PLAYING WITH FIRE.
And now, a few days subsequently, while idling after dinner over
coffee and a cigar, with his pretty cousin and Sir Harry, in the
latter's study, a little room set apart by him for his own
delectation, where he could always find his tobacco jars, the Army
Lists, East Indian Registers, and so forth, ready at hand--a 'study'
hung round with whips and spurs, fishing and shooting gear, a few old
swords, and furnished with Singapore chairs, tiger skins, and a
couple of teapoys, or little tables, Roland Lindsay obtained a little
more insight into family matters that had transpired daring his
absence while soldiering against the False Prophet in the East.
Sir Harry was a tall and handsome man, nearer his seventieth than his
sixtieth year, with regular aquiline features, keen gray eyes, and
closely shaven, all save a heavy moustache, which was, like his hair,
silver white; and though somewhat feebler now by long Indian service
and wounds, he looked every inch, an aristocratic old soldier and
gently but decidedly he spoke to his nephew of troubles ahead, while
Hester's white hands were busy among her Berlin wools, and she
glanced ever and anon furtively, but with fond interest, at her young
kinsman, who apparently was provokingly unconscious thereof.
The old fox-hunting laird, his father, though a free liver, had never
been reckless or profligate; had never squandered or lost an acre of
Earlshaugh; never drank or gambled to excess, nor been duped by his
most boon companions; but on finding that he was getting too heavy
for the saddle, and that the world, after all, was proving 'flat,
stale, and unprofitable,' had latterly, for a couple of years before
his death, buried himself in the somewhat dull and lonely if stately
mansion of Earlshaugh, where he had for a second time, to the
astonishment of all his friends, those of the Hunt particularly,
betaken himself to matrimony, or been lured thereinto by his late
wife's attractive and, as Sir Harry phrased it, 'most strategic' and
enterprising companion, who had--as all the folks in the East Neuk
said--contrived to 'wind him round her little finger,' by discovering
and sedulously attending to and anticipating all his querulous wants
and wishes; and thus, when he died, it was found that he had left
her--as already stated--possessed of all he had in the world, to the
manifest detriment and danger of his only son and daughter; and,
worse still, it would seem that the widow was now in the hands of one
more artful than herself--said to be a relation--one Mr. Hawkey
Sharpe, into whose care and keeping she apparently confided
everything.
Roland's yearly allowance since he joined the army had not been
meddled with; but deeming himself justly the entire heir of
everything, it could scarcely be thought he would be content with
that alone now.
'A black look-out, uncle,' said he grimly; 'so, prior to my return to
Earlshaugh, to be forewarned is to be fore-armed.'
'Yes; but in this instance, my boy,' said Sir Harry, relinquishing
for a moment the amber mouthpiece of his hookah, 'you scarcely know
against what or against whom.'
'Nor can I, perhaps, until I see a lawyer on the subject.'
'Oh, d--n lawyers! Keep them out of it, if possible. The letters
S.S.C. after a man's name always make me shiver.'
'And who is this Mr. Hawkey Sharpe, who seems to have installed
himself at Earlshaugh?' asked Roland, after a brief pause.
'No one knows but your--your stepmother,' replied Sir Harry, with a
grimace, as he kicked a hassock from under his foot. 'No one but she
apparently; he seems a sharp fellow, in whom she trusts implicitly in
all regarding the estate.'
'Where did he come from?'
'God knows; but he seems to be what our American cousins deem the
acme of 'cuteness.'
'And that is----'
'A Yankee Jew attorney of English parentage,' replied Sir Harry, with
a kind of smile, in which his nephew did not join.
'Earlshaugh is a fine properly, as we all know, uncle; but it was
deuced hard for me, when I thought I had come into it, to find this
stepmother--a person I can barely remember acting as my mother's
amanuensis, factotum, and toady--constituted a species of guardian to
me--to me, a captain in my twenty-seventh year, and to be told that I
must for the time content me with my old allowance, as the pater had
been--she said--rather extravagant, and so forth. I can't make it
out.'
'Neither can I, nor any other fellow,' said the old General testily.
'I only know that your father made a very idiotic will, leaving all
to that woman.'
'If he actually did so,' said Roland.
'No doubt about it--I heard it read.'
'But you are a little deaf, dear uncle.'
'D--n it, don't say that, Roland--I am fit for service yet!'
'Well, she has not interfered with my allowance as yet.'
