CHAPTER XVII.

AT EARLSHAUGH.

For two or three days before the all-important First of September, Roland, the old gamekeeper, Gavin Fowler, young Malcolm Skene, and even the pardoned poacher Jamie Spens, had all been busy in a vivid and anxious spirit of anticipation as the day approached. Many a time had they reconnoitered by the King's Wood, the Mains of Dron, in the Fairy Den, and elsewhere, till they knew every rood of ground—ground over which Roland's father had last rambled on his old shooting pony—by stubble field, hedgerow, and scroggy upland slope, where the coveys of the neighbourhood lay, and knew almost the number of birds in every covey; and many a time and oft the route of the first day was planned, schemed out, and enjoyed in imagination; while the dogs were carefully seen to in their kennels, and the guns and ammunition inspected in the gunroom, as if a day of battle were at hand.

Yet, even in the Lowlands of Scotland, the palmy days of shooting are gone in many places never to return. Muirland after muirland has been enclosed, marshes reclaimed, and in other parts the hill slopes, that were lonely, stern, and wild—often all but inaccessible—have now become the sites of villas, mansions, and new-made railway villages, till people sometimes may wonder what Cowper meant in his 'Task' when he wrote—

'God made the country, and man made the town!'

But much of this applies more to England than to the sister kingdom.

The last evening of August saw a gay dinner party in the stately old dining-hall of Earlshaugh, with Roland acting as host, and Mrs. Lindsay, pale and composed as usual, but brilliant in his mother's suite of diamonds (heir-looms of the line), too brilliant, he thought, for the occasion, at the head of the table.

Among other friends who had come for the morrow's shooting were Jack Elliot and Malcolm Skene, both most prepossessing-looking young fellows; and the style and bearing of both—but especially of the former, who had about him that finishing touch which the service, foreign travel, and good society impart—inspired the heart of Mr. Hawkey Sharpe with much jealous rancour and envy, and with something of mortification too.

It may be superfluous to say that in all the elements that make a perfect gentleman, and one accustomed to the world, he far outshone the unfortunate Hawkey; and as he sat there, clad in evening costume, toying with his wine-glass, and conversing in a pleasantly modulated voice with Annot Drummond, who affected to be deeply interested in Cairo and Alexandria, Tel-el-Kebir and Kassassin, he had no more consciousness or idea of finding a rival in such a person than in old Gavin Fowler, the keeper, or Funnell, the butler, who officiated behind his chair.

But Deborah—Mrs. Lindsay—was observing Elliot, and thought of her brother's jealousy, his ambition and avarice, and his recent threats with secret dread and misgivings, and, knowing of what he was capable, she glanced at him uneasily from time to time as he sat silent, almost sullen, and imbibing more wine than was quite good for him.

The appurtenances of the table, especially so far as plate went, were all that might be expected in a house of such a style and age as Earlshaugh, and the great chandelier that hung in the dome-shaped roof with its profusely parqueted ceiling, shed a soft light over all—on many a stately but dim portrait on the walls—among others, one of the Lindsay of the Weird Yett, above the stone mantelpiece, on which was carved the fesse-chequy of Lindsay, crested by a tent, with stars overhead, and the motto, Astra castra, numen lumen.

In the centre of the board towered a giant silver épergne (the gift of the Hunt to the late laird) laden with fruit and flowers, a tableau representing the gallant King James V., the 'Commons King,' slaying a stag at bay in Falkland Wood.

Several attractive girls were present, but none perhaps were more so in their different degree than Maude, with her sunny hair and winning blue eyes; Hester, with her pure complexion, soft bearing, and rich dark-brown braids; and Annot, with her flower-like face, childish playfulness of manner, and glorious wealth of shining golden tresses.

Nearly all at the table were young, and the dinner was a happy and joyous one, save perhaps to Mr. Hawkey Sharpe, who felt himself, with all his profound assurance, somewhat de trop, though he deemed himself, as he was, certainly 'got up as well as any fellow there.'

He was as vain of the form and whiteness of his hands as ever Lord Byron was, and he was wont to hold forth his right one, clenching a cambric handkerchief, with a brilliant sparkling ring of unusual size. His tie was faultless, his eyeglass arrogant and offensive, especially to Elliot, after a time; his would-be general air of stiffness and languid exclusiveness (imitated ill from others) sat as grotesquely on him as his habit of leaving remarks unanswered, while to all appearance critically examining the condition of his spiky finger-nails.

His presence on this particular occasion, though under the auspices of his sister, at first roused Roland's anger to fever heat, and the latter took his seat at table with a very black expression in his handsome face indeed; but he saw or felt the necessity for dissembling, and ignored his existence. Then after a time, affected by the geniality of his surroundings, by the bright, pleasant faces of his friends, the conversation, and the circulation of Mr. Funnell's good wines—more than all, by the presence of such a sunny little creature as Annot, who had been consigned to the care of Jack Elliot—he completely thawed, and acted the host to perfection.

At his back stood old Funnell, his rubicund visage shining like a harvest moon, radiant to see Roland in his father's chair and place at the foot of the table, even though she, Mrs. Lindsay (née Deborah Sharpe), was at the head thereof, though 'not Falkland bred,' an old and unforgotten Fife saying of the days of the princely James's which conveys much there with reference to birth and breeding.

So Roland tried to forget—perhaps for the time actually forgot—the probable or inevitable future, and strove to be genial with her, though it was quite beyond him to be so with her cub of a brother; and, indeed, he never stooped to address him at all.

From the opposite side of the table Elliot silently enjoyed the luxury of admiring his merry-eyed and bright-haired Maude, and all the natural grace of her actions; but Hawkey Sharpe was seated directly opposite to her too; yet her manner betrayed—even to his keen and observant eyes—none of the annoyance or constant confusion which might have shown itself as regarded him and a recent episode, as she entirely ignored his existence, while the presence of Jack shed an ægis over her.

