'IT WAS NO DREAM.'
To Roland Lindsay there was some new and undefinable attraction
towards Annot Drummond, against which, to do him justice, he strove
in vain, and his eyes actually fell under the calm glance of his
cousin Hester. 'Call it what one may,' says a writer, 'that such a
power does exist, and most seriously influences our lives, is an
undoubted fact. We may deride and deny it as we will; but who can
honestly doubt that the sudden and mutual attraction felt by two
persons who are in essential matters absolutely ignorant of each
other, does occur in the lives of most of us, and it is not to be
fought against or laughed away in any manner.'
Whether the attraction was quite _mutual_ in this instance remains to
be seen. As yet the intercourse between Roland and Miss Drummond
_seemed_, with a little more _empressement_ of manner, merely the
well-bred companionship of two persons connected through mutual
relations and residence in the same pleasant country house; but the
change in Roland's manner to herself--veil it as he might--was subtly
felt by Hester, and became apparent even to her father, the otherwise
obtuse old Indian campaigner.
'He was ever attentive, full of fun, lightness, and merriment; but,
oh, there is no mistaking that there is a change now--a change since
_she_ came. What can it be--what has come over him?' thought Hester.
'It is all very odd,' growled Sir Harry; 'I can't make out the
situation now. Roland does not seem a flirting fellow, whatever the
girl may be, and she is plain when compared with my Hester; yet he
looks like a shorn Samson in the fairy hands of this little
golden-haired Delilah, and seems never happy except when with her.
It appears to me that people nowadays always fall in love when,
where, and with whom they ought not. Ah, he is one of the "Lightsome
Lindsays;" yet I never saw anyone so changed,' added Sir Harry, who
had latterly found him wax weary of his Indian reminiscences.
Meanwhile Annot, who firmly believed in the dictum of Thackeray,
'that any woman who has not positively a hump can marry any man she
pleases,' quietly pursued her own course; and day by day it was
Hester's lot to see this courtship evidently in progress--herself at
times ignored and reduced to 'playing gooseberry,' as Annot thought
(if, indeed, she ever thought at all)--reduced again to her own inner
life once more; and knowing that nothing of it could interest them
now, so much did they seem bound in each other, she pursued her old
avocations among the poor and parish people more than ever.
The love--the budding love--he certainly once loved _her_--was less
than a shadow now!
She ceased to accompany them in their walks and long rambles in the
woody glen by Mavisbank and Eldin groves, and knowing the time when
Roland was certainly 'due' at Earlshaugh, she counted every hour till
he should leave Merlwood.
'What a couple of wanderers you have become!' said Sir Harry, a
little pointedly.
'Roland is so sympathetic,' simpered Annot; 'he appreciates fully all
my yearnings after the beautiful, of which we can see nothing in the
brick wilderness of London; and certainly your scenery on the Esk is
surpassingly lovely, uncle!' though in reality she cared not a jot
about it, and had somewhat the Cockney's idea of a landscape, 'that
too much wood and too much water always spoiled it.'
One evening matters had evidently reached a culminating point with
this pair.
Returning at a somewhat late hour for her, when the gloaming was
deepening into darkness, from visiting a poor widow, to whom she had
taken some comforts, Hester, on reaching Merlwood, paused in a garden
path to look around her, pleased and soothed by the calmness and
stillness of the dewy August evening, when not a sound was heard but
the ceaseless murmur of the unseen Esk far down below. Suddenly,
amid the shrubbery, she heard familiar voices, to which she listened
dreamily, mechanically, at first; then, startled by their tenor, she
was compelled to shrink between the great shrubs, and--however
obnoxious and repugnant to her--was compelled to overhear; and till
indignation came, as she listened, there was a passionate, pleading
expression in Hester's eyes, which was unseen in the dark; as was the
quivering of the lip that came from the torture of the soul.
Roland was speaking in accents low and eager, and in others that were
broken and tremulous Annot was responding.
'You have made me so happy, dearest Roland, by the first whisper that
you--you loved me,' sighed the girl.
'I seem scarcely to recollect what happened to me before I met you
here, Annot,' said he.
'How so?' she asked coyly.
'It seems as if I had only existed then.'
'And now, Roland?'
'I live, my darling! for
"In many mental forms I vainly sought
The shadow of the idol of my thought,"
till now. In three days more--only three--my little Annot--my
golden-haired darling, I shall have to leave you for Earlshaugh; and,
till you join me there, what will life be without you?'
He drew her close to him, and poor Hester shivered; but flight was
impossible.
'And what will life at Merlwood be to me?' replied, or rather asked,
Annot, in that caressing and cooing tone which she well knew was one
of her chief attractions.
