And as he spoke, sometimes a tearless sob shook Elliot's sturdy frame, and Roland knew that with his friend Malcolm
'All was ended now—the hope, the fear, and the sorrow;
All the aching of the heart, the restless, unsatisfied longing;
All the dull, deep pain and constant anguish of patience—
His love and his life had ended together!'
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.