The rain and the wind were over; the storm had passed away into the German Sea, as perhaps more than one luckless craft found to its cost between Fife Ness and the shores of Jutland.
It was over in the vicinity of Earlshaugh; the sluices of heaven seemed to have emptied themselves at last; but the atmosphere, if clear, was damp and laden with rain, and the masses of ivy, rent and torn by the wind, flapped against the walls of the old manor-house.
The hour was early; bright and clear the morning had come from the German Sea, and a freshness lay over all the fields and groves of the East Neuk. After such a terrible night there seemed something fairy-like in such a morning with all its details, but the excitement was yet keen in Earlshaugh.
The horse-chestnuts still wore their changing livery of shining gold, and the mountain ash looked gray, but lime and linden were alike nearly stripped of their leaves; and when the breeze blew through the old oaks of the King's Wood the pale acorns came tumbling out of their cups—the tiny drinking-cups of the freakish elves that once abode in the Fairy Den.
Old Jamie Spens, the ex-poacher, now came with startling tidings to Earlshaugh. A shepherd's dog—one of those Scottish collies, of all dogs the most faithful, intelligent, and useful, as they can discover by the scent any sheep that may have the misfortune to be overblown by the snow, had been seen careering wildly in the vicinity of the rocky Cleugh, disappearing down it, to return to the verge barking and yelping loudly, as if he had evidently discovered someone or something there.
Old Spens had looked down, and too surely saw the young laird lying pale, still, and motionless.
'Dead?' asked a score of voices.
'After sic a nicht and sic a fa' what could ye expect?' said the old man with tears in his eyes as he remembered Roland's kindness to himself, adding, as he shook his grizzled head, 'but I hope no—I hope no.'
Spens had found Roland's gun, and a golden pheasant, dead, near the edge of the Cleugh, for which a party at once set out in all haste, Hester and Maude, pale and colourless after such a sleepless night, too impatient to wait for the pony phaeton which Jack Elliot offered to drive, preceding them all, for the scene of the catastrophe was at some distance from the house.
'They laugh longest who laugh last,' muttered Hawkey Sharpe to himself, as—while pausing on the brow of an eminence beyond the Weird Yett—he saw this party setting forth, a large group of servants and keepers with poles and ropes—and he shook his clenched hand mockingly and threateningly as he added, 'do your best, but
'"In the midst of your glee,
You've no seen the last o' my bonnet and me!"'
Annot did not accompany this excited party; it might be that her strength was unequal to it at such an hour and over such ground, or it might be that she had not heart enough for it. There is no secret of the latter, says a French writer, that our actions do not disclose; and as Annot's heart seemed—well, Hester Maule cared not then to analyze it; she was too disgusted to be angry.
But Annot, in all her selfish existence, had never before been, as she thought, face to face with the most awful tragedy of life—Death—and she shrank from the too probable necessity now.
So she remained behind with Mrs. Lindsay. She was not accustomed to such rough weather and such exhibitions; she would get her poor little feet wet; she was subject to catching cold; the morning was full of rain and wind—it was still quite tempestuous—such was never seen in London; so Maude and Hester swept away in contemptuous silence, leaving her, well shawled and cowering close to the fire in Mrs. Lindsay's luxurious boudoir, and thought no more about her, as she remained motionless, silent, and with her eyes certainly full of tears, fixed on the changing features of the glowing coals, and seeing her hopes of Earlshaugh too probably drifting far away in distance, now!
Could this calamity be real? was the ever-recurrent thought in the mind of Hester. It seemed too fearful—too horrible to be true! Was she dreaming, and the victim of a hideous nightmare, from which she would awake?
With all their impatience and anxiety to get on, the keepers, servants, and others stepped short in mistaken kindness or courtesy to the two young ladies who accompanied them; but in an incredibly short space of time the yawning Cleugh was reached, where the shepherd's faithful dog was still on guard, bounding to and fro as they approached, barking and yelping wildly; and with hearts that beat high and painfully—every respiration seeming an absolute spasm—Hester and Maude, who clung to Elliot's arm, reached the verge of the chasm, and on looking down saw too surely—as something like a wail escaped the lips of each—Roland lying at the bottom, still and motionless, half in and half out of the burn's rocky bed, as he, by the last efforts of his strength, had painfully dragged or wrenched himself.
Exclamations of commiseration and pity were now heard on every hand.
'This way, lads—round by the knowe foot,' cried old Gavin Fowler.
