MARY'S MISTAKE.
She regretted that she had permitted her emotions to overpower her so
much in the presence of the Doctor, and that hence he had been
allowed to depart without further questioning when she had so many
inquiries to make. From Alison Home and her other domestic she could
gather nothing, save that on the same Wednesday, at midnight, they
had both heard the swiftly-ridden horse pass along the roadway, and
also the strange cry of the rider.
Could it be possible, she was ever asking of herself, that they would
meet no more? Never more in the thicket, never more at the stile in
the lane at the end of the Lee? that she should never again be
gathered to his breast so kindly and so tenderly?
Cyril's love had made her very happy; so much so that it often
inspired her with gratitude to God for blessing her so, and no shadow
had ever rested upon it, save the secrecy they were compelled to
practise, as they hoped, for a time only, and being both proudly
spirited, they had felt that necessity a degradation and source of
irritation. Now all that and the love itself had passed away, and a
cloud of thought and gloom black as midnight, seemed to envelop the
pale girl as she sat alone in the little chamber, gazing listlessly
at the sunlit scenery, and with no sound in her ears save the beating
of her heart.
Oh, had her brother Harry been spared to her, thought she, Cyril's
friend and comrade in India, how differently might she have been
situated! How she longed to rush to Willowdean and prosecute
inquiries there, but dared not even give expression to the thought!
Only lately she had been anticipating in dread the withdrawal or
expiry of his short leave of absence, and his departure to Turkey
with the proposed Allied Army. Now she felt that to see him going
forth even to face the perils and chances of the threatened Russian
war would be a welcome exchange for the present doubt and horror she
endured.
All that day no food passed her lips, and as evening drew on the
dread of enduring another night without some further intelligence
proved too much for her grief and impatience; so the craving to go
forth and inquire personally--she could not trust to the discretion
of her servants, and shrunk instinctively from their morbid
surmises--became so strong, that on finding her father sleeping
calmly and peacefully after the slight repast he deemed a dinner, she
dressed herself in haste to go out--but for where and to whom were
her next thoughts?
The nearest house was Chesterhaugh; it was little more than four
miles distant, and though she shrunk from the idea of seeing or being
seen by Captain Chesters, she resolved, come what might, to question
his gatekeeper, as if casually, about the last he had seen of Cyril
Wedderburn; for as the coldness between the two families was pretty
well known in that secluded district, she felt assured that the man
would imagine her to be prompted by the merest curiosity.
As she set forth on foot, she sighed when passing the empty
coachhouse and the stables where the hoofs of horses and the rattle
of their stall collars were heard no more. She was young, active,
and would walk the distance in an hour; yet not to repine a little
when she thought of all that should and might have been, was perhaps
impossible.
She did not anticipate that the gatekeeper could add much to the
alarming details already furnished by the Doctor, yet she longed to
see him as one who, however humble, had been the last who looked on
Cyril's winning face and heard his cheerful voice; moreover, the
utter solitude of her home had proved on this day intolerable. She
dared not speak of the occurrence to her father, for he would be the
last perhaps to express genuine sympathy; so the desire to move
abroad, to speak to some one, to be doing anything but sitting still
and brooding, became an irresistible impulse.
Full of her own thoughts as she walked on, she did not perceive how
stormy clouds had enveloped the afternoon sun; that the dull grey
mist was rolling swiftly along the grassy glens and upward to the
slopes of the Lammermuirs, and with how melancholy a sound the wind
shook in gusts the leafless trees of the old wood near the Tower,
while on the hill sides the shepherds were driving fast their flocks
to the thatched _bughts_, or sheepfold in sheltered places. Neither
was she aware that her chief domestic, old Alison Home, looked after
her with mingled admiration and compassion, as if reading something
of her secret, when she passed out upon the highway; for Mary Lennox,
though charming at times, was looking unusually handsome, graceful,
and compact in her smart velvet hat and plume--the wing of a golden
pheasant shot for her by Cyril--her cuffs and muff of grey Iceland
duck, her jacket of sealskin (imitation, we are sorry to say), her
veil drawn tightly over her pretty face and ears, and her skirts
looped up, less to show the scarlet petticoat, taper ankles, and
balmorals, than for activity, as she set forth.