After the ladies withdrew, in obedience to a silent sign from Mrs. Lindsay, the conversation of the gentlemen, as they closed up towards Roland's chair, developed some unpleasant features; for Hawkey Sharpe, whose tongue was loosened and his constitutional impudence encouraged by Funnell's excellent Pomery-greno, evinced an unpleasant disposition to cavil at and contradict whatever Elliot advanced or mentioned—rather a risky proceeding on the part of Mr. Sharpe, as Elliot was what has been described as a 'stand-offish sort of man, with whom one would not care to joke on an early acquaintance, or slap on the back and call 'old fellow,' or abbreviate his Christian name;' so, when the different breeds of sporting dogs and new fire-arms were under discussion, the steward said abruptly:

'Guns—oh, talking of guns, there is nothing I know for sport like that with the new grip action, with Schultze powder.'

'Ah! you mean,' said Elliot, 'the one with the only action that works independently of the top lever spring.'

'Yes.'

'But not for partridges or pheasants.'

'For anything,' said Sharpe curtly.

'Come, you are mistaken,' replied Jack.

'Not at all,' said Sharpe doggedly.

'Excuse me,' said the young officer; 'as a sportsman and an ex-instructor in musketry, you may permit me to have some knowledge of fire-arms; but the one you refer to is for big game, and will neither stick nor jam like the Government rubbish issued to us in Egypt, and is based on the non-fouling principle.'

'Non-fowling? It will shoot any fowl you aim at,' replied Sharpe, mistaking his meaning; 'but you don't know what you are talking about.'

Elliot simply raised his eyebrows and stared at the speaker for a moment.

'You heard me?' added Sharpe, with an angry gleam in his eye.

Elliot turned to Skene and spoke of something else; but his cool and steady, yet inoffensive, stare, and his ignoring the last defiant remark, exasperated Hawkey Sharpe, who had—we have said—imbibed more wine than he was wont; and, like all men of his class, particularly felt the quiet contempt implied by the other's silence and utter indifference to his presence—a spirit of defiance very humiliating and difficult to grapple with, especially by the underbred; thus, 'while nursing his wrath to keep it warm,' Sharpe was determined to pursue a system of aggravation, and when Elliot remarked to Roland, in pursuance of some general observations, that shooting, even in the matter of black-game and muirgame, should never begin till October, as thousands of young partridges that are not fair game would escape being shot by gentlemen-poachers, or falling a prey when in the hedges and hassocks to the mere pot-hunter—Hawkey Sharpe contradicted him bluntly, without knowing what to urge on the contrary, and made some blundering statements about following young game into the standing corn, and how jolly it was to pot even young pheasants in the standing barley during the month of September.

'In these little matters, my good man, you are rather at variance with Colonel Hawker.'

'Who the devil is Hawker?' said Sharpe.

'A great authority on all such matters, sir,' said young Skene, 'and not to have heard of him argues that you are—well, imperfectly up in the subject.'

'Which we had better drop,' said Roland, with a dangerous sparkle in his dark eyes; 'but pass the decanters, Jack—they stand with you.'

Mr. Hawkey Sharpe gave an audible sniff of contempt, meant, doubtless, for Elliot, whose cool stare at him was now blended with a smile indicative of curiosity and amusement, that proved alike enraging and baffling.

When the gentlemen rose to join the ladies in the drawing-room, whence came the distant notes of the piano and the voice of Annot Drummond with her inevitable 'Du du,' Hawkey Sharpe, with an unpleasant consciousness that he had been somewhat foolish and had the worst of his arguments, withdrew to his sanctum in the Beatoun wing to growl and smoke over his brandy and soda, and was seen no more for that night.

Pausing in the entrance-hall, Elliot said:

'Pardon me, Roland, but who is that unmitigated cad who contradicted me so at table?—seemed to want to fix a quarrel, by Jove!'

Roland coloured.

'Why, you redden as if he was a bailiff in disguise—a man in possession!' said Elliot, laughing.

'You forget, Jack, that such officials are unknown on this side of the Border.'

'Then who or what is he?' persisted Elliot.

'My overseer—steward.'

'Steward—the devil! and you have a fellow of that kind at table.'

'Mrs. Lindsay has—not I,' replied Roland, with growing confusion and annoyance. 'There are wheels within wheels here at Earlshaugh, Jack—a little time and you shall know all, even before the pheasants you disputed about are ready for potting.'

But before that period came, or the opportunity so lightly referred to, much was to happen at Earlshaugh that none could at all foresee.

CHAPTER XVIII.

'MY LOVE SHE'S BUT A LASSIE YET.'

The First of September came in all that could be wished for the shooting, in which, to Roland's disgust and Elliot's surprise, Hawkey Sharpe took a part, but attired in accurate sporting costume, and duly armed with an excellent breech-loader. The corn was yellow in some places, the stubble bare in others; there were rich 'bits' of colour in every field, and silver clouds floating in the blue expanse overhead. In such light, says a writer with an artistic eye, 'the white horses seem cut out of silver, the chestnuts of ruddy-gold; while the black horses stand out against the sky as if cut in black marble; and what gaps half a dozen reapers soon make in the standing corn!'

Then the trails of the ground convolvulus and cyanus or corn-flower, of every hue, may be seen, while the little gleaners are afield, tolerated by a good-hearted farmer, who, like Boaz of old, may, perhaps, permit the poor to glean 'even amongst the sheaves.' Elsewhere the fern and heather-covered muirlands were beautiful, with their tiny bushes laden with wild fruits, bramble, and sloe.

