CHAPTER LIV.
THE LONG-SUSPENDED SWORD.
Sorrow is said to make people sometimes, to a certain extent, selfish; thus sorrow in her own little secluded home was, ere long, to render Hester, for a space at least, less thoughtful of the grief which affected her cousin Maude.
Hester was somewhat changed, and knew within herself that it was so.
She found that her daily thoughts ran more anxiously and tenderly upon her father, and about his fast-failing health, than on any other subject now.
She lost even a naturally feminine interest in her own beauty. Who was there to care for it? she thought.
So on Sundays she sat in her pew, in the kirk on the wooded hill, and there listened to the preacher's voice blending with the rustle of the trees and the cawing of the rooks in the ruined fane close by; but with an emotion in her heart never known before—that of feeling that ere long she would have a greater need of some one to lean on—of something to cling to in the coming loneliness that her heart foreboded to be near now.
At last there came a day she was never to forget—a day that told her desolation was at hand.
Seated in his Singapore chair at breakfast one morning, her father suddenly grew deadly pale; a spasm convulsed his features; his coffee-cup fell from his nerveless hand; and he gazed at her with all the terror and anguish in his eyes which he saw in her own.
'Papa—papa!' she exclaimed, and sprang to his side. He gazed at her wildly, vacantly, and muttered something about 'the Jhansi bullet.' Then she heard him distinctly articulate her name.
'Hester—my own darling—you here?' he said, with an effort; 'how sweet you look in that white robe. I always loved you in it, dear.'
'My dress is rose-coloured—a morning wrapper, papa,' said Hester, as the little hope that gathered in her heart passed away.
'So white—so pure—just like your marriage-dress, Hester! But you wore it the first day I saw you, long ago—long ago—at Earlshaugh, when you stood in the Red Drawing-room—and gave me a bouquet of violets from your breast. My own Hester!'
'Oh, papa—papa!' moaned the poor girl in dire distress, for she knew he spoke not of her but of her mother, who had reposed for years under the trees in the old kirkyard on the hill; and a choking sob of dismay escaped her.
It was a stroke of paralysis that had fallen upon the Indian veteran, and he was borne to his bed, which he never left alive.
Hour after hour did Maude hang over him, listening to his fevered breathing, and futile moanings, which no medical skill could repress or soothe; and the long day, and the terrible night—every minute seemed an age—passed on, and still the pallid girl watched there in the hopeless agony of looking for death and not for life.
That long night—one of the earliest of winter—was at last on its way towards morning.
All was still in the glen of the Esk save the murmur of the mountain stream and the rustle of the leaves in the shrubberies without, and there was a strange loneliness, a solemnity, in Hester's mind as she thought of Merlwood in its solitariness, with death and life, time and eternity, so nigh each other under its roof; and the ceaseless ticking of an antique clock in the hall fell like strokes of thunder on her brain, till she stopped it, lest the sound might disturb the invalid.
And in that time of supreme anxiety and sorrow the lonely girl thought of her only kinsman, Roland Lindsay—the friend of her childhood and early girlhood—the merry, handsome, dark-haired fellow, who taught her to ride and row and fish, and whom she loved still with a soft yet passionate affection, that was strong as in the old days, for all that had come and gone between them.
Would he ever return—return to her and be as he had been before—before Annot Drummond came?
Another and a fatal stroke came speedily and mercifully; the long-suspended sword had fallen at last, and the old soldier was summoned to his last home!
A few days after saw Hester prostrate in her own bed and in the hands of the doctors, her rich dark-brown hair shorn short from her throbbing temples, feverish and faint, with dim eyes and pallid lips that murmured unconsciously of past times, of the distant and the dead—of her parents, of camps and cantonments far away; of little brothers and sisters who were in heaven; of green meadows, of garden flowers and summer evenings, when she and Roland had rambled together; and then of Egypt and the war in the deserts by the Nile.
