pacing the shrubbery walk at dallory hall, a grey woollen shawl wrapped closely round her flowing black silk dress, her pale, sweet, sad face turned up to the lowering sky, was ellen adair. the weather, cold and dull, gave signs of approaching winter. the last leaves left on the trees fell fluttering to the earth; the wind, sighing through the bare branches, bore a melancholy sound. all things seemed to speak of death and decay.
this ungenial weather had brought complication with it. just as sir nash bohun was about to quit dallory hall, taking arthur with him, the wind caught him in an unguarded moment, and laid him up with inflammation of the chest. sir nash took to his bed. one of the results was, that arthur bohun must remain at the hall, and knew not how long he might be a fixture there. sir nash would not part with him. he had come to regard him quite as his son.
ellen adair thought fate was cruel to her, taking one thing with another. and so it was; very cruel. whilst they were together, she could not begin to forget him: and, to see him so continually with mary dallory, brought her the keenest pain. she was but human: jealousy swayed her just as it sways other people.
another thing was beginning to trouble her--she did not hear from mr. adair. it was very strange. not a letter had come from him since that containing the permission to marry arthur bohun;--as mrs. cumberland had interpreted it--received at eastsea. ellen could not understand the silence at all. her father had always written so regularly.
"he ought not to remain here," she murmured passionately as she walked, alluding to arthur bohun. "i cannot help myself; i have nowhere else to go: but he ought to leave, in spite of sir nash."
a greyer tinge seemed to creep over the sky. the shrubbery seemed to grow darker. it was only the first advent of twilight, falling early that melancholy evening.
"will there ever be any brightness in my life again?" she continued, clasping her hands in pain. "is this misery to last for ever? did any one, i wonder, ever go through such a trial and live? scarcely. i am afraid i am not very strong to bear things. but oh--who could bear it?"
she sat down on one of the benches, and bent her aching brow on her hands. what with the surrounding gloom, and her dark dress, some one who had turned into the walk, came sauntering on without observing her. it was arthur bohun. he started when she raised her head: his face was every whit as pale and sad as hers; but he could not help seeing how ill and woebegone she looked.
"i fear you are not well," he stopped to say.
"oh--thank you--not very," was the confused answer.
"this is a trying time. heaven knows i would save you from it, if i could. i would have died to spare you. i would die still, if by that means things for you could be made right. but it may not be. time alone must be the healer."
he had said this in a somewhat hard tone, as if he were angry with some one or other; perhaps with fate; and went on his way with a quicker step, leaving never a touch of the hand, never a loving word, never a tender look behind him; just as it had been that day in dallory churchyard. poor girl! her heart felt as though it were breaking there and then.
when the echo of his footsteps had died away, she drew her shawl closer round her slender throat and passed out of the shrubbery. hovering in a side walk, unseen and unsuspected, was madam. not often did madam allow herself to be off the watch. she had seen the exit of captain bohun; she now saw ellen's; and madam's evil spirit rose up within her, and she advanced with a dark frown.
"have you been walking with captain bohun, miss adair?"
"no, madam."
"i--thought--i heard him talking to you."
"he came through the shrubbery when i was sitting there, and spoke to me in passing."
"ah," said madam. "it is well to be careful. captain bohun is to marry miss dallory: the less any other young woman has to say to him, the better."
to this speech--remarkable as coming from one who professed to be a gentlewoman--ellen made no reply, saving a bow as she passed onwards, with erect head and self-possessed step, leaving madam to her devices.
she seemed to be tormented on every side. there was no comfort, no solace anywhere. ellen could have envied bessy rane in her grave.
and the farce that had to be kept up before the world. that very evening, as fate had it, captain bohun took miss adair in to dinner and sat next her, through some well-intentioned blundering of richard's. it had pleased madam to invite seven or eight people; it did not please mr. north to come in to dinner as he had been expected to do. richard had to be host, and to take in a stout lady in green velvet, who was to have fallen to his father. there was a moment's confusion; madam had gone on; richard mixed up the wrong people together, and finally said aloud, "arthur, will you take in miss adair?" and so they sat, side by side, and no one observed that they did not converse together, or that anything was wrong. it is curious how long two people may have lived estranged from each other in a household, and the rest suspect it not. have you over noticed this?--or tried it? it is remarkable, but very true.
after dinner came the drawing-room; and the evening was a more social one than had been known of late. music, cards, conversation. young mr. ticknell, a relative of the old bankers' at whitborough, was there; he had one of the sweetest voices ever given to man, and delighted them with his unaffected singing. one song, that he chose after a few jesting words with ellen, in allusion to her name, two of them at least had not bargained for. "ellen adair." neither had heard it since that evening at eastsea; so long past now, in the events that had followed, that it seemed to be removed from them by ages.
they had to listen. they could not do otherwise. ellen sat at the corner of the sofa in her black net dress with its one white flower, that mr. north had given her, in the middle of the corsage, and nothing, as usual, in her smooth brown hair; he was leaning against the wall, not far from her, his arms folded. and the verses went on to the last one.
