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.