MAUDE'S SECRET.
Roland had got a suitable mount from old Buckle and gone for 'a
spin,' to leave, if possible, his worries and fidgets behind him,
away by Radernie and as far as Carnbee, where the green hills that
culminate in conical Kellie Law look down on the Firth of Forth and
the dark blue German Sea; while Maude--after being down at Spens the
poacher's cottage with money and sundry comforts for his starving
wife and children--full of the subject of Roland's return and the
approaching visit of her _fiancé_, Jack Elliot, had written a long,
effusive, and young girl-like epistle to the latter, and was on her
way to slip it into the locked letter-bag in the hall with her own
hand. She had a consciousness that she was watched, and with it no
desire that her correspondence should be discussed just then, as she
had a nervous dread of Mr. Hawkey Sharpe, who had actually and
presumptuously ventured on more than one occasion to evince some
unmistakable tenderness towards her--an indiscretion, to say the
least of it, of which she dared give no hint to her fiery brother;
but which was the source of much disquietude to poor Maude, and of
confusion and distress to her, as regarded the steward's power in the
house, and made her change colour at the mere mention of his name.
And now when passing through a long and lonely wainscotted corridor,
the windows of which on one side overlooked the haugh beneath the
house, and which led to the great staircase, she came suddenly upon
the very object of her dread, Mr. Sharpe, and hastily thrust her
letter into the bosom of her dress.
Though her own mistress, with her engagement to Captain Elliot
acknowledged and accepted by her brother, Maude, from the influence
of circumstances, was--as stated--actually afraid lest this daring
admirer should discover that she was writing to Elliot, so much did
she dread the power of Sharpe and his sister, and their capacity for
working mischief.
Some vague sense, or doubt, of his security in the future, and of his
sister's continued favour to himself, made Mr. Sharpe thus raise his
bold eyes to the daughter of the house, aware that she was almost
unprotected; her maternal uncle, Sir Harry, was an old and well-nigh
helpless man, and her brother had yet to run the risks of war in that
land now deemed the grave of armies--the Soudan.
Apart from her beauty of mind and person--not that Mr. Hawkey Sharpe
cared much about the former or was influenced thereby--the latter
certainly allured him, and the helplessness referred to encouraged
him in his pretensions, even when he began to suspect that there was
another in the field, though he knew not yet precisely who that other
was.
Mr. Sharpe's antecedents were not brilliant. He had begun life in a
solicitor's office in Glasgow, but had learned more than law
elsewhere; book-making, betting, the race-course, and billiards had
brought him in contact with his betters in rank but equals in
mischief and roguery, and from them he had acquired a certain
factitious polish of manner, which he hoped now to turn to good
account.
Maude Lindsay knew and believed in that which Roland struggled
against knowing and believing, the precise tenor of their father's
will; and in terror of precipitating matters with Sharpe and his
sister, she had been compelled to temporize and submit to the more
than effusive politeness of the former, whose bearing, however, she
could not mistake.
In nothing, as yet, had he gone beyond those--in him, somewhat
clumsy--tendernesses of incipient love-making, which might, or might
not, mean anything, though Maude felt that they meant too much; and
she never forgot the shock, the start, the humiliating conviction
that she experienced when the necessity of regarding him as a lover
was forced by necessity upon her.
Her disdain she utterly failed, at first, to conceal; but Hawkey
Sharpe, whose reading had taught him, through the perusal of many low
and exciting love stories, that a girl might be won in spite of her
teeth, was resolved to persevere.
'Good-evening, Mr. Sharpe--what a start you gave me!' said Maude,
essaying to pass him in the narrow corridor; but he contrived to bar
her way.
'Pardon me for a moment,' said he submissively enough; 'I wish you
would not call me Mr. Sharpe; and oh, more than all, that you would
permit me to--to call you Maude!'
The latter's eyes flashed fire, soft and blue though they were.
