Only a clod
selfish and useless! What a round of dress and decoration, and hurry and
weariness! Harcourt Lowther’s last letter was in her pocket as she sat
musing despondently by the hired Brighton hearth;--his last letter, a
most melancholy epistle, full of despairing lamentations about the
bitterness of separation and the hardships of Van Diemen’s Land. And
over and above all these feminine perplexities which tormented poor
loving Maude, there seemed real cause for anxiety in the state of Mr.
Hillary’s health. It was not that the merchant himself complained; he
did not complain, and, indeed, appeared to resent any inquiries as to
his state, even when those inquiries came from such a privileged person
as his only child. But every morning at the breakfast-table, sitting
opposite to her father in the bright sunlight, Maude could see a darker
shade under Mr. Hillary’s eyes, a more weary look about his haggard
face. She defied his anger very often, and pleaded earnestly with him,
imploring him to consult a physician; but his answer was always very
much the same.
“I am subject to this sort of headache; my work in Moorgate Street is
peculiarly hard just now. Pray do not trouble yourself, Maude; there is
not the least occasion for any uneasiness about my health.”
With such assurances as these Miss Hillary was compelled to be
satisfied. There had been an air of coldness, or almost displeasure, in
her father’s manner to her lately, and Maude found to her surprise that
he was by no means pleased with the matrimonial engagement that had
arisen between Julia Desmond and Francis Tredethlyn.
“Engaged to _her_!” the merchant exclaimed, when his daughter carried
him the news of Julia’s conquest,--“engaged to Julia Desmond! Why, I
fully believed that he came to Twickenham on your account, Maude. I said
nothing to you about the matter, because girls have sometimes such
absurd notions, and I thought it better to let things take their course.
And so Julia has entrapped him, has she? I ought to have been on my
guard against Ryan O’Brien Desmond’s daughter.”
“How can you talk like that, papa?” cried Miss Hillary. “I’m sure Julia
and Mr. Tredethlyn are really in love with each other, and dear Julia is
perfectly disinterested. And then, if Mr. Tredethlyn had been ever so
much in love with me--and I’m sure he never cared the least bit about
me--how could you suppose that I could ever dream of marrying him; when
I--when he’s such a very common kind of person?”
Harcourt Lowther’s name had been almost trembling on Miss Hillary’s
lips, but she had remembered her father’s aversion to that name, and had
modified the conclusion of her sentence in deference to his prejudice.
“A very common kind of person!” repeated Lionel Hillary, in a thoughtful
tone; “yes, yes, my dear, I dare say he is, I dare say he is. But I’ve
seen women as beautiful as you married to commoner men than Francis
Tredethlyn.”
And then, after a brief silence, the merchant’s manner changed all of a
sudden; he took his daughter in his arms, and pressed his lips upon her
forehead with an almost passionate fondness.
“My darling! my darling!” he cried, “do you think it wouldn’t please me
to see you married to a man you could love?”
Maude looked up into his face with a sweet smile upon her own: her lips
parted, and in the next moment Harcourt Lowther’s name would have been
spoken and his cause pleaded by those innocent lips. But it seemed as if
her father in a manner anticipated what she would have said; for he put
her from him suddenly, and turned away with a faint shiver of pain.
“I am very sorry to hear of this engagement between Julia and that young
man,” he said, with his face averted from his daughter, and his hands
nervously shuffling among the papers on the table before him. “I am very
much vexed. There, go, Maude; you don’t understand, you can’t
understand. Go, my dear; I’m busy.”
No more than this had ever been said between the father and daughter
upon the subject of Miss Desmond’s matrimonial arrangements; but Maude
had been able to discover that her father’s vexation was not a matter of
the moment, to be forgotten and done with after the first surprise of
the announcement. Lionel Hillary was tolerably gracious to Mr.
Tredethlyn, but his manner towards Julia changed altogether. There were
times when he scarcely took the trouble to conceal his displeasure from
that young lady herself. He would sit watching her moodily when Francis
Tredethlyn was by her side, and would sometimes, when the conversation
gave him an opening, break out into some cynical generality upon the
husband-hunting propensities of modern young ladies. Francis was too
simple-minded to comprehend the drift of these covert sneers; but Julia
understood her benefactor, and defied him with her bold handsome eyes
and her flashing teeth.
“He wanted thirty thousand a year for his daughter, I suppose,” she
thought, when she pondered on Mr. Hillary’s discourtesy. “What grasping,
avaricious creatures these rich people are!”
Christmas was approaching, and that festival period was to be spent at
the Cedars, to which place Maude Hillary was tenderly attached, despite
her sentimental talk about poverty and a simple home deep down in the
heart of rustic England. The young ladies’ portmanteaus had been packed
ready for the departure from Brighton, and Maude and Julia only waited
for Mr. Hillary to escort them on their homeward journey. He had not
been so much with them during the last week or so of their sojourn: and
as Francis Tredethlyn only came backwards and forwards with Mr. Hillary,
the girls had been left by themselves, with no better occupation or
amusement than the reading of new books, the trying of new music, and a
contemplation of the blusterous gray waves beating eternally before
their windows: for the weather had been cold and stormy of late, and the
delicious esplanade had been deserted; only an occasional masculine
wanderer, out for a “constitutional,” buffeted the winds and strode in
dismal loneliness along the pavement beneath Mr. Hillary’s windows.
