CHAPTER XXXI.

'ALL OVER NOW!'

But it was no delirious delusion of Roland's that he had seen a human

face, or heard a human voice respond mockingly to his despairing cry

for aid.

It singularly chanced that about an hour before midnight, and during

a lull in the storm, Mr. Hawkey Sharpe, who--as we have said--had

been seen hovering about the vicinity of Earlshaugh, was betaking

himself thither, intent on seeing his sister, the mistress thereof

(whom he also deemed his banker) concerning some of his monetary

affairs, and had been passing on foot by the narrow sheep-path that

skirted the verge of the dangerous Cleugh, when the occasional cries

of the sufferer reached his ear, and on peering down he had speedily

discovered by his voice _who_ that sufferer was.

He paused for a minute till quite assured of the fact, and though at

a loss to conceive how the event had come to pass, he proceeded with

quickened steps for some miles, till he reached the private

entrance--for which he had a key--but not for the purpose of raising

an alarm, or procuring or sending forth succour. Of that he had not

the least intention, as we shall show. 'In the place where the tree

falleth, there let it lie,' was the text of Mr. Hawkey Sharpe just

then.

He found the entire household on the _qui vive_, and heard that

Roland Lindsay was missing, thus corroborating to the fullest extent

any detail that might be wanting, and obviating all doubt as to the

episode at the Cleugh.

'What a fuss,' said he mockingly, 'about a storm of rain!'

It now rested with him, by the utterance of a single word, or little

more, to save the missing one from a miserable and lingering death;

but that word remained unuttered, and with a grim and mocking smile

upon his coarse lips, and a gleam of fiendish joy in his watery gray

eyes, he proceeded to his sanctum, up the old turret stair, without

the sensation of his steps going downward according to the household

tradition.

'Lindsay lost in this storm!' he thought. 'How came he to tumble or

to be thrown down there--thrown, by whom?' he added mentally, for his

mind was ever prone to evil. 'Then I am not wrong--it _was_ his

voice I heard at the bottom of the Kelpie's Cleugh! Ha! ha! let him

lie there till the greedy gleds pick his bones to pieces! Well--come

what may, I have had no hand in _this_!' he continued, thinking

doubtless of the charge of No. 5 aimed at Captain Elliot.

Roland had often goaded Hawkey to the verge of madness by his cool,

haughty bearing and unassailable scorn, even at times when the latter

secretly amused him by the 'society' airs he strove to assume; but

Hawkey's time for vengeance seemed to have come unexpectedly and all

unsought for; and in fancy still he seemed to glare gloatingly down

into the dark chasm where the pale sufferer lay in his peril,

doubtless with many a bone broken, and the waters of the burn rising

fast, for the rain was falling in torrents, and there was a _spate_

in all the mountain streams.

Hawkey threw off his soaked coat, invested his figure in a loose,

warm _robe de chambre_, and took a bottle of his favourite 'blend'

from his private cellarette, after which he threw himself into an

easy-chair, with his feet upon another, and strove to reflect.

'I always thought, if I could get rid of that fellow Lindsay by fair

means or foul, this place would certainly be mine, unless Deb plays

the fool--mine! The girl in my way is nothing, yet I may have her

too, and if not, the _other_ one with the yellow hair. After what I

saw by a gleam of the Macfarlanes' lantern to-night, the way seems

pretty clear now!'

He tugged his straw-coloured moustache, and after fixing his eyes

with a self-satisfied glare on vacancy for a full minute, rang the

bell for supper imperiously.

Mr. Hawkey Sharpe was one who never troubled himself about the past,

and seldom about the future; his enjoyment was in the present, and

the mere fact of living well and jollily without having work to do.

Just then he was pretty full of alcohol and exultant hope--two very

good things in their way to lay in a stock of. He cared little what

he did, but he dreaded greatly discovery in any of his little

trickeries.

To him the world was divided into two portions, those who cheat and

those who are cheated.

'Rid of Lindsay,' was the ever-recurring thought; 'rid of his

presence, local influence, and d----d impudence, I shall have this

place again more than ever to myself, if I can only throw a little

dust in Deb's eyes, and have, perhaps, my choice of these two

stunning girls when I choke off that other snob, Elliot.'

Excitement consequent on this most unlooked-for episode at the Cleugh

had nearly driven out of his mind the object which had brought him

that night to Earlshaugh, and his last potations of hot whisky toddy

at The Thane of Fife, a tavern or roadside inn on the skirts of the

park, had for a time rather clouded his intellect, without, however,

spoiling his usually excellent appetite.

Thus when Tom Trotter arrived with a large silver tray--a racing

trophy of the late laird's career--covered with a spotless white

napkin, and having thereon curried lobster, mutton cutlets, devilled

kidneys, and beef kabobs on silver skewers, with a bottle of Mumm, he

drew in his chair and made a repast, all the more pleasantly perhaps

that he heard at intervals the clang of the great house bell

overhead, and saw the lanterns of the searchers like glow-worms amid

the storm of rain and wind, as they set forth again on their bootless

errand, and then a smile that Mephistopheles might have envied spread

over his face.

'Lindsay lost!' he muttered jocularly. 'Well, there was mair lost at

Shirramuir when the Hielandman lost his faither and mither, and a

gude buff belt that was worth them baith.'

He had a habit, when liquor loosened his tongue, of soliloquizing,

and he was in this mood to-night.

'Now, how to raise the ready!' he muttered, as he thrust the silver

salver aside, and drew the decanter once more towards him, together

with his briar-root and tobacco-pouch. 'The money I have lost must

go to a fellow who is said to possess the power of turning everything

he touches to gold--to gold! Gad, could I only do that, I wouldn't

even sponge on old Deb in Earlshaugh, or wait for a dead woman's

shoes. Besides, if I don't please her, she may hand over the whole

place to the Free Kirk; and, d--n it, that's not to be thought

of!--that body which, as she always says, seceded so nobly, and

scorned the loaves and fishes. If I could only get hold of Deb's

cheque-book; but she keeps everything so devilish close and secure!

When a fellow comes to be as I am,' he continued, rolling his eyes

about and lighting his pipe with infinite

difficulty--'bravo!--there's a devil of a gust of wind--hope you like

it, Lindsay--when a fellow, I say, comes to be as I am, with an

infinitesimal balance at the banker's and not much credit with his

tailor, he can't be particular to a shade what he does--and so about

the cheque-book----'

'What have you been doing _now_?' asked a voice behind him.

His sister Deborah again! He grew very pale and nearly dropped his

pipe. 'How much had she overhead?' was his first thought; 'curse

this habit of thinking aloud!' was his second.

'You are always stealing on a fellow unawares, Deb,' said he, in a

thick and uncertain voice; 'it is deuced unpleasant--startles one so.'

Her face was pale as usual; but her eyes and mouth expressed anger,

pain, and a good deal of indignation and contempt too.

'What have you done?' she demanded categorically.

'Nothing,' said he, striving to collect his thoughts; 'but made my

way here in a devil of a shower, for want of other shelter.'

'You know what has happened?'

'To Lindsay--yes.'

'You do?' she exclaimed, making a step forward, with a hand on her

side, as if her usual pain was there.

'I know that he is absent--missing--that is all,' he replied doggedly.

'Nothing more?'

'Nothing more--and care little, as you may suppose,' he replied,

avoiding her keen searching eye by carefully filling his pipe.

'There is always some row on,' he grumbled; 'what a petty world this

is after all--I wonder if the fixed stars are inhabited.'

'That will not matter to you, I should think.'

'Why?'

'You will go some other way, I fear.'

'Deb, your surmise is unpleasant.'

The manner of Hawkey Sharpe to his sister had lost, just then, much

of its general self-contained assurance. She detected the change,

and it rendered her suspicious.

'Save this poor little dog Fifine,' said she, caressing the cur she

carried under an arm, and which was greedily sniffing the _débris_ of

Mr. Hawkey's supper, 'I do not know a living creature who really

cares for me!'

'Oh--come now, Deb--hang it!' said her brother in an expostulatory

manner.

'You have some object in coming here to-night,' said she sternly; 'to

the point at once, Hawkey?'

'Well, since you force me, Deb--I have been unfortunate in some

speculations.'

'Is it thus you describe your losses on the race-course?'

'At the western meeting--yes--backed the wrong or losing

horse--_Scottish Patriot_--devil of a mess, Deb!'

'And lost--how much? An unlucky name.'

'Two thousand pounds--must have the money somehow--I'm booked for it,

and you know the adage--

"A horse kicking, a dog biting,

A gentleman's word without his writing,"

are none of them in my way.'

'I know nothing of the adage, but this I know--there are bounds to

patience.'

'My dear Deb!' said he coaxingly.

'I have lost much--too much, indeed, through you--money that might be

put to good and holy uses--and now shall lose no more!'

Turning abruptly, she swept away and left him.

He looked after her with absolutely a red glare of rage in his pale

gray eyes.

'Good and holy uses--meaning the kirk of course!' he muttered with a

savage malediction. 'We shall see--we shall see. She must have

heard me muttering about her cheque-book--ass that I am; but that

money I must have before three months are past if I rake Pandemonium

for it!'

Again the clanging of the house bell fell upon his ear, and he heard

the storm as it rose and died away to rise again. He took another

glass of stiff grog and glared at the great antique clock on the

mantel-shelf.

'Three in the morning,' he muttered. 'It must be all over with _him_

by this time--all over now!'

CHAPTER XXII.

PELION ON OSSA.

The rain and the wind were over; the storm had passed away into the

German Sea, as perhaps more than one luckless craft found to its cost

between Fife Ness and the shores of Jutland.

It was over in the vicinity of Earlshaugh; the sluices of heaven

seemed to have emptied themselves at last; but the atmosphere, if

clear, was damp and laden with rain, and the masses of ivy, rent and

torn by the wind, flapped against the walls of the old manor-house.

The hour was early; bright and clear the morning had come from the

German Sea, and a freshness lay over all the fields and groves of the

East Neuk. After such a terrible night there seemed something

fairy-like in such a morning with all its details, but the excitement

was yet keen in Earlshaugh.

The horse-chestnuts still wore their changing livery of shining gold,

and the mountain ash looked gray, but lime and linden were alike

nearly stripped of their leaves; and when the breeze blew through the

old oaks of the King's Wood the pale acorns came tumbling out of

their cups--the tiny drinking-cups of the freakish elves that once

abode in the Fairy Den.

Old Jamie Spens, the ex-poacher, now came with startling tidings to

Earlshaugh. A shepherd's dog--one of those Scottish collies, of all

dogs the most faithful, intelligent, and useful, as they can discover

by the scent any sheep that may have the misfortune to be overblown

by the snow, had been seen careering wildly in the vicinity of the

rocky Cleugh, disappearing down it, to return to the verge barking

and yelping loudly, as if he had evidently discovered someone or

something there.

Old Spens had looked down, and too surely saw the young laird lying

pale, still, and motionless.

'Dead?' asked a score of voices.

'After sic a nicht and sic a fa' what could ye expect?' said the old

man with tears in his eyes as he remembered Roland's kindness to

himself, adding, as he shook his grizzled head, 'but I hope no--I

hope no.'

Spens had found Roland's gun, and a golden pheasant, dead, near the

edge of the Cleugh, for which a party at once set out in all haste,

Hester and Maude, pale and colourless after such a sleepless night,

too impatient to wait for the pony phaeton which Jack Elliot offered

to drive, preceding them all, for the scene of the catastrophe was at

some distance from the house.

'They laugh longest who laugh last,' muttered Hawkey Sharpe to

himself, as--while pausing on the brow of an eminence beyond the

Weird Yett--he saw this party setting forth, a large group of

servants and keepers with poles and ropes--and he shook his clenched

hand mockingly and threateningly as he added, 'do your best, but

'"In the midst of your glee,

You've no seen the last o' my bonnet and me!"'

Annot did not accompany this excited party; it might be that her

strength was unequal to it at such an hour and over such ground, or

it might be that she had not heart enough for it. There is no secret

of the latter, says a French writer, that our actions do not

disclose; and as Annot's heart seemed--well, Hester Maule cared not

then to analyze it; she was too disgusted to be angry.

But Annot, in all her selfish existence, had never before been, as

she thought, face to face with the most awful tragedy of

life--Death--and she shrank from the too probable necessity now.