There was no mistaking the tenor of this mode of address. Hawkey
Sharpe seemed to have opened the trenches at last, and Maude's first
thought was:
'Has he been imbibing too much?'
'It was for your sake I let off that poacher Spens this morning,'
said he in a slightly reproachful tone.
'For the sake of his wife and children, I hope, rather.'
'Oh, bother his wife and brats! what are they to me compared with the
satisfaction of pleasing you?'
'Mr. Sharpe!' said Maude, drawing back a pace, and, in spite of
herself, cresting up her proud little head.
'It seems so hard,' said he, affecting an air of humility, and
casting down his eyes for a moment, 'that there should be such a gulf
apparently between us, Miss Lindsay.'
'A gulf,' repeated Maude, not precisely knowing what to say.
'Yes--and you deepen it. If I attempt to speak to you even as a
friend, you recoil from me; and in this huge, sequestered house, it
seems natural that we should at least be friends.'
'If we are enemies, I know it not, Mr. Sharpe,' said Maude with some
hesitation, and then attempting to cover the latter by a smile, as
she knew the necessity--a knowledge which distressed and disgusted
her--of temporizing, which seemed, even if for a moment, a species of
treason to Jack Elliot.
On the other hand, inclination and calculations as to the future,
made Sharpe admire Maude very much, and perhaps he was in love with
her as much as it was in his nature to be in love with anyone beyond
himself. Rejected, or even scorned, he was not a man to break his
heart for any woman in the land, though it might become inspired by
hatred and a longing for revenge. Yet he was prepared to make 'a
bold stroke for a wife' in Maude's instance. If refused once he
would try again, and even perhaps a third or a fourth time, and feel
only an emotion of rage on his final rejection--so in reality heart
was not so much the affair with him.
Maude attempted to pass him, but he still barred her way, and even
sought, without success, to capture one of her hands.
'Open confession is good for the soul,' he resumed, in a blunt and
blundering way, 'and avowals come to one's lips at times, and cannot
be restrained. I have played too long with fire, or with edged
tools. You must know, Miss Lindsay, that no man could be in your
society much without admiring you, and admiration is but a prelude
to--love.'
Fear of him, and all a quarrel with him might involve, repressed the
girl's desire to laugh at this inflated little speech; but he--with
all his constitutional impudence--quailed for a moment under the
expression that flashed in her eyes--blue, and usually soft and sunny
though they were--while she remained silent and thinking:
'What on earth will he say next?'
'Do you not understand me, Miss Lindsay?' he asked, perceiving a look
of wonder gathering in her face. 'Do you not know that I love you?'
he added, lowering his voice, while glancing round with quick and
stealthy eyes.
'Mr. Sharpe,' said Maude, trembling, yet rising to the occasion, 'I
understand what you say; but I hope you are not serious, and not
insulting me.'
'Is the emotion with which you have inspired me likely to be mingled
with jest, or with insult to you?'
'Oh, this is too much!' said Maude, interlacing her fingers, with
difficulty restraining tears of anger and resentment, while, with a
keen sense of future danger and his presumption, she felt as if there
was something unreal and grotesque in the situation. Moreover, she
was anxious to get her letter into the house postal bag ere the
latter was taken away.
'I am deeply earnest, Miss Lindsay,' resumed Sharpe, still with great
humility of tone and manner. 'My regard for you is no passing fancy.
I learned to love you from the first moment I saw you.'
'Mr. Sharpe,' said Maude, gathering courage from desperation, 'I do
not understand why you venture to talk in this style to me!
Encouragement I have never given you, even by a glance.'
'Too well do I know that,' said he, affecting a mournful tone; 'but I
hope to lead you to--to like me a little in return.'
'I don't dislike you,' said Maude, again seeking to temporize.
'And, if possible, to love me--as a man--one to whom you can entrust
a future you cannot see--one whom you will one day call husband.'
He drew nearer as his voice became lower and more earnest, and Maude
recoiled hastily in growing dismay, and the words 'a future you
cannot see' stung her deeply.