How the shooting progressed there—how coveys were flushed and surrounded; how the brown birds rose whirring up, and the cheepers tumbled over in quick succession or were caught by the dogs; how the latter found the birds lurking among turnips or potatoes, or where the uncut corn waved (for there they shelter, engender, and breed), till they rose in coveys of twenty and even thirty—may not interest the reader, so now we must hasten on to other points in our story, having more important matters to relate; but, as Mr. Hawkey Sharpe had an unpleasant reputation for shooting sometimes a little wildly, and forgetting the line of fire, all—by the whispered advice of old Fowler, the keeper—gave him a very wide berth in the field, and of this he was angrily conscious.

Yet he brought upon himself the irate animadversions of most of the sportsmen, and more particularly of Jack Elliot, by ill-using one of the best pointers on the ground. Trained by old Gavin Fowler, this animal would not only stand at the scent of a bird or a hare, but, if in company, would instantly back if he saw another dog point. This perfection, the propensity to stand at the scent of game, though a striking example of intelligence and docility, was so misunderstood by Hawkey Sharpe that he dealt poor Ponto a blow with the butt-end of his rifle, eliciting an oath from the white-haired keeper, and anger from all—remarks which made him clench his teeth with rage and mortification.

But, as the hot month of September is not meant for hard fagging, the whole party were back at the house by luncheon-time, and the united spoil of all the bags was duly laid out by braces on the pavement of the court-yard, and a goodly show it made.

After shooting in the morning and forenoon, as there were three sets of lovers among the party at Earlshaugh, much of the time was spent in riding, driving, and rambling about the grounds and their vicinity, while Roland found a congenial task in teaching Annot to ride, as he had procured a most suitable pad for her, by the aid of old Johnnie Buckle, at the Cupar Tuesday Fair; and just then nothing seemed to exist for him but Annot's white soft cheek, her golden hair, and the graceful little figure that made all other women look, to his eyes, angular and peculiar; and then truly he felt that 'there are days on which heaven opens to us all, though to many of us next day it shuts again.' And shut indeed it seemed to Malcolm Skene, who followed Hester like her shadow, and whose eyes often wore a tender and wistful intensity as he gazed upon her soft dark ones without winning one responsive glance; and he would seek to lure her into the subject that was nearest his own heart—his great love for her—while with the rest, but always somewhat apart, they would ramble on by the silvery birches in the Fairy's Den, by the King's Wood, with its great old oaks and heaven-high Scottish firs that towered against the blue sky; in the leafy dingles where the white-tailed rabbits skurried out of their sandy holes, where the birds twittered overhead, the black gleds soared skyward in the welkin, the dun deer started from the rustling bracken and underwood, and so on to where the woods grew more open, and there came distant glimpses of the German Sea or perhaps of the Firth of Tay, rippling in the glory of the evening sun as it set beyond the Sidlaw Hills.

Unlike Maude and Elliot, who took their assured regard with less demonstration, Roland and Annot Drummond—owing doubtless to the impressible and effusive nature of the latter young lady—were so much together, everywhere and every way, as to provoke a smile among their friends and an emotion of amusement, which certainly Hester Maule did not share.

'Why did I come here after all?' she often asked of herself, as her mind harked back to old days and dreams. 'I could have declined that woman, old Deborah's invitation, and Roland's too. Save papa's suspicions, there was no compulsion upon me. Fool that I have been to come—yet,' she would add with a bitter smile, 'I shall not wear my heart on my sleeve.'

Thus she seemed to lead the van in every proposed scheme for amusement, and the attentions of her old admirer, Malcolm Skene, if they failed to win, at least pleased and soothed her; and, watching her sometimes, Roland would think—

'Well, after all, I am glad to see her so happy.'

A ball had early been proposed, but through the opposition or mal-influence of Mrs. Lindsay the scheme proved a failure; visions of the large dining-hall gay with floral decorations, the lines on the floor and the ball cloth smooth and tight as a drum-head, passed away, and a simple, half-impromptu carpet-dance was substituted; hired musicians were procured from the nearest town, and all the invited—even Hester—looked forward to a night of enjoyment; and, sooth to say, since her visit she had sedulously done all in her power to avoid meeting Roland alone—no difficult matter, so occupied was he with Annot; and then Earlshaugh was a large and rambling old house, intersected by tortuous passages without end, little landings and flights of steps in unexpected places, rooms opening curiously out of each other, and turret stairs up and down, the result of repairs and additions in past times: thus, while it was a glorious old house for flirtation, for appointments and partings, it was quite possible for two persons to reside therein and yet meet each other seldom, unless they wished it to be otherwise.

It was impossible for the mind of Hester not to dwell on the time when Roland was—as she thought—her lover; of rambles and conversations and silences that were eloquent, and beatings of the heart in the bat-haunted gloaming, when the Esk gurgled over its stony bed and the crescent moon was in the violet-tinted sky.

She thought she had got over it all, but she had not yet—she felt that she had not; but now Malcolm Skene was there, and she might if she chose show Roland the sceptre of power, and that the art of pleasing was still hers as ever.

Roland had actually been more than once on the point of seeking some apologetic explanation with her; in his inner consciousness he felt that he owed it to her; but he shrank from it with a species of moral cowardice—he who had hacked his way out of the carnage of Kashgate, and ridden through the slaughter of other Egyptian fields; and though he had often rehearsed in his mind the amende he owed her, how could he dare to approach it?

'It was a mistake of his at Merlwood thinking that he loved me,' Hester would ponder on the other hand; 'and he did not know then—still less did I—that it was a mistake; but I know it now! The only thing left for me is to school myself, if I can, to love him as a friend or sister, a cousin merely. But it is hard—hard after all; and for such an artificial girl as Annot!'

Maude's carpet-dance—for the idea was hers—proved a great success, and many were present to whom, as they have no place in our story, we need not refer; but the music was excellent, and from an arched and partially curtained recess of the Red Drawing-room it swelled along the lofty ceilings and through the stately apartment, on the floor of which the dancers glided away to their hearts' content.