Which of all those hoof-marks she could trace upon the road were
those of Cyril's fatal horse? How often had she walked along that
road to church and to the nearest market town since they had lost
their carriage, but never with a heart so heavy, and with such a
sensation of being benumbed and stupefied with grief.
"Sorrow, misery, and horror!" she muttered from time to time. "Oh
what a life is before me now! Cyril, Cyril!" and at the sound of his
name, even on her own lips, the tears rolled forth beneath the
closely drawn veil, and the little hands were wrung convulsively
within her muff.
Every moment she thought that she must see him coming to meet her; it
seemed impossible that he could be thus blotted out of existence!
All appeared chaos and confusion to Mary as she walked on; the order
of events and the course of time seemed to be alike inverted.
It appeared as if years had elapsed since she had last seen
Cyril--last stood in his close embrace in yonder thicket, and heard
his loving voice, while the events of years ago seemed to have
happened yesterday; even his arrival from India, when she was much
younger, with her dead brother's sword and watch, his rings and lock
of hair, and the happy subsequent time when his and her secret
intimacy began. How much had passed since then; they were lovers,
and engaged, so solemnly too--and now--the mass of unuttered thoughts
seemed to rend her heart!
Circumstances had given her few friends, and now she sorely felt the
want of one.
School companions, girls from town and elsewhere, with gay and happy
home circles, had occasionally broken the monotony of her life by
becoming her guests; but she grew painfully conscious that owing to
the dreary seclusion of the old Tower, where few sounds met the ear
save the bleating of sheep or the whistle of the curlew, and also
from her father's querulous eccentricity, they curtailed their
visits, and seldom or never came again. Then, as he ailed so
frequently and aged so fast, she could not accept invitations in
return, even those given by neighbours so near as Lady Ernescleugh
and others, who were disposed to be kind to the lonely little
Chatelaine of Lonewoodlee.
Ere long she reached the handsome iron gate and grotesque little
lodge of Chesterhaugh, beyond which she could see the sweep of the
gravelled approach that led to the house. The park was perfectly
bare and open now, as the thriftless Captain had long since converted
into cash every tree on the estate; and the park itself, once his
father's pride, was now let to a grazier of cattle.
Mary was flushed and breathless as she approached the gate. She had
walked very quick that she might the sooner return, and she had not
been insensible to the fast increasing coldness of the temperature,
the howling of the March wind, and the gathering of dark masses of
cloud in the east, hastening, or anticipating by nearly an hour, the
shades of evening.
She was in the act of questioning old Tony Heron, the lodgekeeper,
who approached her respectfully with a hand at his hat, "if the
tidings were true that Captain Wedderburn"--how her voice faltered as
her quivering lips pronounced the name--"had really suffered by some
accident after leaving Chesterhaugh," when the sound of hoofs struck
her ear, and before the man could fully reply, Captain Chesters--in
nearly the same costume in which he had breakfasted at
Willowdean--dashed up, accompanied by his favourite and only groom,
Billy Trayner, to whom he at once threw the reins of his horse on
dismounting.
"Good morning, Miss Lennox," said he, lifting his hat with profound
courtesy.
"It is evening, rather," said Mary, covered with confusion and
annoyance by this unexpected _rencontre_, "and I must not delay, lest
poor papa----"
"Ah! to be sure; but the old gentleman was all right, fast asleep,
Alison told me, as I stopped for a moment at the Tower to inquire for
you in passing. But to what good fairy is the humble house of
Chesterhaugh indebted for the honour of a visit from you, Miss
Lennox, and alone too?" he added, as he led her very deliberately
inside the gate, which the keeper shut; "and you have no demon of a
duenna or chaperon. It beats cock-fighting, 'bangs Banagher,' as
O'Grady of ours used to say."
"You make me feel more and more the extreme awkwardness of my
situation by this banter, Captain Chesters," said Mary; "but--but----"
"Out with it. You came to ask about young Wedderburn!" exclaimed
Chesters, bluntly.