So she remained behind with Mrs. Lindsay. She was not accustomed to

such rough weather and such exhibitions; she would get her poor

little feet wet; she was subject to catching cold; the morning was

full of rain and wind--it was still quite tempestuous--such was never

seen in London; so Maude and Hester swept away in contemptuous

silence, leaving her, well shawled and cowering close to the fire in

Mrs. Lindsay's luxurious boudoir, and thought no more about her, as

she remained motionless, silent, and with her eyes certainly full of

tears, fixed on the changing features of the glowing coals, and

seeing her hopes of Earlshaugh too probably drifting far away in

distance, now!

Could this calamity be real? was the ever-recurrent thought in the

mind of Hester. It seemed too fearful--too horrible to be true! Was

she dreaming, and the victim of a hideous nightmare, from which she

would awake?

With all their impatience and anxiety to get on, the keepers,

servants, and others stepped short in mistaken kindness or courtesy

to the two young ladies who accompanied them; but in an incredibly

short space of time the yawning Cleugh was reached, where the

shepherd's faithful dog was still on guard, bounding to and fro as

they approached, barking and yelping wildly; and with hearts that

beat high and painfully--every respiration seeming an absolute

spasm--Hester and Maude, who clung to Elliot's arm, reached the verge

of the chasm, and on looking down saw too surely--as something like a

wail escaped the lips of each--Roland lying at the bottom, still and

motionless, half in and half out of the burn's rocky bed, as he, by

the last efforts of his strength, had painfully dragged or wrenched

himself.

Exclamations of commiseration and pity were now heard on every hand.

'This way, lads--round by the knowe foot,' cried old Gavin Fowler.

'No--by the other way--the descent is easier!' said Elliot

authoritatively; but heedless of both suggestions, Hester Maule, like

the gallant girl as she was, took a path of her own, and went

plunging down the very face of the rocks, apparently!

A cry of terror escaped the more timid Maude, as Hester seemed to

stumble and fall, or sway aside, but rose again and, trembling,

sobbing violently, in breathless and mental agony, her delicate

hands, which were gloveless, now torn and bleeding by brambles and

thorns, her beautiful brown hair all unbound and rolling in a cascade

down her back, finding footing where others would have found none,

grasping grass and heather tufts; while the more wary were making a

circuit, she was the first to reach him, and kneel by his side!

Raising his head, she laid her cheek upon his cold brow, while her

tears fell hot and fast, and for a moment she felt that this helpless

creature was indeed her own, whom even Annot Drummond could not take

from her then.

How pale, cold, sodden, and senseless he seemed! With a moan of

horror that felt as if it came from her wildly beating heart, Hester

applied to his lips a tiny hunting flask of brandy with which she

had, with admirable foresight, supplied herself, and almost

unconsciously he imbibed a few drops.

'Roland!' said Hester, in an agonized voice.

A litter flicker of the eyelashes was the only response.

'Thank God, he lives!' exclaimed the girl.

'Annot, Annot!' he murmured.

'Always--always the idea of chat girl!' sighed Hester bitterly, and

she withdrew her face from its vicinity to his as Elliot, Gavin

Fowler, Spens, and others came splashing along the bed of the stream

from two directions, above and below the Cleugh, and ample succour

had come now.

What his injuries were, whether internal or external, or both, none

could know then. He seemed passive as a child, weak and utterly

exhausted. To all it was but too apparent that had succour been

longer of coming it had come too late; but now there was no lack of

loving and tender hands to bear him homeward, and into his father's

house.

'Annot's name was the first word that escaped his lips,' said Hester,

as with torn and tremulous fingers she knotted up her back hair into

a coil, and seemed on the verge of sinking, after her recent toil,

and under her present excitement and anxiety.

'That girl has been his evil genius--his weird--I think,' said Maude,

who never liked Annot, and mistrusted her; 'and he will never be free

so long as this weird hangs on him.'

'She, a Drummond! The town-bred coward!' exclaimed Hester, her dark

violet eyes flashing fire, while she coloured at her own girlish

energy.

'The sooner she changes it to some characteristic one like Popkins or

Slopkins the better,' said Maude; 'but I think she would prefer

Lindsay.'

'Telegraph to Edinburgh at once for Professor ---- and Dr. ----,'

said Mrs. Lindsay, naming two of the chief medical men (as Roland was

carried up to his room), and evincing an interest that surprised

Maude, and for which her brother, Mr. Hawkey Sharpe, would not have

thanked her.

'I'll see to that myself,' said Jack Elliot, betaking himself at once

to the stable-yard that he might ride to the nearest railway-station,

and meantime send on to Earlshaugh the best local aid that could be

obtained in hot haste.

Roland's injuries were serious undoubtedly, but not so much so as had

been feared at first.

These were a partial dislocation of the left thigh bone and a strain

of the right ankle, both of which bade fair to mar his marching for

many a day; with a general shock to the whole system consequent on

the fall (which, but for the turfy ledge of rock that broke it, would

have proved fatal) and the exposure to the elements for a whole

autumnal night of storm and rain. But with care and nursing, the

faculty--after pulling him about again and again till he was

well-nigh mad, after much tugging of their nether lips, as if in deep

thought, consultations over dry sherry and biscuit, and pocketing big

fees in an abstracted kind of manner--had no doubt, not the slightest

doubt, in fact, that with his naturally fine constitution he would

soon 'pull through.'

A crowd of people always hovered about the gate-lodges; women came

from their cottages, weavers, perhaps the last of their trade, from

their looms, and the ploughmen from their furrows to inquire after

the health of the young laird, for such these kindly folks of the

East Neuk deemed Roland still, for of the mysterious will they knew

little and cared less; horsemen came and went, and carriages, too,

the owners with their faces full of genuine anxiety, for the Lindsays

of Earlshaugh were much respected and well regarded as being among

the oldest proprietors in a county that has ever been rich in good

old historical families; and the veteran fox-hunting laird had been a

prime favourite in the field with all his compatriots. So again, as

before, during Jack Elliot's mishap, the bell of the _porte-cochère_

sent forth its clang in reply to many a kind inquiry.

And many agreed with Maude that none in Earlshaugh were likely to

forget the unfortunate shooting season of that particular year, as

this calamity seemed to surpass the last. It was grief upon grief,

like the classic piling of Pelion on Ossa.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

A TANGLED SKEIN.

Natheless the fair promises of the faculty, Roland Lindsay seemed to

hover between life and death for days. They were a time of watching,

hoping, and fearing, and hoping again, till every heart that loved

him grew sick with apprehension and anxiety.

At first he looked like one all but dead; the great charm of his face

lay in the earnest and thoughtful expression of his eyes, and in

their rich brown colour; both were gone now, and the clearly cut and

refined lips, that denoted a brave, gentle, and kindly nature, were

blue and drawn; and a slight sword cut upon the cheek, won at

Kashgate, looked rather livid just then.

He was exhausted, languid, and passive, but, at times, seemed to

awaken into quickened intelligence; then anon his mind would wander a

little, and the names of Hester and Annot were oddly mingled on his

feverish tongue.

But there was great joy when he became sensible of the perfume of

flowers--the sweetest from the conservatory--culled and arranged by

the loving hands of the former, in the vases that ornamented his

room, and when he fully recognised the latter in attendance upon him.

'My little wife--my child-wife that is to be,' he whispered, 'you

love me still, though I am all shattered in this fashion?'

Then Annot caressed his hand, and placed her cheek upon it.

Guests had all departed, the key was turned in the gun-room door; the

dogs were idle in their kennels, and only Elliot, Hester, and Annot

remained as visitors at Earlshaugh. The great house seemed very

silent now; but Roland, as strength and thought returned, was

thankful that the guests he had invited were gone. The difficulty of

their presence had been tided over without any unpleasantness (save

the affair of Elliot and Sharpe), and now he felt only a loathing of

his paternal home, with an intense longing to be gone--to get well

and strong--to keep well, and then go, he cared not where at first,

so that Annot was with him, and then back to the regiment as soon as

possible, even before his leave was ended.

Annot was now--unlike the Annot who cowered over the boudoir fire on

the morning when Roland was rescued--most effusive in her expressions

of regard and compassion, though she was perhaps the most useless

assistant a nurse could have in a sick room, the air of which 'so

oppressed her poor little head;' and thus she was secretly not

ill-pleased when her services there were firmly, but politely,

dispensed with by old Mrs. Drugget, the portly housekeeper, who had

nursed Roland and his dead brother many a time in their earlier

years, and now made herself, as of old, mistress of the situation.

Annot's bearing on the eventful morning referred to rankled in the

memory of Maude and Hester. They strove to dissemble and veil their

growing dislike to, and mistrust of, her under their old bearing and

cordiality of habit; but almost in vain, despite her winning,

clinging, and child-like ways and pretty tricks of manner. These

seemed to fall flatly now on ear and eye, and soon events were to

transpire with regard to that young lady which gave them cause for

much speculation, suspicion, and positive anger.

She was soon sharp enough to discover that there was a growing cloud

between them, and took the precaution of giving a hint thereof to

Roland. She was somewhat of a flirt, he knew very well; but there

was no one in the house to flirt with, now that Malcolm Skene and all

the others were gone; and he had consoled himself with the reflection

that she was devoted to him, and that her little flirtations had been

of a harmless nature, and the outcome of a spirit of fun and

_espièglerie_.

And if Hester and Maude were somewhat disposed to be severe on Annot

and reprehend this, he knew by experience that ladies who adopt the

_rôle_ of pleasing the opposite sex are rarely appreciated by their

fair sisters.

Mrs. Lindsay when she visited Roland from time to time, as he thought

to watch his progress towards health and departure, felt thankful,

though of course she gave no hint thereof, that her brother had at

least no active hand in the misfortune that had befallen him.

'The guests I somewhat intrusively invited here are all gone, Mrs.

Lindsay,' said he on one occasion, 'and I shall soon relieve you, I

hope, of the trouble my own presence gives you.'

'Captain Lindsay--Roland--do not talk so,' she replied, either

feeling some compunction then for the false position of them both, or

veiling her old constitutional dislike of him, which, Roland cared

not now. Calm, cold, self-contained, and self-possessed, Mrs.

Lindsay, as usual, was beautifully and tastefully dressed in rich

black material, with fine lace lappets over her thick, fair hair, and

setting off her colourless and lineless face. Her expression, we

have said elsewhere, was not ill-tempered but generally hard and

unsympathetic, and now it was softer than Roland had ever seen it,

and something of a smile like watery sunshine hovered about her thin

and firm lips, and to his surprise she even stroked his hair with

something of maternal kindness as she left him, pleased simply

because he had uttered some passing compliment to the effect that he

was glad to see her looking so well and in such good health. But she

and Maude were not, never were, and never could be, friends.

'I should like to know precisely the secret of this prison house,'

thought the observant Annot, as she saw this unusual action.

If a 'prison house,' it suited her tastes admirably; but she was

fated to learn some of the secrets thereof sooner perhaps than she

wished.

A month and more had passed now; Roland was becoming convalescent; he

could even enjoy a cigar or pipe with Jack Elliot, and had been

promoted from his bed to a couch in a cosy corner of his room; and he

felt that now the time had come when he ought to break to Annot the

true story of how monetary matters stood with him at Earlshaugh.

A heavy feeling gathered in his heart as this conviction forced

itself upon him--a sensation as of lead; yet he scorned to think that

he would have to cast himself upon her generosity, or ask for her

pity.

Compared with what might and ought to have been, his prospects now

were, in many respects, gloomy to look forward to; but he had fully

taken breathing time before breaking to her news which, he greatly

feared, might be testing and grievously disappointing.

But it would be unmanly to trifle longer with Annot, or dally with

their mutual fate. Yet how was he to preface the most unwelcome

intelligence that he was no longer--indeed, never was--laird of that

stately mansion and splendid estate, with all its fields, wood, and

waters?

How he dreaded the humiliating revelation--yet why so, if she loved

him?

Taking an opportunity when they were alone, and the two other girls,

escorted by Elliot, had gone for a 'spin' on horseback, he drew her

tenderly towards him, with one arm round her slender waist and one

hand clasping hers, which still had his engagement ring on a

baby-like finger, while gazing earnestly down into her sunny eyes,

which were uplifted to his with something of inquiry in them, he said:

'I have news, darling--terrible news to reveal to you at last.'

