CHAPTER XXXIX.
TURNING THE TABLES.
His sword and helmet cases, his portmanteau and travelling rugs were duly strapped and placed in the stately old entrance-hall in readiness, as Roland was to be off by an early morning train, and never again would he break bread in the home of his forefathers. Every link that bound him to Earlshaugh was broken now, and he felt only a feverish restlessness to be gone!
Ere that came to pass, Roland's eyes were fated to be somewhat roughly opened.
All that day the nervous quivering of his nether lip, his unusual paleness—notwithstanding his apparent calm—showed to his sister that he was deeply agitated, and was suffering from passionate, if suppressed, emotion.
In the deepening dusk of his last evening at Earlshaugh he had, cigar in mouth, strolled forth alone to con over his own bitter thoughts, and nurse his wrath 'to keep it warm,' or inspired by a vague idea that he would sort his mind, which was then in a somewhat chaotic condition.
The evening—one of the last in October—was cool, and the wind wailed sadly in the task of stripping the trees of their withered leaves, though at no time of the year do they look so beautiful in the Scottish woods as in autumn, save, perhaps, when they first burst forth in their emerald greenery.
Round the tall old mansion, down the terraced walks, past the lakelet and through the grounds he wandered till he reached a kind of kiosk or summer-house, built of fantastic, knotty branches, roofed with thatch, and furnished with a rustic seat—a damp and gloomy place just then. He threw himself upon the latter, and, resting his head upon his hand, proceeded to chew the cud of bitter fancy that had no sweet in it.
The period had vanished when existence seemed full of joyous dreams and a course of glowing scenes. The world was still as beautiful, no doubt, but it sparkled no more with light and colour for him; idols had been shattered—ideals had collapsed, and it seemed very cold and empty now.
How long he had been there he scarcely knew—perhaps half an hour—when in the gloom under the half-stripped trees he heard voices, and saw two figures, or made out a male and female lingering near the summer-house, which he dreaded lest they should enter, when he discovered them to be Annot—Annot Drummond, muffled in a cosy white fur cloak of Maude's—and, Heaven above!—of all men on earth—Hawkey Sharpe!
For a moment or two Roland scarcely respired—his heart seemed to stand still. Intensely repugnant to him as it was to act as eavesdropper on the one hand, on the other he was proudly and profoundly reluctant to confront those two. There he remained still, hoping every moment they would move on and leave the pathway clear; but they remained, and thus he heard more than he expected to hear from such a singular pair.
He had now a clue to the reason of Annot's reluctance to leave Earlshaugh, of her protracted visit as the guest of Mrs. Lindsay, and why latterly she had so mysteriously and sedulously cultivated the friendship of that lady.
The question, was it honourable to remain where he was, flashed across Roland's mind! It was not incompatible with honour under the peculiar circumstances, so he heard more.
'That nonsense has surely come to an end, or are you still engaged to him?' said Hawkey, who held her hands in his.
Annot was silent. Could she be temporizing yet?
'Do you think he loves you as well as I do?' urged Hawkey Sharpe, bending over her.
Still she was silent.
'If so, why has he ever left you, even for an hour, to shoot and so forth, as he has often done? Speak, Annot. Surely I may call you Annot now.'
Still there was no reply. It seemed as if she was thinking deeply—thinking how best to reply, to play her cards or to temporize; but to what end, when all was over between her and Roland now?
'You were engaged to him?' said Hawkey again, with a little impatience of manner.
'By a chain of circumstances over which I had no control,' replied Annot in a faltering voice; 'in his uncle's house at Merlwood I was——'
'Was—is it ended?'
'Yes—for ever.'
'Thank God for that! Did you think you loved him?' asked Hawkey with a grin.
'I believe that I did—or ought—I was so silly—so simple—so——'
'There—there—I don't want to worry you.'
'But he loves me, I know that,' said Annot in a low voice—true to her vanity still.
'That I can well believe—who could see you and not love you?' said Hawkey gallantly.
'I could never marry a poor man,' said Annot candidly.
'Well—he is poor enough.'
'And live on, eating my heart out in struggles such as some I have seen,' continued Annot as if to herself.
'Though here in Earlshaugh just now, what is he, this fellow Lindsay, but a penniless pretender!' exclaimed Sharpe, fired with animosity against Roland; who thus heard his name, his position, and the dearest secrets of his heart openly canvassed by this presumptuous and low-born fellow, and with Annot too—she who, till lately—but he could not put his thoughts in words—they seemed to choke him; and the whole situation was degrading—maddening!
