PLAYING WITH FIRE
_A STORY OF THE SOUDAN WAR_
BY
JAMES GRANT
AUTHOR OF
'THE ROMANCE OF WAR,' 'DULCIE CARLYON,' 'ROYAL
HIGHLANDERS,' ETC.
LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS, LIMITED
BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL
MANCHESTER AND NEW YORK
1887
JAMES GRANT'S NOVELS.
The Romance of War
The Aide-de-Camp
The Scottish Cavalier
Bothwell
Jane Seton; or, The Queen's Advocate
Philip Rollo
The Black Watch
Mary of Lorraine
Oliver Ellis; or, The Fusileers
Lucy Arden; or, Hollywood Hall
Frank Hilton; or, The Queen's Own
The Yellow Frigate
Harry Ogilvie; or, The Black Dragoons
Arthur Blane
Laura Everingham; or, The Highlanders of Glenora
The Captain of the Guard
Letty Hyde's Lovers
Cavaliers of Fortune
Second to None
The Constable of France
The Phantom Regiment
The King's Own Borderers
The White Cockade
First Love and Last Love
Dick Rodney
The Girl he Married
Lady Wedderburn's Wish
Jack Manly
Only an Ensign
Adventures of Rob Roy
Under the Red Dragon
The Queen's Cadet
Shall I Win Her?
Fairer than a Fairy
One of the Six Hundred
Morley Ashton
Did She Love Him?
The Ross-Shire Buffs
Six Years Ago
Vere of Ours
The Lord Hermitage
The Royal Regiment
Duke of Albany's Own Highlanders
The Cameronians
The Scots Brigade
Violet Jermyn
Miss Cheyne of Essilmont
Jack Chaloner
The Royal Highlanders
Colville of the Guards
Dulcie Carlyon
Playing with Fire
Derval Hampton
Love's Labour Won
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. MERLWOOD
II. HESTER MAULE
III. KASHGATE--A RETROSPECT
IV. PLAYING WITH FIRE
V. THE COUSINS
VI. ANNOT DRUMMOND
VII. 'IS SHE NOT PASSING FAIR?'
VIII. 'IT WAS NO DREAM'
IX. THE OLD LOVE AND THE NEW
X. ROLAND'S HOME-COMING
XI. A COLD RECEPTION
XII. MAUDE
XIII. ROLAND'S VEXATION
XIV. MAUDE'S SECRET
XV. MR. HAWKEY SHARPE SEEKS COUNSEL
XVI. FOOL'S PARADISE
XVII. AT EARLSHAUGH
XVIII. 'MY LOVE SHE'S BUT A LASSIE YET'
XIX. HESTER RECEIVES A PROPOSAL
XX. MR. SHARPE MAKES A MISTAKE
XXI. MALCOLM SKENE
XXII. A FATAL SHOT
XXIII. THE CITY OF THE CALIPHS--OCTOBER IN THE LAND OF THE PHARAOHS!
XXIV. JACK ELLIOT'S PERIL
XXV. THE WILL
XXVI. MOLOCH
XXVII. ANNOT'S MISGIVINGS
XXVIII. THE FIRST OF OCTOBER
XXIX. ALARM AND ANXIETY
XXX. THE KELPIE'S CLEUGH
XXXI. 'ALL OVER NOW!'
XXXII. PELION ON OSSA
XXXIII. A TANGLED SKEIN
XXXIV. THE PRESENTIMENT
XXXV. LOST IN THE DESERT
XXXVI. ALONE!
XXXVII. THE FIRST QUARREL
XXXVIII. THE CRISIS
XXXIX. TURNING THE TABLES
XL. THE NEW POSITION
XLI. THE CAPTIVE
XLII. THE ZEREBA OF SHEIKH MOUSSA
XLIII. A MARRIAGE
XLIV. THE TROOPSHIP
XLV. THE DEATH WRESTLE
XLVI. MAUDE'S VISITOR
XLVII. THE RESULT
XLVIII. 'INFIRM OF PURPOSE!'
XLIX. CHRISTMAS DAY IN CAMP AT KORTI
L. THE START FOR KHARTOUM
LI. THE MARCH IN THE DESERT
LII. THE PRESENTIMENT FULFILLED
LIII. A HOMEWARD GLANCE
LIV. THE LONG-SUSPENDED SWORD
LV. WITH GENERAL EARLE's COLUMN
LVI. THE BATTLE OF KIRBEKAN
LVII. THE SICK CONVOY
LVIII. IN THE SHOUBRAH GARDENS
LIX. CONCLUSION
PLAYING WITH FIRE.
