RAWDON'S RAID.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 13, Issue 1029, 9 March 1869, Page 4

RAWDON'S RAID.

{Prom "London Societj " for January.) „. CHAPTER I, The ancient ostler of " The Jocelyn Arms" ; Jedthe way across the hard-frozen stableyard to the loose-box in the corner; the two men from the Court followed. r " Fyle have gone out, Major," old Spavih grunted to the elder of the pair ; " but he said 'twere likely you'd be down to see the mare ; and so be left the key with me." '•"■ All right !" the Major nodded between two little blue clouds of cavendish. . " Yes ; I've brought down Mr. Jocelyn to look at her. Let Pyle know I'm here when he comes back, will you ?" he added . : when the old man had unlocked the creaking door. : Mr. Spavin took the hint, and his departure. The Major and his friend, Dick Jocelyn, passed into the well-warmed and littered loose-box. "There she is, Dick !" the mare's owner ; . remarked when the biting breath of that bitter winter's day had been shut out once 1 more ; {i there she is ! Worth coming here to look at, ain't she ?" Dick Jocelyn, usually a man of few words, wagged his handsome head affirma- : tiveiy. The mare was rubbing hers with a low whining of delight against the Major's . shoulder. "Ah ! Lucia, rriia bella" Rawdon Dav ringham apostrophised his pet, patting her glossy neck; "you'll show them the way tornigh^, yron't you ?" Lucia dropped her ears, and whinnied again for answer. The Hussar looked meaningly in his companion's face as he whistled a bar of "Young Lochinvar." Pick Jocelyn seemed, to understand, and responded with an eloquent grin. Then, from sheer habit, the two fell to . discussing, the mare's points for the next five minutes, offering sacrifice, as it were, to the genius loci. For both were thinking . about a very different matter all the time. At' last they made an end of that; and werjpstanding, the one leaning against the *"*~~manger, the other against the wall, meeting each other's eyes, very much like a pair of augurs; : "Well!" Dick Jocelyn said, breaking the silence with rather an injured air at its being left to his taciturn self to break it ; "you'll have to do it, you know ?" "I think so," Daringham responded ; . " shortest way, and best way, too. She couldn't stand another week of this hutofs persecution. And I don't see how else I'm to put a stop to it, unless I have a row with him j which would be a bore, and might do , nq good after all." . '•'.... " Make it all the worse !" Dick affirmed. "Jeff wouldn't fight you, you know ; and he'd simply take it out. of for, the cad !" Daringham's dark face grew darker, and his teeth closed ominously hard on the thick grey amber between them. "I know that," he said ; "I know that, Dick. That's what has made me quiet with the fellow so long. But that was before I knew she hated him, and — you understand ?' ? Jocelyn nodded. The other went on. „" Nowit's different. I've a right now to interfere, if he annoys her ; and I mean to, once for all. Only, as you say, the man won't fight- and I shall put it out of his power to revenge himself on her. There's only one way to do it, and that's this." .; .<' Of course," Daringham continued, "I'm . sorry to cause any annoyance to Lady Hope ; =■ to have to upset her plans, and deprive her of her chosen heaufils ; but, under the circumstances, I don't see what else we're to do, your cousin and I. Lady Hope, you . know, does me the honour to hate me very cordially. Natural enough she should when Mr. Marsden is her standard of perfection. I should have, as far as she is concerned, no chance whatever of winning in . the, usual way. Now, I happen to have set my heart on winning this time, Marsden or no Marsden ; and I simply mean to adopt my lady's motto; 'Every one for himself,' and act accordingly." Rawdon pointed his words by a few more bars of "Young Lochinvar," while he knocked the tobacco-ash from the brown meerschaum bowl. , "Fancy I see the 'puir fulish bridegroom's' expressive countenance when he discovers you've bolted !" the grinning