'News?' she repeated in a whisper.

'Of a nature, perhaps, beyond your imagining,' said he in a voice

that became low and husky despite its tenderness.

'What do you mean, Roland? You frighten me, dearest!'

He pressed her closer to him, and she felt that his hands were

trembling violently.

'Annot, I have a hundred times and more heard you say that you loved

me for myself, and would continue to love me were I poor--poor as Job

himself.'

'Of course I have often said so, and I do love you; but why do you

ask this question now? What has happened? Why are you so strange?'

she asked, changing colour and looking decidedly restless in eye and

manner. 'Are you not well? How cold your poor hands are, and how

they tremble!'

She drooped her fairy-like head, with all its wealth of shining

golden hair, upon his shoulder, and looked upward keenly, if

tenderly, into his downcast eyes.

'Has any new calamity occurred to distress you?'

'Nothing that is new--to me.'

'Why, then--

'It is this. I am not Lindsay of Earlshaugh--not the owner of the

estate I mean. I am poor, poor, Annot, yet not penniless; I have my

old allowance and my pay--but this beautiful estate is not mine.'

'Not yours?'

'No--not a foot of it--not a tree--not a stone!'

Her lips were firmly set, and the rose-leaf tint in her delicate

cheeks died away.

'Whose, then, is it?'

'My father--weakly--my father----'

'To whom did he leave the property?' she asked, lifting her head from

his shoulder and speaking with a sharpness he did not then notice;

'is it as I have heard whispered?'

'To my stepmother--yes. You knew of that--you suspected it, my

darling?' he added, with a sudden access of hope and joy--hope in her

unselfishness and purity of love.

She made no immediate reply.

'Is this unjust will tenable?' she asked, after a time.

'It is without flaw, Annot. My father left her all he possessed,

with the power of bequeathing it to whom she pleases, without

hindrance or restriction.'

'Cruel and infamous! And who, my poor Roland, is her heir?'

'That reptile, Hawkey Sharpe, I presume.'

Something between a gasping sigh and a nervous laugh escaped Annot,

who said, after a little pause, during which he regarded her fair

face with intense and yearning anxiety:

'I thought you as prosperous a gentleman as the Thane of Cawdor

himself; but this is terrible--terrible!'

And as she spoke there was something in her tone that jarred

painfully on his then sensitive and overstrung nerves.

Annot assured him of her unalterable love, whatever lay before

them--whatever happened or came to pass--was he not her own--her very

own! She wound her arms about his neck; she caressed him in her

sweet, and to all appearance, infantile way, striving to reassure

him; to soothe, console, and implant fresh confidence in his torn and

humbled heart; but with all this, there was a new and curious ring in

her voice--a want of something in its tone, and erelong in her eye

and manner, that stung him keenly and alarmed him.

What did this mean? Did she resent his supposed duplicity as to his

means and position? But he consoled himself that he would soon have

her away from Earlshaugh, with all its influences, associations, and

the false hopes and impressions it had given her, and then she would

be his own--his own indeed.

'How loving, how true, gentle, and good she is! Do I indeed deserve

such disinterested affection?' were his constant thoughts.

He disliked, however, to find that Annot had begun to cultivate the

friendship of Mrs. Lindsay--"Deb Sharpe" as she was uncompromisingly

called by Maude, who was always on most distant terms with that

personage; and to find that she was ever in or about her rooms, doing

little acts of daughter-like attention such as Maude, with all her

sweetness of disposition, had never accorded; even to fondling,

feeding, and washing her snarling pug Fifine; and Mrs. Lindsay, of

whom other ladies had always been rather shy, and towards whom they

had always comported themselves somewhat coldly and with that cutting

hauteur which even the best bred women can best assume, felt

correspondingly grateful to the little London beauty for her

friendship and recognition.

The splendour of the house, the richness of the ancient furniture and

appurtenances, the delicacies of the table, the attendance, the

comfortable profusion of everything, had been duly noted and duly

appreciated by Annot, and she felt that it was with sincere regret

she would quit the fleshpots of Earlshaugh.

More than once, when promenading about the corridors with the aid of

a stick, Roland had surprised her in tears.

'Tears--my darling--why--what!' he began.

'It is nothing,' she replied, with a little flush. 'I am oppressed,

I suppose, by the emptiness and size of this great house. I am such

an impressionable little thing you know, Roland.'

'We can't amend the size of the house,' said he, smiling, 'but a

cosier and a smaller one awaits us elsewhere, when you are my dear

little wife, and we quit this place, once so dear to me, as I never

thought to quit it in disgust--for ever!'

Seeing the varying moods of Annot, and the occasional petulance, even

coldness, with which she sometimes ventured to treat Roland now,

Hester, remembering that young lady's confidences with reference to

Mr. Bob Hoyle and other 'detrimentals,' her avowed passion for money,

and how a moneyed match was a necessity of her life, and knowing

Roland's changed position and fortunes--Hester, we say, was not slow

in putting 'two and two together,' to use a common adage, to the

detriment of Annot in her estimation.

'I would that I were a strong-minded woman,' said the latter

reproachfully, as she and Roland lingered one evening in a corridor

that was a veritable picture gallery (for there hung the Lindsays of

other days, as depicted by the brushes of the Jamesons, the Scougals,

De Medinas, Raeburns, and Watsons in the striking costumes of their

times), and Roland had been taking her a little to task for some of

her petulant remarks.

'A strong-minded woman,' he repeated. 'Nonsense! But why?'

'Then I should cease to annoy you, and join an Anglican Sisterhood,

to nurse the poor and all that sort of thing.'

She pouted prettily as she spoke--sweetly, with all her softest

dimples coming into play.

'Are you not perfectly happy, Annot?'

'Oh, yes--yes!' she exclaimed, and interlaced her fingers on his arm;

yet he eyed her moodily, and lovingly, ignorant of the secret source

of her discontent or disquietude.

'How can I take her to task,' thought he; 'already too! so fair, so

bright, with her hair like spun gold!'

He tried to catch and retain her loving glance, but the corners of

her pretty mouth were drooping, and her eyes of pale hazel looked

dreamily and vacantly out on the far extent of sunlit park and the

white fleecy clouds that floated above it; but he thought he read

that in her face which made him long for health and strength to take

her away from Earlshaugh to the new home he had now begun to picture,

and seldom a day passed now without something occuring to increase

this wish.

'Roland,' said Maude on one occasion, as she drove him out through

the pleasant lanes in her pretty pony phaeton, 'that odious creature

Hawkey Sharpe is still, I understand, hovering about here.'

'Bent on mischief, you think?'

'Too probably.'

'Well, I am powerless to prevent him. He is, you know, his sister's

factotum and now all but Laird of Earlshaugh.'

Though possessing no brilliant beauty, the face of the sunny-haired

Maude was one usually full of merriment, and capable of expressing

intense tenderness--one winning beyond all words; but it grew cloudy

and stern at the thought of 'these interlopers,' as she always called

them--Deborah Sharpe and her obnoxious brother.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE PRESENTIMENT.

Among her letters one morning--though her chief correspondent was her

father, the old Indian veteran at Merlwood, whose shaky caligraphy

there was no mistaking--there came one which gave Hester a species of

electric shock. It bore the postmarks 'Egypt' and 'Cairo,' with

stamps having the Pyramids and Sphinx's head thereon.

'From Malcolm Skene!' she said to herself; 'Malcolm Skene, and to

_me_!'

She hurried to her room that she might read it in solitude, for it

was impossible that she could fail to do so with deep interest after

all that Malcolm Skene had said to her, and the knowledge of all that

might have been--yea, yet perhaps might be; but the letter, dated

more than a month before at Cairo, simply began:--

'MY DEAR MISS MAULE,

'My excuse for writing to you,' he continued, 'is--and your pardon

must be accorded to me therefore--that I am ordered on a distant,

solitary, and perilous duty, from which I have, for the first time in

my life, a curious, yet solemn, presentiment that I shall never

return.

'This emotion may, please God, be a mistake; and I hope so, for my

dear mother's sake. It may only be that superstition which some deem

impiety; but we Skenes of Dunnimarle have had it in more than one

generation--a kind of foreknowledge of what was to happen to us, or

to be said or done by those we met. As some one has it, the map of

coming events is before us, and the spirit surveys it, and for the

time we are translated into another sphere, and re-act, perhaps,

foregone scenes. Be that as it may, the unbidden emotion of

presentiment seems to have some affinity to that phenomenon.'

'What a strange letter; and how unlike Malcolm--thoughtful and grave

as he is!' was Hester's idea.

'I read a few days ago that some calamity had occurred at Earlshaugh;

that my dear old friend and comrade Roland had met with an

accident--had _disappeared_! What did that mean? But too probably I

shall never learn now, and, as I have not again seen the matter

referred to in print, hope it may all be a canard--a mistake.

'You remember our last interview? Oh, Hester, while life remains to

me I shall never, never forget it? I think or hope you may care for

me now in pity as we are separated--or might learn to care for me at

a future time. Tell me to wait that time; if I return from my

mission, Hester, and I shall do so--yea, were it seven years, if you

wish it to be--if at the end of those seven years you would lay your

dear hand in mine and tell me that you would be my wife.

'The waiting would be hard; yet, if inspired by hope, I would undergo

it, Hester, and trust while life was spared to me. We are told that

"the meshes of our destiny are spinning every day," silently, deftly,

and we unconsciously aid in the spinning--scarcely knowing that--as

we stumble through the darkness to the everlasting light--the dangers

we have passed by, and the fires we have passed through, are all, in

different ways, the process that makes us godlike, strong and free.'

Much more followed that was a little abstruse, and then he seemed to

become loving and tender in spite of the manner in which he strove to

modify his letter.

'I depart in an hour, and tide what may, my last thoughts will ever

be of you--my last wish a prayer for your happiness! My life's

love--my life's love, for such you are still--once more farewell!

'MALCOLM SKENE.'

Certainly the gentle-hearted Hester could not but be moved by this

letter, coming as it did under all the circumstances from the writer

in a remote and perilous land. She looked at the date after perusing

the letter more than once, and her spirit sank with a dread of what

might have transpired since then.

She recalled vividly the face of Malcolm Skene, and his eyes, that

were soft yet full of power, more frequently grave than merry, and

his firm lips. He was a man whose features and bearing would have

been remarkable amid any group of men, and the first to arrest a

woman's attention and arouse her interest.

But as she re-read his expressions of love she shook her handsome

head slowly and gravely, and thought with Collins:

Friendship often ends in love,

But love in friendship never!'

To this letter a terrible sequel was close at hand. This she found

in the newspapers of the following day, and while her whole mind was

full of that remarkable and most unexpected missive to which she

could send no answer:

'Captain Malcolm Skene, who with a native guide quitted Cairo some

weeks ago, has not been heard of since he entered the Wady Faregh, at

a point more than ten Egyptian _shoni_ or thirty miles British,

beyond Memphis, which was not in his direct way.

'This energetic and distinguished young officer is the bearer of

despatches to the Egyptian Colonel commanding a Camel Battery and

Black Battalion near Dayer-el-Syrian, which district he certainly had

not reached when the latest intelligence came from that somewhat

desolate quarter.

'Doubts are now--when too late--entertained as to the fidelity of

Hassan Abdullah, his guide. A camel supposed to have been his has

been found dead of thirst in the desert, and as there have been some

dreadful sand-storms in that district, the greatest fears are

entertained at headquarters that Captain Skene has perished in the

wilderness--dying in the execution of his duty to his Queen and

country, as truly and as bravely as if he had met a soldier's death

in battle.'

The paper slipped from Hester's hands, and she sank forward till her

forehead rested on the sill of a window near which she sat. She knew

this paragraph meant too probably a terrible and unknown death, the

harrowing details of which might--nay, too surely, never would--be

revealed--death to one who had loved her but too well, and thus all

her soul became instinct with a tender and fearful interest in him.

'Poor Malcolm--poor Malcolm Skene!' she murmured again and again,

while her face, ashy white, was hidden in her hands.

Few women can fail to take a tender interest in the fate or future of

any man who has been _interested_ in them.

For a long time she sat still--nay, still as a statue, but for the

regular and slow rising and falling of the ribbons and lace at her

bosom, and the ruffling of her dark brown hair in the breeze that

came through the open window, kissing her white temples and cooling

her eyelids.