Mr. Hawkey Sharpe, bold and unabashed, was there attired de rigueur in evening costume; but even he did not venture on asking Maude to favour him with one dance; yet he ground his sharp teeth from time to time as he watched her and Captain Elliot, and overheard some—but only some of his remarks to her, though Hawkey had the ears of a fox.

'Maudie, darling, I am afraid you are tired,' said Jack tenderly, pausing for a moment.

'Already? Not at all, Jack; I would go on for ever,' exclaimed the girl, and they swept away again.

To her how delightful it was, waltzing with him—his hand pressed lightly on her willowy waist, her fingers, gloved and soft and slender, just resting on his shoulder; a faint perfume of her silky hair, a drowsy languor in every movement and in the whole situation.

'After we are married, Maudie,' whispered Jack, 'I am sure I shall disapprove of waltzing.'

'Disapprove—why?'

'Because I shall hate to see you whirling away with another.'

'Don't be a goose, Jack.'

'Won't I have the right to forbid you?'

'A right I shall not recognise. You surely would not be jealous of me?'

'Of you—no; but of others—a humiliating confession, is it not?' he added, smiling tenderly down upon her.

Though it was all a hastily got up and impromptu affair, Maude and Annot were radiantly happy; the latter in securing such a lover as Roland Lindsay, with all his surroundings, which she appreciated highly, as they far exceeded the most brilliant hopes and aspirations of herself and her match-making mother in South Belgravia. Her soft cheeks flushed and paled, and her tiny feet—for tiny they were as those of Cinderella—beat responsive to the music; and in the fulness of her own joy even her original emotions of covetousness, and ambition perhaps, were dimmed or lessened; while the dances which she had with Roland seemed quite unlike those she had enjoyed with other men; even when Hawkey Sharpe, who, being a Scotchman, danced of course, ploughing away with the minister's good-natured daughter, cannoned with some violence against them, and made Roland frown and mutter under his moustache till he drew Annot into the recess of a window, and while fanning her, and in doing so lightly ruffling Her shining hair, talked that soft nonsense so dear to them then.

'How childlike you are, Annot, in the brightness of your joy and in your genuine love of amusement!' said he admiringly, as he stooped over her.

'I feel as light as a bird when I hear good dance music like that and have such a good partner as you, Roland,' she exclaimed, looking up, her green hazel eyes beaming with pleasure.

'How could it be otherwise,' said he, 'when,

"My love she's but a lassie yet,
A lightsome, lovely lassie yet."

a sweet one that never had even a passing penchant, I am sure, or perhaps a flirtation!'

'Yet having a very decided tendency thereto.' replied Annot, with one of her arch smiles. 'But nothing more, dear Roland, nothing more!' she added, perfectly oblivious of poor Bob Hoyle and many other 'detrimentals,' as Mamma Drummond called them.

'Have you never had even what the French call a caprice?' he asked, with a soft laugh and a fond glance.

'Never—never—till——'

'Till when?'

'I came to Merlwood.'

'My little darling!'

'So Hester and Mr. Skene are dancing together again,' said Annot, anxious to change what she deemed a dangerous subject. 'I saw her dancing with Captain Elliot after you resigned her.'

'Yes—she seems enjoying herself, poor Hester!'

'I am so glad to see her with Mr. Skene.'

'Why?'

'Because I hope they will marry yet, and bring their little comedy to a close.'

'How a young girl's mind always runs on love and marriage!' said Roland. 'But this little comedy you refer to, I never heard of it, save from yourself.'

'Indeed!' replied Annot, who, from cogent reasons of her own, was anxious to make the most of Skene's undoubted admiration for Hester. 'I've noticed them greatly in London.'

'I always knew that Malcolm was her unvarying admirer, who singled her out in the Edinburgh assemblies and balls elsewhere from the first, and had, of course, poured much sweet nonsense into her pretty little ears—treasured flowers she had worn, gloves, handkerchiefs, bits of ribbon, and all that sort of thing——'

'Which you all do?'

'That I don't admit, Annot.'

'Anyway, this absurd appreciation of each other's society was a source of great amusement to us in London,' she continued, not very fairly, so far as concerned Hester; but then Annot, a far-seeing young lady, was full of past preconceived suspicions and of present plans of her own.

'However, Annot, this little affair is nothing to us—to me,' added Roland, and oddly enough, with the slightest soupçon of pique in his glance and tone, as he saw Malcolm Skene, a tall and stately fellow, who might please any woman's eye—and did please the eyes of many—leading his dark-eyed and dark-haired cousin, not into the whirl of dances, nor to the refreshment-room, but—as if almost unconsciously—towards the entrance of the long and dimly-lighted conservatory which opened off the Red Drawing-room.

As Jack Elliot was too well-bred a man to attract attention by dancing too much with Maude, his fiancée, the observant Mr. Hawkey Sharpe saw, with no small satisfaction, that for nearly the remainder of the night he bestowed the most of his attention on strangers, wholly intent that Maude's little entertainment should please all and go off well, and that intention, which Mr. Sharpe misunderstood, was one of the causes that led to a serious misadventure at a future time.

Old Gavin Fowler, as he carried Ponto home in his arms to his own lodge, while the dog, conscious of kindness, whined and licked his weather-beaten hands, had muttered between his teeth to Roland:

'A better dog never entered a field! Eleven years has he followed me, and now he is thirteen years auld, and can yet find game wi' the youngest and the best whelp we hae; and to think that he should get sic a clowre from a clod like that! But dogs bark as they are bred—so does Hawkey Sharpe! He's like the witches o' Auchencraw; he'll get mair for your ill than your gude.'

A proverb that means, favours are often granted an individual through fear of his malevolence.

Roland felt all the words implied, and colouring, said, pale with anger:

'He shall pay up this score and others, I hope, ere long, Gavin.'

