Only a clod
fashioned. She did not love her affianced husband; but she meant to be
as faithful and devoted as the most loving wife in Christendom. If she
intended to raise herself upon the platform of her husband’s wealth, she
meant that he should mount with her. Already she had lifted him several
stages on the social ladder. From the very first her watchful care had
saved him from a hundred small solecisms, and in the more intimate
relationship of the last few weeks her refining influence had been
almost magical in its effects. The good old blood of the Tredethlyns
asserted itself, and Julia found her task an easy one.
“I don’t want you to be like those Government clerks, and magazine
writers, and embryo Q.C.’s,” she said to him sometimes. “I like you to
be big and deep-voiced and--just a little clumsy. The Knights-Templars,
and Crusaders, and that sort of people, must have been clumsy on account
of their armour. I always fancy I hear the clank of spurs when you come
into a room: and when you sit in Parliament you must be the soldier’s
friend, you know, and make great speeches about rations, and
court-martial verdicts, and discipline, and all that sort of thing; and
I shall come into the ladies’ gallery, and strain my eyes by peering at
you through that horrible grating. You will look so handsome with your
head thrown a little back, and your hand in your waistcoat.”
Now this kind of talk from a handsome woman, whom he knows to be
infinitely his intellectual superior, can scarcely be displeasing to the
most strong-minded of men; and, unluckily, Francis Tredethlyn was not
very strong-minded. He looked down at his Julia with a sheepish smile,
and acknowledged her pretty flatteries in the lamest possible manner;
but when he came to the Cedars next morning, he brought with him the
biggest emerald-headed serpent that he had been able to find among the
jewellers of the West End, and coiled it about his Julia’s wrist. He was
grateful to her for all her tender smiles and pleasant speeches--all the
more grateful, perhaps, because of that uncomfortable knowledge of the
cold void in his own heart, where love for his promised wife should have
been. So he brought her all manner of costly tribute in the way of rings
and bracelets, and necklaces and head-gear; and he bought her a
three-hundred-guinea hunter at Tattersall’s, so that she should no
longer ride Maude Hillary’s horses in the Twickenham lanes. Sometimes,
in spite of himself, even when Julia was most agreeable, the thought
came upon him that he would only too gladly have given her the whole of
his fortune if by such a gift he might have freed himself from the
promise that bound him to her.
“But if I were free to-morrow, _she_ would not care for me,” he thought,
“and what would be the use of my liberty?”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XV.
A COMMERCIAL CRISIS.
The private theatricals at the Cedars were postponed till Christmas, and
in the middle of November Mr. Hillary removed his household to a big
bow-windowed habitation at the western end of Brighton. Francis
Tredethlyn followed, as in duty bound, and spent a great portion of his
life in hurrying to and fro between London and Brighton by express
trains. Never had a better adorer done suit and service to a mistress.
There were no lovers’ quarrels, no temporary estrangements between these
two people. A serene and cloudless sky heralded the coming splendour of
their union, and Maude declared again and again that she had never seen
such a model pair of lovers.
“Harcourt and I were always quarrelling, you know, Julia,” she said;
“but then we were both such horribly jealous creatures. I didn’t like
his turning over music for other girls; though I suppose he was right,
poor fellow, and a man must either turn over music or shut himself from
society altogether. And he didn’t like my going down to dinner with
people in crack cavalry regiments; but I’m afraid we rather enjoyed
ourselves when we quarrelled, and I used to feel as if it would be the
easiest thing in the world to part from him for ever, and go into a
convent, or marry somebody I hated, or something of that kind; and then
directly we _had_ parted, I used to get so silly and miserable, and used
to write him such penitent letters, taking all the blame upon myself,
and making an idiot of him. But it’s so nice to see you and Mr.
Tredethlyn, and I’m sure he’ll be the dearest husband in the world,
Julia, and you’ll be able to twist him round your little finger.”
It was not with a feeling of unalloyed pleasure that Miss Desmond
accepted her friend’s congratulations. She was quite ready to admit that
Francis Tredethlyn was a model lover, and promised to be the most
submissive husband that ever bowed himself before a clever wife’s
dominion. His presents were munificent, his attention was unfailing, his
temper serenely even; and yet there were times when Julia Desmond felt
that all was not quite as it should have been.
She had angled very successfully, and the fish she had landed was a
splendid prize, victoriously snatched from all other anglers; but Oh,
what a difference there is between that poor deluded fish, entrapped out
of the free waters by the cruel hook of the angler, and the willing bird
which flies, of its own loving impulse, to the breast where it fain
would shelter!
Julia Desmond knew that, in securing a husband, she had not won for
herself a lover; and the knowledge pained and humiliated her. It was a
small thing that she should not love Francis; but it seemed very hard
that Francis should not love her. Her womanly tact would have stood in
the place of affection, and she would have been lavish in the
expenditure of a spurious coin, in the way of pretty words and tender
looks, which should have had all the glitter and some of the vibration
of the real mintage. But with Francis it was altogether different. The
young man had no power to simulate; and there was a deadly coldness in
his wooing that chilled the proud Irish girl’s heart.
