CHAPTER XVI.

TIDINGS OF THE LOST ONE.

And now to glance briefly homeward.

During all this time, and while these stirring operations had been progressing, no tidings had been heard of Gillian Lamond. To Dove it seemed as though he had passed away as completely as if he had never existed. As to Mr. Gainswood, he had perhaps ceased to think about him at all.

He had not put the ill-gotten £30,000 odd to any account as yet; neither had he made any important progress in his matrimonial project, though every week put the improvident young heir of Kilsythe more and more in his power, till the latter almost writhed under the conviction of degrading and hopeless entanglement.

"She is still moping after that young beggar!" said his lordship one day, as he played with the lash of his hunting-whip.

"Yes, my lord," replied Mr. Gainswood, adopting the whine with which he usually quoted scripture, and half-closing his grey ferret-like eyes. "'Many waters,' as Solomon saith, 'cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it; if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.'"

"By Jove, if you turn on the religious tap, I'm off like a bird;" and away he went, muttering, "how the deuce will all this end? Devilish hard, don't you know," he continued, addressing some imaginary person, "to chuck one's self away--not on the _crême-de-la-crême_ of Mayfair, as I might do, but the scum-de-la-scum of this provincial lot!" So thus, in the insolence of his spirit, could he speak or think even of Dove.

And now he went off by train to ride with "the Pytchley hounds." One can always get leave in the hunting season; and with him went Stafford Martingale, who was a wonder even among the welter-weights of the Prince's Hussars: so Dove saw no more of her tormentor for a time.

Before his departure she had one good laugh at him. On the occasion of a dinner party, when various divines had been especially invited to meet "Lord Campsie," and rejoice in the light of his noble countenance, till when talking of disestablishment and other matters clerical, of which he knew about as much as the Khan of Khiva, he said:

"The Church of England is, of course, a high branch of the Civil Service, but that of Scotland--is--is--aw----"

"What, my lord?" asked one, hanging with delight on the coming opinion of a titled man on any subject.

"Vulgaw--demmed vulgaw!"

By degrees, through little Mr. McCodicil, who had borne correspondent in the Ross-shire Buffs, it came to be known that a recruit from Edinburgh, named Gillian Lamond, had joined with the last draft from Scotland at Bushire, and some other items of information proved his identity with the lost one.

Old Elspat McBriar, to whom he gave the intelligence, lost no time in communicating it to Mr. Gainswood and to Dove, on both of whom it acted very differently. To the latter it brought a startling and crushing sense of new sorrow; to the former, secret, fierce, and glowing exultation, and the hope that some Persian bullet might find the billet he wished it, but if not, it mattered little.

"So the lad has become a soldier!" said Mrs. McBriar, with a kindling of the eye.

"The camp is the natural home of the ne'er-do-weel and the ungodly," sighed Mr. Gainswood, fixing his eyes on the lofty ceiling of his luxurious dining-room; "many perils must encompass him there--yea, many and enough; yet I forgive him his ingratitude to me, and hope he may pray with the psalmist, 'O spare me, that I may recover strength before I go hence, and be no more.'"

So that night the servants were assembled betimes in the library, and "family worship," as it was called, was held earlier than usual, Mr. Gideon Gainswood leading the van in powerful prayer.

In spite of herself and her desire to see Dove Lady Campsie, at the risk oven of all the girl's future happiness, old Elspat McBriar's heart warmed within her at the idea of Gillian being a soldier, even one so humble in rank. She loved the "redcoat," not the less for the sake of her "dear old man," who had worn it as quarter-master of the Greys, but more than all when it was associated with the kilt, the bonnet, and claymore, and all the past and present associations of Highland chivalry; but from all her communings on these subjects, Dove could gather no comfort. One grim fact stood ever before her.

By this time, amid the strife that surrounded him, his kind and gallant spirit might have fled forever, and the suspense she felt was becoming beyond endurance now; while it was too dreadful to think that when she had been talking, idling with her friends, promenading in the gardens or the gay and sunny streets, the struggle for the life of him she loved had been going on, and the worst that could happen might all be over now.

A soldier! Gillian, so tender and loving, so noble and true--true as herself, who had no thoughts unconnected with him--fighting in the ranks. What could it all mean? what had driven him in desperation to this resource, and what was the mystery involved in it? she would ask of herself, little conceiving that the sphynx that could have told her of all was daily at her elbow.

Had she and Gillian been able to compare notes, they might have found that on the same night when he dreamt of her and her song, so weary and worn, he lay on the bare earth with his knapsack for a pillow, in that desolate bivouac on the plain of Shiraz, she had been alone, abandoned to reverie and full of thoughts of him; but how different were her surroundings in that splendid mansion at the west end of Edinburgh.

She was in what a writer calls "that charming apartment known as 'my own room,' which comprises the mysterious repose of a sleeping chamber, with the solid comforts and light of a sitting-room." Within an arched recess was her pretty little bed, with its laced pillows, on which many a tear had fallen unseen; light muslins separated it from the room in summer, but now, when snow capped the scalps of the Pentlands, rich folds of heavy damask were festooned to the pilasters on each side. The fire burned ruddily in the grate of polished steel, and the lights were blazing brightly in the slender gaselier of Venetian bronze overhead.

Beside her were book-cases full of her favourite authors, on whose leaves were many a pencilling made by the hand that was far away, at that time she knew not where. And there were her beautiful desk, her jewel case, her Maltese spaniel--a gift from Campsie, with its silver collar--in a mother-of-pearl basket, her riding-whips with silver and jewelled heads, her favourite albums and sketch books, with a hundred other pretty trifles, such as young girls love to have in their own peculiar sanctum; and here she loved to retire, for Dove was one of those to whom a library with its books, a fire with its embers, like the sea with its waves, always furnished companionship.

As she looked on these, and could have seen where Gillian was lying at that moment, the sight might have broken poor Dove's gentle heart.

But now she knew the worst, or nearly the worst; he was in Persia.

"Persia!" she would mutter, with a tone of almost incredulity, as she looked at the map of the world. Oh, could it be that about five thousand miles, as the crow flies, of land and sea lay now between her and him whose kiss was on her lip, but yesterday as it were; yet in the confusion of thought it seemed long, long ago.

"And where is Gillian now?" she asked of herself, as she interlaced the fingers of her delicate hands, clasped them above her hair of golden auburn, and turned her passionate and beautiful face upward to heaven. "Oh, Gillian--Gillian!"

Had Dove Gainswood possessed the magic mirror of "Aunt Margaret" or of Cornelius Agrippa, as the clouds on its surface dispersed, she might have seen the single and lonely figure of a Highland sentinel in his dark great-coat and drooping plume, wet and dank with the shower that had passed away, standing with "arms ordered," silent, thoughtful, pale, and hungry--for food was scarce in camp, and the haversacks were empty--on the old rampart of Bushire; high overhead the crescent moon, "sweet Regent of the Sky," tipping with light the cannon in the adjacent embrasures, the white marble dome of a mosque, and the summits of the dark waves that rose and fell in the mighty Gulf of Persia, the leaves of the date palms, and other objects that rose here and there amid the mass of murky shadow, as Gillian, with the rest of his comrades, awaited the red flash and hoarse boom of the morning gun--the morning that saw the soldiers of Outram on their way to the bombardment of Mohammerah!

But it was remarked by all the household--though none of them knew the cause--that from the day when little McCodicil's tidings came, Dove's health visibly and painfully declined.