Chapter XI · MARY BEGINS HER PILGRIMAGE.

With that promptitude which women can so often exert when in grief or adversity, Mary made all her preparations for leaving Lonewoodlee. It was already in the hands of creditors or their agents, and every day she remained she felt as if they were conferring an obligation upon her, and that idea was intolerable! A few relics of her father she secured for herself. The embroidered slippers he had last worn—her own working; his spectacles, an old riding-whip, and other mementos were put away as sacred treasures, over which she often wrung her poor little hands, and as the emotions of the child welled up in her heart, would weep—oh, so bitterly!

Mary had sometimes—especially latterly—repined at the dulness of her impoverished home; but now, with an emotion of repentance, she shed salt and silent tears, at the misery of leaving its shelter for a future which she could not foresee, and some dark forebodings of which had already begun to steal upon her.

The last day there was a dull and melancholy one indeed. A dense mist had set in from the German Sea, and was rolling in masses along all the glens and ravines of the Lammermuirs; the wind seemed to sigh with a deep "sough" in the old pine wood, and the old house-dog, as if sensible of some impending change or calamity, uttered ever and anon a low and dismal howl.

Mary was taking away with her only a trunk, for everything that had belonged to the family in past times, and all their most treasured household lares, were to be left behind for the hammer of the inexorable auctioneer.

Jealously tender of her dead father's honour, Mary had changed into money everything in the shape of jewellery that the solicitors would permit her so to turn (for even the stony hearts of Grub and Wylie were moved); she had thus paid to the last penny all he owed in the neighbourhood; and leaving herself but a very little stock in gold—enough, perhaps, to maintain her for a few weeks, till she discovered some one to appreciate her musical talents and those little domestic accomplishments by which she hoped to feed herself in the great metropolis of the world.

So the fatal or eventful evening came at last, and Mary, with her little trunk, was driven over to the Railway station by Doctor Squills, who, as he had always admired her greatly in secret, was somewhat moved on this occasion. As he turned the gig down the roadway from the hills, Mary begged of him to pause for a moment, while she gave a last long, wistful glance at Lonewoodlee, which—save that no smoke ascended from its chimneys now, and that all the windows were closed—looked just as it must have done for three centuries, a grey and stony mass, with its four turrets standing sharply up against the evening sky.

The little garden, once so trim and neat, was a mere wilderness now, where the jasmine grew in wild masses round the old lichen-spotted dial-stone; and the ancient pines of the thicket which her usually improvident father had spared for beauty's sake, and where she had been wont to meet Cyril, were marked by the axe for cutting down and "sale by public roup at the Market Cross of Willowdean," as a large placard informed the passer.

There had been a time when she had pictured herself leaving Lonewoodlee—if she ever left it—as the bride of Cyril Wedderburn, happy, joyous, and filled with the natural anticipations of a long and brilliant future.—Now! tears choked her under her veil, as she felt keenly all the bitterness of the present, when contrasted with the vanished hopes of the past. It was all over—all—all; and certainly on this side of the grave they would never meet again.

"Drive on, Doctor, please; I fear we shall be late for the train—I am sure I hear the whistle already!" said she, making a prodigious effort to be calm.

In her motherly heart, Lady Wedderburn viewed with much of pity and more of terror, the fact of a solitary and beautiful girl, one so gently bred and nurtured and so totally ignorant of the world, setting forth on a pilgrimage so hazardous; while Sir John, with his usual open-handed liberality, thought of enclosing a cheque to her for a handsome sum, pretending it was some debt he owed her father; but his wife assured him that the spirit of Mary Lennox was such, that she would too probably return it as an insult; so the good man sighed as he relinquished the idea, adding—

"Ah, poor thing—she was so fond of our Cyril, you say;" and he sighed again over his wine that evening, and said, "Kate, Kate, I cannot now, without regret and emotion, regard this utter destruction of an old Border family, with all its local and historical associations. Poor obstinate, passionate Oliver Lennox! I would, for the girl's sake, he had guided his patrimony as he might have done."

Lady Wedderburn agreed with him; but Robert thought "the sooner such geese as old Lennox were plucked and in the market, the better."

"There speaks the lawyer," retorted his father; "but poor Lennox knew one art only—that of squandering."

Meanwhile, Mary was standing as one in a dream on the platform of the little station at Willowdean, where the Reverend Gideon M'Guffog and a few others waited, either to see her off, or more likely to see the train come in, that event being then somewhat of a novelty in the secluded locality. He omitted to warn her, an inexperienced girl, of the perils that might so easily beset her path in a city so vast as London; but he did not fail to warn her to "beware of prelacy, popery, ritualism, and other errors and snares of the Evil One, abounding in the land to which she was going."

Sobbing bitterly as she bade her adieu, old Alison Home, forced upon her acceptance a pair of worsted boots of her own knitting, "to keep her feetie warm in the train," as she said, though the season was the end of summer; and a tall footman in plush brought her from Willowdean a beautiful bouquet and a pretty basket of fruit, with "the compliments and best wishes of Miss Wedderburn."

Her rival—her supplanter! yet she received the graceful gifts quietly, and returned a polite message of thanks.

To keep up appearances, she had taken a first-class ticket to Berwick, resolving to exchange there where she was unknown to a third-class for London, consoling herself by the reflection, that as an unprotected girl, she should doubtless be safer among the many, though more humble, who might be in the latter, than with one or two in the former class of carriage.

And as the train glided away, Mary gave a last and piercing glance at the familiar scenery around her, at the village spire, whose shadow at sunset fell upon the grave of her parents, and then she sank back into a recess of the carriage, to weep and commune alone, with all her thoughts turned inwards.

Every tie between her and her home was broken now; and she had but one all-pervading idea, that on the day of her visit, Cyril's mother, by her silence, had tacitly admitted the fact of his engagement to his cousin Gwendoleyne.

"How soon, oh, how readily he forgot me!" she exclaimed, for she was alone.

Mary felt truly grateful to Lady Wedderburn for her letter of introduction, which was addressed to a Lady Wetherall in Piccadilly, and on the latter all her hopes were based. She wondered whether Piccadilly was a street or square—a park or suburb, and what manner of person Lady Wetherall might be—whether old or young, grave or gay. Would she be kind to her? oh, if so, how very soon she should learn to love her and her two little daughters. If the girls were her daughters, then she could not be very old—middle-aged, pleasant and motherly, perhaps; for now when alone, and entirely among strangers, Mary began to feel a little timid; she had heard and read so much of the unmerited humiliations of governess life.

She had changed carriages at Berwick; the waters of the bordering Tweed had vanished, and she strove, but in vain, to court sleep in the comfortless third-class vehicle, while the swift night train sped on in darkness along the bleak Northumbrian coast line, by Morpeth, and by Newcastle, the lights of which she saw with astonishment from the famous High-level Bridge; and as the train "slowed," then with growing fear and wonder did she look down on the quaint old bridge of the Tyne, on the pigmy figures in the gas-lit streets, and on the masts and yards of the shipping, more than one hundred and twenty feet below her!

So the monotonous night wore away, and weary, pale and nervous, with her black mourning dress powdered white with dust, she saw the train enter London, and run on for miles upon miles between dense streets, which being all of brick, seemed strange and even foreign to her eyes, till she began to imagine it would never stop at all,—till about ten in the forenoon, when she found herself standing lost, bewildered, and literally stunned, amid the bustle and roar of the Great Northern Railway!

But last night—only last night, she had been amid the sequestered solitude of the heathy Lammermuirs, where, save the bleating of a sheep or the whistle of a curlew, no sound broke the oppressive silence!