James Grant

“ And already Elspat Gordon and other old servants, with the keen observance and love of gossip peculiar to their class, had begun to prognosticate a more brilliant future for Ellinor Wellwood than the obscure career of a country doctor's wife, and saw her the lady of 'a real live baronet,' and riding in a chariot to which that of Cinderella was as nothing in comparison; and, as if to make the mischief worse, rumours of their surmises and of their hopes reached somehow—but readily enough in a sequestered district—the ears of Robert Wodrow, and were as gall and wormwood to his soul. ”

“ Despite the disparaging remarks or comments so ungenerously made by Lady Dunkeld and her daughter, a subsequent afternoon saw both Sir Redmond Sleath and Leslie Colville seated in the pretty drawing-room of the sisters at Birkwoodbrae.
Sir Redmond had inadvertently dropped a hint that he meant to visit there, and, greatly to his annoyance, Colville proposed to accompany him.
It was an early day in August, and every breath of air was still; not a leaf was stirring in the silver birches without, or among the monthly roses that clambered round the open windows which faced the pretty garden. ”

“ Colville looked as if he thought there was a good deal to attract, and his dark eyes seemed to say so as he looked into Mary's, which drooped beneath his gaze.
'Your presents came, Captain Colville. They are beautiful, and fit to perfection. Ellinor and I cannot sufficiently thank you,' she said, in a low voice.
'Oho!' thought Sir Redmond, 'he has been sending them presents. Eh! a sly dog.'
'A few gloves are not worth mentioning,' replied Colville, hurriedly. ”

“ The latter could scarcely be, as Ellinor had so many personal attractions, her long lashes imparted such softness to her dark hazel eyes, and the contour of her head and neck seemed so graceful and ladylike as Sir Redmond stooped over her, and complimented her artistic efforts.
Meanwhile Jack, with his hair bristling up, and his bandy legs planted firmly on the carpet, was growling, snarling, and showing such manifestations of making his tusks acquainted with the baronet's calves or ankles, that he had to be ignominiously taken out of the room by Elspat. ”

“ Even her parents, who were lying in their graves, with all their love of her, had never in their proudest and most exultant moments pictured for either of their children a future like this!
So she seemed to live in an enchanted world, out of which the figure of Robert Wodrow faded. 'Once in our lives,' says a writer, 'Paradise opens for all of us out of the dull earth, and moments, golden with the light of romance, shine upon us with a radiance like unto no other radiance of time, and we do not stay to count the cost of the bitter desolation that follows. ”

“ Mary left Ellinor again at her easel, and smiled when she saw that the latter had given some finishing touches to her costume, and had stuck a sprig in her lace collarette, in expectation of a visit from Robert Wodrow and his mother. She knew well of the loving friendship and incipient regard that had long existed between Rob and Ellinor; and that as friends of years' standing each had begun—she hoped—to feel that in all the world the other was the dearest, and a union for life would of course follow. ”

“ Yet I would rather see my daughter dead, if I had one, than married to a man with eyes so cold, so cruel and shifty.'
'But who is thinking of marriage?' said Mary, with a slight laugh, little knowing that it was a contingency as remote from the thoughts of Sir Redmond as her own.
'And I don't think that Captain Colville—for all that Dr. Wodrow seems to like him so much—can be good in every way if he has such a friend or companion as Sir Redmond Sleath,' said the old lady, shaking her head. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mary's gentle voice broke as she told this little story, and whatever Colville thought of it, though a town-bred Scotsman, no unbelief was traceable in his face.
'We know not what to think of such things,' said Dr. Wodrow, with one of his soft smiles; 'but, as Sir William Hamilton says in his metaphysics, "to doubt and be astonished is to recognise our own ignorance. Hence it is that the lover of wisdom is to a certain extent a lover of the mythic, for the subject of the mythic is the astonishing and the marvellous." ”

“ I thought, small as it is, that Birkwoodbrae was almost our patrimony; it proves to be his, so let him have it.'
'And you——'
'Have the world wide before me,' she replied, with a quiver of her sweet upper lip; 'with us—Ellinor and me—it may be as in Strathallan's Lament—
"Ruin's wheel has driven o'er us,
Not a hope may now attend;
The world wide is all before us,
But a world without a friend."
'Heaven! I hope not,' said he.
'Why does he continue on this distasteful subject,' thought Mary, 'unless to prolong the conversation?'
He now proceeded to pat Jack's head. ”

“ The latter cast her sweet eyes down and made no reply, as in this important matter she was as yet tongue-tied.
'Be wary—be wary, pet Ellinor, for it has been truly said that common-sense and honesty bear so small a proportion to folly and knavery that human life at least is but a paltry province.'
'Is this out of one of Dr. Wodrow's sermons?' asked Ellinor, with some annoyance. 'Surely I am the best judge of what is for my own happiness.'
'Perhaps; but remember the proverb,' said Mary, thinking of the absent Colville and fading hopes. ”

“ In an atmosphere of drooping acacias, little palms, curious ferns, cacti, and other exotics in tubs and pots, where the light was subdued by the greenery overhead and around, and where the plashing of a beautiful bronze fountain alone broke the stillness, for in the nook of that great conservatory to which Sir Redmond Sleath had successfully drawn Ellinor alone, the music of the band and the merry voices of the garden party were scarcely heard, they were seated together on a blue velvet lounge ”

