Читать книгу Playing with Fire - James Grant - Страница 13

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Let us return to the day of Roland Lindsay's departure from Merlwood, when full of thoughts of a sorrowful cast, and perhaps in the frame described by Wordsworth as

'That sweet mood when pleasant thoughts

Bring sad thoughts to the mind.'

A letter that had come for him overnight—one from Annot's mother in South Belgravia—he scanned twice hurriedly, and consigned to his pocket. Annot, in that quarter, had made no secret, apparently, of the terms on which he and she were, and the congratulations of the old lady were palpable enough.

'What is next?' he muttered, as he opened a little basket and laughed. It contained sandwiches and sherry, peaches, grapes, and a little bouquet of hot-house flowers, all selected, he knew, by the white hands of Hester.

'Poor girl!' he muttered; 'does she think I am bound, not for Earlshaugh, but for Alexandria?'

He had beautifully-coloured photos of both girls in his pocket book—one of Annot, smiling, saucy, and arch, with her laughing eyes and golden hair; and one of Hester, with her calm, sweet expression, her dark, beseeching, and pleading eyes, and hair of rich dark brown; but he had one of the former's fair tresses—not the first of them that Annot had bestowed on 'Bob Hoyle' and others that he knew not of. But so it is—

'Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare,

And beauty draws us with a single hair.'

Merlwood had vanished as the train sped on, and, away from the immediate influence of Annot, softer memories of Hester began to mingle upbraidingly with the idea of the former, and—as he thought it all over again—the past; he recurred mentally to many a loving and half-ended episode, to Hester's winning softness, her pleading, truthful eyes of violet blue, and he felt himself, though uncommitted by pledge or promise, inexpressibly false!

It was not a pleasant reflection or conviction even while caressing Annot's shining tress of hair—his tempter and her supplanter.

Some men, it has been said, when they form a new attachment, try to teach themselves that the old one contained no true love in it. This was not the case with Roland, nor could he be a man to love two at once, though some natures are thought to be capable of such an idiosyncrasy.

At last he was roused from his mingled day-dreams by his train clanking into the Waverley Station, and he saw Edinburgh, the old town and the new, with gables, spires, and tower-crowned rocks rising on each side of him, with a mighty bridge of round arches high in air spanning the space between.

The day was yet young, so he idled for a time at the United Service Club with Jack Elliot, his comrade in Egypt, on leave like himself, and now his sister Maude's fiancé, a fine, handsome, and soldier-like young fellow, of whom more anon—full of such earnest love and enthusiasm for the girl of his unwavering choice, that Roland—reflecting on his late proceedings at Merlwood—felt his cheek redden more than once, as well it might, and an involuntary sigh escaped him, though he could little foresee the future.

So full was he of his own thoughts, that it was not until he was landing on the Fife side of the Forth that he reflected with annoyance:

'What a fool I have been, when in the city, not to call upon old MacWadsett, the W.S., about the exact terms of my father's will. They never reached me in Egypt—the Bedouins at Ramleh made free with the mail-bags. Besides, I need not have gone before this, as the old fellow has been on the Continent.'

So he consoled himself with the inevitable cigar, while the train rolled on by many a familiar scene, on which he had not looked for an age, as it seemed now; by the 'lang, lang town' of Kirkaldy, and picturesque Dysart, with its zigzag streets, overlooked by the gaunt dwelling-place of Queen Annabella, and the sea-beaten rock of Ravenscraig; anon past Falkland Woods, and after he crossed the Eden he began to trace the landmarks of Earlshaugh, and the train halted at a little wayside station, close beside an old and almost unused avenue that led to the latter, and he sprang out upon the platform, where he seemed to be the only passenger. The two or three officials who were loitering about were strangers, and eyed him leisurely.

'Has not a trap come for my luggage?' he asked.

'For where, sir?'

'Earlshaugh.'

'No sir,' replied one, touching his cap, an ex-soldier recognising his questioner's military air. 'No trap is here.'

'Strange!' muttered Roland, giving his moustache an angry twist; 'and yet I wrote—I'll walk on, and send for my things,' he added.

The house was little more than a mile distant, and every foot of the way had been familiar to him from infancy.