CHAPTER I.
MERLWOOD.
''Pon my word, cousin, I think I should actually fall in love with
you, but that--that----'
'What?' asked the girl, with a curious smile.
'One so seldom falls in love with one they have known for a life
long.'
The girl sighed softly, and said, still smiling sweetly:
'Looking upon her as almost a sister, you mean, Roland.'
'Or almost as a brother, as the case may be.'
'Then how about Paul and Virginia? They knew each other all their
lives, and yet loved each other tenderly.'
'Or desperately, rather, Hester; but that was in an old story book
greatly appreciated by our grandmothers.'
'Instead of talking nonsense here, I really think you should go home,
Roland,' said the girl, with a tone of pain and pique at his
nonchalant manner; 'home for a time, at least.'
'To Earlshaugh?'
'Yes.'
'Are you tired of me already, Hester?'
'Tired of you, Roland?--oh, no,' replied the girl softly, while
playing with the petals of a flower.
The speakers were Roland Lindsay, a young captain of the line, home
on leave from Egypt, and his cousin, Hester Maule, a handsome girl in
her eighteenth year; and the scene in which they figured was a shady,
green and well-wooded grassy bank that sloped down to the Esk, in
front of the pretty villa of Merlwood, where he swung lazily in a net
hammock between two beautiful laburnum-trees, smoking a cigar, while
she sat on the turf close by, with a fan of peacock feathers in her
slim and pretty hand, dispersing the midges that were swarming under
the trees in the hot sunshine of an August evening.
While the heedless fellow who swung there, enjoying his cigar and his
hammock, and the charm of the whole situation, twitted her with her
unconcern, Hester--we need not conceal the fact--loved him with a
love that now formed part of her daily existence; while he accorded
her in return the half-careless affection of a brother, or as yet
little more.
At his father's house of Earlshaugh, at his uncle's villa of
Merlwood, and elsewhere, till he had joined his regiment, they had
been brought up together, and together had shared all the pleasures
and amusements of childhood. In the thick woods of Earlshaugh, and
along the sylvan banks of the Esk, in the glorious summer and autumn
days, it had been their delight to clamber into thick and leafy
bowers--vast and mysterious retreats to them--where, with the birds
around them, and the flowers, the ivy, and the ferns beneath their
feet, they wove fairy caps of rushes and conned their tasks, often
with cheek laid against cheek and ringlets intermingled; and in their
days of childhood Roland had often told her tales of what they would
do and where they would go when they became man and wife, and little
Hester wondered at the story he wove, as it seemed impossible that
they could ever be happier than they were then. He always preferred
her as a companion and playmate to his only sister Maude, greatly to
the indignation of that young lady.
She had borne her part in many of Roland's boyish pastimes, even to
spinning tops and playing marbles, until the days came when they
cantered together on their sturdy little Shetlands through Melville
Woods and by the braes of Woodhouselee, or where Earlshaugh looked
down on the pastoral expanse near Leuchars and Balmullo, in the East
Neuk of Fife.
When the time came that Roland had inexorably to go forth into the
world and join his regiment, poor Hester Maule wept in secret as if
her heart would have burst; while he--with all a boy's ardour for his
red coat and the new and brilliant life before him--bade her farewell
with provoking equanimity and wonderful philosophy; and now that he
had come back, and she--in the dignity of her eighteen years--could
no longer aid him in birdnesting (if he thought of such a thing), or
holding a wicket for him, she had--during the few weeks he had been
at home--felt her girl's heart go back to the sweet old days and the
starting-point, which he seemed to have almost forgotten, or scarcely
referred to.
And yet, when she came along the grassy bank, and tossed her garden
hat aside on seating herself on the grass near him, there was
something in her bearing then which haunted him in after-years--a
shy, unconscious grace in all her movements, a flush on her soft
cheek, a bright expression in her clear and innocent eyes, brightened
apparently by the flickering shadows that fell between the leaves
upon her uncovered head, and flushed her white summer dress with
touches of bright colour; and looking at him archly, she began, as if
almost to herself, to sing a song she had been wont to sing long
ago--an old song to the older air of the 'Bonnie Briar Bush':
'The visions of the buried past
Come thronging, dearer far
Than joys the present hour can give,
Than present objects are----'
'Go on, Hester,' said Roland, as she paused.