'Allowance!' exclaimed Sir Harry, smiting the table with his hand;
'why the devil should you be restricted to one at all?'
'If--I am very ignorant in law, uncle--but if under this will she has
the life-rent----'
'More than that, I tell you.'
'I can scarcely believe it; and she has not meddled with the
allowance of dear little Maude.'
'She may cut off your sister's income and yours too at any moment,
Roland!'
'Well, I suppose if the worst comes to the worst,' said the latter,
with a kind of bitter laugh, while still hoping against hope, 'I
shall have to send in my papers and volunteer as a trooper for one of
these Cape corps in Bechuanaland or the Transvaal.'
'Oh, Roland, don't think of such things,' said Hester, as with
tenderness in her eyes she looked up at him for a moment, and then
resumed her work.
'Have you seen this stepmother of mine lately?' he asked.
'No--but she has invited me to Earlshaugh next month, not knowing,
perhaps, that you would spend the first month of your leave--'
'With his old uncle,' said Sir Harry, as his eyes kindled, and he
patted Roland's shoulder, adding, 'a good lad--a good lad--my own
sister's son!'
Uncle and nephew had much in common between them, even 'shop,' as
they phrased it; and the regard they had for each other was mutual
and keen.
'She writes to me seldom,' said Hester, 'for, of course, our tastes
and ideas are somewhat apart; but, as papa says, when he sees her
stiff note-paper, with the sham gentility of its gilt and crimson
monogram, and strong fragrance of Essbouquet, he feels sure that,
with all her manners, airs, and so forth, she cannot be a lady,
though many a lady's companion, as she was to your mother, unhappily
is.'
Roland remained silent, sucking his cheroot viciously.
'Yes,' observed his uncle, 'her very notes in their pomposity speak
of self-assertion.'
'In going--unwillingly as I shall--to Earlshaugh, I don't know how
the deuce I may get on with such an incubus,' said Roland
thoughtfully; and now thoughts of the cold welcome that awaited him
by the hearth that had been his father's, and their forefathers' for
generations past, made him naturally think and feel more warmly and
kindly of those with whom he was now, and more disposed to cling to
the loving old kinsman who eyed him so affectionately, and the sweet,
gentle cousin, every motion of whose white hands and handsome head
was full of grace; and thus, more tenderly than ever was his wont, he
looked upon her and addressed her, softly touching her hands, as he
affected to sort, but rather disarranged, the wool in her
work-basket; and, though the days were rather past now when he
regarded with interest and admiration every pretty girl as the
probable wife of his future, and he had not thought of Hester in that
sense at all, she was not without a subtle interest for him that he
could scarcely define.
'Give me some music, Hester--by Jove! I am getting quite into the
blues; there is a piano in the next room,' said Roland, throwing
aside his cigar and leading her away; 'a song if you will, cousin,'
he added, opening the instrument and adjusting the stool, on which
she seated herself.
'What song, Roland?'
'Any--well, the old, old one of which you sang a verse to me the
other evening in the lawn.'
'Do you really wish it?' she asked, looking round at him with
half-drooped lashes, and an earnest expression in her dark, starry
eyes.
'I do, indeed, Hester--for "Auld Langsyne."' So she at once gave her
whole skill and power to the Jacobite air and the simple, old song
which ran thus
'The visions of the buried past
Come thronging, dearer far
Than joys the present hour can give,
Than present objects are.
I love to dwell among their shades,
That open to my view;
The dreams of perished men, and years,
And bygone glory, too.
'For though such retrospect is sad,
It is a sadness sweet,
The forms of those whom we revere,
In memory to meet.
Since nothing in this changing world
Is constant but decay;
And early flowers but bloom the first,
To pass the first away!'
As the little song closed, the girl's voice, full as she was of her
own thoughts, became exquisitely sweet, even sad.
'Hester, thank you, dear,' said Roland, laying a hand on her soft
shoulder, with a sudden gush of unusual tenderness. 'The early
flowers that bloomed so sweetly with us have not yet passed away,
surely, Hester?'
'I hope not, Roland,' she replied, in a low voice.
'And I, too, hope not,' said he, stooping, and careless of the eyes
of Sir Harry, who had been drumming time to the air on a teapoy, he
pressed his lips to the straight white division between her close and
rich dark hair.
As he did so he felt her thrill beneath the touch of his lips, and
though his nonchalant air of indifference was gone just then he said
nothing more, but he thought:
'Is not this playing with fire?'