And Mrs. Lindsay placed her hand upon her heart, on hearing of the episode, and was secretly thankful that the only one who suffered from Hawkey's jealous vengeance was poor Ponto, the pointer.

CHAPTER XIX.

HESTER RECEIVES A PROPOSAL.

Annot was certainly curious to know what was passing between the two whom she had seen wandering into the cooler atmosphere of the conservatory; but she could not at the same time relinquish the society of Roland, and to suggest that they should adjourn thither might only mar the end she wished—without any real affection for Hester—to come to pass, as she had not been without her own suspicions retrospectively. But, sore though it was, we fear that the heart of Hester Maule was not to be caught on the rebound.

And in dread and dislike of Annot's observation, her jests and comments, she had—so far as she could—lately avoided being, if possible, for a moment alone with Malcolm Skene, or giving him an opportunity of addressing her, and he had felt this keenly.

In the long drawing-room the dancing was still gaily in progress, and the soft strains of Strauss went floating along the leafy and gorgeous aisles of the conservatory, where Skene and Hester had—so far as she was concerned—unconsciously wandered. She seated herself, wearily and flushed with dancing, while he hung over her, with his elbow resting on a shelf of flowers, while looking pensively and tenderly down on her—on the heaving of her rounded bosom, her long dark lashes, and the clear white parting of the rich brown hair on her shapely head, longing with all his soul to place his arms round her, and draw that beloved head caressingly on his breast; and yet the words he said at first were somewhat commonplace after all. But Hester, while slowly fanning herself to hide the tremulousness of her hands, knew and felt intuitively that a scene between them was on the tapis; and, deeming it inevitable at some time or other, she thought the sooner it was over the better; and in the then weariness of her heart, she felt a little reckless; but his introductory remarks surprised her by their bluntness.

'My life now seems but one manoeuvre, Miss Maule—to be alone with you for a moment or two.'

Hester made some inaudible reply; so he resumed:

'I have heard it said by some—by whom matters not—that you are engaged, Miss Maule?'

'Then they know more than I do—but to whom have my good friends assigned me?'

'To your cousin.'

'Roland!'

'Yes.'

'I am not engaged to Roland certainly,' replied Hester, her lips and eyelashes quivering as she spoke.

'I thought not,' said Malcolm Skene, gathering courage; 'Miss Drummond seems to me his chief attraction. If he is as happy as I wish him, he will be the happiest of deserving men.'

'The phrase of a novel writer, Mr. Skene,' said Hester, a little bitterly, as she thought over some episodes at Merlwood; 'but do not talk so inflatedly of what men deserve. The best of them are often unwise, unkind, unjust.'

'Do not blame all men for the faults perhaps of one,' said Skene at haphazard, and a little unluckily, as the speech went home to Hester's heart. She grew pale, as if he had divined her secret.

'I do not understand you,' she faltered a little haughtily, while flashing one upward glance at him.

'Considering the way you view men now, and the way you avoid or rebuff me, I wonder that I have got a word with you, as I do to-night.'

'Do I rebuff you?'

'Yes—to my sorrow, I have felt it.'

'Sorrow—of what do you really accuse me?'

'Treating me with coldness, distance——'

'I am not aware—that—that——' she paused, not knowing what to say.

'Hester—dearest Hester,' said he in a low and earnest voice, while stealing nearer her and assuring himself by one swift glance that they were alone in the conservatory; 'let me call you so, were it only for to-night—you know how long I have loved you, and surely you will love me a little in time. I know how true, how tender of heart you are; I know, too, that I have no rival in the present—with the past I have nothing to do; but tell me, even silently, by one touch of your hand, that you love me in turn, or will try to love me in time, Hester—dear, dear Hester!'

She opened her lips, but no sound came from them, and her interlaced hands trembled in her lap, for the 'scene' had gone somewhat beyond her idea in depth and earnestness; and she felt that Malcolm Skene's deduction as regarded there being no rival in the present was a mistake in one sense.

Encouraged by her silence, and construing it in his own favour, little conceiving that her head was then full of a false idol, he resumed:

'Hester, ever since I first saw and knew you, it has been the great hope of my existence to make you my wife.'

Still the girl was voiceless, and felt chained to her seat.

She could feel—yea, could hear her heart beating painfully, as she had a pure regard and most perfect esteem for the young fellow by her side; and thought that to the end of her days the perfume of the lily of the valley, of stephanotis, and other plants close by would come back to memory with Malcolm's voice, the strains of Strauss, the strange atmosphere of the conservatory, and the dull sense of unreality that was over her then.

'Oh, Hester, will you not tell me that you will try to love me—to love me a little? Have you not a single word to give me?'

Passionately earnest were his handsome eyes—anxious and eager was his lowered voice and the expression of his clearly cut face. He said nothing to her, as other men might have done, of his fortune, of his estate, of his lands of Dunnimarle that overlooked the Forth, of his prospects or his future; all such items were forgotten in the present. Neither did he urge that he was going far—far away from her soon—much sooner than he had then the least idea of—to enhance his value in her eyes, or win her interest in his favour; for even that, too, he forgot.

She looked up at him with her soft, velvety, dark-blue eyes suffused, gravely and kindly; the charming little tint gone from her rounded cheeks; her whole face looking very sweet and fair, but not wearing the expression of one who listened with happiness to a welcome tale of love.

'Oh, why do you say all this to me, Mr. Skene—Malcolm I shall call you for old acquaintance' sake—why ask me to marry you?'

'Why? a strange question, Hester,' said he, a little baffled by her apparent self-possession, while tremulous with joy to hear for the first time his Christian name upon her lips.

'Yes—why?' she asked, wearily and sadly.

'Because I love you as much as it is in the nature of an honest man to love a woman.'

'But—but I do not return the sentiment—I cannot love you as you would wish.'

