DREAMS AND DOUBTS.
The sun of a soft and balmy summer afternoon was, as the song has it,
'Glinting bright
On Invermay's sweet glen and stream,'
on all the silver birches that grow thereby, on the rocky gullies
through which the stream gurgles and babbles as it forces a passage
towards the Earn, and on the green mound of the Holy Hill, of which
its ceaseless current has swept so much away, when Mary Wellwood,
alone, or attended only by her dog, and full of her own happy and
innocent day-dreams, took a narrow path that leads northward down the
side of the sylvan strath.
Her dress was plain, but fitted well her lithe and slender figure.
She had on the daintiest of white cuffs and collar; a sunshade over
her head lined with pink imparted to her soft face a glow that it did
not naturally possess, and over her left arm were the two chaplets
she and Ellinor had been so lately preparing.
No sound but the rustle of leaves and the twitter of birds broke the
sunny stillness, till she eventually heard Jack, her fox-terrier, who
was careering in front of her, barking and yelping with all the
satisfaction of a joyous dog that has met with a friend, and almost
immediately afterwards a turn of the rocky path brought her face to
face with Captain Colville, who, rod in hand and basket on shoulder,
had just quitted his fishing in the May after a satisfactory day's
sport, and about whose well-gaitered legs Jack was leaping and
bounding noisily.
'When Jack was here, I knew his mistress could not be far off,' said
Colville, lifting his fly-garnished wideawake and presenting a hand
with his brightest smile. 'You know the saw, Miss Wellwood, "Love
me, love my dog," but it would seem that Jack loves me. And Jack is
a travelled dog, I understand--one who has seen the world?'
'Yes; Jack was a soldier's dog--was with Roberts' army in India, and
in more than one battle,' replied Mary.
'I too have been in India--a bond between Jack and me,' said
Colville, as he produced a biscuit from his pocket, and the dog
caught it with a snap.
'He wags his dear old tail quite as if he recognised a comrade,' said
Mary, laughing, while Colville accompanied her along the narrow path
over which the silver birches drooped their graceful foliage.
'And so you and your sister, Miss Ellinor, are cousins of my
brother-officer, Wellwood?' said Colville, after a pause, and a
little abruptly, as Mary thought.
'I am sorry to say we are.'
'Why sorry--he is not half a bad fellow?'
'Well, I have no reason to be otherwise than quite indifferent on the
subject of his existence. It was some family matter. Our parents
were never friends, and he--he----'
'What?'
'Has chosen to forget there were such persons in the world as Ellinor
and I; and considering that we have so few relations--none else
nearly now----' Mary paused, and her eyes fell on the chaplets
through which her slender arm was passed.
'He could never have seen you,' said Colville, earnestly; 'had he
done so he would never have forgotten you, believe me; and when I
tell him----'
'Tell him nothing, pray.'
'As you please, Miss Wellwood. I knew him in India, before I was in
the Guards.'
'Indeed.'
'Yes; I remember his first dinner with our mess at Lahore--got
screwed, as the phrase is; and how do you think he was taken to his
bungalow?'
'In a cab, perhaps,' suggested Mary.
'We carried him through the lines shoulder-high upon a door, with the
bugles playing the "Dead March in Saul," before him.'
'Then he is dissipated?'
'Oh--awfully--a wild fellow, in that sense.'
'He was wounded in an affair with a hill tribe?'
'So was I. Had your odious cousin been shot, I suppose you would not
have cared much?'
'Nay--nay--_nay_,' exclaimed Mary; 'can you think so vilely of me?
Perhaps I might have wept for him?'
'Indeed. Why?'
'In the knowledge that, like Ellinor and myself, he had no father,
mother, or other kindred to sorrow for him.'
Her voice, musical at all times, and sweetly modulated--for a chord
seemed to run through every word--broke a little just then; and she
coloured on seeing how earnestly her companion was regarding her.
'For what purpose are those wreaths of flowers?' he asked, softly,
after a pause.
