Only a clod
everyone who comes here regards the matter as settled, and I heard Maude
say the other day that she thought you a very good fellow--_she_ didn’t
say fellow,--and would be delighted to see her dear Julia so pleasantly
established.”
“Did she say that?” cried Francis, with a dusky blush kindling under his
dark skin; “did she speak well of me? And if--if she should think I have
done Miss Desmond some kind of wrong by usurping her society and setting
people talking about us--if _she_ should think me mean or base----”
Montagu Somerset interrupted Mr. Tredethlyn by a long whistle.
“Oh! the wind’s in that quarter, is it?” he exclaimed; “you’re down in
that list; then in that case I’ve nothing more to say. The river flows
at your feet, my dear friend; and I dare say there’s a rope for sale
somewhere in the villages of Twickenham or Isleworth.”
The young man sauntered away, leaving Francis with his arms folded on
the balustrade, and his face darker than it had been, even when he had
thought remorsefully of his missing cousin.
Miss Desmond had not made such very bad use of her time. With consummate
tact she had contrived to detain Francis Tredethlyn at her side in all
those pleasant walks, and drives, and boating excursions, which made up
a great part of life at the Cedars; and it had seemed that the young
man, of his own option, devoted himself to Colonel Desmond’s daughter.
Julia had been clever enough to set the simple Cornishman entirely at
his ease in her presence, and having done that, all the rest followed
naturally enough. It was to Miss Desmond that Francis Tredethlyn
confided his opinions upon every subject; it was to Miss Desmond that he
applied for enlightenment when his ignorance fenced him about with cloud
and darkness, and seemed to shut him out from the people round him. When
the visitors at the Cedars were busy in the animated discussion of some
new book whose name Francis had never heard, and whose contents would
have been utterly beyond his untrained understanding, Julia would
explain to him the nature of the volume, simplifying the subject with a
dexterity that was all her own, but never humiliating her companion by
any display of her own superiority. If art was the subject of
discussion, Julia insidiously demonstrated to the Cornishman the merits
and demerits of any given picture. So Francis Tredethlyn had been
considerably benefited by three months of intimacy with a handsome and
accomplished woman, and he began to feel something like a well-disposed
Maori who had been admitted into familiar intercourse with a family of
friendly settlers.
But all this time, in spite of handsome, dark-eyed Julia’s kindness, in
spite of all the benefits to be derived from intimate relations with
such agreeable people as the guests who were always to be found at
Twickenham, the one charm that had held the young man constant to the
Cedars,--like some spell-bound knight in a fairy story, who cannot leave
an enchanted castle, though he knows that peril and ruin lurk within its
walls,--the one supreme influence that had taken possession of Francis
Tredethlyn had been the presence of Maude Hillary. From first to last
his faith had never wavered, but his devotion had been the servile
worship of an idolater, who was prepared to find his divinity hard and
merciless. No thought of ever being anything nearer to Maude Hillary
than he now was entered the young man’s mind. She was beautiful,
amiable, loving,--for had he not seen her with her father? She was all
that is most lovely and adorable in womankind: but she was not for him.
In her presence his ignorance and awkwardness seemed to weigh him down
to the very dust; and yet she was never unkind to him, or supercilious,
or insolent. She was only indifferent: but Oh, the bitterness of her
indifference! the anguish of the slavish worshipper who prostrates
himself before his idol, and knows all the while that it is stone, and
cannot have pity upon him! Again and again Francis Tredethlyn had
determined that he would come no more to the Cedars. He would call on
Mr. Hillary in the City some morning, and thank him for his hospitable
kindness; and then he would buy a commission in a cavalry regiment newly
ordered for Indian service.
“Why should I be always coming here?” he thought. “They’re all very good
to me, the young swells. But I feel awkward amongst them still; and even
if I could fall into their ways, and make myself like them, which I
can’t, where would be the good? I don’t want to be a ‘swell;’ I should
like to be a soldier, with a regiment of glorious fellows to call me
captain; or a farmer, with half a county to ride over, and a thousand
sturdy labourers to take wages from me on a Saturday night; or a
merchant, like Mr. Hillary, with a small fleet of ships on the high
seas. That sort of thing would be life. But to dawdle in a
billiard-room; or lounge at Tattersall’s, and buy a horse one doesn’t
want, out of sheer idleness, and sell him at a loss three weeks
afterwards; or to go for a yachting excursion off the Isle of Wight,
with men to do all the work, and nothing to do one’s self except lie on
one’s back and smoke and drink pale ale all day long: I can’t fancy such
a life as that. So, why should I come here any more? I can’t fall
naturally into these people’s habits. I think sometimes that I was
happier out yonder, brushing the captain’s clothes and talking to the
convicts. What a fellow that Surly Bill was! By Jove, that man _had_
seen life!”