“ For a man like Sir Redmond there was a strange fascination in achieving the conquest of, or in 'running to earth,' as he would have phrased it, a girl so pure and confiding as Ellinor, and whose beauty and helplessness inspired him with a kind of love, as he thought it, but a selfish love peculiarly his own.
It may excite surprise that such worldlings as Lord and Lady Dunkeld did not prefer a baronet as a parti for their daughter's hand; but Leslie Colville was by far the richer of the two, and possessed landed property in various directions ”

“ I can't make out the mystery of it at all!'
'Alas! we must go; this house was never ours—we dwelt here on sufferance; and the place is another's now—another whom we know only by name and in family feud.'
'Can it be that God's world belongs only to rascals!' exclaimed young Wodrow, bitterly.
'Well, the rich and cruel seem to thrive best, for a time at least,' said Mary, a little infected by his mood.
'But to go away so far—so far as London?' he urged, with an air of bewilderment. ”

“ Line after line—though it was brief—the words were loving and tender, but ended in bitterness and upbraiding; passion made them eloquent, and they burned into the heart of the girl as the eyes and voice of Robert haunted her; but she felt besotted by this new and showy admirer, he was so different from homely, honest, Robert Wodrow—so different from any man she had ever met before; and why should Robert, who was only her friend—her old playmate, she strove to think, but with much sophistry, attempt to compete with him and control her movements. ”

“ Wodrow said and inveighed against superstition, the piper would lead the funeral party thrice deisal-wise round the burial-ground before entering it.'
'And no doubt the doctor would quote his ancestor's famous Analecta?' said Ellinor.
'On that occasion he did not,' replied Mary; 'but it's too bad of you, Ellinor, to quiz the dear old man, who does his duty so well. I always recall what papa used to say, that no one who does not try with all the strength one possesses to do some good to those about them, can possibly say they do their best to live usefully and honestly. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If he was betraying himself, he paused, and Mary could feel how her heart was vibrating.
For a moment her long dark lashes flickered as she glanced at him timidly, and thought how happy his avowed love would make her was he at liberty to do so; and she remembered that when he was away at Alyth how she had felt a void in her heart, till adversity brought her other things to think of. ”

“ Wodrow?'
'I am afraid I do,' said he, with increasing kindness and gravity of manner. 'So Robert and Ellinor have completely quarrelled?'
'I fear so.'
'George Eliot says that "Every man who is not a monster, a mathematician, or a moral philosopher is the slave of some woman or other." But I came not to speak of Robert, poor fellow, but of something concerning yourself.'
'Of me!' said Mary, startled by the growing gravity of his manner. ”

“ Wodrow, to be sold for their behoof; but, for reasons to be given, strange to say, nothing was sold.
Though the apparently strange conduct of Captain Colville in teaching her to love him, and exciting brilliant hopes in her heart only to let them fade, had so deeply mortified Mary that already his image was passing out of her busy thoughts, or seemed as only something to be forgotten as soon as possible, she was not without strong though vague hope of the future for Ellinor and herself; but hope has often been likened to the mirage of the desert, and as being often quite as illusory. ”

“ This ghost was a heavily-booted one, with spurs that were heard to jingle as it went; and it was wont to appear by the bedside of some sleeping visitor, over whom it would bend with pallid face and gleaming eyes; and those who had found courage enough to strike at the figure with hand or sword, found, to their dismay, that notwithstanding his heavy-heeled boots, by some idiosyncrasy, peculiar perhaps to ghosts, the stroke passed unimpeded through it; but Mary averred that since the railway had come through Strathearn, less and less had been seen of the Darien spectre, and now it came no more. ”

“ Wodrow, from his fatalist or Presbyterian point of view, as he cast his eye upward to the ceiling.
Mary heard his voice as one hears in a dream. The flies buzzed in the window curtains, the last of the birds still twittered about among the climbing creepers at the open sash, the roses sent forth their fragrance still, and the drooping foliage of the silver birches was gently stirred by the soft evening breeze. ”

“ I think when a young man is attached to a married lady it keeps him out of harm's way,' said Lady Dunkeld; 'however, we must take some decided measures with Miss Wellwood, and with Captain Colville too.'
'Dear mamma!' cooed Miss Blanche Galloway, and she laughed that worldly little laugh of hers, which was so indicative of her character.
The result of all this was that, when Mary and Ellinor called ceremoniously shortly after the garden-party, Lady Dunkeld, who was seated at one of the drawing-room windows, on seeing them approach, rose hastily and retired. ”

“ In the railway-carriage Jack crouched at Mary's feet, and, looking up in her eyes, whined and whimpered, for dogs have strange instincts. All that was left to the sisters of Birkwoodbrae was the bunch of freshly-gathered roses which each carried in her hand, and many times did Mary bury her hot and tear-stained face among their cool and fragrant leaves. ”

“ Mary Wellwood had reached a part of the stream where it was more difficult to fish, as its banks were thickly wooded, when she saw near her, similarly occupied, a gentleman, who, though he did not seem to watch her, certainly did so, for to his eyes angling seemed an odd amusement for a young girl—a lady especially—though it is not more so than archery, and certainly not so much as bringing down a grouse upon the wing, a feat attempted by some damsels now-a-days. ”

“ 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 ”

“ There has seldom been a woman who liked to see a once avowed lover slip from her grasp; and Robert Wodrow certainly had been Ellinor's lover till the serpent entered her paradise in the shape of rank and ambition.
But we are somewhat anticipating the events of the day subsequent to her intended flight.
Mary, after evening fell, and having been round among some of her poor people, was seated somewhat thoughtfully alone, and seemed to have lost most of her usual buoyancy of spirit. ”