Chapter XII: After Thoughts

There are generally two distinct sets of people at every country entertainment carrying out the principle of 'pig-iron that looks down on tenpenny nails;' but Lady Dunkeld's garden-party was voted a charming gathering. She had a special skill for assorting her guests, and did so accordingly, though some of our _dramatis personæ_ assorted themselves; and the result was so far harmony, apparently--we say apparently, for it was not universal.

Thus Blanche Galloway was displeased with the manner in which Leslie Colville hovered about Mary Wellwood, while Colville, and more especially Robert Wodrow, were both displeased by the conspicuous absence of Sir Redmond and Ellinor. Robert knew not where they had been, and somehow never thought of looking in the conservatories, and probably would not have done so had the idea occurred to him.

He had not been near her all day, and he was now, more than ever, beginning to realise bitterly that the girl he had loved so well all these years past, and who, he certainly thought, loved him, was going out of his life as completely as if she had never existed. Yet he could not relinquish her without another effort--another last appeal; though he quitted the gaieties of Craigmhor early with a sore and swollen heart.

The evening was far advanced when the sisters returned to Birkwoodbrae.

There was a letter lying on the dining-room table addressed to Ellinor in the familiar handwriting of Robert Wodrow. Why did he write to her now when he lived so close by, as a hedge only separated Birkwoodbrae from the glebe? unless to tell her what he dared not trust his lips to do; and her heart foreboded this.

The letter lay almost beneath her hand white and glaring in the last flush of the sunset; but, until Elspat had retired and Mary had followed on some household matter intent, she did not trust herself to open it.

Then when there was no one by to observe her, she slowly opened the letter of the lover who too truly feared he had been supplanted by another.

Line after line--though it was brief--the words were loving and tender, but ended in bitterness and upbraiding; passion made them eloquent, and they burned into the heart of the girl as the eyes and voice of Robert haunted her; but she felt besotted by this new and showy admirer, he was so different from homely, honest, Robert Wodrow--so different from any man she had ever met before; and why should Robert, who was only her friend--her old playmate, she strove to think, but with much sophistry, attempt to compete with him and control her movements.

'I must give you up, Robert,' she half whispered to herself; and then the idea occurred to her, 'would she have done so had she never met Sir Redmond Sleath?'

The letter had a postscript:--

'My darling, the windows of your room face mine over the orchard wall. If you have not cast me utterly out of your heart, for pity sake give me some sign then to-morrow--place a vase of flowers upon your window-sill, and I shall know the token.'

But Robert Wodrow next day, from earliest dawn till morn was long past, looked and watched in vain for the sign, but none was given to him; for though the heart of Ellinor Wellwood was wrung within her, she was too completely under a new and baleful influence now, and the old love was fast being forgotten.

To do her a little justice, we must admit that her first impulse had been to accord the poor fellow the token for which his soul thirsted.

A vase of flowers, sent to her but that morning from Sir Redmond by the hands of his valet, was on the mantelpiece. She put her hands towards it mechanically, as if she would have placed it on her window sill in obedience to that pitiful letter; but strange to say the flowers were all dead--already dead and withered!

Why was this?

Something superstitious crept over the girl's heart as she looked on them; she turned away--and the token was not given.

Robert, we have said, watched with aching heart and aching eyes in vain. Had the postscript escaped her notice? It might be so; and to this straw, like a drowning man, he clung. So the day passed on; and Ellinor began to think she had done wisely in not raising hopes only to crush them, and gave herself up to thoughts of Sir Redmond, and the secret contemplation of his beautiful gift.

Sir Redmond had poured into her ear much of love, of passion, of admiration, and so forth, certainly; but even to Ellinor's unsophisticated mind his proposal of marriage seemed a strange one.

Each sister had ample food for her own thoughts. Mary was rehearsing over and over again the cutting of the initials on the tree, and the manner of Colville to herself. If he really was engaged to Blanche Galloway (of which she had no positive proof), it was not flattering to either of them; yet the expression of his eyes seemed ever sweet, candid, and honest; and she gave fully her confidence to Ellinor.

The latter, who had never a secret to keep from her sister before, felt with shame and compunction that she had one now--one of vast importance to them both; but Sir Redmond had bound her to secrecy for a little time, and she could but trust; so fondly she thought over that scene in the conservatory--his proposal, a dazzling one, for would she not one day be Lady Sleath, proud, wealthy, and independent of all the world?

Even her parents, who were lying in their graves, with all their love of her, had never in their proudest and most exultant moments pictured for either of their children a future like this!

So she seemed to live in an enchanted world, out of which the figure of Robert Wodrow faded. 'Once in our lives,' says a writer, 'Paradise opens for all of us out of the dull earth, and moments, golden with the light of romance, shine upon us with a radiance like unto no other radiance of time, and we do not stay to count the cost of the bitter desolation that follows. For Eve herself would scarcely have surrendered one memory of Eden for all the joys to be found upon earth.'