Then she recalled her father's strange and weird story of his

father's dream, vision, or presentiment, before the storming of

Jhansi, where the latter fell; and thought with wonder, could such

things be?

She confided the letter and its contents to her bosom friend Maude;

but she could not--for cogent reasons--bring herself to say a word on

the subject to Roland, whose mind, however, was full enough of the

newspaper report of his old friend's misfortune, or as he never

doubted now--evil fate!

CHAPTER XXXV.

LOST IN THE DESERT.

Natheless his somewhat gloomy letter to Hester Maule, Malcolm Skene,

though feeling to the fullest extent the influence of the

presentiment of evil therein referred to, was too young, and of too

elastic a nature, not to feel also a sense of ardour, enterprise, and

enthusiasm at the confidence reposed in him by his superiors. With

an inherent love of adventure and a certain recklessness of spirit,

he armed himself, mounted, and quitted his quarters at Cairo just

when the first red rays of the morning sun were tipping with light

the summit of the citadel or the apex of each distant pyramid, and

rode on his solitary way--solitary all save Hassan, the swarthy

Egyptian guide provided for him by the Quartermaster-General's

Department.

He had been chiefly selected for the duty in question--to bear

despatches to the _Amir-Ali_, or Colonel, commanding the Egyptian

force at Dayr-el-Syrian, in consequence of his proficiency in

Arabic--the most prevailing language of the country.

He and his guide were mounted on camels. Skene's was one of great

beauty, if an animal so ungainly can be said to possess it, with a

small head, short ears, and bending neck. Its tail was long, its

hoofs small, and it was swift of action. The rider was without

baggage; he wore his fighting kit of Khakee cloth and tropical helmet

with a pugaree. He had his sword and revolver, with goggles, and a

pocket compass for use if his guide in any way proved at fault.

Unnoticed he traversed the picturesque streets that lay between the

citadel and the gate that led by a straight road towards the castle

and gardens of Ghizeh, passing the groups and features incident to

Cairo: a lumbering train of British baggage waggons, escorted by our

soldiers in clay-coloured khakee with bayonets fixed; an Egyptian

officer in sky-blue uniform and red tarboosh 'tooling' along on a

circus-like Arab; a whole regiment of darkies, perhaps with rattling

drums and French bugles; strings of maimed, deformed, and blind

beggars; private carriages with outriders in Turkish costumes of

white muslin with gold embroideries, and bare-legged grooms; 'the

gallant, gray donkeys of which Cairo is so proud, and which the

Cairenes delight in naming after European celebrities, from Mrs.

Langtry to Lord Wolseley;' singers of Nubian and Arabian songs and

dealers in Syrian magic, all were left behind, and in the cool air of

the morning Malcolm Skene found himself ambling on his camel under

the shadows of the lebbek trees, with wading buffaloes and flocks of

herons on either side of the road as he skirted the plain where the

Pyramids stand--the Pyramids that mock Time, which mocks all things.

He was too familiar with them then to bestow on them more than a

passing glance, and rode forward on his somewhat lonely way. Hassan,

his guide, like a true Arab, uttered a mocking yell on seeing the

vast stony face of the Sphinx--an efrit--fired a pistol, and threw

stones at it, as at a devil, and then civilization was left behind.

Trusting to his guide Hassan, Skene was taken a few miles off his

direct route southward down the left bank of the Nile, and while

riding on, turning from time to time to converse with that personage,

who was a typical Fellah--very dark-skinned, with good teeth, black

and sparkling eyes, muscular of form, yet spare of habit, and clad

simply in loose blue cotton drawers with a blue tunic and red

tarboosh--it seemed that his face and voice were somehow not

unfamiliar to him.

But where, amid the thousands of low-class Fellaheen in Cairo, could

Malcolm Skene have seen the former or heard the latter? Never before

had he heard of Hassan Abdullah even by name. But 'strange it is,

for how many days and weeks we may be haunted by a _likeness_ before

we know what it is that is gladdening us with sweet recollections, or

vexing us with some association we hoped to have left behind.'

Memphis, with its ruins and mounds, in the midst of which stand the

Arab hamlets of Sokkara and Mitraheny, was traversed with some

difficulty, though the site is now chiefly occupied by waste and

marshes that reach to the sand-hills on the edge of the desert; but

from Abusir all round to the west and south, for miles, Skene and his

guide found themselves stepping from grave to grave amid bones and

fragments of mummy cloth--the remains of that wondrous necropolis

which, according to Strabo, extended half a day's journey each way

from the great city of Central Egypt.

'Ugh!' muttered Malcolm Skene, as he guided the steps of his camel

and lighted more than one long havannah, 'this is anything but

lively! What a dismal scene!'

'The work of the Pharaohs,' said Hassan, for to them everything is

attributed by the Fellaheen, who suppose they lived about three

hundred years ago.

But Memphis was ere long left in his rear, and night was at hand,

when--according to Hassan Abdullah's statement, on computation of

distance--they should reach and halt at certain wells, about ten

_shoni_ distant therefrom, in the direct line to the Wady Faregh.

Memphis was, we say, left behind, and the two rode swiftly on. His

former thoughts recurring to him, Malcolm Skene, checking his camel

to let that of his guide come abreast of him, said to the latter:

'Your face is singularly familiar to me. Did we ever meet in Cairo?'

Hassan grinned and showed all his white teeth, but made no reply.

'Your face _has_ some strange mystery for me,' resumed Skene, with

growing wonder, yet fearing he might make the man think he possessed

the evil eye; 'it seems a face known to me--the face of the dead in

the garb of the living.'

'And it is so, _Yusbashi_ (captain), so far as _you_ are concerned,'

was the strange reply of the Fellah as his black eyes flashed.

'What do you mean?'

'We met in the roulette saloon of Pietro Girolamo.'

'Right! I remember now; you are one of the fellows I fought with. I

thought you were killed in that row!'

'Nearly so I was, and by _you_.'

This was an awkward discovery.

'But you escaped?'

'Yes; thanks to an amulet I wear--a verse of the Koran bound round my

left arm.'

To trust such a rascal as Skene now supposed this fellow must be was

full of peril. To return and seek another guide, when he had

proceeded so far upon his way, would argue timidity, and tempt the

'chaff' of the more heedless spirits of the mess; thus it was not to

be thought of.

He could but continue his journey with his despatches, and watch well

every movement of his guide; but to have as such one of the ruffians

and bullies of Pietro Girolamo was certainly an unpleasant

discovery--one with whom he had already that which in these parts of

the world is termed a _blood feud_, seemed to be the first instalment

of his gloomy presentiment.

Hassan Abdullah had been--he could not conceive how or why--chosen or

recommended as a guide by those in authority; and if false, or

disposed to be so, he veiled it under an elaborate bearing of

servility and attention to every wish and hint of Skene. Thinking

that he could not make any better of the situation now, Malcolm was

fain to accept that bearing for what it might be worth, and, to veil

his mistrust, adopted a new tone with Hassan, and instead of

listening to directions from him, began to give orders instead. But,

ignorant as he was of the route, this system could not long be

pursued.

As he rode on he thought of Hester Maule, and how she would view or

consider his letter. Would she answer it? He scarcely thought she

would do so--nay, became certain she would not. Under the

circumstances in which they had parted after that interview in the

conservatory at Earlshaugh, and with the grim presentiment then

haunting him, it was beseeming enough in him perhaps to have written

as he did to her; but not for her to write him in reply unless she

meant to hold out hopes that might never be realized.

What amount of ground they had traversed when the sun verged westward

Malcolm scarcely knew, as the way had been most devious, rough, and

apparently, to judge of the guide's indecision more than once, very

uncertain; but the former judged that it could not have been more

than thirty miles from Memphis as the crow flies.

Dhurra reeds, date, and cotton-trees had long since been left behind,

and before the camel-riders stretched a pale yellow waste of sand,

strewed in places by glistening pebbles. Malcolm Skene thought they

were now entering the lower end of the Wady Faregh, between El Benat

and the Wady Rosseh, and on consulting his pocket-compass supposed

the Dayr Macarius Convent must be right in his front, but distant

many miles, and the post of Dayr-el-Syrian, for which he was bound,

must be about ten miles further on; but Hassan Abdullah knew better;

and when near sunset that individual dismounted and spread his dirty

little square carpet whereon to say his orisons, with his face

towards Mecca, his head bowed, his beads in his dingy hands, and his

cunning eyes half closed. None would have thought that a Mussulman

apparently so pious had only hate and perfidy in his heart for the

trusting but accursed infidel, or _Frenchi_, as he called Skene--the

general name in Egypt for all Europeans--as the latter seated himself

by the side of a low wall half buried in the drifted sand--the

fragment of some B.C. edifice--and partook of his frugal meat, supper

and dinner combined.

Far, far away in the distance Memphis and the Valley of the Nile were

lost in haze and obscurity; westward the sun, like a ball of fire--a

blood-red disc of enormous proportions--shorn of every ray, was

setting amid a sky of gold, crimson, and soft apple-green, all

blending through each other, yet with light strong enough to send far

along the waste they had traversed the shadows of the two camels of

Skene and of Hassan.

The former recalled with a grim smile Moore's ballad:

'Fly to the desert, fly with me!'

and thought the desert looked far from inviting.

His only table appurtenance was the jack-knife hung from his neck by

a lanyard, and as issued to all ranks of our troops in Egypt, and

with that he cut his sandwiches, now dry indeed by this time, and

opened a tiny tin of preserved meat, which he washed down by a

mouthful from the hunting-flask, carried in his haversack.

As he sat alone eating his frugal meal, which from religious scruples

Hassan declined to share with him--or indeed anything save a

cigar--Skene, though neither a sybarite nor a gourmand, could not

help thinking regretfully of the regimental mess-table in the citadel

of Cairo, possessing, like other such tables, all the ease of a

kindly family circle, without its probable dulness; of the dressing

bugle, and the merry drums and fifes playing the 'Roast Beef of Old

England;' the quiet weed after dinner, a stroke at billiards, a

rubber of short whist while holding good cards; and just then

civilization and all the good things of this earth seemed very far

off indeed!

When he and Hassan started again to reach the wells--where they were

to procure water for themselves and their camels, and were to bivouac

for the night, no trace of these could be found, though the

travellers wandered several miles in different directions; and, as

the sun set with tropical rapidity, Skene--his water-bottle

completely empty--with his field-glass swept the horizon in vain for

a sight of those gum-trees which were said to indicate the locality

of the springs in question; and then he began more than ever to

mistrust the good faith, if not the knowledge, of Hassan Abdullah.

So far as their camels were concerned, Skene had no cause as yet for

any anxiety, as these animals, besides the four stomachs which all

ruminating quadrupeds possess, have a fifth, which serves as a

reservoir for carrying a supply of water in the parched and sandy

deserts they are so often obliged to traverse.

A well--one unknown to Hassan, apparently--they certainly did come

upon unexpectedly, but, alas! it was dry. Malcolm Skene looked

thirstily at the white stones that lined or formed it, glistening in

the light of the uprisen moon, and with his tongue parched and lips

hard and baked he thought tantalizingly of brooks of cool and limpid

water, of iced champagne and bitter beer!

He haltered his camel, looked to his arms and laid them half under

him, and resting his head against the saddle of his animal, strove to

court sleep, against the labours of the morrow, thinking the while

that the labours of Sisyphus were almost a joke to the toil of the

duty he had undertaken.

At a little distance on the other side of the dried-up fountain,

Hassan, whom he watched closely for a time, took his repose in a

similar fashion.

The night in the desert was not altogether unpleasant, for that

rarefied clearness of sky which renders the heat of the sun so

intolerable by day, makes the sky of night surpassingly beautiful,

and that is the time when, if he can, the traveller should really

make his way over the sandy waste.

With early morning, and while the red sun was yet below the hazy

horizon, came full awakening after a somewhat restless night, broken

by periods of watchfulness and anxiety, and tantalized by dreams of

flowing and sparkling water, which left the pangs of growing thirst

keener than ever.

Hassan, however, seemed 'fresh as a daisy,' having, as Malcolm

strongly suspected, some secret store of his own selfishly concealed

about him.

They gave their camels a feed of their favourite food, the twigs of

some thorny mimosa that grew near the dried-up well--scanty herbage

of the desert--and then Malcolm, who distrusted the skill or fealty,

or both, of Hassan Abdullah, while the latter was kneeling on his

prayer carpet, turned to consult his pocket compass with reference to

the direction in which to steer through the waste of sand which now

spread in every direction around them.

