He tugged his straw-coloured moustache, and after fixing his eyes with a self-satisfied glare on vacancy for a full minute, rang the bell for supper imperiously.
Mr. Hawkey Sharpe was one who never troubled himself about the past, and seldom about the future; his enjoyment was in the present, and the mere fact of living well and jollily without having work to do.
Just then he was pretty full of alcohol and exultant hope—two very good things in their way to lay in a stock of. He cared little what he did, but he dreaded greatly discovery in any of his little trickeries.
To him the world was divided into two portions, those who cheat and those who are cheated.
'Rid of Lindsay,' was the ever-recurring thought; 'rid of his presence, local influence, and d——d impudence, I shall have this place again more than ever to myself, if I can only throw a little dust in Deb's eyes, and have, perhaps, my choice of these two stunning girls when I choke off that other snob, Elliot.'
Excitement consequent on this most unlooked-for episode at the Cleugh had nearly driven out of his mind the object which had brought him that night to Earlshaugh, and his last potations of hot whisky toddy at The Thane of Fife, a tavern or roadside inn on the skirts of the park, had for a time rather clouded his intellect, without, however, spoiling his usually excellent appetite.
Thus when Tom Trotter arrived with a large silver tray—a racing trophy of the late laird's career—covered with a spotless white napkin, and having thereon curried lobster, mutton cutlets, devilled kidneys, and beef kabobs on silver skewers, with a bottle of Mumm, he drew in his chair and made a repast, all the more pleasantly perhaps that he heard at intervals the clang of the great house bell overhead, and saw the lanterns of the searchers like glow-worms amid the storm of rain and wind, as they set forth again on their bootless errand, and then a smile that Mephistopheles might have envied spread over his face.
'Lindsay lost!' he muttered jocularly. 'Well, there was mair lost at Shirramuir when the Hielandman lost his faither and mither, and a gude buff belt that was worth them baith.'
He had a habit, when liquor loosened his tongue, of soliloquizing, and he was in this mood to-night.
'Now, how to raise the ready!' he muttered, as he thrust the silver salver aside, and drew the decanter once more towards him, together with his briar-root and tobacco-pouch. 'The money I have lost must go to a fellow who is said to possess the power of turning everything he touches to gold—to gold! Gad, could I only do that, I wouldn't even sponge on old Deb in Earlshaugh, or wait for a dead woman's shoes. Besides, if I don't please her, she may hand over the whole place to the Free Kirk; and, d—n it, that's not to be thought of!—that body which, as she always says, seceded so nobly, and scorned the loaves and fishes. If I could only get hold of Deb's cheque-book; but she keeps everything so devilish close and secure! When a fellow comes to be as I am,' he continued, rolling his eyes about and lighting his pipe with infinite difficulty—'bravo!—there's a devil of a gust of wind—hope you like it, Lindsay—when a fellow, I say, comes to be as I am, with an infinitesimal balance at the banker's and not much credit with his tailor, he can't be particular to a shade what he does—and so about the cheque-book——'