CHAPTER VIII.
'IT WAS NO DREAM.'
To Roland Lindsay there was some new and undefinable attraction towards Annot Drummond, against which, to do him justice, he strove in vain, and his eyes actually fell under the calm glance of his cousin Hester. 'Call it what one may,' says a writer, 'that such a power does exist, and most seriously influences our lives, is an undoubted fact. We may deride and deny it as we will; but who can honestly doubt that the sudden and mutual attraction felt by two persons who are in essential matters absolutely ignorant of each other, does occur in the lives of most of us, and it is not to be fought against or laughed away in any manner.'
Whether the attraction was quite mutual in this instance remains to be seen. As yet the intercourse between Roland and Miss Drummond seemed, with a little more empressement of manner, merely the well-bred companionship of two persons connected through mutual relations and residence in the same pleasant country house; but the change in Roland's manner to herself—veil it as he might—was subtly felt by Hester, and became apparent even to her father, the otherwise obtuse old Indian campaigner.
'He was ever attentive, full of fun, lightness, and merriment; but, oh, there is no mistaking that there is a change now—a change since she came. What can it be—what has come over him?' thought Hester.
'It is all very odd,' growled Sir Harry; 'I can't make out the situation now. Roland does not seem a flirting fellow, whatever the girl may be, and she is plain when compared with my Hester; yet he looks like a shorn Samson in the fairy hands of this little golden-haired Delilah, and seems never happy except when with her. It appears to me that people nowadays always fall in love when, where, and with whom they ought not. Ah, he is one of the "Lightsome Lindsays;" yet I never saw anyone so changed,' added Sir Harry, who had latterly found him wax weary of his Indian reminiscences.
Meanwhile Annot, who firmly believed in the dictum of Thackeray, 'that any woman who has not positively a hump can marry any man she pleases,' quietly pursued her own course; and day by day it was Hester's lot to see this courtship evidently in progress—herself at times ignored and reduced to 'playing gooseberry,' as Annot thought (if, indeed, she ever thought at all)—reduced again to her own inner life once more; and knowing that nothing of it could interest them now, so much did they seem bound in each other, she pursued her old avocations among the poor and parish people more than ever.
The love—the budding love—he certainly once loved her—was less than a shadow now!
She ceased to accompany them in their walks and long rambles in the woody glen by Mavisbank and Eldin groves, and knowing the time when Roland was certainly 'due' at Earlshaugh, she counted every hour till he should leave Merlwood.
'What a couple of wanderers you have become!' said Sir Harry, a little pointedly.
'Roland is so sympathetic,' simpered Annot; 'he appreciates fully all my yearnings after the beautiful, of which we can see nothing in the brick wilderness of London; and certainly your scenery on the Esk is surpassingly lovely, uncle!' though in reality she cared not a jot about it, and had somewhat the Cockney's idea of a landscape, 'that too much wood and too much water always spoiled it.'
One evening matters had evidently reached a culminating point with this pair.
Returning at a somewhat late hour for her, when the gloaming was deepening into darkness, from visiting a poor widow, to whom she had taken some comforts, Hester, on reaching Merlwood, paused in a garden path to look around her, pleased and soothed by the calmness and stillness of the dewy August evening, when not a sound was heard but the ceaseless murmur of the unseen Esk far down below. Suddenly, amid the shrubbery, she heard familiar voices, to which she listened dreamily, mechanically, at first; then, startled by their tenor, she was compelled to shrink between the great shrubs, and—however obnoxious and repugnant to her—was compelled to overhear; and till indignation came, as she listened, there was a passionate, pleading expression in Hester's eyes, which was unseen in the dark; as was the quivering of the lip that came from the torture of the soul.
Roland was speaking in accents low and eager, and in others that were broken and tremulous Annot was responding.
'You have made me so happy, dearest Roland, by the first whisper that you—you loved me,' sighed the girl.
'I seem scarcely to recollect what happened to me before I met you here, Annot,' said he.
'How so?' she asked coyly.
'It seems as if I had only existed then.'
'And now, Roland?'
'I live, my darling! for
"In many mental forms I vainly sought
The shadow of the idol of my thought,"
till now. In three days more—only three—my little Annot—my golden-haired darling, I shall have to leave you for Earlshaugh; and, till you join me there, what will life be without you?'
He drew her close to him, and poor Hester shivered; but flight was impossible.
'And what will life at Merlwood be to me?' replied, or rather asked, Annot, in that caressing and cooing tone which she well knew was one of her chief attractions.
