Only a clod
cried Maude, in a tone of horror.
“Those difficulties were only temporary. The thirty thousand I advanced
have wiped out all liabilities, and your father’s business stands on a
firmer basis than ever.”
“_Thirty_ thousand! You have lent papa thirty thousand pounds?”
“I have not lent it, my dear Miss Hillary. I have only invested it in
your father’s business. There is no obligation in the matter, believe
me; or if there is, it is all on my side. I get a higher rate of
interest for my money than I should get elsewhere.”
He stopped suddenly, for Maude had burst into a passion of sobs.
“Oh, how could he do it? How could he?” she cried. “How could papa take
so mean an advantage of your generosity? I love him so dearly, that it
almost kills me to think he should be base or dishonourable. I thought
the twenty thousand pounds would soon be paid, and instead of that he
has borrowed more money of you.”
“My dear Miss Hillary, pray, pray do not distress yourself. Believe me
you misunderstand this business altogether. It is not a loan. It is only
an equitable and friendly arrangement, quite as advantageous to me as to
your father. Upon my word of honour you do Mr. Hillary a cruel wrong
when you imagine otherwise.”
Maude dried her tears, and listened to the voice of her consoler. She
was so anxious to think well of her father, that she must have been
something more than an ignorant, inexperienced girl, if she shut her
ears to Francis Tredethlyn’s arguments.
Those arguments were very convincing, very specious. Maude ought,
perhaps, to have perceived that they were not the original ideas of Mr.
Tredethlyn. She ought, perhaps, to have discovered the parrot-like
nature of his discourse respecting all the grand prospects of the house
of Hillary and Co.; but she wanted to think well of her father, and
Francis Tredethlyn urged her to that conclusion. She listened to his
discourse as eagerly as if he had been the most eloquent of living
creatures. She felt a kind of tender friendship for him as he talked to
her; never before had he seemed so nearly on a level with herself. She
wanted to believe in his wisdom; she wanted to respect his sense and
judgment, because he was the defender of her father--that beloved father
against whom her own conscience had so lately arisen, a stern and
pitiless judge.
The quiet river rippled under the summer moonlight before Maude and her
companion left the terrace; so much had Francis found to say about the
house of Hillary and Co., and the wonderful advantages that must come to
him from a partnership in that great firm. Surely his enthusiasm must
have arisen from some vague idea that even that commercial alliance
would be some kind of link between Miss Hillary and himself. He talked
very freely to-night, for Maude’s confidence had set him at his ease;
and in almost every word he uttered he naïvely revealed some new depth
in his devoted love.
Late that night, when the Cornishman had gone away, Maude stood at her
open window, looking out at the river, and thinking of all that Francis
Tredethlyn had said to her.
“Harcourt Lowther never loved me as this man loves me,” she thought,
sadly. “Ah, what a pity that there should be so much wasted love and
devotion in the world!”
And then the thought of Francis Tredethlyn’s thirty thousand pounds
arose in her mind,--a terrible obligation, a heavy burden of debt; a
debt that was perhaps never to be cancelled.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXI.
HARCOURT LOWTHER’S WELCOME.
Within a month from that night on which the merchant’s daughter and
Francis Tredethlyn had lingered so long together on the terrace up the
river, Maude Hillary sat at her desk in the little study, trying to
begin the most difficult letter she had ever had occasion to write.
The letter was to be addressed to Harcourt Lowther, and the three words,
“My dear Harcourt,” were already written on the rose-tinted foreign
note-paper; but beyond those preliminary words Maude found it very
difficult to proceed.
That which she had to tell the distant soldier, sorely tried by
inglorious idleness in a penal settlement, and inclined to resent every
stroke of ill-fortune, was by no means a pleasant thing to tell. She had
to announce to him that the promise she had made long ago in the
twilight by the river had been deliberately broken. She had to tell him
that she was the plighted wife of another man; and she was not free to
reveal to him any one of the strange circumstances that had pressed so
cruelly upon her, pushing her, little by little, into this renunciation
of her first and only love.
It was only a very commonplace letter that Miss Hillary could write to
her discarded lover. She could only tell the old, common story, and put
in the hackneyed pleas so often heard in the court of Cupid;--her
father’s wishes: her desire to secure his happiness rather than her own;
and then a wild womanly prayer for pity: an entreaty that her lover
would believe in the existence of stronger reasons--higher motives--the
nature of which she was not free to reveal. And last of all, after many
pages of passionate supplication for pardon, with not a little violation
of the nicer laws propounded by Lindley Murray and his successors,--at
the very last there came one page blotted with tears, earnest yet
incoherent, in which Miss Hillary implored Mr. Lowther to forget her,
and to seek happiness with a happier woman. Never had she loved him so
dearly as while she wrote that last page, in which she resigned him for
ever. Surely Queen Guinevere’s diamonds must have sparkled their very
brightest just in that one angry moment in which she flung them into the
river.
