Chapter IX: Colville's Warning

Despite the disparaging remarks or comments so ungenerously made by Lady Dunkeld and her daughter, a subsequent afternoon saw both Sir Redmond Sleath and Leslie Colville seated in the pretty drawing-room of the sisters at Birkwoodbrae.

Sir Redmond had inadvertently dropped a hint that he meant to visit there, and, greatly to his annoyance, Colville proposed to accompany him.

It was an early day in August, and every breath of air was still; not a leaf was stirring in the silver birches without, or among the monthly roses that clambered round the open windows which faced the pretty garden. Within the room all was arranged with care and taste, while the polished grate, filled with fresh flowers, the bouquets in jars and vases, the snow-white curtains, and other etcetera bore token of feminine diligence and skill.

Stretched on a deer-skin, Jack lay with sleepy eyes, half open to watch the movements of his mistress, when 'visitors' were announced by Elspat, with a peculiar and provoking smirk of satisfaction on her hard Scotch visage, and the costumes for the forthcoming garden-party, on which those clever fingers of the sisters were busy, were hastily tossed aside; the two gentlemen were ushered in, and Jack snarled and barked so furiously at Sir Redmond that he had to be carried bodily out of the room by Elspat.

The baronet affected to laugh, but felt in his heart that nothing would please him better than to get 'a quiet pot-shot at that d----d cur!'

'We merely dropped in when passing,' said Sir Redmond, who, strange to say, seemed to be constrained, even awkward, in manner, and Ellinor was somewhat silent and abashed too.

'It is kind of you to visit us,' replied Mary, addressing herself, however, to Colville; 'we have so little amusement to offer; there is so little attraction; we live so quietly here at Birkwoodbrae.'

Colville looked as if he thought there was a good deal to attract, and his dark eyes seemed to say so as he looked into Mary's, which drooped beneath his gaze.

'Your presents came, Captain Colville. They are beautiful, and fit to perfection. Ellinor and I cannot sufficiently thank you,' she said, in a low voice.

'Oho!' thought Sir Redmond, 'he has been sending them presents. Eh! a sly dog.'

'A few gloves are not worth mentioning,' replied Colville, hurriedly. And then he added--'How beautiful is the view all round this place, especially that with the silver birches and the stream glittering under their shadow. Ere I leave this, Miss Wellwood, you must show me some of your favourite places, your pet nooks--the scenery here is so full of picturesque spots.'

'Ellinor knows all such places hereabout better than I do. They employ her pencil freely,' said Mary, diffidently; 'and they are the very abode of old legends, fairies, and so forth.'

'I know that she is an artist possessed of both taste and skill,' said Colville; 'but is she also the musician?' he asked, turning to the piano, which was open.

'I am chiefly,' replied Mary, smiling; 'but I think you should hear Ellinor sing the "Birks of Invermay."'

'Who--or what are they?' asked Sir Redmond, with a drawl.

'Those very birches you see from the window,' replied Mary, laughing.

'And there is a song about them?'

'There are several.'

'Do let us hear at least one, Miss Ellinor,' urged Sir Redmond, as he placed the piano stool before the instrument.

Accordingly Ellinor, without further preface or pressing, seated herself, and sang with great sweetness and pathos neither David Mallet's affected stanzas nor Bryce's ludicrous lines, but the simple old song of the sixteenth century to its wonderfully beautiful air:--

'The evening sun was glinting bright
On Invermay's sweet glen and stream;
The woods and rocks in ruddy light
Appeared as in a fairy dream.
In loving fear I took my path
To seek the tryst that happy day,
With bonnie Mary, young and fair,
Among the Birks of Invermay.

'It wasna till the pale moonshine
Was glancing deep in Mary's e'e,
That with a smile she said, "I'm thine,
And ever true to thee will be!"
One kiss--the lover's pledge--and then
We spoke of all that lovers say,
And wandered hameward through the glen,
Among the Birks of Invermay.'

At the mention of Mary's name in the song, the eyes of Colville involuntarily sought those of her who bore it, and she coloured perceptibly. The performance of Ellinor was duly applauded by Sir Redmond, though he afterwards confided to Colville it was 'the silliest piece of Scotch twaddle' he had ever heard. Yet his admiration of Ellinor personally was open and unconcealed, perhaps too much so, and of its own kind was no doubt genuine enough, and while she sang, Ellinor was inwardly hoping her hair was tidy and looked well, as she felt conscious he was gazing straight down on it; while Mary had an uncomfortable feeling that visits from these gentlemen might be misconstrued by Lady Dunkeld, their hostess, and still more so by her daughter--a conviction that at times made her almost cold in her manner to Captain Colville, whom she believed to be that young lady's especial property. And she blamed herself, and blushed for herself, in the consciousness that she sometimes treasured up, and repeated to herself, little things he had said--appeals to her taste, her opinion, and so forth. While Colville, however he was situated with regard to Miss Galloway, made no secret of how he delighted in the quaint frankness of Mary Wellwood since the afternoon he had first met her, when both were fishing in the May.

