MOLOCH.
While Roland's mind was agitated by a nervous dread of how to break
to the ambitious little Annot--for ambitious he knew her to be--the
real state of his position and his altered fortune, unknown to him,
and in his absence, that young lady was receiving an inkling of how
matters stood, and thus, when the time came, some trouble and pain
were saved him.
Red-eyed, and apparently inconsolable for his absence for a single
day, the 'gushing' Annot had cast her society almost entirely upon
Hester, as Maude was too much occupied by her own thoughts and cares
to give her sympathy.
'Why has he gone, why left me so soon after we came here?' she moaned
for the twentieth time, with her golden head reclined on Hester's
shoulder. 'What shall I do without him?' she added.
'For a few hours only. What will you say when winter comes or
spring, and he is back in Egypt, if you think so much of a few hours
now?'
'It is very silly of me, I suppose, but I cannot help it; but we have
never been separated since--since----'
'You met at Merlwood,' said Hester coldly, and annoyed by the other's
acting or childishness, she scarcely knew which it was. She added,
'Business has taken him to Edinburgh.'
'Business--he never told me! About what?'
'Something very unpleasant, I fear; but you know that a man of
property--
Hester paused, not knowing very well how to parry the questions of
Annot, who had put them to her frequently, and for a few minutes they
promenaded together the long flowery aisles of the conservatory in
silence.
Hester was so tall and straight, so proud-looking and yet so soft and
womanly, her bearing a thing of beauty in itself, her dark velvety
eyes so sensitive and sweet in expression that anyone might wonder
how Annot Drummond, with all her fair and fairy-like loveliness, had
lured Roland away from her, yet it was so.
Now and then, oftener than she wished, there came back unbidden to
Hester's mind memories of those happy August evenings at Merlwood,
ere Annot came, when she and Roland wandered in the leafy dingles by
the Esk, by 'caverned Hawthornden' and Roslin's ruin-crowned rock;
and when these memories came she strove to stifle them, as if they
caused a pain in her heart, for such haunting day-dreams were full of
tenderness, a vanished future and a present sense of keen
disappointment.
And she remembered well, though she never sang now, the old song he
loved so well, and which went to the 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.'
And she felt with a sigh that her past was indeed buried and done
with.
Honest and gentle, Hester had long since felt that she was unequal to
cope with Annot Drummond, or the game the latter played--a damsel who
possessed, as a clever female writer says, 'all the thousand and one
tricks, in short, by which an artificial woman understands how to lay
herself out for the attraction and capture of that noble beast of
prey called man;' and Annot was indeed artificial to the tips of her
tiny fingers.
'Hester,' said Annot, breaking the silence mentioned, and following
some thoughts of her own, 'have you never had dreams--day-dreams, I
mean--of being rich?'
'I don't think so.'
'Why is this?'
'Because I am quite content; and when one is so there is no more to
be desired. As our proverb says: "Content is nae bairn o' wealth."'
'I cannot understand your point of view,' said Annot. 'I should like
gorgeous dresses--Worth's best; fine horses, with skins like satin,
and glittering harness; stately carriages, such as we see in the
parks; tall footmen, well-liveried and well-matched; a house in Park
Lane----'
'And lots of poor to feed?'
'I never think of them--they can take care of themselves, if the
police don't.'
'Oh, Annot!'
'And I should like my wedding presents to be the wonder of all, and
duly catalogued in all the 'Society' papers--services in exquisite
silver, the épergne of silver and gold--spoons and forks without
number--ice buckets and biscuit boxes--coffee sets in Dresden china,
écru, and gold--toilette suites in crystal and gold--Russian sables,
fans, gloves, jewels--a Cashmere shawl from the Queen, of course--a
lovely suite of diamonds and opals from the brother-officers of the
bridegroom--shoals of letters of congratulation, and a present with
each!'
'In all this you say nothing of love,' said Hester, with a curl on
her sweet red lip, 'and without it all these things were worthless.'
