ROLAND'S HOME-COMING.
Let us return to the day of Roland Lindsay's departure from Merlwood,
when full of thoughts of a sorrowful cast, and perhaps in the frame
described by Wordsworth as
'That sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.'
A letter that had come for him overnight--one from Annot's mother in
South Belgravia--he scanned twice hurriedly, and consigned to his
pocket. Annot, in that quarter, had made no secret, apparently, of
the terms on which he and she were, and the congratulations of the
old lady were palpable enough.
'What is next?' he muttered, as he opened a little basket and
laughed. It contained sandwiches and sherry, peaches, grapes, and a
little bouquet of hot-house flowers, all selected, he knew, by the
white hands of Hester.
'Poor girl!' he muttered; 'does she think I am bound, not for
Earlshaugh, but for Alexandria?'
He had beautifully-coloured photos of both girls in his pocket
book--one of Annot, smiling, saucy, and arch, with her laughing eyes
and golden hair; and one of Hester, with her calm, sweet expression,
her dark, beseeching, and pleading eyes, and hair of rich dark brown;
but he had one of the former's fair tresses--not the first of them
that Annot had bestowed on 'Bob Hoyle' and others that he knew not
of. But so it is--
'Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare,
And beauty draws us with a single hair.'
Merlwood had vanished as the train sped on, and, away from the
immediate influence of Annot, softer memories of Hester began to
mingle upbraidingly with the idea of the former, and--as he thought
it all over again--the past; he recurred mentally to many a loving
and half-ended episode, to Hester's winning softness, her pleading,
truthful eyes of violet blue, and he felt himself, though uncommitted
by pledge or promise, inexpressibly false!
It was not a pleasant reflection or conviction even while caressing
Annot's shining tress of hair--his tempter and her supplanter.
Some men, it has been said, when they form a new attachment, try to
teach themselves that the old one contained no true love in it. This
was not the case with Roland, nor could he be a man to love two at
once, though some natures are thought to be capable of such an
idiosyncrasy.
At last he was roused from his mingled day-dreams by his train
clanking into the Waverley Station, and he saw Edinburgh, the old
town and the new, with gables, spires, and tower-crowned rocks rising
on each side of him, with a mighty bridge of round arches high in air
spanning the space between.
The day was yet young, so he idled for a time at the United Service
Club with Jack Elliot, his comrade in Egypt, on leave like himself,
and now his sister Maude's _fiancé_, a fine, handsome, and
soldier-like young fellow, of whom more anon--full of such earnest
love and enthusiasm for the girl of his unwavering choice, that
Roland--reflecting on his late proceedings at Merlwood--felt his
cheek redden more than once, as well it might, and an involuntary
sigh escaped him, though he could little foresee the _future_.
So full was he of his own thoughts, that it was not until he was
landing on the Fife side of the Forth that he reflected with
annoyance:
'What a fool I have been, when in the city, not to call upon old
MacWadsett, the W.S., about the exact terms of my father's will.
They never reached me in Egypt--the Bedouins at Ramleh made free with
the mail-bags. Besides, I need not have gone before this, as the old
fellow has been on the Continent.'
So he consoled himself with the inevitable cigar, while the train
rolled on by many a familiar scene, on which he had not looked for an
age, as it seemed now; by the 'lang, lang town' of Kirkaldy, and
picturesque Dysart, with its zigzag streets, overlooked by the gaunt
dwelling-place of Queen Annabella, and the sea-beaten rock of
Ravenscraig; anon past Falkland Woods, and after he crossed the Eden
he began to trace the landmarks of Earlshaugh, and the train halted
at a little wayside station, close beside an old and almost unused
avenue that led to the latter, and he sprang out upon the platform,
where he seemed to be the only passenger. The two or three officials
who were loitering about were strangers, and eyed him leisurely.
'Has not a trap come for my luggage?' he asked.
'For where, sir?'
'Earlshaugh.'
'No sir,' replied one, touching his cap, an ex-soldier recognising
his questioner's military air. 'No trap is here.'
'Strange!' muttered Roland, giving his moustache an angry twist; 'and
yet I wrote--I'll walk on, and send for my things,' he added.
The house was little more than a mile distant, and every foot of the
way had been familiar to him from infancy.
