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.'