Chapter XIV: Gretchen and Faust

'And you have quarrelled with poor Robert?' said Mary, somewhat reproachfully, to her sister.

'Nay--not quarrelled, exactly,' replied Ellinor.

'What, then?'

'Agreed to part.'

'After--_all_; oh, Ellinor!'

'All what?'

'Well, you know what I mean.'

'We have always been in the habit of calling each other by our Christian names, and by pet names, too, such as Robbie and Ellie--a bad system--and--and--in fact, you know, Mary, we regarded each other rather as brother and sister than as--as----'

'Lovers--and in this new view of the situation you are no doubt influenced by Sir Redmond Sleath?'

'Perhaps,' replied Ellinor, doggedly, as she watched the hands of the clock.

'If he means honourably--and he dare not mean otherwise--you are perhaps worldly-wise. But poor Robert!'

The exclamation, though uttered low, found an echo in the heart of Ellinor. Yet she was inexorably intent on keeping her invited appointment, of which Mary had not, of course, the least suspicion.

'I do not like Sir Redmond,' said Mary, with a tone of decision.

'Why?' asked Ellinor, changing colour.

'He never looks me straight in the face, and at times, with all his insouciance, he can do nothing but tug out his moustache, as if to show off his white, useless hands. He certainly has hung about you, Ellinor, more than I--considering our friendless and lonely position--have quite relished.'

'Not perhaps more than Captain Colville has hung about you, Mary,' retorted Ellinor, softly; 'and I may as well admit that Sir Redmond always speaks to me of his love, and has asked me to love him in return.'

'He has done this?' exclaimed Mary, growing pale.

'Yes,' replied Ellinor, kissing her sister, perhaps to hide her own face.

'Has he asked you to be his wife?'

The look of unrest--sorrowful unrest--she had detected more than once in Ellinor's face crept over it now. 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. 'Happiness is like an echo which answers to the call, but does not come.'

'What an old croaker it is!' said Ellinor, as she laughingly kissed her sister again and slipped away from her.

She re-read Sir Redmond Sleath's letter--the first love-letter she had ever received, if we except the sorrowful and upbraiding epistle from Robert Wodrow. It seemed orthodox enough, as it began 'My darling,' but had no genuine signature, and there was very little devotion expressed in it, and was brief and curt.

Perhaps Sir Redmond disliked letter-writing--most men do; but there seemed something wanting in this letter--something she could not define, and the lack of which she felt and sighed over. Were Mary's words of warning affecting her? It almost seemed so; but she put the document carefully away in the most secret recess of her desk, and hastened to hold the meeting it solicited--and like the Gretchen of Goethe hastening to meet Faust, took her way to the trysting-place near the Linn, and long after in Ellinor's mind was the sound of the May, as it poured over the steep cascade, associated with this meeting and all the pain it caused her.

When she arrived, Sir Redmond was not there, and was ungallantly late in keeping his appointment; but he and Lord Dunkeld had lately betaken themselves to wiling away the evenings at écarté, though the baronet had a way of turning a king that would have made the fortune of anyone compelled to pluck wealthy pigeons. He came just when Ellinor was very much disposed to pout, and framed the most humble of apologies, as he was resolved to lose no time in carrying out his nefarious plans in absence of the Guardsman, who seemed to have--he knew not why, unless for evil schemes of his own--a mysterious interest in these two girls, of one of whom he stood somehow rather in awe.

Pressing Ellinor close to his heart, with her face nestled in his neck, he told her why he had asked for this meeting, and what he had now to propose for their own happiness, and that to deceive his wealthy uncle, from whom their marriage must be kept a secret--there could be no public ceremony--no notice in the newspapers, more than all!

'Dare you trust yourself to me, darling Ellinor, and marry me privately; and then--then, before spring comes, assuredly--'

'My heart recoils from such treachery to Mary--from all this secrecy; is it--can it be necessary?' asked the girl, weeping.

'Most necessary for our future, if it is to be a brilliant one, as I have no doubt you wish,' he continued, caressing her, and then added, with a sophistry that would have been plain to anyone less simple or less easily deluded than Ellinor, 'I am quite prepared to acknowledge our marriage to all the world, provided it does not, as it must not, reach my uncle's ears.'

'I have heard that trusting to Providence in the shape of elderly relations is often fatal,' said Ellinor, with a sickly smile.

'I shall get a special licence, if that will satisfy you, Ellinor darling!' he urged, ignorant of the fact that in Scotland such a document was unknown, and that there the Archbishop of Canterbury had no more power than 'General Booth.'

He left nothing unsaid to play upon her weakness, but it was long before he could obtain a half silent consent from her, and, ere he did so, more than once an ugly gleam came into his eyes.

Though not unhandsome, the face of Sir Redmond was not always a pleasant one to look upon. A certain force about it there was, and those who watched it felt that its owner was not a man to be trifled with in anything that touched his self-interest or his evil purposes; that he was a man ready for emergencies and heedless of obstacles if he had an end in view.

Like a character recently described by a novelist, 'his great weapon was his inflexible will, aided by the reputation he had achieved of never allowing himself to be defeated. I need not say that he held women in the most supreme contempt, and openly expressed his opinion that every woman had her price. The only merit he assumed was in knowing the exact article of barter each had set her heart on.'

Such was the pleasant personage who had supplanted Robert Wodrow, and even while he was softly caressing the girl and subjecting her to his endearments, he was thinking of the time to come--the time when she would find herself separated from her loving sister, her only tie on earth--alone in the world, penniless and in his power, her character and position utterly lost, and when none would believe her most solemn protestations of innocence; then would be his hour of supreme triumph, when, like a bruised and wounded bird, she would come fluttering to him for succour and protection, and when he might be generous, and make her over to 'that yahoo, Robert Wodrow.'

'I shall have a splendid house in which to enshrine you when the time comes and I am free,' continued the tempter; 'you, my darling, have known no home but this sequestered one--apart from all the world--a world of which you know nothing.'

'And poor Mary--how can I leave her?'

'Nor need you do so--once we are away and have been made one we shall send for her; it will only be the matter of a post or two. I shall so love and cherish you both,' urged Sleath, half laughing in his mind at the conviction that she would never see Mary again until--well, until he was tired of her. 'Courage, little one, and you will be Lady Sleath--it is a second edition of the miller's lovely daughter.'

'I am not quite so humble as she was,' said Ellinor, making a little _moue_.

'Nor I so exalted as the "gracious Duncan." To-morrow night, then, dearest Ellinor, at this hour--nine o'clock, I shall await you with a hired carriage at the corner of the lane below Birkwoodbrae, and a short drive will take us to the station, where we shall get the up train for London and the south!'

Ellinor answered only by her tears, and the silently-accorded kiss that gave consent, and went shudderingly back to her home, feeling as if she was hovering on the verge of an abyss.

And she was so in more ways than one!