THE SPRING EVENING.
Ere the night fell and the moonlight paled out on the Lammermuirs and
on the sea, Mary was fated to hear what this secret communication was!
"What had happened at Willowdean--what was the nature of the
telegram?" she asked of her own heart and of Alison in vain; the
discovery of Cyril's body in the sea, or cast upon the shore perhaps,
and even she who loved him so, yea as her own soul, dared not ask
permission to look upon his pallid face again!
This conviction was a great, a bitter, and a mortifying grief! Well,
well, if the world were going to pieces, she knew that she must
attend to the health and wants of her father, and on looking at her
watch, she found that she had not a moment to lose if she would be at
the station when the train from the North came in. She tied on her
smart hat and veil, took her tiny muff, and set forth.
She might have sent Alison Home, but she had a craving to be a little
abroad in the open air, for the atmosphere of the house seemed to
stifle her, and there were times when the clamorous fluttering of her
heart amounted to agony, and when she felt as one in a dream--one
enduring sorrows not her own, but those of another.
She passed the thicket and the stile where she had been wont to meet
him in the evening, and she glanced at both wistfully. No need was
there now to wait with anxious heart to watch the clock, or wonder
whether papa would be asleep, awake, or fretful when the time for
trysting came. All was ended now! and yet as she looked at the rude
steps of the stone stile, grey and spotted with lichens, it seemed to
her as if she could, in her mind's eye, trace the outline of her
handsome and winning lover's figure, waiting for her as of old--as he
had waited only five days ago--her lost Cyril!
Never more! Oh, how much of sadness, of bitterness, and
hopelessness, do these two words contain!
Save in a few hollow places on the hill sides, the snow of the
preceding night had totally disappeared. The sunset deepened with a
warm and russet glow on the summits of the pastoral hills, the air
was balmy, and the chirping of the birds came clearly upon it, with
the voices of children from a distance. The green buds were swelling
in the hedgerows, and near a cottage which had once been a lodge of
Lonewoodlee (now let to a cottar) she saw a group of rosy, barelegged
"bairns" peeping with wonder into the first bird's nest of the
season, which some unwary sparrow had built in the cleft of an open
bush. The rooks were cawing aloft, the brown hares were gliding
among the glistening furrows of the freshly ploughed fields, or
"mains" as they are named in the Merse; there was a fragrance and
odour of verdure in the air, and though the month is usually a rude
and boisterous one, Mary, as she walked rapidly on, could not be
insensible of the genial influence of spring.
Pausing at times, she looked fondly and sadly back to the gloomy old
Tower, the tourelles, bartizan, and stone roof of which stood out so
darkly against the bright blue evening sky. There, in the stirring
times of old, by the Border Laws, or _Leges Marchiarum_, her
forefathers had been compelled to keep a watch with alarm-bell and
fire-pan, to give warning to the North, to Soltra and Dunpender, when
the English crossed the Tweed or entered the Merse, and now their
descendants trembled at the approach of an angry creditor! How long
would her dwelling be there, and where would be her home when--but
she thrust _that_ thought aside as too painful, and hastened on.
She passed ere long the handsome modern gate and Grecian lodge of
Willowdean, the pillared peristyle and white façade of which she
could see at a distance between the trees of the park (or chase, it
might be called in England), and an irrepressible sob escaped her for
one who would never more be under its roof; and thus, with the tears
welling but unseen beneath her closely tied veil, she entered the
market town of Willowdean, which owed its existence and prosperity to
the Wedderburns.
It is a quaint old Scottish Burgh of Barony, and was so long before
the union of the kingdoms, remaining very much unchanged for more
than a century after, and singularly so, as in Scotland nothing
stands, for there whatever fails to "go ahead" must decline and pass
away, like many of the burghs of Fife. It has stood almost
unchanged, even by the railway, save for the erection of a few gayer
shops and taverns--unchanged in its general aspect since Queen Mary
made her famous ride to Hermitage, and from its aspect, its cross--a
slender shaft of stone surmounted by a mouldered unicorn--its kirk,
and crow-stepped gables abutting on the street, its quaint outshots
and turnpike stairs, one might expect to see the mailed knights of
Mary, or buff-coated troopers of Leslie, fresh from Marston Moor,
drinking at the market well, or "chaffing" the girls at the grated
windows of the houses, some of which still show the iron crosses of
St. John of Jerusalem.
The town once boasted of a castle, but after being burned by some
Northumberland raiders in the time of Charles II., it has dwindled
down to a few vaults and a green mound, the favourite resort of the
children for games and play. Willowdean still boasts of a parochial
barn, called a kirk, where God is worshipped according to the cold
and stern form ordained in 1559 by the Lords of the Congregation,
when Mary of Guise was Regent of the realm, enlightened Scottish
lords who could barely make their mark like an Irish navvy, and who
(could such an investment have been made) would have sold their
fathers' skins to Queen Elizabeth.