'To lay upon our graves.'
'Our graves,' he repeated.
'Papa and mamma's graves, I mean.'
'A melancholy duty.'
'The only one that is left us now.'
'May I accompany you?'
'If you choose, Captain Colville.'
'And where are they buried?'
'Here,' replied Mary, as she gently opened the gate of the
churchyard, and they entered together.
It was an old and sequestered burying-ground--older than the days
when Fordoun, the Father of Scottish History, wrote of the district
as Fortevioch, a supposed corruption of the Gaelic for distant and
remote. Old headstones, spotted with lichens and green with moss,
were there half sunk in the ground amid the long rank grass; but the
two graves that Mary sought so lovingly, were smoothly turfed and
adorned with flowers planted by the hands of herself and Ellinor.
As she knelt to deposit a chaplet at the head of each, Colville read
the inscription on the modest tombstone to the memory of Colonel
Wellwood, of the Scots Fusiliers, and Ellinor his wife, and Mary,
glancing upwards, saw that as he read a soft expression stole into
his face, while he hastily, almost surreptitiously, lifted his hat,
and then looked more kindly, if possible, at her.
'Well,' thought the girl, 'he is, at least, the best of good fellows
to feel this interest in total strangers. It is, I suppose, what
poor papa used to call "the Freemasonry of the service."'
Anon came other thoughts that were less pleasing to her. Did real
emotion and kindness prompt all this, or was it but a cunning
attempt, by an affectation of sympathy and friendly interest, to gain
her favour.
But she repelled the suspicion as something unworthy of him and of
herself.
Quitting the churchyard in silence, he softly closed the gate, and
they continued to walk on slowly a little way together, and Colville
was silently recalling Mary's curious legendary story of the funereal
light seen by Elspat, the old soldier's widow.
Mary Wellwood's manner and bearing proved to Colville wonderfully
attractive. Easy, unaffected, and apparently unconscious of her own
beauty, she was charming. She was equal, in all the attributes of
good society, to any girl he had met, and Leslie Colville was no bad
judge, as he had been brought up in an exclusive set, among whom any
faults of breeding were discrepancies never to be atoned for.
And she--how was she affected towards him? Stealing a glance at his
handsome face and figure from time to time, and listening to his very
pleasant voice, Mary--somewhat of a day-dreamer--was thinking how
delightful it would have been had God given her and Ellinor such a
man as a brother to guide, love, and protect them.
It began to seem to both that they had been friends--companions
certainly--for a longer time than they had known each other; they
discovered so much in common between them, so far as sentiment and
opinion went; but remembering Mr. Wodrow's assurance that Captain
Colville was engaged to Blanche Galloway, she compelled herself to be
somewhat reserved in her manner towards him, yet more than once it
thawed unconsciously. However, she was a little startled when, after
a pause, he said suddenly, in a low and earnest tone, while looking
down into her face,
'Tell me something of your life here at Invermay, Miss Wellwood?'
'Something of my life--what a strange request!' exclaimed Mary, her
dark blue eyes dilating as she spoke. 'What can I tell you that
could be of interest to you?'
'Pardon me--how your time passes, for instance, I mean.'
'As you see,' she replied, smiling, 'and as you have seen; my daily
duties but repeat themselves. I have my little household to look
after, accounts and taxes to pay--thanks to our kind kinsman abroad
(for Birkwoodbrae is entailed) we have no rent to pay; I have my
feathered family in the yard to supervise; my garden with its flowers
and fruits; my poor pensioners in the village and all round about.'
'A grey life for one so young and winning,' thought Colville; 'and
with you,' he added aloud, 'so runs the world away?'
'Yes.'
'And all your people love you, Dr. Wodrow tells me?'
'I hope so--nay, I am sure they do,' replied Mary, with one of her
brightest smiles.
'And you love the scenery here?'
'Yes--every rock and tree and stream; they have all their old stories
and young associations to me.'