'And without them it were useless,' replied the mercenary little
beauty, with a perfect coolness that kindled an emotion of something
akin to contempt rather than amusement in the breast of Hester.
'As Claude Melnotte says, after describing his palace by the Lake of
Como, "Dost like the picture?"' asked Annot laughingly.
'Not at all from your point of view,' replied Hester, a little
wearily. 'The diamond and opal suite, to be the gift of the
bridegroom's brother-officers, has reference, I suppose----'
'To Roland, of course.'
'Poor Roland!' said Hester, with a genuine sigh.
'Why do you adopt that tone in regard to him?' asked Annot, her eyes
of bright hazel green dilating with surprise.
'For reasons of which, I fear, you know nothing,' replied Hester,
unable to repress a growing repugnance for the questioner.
'But I surely must know them in time?'
'Perhaps.'
'There is no "perhaps" in the matter,' said Annot pettishly; 'what do
you mean, Hester--speak?'
'Is it possible,' said the other with extreme reluctance, 'that you
have never heard of the terms of his father's will?'
'Scotch-like, you reply to one question by another. Well, what will?'
'His father's most singular and unjust one.'
'No.'
'Not even from Roland?'
'No--never, I say!'
'Most strange!'
'You know that I cannot speak of it.'
'Of course not.'
'But mamma may. This estate of Earlshaugh----'
'Is the property by gift of his father to his second wife----'
'That grim woman, Deborah Sharpe?'
'Yes--to have and to hold--I don't know the exact terms.'
'How should you?' said Annot incredulously. 'You cannot be much of a
lawyer, Hester!'
'Of course not--but this is not a lawyer's question now.'
'Why?'
'The will is an accomplished fact. Roland, when abroad, may have
been misled--nay, has been misled--by words and delusive hopes; but
these the family agent will shatter when he shows him the truth.'
Annot made no immediate reply to a startling statement, which she
suspected was merely the outcome of natural female jealousy, and
perhaps rancour in the heart of Hester Maule. But the memory of the
latter went too distinctly back to that mournful day at Earlshaugh
when the last laird had been borne to his last home on the shoulders
of his serving men, while Roland was in Egypt, and poor Maude too ill
to leave her own room; the solemn and substantial luncheon that was
laid in the dining-hall for all who attended the funeral, and of the
subsequent reading of the will by Mr. M'Wadsett in the Red
Drawing-room to that listening group, over whom lay the hush and the
shadow of selfish anticipation; the legacies to faithful old
servants, those to her father, to herself, and other relations; and
then the terrible clause which bequeathed to 'his well-beloved wife
and ministering angel of his later days' everything else of which the
testator died possessed. And then followed the buzz of astonishment
and dissatisfaction with which the sombre assembly broke up.
Of these details Hester said nothing to Annot; but the latter had now
something _to reflect upon_, which was too distasteful for
consideration, and which she endeavoured resolutely to set aside.
Sooth to say, her selfish delight in the solid, luxurious, and
baronial glories of Earlshaugh was too great to be easily dissipated,
and she had still, as ever, a decided, repugnance to the
recollections of her widowed mother's struggles with limited means;
and their somewhat sordid home in South Belgravia, as she sought
courageously to shut her bright eyes to the gruesome probabilities of
Hester's communication.
With a sigh of sorrow, in which, notwithstanding the gentleness of
her nature, much of contempt was mingled, Hester Maule regarded her
town-bred cousin, who though apparently so volatile and thoughtless,
was quite a watchful little woman of the world, with what seemed
childish ways, and Hebe-like beauty, so fair, so soft, with rose-leaf
complexion, and her _petite_ face peeping forth, as it were, from
among the coils and masses of her wonderful golden hair; and yet she
was ever ready to sacrifice everything to society--that Moloch to
which so many now sacrifice purity, happiness, and life itself.
For Annot believed in a union of hands and lands, with hearts left
out of the compact.