WAS IT NOT A DREAM?
He came forward through the long drawing-room with his usual easy
bearing, his head well set up, his military air, and calm,
unflinching eyes, which dilated on seeing Mary Wellwood, and then he
paused.
For fully a minute there was dead silence--the silence of dumb
bewilderment, and Mary felt how loudly and painfully her heart was
beating; while to both Colville and Mrs. Deroubigne it was apparent
how much she was agitated, thereby involving a secret which the
latter was yet to learn.
Mary had felt that she had cause to be indignant and to feign
indifference. As the lover who had trifled with her, as she thought,
and gone to the very verge of a declaration or proposal, and then
paused, and he--the obnoxious cousin, the heir of entail, one and the
same person--stood before her, in her eyes of deep violet blue there
came for a brief space the light of a sudden determination, with
something of a horrified stare; but ere Mrs. Deroubigne could
approach an explanation or introduction, Colville sprang towards the
pale and trembling girl, and took both her hands within his own.
'Mary--Mary Wellwood!' he exclaimed, in a voice full of passion and
pathos; 'you here!--and do we meet again after all? What mystery is
this?'
'Probably a portion of that which seems to have involved all your
actions of late,' replied Mary, with the slightest _soupçon_ of
hauteur in her manner, while with difficulty restraining her tears.
'But are you not glad to see me again--you whom I loved, and love
with all my heart?'
'Captain Colville,' said Mary, attempting, but in vain, to withdraw
her hands, 'this painful and degrading mode of treating me must not
to be resumed!'
'Painful and degrading? Mary, you know that I love you.'
'You never told me so. I wish I had never seen you, or that I were
dead!' exclaimed Mary, a little incoherently, while averting her
face, and feeling her determination giving way.
'Never told you so--but you knew; and we were interrupted when we
parted last; and then I met with that accident, the wound in my right
hand, which prevented me from writing or going to Birkwoodbrae in
time to prevent you and Ellinor from vanishing, without trace, as you
did.'
By this time she had wrenched her hands away, and, thinking with
alarm and dismay of how Mrs. Deroubigne might view this singular
scene, she covered her face with them.
'Captain Colville!' she exclaimed, with a tone of expostulation, as
he gently pulled them down, while triumph and joy sparkled in his
eyes.
'Now, don't look vexed with me any more,' said he, in a tone of
tender entreaty, while kissing her hands. 'My dear, dear
cousin--dearer than all the world to me,' he added, as the mingled
expression of indignation, perplexity, and doubt passed out of her
sweet, pale face; 'let me explain all, and tell you how I love you!'
Mary was so shaken by all she had lately undergone that she could
only weep now; thus for a moment or two she yielded to him; he
pressed her to his heart, and covered her eyes and lips with
fast-falling kisses, forgetful of the presence of Mrs. Deroubigne,
who looked laughingly on. The good old lady seemed to like the
romance of the situation, and of the episode she had so unwittingly
brought about.
'And how is Ellinor?' he asked, as Mary drew blushingly back towards
their hostess.
'Far from well. Of late she has suffered much----'
'Through my folly?'
'And other matters too.'
Mary felt her poor little head in a whirl, with some difficulty
recognising the whole situation.
So the Colville she had learned to love and her cousin Wellwood were
one and the same person! Thus, much which had puzzled her on many
occasions in the bearing of Dr. Wodrow was accounted for now. They
had been in the plot together. Many things that had seemed
perplexing and strange were now clear as day. She recalled the
initials, and the mystery he made about the W that stood for the
middle name, and remembered that she had seen the Wellwood crest--a
demi-lion--on his signet ring; nay, it was on it now! She recalled,
with some shame and bewilderment, all her sharp and antagonistic
utterances about him and his father, and she cast down her long dark
lashes as these things came to memory.
And so it was of himself he had spoken, and to himself he had
referred, as having been the worse for wine in the cantonments at
Lahore; himself he had referred to as being 'not a half bad fellow,'
and being wounded in action with the hill tribes; himself on whose
supposed coldness and selfishness he heard her descant; and it was
regard for her as a beautiful and friendless girl, with the charming
tie of cousinship hitherto unknown, that had inspired him as he stood
with her side by side at her parents' grave!
'I knew not what love really was till I knew you, Mary,' said he,
caressing her again. 'In the world I live and move in, I never
thought it would touch me as it did, for there money seeks money or
rank. Out of novels and plays, I doubted its existence; but I have
learned the sweet lesson at last, and you--the dear cousin who
loathed my very name--were my preceptor, Mary!'
'But why--oh, why all this mystery--this concealment of your real
position, name, and relationship?'
'Can you ask me, after what I have said? I wanted to know you
thoroughly, after all Dr. Wodrow had told me about you and Ellinor.
I then wanted you to love me, not as the owner of a landed
estate--not as a lounging Guardsman--not for the pretty woods of
Birkwoodbrae, that I could perhaps give to you, and would have done
so had they not been entailed; but, like the hero of a romance, Mary,
for myself alone.'
'And now to lunch, dears,' said Mrs. Deroubigne, as she laughingly
kissed Mary. 'I am tired of playing the part of Gooseberry.'
