CHAPTER XV.
MR. HAWKEY SHARPE SEEKS COUNSEL.
We have said that Maude thought that Mr. Hawkey Sharpe's love-making, with all its euphonious platitudes, was known to him and to herself alone.
In this she was mistaken, as Hawkey's sister Deborah, Mrs. Lindsay, was in his confidence in that matter, and quite au fait of its doubtful progress. She did not appear at dinner that evening, but dined in her own room, and then betook her to her brother's sanctum, or 'den,' as he called it—a picturesque old panelled apartment, in what was named the Beatoun wing—which had a quaint stone fireplace, the grate of which was full of August flowers then, but at the hearth of which in the winter of the year before Pinkeyfield was fought, his Eminence had been wont to toast his scarlet-slippered toes.
The furniture was quite modern. Fishing and shooting gear, with whips, spurs, billiard cues, a few soiled books on farriery and racing, were its chief features now; while sporting calendars, etc., strewed the table, with a few note and account books, and letters of minor importance.
After gloomily referring to his late interview with Maude Lindsay, he assisted himself to a briar-root pipe from a nice arrangement of meerschaums and other pipes stuck in an oaken and steel mounted horseshoe on the broad mantel-shelf, and prepared to soothe himself with 'a weed' and the contents of a remarkably long tumbler—brandy and soda—sent up, per Mr. Trotter, from the pantry of old Funnell, the butler, for his delectation; while his pale and sallow-visaged sister was content to sip from a slender glass a decoction of some medical stuff prescribed for chronic low spirits and weak action of the heart—an affliction under which she laboured, and to which, no doubt, her pallid and at times stone-coloured complexion was attributable.
Always calm in demeanour, she was otherwise unlike her brother Hawkey, who was not particular to a shade in anything (provided he was not found out), and she was outwardly a model of religion and propriety, blended with hypocrisy, which—according to Rochefoucauld—is the homage that vice pays to virtue.
Attired in a luxurious dressing-gown and tasselled smoking cap, Mr. Sharpe lounged in a cosy easy-chair, shooting his huge cuffs forward from time to time, and stroking his sandy, ragged moustache, in what he thought to be 'good style.'
Instead of being thick and podgy, as his humble origin might suggest, his hands, we must admit, were rather thin, with long spiky filbert nails, reminding one—with all their cultivated whiteness—of the talons of a bird of prey.
'Deuced good thing for us, Deb, that codicil was never completed,' said he (for about the hundredth time), breaking a pause; 'but still we have now that fellow, Roland Lindsay, back again, ready to overhaul matters, after escaping Arab bullets and swords, desert fever, and the devil only knows what more.'
'You forget that this is his home,' said she, with a little touch of womanly feeling for the moment, 'or he deems it as such.'
'So long as you permit it, I suppose.'
'I cannot throw down the glove to the County just now.'
'But assume a virtue if you have it not,' said Hawkey, applying himself to the long tumbler, that still sparkled and effervesced in the lamp-light.
'He cannot harm me, at all events.'
'I don't know that, and I was deuced easier when he was away in Egypt. Some might call this selfish—what the devil do I care! A man's chief duty centres on himself.'
'Without pity for the unfortunate?'
'Don't be a humbug, Deb, and don't act to me! The poor and unfortunate are so, by their own fault, I suppose. I wish to speak with you about that to which I have—reluctantly—referred more than once.'
Mrs. Lindsay made a gesture of impatience, and said, while toying with her pet cur Fifine:
'Ah—money matters with reference to yourself in the future?'
'Yes; but I do dislike, my dear Deb,' said he, with an affection which she knew right well was mostly simulated, 'discussing them with you.'
'Why?'
'It is so disagreeable.'
'It would be more disagreeable for you if there were no money matters to discuss,' she replied with the smallest approach to a sneer. 'But, to the point, Hawkey—I know what it is!'
'You are not strong, you know, dear Deb; you may go off—' (the hooks, he was about to say, but changed his mind)—'off suddenly, and not leave your house well ordered. We should always be prepared for the worst. You know what the best doctors in Edinburgh have told you,' he added, burying his nose and moustache in the tumbler again.
'Well?' said she.
'I mean that you should execute that will you spoke of.'
'In your favour?'
'And so preclude all contention from any quarter—a hundred times I have hinted this to you.'
'How kind and soothing the reminder is!' she replied bitterly, unwilling, like all selfish people, to adopt or face the dire idea of death, sudden or otherwise.
'I do advise you to consider well, Deb.'
'For your sake, of course.'
'Well—it may seem selfish, dear Deb.'
'Ah—advice is a commodity which every possessor deems most valuable, and yet hastens to get rid of.'
Hawkey eyed her anxiously, for her irritation and animosity, when her delicate health and disease of the heart were referred to, always predominated over every other feeling, but she waived them for the time and returned to the first subject.
'So that was all your success with Maude?'
