CHAPTER LVIII.
IN THE SHOUBRAH GARDENS.
Roland lost no time in telegraphing home for news of the missing ones, but received none; Mr. M'Wadsett was absent from town, so he and Jack Elliot, who was far from recovery yet, had to take patience and wait, they scarcely knew for what. One fact was too patent, that both Hester and Maude had disappeared—one too probably in penury and the other in an agony of grief and shame. It was not even known, apparently, whether they were together.
They had vanished, and, save a cheque or two cashed by Jack's bankers, left no trace of how or when; and a chilling fear crept over the hearts of both men as to what might have happened—illness, poverty, unthought-of snares, even death itself.
Meanwhile, 'the shadow, cloaked from head to foot, who keeps the keys of all the creeds,' was hovering perilously near Jack, for whom Roland procured quarters in a pleasant house in the beautiful Shoubrah Road, near Cairo—a broad but shady avenue formed of noble sycamores, the 'Rotten Row' of the city, and day followed day somewhat monotonously now, though a letter dated some weeks back from his legal friend of Thistle Court gave Roland some occasion for gratifying thought.
'If you can return,' it ran, 'must I remind you that now Earlshaugh is unoccupied; the land so far neglected, and the tenants well-nigh forgotten; the rents are accumulating at your bankers', but no good is done to anyone. Your proper place and position is your own again; justice has restored your birthright; so come home at once and act wisely—home, my dear friend, and you shall have such a welcome as Earlshaugh has not seen since your father came back after the Crimean War.'
Pondering over this letter and on what the future might have in store, Roland was one afternoon idling over a cigarette in the gardens of the Shoubrah Palace, an edifice which rises from the bank of the Nile. On one side are pleasant glimpses of the latter, with its palm-clad banks and sparkling villages; on the other a tract of brilliantly tinted cultivation, and beyond it the golden sands of the desert, the shifting hillocks they form, and the gray peaks of several pyramids.
The gardens, surpassingly beautiful and purely Oriental in character, are entered by long and winding walks of impenetrable shade, from which we emerge on open spaces that team with roses, with gilded pavilions and painted kiosks. 'Arched walks of orange-trees with the fruit and flowers hanging over your head lead to fountains,' says a Jewish writer, 'or to some other garden court, where myrtles border beds of tulips, and you wander on mosaic walks of polished pebbles; a vase flashes amid a group of dark cypresses, and you are invited to repose under a Syrian walnut-tree by a couch or summer-house. The most striking picture, however, of this charming retreat is a lake surrounded by light cloisters of white marble, and in the centre a fountain of crocodiles carved in the same material.'
Lulled by the heat, by the drowsy hum made by the sound of many carriages filled with harem beauties or European ladies rolling to and fro on the adjacent Shoubrah Road, with the ceaseless patter of hoofs, as mounted Cairene dandies and our cavalry officers rode in the same gay promenade, Roland reclined on a marble seat, lit another cigarette, and watched the giant flowers of the Egyptian lotus in the little lake, blue and white, that sink when the sun sets, but open and rise when it is shining, till suddenly he saw a young lady appear, who was evidently idling in the gardens like himself.
He could see that she was a European. With one glove drawn off, showing a hand the pure whiteness of which contrasted with her dark dress, she was playing with the water of a red marble fountain that fell sparkling into the lakelet, not ten yards from where he was seated, unseen by her.
Suddenly his figure, in his undress uniform, caught her eye; she turned and looked full at him, as if spellbound.
'Roland!' she exclaimed.
'Hester—good heavens, can it be?—Hester, and here!' said he.
Hester she was; he sprang to her side, and they took each other's hands, both for a moment in dumb confusion and bewilderment. At the moment of this meeting and before recognition, even when hovering near him, and he had been all unconscious of who the tall and slender girl in mourning really was, she had been thinking of him, and as she had often thought—
'I loved Roland all my life—better than my own soul; but such a love as mine is too often only its own best reward; and many a sore heart like mine learns that never in this world is it measured to us again as we have meted it out.'
Thus bitterly had the girl been pondering, when she found herself suddenly face to face with the subject of her reverie, and, in spite of herself, a little cloud was blended with the astonishment her eyes expressed.
'Hester—what mystery is this? And are you not glad to see me?' he asked impetuously.
