Playing with Fire: A Story of the Soudan War

by James Grant

The family legal agent had not yet returned to Edinburgh, so Roland had not been able to see or take counsel with him as to what transpired when he was lurking in the desert after Kashgate.

But Annot was come, and for the time he was content to live at Earlshaugh in that species of Fool's Paradise—'to few unknown,' as Milton has it. As yet nothing more had been heard of the meadowing of the park or cutting down the King's Wood; and save that Mr. Hawkey Sharpe from time to time crossed his path, and even—to Maude's intense annoyance, and that of Roland from other causes—joined his sister at the family meals, Roland had no other specific grievance; but he felt as if upon a volcano.

As Annot left the carriage, she was greeted warmly and kindly by Maude, who was glad to return attentions received in London, and who as yet knew nothing of how the young lady was situated with regard to Roland, who now looked round for Mrs. Lindsay as the lady of the house.

But the latter, under the régime of her predecessor, his mother, 'was too accurately acquainted with the weights and measures of society for such a movement as that;' and thus received her two guests—or Maude's rather—in the Red Drawing-room, accurately attired in rich black moire, with lace lappets and jet ornaments; and was, of course, 'delighted' to see both, while according to each, not her hand, but a finger thereof; and Hester, who knew her well of old, read again in her pale face that mixture of hardness and cunning with which the slight smile on her thin lips—a smile that never reached her sharp gray eyes—well accorded.

Her eyes were handsome, and had been pleasing in their expression once; but now her somewhat false position in Earlshaugh and her secret ailment had imparted to them a defiant, restless, and peculiar one.

The coldness of her manner struck Hester as unpleasant; Roland's politeness was not warmth that made up for it, and the girl already began to think—'I was a fool—a weak fool to come! But how to get away, now that I am here?'

'It is a beautiful place!' thought the artful and ambitious little Annot, when left for a few minutes in the solitude of her own room, and, forgetting even to glance at her soft face and petite figure in the tall cheval glass or toilette mirror, gazed dreamily from the windows, arched and deep in the massive wall, over the far extent of pastoral country, tufted here and there with dark green woods, with a glimpse of the German Sea in the distance; and she felt, for a time, all the anticipative joy of being the mistress—the joint owner—of such a stately old pile as Earlshaugh with all its surroundings, the historic interest of which was to her, however, a sealed book; but there is much in the glory of a sense of ownership, says a writer—'of the ownership of land and houses, of beeves and woolly flocks, of wide fields and thick growing woods, even when that ownership is of late date, when it conveys to the owner nothing but the realization of a property on the soil; but there is much more in it when it contains the memories of old years; when the glory is the glory of a race as well as the glory of power and property.'

And though to a little town-bred bird like Annot such historic flights were empty things, the old walls of Earlshaugh had seen ancestors of Roland ride forth heading their followers with morion, jack, and spear, to the fields of Flodden, Pinkey, and Dunbar; to the muster place of the Fife lairds, in the year of Sherriffmuir, and to many a stirring broil in the days when the Scotsman's sword was always in his hand and never in its scabbard; but from such daydreams as did occur to her, Annot was now roused by the welcome sound of the luncheon gong echoing from the entrance-hall, and, dispensing with the assistance of a maid, she hurried at once downstairs.

In expectation of the gentlemen who were coming after the birds on the First, a day or two passed off delightfully enough, amid the novelty of Earlshaugh, and the evenings were devoted to music; and despite the unwelcome presence of the cold, haughty, and somewhat repellant Mrs. Lindsay, Annot, as at Merlwood, talked to Roland, played for, sang to Roland, and put forth—more effusively than ever—all her little arts in the way of attraction for him, and him alone; which his sister Maude, to whom this style of thing was rather new, looked on with amused surprise at first, and then somewhat reprehensively and gloomily.

To Hester, Roland, acting as host, was elaborate in his brotherly kindness and attention; perhaps—nay doubtless—a lingering sentiment of remorse had made him so; and she received it all, but with secret pain and intense mortification, and Maude's soft blue eyes were not slow to detect this.