'Not much, certainly,' he replied, with a scowl at vacancy.
'Unfortunate!'
'Rather!'
'As the provision left by her father is a most ample one for her.'
'Not so ample as all Earlshaugh, however,' thought he, refilling his briar-root in silence.
'You must persevere. It has been truly said that "the days of Jacob are over, that men don't understand waiting now, and it is always as well to catch your fish when you can."'
Hawkey smoked on in silence. He had never before dared to lift his eyes so high, never before ventured to 'make love' to a lady. His past experience had been more sudden, abrupt, less bothersome, and more acceptable. Had he done or said too much, or too little? Ought he to have gone down on his knees like the lovers he had seen on the stage, or read of in old story books?
No—he was certain she would have laughed at him had he done so; and he was also certain no one 'did that sort of thing' nowadays. The age of such supplication was assuredly past; and he thought, viciously too, that he had 'done all that may become a man.'
'These bloated aristocrats, Deb, have a way all their own, of setting a fellow down!' said he, with a louring expression in his shifty, pale-gray eyes; 'she is, I know, my superior in position, in the way the world goes, as yet,' he continued, for Mr. Hawkey Sharpe, though longing for the vineyard of Naboth, was—at heart—a Social-Democrat; 'my superior in birth, education, and habits.'
'I should think so.'
'Don't sneer at me, Deb.'
'So far, perhaps, as Maude is concerned, your success depends, Hawkey, upon whether there is anyone else in her thoughts.'
'Before me, you mean?'
'Yes—she may be engaged for all we know. I, for one, am certainly not in her confidence. She has a lover, however, I suspect.'
'It looks deuced like the case. I saw her post a letter to a fellow named Elliot to-night,' he added, with a knit in his brow and an ugly gleam in his pale eyes.
'Elliot—that is the name of one of those who come here to shoot, for the First.'
'To shoot?'
'Yes—on Roland's invitation.'
'There may be something else shot than partridges.'
'Elliot—Captain Elliot?'
'Yes—that was the name on her letter.'
'Well—you must not quarrel with him—that would be unseemly.'
'My dear Deb, I never quarrel with those I hate,' was the comprehensive and sinister reply of Hawkey Sharpe, with his most diabolical expression; 'and though I have never seen this interloper Elliot, I feel a most ungodly hatred of him already.'
'I repeat that no good can come of a vulgar quarrel, and that you must not forget the proprieties. What would the servants alone say or think?'
'Oh, d—n the servants!' responded her brother, tugging his moustache angrily; 'but if that fellow Elliot is her lover, I must put my brains in steep and contrive to separate them at all hazards, Deb. If I allow him or anyone else to enter the stakes, I shall be out of the running. Anyhow, as you are looking pale, Deb, I mustn't keep you here talking over my incipient love affairs, or you will not be able to receive some of these infernal guests, who, I believe, come to-morrow. You are not overburdened with visitors, however.'
'Yet I would rather it was the time of their going than their coming,' said Mrs. Lindsay, whom his remark touched on a tender point.
'Why?' asked Hawkey.
'They must soon perceive that I am tabooed by the county families—that no one calls here as of old.'
'Well?'
'Except, perhaps, the people from the Manse and the doctor.'
'Neither—or none—of whom I care to see.'
'And yet I subscribe to all local charities, bazaars, school feasts, as regularly——'
'As if you were an Elder of the Kirk—thereby wasting your money to win a place among the "unco guid," and all to no purpose,' said Hawkey, with the slightest approach to derision. 'Well—well; how I shall succeed with the fair Maude—if I succeed at all—time and a little management, in more ways than one, will show,' he added with knitted brows and hands clenched by thoughts that were full of vague but savage intentions.
'You know the proverb,' said Mrs. Lindsay, with a cold smile, as she lifted up her dog and retired: 'a man may woo as he will, but maun wed where his weird is.'
Hawkey Sharpe set his teeth, and his eyes gleamed as he thought with—but did not quote—Georges Ohnet, because he knew him not: 'Money is the password of these venal and avaricious times. Beauty, virtue, and intelligence count for nothing. People no longer say, "Room for the worthiest," but "Room for the wealthiest!"'
Then other things occurred to him.
'I am certain that Maude' (he spoke of her as 'Maude' to himself and his sister) 'won't mention our little matter, for cogent reasons, to her brother,' he reflected confidently;. 'but I must work the oracle with Deb about her will. With that heart ailment which she undoubtedly has, she may go off the hooks at any moment, as I, perhaps unwisely, hinted; and I am not lawyer enough to know how old Earlshaugh's last testament may stand; yet, surely, I am Deb's heir-at-law, anyhow, I should think!'
Unless Mr. Hawkey Sharpe had indulged—which was not improbable—in 'tall talk,' his language and disposition augured ill for the safety and comfort of Maude's fiancé if he came to Earlshaugh; but Sharpe's threatened vengeance had no decided plan as yet.