Colville of the Guards, Volume 1 (of 3)

KIRKWOODBRAE.

'You are a dear and good-hearted jewel, Mary!' said Ellinor. 'How you can constantly face and soothe the sorrows and miseries of all these poor people, I cannot conceive; I am not selfish, I hope, and yet the frequent task would he too much for me.'

'You are not without a tender heart,' replied Mary, as she set down her little hand-basket, now empty. 'I have paid but one visit to-day--a very sorrowful one--and I am glad to be back again in our own pretty home. When I saw old Elspat the funeral was over, and dear Dr. Wodrow had brought her back to the little lonely cottage from which her husband had been borne away. It was so sad and strange to see the empty bed, with a plate of salt upon the pillow, and the outline of his coffin still on the coverlet, and the now useless drugs and phials on a little table, close by--sad reminiscences that only served to torture poor Elspat, whose grey head the minister patted kindly, while telling her, in the usual stereotyped way, that whom He loved He chastened--that man is cut down like a reed--all flesh is grass, and so forth. But old Elspat shall not live alone now--she is to come here, and be a kind of factotum for us.'

'That is like your kind, considerate heart, Mary; always thinking of others and never of yourself.'

'When I think of the brightness of our own home, Ellinor--though death has twice darkened it--and compare it with that of old Elspat, my heart throbs with alternate gratitude and sorrow.'

'Poor Elspat Gordon.'

The speakers were sisters, two bright and handsome girls, one of whom had just returned from an errand of charity and benevolence, while the younger was seated in a garden before her easel and paint-block, on which she was depicting, for perhaps the twentieth time, the features of their home, Birkwoodbrae--works of art in which their favourite fox-terrier Jack always bore a prominent part; and Jack, his collar duly garlanded with fresh rosebuds and daisies, was now crouched at the feet of the fair artist.

Mary Wellwood was fair-haired, with darkly-lashed eyes of violet-blue. Many would call her very handsome, but few merely pretty. She was far beyond the latter phrase. With all its soft beauty and dimples, there were too much decision and character in her face to justify the simple term prettiness, while it was a face to haunt one a life long!

Two years younger than Mary, Ellinor was now twenty. Her dark hazel eyes were winning in expression, and, like Mary's, longly-lashed, and what lovely lips she had for kisses! Hers was no button of a mouth, however. Critics might say that it was a trifle too large; but her lips were beautifully curved, red, and alluring, often smiling, and showing the pure, pearl-like teeth within; and yet, when not smiling, the normal expression of Ellinor's face was thoughtful.

The orphan daughters of Colonel Wellwood--a Crimean veteran--the two girls lived alone in their pretty sequestered home at Birkwoodbrae. They had not a female relation in the world whom they could have invited to share it; and though sometimes propriety suggested a matron or chaperone as a necessity to two handsome and ladylike girls, living almost under the shadow of the manse, and as the minister, Dr. Wodrow, had been left by their father on his death-bed a species of guardian to them, 'why hamper themselves with some uncomfortable old frump, when they could be perfectly happy without her, with their father's old servants about them?' was always the after reflection of each.

Thus for three years the time had glided away, and Mary's life we shall show to have been a busy, active, and useful one, adding to and nearly doubling indeed the little income left them by their father, through her own efforts in the production and sale of the agricultural produce of the few acres of Birkwoodbrae, with a skill and independence of spirit that won the admiration and respect of all who knew her.

Yet the house they loved so well, and the patch of land around it, did not belong to the orphan sisters.

The heir of the entail--for, according to 'Shaw's Index,' small though the property of Birkwoodbrae might be, it had been entailed as far back as 1696, with date of tailzie 1694, by Ronald Wellwood, a remote ancestor, who was one of the many victims of King William's treachery at Darien--the heir of entail, we say, held a lucrative diplomatic appointment abroad, and left his two nieces in undisturbed enjoyment of the house and lands.

Thus the latter, in Mary's care, had become quite a little farm, the produce of which, in grazing--even in grain--butter, eggs, and poultry, doubled, as we have said, the pittance left to her and her sister by their father, the improvident old colonel.

In the words of Herbert's Jacula Prudentum, Mary Wellwood's motto had ever been, 'Help thyself and God will help thee.'

The house of Birkwoodbrae was a little two-storied villa, with pretty oriel windows, about which the monthly roses, clematis, and Virginia creeper clambered: and it had been engrafted by the colonel on an old farmhouse, the abode of his ancestors, which had two crow-stepped gables and a huge square ingle-lum--the later being now the ample kitchen fireplace of the new residence, and in the remote quarter of the little household.