'But Earlshaugh in time will be your home, Annot—yours, to make what alterations you choose on the quaint old place. You shall reign there—the fairest and dearest bride that ever came within its walls.'
'Do not talk thus, Roland!'
'Why?'
'It makes me feel as if I were selling myself.'
'Annot!' he expostulated; and she answered with that low, cooing laugh of hers which was such a wonderful performance.
'Now, tell me,' said she; 'were you ever in love before?'
'Why that question, Annot?'
'I have no motive—only curiosity, Roland—yet I could not bear to think that you had ever loved anyone else as you do me.'
'I never did! All men have, or have had fancies,' said he evasively.
'I don't mean a fancy—a real love!'
'Annot?'
'Did you ever ask a girl to marry you?'
'Never—never! My darling—my pet—my little fairy—you alone have crept into my heart and made it all your own! With all their real length, how short have seemed the August days since you came hither, Annot!—how brief and swift the hours we spend together! But—but—you must say nothing of all this, our hopes and our future, to Hester.'
'No—oh no; I love you too fondly to have a confidant in the world.'
'I must seal your lips, dearest Annot,' interrupted Roland. Then came a pause and many caresses and many endearing names, as they slipped softly away towards the lighted windows of the villa, and left the agonized and startled listener free—for startled she was, and, curiously enough, for all she had seen and suspected, she was scarcely prepared for such a scene as this; and every caress she saw had seemed to sink like a hot poniard into her heart, as she stole away to her room, and strove to think, as one might in a dream.
Vague and numb was the first impression the episode made upon her, till feverish jealousy and mortification made her clasp and wring her hot, dry hands, and gnaw her nether lip, while burning tears rolled down her cheeks, with the assurance that all was over now!
'After all—he meant nothing—nothing after all!' she muttered; 'why did you make me love you so, Roland!'
The man she had loved—who fully, as far as manner and almost words went, had answered her love for him, had meant nothing, but pour passer le temps. He had been, he thought perhaps, only kind, friendly, cousinly, while she—great Heavens!—had been on the point of laying her affectionate heart at his feet.
Oh, what humiliation was hers!
In explanation of the lateness of their return, they had been a long walk, the loiterers said, away below Roslin Chapel; but said nothing of what the walk had somewhat suddenly evolved.
When the gloaming was considerably advanced, and, though a ruddy sunset lingered in the north-west, there was no moon in the sky, where the evening star shone brilliantly, they had wandered down the river-side—its current flowing like molten silver when seen between and under the dark, overshadowing, and weird-like trees—to where, on the summit of its high and grassy knoll, the beautiful chapel of Roslin towered up between them and the sky-line—the solemn scene, as Scott has preserved it, of one of the most thrilling and poetical of all family presages of death and war; a legend deduced from the tomb-fires of the Norsemen, and, doubtless, transplanted from our stormy Northern Isles to the sylvan valley of the Esk by that old Prince of Orkney, whose bride, Rosabelle, perished, and when the chapel seemed filled with flame.
'O'er Roslin all that dreary night,
A wondrous blaze was seen to gleam!
'Twas broader than the watchfire's light,
And redder than the bright moonbeam.
Even as Roland was quoting these lines to Annot Drummond a wonderful but natural effect took place.
'Look, Roland,' cried she with a thrill of real terror; 'look, the chapel is on fire!'
'Oh, impossible,' said he, still intent on gazing on her sweet face.
'But look—look—it is!'
Whether she thought so or not Annot was evidently startled and discomposed, while Roland certainly was not without momentary astonishment. A row of red lights appeared through the branches of the dark trees high above where he and Annot stood. It was the last light of the orange and blood-red set sun gleaming though the double row of chapel windows—the rich red light that is peculiar to Scottish sunsets, and the phenomenon it produced had a powerful effect upon the vision and minds of the beholders—even on the volatile and unimaginative Annot, who, before the light faded out, was not slow to understand and to utilize the situation in her own way.
She clung to Roland in an access of terror apparently, and that it was more than partly simulated certainly he never thought. While seeming to be terrified by the ghostly sight, she hid her face in his neck; and then Roland felt it was all over with him!
'My darling—my darling, do not be so alarmed—it is only a transient sunset effect,' said he, kissing her cheek.
'Don't, Roland, don't—oh, you must not do that,' she murmured.
