He heard no sound and saw no sign, and to him seconds seemed like minutes—minutes hours. Could anything have happened? Had Mary baffled the plans of Ellinor, or had the courage of the latter failed her at the last moment? He had known of such things; and there was a curious suppressed gleam—a latent glitter in his cold blue eyes that would not have been pleasant to see.
He heard the house clock strike the hour of nine, and just as the last stroke sounded he saw the waving of a dress and of a white skirt, the wearer of which turned into the lane, and he smiled as such men smile over the triumph of their own selfishness and heartlessness; but now Ellinor, for she it was, paused in her approach, for something between a yell and a hoarse oath escaped Sir Redmond, blended with fierce growling, and he felt as if his right leg had been caught in the sharpest of mantraps.
True to the instincts of hate and vengeance for more than one kick administered by Sleath, Jack, the bull terrier, who had been upon the prowl, had caught the baronet by the calf of the leg and held him fast!
Now, whether it was a dog, a cat, a hare, or a rabbit on which Jack fastened, he never relaxed his hold while life remained in his victim; and so, after tearing Sir Redmond's trousers from heel to waistband, Jack's sharp teeth were closed nigh to meeting in the muscles of his enemy's right leg.
And well might Ellinor pause in wonder and affright as she shrank under the shadow of a hedge, for to the fierce imprecations of Sir Redmond, and the angry snarling of the dog, were added the swearing of the valet, John Gaiters, and the shouts of the brougham driver.
By the time the dog let go and trotted leisurely to the house, there was nothing left for Sir Redmond and his two attendants but an ignominious retreat, and they drove off accordingly.
To Sleath it was a matter for the fiercest exasperation that his carefully matured and well-laid scheme to entrap a beautiful and well-nigh friendless girl—a scheme on the very verge of its fruition—had been baffled, and baffled so absurdly, so grotesquely, and with so much physical agony, by 'an accursed cur which he would yet shoot like a rat,' as he hissed through his clenched teeth.
And Sleath was, strange to say, the more furious because he had meditated a perfidy towards Ellinor.
Terror of the dog's bite and probable hydrophobia made her would-be lover nearly beside himself. He came no more near Birkwoodbrae, so, for the present, she was safe from him. His pedestrianism was effectually marred for several days, and even had he been able to concoct any fresh nefarious scheme, events were about to occur at Birkwoodbrae beyond the conception of all.
However, on the day of the projected elopement, he had made all his arrangements for leaving Craigmhor, and, having formally bade adieu to Lord Dunkeld's household, he could not return, and had to carry out his plans for travelling south without the fair companion whom he intended should accompany him. In the snug comfort of a Pullman car he gave loose to the rage and mortification naturally inspired by his most humiliating and grotesque defeat. He drank heavily, and there was a fiendish expression of determination in his face that terrified even his usually stolid valet, Mr. John Gaiters.
Though she heard the shrill voice of Elspat crying,
'Oh, Miss Wellwood, Jack's been up to mischief—fighting with something; his jaws are all over with blood!'
Ellinor knew not precisely what had happened: she only felt that all was over, how or why she knew not; but a revulsion of feeling took possession of her, a flood of tears relieved her, and on her knees by her bedside she thanked Heaven for her escape!
That night before retiring to rest, when seated near Mary, and affecting to read to Ellinor quietly by the light of a pleasantly shaded lamp, all the stirring and startling events of the recent hour or two seemed a kind of dream—an unreality—though the illusion was apt to be dispelled by Mary's wondering surmises as to what Jack had been fighting with, and who made all the noise prior to the dog's return with somewhat ensanguined teeth and jaws!
Ellinor, as she looked furtively from time to time at Mary's sweet and placid face, with its downcast looks and soft, yet firm expression, felt inclined to cast herself on her breast and confess all the story of the late escape. But her heart failed her; it was too full of shame for her duplicity, with doubt, bewilderment, and a strange kind of hope in the future.
Her day-dreams, as we have described them, were too bright and too recent to be quite dispelled or abandoned yet.
And both sisters were quite unaware that they owed the fact of their being placidly seated as usual together at that time to Jack the terrier, who lay asleep with his head resting on Mary's feet, yet snarling from time to time and showing his teeth; for he was dreaming—as dogs will dream—of his late encounter and revenge. For though Jack had snarled fiercely when assailed by Gaiter's foot and the driver's whip, he had made his first attack 'with that savage and insidious silence' which, as Bell in his British quadrupeds says, indicate the character of the bull-dog; and, though called a fox-terrier, the gallant Jack had a strong cross of the bull in him.
Betimes next morning Ellinor sought the spot where she was to have met Sir Redmond. There the wayside grass was bruised, torn, and spotted with blood, which the dew of the August night had failed to wash away, and there lay a half-smoked cigar and a gentleman's kid glove. On the latter, Jack, who accompanied her, with cocked ears and tail, and with his bandy legs looking more impudent and confident than usual, pounced with a snort of triumph, and tore it to shreds with his teeth and paws, thus giving Ellinor the first light she had on last night's mystery.
There were marks close by where horses' hoofs had been planted, and the deep ruts of carriage wheels—a carriage brought for her; all silent witnesses that Sir Redmond had been there!
And all this had happened but last night—exactly twelve hours ago; yet it looked as if a score of years had passed since she stole silently from her room and approached the shaded lane!
Troubles and hopes always look brighter by day than by night, in sunshine than under clouds and rain; so Ellinor began to consider the whole affair with more composure.
To her it had seemed that, 'although love in a cottage is a very fine thing, love in a Belgravian mansion was decidedly preferable;' but all that just then seemed to be over and done with, when, during the day, she heard incidentally through old Elspat of Sir Redmond's sudden departure from Craigmhor—the departure in which she was to have shared!
She loved Sir Redmond with her head only, and not with her heart; and though Robert Wodrow might not have quite divined the difference, yet a difference in such love there is.
And Ellinor as she reflected, vowed to herself that never again would she risk the loss of position as Colonel Wellwood's daughter (even to be a baronet's wife), or place herself so foolishly in a comparative stranger's power, till he was free to claim and wed her, despite relations and wealth.
Little did the simple Ellinor know the reality of the escape she had so narrowly made from the pitfall prepared for her. 'Væ victis!is the watchword of civilisation,' says a writer; 'a trustful, loving girl succumbs to the artifices of a scoundrel, and society punishes her by averting the light of its countenance from her, while the man who has committed a crime only next to murder in atrocity is let off scot-free. And so the world wags, my venerable masters! and it is a jolly one, take it at its worst aspect.'
Ignorant of the baffled elopement, of course, and perhaps of Sir Redmond's departure from the neighbourhood of Invermay, Robert Wodrow, intent on plans of his own, came near Ellinor no more, and seemed to ignore her existence.
