CHAPTER X.

"IT MAY BE FOR YEARS, AND IT MAY BE FOR EVER."

"Sit down, Gillian, and compose yourself--I would speak with you," said Mr. Gainswood gravely, and seeking to veil under his usually bland exterior his real dislike and intense irritation--dislike of Gillian--simply because he himself had basely wronged this young man, and irritation, that he was the innocent cause of thwarting this matrimonial design upon Lord Campsie. After a pause, he said, "I told you some days ago, when we first had tidings of that sore dispensation of Divine Providence--your good father's death--that it would materially alter your views and relations with Dove. You remember?"

"Yes," replied Gillian, faintly, and fearing that which was to come next.

"Since then, I have been wrestling, as it were, in prayer with Fate, for strength to tell you more, and painful intelligence."

"Of what nature?" asked Gillian, huskily.

"That you are totally without any means of subsistence, other than what my purse may afford you," said Mr. Gainswood, putting the points of his fingers together, and gazing upward at the ceiling, as if full of sad and pious thoughts.

"How comes this to pass?" asked Gillian, thoroughly startled by such dire intelligence; "my father----"

"Remitted yearly to me a moderate allowance for your maintenance--moderate I say, lest you should be guilty of the sin of extravagance; that allowance dies with him, and you are, in fact, veritably, with pain and sorrow I say it--a beggar!"

The hot blood rushed to Gillian's temples, and for a moment the room seemed to whirl round him. After a pause, he said, in a broken voice:

"But was not my father amassing money?"

"Money!" said Gainswood, sternly, "who could have told you so?"

"For years past I have thought--somehow it was inferred--that he had hopes of repurchasing Avon-na-gillian----"

"A bubble--a vain Highland bubble--folly; he never realised a shilling; all he possessed was his commission, and the pay it procured him. Your allowance, therefore, ceases now; and even if it did not, you could not expect that upon it alone, I could further countenance your views with regard to my daughter. The foolish engagement which, at one time, I was weak enough to countenance, must end here now, and for ever! Moreover, you must leave my house, Gillian, as you must be aware there is an awkwardness in your presence here now; I will hand you the balance of your allowance, for which you will give my cashier a receipt in full of all demands against me; and by to-morrow at latest I shall expect you to go forth and seek your bread elsewhere--out of this city, I hope. God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, Gillian, and if you are earnest, pious, and prayerful, as you could not fail to be, brought up as you have been in my house and under my guidance, you cannot fail to succeed; but be assured of this, that more I cannot, and will not, do for you."

This intelligence was triply crushing, for in a moment the lad found himself deprived of the actual means of subsistence, of a splendid home, and more than all, of the affectionate girl he so tenderly loved. His agitation was great. He turned deadly pale; his lips became dry, his throat parched; but Mr. Gainswood looked at him gravely and utterly unmoved.

Notwithstanding the usual cant with which he closed a sentence that sounded even as a sentence of death to his nephew, the latter detected something false and hollow in his tone; vague suspicions of being deluded flashed, he knew not how or why, upon his mind, but he could give them neither form nor utterance. Moreover, that the speaker was the father of Dove, repressed much that he might have said. That he was about to lose, or had lost her, alone stood prominently and out amid the ruin and chaos that seemed so suddenly to have enveloped him.

"Uncle Gainswood, I am young--Dove is young--we can wait--I shall work, oh, yes, and work so hard; surely, after all your promises, you will not be so cruel as to separate us now?" he asked, almost in tears.

"It would be greater cruelty not to do so, or to foster your preposterous hopes," replied Gainswood, quietly.

"Preposterous?"

"Of course; you have not a sixpence in the world beyond the balance owing you (some few pounds, I think). Would you marry my daughter on that!"

"No, uncle--no," replied Gillian, now thoroughly crushed; "but surely, after the training I have had with you, I might obtain some legal employment----"

"Better not--a lawyer's life is one of sore temptation--all honour be to those who resist the tempter. (He had not, whatever he meant.) The All-seeing-Eye will, I doubt not, watch over you; but leave my roof you must, and Dove must learn to forget the folly in which she has been indulging."

"If--if--Lord Campsie has influenced you in coming to this decision," began Gillian, a sudden gust of jealous rage and suspicion coming to his aid.

"Lord Campsie has not influenced me," replied Mr. Gainswood, assuming a lofty and injured air; "but if his lordship had, what then?"

"By my father's soul, I would break every bone in his lordship's body!" was the furious rejoinder.

