The Master of Aberfeldie, Volume 3 (of 3)

SUSPICION.

Many a wife, mother, and maid watched the progress of our troops from point to point in Egypt, from the bombardment of Alexandria, with the subsequent landing, up to the last telegram which announced that the army had begun its auspicious night march from Kassassin towards Tel-el-Kebir, but none could do so with more anxiety than had Olive Raymond and Eveline.

To them and to how many loving hearts at home were the next telegrams fraught with terror and anxiety!

Olive was free to rush to the newspapers as soon as they arrived. But not so Eveline, for so suspicious of her secret interest in one who was far away had Sir Paget become, that he absolutely kept them out of her sight as much as possible; and she had a terror in her heart that Evan Cameron might be killed in action, and, for a time, all unknown to her.

Great was her craving for intelligence. She could not, like a man, go to clubs or newspaper offices, when the latest telegrams--often false ones--were posted up; and often nightly she went to bed with the agonising yet unasked question on her lips, 'Oh, what has happened to-day in Egypt?--what is happening now?' and she had to scan the morning papers, if at all, surreptitiously, eagerly, and feverishly, for what she did not want to see.

How would she have suffered the old Peninsula war time, when news and battle lists appeared in the weekly and bi-weekly journals more than a month, yea, sometimes two months, after victories were won (we had no defeats in those long-service days), and after the grass was green above the graves of our gallant dead--the men that knew how to die, but never turn their heel before a foe--when our regiments fought for the historic glory of their number, as steadily as for king and country!

Sir Paget knew the source of his young wife's anxiety, and watched her grimly.

'How dull my life is with him, kind though he tries to be,' thought the girl; 'we have not a thought, feeling, or inspiration in common. When with Evan, it seemed all inspiration, and thoughts came and went so fast. He always brought bright ones to me.'

He was her first and only love--the love that leads a girl to see only ideal perfection in the object so beloved. Their passion had been like the diva in of a mid-summer night, and now they were to meet never more--never more!

She recalled the words of the song he was wont to sing to air of 'Rousseau's Dream'--

'See the moon o'er cloudless Jura Shining in the loch below; See the distant mountain towering Like a pyramid of snow.

'Scenes of grandeur, scenes of childhood, Scenes so dear to love and me! When we roam by bower or wild wood, All is lovelier when with thee!

And, as she touched the piano, his voice seemed to come to her ear again.

'Eveline!' she would murmur, dreamily, 'he called me Eveline--his own--yes, I can hear his voice plainly now--plainly I heard it at Dundargue, and on that last evening at Maviswood.'

Then her eye would fall on her wedding-ring, and a kind of shiver passed over her.

She strove to read, but that was almost impossible; her mind wandered from the story, or sometimes certain passages struck her painfully. In a novel ('Out of Court') one ran thus:--'she married him; she ceased to love him, and she died, which, on the whole, was a better fortune than generally befalls the women who make this irretrievable stumble on the threshold of life.'

'Oh! would I but die too; but I am too young, and too strong!' she thought bitterly. 'Our hearts choose for us, in spite of us, and I chose Evan.'

Bound though she was to a husband beyond her years, uncongenial, and, in some points, unappreciative, she could respect him, but she could never love him; that was impossible. Her love was far away, where the shadows of the Pyramids fell on the sands of Ghizeh, and the pipes of the Black Watch sent up their wild war-notes in the desert of Goshen.

She had still the companionship of Olive, who, with her aunt, Lady Aberfeldie, was lingering at Southsea.

'Take care, Eveline,' said the former, warningly, 'lest this useless and hopeless regret for Cameron becomes too apparent to Sir Paget.'

'I cannot help it, however wrong and sinful it may be,' she replied. 'I do my best. I let myself love him from the first moment I met him, and knew that he loved me--loved me well--before the secret escaped him. Many have admired me, but,' she added, simply and sweetly, 'no one ever spoke to me before as Evan spoke, and I gave him all the love of my heart; but to cherish it is, I grant you, hopeless now.'

'Hopeless as mine; for now Allan, I fear, loathes me, if he thinks of me at all,' said Olive.

'I am very tired, Olive,' observed the other girl, 'of trying to compel duty to triumph over sorrow.'

In her soft hazel eyes there was the expression of one who was always looking far away at some horizon unseen by others. Sir Paget was not so dull or so slow as not to perceive all this, and to draw his own deductions therefrom. A change had decidedly come over him since he detected her emotion on the day the Black Watch marched, and he had become captious, fractious, jealous, and inclined to be sneering, while watchful of every expression in her face.

In the library one day she was looking at a terrestrial globe on a tall and handsome stand. She saw that, as the crow flies, the distance was two thousand five hundred miles at least to where the Black Watch were face to face with the swarthy followers of Arabi; and, stooping, she pressed her lips to Egypt in general.

'_He_ is there--I here! On the globe, how short the distance seems!'

'What are you about, Lady Puddicombe?' said a voice, sharply, behind her--the voice of Sir Paget, who was jerking his bald head forward most alarmingly. 'Kissing a globe!--what tomfoolery--what strange fancy is this?'

'I was only examining it,' she faltered.

'Only examining it!' he snarled; 'very, closely apparently, and in what quarter did your geographical studies lie? Why, your lips were absolutely upon it.'

'A giddiness came over me,' replied Eveline, ashamed alike of her sudden emotion and enforced duplicity.

He eyed her viciously, and his eyes glittered dangerously.

'At luncheon this afternoon you were more dull and distraite even than I have seen you before,' said he, peering at her through his gold pince-nez. 'Now, pray, what was the meaning of that? What ails you--what oppresses you?'

'It is very wrong. I cannot help it,' urged the girl, desperately.

'Like all the rest of the world, you were thinking of--I suppose, Egypt?'

'I was, Sir Paget.'

'D--n Egypt, and everyone there!' exclaimed the baronet, coarsely and savagely. 'What is Egypt to you, madam, in particular?'

'My brother----'

'Your brother--bosh, madam, bosh! Don't think to hoodwink me. A young married lady should always make herself agreeable, especially to her husband; it is one of the first principles of good-breeding and of wifely quality.'

Eveline coloured with pain and keen annoyance at what these remarks implied; but Sir Paget in his anger was not disposed to content himself with them alone.

'Kissing a globe, indeed! To my mind it is evident that you think less of your brother than of your brother's friend--that fellow Cameron,' he exclaimed, giving full swing to his jealousy. 'He comes, I believe, of a decent stock enough; but that should not have encouraged him to act like the other adventurer Holcroft with your cousin, and dare to raise his eyes to you.'