Too well did she know that all this bold love-making was born of the
humbled, fallen, and peculiar nature of her position under her
ancestral rooftree, and of the ruin of her family--a ruin on which
this man was rising under his sister's wing!
'I beseech you, Mr. Sharpe,' said she, 'to say no more on this
subject, for more than the merest friendship there can never be
between us.'
'Have you thought it over?'
'Certainly not!'
His face clouded, and his usually bold, observant, and keen gray eyes
became inflamed with growing anger.
'Seriously--deliberately you refuse to accord me the slightest hope?'
'Yes.'
'You think by this bearing to humiliate me as much as a proud girl
can do?'
'You pain me now by speaking thus,' she responded more gently.
'And you ruin my life!'
'I think not,' said Maude, with a little curl on her lovely lip.
'And may make that ruin a subject of jest to your brother's fine
friends who are coming here in a few days--a few hours, rather, now.'
At this coarse remark Maude accorded him an inquiring stare.
'Oh, I know what young girls are,' he resumed in a half-savage,
half-sullen manner. 'A rejection like mine is just the sort of thing
they like to boast of.'
'You thus add insult to your profound presumption!' exclaimed Maude,
quite exasperated now by the under-breeding of the style he adopted
so suddenly; and, sweeping past him, she reached the entrance-hall,
where the postal bag lay--a square and stately place, the stone floor
of which was covered with soft matting; where in winter a great fire
always blazed in the spacious stone fireplace, over which hung a
single suit of armour, amid a trophy of weapons, old swords, mauls,
and pikes.
She put her hand in her bosom--her letter--the letter she wished to
dispose of with her own hand--was no longer there! How--where had
she dropped it? She turned, looked hastily round her, and saw Mr.
Hawkey Sharpe, who had evidently picked it up, descending the
staircase, and he handed it to her with a slight and grave bow.
'Oh--thank you,' said Maude, her mind now full of confusion and
vexation.
Quick as thought she dropped it into the postal bag after he handed
it to her, but not before he had seen the address, and a dangerous
gleam shot athwart his shifty eyes, and again the coarse, bold nature
of the man came forth.
'So--so,' said he, through his clenched teeth. 'I find I have been
mistaken in you, Miss Lindsay.'
'Mistaken, Mr. Sharpe?'
'Yes--mistaken all along.'
'I do not comprehend you.'
'Deceived by your soft, fair face and gentle eyes, I thought you
unlike other girls--no coquette--no flirt--and now--now, I find----'
'What, sir?' demanded Maude impetuously.
'That you have correspondents.'
'Few, I suppose, are without them.'
'But who is he to whom you openly write--this Captain John Elliot?'
'Intolerable! How dare you ask me?' demanded Maude, her breast
swelling, her cheeks, not flushed, but pale with anger, and her eyes
flashing.
'A military friend of your brother's, I suppose we shall call him,'
said he with an undisguised sneer.
'And a dear friend of mine,' said Maude defiantly, exasperated to
find that the very discovery she wished to avoid had been made, and
by this person particularly; 'but here comes my brother, and perhaps
you had better make your inquiries of him,' she added, as a great
sigh of mingled anger and relief escaped her on hearing Roland
dismount under the _porte-cochère_; but, unable to face even him,
distressed, humiliated, and altogether unnerved by her recent
interview, all it involved, and all she had undergone, poor little
Maude rushed away to seek alleviation amid a passion of tears, unseen
and in the solitude of her own room.
So this was Maude's secret!
Hawkey Sharpe cared not just then to face Roland Lindsay; but with
hands clenched he sent a glance of hate after the retreating figure
of Maude, and withdrew in haste.
They met in future, as we shall show, even amid Roland's guests; but
with a consciousness--a most humiliating and irritating one to Maude,
that there was almost a secret understanding--that odious love-making
between them--and known, as she thought, to themselves alone.