"Yes, sir," said the lodgekeeper, officiously; "she was just asking
me when you rode up, and I was about to tell her----"
"That according to our old Scottish proverb, 'a fu' man and a fasting
horse go quickly home'--but, by Jove! Cyril Wedderburn went rather
further than he quite reckoned on."
"I ask pardon, sir, but I think you are wrong," said the man,
touching his hat; "the Captain was not the worse of wine, though his
horse seemed mad."
"How the devil should you know anything about it? Silence, Tony!"
"I let him out, and shut the gate."
"Then shut your mouth now, or speak only when you are spoken to,"
said the Captain, furiously, on which the man slunk into his lodge,
abashed.
"Poor Cyril Wedderburn!" said Mary, biting her nether lip to control
her emotion.
"He left Chesterhaugh quietly enough, but his horse was disposed to
be restive, straining hard on the curb, and so forth, and would seem
to have run away with him. It is a very mysterious and melancholy
affair," added Chesters, drawing off one of his riding gloves; "but
if you will permit me to lead you into the house I shall then tell
you all about it, at least, all that I can pretend to know."
"Thanks, no, excuse me," replied Mary, hurriedly, as she was nearly
swept away by a sudden gust of wind, while hail and snow came on
suddenly with great force and density "Good Heavens!" she exclaimed,
"it is quite a storm. I must take shelter here a few minutes, if you
will permit me."
"In my gate-lodge? Impossible! Absurd! Come with me into the
house, and if the blast does not lull in a few minutes, I shall have
the pleasure of driving you over to Lonewoodlee."
Mary looked rather despairingly through the bars of the handsome iron
gate, and saw the bleak wide moorland waste she had traversed
whitening fast, and that the road was becoming more and more obscure,
as the snow covered and the darkness overshadowed it; and while her
tears and her repugnance to accept the invitation increased, she
said--
"Thank you, Captain Chesters; you are very kind. I was most rash to
come; but I could scarcely walk back now, and alone too."
"To walk alone; the thing is not to be thought of. And do not talk
of thanks, you owe me none. Do permit me." And taking her hand with
all the suavity he could assume--for Chesters was harassed in aspect,
having been questioned and cross-questioned by the Procurator Fiscal
and the constabulary till he was sickened by the name of Cyril
Wedderburn--he conducted Mary into the house of Chesterhaugh, where
she had not been for several years, since she was a little girl and
led by her father's hand.
Through the marble-floored and oak-panelled entrance-hall, which was
hung with spoils of the field and chase--trophies of arms brought by
Chesters from India, tiger skins, skulls and horns, with a multitude
of whips and spurs, cloaks and riding-boots; thence through a long
corridor, that in his father's time had been furnished by magnificent
cabinets of buhl and marqueterie, and hung with fine old paintings,
all of which had gone, like the trees of the park--he led her into a
handsome and well-appointed dining-room.
Though the assurance given by Chesters that he had left her father
asleep but a short time before was not strictly true, it tended to
soothe Mary's mind a little till the shower of hail that crashed on
the windows of the room disturbed her, all the more that the
closely-drawn curtains, and the twelve waxlights in the chandelier of
Florentine bronze, suggested ideas of nightfall, though the hour was
barely six o'clock.
Chesters courteously drew a chair for her near the fire, and led her
to it.
"Permit me to relieve you of your muff and hat. Wont you even lift
your veil?" he entreated, as he leant, half caressingly, over her
chair; but Mary was determined to remain in all her walking gear, to
be ready for departure, and said--
"Captain Chesters, do kindly order Trayner to drive me home without
delay."
"Why such haste?"
"I perceive that you are just going to dine."
"And will you not share my poor bachelor fare, and by your presence
shed a light over my lonely board for an hour or so, and then I shall
drive you home in person?"
But Mary was resolute. No food had passed her lips; but she had
dined, she said, long ago, by her papa's bedside. Go she must, and
at once, she added, and was only pleased that her tears and her
blushes of irritation were hidden by her tightly drawn veil, as with
a very peculiar expression in his face, Captain Chesters languidly
rang the bell for Trayner.