'Glad—oh, Roland! glad indeed, and that you escaped that dreadful day at Kirbekan!' she replied, while her eyes became humid now.
'God bless you, my darling!' he exclaimed, as all his soul seemed suddenly to go forth to her, and he would have drawn her to him; but she thought of Annot Drummond, and fell back a pace. 'Hester,' said he upbraidingly, 'will you not accord me one kiss, darling?'
She grew pale now, for she feared that her welcome had been more cordial than he had any right to expect; but the circumstances were peculiar, their place and mode of meeting alike strange and unexpected; but it was impossible for her not to guess, to read in his eyes, in fact, all the tender passion of love, esteem, and kinship that filled his heart for her now.
'How well you are looking, Hester, after all you must have suffered—some of the old rose's hue is back to your cheek, darling.'
'Don't speak thus, Roland—I—I——' she faltered.
'Why not, Hester? You loved me, I know, even as I loved you.'
'Before that beautiful little hypocrite and adventuress came,' said she, with quiet bitterness, 'I certainly did love you, Roland——'
'And love me still, Hester?'
'Do I look as if I had let the worm in the bud feed on my damask cheek?' said she, with a little gasping laugh; 'has my hair grown thin or white? How vain you are, Cousin Roland!'
'No, Hester' (how he loved to utter her name!); 'though I admit to having been a hopeless and thoughtless fool—no worse; but, forgive me, dear Hester; I ask you in the name of your good old father, who so loved us both, and in memory of our pleasant past at Merlwood.'
She made no answer; but her downcast eyes were full of tears; her breast was heaving, and her lips were quivering now.
'It ought not to be hard to forgive you, Roland, as you never said, even in that pleasant past, that you loved me; and yet, perhaps—but I must go now,' she said, interrupting herself, as she turned round wearily and vaguely.
'Go where?' he asked. 'But how came you to be here—here in Cairo—and whither are you going?'
'To where I reside,' she replied, with a soft smile; for, with all her love for him, and with all her supreme joy at meeting him again thus safe and sound, and in a manner so unprecedentedly peculiar, she was not disposed quite to strike her colours and yield at once.
'Reside!' thought Roland, with a flush of anger in his heart; 'as companion, governess, nursing sister, or—what?'
'To where I reside with Maude,' she added, almost reading his thoughts.
'Is Maude here, too?'
'Yes; we came together in quest of you and Jack. Oh! where is he?—well and safe, too, I am sure, or you would not be looking so bright. Maude left her home under a mistake—the victim of a conspiracy, hatched, as we know now, by that wretched creature Sharpe.'
'And she is here—here in Cairo?'
'Yes.'
'This seems miraculous!'
'Come with me to Maude.'
'And then to Jack—to poor Jack, whom the sight of her beloved face will surely make well and strong again.'
And, as people in a dream, in another minute they were in a cab—for cabs are now to be had in the city of the Caliphs and the Mamelukes—and were bowling towards one of the stately squares in the European quarter through strangely picturesque streets of lofty, latticed, and painted houses, richly carved as Gothic shrines, where, by day, the many races that make up the population of Cairo in their bright and varied costumes throng on foot, on horse or donkey-back; and where, by night, rope-dancers, conjurers, fire-eaters, and tumblers, with sellers of fruit, flowers, sherbet, and coffee, make up a scene of noise and bustle beyond description; and now certainly, with Hester suddenly conjured up by his side, Roland felt, we say, as if in a dream wild and sudden as anything in the 'Arabian Nights.'
Does love once born lie dormant to live again?
Judging by his own experience, he thought so, with truth.
More than once when he had gone forth into the world with his regiment he had almost forgotten the little Hester as she had been to him, a sweet, piquante, and dainty figure amid the groves of Merlwood, and in the background of his boyish days; then in his soldier's life, she would anon flit across the vista of memory, fondly and pleasantly, till he learned to love her (ere that other came, that Circe with her cup and the dangerous charm of novelty); and now all his old passion sprang into existence, holding his heart in its purity and strength as if it had never wandered from her—tender, unselfish, and true as his boyish love had been in the past time; yet just then, by her side, and with her hand within grasp of his own, he felt his lips but ill unable to express all he thought and felt, and his fear of—the refusal that might come.
Then he was about to see his dearly-loved sister Maude; but his joy thereat was clouded by the dread and knowledge that poor Jack's life was trembling in the balance.