'But Earlshaugh in time will be your home, Annot--yours, to make what
alterations you choose on the quaint old place. You shall reign
there--the fairest and dearest bride that ever came within its walls.'
'Do not talk thus, Roland!'
'Why?'
'It makes me feel as if I were selling myself.'
'Annot!' he expostulated; and she answered with that low, cooing
laugh of hers which was such a wonderful performance.
'Now, tell me,' said she; 'were you ever in love before?'
'Why that question, Annot?'
'I have no motive--only curiosity, Roland--yet I could not bear to
think that you had ever loved anyone else as you do me.'
'I never did! All men have, or have had fancies,' said he evasively.
'I don't mean a fancy--a real love!'
'Annot?'
'Did you ever ask a girl to marry you?'
'Never--never! My darling--my pet--my little fairy--you alone have
crept into my heart and made it all your own! With all their real
length, how short have seemed the August days since you came hither,
Annot!--how brief and swift the hours we spend together!
But--but--you must say nothing of all this, our hopes and our future,
to Hester.'
'No--oh no; I love you too fondly to have a confidant in the world.'
'I must seal your lips, dearest Annot,' interrupted Roland. Then
came a pause and many caresses and many endearing names, as they
slipped softly away towards the lighted windows of the villa, and
left the agonized and startled listener free--for startled she was,
and, curiously enough, for all she had seen and suspected, she was
scarcely prepared for such a scene as this; and every caress she saw
had seemed to sink like a hot poniard into her heart, as she stole
away to her room, and strove to think, as one might in a dream.
Vague and numb was the first impression the episode made upon her,
till feverish jealousy and mortification made her clasp and wring her
hot, dry hands, and gnaw her nether lip, while burning tears rolled
down her cheeks, with the assurance that all was over now!
'After all--he meant nothing--nothing after all!' she muttered; 'why
did you make me love you so, Roland!'
The man she had loved--who fully, as far as manner and almost words
went, had answered her love for him, had meant nothing, but _pour
passer le temps_. He had been, he thought perhaps, only kind,
friendly, cousinly, while she--great Heavens!--had been on the point
of laying her affectionate heart at his feet.
Oh, what humiliation was hers!
In explanation of the lateness of their return, they had been a long
walk, the loiterers said, away below Roslin Chapel; but said nothing
of what the walk had somewhat suddenly evolved.
When the gloaming was considerably advanced, and, though a ruddy
sunset lingered in the north-west, there was no moon in the sky,
where the evening star shone brilliantly, they had wandered down the
river-side--its current flowing like molten silver when seen between
and under the dark, overshadowing, and weird-like trees--to where, on
the summit of its high and grassy knoll, the beautiful chapel of
Roslin towered up between them and the sky-line--the solemn scene, as
Scott has preserved it, of one of the most thrilling and poetical of
all family presages of death and war; a legend deduced from the
tomb-fires of the Norsemen, and, doubtless, transplanted from our
stormy Northern Isles to the sylvan valley of the Esk by that old
Prince of Orkney, whose bride, Rosabelle, perished, and when the
chapel seemed filled with flame.
'O'er Roslin all that dreary night,
A wondrous blaze was seen to gleam!
'Twas broader than the watchfire's light,
And redder than the bright moonbeam.
Even as Roland was quoting these lines to Annot Drummond a wonderful
but natural effect took place.
'Look, Roland,' cried she with a thrill of real terror; 'look, the
chapel is on fire!'
'Oh, impossible,' said he, still intent on gazing on her sweet face.
'But look--look--it _is_!'
Whether she thought so or not Annot was evidently startled and
discomposed, while Roland certainly was not without momentary
astonishment. A row of red lights appeared through the branches of
the dark trees high above where he and Annot stood. It was the last
light of the orange and blood-red set sun gleaming though the double
row of chapel windows--the rich red light that is peculiar to
Scottish sunsets, and the phenomenon it produced had a powerful
effect upon the vision and minds of the beholders--even on the
volatile and unimaginative Annot, who, before the light faded out,
was not slow to understand and to utilize the situation in her own
way.
She clung to Roland in an access of terror apparently, and that it
was more than partly simulated certainly he never thought. While
seeming to be terrified by the ghostly sight, she hid her face in his
neck; and then Roland felt it was all over with him!
'My darling--my darling, do not be so alarmed--it is only a transient
sunset effect,' said he, kissing her cheek.
'Don't, Roland, don't--oh, you must not do that,' she murmured.
But Roland did _that_, again and again--pressing his lips to her
eyes, her rippling hair--covering her face with kisses, while he half
lifted, half led her homeward, up the steep and winding path to
Merlwood, which they reached, as said, at a somewhat later period
than usual.