Dick felt constrained to say. "It was a simply heavenly idea of mine, this !" He chuckled fondly over the ' heavenly " idea," and the vision he had conjured up, for a minute or two. Then, relapsing into his ; won ted impassibility of demeanour, he inquired'— "■'■• "To-night, eh?" : "That depends," the other answered, "on Fyle's: reponi. I've sent him over to the Ashbridge Station to know if they will ; try, and get the Paris mail through to-night. The line's blocked heavily between Ashbridge and Dover ; but as they've been at work for the last two days, and there has been no wind to-day to make a fresh drift, there iVjust the chance they will manage it. If they dp, we're all right : if they don't . parlie. remise, that's all !" "You're a jolly cool hand, Don !" Dick muttered, admiringly. " Said anything to Tier yet ?" " Not advisable, till I've seen Pyle. No Use in troubling her before her time, poor child I But Tve^ had a little conversation With Mademoiselle Fanchon, who quite understands what she's got to do, and will be . only too delighted to do it. The notion of a trip to Paris won her at once. n "Good girl that," observed Dick; " hates old Jeff like poison, too." "Mp^t women generally do manage to hate, Mr, Marsden, somehow," Rawdon responded. "Like most men. Well, Fanchon is all right, and will see about the baggage. She'll join us at Ashbridge under FyleV escort, if the business is to be done to-night." "!And the way we arranged holds good ?" „ y Barring accidents, or anything unforseett in Fyle's . report presently — yes. " There's some one riding into the yard now. He's ooijie back I dare say." . The, Major pushed open the door and ioo&ed.out. "I thought so, Dick," he said. " Here he is.'* ;A/ man in a groom ? s undress, with /" soldier" stamped upon him unmistakably, was, swinging himself off his horse, and bawling .for Mir. Spavin. , ;: j: '♦Here, FyleF Itawdon called, as the ancient ostler came shivering and shambling /duteof the warm tap-room, and took the . bridle. Mr. Pyle 'turned, made t s lQose-box the I'v^-i wn^ie,, ancj Subsequently, his soldier-

like report. The line would be clear enough of snow, the Ashbridge stationmaster had told him, by an early hour the next morning, to admit of an attempt, at all events, being made to get the long-delayed Paris mail through to Dover, supposing, of course, no fresh fall took place and no wind came on to occasion a fresh drift. The mail was expected, in such case, to reach Ashbridge about four a.m. ; • and-* Mr. Fyle had taken upon himself to secure a compartment for his master. Below Ashbridge the rails were reported free ; so that if the train got as far as that station there was no likelihood of its being blocked up again further on. On this Mr. Pyle had certain orders given him ; and then Rawdon Daringham, Major of "Ours," and his friend, Dick Jocelyn the Guardsman, walked, talking rather earnestly together, through the straggling street of the little Kentish village, where the last red rays of the wintry afternoon sun were gleaming on frosted window-panes, and so through the lower lodge-gates and the long avenue of snowdraped elms back to Dane Court. Ex-private John Pyle watched them a brief while, stroking his moustache as he had seen his master stroke his. " Ah !" he thought aloud, as he turned away ; " that's the Major's little game, is it ? And a very pretty little game too !" chapter n. "Hilda! You love him?" ."Oh! Helen." . Misß Jocelyn's confession in two words, made with such a piteous little sigb, such a tell-tale biding of a blush-rose face in her confessor's lap ! The said confessor looked grave, but stroked the penitent's fair hair fondly and forgivingly enough, notwithstanding. Then there was silence for a space in that little chamber where the cousins sat that wintry gloaming over the log-fire. Cousin Helen's room, they called it at Dane Court. It looked over the lawn upon the park, and the great elms of the Long Avenue ; up which Dick Jocelyn and his friend were walking just then, after their visit to Lucia's