Chapter IX: Was It Not a Dream?

He came forward through the long drawing-room with his usual easy bearing, his head well set up, his military air, and calm, unflinching eyes, which dilated on seeing Mary Wellwood, and then he paused.

For fully a minute there was dead silence--the silence of dumb bewilderment, and Mary felt how loudly and painfully her heart was beating; while to both Colville and Mrs. Deroubigne it was apparent how much she was agitated, thereby involving a secret which the latter was yet to learn.

Mary had felt that she had cause to be indignant and to feign indifference. As the lover who had trifled with her, as she thought, and gone to the very verge of a declaration or proposal, and then paused, and he--the obnoxious cousin, the heir of entail, one and the same person--stood before her, in her eyes of deep violet blue there came for a brief space the light of a sudden determination, with something of a horrified stare; but ere Mrs. Deroubigne could approach an explanation or introduction, Colville sprang towards the pale and trembling girl, and took both her hands within his own.

'Mary--Mary Wellwood!' he exclaimed, in a voice full of passion and pathos; 'you here!--and do we meet again after all? What mystery is this?'

'Probably a portion of that which seems to have involved all your actions of late,' replied Mary, with the slightest _soupçon_ of hauteur in her manner, while with difficulty restraining her tears.

'But are you not glad to see me again--you whom I loved, and love with all my heart?'

'Captain Colville,' said Mary, attempting, but in vain, to withdraw her hands, 'this painful and degrading mode of treating me must not to be resumed!'

'Painful and degrading? Mary, you know that I love you.'

'You never told me so. I wish I had never seen you, or that I were dead!' exclaimed Mary, a little incoherently, while averting her face, and feeling her determination giving way.

'Never told you so--but you knew; and we were interrupted when we parted last; and then I met with that accident, the wound in my right hand, which prevented me from writing or going to Birkwoodbrae in time to prevent you and Ellinor from vanishing, without trace, as you did.'

By this time she had wrenched her hands away, and, thinking with alarm and dismay of how Mrs. Deroubigne might view this singular scene, she covered her face with them.

'Captain Colville!' she exclaimed, with a tone of expostulation, as he gently pulled them down, while triumph and joy sparkled in his eyes.

'Now, don't look vexed with me any more,' said he, in a tone of tender entreaty, while kissing her hands. 'My dear, dear cousin--dearer than all the world to me,' he added, as the mingled expression of indignation, perplexity, and doubt passed out of her sweet, pale face; 'let me explain all, and tell you how I love you!'

Mary was so shaken by all she had lately undergone that she could only weep now; thus for a moment or two she yielded to him; he pressed her to his heart, and covered her eyes and lips with fast-falling kisses, forgetful of the presence of Mrs. Deroubigne, who looked laughingly on. The good old lady seemed to like the romance of the situation, and of the episode she had so unwittingly brought about.

'And how is Ellinor?' he asked, as Mary drew blushingly back towards their hostess.

'Far from well. Of late she has suffered much----'

'Through my folly?'

'And other matters too.'

Mary felt her poor little head in a whirl, with some difficulty recognising the whole situation.

So the Colville she had learned to love and her cousin Wellwood were one and the same person! Thus, much which had puzzled her on many occasions in the bearing of Dr. Wodrow was accounted for now. They had been in the plot together. Many things that had seemed perplexing and strange were now clear as day. She recalled the initials, and the mystery he made about the W that stood for the middle name, and remembered that she had seen the Wellwood crest--a demi-lion--on his signet ring; nay, it was on it now! She recalled, with some shame and bewilderment, all her sharp and antagonistic utterances about him and his father, and she cast down her long dark lashes as these things came to memory.

And so it was of himself he had spoken, and to himself he had referred, as having been the worse for wine in the cantonments at Lahore; himself he had referred to as being 'not a half bad fellow,' and being wounded in action with the hill tribes; himself on whose supposed coldness and selfishness he heard her descant; and it was regard for her as a beautiful and friendless girl, with the charming tie of cousinship hitherto unknown, that had inspired him as he stood with her side by side at her parents' grave!

'I knew not what love really was till I knew you, Mary,' said he, caressing her again. 'In the world I live and move in, I never thought it would touch me as it did, for there money seeks money or rank. Out of novels and plays, I doubted its existence; but I have learned the sweet lesson at last, and you--the dear cousin who loathed my very name--were my preceptor, Mary!'

'But why--oh, why all this mystery--this concealment of your real position, name, and relationship?'

'Can you ask me, after what I have said? I wanted to know you thoroughly, after all Dr. Wodrow had told me about you and Ellinor. I then wanted you to love me, not as the owner of a landed estate--not as a lounging Guardsman--not for the pretty woods of Birkwoodbrae, that I could perhaps give to you, and would have done so had they not been entailed; but, like the hero of a romance, Mary, for myself alone.'

'And now to lunch, dears,' said Mrs. Deroubigne, as she laughingly kissed Mary. 'I am tired of playing the part of Gooseberry.'

