What did, or what could, Annot mean by this studied duplicity and defiance of propriety? thought Maude; but ere she could reflect much on the subject, or consider how to speak to Roland about it, or whether she should simply let him discover more for himself, the crisis referred to in our last chapter came to pass, and the possible 'other distractions' that had occurred, in his irritation, to Roland's mind were forgotten by him then.
Notwithstanding what had passed between them, the charm of Annot's manner, her graceful and piquant ways, impelled or allured him again, and his passionate love for her swelled up at times in his breast. Was he not to make one more effort, or was it too late to win her love again?
Like one who when drowning will cling to a straw, Roland, with all his just indignation at Annot, clung to his faith in her; but they had parted with much apparent coldness; and, as we have said, in that huge old rambling mansion of Earlshaugh, as it was easy for people to avoid each other it they wished to do so, he had not again met her alone.
Thus any explanation was deferred, and, with all his love, he felt painfully that if he once began fully to doubt her and surrendered himself to that idea, all would be lost; and yet he had little cause for confidence now, apparently.
From her own lips again he resolved—however galling to his pride—to hear his fate, of her wishes and of her love, if the latter still was his; and thus he asked her by note to meet him in the library, at a time when they were sure to be undisturbed, as Mrs. Lindsay was usually indisposed at the hour he selected, and Maude, Jack, and Hester would be, he knew, absent riding.
From his own lips Annot had been fully informed of how his father's will was framed, but her ambition went far beyond that of Becky Sharp when the latter thought she would be a good woman on five thousand a year, would not miss a little soup for the poor out of that sum, and could pay everybody when she had it.
Annot, though apparently passive no longer, feigned a desire to continue 'the entanglement,' for such she deemed it—this engagement to Roland, begun at Merlwood. She had a secret gratitude for the information that had come to her in time of his future prospects. She could have continued to love him after a fashion of her own, and perhaps as much as it was in her selfish nature to love anyone; but it must be as proprietor of Earlshaugh, of which she had an overweening desire to be mistress, and, moreover, she never meant to form or face 'a moneyless marriage.'
And now in this meeting with Roland she felt that a crisis in her fate had come; that the sooner it was over and done with the better; and with a power of will beyond what anyone could have conceived a girl so soft and fair, so small in stature and lovely in feature might possess, she kept her appointment; but, without referring even to Lucrezia Borgia, who was a golden-haired little creature, with a feeble and vapid expression of face (as Mrs. Jameson tells us), does not history record how often fair little women have been possessed of iron will and nature?
Annot accorded her soft cheek to Roland's lip so coldly that he scarcely touched it!
Both looked pale, though they stood, when regarding each other, in the red light of the October sunset, that streamed like a crimson flood through a deeply embayed old window near them.
Annot wore a dark dress, and round her slender throat a high ruffle of black lace, which, like the jet drops in her tiny ears, enhanced the marvellous fairness of her skin, as Roland remarked, for even such trifling details failed to escape him in that time of doubt and exceeding misery.
'You have not kept me waiting,' said she with a smile, and as if feeling a dire necessity for saying something.
'Was it likely I should do so, Annot, when I have counted every moment of time since I sent my little note to you?' replied Roland, feeling instinctively from what he saw in her eye and manner that the dreaded time had come!
'How silly—useless I mean, such impatience, when we meet daily somewhere—at meals and so forth!' said she, looking out upon the far expanse of green park, steeped in the hazy sunshine of one of the hot evenings of October.
'Annot,' said Roland impatiently, and striking a heel on the floor as he spoke, 'after what passed between us last—a conversation alike distasteful and painful—I can no longer endure the suspense, the agony your conduct and bearing cause me. Do you really wish all to be at end between us?'
His eyes were bent eagerly upon her face, the muscles of which certainly quivered with emotion—either love or shame, he knew not which—and he took her hands in his, but relinquished them; his own were hot and trembling as if he had an ague, white hers were firm and cold as they were white and beautiful.
'It was a joke—a petulant joke, your proposal to give me back your ring and break our engagement—was it not, darling?' he asked after a brief pause.
'It was no joke,' replied Annot, with still averted eyes, in which, however, there was not a vestige of those sympathetic tears, which, fur effect, she had usually so near the surface on trivial occasions; 'it cost me much to utter the few words I said—but I meant them.'
'You did?'
'Yes—Roland.'
'And that was to be your only reply to my remonstrances?'
'Made as these remonstrances were—yes. You are too exacting, Roland; and—and—' she added with a bluntness that jarred on his ear, 'it is so tiresome being long engaged, mamma says.'
'I am sorry you quote her; but we can end it without an unseemly quarrel, surely.'
She shook her head, and all her hair shone like a golden aureole in the sunlight; and with all his just anger Roland looked at her as if his mind were leaving him.
'In short, mamma also says——'
'Mamma again!—says what?'
'That we are evidently unsuited for each other.'
'When did she discover this? Her letters to me have never breathed a suspicion of it.'
Annot did not reply, but continued to trace the pattern of the carpet with a foot like that of Cinderella.
'When did she adopt this new view?' asked Roland, almost sternly.
'Recently, I suppose.'
'We know our own minds, surely, so what can her capricious ideas matter to us? If you love me, Annot, they can make no difference.'
She only winced a little, and averted her face still more, as if she dared not meet his dark, earnest, and inquiring eyes.
'Speak!' he exclaimed.
