Chapter XIX: ;

THE DEPARTURE.

To-morrow came, and the next day, and the next, but there was no sign of, or letter from, Captain Colville, so Mary resumed her arrangements all the more briskly and bitterly.

Ellinor had heard of his interview with Mary, and felt much tender interest and concern. Had he spoken of Sir Redmond Sleath, or his movements, she marvelled sorely; but failed to ask.

Meanwhile May's recent thoughts were of a very mingled and somewhat painful kind. The memory of his great tenderness of manner, of the kiss he had snatched, and the assertion that he was not the _fiancé_ of Blanche Galloway were all ever before her in constant iteration, with the consciousness that no distinct avowal had preceded, and no proposal had followed the episode.

A kiss! Their lips had met but once, yet the memory of such a meeting often abides for ever.

'How dared he kiss me! Why did I not prevent him?' she thought, while her cheeks burned, and the conviction that he had been only amusing himself with her grew hourly stronger in her heart. She remembered, too, that he had laughed once or twice during the most earnest parts of her conversation about her troubles, and she thought that most people could hear of the misfortunes of others with tolerable equanimity.

Was he really engaged to Blanche Galloway after all? and was she the means of preventing the promised visit on 'the morrow'--the visit that never took place?

His visit to Birkwoodbrae on the very day of his return from Alyth was certainly duly reported to that young lady by Mademoiselle Rosette, who had watched and followed him--and smiled brightly as she did so--for where is the French soubrette to be found who does not feel a malicious pleasure in knowing that her master or her mistress is being deceived?

The first day of Colville's absence after that thrilling visit dragged wearily on, and, when evening came and the sun set, Mary marvelled was it eight hours since she rose that morning. It looked more like eight hundred, and still longer looked the days that followed, till anger began to mingle with her depression, anxiety, and sense of unmerited humiliation, all of which enhanced her desire to be gone.

How little could she conceive that, wounded in the right hand by the explosion of a friend's fowling-piece when shooting, he was confined at first to bed, and then to his room at Craigmhor; that he was thus unable to write to or communicate with her; and that thus, too, probably she would never see him again, for by the evening of the third day the arrangements for the departure of Ellinor and herself were finally completed.

'Would that I could peep into our future, Mary,' said Ellinor, tearfully, on their last evening in their old home.

'Ah! the future is indeed a mystery to us,' said Mary; 'but blessed be God for all His gifts!' she added, in a broken voice, as she thought of the legend over the old doorway, through which they would pass no more.

Many relics were packed and sent to the manse, there to be kept till better times came; everything else was left in care of the still absent Dr. 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.

Ellinor, we have said, had thanked heaven for her escape from what must have proved a great and perilous _esclandre_; yet by one of those idiosyncracies of the female heart she also thanked heaven that London was to be the place of their exile; Sir Redmond was there, no doubt, and she felt assured that he loved her still. Mighty though the modern Babylon was--and of that mightiness she had not the slightest conception--they might meet again; and even, if not, it would be pleasant to walk in the same streets where he walked or rode; to breathe the same air that was breathed by him: to be in the same place where _he_ was.

So she had, to enliven the path before her, a little element of romance that was unknown to, and denied to the poor but more practical Mary; and to her, foolish girl, it seemed that perhaps the dear old tale might conclude, after all, with wedding bells and vows of wedded love.

Why she should have indulged in these dreams it is difficult to say. Days upon days had passed, and, like Colville, the impassioned baronet, with whom she had been on the point of sharing her future, gave no sign, and she could make none. But she was yet to learn that; all the fine old Grandisonian notions of honour and delicacy towards woman held by our grandfathers were exploded, or else deemed absolutely antediluvian and absurd.'

Now she longed to be gone--gone even from Birkwoodbrae. 'She wanted to see life' (she thought), 'as poets and painters and young ladies picture it--a sort of misty, delicious paradisiacal existence of excitement, unfailing amusement, and perpetual delight.'

The old peace of mind was gone; she wished to leave all connected with it behind; and, poor girl, she little knew what was before her--it might be of penury, struggle, and despair!

Every movement, as the hour of departure approached, brought a fresh pang to the tender heart of Mary. She had parted with her pets and household cares. Her tame owl she had cast loose, and she watched him as he winged his way back to his eyrie in the ruined tower, from which Robert Wodrow in happier times had brought him.

Wearily and sadly she had all the dear familiar spots, and the cottars who dwelt among them, to visit for the last time--hard and shrivelled hands to press and children to kiss. How should she ever get through it all?

She picked up a few daisies from the graves where her parents lay, and placed them between the leaves of her Bible, and then it seemed as if there was nothing more to do.

The evening seemed painfully sweet and silent and still when the sisters quitted their home for the last time, and to Mary it seemed that even 'the grasshoppers were silent in the grass.'

The keys were to be handed over by Elspat Gordon to a clerk of Mr. Luke Sharpe's when he chose to come for them. Elspat received the instructions drowned in tears, and as a spell against evil put in her pocket some grains of wheat, as it is, or was, a superstition in Scotland that in every grain there is the representation of a human face, said to be that of the Saviour, and hence the efficacy of the spell.

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.

'Good-bye!' she whispered in her heart to many an inanimate but familiar object, as it seemed to fly past and vanish, till the darkness of descending night shrouded all the scenery. Then Mary closed her eyes, and strove to think, while the clanking train glided swiftly and monotonously on.

The past, the present, and the future, so far as Colville was concerned, seemed to have melted into thinest air; or perhaps the past alone, with its brief life and glow of love and hope, thrust itself poignantly forward.