Only a clod
the library in search of a railway rug which he had flung off his arm
when he sat down to write the letter; and during his brief absence there
was a flutter of silk in the hall, and a little conference between Mr.
Lowther and the Abigail.
Half an hour afterwards, when the two men were walking up and down the
platform at the King’s Cross station, with cigars in their mouths, Mr.
Lowther handed his friend the identical letter which Francis had
entrusted to his wife’s maid.
“You can post that to its address if you like, dear boy; but I think _I_
should light my cigar with it. The seal is unbroken, you see; but I
fancy I can make a tolerable guess at the contents of the epistle. Dear
old Frank, if you want to preserve the merest semblance of manhood, the
poorest remnant of independence, never beg your wife’s pardon.”
Of course Mr. Tredethlyn was very angry. Harcourt Lowther was prepared
to encounter a given amount of resistance. The wave may lash and beat
itself against the quiet breast of the rock; and the rock, secure in its
supremacy, has only to stand still until that poor worn-out wave crawls
meekly to the stony bosom, a conquered and a placid thing. Mr. Lowther
had his work to do, and he took his own time about doing it. The
apologetic little epistle was _not_ sent to Mrs. Tredethlyn; and at an
uproarious after-dinner assemblage at the Reindeer, Francis abandoned
such frivolous stuff as sparkling Moselles and Burgundies for fierce
libations of brandy punch. He made a tremendous book for all manner of
events, always under the advice of his friend; indeed, its pages
contained many rather heavy engagements with Mr. Lowther himself, who
affected extreme simplicity amongst the magnates of the turf, but who
was nevertheless eminently respected by those gentlemen, as being of the
deep and dangerous class--a dark horse, secretly exercised on lonely
commons at weird hours of the early morning, and winning with a rush
when he was least expected to do so.
While Francis was seeing life through the medium provided for him by his
experienced adviser, Maude enjoyed herself after her own fashion. She
had been very happy at Twickenham; but she had never until now been
entirely her own mistress, with unlimited credit and unlimited ready
money, and all the privileges of a matron. At the Cedars she had been
always more or less under her father’s direction. She had acted very
much as she pleased upon all occasions; but she had made a point of
consulting him about the smallest step in her simple life; a round of
calls, a day’s shopping, a little musical gathering after a
dinner-party, the amount of a subscription to a charity,--even the
colour of a dress.
But now the young matron shook off even the gentle fetters which had
held the girl, and spread her pinions for a bolder flight. A much wider
world had opened itself to the merchant’s daughter since her marriage.
The story of Mr. Tredethlyn’s fortune--always multiplied by the liberal
tongue of rumour--was one of the most popular topics amongst the
denizens of the new district in which Mr. Tredethlyn’s house was
situated. None of these West-end people knew that Lionel Hillary’s
position had ever endured a dreadful crisis of uncertainty and terror.
The marriage between Maude and Francis was supposed to be one of those
sublime unions in which wealth is united to wealth--the alliance of a
Miss Rothschild with a Master Lafitte--a grand commercial combination
for the consolidation of capital.
So Maude took her place as one of the most important novelties of the
current year. She gave great receptions in her three drawing-rooms,
whose gorgeous decorations were just a little too much like the velvet
and ormolu magnificence of a public room at a gigantic hotel. She
organized dinner-parties, and revised and corrected a _menu_, with the
_savoir faire_ of a Brillat Savarin in petticoats. Always accustomed to
a reckless expenditure, she had no idea of the necessity for some
regulation in the expenses of a large household. Left a great deal to
herself, and frequently at a loss for occupation, she often spent her
husband’s money from sheer desire for amusement. After that unlucky
encounter on the stairs, she resigned herself entirely to her position
as a fashionable wife. Her husband went his way unmolested, and she went
hers. She was tolerably happy, for the life was a very pleasant one to
live; but oh, what a vain, empty, profitless existence to look back
upon!--the success of a dinner, the triumph of an audacious toilette,
the only landmarks on a great flat of frivolity. But Mrs. Tredethlyn was
not at the age in which people are given to looking back; she was rich,
beautiful, accomplished, agreeable, with that dash of recklessness in
her gaiety which makes a woman such an acquisition in a drawing-room,
and the fumes of the incense which her admirers burned before her were
just a little intoxicating. The Twickenham loungers, who had worshipped
her mutely and reverently from afar off, found themselves distanced now
by bolder adorers, and, conversing amongst themselves upon the
staircases and on the outer edges of crowded drawing-rooms in the
stuccoed district, shook their heads and pulled their whiskers, gravely
opining that Mrs. Tredethlyn was “going the pace.”
Maude had been Francis Tredethlyn’s wife more than six months, and the
London season was at its fullest height, when an accidental meeting with
Julia Desmond brought about that young lady’s restoration to her old
position of confidante and companion to the pampered daughter of her
dead father’s friend. The two women met in the Pantheon; and it was a
terrible shock to Maude to see her old companion dawdling listlessly
before a stall of toys, dressed in a shabby black silk and a doubtful
bonnet, and attended by two ungainly girls in short petticoats and
scarlet stockings.