It was gone!

Nervously, with fingers that trembled in their haste, he searched his

haversack, turning out its few contents again and again, and cast

keen glances all around where he had been overnight, but no sign or

trace of that invaluable instrument, on which too probably his life

depended, was there!

Fiercely he turned to Hassan, then just ending his morning prayer and

folding up his carpet, suspecting that the soft and swift-handed

Egyptian must have filched it from him during sleep--yet he had felt

so wakeful that such could scarcely be the case.

'My compass!' he exclaimed.

'What of it, _Yusbashi_?'

'Have you seen it?'

'I--not I; and if I did, do you think I would touch it?'

'It is _ifrit_--the work of the devil--an affair of which I, as a

true Mussulman, can know nothing.'

'But how about the way to go now?' said Malcolm Skene in genuine

perplexity and alarm, looking all around the vicinity of the stony

hole, called a well, for the twentieth time.

'The _Frenchi_ will be told all of the way that his servant knows,'

replied Hassan with a profound salaam, while bending his head to hide

the leer of his stealthy and glittering eyes.

Skene thought for a moment. Should he take this fellow at his word;

threaten him with death if he did not produce the pocket compass, or

knock him down with the butt-end of his pistol and then search his

pockets?

An open quarrel was to be avoided. Skene felt himself to be a good

deal, if not wholly, at the fellow's mercy. The latter could only

delude him so far, at the risk of perilling himself; but he might, on

the other hand, lure and betray him into the hands of the enemy,

several of whom, under a leader named Sheikh Moussa Abu Hagil, were

hovering on the skirts of the desert in various directions--a man

known to have been a faithful adherent and kinsmen of the captive

Zebehr Pasha.

Nothing seemed to remain for Skene but to accept as before the

guidance of Hassan Abdullah, so, after the latter had breakfasted on

a few dates and the former on a simple ration from his haversack,

once more they headed their course into what seemed to be an endless

and markless waste of sand.

Apart from the bodily pangs of thirst, anger, doubt, and anxiety were

gathering in the mind of Malcolm; but he sternly resolved that the

moment he became assured of Hassan Abdullah deluding or betraying him

he would shoot that copper-coloured individual dead, as if he were a

reptile or a wild beast. And Hassan no doubt knew quite enough of

life in his own country to be aware that he rode on with his life in

his hands.

So another night and day passed away.

And now, as we have referred to the desert here and elsewhere in the

Soudan, it may seem the time to give a description of what such a

waste is, and the scene that now spread before the anxious and

bloodshot eyes of Malcolm Skene; for it has been justly said that he

who has never travelled through such a place can form no idea of a

locality so wondrous--one in which all the ordinary conditions of

human life undergo a complete change.

Once away from the valley of the Nile, all between the fourteenth

degree and the shore of the Mediterranean, a tract of more than eight

hundred thousand square miles _is desert_, treeless, waterless,

without streams or rivulets, and almost without wells, which, when

they exist, are scanty, few, and far apart. 'The first thing after

reaching a well,' says a recent writer, 'is to ascertain the quantity

and quality of its water. As to the former, it may have been

exhausted by a preceding caravan, and hours may be required for a new

supply to ooze in again. The quality of the desert water is

generally bad, the exception being when it becomes worse, though long

custom enables the Bedouins to drink water so brackish as to be

intolerable to all except themselves and their flocks. Well do I

remember how at each well the first skinful was tasted all round as

epicures sip rare wines. Great was the joy if it was pronounced

_moya helwa_, "sweet water;" but if the Bedouins said _moosh tayib_,

"not good," we might be sure it was a solution of Epsom salts.'

The desert now traversed by Skene was composed of coarse sand,

abounding in some places with shells, pebbles, and a species of salt.

In some parts the soil was shifting, and so soft that the feet--even

of his camel--sank into it at every step; at others it was hard as

beaten ground. Here and there grew a few patches of prickly plants,

such as he remembered to have seen in botanic gardens at home, with

small hillocks of drifted sand gathered round them; and as he rode on

he felt as if he had about him the awful sensations of vastness,

silence, and the sublimity of a calm and waveless ocean--but an ocean

of sand, arid, and gloomy, dispiriting and suggestive of death--but

to the European only; as the Bedouins, whose native soil it is, are,

beyond all other nations and races, gay and cheerful.

During August and September the winds in Egypt retain a northerly

direction, and the weather is generally moderate; but Malcolm Skene

was in the desert now, and under the peculiar influences of that

peculiar region.

Then at times is to be encountered the mirage, or Spirit of the

Desert, as the Arabs call it, when the eyes of the wanderer there are

deluded by the seeming motion of distant waves; of tall and graceful

palms tossing feathery leaves in the distance, when only the

sun-scorched sand is lying, mocking him with the false show of what

his soul longs for, and his overheated brain depicts in glowing

colours.

Riding mechanically on--uncomfortably, too, all unused as he was to

the strange ambling action of a camel--oppressed by thirst which he

could see no means of quenching, and knowing not when he might be

able to do so--oppressed, too, by the glare of a cloudless sun

growing hotter and hotter--more mighty than ever it seemed to be

before--Malcolm Skene was soon to become conscious that the sense of

vision was not the only one by which the mysterious desert mocks its

sojourner with fantastic tricks; and once he became sensible of that

strange and bewildering phenomena referred to by the author of

'Eothen' in his experiences of Eastern travel.

He seemed, overpowered by the heat, to fall slowly asleep--was it for

moments or minutes?--he knew not; but he seemed also to be suddenly

awakened by the familiar but far-off sounds of drums beating, to the

wailing of a bagpipe playing 'The March of Lochiel,' as he had often

heard it played by the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders, in the

citadel of Cairo.

He started and listened, his first idea being naturally that he was

partly under the power of a dream; but it seemed as if minutes passed

ere these sounds, in steady marching cadence, became fainter and then

died away.

Utterly bewildered, he was quite awake now. Under the same

influence, and in the same place, it was the bells of his native

village that were heard by the writer referred to, and who says: 'I

attribute the effect to the great heat of the sun, the perfect

dryness of the clear air through which I moved, and the deep

stillness of all around me. It seemed to me that these causes, by

occasioning a great tension and susceptibility of the hearing organs,

rendered them liable to tingle under the passing touch of some new

memory that must have swept across my brain in a moment of sleep.'

And so doubtless it was with Malcolm Skene, who, sunk in thought and

lassitude, was pondering deeply over the strange dream--if dream it

was--when he was roused by the voice of Hassan Abdullah, as it

amounted to something like a shriek.

'The _Zobisha_--the _Zobisha_!' he exclaimed, with a terror that was

too genuine to be affected in any way.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

ALONE!

It was about noon, now, and with a start, roused from his day-dream

and half-apathy, Malcolm Skene looked about him and saw that he had

then to face one of the most appalling, yet sublime, sights of the

desert--a sand-storm--at that season when the Egyptian winds approach

the Southern tropic, and they are more variable and tempestuous than

during any other season of the year--a state in which they remain

till February.

Distant about two miles, he suddenly saw the _Zobisha_, as Hassan

called it--several lofty pillars of sand travelling over the waste

with wondrous swiftness. The tallest was vertical, the others seemed

to lean towards it, and, at the bases of all, the sand rose as if

lashed by a whirlwind into a raging sea, amid which tough mimosa

bushes were uprooted and swept away like feathers.

The whirlwind subsided, but the mighty cloud of sand and small

pebbles which it had raised high in the darkened heavens, almost to

the zenith, continued to tower before the two sojourners in the

desert for more than an hour--purple, dun, and yellow in hue at

times, and anon all blended together.

Brave though he was, a nameless dread such as he had never felt

before possessed the soul of Skene at a sight so unusual and

terrific; and there flashed upon his mind the recollection of his

letter to Hester, and how true his presentiment seemed to be proving

now, for he felt on the verge of suffocation.

Hassan Abdullah, who in his prayers usually sighed for the Paradise

of the Prophet, with his seventy houris awaiting him in their couches

of hollow pearl, the fruits of the Tree of Toaba, and springs of

unlimited lemonade, now prayed only for his own safety, while both

their camels forgot their usual docility, and became well nigh

unmanageable with terror.

The air was full of impalpable dust. To avoid suffocation or

blindness therefrom, Skene dismounted, tied his gauze pugaree tightly

over his face, and placing his camel between him and the skirt of the

blast, which now developed into a wind-storm, sweeping the column of

sand with wondrous speed before it, stooped his head close to the

saddle and held on to a stirrup-leather.

On came the wind-storm, and before he had time to think, to express

wonder to Hassan as to what it could be, the tornado swept over the

desert, carrying before it mimosa bushes and cacti, clouds of shining

pebbles, the withered fragments of an old gum-tree, and the white

bones of a dead camel.

How his animal withstood the sharp and sweeping blast that darkened

all around them, Malcolm Skene knew not; but he found his hands torn

from the stirrup-leather, and himself flung furiously and helplessly

amid the sand, which half covered him.

After a time, gasping, with his throat, nostrils, and ears full of

dust, he struggled to his feet and looked around him, and saw,

already far distant, the sand-cloud borne away by the mighty wind,

then in its wild career to some other quarter of the desert.

Above him the sky was again cloudless; the air all still and clear;

the awful and angry rush of the wind-storm was past.

But where was Hassan Abdullah?

A speck vanishing away in the far distance showed but too plainly

where he had gone with all the speed his camel could achieve--a

natural swiftness now accelerated by the extremity of fear; and in

another minute even that moving speck disappeared, and Malcolm Skene

found himself alone--guideless and ignorant of which way to turn his

steps in the appalling solitude of the desert.

What was he to do now?

Follow in the route Hassan had taken, and which that wily personage

no doubt knew led to some haunt of men, or abode of such civilization

as existed there?

Even that he could not do. The horizon showed no point to indicate

where the speck he knew to be Hassan and his camel had vanished.

Malcolm's alarm for the future exceeded his just anger and

indignation for the present at this sudden and unexpected desertion;

but action of some kind became necessary, and though apparently he

could not be worse off than where he was, every step he took might be

leading further from the path he should pursue to

Dayr-el-Syrian--further from a well or succour, and nearer to 'dusty

death.'

After glancing at the trappings of his camel, he remounted and rode

forward slowly, fain to suck for a moment even a hot pebble of the

desert in hope to produce a little moisture in his mouth, while

consulting a small pocket map he possessed.

If Hassan had not misled him wilfully, and they had not overshot the

proper distance, to judge by the position of the sun, he supposed

that Dayr-el-Syrian, where the Amir-Ali's command was encamped,

should be somewhere on his right; but, if so, ere this he should have

come to the sequestered Macarius Convent--so called from St. Macarius

the Elder, of Egypt, a shepherd of the fourth century, who (so runs

the story) dwelt for sixty years in the desert; but of that edifice

he saw no sign or vestige, and he saw, by the same map, that if he

had _passed_ it and gone through the extreme end of the Wady Faregh,

then before him must lie the 'Petrified Forest,' of which he knew

nothing, and of which he had never heard before, lying apparently

more than a hundred miles westward of Cairo--a distance which it

seemed almost incredible he had so nearly travelled, and the very

name of which was suggestive of something of horror and dismay.

Again and again, with hollow and haggard eyes, he swept the desert

through his field-glass, seeking to note a bush or tree that might

indicate where a fountain lay; but in vain, and the pangs of thirst

increased till they became gnawing and maddening.

He would certainly die soon!

More than once he looked, too, in the desperate hope of seeing

Abdullah returning; but equally in vain.

As he rode on under the scorching sun--scorching even while

setting--with his head nodding on his breast through weakness, there

came before him day-dreams of runnels of gushing water--their very

sound seemed to be in his ears--of 'a wee burnie wimpling under the

lang yellow broom,' in the shady woods of Dunnimarle, and the rustle

of their leaves seemed overhead!

The poor old mother there, to whom he was as the apple of her

eye--Hester too--would never know of all he endured and would have to

endure inexorably till the bitter end came; and just then, more than

even his mother, dove-eyed Hester Maule seemed all the world to him!

Well--'Time and the hour run through the roughest day.'

