Miss Cheyne of Essilmont, Volume 1 (of 3)

OUT WITH THE ROYAL BUCKHOUNDS.

'And your name is Alison,' said the young man, looking tenderly in the girl's eyes of soft grey-blue, that long, dark lashes shaded. 'Yet I hear some of your friends call you Lisette.'

'It is, I believe, the same thing--an old Scoto-French name, long peculiar to our family--the Cheynes of Essilmont--as papa would say if he were here,' she added, with a soft smile. Then after a pause she asked, 'How did you learn, Captain Goring, that it was Alison?'

'By looking in Debrett after I first had the pleasure' (he had well-nigh said the joy) 'of meeting you at the General's garden-party in Aldershot.'

This simple avowal of an interest in her (but it might only be curiosity) caused the girl to colour a little and nervously re-adjust her reins, though her horse, pretty well blown after a long run, was now going at an easy walk, pace by pace, with the larger and stronger bay hunter of her companion, and she glanced shyly at him as he rode by her side, for Bevil Goring, in his perfect hunting costume--his coat, buckskins, and boots, his splendid strength and engaging debonair expression of face, his soldierly set up, born of infantry service in India--was all that might please a woman's eye, however critical; and he in his turn felt that every pulse in his frame would long beat to the slight incidents of that day's glorious scamper together on horseback.

Gathered into a tight coil under her smart riding hat and dark blue veil, Alison Cheyne's hair was of that bright and rare tint when the brown seems to blend with or melt into amber, and these into a warmer tint still in the sunshine, and with which there is generally a pure and dazzling complexion.

'It was so kind of you, Captain Goring,' said Miss Cheyne, after a pause, 'to invite down papa to dine at your mess at Aldershot.'

'Not at all. Dalton, Jerry Wilmot, and all the other fellows were most glad to see the old gentleman. I only fear that he thought us rather a noisy lot.'

'It delighted him--we live but a dull life at Chilcote.'

'And you have had two brothers in the service, Mrs. Trelawney told me?' resumed Goring, by no means anxious to let the conversation drop, or his companion begin to think of friends who might be looking for her.

'Yes--two, much older than I, however--poor Ranald and golden-haired Ellon.'

'What a curious name!'

'It is a place in Aberdeenshire where much of papa's property once lay. Ranald died of fever, and was buried in the lonely jungle near the Jumna.'

'Illness there does its work quickly--four and twenty hours will see the beginning and the end, and the green turf covering all. I have seen much of it in my time, Miss Cheyne--often buried the dead with my own hands, by Jove!'

'How sad to die as my poor brother did--so far away,' said the girl, her soft voice breaking a little. 'We have a saying in Scotland, "May you die among your kindred."'

'In the service one's comrades become one's kindred--we are all brother soldiers.'

'Ellon was thrown from his horse near Lahore, and impaled on his own sword, and so--and so--poor papa has now only me! I don't think he has ever got fairly over Ellon's death, as it left the baronetcy without an heir. But let me not think of these things.'

'I remember the unfortunate event of Ellon Cheyne's death,' exclaimed Goring, the colour gathering in his bronzed cheek. 'It occurred just close by the Cabul road, the day after we marched in from Umritsur; and, strange to say, I commanded the firing party at the poor fellow's funeral, on a day when the sky was like molten brass, and the wind swept past us hot and stifling like the blast from an open furnace.'

'You?' said Miss Cheyne, her eyes dilating as she spoke.

'Yes; my voice gave the orders for the three funeral volleys.'

'How strange--and now I meet you here!'

'The world is a small place now-a-days.'

Her eyes were full of a tender interest now, that made the heart of her companion thrill; nor did hers do so the less that this event caused a bond of sympathy--a subject in common between them.

A sad expression stole over the features of Alison Cheyne, and so regular were these, that with the fine outline of her profile they might have been deemed insipid, but for the variable expression of her very lovely eyes and sensitive mouth; and now, when flushed with the exercise of fast riding, the excitement of following the hounds amid such a stirring concourse, and over such an open country, they seemed absolutely beautiful.

Attracted by each other's society, she and the Captain were now somewhat apart from all the field, and the brilliant hunt was waxing to its close.

The day was a bright and clear one early in October, the regular opening day of the regular season with the Royal Buckhounds. The country wore the aspect of the month; swine were rooting in the desolate cornfield, eliciting the malediction of many a huntsman as he tore over the black and rotting stubble; geese were coming draggled and dirty out of the muddy ponds and brooks; the hedges looked naked and cold, and the blackened bean sheaves that had never ripened were rotting in the ground. An earthy odour came from the water-flags, and every hoof-print was speedily filled with the black ooze of the saturated soil the moment it was made; but the sky was clear, if not quite cloudless, and the sunshine bright as one could wish.