How much they had to talk about, to describe, to explain to each
other, out of all the cross-purposes, confusion, and pain that had
arisen from her cousin's scheme, the little romance he had concocted,
and the end of which he had not foreseen; while, worse than all, but
for the doctrine of chances, they might never have met again!
He heard with astonishment of the two episodes of Lady Dunkeld's
dance and Westminster Abbey.
'To think that I should be so near you, and have no consciousness of
your presence!' he exclaimed. 'Where were my eyes--where was my
heart? My poor little Mary, had you only thought of looking in the
Army List, you would there have seen that your wicked cousin and
Leslie Colville were one and the same man!'
The astonishment of the latter, on hearing of the recent cruel
conduct of Lady Dunkeld and her daughter, was only equalled by his
just indignation.
'Oh, for the rarity of Christian charity!' he exclaimed.
'I can forgive them _now_,' said Mary, in a tremulous voice, and with
a swift, bright glance at Leslie Colville.
'I cannot,' said he; 'forgiveness is indifference, or nearly so, but
no one can quite forgive a wrong like this. But I see the origin of
this hostility to one who was helpless against it. When I think
how--as you know, my dear Mrs. Deroubigne--how that half-French brat,
Blanche Galloway, in her flirty, Continental way, has sung to me,
played at me, talked to me, and made œillades, I am disgusted.'
'Come now, Captain Colville,' said Mrs. Deroubigne, 'that is scarcely
fair; did you not encourage her a little _à la soldat_?'
'Not at all! She was ever admiring the rose or flower I had in my
button-hole, and when I begged her acceptance thereof, it duly
figured in her bosom or hair afterwards, while she flattered herself,
no doubt, in the depths of her French imaginings--but I shall teach
these Dunkelds a sharp lesson ere I go.'
'Now that you talk of it--and now especially--I do not see why you
should go to the East at all,' said Mrs. Deroubigne, while Mary grew
paler than before, and felt as if roused from a startling dream.
'True, true, but needs must now. In sorrow for the loss of Mary, I
volunteered for special service abroad; and so I find her but to lose
her again,' exclaimed Colville.
'Special service!' she asked, in a strange voice. 'What is that?'
'It means detached for staff work where--where operations are in
progress,' said he, evasively.
'Speak to the point, Captain Colville,' said Mrs. Deroubigne. 'You
go to the north-west frontier of India.'
'India!' repeated Mary, with whitening lips. 'Has life so little joy
for you?'
'It had but little till within this hour, dearest Mary.'
'Can you not withdraw your application?' said Mrs. Deroubigne.
'As a soldier's widow, you should know that, unless overtaken by
illness, I could not do so with honour.'
'You are right. How unfortunate it is!'
'So, my darling and I have met but to part again.'
Mary heard all this with more dismay than she dared exhibit just
then, or trust herself to speak about, and it was with a mingled
sense of joy she found herself pledged, before Mrs. Deroubigne, to be
Leslie Colville's future wife, and saw flashing on her engaged finger
the same diamond ring he had brought for her acceptance on that
eventful day at Birkwoodbrae, for then, as now, Mary Wellwood was the
one woman in the world for him. 'Whether our passion be prudent,'
says Hawley Smart, 'whether the woman we have asked to tread life's
path with us is likely to be approved in our maturer years, we reck
little. She is the one woman, so far as we are concerned just now,
and has she not pledged herself to be so always?'
But no doubt of himself or of his choice came into the heart of
Colville. She had already been tried like gold in the fire; and he
was yet to be further tried to an extent he little expected.
When the time came to depart, Mary left Mrs. Deroubigne with a heart
too full of regard and gratitude for utterance in words. She could
only sob on her ample and motherly breast; and Colville, when
conveying her in a cab to that home which he had resolved she must
change for one more suitable, heard of its locality with sorrow and
dismay, and with emotions very different from those of Sir Redmond
Sleath when he obtained the address of Ellinor.
'Paddington--Paddington Green! My Heaven, how came you to select
such a place?' he exclaimed.
'Through the guard of the train. We asked his advice,' replied Mary,
simply.
'This is intolerable! Such a hole--such a den--such a locality! You
must quit it without delay,' he added, as the only homes he knew were
in Mayfair, Tyburnia, and Belgravia: and though his heart was full of
joy the first genuine laugh that escaped him was when he heard the
address he was to inquire for.
'Mrs. Seraphina Fubsby! Good heavens, where did she pick up such a
name?'
Mary had no time then to inform him that the good woman was fully
entitled to another. She was too full of her own thoughts, and,
though the fog of that horrible London November day had deepened and
darkened all around her, in her heart there seemed sunshine now!
Could it be that so much had passed--that events to her so momentous
had occurred--since she had turned away in gloom and almost in
despair from the great door of that house near Portman Square, afraid
even to tell and crush poor Ellinor's heart by tidings of the new
misfortune that had overtaken them?
Was it not all a dream, from which she would awake to a world of
bitterness?
But, no. Leslie Colville's betrothal ring was on her finger; his
strong, firm and loving hand was clasping hers; and all about her was
truth and reality.
'What tidings I bring, dear Ellinor!' she thought, as the cab stopped
at the door of their humble abode, and Leslie Colville sprang out to
assist her to alight as they heard Jack's bark of welcome.