Miss Cheyne of Essilmont, Volume 2

Miss Cheyne of Essilmont, Volume 2

Volume 2 of James Grant's *Miss Cheyne of Essilmont* continues the story of Alison Cheyne, torn between her love for the poor but honorable officer Bevil Goring and her father Sir Ranald's insistence that she marry the wealthy, vulgar Lord Cadbury. Alison and her father are aboard Cadbury's yacht Firefly, ostensibly cruising for Alison's health but really so Cadbury can isolate her from Goring. Captain Tom Llanyard, the yacht's skipper, grows protective of the unhappy girl. One foggy night off the Belgian coast the Firefly collides with a Flemish fishing lugger named, ominously, *Le Chien Noir d'Ostende* (The Black Hound of Ostend) — recalling a Cheyne family death-omen. The lugger's crew drown, Sir Ranald is badly injured by a falling block, and Alison's maid Daisy Prune is lost overboard; news reaches England that the yacht has sunk with all aboard. At Aldershot, parallel romantic troubles unfold among Goring's brother officers. At a ball at Wilmothurst, Captain Jerry Wilmot, heir to a mortgaged estate, is in love with Bella Chevenix, daughter of the moneylender holding those mortgages, but his clumsy, pride-choked declarations are misread by Bella as condescension, and the haughty interference of his mother, Lady Wilmot, deepens the rift. Neither will bend, and when the Rifle Brigade receives orders for the Ashanti campaign, Jerry and Bella part coldly, each too proud to admit love. Meanwhile Bevil Goring unexpectedly inherits a great Indian fortune from a cousin, wealth that might finally answer Sir Ranald's objections — if only Alison can be found. Captain Tony Dalton, another officer, confesses to Goring a hidden shame: as a reckless youth he secretly married an actress, Laura Dorillion, whose disreputable parents drove him to abandon her; disinherited and heartbroken, he has spent years since suppressing a forbidden passion for the glamorous widow Mrs. Trelawney, unable to propose because he believes himself still bound. On the eve of embarkation at Southampton, Mrs. Trelawney reveals herself to be Laura, his own wife, who had deliberately drawn him back into love to test and punish him for his desertion; the discovery that little Netty is his daughter completes a joyful but bittersweet reunion, cut short as the transport sails for Africa. Goring, devastated by the report of Alison's death, learns from Mrs. Trelawney (now Mrs. Dalton) of the shipwreck notice and rushes abroad to investigate, boarding the wrong steamer by chance and landing in Antwerp — where, by extraordinary luck, he finds the damaged Firefly under repair and learns Alison and her father survived. Cadbury's sly valet Gaskins, however, plants seditious pamphlets among Goring's luggage and tips off the Belgian police, and Goring is arrested and imprisoned for days on a fabricated charge of revolutionary conspiracy, delaying his search. In Antwerp, Alison nurses her ailing, embittered father while resisting continued pressure to accept Cadbury, who has shifted tactics from lover to solicitous "friend" to lower her guard. Persuaded to attend a masked ball at the Théâtre des Variétés, she is separated from Cadbury in the crush of the crowd and falls prey to two predatory Englishmen, Sir Jasper Dehorsey and Tom Hawksleigh, who lure her to a private supper room under false pretenses. Recognizing the danger, she flees into the snowbound streets, is accosted by drunken revelers, and finally collapses unconscious on a doorstep in the Rue Rouge, robbed even as she lies senseless — her fate left unresolved as the volume nears its close. When Goring is finally released, he finds Sir Ranald frantic and Alison missing for a week, with both Cadbury and Sir Ranald wrongly assuming Goring himself has spirited her away. Sir Ranald, weak and enraged, denounces Goring and demands a duel; Cadbury, confronted and openly accused of trickery, is publicly humiliated by Goring in the hotel lobby. Goring, convinced Cadbury knows more than he admits, forces a formal challenge through a new Belgian acquaintance, Captain Victor Gabion, who arranges a pistol duel at the citadel for the following morning. The volume ends on this unresolved note of suspense — Alison's whereabouts and condition unknown, and Goring committed to a duel with Cadbury at dawn, determined to wring the truth from him whatever the cost.

By James Grant · First published 1883 · Genre: Romance, Victorian Literature, Adventure Fiction · 23 chapters · 57,461 words

First lines

'Is it it love itself,' asks a writer, 'or the lover that a young girl thinks most of, when she becomes conscious of this dual existence in her heart? I am inclined to think it is the former. The novelty of her own sensations occupies her more than the person to whom she owes their birth and existence.'

It may be thus with some, but it was not so with Alison Cheyne, for she thought of Bevil -- Bevil Goring only -- as the embodiment of her love and of all she could love.

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Miss Cheyne of Essilmont, Volume 2 is listed on Textopian as a novel by James Grant, dated 1883 CE.

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Victorian fiction · Scottish literature · romance · historical fiction · 19th-century novel · social drama · family secrets · aristocracy · inheritance · love and duty · society manners · domestic life

Contents

More by James Grant