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.