The time-honoured meet had duly taken place at the old village of Salthill, the scene of that tomfoolery called the Eton Montem, till its suppression in 1848; and we need scarcely inform the reader that a certain sum is devoted annually to maintain the stables, kennels, and establishment of the Royal Buckhounds, and that with each change of Ministry the post of their master is an object of keen competition among sport-loving nobles; but the opening meet is said to be seldom a favourite one with lovers of hard riding.

There is always a vast 'field,' and every one who 'by hook or crook' can procure a mount is there. Salthill thus becomes an animated and pleasant spectacle to the mere spectator, while it is a source of unmixed excitement to all who go to hunt--perhaps some five hundred horsemen or so, all anxious to be first in the chase, and jostling, spurring, and struggling to be so.

All know what a scene Paddington Station presents a short time previous to the meet, when the Metropolitan corps of huntsmen begin to muster in strong force, and well-known faces are seen on every hand--staunch followers of 'the Queen's'--going down by special train, the present holder of the horn being the observed of all; and the train, with a long line of dark horse-boxes starting with sixty or seventy noble horses for Slough, whence, after an eighteen miles' run, the long cavalcade of horsemen and people on foot pours on to Salthill, huntsmen and whips bright in brilliant new costumes of scarlet laced with gold, their horses with skins like satin, and the hounds the perfection of their breed.

There may be seen young guardsmen from Windsor, cavalry men from Aldershot, which is about twenty miles distant, in spotless black and white, side by side with old fellows in tarnished pink with the old jockey-cap, horse-dealers in corduroys and perhaps blucher boots; city men, and apparently all manner of men, and here and there a lady such as only may be seen in the Row, perfect in her mount, equipment, and costume.

On the adjacent road a lady's pretty little victoria may be jammed between a crowded four in hand and a still more crowded costermonger's cart; and so the confusion goes on till some well-known deer is quietly taken away to the front; and punctually to time the master gives the order to advance, when the huntsmen and hounds scurry into an open field, where the yeomen prickers in their Lincoln green costumes have uncarted the quarry.

Anon the line is formed, and away over the open country stream the hounds like a living tide, with red tongues out, and steam, issuing from their quivering nostrils, and all follow at headlong speed.

Here it was that Alison Cheyne, Bevil Goring, and others of their party lost some of their companions in the first wild rush across a hedge with a wet ditch on the other side. Jerry Wilmot's saddle-girth gave way, and he fell in a helpless but unhurt heap on the furrows; Lord Cadbury--a peer of whom more anon--failed utterly to clear the hedge; and Tony Dalton, of Goring's regiment, though a keen sportsman, came to grief somehow in the ditch, and thus ere long Alison Cheyne had as her sole squire the companion we have described, and together, after charging with many more a gate beyond the hedge, they had a splendid run over an open country.

Together they kept, Goring doing much in the way of guiding his fair friend, who though somewhat timid, and not much practised as an equestrienne, had now given her whole soul to the hunt, and became almost fearless for the time.

In a pretty dense clump 'the field' went powdering along the path through the village of Farnham, after which the deer headed off for Burnham Beeches, the beautiful scenery of which has been so often portrayed by artists and extolled by tourists; and then, like bright 'bits of colour' that would delight the former, the scarlet coats could be seen glancing between the gnarled stems of the giant trees, as the horsemen went pouring down the woody steeps.

'Take care here, for heaven's sake, Hiss Cheyne, and keep your horse well in hand, with its head up,' cried Bevil Goring. 'The tree stumps concealed here among the long grass are most treacherous traps.'

'I fear more the boughs of the trees, they are so apt to tear one's hair,' replied the flushed girl, breathlessly, as she flew, her dark blue skirt and veil streaming behind her; and now and then a cry of terror escaped her, as a horse and its rider went floundering into some marshy pool, though generally with no worse result than a mud bath.

At length the beeches are left behind, while the deer shoots on past Wilton Park, anon over Chalfont Brook, till she reaches the stable in a farmyard, and there is captured and made safe, and so ends the day, after which there is nothing left for the breathless and blown, who have followed her thus far, but to ride slowly back some fifteen miles to Slough.

Less occupied by interest in the hunt than with each other, Bevil Goring and Miss Cheyne had gradually dropped out of it, and at the time of the conversation with which this chapter opens were riding slowly along a narrow green lane that led--they had not yet begun to consider in what precise direction.