loose-box. It was of one of those two out there in the snow that Helen Carew and Hilda Jocelyn had been talking for the last halfhour. Till their talk had ended in that last question and answer we have overheard. It began again, of course, in a minute or two. Naturally it couldn't be let to die there. "My poor darling !" Helen said, bending over -the golden head nestling in the folds of her dress. " Since when ?" " Always, I think. Always, since that first night I saw him. Oh ! Nell, I couldn't help it !" As though the child anticipated rebuke, and were trying to deprecate it. But the other hadn't, apparently, the heart to be hard with the criminal. Nay, she bent over her pet closer, and put her handa under the criminal's cheek and chin, and lifted up the flushed, tear-stained little face, and kissed it. That kiss was absolution in full. Hilda felt that; so the tears fell faster. Helen let them have their way a while before she said — " That was six months ago, Mignonne, I remember ; at that ball at Princess Gate. Dick brought him there. Just after you had let them tie you to the other it must have been. Oh ! Hilda, why did you ever let them ?" As if Mignonne had ever had a chance against mamma ! That match between her daughter and Jeffrey Marsden, the City banker, had been a pet project of Lady Hope's always ; it was so likely any objection on the child's part to the arrangement would have carried weight! My lady's word, as she proclaimed to all the world, was law ; Hilda had never in all her life dared dream of disobedience. As she told her confessor now. "What could I do?" she pleaded. " Mamma said I was to take him ; and he asked me — oh ! Nell, his cold hard voice made me shiver ! and I did as I was told. And then he came — Rawdon. And then I knew what I had done. We went away to Homburg, mamma and I ; and I tried not to think about him. It was no use, Nell. He came to Homburg, too, with Dick. Mamma was terribly angry with me because he did. And I deserved it, for I was so happy ! He never said a word to me anybody mightn't have heard? but I thought— but I knew he cared for me before we went away. I don't know whether Mr. Marsden fancied anything; but in his icy way I know he hated him. Mamma said cruel things to me about him. I didn't mind ; I was so happy — happy in such a strange painful way, dear! — to think he cared for me, my brave, strong Rawdon! Then we came home. Oh! Nell, I thought I should have died that night I said good-bye to him; the last night I should ever see him, perhaps ! We came home. I think if I hadn't got ill, and you hadn't come down here to nurse me and fight for me, mamma would have had me married to Mr. Marsden in the autumn. As it was, I got a respite till now. And now I can't do it ! I won't do it !" poor Hilda sobbed out. The elder girl's soft voice and loving hands soothed her tenderly. " I begin to think you mustn't, Mignonne," Helen said. "And if you mustn't, you shan't ! But let me hear the end of it. How came Major Daringham down here this Christmas ?" Mignonne smiled through her tears. "Dick brought him again," she answered. " Dear old Dick ! He's been so good to me, in his quiet, cool fashion, all through. I think he and Rawdon are bosom-friends, you know, like you and me ; they've no secrets from each other ; and " " I see !" Helen nodded. " And, moreover, Dick detests the Croesus. Yes ; I quite understand." "And you know," Hilda went on, " Mamma never quarrels with him, somehow ; and Dane Court really belougs to him ; so when she found Rawdon in the drawing-room one day, just before you came back, dressed for dinner, and Dick told her he'd brought him down for the shooting, why, she had to accept the situation. Only she wrote off to Mr. Marsden, I think, to come down too, a fortnight sooner than had been arranged. And before he came- " Mignoune made pause here. The fair little face paled and flushed; the golden head began to droop again. It was cleat enough to Miss Carew what had happened before Jeff Marsden came. "He spoke to you ? You let him, Mignonne ?"