'And your old home at Birkwoodbrae?' he added, smiling at her
enthusiasm.
'Yes--dearly, every stone of it!'
He paused a little, as if lost in thought, and then said,
'But surely you must miss something in your life, Miss Wellwood--you
must be lonely amid these birchen woods?'
'Lonely with Ellinor and all my work? Oh! no. I assure you I am
not.'
'But you cannot expect to have her--a girl so very handsome--always
with you?'
'Perhaps not,' said Mary, and her long dark lashes drooped, as her
thoughts hovered between poor Robert Wodrow and his probable rival,
the tawny-haired Englishman.
'Nor can she always have you; and what then?' said Colville, lightly
touching her hand, and lowering his voice in a way that to some there
would have been no mistaking; but Mary, devoid of vanity, was all
unconscious of it, and, disliking to talk about herself, now talked
of other things.
Again and again Colville thought, in her perfect sweetness, humility,
and composure, how utterly dissimilar she was in many ways from the
town-bred girls he had been wont to meet in his London life
especially, where the beautiful was so often combined with the
artificial, and even youth with utter hollowness of heart. Amid
dinners, garden-parties, the Row, and the general _rôle_ of his life
as a Guardsman, the pet of many a woman and her fair brood, all the
more that he was now the inheritor of a revenue that was great, he
had been conscious of all that.
To Mary--who was a close observer in her way--it sometimes seemed
that there was in Captain Colville's face, when he addressed her, a
half-amused expression, mingling with much of undoubted admiration.
The first was occasionally a source of pique to her; and the other
was a source of pique, too, rather than pleasure; for, if he was the
_fiancé_ of Miss Galloway, he had no business to amuse himself with,
or bestow admiration on, any other young lady, and these ideas made
her manner to him reserved at times.
In being assisted over an awkward stone stile, though she required no
aid, yet she was compelled to take his proffered grasp, but even then
unconsciously her
'Very coldness still was kind,
And tremulously gentle her small hand
Withdrew itself from his, but left behind
A little pressure, thrilling, and so bland
And slight, that to the mind 'twas but a doubt.'
As her slim hand was quickly withdrawn from his, and she murmured her
'thanks,' Mary's first thought was that it was cased in a somewhat
too well-worn glove, and Colville perhaps remarked this too, for he
said,
'Do you always wear gauntlet gloves?'
'No; but then I am so much in the garden among thorns and bushes that
ordinary gloves are useless, and I used to get through so many of six
and a quarter.'
'Surely even that is too large for a hand like yours,' said he; and
Mary now fairly blushed at the tenor of the conversation, and when he
attempted again to take her shapely little hand in his she resolutely
withheld it, and, thinking of Blanche Galloway, said,
'Please don't, Captain Colville; and now I must bid you farewell,
with many thanks for your escort.'
And Colville, who was under the impression, from Blanche Galloway's
mistaken remark, that Robert Wodrow was 'the lover of the elder
sister,' thought he would not just then press his society further
upon Mary Wellwood. Nor could he have done so, for just where the
little wooded path they had been pursuing opened upon the highway, a
well-appointed little park phaeton, drawn by a pair of beautiful
ponies, and driven by Blanche Galloway, was seen drawn up under the
trees about forty yards off.
'The time has passed so quickly when with you, Miss Wellwood,' said
Colville, lifting his hat with an air of positive confusion, 'that I
forgot--I quite forgot----'
'What, Captain Colville?'
'That Miss Galloway's pony carriage was to meet me here, and drive me
home. Ah, there it is----'
'And she too, I think,' said Mary, turning, and growing pale with
absolute pain and annoyance at the whole situation; yet, after all,
there was nothing in it. However, the Honourable Blanche, after a
glance at Mary from under her tied veil, turned away also; and Mary,
with pride awakened and a sense of mortification, pursued the path to
Birkwoodbrae.