On many a strange and foreign scene had he looked, and many a peril
had he faced, in the land of the Pharaohs since last he had trod that
shady avenue--the land of the Sphinx and the Pyramids, where the hot
sand of the desert seemed to vibrate and quiver under the fierce
glare of the unclouded sun.
Forgetful of old superstitions, he had entered the avenue by the
Weird Yett. It was deemed unlucky for a Lindsay of Earlshaugh to
approach his house after a long absence through that barrier; but as
the gate was open, Roland, full of his own thoughts, passed in,
heedless of the legend which told that the Lindsay fared ill who did
so.
Two stone pillars, dated 1600, with an arch and coat of arms with the
Lindsay supporters, two lions sejant, termed the barrier, which was
usually closed by a massive iron gate, the barbs or pikes of which
had once been gilt. A century later had seen it the favourite
trysting-place of Roland Lindsay, the younger, of Earlshaugh, and a
daughter of a neighbour, the Laird of Craigie Hall, till the former
left with his regiment, the Scots Guards, for Spain. One evening the
girl was lingering there, in the soft violet light of the gloaming,
impelled by what emotion she scarcely knew, but doubtless to dream of
her lover who she thought was far away, when suddenly a cry escaped
her, as she saw him appear, in his scarlet uniform, with
feather-bound hat--the Monmouth cock--his flowing wig, and sword in
its splendid belt; but gouts of blood were upon his lace cravat, and
she could see that his face was sad and pale, as face and figure
melted away and she found herself alone.
Apparitions generally 'come in their habits as they lived,' says the
authoress of the 'Night side of Nature,' 'and appear so much like the
living person in the flesh that when they are not known to be dead,
they are frequently mistaken for them. There are exceptions to this
rule, but it is very rare that the forms in themselves exhibit
anything to create alarm.'
So did the girl's lover appear to her as if alive.
With a power of reason beyond her years and time, she tried to
think--could it be a dream of her excited brain? But no, she was
awake with all her senses; she thought of the blood on his dress, and
the awful knowledge came to her, that she had looked upon the face of
the dead--on the wraith of her lover--who, a month after she learned,
had perished at that very hour and time, shot by the Spaniards on the
fatal field of Almanza.
'The divine arts of priming and gunpowder have frightened away Robin
Goodfellow and the Fairies,' wrote Sir John Aubery of old; but the
ghost of the Weird Yett lingered long in the unused avenue of
Earlshaugh.
When he did recall the terror of his boyhood, Roland smiled; but
kindly, for every feature round him spoke of _home_. Seen through
the tree-stems was the old thatched hamlet of Earlshaugh, on the side
of a burn crossed by one huge stone as a bridge--the hamlet where the
clatter of the weaver's loom still lingered even in these days of
steam appliances, and on the humble doors of which the old Scottish
risp or tirling-pin was to be seen as elsewhere in the East Neuk; and
as he looked at the gray fallen monolith by which the stream was
crossed, he thought of the old song which seemed to describe it:
'Yet it had a bluirdly look,
Some score o' years ago,
An' the wee burn seemed a river then,
As it roared doon below;
And a bauld bairn was he,
In the merry days lang gane,
Wha waded through the burn,
Aneath the auld brig-stane.'
And, as if to complete the picture, an old woman, wearing one of
those white mutches, with the modest black band of widowhood,
introduced by Mary of Guelders, sat on a 'divot-seat' knitting at the
sunny end of her little thatched cottage.
A love of his birthplace and a pride in his historic race were the
strongest features in the character of Roland Lindsay, and Earlshaugh
was certainly such a home as any man might be pardoned for regarding
with something of enthusiasm.
As he looked upon the old manor house, high, square, and embattled,
towering on its grassy steep above the haugh--that abode of so many
memories, with all his pride in it, and pride of race and name, there
came a stormy emotion, or sense of humiliation--even of rage, when he
thought of the tenor or alleged tenor of that will, by which his
father, in the senility of age (if all he heard were true), had
degraded him to a cypher by leaving the estate entirely to an alien,
to his second wife, who had been the artful companion of his
first--to the exclusion of him--Roland, the heir of line and blood,
save for such a pittance or allowance as she chose to accord him, for
the term of his or her natural life, which, when the chances of war
and climate were considered, was certain to exceed his own, his
senior though she was in years.