A lintel over the door that now led to the barnyard told the date of this portion of the mansion, as it bore the legend often repeated by Mary:--

'BLISSIT BE GOD FOR AL HIS GIFTIS. R. W. 1642,'

and showed that it had outlived the wars of the Covenant and the strife that ended at Killiecrankie; and by its wall there grew a hoary pear-tree, called a longovil--the name of a kind of pear introduced into Scotland by Queen Mary of Guise, the Duchess of Longueville.

This part of the house was, or used to be haunted by a goblin known as 'the Darien Ghost,' a spectre that used to appear during the blustering winds of March, on the anniversary of the storming and sack of Fort St. Andrew by the Spaniards, when a thousand Scotsmen perished, among them, Ronald, the Laird or Gudeman of Birkwoodbrae. 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.

Around the house were groups of lovely silver birches, the 'siller birks' that gave the place its name; in front the ground sloped gently downward, till the little garden, with its well-kept plots and parterres of flowers, ended in a park of emerald green grass, where the spotlessly white sheep and brindled cattle grazed amid the sweetest sylvan scenery, the vivid colours of which were now brought forth by the fleecy whiteness of the clouds, the deep blue of the sky, and the brilliance of the sunshine; and, as William Black has it, 'I have heard Mr. Millais declare that three hours' sunshine in Scotland is worth three months of it at Cairo.'

When Mary came forth into the garden again, she wore an old straw hat to save her complexion from the glares and had the smartest and most becoming of lawn-tennis aprons pinned over her dress, with Swedish gloves upon her hands, as she proceeded to snip and train some straggling sprays of roses about the walls of the house, and seemed to do so with loving and gentle care, as if the said house was a thing of life, and sensible of the love she bore it; while uttering many a yelp and gurgle, Jack, the fox-terrier, overwhelmed her with the wildest of canine caresses.

Now Jack was deemed a wonderful 'doggie' in his way, and had been the gift of Elspat's husband, an old Gordon Highlander, who had followed Roberts to victory, and had Jack by his side in more than one battle in Afghanistan. Jack was all muscle, and white as snow, save two tan-coloured spots, one over the right eye and the other in the centre of his back. He was the perilous enemy of all dogs, and cats too, and at the sight of one or other his muscles grew tense, his hair bristled up, and he showed his molar tusks; but otherwise he was absurdly meek and gentle, and in appearance belied his combative nature.

'Is it not strange, Ellinor,' said Mary, resuming the subject of their conversation, 'that Elspat's husband, who never recovered from the wound received three years ago in a battle in India, had a presentiment that he would die of it, and on the anniversary of the very day, hour, and moment he was hit, he expired? Yes, Jack, and you, my dear little doggie, were there too,' she added, nestling Jack's head in her pretty neck. 'In spite of all that Dr. 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. Oh, Ellinor, what a delicate arum lily you have there!' Mary suddenly exclaimed.

'I am putting it in my foreground. It came with some lovely peaches.'

'From Robert Wodrow?'

'Yes,' replied Ellinor, with a soft and pleased smile, for thereby hung a tale, as young Robert Wodrow (of whom more anon), the minister's only son, from his boyhood had sighed for Ellinor, and was never perfectly happy but when with her, and, like the lover of Rosamund Gray, 'he could make her admire the scenes he admired, fancy the wild flowers he fancied, watch the clouds he was watching, and not unfrequently repeat to her the poetry which he loved, and make her love it too.'

And so, in early youth, the boy and girl had grown fond of each other--far fonder than either of them at first suspected.

'By the way,' said Mary, suddenly, and pausing in the act of snipping off a decayed rose with her garden scissors, 'the Dunkeld family are back at Craigmhor.'

'With visitors, of course?'

'As usual--gentlemen to shoot when the season opens in a week or two; and one, a Captain Colville--a very handsome man--is, I hear, the intended of that haughty girl, Blanche Galloway.'

'Well, I am not ill-natured,' said Ellinor, with her pretty head on one side, as she reproduced Robert Wodrow's lily in flake-white; 'but the man who marries Blanche won't have his sorrows to seek. However, we shall not call, unless they do so first, of course; so these people are nothing to us.'

'Nay,' said Mary; 'with visitors at Craigmhor, the housekeeper must necessarily require more eggs, fowls, flowers, and I know not what.'