Chapter VII · SUSPENSE AND DREAD.

At noon on the morrow, the time he had promised to come, she looked for Cyril from the turret window of her room, which commanded an extensive view of the road that wound through the grassy and pastoral district. From that turret window and along the same road had more than one ancestress of Mary looked for her husband returning from the Scottish wars, in the times of Cromwell, Montrose, and Dundee, and looked in vain.

Through her lorgnette Mary studied every figure that approached on foot or horseback; there were not many, perhaps three or four only, during the entire day; but there was no appearance of Cyril Wedderburn, either mounted on his favourite bay hunter or afoot with rod and gun.

So for that day the thicket was unvisited; no fond whispers were uttered under the old larch-tree, and when midnight came she looked at her ring as on the preceding night in the vague hope that he might be doing the same, and thinking of her, wherever he might be.

Three days—to Mary, long, anxious, and dreary days—passed away. Knowing that his leave of absence from the Fusileers was so short, she grudged every hour he spent with others, when he passed so few with her, and now a new source of terror occurred. Had the war broken out suddenly, and Cyril's leave been cancelled? But surely he would have written, and however sudden his departure, should have made an effort to see and to bid her farewell.

Was he ill? That was not improbable, as for three days now the parochial Sangrado, Doctor Squills, had not been near Lonewoodlee; but then she knew that such rich folks as those at Willowdean would depend more on the greater medical talent, for which they could telegraph at any moment to the metropolis.

She was in an agony of suspense; their residence was not a cheerful place, so visitors were few and far between, and she could learn no tidings of the only other being whom, beside her father, she loved on earth.

On the fourth day, one of her domestics, Alison Home, an elderly woman, who had noticed her feverish anxiety without suspecting its cause, announced that a person on horseback was approaching the house—coming indeed at a gallop over the Lee. Then Mary rushed to her window, only to be disappointed, as she recognised at once, not Cyril Wedderburn on his long-stepping hunter, but the rather awkward figure of Doctor Squills, on his barrel-shaped Galloway cob.

The Doctor was a suave, well-meaning, fair, florid, and passably good-looking man, about thirty-five or forty years of age, anxious to please all, and to spread the practice in a district where the people were so healthy, that, save for his parochial salary, and one or two retired Bengalees with large livers and purses, he must have starved, his patrons being as few as his patients. Mr. Lennox was certainly a permanent, but far from a lucrative one; yet the Doctor was kind and attentive, all the more so that he had naturally a secret desire to stand well in Mary's estimation, and whenever he visited Lonewoodlee, he almost unconsciously made a more careful toilette than usual.

She received him with a genuine smile of welcome in the gloomy little dining-room, with its deeply embayed windows, its dingy old family portraits, the two great horsehair sofas and veteran chairs and tables, of the shabbiness of which, by long use and wont, she had ceased to be ashamed, though the pretentious coat-armorial of the Lennoxes was carved in stone above the fireplace, at the richly moulded jambs of which there still hung on each side those steel chains by which the fireirons were secured in the good old Scottish times, when guests would quarrel over their cups, and if their swords were left in the hall, were wont to enforce their arguments with the poker and shovel, if not thus secured to the wall.

"By that bright smile I augur well of my patient, Miss Lennox?" said Doctor Squills, taking Mary's hand between his own, patting it the while, and seeming very much disposed to retain it as he seated himself, for it was a lovely little hand indeed.

"Thanks, Doctor Squills—papa has been singularly easy and free from pain for three days past," replied Mary, making an effort to retain her impatience for some news of the outer world.

"That is good—very good. The composing draught taken as usual, I suppose?"

"All according to your orders. I am a good little nurse, I hope," said Mary, with a smile and a sigh.

There was a pause, and then the Doctor said,

"You have heard the great news, of course, Miss Lennox? but we'll talk of it after I have seen your papa. Is he awake just now?"

