Only a clod
Mr. Lowther breakfasted early the next morning, and dressed himself with
his accustomed neatness before going out. He had no body-servant now
whom he could badger and worry when the world went ill with him; or that
individual would most assuredly have paid the penalty of Miss Hillary’s
broken faith. Harcourt Lowther, the younger son, was too poor to keep or
pay a valet. He had grown weary of waiting for promotion in the army, as
he had sickened of hoping for advancement at the bar, and had sold his
commission. The world was all before him now, as it had been seven years
ago, when he had first looked about him for a profession. The world was
all before him, and his one chance of fortune, the possibility of a
marriage with Maude Hillary, seemed entirely lost to him. It was
scarcely strange if his spirits sank before the dismal blankness of the
prospect which he contemplated that morning, as he loitered over his
breakfast of London eggs and lodging-house toast and coffee.
He went out a little after twelve o’clock, hailed the first prowling
hansom he encountered in the Strand, and ordered the man to drive to a
certain street in the City, sacred to the stockbroking and money-making
interests. Here he alighted, dismissed the cab, turned into a narrow
court, still more entirely sacred to stockbroking, and entered a little
office, where there was a desk, two or three horsehair chairs, a great
many bills hanging against the wall, all relating to the stockbroking
interests, and a six-foot screen of wooden panelling, dividing the small
outer office from a larger inner office.
Mr. Lowther walked straight to this screen, and standing on tip-toe,
looked over into the second office.
A gentleman with sandy whiskers, a light overcoat, and a white hat, was
standing at a desk, and jotting some pencil memoranda upon the margins
of a file of documents, which he was turning over with a certain
rapidity and precision of touch peculiar to a man of business.
“Can you spare a quarter of an hour of your valuable time from the
calculation of last year’s prices for the Fiji Island Grand Junction
Stock in order to devote it to the claims of friendship?” asked Mr.
Lowther.
The clerks smiled as they looked up from their desks; and the gentleman
in the white hat dropped his pencil, and ran to a little wooden door in
the partition, over which Harcourt Lowther’s hat made itself visible.
“My dear Lowther!” he exclaimed, presenting himself in the smaller
office, and stretching out both his hands towards the intruder; “this
_is_ a surprise; I thought you were at the Antipodes.”
“Yes, that’s the way of the world,” answered Mr. Lowther, rather
peevishly; “a man is banished to some outlandish hole at the remotest
end of the universe, _ergo_ he’s never to return to the civilized half
of the globe.”
“But it seems only yesterday when----”
“And that’s another cruel thing a man’s friends say to him when he does
turn up in the civilized hemisphere,” interrupted Mr. Lowther. “‘It
seems only yesterday when you left us;’ that is to say, life has been so
pleasant and rapid for us, amidst all the gaieties and luxuries and
successes of the most wonderful city in the world, that we are utterly
unable to believe in the dreary months and years that you’ve had to drag
out, poor devil, in your hole on the other side of the line. That’s what
a fellow’s friends _mean_ when they talk their confounded humbug about
it’s only seeming yesterday.”
Harcourt Lowther’s City friend was not the most brilliant or original of
men when you took him away from the stockbroking interests. He stared
blankly during Mr. Lowther’s discontented remarks upon the selfishness
of mankind.
“Haw! that’s good. Meant no offence by allusion to yesterday; only meant
that I was jolly glad to see you, you know, and so on. But, you see, a
fellow turning up in the City when you’ve been given to understand that
he’s in Van Diemen’s Land is rather a surprise, you know. Can I do
anything for you? I’ll tell you what, old fellow; I can put you up to a
good thing in the Etruscan Loan,--panic prices,--nine percent, and
certain to turn up trumps in the long run.”
Mr. Lowther smiled bitterly.
“Do you suppose that I’ve any money to invest; or that if I had money,
I’m the sort of man to sink the glorious principal for the sake of some
miserable dribblings in the way of interest? No, my dear Wilderson, you
_can_ do me a good turn, but it’s in quite another direction. Just step
this way.”
He put his hand on his friend’s shoulder, and led him to the door
leading into the court. Here, safely out of the hearing of the clerks at
work in the inner office, Mr. Lowther lowered his voice to a
confidential tone.
“Wilderson,” he said, “I think you know Lionel Hillary, the Australian
merchant?”
“Hillary and Co.?” exclaimed Mr. Wilderson,--“I should flatter myself I
did.”
“I want you to tell me all about him--how he stands--how he has stood
for some time past; in short, all you know about him.”
The stockbroker pulled his hay-coloured whiskers thoughtfully, and shook
his head.
“These sort of things are rather difficult to _know_,” he said, “but a
man may have his thoughts about ’em.”
“And what are your thoughts? Hang it, man, speak out. You talked just
now of being ready to serve me. You can serve me in this matter, if you
choose.”
Mr. Wilderson shrugged his shoulders, and again pulled his whiskers in a
reflective mood.
“Dear boy,” he said presently, “come out into the court.”
Evidently in Mr. Wilderson’s mind the court was as some primeval forest,
wherein no listener’s ears could penetrate.
