Chapter XX: The Heir of Entail

The sudden departure of the sisters from Birkwoodbrae, few knew precisely for where, caused something like consternation--at least, a great deal of commiseration--in the place they had left behind them. Their sweet, soft, ladylike faces and presence were missed erelong from the pew in which they had sat on Sundays from childhood; countless acts of kindness, goodness, charity, and benevolence were remembered now and rehearsed by cottage hearths and 'ingle-lums' again and again, and all deplored that the places which knew them once would know them no more!

When, two days after their departure, Captain Colville, with a magnificent diamond ring for Mary, and intent on taking up the story of his love where he had left it off, rode over to Birkwoodbrae, he went in hot haste to the manse for intelligence, and then he and Dr. Wodrow looked blankly in each other's face.

'Gone--what does it all mean?' impetuously asked the captain, whose wounded hand was in a black silk sling, and who looked pale and thin.

'It simply means that they have abruptly left us, and we may never see them again,' replied Dr. Wodrow, with unconcealed grief and irritation.

'Gone--gone!' exclaimed Colville, changing colour, or losing it rather; 'why did I not sooner tell them who I was--why act the part I did, and lure you into doing so, too?'

'Ay--why, indeed,' groaned the poor minister. 'You see what strength of character they both possess--Mary, certainly, at least.'

'And they have left no address--no clue?'

'None.'

'Mary wrote a farewell note to Mrs. Wodrow, saying she had not the heart to bid her good-bye verbally. Her friends of the past, she wrote, were no longer for her now--she had a new sphere of action to enter upon, a new life to lead, and new duties to fulfil, with much more to the same purpose, and that erelong she would write from London.'

'London!' exclaimed Colville, striking his right heel on the floor.

It would be an insult, perhaps, to the intelligence of the reader to assume that he or she has not already suspected that Leslie Colville and the encroaching cousin Leslie Wellwood were one and the same person. Apart from his entailed property, he had succeeded to other possessions, requiring him with reference to his peerage claim to add to his own the name of Colville, and hence the _incognito_ he had--for reasons of his own--been enabled to assume to his cousins, to Mrs. Wodrow, and others, including even that very acute party Sir Redmond Sleath. In short, save the minister, no one knew the part he wished to play.

'The little drama from which you promised yourself so much interest, generous and romantic pleasure has been thoroughly overdone,' said Dr. Wodrow, somewhat reproachfully.

'Overdone, indeed!'

'And doubtless has caused, and is causing great pain.'

'Poor girl! Could I have believed that Mary----'

'Possessed so much individuality, decision, and independence of character.'

'Most true; the drama has been overdone, but can be quickly amended by a pleasant epilogue. And it would have been so some days ago but for this wretched accident to my right hand, which prevented me from writing to Mary or to you. Prejudiced, as you know, by my father against them, I wished to learn the real disposition and character of these girls before befriending them, as I intended to do; and, even while learning to love Mary, I carried my romantic schemes too far. Why the devil did we make all this mystery!'

'_We_. It was your own suggestion and wish--not mine,' said Dr. Wodrow, testily; 'and now they have anticipated everything by going forth into the wide waste of the world and leaving us no clue.'

Colville bit his nether lip, twisted his moustache, and remained silent and perplexed. So the minister spoke again.

'Captain Colville, I feared you meant to go on for ever playing at cross-purposes with the poor girls. How I wish I had interposed, as it was my duty to have done, ere it was too late; but you bound me to secresy, as you know, and now they have gone far away, and with sore, sore hearts, you may be assured.'

And this secret, of which the Dunkeld family knew nothing, may explain the curious and laughing manner of Dr. Wodrow when speaking of Mr. Luke Sharpe the lawyer, and announcing to Mary the existence and intentions of the heir of entail.

'Poor Mary--poor darling!' said Colville, in a low voice. 'Why did I play with her feelings and my own so long! Fool that I was not to declare my love and propose to her on the spot?'

'Ay, fool indeed!' commented Dr. Wodrow, roughly. 'Think of all this worry, mischief, pain, and separation!'

'In studying her character I shall have deceived her as to my own.'

'She always seemed to think you were engaged to Miss Galloway.'

'I know that now. Why did you not undeceive her?'

'I had not your permission to move or explain in the matter.'

'And we have parted like strangers almost! What must Mary have thought of me--what can she think of me still?'

'That you were only amusing yourself with her.'

'Hence the strangeness and coolness of her manner towards me at times. Oh, Dr. Wodrow, I never knew how much I loved that girl till now!' exclaimed Colville, as he now realised fully in that time of pain and surprise that Mary Wellwood was the one woman in all the world for him.