The proud spirit of the Desmonds had been crushed by the iron hand of
necessity. In these perpetual duels between pride and poverty, the
result seems only a question of time. Poverty must have the best of it,
unless, indeed, death steps between the combatants to give poor pride a
doubtful victory. Julia Desmond had carried her pride and anger away
from the luxurious idleness of the Cedars, to nurse them in a London
lodging. The only money she had in the world was a ten-pound note, left
out of a sum which the liberal merchant had given her for the payment of
a dressmaker’s bill. She had the jewels given her by Francis
Tredethlyn--the diamonds which she had thrown at his feet in the little
study at the Cedars, on the night of the amateur theatricals--but which
the sober reflections of the following morning had prompted her to
retain amongst her possessions. She had these, and upon these she might
have raised a very considerable sum of money. But the angry Julia had no
desire to raise money. A life of idleness in a London lodging was the
very last existence to suit her energetic nature. She inserted an
advertisement in the “Times” upon the very day after her departure from
Twickenham, and she went on advertising until she succeeded in getting a
situation as governess in a gentleman’s family. But ah! then came the
bitterest of all her trials. She fancied that her life, wherever she
went, would be more or less like her life at the Cedars. There would be
a great deal more work, perhaps, there might be less luxury, less
gaiety, but it would be the same kind of life: while on any day the
lucky chance might arise, and the beauty of the Desmonds might win her
some great prize in the matrimonial lottery.
Alas for Julia’s inexperienced notions of a governess’s existence! She
found herself the drudge of an exacting mistress, with every hour of her
dreary life mapped out and allotted for her, with less share in the
social pleasures of the house she lived in than if she had been the
kitchen-maid, and with two small tyrants in crinkled hair and holland
pinafores always on the watch to detect her shortcomings, and to twist
them into excuses for their own. The dreadful monotony of her life would
alone have made it odious; but Julia had “a sorrow’s crown of sorrow”
perpetually pressing on her tortured brow. She had the recollection of
happier things--the pleasant idleness at the Cedars, the position of
Francis Tredethlyn’s affianced wife. And she had given up this position
in one moment of ungovernable rage and jealousy. She had suffered one
mad impulse of her proud nature to undo the slow work of months. Miss
Desmond had ample leisure for the contemplation of her folly during the
long winter evenings which she spent in a third-floor sitting-room at
Bayswater, hearing unwilling children grind hopelessly at a German
grammar by the light of two guttering tallow-candles. She _did_
contemplate her folly, while the guttural verbs and declensions fell
with a droning noise on her unlistening ears; but the rage which swelled
her bosom was against Maude Hillary, and Maude alone.
She saw Maude’s carriage in the Park sometimes, while she took her
allotted walk with the unwilling children, who might have been pleasant
children enough, perhaps, if they had not been weighed down by
intellectual exercises compared to which the enforced physical labours
of Toulon would have seemed light and agreeable. Julia saw her old
companion, and her mind went back to the sunny afternoons on the lawn at
Twickenham; and the sight of the pretty face and golden hair, the Skye
terriers and neatly appointed equipage, stirred the fire of hatred
always burning in her breast, until she could almost have shaken her
small fist at the merchant’s daughter.
She saw the announcement of Maude’s marriage in the “Times,” and hated
her still more. She saw Maude in the Park, after her marriage, in a more
splendid equipage than the landau from the Cedars, and she hated her
even more and more. She set her teeth together, and drew back under the
shadow of the trees to watch Francis Tredethlyn’s wife drive by.
“She has cheated me out of it all,” she thought; “it would all have been
mine but for her treachery.”
Then one bright and sunny afternoon in early May the two women
met,--Julia a wan shadow of her former self, worn out with hard work,
depressed by the monotony of her life, indifferent as to her dress and
appearance; Maude a beaming creature in gauzy mauve muslin, with a
Watteau skirt, all a-flutter with ribands, and a voluminous train
sweeping the dust behind her.
“Dear Julia----”
“Maude--Mrs. Tredethlyn!”
Miss Desmond turned as pale as death. The encounter had come upon her
very suddenly, and she was neither physically nor mentally able to bear
it. She set her teeth and tried to flash the old defiance from her dark
eyes. But the light of that once fiery glance died out like the flame of
a candle which burns feebly in the glare of the morning sun. Julia was
quite worn out by the life she had been leading for the last year and a
half. The pride of a Somerset might give way beneath a long course of
overwork and indifferent diet.
After that first exclamation of surprise she drew herself to her fullest
height, and tried to pass Mrs. Tredethlyn with a bow, and a faint, cold
smile of recognition, but Maude stopped her.
“Dearest Julia, if you knew how anxious and unhappy I have been about
you, I’m sure you would not want to pass me by. Do let us be friends.
The past is forgotten, isn’t it? Yes, I’m sure it is. Will you come
up-stairs to the picture-gallery? that’s always a nice solitary place
where one can talk. Are those young ladies with you? What very nice
little girls! Miss Desmond and I are going up-stairs, dear, to have a
chat. Will you come with us?”
The elder of Julia’s pupils, to whom this question was addressed,