Only a clod
“Tell me the truth, Mr. Tredethlyn,” she said, looking Francis full in
the face, with her eyes and teeth gleaming in the twilight; “why are you
going to leave this house? Why do you talk of hurrying away from
England?”
“Because--because--I have done you a wrong in absorbing so much of your
society, Miss Desmond, and the people here have begun to mix your name
with mine. I cannot bear that you, who are so superior to me, should be
humiliated by such an association; especially when there is no
foundation for their talk,” Francis Tredethlyn added, in considerable
embarrassment.
“Oh, I understand it all now,” answered Julia, with an unutterable
bitterness in her tone; “you have been warned against me, Mr.
Tredethlyn. I am only a fortune-huntress, and I have been spreading my
toils about your innocent footsteps, and it is only by flight that you
can save yourself. Oh, yes!” she cried, with an ironical laugh, which
seemed to express a keener anguish than another woman’s wildest sob, “I
know how these people talk!”
“Miss Desmond, on my honour----”
“Mr. Tredethlyn, on _my_ honour, I know the world better than you do. If
you had devoted yourself to any other woman in this house, to any
daughter of that mercantile aristocracy in which Mr. Hillary rules
supreme, no sneering comments would have greeted your ear. But what am
I--the daughter of the Desmonds of Desmond--amongst these people? What
am I but Maude Hillary’s dependant and companion? I am poor, and I
endure poverty in its most cruel bitterness; for I am poor amongst the
vulgar rich. Who can give me credit for sincerity? who dare trust in my
friendship? I am a well-bred pauper, a fortune-huntress, an adventuress,
a creature whose smiles are to be dreaded, whose society is to be
avoided. O Francis Tredethlyn,” cried Julia, with a sudden shiver of
agony, which would have done credit to a Rachel, “_I know so well_ what
has been said to you. Go--go at once. You are wise to accept the warning
conveyed in these people’s insolent insinuations. Go--there is a gulf
between you and me, for you are rich and I am poor. Beware of me even
when I seem most sincere. Remember that I am a pauper, and the
descendant of paupers--paupers who shed their blood and squandered their
fortunes in a losing cause; paupers who died for the love of honour and
loyalty, two words that would seem the emptiest sounds to merchants and
tradesmen. Oh, Mr. Tredethlyn, have pity upon me, and go.”
And then Miss Desmond broke down all at once into a burst of hysterical
sobbing, and stretching out her hand towards the back of a _prie-dieu_
chair standing near her, tottered as if she would have fallen. She did
not fall, however; for before her hand could reach the _prie-dieu_,
Francis Tredethlyn’s strong arm was round her.
“Miss Desmond,” he cried, “Julia! why do you talk like this? Do you
think that any base thought about you ever entered _my_ brain?
Fortune-huntress, adventuress--did I ever wrong you in my inmost
thoughts by such a name as that?”
“No,” answered Julia, softly. “_You_ are too noble; and yet you may have
been influenced by others. Why should you think better of me than others
think? Why should not you too despise me?”
Her voice was broken by sobs, and she was still supported by Mr.
Tredethlyn’s arm. He felt that she was trembling violently. He could
just distinguish her handsome profile in the dusk, and the tears
glittering upon her dark lashes.
“Despise you, Julia! you who are so superior to me! Do you forget what I
am? Have I not much greater reason to fear your contempt? And you talk
of poverty, as if that were so deep a suffering, while I am so rich, and
care so little for my money. Share it with me, Julia. I’m only a poor
waif and stray as it is; but with such a woman as you for my wife I
might be of some good in the world. Heaven knows you are welcome to my
fortune, Miss Desmond. If you were a man, and my comrade, I would say,
Share it with me as my brother and my friend. But you are a woman, and I
can only say, Be my wife.”
Julia withdrew herself from the supporting arm.
“Ah, Mr. Tredethlyn,” she said, in an icy kind of voice, “this is the
bitterest insult of all. The Desmonds do not marry for money; they only
marry where they are beloved, and can love again.”
“How can I expect that you can love me?” asked Francis. “Do you think I
can forget that I am an ignorant boor, suddenly thrown amongst people
whose habits of life, whose very thoughts, are strange to me?”
“And you would marry a woman without so much as asking for her love?”
“I would ask for her friendship and her fidelity. I shouldn’t care to
exact an uneven bargain, Miss Desmond; and I doubt if I could give much
more myself,” the young man answered, rather coldly. But at the sound of
a stifled sob from Julia he changed his tone all at once; a thousand
generous impulses were stirred in him by the aspect of her distress. He
was nothing more than a child in the hands of this brilliant young
Irishwoman.
“Dear Miss Desmond,” he cried, “I seem destined to offend and grieve
you. If you will share my fortune, if you will accept any best
friendship and fidelity, my whole life shall prove to you how much I
admire and respect you. If you reject my offer, I can only say----”
But Julia did not allow him to finish the sentence, which she foresaw
would be expressive of complete resignation to her adverse decision.
“Oh, Francis,” she exclaimed, “you offer me your _fortune_!” There was
something sublime in her contemptuous enunciation of this last word.
