THE HEIR OF ENTAIL.
The sudden departure of the sisters from Birkwoodbrae, few knew
precisely for where, caused something like consternation--at least, a
great deal of commiseration--in the place they had left behind them.
Their sweet, soft, ladylike faces and presence were missed erelong
from the pew in which they had sat on Sundays from childhood;
countless acts of kindness, goodness, charity, and benevolence were
remembered now and rehearsed by cottage hearths and 'ingle-lums'
again and again, and all deplored that the places which knew them
once would know them no more!
When, two days after their departure, Captain Colville, with a
magnificent diamond ring for Mary, and intent on taking up the story
of his love where he had left it off, rode over to Birkwoodbrae, he
went in hot haste to the manse for intelligence, and then he and Dr.
Wodrow looked blankly in each other's face.
'Gone--what does it all mean?' impetuously asked the captain, whose
wounded hand was in a black silk sling, and who looked pale and thin.
'It simply means that they have abruptly left us, and we may never
see them again,' replied Dr. Wodrow, with unconcealed grief and
irritation.
'Gone--gone!' exclaimed Colville, changing colour, or losing it
rather; 'why did I not sooner tell them who I was--why act the part I
did, and lure you into doing so, too?'
'Ay--why, indeed,' groaned the poor minister. 'You see what strength
of character they both possess--Mary, certainly, at least.'
'And they have left no address--no clue?'
'None.'
'Mary wrote a farewell note to Mrs. Wodrow, saying she had not the
heart to bid her good-bye verbally. Her friends of the past, she
wrote, were no longer for her now--she had a new sphere of action to
enter upon, a new life to lead, and new duties to fulfil, with much
more to the same purpose, and that erelong she would write from
London.'
'London!' exclaimed Colville, striking his right heel on the floor.
It would be an insult, perhaps, to the intelligence of the reader to
assume that he or she has not already suspected that Leslie Colville
and the encroaching cousin Leslie Wellwood were one and the same
person. Apart from his entailed property, he had succeeded to other
possessions, requiring him with reference to his peerage claim to add
to his own the name of Colville, and hence the _incognito_ he
had--for reasons of his own--been enabled to assume to his cousins,
to Mrs. Wodrow, and others, including even that very acute party Sir
Redmond Sleath. In short, save the minister, no one knew the part he
wished to play.
'The little drama from which you promised yourself so much interest,
generous and romantic pleasure has been thoroughly overdone,' said
Dr. Wodrow, somewhat reproachfully.
'Overdone, indeed!'
'And doubtless has caused, and is causing great pain.'
'Poor girl! Could I have believed that Mary----'
'Possessed so much individuality, decision, and independence of
character.'
'Most true; the drama has been overdone, but can be quickly amended
by a pleasant epilogue. And it would have been so some days ago but
for this wretched accident to my right hand, which prevented me from
writing to Mary or to you. Prejudiced, as you know, by my father
against them, I wished to learn the real disposition and character of
these girls before befriending them, as I intended to do; and, even
while learning to love Mary, I carried my romantic schemes too far.
Why the devil did we make all this mystery!'
'_We_. It was your own suggestion and wish--not mine,' said Dr.
Wodrow, testily; 'and now they have anticipated everything by going
forth into the wide waste of the world and leaving us no clue.'
Colville bit his nether lip, twisted his moustache, and remained
silent and perplexed. So the minister spoke again.
'Captain Colville, I feared you meant to go on for ever playing at
cross-purposes with the poor girls. How I wish I had interposed, as
it was my duty to have done, ere it was too late; but you bound me to
secresy, as you know, and now they have gone far away, and with sore,
sore hearts, you may be assured.'
And this secret, of which the Dunkeld family knew nothing, may
explain the curious and laughing manner of Dr. Wodrow when speaking
of Mr. Luke Sharpe the lawyer, and announcing to Mary the existence
and intentions of the heir of entail.
'Poor Mary--poor darling!' said Colville, in a low voice. 'Why did I
play with her feelings and my own so long! Fool that I was not to
declare my love and propose to her on the spot?'
'Ay, fool indeed!' commented Dr. Wodrow, roughly. 'Think of all this
worry, mischief, pain, and separation!'
'In studying her character I shall have deceived her as to my own.'
'She always seemed to think you were engaged to Miss Galloway.'
'I know that now. Why did you not undeceive her?'
'I had not your permission to move or explain in the matter.'
'And we have parted like strangers almost! What must Mary have
thought of me--what can she think of me still?'
'That you were only amusing yourself with her.'
'Hence the strangeness and coolness of her manner towards me at
times. Oh, Dr. Wodrow, I never knew how much I loved that girl till
now!' exclaimed Colville, as he now realised fully in that time of
pain and surprise that Mary Wellwood was the one woman in all the
world for him.
