COLVILLE OF THE GUARDS
BY
JAMES GRANT
AUTHOR OF
"THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "THE CAMERONIANS,"
"THE SCOTTISH CAVALIER,"
ETC., ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1885.
All rights reserved.
CONTENTS
I. [Birkwoodbrae]
II. [Mary's Adventure]
III. [The Introduction]
IV. [Robert Wodrow]
V. [The Dunkeld Family]
VI. [The Visit]
VII. [Dreams and Doubts]
VIII. [A Truce]
IX. [Colville's Warning]
X. [A Garden-Party at Craigmhor]
XI. [In the Conservatory]
XII. [After Thoughts]
XIII. [The Last Appeal]
XIV. [Gretchen and Faust]
XV. [How Faust Succeeded]
XVI. [Evil Tidings]
XVII. [Mary's Preparations]
XVIII. [On the Brink]
XIX. [The Departure]
XX. [The Heir of Entail]
COLVILLE OF THE GUARDS.
CHAPTER I.
KIRKWOODBRAE.
'You are a dear and good-hearted jewel, Mary!' said Ellinor. 'How you can constantly face and soothe the sorrows and miseries of all these poor people, I cannot conceive; I am not selfish, I hope, and yet the frequent task would he too much for me.'
'You are not without a tender heart,' replied Mary, as she set down her little hand-basket, now empty. 'I have paid but one visit to-day—a very sorrowful one—and I am glad to be back again in our own pretty home. When I saw old Elspat the funeral was over, and dear Dr. Wodrow had brought her back to the little lonely cottage from which her husband had been borne away. It was so sad and strange to see the empty bed, with a plate of salt upon the pillow, and the outline of his coffin still on the coverlet, and the now useless drugs and phials on a little table, close by—sad reminiscences that only served to torture poor Elspat, whose grey head the minister patted kindly, while telling her, in the usual stereotyped way, that whom He loved He chastened—that man is cut down like a reed—all flesh is grass, and so forth. But old Elspat shall not live alone now—she is to come here, and be a kind of factotum for us.'
'That is like your kind, considerate heart, Mary; always thinking of others and never of yourself.'
'When I think of the brightness of our own home, Ellinor—though death has twice darkened it—and compare it with that of old Elspat, my heart throbs with alternate gratitude and sorrow.'
'Poor Elspat Gordon.'
The speakers were sisters, two bright and handsome girls, one of whom had just returned from an errand of charity and benevolence, while the younger was seated in a garden before her easel and paint-block, on which she was depicting, for perhaps the twentieth time, the features of their home, Birkwoodbrae—works of art in which their favourite fox-terrier Jack always bore a prominent part; and Jack, his collar duly garlanded with fresh rosebuds and daisies, was now crouched at the feet of the fair artist.
Mary Wellwood was fair-haired, with darkly-lashed eyes of violet-blue. Many would call her very handsome, but few merely pretty. She was far beyond the latter phrase. With all its soft beauty and dimples, there were too much decision and character in her face to justify the simple term prettiness, while it was a face to haunt one a life long!
Two years younger than Mary, Ellinor was now twenty. Her dark hazel eyes were winning in expression, and, like Mary's, longly-lashed, and what lovely lips she had for kisses! Hers was no button of a mouth, however. Critics might say that it was a trifle too large; but her lips were beautifully curved, red, and alluring, often smiling, and showing the pure, pearl-like teeth within; and yet, when not smiling, the normal expression of Ellinor's face was thoughtful.
The orphan daughters of Colonel Wellwood—a Crimean veteran—the two girls lived alone in their pretty sequestered home at Birkwoodbrae. They had not a female relation in the world whom they could have invited to share it; and though sometimes propriety suggested a matron or chaperone as a necessity to two handsome and ladylike girls, living almost under the shadow of the manse, and as the minister, Dr. Wodrow, had been left by their father on his death-bed a species of guardian to them, 'why hamper themselves with some uncomfortable old frump, when they could be perfectly happy without her, with their father's old servants about them?' was always the after reflection of each.
Thus for three years the time had glided away, and Mary's life we shall show to have been a busy, active, and useful one, adding to and nearly doubling indeed the little income left them by their father, through her own efforts in the production and sale of the agricultural produce of the few acres of Birkwoodbrae, with a skill and independence of spirit that won the admiration and respect of all who knew her.
Yet the house they loved so well, and the patch of land around it, did not belong to the orphan sisters.
The heir of the entail—for, according to 'Shaw's Index,' small though the property of Birkwoodbrae might be, it had been entailed as far back as 1696, with date of tailzie 1694, by Ronald Wellwood, a remote ancestor, who was one of the many victims of King William's treachery at Darien—the heir of entail, we say, held a lucrative diplomatic appointment abroad, and left his two nieces in undisturbed enjoyment of the house and lands.
Thus the latter, in Mary's care, had become quite a little farm, the produce of which, in grazing—even in grain—butter, eggs, and poultry, doubled, as we have said, the pittance left to her and her sister by their father, the improvident old colonel.
In the words of Herbert's Jacula Prudentum, Mary Wellwood's motto had ever been, 'Help thyself and God will help thee.'
The house of Birkwoodbrae was a little two-storied villa, with pretty oriel windows, about which the monthly roses, clematis, and Virginia creeper clambered: and it had been engrafted by the colonel on an old farmhouse, the abode of his ancestors, which had two crow-stepped gables and a huge square ingle-lum—the later being now the ample kitchen fireplace of the new residence, and in the remote quarter of the little household.
A lintel over the door that now led to the barnyard told the date of this portion of the mansion, as it bore the legend often repeated by Mary:—
'BLISSIT BE GOD FOR AL HIS GIFTIS. R. W. 1642,'
and showed that it had outlived the wars of the Covenant and the strife that ended at Killiecrankie; and by its wall there grew a hoary pear-tree, called a longovil—the name of a kind of pear introduced into Scotland by Queen Mary of Guise, the Duchess of Longueville.
This part of the house was, or used to be haunted by a goblin known as 'the Darien Ghost,' a spectre that used to appear during the blustering winds of March, on the anniversary of the storming and sack of Fort St. Andrew by the Spaniards, when a thousand Scotsmen perished, among them, Ronald, the Laird or Gudeman of Birkwoodbrae. This ghost was a heavily-booted one, with spurs that were heard to jingle as it went; and it was wont to appear by the bedside of some sleeping visitor, over whom it would bend with pallid face and gleaming eyes; and those who had found courage enough to strike at the figure with hand or sword, found, to their dismay, that notwithstanding his heavy-heeled boots, by some idiosyncrasy, peculiar perhaps to ghosts, the stroke passed unimpeded through it; but Mary averred that since the railway had come through Strathearn, less and less had been seen of the Darien spectre, and now it came no more.
Around the house were groups of lovely silver birches, the 'siller birks' that gave the place its name; in front the ground sloped gently downward, till the little garden, with its well-kept plots and parterres of flowers, ended in a park of emerald green grass, where the spotlessly white sheep and brindled cattle grazed amid the sweetest sylvan scenery, the vivid colours of which were now brought forth by the fleecy whiteness of the clouds, the deep blue of the sky, and the brilliance of the sunshine; and, as William Black has it, 'I have heard Mr. Millais declare that three hours' sunshine in Scotland is worth three months of it at Cairo.'