After a time, when the early days of February came, when the mellow-voiced merle and the speckle-breasted mavis were heard in the woods by the Esk; when the silver-edged gowans starred the grassy banks, and the newly-dug earth gave forth a refreshing odour, and everywhere there were pleasant and hopeful signs that the dreary reign of winter was nearly over, Hester became conscious of her surroundings, but at first only partially so.
'Maude,' said she, in a weak voice to a watcher, 'dear Maude—are you there?'
'Yes,' replied the cousin, drawing the sick girl's head upon her bosom. 'Oh, Hester—my poor darling, how ill you have been!'
'Ill—I ill? I thought it was papa,' she said, with dilated eyes. 'Is he well now?'
'Yes,' replied Maude, in a choking voice, 'well—very well; but drink this, dearest.'
'Where is papa—can I see him? Will you or the doctor take me to him?'
'He is not here,' began the perplexed Maude.
'Not here; where then?'
'You must wait, Hester, till you are well and strong—well and strong; you must not speak or think—but eat.'
Then a feeble smile that made Maude's tender heart ache stole over Hester's pale face.
'Where is papa?' the latter exclaimed suddenly, with a shrill ring of hysterics in her voice. 'Ah—I know—I remember now,' she added, with a smile, 'he is dead—dead!'
'Born again, rather say, my darling,' whispered poor Maude, choked with tears, as she nestled Hester's face in her neck.
'Dead—dead; and I am alone in the world!' moaned Hester, as a hot shower of tears relieved her, and she turned her face to the wall, while convulsive sobs shook her shoulders.
In time she was able to leave her bed—to feel herself well, if weak—deplorably weak, and knew that she had resolutely and inexorably to face the world of life.
A pile of letters occupied her, luckily, for a time—letters that were sad if soothing—all full of sympathy, tenderness, and sincere regret, profound esteem, and so forth, for the brave old man who was gone; even there was one from Annot, but none from Roland or Jack.
Where were they? Far away, alas! where postal arrangements were vague and most uncertain.
We have said that Hester had the world to face. Her father's pay and pension died with him, and suddenly the girl was all but penniless. Her father had been unable to put away any money for her. People thought he might and ought to have managed better; but so it was.
Sir Henry's Indian relics, his treasured household gods, such as the tulwar of the Amazonian Ranee of Jhansi, who fought and died as a trooper when Tantia Topee strove to save the lost cause, all of which had to Hester a halo of love and superstition of the heart about them, were brought to the auctioneer's hammer inexorably, and with the money realised therefrom she thought to look about for some such situation or employment as might become one in her unfortunate position.
As the relics went, her conscience smote her now, for the recollection of how often she had grown weary over the oft repeated Indian reminiscences of the poor old man, who lived in the past quite as much, if not more, than in the present. What would she not give to hear his voice once again! And she remembered now how fond he was of quoting the words of 'The Ancient Brahmin':
'Happy is he who endeth the business of his life before his death.... Avoid not death, for it is a weakness; fear it not, for thou understandest not what it is; all thou certainly knowest is, that it putteth an end to thy sorrows. Think not the longest life the happiest; that which is best employed doth the man most honour, and himself shall rejoice after death in the advantages of it.'
Like other girls who are imaginative and impressionable, she had built her châteaux en Espagne, innocent edifices enough, and romantic too, but now they had crumbled away, leaving not one stone upon another. Her future seemed fixed irrevocably; no idle dreams could be there, but a life that would, too probably, be blank and dreary even unto the end.
We cannot be in the world and grieve at all times; but yet one may feel a sorrow for ever.
'I shall go and earn my living, Maude—be a governess, or something,' she said, as her plans began to mature. 'It cannot be difficult to teach little children; though I always hated my own lessons, I know, even when helped by—Roland.'
'Nonsense, Hester!' exclaimed Maude; 'you shall live with me and—and Jack, if he ever returns, and all is well. You are too pretty to be a governess; no wise matron would have you.'
'Why?'
'Because all the grown sons and brothers would be falling in love with you. So you must stay with me.'
But Hester was resolute.
