Only a clod
his; “and I’ve spent all my money, and I’ve bought these for you.” She
flourished a pair of gorgeously-embroidered slippers before his eyes,
and then put her arm through his with an air of proprietorship that was
as charming as--every thing else she did.
Lionel Hillary, Australian merchant, of Moorgate Street, London, was a
handsome-looking man, tall, and stout, and dark, with iron-grey hair and
whiskers, and very unlike his daughter in every respect; for the happy
brightness which was the chief element of her beauty found no reflection
in his face. He looked very grave, and a little careworn; and Maude,
watching him closely, said presently,
“I’m afraid you have one of your headaches again to-day, papa?”
“Yes, my dear; I’ve been working rather hard this morning. Let me
introduce you to this gentleman, whom I have induced to come and spend a
little of his money for the benefit of the Duchess’s poor people.”
This gentleman was Mr. Francis Tredethlyn, who had been loitering a
little in the rear of Lionel Hillary while the merchant talked to his
daughter. The two men had become acquainted with each other in the
simplest possible manner. Amongst the property Francis Tredethlyn had
inherited from his uncle was a bundle of shares in a certain Australian
insurance company of which Mr. Hillary was a director. Francis, wanting
to make some inquiry about the shares, had been advised to go to Mr.
Hillary, and had done so. He found the merchant very cordial and
friendly,--he had found a great many people in these dispositions
towards him lately,--and with the frankness natural to him had told a
good deal of his story to that gentleman; always avoiding any allusion
to his cousin Susan. Lionel Hillary, being much pleased with his manner,
and being generally very kind and hospitable to any young men who came
in his way, had offered to drive his new acquaintance down to
Twickenham.
“You must find London miserably dull at this time of year,” he said.
“There’s a _fête_, or a fancy fair, or something of that kind, our way.
I’ll drive you down, and you shall dine at my place afterwards.”
Thus it was that Francis Tredethlyn found himself upon the lawn before
the Château de Bourbon, making what he felt to be a very awkward bow,
and most heartily wishing that some convulsion of nature might open a
ready-made grave in the smooth turf on which he stood, wherein he might
hide himself from the bright eyes of Miss Hillary.
She spoke to him in the easiest, friendliest manner; asked him if he had
ever been to the château before; if he liked a fancy fair; hoped he
meant to spend EVER so much money. She opened her eyes very wide as she
said this, and he saw how blue they were, and then felt an actual blush
kindling under his brown skin. Such a woman as this had never before
walked by his side, talking to him, and smiling at him. He answered her
animated inquiries as best he might, and found himself thinking of all
manner of incongruous things,--of Maude Hillary’s blue eyes and
point-lace parasol, of his own awkwardness and ignorance, of the narrow
points of her dove-coloured boots, as they peeped from under her dress
now and then, like anything in the world you like _except_ Sir John
Suckling’s mice, of the old farmhouse on the Cornish moorland, of little
Susy in a white dimity sun-bonnet.
He had never been in such a place before, mixing on equal terms with
well-dressed men and women, about most of whom even he, in despite of
his ignorance, recognized a nameless something that stamped them as
superior to the common run of well-dressed people. That in itself was
enough to bewilder him. He had never before seen such a woman as Maude
Hillary; and even experienced young men from Government offices found
Maude Hillary bewildering. He felt terribly embarrassed and out of
place; and after undergoing a sharp ordeal on the terrace, where he was
introduced to Miss Desmond, and the two young men staying at the Cedars,
he was not a little rejoiced to find himself free for a few minutes,
while Mr. Hillary and his daughter talked to a group of new arrivals. He
strolled away to the end of the terrace, and lounged upon the marble
balustrade, looking down at a lane below--a kind of gorge cut through
two separate gardens, in which some of the common folks of the
neighbourhood were gathered, listening to the music of the band, and
staring at the splendid line of carriages waiting for the guests in the
gardens above.
“I didn’t think I was such a fool as to let my brains be muddled like
this by a lot of fine dresses and parasols, and flower-beds, and the
playing of a brass band,” he thought; “they’re flesh and blood, those
people, I suppose, like the rest of us. _She’s_ flesh and blood, just as
much as my mother that’s dead and gone, or poor little Susy. But when I
looked at her just now, it seemed as if there was a light shining all
about her somehow, that almost blinded me. She spoke to me as prettily
and as kindly as she spoke to her father; and yet I felt more afraid of
her than if she had been my uncle Oliver, and I a little boy again,
tumbling down his corn in the valley farm.”
He moved a little way from the balustrade, and stood looking rather
sheepishly towards the group he had left, doubtful whether he was
expected to rejoin them, or to stroll about by himself, amusing himself
as he pleased. He would have given a great deal of money for the poorest
treatise on etiquette which would have told him as much as this; and in
the mean time he lingered where he was, twirling a very big pair of
lavender gloves which he had bought--through the agency of Mr. Hillary’s
groom, and with no reference to their adaptability to his own hands--on
the way down.