It was only natural, under these circumstances, that the young ladies
should have grown weary of Brighton. They had a close carriage at their
disposal; but then driving through perpetual tempest is not particularly
agreeable even in a close carriage. They went shopping in East Street
two or three times during the severe weather, and bought expensive
materials for impossible complications of Berlin-wool work and gold
beads; and, experimentalizing with the same on their return home,
discovered themselves at sea in a wide ocean of perplexity. Thus it was
that they grew very tired of Brighton, and wished most earnestly for Mr.
Hillary’s coming.
“Oh, for the silvery ring of my own Broadwood!” exclaimed Maude, as she
rose from a struggle with a German rendering of “Polly, put the kettle
on,” in seven flats, and ten pages of double arpeggios. “I wonder _who_
makes the pianos for houses that are let furnished? I’m sure they must
all be made by the same man; and I suppose it’s a theory of his own that
makes him always use damp wood, and put so much flannel into his
trebles.--I wish papa would come and take us home, Julia.”
Miss Hillary expressed this wish at least twenty times in a day; and
Julia echoed it, as if out of pure sympathy. But Miss Desmond was not a
very sympathetic person, and she was really anxious to get back to the
neighbourhood of London and Francis Tredethlyn. Nearly a fortnight had
passed since the Cornishman had been to Brighton, and Julia was terribly
conscious that the link which united him to her was very fragile, and
might be broken by any unlucky hazard--unless, indeed, his constancy
were sustained by a chivalrous sense of honour. She had as yet had no
opportunity of discovering his sentiments on this subject, and she had a
vague idea that a small farmer’s son, who had taken the Queen’s
shilling, would be unlikely to entertain the same splendid notions of
truth and loyalty that glowed in the breasts of his superiors.
“I know that he’s a very good fellow,” Julia thought; “and I don’t
suppose he would steal anything, or tell a deliberate falsehood; but I
dare say he would think it no sin to throw me over at the last moment
if----”
There was a point at which Miss Desmond’s reveries always stopped short.
She did not care to think about that which Francis Tredethlyn might like
to do, even if he were free to do as he liked.
Mr. Hillary came home very late upon the evening of an especially
disagreeable day. He came down to Brighton by the mail train, and
arrived at the hired mansion just as the two girls were gathering
together the gold beads and Berlin wools, preparatory to going to bed.
But though the merchant had been so much longer away than usual, he
seemed in no particular hurry to embrace his daughter; for instead of
coming up to the drawing-room, he walked straight to a dreary little
study at the back of the house, which had been set apart for his use.
Maude had heard the sonorous knock at the big street door, and flew out
of the drawing-room to greet the traveller.
“At last, dear papa!” she cried. “We have been as dull and dreary as a
pair of Marianas in a moated grange. Oh, you darling papa! I am so glad
you have come! Please take us home to Twickenham: we’ve had _such_
weather; we’re as helpless and miserable as those poor working people
who go about singing so dreadfully flat when there’s a hard frost. ‘We
are two lonely single girls, and we’ve got no work to do!’” sang Miss
Hillary, with the established nasal drawl, as she skipped down the
stairs.
“Kiss me, you wet, cold, melancholy-looking papa,” she said, planting
herself between Lionel Hillary and the door of his sanctum.
The merchant seemed in no very affectionate humour to-night. He put his
daughter aside without looking at her. His face was fixed and stern in
expression, and its gloomy rigidity was in no way relaxed as he spoke to
Maude.
“Why are you up so late?” he said. “I thought you would have gone to bed
an hour ago. I don’t want to be worried to-night, Maude. I’ve some
papers down here that want looking into, and I’ve brought other papers
with me. I may have to sit up half the night, perhaps; and, remember, I
am not to be disturbed.”
“But you will be ill, papa, if you work so hard.”
“I shall not be ill, and I know what is best for myself. I cannot and
must not be annoyed to-night, Maude.”
He went into his room, where the servant had already made an
illumination that would have been enough for a chapel or a factory, by
means of five flaring gas-burners; but Maude followed him, and was not
to be put off even by the harsh words that sounded so strangely in her
ears.
“Papa,” she remonstrated piteously, “I am sure that you are ill, or that
something has happened.”
Mr. Hillary laid his hand upon his daughter’s shoulder, and put her out
of the room,--very gently, but with a certain determination which was
quite a new thing in his treatment of this idolized and exacting Maude.
“I tell you, once more, that I am going to be--very busy, and must
not--be disturbed.” He seemed tired, for the words came slowly, as if
the mere utterance of them were a painful exertion. “Good night, my
dear; go to bed, and sleep peacefully. God bless you, and take you into
his keeping!”
His manner changed all in a moment as he said this, and he caught her
suddenly to his breast and kissed her passionately, as he had done on
that other day when they had talked of Francis Tredethlyn.
But in the next moment Maude found herself standing outside the closed
door of her father’s retreat, amazed and unhappy. That sudden little
gush of affection had been as perplexing to her as Mr. Hillary’s unusual