'No—by the other way—the descent is easier!' said Elliot authoritatively; but heedless of both suggestions, Hester Maule, like the gallant girl as she was, took a path of her own, and went plunging down the very face of the rocks, apparently!
A cry of terror escaped the more timid Maude, as Hester seemed to stumble and fall, or sway aside, but rose again and, trembling, sobbing violently, in breathless and mental agony, her delicate hands, which were gloveless, now torn and bleeding by brambles and thorns, her beautiful brown hair all unbound and rolling in a cascade down her back, finding footing where others would have found none, grasping grass and heather tufts; while the more wary were making a circuit, she was the first to reach him, and kneel by his side!
Raising his head, she laid her cheek upon his cold brow, while her tears fell hot and fast, and for a moment she felt that this helpless creature was indeed her own, whom even Annot Drummond could not take from her then.
How pale, cold, sodden, and senseless he seemed! With a moan of horror that felt as if it came from her wildly beating heart, Hester applied to his lips a tiny hunting flask of brandy with which she had, with admirable foresight, supplied herself, and almost unconsciously he imbibed a few drops.
'Roland!' said Hester, in an agonized voice.
A litter flicker of the eyelashes was the only response.
'Thank God, he lives!' exclaimed the girl.
'Annot, Annot!' he murmured.
'Always—always the idea of chat girl!' sighed Hester bitterly, and she withdrew her face from its vicinity to his as Elliot, Gavin Fowler, Spens, and others came splashing along the bed of the stream from two directions, above and below the Cleugh, and ample succour had come now.
What his injuries were, whether internal or external, or both, none could know then. He seemed passive as a child, weak and utterly exhausted. To all it was but too apparent that had succour been longer of coming it had come too late; but now there was no lack of loving and tender hands to bear him homeward, and into his father's house.
'Annot's name was the first word that escaped his lips,' said Hester, as with torn and tremulous fingers she knotted up her back hair into a coil, and seemed on the verge of sinking, after her recent toil, and under her present excitement and anxiety.
'That girl has been his evil genius—his weird—I think,' said Maude, who never liked Annot, and mistrusted her; 'and he will never be free so long as this weird hangs on him.'
'She, a Drummond! The town-bred coward!' exclaimed Hester, her dark violet eyes flashing fire, while she coloured at her own girlish energy.
'The sooner she changes it to some characteristic one like Popkins or Slopkins the better,' said Maude; 'but I think she would prefer Lindsay.'
'Telegraph to Edinburgh at once for Professor —— and Dr. ——,' said Mrs. Lindsay, naming two of the chief medical men (as Roland was carried up to his room), and evincing an interest that surprised Maude, and for which her brother, Mr. Hawkey Sharpe, would not have thanked her.
'I'll see to that myself,' said Jack Elliot, betaking himself at once to the stable-yard that he might ride to the nearest railway-station, and meantime send on to Earlshaugh the best local aid that could be obtained in hot haste.
Roland's injuries were serious undoubtedly, but not so much so as had been feared at first.
These were a partial dislocation of the left thigh bone and a strain of the right ankle, both of which bade fair to mar his marching for many a day; with a general shock to the whole system consequent on the fall (which, but for the turfy ledge of rock that broke it, would have proved fatal) and the exposure to the elements for a whole autumnal night of storm and rain. But with care and nursing, the faculty—after pulling him about again and again till he was well-nigh mad, after much tugging of their nether lips, as if in deep thought, consultations over dry sherry and biscuit, and pocketing big fees in an abstracted kind of manner—had no doubt, not the slightest doubt, in fact, that with his naturally fine constitution he would soon 'pull through.'
A crowd of people always hovered about the gate-lodges; women came from their cottages, weavers, perhaps the last of their trade, from their looms, and the ploughmen from their furrows to inquire after the health of the young laird, for such these kindly folks of the East Neuk deemed Roland still, for of the mysterious will they knew little and cared less; horsemen came and went, and carriages, too, the owners with their faces full of genuine anxiety, for the Lindsays of Earlshaugh were much respected and well regarded as being among the oldest proprietors in a county that has ever been rich in good old historical families; and the veteran fox-hunting laird had been a prime favourite in the field with all his compatriots. So again, as before, during Jack Elliot's mishap, the bell of the porte-cochère sent forth its clang in reply to many a kind inquiry.
And many agreed with Maude that none in Earlshaugh were likely to forget the unfortunate shooting season of that particular year, as this calamity seemed to surpass the last. It was grief upon grief, like the classic piling of Pelion on Ossa.