Lingering thus, doubtful of himself, and painfully conscious of being
very much out of keeping with the scene around him, he still thought of
all manner of incongruous things; and among other fancies one special
thought, which could have had no possible connection with the events of
the day, kept surging upwards on the troubled sea of his reflections.
“I never loved my cousin Susan,” he thought; “I know now that I never
really loved my cousin Susan.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER IX.
JULIA DESMOND MAKES HERSELF AGREEABLE.
Captain Masters drove Lionel Hillary’s phaeton to the Cedars, when the
crowd in the sunny gardens before the Château de Bourbon had dispersed,
and only a few scattered groups still lingered about the pleasant home
of exiled royalty. Amongst which loiterers might be observed some lively
gentlemen of the occasional-reporter species, who wanted to ascertain
whether there would not be something in the champagne and lobster-salad
way before the _fête_ was finished. Captain Masters drove his friend Mr.
Somerset back to the Cedars in the mail-phaeton, while Lionel Hillary
and Francis Tredethlyn went home with the ladies in the landau.
The man who had been a private soldier only a few months before that
day, and who had not yet been able to realize the change made in his
position by the inheritance of thirty thousand a year, found himself
oppressed by a strange feeling as he sat in Miss Hillary’s open carriage
with his back to the horses, surrounded by billows of silk and lace and
muslin, a surging sea of feminine draperies, from which a faint perfume
was wafted towards him as the summer wind blew in his face. It was not
so much that he was ill at ease in that feminine presence, or in any way
daunted by the fire of two pairs of handsome eyes. The feeling which
oppressed him was rather a sense of unreality. He was like a child at a
pantomime, who sees a stage-fairy for the first time, and cannot believe
that the resplendent creature is only flesh and blood. He looked at
Maude Hillary, and thought of his cousin Susan’s rosy cheeks and brown
hair shaded by the familiar dimity sun-bonnet. There were men in the
world who might aspire to marry such a creature as this Miss Hillary. He
tried to imagine the sort of man who might lift his eyes to that
divinity; and there arose in his mind the picture of a grandiose
creature with yellow whiskers and a geranium in his button-hole. The
æsthetic element in Mr. Tredethlyn’s mind was as yet very imperfectly
developed; and his idea of a lover befitting Maude Hillary leaned rather
to the gaudy king’s-pattern order of mankind.
The Australian merchant sat with his head leaning back against the
cushions of the carriage and his eyes closed. His headache was, if
anything, worse, he confessed, in answer to Maude’s anxious inquiries.
He did not speak three times during the homeward drive, and his daughter
rarely took her eyes from his face. She was very fond of him, and
displayed her affection for him now as frankly as she had done when she
had been a little girl in a white frock, sitting on his knee after
dinner, and eating unwholesome fruits and confections out of his plate.
She watched him now with a tender anxiety in her face, and seemed almost
unconscious of the presence of the big soldier-like individual with a
bronzed countenance and close-cropped black hair. But Francis Tredethlyn
was not entirely neglected, for Miss Desmond appeared determined to
atone for Maude’s want of courtesy. She had heard the Cornishman’s story
from Mr. Somerset, who had heard it from a gentleman whom he described
as “a fellow in the 11th Hussars;” and the handsome Julia felt some
little interest in the hero of the narrative. An ignorant young man, a
farmer’s son, who has suddenly come into a fortune of thirty thousand a
year, is not the sort of person to be met with every day. Julia
remembered that dreary ruin, that tall stone gaol on the bare hill
beyond Limerick, which sounded so well when casually alluded to as
Castle Desmond; but whose image chilled her as it rose, dismal and
stony, before her mind’s eye. She remembered the muddy roads, the
murderous ruts, the broad acres of irredeemable bog, the long rank grass
waving on the roofs of tumbledown stone cabins, the gaunt pigs and
gaunter peasantry; and a feeling that was not altogether ignoble kindled
a sudden flush upon her handsome face. What could not be done for Castle
Desmond and those ill-used peasantry by a chieftainess who should have
thirty thousand a year at her command! She fancied herself a kind of
fairy queen, beneath whose wand pleasant homesteads might arise on those
desolate hills, and yellow cornfields spread a golden mantle over the
valleys now so bare and empty. Miss Desmond’s lot in life was altogether
exceptional, and the sentimental dreams which come to some young women
had no lodgment in her brain. She looked her fate straight in the face,
and was eager to make the best of any opportunity that might fall in her
way. For the present she was very well off where she was; though the
worship of the golden calf, as represented by Maude Hillary, was a
perpetual abomination to her. But she was tolerably resigned to her
present position at the Cedars. It was only in the future that her life
looked dark and threatening. She must marry before Miss Hillary,--that
was essential,--or else she must resign herself to the miserable
position of a companion on sufferance, necessary to Maude, perhaps, but
very disagreeable to Maude’s husband.
Under these circumstances, a chance visitor at the Cedars with thirty
thousand a year for his fortune was not a person to be disdainfully
entreated even by the daughter of all the Desmonds: so Julia was very
kind to Francis Tredethlyn during that brief homeward drive, asked him
all manner of questions respecting his sentiments upon things in general
and the charity _fête_ in particular, and flashed her handsome eyes and