Only a clod
trifling mechanically with the loose Berlin wool lying on Miss Hillary’s
canvas.
“I am afraid you think it a kind of degradation to you, that _I_ should
have been a servant, Maude?” he said presently.
“You never told me----”
“No--I told you I had been a private in the 51st. The other business was
only a part of my duty.”
Maude was silent for some moments after this. She sat looking dreamily
out of the window, while Francis still twisted the Berlin wools in his
strong fingers. Maude was the first to speak.
“Was it Mr. Lowther you meant just now, when you spoke of a discontented
fine gentleman?” she asked, with some slight hesitation.
“Yes; I never served any other master. Ensign Lowther was horribly
discontented. He was one of those men who can’t take things easily; but
I can understand a good deal of his peevish restlessness now. I can
sympathize with him now, Maude.”
His voice grew low and tender as he said this.
“Why?” asked Miss Hillary, rather coldly.
“He was in love, Maude,--an unhappy attachment, as I understood, to some
lady--an heiress, I think--whose money was a hindrance to a marriage
between them.”
From the beginning to the end of this conversation Maude Hillary’s
thoughts had been employed in debating one question--should she, or
should she not, tell her future husband that Harcourt Lowther was the
man to whom she had been previously engaged? He knew of that broken
engagement, but he did not know the name of her lover. Was it her duty
to tell him? It would be very unpleasant to do so; but then duty is so
often unpleasant. She was still silently debating this subject; the
words which she should speak were forming themselves in her mind; when
the drawing-room door was opened, and a servant announced Mr. Lowther.
Maude’s heart beat violently. Would there be a scene? Why had Harcourt
come, when he knew----? But Mr. Lowther very speedily relieved her fears
upon this subject. Nothing could be more delightful than his manner. He
was cordial to his old servant, without attempting any airs of
patronage. He could not have been more entirely at his ease with Maude,
had he been the most indifferent of first-cousins.
Mr. Lowther was only acting up to his determination to take things
quietly. He had met Lionel Hillary in the City that morning, and had
surprised the merchant by speaking of Maude’s engagement to Francis
Tredethlyn.
“But don’t alarm yourself, my dear Hillary,” he said with a frank smile.
“To say that I adored, and do adore, your daughter, is only to admit a
fact to which, I dare say, every male visitor at the Cedars would be
happy to testify in a round-robin. Miss Hillary is made to be
worshipped. I have only been one among a score of worshippers. If ever I
hoped to overcome your very natural prejudice against my disgusting
poverty, I have long ceased to hope it; so it was scarcely such a
death-blow to me to discover what had happened during my exile. Will you
let me renew my old relations with your household? Will you let me be
one of the moths again? I know now that the candle will burn, and that
its dangerous glare alone, and not its tender warmth, is reserved for
me, so I shall have only myself to blame if I come away with a scorched
wing.”
Mr. Hillary’s only reply to this rather sentimental speech was a hearty
invitation to dinner.
“I can give you your favourite Rüdesheimer with the oysters. Chablis is
a mistake, when you can get good hock. Sharp seven, remember; but you
may go earlier if you care for croquet. I dare say you’ll find
Tredethlyn there.”
“The poor fellow is very hard hit, I suppose?”
Mr. Hillary smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
“I never saw such a devoted creature. Good day.”
The merchant hurried off, and Harcourt walked slowly away, pondering as
he went.
“A devoted creature. Yes, and there has been new blood let into the
commercial anatomy of Hillary and Co. I dare say that poor devil
Tredethlyn has been bled to a hideous extent.”
The dinner at the Cedars went off very pleasantly. What dinner could
fail to go off tolerably well, enlivened by Harcourt Lowther, when that
gentleman cared to exercise his genius for making conversation? There
were other guests at the merchant’s round table; and after dinner people
showed an inclination to stroll out of the lamplit drawing-room on to
the dusky lawn, and down to the terrace, drawn perhaps by the magnetic
influence of the river, which _will_ be looked at.
It happened somehow--I suppose Mr. Lowther himself managed it--that he
and Maude were left a little way behind the rest of the loiterers upon
the twilit terrace. Ah! how vividly in the memory of both arose the
picture of a time long ago, when they had stood there side by side, by
the same river, in a twilight calm like this, with the same star
glimmering faintly in a low rose-tinted western sky! In Maude’s breast
that memory awakened cruel pangs of shame and remorse! In Harcourt
Lowther’s breast there was a strangely mingled feeling of bitterness and
regret;--bitterness against the Destiny which had given him so few of
life’s brightest possessions; regret for the vanished time in which some
natural earnestness, some touch of fresh and manly feeling, had yet
lingered in his heart.
“Poor, simple, unworldly Maude,” he thought, as he contemplated the
girl’s pale face, “what a penitent look she has! and yet if she
knew----”
He smiled, and left the thought unfinished. Then, turning to Maude, he
said, with a little touch of melancholy solemnity, worthy of Edgar
Ravenswood himself, “Miss Hillary, let us be friends. If you can bury
the past, so can I. We may yet strew sweet flowers of friendship on the
grave of our dead love.”