Colville, when in the solitude of his own room, overlooking the woods of Craigmhor, was full of his own thoughts, some of which were not very pleasant, as he was dissatisfied with himself. He had a little plan he wished to carry out, as we shall show in time, and he felt perhaps that he was acting foolishly. He had come from London with the Dunkeld family, who evidently expected more from him in regard to Blanche than he had yet evinced, and the rumour of their engagement was a false one.

He had also come with his mind inspired with doubt, indifference, even prejudice against some of those he had met, the Wellwood sisters in particular; and, instead of finding them objectionable in any way, they were far more refined than himself, the 'curled pet' of many a Belgravian drawing-room.

Many a fair face in these regions was forgotten now, and his thoughts were all of Mary Wellwood--more than he dared acknowledge to himself. Though he had seen so little of her, he felt--was it the result of some magnetic affinity?--as if he had known her all his life; as if a full knowledge of her character had suddenly crept into his heart, and yet this was impossible just then.

'Mary Wellwood!' he murmured to himself.

He had heard of Colonel Wellwood's daughters in London more than once, from one who should have befriended them, but always omitted to do so, and whose views and opinions of two friendless girls were ever slighting and hostile; and now that he met and knew them, Colville despised himself for some of the thoughts in which he had first indulged concerning them, and the more tenderly he thought of Mary the more reproachful of himself he grew.

He had made no declaration--no; he was neither so rash nor so foolish as that yet, with all his romance, if the object of her regard was Mr. Robert Wodrow.

Of her feelings towards himself he could not form the slightest idea, and her manner was a source of perplexity. One moment she was frank, genial, and without restraint; but the next, if he became in the least degree tender, she grew retiring, distant, and cold; and, though he knew it not, this bearing was born of the rumours concerning Blanche Galloway, and he was all unaware how local gossip had mixed up his name with that of this young lady.

On one occasion he suspected that Mary avoided him, and once she seemed nearly to dislike him; thus he was pleased that he had not too formally committed himself, and so, until he could put the matter 'to the touch, to win or lose it all,' he would but torment himself with doubts and fears in the way usual to all lovers; but ere the time came, events were to occur which, though in some measure caused by himself, the bitter issue of them he could never have foreseen.

The two chief episodes of the garden-party were of course well known to the two ladies at Craigmhor, as Mademoiselle Rosette had two bright and sharp French eyes in her head, and knew perfectly well how to use them.

'I don't like the conduct of Sir Redmond, of course, Blanche,' said Lady Dunkeld, 'and have no wish that he should involve himself with an obscure girl whom he met in our house.'

'I believe it to be all nothing more than a mere _coquetterie de salon_,' said Lord Dunkeld. 'Sleath is not a marrying man.'

'And Captain Colville's conduct with the other sister, wandering away into remote parts of the ground; I suppose that was a _coquetterie de salon_ too, mamma,' said Blanche, her eyes sparkling with anger, while she shrugged her shoulders, and briskly used her dark blue and bronzy green fan of peacocks' feathers.

'What--how?'

'They strolled away from everyone together, and were absent ever so long.'

'This is intolerable; but men will be men, you see, Blanche. If Miss Wellwood had been a married lady it would not have mattered so much. I think when a young man is attached to a married lady it keeps him out of harm's way,' said Lady Dunkeld; 'however, we must take some decided measures with Miss Wellwood, and with Captain Colville too.'

'Dear mamma!' cooed Miss Blanche Galloway, and she laughed that worldly little laugh of hers, which was so indicative of her character.

The result of all this was that, when Mary and Ellinor called ceremoniously shortly after the garden-party, Lady Dunkeld, who was seated at one of the drawing-room windows, on seeing them approach, rose hastily and retired.

'No one was at home.'

Next day the sisters were scarcely noticed by Lady Dunkeld and her daughter at church.

Other persons were not slow to remark this, and the surmises thereon--though the two girls knew nothing about them--were the reverse of pleasant or flattering.

Mary observed the absence of Captain Colville, who was not in the Dunkeld pew; and on the following day she felt a keen pang on learning that he was gone for a few days to shoot with Lord Dunkeld in the Forest of Alyth.

So he had gone without paying her a farewell visit, thought Mary.

'He is to return in a fortnight,' said her informant, Mrs. Wodrow, near whose chair Mary was seated on a tabourette in the cosy manse parlour, making up a gala-cap for the old lady; and near her crouched Jack, watching the process.

The parlour was a pretty apartment, neither morning-room nor boudoir, though somewhat of both, with many indications of a woman's presence.