'Not even in the end, Hester?'

'What end?'

'Any time I may give you and hopefully wait for?'

She shook her head and cast down her white eyelids.

'And yet no one else seeks your love?' said he a little reproachfully.

'No one else.'

'Can I never make you care for me?' he urged in a kind of dull desperation.

'Pardon me—but I do not think so; my regard, my friendship and gratitude will ever be yours; but please—please,' she added almost piteously, 'do not let us recur to this matter again.'

'You feel the impossibility——'

'Of receiving your words as you wish.'

'You are at least candid with me, Hester; and I shall, indeed, trouble you no more.'

He spoke with more grief than bitterness, as he dropped the little and softly gloved hand which he had captured for a moment.

She then passed it over his arm and rose, as if to show that all was over and that they were to return to the drawing-room—which she now deeply regretted having quitted—and with them the dancing, the joy, and the brilliance of Maude's little fête had departed for the night.

Skene felt that nothing was left for him now but to quit Earlshaugh at once, and the time and the hour came sooner than he expected, and all the more welcome now.

But the adventures of the night—adventures in which Mr. Hawkey Sharpe bore a somewhat prominent part—were not yet over.

CHAPTER XX.

MR. SHARPE MAKES A MISTAKE.

Maude, though she knew not then the reason, had seen how Hester Maule, after coming from the conservatory, with a kind of good-night bow to Skene, had abruptly quitted the dancers, and looking pale, ill, and utterly out of spirits, had retired to her own room, whither she soon accompanied her; but failing to learn the reason of her discomposure, was returning downstairs to have one last turn with Jack Elliot, when she suddenly met Mr. Hawkey Sharpe, the result of whose attentions to the wine in the refreshment-room was pretty apparent in his face and watery gray eyes, and he paused unsteadily with a hand on the great oaken banisters.

As Maude came tripping down the broad stone staircase with leisurely grace and clad in a soft and most becoming dress, one of those 'whose apparently inexpensive simplicity men innocently admire, and over the bills for which husbands and fathers wag their heads aghast,' he glanced appreciatively at her snowy neck and shoulders, where her girlish plumpness hid even the small collar-bones; at her beautiful, blooming face, her sunny hair; her petulant, scornful mouth, and delicate profile; while she, with some remembrance of how he had acquitted himself among the dancers, and when waltzing, in attempting to reverse, had spread dismay around him, for a moment felt inclined to smile.

Wine gave Hawkey Sharpe fresh courage, and just then some new thoughts had begun to occur to him.

He had seen that—unlike young Malcolm Skene, who hovered about Hester like her shadow, and unlike Roland, who was never absent from the side of Annot—Captain Elliot and Maude were not apparently overmuch together; for in the assured position of their love and engagement they seemed in society very much like other persons. He was ignorant of the mystery that there could be

'Sighs the deeper for suppression,
And stolen glances sweeter for the theft,'

and in the coarseness of his nature and lack of fine perception he mistook the situation, and began to think that, notwithstanding all he heard mooted, and notwithstanding the fact of seeing a letter addressed in Maude's handwriting to the gentleman in question, there might be 'nothing in it,' but perhaps an incipient flirtation; and he had resolved on the first opportune occasion to renew his pretensions, as the Captain had evidently danced much with other girls—perhaps, he thought, had preferred them—during the past night.

And now it seemed the time had come; and, over and above all his extreme assurance, he thought to win through her terror and necessity of temporizing for appearance' sake what she never might yield to any regard for himself; and even now, as he prepared to address her, anger, fear, and a sickly sense of humiliation suddenly came into the heart of Maude, though a moment before it had been beating happily with thoughts that were all her own.

'I hope,' said he, with what he meant for a smile, but was more like a grimace, 'that you enjoyed the dancing to-night, Miss Lindsay?'

'Thanks,' replied Maude curtly. 'I hope you, too, have been amused,' she added, making a side step to pass, but, as on a previous occasion, he barred the way, and said:

'I did not venture to ask you for one dance, even.'

Maude, who deemed his presence there, though at the invitation most probably of her stepmother, presumption enough, smiled coldly and haughtily, and was about to pass down with a bow, which might mean anything, when, still opposing her progress, he said, while eyeing her fair beauty with undisguised admiration, and with a would-be soft voice, which, however, was rather 'feathery':

'Have you quite forgotten the subject on which I last addressed you?'

'The subject!'

'Yes.'

'I have not forgotten your profound presumption, Mr. Sharpe, as I then called it, if it is to that you refer,' replied Maude, trembling with anger.

'Presumption! You so style my veneration—my regard—my——'

'Take care what you say, sir, and how you may provoke my extreme patience too far,' interrupted Maude, her face now blanched and pale.

'Your patience! that for it!' said he, suddenly snapping his fingers, and giving way to a sudden gust of coarse anger that caused his cheeks to redden and his eyes to gleam. 'It is your fear of me—your fear of me for your brother and his popinjay friends that gives you what you pretend to call patience, Maude Lindsay, and by the heavens above us,' he continued, wine and rage mounting into his brain together, 'by the heavens above us, I say, if that fellow Elliot—

What he was about to say remains unknown, as it was suddenly cut short. A hand from behind was laid firmly on his right ear, and by that he was twisted round, flaming with rage, fury, and no small amount of pain, to find himself confronted by the calm, stern, and inquiring face of the very person he referred to—Captain Elliot.

There was a half-minute's pause after the latter flung Hawkey Sharpe aside.

The steward glared at his assailant, who scarcely knew what to make of the situation, a sound like a hiss escaping through his teeth in his speechless rage and sense of affront, he clenched his hands till the spiky nails pierced his flesh. He grew deadly pale, and, with an almost grotesque expression of hate there is no describing in his pale, shifty, and watery eyes, he turned away muttering something deeply and huskily; while with a smile of disdain Jack Elliot drew the trembling girl's arm through his own and led her downstairs; but her dancing was over for that night.