On many a strange and foreign scene had he looked, and many a peril had he faced, in the land of the Pharaohs since last he had trod that shady avenue—the land of the Sphinx and the Pyramids, where the hot sand of the desert seemed to vibrate and quiver under the fierce glare of the unclouded sun.

Forgetful of old superstitions, he had entered the avenue by the Weird Yett. It was deemed unlucky for a Lindsay of Earlshaugh to approach his house after a long absence through that barrier; but as the gate was open, Roland, full of his own thoughts, passed in, heedless of the legend which told that the Lindsay fared ill who did so.

Two stone pillars, dated 1600, with an arch and coat of arms with the Lindsay supporters, two lions sejant, termed the barrier, which was usually closed by a massive iron gate, the barbs or pikes of which had once been gilt. A century later had seen it the favourite trysting-place of Roland Lindsay, the younger, of Earlshaugh, and a daughter of a neighbour, the Laird of Craigie Hall, till the former left with his regiment, the Scots Guards, for Spain. One evening the girl was lingering there, in the soft violet light of the gloaming, impelled by what emotion she scarcely knew, but doubtless to dream of her lover who she thought was far away, when suddenly a cry escaped her, as she saw him appear, in his scarlet uniform, with feather-bound hat—the Monmouth cock—his flowing wig, and sword in its splendid belt; but gouts of blood were upon his lace cravat, and she could see that his face was sad and pale, as face and figure melted away and she found herself alone.

Apparitions generally 'come in their habits as they lived,' says the authoress of the 'Night side of Nature,' 'and appear so much like the living person in the flesh that when they are not known to be dead, they are frequently mistaken for them. There are exceptions to this rule, but it is very rare that the forms in themselves exhibit anything to create alarm.'

So did the girl's lover appear to her as if alive.

With a power of reason beyond her years and time, she tried to think—could it be a dream of her excited brain? But no, she was awake with all her senses; she thought of the blood on his dress, and the awful knowledge came to her, that she had looked upon the face of the dead—on the wraith of her lover—who, a month after she learned, had perished at that very hour and time, shot by the Spaniards on the fatal field of Almanza.

'The divine arts of priming and gunpowder have frightened away Robin Goodfellow and the Fairies,' wrote Sir John Aubery of old; but the ghost of the Weird Yett lingered long in the unused avenue of Earlshaugh.

When he did recall the terror of his boyhood, Roland smiled; but kindly, for every feature round him spoke of home. Seen through the tree-stems was the old thatched hamlet of Earlshaugh, on the side of a burn crossed by one huge stone as a bridge—the hamlet where the clatter of the weaver's loom still lingered even in these days of steam appliances, and on the humble doors of which the old Scottish risp or tirling-pin was to be seen as elsewhere in the East Neuk; and as he looked at the gray fallen monolith by which the stream was crossed, he thought of the old song which seemed to describe it:

'Yet it had a bluirdly look,

Some score o' years ago,

An' the wee burn seemed a river then,

As it roared doon below;

And a bauld bairn was he,

In the merry days lang gane,

Wha waded through the burn,

Aneath the auld brig-stane.'

And, as if to complete the picture, an old woman, wearing one of those white mutches, with the modest black band of widowhood, introduced by Mary of Guelders, sat on a 'divot-seat' knitting at the sunny end of her little thatched cottage.

A love of his birthplace and a pride in his historic race were the strongest features in the character of Roland Lindsay, and Earlshaugh was certainly such a home as any man might be pardoned for regarding with something of enthusiasm.

As he looked upon the old manor house, high, square, and embattled, towering on its grassy steep above the haugh—that abode of so many memories, with all his pride in it, and pride of race and name, there came a stormy emotion, or sense of humiliation—even of rage, when he thought of the tenor or alleged tenor of that will, by which his father, in the senility of age (if all he heard were true), had degraded him to a cypher by leaving the estate entirely to an alien, to his second wife, who had been the artful companion of his first—to the exclusion of him—Roland, the heir of line and blood, save for such a pittance or allowance as she chose to accord him, for the term of his or her natural life, which, when the chances of war and climate were considered, was certain to exceed his own, his senior though she was in years.