When Mary came forth into the garden again, she wore an old straw hat to save her complexion from the glares and had the smartest and most becoming of lawn-tennis aprons pinned over her dress, with Swedish gloves upon her hands, as she proceeded to snip and train some straggling sprays of roses about the walls of the house, and seemed to do so with loving and gentle care, as if the said house was a thing of life, and sensible of the love she bore it; while uttering many a yelp and gurgle, Jack, the fox-terrier, overwhelmed her with the wildest of canine caresses.
Now Jack was deemed a wonderful 'doggie' in his way, and had been the gift of Elspat's husband, an old Gordon Highlander, who had followed Roberts to victory, and had Jack by his side in more than one battle in Afghanistan. Jack was all muscle, and white as snow, save two tan-coloured spots, one over the right eye and the other in the centre of his back. He was the perilous enemy of all dogs, and cats too, and at the sight of one or other his muscles grew tense, his hair bristled up, and he showed his molar tusks; but otherwise he was absurdly meek and gentle, and in appearance belied his combative nature.
'Is it not strange, Ellinor,' said Mary, resuming the subject of their conversation, 'that Elspat's husband, who never recovered from the wound received three years ago in a battle in India, had a presentiment that he would die of it, and on the anniversary of the very day, hour, and moment he was hit, he expired? Yes, Jack, and you, my dear little doggie, were there too,' she added, nestling Jack's head in her pretty neck. 'In spite of all that Dr. Wodrow said and inveighed against superstition, the piper would lead the funeral party thrice deisal-wise round the burial-ground before entering it.'
'And no doubt the doctor would quote his ancestor's famous Analecta?' said Ellinor.
'On that occasion he did not,' replied Mary; 'but it's too bad of you, Ellinor, to quiz the dear old man, who does his duty so well. I always recall what papa used to say, that no one who does not try with all the strength one possesses to do some good to those about them, can possibly say they do their best to live usefully and honestly. Oh, Ellinor, what a delicate arum lily you have there!' Mary suddenly exclaimed.
'I am putting it in my foreground. It came with some lovely peaches.'
'From Robert Wodrow?'
'Yes,' replied Ellinor, with a soft and pleased smile, for thereby hung a tale, as young Robert Wodrow (of whom more anon), the minister's only son, from his boyhood had sighed for Ellinor, and was never perfectly happy but when with her, and, like the lover of Rosamund Gray, 'he could make her admire the scenes he admired, fancy the wild flowers he fancied, watch the clouds he was watching, and not unfrequently repeat to her the poetry which he loved, and make her love it too.'
And so, in early youth, the boy and girl had grown fond of each other—far fonder than either of them at first suspected.
'By the way,' said Mary, suddenly, and pausing in the act of snipping off a decayed rose with her garden scissors, 'the Dunkeld family are back at Craigmhor.'
'With visitors, of course?'
'As usual—gentlemen to shoot when the season opens in a week or two; and one, a Captain Colville—a very handsome man—is, I hear, the intended of that haughty girl, Blanche Galloway.'
'Well, I am not ill-natured,' said Ellinor, with her pretty head on one side, as she reproduced Robert Wodrow's lily in flake-white; 'but the man who marries Blanche won't have his sorrows to seek. However, we shall not call, unless they do so first, of course; so these people are nothing to us.'
'Nay,' said Mary; 'with visitors at Craigmhor, the housekeeper must necessarily require more eggs, fowls, flowers, and I know not what.'
'Sending these things to market at Perth or Forteviot is all very well, but I do dislike orders from the great folks at the manor house.'
'So do I, but needs must, you know, Ellinor.'
'What would papa have thought?'
'Had he thought more at times we had not been reduced to such shifts—not that I upbraid him, poor old man.'
'I detest catering for these great folks, who ignore our existence, save by a bow—more often a stare—at church,' persisted Ellinor.
'I care not—together we are independent, and happy here as the day is long: are not you so, Ellinor?'
'Yes; but how if one of us were to get married? Such things happen.'
'Don't speculate on that, though I think Robert Wodrow does,' said Mary, with something between a laugh and a sigh, as she took her way to the hen-court to see after her fowls.
CHAPTER II.
MARY'S ADVENTURE.
On the following day, after seeing old Elspat duly installed in one of the cosiest rooms of the old portion of the mansion as a kind of housekeeper, Mary Wellwood put on her garden-hat, brought forth her fishing-tackle, tied a pretty basket round her waist, and, taking her rod, a dainty little one—the gift of Ellinor's admirer, Robert Wodrow—set forth, accompanied by Jack, to get a trout or two from the May, for Mary was an expert angler, giving, ere she departed, a last look at her favourite hen, with a callow brood of primrose-coloured chickens, over which she clucked noisily in the sunshine amid a wisp of straw, while eyeing Jack the terrier with keen alarm and antagonism.
Mary left Ellinor again at her easel, and smiled when she saw that the latter had given some finishing touches to her costume, and had stuck a sprig in her lace collarette, in expectation of a visit from Robert Wodrow and his mother. She knew well of the loving friendship and incipient regard that had long existed between Rob and Ellinor; and that as friends of years' standing each had begun—she hoped—to feel that in all the world the other was the dearest, and a union for life would of course follow.
But young Wodrow, who was now past his twentieth year, had 'his way to make' in the world, and, till he had graduated in medicine, matrimony was not to be seriously thought of.
She had one or two errands of mercy to fulfil ere she reached the river side, and began to put her rod together, and deftly did so with purpose-like little hands, that were cased in her garden-gloves, while Jack kept close by her side. In the woods there were no cats to worry, but he had sharp eyes for the rabbits that scudded about—sharp as any poacher or gamekeeper could have.
The day was a bright and lovely one in summer. The pale primrose had come and gone, and the bluebells were already fading out of the woods; the sorrel was becoming redder, and the wild strawberry, with its little white flowerets, was peeping out in unlikely places. The grass in the meadows was green and studded with golden buttercups, and the voice of the cushat dove could be heard at times among the silver birches—the 'siller birks' that cast their quivering and aspen-like shadows on the waters of the bonnie May, which is a fine stream for trout, ten miles in length, from its rise among the Ochils to its confluence with the lovely Earn.
Everywhere here the scenery is rich and beautiful, and the banks of the May are very varied. In one part a long and deep channel has been worn by its waters through the living rocks which almost close above it, and far down below they gurgle in obscurity with a deep and mysterious sound. At another place they pour in silver spray over a linn, thirty feet in height, and form a beautiful cascade, and everywhere the glen scenery is picturesque and richly wooded with the graceful silver birch, which is so characteristic of the Scottish Highlands, where it climbs boldly the brows of the steepest hills and rocks, though the oak prevails in the valleys of the Grampians.
There had been recently a 'spate,' or summer flood in the river, so the trout took to the fly greedily, and intent on her task Mary had nearly filled the little basket that hung at her waist with fish—two or three of which weighed heavily—and cost her little fingers no small trouble to disengage the hook from their gills, ere she became aware that she had a companion in her sport, of which she was very fond. But though Mary loved to dangle a little rod over a brook that teemed with finny denizens, it was, of course, quite beyond her strength or skill to hold a big rod over a river for the chance of hooking a 'pounder.'