With that appreciation of trifles peculiar to us all in moments of

dire perplexity or intense excitement, he was remarking the vast

length of shadow thrown across the level waste, by the light of the

now nearly level sun--the shadow of himself and his camel--when a

sudden acceleration in the speed of the latter attracted his

attention; it began to glide over the desert sand more swiftly than

ever, guided by some instinct implanted in it by nature, and in a few

minutes it brought him to a little spot of green--an oasis--amid

which, fenced round by stones and large pebbles, lay a pool of water!

'A well--a well--water--water at last!' exclaimed Skene with a prayer

on his lips, as he threw himself beside it. Forgetting thoughts of

all and everything, past and future, in the mingled agony and joy of

the present, he crawled towards it on hands and knees, tossed aside

his tropical helmet and drank of it deeply, thirstily, greedily,

laving his face and hands in it often, and he was not sure that his

tears did not mingle with the water as he did so--tears of gratitude.

By nature and its physical formation, less athirst than his rider,

the camel drank of the pool too, but scantily. Skene then filled his

water-bottle with the precious liquid, as if he feared the well might

dry up, even as he watched it; and then (after tethering his camel)

he stretched himself beside it, and, utterly worn out by all he had

undergone in mind and body, fell into a deep and dreamless slumber,

undisturbed alike by flies or mosquitoes.

How long he slept thus he knew not, but day had not broken, and the

waning moon was shining brightly when he awoke. He was already too

much of a soldier to feel surprise on awaking in a strange bed or

place; but some of his surroundings there were sufficiently strange

to startle him into instant wakefulness and activity.

'It is the Frenchi--the Infidel!' he heard the voice of Hassan

exclaim, and he found himself surrounded by a crowd of armed Arabs,

foremost among whom stood Pietro Girolamo--the rascally Girolamo of

Cairo, who, having made even that city too hot to hold him, had, for

the time, sought refuge with the denizens of the desert.

Partly clad and partly nude, with plaited hair, forms of bronze

colour, their teeth and eyes gleaming bright as the swords and spears

with which they were armed, Malcolm Skene saw some twenty or more

Soudanese warriors, on foot or camel-back, around him, and gave

himself up for lost indeed, as his sword and revolver were

immediately torn from him.

Uttering a yell, Girolamo was rushing upon him with upraised knife,

when he was roughly thrust back by a tall and towering Arab, who

dealt him a sharp blow with the butt-end of his Remington rifle--so

much as to say, 'I command here.'

Clearly seen and defined in the light of a moon which was silvery,

yet brilliant as that of day, Skene saw before him in this personage

an Arab of the Arabs.

His bronzed face was nearly black by nature and exposure to the

scorching tropical sun. His arms, legs, and neck were bare, and

their muscles stood forth like whipcord. His nose was somewhat

hawk-like; his eyes were keen as those of a mountain eagle, and his

shark-like teeth were white as ivory, in contrast to the skin of his

leathern visage.

His hair, which flowed under a steel cap furnished with a nasal bar,

was black as night, and shone with an unguent made from crocodile fat

by the fishers of Dongola; and save for his shirt of Dharfour steel

and Mahdi tunic and trousers, he looked like a mummy of the Pharaohs

resuscitated and inspired by a devil.

His arms were a long cross-hilted sword, a dagger, and a Remington

rifle.

Such was the Sheikh Moussa Abu Hagil, kinsman of Zebehr Pasha--like

Zebehr, almost the last of the great slave-dealers--and whose

prisoner Malcolm Skene now found himself--whether for good or for

evil, he could not foresee; but his heart too painfully foreboded the

_latter_!

'Sheikh,' said he, 'you will consider me as a prisoner of war, I

trust?'

'We shall see--there are things that are as bad as death, and yet are

not death,' was the grim and enigmatical reply of Moussa Abu Hagil,

which Skene knew referred to torture or mutilation, by having his

hands struck off, like those of some prisoners he had seen.

For many a day after, the friends of Malcolm Skene searched the

public prints in vain for further tidings of him than we have given

three chapters back.

Applications to the War Office and telegrams to headquarters at Cairo

were alike unavailing, and received only the same cold, stereotyped

answer--that nothing was known of the fate of Captain Malcolm Skene

but what the news papers contained.

His supposed fate and story were deemed as parallel with the Palmer

tragedy on the shore of the Red Sea; but more especially with that of

his countryman, Captain Gordon, an enthusiastic soldier, who, missing

Colonel Burnaby's party which he was to accompany with the desert

column, perished in the wilderness, far from the Gakdul track--but

whether at the hands of the Arabs, or by the horrors of thirst, was

never known.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE FIRST QUARREL.

In his anxiety to leave Earlshaugh, Roland writhed under his

convalescence, thus retarding in no small degree his complete

recovery, and keeping him chained to a sofa in his sitting-room, when

otherwise he might have been abroad in the grounds, though the brown

foliage and the falling leaves, with the piping of the autumn winds,

were not calculated much to raise the spirits of the ailing.

The partridges had become wild; the pheasants were still in splendid

order, and cub-hunting was beginning in those districts where it was

in vogue; but no one in Earlshaugh House thought of any of these, yet

cub-hunting, as an earnest of the coming season, had been one of

Roland Lindsay's delights.

However, he had other more serious and bitter things to think of now;

and for cub-hunting or fox-hunting, never again would he set out from

Earlshaugh and feel the joyous enthusiasm roused by seeing the hounds

'feathering' down a furrowed field with all their heads in the air,

or find himself crossing the fertile and breezy Howe of Fife, from

meadow to meadow, and field to field, over burns, hedges, and

five-foot drystone dykes, then standing erect in his stirrups and

galloping as if for life after the streaming pack, as they swept over

'the Muirs of Fife' which merge in the rich and extensive plains of

the famous East Neuk.

Hunt he might elsewhere in the future, but never again where he and

his fathers before him had hunted for generations, though Mr. Hawkey

Sharpe was then actually doing so, and with horses from 'his

sister's' stables at Earlshaugh!

During this period of convalescence and enforced idleness Roland

became conscious of a kind of change--subtle and undefinable--in

Annot. She--in a spirit of maidenly reserve--was apparently in no

hurry for the completion of arrangements about their marriage.

She left all these _pro tem._ in the hands of 'mamma' in South

Belgravia; and the old lady's letters--changed in tone--were full of

suggested delays, doubts, and difficulties in finally fixing a period

to her daughter's engagement with Roland; the said letters, of

course, bearing on the all-important matter of settlements, which--as

circumstances now stood at Earlshaugh--he was utterly at a loss how

to make without the advice, more than ever, of the family agent, old

Mr. M'Wadsett of Thistle Court.

Meanwhile, full of themselves and their own affairs, and of their

marriage, which was now fixed for an early day, and before Jack

Elliot's return to Egypt, Maude and the latter were less observant

than Hester of what transpired at Earlshaugh during Roland's

convalescence.

Attended by old Buckle, Annot had gone to see the hounds throw off,

and in following the field for some little way contrived to lose her

venerable groom, whom no doubt she deemed a bore; and while he was

searching for her hopelessly over a Fifeshire muir she came home to

one of the park gates attended by a gentleman in hunting costume,

with whom she seemed on pretty intimate terms--a circumstance which,

when mentioned, she laughingly explained away.

But at a subsequent period she was seen by Maude and Hester riding in

the park with one supposed to be the same stranger, but at a

considerable distance.

The two girls could see that the pair were going slowly

together--perhaps their cattle were tired, but, as Maude said, that

was no reason why they should ride so near each other that his right

hand could rest on her saddle-bow.

'Who is he? I don't like this,' said Maude.

But Hester remained silent and full of her own thoughts.

Other meetings between these two became whispered about, rather

intangibly, however, and then rumour gave the gentleman the name of

Hoyle.

'Hoyle?' thought Hester, and she remembered Annot's confidence about

her Belgravian admirer, 'the Detrimental' Bob Hoyle.

Annot blushed deeply and painfully with a suffusion that dyed her

snowy neck and face to the temples, and which was some time in

passing away, when questioned on this matter by Maude, who she knew

mistrusted her, and falteringly she asked:

'How did you learn his name?'

'It dropped from you incidentally when speaking to Elliot.'

'Did it?' said she, with a pallid lip.

'Yes, when hunting, at a house in the neighbourhood.'

'I--I know no one--I mean no harm--and Roland cannot ride to hounds

just now,' urged Annot, a little piteously, and adopting her

child-like manner.

'Then neither should you, Annot.'

'I will do so no more, Maude--and I give you my word,' she added

emphatically, and with an air of perfect candour, 'that I shall never

again see Mr. Hoyle!'

Then Maude kissed her, but, as she did so, it scarcely required so

close an observer as Hester to detect the actual dislike--all sweet

and lovely as her face was--that lurked under her cousin's affected

cordiality.

But the latter's indignation returned when the pledge was broken.

Deeming all this most unfair to Roland, his sunny-haired sister

consulted with Hester, but that young lady nervously declined to

involve herself in the matter, though Roland nearly took the

initiative one day (when Hester was arranging some fresh flowers in

his room) with reference to Annot's now frequent absences and seeming

neglect of him.

'Does the dear girl shrink from me, Hester,' said he, 'because I am

pale and thin--wasted and feeble--after that cursed accident?'

'Surely not, Roland!'

'It seems very like it, by Jove!' he grumbled almost to himself.

In the dark violet eyes of Hester there shone at that moment, as she

bent over the flower-vases, a strange light--the light that is born

of mingled anger and love.

Maude thought it very strange that in all reports of the meets,

hunting and county packs, etc., the name of Mr. Hoyle never appeared

among others, nor were her suspicions allayed by the idea of Jack

Elliot, that 'he was probably a duffer whose name was not worth

mentioning.'

But gossip was busy, and Roland's loving and tender sister's

complaints of Annot seemed to become the echo of his own secret and

growing thoughts, which rose unpleasantly now on Annot's protracted

absences from his society, and a new and undefinable something in her

manner that, in short, he did not like.

The half-uttered hints of Maude--uttered painfully and reluctantly,

trembling lest she should become a mischief-maker--stung him deeply,

more deeply than he cared to admit.

'What has Annot done now?' he asked on one occasion, tossing on his

sofa and flinging away a half-smoked cigar. 'It seems to me that if

a woman is popular with our sex she becomes intensely the reverse

with her own.'

'Roland,' urged Maude, 'you are unnecessarily severe, on me at least.'

'Well--perhaps the atmosphere of this place is corrupting her; I

don't wonder if it is so; we live here in one of deceit,' said he

bitterly. 'Poor little Maude,' he added more gently, 'home is no

longer home to you now.'

'I shall soon have another,' said Maude, with brightness dancing in

her eyes of forget-me-not blue.

'Bui I must have this matter out with Annot--ask her to come to me.'

And when Annot came, with all her strange and flower-like fairness of

colour and willowy grace, how fragile, soft, and _petite_ she looked,

with her minute little face and wealth of golden hair, her bright

inquiring eyes, their expression just then having something of alarm

mingled with coyness in them!

How could he be angry with her? What was he to say--how to begin?

We say there was alarm in her expression, for she saw near Roland's

hand his powerful field-glasses, with which he was in the habit of

amusing himself in viewing the far stretch of country extending away

to the distant hills. He could also view the park, which was much

nearer.

She knew not _whom_ he might have seen there, and the little colour

she had died away.

'What is it, Roland?' she asked; 'you wish to speak with me.'

How terrible it is, says someone, to confront direct and apparently

frank people! 'To state in precise terms the offences of all those

who incur our displeasure would occasion a good deal of humming and

hawing, and, it is to be feared, invention on the part of most of us

in the course of twelve months. We have wrought ourselves up to the

pitch of a very pretty quarrel, and it is dreadfully embarrassing to

be called upon to state our grounds for it.'

So it was with Roland. He had worked himself up to a point which he

failed just then to sustain, while in her manner there was a curious

mixture of the caressing and the defiant; but when she tried some of

her infantile and clinging ways, Roland became cold and hard in the

expression of his mouth and eyes, though she hastened to adjust the

sofa-cushion on which his head reclined.

'You wish to speak with me, Maude said,' remarked Annot, in a low

voice, while looking down and somewhat nervously adjusting a flower

in her girdle.

Roland did not reply at once. She eyed him furtively, and then

laughed.

'I do not understand your mirth,' said he coldly.