And, strange to say, ere long she became indignant that he made no sign or advance; while rumour said he was perhaps going away, no one knew whither. There has seldom been a woman who liked to see a once avowed lover slip from her grasp; and Robert Wodrow certainly had been Ellinor's lover till the serpent entered her paradise in the shape of rank and ambition.
But we are somewhat anticipating the events of the day subsequent to her intended flight.
Mary, after evening fell, and having been round among some of her poor people, was seated somewhat thoughtfully alone, and seemed to have lost most of her usual buoyancy of spirit. Was it a prevision of coming evil, she thought, or the result of the weather? The sun had sunk like a red, glowing ball behind the hills, and there was in the air an extraordinary stillness which produced a depressing effect upon her spirits.
The recent visits of Captain Colville and Sir Redmond Sleath, on the one hand, and the cold and haughty demeanour of Lady Dunkeld and her daughter, on the other, had begun to impress upon her the necessity for making a change in their little household, and having some pleasant, motherly, and elderly lady to reside with them as a chaperone; and her mind was full of thought on this matter when Dr. Wodrow was announced. She welcomed him with pleasure, as usual, all unaware that he was the bearer of tidings that would render all her plans for the future unavailing!
He noticed the cloud on Mary's face through her smile of welcome, and, taking her hand kindly in his own, he said,
'Mary dear, is there anything you particularly dread?'
'How strange that you should ask me this,' replied Mary, 'for I am rather ashamed to say that I feel as if something of evil were about to happen—but the emotion is vague and undefined.'
'Then you believe in presentiments?'
'I do—sometimes—do not you, Dr. Wodrow?'
'I am afraid I do,' said he, with increasing kindness and gravity of manner. 'So Robert and Ellinor have completely quarrelled?'
'I fear so.'
'George Eliot says that "Every man who is not a monster, a mathematician, or a moral philosopher is the slave of some woman or other." But I came not to speak of Robert, poor fellow, but of something concerning yourself.'
'Of me!' said Mary, startled by the growing gravity of his manner.
'Yourself and Ellinor! I have wanted much to see you all day, my dear.'
'Why?'
'I have news for you.'
'Good news or bad?'
'Bad, I grieve to say, my dear bairn,' said he, as he paused again with something pitiful in his handsome old face, while Mary's colour changed, and her heart began to beat quicker with pain and apprehension.
'Have you had a letter from a Mr. Luke Sharpe?'
'No—who is he?'
'A lawyer—a writer to the signet in Edinburgh—who is the legal agent of your cousin Wellwood.'
'What is all this to me—to us?'
'Your uncle is dead. Your cousin is the next male heir—heir of entail—so Birkwoodbrae, and everything else of which your uncle died possessed that is entailed, goes to him, and you and Ellinor can reside here no longer—so Mr. Sharpe has written me.'
He evidently said this with an effort—with manifest difficulty, and as if he dreaded to look in the face of Mary, who for some moments felt as if stunned, and gazed at the lawyer's letter, which he placed before her, as she would at a serpent, and scarcely taking in its meaning.
'Understand me, child. Your father's elder brother, who permitted you to live unmolested here—as Birkwoodbrae was but a moiety of the entailed property—is dead, and young Wellwood, the guardsman of whom Captain Colville spoke so often, claims all.'
'And we must go away?' said Mary, in a low, strange, wailing voice, all unlike her own.
'Away—yes—but where?'
'God only knows!'
And as she spoke the girl wrung her slender interlaced fingers, while the old minister kindly patted her head, as he had often done in her childhood. After a pause, Mary said, in a voice broken more than once by a hard dry sob,
'Our uncle in Australia would seem to have died months ago according to this letter, yet we only hear of the event now.'
'Yes.'
'And we have been living here in another person's house, though we deemed it our own—another person's, and not thinking of rent?' she added, bitterly.
'Yes.'
Mary thought the doctor took the matter somewhat placidly, and felt indignation mingle with her grief.
'And for the roof that covered us, Ellinor and I have actually been indebted for months to our cousin Wellwood, the cold-blooded son of a cold-blooded father, who died at feud with ours, and amid the whirl of London life never troubled himself about our existence, even when we were left as orphan girls upon the world. So we have been living here in dear, dear Birkwoodbrae in a fool's paradise, after all—after all!' continued Mary, with growing bitterness of tone and heart.
'"The paradise of fools—to few unknown," as Milton has it,' said the doctor, sententiously.
'To turn us out of Birkwoodbrae is nothing less than the most cruel injustice!' resumed Mary, with anger.
'But legal. It is the law of entail.'
'Birkwoodbrae is twice as valuable now as it was when poor papa settled here, some twenty years ago, and he and we have made it so. It is hard, it is bitter, our home—our dear home—we have known no other; and so near where they lie—papa and mamma—so near this house in which I closed their eyes.'
'I doubt not that if your cousin Wellwood were properly appealed to——'
'We should die rather than appeal to him!' interrupted Mary, impetuously, while stamping her little foot upon the floor. 'To do so would be enough to make papa turn in his grave. Though Birkwoodbrae is inexpressibly dear to Ellinor and to me. Papa used to say of cousin Wellwood as a boy, though he never saw him, that he was a puzzle to the whole family.'
'How, Mary?'
'Well, as—as—like a treacherous cuckoo's egg that is dropped into a sparrow's nest and becomes a puzzle to the poor sparrow, which wonders and compares it with her own little brood.'
'What an odd simile, my dear,' said Dr. Wodrow, his face actually rippling over with a smile brighter than Mary relished under the circumstances, and recalled the aphorism of that unpleasant fellow, J. J. Rousseau, that many people feel an internal satisfaction at the troubles of even their best friends.
'Then you will not trust a little to humanity and to Wellwood?'
'Death were preferable, I repeat!' exclaimed Mary, though her tears were falling fast now.
'Consider—blood is thicker than water, among us in Scotland particularly.'
'Ellinor and I will never stoop so low,' replied Mary, alternately interlacing her fingers in her lap, and mechanically caressing the head of Jack, who had placed his nose on her knee, and regarded her wistfully with his great black eyes, as if he knew instinctively that something distressed his mistress by the expression of her face.
'Well, what will be, will be!' said Dr. Wodrow, from his fatalist or Presbyterian point of view, as he cast his eye upward to the ceiling.
Mary heard his voice as one hears in a dream. The flies buzzed in the window curtains, the last of the birds still twittered about among the climbing creepers at the open sash, the roses sent forth their fragrance still, and the drooping foliage of the silver birches was gently stirred by the soft evening breeze.