'Women change their minds often, it is said—why may not I, by advice?'
'God keep me, Annot! Then the change is with yourself? Has our past, so far as you are concerned, been all duplicity and falsehood?'
'As when last we spoke on this matter, your language is unpleasant, Roland,' said Annot, as if seeking a cause for indignation or complaint.
'Is this a time to mince matters? Surely you loved me?'
'You—you were so fond of me, that I could not help liking you in return, Roland,' said she, trembling and confusedly; 'we were thrown so much together, and—and you see——'
'That I have been befooled!' he interrupted her with bitterness and a gust of anger.
'Do not use such a rough expression,' said she, recovering herself; 'and please don't allow listeners to think we are rehearsing for amateur theatricals.'
For a moment concentrated fury flashed in Roland's dark eyes.
Then he regarded her wistfully again, and his gust of anger gave way to an emotion of infinite tenderness.
'Annot,' he exclaimed, caressing her hands, on which, truth to tell, his hot tears dropped. 'Oh, my darling, tell me that you do not mean all this—that you are not in cruel earnest and oblivious of all the past.'
'I never loved you——'
'Never loved me?' said he hoarsely,
'As you wished to be; it was to serve my own ends—my own purpose that I simulated—then—so hate me if you can!'
'Hate you,' he faltered, utterly crushed and bewildered by her words. His eyes were lurid now, for anger again mingled with love in them. 'Surely this is all some bad dream, from which I must awaken.'
'It is no dream,' said Annot, turning with an unsteady step as if she would pass him; but he barred her way.
'Do you mean that you loved some one else?' he asked.
'Do not ask me.'
'I have the right to do so!'
'No, Roland—you have not.'
'You surely did at one time love me, Annot, or your duplicity is monstrous, till—till this fellow Hoyle came upon the tapis? Was it not so?' he asked, almost piteously, for his moods varied quickly.
'Not quite; and I can't be poor, that is the plain English of it; I can't be a struggling man's wife, as I now know yours must be, as Earlshaugh——'
'Belongs to another, and not to me, you mean?'
She was silent. Selfish though she was to the heart's core, a blush crossed her cheek, a genuine blush of shame at her own blunt openness, and it was but too evident that she had schooled herself for all this—had screwed her courage to the sticking point.
'Then I have only been a cat's-paw, and you have loved, if it is in your nature to love, another all the time?' said Roland hoarsely, as he drew back a pace with something of horror and disgust in his face now.
Almost pitifully did this cruel girl regard his face, which had become ashy gray, the wounded and despairing love he felt for her passing away from his eyes, while his figure, she could not but admit, was straight, handsome, and proud in bearing as ever, when compared with that of the other, who was in her mind now.
'All is over, then, and there is no need to torture or humiliate me further,' said he.
'All is over—yes,' she replied, with a real or affected sob; 'and you will, I hope, bless the day when I left you free to win a richer bride than I am, Roland. Forgive me, and let us part friends.'
'Friends!' he exclaimed, in a low voice of reproach, bitterness, and rage curiously mingled.
Resolute to act out the scene to the last detail, she slowly drew her engagement ring off her finger—like the marriage ring, the woman's badge of servitude according to the old English idea, but of eternity with every other people, past or present—laid it on a table near him, and gliding away without another word or glance, they separated, and Roland stood for a minute or so as if turned to stone.
Then, like one in a dream, he found himself walking slowly to and fro, forgetful even of his temporary lameness, on the terraced path beneath the towering walls of the old house.
The engagement ring—how tiny it looked!—was in his hand, and with something like a malediction he tossed it into a sheet of deep ornamental water that lay thereby, and there too, perhaps, he would have tossed all the other beautiful and valuable presents he had given her; but these the fair Annot did not as yet see her way to returning, and, sooth to say, he never thought of them.
So—so he was 'thrown over' for one who seemed most suddenly and unaccountably to have come upon the tapis, but chiefly because he was a kind of outcast—a disinherited man. Had she not told him so in the plainest language?
The situation was a grotesquely humiliating one.
'Oh, to be well and strong and fit to march again!' he sighed.
In the expression of his dark eyes there was now much of the bitterness, keenness, and longing of a prisoner looking round the cell which he loathed, and from which he desired to be gone; and more than once, in the solitude of his room, he closed his eyes and rested his head upon his arms, as if he wished to see and hear of his then surroundings no more.
Even the caresses of Maude—even Hester's gentle voice and soft touch failed to rouse him for a time.
Some days elapsed before Roland—after thinking over again and again all the details of this most singular episode, the strangest crisis in his life—could realize that it was not all a dream, and that the relations between himself and Annot had undergone such a complete revolution that their paths in life must lie apart for ever, now.
But he was yet to learn the more bitter sequel to all this.
Roland naturally thought that as the doctors would scarcely yet permit him to quit Earlshaugh and travel, now Annot Drummond would take her departure to Merlwood or London; but this she did not do, and seemed, with intense bad taste, to adopt the rôle of being his stepmother's guest, while sedulously avoiding him, so he began to make his arrangements for decamping without delay.
In bidding adieu, out of mere courtesy to Mrs. Lindsay, Roland never referred to the existence of Annot. Neither did she.
Was this good feeling, or was she endorsing the new situation adopted by Annot?
He cared not to canvass the matter even in his own mind; but ere he quitted Earlshaugh he was yet, we have said, to learn the sequel to all this.