'And so this locality is full of old legends of fairies and so forth?' said Colville, referring to a previous remark of Mary's.

'Yes; but then every foot of ground in Scotland has about it something historical or legendary--all teems with the past.'

'The present is more to my taste, Miss Wellwood,' said Sleath, twirling out his straw-coloured moustache.

'It would not be so if you lived always, as we do, under the shadow of the Ochil mountains.'

'I agree with you, by Jove.'

But Mary did not perceive that they misunderstood each other.

'Sir Redmond is guiltless of romance as any man living, I believe, Miss Wellwood,' said Captain Colville, 'but London life makes one sadly prosaic and incredulous.'

'Has it made you so?'

'I hope not--I can scarcely say. But did not my old friend Dr. Wodrow hint that some old legend is connected with those stones, or the ruin, on yonder knoll by the river?'

'The Holy Hill?'

'Yes.'

'Ah,' said Mary, as a smile rippled over her bright face, 'that is not a legend--it is history.'

'About what?'

'A miller's daughter who married a king.'

'Then it is a tale of the days

"When King Cophetua loved the beggar maid."'

'Something of that kind. But in the remoter ages of Scottish history the Holy Hill was the site of a royal residence; for there King Kenneth II. died, and there Malcolm III. was born--he who married Margaret of England.'

'These things didn't happen yesterday,' said Colville, smiling down into her earnest and animated face.

'In those days there was an old miller here in Forteviot who had one daughter named Edana, a girl of rare beauty, and who was famed therefor throughout all the land between the Earn and Forth.'

'And, of course, she had lovers in plenty?'

'So the story says; but she would listen to none, nor was her heart stirred, till one morning, about Beltane time, when filling a jar with water at the May, there came riding under the silver birches--for silver birches were here then as now--a marvellously handsome young knight on a white horse, alone and unattended, and courteously he besought her for a draught of water, saying that he had ridden that morning from the Moathill of Scone, and was sorely athirst.

'He wore an eagle's feather in his helmet, from under which his golden hair fell upon his shoulders like that of a girl. His mantle of striped scarlet, violet, and blue was fastened on his breast by a brooch of gold, and the rings of his coat-of-mail shone like silver in the morning sun.

'Edana had never looked on such a face and figure before, and he seemed equally taken by her great, if rustic, loveliness. He lingered with her long in the birchen wood; thither he came again and again, and love between them ripened fast, as it seems always to have done in the olden time, if we are to believe song, ballad, and story.

'The miller ere long heard of these stolen meetings, and his heart filled with alarm lest the so-called handsome stranger who had bewitched or won his daughter's heart might prove some evil spirit of the Flood or Fell; but Edana said he could be no evil spirit who wore a crucifix round his neck, and daily said his prayers in the old chapel of Kirktoun Mailler.

'But the miller uttered an execration under his silver beard, put his battle-axe to the grindstone, and kept watch when next the young knight came; and then, behold, his heart seemed to die within him as he recognised--the king!

'And so in time it quickly came to pass that Edana became the wife of Duncan, King of Scotland--the same king who was slain at Cawdor--and the mother of Malcolm III., who was born at the Holy Hill, and hence an ancestress of Queen Victoria.'

With a soft yet strange smile on his face, Colville listened to this old story, and, brief though it was, Sleath, as it was not to his taste, would have yawned, had not good breeding forbade him.

'Perhaps love and romance, too, still linger among the Birks of Invermay,' said he, laughingly, and with some point in his manner; and there came a time when Mary recalled these words and saw their meaning; and now, deeming that their visit had been protracted long enough, the gentlemen rose to depart--Sleath only lingering to kiss his hand to Ellinor--surreptitiously, as he thought, but the jaunty action was detected by Colville.

Somehow, Mary thought she wished that Captain Colville--Miss Blanche Galloway's _fiancé_--had not called that afternoon; yet, if asked, she could not have told the reason why.

Was an interest in him growing in her heart unknown to herself--one beyond the wish that she and Ellinor had such a brother? It almost seemed so, for she felt altered in some way, but in what way she knew not, though the present and the future became curiously mingled in her thoughts, as they were just then in those of Ellinor.