Out in the court the stockbroker hitched his arm through that of
Harcourt Lowther, and began to discourse upon Lionel Hillary, or Hillary
and Co., as Mr. Wilderson preferred to designate him. He said a great
deal in a low, confidential voice, and Harcourt Lowther’s lower jaw fell
a little as he listened. One thing was made clear to the ex-officer, and
that was, that Lionel Hillary’s affairs had been hinted at by the
knowing ones as rather shaky; that there had been even whispers of that
awful word, “suspension:” but that somehow or other Hillary and Co. had
contrived to right themselves; and that it was supposed by the aforesaid
knowing ones that the Australian merchant had found a wealthy backer.
“There’s fresh blood been let into his business, you may rely upon it,
dear boy,” said Mr. Wilderson. “I know that he was in Queer Street last
Christmas. Bills referred to drawer, and that sort of thing. The bankers
were beginning to get shy of his paper. I held a little of it myself,
and a deuced deal of trouble I had to plant it.”
This and much more to hear did Harcourt Lowther seriously incline. Then
he asked Mr. Wilderson to dine with him at a certain noted establishment
in the Strand, and left the court very grave of aspect and slow of step.
“So my lovely Maude is not a millionaire’s daughter after all,” he
thought. “And my friend Hillary has been dipping his capacious paw into
Francis Tredethlyn’s purse. I ought to have known that half these
reputed rich men are as rotten as a pear. So this is the explanation of
my simple Maude’s heroics. Poor little girl, _she_ has been the pretty
fly with which that accomplished angler, Mr. Hillary, has whipped the
stream for his big gudgeon! Any little card I may have arranged to play
for myself has been very neatly taken out of my hands; and I find my
friend provided with a needy father-in-law and an extravagant wife.
However, I dare say there’s some small part left for me to play: and
perhaps the best thing I can do is to take it quietly.”
Harcourt Lowther’s servant!
The man to whom Maude Hillary was now engaged had once been the valet of
her discarded lover. This could scarcely be a pleasant thought to any
young lady early imbued with all the ordinary prejudices of society.
Miss Hillary was not a strong-minded woman; she could not console
herself with a neat aphorism from Burns to the effect that “a man’s a
man for a’ that;” and to her Harcourt Lowther’s revelation seemed
cruelly humiliating. She had heard of young women in her own position
marrying grooms, or perhaps even footmen, for love, and she had
shuddered at the very idea of their iniquity. But was it not quite as
degrading to marry a valet for money, as to elope with a groom for love?
“He blacked Harcourt’s boots!” thought poor Maude; and it is impossible
to describe the utter despair expressed in that brief sentence. She met
her lover with a very pale face the next day, and, seating himself in
his accustomed place by her embroidery frame, Francis Tredethlyn saw
that there was something wrong. Alas! poor--Francis, he had already
learned to watch every change upon that beautiful face; already, before
the marriage vows had been spoken, all the miserable tortures of doubt
had begun to prey upon his devoted heart. She had promised to marry him,
but she had not promised to love him. He remembered that. She had given
herself to him in payment of her father’s debt. She had sacrificed
herself in accordance with the loyal instincts of her noble nature.
Francis, generous and loyal himself, could understand this, much better
than it was understood by Lionel Hillary, for whose sake the sacrifice
was made.
There were times when the young man reproached himself for his
selfishness in accepting the supreme desire of his soul. Ought he not
rather to have wrestled with himself and let this bright young creature
go? But there were other times when Francis Tredethlyn suffered himself
to be beguiled by delicious hopes. Had not true and honest love
sometimes triumphed over circumstance? Might not the day come when Maude
Hillary would be able to return his affection, to reward his patience?
“I can afford to be so patient,” he thought; “for it will be such
happiness to be her slave.” To-day, watching her pale face in pensive
contemplation, Francis puzzled himself vainly to guess what was amiss
with his promised wife. It was not only that she was paler than
usual,--and the brightness of her colour had faded very much of
late,--but to-day, there was a shade of coldness in her manner which was
quite new to her affianced husband, and which sent a chill to his heart,
always ready to sink under some vague apprehension where Maude Hillary
was concerned. We hold these supreme joys of life by so slender a
thread, that half our delight in them is poisoned by the dread of their
possible loss.
“Maude,” he said by-and-by, after a few commonplace phrases, and after
he had watched her for some minutes in silence, “I am sure there is
something amiss with you to-day. You are ill--you----”
“Oh, no, not ill. Only a little worried.”
“Worried--but about what?”
“I heard something about you last night, Mr. Tredethlyn,” said Miss
Hillary,--it was the first time she had called him Mr. Tredethlyn since
their engagement,--“something which you never told me yourself. Mr.
Lowther,--a friend of papa’s, who has just come home from Van Diemen’s
Land, told me--that--that--you had been----”
“His servant! Yes, Maude, it is quite true. I was a soldier, and I was
obliged to obey orders. I was ordered to attend upon Ensign Lowther, and
I did my best to serve him well. When I enlisted in her Majesty’s
service, I had all sorts of foolish fancies about fighting and glory,
but they all dwindled down to the usual routine. No fighting, no glory,
no desperate attacks upon Indian fortresses, no scaling walls to plant
the British flag upon the enemy’s ramparts; but any amount of drill and
hard work, and a discontented fine gentleman to wait upon.”
A flood of crimson rushed into Maude’s face as Francis said this; but
the young man’s head was drooping over the embroidery frame, and he was