'Maudie, darling, is that fellow mad? What the deuce is all this about?' asked Elliot, full of concern and surprise.

'Jack, dear Jack,' said Maude beseechingly, and in tears now, 'I implore you not to speak to Roland of this unseemly episode.'

'The fellow seems to have taken too much wine.'

'Yes, Jack, and forgot himself.'

'But he should have remembered you, and who you are.'

'But you don't know—you can't know, how Roland is situated,' said Maude, in a breathless and broken voice.

'I suspect much; but there—don't weep, Maude; the fellow's whole existence is not worth one of your tears.'

Maude was full of fear and distress for what might ensue if Roland knew all. Alas! she could very little foresee what did ensue.

But notwithstanding his promise to Maude, Elliot was too puzzled by the apparent mystery, and her too evident sense of grief and mortification, not to make some small reference to the affair when he and Roland met for a farewell cigar in the smoke-room, after the last of the guests had driven away. He kept, however, Maude's name out of the matter.

'I am loth, Roland, to have an unseemly row with one of your dependents; but, d—n me, if I don't feel inclined to lash that fellow—Sharpe, I think, his name is!'

'He is certainly an underbred fellow,' said Roland uneasily.

'Then why not send him to the right-about?'

'Easier said than done, Jack—if you knew all,' said Roland, almost with a groan; 'but has he been rude to you?'

'To me—well—yes, in a way he has.'

'With all his impudent would-be air of ease, it is evident he has none, as one may see at a glance,' said Skene, who had been smoking moodily in a corner, 'he is a man who does not know what to do with his legs and arms, or to seem in any way at ease like a gentleman.'

'I feel at times that I would like to kick the fellow,' said Roland, with a sudden gush of anger, 'when he sits with that aggravating smile and see-nothing look on his face, yet "taking stock" of everyone and everything all round—all the while answering me so softly, when he knows that I am burning with contempt and dislike of him. If he would get into a passion and fly out I would respect him more, but he seems to be for ever biding his time—his time for what?' added Roland, almost to himself.

'Passion? You should have seen him to-night!' said Elliot, who, unfortunately for himself, had not yet seen the tail of the storm he had roused; 'but why give him house-room, I say?'

'He is just now a necessary evil—a little time, Jack, and you shall know all,' replied Roland in a somewhat dejected voice; so Elliot said no more.

Meantime the subject of these remarks had betaken him to his own apartments, and certainly as he had ascended the old hollowed steps of the turret stair that led thereto they seemed, according to the Earlshaugh legend, to lead down rather than up.

'I'll be even with you, Miss Maude Lindsay, some fine day—see if I am not!' he muttered as he went; 'your high and mighty hoity-toity airs will be the ruin of you and yours. And as for that fellow Elliot, I'll take change out of him—make cold meat of him, by heaven, if I can!'

Sobered by rage he reached his peculiar sanctum, and sat down there to scheme out revenge, through the medium of a briar-root from his rack of pipes, and brandy and soda from a cellarette he possessed.

'I'll marry that girl Maude—or—by Jove! not a bad idea, the other one, with the golden hair, if old Deb fails me, which I can scarcely think. The little party with the golden hair seems game for anything,' he added, showing more acuteness than Roland in the matter. 'Why shouldn't I? I am going in for respectability now, and I rather flatter myself I am as good as any of that Brummagem lot downstairs, for all their coats of arms, pedigrees, and bosh! I'm in clover here—in society now, and, by Jove, I'll keep to it. But, Deb,' he continued talking aloud, as the new beverage cast loose his tongue, 'her heart is in a bad way—devil a doubt of that! The doctors assure me of it—is breaking up—breaking up—tell more to me than they have done to her; and that she may go off any time like a farthing candle! Poor Deb—she is not half a bad sort—yet I wish she would settle her little affairs and——'

A sound made him look round, and he saw his sister looking pale—white indeed—and weary, with an unpleasant expression in her cold, deep eyes, and a palpable knit on her usually smooth and lineless forehead.

'How much had she overheard?' was Hawkey's first fearful thought.

'My dear Deb,' he stammered, 'I was just thinking that you should make the whole of that pack clear out of the house—they are too much for you, and the house is yours! Have a little brandy and water, Deb—you look so ill! Poor, dear Deb,' he continued in a maudlin way, 'if anything happened to you, you know how I should sorrow for it.'

'I have no intention of affording you that opportunity yet,' she replied, with something of a flash in her eyes.

CHAPTER XXI.

MALCOLM SKENE.

The sportsmen assembled next morning a little later than usual, and after hastily partaking of coffee, were about to set forth after the partridges, with dogs, keepers, and beaters, to a particular spot where Gavin Fowler assured them that the coveys were so thick as to cover the ground, when Malcolm Skene, whom all were beginning to miss, suddenly appeared, but minus gun, shot belt, and other shooting paraphernalia, yet with a brighter smile on his face that it had won overnight.

'What is up, Malcolm?' asked Roland; 'don't you go with us?'

'Impossible! I have just had a telegram from the Colonel. The corps is short of officers, from sickness, casualties, and so forth; so I must resign my leave and start at once.'

'For the depôt?'

'No—for Egypt,' continued Skene, 'so I must be off. Let me have a trap, Roland, that I may catch the up train for the South.'

'This is sudden!' exclaimed several.

'Sudden indeed—but no less welcome,'

'I am so sorry, old fellow!' exclaimed Roland, 'when the birds are in such excellent order, too.'

'I can scarcely realize it,' said Skene, whose thoughts were not with the birds certainly. 'In a fortnight, I shall be again in my fighting kit and in the land of the Pharaohs.'