Mary Wellwood had reached a part of the stream where it was more difficult to fish, as its banks were thickly wooded, when she saw near her, similarly occupied, a gentleman, who, though he did not seem to watch her, certainly did so, for to his eyes angling seemed an odd amusement for a young girl—a lady especially—though it is not more so than archery, and certainly not so much as bringing down a grouse upon the wing, a feat attempted by some damsels now-a-days.
Clad in a rough tweed suit, with fishing-boots that came above his knees, a straw hat, the band of which was garnished with flies and lines, he was a man above the middle height, apparently nearer thirty than twenty, handsome in figure and in face. The latter was of a rich, dark complexion, with regular features; a heavy, dark brown moustache, and unmistakably keen hazel eyes. He was a man with a fine air and of decided presence.
He had been observing Mary Wellwood for some time before she was aware of his presence or vicinity, and the consequence was that for each trout he caught the girl caught three; for while she was solely intent on making the fly, with which her hook was baited, alight on the eddying water in the most delicate manner directly above where she supposed the fish to be, he was, as he would have phrased it, 'taking stock' of her lissom and graceful figure, which her tight costume showed to the utmost advantage as she stooped over the stream; the perfect form of her 'thoroughbred' ears and hands, and the exceeding fairness of her skin, which was of that snowy kind which usually accompanies light brown hair, and Mary's was of a brilliant light brown, shot with gold, when the ruddy flakes of sunshine struck it through the trees aslant.
Desirous of getting away alike from his observation and vicinity, Mary lifted her line in haste, but, alas! it was caught by the root of a silver birch, which held it fast a little beneath the water, and from which, after drawing off her gloves, she sought in vain to disentangle it. Here was a dilemma.
'Permit me?' said the stranger, planting his rod in the turf, and lifting his hat as he came towards her. He at once succeeded in releasing her hook and line, while Jack at once fraternised with him.
'Thanks—thank you so much,' said Mary, colouring a little, as she quickly wound the line up, and with a bow passed on to a part of the stream some yards further down; the stranger had looked at her shapely white hand, as if he longed to take it within his own, and, as if by magnetism, was strongly attracted towards it.
But Mary—who intended to catch just one more fish—had barely resumed her operations before a most unforeseen mishap occurred to her. After a 'spate,' the water of the May is often dark in some places, and to reach a pool wherein she knew by past experience some fine trout were sure to be lurking, by the assistance of a stone she reached a flat boulder fully six feet from the bank, but her foot—light thought it was—had barely left the former ere it turned over in the current and vanished, leaving her isolated amid the stream, whereat her terrier yelped and barked furiously.
The distance was too great for her to leap; moreover, the bank was steep there, and to fall would end in a complete immersion, and, gathering her skirts above her little booted feet, she looked around her with a comical air of perplexity and dismay, which her companion of the rod was not slow to perceive, and again he instantly approached, but this time with an absolute smile rippling all over his face.
'You cannot leap this distance without risk, and so must permit me to assist you again,' said he, stepping at once into the water, which rose midway up his long fishing-boots. He put an arm round her—a strong arm she felt it to be—and at once lifted her to the bank.
'I have to thank you again, sir,' said Mary, blushing in earnest now.
'I am so glad that I was within sight—you were quite in a scrape, perched on that fragment of rock, with the dark water eddying round you,' said he, again lifting his hat; 'but perhaps you can repay me by indicating the nearest path to Craigmhor?'
Mary did so, on which, still lingering near, he remarked,
'And so these are the Birks of Invermay, so famed in Scottish song, and story, too, I believe? It is indeed a lovely spot!'
'Lovely, indeed,' replied Mary, as the praise of her native glen went straight to her heart; 'even we, who live here all the year round, never tire of its beauty.'
'I am here for the first time; I came to this quarter only yesterday, and the alternately bold and sylvan nature of the scenery impressed me greatly. You must be fond of fishing,' he added, with a well-bred smile, 'and seem more expert with your rod than I.'
'But I only know the May,' replied Mary, taking her rod to pieces as a hint that she was about to withdraw, on which the stranger began to do the same.
'I have fished for trout in many places—even in the Lake of Geneva,' said he, 'and, curiously enough, the fish there are precisely the same as those in Lough Neagh in Ireland.'
'In weather so clear and light as this—even after flood—it is no easy task to lure them to destruction here,' replied Mary, 'and a light enough basket is often carried home, even from the best parts of the stream.'
'Such has been my fortune to-day,' said he, as he quietly proceeded by her side; but now Mary remembered that the path she had indicated to him as leading to Craigmhor was also the one she had to pursue to reach Birkwoodbrae.
'Our May trout are very beautiful, and are as good in quality as in appearance,' remarked Mary, scarcely knowing what to say.
'I hope you do not venture to such places as this in winter,' said he, pointing to some rocks that overhung the shaded stream.
'Why?' asked Mary, laughing.
'Because, when the water freezes—as I suppose it does—and these rocks are covered with snow, there must be danger.'
'I fear you look at them with a Londoner's eyes.'
'I am a Londoner—in one fashion—Captain Colville of the Guards.'
'Oh, I do not fear the snow,' said Mary; 'I have been up on the summit of yonder hill when it was covered deep with snow,' she added, pointing to a spur of the Ochils, while her eyes kindled, for under the shadow of those mountains she was born; 'but I was only a child then.'
'And what object took you up at such a time, may I ask?'
'To save a wee pet lamb, that else must have perished in the snow.'
'And did you carry it down?'
'Yes—of course.'
'By Jove!' exclaimed the Guardsman, twirling his moustache.
'We call that place Crow Court,' said Mary.
'Why?' he asked.
'Because sometimes in summer the crows collect there in such numbers that the green hillside is blackened with them, as if they had all been summoned for the occasion; and sometimes they have been known to wait for a day or two while other crows were winging their way hither from every quarter of the sky. Then a great clamour and noise ensue among them, and the whole will fall upon one or two crows that have been guilty of something, and after picking and rending them to death they disperse in flights as they came.'
The Guardsman knew not what to make of this bit of natural history, and could only stroke his moustache again.
Something in this girl's sweet but determined profile—something in the freshness of her character, and her slightly grave manner, as that of one already accustomed, but gently, to rule others, had a strange charm for Leslie Colville—for such was his name—though he was evidently a man accustomed to the ways of West-End belles and Belgravian mammas. Yet this girl never flattered him even by a smile, and her violet-blue eyes met his keen dark hazel ones as calmly as if their sexes were reversed, while her whole manner had the provoking indifference and the conscious air of self-possession which can only be acquired in the best society; and yet, to his very critical eye, her costume was rather unsuited to the atmosphere of Regent Street and Tyburnia, being extremely plain, and destitute of every accessory in the way of brooch, bracelet, ring, or even the inevitable bow.
To him it seemed quite refreshing to talk to a girl who, with all her loveliness, evidently seemed not to know how to flirt or even think about it.
'I must now bid you good-morning,' said Mary, on reaching a hedge-bordered path that led to her home.
'What is the name of that house so charmingly embosomed among birches?' he asked.
'Birkwoodbrae.'
'Birkwoodbrae—indeed!' he repeated, with a start that Mary detected, but believed it to be simulated, and felt somewhat offended in consequence.
'The name seems to interest you,' said she, coldly, almost with hauteur.
'Do you reside there?' he asked, while regarding her so curiously that Mary felt her natural colour deepen.