“Are they worth the humiliation?” she thought sometimes, when she
contemplated her diamonds before the lighted glass in her bedroom at
Brighton. “They are very big and brilliant and costly; but I’ve seen
myself look handsomer with a scrap of scarlet ribbon twisted in my hair,
than I look to-night with all these stars and crosses and serpents
flashing and twinkling about me. And then, when I go down stairs, I must
go through all the old stereotyped business; and when I thank him for
the flowers that he sent me this morning, he will look at me with his
cold eyes, and tell me he is pleased to have given me pleasure. What is
he but a clod--a mere clod, nothing but a clod? I ought to remember
that; and yet I am angry with him because he does not love me. Why can I
not be thankful for my good fortune, and accept my future husband for
what he is,--a respectable, well-behaved ploughman, whom an accident has
endowed with thirty thousand a year?”
Perhaps Miss Desmond did not particularly care to answer that question
which she put to herself in so impatient a spirit. And yet it was a
question that might have been answered, had she cared to fathom the
lower deeps of her own mind. But then there _are_ questions which are
better left unanswered. Why was she angry with Francis Tredethlyn for
that passionless serenity of manner which was so nearly akin to
indifference? Why? unless it was because in her own heart there lurked
the consciousness that the unpolished Cornishman _might_ have been a
very different kind of lover; and that beneath his cold exterior there
were slumbering embers which might have blazed into glory had one
special torch been applied to them.
Yes, Julia knew this, and the knowledge was a perpetual poison that
embittered the wine of success. The pride of the Desmonds had not been
entirely trodden out beneath the iron heel of poverty. This girl, who
had not been too proud to set herself to ensnare a rich husband, was yet
proud enough to feel the bitterness of her degradation.
“If he only loved me,” she thought, “I should feel that the bargain was
a fair one. But to know that, at best, he only submits to the force of
circumstances! He has been drifted into the position of a lover, and he
performs the duties exacted of him; just like some non-dancing man who
has been persuaded to dance in order to fill the last place in a
quadrille, and who dawdles listlessly through the figures, and almost
yawns in the face of his partner. And yet I have seen him look at _her_
until the dull clay of which he is made seemed to change into a thing of
life and fire.”
And then Miss Desmond was fain to turn to her new jewel-case for
consolation, and to beguile her mind from unpleasant thoughts by the
consideration of all those grand things that may be done with thirty
thousand a year.
If the young ladies of the household thought it a pleasant thing to
spend the brief November afternoons on that delightful esplanade beside
the sea, Mr. Hillary did not find a residence in Brighton so entirely
convenient. A great deal of his time was spent in journeyings to and fro
by the best and quickest express train in England: and there were days
when even the facilities of a Brighton railway would not enable the
merchant to take his dinner in the society of his beautiful daughter and
her companion. There were occasions on which the two girls sat for a
wearisome hour or so, trying vainly to amuse themselves by some feminine
occupation, or to beguile the time by some feminine discourse, while the
soup grew cold and the Brightonian cook grew angry; and then at last
were fain to sit down at nine o’clock, and make a dismal pretence of
dining without the head of the household.
“I sometimes think so much railway travelling must be bad for papa,”
Maude said. “I am afraid it must shake him a little; though riding in
the Brighton express is almost as good as sitting in one’s own room. I
fancy papa has not looked so well lately. I have begged him to see Mr.
Desborough, our Twickenham doctor, or some London physician; but it’s no
use, for he won’t listen to me. I can’t tell you how uneasy I am about
him, Julia. He has had so many of his bad headaches lately; and then he
says the business in Moorgate Street has been so heavy. Ah, Julia! what
is the good of being rich, if papa must work as he does?”
Miss Desmond shrugged her shoulders.
“Business men seem scarcely to exist out of their offices,” she said,
rather scornfully. She always took care to let Maude know that she
looked down upon the Twickenham splendour and its commercial sources. “I
dare say your papa will devote himself to money-making as long as he
lives.”
“I sometimes think we might have been happier if we had been poorer,”
Maude said, dreamily, by-and-by. “I can’t help fancying how we might
have lived in some quiet country place, in a low-roofed, old-fashioned
cottage, with a garden all round it and a churchyard close by, and the
smell of cows and the cooing of pigeons; and then I need not have been
separated from----.” She did not finish the sentence; she was talking to
herself rather than to Julia. Her face was beautified by an
inexpressible softness and tenderness as she murmured that broken
sentence. Her thoughts wandered back to the time in which she and
Harcourt Lowther had sworn eternal constancy, standing with their hands
locked together in the dim summer twilight, on the bank of the shadowy
river. She thought of that time, and all the freshness of feeling that
had gone down with it came back upon her suddenly, like a breath of air
from a distant ocean. How frivolous her life had been since then!--how