Rare old china was disposed in odd nooks, and china bowls with roses freshly gathered from the garden; and the furniture, if old-fashioned, and pertaining to the early days of Mrs. Wodrow's homecoming to the manse as a young wedded wife, was all polished to perfection. On a shelf was an imposing row of the 'Wodrow Society's' religious publications, including 'The Last Words of My Lady Coltness,' 'Of My Lady Anne Elcho,' the life of the gallant Covenanter, Sergeant John Nisbet of Hardhill, and so forth.

'_Apropos_ of Captain Colville,' said the old lady, looking down on her young friend, 'I hope you have not lost your heart to him, Mary?'

'I should think not,' replied Mary, stoutly, but colouring so deeply, nevertheless, that Mrs. Wodrow could see how the crimson suffused even her delicate neck.

'That is well, Mary; mischief enough has been wrought among us already,' resumed Mrs. Wodrow, her benign old face becoming cloudy.

Mary knew to what she referred, but seemed, or affected to seem, wholly intent on the cap; and Mrs. Wodrow looked admiringly and affectionately down on her dimpled wrists and little white hands.

'I do wish I had something nice and fresh for trimming!' she exclaimed, as she twirled round the cap for inspection. 'I think these rosebuds will do with this spray of ivy,' she added, searching a flower-box, and putting her head meditatively on one side.

'Then, Mrs. Wodrow,' she exclaimed, 'if I fail to please you, you must be a dreadful coquette, you old dear!'

'Thanks, pet Mary; when did you ever fail to please me?' said the old lady, caressing the girl's head, and adding, anxiously, 'You do not look well, Mary; where were you this morning? Not in the clachan, I hope, as I hear there is scarlatina there.'

'I have no fear; I took a kind message from Robert about a sick baby. I fear it is dying, and God pity the poor mother, the only light of whose life is likely to go out in darkness.'

'You have a tender heart, Mary. Robert, poor Robert; you know he has failed to pass, Mary?'

'Yes; I am so sorry, and so is Ellinor.'

'Ellinor may well be,' said Mrs. Wodrow, with some asperity.

'Why?' asked Mary, her colour deepening again.

'Because her fair face has come between him and his wits, poor fellow, and I shouldn't wonder if we lose him altogether.'

'Lose him!' repeated Mary, in a breathless voice; 'how?'

'He seems desperate and says that rather than slave for another session at college he will go for a soldier.'

'Oh, never, never think of such a thing!'

'He and Ellinor seem to have quarrelled.'

'Quarrelled--surely not! About what or who?'

'That man Sir Redmond Sleath, and his attentions to her.'

'They will make up this quarrel as they have made up others long ago,' said poor Mary, cheerfully, as she little knew to what a crisis the baronet's admiration for her sister was coming--nay, had come. She knew nothing of the scene in the conservatory and other minor scenes, of the present of jewellery, of utterances and promises. She believed the whole affair was only a lovers' quarrel, stimulated by jealousy on Robert's part, and vanity on that of Ellinor; and meantime she sympathised with Mrs. Wodrow, and would have done so with Robert had he been there, but he was fully and painfully occupied elsewhere at that precise time.

'As children--as boy and girl, they may have quarrelled, Mary; but this affair will be a serious one for both, for Robert especially. His studies are neglected, his appetite is gone, and he looks the ghost of himself.'

Mary knew not what more to urge, as she had seen, with some anxiety, Sir Redmond's admiration of her sister, and said, after a pause,

'I wonder what manner of man Sir Redmond is?'

'Judging by the little I saw of him at the garden-party--where the mischief seems to have been done--not a good man, Mary dear--not a good man, though a handsome one in his way, and to a young girl, I doubt not, fascinating. Yet I would rather see my daughter dead, if I had one, than married to a man with eyes so cold, so cruel and shifty.'

'But _who_ is thinking of marriage?' said Mary, with a slight laugh, little knowing that it was a contingency as remote from the thoughts of Sir Redmond as her own.

'And I don't think that Captain Colville--for all that Dr. Wodrow seems to like him so much--can be good in every way if he has such a friend or companion as Sir Redmond Sleath,' said the old lady, shaking her head.

These provoking words haunted Mary for weeks after, as the tormenting fragment of a song or air will haunt us--not because we like it, though it will recur again and again. Then he had gone without the formality of a farewell visit. Had the Dunkeld ladies aught to do with that? Mary's heart foreboded that they had.

Mrs. Wodrow was full of indignation at the worry and humiliation undergone by her son, and even the doctor was not disinclined to inveigh against garden-parties and such-like gatherings, as his ancestor did against theatres--'those seminaries of idleness, looseness, and sin,' as he termed them in _Analecta Scotica_.

The peaceful current of the sisters' life--the life they led at bonnie Birkwoodbrae, was soon to be roughly disturbed now, and events were to occur which they could never have foreseen.