CHAPTER LIII
A HOMEWARD GLANCE.
The action of one human being on another, by subtle means, it has been said, is as effective as the action of light on the air: that under the influence of Hawkey Sharpe and certain new circumstances, Annot Drummond had visibly deteriorated already.
Her high-flown ideas and undoubtedly better breeding had caused her to experience many a shock when in the daily and hourly society of her husband, with all his vulgar and horsey ways, and he was certainly far below that young lady's high-pitched expectations and her love of externals.
Her life at Earlshaugh had at first been getting quite like a story, she thought, and a perplexingly interesting story, too, with the high game she had to play for—a game in manoeuvres worthy of Machiavelli himself.
Annot, we know, was not tall; but her slight figure was prettily rounded. She carried herself well, though too quick and impulsive in her movements for real dignity, and as Maude had said, she never could conceive her at the head of a household, or taking a place in society. Now, as the wife of 'a cad' like Hawkey Sharpe, the latter was not to be thought of.
Her pretty ways and glittering golden hair, which had misled better men than the wretched Sharpe, were palling even upon him, now; and her studied artlessness had given place to a bearing born of vanity and her own success and ambition, the sequel of which she was yet to learn, but withal she was not yet lady of Earlshaugh. But, as a writer says of a similar character, 'a self-love, that demon who besets alike the learned philosopher with his own pet theories; the statesman with his pet political hobbies; the man of wealth with his own aggrandisement; and the man of toil with his own pet prejudices—that insidious demon had entire hold now of this silly little girl's heart, and closed it to anything higher.'
Married now, and safe in position as she thought herself, Annot was no longer the coaxing and cooing little creature she had been to Hawkey Sharpe; and rough and selfish though he was, a flash of her eyes, or a curl of her lip cowed him at times. She treated him as one for whom she was bound to entertain a certain amount of marital affection, but no respect whatever, and when she contrasted him with Roland Lindsay and other men she had known, even poor, weak Bob Hoyle, her manner became one of contempt and, occasionally, disgust.
But she had preferred the couleur d'or to the couleur de rose in matrimony, and had now, as Hawkey said, 'to ride the ford as she found it.'
'Men like Roland,' said Annot to Mrs. Lindsay when discussing her whilom lover, 'especially military men, see a good deal of life, and experience teaches them how passing a love affair may be.'
'You mean——' began Mrs. Lindsay, scarcely knowing what to say.
'I mean that he must have played with fire pretty often,' said Annot, laughing, but not pleasantly, 'and will forget me as he must have forgotten others. I suppose our likes and dislikes in this world are based upon the point that somebody likes or dislikes ourselves.'
Hawkey Sharpe's debts and demands since his marriage had exhausted the patience if not quite the finances of his sister: and now the bill, erewhile referred to—the racing debt—was falling inexorably due, and how to meet it, or be stigmatised as a 'welsher' on every course in the country, became a source of some anxiety to that gentleman.
To meet his other requirements, all the fine timber in the King's Wood was gone—a clean sweep had been made from King James's Thorn to the Joug Tree, that bears an iron collar, in which for centuries the offenders on the domains of Earlshaugh had suffered durance, and the once finely foliaged hill now looked bare and strange; and for angry remarks thereat, Willie Wardlaw, the gardener, and Gavin Fowler, the head gamekeeper, aged dependants on the house of Earlshaugh, as their fathers had been before them, had been summarily dismissed by Mr. Hawkey Sharpe.
A well-known firm of shipbuilders on the Clyde had offered for the wood, and to the former the most attractive part of the transaction, in addition to the good price, was the fact that the money was paid down at once but it was far from satisfying the wants of Mr. Hawkey Sharpe.
'You know I disliked having that timber sold—that I hated the mere thought of having it cut!' said Deborah to him reproachfully, as she looked from the window into the sunshine.
'Why?' he asked sulkily; 'what the devil was the use of it?'
'It was the favourite feature in the landscape——'
'Of whom?'
'My dead husband.'
'Bosh!' exclaimed Hawkey, who thought this was (what, to do her justice, it was not) 'twaddle.'