“You ask me to accept your friendship, when I have been weak and mad
enough to LOVE YOU.” She was not Rachel any longer; she was Madame
Dorval, all melting tenderness and womanly pathos. She covered her face
with her hands, and then, with something between a sob and a shudder,
rushed suddenly from the room, and hurried along the dusky staircase and
passages to her own apartment.
The candles were lighted on the dressing-table; but there was no
intrusive handmaiden to annoy Miss Desmond by her watchful glances, her
mute interrogation. Julia looked at her reflection in the glass, and saw
herself flushed and triumphant, with traces of tears upon her cheeks.
“And my eyes are really wet,” she thought; “but then the chance was such
a good one, and so nearly lost. What a good, simple-hearted fellow he
is! and how happy any reasonable woman might be with him--and thirty
thousand a year! Ah, Maude Hillary! it was very pretty and childish and
nice of you, coming to wake me out of my sleep on your last birthday, to
show me the set of diamonds and opals papa had bribed your maid to slip
under your pillow before you awoke; but _I_ will show you diamonds
before long that shall make you ashamed of that birthday trumpery.”
Miss Desmond rolled her black hair into a great smooth knot at the back
of her head; and she put on a dress of that fugitive golden yellow, in
which there is an artful intermingling of silvery sheen, and which
milliners call maize--a bewilderingly beautiful colour when seen in
conjunction with a handsome brunette. The loungers who dined at the
Cedars that evening declared that Julia Desmond had never looked so
splendid. Francis Tredethlyn sat by her at dinner, and was near her all
the evening: and at night, when he found himself alone in the pretty
chintz-curtain chamber that he had so often occupied of late, the young
man seated himself by one of the windows, and, pushing open the sash,
looked out at the quiet river rippling softly under the stars.
“And she is to be my wife,” he thought; “she is very handsome, and I
ought to be proud to think that she can care for such a fellow as I. And
yet----” His head sank forward on his folded arms, and the image of a
beautiful creature smiled before him in all the dazzling brightness of
an opium-eater’s dream. Francis Tredethlyn gave one long regretful sigh
as he raised his head, and looked moodily out at the distant woodland on
the other side of the river.
“What can it matter whom I marry?” he asked himself, bitterly; “would
_she_ ever think of me, if I were to come to this house every day for
ten years at a stretch? Why, her dogs are more to her and dearer to her
twenty times than I am. And Julia Desmond loves me, and thinks me better
than those fellows with the yellow whiskers, who are always talking of
new books and new music. They please _her_; but Julia despises them. Am
I such a wretch that I cannot be grateful for a sensible woman’s
affection? I _am_ grateful to her. I am proud to think that she will be
my wife. But I wish I was back in Van Diemen’s Land, blacking the
captain’s boots, and smoking shag tobacco with Surly Bill the burglar.”
After that dramatic little scene in the twilight study at the Cedars,
everything went on velvet. Julia was triumphant; Maude was delighted and
sympathetic. What could be more charming or more proper than that Julia
should marry a man with thirty thousand a year for his fortune? The only
hindrance to universal happiness in a very delightful world was the fact
that so many people had to do _without_ thirty thousand a year, Miss
Hillary thought, whenever she gave her mind to the study of political
economy.
“And you will be so rich, dear Julia,” Maude said, as she kissed her
friend; “and if Harcourt and I are very poor--as we must be, unless papa
gives his consent by-and-by--you’ll take us for a drive in the Park
sometimes, won’t you? And if you give many parties in the season, I
shan’t be able to come to them; for you wouldn’t like to see me always
in the same dress--like those poor people at the Union--and I shall be
obliged to get a set of black-lace flounces, like Reder--you never saw
Reder, my last German governess but one--and put them on pink silk one
day, and blue the next, and so on; it’s very troublesome, and the
flounces don’t generally come straight; but then it looks as if one had
so many dresses. Of course you’ll have boxes at _both_ houses, Julia,
and on the grand tier? and you’ll buy a place in the country--and Oh,
where do you mean to live in town?”
Miss Desmond answered all these eager queries very demurely. Francis
would make all arrangements for their future life, she said; he _had_
certainly promised her the two opera-boxes; he had made inquiries about
the one house that was to be let in Park Lane; and he was anxious to
discover her favourite county before taking any steps towards the
purchase of an estate.
“But you know he is such a dear good fellow, and has such a knack of
guessing all my fancies, that really I never like to suggest anything,”
Miss Desmond concluded, modestly. But, somehow or other, without making
any very direct suggestions, Julia had so contrived matters, that in a
few weeks her affianced husband had gratified many of the desires that
had been smouldering in her breast ever since the earliest dawn of
girlhood.
Already the “family jools” of the Desmonds had been consigned to the
oblivion of one of Julia’s shabbiest trunks, and diamonds now twinkled
on Miss Desmond’s neck and arms, and gleamed here and there in her black
hair, when she came down to dinner in her maize silk dress. Her
toilette-table was all of a glitter with the rings she drew off her slim
fingers when she disrobed at night, before the looking-glass which had
so often reflected a gloomy, discontented face, but which now only gave
back triumphant smiles.
She was an adventuress perhaps, and her triumph was an ignoble one; but
she was not altogether base. She was prepared to be a good wife to the
man whom she had brought to her feet by force of feminine strategy. She
did not love Francis Tredethlyn; and indeed she seemed to be made of a
sterner stuff than that out of which the women who can love are