"Let him! Do you think I could stop him, Helen ? I hadn't the power — nor the will, perhaps. Yes, he did speak to me ; he did tell me he loved me ! And I listened to him." She lifted her head up, with a sudden, proud little gesture, and looked her questioner fairly in the eyes. "I listened to him," she went on ; "listened to every word that made me thrill, and shiver, and grow faint — to every low passionate word he spoke, as you would never think his voice could speak. He loved me, my own ! His own lips were telling me so ; how could I not listen ? I was his, he said ; no other man's. His own — was it not so ? Ah! he had no need to ask. I was his ! I am his ; not this other man's." Passion transformed the child's face so that there was upon it something of my lady's " determined" look while she spoke those last words. " You never can be the other man's now, Mignonne," Helen said, presently, when the Major's wooing had been circumstantially described, and there were no more questions to be asked. " But you must tell Aunt Hope what has happened." "Tell mamma? I daren't, Helen. She's set her heart on my marrying her Crcesus. And, besides, she can't bear Rawdon." " For all that, if you don't tell her, Kawdon must. Or I. I'm not afraid of her." " But Rawdon says she mustn't be told yet. Nor Mr. Marsden." "Yet? Have you forgotten what this day fortnight was to have been ?" Mignonne gave a little shudder. " You would have been Mrs. Marsden by this time, poor child ! He thinks you are to be, still. He's a right to think so, Hilda, till you tell him you've changed your mind. And you must tell him." Hilda shook her head. " Don says no !" she replied, dutifully. uHe says Mamma is too strong against us as it is." "What are you going to do, then?" Miss Carew asked, rather impatiently. " Whatever Don tells me, dear," Mignonne said. "I leave it all to him." "I must have a little talk with this autocratic Don," Helen said to herself. There came a knock at the door. " May I come in, Helen ?" Dick Jocelyn's voice asked. "Of course," Helen answered ; and Dick entered. He went straight up to the log-fire and stirred it into a blaze. Then he leaned tranquilly against the low mantelpiece and warmed himself. " Cold, ain't it ?" he said. " Come in, to tell you we've arranged about the sledges for to-night. Don will drive one of you ; and I the other. I've told my lady about it." " What did she say p" questioned Helen, glancing at Hilda. " Objected, of course. She always objects, you know. However, I managed to convince her that she couldn't get more than four people into the carriage— herself, old Jed, and the two Pierrepoint women. She couldn't very well offer to send them in \ a sledge ; besides Don and I wouldn't have 'em at any price. We don't mind driving you two. I told my lady so." "On nest plus flatteur, Monsieur !" ' " No, is one ? Well ; my lady suggested the carriage should come back for you. I said she might think herself lucky if it got her to the Boodles' on a night like this, with the snow drifted a dozen feet deep. Then she wouldn't go. Needn't, I told her; but we meant to go — you should have seen old Jeff's face, when I said that Hilda ! — for the fun of the thing. And, besides, what would the Boodles think if she stopped away, when they came to her with four horses and a snow-plough ? At last she dropped into my plan. You and Hilda are to be sleighed over. Old Jeff, it seems, has more confidence in my skill than in Don's, so I'm to take Mignonne, and you'll have to trust yourself to him." ; " Oh !" remarked Helen, seeing an opportunity for her little tale. "Yes," Dick returned. "Crumple your ball-dresses a bit, the buffalo-robes will ; but it's the only way of getting there to-night, Ido believe. Suppose you want to go ?" " Yes, of course I" both girls cried, quickly. " All right, then. Start at ten. Don's had a mare he had in Canada sent over from the Barracks expressly for the occasion ; and it's a splendid night." Dick moved away from the mantel-piece as if he were going. Instead of that, however, he dropped into a chair, as though the unwonted eloquence he had indulged in had knocked him up. He smoothed Hilda's golden hair rather more fondly than usual, too, as he said : " Go and get me a rosebud for my coat out of the conservatory, Mignonne, will you?" She looked up at him inquiringly. He drew her head closer, and whispered in her ear. A stage whisper, though; Helen heard what he said. " Don's there, darling ! My lady's dressing ; so are the other women ; and old Jeff's writing in the library for his life to save the post. Don wants to speak to you." She gave a little cry, and ran out of the room. " Dick !" Helen