'Nor I your gloom, Roland dear; but then you are far from well.'

He sighed, as if deprecating her manner.

'Am I to be scolded, like a naughty child?' she asked.

'You seem to feel that you deserve it.'

'But I won't be scolded--and for what?'

'Acting as you ought not to do.'

'How?'

'Riding to see the hounds throw off, without my knowledge, and

escorted only by an old groom, whose place another has taken more

than once.'

He paused, loth to say more. His proud soul revolted at the idea of

being jealous--vulgarly, grotesquely jealous of anyone; yet he eyed

her with pain and anger mingled.

'Oh, you refer to Bob Hoyle--poor Bob! Hester knows about him,' said

Annot, after a little pause, in which she grew, if possible, paler,

and certainly more confused.

'He is not a visitor here--and yet you have been seen with him in the

park and lawn.'

'Yes. Can I be less than polite when he escorted me home from the

meet--in the dusk, too?'

'And who the deuce is Bob Hoyle?'

'I have mentioned him to Hester,' replied Annot, still evasively.

'But who is he visiting in this locality?'

'I do not know.'

'Not know--how?'

'Simply because I never asked him.'

'Strange!'

'Not at all, Roland dear, when I think and care so little about him.'

She tried a tiny caress, but he turned from her, embittered and

humiliated.

Disappointment, shame, sorrow, and mortification were all gathering

in his heart, as doubts of Annot grew there too; and in his then weak

and nervous state he actually trembled to pursue a subject so

obnoxious. Was it to be the old story;

'Of one that loved, not wisely, but too well;

Of one not easily jealous, but, being wrought,

Perplexed in the extreme.'

A little silence ensued, during which, as he looked upon her in all

her fair beauty, so unstable of purpose, and so humble in heart is

one who loves truly that he felt inclined to throw himself upon her

affection for him, and only beseech her to be careful.

She was--he thought--young, artless, rash, and perhaps knew not how

unseemly, especially in a censorious country place, were these

mistakes of hers. But her manner repelled him. The half-grown

sensation of softness died away, and irritation came instead. So he

said bluntly:

'Annot, I tell you plainly that there must be no more of this sort of

thing.'

Her usually sweet little lips curled defiantly, and she eyed him

inquiringly now.

'Dare you try to make me believe that what you admit is all that has

occurred?'

'I do not wish to try and make you believe anything,' she replied

sullenly, yet in a broken tone.

'This is worse and worse,' said Roland in a husky voice.

'Are you jealous of him?' she asked, with a laugh that had no mirth

in it. 'Surely not; he is but a boy.'

'I am, and shall be, jealous of no one, Annot!'

'He speaks to me; it is not my fault--and is always polite. Do not

let us squabble, dearest Roland--I do so hate squabbling,' said she,

selecting a white bud from among the flowers at her waist and pinning

it in his hole; but Roland's blood was too much up to be propitiated

by a white bud, so Annot had recourse to a few tears; but, so far

from there being peace between them, matters waxed more unpleasant

still.

'Why has this Mr.--ah--Hoyle--as you name him, never called here, nor

left even a card?'

'I cannot tell.'

Yet he is an old London friend, and has come almost to the house

door!'

'I cannot tell,' repeated Annot.

'Ycu have met him on the skirts of the park?'

'By the merest chance.'

'These chances would seem to have occurred too often,' interrupted

Roland, greatly ruffled now, yet feeling sick at heart; 'so let us

come to an end!'

'By--by parting?' she asked, with pale lips.

'It is easily done; I am going back to the regiment in a little time,

and gossips will soon cease to link my name with yours, when you----'

'How cruel of you, Roland!' she said, and she looked at him

entreatingly for a moment with her small hands clasped, and then

turned away her face.

'It may be merely flirtation or folly that inspires you; but beware,

Annot, how you treat me thus, and remember that lovers' quarrels are

not _always_ love renewed.'

He felt and feared that a gulf which might never be bridged over was

widening suddenly between them. Had she asked him just then, with

all his anger, to kiss her once and forgive her, he would have

yielded too probably; but the little beauty, all unlike her usually

pliant, soft, and clinging self, held haughtily aloof and said:

'Am I to give you back your ring, and relinquish all that it

involves?'

'No, Annot, no, no,' exclaimed Roland, not yet prepared for such a

climax.

With an angry sob in her slender throat she tried to twist it off,

but in vain; and they regarded each other with a curiously mingled

expression which they never forgot--he sorrowfully and indignantly;

she saucily and defiantly.

'Have you anything more unpleasant to say to me, Roland?' she asked.

'Only that I begin to wish, Annot--oh, my God--that we had never,

never met!'

'Indeed! Good-bye.'

'Good-bye.'

She swept away. What a change--was it witchcraft?--had come ever the

once playful, childlike, and winning little Annot! Roland's heart

was sick and crushed, and he began to have a growing and unpleasant

suspicion that he had made, as he thought, 'a confounded fool of

himself.'

'Thank Heaven, Hester! I shall soon have the sea rolling between me

and this place,' said he, when, after a time, he told his cousin, the

early playmate and sweetheart of other days, the story of this

interview and his complaint against Annot. 'Regrets are useless; we

cannot change the past; but I have neither the inclination nor the

capacity to face all the circumstances that seem to surround me in

Earlshaugh now.'

'Why has he addressed me in his distress, and on this subject?'

thought Hester almost angrily; 'how can I sympathize with him in the

matter? And he comes to me at a time, too, when I know we may be

soon parted for ever, and when my thoughts are as full of him as they

were in that old time that can return no more.'

Piqued at and disappointed with Annot, a curious and confusing

emotion came more than once into the mind of Roland--one described by

a Scottish writer as feeling 'that had he not, and had he been, and

if he could he might--in line, he thought the medley which many a man

thinks when he knows that he loves one, and only _one_; but under

suasion and pressure would find it just possible to yield to _other_

distractions.'

Annot did not afford him many opportunities of recurring to their

first quarrel or effacing its memory; and from that hour she kept

indignantly and sullenly aloof, as much as she could in courtesy do,

from Maude and Hester--to their surprise--spending most of her time

in the apartments and society of Mrs. Lindsay.

But once again, in the long shady avenue near the Weird Yett, when

Maude was idling there, under the cold blue sky of an October

evening, with Jack Elliot--idling in the happiness a girl feels when

on the brink of her marriage with the man she loves with all the

strength of her warm heart--the man whose voice and the mere touch of

whose hand gives joy--she felt that heart turn cold when she detected

Annot--her brother's _fiancée_--bidding a hasty adieu to the stranger

before referred to--clad in a red hunting coat, and leading his horse

by the bridle.

So a crisis of some kind was surely at hand now!

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE CRISIS.

What did, or what could, Annot mean by this studied duplicity and

defiance of propriety? thought Maude; but ere she could reflect much

on the subject, or consider how to speak to Roland about it, or

whether she should simply let him discover more for himself, the

crisis referred to in our last chapter came to pass, and the possible

'_other_ distractions' that had occurred, in his irritation, to

Roland's mind were forgotten by him then.

Notwithstanding what had passed between them, the charm of Annot's

manner, her graceful and piquant ways, impelled or allured him again,

and his passionate love for her swelled up at times in his breast.

Was he not to make one more effort, or was it too late to win her

love again?

Like one who when drowning will cling to a straw, Roland, with all

his just indignation at Annot, clung to his faith in her; but they

had parted with much apparent coldness; and, as we have said, in that

huge old rambling mansion of Earlshaugh, as it was easy for people to

avoid each other it they wished to do so, he had not again met her

alone.

Thus any explanation was deferred, and, with all his love, he felt

painfully that if he once began fully to doubt her and surrendered

himself to that idea, all would be lost; and yet he had little cause

for confidence now, apparently.

From her own lips again he resolved--however galling to his pride--to

hear his fate, of her wishes and of her love, if the latter still was

his; and thus he asked her by note to meet him in the library, at a

time when they were sure to be undisturbed, as Mrs. Lindsay was

usually indisposed at the hour he selected, and Maude, Jack, and

Hester would be, he knew, absent riding.

From his own lips Annot had been fully informed of how his father's

will was framed, but her ambition went far beyond that of Becky Sharp

when the latter thought she would be a good woman on five thousand a

year, would not miss a little soup for the poor out of that sum, and

could pay everybody when she had it.

Annot, though apparently passive no longer, feigned a desire to

continue 'the entanglement,' for such she deemed it--this engagement

to Roland, begun at Merlwood. She had a secret gratitude for the

information that had come to her in time of his future prospects.

She could have continued to love him after a fashion of her own, and

perhaps as much as it was in her selfish nature to love anyone; but

it must be as proprietor of Earlshaugh, of which she had an

overweening desire to be mistress, and, moreover, she never meant to

form or face 'a moneyless marriage.'

And now in this meeting with Roland she felt that a crisis in her

fate had come; that the sooner it was over and done with the better;

and with a power of will beyond what anyone could have conceived a

girl so soft and fair, so small in stature and lovely in feature

might possess, she kept her appointment; but, without referring even

to Lucrezia Borgia, who was a golden-haired little creature, with a

feeble and vapid expression of face (as Mrs. Jameson tells us), does

not history record how often fair little women have been possessed of

iron will and nature?

Annot accorded her soft cheek to Roland's lip so coldly that he

scarcely touched it!

Both looked pale, though they stood, when regarding each other, in

the red light of the October sunset, that streamed like a crimson

flood through a deeply embayed old window near them.

Annot wore a dark dress, and round her slender throat a high ruffle

of black lace, which, like the jet drops in her tiny ears, enhanced

the marvellous fairness of her skin, as Roland remarked, for even

such trifling details failed to escape him in that time of doubt and

exceeding misery.

'You have not kept me waiting,' said she with a smile, and as if

feeling a dire necessity for saying something.

'Was it likely I should do so, Annot, when I have counted every

moment of time since I sent my little note to you?' replied Roland,

feeling instinctively from what he saw in her eye and manner that the

dreaded time had come!

'How silly--useless I mean, such impatience, when we meet daily

somewhere--at meals and so forth!' said she, looking out upon the far

expanse of green park, steeped in the hazy sunshine of one of the hot

evenings of October.

'Annot,' said Roland impatiently, and striking a heel on the floor as

he spoke, 'after what passed between us last--a conversation alike

distasteful and painful--I can no longer endure the suspense, the

agony your conduct and bearing cause me. Do you really wish all to

be at end between us?'

His eyes were bent eagerly upon her face, the muscles of which

certainly quivered with emotion--either love or shame, he knew not

which--and he took her hands in his, but relinquished them; his own

were hot and trembling as if he had an ague, white hers were firm and

cold as they were white and beautiful.

'It was a joke--a petulant joke, your proposal to give me back your

ring and break our engagement--was it not, darling?' he asked after a

brief pause.

'It was _no_ joke,' replied Annot, with still averted eyes, in which,

however, there was not a vestige of those sympathetic tears, which,

fur effect, she had usually so near the surface on trivial occasions;

'it cost me much to utter the few words I said--but I meant them.'

'You did?'

'Yes--Roland.'

'And that was to be your only reply to my remonstrances?'

'Made as these remonstrances were--yes. You are too exacting,

Roland; and--and--' she added with a bluntness that jarred on his

ear, 'it is so tiresome being long engaged, mamma says.'

'I am sorry you quote her; but we can end it without an unseemly

quarrel, surely.'

She shook her head, and all her hair shone like a golden aureole in

the sunlight; and with all his just anger Roland looked at her as if

his mind were leaving him.

'In short, mamma also says----'

'Mamma again!--says what?'

'That we are evidently unsuited for each other.'

'When did she discover this? Her letters to me have never breathed a

suspicion of it.'

Annot did not reply, but continued to trace the pattern of the carpet

with a foot like that of Cinderella.

'When did she adopt this new view?' asked Roland, almost sternly.

'Recently, I suppose.'

'We know our own minds, surely, so what can her capricious ideas

matter to us? If you love me, Annot, they can make no difference.'

She only winced a little, and averted her face still more, as if she

dared not meet his dark, earnest, and inquiring eyes.

'Speak!' he exclaimed.

'Women change their minds often, it is said--why may not I, by

advice?'

'God keep me, Annot! Then the change is with yourself? Has our

past, so far as you are concerned, been all duplicity and falsehood?'