"but now thou art cold to me,
ellen adair:
but now thou art cold to me,
ellen my dear.
yet her i loved so well,
still in my heart shall dwell,
oh! i shall ne'er forget
ellen adair."
she could not help it. had it been to save her life, she could not have helped lifting her face and glancing at him as the refrain died away. his eyes were fixed on her, a wistful, yearning expression in their depths; an expression so sad that in itself it was all that can be conceived of pain. ellen bent her face again; her agitation at that moment seeming greater than she knew how to suppress. lifting her hand to shade her eyes, the plain gold ring, still worn on it, was conspicuously visible.
"you look as though you had all the cares of the nation on your shoulders, arthur."
he started at the address, which came from miss dallory. she had gone close up to him. rallying his senses, he smiled and answered carelessly. the next minute ellen saw them walking across the room together, her hand within his arm.
the next morning, jelly made her appearance at the hall, with two letters. they were from australia, and from mr. adair. one was addressed to mrs. cumberland, the other to ellen. dr. rane had desired jelly to take both of them to miss adair, whom he now considered the most proper person to open mrs. cumberland's. ellen carried it to mr. north, asking if she ought to open it. certainly, mr. north answered, confirming dr. rane's view of the matter.
ellen carried the letters to a remote and solitary spot in the garden, one that she was fond of frequenting, and in which she had never yet been intruded upon. she opened her own first: and there read what astonished her.
it appeared that after despatching his last letter to mrs. cumberland: the one already alluded to, that she had read with so much satisfaction to arthur bohun at eastsea: mr. adair had been called from his station on business, and had remained absent some two or three months. upon his return he found other letters awaiting him from mrs. cumberland, and learnt, to his astonishment, that the gentleman proposing for ellen was arthur bohun, son of the major bohun with whom mr. adair had once been intimate. (the reader has not forgotten how mrs. cumberland confused matters in her mind, or that in her first letter she omitted to mention any name.) in a few peremptory lines written to ellen--these that she was now reading--mr. adair retracted his former consent. he absolutely forbade her to marry, or ever think of marrying, arthur bohun: a union between them would be nothing less than a calamity for both, he wrote, and also for himself. he added that in consequence of an unexpected death he had become the head of his family, and was making preparations to return to europe.
wondering, agitated, ellen dropped the letter, and opened mrs. cumberland's. an enclosure fell from it: a draft for a sum of money, which, as it appeared, mrs. cumberland was in the habit of receiving every half-year for her charge of ellen. mr. adair wrote in still more explicit terms on the subject of the proposed marriage to mrs. cumberland--almost in angry terms. she, of all people, he said, ought to know that a marriage between his daughter and the late major bohun's son would be unsuitable, improper, and most distasteful to himself. he did not understand how mrs. cumberland could have laid such a proposal before him, or have permitted herself to entertain it for a moment: unless indeed she had never been made acquainted with certain facts of the past, connected with himself and major bohun and major bohun's wife, which cumberland had known well. he concluded by saying, as he had said to ellen, that he hoped shortly to be in england. both letters had evidently been written in haste and in agitation: all minor matters being accounted as nothing, compared with the distinct and stern embargo laid upon the marriage.
"so it has happened for the best," murmured ellen to her breaking heart, as she folded the letters and put them away.
she took the draft to mr. north's parlour. he put on his spectacles, and mastered its meaning by the help of some questions to ellen.
"a hundred and fifty pounds!" exclaimed he. "but surely, my dear, mrs. cumberland did not receive three hundred a-year with you! it's a large sum--for so small a service.
"she had two hundred, i think," said ellen. "i did not know the exact sum until to-day: mrs. cumberland never talked to me about these matters. papa allows me for my own purse fifty pounds every half-year. mrs. cumberland always gave me that."
"ah," said mr. north. "that's a good deal, too."
"will you take the draft, sir; and let me have the fifty pounds at your convenience?"
mr. north looked up as one who does not understand.
"the money is not for me, child."
"but i am staying here," she said, deprecatingly.
he shook his head as he put back the paper.
"give it to richard, my dear. he will know what to do about it, and what's right to be done. and so your father is coming home! we shall be sorry to lose you, ellen. i am getting to love you, child. it seems as if you had come in the place of my poor lost bessy."
but ellen was not sorry. the arrival of mr. adair would at least remove her from her present position, where every hour, as it passed, could only bring fresh pain to her.