About her there was an originality which struck him. She was unlike
any other girl he had seen; she had a freshness and depth of thought
which delighted as much as her beauty bewildered him; and he must
have loved her as a cousin if he had not loved her as something more.
And now she and Ellinor had gone--fled, as it were--to London in a
kind of desperation and sorrow, brought about by his own folly and
mismanagement--to London, of all places in the world for girls
ignorant of it--beautiful, helpless, and poor!
'But they will soon discover the trick we have played them, Dr.
Wodrow,' said Colville, looking up after a silent pause.
'How?'
'If they look in the Army List they will see that there is only one
Wellwood in the Guards--myself, Leslie Wellwood Colville.'
'That is where they will never think of looking,' replied Dr. Wodrow;
and he was right--the sisters never did; besides, Army Lists were
seldom in their way.
'Had that confounded old gossip, Mrs. Wodrow, not come in at the time
she did all would have been explained--I was on the point of telling
my darling all!' thought Colville, bitterly and angrily; 'all would
have been so different now, and I should have won the confidence, as
I had evidently won the love of Mary Wellwood. And now to follow and
to find her!'
'Where?' asked Dr. Wodrow, pithily and sharply.
'True--true; I must be patient, and wait for tidings through you,'
said Colville, with something like a groan. 'By the by, doctor, your
son seems cut up about the departure of my cousins.'
'No wonder, poor fellow--since boyhood Miss Ellinor was the apple of
his eye.'
'Ellinor?'
'Yes--and they both seemed happy enough in their hope of each other
till Sir Redmond Sleath came hovering about her.'
Colville's face grew very dark.
'I did not like your friend's character,' said the minister.
'Friend--he was no friend of mine!' said Colville, bluntly.
'I saw through him soon after he first came here; I have had my
experience of evil faces, and I could read his like a book.'
'And what were his views regarding Ellinor?'
'Matrimony, on the death of an uncle, I have heard, from whom he has
great expectations.'
'He has no uncle by male or female side. This was some specious
falsehood!' exclaimed Colville, with knitted brows.
'How do you know this?'
'As you may know it--by looking in the Baronetage.'
In the days that succeeded the departure of Mary and Ellinor most
eagerly were letters looked for at the manse of Kirktoun-Mailler, but
none came from either, though both sisters had promised to write
whenever they had found a new home, however temporary, and
periodically the path through the fields, by which the postman always
came, was watched by anxious eyes.
How was this?--what had happened? were the constant surmises of Dr.
and Mrs. Wodrow, as they looked gravely in each other's face, while
more than once each day Colville came to the manse in hope of having
tidings. Were both ill--stricken down by some sudden ailment and
among strangers--they so gentle, so tenderly nurtured, and so refined
in nature?
The doubt and perplexity were intolerable! And the upbraiding,
almost despairing looks of Dr. Wodrow cut Colville to the heart.
With their departure by railway all clue was lost, and as the days
ran on to weeks the anxiety that preyed on the minds of the good
people at the manse became sore indeed, and to Colville, who knew
what London is, doubt was simply maddening! From the heir of entail
Mr. Luke Sharpe received instructions that everything was to remain
intact and untouched at Birkwoodbrae till the sisters should come
back and once more sit by its hearthstone; and old Elspat, who had
been installed there in charge, held for a time a kind of daily levee
of humble neighbours, whose inquiries, comments, and regrets were
reiterated and ever recurrent.
But days, we have said, passed on and became weeks and more, and no
tidings came of the lost ones, for so those among the Birks of
Invermay began to consider them.
Captain Colville had rejoined his regiment in London; Sir Redmond
Sleath was no one knew precisely where, and Robert Wodrow, whose evil
genius he had been, abandoning his studies in a kind of despair, had
disappeared. Thus a great gloom reigned over the old manse, and the
worthy descendant of the author of 'Analecta Scotica' could not find
in any page thereof a passage to soothe him in his great sorrow.
With Colville's return to London a slight hope had grown in the old
minister's heart that he might be the means of casting a little light
on this painful mystery, but ere long that hope died away too.
September stole on, and October came, with its red, yellow, and
russet autumnal hues; the leaves were falling on the empty air; hardy
apples yet hung in the otherwise bare orchards for the coming frosts
to ripen; dark berries clustered on the elder-trees; long rushes
waved in the wind by the banks of the May, which careered the same as
ever through its bed of rock towards the Earn; the call of the
partridge and the few notes uttered by the remaining birds of the
season came on the low sighing breeze; winter was close at hand, and
yet there came no tidings of Mary Wellwood or her sister.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
LONDON: PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD, BLENHEIM HOUSE.