said, reproachfully. "Pooh !" returned that individual. " Hasn't she been telling you all about it ? Thought so. And you don't suppose I'm going to let her marry that grey old icicle, Jeff Marsden, do you ? I'd have stopped that little game of my lady's at first if I'd been on the spot. I'm going to stop it now. Awful fun, it'll be !" " What do you mean ?" " Going to tell you. You're a sensible girl, Helen, and worth the trouble. Sit down and listen." Miss Carew sat down, and did listen. Dick began to unfold a conspiracy. When the dressing-bell rang Mignonne hadn't come back, and Dick was talking away ; still. CHAPTER 111. , " I think it a most objectionable pro- ; ceeding, and I repeat that it is my wish that • you do not go !" He who spoke was a grim, gaunt, griz- • zled personage, with a voice that grated on i your nerves like a handsaw ; with thin, r bloodless lips and freezing, steel-blue eyes ; I clothed in severe evening-dress ; in a choking collar and a creaking cravat, and a ■ decidedly bad temper. He was Jeffrey Marsden, banker, of Lombard Street and

Roehampton ; and, having managed to catch her alone for five minutes in the Dane Court drawing-room before the expedition started for the Boodles' ball, he was haranguing the fair-haired child whom he counted on having in another fortnight undisputed right to harangue for the rest of her natural life, in his most autocratic manner, though with hardly the same effect as usual. Hilda stood where he had stopped her, rather pale, and with her little gloved hands clasped tight upon each other ; but neither trembling nor submissive. "My wish, toy request, that you give up this ball under the circumstances !" enunciated the Croesus, after an emphatic pause, and setting down his empty coffee cup. " Give up this ball ?" Hilda repeated— and he was vaguely conscious that she spoke in a different way somehow, to her usual one towards himself — " Why ?" Marsden looked at her over the creaking cravat as one who finds v difficulty in understanding what he hears 5 or fancies he can scarcely hear aright. " I beg your pardon," he said in his most icily-rasping tone ; " you asked me——" " I asked you why I should give up this ball?" She met his hard eyes quite steadily. He looked at her in real surprise. "Did you not hear me say it was my wish, my request ? You can require no better reason." " A plainer one, at all events." "Hilda!" He had never called her by her name half a dozen times in his life ; he was only startled into doing so now. What had come to her that she dared speak in this way ; dared meet his rebuking glance so— yes, so defiantly ? He must put an end to this once for all. His thin lips shut close together once or twice. Then he said, with his most offensively authoritative air : "You oblige me to lay my commands upon you not to go." He was preparing to stalk gravely to a chair, or out of the room, when she spoke again, still in the same changed voice. " You have no right to do that !" Hilda said. "No right ?" he repeated, mechanically. "No, No right to 'command' me not to go. No right to 'command' me at all. No right to speak to me as you do speak. No right to tell me at the last moment that I am not to go to-night, for no better reason than to parade your authority over me—an authority to which you have no right either." He turned very white, but stood speechless. She went on. "An authority you claim, I know : but which you have done nothing to gain. What have you ever been at the pains to win from me ? And now you ' command ' me ! It is too late ! " Flat rebellion this, beyond question. Fool that he was to try and crush it with a heavy hand as he thought he could do ! "Enough, if you please ! " he said, with what he flattered himself was irresistible severity ; " I can listen to no more of this. Once more, and for the last time, I distinctly and formally forbid your goiog to this ball to-night. Be good enough to let that suffice." How little he knew what he was really doing at that moment ! Couldn't he almost see, though, in the face she turned towards him? ult shall suffice ! " she said. " Distinctly and formally I refuse to be forbidden. For the last time, as you say." Before he could find his voice again, there came a sound of other voices from beyond the portieres. The other woman had come down. The pleasant little tete-d-tcte was going to be interrupted. And she had defied him ! This penniless child he thought he had, defied him, Jeffrey Marsden, the millionaire, who had actually condescended to ask her to be his wife ! What did it mean ? What could have come to her ? And what was he to do ? She had set his express commands at naught ; she evidently was determined to have her