'Yes, and have done so since my father's death,' and, bowing again, she quickly withdrew, while he, with hat in hand, looked after her.
'These are the last trout we shall have for a time—of my own fishing at least, Ellinor,' said Mary, as she relieved herself of the basket and told of the forenoon adventures.
'Why?'
'I have no wish to be escorted by any of the visitors at Craigmhor; least of all by Captain Colville, the fiancé, as I understand he is, of that intolerable girl, Blanche Galloway.'
'I should think not,' replied Ellinor, laughing at her sister's unusual air of annoyance.
But the sisters had not heard the last of Captain Leslie Colville.
CHAPTER III.
THE INTRODUCTION.
A day or two after the rencontre we have narrated, when the sisters were quietly reading in their little drawing-room, the curtained windows of which opened to the lovely glen, through which May flows, visitors were announced—two strangers and their old friend the parish minister.
The latter entered, hat in hand, with the cheery confidence of one who knew he was welcome, saying,
'My dear girls, allow me to introduce two new friends—Captain Colville and Sir Redmond Sleath—Miss Wellwood—Miss Ellinor Wellwood.'
A few well-bred bows, with the subsequent inevitable remarks about the weather followed, and as all seated themselves, Dr. Wodrow said,
'We have had a long ramble by the Linn, and even as far as the King's Haugh, and have just dropped in to have a cup of afternoon tea, my dears.'
Mary sweetly gave a smile of welcome and assent, as her hand went to the bell.
The old minister, who knew that for reasons yet to be explained, Captain Colville was anxious to see once more the fair girl whom he had met and succoured by Mayside, had artfully arranged the proper introduction, which had now come to pass, and the end of which he—good, easy, and unthinking man—could little then foresee.
Sir Redmond, as he was introduced to Mary, took his glass out of his right eye, where it had hitherto been, and placed it in his left to focus Ellinor when introduced to her, each time bowing very low, yet with an expression of appreciative scrutiny in his face.
The transference of his glass from eye to eye was perhaps a small matter in one way, yet in another it was very indicative of the man's cool insouciance of character and bearing.
On the unexpected arrival of these visitors, the first thoughts of the sisters were that their household furniture was decidedly the worse for the wear, that it was all old-fashioned, and that the curtains, carpets, and chairs were all toned down by time; yet everything was scrupulously clean, and in all its details Birkwoodbrae was evidently the home of gentlewomen of taste and refinement. Flowers, artistically sorted, were distributed whereever they might be placed with propriety, with all the pretty trifles and nick-nacks peculiar to the atmosphere of 'the British drawing-room,' while the newest music lay upon the open piano, and Colville's observant eye quickly detected the latest novels and illustrated papers too.
'Miss Wellwood and I are already old friends,' said Captain Colville, with a pleasant smile, as he slid at once into conversation with Mary, laughingly, about their meeting by the river.
'You have not been fishing for some days past, Miss Wellwood,' he remarked, incidentally.
'No, I have been otherwise occupied,' replied Mary, as she thought 'he has been looking for me, or has missed me,' and she knew not whether to be flattered or provoked by the discovery, while, with secret pleasure, Colville was looking into her minute and handsome face, with its starry blue eyes, and tender, mobile mouth—a face as rare in its candour and innocence of expression as in its delicate beauty.
Sir Redmond Sleath—of whom more anon—was tall, fair-haired, and undoubtedly handsome, with a tawny or blonde moustache, and regular features. He was every way the style of man to please a woman's fancy, yet to those who watched him closely it was evident that his blue eyes—for they were a species of cold China blue rather than grey—had a shifty, almost dishonest expression, and that no smile ever pervaded them, even when his lips laughed.
He was in morning costume, with accurately fitting, light-coloured gloves, and a dainty 'button-hole' in the lapel of his black coat; while Colville wore a dark velvet shooting-coat and tan gaiters, his thick, brown hair carefully dressed, his dark moustache pointed, a plain signet ring glittering on his strong brown hand—an onyx, which bore, as Ellinor's sharp, artistic eye observed, the Wellwood crest, or one uncommonly like it—a demi-lion rampant; but then the crests of so many families are the same.
Dr. Wodrow, the minister of Invermay (called of old the Kirktown of Mailler), was a tall, stout, and more than fine-looking man, with aquiline features, and a massive forehead, from which his hair, very full in quantity, and now silvery white, seemed to start up in Jove-like spouts, to fall behind over his ears and neck. He had keen, dark-grey eyes, always a pleasant smile, with a calm, kind, and dignified, if not somewhat pompous, manner, born, perhaps, of the consciousness that, after the laird, he was a chief man in the parish.
His one little vanity, or pet weakness, was pride in his descent from the pious but superstitious old author of 'Analecta Scotica,' and other almost forgotten works, but who was a great man in his time, before and after the Treaty of Union, and in honour of whom he had named his only son 'Robert.'
The afternoon tea proceeded in due course, served in fine old dragon china, brought in by old Elspat, a hard-featured little woman, in deep black, owing to her recent bereavement, who curtseyed in an old-fashioned way to each and all, and with whom the minister shook hands, somewhat to the surprise of his London friends.
'What a splendid type of dog you have here, Miss Wellwood—all muscle and sinew—half bull, half fox terrier,' said Colville, in a pause of the conversation, patting Jack, who was nestling close to Mary's skirt, for the captain deemed rightly that her dog was a safe thing to enlarge upon.
'He is indeed a pet—the dearest of dogs,' she replied, tickling Jack's ears, and getting a lick of his red tongue in return.
'Are you not afraid of him?' asked Sir Redmond, a little nervously.
'Afraid of Jack—I should think not!' replied Mary, laughing.
But somehow Jack seemed to have an antipathy for the baronet, and growled and showed his molar tusks very unmistakably each time that personage focussed him with his eyeglass.
The cabinet portrait of an old officer, in uniform with epaulettes and one or two medals, seemed to attract the interest of Leslie Colville.
'That is papa,' said Mary, in an explanatory tone.
'Ah, he was in the service, then,' said the captain, smiling. 'So am I—in the Scots Guards.'
'The Scots Guards! Then perhaps you know our cousin, Captain Wellwood.'
'Of course I know him intimately,' he replied, with some hesitation, while colouring deeply.
Mary thought there was something strange in his manner, as he spoke in a low and indistinct voice, heard by herself alone, so she pursued the, to her, rather distasteful subject no further, but the captain added,
'A lucky dog—he has succeeded lately to a pot of money—quite a fortune, in fact.'
'Lucky indeed,' assented Sir Redmond. 'By Jove, there is nothing like money for enabling one to enjoy life. Don't you think so, doctor?'
'No,' replied the minister, shaking his white head, 'I agree with my worthy ancestor, who remarks, in the third volume of his Analecta, that "wealth is apt to abate the godly habits of a people." Of course, Sir Redmond, you have read Wodrow's Analecta.'
'Sorry to say, my dear sir, that I never heard of it.'
'Indeed. It was the labour of twenty-seven years. Thus, you may see that he was unlike Hué, the learned Bishop of Avranches, who used to say that all human learning could be comprised in one volume folio.'
Sir Redmond felt himself somewhat at a loss here, and ignoring the minister, whom he deemed 'an old parish pump,' he turned again to Ellinor Wellwood, some of whose framed landscapes drew attention to her merits as an amateur artist, and led to the production of a portfolio of her sketches, over which the baronet hung, as well as over herself, in real or well-simulated admiration.