Sleath was fast winning the fancy of the latter, if not her heart. She had been content with the love of Robert Wodrow and the prospect of a future with him; she thought now how different it would be to become the wife of a man who would give her rank, position, wealth, and she thought the time and 'the prince' had now come. Yet with all this it was strange that her heart never thrilled at his voice or approach, nor did her pulses quicken at the touch of his hand, as they had often done at the honest clasp of Robert Wodrow.

'Why was this?' she asked of herself.

'You are very silent, Colville,' observed Sleath, as they walked homeward together cigar in mouth.

'There is something in that girl's face which seems familiar to me, as if I had foreshadowed it in some dream!' exclaimed Colville.

'_Which_ girl's face?' asked Sleath, sharply.

'Mary's--Miss Wellwood,' replied Colville, colouring with annoyance at having been betrayed into confidence with a man he disliked.

'Stuff,' said Sir Redmond; 'as if people foreshadowed faces in the Row or Regent Street! What would the fair Blanche think of this idea? And what a cock-and-bull yarn that was about the "gracious Duncan" and the miller's daughter.'

'Why doubt it?--the story is a pretty one, any way,' said Colville, with annoyance in his tone.

'Let us skip Mary--it is her sister I admire.'

'Your demeanour to that young lady is rather strange, Sir Redmond,' said Colville, with a gravity of manner and eye that did not fail to strike his listener.

'Strange--how?'

'A very short intimacy seems to have placed you on rather friendly terms.'

'Rather,' replied Sir Redmond, tugging at the end of his moustachios, with a very self-satisfied smile on his _blasé_ face. 'She is an unsophisticated kind of Jeanie Deans, or Effie rather, whom one may flirt with, patronise, or quarrel with and make it up again; treating her with any amount of chic when so inclined, and----'

Whatever in his profound vanity or spirit of insolence Sir Redmond was about to add, he paused. There was a dark, stern, and indignant expression in the face of Leslie Colville that there was no misunderstanding just then.

'Hey--how--what the deyvil--are you smitten in that quarter too?' asked Sleath.

'No--what do you mean?'

'Thought you were, perhaps, that's all,' was the somewhat sulky response.

'I am not what you think,' replied Colville, quietly. 'I only warn you to adopt a different tone in reference to these young ladies, and to take care what you are about!'

'Now, what the devil is all this to _him_?' thought the baronet, malevolently; and he had hardihood enough to give his thought expression, on which Colville's face grew darker still.

'Sir Redmond,' said he, 'there is no use in beating about the bush with you. I have often heard you say that there was but one excuse in this world for matrimony.'

'Yes--well?'

'Miss Ellinor Wellwood is poor, as you may say, yet you seem very attentive in that quarter.'

Confounded at what he deemed the presumption of all these queries, Sleath stuck his glass into his right eye, and glared through it at his companion with undoubted surprise.

'Attention,' he muttered; 'not at all! Who is thinking of matrimony? And if I were so, may I ask what it is to _you_?'

'More than you think,' replied Colville, with suppressed passion, as he adjusted his shirt cuffs; 'but enough of this subject--here is the gate of Craigmhor.'

Colville said no more; but he thought a good deal, and he muttered to himself a Spanish proverb,

'_Puerto abierta, al santo tiento_--the open door tempts the saint; and, by Jove, this fellow is no saint--so I shall keep my eye on him!'

Hitherto it had seemed to Ellinor, but to Mary chiefly (as she had no special admirer), that life had been dull and colourless--if a happy and contented one--at Birkwoodbrae; and already the days thereof--before these visitors came--seemed to be part of another and remoter existence; for love and the illusions of love were shedding their haloes over the present.

'I hope dear Mary Wellwood will not make a fool of herself with that Captain Colville,' said Mrs. Wodrow to her spouse, with reference to this very subject. 'I hear that he has been calling at Birkwoodbrae again, though engaged, they say, to Miss Galloway. She is old enough to know that officers are the greatest flirts in the world--men not to be trusted. When _I_ was a girl, I always heard so.'

Dr. Wodrow laughed softly, as he looked up from the notes of his next sermon, and said,

'I don't think, my dear, you ever had much experience of them out of novels; but I will own to you that officers now-a-days are not like what they were at one time. Even my worthy ancestor, in 1724, deplores in his 'Analecta' that Christian officers had left no successors to such men as Colonel Blackadder, of the Cameronians, Colonel Erskine, and Major Gardiner, of Stair's Grey Dragoons--all men who could expound on the Gospel better than I.'