own way and go. His cold blood ran almost warm under the sense of his defeat. But he was so utterly taken by surprise that he could only mutter awkwardly enough something about " Lady Hope," and " tomorrow," before the others were in the room. To-morrow ! He remembered afterwards the smile that crossed the girl's pale face when he talked of that. " What's been the matter, Mignonne ?" Helen whispered as she came up to Hilda by the fire, and Marsden stalked away stridently in his varnished boots. " Have you told him?" Hilda shook her head. " He has been telling me that I wasn't to go to-night, that's all," she answered. " Ordered mo not to go. And, as he said, for the last time !" " Now then !" Dick Jocelyn broke in ; " come and be wrapped up, you two. Lady Jocelyn's carriage stops the way. Perhaps you'll give my lady your arm, Marsden. Don and I will see after the girls." "Really, Richard," began that 'faded beauty of the baths,' Lady Hope, " I think they'd better let the carriage come back for them ! " " Wait till it gets there, first, chere tante! You don't know what the roads are like tonight. Better let us come back for you. But don't keep the horses standing, if you mean to go, I advise you. Now, Marsden, look olive, will you ? " the irreverent youth went on. " Ah ! here's Don, in his Canadian get-up." Rawdon came in with a fur pelisse over his ball dress, and another over his arm. "I think this won't crush you very much, Miss Jocelyn," he said, in his tranquil way, going straight up to Hilda; "it's very warm, and very light. Let me put it on for you." He wrapped the glossy skins about her tenderly, under Marsden's hostile eyes and my lady's. The Lombard Street plutocrat cared as much, I verily believe, for the girl as he could care for anything but himself; though to ' form' her for his wife he had, in his eternal self-assertion, tyrannized over her till she simply hated him ; and, seeing another perform what should have been his duty—watching her face when she met Rawdon's 100k — a feeling of simple dislike he had always been conscious of for the Sabreur grew sharply into a stronger, and to him a very strange one — jealousy. Yes ; Jeffrey Marsden hated the man jealously now. Was it he who had undermined his authority over his future wife ? Did he actually dare to ' • He tries to stifle that half-formed thought his overweening pride revolted at so angrily,

. . " But there shall be no more of this P" he said to himself as he led Lady Hope out to the carriage. The Pierrepoint women and the other four followed. Dick was right about the night ; it was splendid. Clear, calm/ moonlit ; with the thermometer down a dozen degrees below zero. A sparkling snow mantle covered the deer-park and the, hills beyond ; feather flakes of snow draped every tree. Just the night for a sleigh drive, as Dick remarked. . The two sleighs were waiting just behind my lady's family ark of a carriage. Lucia's silver collar-bells rang out musically as the mare tossed her head and snorted, hearing her master's voice. "Keep close to us, Bichard," my lady said, as she settled herself in her corner ; "and take care of Hilda mind!" The family ark moved on a little and then waited till the others were ready. Dick Jocelyn lifted his charge in his strong arms aad carried her down the steps to her place in his own sleigh, and rolled the great buffalo-robe round her. Miss .Carew followed, on the foot-cloth, under Don's escort. " All right ?" Dick inquired, taking his reins. " All right !" came from the rear. "Go on, Johnson !" And the expedition started. The great ark lumbered along, with a tortoise-like deliberation ; the two sleighs slid smoothly after. Down the Long Avenue, through the Lodge gates, out on the iron-bound road, with a wall of snow a dozen feet high on either side, stretching and winding away yonder like a narrow white riband. In the ark, the Fierrepoint women did all the talking ; my lady was sulky with cold, and Marsden sulky with wrath, " Well, Mignonne !" Dick said presently to his silent companion ; v it's all settled, ain't it?" "Oh! Dick," she whispered out of her furs, "how caul?" " You will, though !" was the wise youth's mental reply. " And so, my dear Miss Carew," was how Don finished a long answer to certain objections — urged, half of them, it must be confessed, merely pro forma — which Helen had raised. " And so, 1 really don't see what else we are to do. Do you now ? Hilda's no chance with my lady if she stays here ; nor have I. They'll marry her to this — this man, Marsden. Think what that would be for both of us ! My plan saves us both. Everything's arranged. If she says yea t you won't say no ?" (*Po be concluded in our next.)