The latter could scarcely be, as Ellinor had so many personal attractions, her long lashes imparted such softness to her dark hazel eyes, and the contour of her head and neck seemed so graceful and ladylike as Sir Redmond stooped over her, and complimented her artistic efforts.
Meanwhile Jack, with his hair bristling up, and his bandy legs planted firmly on the carpet, was growling, snarling, and showing such manifestations of making his tusks acquainted with the baronet's calves or ankles, that he had to be ignominiously taken out of the room by Elspat.
'Dogs have strange instincts and antipathies,' said Dr. Wodrow, rather unluckily, and unaware of all his words implied. 'Ah,' he added, as Ellinor displayed one of her drawings, 'that is the Holy Hill of Forteviot, and these stones you see depicted among the turf possess a curious legend—the story of a miller's daughter who married a king—a story you must get Miss Wellwood to tell you one of these days. And so you have given old Elspat a home here, Mary,' he added, smoothing her bright hair with his hand, as he had been wont to do when she was a child, caressingly.
'Yes, for Ellinor and I both love the poor old creature.'
'You are one after God's own heart, Mary,' said the minister, his grey eyes kindling as he spoke.
'We have never forgotten the strange weird dream—if dream it was—she had in the winter night before dear papa died.'
'And this dream?' said Captain Colville, inquiringly, and regarding the girl's face with genuine interest.
'Was a waking one—tell him, Mary,' said Dr. Wodrow, seeing that she hesitated to speak of such things to an utter stranger.
'When papa was on his death-bed,' said she, 'the winter snow covered all the hills; it lay deep in the glen there, and even the great cascade at the Linn hung frozen like a giant's beard in mid-air. About the solemn gloaming time Elspat saw from her cottage window a strange, dim, flickering light leave our house here, and proceed slowly towards the village church, by a line where no road lies, and pass through the churchyard wall at a place where no gates open, and then, at a certain point, it vanished! At that precise time papa died, and when the funeral day came—a day never to be forgotten by us—the roads were so deep with snow that the procession took the way traversed by the light, and, as the gates were buried deep, the wall was crossed at the point indicated by the light, and the grave was found to have been dug where the light vanished.'
Mary's gentle voice broke as she told this little story, and whatever Colville thought of it, though a town-bred Scotsman, no unbelief was traceable in his face.
'We know not what to think of such things,' said Dr. Wodrow, with one of his soft smiles; 'but, as Sir William Hamilton says in his metaphysics, "to doubt and be astonished is to recognise our own ignorance. Hence it is that the lover of wisdom is to a certain extent a lover of the mythic, for the subject of the mythic is the astonishing and the marvellous." But the corpse-light is a common superstition here, as the tomb-fires of the Norse used to be of old.'
CHAPTER IV.
ROBERT WODROW.
Leaving Ellinor and Sir Redmond occupied with the contents of the portfolio, Mary, accompanied by the other two visitors, issued into the garden, where all the flowers of summer were in their brilliance. They lingered for a time at the door of the barnyard, surmounted by the quaint legend, and beyond which they could see Mary's cow standing mid-leg deep among luxuriant clover, while at the sight of her all the fowls, expectant of a feed, came towards her noisily in flights; nor were they quite disappointed, as the pockets of her lawn-tennis apron were not without some handfuls of corn, and Colville could not help thinking what a charming picture she made at that moment, as she stood with her sheeny hair in the sunshine expatiating on the good qualities of her feathered subjects, among whom many of Lord Dunkeld's pheasants came to feed as usual, but the birds looked so beautiful in their brown and golden-tinted plumage that Mary had never the heart to drive them away.
'That is a beautiful Cochin China,' said she to Colville; 'she consumes a gallon of barley every ten days; and is not that black Spanish cock a splendid fellow? His feathers are like the richest satin, and how strongly his plumage contrasts with my snow-white dorkings; and are not these chickens like balls of golden fluff—dear wee darlings!'
And as she spoke, and scattered some grains among them from her quick white hands, the birds fluttered in flights about her, as if she was the mother of them all; and, as she gave Colville some corn to throw among them, the Guardsman, with all his admiration of her, could not resist a covert smile at himself and his surroundings.
She looked so fresh and so innocent, and so ready to tell him all her little plans and of her local interests.
To him, a club man—a man of the world—accustomed to the giddy whirl of London life, the Parks, the Row, Hurlingham and Lillie Bridge; Lord's Cricket Ground, garden and water-parties, 'feeds' at the 'Star and Garter,' and heaven only knows all what more—it was a new sensation this, and a wonderfully pleasant one.
He was next obliged to visit her ducks as they swam to and fro in an artificial pond—
'With glassy necks of emerald hue,
And wings barred with deepest blue
That sapphire gives; and ruddy breast
By the clear dimpling waters pressed,'
as Dr. Wodrow quoted the poet; and then her brown owl, which had been caught by Robert Wodrow, nearly at the risk of his life, in the ruined tower of Invermay, and now sat in a hollow of the garden wall secured by a net, behind which it winked and blinked and waited for a sparrow or a field-mouse; and the girl seemed so bright and independent, so happy and so busy with all the objects which formed her little cares, that Leslie Colville surveyed her with a kind of wonder and curiosity, for, while being perfectly ladylike, perfectly bred and delicately nurtured, she was so unlike any woman he had ever met before; her world was, in many respects, one altogether apart from his.
Meanwhile Sir Redmond, the very picture of bland laziness, though secretly keen as a ferret, with his glass in his left eye and his hands thrust into his trousers pockets, and his hair parted like a woman's in the middle, was standing before Ellinor, and contemplating her with evident satisfaction, for he was a vaurien by nature.
'And you have come here to shoot?' said she, as the portfolio was relinquished at last.
'To shoot—yes,' he replied; 'this will be my first turn at the game in Scotland.'
'Robert tells me that the gleds have sucked half the grouse eggs this season.'
'Gleds—what are they—nasty little boys?'
'They are a kind of crow,' replied Ellinor, laughing excessively.
'And who is Robert?' asked Sir Redmond, slowly, readjusting his eyeglass.
'The son of Dr. Wodrow,' replied Ellinor, colouring a little, as he could perceive.
'He prognosticates a bad look-out for us on the 12th of next month?'
The normal expression of Sir Redmond's face, which was perhaps lazy insolence, seemed to change when a smile spread over it, and then the sensual lips, partly hidden by their fair moustache, became almost handsome. In Ellinor's sketches there had been ample food for ready conversation. Sir Redmond had seen all the picture galleries in Europe, and, whether he understood it or not, could talk of art with all the ease and fluency of a well-bred man of the world who was desirous of pleasing, and he had watched with growing interest her changing face and the brightening expression of her sweet eyes that had become trained to observe all things; but now that the portfolio was closed, the conversation had begun to flag a little.
'Robert also told me,' said Ellinor, to fill up an awkward pause, 'that as the grouse had been seen close to the barn and orchard walls, it is a sign of a severe winter.'
'It is too soon to think of winter yet; but he seems to be an authority in zoological matters, this Mr.—Mr.——'
'Wodrow.'
'Ah, yes—Robert Wodrow.'