'Well,' thought Hester, as she bathed her face and eyes to remove all
traces of her late emotion, 'in three days I shall, for a time at
least, see and hear no more of this. And yet--my heart will speak--I
have loved _him_--all my life--ever since he was a boy; and she has
known him, as it were, but yesterday!'
She put a hand to her forehead and pushed back the rings and rows of
heavy brown hair, as if their weight oppressed her.
'Thank Heaven!' she thought, 'I can make my life a useful and a busy
one, even here. Thank Heaven for the refuge of another love, with
work and duty--love and duty to papa, and work for my poor people and
their little ones! But why, oh why,' she added, while interlacing
her fingers behind her neck, and looking round her wildly, 'did he
love her after _all_?--why turn from me to her--that little
golden-haired doll, with her winning ways and heartless nature; and
how comes it that her languorous green eyes have power to awake such
a passion as filled every accent of Roland's voice in the gloaming
there? She came when she was not wanted; and both are cruel,
heartless, treacherous!'
But, to do Annot justice, she knew nothing then of the tender
relations that had begun to exist between Hester and her cousin,
though we do not suppose that the knowledge would have much
influenced that enterprising young lady in her plans and views, her
wishes and purpose.
Hester felt that she had been ready enough--too ready, she now
feared--to show him all her own heart, till that other girl came, and
she thought till now that it had frozen up under Annot's presence and
too evident influence on him.
That evening she did not appear at dinner, but sent excuses
downstairs, and refused to receive even a visit from Annot. That
would have been indeed too much to have undergone; but anon the
mental storm passed away; the ruddy dawn stole into Hester's bedroom,
and she rested her weary head against the open window to inhale the
fresh morning breeze that came up the woody valley of the Esk, and
over parterres of dewy flowers that were sweet enough to grace the
bank whereon the Queen of Elfin slept.
That day she saw on Annot's mystic finger--the fourth of the left
hand--a ring she had not observed before, and knew who was the donor,
and what the gift meant, but the knowledge could not give her a
keener pang. She thought of Roland's gift, and of the emotions that
had filled her heart when he had clasped it round her neck. She
could not return that gift to Roland without some reason; and she
apparently had none; but yet its retention was most repugnant to her,
and never would she wear it. He had given it to her as his
cousin--nothing more, now it would seem. Did he mean it so, _then_?
The dainty slippers, with blue embroidery on buff leather, which had
formed a portion of her daily and loving work, were relinquished now
and cast aside, too probably to be never finished.
Hester Maule felt all the shame and sorrow of loving one in secret,
whose heart and preference were given to another. What evil turn of
Destiny had wrought this for her? Why had she so mistaken--if she
_had_ indeed done so--his mere playful, cousinly regard for aught
else than its true value?
Yet--yet there had been times--especially on that night when he gave
her the jewels--that a gleam of tenderness, of yearning, of love had
lit up his dark eyes--an expression that had gone straight to her
heart and made every nerve thrill. Why had she not guessed then--why
not foreseen what was to happen? But the _future_ is always oddly
woven up with the _present_, we are told; and 'how strange are the
small threads that first begin to spin the great woofs of our life
story--unnoted, unheeded at the time--they stand out clearly and
plainly to our mental vision afterwards, and we ask ourselves with
bitter anguish, "Why did we not guess--why did we not foresee it?"
Better, perhaps, that the power of prevision is denied us, since we
can neither alter nor avert the doom that awaits us along the path of
life.'
We do not mean to palliate or defend the indecision--change of love
and regard--on the part of Roland Lindsay; but Hester had been from
his earliest years so much of a younger sister to him, that, though
loving, winning, and gentle, this golden-haired girl, with all her
_espièglerie_, her bold little speeches, and pretty touches and
tricks of manner, came as a new experience to him; and for the
present certainly, to all appearance, had enslaved and bewildered
him, dazzling his fancy to say the least of it.
Despite all her efforts, Hester, if she completely controlled her
manner, could not conceal her pain; thus her eyes seemed dull, even
sunken, and harsh lines marred the usual sweetness of her lips. If
Roland noted these signs, he strove to ignore them. Annot had
artfully instilled some petty jealous suspicions of young Skene of
Dunnimarle in Roland's mind, and he sought mentally to make these a
kind of apology to himself, while seeming indifferent to what the
girl might suffer, even when her presence (despite the arrangement
for secrecy she had overheard) scarcely at times interfered with the
_sotto voce_ babble of their lover-like but inane conversation.
To Hester it seemed as if she was in a bad dream, but
'It was no dream, and she was desolate.'