They were together in his sanctum, or 'den,' which passed occasionally as his office; though the table, like the mantelpiece, was strewed with pipes, their ashes were everywhere, and the air was generally redolent of somewhat coarse tobacco smoke.
Having a favour to ask, he had, in his own fashion, been screwing his courage to the sticking-point.
'You have been imbibing—drinking again?' said his pale sister, eyeing him contemptuously with her cold, glittering stare.
'"I take a little wine for my stomach's sake and other infirmities," as we find in 1st Timothy,' said he with a twinkle in his shifty eyes.
'The devil can quote Scripture, so well may you.'
'That is severe, Deb,' said he, filling his pipe.
'Come to the point.'
'Well, Deb, dear, would it be convenient to you to—to lend me a couple of thousand pounds for a few weeks? I have hinted of this from time to time.'
'Two thousand pounds! Not only inconvenient, but impossible,' said she, twisting her rings about in nervous anger.
'Why, Deb?'
'I have not even a fifty-pound note in the house.'
'But plenty lying idle at your banker's.'
'Not the sum you seek to borrow just now. Borrow! Why not be candid, and ask for it out and out? Two thousand——'
'I must have the money, I tell you,' he said, with sudden temper, 'or—or——'
'What?'
'Be disgraced—that is all,' he replied, sullenly lighting his huge briar-root.
'Well, you must find it without my aid,' said she, coldly and sullenly too.
'Could you not raise it on some of your useless jewels? Come, now, dear old Deb, don't be too hard upon a fellow.'
Anger made her pale cheek suffuse at this cool suggestion, and she became very much agitated.
'Now, don't cut up this way. It is your heart again, of course; but keep quiet, and let nothing trouble you,' said he, puffing vigorously. 'You have a lot of the Lindsay jewels that are too old-fashioned for even you to wear.'
'But not to bequeath.'
'To Annot?' said he, brightening a little.
'I am sick of you and your Annot,' exclaimed Mrs. Lindsay, now all aflame with anger, and trembling violently.
'Sorry to hear it,' said he, somewhat mockingly. 'We have not yet quite got over our spooning.'
'Don't use that horrid, vulgar phrase, Hawkey.'
'Vulgar! How?'
'One no doubt derived from the gipsies, when two used one horn spoon. Annot, with all her apparent amiable imbecility, is a remarkably acute young woman.'
'She is—and does credit to my taste, Deb.'
'One whom it is impossible to dislike, I admit.'
'Of course.'
'And also quite impossible to love.'
'Oh, come now, poor Annot!' said Hawkey, with a kind of mock deprecation; and then to gain favour he said, 'I do wish, dear Deb, that you would see the doctor again—about yourself.'
'I have seen him; the old story, he can do nothing but order me to avoid all agitation, yet you have not given me much chance of that lately.'
'But just once again, Deb—about this money——'
'Another word on the subject and we part for ever!' she exclaimed, and giving him a glance—stony as the stare of Medusa—one such as he had never before seen in her small, keen, and steely-gray eyes, she flung away and left him.
He gnashed his teeth, smashed his pipe on the floor, then lit a huge regalia to soothe his susceptibilities, and thought about how the money was to be raised. He knew his sister had thousands idle in the bank, and have it he should at all hazards!
He had meant, too, if successful, and he found her pliable, to have spoken to her again about making her will; but certainly the present did not seem a favourable occasion to do so.
'Deb will be getting her palpitation of the heart, nervous attacks, low spirits, and the devil only knows all what more, on the head of this!' he muttered with a malediction.
Hawkey had watched her retire through the deep old doorway (under the lintel of which tall Cardinal Beatoun had whilom stooped his head) and disappear along the stately corridor beyond. Then he dropped into an easy-chair—stirred the fire restlessly and impatiently, and drained his glass, only to refill it—his face the while fraught with rage and mischief.
He drew a letter or two from a drawer—they were from his sister—and he proceeded to study her signature with much artistic acumen and curiosity.
'Needs must when the devil drives!' said he, grinding his teeth and biting his spiky nails; 'I have done it—and that she'll know in time!'
Done what?
That the reader will know in time too.