'He is here to speak for himself,' said Ellinor, with just the slightest soupçon of confusion or of annoyance in her manner as a young man entered unannounced, and was at once introduced to Sir Redmond Sleath, who, in responding to his bow, proceeded at once to focus him with his eyeglass.
With a well-knit, well-set-up figure, Robert Wodrow was an active-looking young fellow, somewhat less in stature than Sir Redmond, less dignified in air and bearing, yet not less like a gentleman. He had his father's regular features, his open character of face, and honest dark-grey eyes, in which at times there was a thoughtful expression, the result of hard study. At others a merry, devil-may-carish one, the result of life among the rollicking medical students of a great University.
Without adverting to any subject on which the two had been talking with reference to himself, he proceeded at once to address Ellinor.
'I have brought the ferns you wished for,' said he, placing in her hand a tuft of sprays.
'Oh, thanks; my wish was so slightly expressed.'
'It was a command to me,' he said, in a low voice.
'How far did you walk for them?'
'More than ten miles down Earn side.'
'Ten miles!'
'Near to Strath Allan.'
'Dear me—the Allan Water!' said Sir Redmond. 'Is that the place where the miller's lovely daughter so sadly misconducted herself in the sweet spring time of the year?'
Robert's reply to this question was only a cold and haughty stare, under which even the baronet's insouciance nearly failed him, but from that moment the two men instinctively felt themselves enemies.
'Why did you take so much trouble for a mere trifle, Robert?' asked the girl.
'Because I heard you express a wish to have that particular fern, Ellinor,' replied the young fellow, whose eyes seemed to say that he would have gone ten times the distance ungrudgingly for one of her old smiles, or for the smile she was now according, not to him, but to her strange visitor, whose eyebrows were slightly and inquiringly elevated, as he glanced at the speaker, who seemed so much en famille at Birkwoodbrae, and called Ellinor by her Christian name, and who saw that she placed the fern leaves on the table, and soon—Robert Wodrow thought too soon—forgot all about them apparently.
'You have known Robert long, I presume, Miss Ellinor?' said Sir Redmond, with a twinkle in his cold, china-blue eyes, and as he would have spoken of a boy or a child.
'I have known him all my life,' she replied.
'Indeed!' drawled the other, who now rose and took up his hat, as Colville and Dr. Wodrow appeared, and were about to depart, and, bidding adieu to the ladies, the two visitors from Craigmhor bent their steps in that direction, while the minister lingered behind.
'Isn't she pretty!' exclaimed Sir Redmond, as they proceeded along the highway that seemed like a private avenue, so thickly was it bordered and over-arched by beautiful and drooping silver birches.
'She—who—which?' asked Captain Colville, with a slightly ruffled tone.
'Ellinor—the youngest sister.'
'Miss Ellinor Wellwood,' said Colville, with an accent on the word, 'is downright lovely, man; but you think every girl pretty, especially when in the country.'
'And away from contrasts, you mean; but excuse me; I am neither so facile nor so inflammable as that comes to; yet I do know a handsome girl when I see one; and by Jove, little Ellinor is one to cultivate. Two such girls living there alone seems a singular proceeding.'
'In your eyes, I have no doubt,' replied Colville, stooping to light a cigar, and hide the expression of annoyance that crossed his face; 'but it is not so much, perhaps, in the place where their parents have been respected; and where all know them well, and seem to love them.'
'Dressed as I could dress her,' continued Sleath, still pursuing one thought, and that an evil one, 'she would make quite a sensation—never saw such hair and eyes, by Jove.'
'What do you mean?' asked Leslie Colville, coldly.
'Well, among other things, I mean that she is a deal too pretty to be thrown away upon that Scotch country clodhopper, who is evidently spoony upon her—has known her all her life, and all that sort of thing, don't you know.'
'Whom do you mean now?'
'This—well—ah—what's his deuced name—Robert Wodrow.'
'The son of a very worthy man—a friend of mine, Sir Redmond.'
'Oh—ah—indeed.'
Colville's face darkened and grew rather stern.
Why?
We shall be able to let a little light on his secret emotion in time to come.
Meanwhile the speakers were the source of some speculation among those they had just quitted.
'Who are those gentlemen, Dr. Wodrow?' asked Mary.
'Captain Colville, of the Household Brigade, and Sir Redmond Sleath, a baronet, and wealthy, I believe, friends of the Dunkeld family, come here for the Twelfth. Are you pleased with them?'
'Oh, yes,' replied Ellinor, but Mary remained silent.
'Perhaps one may prove like the hunter who came in the olden time to hunt here, and wooed the pretty maid of Forteviot,' said the doctor, laughing, and pinching her soft cheek.
'And Captain Colville is engaged to Blanche Galloway, is he not?' she asked.
'So I believe. A man of undoubted wealth, he has lately succeeded to property of various kinds, and means, it is said, to urge his claim in the female line to the peerage of Ochiltree, which has been dormant since the death of David, fourth lord, in 1782. He has thus assumed the name of Colville.'
'Lord Colville of Ochiltree,' said Mary, softly and thoughtfully.
'Yes—he claims that peerage, my dear,' replied Dr. Wodrow. 'I have a great and melancholy respect for our dormant, extinct, and—more than all—for our attainted peerages. The men who held them were generally, if not all, true to Scotland, which is more than we can say for our mongrel and often cockney-born peers of the present day; but Captain Colville would be one, good, honest, and true, I doubt not.'
'And his own name?'
'I do not precisely know,' replied the minister, whose son listened to all this with a lowering brow, but lingered a little behind his father, and, while the latter was striding along the green lanes towards the manse, Robert was telling Ellinor over again of all his hopes and plans, and his expectation of certainly graduating in medicine at Edinburgh, and that he would get his diploma very shortly; and then—and then—what then?
A kiss given in secret seemed more than a reward for all his labours and consumption of the midnight oil in a lonely lodging up a common stair near the old 'Academia Jacobi VI. Scotorum Regis,' and where he had pored for many a weary hour over 'Quain's Anatomy,' 'Christison's Dispensatory,' 'Balfour's Botany,' and so forth, inspired by his love for Ellinor Wellwood, and now he left her, with his heart full of happy dreams of the future.
'Why did Dr. Wodrow bring those two strange gentlemen here?' remarked Ellinor.
'You may well surmise,' said Mary; 'to visit two girls living alone as we do. It is so unlike him and his usual care.'
'That Captain Colville struck me as being very inquisitive about us and our surroundings.'
'I do not think so,' replied Mary; 'but his friend appeared a very blasé man of the world indeed, if I am a correct judge. But, if afternoon tea was merely their object, why not have gone to the manse?'
Gentlemen visitors—especially of such a style as these two—one a baronet, the other a Guardsman and claimant of a peerage—were not very usual at Birkwoodbrae; so, apart from the natural surmises as to why the old minister, usually so wary, chary, and shy about all introductions, should have brought these two to pass, the two girls had much to speculate upon that proved of considerable interest to both.
Old Colonel Wellwood, as we have said, when on his death-bed, had verbally left his two orphan daughters in the care and custody of his old friend the minister, and faithfully and kindly had the latter and his worthy better-half taken the trust upon them.
But no influence could induce the sisters, Mary especially, to quit Birkwoodbrae and reside at the manse. There was a strong spirit of independence in the girls, and believing in self-help they continued to reside in the house wherein their parents died, undisturbed, as we have said, by their kinsman, who was far away abroad.