'No,' said she with a little _moue_, 'you don't care for these old
memories now.'
'When soldiering, Hester, we have to keep our minds so much in the
present that, by Jove! a fellow has not much time for brooding over
the past.'
Hester made no reply, but cast down her lashes, and proceeded to roll
and unroll the ribbons of her hat round her slender fingers.
Roland Lindsay manipulated another cigar, lit it leisurely, and
relapsed into silence too.
He was a remarkably good-looking young fellow, and perhaps one who
knew himself to be so, having been somewhat spoiled by ladies
already. Though not quite regular, his features were striking,
and--like his bearing--impressed those who did not know him well with
a high opinion of his strength of character, which was not great, we
must admit, in some respects; though his chin was well defined and
even square, as shown by his being closely shaven all save a
carefully trimmed dark moustache.
His grayish hazel eyes looked almost black at night, and were
expressive and keen yet soft. In figure he was well set up--the
drill-sergeant had done that; and unmistakably he was a manly-looking
fellow in his twenty-seventh year, dressed in a plain yet
irreproachably-made tweed suit of light gray that well became his
dark and dusky complexion, with spotlessly white cuffs and tie, and a
tweed stalking-cap peaked before and behind. He had an air of
well-bred nonchalance, of being perfectly at home; and now you have
him--Captain Roland Lindsay of Her Majesty's Infantry, with a face
and neck burned red and blistered by the fierce sun of Egypt and the
Soudan.
Merlwood, the house of Hester's father, which he was now favouring
with a protracted visit, is situated on the north bank of the Esk,
and was so named as being the favourite haunt of the blackbird, whose
voice was heard amid its thickets in the earliest spring, as that of
the throstle was heard not far off in the adjacent birks of
Mavis-wood on the opposite side of that river, which, from its source
in the hills of Peebles till it joins the sea at Musselburgh,
displays sylvan beauties of which no other stream in Scotland can
boast--the beauties of which Scott sang so skilfully in one of his
best ballads:
'Sweet are the paths, O, passing sweet!
By Esk's fair streams that run
O'er airy steep, through copsewood deep,
Impervious to the sun,
'From that fair dome where suit is paid,
By blast of bugle free,
To Auchindinny's hazel shade,
And haunted Woodhouselee,
'Who knows not Melville's beechy grove
And Roslin's rocky glen,
Dalkeith, which all the virtues love,
And classic Hawthornden?
Embosomed amid the beautiful scenery here, the handsome modern villa
of Merlwood, with its Swiss roof and plate-glass oriel windows half
smothered amid wild roses, clematis, and jasmine, crowned a bank
where the dreamy and ceaseless murmur of the Esk was ever heard; and
in the cosy if not stately rooms of which old Sir Harry Maule,
K.C.B., a retired Lieutenant-General, and the veteran of more than
one Indian war, had stored up the mementoes of his stirring past--the
tusky skulls, striped skins, and giant claws of more than one
man-eating tiger, trophies of his breechloader; and those of other
Indian conflicts at Lucknow, Jhansi, and elsewhere, in the shape of
buffalo shields, tulwars, inlaid Afghan juzails, battle axes, and
deadly khandjurs, with gorgeous trappings for horse and elephant.
And picturesque looked the home of the old soldier and his only
daughter Hester, as seen in the August sunshine, at that season when
autumn peeps stealthily through the openings made in thicket and
hedge, when the sweet may-buds are dead and gone, the feathered
grasses are cut down, but the ferns and the ivy yet cover all the
rocks of the Esk, and flowering creepers connect the trees; the blue
hare-bell still peeped out, and in waste places the ox-eye daisy and
the light scarlet poppy were lingering still, for August is a month
flushed with the last touches of summer, and though the latter was
past and gone, those warm tints which make the Scottish woods so
peculiarly lovely in autumn had not yet begun to mellow or temper the
varied greenery of the bosky valley of rocks and timber through which
the mountain Esk flows to the Firth of Forth.
To the eyes of Roland Lindsay, how still and green and cool it all
seemed, after the arid sands, the breathless atmosphere, and the
scorching heat of Southern Egypt!
'By Jove, there is no place like home!' thought he, and he tossed out
of his hammock _Punch_, the _Graphic_, and Clery's 'Minor Tactics,'
with which he had been killing time, till his fair cousin joined him;
and with his cigar alight, his stalking cap tilted forward over his
eyes, his hands behind his head, he swung to and fro in the full
enjoyment of lazy indolence.