The old clock ticked loudly on the mantelpiece—unnaturally so—as Mary thought it seemed to do 'when mamma and papa died;' but when the minister urged again that she should attempt to temporise,
'No,' she exclaimed, emphatically, 'we shall not accept a farthing or a farthing's worth of what belonged to our common ancestors. It would ill become Colonel Wellwood's daughters to do so now.'
'Lady Dunkeld, I doubt not, has great influence with your cousin Wellwood.'
'She knows him, then?'
'Yes; people in "Society," as it is called, all know something of each other.'
'And you would have me seek his interest through her? Enough of this, dear Dr. Wodrow. I think you should know me better,' said Mary, covering her eyes with white and tremulous fingers, as if she would thrust back her tears.
'The recognition of the inevitable in human affairs often brings composure when all else fails, we read somewhere,' said the minister.
'Whateveris, is doubtless best, and this apparent stroke of evil fortune may—nay, must be so,' said Mary; 'yet it is hard to bear just now—hard to bear.'
Dr. Wodrow regarded her bowed head with a soft, kind, and admiring smile.
'All will come right in the end, dear Mary,' said he, confidently, and then added, almost laughingly, 'I am sure Captain Colville's advice may prevail with you; and he will be back before I can return from Edinburgh, whither I must go on the morrow morning early.
Mary's pallor increased at the mention of Captain Colville's name; but she said, firmly and doggedly,
'He is the last man in the world whose advice I would seek.'
But before the well-meaning old minister came back from his journey the crisis in the sisters' affairs seemed ended and over.
At last he was gone, and Mary sat for a time in the twilighted old dining-room as one who was stunned or in a dream, while the beloved and reverend figures of her dead parents seemed once again to occupy in fancy their favourite places by the hearth.
The good old honest furniture of the room was all of the 'old school,' and had been familiar to her from her childhood; the vast sofa with its wide arms and cosy cushions; the dark mahogany sideboard that was like a mural monument, with two urn-like knife-boxes thereon, and over which hung an old, old circular convex mirror, surmounted by an eagle with a glass ball in its beak. The horsehair chairs were ranged in rank and file along the wall; and all these household features spoke to Mary's heart so much of the past and of home that the details of the room gave her a sensation of acute agony, as she caught them at a glance and covered her face with her hands.
She tried to realise the new life—the homeless life—that must lie before her and Ellinor now, and the rocks, the shoals, and pitfalls that too probably would be ahead.
Her first emotion of relief—if it could be called so—came when she shared her grief with the startled Ellinor; and far into the August night sat the two crushed creatures talking over the storm-cloud that had so suddenly enveloped them—a cloud that must have descended at some time, though as yet they had not quite foreseen it.
'I cannot believe it—I cannot realise it!' said they both, conjunctly and severally, again and again, as they mingled their tears and caresses together, each clinging to the other as if for consolation and help.
'What on earth will become of us!' exclaimed Ellinor, pushing back the masses of dark brown hair from her forehead.
'We shall go away, and at once, in search of a new home—a little nest somewhere far away from all who know us, Ellinor; for the condolence, the wonder, surmises, and pity of neighbours would prove intolerable to me!' exclaimed Mary. 'We shall have to put our shoulders to the wheel, as poor papa used to say when in money straits. I must turn my French and music to account.'
'And I my drawing,' said Ellinor.
'Yes, dearest,' added Mary, kissing her, 'my few accomplishments will require some brushing up, but your pencil is always a ready one; and people never know what they can do till they try. But then, Birkwoodbrae—dear, bonnie Birkwoodbrae—to think we shall never see it more!' exclaimed Mary, relapsing into a storm of grief again; after which she became more composed, and began resolutely to think of the future that must be faced—the future which would necessarily begin for them on the morrow; and as Mary was by nature independent and self-reliant, as she thought on the pittance left them by their father, she said that, by God's help, they might battle with the world yet; and battle with it too in London.
The human mind, it has been said, is naturally pliable, and, provided it has the most slender hope to lean upon, adapts itself to the exigencies of fortune, especially if the imagination be a gay and luxuriant one.
The dreary night of their new and great sorrow wore on till the small hours of the morning came, and at last the sisters slept; and 'sleep is a generous robber that gives in strength what it takes in time.'
So the worthy old minister had gone to Edinburgh.
Mary conceived not unnaturally that this visit to the Scottish metropolis meant one to Mr. Luke Sharpe with reference to her cousin Wellwood, and the monetary affairs of herself and Ellinor; but she was determined on having no temporising, no patronage, or half-measure from that quarter; and resolved to leave Birkwoodbrae and to go forth to find another home in another land, and to this end she began restlessly, but resolutely, to take the means at once.
Strange to say, Ellinor, the romantic and volatile, did not seemed so much cast down after a time. She had her own secret hopes, thoughts, and ambition, in which Mary had no share, or of which she had no exact knowledge as yet; but to the latter to leave Birkwoodbrae, to see no more the kind old folks at the cosy manse; to see no more her pensioners, her feathered pets, and flowers, the hills, the glen, the rockbound stream, and the 'siller birks' that shaded it—to be far away from all and everything that was dear—to lose, more than all, the dawning love of her young heart—was indeed a catastrophe hitherto unlooked for, and at times her soul seemed to die within her. But she was more often in those moods to which the young are said to be subject in time of trouble—'in which the existing alone seems unendurable, and anything better than what is.'
Greatly to the chagrin of Lady Dunkeld, there seemed no chance of extracting a proposal from Captain Colville, the rumour of whose engagement to her daughter was simply provincial gossip, and as for Sir Redmond Sleath, for certain cogent reasons of his own, perhaps he dared not make one, even if dazzled by the fair Blanche Galloway.
The invitation to Craigmhor seemed to be a failure as yet, so far as the former was concerned, for after the shooting began on the 12th of August, when not on the moors, he spent much of his time most provokingly immersed in correspondence concerning the property to which he had succeeded and his peerage claim—both circumstances that greatly enhanced his value in the eyes of such a match-making mother as my Lady Dunkeld.
He was often found closeted in consultation with Doctor Wodrow, with whom he seemed to stand high in favour, and it was noted that they always separated in high good humour; so the supposition was, that the latter was seeking the wealthy Guardsman's good offices for his son Robert. What other matter could they have in hand?
Lady Dunkeld was therefore not sorry when Captain Colville took his temporary departure to shoot in the forest of Alyth, trusting to a change on his return.
If she had flattered herself that, amid the somewhat secluded life all led at Craigmhor, any fancy Colville had for Blanche would speedily manifest itself, she was doomed to disappointment—angry disappointment, and worse; for, if the stories Mademoiselle Rosette told were true, the captain had spent somewhat too much of his time wandering, rod in hand, on the banks of the May, and tarrying for afternoon tea at Birkwoodbrae.
