Only a clod
Harcourt Lowther shrugged his shoulders, and a frown, or the passing
shadow of a frown, darkened his handsome face.
There are some natures in which there is a certain element of
childishness, and between such natures no desperate antagonism is ever
likely to arise.
“We were rather dull at Combe Western,” said Mr. Tredethlyn, presently;
“but since we’ve been in London we’ve got on capitally. I’ve been
everywhere with Maude--shopping even; and I’ve written out the lists for
her parties, and been on a round of calls; and, in short, I’ve been the
happiest fellow in all creation.”
“No doubt, my dear boy; that sort of thing’s delightful for a fortnight;
but look out for the day when the twin demons of satiety and disgust
will arise to wither all these Arcadian delights.”
Francis pondered gravely. He had been happy since his return to London,
for he had seen Maude bright and lively, pleased with the novelty of her
position, happy in her father’s affectionate welcome, serene in the
consciousness of pure intentions, and grateful for the devotion, of
which some new evidence met her at every turn. Poor Francis had been
entirely happy; but it needed only a whisper from an elegant
Mephistopheles in modern costume to render this simple Cornishman
doubtful even of his own happiness. It might be only a sham and
delusion, after all; and Maude’s sunniest smile might be the smile of a
victim resigned to the sacrifice.
“If you think that Maude is likely to grow tired----” Francis began, in
a very melancholy tone; but Mr. Lowther interrupted him.
“_If_ I think! dear boy. How can I do otherwise than think what is
obvious to the dullest apprehension? Take life as other people take it,
my dear, simple-minded Tredethlyn, and you’ll find it go smoothly enough
with you. Try to live on a plan of your own, and--the rest is chaos.
‘_Il n’est pas de bonheur hors des routes communes:
Qui vit à travers champs ne trouve qu’infortunes._’
You had better stick to the vulgar highway, Frank, and not attempt to
set up an exceptional _ménage_. No woman will long tolerate a man tied
to her apron string. She may be flattered by his devotion in the
beginning, but she ends by despising his folly.”
So it was that Francis Tredethlyn began life under the advice of his
friend Harcourt Lowther. After that conversation in the study the young
husband no longer intruded himself upon his wife’s leisure, or attempted
to identify himself with her pursuits. He found plenty to occupy his own
time; for Harcourt Lowther always had some new scheme for his friend’s
employment or amusement. A race, that no man living in the world could
exist without seeing; a horse to be sold at Tattersall’s; a celebrated
collection of pictures at Christie and Manson’s; a bachelor’s dinner at
a club; a review at Wimbledon;--somehow or other there was always
something to be seen, or something to be done, of a nature in which Mrs.
Tredethlyn could neither have any part nor feel any interest; and when
Francis and his friend dined alone with her, as they did very often, it
happened somehow that the conversation was always of a horsy and
masculine character, painfully wearisome to the ordinary female mind. If
Mr. Lowther had been intent on widening the natural gulf which
circumstances had set between these two people, he could scarcely have
gone to work more skilfully than he did: though it is of course to be
presumed that he was only an unconscious instrument, an involuntary
agent of mischief and ruin.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXV.
THE ROAD TO RUIN.
Maude Tredethlyn took her new life very pleasantly. Her father was
happy. There had been a reaction in the City; things were going very
well for the Australian merchant; and Francis Tredethlyn was receiving
handsome interest for his thirty thousand pounds.
He brought these tidings to his wife’s boudoir one morning early in the
new year.
“I knew you’d be glad to hear it, Maude,” he said; “and now you see that
it _was_ a very fine thing for me to get into your father’s business. So
you need not have been uneasy about the matter, my darling.”
Mrs. Tredethlyn lifted herself upon tiptoe, and pursed up the rosiest
lips in Christendom. A kiss, transient as the passing flutter of a
butterfly’s wing, alighted somewhere amid the thickets of the
Cornishman’s beard.
“You dear, good old Francis! That is the pleasantest news I ever heard,
except----”
“Except what, darling?”
“The news that papa brought me home a year ago, when a generous friend
stepped in between him and ruin.”
Francis Tredethlyn blushed like a schoolgirl.
“Oh, Frank, if I should ever forget that day!” said Maude, in a low
voice, that had something of sadness in its tone.
Was she thinking that there had been occasions since her marriage when
she _had_ almost forgotten how much she owed to the devotion of her
lover,--occasions on which some little social failure--some small
omission or commission--some petty sin against the laws of the
Belgravians and Tyburnians, had been large enough to blot out all memory
of her husband’s goodness? How can you remember that a man has a noble
heart, when, for want of the ordinary tact by which the well-bred
navigators steer their barks amid the troubled waters of society, he
blurts out some unlucky allusion which paralyzes the conversational
powers of an entire dinner-table, and brings blight and ruin down upon
an assemblage which has fairly promised to be a success? Or how can you
be expected to appreciate the generous spirit of a being whose ungainly
elbow has just tilted half-a-dozen _petites timbales de gibier_ into the
ruby-velvet lap of your most important guest?
