that you would forget the heartless minx who has dared to gain your love then spurn it. You _will_ forget her?"
"Never, father, never; that is impossible. Sword in hand on the battle-deck I shall seek surcease of sorrow, but forget little Gerty Keane, never, never, never!"
The young man covered his face with his hands, and his form heaved with suppressed emotion, and even the kindly-hearted Richards could but look on in silence. Not a word of consolation could he adduce that had the power to a.s.suage grief so deep as this.
No one spoke for many minutes--sorrow is oftentimes too deep for words--but higher and higher in the calm, still gloaming rose the blackbird"s notes of love, sounding half hysterical in the very fulness of their happiness and joy.
General Mackenzie rose slowly from his chair, and approaching his son placed a kindly hand on his shoulder.
"Dear Jack," he said slowly, "we each have something left us, a name that has never yet been tarnished; our clansmen have ever been found in the battle"s van, or
"In death laid low, Their backs to the field, their feet to the foe."
We have that name, Jack boy; we have that fame. We have our unsullied swords. Jack lad, we _shall_ forget."
"Father, we shall try."
And hand met hand as eye met eye. The two had signed a compact, and well they knew what that compact was.
Jack Mackenzie sat alone in his bedroom that night long after his father and every guest had retired. The cas.e.m.e.nt window was wide open, so that the sweet breath of the June roses could steal in, and with it the weird tremolo of a nightingale singing its love-lay in an adjoining copse. The moonlight was everywhere, bathing the flower-beds, spiritualizing the trees, lying on the gra.s.s like snow, and casting deep shadows from the quaint figures of many a statue, and a deeper shadow still from the mossy dial-stone.
So intent was Jack in his admiration of the solemn beauty of the scene, that he saw not his chamber door slowly opening, nor noted the figure robed from head to feet in white that entered and glided towards him.