"Yes," said Mary, in a breathless voice, for the idea of "news" terrified her, and she seemed as one frozen, while the Doctor, after leisurely depositing his hat and gloves on the table, where with trembling hands she was placing a decanter of wine, and cake of her own making, from an antique buffet—with his bland smile of professional sympathy and jaunty step, took the way which he knew so well, to the bedchamber of Mr. Lennox.

What "news" had the Doctor? was it of war and peril, of hasty departure, of sickness or sorrow, of joy and triumph, or what? The Doctor knew nothing of her interest in Cyril; so, could he be referred to?

Poor girl! she was not left long in suspense, for the Doctor soon came sidling in with the same jaunty air, saying—

"Pulse regular, head cool, breathing good. Complaining of appetite too; capital! Give him any reasonable thing he may wish. Strength must be kept up at his years, you know, Miss Lennox—at his years especially."

"And you think papa better to-day?"

"Indubitably so—beyond my expectations."

"Thank God for that!" said Mary, fervently.

It was only a brief rally before the great catastrophe; but the good-hearted Doctor had not yet the courage to tell her so.

"You spoke of news, Doctor?" said she.

"Ah—sad—sad—very sad, indeed! Those poor folks are greatly to be pitied."

"Who—where?"

"The family at Willowdean."

"Pitied for what?" exclaimed Mary, starting as she grasped with a white and trembling hand the arm of the sofa on which she sat.

"The awful loss which they have too evidently sustained," said the Doctor, pouring out a glass of poor Mary's indifferent sherry, as he remembered that he had a ten miles ride over the hills before him.

"What loss? What has happened? Oh, tell me, tell me, Doctor, for the love of Heaven!"

"Is it possible that you have not heard what, now, all in the county know?"

"No—no—no; I have heard nothing," said Mary, wringing her hands piteously, while her dilated eyes, her blanched visage, and quivering lip betrayed a depth of emotion for which the Doctor, who knew of the coolness between the families, totally failed to account. "What do you mean?" she added.

"The disappearance—the death, no doubt—of young Captain Wedderburn, Sir John's heir apparent, the heir to so fine a property, and a title among the oldest of our Nova Scotian baronets—and with a rich wife in prospect too—one we hear worth half a million of money. It is a great and unparalleled calamity, and his family are plunged, as you may well suppose, in the profoundest affliction—the affliction of the wealthy and noble is always profound, it would seem, to judge from editorial sympathy—and to be in depth far beyond anything that the middle class or poor folks can have any idea of," added the Doctor, with a sigh, which was perhaps induced more by cynical repining than pure sympathy, as he drank his sherry, and then turned to Mary, and saw, with some amazement and alarm, her crushed and wobegone aspect.

"Disappearance—death?" she thought. "Oh, what does this mean? Do I hear aright? Am I mad, asleep, or dreaming?"

"I see, my dear Miss Lennox, that your tender susceptibilities are greatly shocked; but I can only tell you what I heard, and what the local papers of this morning contain; but first, take a glass of wine, and then listen to me. Take it, pray—nay, you must," and the kind Doctor forced her to swallow that which nearly choked her, and then resumed in his chirruping, gossipy manner, "the terrible catastrophe, happened thus—on Wednesday last—let me see, was it Wednesday or Thursday?"

"Wednesday, I suppose. Go on, in the name of mercy!" said Mary, in a voice all unlike her own; the rich chord was gone, and a cracked unearthly sound now remained.

"Yes, my dear Miss Lennox, it was on Wednesday, for the Berwick Warder has it so—Captain Wedderburn dined with that gay man of the world (rather too gay he is), Captain Chesters, at the Haugh, but did not return home. His non-appearance at breakfast next morning—though Mr. Asloane rang the great house-bell thrice—created no alarm among the family, as it was supposed he had remained overnight with his new sporting friend, and would probably turn up about luncheon time; though as Chesters was only a recent acquaintance, it excited a little surprise at Willowdean that Captain Wedderburn would tax his hospitality. That I learned from Mr. Asloane himself, as I had to ride over to see one of the laundry-maids who had a whitlow, which I treated successfully by——"

"Oh, go on—go on, I implore you!"

