HESTER MAULE.
Though the life of Hester Maule at Merlwood was a somewhat secluded
one, as she had no mother to act as chaperone, it was not one of
inaction. Her mornings were generally spent in charitable work among
poor people in the nearest village, visiting the old and sick,
sometimes in scolding and teaching the young, assisting the minister
in many ways with local charities, and often winding up the evening
by a brisk game of lawn-tennis with his young folks at the manse, and
now and then a ball or a carpet dance at some adjacent house, when
late hours never prevented her from being down from her room in the
morning, as gay as a mavis or merle, to pour out her father's coffee,
cut and air his paper, or attend to his hookah, the use of which the
old Anglo-Indian had not yet been able to relinquish.
Now the girl had become shy or dry in manner, piqued and silent
certainly, to her cousin; for, in mortifying contrast to her silent
thoughts, she was pondering over his off-hand speech with which the
preceding chapter opens; thus even he found it somewhat difficult to
carry on a one-sided conversation with the back of her averted head,
however handsome, with its large coil of dark and glossy hair turned
to him.
Roland liked and more than admired his graceful cousin, and now,
perhaps suspecting that his nonchalant manner was scarcely 'the
thing' and finding her silent, even frosty in manner, he said:
'Hester, will you listen to me now?'
'That depends upon what you have to say, Roland.'
'I never say anything wrong, so don't be cross, my dear little one.'
'He treats me as a child still!' she thought in anger, and said
sharply:
'Well?'
'Shall we go along the river bank and see the trout rising?'
'Why?'
'Well--it is certainly better than doing nothing.'
'But is useless,' said she coldly.
'Why? It is now my turn to ask.'
'Because you know very well, or ought to know, that there are none to
be seen after June, and that the mills have ruined angling hereabout.'
'Let us look for ferns, then--there are forty different kinds, I
believe, in Roslin Glen.'
'Ferns--how can you be so childish, Roland!' exclaimed the girl with
growing pique, as she thought--'If he has aught to say of more
interest, surely he can say it here,' and she kept her eyes averted,
looking down the wooded glen through which the river brawled, with
her heart full of affection and love, which her cousin was singularly
slow to see; then furtively she looked at him once or twice, as he
lounged on his back, smoking and gazing upward at the patches of blue
sky seen through the interlaced branches of the overarching trees.
'Gentleman' was stamped on every feature and in every action of
Lindsay, and there was an easy and quiet deliberation in all he did
and said that indicated good breeding, and yet he had a bearing in
his figure and aspect in his dark face that would have become
Millais' 'Black Brunswicker.'
Hester Maule is difficult to describe; but if the reader will think
of the prettiest girl she or he ever saw, they have a general idea of
her attractions.
A proud and stately yet most graceful-looking girl, Hester had a
lissom figure a trifle over the middle height, hair of the richest
and deepest brown, dark violet-coloured and velvety-like eyes with
full lids, long lashes, and brows that were black; a dazzling
complexion, a beautiful smile when pleased, and hands and feet that
showed race and breeding beyond all doubt.
Roland was quite aware that Hester was no longer a child, but a girl
almost out of her teens, and one that looked older than her years.
He had seen her at intervals, and seen how she had grown up and
expanded into the handsome girl she had become--one of whom any
kinsman might be proud; and with all his seeming indifference and
doubt of his true emotions, it was evident now that propinquity might
do much; and times there were when he began to feel for her some of
that tender interest and admiration which generally form a sure
prelude to love. Moreover, they were cousins, and 'there is no
denying that cousinship covers a multitude of things within its
kindly mantle.'
Hester was the only daughter of his maternal uncle, the old General,
whose services had won him a K.C.B.--an improvident and somewhat
impoverished man, who for years had been a kind of invalid from
ailments contracted after the great Indian Mutiny--chiefly from a
bullet lodged in his body at Jhansi, when he fought under the famous
Sir Hugh Rose--Lord Strathnairn in later years.
She was the one 'ewe lamb' of his flock, all of whom were lying by
their mother's side under the trees in the old kirkyard of Lasswade,
within sound of the murmuring Esk; and though the charm of Hester's
society had been one of the chief reasons that induced Roland Lindsay
to linger at Merlwood, as he had done for nearly a month past, he was
loth to adopt the idea now being involved therein. Such is the
inconsistency of the male heart at times; and he, perhaps,
misconstrued, or attributed his emotion to compassion for her
apparently lonely life and somewhat dubious future--for Sir Henry's
life was precarious; and in this perilous and dubious state matters
were now, while Roland's leave of absence was running on.
Not that the latter was extremely limited. To the uninitiated we may
mention that what is technically termed winter leave extends
generally from the 15th October to the 14th of the following March,
'when all officers are to be present with their respective regiments
and depôts;' but Roland had extended or more ample leave accorded him
than this, owing to the sufferings he had undergone from a wound and
fever when with the army of occupation in Egypt, a portion of which
his regiment formed--hence it was that August saw him at Merlwood.
And now we may briefly state how he was situated, and some of the
'features' on which his future 'hinged.'
During his absence with the army his father, the old fox-hunting
Laird of Earlshaugh, a widower, after the death of Roland's mother
had rashly married her companion, a handsome but artful woman, who,
at his death (caused by a fall in the hunting-field, after which she
had nursed him assiduously), was left by him, through his will, all
that he possessed in land, estate, and heritage, without control; but
never doubting--poor silly man--that she would do full justice in the
end to his only son and daughter, as a species of mother, monitress,
and guardian--a risk the eventualities of which he had not quite
foreseen, as we shall show in the time to come.
But so it was; his father, who, at one time, he thought, would hardly
have rested in his grave if the acres of Earlshaugh and the turrets
of the old mansion had gone out of the family, in which they had been
since Sir James Lindsay of Edzell and Glenesk fell by his royal
master's side at Flodden, had been weak enough to do this monstrous
piece of injustice, under the influence of an artful and designing
woman!
It was an injury so galling, so miserable, and--to Roland Lindsay--so
scarcely realizable, that he had been in no haste to return to his
ancestral home.
And hence, perhaps, he had lingered at Merlwood, where his uncle, Sir
Harry, who hated, defied, and utterly failed to understand anything
of the 'outs and ins' of law or lawyers, including wills and
bequests, etc., etc., fed his natural indignation by anathematizing
the artful Jezebel of a step-mother; and declaring that he never did
and never would believe in her; and adjusting himself as well as that
cursed 'Jhansi bullet' would allow him, while lounging back in his
long, low, and spacious Singapore chair, he would suck his hookah
viciously, and roundly assert, as a crowning iniquity, that he was
certain she had 'at least four annas to the rupee in her blood!'