Unlike her gloomy paternal residence, and unlike the more elegant and
modern mansion of Willowdean, the house of Chesterhaugh had been
built in the reign of George II., when art was at its lowest ebb in
Scotland, and taste was studied less than solid comfort. It was a
great square block, three stories in height, with all its chimneys
clustered in the centre; the roof sloped down from them in the
pavilion form, and the outside walls were roughcast with gravel and
lime; and poor Mary thought sadly of her own older-fashioned and more
sordid home, and of the few comforts that surrounded the declining
days of her father, as she surveyed and contrasted with a rapid
glance all the details of the spacious and lofty dining-room of
Chesterhaugh--the walnut-wood furniture so elaborately carved, the
chairs of green morocco, the crimson damask window-curtains with
their gilded cornices, the many pictures in which horses seemed to
predominate in place of men; the brilliant plate console mirrors, in
which all these objects were reproduced in two endless perspectives;
the elegant ironstone dinner-service of pink and gold, laid for
Chesters; the massive plate; the claret airing near the fire--and she
marvelled how all this luxury was supported, when remembering that
the Captain had the reputation of being a spendthrift, a bankrupt,
and worse.
She little knew that Cyril Wedderburn, when last he had been in that
room, had sat in the very chair she now occupied; but Chesters
remembered the circumstance, and a disdainful smile crossed his face
as he did so.
Again and again he pressed her to take wine; but Mary steadily
declined; and at last, after being rung for thrice, Mr. Bill Trayner
appeared--a very good specimen of a smart but unscrupulous groom,
small in stature, with a long body and short bandy legs, a mean and
narrow forehead, sleek black hair, shorn short, with a circular lock
or curl plastered on each prominent cheek-bone, and with sharp,
cunning eyes.
Bill was a Scotchman of Newmarket growth, and to all the worst points
of the national character, added the roguery that may be so easily
gained in the atmosphere of the betting-house, the stable-yard, and
training-ground. He kept a betting-book as well as his master, whom
he was always ready to second in mischief, and to betray, if it
suited his private interests to do so.
A perfect oracle on all matters pertaining to the turf, he knew by
heart or rote all the entries and engagements made at the various
race meetings throughout the country; and knew shrewdly which horses
were the best to back and which were likely to be scratched.
"How about the waggonette, Trayner?" said Chesters. "You know I have
no other carriage, Miss Lennox," he added, parenthetically, to Mary.
"The waggonette, sir," repeated Trayner, trying to fathom the meaning
of a peculiar glance his master gave him.
"Yes, the waggonette with the patent springs," resumed Chesters, with
a remarkably knowing wink.
"The springs is broke, sir," replied Trayner, with a similar mode of
telegraph, when he glanced at Miss Lennox, and took in the whole
situation.
"Broken--the devil they are!"
"All to smash, sir."
"Then the waggonette won't be in working order for----"
"Not for ever so long, sir."
"Then I must walk, and at once!" said Mary, rising from her chair.
"I have not a moment to lose."
"Walk? Listen to the rising blast and the crash of the hailstones,"
urged Chesters.
"Ah, there's more there than hailstones, Miss," said Trayner. "It is
a regular feeding storm. The snow is some inches deep already."
"Oh, my poor papa!" exclaimed Mary. "If he is awake and calling for
me! Surely the lodgekeeper will accompany me?"
"The two old women at Lonewoodlee will surely suffice as attendants
for a couple of hours."
"Hours! Impossible, Captain Chesters!"
"That will do, Trayner. You may go," said Chesters, and his _fidus
Achates_ vanished with a leer, which he conveyed to the servants in
the hall below, together with the information that "the master had
been and gone and done it again. Here's a lark! He's got that girl
of old Lennox's, and means to keep her in Chesterhaugh all night if
he can--only she seems spirited, and likely to kick over the traces."
Mary had seen something of the man's expression of face as he
retired, and she felt that in her anxiety and grief for Cyril
Wedderburn she had made a mistake it was too late to remedy now; but
it was destined to have a fatal effect upon her interests and
happiness at a future time.