How much they had to talk about, to describe, to explain to each other, out of all the cross-purposes, confusion, and pain that had arisen from her cousin's scheme, the little romance he had concocted, and the end of which he had not foreseen; while, worse than all, but for the doctrine of chances, they might never have met again!

He heard with astonishment of the two episodes of Lady Dunkeld's dance and Westminster Abbey.

'To think that I should be so near you, and have no consciousness of your presence!' he exclaimed. 'Where were my eyes--where was my heart? My poor little Mary, had you only thought of looking in the Army List, you would there have seen that your wicked cousin and Leslie Colville were one and the same man!'

The astonishment of the latter, on hearing of the recent cruel conduct of Lady Dunkeld and her daughter, was only equalled by his just indignation.

'Oh, for the rarity of Christian charity!' he exclaimed.

'I can forgive them _now_,' said Mary, in a tremulous voice, and with a swift, bright glance at Leslie Colville.

'I cannot,' said he; 'forgiveness is indifference, or nearly so, but no one can quite forgive a wrong like this. But I see the origin of this hostility to one who was helpless against it. When I think how--as you know, my dear Mrs. Deroubigne--how that half-French brat, Blanche Galloway, in her flirty, Continental way, has sung to me, played at me, talked to me, and made œillades, I am disgusted.'

'Come now, Captain Colville,' said Mrs. Deroubigne, 'that is scarcely fair; did you not encourage her a little _à la soldat_?'

'Not at all! She was ever admiring the rose or flower I had in my button-hole, and when I begged her acceptance thereof, it duly figured in her bosom or hair afterwards, while she flattered herself, no doubt, in the depths of her French imaginings--but I shall teach these Dunkelds a sharp lesson ere I go.'

'Now that you talk of it--and now especially--I do not see why you should go to the East at all,' said Mrs. Deroubigne, while Mary grew paler than before, and felt as if roused from a startling dream.

'True, true, but needs must now. In sorrow for the loss of Mary, I volunteered for special service abroad; and so I find her but to lose her again,' exclaimed Colville.

'Special service!' she asked, in a strange voice. 'What is that?'

'It means detached for staff work where--where operations are in progress,' said he, evasively.

'Speak to the point, Captain Colville,' said Mrs. Deroubigne. 'You go to the north-west frontier of India.'

'India!' repeated Mary, with whitening lips. 'Has life so little joy for you?'

'It had but little till within this hour, dearest Mary.'

'Can you not withdraw your application?' said Mrs. Deroubigne.

'As a soldier's widow, you should know that, unless overtaken by illness, I could not do so with honour.'

'You are right. How unfortunate it is!'

'So, my darling and I have met but to part again.'

Mary heard all this with more dismay than she dared exhibit just then, or trust herself to speak about, and it was with a mingled sense of joy she found herself pledged, before Mrs. Deroubigne, to be Leslie Colville's future wife, and saw flashing on her engaged finger the same diamond ring he had brought for her acceptance on that eventful day at Birkwoodbrae, for then, as now, Mary Wellwood was the one woman in the world for him. 'Whether our passion be prudent,' says Hawley Smart, 'whether the woman we have asked to tread life's path with us is likely to be approved in our maturer years, we reck little. She is the one woman, so far as we are concerned just now, and has she not pledged herself to be so always?'

But no doubt of himself or of his choice came into the heart of Colville. She had already been tried like gold in the fire; and he was yet to be further tried to an extent he little expected.

When the time came to depart, Mary left Mrs. Deroubigne with a heart too full of regard and gratitude for utterance in words. She could only sob on her ample and motherly breast; and Colville, when conveying her in a cab to that home which he had resolved she must change for one more suitable, heard of its locality with sorrow and dismay, and with emotions very different from those of Sir Redmond Sleath when he obtained the address of Ellinor.

'Paddington--Paddington Green! My Heaven, how came you to select such a place?' he exclaimed.

'Through the guard of the train. We asked his advice,' replied Mary, simply.

'This is intolerable! Such a hole--such a den--such a locality! You must quit it without delay,' he added, as the only homes he knew were in Mayfair, Tyburnia, and Belgravia: and though his heart was full of joy the first genuine laugh that escaped him was when he heard the address he was to inquire for.

'Mrs. Seraphina Fubsby! Good heavens, where did she pick up such a name?'

Mary had no time then to inform him that the good woman was fully entitled to another. She was too full of her own thoughts, and, though the fog of that horrible London November day had deepened and darkened all around her, in her heart there seemed sunshine now!

Could it be that so much had passed--that events to her so momentous had occurred--since she had turned away in gloom and almost in despair from the great door of that house near Portman Square, afraid even to tell and crush poor Ellinor's heart by tidings of the new misfortune that had overtaken them?

Was it not all a dream, from which she would awake to a world of bitterness?

But, no. Leslie Colville's betrothal ring was on her finger; his strong, firm and loving hand was clasping hers; and all about her was truth and reality.

'What tidings I bring, dear Ellinor!' she thought, as the cab stopped at the door of their humble abode, and Leslie Colville sprang out to assist her to alight as they heard Jack's bark of welcome.