The result of all this was that Mary and Ellinor had become painfully conscious that many who were their friends before had now begun to view them coldly and distantly, why or wherefore, in their innocence, they knew not, because they were ignorant of malevolent hints regarding them dropped to chance visitors at Craigmhor, by elevation of the eyebrows, shrugs of the shoulder, or the impatient wave of a fan, if their names were mentioned; the ladies there—mother and daughter—were leaving nothing undone to injure them in the estimation of all, and even spoke of them as 'young women who were above doing their duty in that state of life to which Providence had called them.'
A consciousness of all this added to their new mortification, and increased their anxiety to be gone, and they worked away at their arrangements in a species of suppressed excitement, and Dr. Wodrow was still in Edinburgh.
It was neither a Sacramental Fast-day nor a Sunday at Birkwoodbrae, yet a strange stillness, as if death were there again, brooded over all the place; the house with its roses and creepers, the garden with its now untended flowers, the empty meadow, and the lovely silver birches; and poor Robert Wodrow, as sadly he approached the house for the last time, felt conscious of this as he passed, and with a bitter sigh looked around him.
Even Jack's bark was unheard; the scythe lay among the rich clover, the gate that led to the highway stood wide open, and near it lingered some cottar people, with mouths agape, old and young, with grave and anxious faces, even with tears, for some of the young girls' 'belongings' had already been sent away, the gazers knew not where.
Something strange they thought had come to pass, yet the sunshine of the first of September lay golden on the woods, the pastures, the cattle, and the flower-gardens, though beneath was a great shadow like that of death over all, and Robert Wodrow, impressionable at all times, felt it; for the sisters were on the eve of departure, and another day or two—so quickly had Mary's preparations been made—would see all ended.
The bright sunshine of the autumn evening was touching, we have said, with fiery light the smooth silver stems of the tall birch-trees, and the birds still sang sweetly under the feather-like foliage that hung gracefully downward, unstirred by the faintest breeze, when, looking from an open window on the scene she loved so well, Mary Wellwood paused in the bitter task of making up a list of their household effects ere she left the roof of Birkwoodbrae for ever. After she was fairly gone, a letter to Dr. Wodrow would inform him of all their wishes, she was thinking, when suddenly Robert stood by her side, and put an arm kindly round her.
'Why, you will kill yourself with all this work and anxiety; dear Mary, let me help you,' said he.
'I am nearly done,' said she, wearily, and with a quivering lip; 'there are but a few relics, books and so forth, I wish to keep——'
'Leave it with me; save you, Mary, and the old folks at the manse, I have no one left to care for now.'
'Poor Robert!' said she, kissing his cheek, for she knew his meaning well.
No one can 'minister to a mind diseased' like a mother, it has been said; but Mrs. Wodrow, to her sorrow, had signally failed to so minister to her son Robert.
'And you have failed at the University, Robert?' said Mary, after a pause.
'Utterly!'
'How—and why?'
'I don't know—at the last moment, somehow,' said he, despondently, looking down on the carpet.
'Ellinor, no doubt, was the cause?' said Mary, softly.
He smiled bitterly, but made no reply.
'You will try again, Robert dear?' said Mary, patting his hand.
'Never, Mary,' he replied, in a low, husky voice; 'God only knows how I toiled and toiled, at botany, anatomy, and chemistry—Balfour and Quain and Miller, and withwhatobject; but I have taken my last shot, and shall grind no more.'
'And what do you mean to do, Robert?'
'Heaven knows—you will hear in time, Mary.'
She eyed him wistfully and sorrowfully, and then said,
'After your quarrel with Ellinor——'
'Don't call it a quarrel, Mary—say coldness. Well?'
'It is very kind of you to take the trouble to come here now.'
'Kind—trouble; why, what has come to you, Mary, that you speak thus, and tome? A farewell letter might have done, but I—I preferred to come to the old place once again.'
'Pardon me, Robert, but I am so crushed—so confused—that I scarcely know what I say.'
'But is the step you are about to take absolutely necessary, and in such hot haste too?'
'What step?' asked Mary, as if to delay the bitterness of the admission.
'Leaving Birkwoodbrae! I can't make out the mystery of it at all!'
'Alas! we must go; this house was never ours—we dwelt here on sufferance; and the place is another's now—another whom we know only by name and in family feud.'
'Can it be that God's world belongs only to rascals!' exclaimed young Wodrow, bitterly.
'Well, the rich and cruel seem to thrive best, for a time at least,' said Mary, a little infected by his mood.
'But to go away so far—so far as London?' he urged, with an air of bewilderment.
'The further the better now, Robert.'
'But the idea of making your own livelihood in that awful human wilderness, you and Ellinor, seems so strange—so perilous and unnatural.'
'Why so—don't thousands work?'
'And starve and die of broken hearts!'
'Robert, you are not encouraging.'
'I would that I could be so.'
'We must make the attempt as others do and have done. We are well-nigh penniless now; without Birkwoodbrae and its accessories we could not live alone on the pittance poor papa left us, and here we could not add a penny to it. I don't think I am fit for much, Robert,' continued Mary, sadly and humbly, with tears in her soft, sweet eyes. 'No one will give me a high-class situation, my education has been so very simple, and beyond a little music'—her voice broke fairly now—'and Ellinor's pencil, she is very clever, you know——'
'I wish I could see this infernally grasping cousin of yours!' surmised Robert, angrily and reflectively.
'Don't think of it—I would not accept a favour from his father's son; for that father was—through life—the enemy of mine!'
'Why—and about what?' asked Robert.
'Some quarrel about a lady in their youth, as subalterns, I believe.'
'Oho—the old, old story!' said Robert, gnawing his nether lip, and taking up his hat, but lingering still.
'You will see Ellinor, Robert dear,' said Mary, timidly and pleadingly. 'I can call her from her room—it will be for the last time.'
The cloud on young Wodrow's face deepened, as he said, in a low voice,
'No, Mary—thank you—I dare not—would rather not see her again.'
'Why?' asked Mary, taking his hands caressingly between her own.
'All my love for her might—nay, would break out for her with renewed force, for I am in some ways weak and unstable of purpose. Better not—better not—never again—never again,' he muttered, huskily, and Mary kissed him with her eyes full of tears, for just then her heart was very sore indeed.
'Besides, Mary, I have schooled myself for the future.'
'And thatfuture, Robert.'
'You will learn in time. Curse that fellow,' he suddenly exclaimed, his eyes flashing, as he referred to Sleath, 'what evil chance brought him among us here? How I can recall his eyes, alternately sleepy and shifty, and the air of would-be high-bred tolerance and boredom with which he condescended to survey us all and everything here!'