'Well,' chuckled Sharpe, 'he is out of the running now; and then you and I understand each other so well, my little golden-haired pet! so true it is that "when a woman of the world and a man of the world meet, whatever the circumstances may be, or the surroundings, in a moment there is rapport between them, and all flows along easily." I thought when Lindsay fell into the Cleugh,' he added, with a coarse laugh, 'that he had betaken himself off to something that suited him better than fighting the Arabs. But it is long ere the deil dies—now he is well and whole again, and looks every inch like the Lindsay in the gallery, with the buff coat and a dish-cover on his head, that led a brigade of horse against the English at Dunbar. Well, the old place has done with that brood now; and after Deb, Earlshaugh must be mine—mine—shall be ours, Annot, for ever and aye!'
The breeze caught the lace of her sleeve, and, lifting it, showed the perfect and lovely contour of her soft white arm, on which Hawkey Sharpe fastened his coarse lips with a fervour there could be no doubting.
Kissed by him? Roland felt perfectly cured. The desecration, the dishonour, seemed complete! It is but too probable that Mr. Hawkey Sharpe felt the exultation of revenge and triumph in every kiss he took, even though he believed them to be unseen.
Though it was now apparent that she had thrown 'dust' in Roland's eyes by using the name of another, and had thus doubly lied to him, the blow did not fall so unexpectedly, yet the degradation of it was complete.
Hoyle was a myth—a blind to throw him off the right track—and he had been discarded, not for that personage, but for Hawkey Sharpe. This was truly to find
'In the lowest deep a lower deep'
of utter humiliation!
At last they passed onward, and he was again alone.
'I have undergone something like the torture of the rack,' said he with a bitter laugh, when he related to Maude and Hester what he had been compelled to overhear in the summer-house, and the latter thought of that eventful evening at Merlwood, when she so unwittingly had in like manner been compelled to lurk in the shrubbery and hear a revelation that crushed her own heart to the dust.
Thus, though he knew it not, the tables were turned on Roland with a vengeance.
Like Hester, he could not agree with Romeo—
'How sweet sound lovers' tongues by night,'
when the said tongues addressed all their sweetness to others.
'She is an ungrateful, selfish, horrible girl—I'll never forgive her—never!' said Maude, almost sobbing with anger.
'How filthy lucre rules the world now!' exclaimed Roland. 'Do such girls as she ever repent the mischief they make—the hearts they have broken?'
'As if hearts break nowadays? she would ask,' said Hester with something of a smile.
'Likely enough—it is her style, no doubt. But can you, Hester, or anyone, explain this cruel duplicity? To me it seems as if I were still in the middle of a horrid dream—a dream from which I must suddenly wake. That she, so winsome and artless apparently—so gentle and loving, should become so cold, so calculating, so mercilessly cruel now!'
'I always mistrusted her,' said Maude bitterly. 'People call her eyes hazel—to me they always seemed a kind of vampire-green.'
Roland made no reply, but he was thinking with Whyte-Melville:
'Who shall account for the fascination exercised by some women upon all who approach their sphere? The peculiar power of the rattlesnake, whose eye is said to lure the conscious victim unresistingly to its doom, and the attractive properties possessed by certain bodies, and by them used with equal recklessness and cruelty, are two arrangements of Nature which make me believe in mesmerism.'
'Well—to-morrow I quit this place without beat of drum!' exclaimed Roland.
'For Edinburgh?'
'Yes—to the Club.'
'And then?'
'For Egypt. There I shall live every day of my life as if there were no to-morrow.'
'Nonsense!' said Jack. 'You'll get over all this in time—a hit in the wing, that is all!'
Old Johnnie Buckle, who had forebodings in the matter of Roland's departure, had tears in his eyes as he drove him in the drag to the railway station next morning, and as he wrung his hand at parting he said—showing that he knew precisely of the double trouble that had fallen on the young Laird:
'Better twa skaiths than ae sorrow, Maister Roland,' meaning that losses can be repaired, but grief may break the heart; 'and mind ye, sir,' he added, as the train started, 'a' the keys o' the country dinna hang at ae man's belt, and ye'll wear your ain bannet yet!'
And on this bouleversement we need scarcely refer to the emotions of those who loved Roland best.
Jack Elliot, as he selected a cigar to smoke and think the situation over, deemed that Roland was well out of the whole affair; Maude, who was preparing for her departure from Earlshaugh, like Hester, was furiously indignant; but, for reasons of her own, the thoughts of the latter were of a somewhat mingled nature.