Yes, it had come to this. Maude Hillary, like a modern Iphigenia, had
sacrificed herself for the benefit of her father. The burden of that
debt which had been incurred by her agency had weighed too heavily upon
her girlish breast. Somehow or other Francis Tredethlyn must be paid;
and since he loved her so devotedly, so foolishly--since he held her as
the brightest treasure to be won by aspiring man--it was surely better
that he should take this poor recompense than go altogether unrewarded.
It may be that Maude Hillary would under no circumstances deliberately
have broken faith with her betrothed lover. But these grand crises, upon
which the fate of a lifetime may depend, are apt to come very suddenly
upon us. The great flood-tide of fate arises, and carries away the weak
creatures afloat on its resistless waters. A moment of hesitation--a few
faltering words--half doubtful, half imploring, and the thing is done.
It had all happened on the day on which Francis Tredethlyn accepted Mr.
Hillary’s magnanimous offer, and allowed himself to be created a
sleeping partner in the Australian house. It was only natural that on
such a day Francis should dine at the Cedars; and it was only natural
that Lionel Hillary should make a little speech about the young man,
telling his daughter of the generosity of this noble-minded Cornishman,
who had been something more than a son to him--a friend, a benefactor, a
preserver. What praise could be loud enough for a man who would lend
thirty thousand pounds without security? And then this noble-minded
Cornishman, whose heart was like a great lump of tinder--only wanting
the feeblest spark to kindle it into a blaze--burst out into a
passionate declaration of his love. What was his fortune but so much
dirt, which he was only too glad to fling under the feet of Miss
Hillary? Would he not go out into the world to-morrow penniless,
barefoot, a beggar, if by so doing he could add to her happiness? He
asked a few such questions as these: and then cried out suddenly that he
was a despicable wretch, and that he was ashamed of himself for saying
all this, when he knew that Miss Hillary’s heart was given to another
man. He would go, he said; she should never again be tormented by him.
She should not be annoyed by so much as the mention of his name. After
which passionate speech Mr. Tredethlyn grasped the merchants hand, and
then made a rush towards the door. He would fain have suited the action
to the word; he wanted to go away that moment, and hide himself for ever
from Maude Hillary. But before he could reach the door Maude was by his
side, with her hands clasped about his arm her face looking upward at
his, and drowned with tears.
“How good you are!” she cried. “Don’t go away; we cannot part from you
like this. You have been so good to my father. Ah, how can we ever
recompense so much devotion! If my esteem--my gratitude--can make you
happy, they are yours,--they have long been yours. I renounce every
other thought, every other duty. I can have no duty higher than this.”
The last words were almost stifled on her lips, for Francis Tredethlyn
caught her to his breast as passionately as in that last scene of the
“Lady of Lyons.”
“Maude, my love--my angel--you will renounce, for my sake--you--you--will
be my own--my wife!” he gasped, incoherently. “No--no, I cannot accept
such a sacrifice--I am not so mean, so selfish, as to----”
But Mr. Hillary, hovering over his daughter and the generous-minded
young Cornishman, would not allow Francis to finish this sentence.
“My dear boy!” he exclaimed,--“my darling Maude! nothing upon earth
could give me greater pleasure than this, because I know that it is for
your mutual happiness. What joy can be deeper or purer than that of a
father who knows that his child has won for herself the devoted
affection of a good man?”
“And the thirty thousand pounds will be sunk for ever and ever in the
firm of Hillary and Co.,” the merchant may have thought at the close of
that enthusiastic address.
Thus it was that Maude Hillary arrived at the very point towards which
fate and her father had been pushing her for the last twelve months.
After that passionate impulse of self-sacrifice had passed away, a dull
dead feeling of pain took possession of her breast. Alone in the quiet
of her own pretty rooms; alone through the long sunny July mornings with
her books, and Berlin-wool work, and piano, she had only too much time
to consider the step she had taken; she had only too much time to think
of her broken vows, her scattered hopes. And she did think of these
things,--with cruel remorse and self-upbraiding, with bitter and
unavailing regret.
And now Francis Tredethlyn appeared to her all at once in a new light.
Alas! he was no longer the noble-hearted friend to whom she could appeal
for help in the day of trouble. He was no longer the humble adorer,
kneeling on the lowest step of the altar, remote and submissive. He was
her affianced husband, and he had a right to her society. He had a right
to attend her in her walks and rides, to linger near the piano when she
sang, to hold perpetual skeins of Berlin-wool during those tedious
morning visits which he made now and again to the Cedars. All these
privileges were his by right; and other people gave place when he
approached Miss Hillary, and watched to see her face brighten as he drew
near her. It was not that Francis himself was in any way altered. His
adoration of his bright divinity was no less humble than of old--even
now when he knew that the goddess was to descend from her pedestal and
exchange her starry crown for the orange-blossoms of an earthly bride.
He was in no way changed; the distance between himself and Maude Hillary
was as wide as ever. He could set it before him--a palpable gulf, across
which he beheld her, a strange creature, in a strange land,--a creature
who might hold out her hand to him once in a way across the impassable
abyss, but who could never draw him near her. Alas for Francis