In the gust of jealous anger that now possessed him, Mary knew that it was useless to urge again that he should see Ellinor, and after making her all offers of assistance and proffers of kindness, he strode suddenly away, muttering to himself the lines of Edmondstoune Aytoun.
'Woman's love is writ in water,Woman's faith is traced in sand,Backwards, backwards let me wander,To the noble northern land.'
The little money that Mary could spare from what she had been able to realise by the hasty sale of two pet cows and the stock of her fowl-yard, she bestowed, as far as she could, upon Elspat and other old servants, all of whom were bowed down with wonder, grief and alarm at movements and changes so unexpected; and she felt that she would be glad when the parting with all—the final wrench—was over.
Between her and these subordinates there was a closer bond of sympathy than usually exists between mistress and servant—even in Scotland—now-a-days, and can scarcely be found south of the Tweed. 'My English readers,' says an English writer on this subject, 'will probably ridicule such a feeling on the part of a servant, for the majority of them are of the belief that money is the only connecting link of a household. So long as wages are regularly paid and the ordinary meals provided, a servant has only to do her duty properly, and leaves it as utter a stranger as when she entered it. There is no obligation on either side, and, if she goes, some one will be found to take her place.'
But it is not quite so yet in the kindly north country, especially the further north we go; for the influences of the old feudal system, and of the still older and dearer ties of clanship, linger among the hills and glens, knitting all ranks and conditions of men together, and long, long may they continue to do so.
Of a more nervous organisation than Mary, Ellinor, suffering from reaction of spirits and a keen sense of all she had recently undergone, was far from well, and, amid the bustle of preparation for departure, remained much in the seclusion of her own room.
It was September now, we have said. The autumnal weather and autumnal tints had come somewhat early, and occasional showers brought coolness and freshness to the birchen woods, and pleasant odours came from them and even from the dusty highway and the parched meadows, where the rich after-grass was ready for the scythe, and the grouse on the Perthshire hills had become but too fatally familiar with the crack and clatter of the breech-loader in the heathery glens.
Mary Wellwood had of late worked hard, very hard, rising earlier and going to bed later—so much so that her sweet face was beginning to look thin and careworn, and old Elspat remonstrated that she did not give herself time to take her meals, but 'was for ever think, think, thinking and worrying over accounts and market-books.'
She had neither Dr. Wodrow nor Robert to advise or assist her then. The former was detained in Edinburgh on clerical or other business, and the latter absented himself for obvious reasons; so Mary worked alone, but no new or growing cares could change the sweet and grave expression of her face or the calm steadfastness of her violet eyes, yet a startled expression certainly came into them when one evening Captain Colville was suddenly ushered in upon her, looking so handsome, brown, and ruddy from exposure among the hills.
There flashed upon Mary's mind the time, but a short space ago, when she had been thinking of a chaperone for herself and Ellinor: but all was changed since then, and there would be no need of one now.
He had just returned that morning from shooting in the forest of Alyths had heard a rumour of their approaching departure, which the half-dismantled aspect of the drawing-room seemed to confirm. Why was it so?
He spoke so pleasantly and sympathetically as he seated himself near her, and she felt all the glamour of his proximity, of his presence, and her breast heaved tumultuously in spite of herself. She became nervous, and her eyes suffused deeply.
'Tears, Miss Wellwood?' said he, inquiringly.
'We are going far away, Captain Colville—leaving this place for ever.'
'I have heard something of it; but why leave Birkwoodbrae?' he asked, smilingly.
Mary told him why.
'And, on leaving, whither do you mean to go?'
'London.'
'Is that not a rash scheme?'
'When the will is strong the heart is willing; and we never know what a day may bring forth.'
He gazed down upon her tenderly, admiringly, and, making a half effort to take her hand, paused and said,
'You surely did not mean to spend all your life in this old tumbledown place, Miss Wellwood?'
'Don't call it tumbledown, please,' said Mary.
'I beg your pardon; but——'
'It is very dear to me, as the place where they lived and died,' interrupted Mary, with a little break in her voice.
'They—who?'
'Papa and mamma. It seems like yesterday when he died in the room above us, and when he said in a low, weak voice—"Don't cry, Mary darling—don't cry so; our separation is only for a time;" and then added, "Is that the daybreak?" "No," said I. "It is—it is—andso bright!" he exclaimed, and then died. Oh, Captain Colville, the light he saw must have been that of the other world, for just as he expired the clock struck midnight, and the lamp was burning very low.'
'Poor old gentleman! But take courage,' said Colville, with a soft smile, as he patted her shoulder; 'you have not yet left Birkwoodbrae.'
'What can he mean by this!' thought Mary, with a slight sense of annoyance, as she woke up from her dark dreamland.
'And your father, the colonel—he—he—pardon me, left you little more than Birkwoodbrae when he died?'
'His blessing was the best he had: Birkwoodbrae, I have said, was not his to leave. We have lived here on sufferance—Ellinor and I.'
Colville sat for a time silent, and Mary thought his question a very strange one, unless he had a deeper interest in them both than she thought he could possibly have; and, still pursuing a personal theme, he said,
'I have heard from Dr. Wodrow that his son Robert was your sister's admirer, and that they have quarrelled. Is not this to be regretted?'
'Regretted indeed!'
'You always seemed interested in him.'
'As Ellinor's lover—yes.'
'I always thought he wasyours.'
'Mine—who said so?'
'Miss Galloway, repeatedly.'
'She had no authority for any such statement,' said Mary, upon whom a kind of light was beginning to break, and Colville drew a little nearer, as he seemed very much disposed to take up the thread of the 'old story' where he had left it off on the afternoon when he carved their initials on the tree, carried off the bunch of berries, and gave her in exchange the bouquet of Blanche Galloway, before he went to Alyth.
'Is it not strange, Captain Colville,' said Mary, 'that day after day passes, and yet we hear nothing more of this new heir—this usurper of our poor little home—or of any special notice to quit Birkwoodbrae?'
'Amid the world he lives in, he may forget.'
'He and his father before forgot us always. But still, there is one patrimony of which he cannot deprive us—one near the churchyard wall!' said Mary, bitterly. 'However, things are at the worst with us now, and they will be sure to mend.'
He was observing the rare delicacy of her hand, as she caressed the head of Jack resting on her knee.
'How you must loathe that cousin!' said he.
'Oh, no! Heaven forbid! He has never done us any active harm; yet we Wellwoods are very unforgiving in our feuds.'
'So it would seem.'
'I must never, never see him, and am most anxious to get away before he comes here, if he cares at all to visit so poor a place.'
'He might fall in love with you—nay, would be sure to do so,' said Colville, stooping nearer her, and lowering his voice. 'Love, with cousinship, soon develops, and he might marry you.'