Ignorant of what had so suddenly transpired, Hester, for whom he looked anxiously and wistfully, was lingering in her room, till the shooting party should have gone forth, unwilling to face Malcolm Skene after the interview of last night, and full of a determination to return at once to Merlwood, to her old life by the wooded Esk, with her silver-haired father, his bubbling hookah, and his Indian reminiscences—oh! how well she knew them all! But Maude, and even the selfish and apparently volatile Annot, regarded the handsome fellow with deep interest, and the lips of the former were white and quivering as she bade him adieu.

'Good-bye, all you fellows;' he exclaimed, when old Buckle came with the trap to the porte-cochère. 'Good-bye, Roland and you, Jack—when shall we three meet again? In thunder and all the rest of it, no doubt. Farewell, Miss Lindsay—Maude I may call you just now—bid Hes—, your cousin, adieu for me, and God keep you all till we meet once more—if ever!' he added, under his moustache.

Another moment he was gone, and no trace remained of him but the wheel-tracks in the avenue.

'Good-bye—good-bye;' it sounded like a dirge in the air of the warm autumn morning.

'Poor Malcolm—he is the king of good fellows,' said Roland to his friends who were gathered in the entrance-hall, just as Hester Maule, pale as a lily, after vainly practising a little the art of smiling and looking happy in her mirror, appeared at the foot of the staircase, and heard what had occurred.

'Yes—Skene has just gone, poor fellow. Should you not have liked to have bade him farewell?'

'Yes—of course,' said Hester, with colourless lips; but thought, 'it is better not—better not now.'

'His last message was to you,' whispered Maude.

'Well—it will be my turn next, and yours too, Elliot,' said Roland as he lit a cigarette.

'It but reminds me of Wolfe's song,' added Elliot cheerily, as he sang in a tragic-comic way—

'Let mirth and wine abound.
The trumpets sound,
    And the colours flying are, my boys!
'Tis he, you, or I,
Whose business is to die;
    Then why should we be melancholy, boys,
Whose business is to die?'

Come along—here are the dogs.'

'Skene's departure seems to have upset you girls,' said Roland, 'and now, Hester, my dear cousin,' he added in a blundering way, 'you look as pale as if Melancholy had marked you for her own.'

'Don't jest, Roland,' said Maude; 'Malcolm Skene looks like one who has a history behind him, and a strange destiny before him. Only think, Roland,' she added in a whisper, as she drew her brother aside; 'he proposed to Hester in the conservatory last night!'

'And—and she——'

'Refused him.'

'Why?'

Maude only shook her pretty head; but his heart told him too probably why, and for a time his conscience smote him.

'Don't you think she was foolish?' asked Maude; 'I certainly told her that I thought so, as Malcolm is such a lovable fellow.'

'And what did she say?'

'Replied, with a feeble laugh, that she meant to die an unappropriated blessing.'

'What is that, Maudie?'

'An old maid.'

'Nonsense—a handsome girl like Hester!'

To do the latter justice, she asked herself more than once why had she refused him, and for what?

Many may deem that Hester acted a foolish part: but her heart was too sore, and still too full of regard for another to find a place in it for the love of Malcolm Skene, though she knew it had been hers in the past, ready to lay at her feet.

Steadfast of purpose, she was, in some respects, a remarkable girl, Hester Maule. Roland, her companion in childhood, as we have elsewhere stated, was the one love of her life.

'All of hers upon that die was thrown,' and her heart was not to be caught on the rebound, through pique, pride, soreness, or disappointment.

But now that Malcolm was gone, Hester in solitude could not but give a few tears as she thought of his true regard for her; his stately presence, his soft earnestness, and his sad, tender eyes—thought over all that—but for Roland's image—might have been; and of the high compliment Skene's honest and gallant heart had paid her; but all—even could she have wished it otherwise—was over now, and he had gone to that fatal land of battle and disease, where so many found their graves then!

Did Roland jest when he asked if Melancholy had marked her for its own? If so, it was a species of wound, and she felt that 'it is only wounds inflicted by those we love whose sting lasts.'

Maude and Annot, with the old groom, Johnnie Buckle, as their Escudero, had gone for a 'spin' on their pads as far as Kilmany, to visit the Gaules-Den, a deep ravine through which a river runs; Mrs. Lindsay was in the seclusion of her own room, as usual at that time of the day, when she took some kind of drops for her heart, and Hester, left alone to silence and solitude, mentally followed Malcolm Skene in his journey southward. Her hands were folded idly in her lap; a kind of sad listlessness was all over her, and her soft dark eyes were dreamily fixed on vacancy, and seemed to see—if we may say so—visions, while, as on yesternight, the perfume of the lily of the valley, of the stephanotis, and other flowers was floating round her.

She thought she might have seen him once again had she gone downstairs at the usual time—but have seen him to what end or purpose, constituted as her mind was then? Better not.

In these days it seemed to Hester that there was not one of her actions which she did not repent of before it was half conceived or half acted upon.

The forenoon sun soared hot and high, and the drowsy flies and one huge humming bee, enclosed by the windows of her room, made their useless journeys up and down the panes, on which the climbing ivy pattered; the birds twittered among the leaves of the latter; an occasional dog barked in the stable-yard, and the voice of the peacock—never pleasant at any time—was heard on the terrace without; but soon other sounds—voices indicative of excitement and alarm—caused her to rise, throw open a window in the deep embayment of the ancient wall, and look out.

Advancing across the emerald sward of the lawn, but slowly and carefully, came a group—the sportsmen of the morning, with their guns sloped on the shoulder or carried under an arm, and the dogs cowering, as if overawed, about their footsteps.

What was the cause of this? What had happened?

Four men were bearing a fifth on a stretcher or hurdle of some kind—a man either terribly wounded or dead, he lay so still—so very still!

A half-stifled cry escaped Hester, as she rushed downstairs, for some dreadful catastrophe had evidently taken place!