Till the next Sunday in church the sisters of Birkwoodbrae saw nothing of their two visitors. The latter—ignoring the service, or seeming at least rather indifferent about it—were in Lord Dunkeld's pew, a large, old-fashioned one, panelled with carved oak, lined with crimson velvet, and having a little oak table in the centre of it. An arched window, in which some fragments of the original stained glass of pre-Reformation times remained, was near, and through it the sunshine streamed on the handsome face and unexceptionable bonnet of Blanche Galloway, who barely accorded the sisters a bow, and then bent her over her book, which she shared with Captain Colville.
Her father, the old lord—of whom more anon—seemed to doze, while Sir Redmond, when not glancing towards Mary and Ellinor Wellwood, seemed to occupy himself with studying the faces, not of the hard-featured country congregation, but of the Scoto-Norman chancel arch, which exhibited elaborate zig-zag rows of heads of fabulous figures and animals, characteristic of church architecture in the days of William the Lion and Alexander I. A few coats armorial were discernible here and there, emblems of races, conquests, honours, and dignities of later times, all of which had passed away; tombs where whilom hung the helmets, banners, and swords of those who defended Scotland when Scotland was true to herself, and the days when she would sink to be a neglected province were unforeseen.
Of Dr. Wodrow's sermon Ellinor took little heed. With the watchful and loving eyes of Robert upon her she was only anxious to get away from church without being addressed by Sir Redmond Sleath, and as the latter and his friend the captain were on 'escort duty' with the fair Blanche, Mary fully shared her anxiety and wish; thus both sisters were on the wing by the close of the last psalm, that sound so welcome to the shepherd-dogs, who were coiled under their master's pews, and at the first notes thereof were seen to yawn and stretch forth their legs in anticipation of a fight in the churchyard, or a scamper after the sheep on the breezy sides of the hills.
Leslie Colville and Sir Redmond were not, however, though we have said it, 'friends.' Their natures were too dissimilar for that; they were merely acquaintances, and, like some other guests, had met for perhaps the first time at Craigmhor.
Both were—to the casual eye—unexceptionable in manner and appearance; but Colville's nature and disposition were open, manly, candid, and genuinely honest; while those of Sir Redmond, whose baronetcy dated from 'yesterday,' were crooked, selfish, and secretly prone to many kinds of dissipation and evil. He had gone through the worst curriculum of both that the worlds of London and Paris can furnish. His very eyes and lips, at times, told as much.
Discovering speedily that Leslie Colville resented any loose or slighting remarks concerning the young ladies at Birkwoodbrae, and that he still more would be disposed to resent any attentions on his part towards them, though why or wherefore seemed very mysterious, Sir Redmond Sleath contrived to pay more than one visit, and to bestow more than one attention in secret, at least unknown to Colville; he, a sly Englishman of the worst type, conceiving that the other was only a 'sly Scotsman,' with views of his own, as he himself had.
On the pretence of bringing books, music, flowers, and so forth to the sisters, but more particularly Ellinor, Sir Redmond had found his way to the little villa rather oftener than Dr. Wodrow, and still more than the latter's son, would have relished. Hence, one day when Robert came to Birkwoodbrae, he saw the wished-for ferns he had gone so far and so lovingly to procure—not planted in her little fernery, but—lying dead, withered, and forgotten in a walk of the garden.
Robert Wodrow made no remark on this, but the neglect seemed somehow to tell a bitter tale to his heart.
CHAPTER V.
THE DUNKELD FAMILY.
'Ah, London is the true place for life! One exists only in the country, but in London we live!' exclaimed Lady Dunkeld.
'You are right, my Lady Dunkeld!' exclaimed Sir Redmond Sleath; but life in London had for him some elements to his listener unknown—or, if so, not cared for—flirtations with pretty actresses, dinners to fast fair ones at the 'Star and Garter,' cards, billiards, pool, and pyramid, all very nice things in their way, but ruinous if carried to excess, even by a bachelor of Sir Redmond's means.
'I agree with you also, mamma,' said her daughter; 'but what is it to be—a ball, or dinner-party, or a garden-party we must give, if not all the three?'
'A garden-party by all means, Blanche.'
And Blanche shrugged her shoulders with the quaint foreign gesture which she inherited with her French blood, and took a sheet of paper from her desk to make out a list of names, to which her father, the old peer, listened with perfect indifference, if he listened at all.
Though descended from Patrick Galloway, who was minister of the Gospel at Edinburgh in the reign of James VI., the Dunkeld family, as the Scottish Peerage tells us, were first ennobled in the person of Sir James Galloway of Carnbee, in Fifeshire, who was Master of the Requests to James VI. and Charles I., Secretary of State and Clerk to the Bills, and was 'created Lord Dunkeld by patent on the 15th of May, 1645.' After intermarriages with the families of Duddingston and Dudhope, we come to 'James, third Lord Dunkeld, who was bred to the army, and was accounted a very good officer,' says Douglas; 'he joined Lord Dundee when he raised forces for King James VII., and was with him at the battle of Killiecrankie.'
There he was one of the foremost in that heroic charge, before which
'Horse and man went down like drift-wood
When the floods are black at Yule,
And their carcases were whirling
In the Garry's deepest pool.'
Outlawed, he became a colonel in the French service, and fell in battle but long after; his name appears as 'my Lord Dunkell' in the Liste des Officiers Genereaux for May 10, 1748.
James, the fourth lord, was also a general in the French army, and was a Grand Cross of St. Louis.
His grandson, the present lord, proved—untrue to the old traditions of his race—a very different, useless, and mediocre Scottish peer, of the type too well known in our day. He had no property in Scotland, and no more interest in her people, morally, practically, or politically, than a Zulu chief. He was proud of his descent and title, nothing more, and, not being very wealthy, thought, like his wife, that Leslie Colville would be a very eligible son-in-law; while at his death his title would inevitably pass to a second cousin, Colonel Charles Edward Galloway, chef d'escadron of a cavalry regiment, then quartered at Chalons-sur-Marne.
Lord Dunkeld had one pet vanity—a real or fancied resemblance in his profile to those of the Grand Monarque and the later Louis of France; a facial angle indicative of weakness certainly, if not of worse; but, if the idea pleased him, it did no one any harm.
Though thoroughly English bred, and English in all her ideas, as taken from her mother, the Hon. Blanche Gabrielle—so called from her grandmother, Gabrielle de Fontaine-Martel (daughter of the marquis of that name)—had considerable French espièglerie in her manner, and many pretty foreign tricks of it, with her eyebrows and hands, but she was naturally cold, ambitious, selfish, and vain.
It was the luncheon-time at Craigmhor, which Lord Dunkeld only rented. The shooting had not yet begun; the circle therefore had some difficulty in getting through the days, and the necessity for some amusement being devised, 'something being done,' was on the tapis.
Blanche wore a dress of plain blue serge, with a simple linen collar and lace collarette encircling her slender neck. Her hair, of a light golden tint, was dressed in the most perfect taste by the deft fingers of Mademoiselle Rosette, her French maid. In contrast to her hair, her eyes were dark—large eyes, full of observation and expressive of sensitiveness; she had delicately cut lips, which always seemed to droop when she did not smile.
She had a general air of great softness and sweetness, which was most deceptive, as Blanche Galloway was secretly strong, with all the strength of one who in love, hate, or ambition could be fearless, and wily as fearless. Lastly, she had that which so often comes with foreign blood in a girl's veins, the faintest indication of a moustache, or down, at the corners of her red and mobile lips.