'I would not marry him if there was not another man in the world!' exclaimed Mary, reddening in positive anger, with a choking and half smothered sob in her throat; and Colville laughed excessively at her increased but momentary annoyance at his suggestion, which indeed was far from being an unnatural one.
'If he saw you, he would certainly leave you in undisturbed possession of Birkwoodbrae.'
'A speech meant to be gallant; but he shall not see me if I can help it.'
He laughed again, and Mary felt piqued.
'From what I hear of all the matter,' he began, 'from what I know of you——'
'Of me, Captain Colville—what can you know ofme?' asked Mary, almost petulantly.
'Shall I say, then, from what I know of your cousin Wellwood——'
'Well—quick; from what you know of him?'
'Which I do as well as one fellow can know another in the same battalion, I am sure he would never dispossess so charming—two such charming cousins.'
'Indeed! you have said something like this already.'
'Would you not write to him and ask—'
'Emphatically—no!'
'Allow me, then?' asked Colville, in his most persuasive tone.
'Never! I—we shall be beholden to none! I thought, small as it is, that Birkwoodbrae was almost our patrimony; it proves to be his, so let him have it.'
'And you——'
'Have the world wide before me,' she replied, with a quiver of her sweet upper lip; 'with us—Ellinor and me—it may be as inStrathallan's Lament—
"Ruin's wheel has driven o'er us,Not a hope may now attend;The world wide is all before us,But a world without a friend."
'Heaven! I hope not,' said he.
'Why does he continue on this distasteful subject,' thought Mary, 'unless to prolong the conversation?'
He now proceeded to pat Jack's head. and as he did so his hand came more than once in contact with hers, and each touch sent a thrill to his heart, while with that mysterious instinct which tells a girl of the emotions with which she is inspiring an admirer, Mary, without turning her head, knew that the fond gaze of Leslie Colville was bent upon her.
What did he mean? To desert Blanche Galloway, or was he simply amusing himself with her, or with both? Her pride revolted at the idea. However, their acquaintanceship would soon be at an end, as he would be leaving like herself; and as if he divined her thoughts, he said something of his approaching departure.
'I hope you will have some pleasant memories to carry away with you?' said Mary, and then she could have bitten her tongue for making the surmise, and added, 'I shall have none but sad ones—though Invermay is so lovely.'
'Yes; but there are some memories of it that will ever be dear to me—the hours I have spent here at Birkwoodbrae.'
If he was betraying himself, he paused, and Mary could feel how her heart was vibrating.
For a moment her long dark lashes flickered as she glanced at him timidly, and thought how happy his avowed love would make her was he at liberty to do so; and she remembered that when he was away at Alyth how she had felt a void in her heart, till adversity brought her other things to think of.
As Colville looked down on the ripples of the girl's golden hair and on her saddened face, a great pity that was allied with something warmer and dearer stirred his heart, and bending over her downcast head, he lightly touched her hair with his lips.
'Poor child!' said he, and Mary drew haughtily back. She saw there was a smile on his face; it was a very fond one, but she misjudged it, and felt assured that no lover would smile at such a time. Thus his manner perplexed her, so she said,
'Do not forget yourself, Captain Colville, and that you are engaged to Miss Galloway.'
'Engaged—to—Miss Galloway!' be repeated, with genuine surprise and annoyance. 'Not at all. Who on earth put that into your little head?' he added, with a laugh.
'Mrs. Wodrow always told me so,' replied Mary, covered with confusion, but feeling very happy nevertheless.
'Silly, gossiping old woman! No, Miss Wellwood: I am, thank Heaven, a free man—as yet.'
Here was a revelation—if true.
He was gazing on her now with eyes that were full of admiration and ardour, while the clasp of his hand seemed to infuse through her veins some of the force and love that inspired him. In the glance they exchanged each read the other's secret, and he drew her towards him and kissed her. 'There are moments in life,' it is said, 'when joy makes us afraid: and this was one'—to Mary at least, and she shrank back—all the more quickly and confusedly that a visitor was approaching; and a half-suppressed malediction hovered on the lips of Colville as the portly Mrs. Wodrow was ushered in—ushered in at that moment!
He rose with annoyance, and still retaining Mary's hand in his, said hurriedly, and in a low tone, with a little laugh that was assumed to cover her confusion,
'Promise me that in the matter of leaving Birkwoodbrae you will do no more till I see you againto-morrow.'
'I promise,' replied Mary, trembling very much, and scarcely knowing what she said; and, bowing to Mrs. Wodrow, Colville took his departure, while the pressure of his hand seemed to linger on Mary's heart. 'Who does not know,' says the authoress of 'Nadine,' 'the magnetic thrill—the strange and subduing sense of soul-communion, which sometimes lingers in a hand-clasp;' and with this thrill in her veins Mary addressed herself to the task of talking commonplace to old Mrs. Wodrow.
He had been on the brink of a proposal without doubt, yet none had been made.
To-morrow came, and the next day, and the next, but there was no sign of, or letter from, Captain Colville, so Mary resumed her arrangements all the more briskly and bitterly.
Ellinor had heard of his interview with Mary, and felt much tender interest and concern. Had he spoken of Sir Redmond Sleath, or his movements, she marvelled sorely; but failed to ask.
Meanwhile May's recent thoughts were of a very mingled and somewhat painful kind. The memory of his great tenderness of manner, of the kiss he had snatched, and the assertion that he was not thefiancéof Blanche Galloway were all ever before her in constant iteration, with the consciousness that no distinct avowal had preceded, and no proposal had followed the episode.
A kiss! Their lips had met but once, yet the memory of such a meeting often abides for ever.
'How dared he kiss me! Why did I not prevent him?' she thought, while her cheeks burned, and the conviction that he had been only amusing himself with her grew hourly stronger in her heart. She remembered, too, that he had laughed once or twice during the most earnest parts of her conversation about her troubles, and she thought that most people could hear of the misfortunes of others with tolerable equanimity.
Was he really engaged to Blanche Galloway after all? and was she the means of preventing the promised visit on 'the morrow'—the visit that never took place?
His visit to Birkwoodbrae on the very day of his return from Alyth was certainly duly reported to that young lady by Mademoiselle Rosette, who had watched and followed him—and smiled brightly as she did so—for where is the French soubrette to be found who does not feel a malicious pleasure in knowing that her master or her mistress is being deceived?
The first day of Colville's absence after that thrilling visit dragged wearily on, and, when evening came and the sun set, Mary marvelled was it eight hours since she rose that morning. It looked more like eight hundred, and still longer looked the days that followed, till anger began to mingle with her depression, anxiety, and sense of unmerited humiliation, all of which enhanced her desire to be gone.