"Is this a proper spirit in which to receive the dispensations of a chastening Providence--dispensations, doubtless, meant for your good? Leave my house, I tell you, but tell you sorrowfully; moderate your angry passions, lest you fall into the hands of an angry and avenging God!"

"Oh, Uncle Gainswood, how can you be so cruel, so unjust, and so cuttingly cold to me?" urged Gillian, in a voice that would have touched the heart of any other man but his hearer.

"Enough--that will do; to-morrow at latest--it is a grave necessity--you leave this roof."

"For where?"

"That is your affair; by train I hope, for any place you like. If not, any way Dove Gainswood shall be put utterly beyond the reach of even receiving a letter from you; further communing between you beseems not now."

"So be it," said Gillian, grief mastering and suppressing the passion and indignation that fired his spirit. "My father has dealt hardly and unjustly with me, in keeping me without a profession--even a trade--in feeding false hopes that were never to be realised, and leaving me thus upon a world like a stranded wreck, at the very outset of life--a beggar, as you harshly, but truly, phrase it."

"Your father has gone to his account, Gillian; so judge not lest ye be judged. We part now and for ever--but let us part friends. Go--the record is closed!"

He sighed, and looked heavenward; but only saw the ceiling.

Then, leaving Gillian as if turned to stone, Mr. Gainswood put on his hat and went forth, in the earnest hope that he might never see his face again. His brows were knit, and there was a fierce glitter in his grey eye--the glitter of suppressed rage, hate, and mortification---rage at Dove, hatred of Gillian, as being the main cause of her contumacy, and keen mortification at the too probable destruction of his ambitious hope; and yet he chuckled with fierce satisfaction that he had amply avenged himself, and acted so quietly throughout the recent interview.

Would Campsie come to the point again? If not!-- At this fear and doubt, he ground his teeth, and with all his assumed blandness and Christian meekness, he felt a gust of wrath that nearly choked him. But he contented himself with bullying some of his drudges, dismissing a footman--thus only compelling himself ere the week was out to advertise for another, who was a "Christian and teetotaller,"--and giving orders relative to some unhappy people whose rents were in arrear--orders which he knew would inflict incalculable hardship upon them; and thus, relieved in mind, attired in accurate black, with a spotless necktie, he went blandly, in his capacity of Elder, to some religious meeting where his speeches and prayers proved as usual very edifying to those who were not as hypocritical as himself, but yet thanked God that they were not as other men.

Without having a word of explanation or farewell, or seeing Dove--Mr. Gainswood had taken some sure means to preclude all chance of that---Gillian walked forth with a few shillings in his pocket and a change of raiment in a hand-bag, without aim, object, or intention, as yet--forth, as it were, into the world.

He felt as one in a dream might do, or as if all this must be happening to some other person, and not to him, the Gillian Lamond of yesterday.

The city with its sounds and associations maddened him, so he sought the solitude of the country. It was a calm summer evening now, and a scene of rare beauty lay before him, the vast and fertile plain, that stretches westward for miles upon miles nearly to the spires and smoke of Glasgow. Amid clouds of gold and amber the sun was setting; the fields of corn were yellowing on the upland slopes, and the birds were circling in the air, full of life and with no fear of the morrow; and in the distance, with their glens and ravines sunk in shadow and their peaks bathed in rosy light, rose the wavy line of the beautiful Pentland Hills which close the view to the south.

Despairing and broken-hearted though he was, Gillian resolved that he would see Dove once more, and then turn his back upon Edinburgh; but for where? The grim fact stood ever before him. Cast suddenly and roughly on the world at his age, without prospects, or profession, or even a trade, what was there left for him to do. He could not work, and to beg he was ashamed, and he almost shivered as he thought of the Scriptural quotation, as such phraseology was so frequently on the lips of Gideon Gainswood.

Pitiless as a famished wolf, the latter had no commiseration for the lad who had grown up to manhood at his hearth, under his roof and eye, who loved his daughter with his whole heart, and whom in secret he had so foully and terribly wronged, going forth into the cold, hard, and bitter world--into the very darkness thereof, as it were, to push his fortune, to seek his food rather, where, when, or how he best could, and too probably to perish in the attempt.

He saw, or heard of him no more. One circumstance surprised him: that Gillian never asked for the balance of his allowance, and he could not imagine him adopting any line of action without it. Without money he could neither leave the city nor live in it. Penniless and desperate, ardent and full of fiery spirit, would he have committed suicide? Black-hearted though he was, Gideon Gainswood felt somewhat appalled by the idea, and shrunk from it; though there came a time when he might have cared less, had such a calamity actually taken place.