But Roland did that, again and again—pressing his lips to her eyes, her rippling hair—covering her face with kisses, while he half lifted, half led her homeward, up the steep and winding path to Merlwood, which they reached, as said, at a somewhat later period than usual.
'Well,' thought Hester, as she bathed her face and eyes to remove all traces of her late emotion, 'in three days I shall, for a time at least, see and hear no more of this. And yet—my heart will speak—I have loved him—all my life—ever since he was a boy; and she has known him, as it were, but yesterday!'
She put a hand to her forehead and pushed back the rings and rows of heavy brown hair, as if their weight oppressed her.
'Thank Heaven!' she thought, 'I can make my life a useful and a busy one, even here. Thank Heaven for the refuge of another love, with work and duty—love and duty to papa, and work for my poor people and their little ones! But why, oh why,' she added, while interlacing her fingers behind her neck, and looking round her wildly, 'did he love her after all?—why turn from me to her—that little golden-haired doll, with her winning ways and heartless nature; and how comes it that her languorous green eyes have power to awake such a passion as filled every accent of Roland's voice in the gloaming there? She came when she was not wanted; and both are cruel, heartless, treacherous!'
But, to do Annot justice, she knew nothing then of the tender relations that had begun to exist between Hester and her cousin, though we do not suppose that the knowledge would have much influenced that enterprising young lady in her plans and views, her wishes and purpose.
Hester felt that she had been ready enough—too ready, she now feared—to show him all her own heart, till that other girl came, and she thought till now that it had frozen up under Annot's presence and too evident influence on him.
That evening she did not appear at dinner, but sent excuses downstairs, and refused to receive even a visit from Annot. That would have been indeed too much to have undergone; but anon the mental storm passed away; the ruddy dawn stole into Hester's bedroom, and she rested her weary head against the open window to inhale the fresh morning breeze that came up the woody valley of the Esk, and over parterres of dewy flowers that were sweet enough to grace the bank whereon the Queen of Elfin slept.
That day she saw on Annot's mystic finger—the fourth of the left hand—a ring she had not observed before, and knew who was the donor, and what the gift meant, but the knowledge could not give her a keener pang. She thought of Roland's gift, and of the emotions that had filled her heart when he had clasped it round her neck. She could not return that gift to Roland without some reason; and she apparently had none; but yet its retention was most repugnant to her, and never would she wear it. He had given it to her as his cousin—nothing more, now it would seem. Did he mean it so, then?
The dainty slippers, with blue embroidery on buff leather, which had formed a portion of her daily and loving work, were relinquished now and cast aside, too probably to be never finished.
Hester Maule felt all the shame and sorrow of loving one in secret, whose heart and preference were given to another. What evil turn of Destiny had wrought this for her? Why had she so mistaken—if she had indeed done so—his mere playful, cousinly regard for aught else than its true value?
Yet—yet there had been times—especially on that night when he gave her the jewels—that a gleam of tenderness, of yearning, of love had lit up his dark eyes—an expression that had gone straight to her heart and made every nerve thrill. Why had she not guessed then—why not foreseen what was to happen? But the future is always oddly woven up with the present, we are told; and 'how strange are the small threads that first begin to spin the great woofs of our life story—unnoted, unheeded at the time—they stand out clearly and plainly to our mental vision afterwards, and we ask ourselves with bitter anguish, "Why did we not guess—why did we not foresee it?" Better, perhaps, that the power of prevision is denied us, since we can neither alter nor avert the doom that awaits us along the path of life.'
We do not mean to palliate or defend the indecision—change of love and regard—on the part of Roland Lindsay; but Hester had been from his earliest years so much of a younger sister to him, that, though loving, winning, and gentle, this golden-haired girl, with all her espièglerie, her bold little speeches, and pretty touches and tricks of manner, came as a new experience to him; and for the present certainly, to all appearance, had enslaved and bewildered him, dazzling his fancy to say the least of it.
Despite all her efforts, Hester, if she completely controlled her manner, could not conceal her pain; thus her eyes seemed dull, even sunken, and harsh lines marred the usual sweetness of her lips. If Roland noted these signs, he strove to ignore them. Annot had artfully instilled some petty jealous suspicions of young Skene of Dunnimarle in Roland's mind, and he sought mentally to make these a kind of apology to himself, while seeming indifferent to what the girl might suffer, even when her presence (despite the arrangement for secrecy she had overheard) scarcely at times interfered with the sotto voce babble of their lover-like but inane conversation.
To Hester it seemed as if she was in a bad dream, but
'It was no dream, and she was desolate.'