How little could she conceive that, wounded in the right hand by the explosion of a friend's fowling-piece when shooting, he was confined at first to bed, and then to his room at Craigmhor; that he was thus unable to write to or communicate with her; and that thus, too, probably she would never see him again, for by the evening of the third day the arrangements for the departure of Ellinor and herself were finally completed.
'Would that I could peep into our future, Mary,' said Ellinor, tearfully, on their last evening in their old home.
'Ah! the future is indeed a mystery to us,' said Mary; 'but blessed be God for all His gifts!' she added, in a broken voice, as she thought of the legend over the old doorway, through which they would pass no more.
Many relics were packed and sent to the manse, there to be kept till better times came; everything else was left in care of the still absent Dr. Wodrow, to be sold for their behoof; but, for reasons to be given, strange to say, nothing wassold.
Though the apparently strange conduct of Captain Colville in teaching her to love him, and exciting brilliant hopes in her heart only to let them fade, had so deeply mortified Mary that already his image was passing out of her busy thoughts, or seemed as only something to be forgotten as soon as possible, she was not without strong though vague hope of the future for Ellinor and herself; but hope has often been likened to the mirage of the desert, and as being often quite as illusory.
Ellinor, we have said, had thanked heaven for her escape from what must have proved a great and perilousesclandre; yet by one of those idiosyncracies of the female heart she also thanked heaven that London was to be the place of their exile; Sir Redmond was there, no doubt, and she felt assured that he loved her still. Mighty though the modern Babylon was—and of that mightiness she had not the slightest conception—they might meet again; and even, if not, it would be pleasant to walk in the same streets where he walked or rode; to breathe the same air that was breathed by him: to be in the same place wherehewas.
So she had, to enliven the path before her, a little element of romance that was unknown to, and denied to the poor but more practical Mary; and to her, foolish girl, it seemed that perhaps the dear old tale might conclude, after all, with wedding bells and vows of wedded love.
Why she should have indulged in these dreams it is difficult to say. Days upon days had passed, and, like Colville, the impassioned baronet, with whom she had been on the point of sharing her future, gave no sign, and she could make none. But she was yet to learn that; all the fine old Grandisonian notions of honour and delicacy towards woman held by our grandfathers were exploded, or else deemed absolutely antediluvian and absurd.'
Now she longed to be gone—gone even from Birkwoodbrae. 'She wanted to see life' (she thought), 'as poets and painters and young ladies picture it—a sort of misty, delicious paradisiacal existence of excitement, unfailing amusement, and perpetual delight.'
The old peace of mind was gone; she wished to leave all connected with it behind; and, poor girl, she little knew what was before her—it might be of penury, struggle, and despair!
Every movement, as the hour of departure approached, brought a fresh pang to the tender heart of Mary. She had parted with her pets and household cares. Her tame owl she had cast loose, and she watched him as he winged his way back to his eyrie in the ruined tower, from which Robert Wodrow in happier times had brought him.
Wearily and sadly she had all the dear familiar spots, and the cottars who dwelt among them, to visit for the last time—hard and shrivelled hands to press and children to kiss. How should she ever get through it all?
She picked up a few daisies from the graves where her parents lay, and placed them between the leaves of her Bible, and then it seemed as if there was nothing more to do.
The evening seemed painfully sweet and silent and still when the sisters quitted their home for the last time, and to Mary it seemed that even 'the grasshoppers were silent in the grass.'
The keys were to be handed over by Elspat Gordon to a clerk of Mr. Luke Sharpe's when he chose to come for them. Elspat received the instructions drowned in tears, and as a spell against evil put in her pocket some grains of wheat, as it is, or was, a superstition in Scotland that in every grain there is the representation of a human face, said to be that of the Saviour, and hence the efficacy of the spell.
In the railway-carriage Jack crouched at Mary's feet, and, looking up in her eyes, whined and whimpered, for dogs have strange instincts. All that was left to the sisters of Birkwoodbrae was the bunch of freshly-gathered roses which each carried in her hand, and many times did Mary bury her hot and tear-stained face among their cool and fragrant leaves.
'Good-bye!' she whispered in her heart to many an inanimate but familiar object, as it seemed to fly past and vanish, till the darkness of descending night shrouded all the scenery. Then Mary closed her eyes, and strove to think, while the clanking train glided swiftly and monotonously on.
The past, the present, and the future, so far as Colville was concerned, seemed to have melted into thinest air; or perhaps the past alone, with its brief life and glow of love and hope, thrust itself poignantly forward.
The sudden departure of the sisters from Birkwoodbrae, few knew precisely for where, caused something like consternation—at least, a great deal of commiseration—in the place they had left behind them. Their sweet, soft, ladylike faces and presence were missed erelong from the pew in which they had sat on Sundays from childhood; countless acts of kindness, goodness, charity, and benevolence were remembered now and rehearsed by cottage hearths and 'ingle-lums' again and again, and all deplored that the places which knew them once would know them no more!
When, two days after their departure, Captain Colville, with a magnificent diamond ring for Mary, and intent on taking up the story of his love where he had left it off, rode over to Birkwoodbrae, he went in hot haste to the manse for intelligence, and then he and Dr. Wodrow looked blankly in each other's face.
'Gone—what does it all mean?' impetuously asked the captain, whose wounded hand was in a black silk sling, and who looked pale and thin.
'It simply means that they have abruptly left us, and we may never see them again,' replied Dr. Wodrow, with unconcealed grief and irritation.
'Gone—gone!' exclaimed Colville, changing colour, or losing it rather; 'why did I not sooner tell them who I was—why act the part I did, and lure you into doing so, too?'
'Ay—why, indeed,' groaned the poor minister. 'You see what strength of character they both possess—Mary, certainly, at least.'
'And they have left no address—no clue?'
'None.'
'Mary wrote a farewell note to Mrs. Wodrow, saying she had not the heart to bid her good-bye verbally. Her friends of the past, she wrote, were no longer for her now—she had a new sphere of action to enter upon, a new life to lead, and new duties to fulfil, with much more to the same purpose, and that erelong she would write from London.'
'London!' exclaimed Colville, striking his right heel on the floor.
It would be an insult, perhaps, to the intelligence of the reader to assume that he or she has not already suspected that Leslie Colville and the encroaching cousin Leslie Wellwood were one and the same person. Apart from his entailed property, he had succeeded to other possessions, requiring him with reference to his peerage claim to add to his own the name of Colville, and hence theincognitohe had—for reasons of his own—been enabled to assume to his cousins, to Mrs. Wodrow, and others, including even that very acute party Sir Redmond Sleath. In short, save the minister, no one knew the part he wished to play.
'The little drama from which you promised yourself so much interest, generous and romantic pleasure has been thoroughly overdone,' said Dr. Wodrow, somewhat reproachfully.