'As when last we spoke on this matter, your language is unpleasant,

Roland,' said Annot, as if seeking a cause for indignation or

complaint.

'Is this a time to mince matters? Surely you loved me?'

'You--you were so fond of me, that I could not help liking you in

return, Roland,' said she, trembling and confusedly; 'we were thrown

so much together, and--and you see----'

'That I have been befooled!' he interrupted her with bitterness and a

gust of anger.

'Do not use such a rough expression,' said she, recovering herself;

'and please don't allow listeners to think we are rehearsing for

amateur theatricals.'

For a moment concentrated fury flashed in Roland's dark eyes.

Then he regarded her wistfully again, and his gust of anger gave way

to an emotion of infinite tenderness.

'Annot,' he exclaimed, caressing her hands, on which, truth to tell,

his hot tears dropped. 'Oh, my darling, tell me that you do not mean

all this--that you are not in cruel earnest and oblivious of all the

past.'

'I never loved you----'

'Never loved me?' said he hoarsely,

'As you wished to be; it was to serve my own ends--my own purpose

that I simulated--then--so hate me if you can!'

'Hate you,' he faltered, utterly crushed and bewildered by her words.

His eyes were lurid now, for anger again mingled with love in them.

'Surely this is all some bad dream, from which I must awaken.'

'It is no dream,' said Annot, turning with an unsteady step as if she

would pass him; but he barred her way.

'Do you mean that you loved some one else?' he asked.

'Do not ask me.'

'I have the right to do so!'

'No, Roland--you have not.'

'You surely did at one time love me, Annot, or your duplicity is

monstrous, till--till this fellow Hoyle came upon the tapis? Was it

not so?' he asked, almost piteously, for his moods varied quickly.

'Not quite; and I can't be poor, that is the plain English of it; I

can't be a struggling man's wife, as I now know yours must be, as

Earlshaugh----'

'Belongs to another, and not to me, you mean?'

She was silent. Selfish though she was to the heart's core, a blush

crossed her cheek, a genuine blush of shame at her own blunt

openness, and it was but too evident that she had schooled herself

for all this--had screwed her courage to the sticking point.

'Then I have only been a cat's-paw, and you have loved, if it is in

your nature to love, another all the time?' said Roland hoarsely, as

he drew back a pace with something of horror and disgust in his face

now.

Almost pitifully did this cruel girl regard his face, which had

become ashy gray, the wounded and despairing love he felt for her

passing away from his eyes, while his figure, she could not but

admit, was straight, handsome, and proud in bearing as ever, when

compared with that of the _other_, who was in her mind now.

'All is over, then, and there is no need to torture or humiliate me

further,' said he.

'All is over--yes,' she replied, with a real or affected sob; 'and

you will, I hope, bless the day when I left you free to win a richer

bride than I am, Roland. Forgive me, and let us part friends.'

'_Friends!_' he exclaimed, in a low voice of reproach, bitterness,

and rage curiously mingled.

Resolute to act out the scene to the last detail, she slowly drew her

engagement ring off her finger--like the marriage ring, the woman's

badge of servitude according to the old English idea, but of eternity

with every other people, past or present--laid it on a table near

him, and gliding away without another word or glance, they separated,

and Roland stood for a minute or so as if turned to stone.

Then, like one in a dream, he found himself walking slowly to and

fro, forgetful even of his temporary lameness, on the terraced path

beneath the towering walls of the old house.

The engagement ring--how tiny it looked!--was in his hand, and with

something like a malediction he tossed it into a sheet of deep

ornamental water that lay thereby, and there too, perhaps, he would

have tossed all the other beautiful and valuable presents he had

given her; but these the fair Annot did not as yet see her way to

returning, and, sooth to say, he never thought of them.

So--so he was 'thrown over' for one who seemed most suddenly and

unaccountably to have come upon the tapis, but chiefly because he was

a kind of outcast--a disinherited man. Had she not told him so in

the plainest language?

The situation was a grotesquely humiliating one.

'Oh, to be well and strong and fit to march again!' he sighed.

In the expression of his dark eyes there was now much of the

bitterness, keenness, and longing of a prisoner looking round the

cell which he loathed, and from which he desired to be gone; and more

than once, in the solitude of his room, he closed his eyes and rested

his head upon his arms, as if he wished to see and hear of his then

surroundings no more.

Even the caresses of Maude--even Hester's gentle voice and soft touch

failed to rouse him for a time.

Some days elapsed before Roland--after thinking over again and again

all the details of this most singular episode, the strangest _crisis_

in his life--could realize that it was not all a dream, and that the

relations between himself and Annot had undergone such a complete

revolution that their paths in life must lie apart for ever, now.

But he was yet to learn the more bitter sequel to all this.

Roland naturally thought that as the doctors would scarcely yet

permit him to quit Earlshaugh and travel, now Annot Drummond would

take her departure to Merlwood or London; but this she did not do,

and seemed, with intense bad taste, to adopt the rôle of being his

stepmother's guest, while sedulously avoiding him, so he began to

make his arrangements for decamping without delay.

In bidding adieu, out of mere courtesy to Mrs. Lindsay, Roland never

referred to the existence of Annot. Neither did she.

Was this good feeling, or was she endorsing the new situation adopted

by Annot?

He cared not to canvass the matter even in his own mind; but ere he

quitted Earlshaugh he was yet, we have said, to learn the sequel to

all this.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

TURNING THE TABLES.

His sword and helmet cases, his portmanteau and travelling rugs were

duly strapped and placed in the stately old entrance-hall in

readiness, as Roland was to be off by an early morning train, and

never again would he break bread in the home of his forefathers.

Every link that bound him to Earlshaugh was broken now, and he felt

only a feverish restlessness to be gone!

Ere that came to pass, Roland's eyes were fated to be somewhat

roughly opened.

All that day the nervous quivering of his nether lip, his unusual

paleness--notwithstanding his apparent calm--showed to his sister

that he was deeply agitated, and was suffering from passionate, if

suppressed, emotion.

In the deepening dusk of his last evening at Earlshaugh he had, cigar

in mouth, strolled forth alone to con over his own bitter thoughts,

and nurse his wrath 'to keep it warm,' or inspired by a vague idea

that he would sort his mind, which was then in a somewhat chaotic

condition.

The evening--one of the last in October--was cool, and the wind

wailed sadly in the task of stripping the trees of their withered

leaves, though at no time of the year do they look so beautiful in

the Scottish woods as in autumn, save, perhaps, when they first burst

forth in their emerald greenery.

Round the tall old mansion, down the terraced walks, past the lakelet

and through the grounds he wandered till he reached a kind of kiosk

or summer-house, built of fantastic, knotty branches, roofed with

thatch, and furnished with a rustic seat--a damp and gloomy place

just then. He threw himself upon the latter, and, resting his head

upon his hand, proceeded to chew the cud of bitter fancy that had no

sweet in it.

The period had vanished when existence seemed full of joyous dreams

and a course of glowing scenes. The world was still as beautiful, no

doubt, but it sparkled no more with light and colour for him; idols

had been shattered--ideals had collapsed, and it seemed very cold and

empty now.

How long he had been there he scarcely knew--perhaps half an

hour--when in the gloom under the half-stripped trees he heard

voices, and saw two figures, or made out a male and female lingering

near the summer-house, which he dreaded lest they should enter, when

he discovered them to be Annot--Annot Drummond, muffled in a cosy

white fur cloak of Maude's--and, Heaven above!--of all men on

earth--Hawkey Sharpe!

For a moment or two Roland scarcely respired--his heart seemed to

stand still. Intensely repugnant to him as it was to act as

eavesdropper on the one hand, on the other he was proudly and

profoundly reluctant to confront those two. There he remained still,

hoping every moment they would move on and leave the pathway clear;

but they remained, and thus he heard more than he expected to hear

from such a singular pair.

He had now a clue to the reason of Annot's reluctance to leave

Earlshaugh, of her protracted visit as the guest of Mrs. Lindsay, and

why latterly she had so mysteriously and sedulously cultivated the

friendship of that lady.

The question, was it honourable to remain where he was, flashed

across Roland's mind! It was not incompatible with honour under the

peculiar circumstances, so he heard more.

'That nonsense has surely come to an end, or are you still engaged to

him?' said Hawkey, who held her hands in his.

Annot was silent. Could she be temporizing yet?

'Do you think he loves you as well as I do?' urged Hawkey Sharpe,

bending over her.

Still she was silent.

'If so, why has he ever left you, even for an hour, to shoot and so

forth, as he has often done? Speak, Annot. Surely I may call you

Annot now.'

Still there was no reply. It seemed as if she was thinking

deeply--thinking how best to reply, to play her cards or to

temporize; but to what end, when all was over between her and Roland

now?

'You _were_ engaged to him?' said Hawkey again, with a little

impatience of manner.

'By a chain of circumstances over which I had no control,' replied

Annot in a faltering voice; 'in his uncle's house at Merlwood I

was----'

'Was--is it ended?'

'Yes--for ever.'

'Thank God for that! Did you think you loved him?' asked Hawkey with

a grin.

'I believe that I did--or ought--I was so silly--so simple--so----'

'There--there--I don't want to worry you.'

'But he loves me, I know that,' said Annot in a low voice--true to

her vanity still.

'That I can well believe--who could see you and not love you?' said

Hawkey gallantly.

'I could never marry a poor man,' said Annot candidly.

'Well--he is poor enough.'

'And live on, eating my heart out in struggles such as some I have

seen,' continued Annot as if to herself.

'Though here in Earlshaugh just now, what is he, this fellow Lindsay,

but a penniless pretender!' exclaimed Sharpe, fired with animosity

against Roland; who thus heard his name, his position, and the

dearest secrets of his heart openly canvassed by this presumptuous

and low-born fellow, and with Annot too--she who, till lately--but he

could not put his thoughts in words--they seemed to choke him; and

the whole situation was degrading--maddening!

'Well,' chuckled Sharpe, 'he is out of the running now; and then you

and I understand each other so well, my little golden-haired pet! so

true it is that "when a woman of the world and a man of the world

meet, whatever the circumstances may be, or the surroundings, in a

moment there is rapport between them, and all flows along easily." I

thought when Lindsay fell into the Cleugh,' he added, with a coarse

laugh, 'that he had betaken himself off to something that suited him

better than fighting the Arabs. But it is long ere the deil

dies--now he is well and whole again, and looks every inch like the

Lindsay in the gallery, with the buff coat and a dish-cover on his

head, that led a brigade of horse against the English at Dunbar.

Well, the old place has done with that brood now; and after Deb,

Earlshaugh must be mine--mine--shall be _ours_, Annot, for ever and

aye!'

The breeze caught the lace of her sleeve, and, lifting it, showed the

perfect and lovely contour of her soft white arm, on which Hawkey

Sharpe fastened his coarse lips with a fervour there could be no

doubting.

Kissed by him? Roland felt perfectly cured. The desecration, the

dishonour, seemed complete! It is but too probable that Mr. Hawkey

Sharpe felt the exultation of revenge and triumph in every kiss he

took, even though he believed them to be unseen.

Though it was now apparent that she had thrown 'dust' in Roland's

eyes by using the name of _another_, and had thus doubly lied to him,

the blow did not fall so unexpectedly, yet the degradation of it was

complete.

Hoyle was a myth--a blind to throw him off the right track--and he

had been discarded, not for that personage, but for Hawkey Sharpe.

This was truly to find

'In the lowest deep a lower deep'

of utter humiliation!

At last they passed onward, and he was again alone.

'I have undergone something like the torture of the rack,' said he

with a bitter laugh, when he related to Maude and Hester what he had

been compelled to overhear in the summer-house, and the latter

thought of that eventful evening at Merlwood, when she so unwittingly

had in like manner been compelled to lurk in the shrubbery and hear a

revelation that crushed her own heart to the dust.

Thus, though he knew it not, the tables were turned on Roland with a

vengeance.

Like Hester, he could not agree with Romeo--

'How sweet sound lovers' tongues by night,'

when the said tongues addressed all their sweetness to others.

'She is an ungrateful, selfish, horrible girl--I'll never forgive

her--never!' said Maude, almost sobbing with anger.

'How filthy lucre rules the world now!' exclaimed Roland. 'Do such

girls as she ever repent the mischief they make--the hearts they have

broken?'

'As if hearts break nowadays? she would ask,' said Hester with

something of a smile.