"It was on her right thumb—well, you are impatient, I see. After a time, a whisper came of his having left Chesterhaugh before midnight on Wednesday. This was alarming. If so, where had he been for these twelve hours past? The butler came to Lady Wedderburn at the usual hour about orders for the carriage, or horses for riding; they were both postponed, and the luncheon was delayed. Master Robert, his cousin, Lieutenant Ramornie, old Asloane, all the gamekeepers, gardeners, and grooms; even Sir John, and the Master of Ernescleugh, with all his people, proceeded to beat the woods, shrubberies, the park, and all the roads, but did so in vain. No traces of the Captain were discovered until yesterday, when a hat—a grey felt wide-awake, known to be his—was found at Buncle-edge, and his silver-mounted whip at Falaknowe, about a mile further eastward. There were no traces of blood, however. Pardon me, for I seem to shock you: but last night the darkest tidings of all came from Lady Juliana Ernescleugh. A horse known to be his, a fine bay hunter with black fetlocks, which he had purchased from her son the Master, was found by some of the Dunbar fishermen sorely bruised, battered, and drowned, with saddle-girths reversed, beside the rocky cleugh or beach, somewhere near Fast Castle. So what has happened, how he has perished or by what means, and as to where his body may be lying, whether on the land or in the sea, we are as yet helplessly and hopelessly in the dark. It is a terrible and melancholy catastrophe, and affects you deeply, I see, my dear young lady. I know not whether you ever saw Captain Wedderburn, but he was one of the finest young men in the Merse."

As the Doctor concluded this harrowing story, calmly and quietly, but unwittingly dealing death-stabs in her heart, poor Mary Lennox sank quietly back with eyes closed into a recess of the sofa; she was icy cold, and but for his presence and the means he took to recover her, by forcing her to take more wine, she must have fainted.

A stupor or torpor seemed to come over her. She became stunned, blind, and almost deprived of the power of volition. She knew not what to think or believe, or what to do. Aware of the stern necessity for keeping up appearances and for preventing the secrets of her heart from becoming patent to a stranger, she made a vehement essay to start up and question the Doctor again, only to find that he had been gone for nearly an hour and she had known it not. Neither she knew or cared what instructions regarding herself he had left with her two startled and dismayed domestics.

She only knew and could only realize that her lover, her affianced husband, the secret husband of her heart, had perished by some miserable death, whether the result of foul play or some terrible accident she might never know; and now she recalled with grief and terror how she had heard a horse galloping madly past, when she looked at her watch on that fatal Wednesday at midnight; and the wild cry, the prompting, as it seemed, of fear or of despair, that came upward to her ear; and how she had associated that cry with the voice of Cyril Wedderburn!

And his horse had been found at Ernescleugh, near Fast Castle (the Wolf's Craig of Scott's romance), and she knew how frightfully steep the rocks are there!

Her kind, her handsome, and her loving Cyril! Never again would his strong arm caress her slender waist, or his love-lit eyes gaze tenderly into hers; and now all his soft and loving ways came vividly before her, mingled with a dreadful sense of calamity and loss, till the very tears—tears which she longed to mingle with those of his haughty mother—almost choked her as she lay on her bed, prostrate on her face.

On Wednesday she had seen him last, and this was Sunday forenoon: she could hear the bells for service ringing in the village church about a mile distant to remind her of the fact, and that four days—four days in this age of steam and telegraphy had elapsed without trace or tidings of her lost one!

Then she became suddenly aware that her father was ringing his hand-bell furiously, and was querulously, even peevishly, demanding her presence for something.

Her tears, and the cause of them, she was alike compelled to conceal; so, after bathing her eyes hurriedly, she tottered away to attend him as usual.