This church had, however, attached to it the Gothic fragment of an
older fane, still called the Lennox Aisle, and there lay most of the
forefathers of her who now entered the street afoot, and sick and sad
at heart.
To many of the "burgh merchants" in that little town was her father
in debt, yet everywhere did Mary meet with respect; all touched their
hats to her, for the memory of her father's openhanded youth was a
popular one: and in a place so sequestered and out of the route of
the tourist, even in fast-changing and radical Scotland, some more
respect is paid at times to the representative of an old family than
might be accorded to a wealthy parvenu, and all the more readily when
the said representative is a lovely young girl like Mary Lennox.
In the middle of the street--the town has but one, with a few
thatched closes or alleys diverging therefrom--she encountered a
group of little children dancing hand-in-hand and singing in chorus
one of those local rhymes which are so peculiar to the Lowlands, as
they came merrily along, enumerating, to an air of their own, several
localities, thus--
"Braw Bughtrig and braw Belchester,
Leetholm and the Peel;
The lad wha gets a wife frae there
Will ever do weel;
But better far in Willowdean,
And bonnier will he see,
If he'll ride further up the muir,
Unto the Lonewoodlee."
Then, as they suddenly perceived and recognised Miss Lennox, the
little creatures blushed and curtseyed; and, but for the chronic
sadness of her heart, Mary could have smiled at the old rhyming
compliment to the alleged beauty of the ladies of her family.
At last she reached the railway station, of which no description is
necessary, as such edifices bear a strong family resemblance all over
Europe. There were the same liveried porters loitering about that
one sees everywhere; passengers with labelled luggage awaiting the
up-train or the down-train; the book-stall, with its inevitable rows
of yellow, green, or red novels, Punch, and the _Illustrated News_.
Mary had not long to wait. With a shrill and vicious whistle, the
train for England swept out of the tunnel, a long pennant of smoke
streaming behind, and its crimson lamps flaming like the eyeballs of
a demon in front, for the twilight had deepened to the gloaming now.
Clang went the bell, the engine "slowed," and, amid the bustle, the
opening and slamming of doors, the production and notching of
tickets, the choice of seats and stowal of luggage, the darting of
the thirsty into the refreshment-room, and so forth--for all had to
be adjusted and the train off in five minutes, if it would avoid the
express for Berwick--Mary looked in vain for the familiar face of the
friendly guard who frequently did her little services, and who was to
bring her the important packet from town.
The man on duty this evening was a total stranger to her.
"A packet for you, Miss?" said he, in reply to her inquiries. "What
is the name?"
"For Mr. Lennox, of Lonewoodlee."
"It was given to a gentleman in the train; he offered to take charge
of it."
"By whom?"
"The other guard, to whom he seemed well known, and to whom he
offered in person to deliver it."
"Singular; a gentleman!" exclaimed Mary, in vague alarm that the
long-expected packet might be lost or stolen.
"Yes, Miss; a regular gentleman, for he gave me a crown when smoking
in the van."
"But where is he?"
"Yonder, on the platform, Miss. Seats, gentlemen, seats!" and
cutting short the conversation, the bustling official hurried away,
touching the brass-lined peak of his cap.
Clang went the doors and the bell; the engine panted and screamed,
the train glided away, and Mary went towards the gentleman indicated
by the guard. He was speaking in an animated manner to a few of the
loiterers on the platform, who had formed a group about him, and Mary
fancied that he had a small sealed packet in his hand.
Irresolute about addressing him, she lingered for a moment, till
something in his air and manner stirred a secret chord in her heart,
which vibrated painfully, and a low cry escaped her lips, when the
handsome face, with the well-known moustache and tender loving eyes
of the lost one, was turned towards her!
"Cyril!" she exclaimed, and would have fallen, but that his arm was
instantly around her.
"Mary--Mary Lennox!"
It was he, but looking paler and thinner, and strangely attired; and
they met thus abruptly amid a group of people on the open and most
prosaic of places--a railway platform!
Great though his excitement, Cyril Wedderburn had that horror of a
"scene" natural to every well-bred Briton, and rapidly recovering his
consciousness of the necessity for appearing calm and unmoved, he
lifted his hat, and said--
"Take my arm, Miss Lennox: allow me to see you out of this place. I
have here the packet addressed to your father. I hope to hear that
he is better. Good evening, gentlemen and friends; thanks for all
your kind wishes and congratulations."
He drew Mary's arm through his, waved his hat to the people who had
recognised and crowded about him on the platform, welcoming his
return--resuscitation, what you will--with a genuine cheer that died
away in a buzz of speculation and wonder, for the Wedderburns were
deservedly popular in the district; and then he led away Mary, who
was in a state of intense bewilderment, for much of utter terror was
mingled with her joy, so that her steps tottered as they left the
station and proceeded through the street of Willowdean, where the
windows of the little shops were beginning to be lit with feeble gas,
or still more feeble candles, and from thence out upon the familiar
highway that stretched beyond.