Mr. Tredethlyn, lounging perpetually in the gardens by the river,
conscious of his incapability of breaking the spell that bound him,
thought, with some touch of envy, of the brilliant career of his late
acquaintance, Surly Bill the burglar. But now the Cornishman had been
all at once aroused from the pleasant torpor which had crept upon him in
this modern Castle of Indolence. All that was most generous in the young
man’s nature arose in revolt against the thought that he had wronged
Julia Desmond. “It seems so hard that she should have set these people
talking about her by her kindness to an ignorant fellow like me. It must
do a girl harm to have her name bandied about by an idle young fellow
like Somerset. And she stands alone in the world, too, with no father or
brother to take her part. I ought to have told that fellow to hold his
tongue, and I will, too, before I leave this house to-night. But _this_
decides me, at any rate. I’ve been here too much; I’ll buy a commission
and go out to India, and the lawyers must look after poor little Susy.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XIV.
VERY PRIVATE THEATRICALS.
The river was gray and dim in the twilight by this time; for the first
half of October was gone, and the dusky shadows gathered early on Mr.
Hillary’s lawn. Francis Tredethlyn found the gardens deserted when he
left the terrace, and walked slowly towards the house, where lights were
gleaming in innumerable windows. The young man had only ridden down to
Twickenham that morning, and had no special engagement to dine at the
Cedars.
“I’ll go round to the stables at once,” he thought, “and I can call in
Moorgate Street to-morrow, and tell Mr. Hillary that I think of going
abroad. Why should I see _her_ again? The sight of her will only make me
foolish, and keep me here in spite of myself.”
The lady thus vaguely alluded to was not Miss Desmond; but when Francis
Tredethlyn entered Mr. Hillary’s house by the first open window that
presented itself on the upper terrace, he found himself in a little
study much affected by the ladies of the household, and came suddenly
upon a female figure sitting alone in the dark.
Something like a guilty pang shot through him as he recognized that
stately figure, even in the shadowy obscurity of the unlighted room. In
the next moment there was a rustling of silk, and Miss Desmond had risen
and was facing him in the twilight.
“Yes, it _is_ Mr. Tredethlyn,” she said, presently. “What have you been
doing with yourself all the afternoon? There has been a grand discussion
about some amateur theatricals, concerning which Maude Hillary is
absolutely bewitched, and we want you to act.”
“I think you’ve got plenty of fellows who’ll act better than I can, Miss
Desmond; though I did try my hand at the business once in Van Diemen’s
Land; and I’d be glad to make myself useful in any way that would please
Miss Hillary, if it was to dress myself as a footman and carry a
tea-tray or a scuttle of coals; but I think I shall be leaving England
before the theatricals come off; in point of fact, I think I shall be
leaving England directly.”
“Leaving England!”
The expression of those two words could scarcely have been more tragical
than it was; and yet for once in a way Miss Desmond was _not_ acting.
All in a moment she saw the fair edifice which she had schemed to build
for herself crumbling into ruin and chaos.
“Leaving England!” she repeated,--“you think of leaving England, Mr.
Tredethlyn?”
She put her hands to her forehead with a little tragic gesture: and
Francis Tredethlyn wished that he had entered the house by any other
door or window than that which he had chosen.
Julia’s dismay was entirely real; for the disappointment was very bitter
to this young lady; who had built up a fair future for herself on the
foundation of Francis Tredethlyn’s wealth. The grim walls of Castle
Desmond, the silver waters of the Shannon, the green hill sides and
lonely valleys, made themselves into a picture that shut out the dusky
room, and then melted into gray blankness. She had meant to do such
great things with Francis Tredethlyn’s thirty thousand a year!
The young man stood looking at her in as much embarrassment as if he had
been guilty of some wilful deception. He was so little of a coxcomb,
that it was very difficult for him to imagine that his sudden departure
could give pain to the brilliant Julia. He was so entirely simple and
true-hearted, that no suspicion of Miss Desmond’s mercenary views had
any place in his mind.
There was a very brief pause, and then Julia murmured, in low,
half-broken accents--
“You are really going away?--but why?”
“Oh, Miss Desmond, I scarcely like to tell you why; and yet it’s not
altogether on that account,” answered Francis, vaguely. “There are other
reasons. I am not in my right place amongst such people as I meet here.
I’m a rough, uneducated fellow, and idleness doesn’t suit me. I want to
be of some use in the world. Why, I felt myself a better man out yonder,
without sixpence in my pocket, than I am to-day, in spite of Oliver
Tredethlyn’s money. So I mean to buy a commission and go out to India,
where there’s some fighting to be done.”
“You are not telling me the truth, Mr. Tredethlyn. _This_ is not your
real reason for running away from the Cedars, as if the house were
infected.”
“My dear Miss Desmond, I--you have been so kind to me--you have made me
feel so much at home here, where, but for you, I must have felt myself
so miserably out of place.”
“Why should you be out of place amongst these people?” cried Julia,
drawing up her head with a proud gesture, “unless,” she murmured, in a
thoughtful undertone--“unless because these people are so much beneath
you.”
Miss Desmond had entirely recovered herself by this time. All at once,
after sitting a long time at the table, playing her cards with infinite
tact and patience,--all at once she found herself losing the game, and
saw that only the boldest play could help her. But Julia was equal to
the situation. The second of December had come upon her very suddenly;
but she did not despair of triumphing by a _coup d’état_.