“And I really don’t want to let Francis Tredethlyn slip through my
fingers altogether,” Mr. Lowther added, mentally, as a sort of rider to
that pretty little speech.
Maude looked at him with rather a puzzled expression.
“You are very generous,” she faltered, embarrassed, and at a loss how to
express herself, “but--don’t you think it would be better for us--to--to
say good-bye to each other--for ever? I--I--hope you will marry some
one--worthy of you--some one who is less the slave of circumstances than
I am. I want to do my duty to Mr. Tredethlyn--and I think it is a part
of my duty to tell him of our broken engagement.”
“My dear Miss Hillary, you would surely never do anything so foolish.
Poor Francis is the best fellow in the world, but he is just the man to
be ferociously jealous if he once got any foolish crotchet into his
head. I have lived in the same house with him, remember, and must
therefore know him better than you do. As for saying farewell for ever,
and all that kind of thing, your eternal parting reads remarkably well
in a novel, but it isn’t practicable between civilized people who belong
to the same rank of society. Georgina bids Algernon an irrevocable adieu
on Tuesday morning, and there is burning of letters and love-locks, and
weeping and wailing in Brompton Crescent; and on Wednesday evening the
same Algernon takes her down to dinner in Westbourne Terrace. We can
bury the past in as deep a grave as you like, and lay the ghost of
memory with any exorcism you please, but we can’t pledge ourselves not
to meet any day in the week in the houses of our common friends.”
Maude was quite unable to argue with so specious a reasoner as Mr.
Lowther. She did her best to defend her position, and urged the
necessity of telling Francis Tredethlyn the whole truth. But Harcourt
overruled her objections, and in the end obtained from her a promise
that she would still remain silent as to the name of her discarded
lover.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXIII.
TIDINGS OF SUSAN.
Absorbed in the conflicting tortures and delights of his bondage,
Francis Tredethlyn had thought very little of that missing cousin who
had once been so near and dear to him. Now and then, when he had been
most entirely under the spell of Maude Hillary’s fascinating presence,
the vision of a rosy rustic face, framed in a little dimity bonnet, had
arisen suddenly before him, mutely reproachful of his forgetfulness and
neglect, and he had resolved that on the very next day some new steps
should be taken in the search for Susan Tredethlyn. But then, on that
next day, there was generally some flower-show or _matinée musicale_,
some boat-race at Putney or appointment to play croquet at Twickenham;
in short, some excuse or other for devoting himself to Maude Hillary;
and poor Susan’s rustic image melted away into chaos. But Mr. Tredethlyn
was suddenly startled into recollection of his neglected duty by the
receipt of a letter from his solicitors, Messrs. Kursdale and Scardon,
asking for an early interview, and announcing that they had an important
communication to make respecting Miss Susan Tredethlyn, otherwise Miss
Susan Turner.
An important communication. The Cornishman felt his face grow hot as he
read the letter. Susan was found, perhaps, he thought. He had never
mentioned her name to Maude Hillary, and now it might be that she would
need all the devotion of a loving protector, perhaps even the strong arm
of an avenger, at a time when his every thought was absorbed by his
approaching marriage. The young man did not wait for any ceremonious
appointment, but hurried off at once to Gray’s Inn, and presented
himself before Mr. Kursdale, the senior partner.
In the quiet office Francis Tredethlyn’s hot eagerness tamed down a
little before the matter-of-fact manner of the solicitor. There was a
sober tranquillity in the aspect of the man and of the place, which
seemed to have a singularly soothing effect upon all human emotion. The
sober little clock ticking on the grey stone mantel-piece--a skeleton
clock, exhibiting its entire anatomy to the public eye, and superior to
all meretricious adornment--seemed to be perpetually ticking out in the
stillness:
“Let me advise you to take it easily; let me recommend you to take it
quietly: whatever the Law can do for you will be done for you here; but
it must be done in the Law’s own way, which is very slow, and very
complicated, and rather trying to human patience.”
Mr. Kursdale received Francis with calm cordiality, and after a few
stately compliments proceeded at once to business.
“You will remember that my opinion, and that of my partner--for I
availed myself of his judgment in the matter,--you will, no doubt,
recollect, that after considerable study of the manuscript or journal
which you confided to me, I came to the conclusion that the writer of
that journal had contemplated imposing upon your cousin’s simplicity by
a mock marriage, a sham ceremonial, performed before some person falsely
representing himself to be a district registrar. This opinion was really
forced upon me by the wording of the diary. Look at the diary in what
light I would,--and I assure you I weighed the matter most carefully,--I
could not see my way to any other conclusion.”
“I understand,” answered Francis. “I knew the man was a scoundrel. I
made that out, somehow or other, from his journal. I knew he meant
mischief and treachery upon little Susy; but I couldn’t make out _what_
treachery till you opened my eyes to the truth.”
“But suppose that, after all my care, I was too hasty in forming a
conclusion. Suppose that we have been mistaken, Mr. Tredethlyn?”
“How do you mean, sir?”
“Some days since, I happened to open a drawer which had been unopened
for a long time, and hidden under a lot of other documents I found the
diary which you entrusted to me. The sight of the manuscript reminded me
of you and your missing cousin; so I suppose it was only natural that I