To the many letters of the former—letters agonising in tenor—addressed to Jack Elliot and to her brother Roland, no answer ever came, while weeks became months; for many difficulties just then attended the correspondence of the troops that were on the arduous expedition for the relief of Khartoum.
Thus, amid all the sorrows of Hester, how keen and great was the anxiety of Maude!
Jack, her husband—if he was her husband—was now face to face with the enemy—those terrible Soudanese—and might perish in the field, by drowning, or by fever, before she could ever have elucidated the mystery, the cloud, the horrible barrier that had come between them.
At times the emotions that shook the tender form of Maude were terrible, since the night of that woman's visit, when the iron seemed to enter her soul; and there descended upon her a darkness through which there had come no gleam of light.
The past and the future seemed all absorbed in the blank misery of the present, and as if her life was to be one career of abiding shame, emptiness, and misery, as a dishonoured wife—if wife she was at all!
Hawkey Sharpe had inflicted the revengeful blow; the woman, his degraded tool, had disappeared, and her story remained undisproved as yet. Jack, as we have said, might perish in Egypt, and the truth or the falsehood of that odious story would then be buried in his grave!
The pretty villa near the Grange Loan—the wood-shaded Loan that led of old to St. Giles's Grange—she now went near no more; it was torture to go back there—her home it never could be. Turn which way she would, her haggard eyes rested on some reminder of Jack's love or his presence there—their mutual household Lares: her piano, Jack's carefully selected gift; the music on the stand, chosen by him, and with his name and 'love' inscribed to her, just as she had left it; books, statuettes—pretty nothings, alas!
Her mind now pointed to no definite course; she felt like a rudderless ship drifting through dark and stormy waters before a cruel blast; in all, her being there was no distinct resolution as yet what to do or whither to turn.
Yet, calm as she seemed outwardly, there was in her tortured heart a passionate longing for peace, and peace meant, perhaps, death!
And all this undeserved agony was but the result of a most artful but pitiful and vulgar vengeance!
Whether born of thoughts caused by recent stirring news from the seat of war, we know not; but one night Hester woke from a dream of Roland—after a feverish and sleep-haunted doze—haunted as if by the spiritual presence of one who—bodily, at least—was far away.
Waking with a start, she heard a familiar and firm step upon the staircase, and then a door opened—the door of that room which Roland had always occupied when at Merlwood.
'Roland—Roland!' she cried in terror, and then roused Maude.
There was, of course, no response, but a sound seemed to pass into that identical room; she fancied she heard steps—his familiar steps moving about, but as if he trod softly—cautiously.
Terror seized her, and her heart seemed to die within her breast.
She sprang from bed, clasped Maude's hand, and went softly, mechanically to the room. It was empty, and the cold light of the waning moon flooded it from end to end, making it seem alike lone and ghostly.
Her imagination had played her false; but she was painfully haunted by the memory of that dream and the palpable sounds that, after waking, had followed it; and hourly, in her true spirit of Scottish superstition, expected to hear of fatal tidings from the seat of war—like her who, of old, had watched by the Weird Yett of Earlshaugh.
Like poor Malcolm Skene was she, too, to have her presentiment—her prevision of sorrow to come?
It almost seemed so.
But her thoughts now clung persistently to the hero of her girlish days; he had behaved faithlessly, uncertainly to her, she thought; yet, perhaps, he might come back to her some day, if God spared him, and then he would find the old and tender love awaiting him still.
Yet Roland might come home and marry someone else! No man, she had heard, went through life remembering and regretting one woman for ever. Was it indeed so?
But after the night of her strange dream the morning papers contained the brief, yet terrible, telegram stating that a battle had been fought at a place called Kirbekan, by General Earle's column (of which the Staffordshire formed a part), but that no details thereof had come to hand.
The recent calamity she had undergone rendered Hester's heart apprehensive that she might soon have to undergo another.
And ere the lengthened news of the battle did come, she and Maude had left Edinburgh, as they anticipated, perhaps for ever.