The name of Gillian was seldom or never uttered by Gainswood or by Dove now. Of her sorrow, the former could not fail to be cognisant; but it only fretted and annoyed him, and he watched her pale cheeks and tear-inflamed eyes with a grim smile, as he felt convinced "this sort of thing" would not last long; he could not understand a love that was "never to die," and so forth, and felt assured that now the cause of all this was removed, that Time would effect a cure in the usual way. "A determination to true lovemaking, in this civilised world of ours," says a writer, "is a disease which is always subjected to the management of the pruning knife of papas and mammas, just as much as a determination of blood to the head belongs to the family physician."

On the fifth night after Gillian's disappearance, Dove was found by Mr. Gainswood, abandoned to her grief and weeping passionately.

"Dove, Dove," said he, in a tone of grave reprehension, "you know not what you do in giving way thus, or the true nature of the lad you are so foolish as to mourn for. You have made a fortunate escape, girl. He takes after his father, who hath now gone to judgment. He is one of those who know not the pain they give unto those who, like me, pray and have prayed that they may see the Light, and who mourn heavily over their indifference to the awful realities of judgment and eternity."

Dove shuddered at this farrago and turned away; yet but an hour before Gillian's kiss had been upon her lips, and it came to pass thus.

Old Elspat McBriar had some human sympathies (if her kinsman Gainswood had none), especially for lovers. Gillian she had loved for his sake, and perhaps all the more for the sake of his father, who had been a soldier, even as Quarter-master McBriar, her "own comely Duncan," had been; and when Gillian wrote to her, from the quiet hotel at which he had temporarily taken a room, she--at the risk of losing all Mr. Gainswood's favour, and even the shelter of his roof--arranged a farewell meeting between the cousins, after dusk in the spacious garden, of the square.

Gillian was there betimes. It was to both a familiar spot, long endeared to them by many sweet and tender memories, and the flowering rhododendrons, the azaleas, the feathery disdara, and the trees whose branches swept the smooth green turf, seemed all as old friends on whom he was looking for the last time.

The idea that he had lost the chance of having Avon-na-gillian, fortune and position never occurred to him now; he thought only of his brave father's romantic and honest aspirations ended by murky death and a distant grave; and that he had lost Dove.

There was a sound--the rustle of a dress--a heavy, heavy sob, one of those that seem drawn from the heart, and the girl was clasped to his breast in a long, and, at first, silent embrace--an embrace all the more wild and passionate, that this interview could last but a few minutes, as Mr. Gainswood was on the _qui vive_.

"I am in despair, Dove!" said Gillian, as his tears mingled with hers.

"Do not despair, my darling, my darling--it is a sin to do so," urged the soft weeper, who clung despairingly, nevertheless, to his breast.

"You must learn to forget me, Dove."

"Never; for I know, Gillian, that you will never, never forget me! And, oh, my own Gillian, if I die before we meet again, I shall come to you in spirit, like the wild Joanna of my song."

"Do not talk so, my love."

After much weeping on the part of Dove, many deep sighs on the part of Gillian, and the utterance of many tender interjections and incoherences,--

"Now," said he, "my darling Dove, I must bury all the old past days and think only of the life that is before me!"

"And where?"

"God alone knows--I do not."

"Gillian--Gillian!"

Tears choked her utterance as he kissed and pressed her hands, for the time had come when they must inexorably part.

"Kiss me once again," she said, in a voice like a broken whisper.

A long, long and clinging kiss was exchanged, and then they were apart--too surely, it seemed, for ever. Old Elspat McBriar led away Dove, who seemed as if turned to stone, while Gillian, stumbling like a blind man, went forth upon his lonely way.

Gillian felt now that he was fairly launched upon the world--committed as it were to the dark tide and turbid waves of Fate.

As he walked moodily and sadly on in the starlight, he gave a farewell glance to all the grand and striking local features that had been so long familiar to him--the mighty mass of the castled-rock towering far and vast in gloom above the city--the dark, ridgy outline of the ancient capital glittering with a thousand lights high above the terraced splendour of the new one; the lion-shaped mountain that for a thousand years and more has looked down darkly, solemnly, and placidly upon the cradle of Scottish history, old Dunedin, "the fort upon the slope"--Gillian, we say, looked sadly round him, as if bidding a mute adieu to all he had ever loved, and then turned his face resolutely to the path before him.