About her there was an originality which struck him. She was unlike any other girl he had seen; she had a freshness and depth of thought which delighted as much as her beauty bewildered him; and he must have loved her as a cousin if he had not loved her as something more.

And now she and Ellinor had gone--fled, as it were--to London in a kind of desperation and sorrow, brought about by his own folly and mismanagement--to London, of all places in the world for girls ignorant of it--beautiful, helpless, and poor!

'But they will soon discover the trick we have played them, Dr. Wodrow,' said Colville, looking up after a silent pause.

'How?'

'If they look in the Army List they will see that there is only one Wellwood in the Guards--myself, Leslie Wellwood Colville.'

'That is where they will never think of looking,' replied Dr. Wodrow; and he was right--the sisters never did; besides, Army Lists were seldom in their way.

'Had that confounded old gossip, Mrs. Wodrow, not come in at the time she did all would have been explained--I was on the point of telling my darling all!' thought Colville, bitterly and angrily; 'all would have been so different now, and I should have won the confidence, as I had evidently won the love of Mary Wellwood. And now to follow and to find her!'

'Where?' asked Dr. Wodrow, pithily and sharply.

'True--true; I must be patient, and wait for tidings through you,' said Colville, with something like a groan. 'By the by, doctor, your son seems cut up about the departure of my cousins.'

'No wonder, poor fellow--since boyhood Miss Ellinor was the apple of his eye.'

'Ellinor?'

'Yes--and they both seemed happy enough in their hope of each other till Sir Redmond Sleath came hovering about her.'

Colville's face grew very dark.

'I did not like your friend's character,' said the minister.

'Friend--he was no friend of mine!' said Colville, bluntly.

'I saw through him soon after he first came here; I have had my experience of evil faces, and I could read his like a book.'

'And what were his views regarding Ellinor?'

'Matrimony, on the death of an uncle, I have heard, from whom he has great expectations.'

'He has no uncle by male or female side. This was some specious falsehood!' exclaimed Colville, with knitted brows.

'How do you know this?'

'As you may know it--by looking in the Baronetage.'

In the days that succeeded the departure of Mary and Ellinor most eagerly were letters looked for at the manse of Kirktoun-Mailler, but none came from either, though both sisters had promised to write whenever they had found a new home, however temporary, and periodically the path through the fields, by which the postman always came, was watched by anxious eyes.

How was this?--what had happened? were the constant surmises of Dr. and Mrs. Wodrow, as they looked gravely in each other's face, while more than once each day Colville came to the manse in hope of having tidings. Were both ill--stricken down by some sudden ailment and among strangers--they so gentle, so tenderly nurtured, and so refined in nature?

The doubt and perplexity were intolerable! And the upbraiding, almost despairing looks of Dr. Wodrow cut Colville to the heart.

With their departure by railway all clue was lost, and as the days ran on to weeks the anxiety that preyed on the minds of the good people at the manse became sore indeed, and to Colville, who knew what London is, doubt was simply maddening! From the heir of entail Mr. Luke Sharpe received instructions that everything was to remain intact and untouched at Birkwoodbrae till the sisters should come back and once more sit by its hearthstone; and old Elspat, who had been installed there in charge, held for a time a kind of daily levee of humble neighbours, whose inquiries, comments, and regrets were reiterated and ever recurrent.

But days, we have said, passed on and became weeks and more, and no tidings came of the lost ones, for so those among the Birks of Invermay began to consider them.

Captain Colville had rejoined his regiment in London; Sir Redmond Sleath was no one knew precisely where, and Robert Wodrow, whose evil genius he had been, abandoning his studies in a kind of despair, had disappeared. Thus a great gloom reigned over the old manse, and the worthy descendant of the author of 'Analecta Scotica' could not find in any page thereof a passage to soothe him in his great sorrow.

With Colville's return to London a slight hope had grown in the old minister's heart that he might be the means of casting a little light on this painful mystery, but ere long that hope died away too.

September stole on, and October came, with its red, yellow, and russet autumnal hues; the leaves were falling on the empty air; hardy apples yet hung in the otherwise bare orchards for the coming frosts to ripen; dark berries clustered on the elder-trees; long rushes waved in the wind by the banks of the May, which careered the same as ever through its bed of rock towards the Earn; the call of the partridge and the few notes uttered by the remaining birds of the season came on the low sighing breeze; winter was close at hand, and yet there came no tidings of Mary Wellwood or her sister.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

LONDON: PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD, BLENHEIM HOUSE.