There were times when Maude was forgetful of everything except her
husband’s genial good-nature and unfailing devotion. There were other
times when her heart sank within her as she saw his candid face beaming
at her from the remote end of a long dinner-table, and heard his
sonorous laugh pealing loud and long above the hushed accents of
Belgravia.
He was her slave. If she loved him--and surely it was impossible that
she could accept so much idolatry, and render no small tribute of
affection in return--her love for him was pretty much of the same
quality as that which she bestowed on her favourite Skye terrier.
He was such a dear, devoted creature--so sensible, so obedient; and if
he did not quite stand up in a corner to beg, with a bit of bread upon
his nose, it was only because he was not required to do so. He was the
best of creatures--a big, amiable Newfoundland, ready to lie down in the
dirt to be trodden upon by his mistress’s pretty slipper, or to fly at
the throat of the foe who dared to assail her. He was a faithful slave
and defender, and it was very pleasant to know that he was always at
hand--to be patted on the head now and then when he was specially
good--to be a little neglected when his mistress was absorbed by the
agreeable distractions of society--to be blushed for, and even disowned
now and then, when his big awkward paws went ruthlessly trampling upon
some of the choicest flowers in the conventional flower-garden.
He was her slave--her own. He loved her with an idolatrous devotion
which she could rarely think of without smiling at his exaggerated
estimate of her charms and graces. He was hers--so entirely that no
possibility of losing him ever entered into her mind. He was hers, and
we are apt to be just a little indifferent about the possessions we hold
most securely. It had become a matter of course that her husband should
scatter all the treasures of his affection at her feet, and hold himself
richly repaid by any waif or stray of tenderness she might choose to
bestow upon him. She had no uneasiness about him,--none of those sharp
twinges of jealousy--those chilling pangs of doubt--those foolish and
morbid fears, which are apt to disturb the peace of even the happiest
wife. She knew that he had loved her from the very hour of their first
meeting, against his will, in despite of his better reason. She knew
that he had been content to stand afar and worship her in utter
hopelessness; and having now rewarded his fidelity, she fancied that she
had no more to do, except to receive his idolatry, and smile upon him
now and then when it pleased her to be gracious.
There was neither pride nor presumption in her nature; but she had lived
all her life in one narrow circle, and she could not help being
unconsciously patronizing in her treatment of the man who had taken her
Majesty’s shilling, and blacked Harcourt Lowther’s boots.
Francis Tredethlyn might perhaps have been entirely satisfied by
brightly patronizing smiles, and gentle pattings on the head, if he had
not been blessed with a friend and adviser, always at his elbow, always
ready to step in with an intellectual lantern held gracefully aloft, and
a mocking finger pointed, when the simple Cornishman’s perception failed
to show him the uncomfortable side of the subject.
“What a darling she is!” exclaimed Mr. Tredethlyn, as he left the house
with Harcourt Lowther, after Maude had parted from him on the staircase
all in a flutter of silk and lace, and with a feathery bush of golden
hair framed in the last Parisian absurdity in the way of bonnets.
“Mrs. Tredethlyn is just the sort of wife for a man of the world,”
Harcourt answered, with a slight shrug of his well-shaped shoulders.
“But I can’t help fancying sometimes that you’re too good a fellow to be
thrown away upon the loveliest creature who ever isolated herself from
the rest of the human race in the remote centre of a continent of moiré
antique. Of course I can’t for a moment deny that you are the most
fortunate of created beings--but--there is always a ‘but,’ you know,
even if one has a beautiful wife and thirty thousand a year. I suppose
it is the habit of my mind to quarrel with perfection. I think if I were
a fresh-hearted, simple-minded fellow like you, Tredethlyn, I should
yearn for something nearer and dearer to me than a fashionable wife.”
The finger of Mephistopheles, always pointing, generally contrived to
touch a sore place. Francis Tredethlyn, even when he had been happiest
in the sunlight of Maude’s smiles, had felt a vague sense of that one
bitter truth. She was no nearer to him than of old. The impassable gulf
still yawned between them, not to be bridged over by pretty little
courtesies or patronizing smiles.
But in spite of all inward misgivings, Mr. Tredethlyn turned upon his
friend, and hotly denied the truth of that gentleman’s observations.
Harcourt Lowther was quite resigned to a little fiery contradiction of
this kind. The arrow went home to the mark it had been shot at, and
rankled there. Such discussions were very frequent between the two men;
and however firmly Francis might argue with his friend in the daytime,
he was apt to lie awake in the dead of the night, like false cousin Amy
in the poem, when the rain was pattering on the roofs of the palatial
district, and wonder, with a dull, aching pain in his heart, whether
Harcourt Lowther was right after all; and Maude--sunny-haired,
beautiful, frivolous Maude--would never be any nearer and dearer to him
than she was now.
In the meantime, Mr. Lowther, who sowed the seeds of the disease, was
always ready with the remedy; and the remedy was--dissipation.
Harcourt Lowther, in whose few years of legal study had been crammed the
vicious experiences of a lifetime, was eager to perform the promise he
had made to Francis Tredethlyn some two years before, when the young man
first received the tidings of his uncle Oliver’s bequest.