After all he had endured in the deserts by the Nile, hunger, thirst, suffering, sickness, and wounds, facing and enduring all that a soldier may since last he had looked on old, gray Earlshaugh, as memory went flashing back he strove to forget for a brief time the wrong his father had done himself and his sister Maude, and to think only of his happy boyhood, and all that had been then.

Memories of his dead parents, of his gentle and loving mother, of his manly and fox-hunting father, who had taught him to ride, and shoot, and fish—of little brothers who lay buried by their side in the grave—of his childhood, of games, and old—or rather young—longings and imaginings, when the woods of Earlshaugh, and the trouting stream, were objects of vague mystery, the former peopled with fairies, and the latter the abode of a wicked kelpie!

Many a living voice and loving face had passed away since then—vanished for ever; but the memories of them were strong and pathetic. The rooks still clamoured in the old trees, and the birds sang amid the shrubberies as of old; he heard the men whistling and singing in the stable-yard. In the fields the soil had a fresh and grassy odour in the noonday sunshine familiar to him; and he felt the conviction that though he in many a sense had changed, Nature had not—'for the wind blows as it will through all the long years, and the land wakes glad and fragrant at the kiss of the pale dawn, and plain daily labour goes on steadily and unheedingly from generation to generation.'

As unnoticed and unseen he drew near the house—a massive old Scottish fortalice with tourelles at every angle—and surveyed its striking façade, he recalled the words of his uncle and Hester, and felt that he had now much that was practical to think about, much that was painful and dubious to forgive or submit to, while a vague sense of coming bitter annoyance—it might be humiliation, as we have said—rose before his haughty spirit, and the suspicion or emotion was not long of being put to the test.

A man with his hands in the back pockets of his coat, his hat set negligently into the nape of his neck—a thickset, well-to-do, little fellow, about thirty years of age, clad in a kind of semi-sporting style, with a straw in his mouth and much display of jewellery at his waistcoat—came leisurely down the front steps from a porte-cochère, which the late Laird had added to the old house—leisurely, we say, and with a very insouciant air, and accorded a nod—bow it could not be called—to Roland and paused.

'Oh,' said he, 'Captain Lindsay, I presume?'

'Yes,' replied the other, with surprise, and curtly.

'Ah, welcome; we've been expecting you. Did you walk from the station?'

'I was obliged to do so——'

'Ah.'

'And you, sir?' asked Roland inquiringly.

'Mr. Sharpe—Hawkey Sharpe, at your service.'

'The new steward?' said Roland, repressing a vehement desire to kick him along the terrace.

'If you please to call me so.'

('What the devil else does he think I should call him?' thought Roland.)

As Mr. Hawkey Sharpe neither touched nor lifted his hat Roland ignored his tardily proffered hand, which was replaced in his coat pocket.

'Had a pleasant morning journey, I hope.'

'Yes.'

'Ah, I am just going to the stables—all are well at home,' said this strange and very confident personage, passing on, while Roland stood for a moment rooted to the ground by the profound insouciance of the man; but from that moment there was a secret, if unnamed, hatred of each other in the eyes of these two—hate blended with contempt and indignation in those of Roland, who felt intuitively that the other, though, as he supposed, his underling, would yet work him a mischief if he could.

'D—n the fellow!' thought Roland. 'So this is Mr. Sharpe. I must put him to the rightabout! He ought to have ushered me in or preceded me.'

He rang the bell furiously.

A strange footman appeared promptly enough, but without the indignation a 'London Jeames' would have manifested at a summons so rough and impatient; for natheless his irreproachable livery and powdered hair, he had been born and bred in the East Neuk of Fife, and had no 'West-End' airs about him.

'All are strangers now hereabout,' thought Roland, who was about to enter, when the man distinctly barred his way.

'Name, sir, please?' said he.

'Is Miss Maude—Miss Lindsay, I mean—at home?'

'No, sir; out riding.'

'Your mistress, then?' said Roland sharply.

'Yes, sir—if you will give me a card.'

'Card, ha!' exclaimed Roland, losing his temper now, and with fury blazing in his dark eyes. 'Say that Captain Lindsay has arrived!'

On this the valet—Tom Trotter by name—threw the door wide open, with a grin of welcome not unmingled with astonishment and alarm, and Roland found himself again under the roof of Earlshaugh.