Luncheon, we say, was in progress. Colville, Sir Redmond, and some other guests (who have no part in our story) were busy thereat; and the old family butler—in some respects an old family tyrant, who resented any alteration in the daily domestic arrangements as something bordering on a personal affront—was carving at the sideboard.
It was high summer now. The chestnuts were in full leaf, and their shadows were lightened by the silver birches. The garden around Craigmhor was red with roses; the stone vases on the paved terrace were teeming with fragrant blossoms, and the stately peacocks, their tails studded with the fabled eyes of Argus, iridescent and flashing in the sunshine, strutted to and fro.
Craigmhor (or the Great Rock) was neither a Highland stronghold of the middle ages nor a Scoto-French chateau of the latter James's, but a very handsome modern villa, with all the appurtenances and appliances that wealth and luxury can supply in the present day, otherwise my Lady Dunkeld could not have endured it.
Once a belle in Mayfair, she had many remains of beauty still, as she was not over her fortieth year. Sooth to say—and we are sorry to record it—she did not like Scotsmen very much, but she rather approved of Leslie Colville. He was now very rich—the probable inheritor of a title nearly as old as that borne by her husband; and having been educated at Rugby, and being now in the Guards, he was a kind of Englishman by naturalization, a view which perhaps Colville would have resented.
For many reasons Lady Dunkeld did not care about a ball in the country; it was so difficult where to draw the line with regard to the invitations.
In London her balls were always a success—no one knew precisely how or why—yet they were so, though organised just like those of other people. Her cards of invitation were always in keen request, and, though she had the reputation of yearly launching into society, and getting excellent matches for a bevy of lovely girls, her daughter Blanche, now in her twenty-fourth year, was still upon her hands.
So the idea of a garden-party was carried nem. con., as suitable to 'all sorts.'
They might have in the garden and lawn those with whom they could not be intimate in the house. It was easy to entertain with ices, wine, and fruit, music, and chit-chat those whom they cared not to have at their mahogany, or to meet in the tolerably perfect equality of a ball-room. Oh, yes, a garden-party was just the sort of thing to have for the people about Craigmhor, who were not county people.
So, while some of the gentlemen withdrew to smoke and idle in the gun-room or stables, Blanche seated herself at her davenport, and, with a dainty gold pencil, proceeded to make out the list for her mamma.
Certain names were put down as a matter of course; those of adjacent landholders or the renters of shootings—many of whom were English idlers of good position; also 'a paper lord,' who lived in the vicinity, for, in absence of the real article, as Sir Redmond said, with a laugh, 'the factitious rank that accrues to the Scottish bench was always acceptable in Scotland.' But though Sir Redmond was a baronet, he came of a family which, like that of Mrs. Grizzle Pickle, 'was not to be traced two generations back by all the powers of heraldry or tradition.'
A country doctor and a clergyman or two, with their families, come next, including the Rev. Dr. Wodrow, of course.
'The Misses Wellwood, mamma?' said Blanche, inquiringly, as she looked up from her list. 'I saw them at church on Sunday.'
'Are these girls living alone—still?' asked Lady Dunkeld, 'without even an old maid to play propriety.'
'It is clearly against the rules of society, mamma.'
'As laid down by Mrs. Grundy. Have them, by all means,' said Lord Dunkeld; 'but for their extreme goodness, charity, and spotless lives, uncharitable people might say uncharitable things. We must have them, Blanche; their father was a brave old officer.'
Whether it was some French associations and his half-blood that influenced him, we cannot say; but Lord Dunkeld by no means shared in the prejudices of his wife and daughter against the two orphan girls at Birkwoodbrae, more especially, as he admitted, their father had been, like himself and his fathers before him, a man of the sword.
'Put their names down, Blanche,' said Lady Dunkeld; adding mentally, 'men like Sir Redmond will be sure to get up a flirtation, which these cottage girls will be sure to misunderstand.'
'But will they come, mamma?' said Blanche. 'You know we have never called on them.'
'That is a matter easily remedied—deliver your invitations in person,' said old Lord Dunkeld.
'And if we invite them here, are we also to invite the elder girl's shadow?' asked Blanche.
'Her shadow!' exclaimed Lady Dunkeld. Who do you mean?'
'That young man—I do not rightly know his name—to whom she is, Rosette tells me, engaged.'
'Of course not; where would your list end if we went on thus?'
Blanche either meant Ellinor's lover, or made a mistake; but somehow both Colville and Sir Redmond Sleath noted her words.
After a time it was discovered that 'the young man' referred to was Dr. Wodrow's only son, so his name was included in the list.
'How many such acquaintances as these people are made in a year and then dropped,' observed Blanche, unaware that Captain Colville coloured with something of pain and even annoyance at her remark.
To all this sort of thing Sir Redmond Sleath listened with attention. We need not conceal the fact or circumstance that this enterprising baronet had marked out the soft, dreamy, artistic, and gentle Ellinor for a kind of affaire du cœur peculiarly his own. Mary Wellwood, from her natural strength of character, he knew to be beyond the range of his nefarious views or schemes; and eventually, the warmth of his attentions to Ellinor were only curbed in public or veiled by a wholesome fear of his new acquaintance, Captain Colville, who, he thought, was 'idiotically smitten' by a fancy for or interest in Mary, for a time, of course, he supposed, 'as these things never lasted;' and he hoped, when the Guardsman went back to town and was fully under the influence of Blanche and her mother, to return to the vicinity of Birkwoodbrae on any pretence, and then have the field to himself.
For a man like Sir Redmond there was a strange fascination in achieving the conquest of, or in 'running to earth,' as he would have phrased it, a girl so pure and confiding as Ellinor, and whose beauty and helplessness inspired him with a kind of love, as he thought it, but a selfish love peculiarly his own.
It may excite surprise that such worldlings as Lord and Lady Dunkeld did not prefer a baronet as a parti for their daughter's hand; but Leslie Colville was by far the richer of the two, and possessed landed property in various directions; and, however Sir Redmond might admire Blanche Galloway, he dared not raise his eyes to her, for very sufficient reasons yet to be explained.
Finding that Colville, as we have said, was curiously disposed to resent some of his off-hand remarks about Mary and Ellinor Wellwood, he began to take refuge in professions of the greatest esteem for them both, and occasionally urged his regard for the youngest.
'In love again—you—and with a little country lass?' said Colville, laughing. 'You who were over head and ears, as the saying is, with Lady Sarah, all last season, as repute said.'
'When she loved me—if she was capable of it,' replied Sleath, with a dark look, 'she was indeed my Queen of Hearts.'
'And now, having married that millionaire fellow, she is Queen of Diamonds. But what could you expect of a girl who was engaged to two men at once, and wore the engagement rings of both?'
'Of course her heart was no longer her own when the millionaire solicited. She accepted him, and made a hecatomb of my letters and those of another fool, who is now broiling with his regiment in South Africa. 'The world well lost for love' is poetic, certainly, but devilish stupid practically.'
Though entirely opposite and different in character and disposition, both these men looked forward with pleasure to the anticipated garden-party—Colville with real satisfaction to the hope of meeting Mary Wellwood once more; and Sir Redmond to the chances of furthering his own particular views.