But Jack, as if loth that the two should part, scoured backwards and
forwards between them, till, after a time, he finally followed his
mistress, and even from this, probably, Blanche angrily drew
deductions.
We fear the captain did not enjoy much his drive home, though driven
by a Park beauty in that luxurious pony phaeton, as Blanche put her
own construction on the meeting and sudden parting--a construction
far apart from the reality. She was sorely piqued, and he was not
surprised by her taciturnity, though he strove to ignore it, and
expatiated on the beauty of the scenery, on lights and shades, tints
and effects, as if he had been a Royal Academician; nor was he
surprised when she remarked to him very pointedly and plainly in the
drawing-room after dinner, when she was idling over the piano,
'I don't think mamma will approve much of your cultivating those
strange girls at Birkwoodbrae.'
'I do not do so,' said he, stooping close to her pretty head; 'but
did not you and Lady Dunkeld call for them the other day?'
'Out of curiosity--and urged, perhaps, by Dr. Wodrow, who greatly
affects to favour them.'
'Surely this is severe?' urged Colville, gently.
'Men, like women, cannot be too wary of chance medley acquaintances,'
persisted Blanche, cresting up her handsome head.
'I have somewhere read,' said her mamma, who was now _au fait_ of the
whole episode, 'that men may study women as they do a barometer, but
only understand them on a subsequent day.'
'It may be so,' said Colville, 'but what then?'
'I agree with Blanche in her views of these Wellwood girls. People
may do much in town that they cannot do in country places, where
everyone's actions are, as it were, under a microscope; where every
trivial movement is known, freely commented upon, and often
exaggerated by menials and the vulgar. Thus,' continued Lady
Dunkeld, with a very set expression on her usually placid face, 'I am
not sure--nay, I am quite certain--it does not agree with what
society calls _les convenances_, visiting these young girls.'
'In some respects you are right,' replied Colville, colouring with
real pain; 'but I was not visiting. I only met Miss Wellwood near
the old burying-ground--moreover, they are ladies, she and her
sister, perfect ladies!' he urged, with a gleam in his dark eyes,
which Lady Dunkeld was not slow to detect.
'But living so eccentrically alone?'
'So independently, let us say,' he continued.
'Captain Colville is quite their champion,' said Blanche, with a
laugh that was not very genuine; and then the subject dropped.
Lady Dunkeld exchanged a quick glance with her daughter, and slowly
fanned herself with an inscrutable expression on her certainly
aristocratic face, and adopting the imperturbable placidity generally
peculiar to her class and style.
Her somewhat unmotherly and selfish views deeply pained Colville, for
reasons peculiarly his own, but had quite an opposite and most
encouraging effect upon the enterprising mind of Sleath, who had
listened in attentive silence.
A day or two subsequently a parcel came for Mary, addressed to
Birkwoodbrae, but having with it no other clue than the vague one of
the Edinburgh postmark. It contained, for both sisters, two
beautiful boxes of gloves, all of the most delicate tints and finest
quality. Each box was a miracle of carved white Indian ivory, lined
with blue satin, a sachet of perfume on the under side of each lid,
and their initials in silver on the upper.
Remembering what had passed at the stile, Mary Wellwood could not
doubt who the donor was, and she flushed hotly with pleasure; yet it
could all mean nothing--nothing but gallantry.
To decline the gifts would seem churlish and ungracious. She could
not write, and resolved to wait for the first meeting with Colville
to thank him.
Ellinor was quite in a flutter about the gifts--more so than Mary,
who really felt, after a time, some confusion and dismay, for in the
course of her simple life no such episode had occurred before; and
she was all unlike the fair Blanche, to whom boxes of gloves were as
nothing, and who could book her bets for far more than gloves on the
winner of the Oaks or the Derby with the prettiest air of _sang
froid_ in the world.
Mary's mind became filled with pleasant dreams, that joined with
unpleasant doubts.
Was Colville really becoming an admirer of hers; or dared he be so,
if the rumour about Blanche Galloway was true?