'Overdone, indeed!'
'And doubtless has caused, and is causing great pain.'
'Poor girl! Could I have believed that Mary——'
'Possessed so much individuality, decision, and independence of character.'
'Most true; the drama has been overdone, but can be quickly amended by a pleasant epilogue. And it would have been so some days ago but for this wretched accident to my right hand, which prevented me from writing to Mary or to you. Prejudiced, as you know, by my father against them, I wished to learn the real disposition and character of these girls before befriending them, as I intended to do; and, even while learning to love Mary, I carried my romantic schemes too far. Why the devil did we make all this mystery!'
'We. It was your own suggestion and wish—not mine,' said Dr. Wodrow, testily; 'and now they have anticipated everything by going forth into the wide waste of the world and leaving us no clue.'
Colville bit his nether lip, twisted his moustache, and remained silent and perplexed. So the minister spoke again.
'Captain Colville, I feared you meant to go on for ever playing at cross-purposes with the poor girls. How I wish I had interposed, as it was my duty to have done, ere it was too late; but you bound me to secresy, as you know, and now they have gone far away, and with sore, sore hearts, you may be assured.'
And this secret, of which the Dunkeld family knew nothing, may explain the curious and laughing manner of Dr. Wodrow when speaking of Mr. Luke Sharpe the lawyer, and announcing to Mary the existence and intentions of the heir of entail.
'Poor Mary—poor darling!' said Colville, in a low voice. 'Why did I play with her feelings and my own so long! Fool that I was not to declare my love and propose to her on the spot?'
'Ay, fool indeed!' commented Dr. Wodrow, roughly. 'Think of all this worry, mischief, pain, and separation!'
'In studying her character I shall have deceived her as to my own.'
'She always seemed to think you were engaged to Miss Galloway.'
'I know that now. Why did you not undeceive her?'
'I had not your permission to move or explain in the matter.'
'And we have parted like strangers almost! What must Mary have thought of me—what can she think of me still?'
'That you were only amusing yourself with her.'
'Hence the strangeness and coolness of her manner towards me at times. Oh, Dr. Wodrow, I never knew how much I loved that girl till now!' exclaimed Colville, as he now realised fully in that time of pain and surprise that Mary Wellwood was the one woman in all the world for him.
About her there was an originality which struck him. She was unlike any other girl he had seen; she had a freshness and depth of thought which delighted as much as her beauty bewildered him; and he must have loved her as a cousin if he had not loved her as something more.
And now she and Ellinor had gone—fled, as it were—to London in a kind of desperation and sorrow, brought about by his own folly and mismanagement—to London, of all places in the world for girls ignorant of it—beautiful, helpless, and poor!
'But they will soon discover the trick we have played them, Dr. Wodrow,' said Colville, looking up after a silent pause.
'How?'
'If they look in the Army List they will see that there is only one Wellwood in the Guards—myself, Leslie Wellwood Colville.'
'That is where they will never think of looking,' replied Dr. Wodrow; and he was right—the sisters never did; besides, Army Lists were seldom in their way.
'Had that confounded old gossip, Mrs. Wodrow, not come in at the time she did all would have been explained—I was on the point of telling my darling all!' thought Colville, bitterly and angrily; 'all would have been so different now, and I should have won the confidence, as I had evidently won the love of Mary Wellwood. And now to follow and to find her!'
'Where?' asked Dr. Wodrow, pithily and sharply.
'True—true; I must be patient, and wait for tidings through you,' said Colville, with something like a groan. 'By the by, doctor, your son seems cut up about the departure of my cousins.'
'No wonder, poor fellow—since boyhood Miss Ellinor was the apple of his eye.'
'Ellinor?'
'Yes—and they both seemed happy enough in their hope of each other till Sir Redmond Sleath came hovering about her.'
Colville's face grew very dark.
'I did not like your friend's character,' said the minister.
'Friend—he was no friend of mine!' said Colville, bluntly.
'I saw through him soon after he first came here; I have had my experience of evil faces, and I could read his like a book.'
'And what were his views regarding Ellinor?'
'Matrimony, on the death of an uncle, I have heard, from whom he has great expectations.'
'He has no uncle by male or female side. This was some specious falsehood!' exclaimed Colville, with knitted brows.
'How do you know this?'
'As you may know it—by looking in the Baronetage.'
In the days that succeeded the departure of Mary and Ellinor most eagerly were letters looked for at the manse of Kirktoun-Mailler, but none came from either, though both sisters had promised to write whenever they had found a new home, however temporary, and periodically the path through the fields, by which the postman always came, was watched by anxious eyes.
How was this?—what had happened? were the constant surmises of Dr. and Mrs. Wodrow, as they looked gravely in each other's face, while more than once each day Colville came to the manse in hope of having tidings. Were both ill—stricken down by some sudden ailment and among strangers—they so gentle, so tenderly nurtured, and so refined in nature?
The doubt and perplexity were intolerable! And the upbraiding, almost despairing looks of Dr. Wodrow cut Colville to the heart.
With their departure by railway all clue was lost, and as the days ran on to weeks the anxiety that preyed on the minds of the good people at the manse became sore indeed, and to Colville, who knew what London is, doubt was simply maddening! From the heir of entail Mr. Luke Sharpe received instructions that everything was to remain intact and untouched at Birkwoodbrae till the sisters should come back and once more sit by its hearthstone; and old Elspat, who had been installed there in charge, held for a time a kind of daily levee of humble neighbours, whose inquiries, comments, and regrets were reiterated and ever recurrent.
But days, we have said, passed on and became weeks and more, and no tidings came of the lost ones, for so those among the Birks of Invermay began to consider them.
Captain Colville had rejoined his regiment in London; Sir Redmond Sleath was no one knew precisely where, and Robert Wodrow, whose evil genius he had been, abandoning his studies in a kind of despair, had disappeared. Thus a great gloom reigned over the old manse, and the worthy descendant of the author of 'Analecta Scotica' could not find in any page thereof a passage to soothe him in his great sorrow.
With Colville's return to London a slight hope had grown in the old minister's heart that he might be the means of casting a little light on this painful mystery, but ere long that hope died away too.
September stole on, and October came, with its red, yellow, and russet autumnal hues; the leaves were falling on the empty air; hardy apples yet hung in the otherwise bare orchards for the coming frosts to ripen; dark berries clustered on the elder-trees; long rushes waved in the wind by the banks of the May, which careered the same as ever through its bed of rock towards the Earn; the call of the partridge and the few notes uttered by the remaining birds of the season came on the low sighing breeze; winter was close at hand, and yet there came no tidings of Mary Wellwood or her sister.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
LONDON: PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD, BLENHEIM HOUSE.