After all he had endured in the deserts by the Nile, hunger, thirst,
suffering, sickness, and wounds, facing and enduring all that a
soldier may since last he had looked on old, gray Earlshaugh, as
memory went flashing back he strove to forget for a brief time the
wrong his father had done himself and his sister Maude, and to think
only of his happy boyhood, and all that had been then.
Memories of his dead parents, of his gentle and loving mother, of his
manly and fox-hunting father, who had taught him to ride, and shoot,
and fish--of little brothers who lay buried by their side in the
grave--of his childhood, of games, and old--or rather young--longings
and imaginings, when the woods of Earlshaugh, and the trouting
stream, were objects of vague mystery, the former peopled with
fairies, and the latter the abode of a wicked kelpie!
Many a living voice and loving face had passed away since
then--vanished for ever; but the memories of them were strong and
pathetic. The rooks still clamoured in the old trees, and the birds
sang amid the shrubberies as of old; he heard the men whistling and
singing in the stable-yard. In the fields the soil had a fresh and
grassy odour in the noonday sunshine familiar to him; and he felt the
conviction that though he in many a sense had changed, Nature had
not--'for the wind blows as it will through all the long years, and
the land wakes glad and fragrant at the kiss of the pale dawn, and
plain daily labour goes on steadily and unheedingly from generation
to generation.'
As unnoticed and unseen he drew near the house--a massive old
Scottish fortalice with tourelles at every angle--and surveyed its
striking façade, he recalled the words of his uncle and Hester, and
felt that he had now much that was practical to think about, much
that was painful and dubious to forgive or submit to, while a vague
sense of coming bitter annoyance--it might be humiliation, as we have
said--rose before his haughty spirit, and the suspicion or emotion
was not long of being put to the test.
A man with his hands in the back pockets of his coat, his hat set
negligently into the nape of his neck--a thickset, well-to-do, little
fellow, about thirty years of age, clad in a kind of semi-sporting
style, with a straw in his mouth and much display of jewellery at his
waistcoat--came leisurely down the front steps from a
_porte-cochère_, which the late Laird had added to the old
house--leisurely, we say, and with a very _insouciant_ air, and
accorded a nod--bow it could not be called--to Roland and paused.
'Oh,' said he, 'Captain Lindsay, I presume?'
'Yes,' replied the other, with surprise, and curtly.
'Ah, welcome; we've been expecting you. Did you walk from the
station?'
'I was obliged to do so----'
'Ah.'
'And you, sir?' asked Roland inquiringly.
'Mr. Sharpe--Hawkey Sharpe, at your service.'
'The new steward?' said Roland, repressing a vehement desire to kick
him along the terrace.
'If you please to call me so.'
('What the devil else does he think I should call him?' thought
Roland.)
As Mr. Hawkey Sharpe neither touched nor lifted his hat Roland
ignored his tardily proffered hand, which was replaced in his coat
pocket.
'Had a pleasant morning journey, I hope.'
'Yes.'
'Ah, I am just going to the stables--all are well at home,' said this
strange and very confident personage, passing on, while Roland stood
for a moment rooted to the ground by the profound _insouciance_ of
the man; but from _that_ moment there was a secret, if unnamed,
hatred of each other in the eyes of these two--hate blended with
contempt and indignation in those of Roland, who felt intuitively
that the other, though, as he supposed, his underling, would yet work
him a mischief if he could.
'D--n the fellow!' thought Roland. 'So this is Mr. Sharpe. I must
put him to the rightabout! He ought to have ushered me in or
preceded me.'
He rang the bell furiously.
A strange footman appeared promptly enough, but without the
indignation a 'London Jeames' would have manifested at a summons so
rough and impatient; for natheless his irreproachable livery and
powdered hair, he had been born and bred in the East Neuk of Fife,
and had no 'West-End' airs about him.
'All are strangers now hereabout,' thought Roland, who was about to
enter, when the man distinctly barred his way.
'Name, sir, please?' said he.
'Is Miss Maude--Miss Lindsay, I mean--at home?'
'No, sir; out riding.'
'Your mistress, then?' said Roland sharply.
'Yes, sir--if you will give me a card.'
'Card, ha!' exclaimed Roland, losing his temper now, and with fury
blazing in his dark eyes. 'Say that Captain Lindsay has arrived!'
On this the valet--Tom Trotter by name--threw the door wide open,
with a grin of welcome not unmingled with astonishment and alarm, and
Roland found himself again under the roof of Earlshaugh.