Only a clod
work without that most dangerous of all machinery--pen and paper. Poor
Francis! he looks a little worn.”
Mr. Lowther looked down upon the sleeper with the most benign
expression. He had no dislike whatever to the simple Cornishman; he had
only--his own plans.
“These fellows who come suddenly into a large fortune are sure to kill
themselves before they have done spending it,” he murmured,
complacently. “Jervois,” he said, as he went out, “you won’t forget your
master’s engagement. He’d better drive up to my place in the mail
phaeton.”
Mr. Lowther’s “place” was the same lodging which he had taken for
himself when he first returned to England. He was an adventurer; but he
was not a vulgar adventurer, and in all his dealings with Francis
Tredethlyn he had not sponged upon that gentleman’s purse for so much as
a five-pound note. He had his plans; but they were not the plans of a
man who lives from hand to mouth. He won a good deal of his friend’s
money; but he never cheated Francis out of a sixpence. His sole
advantage was that which must always accompany skill and experience as
opposed to ignorance and inexperience. In the meanwhile, Harcourt
Lowther lived as best he might on his winnings and a small allowance
made him by his mother.
The Lowthers were great people in their way, and Harcourt had admission
to some of the best houses in London. He was very well received in that
circle in which Maude Tredethlyn had taken her place, and contrived
somehow or other to be present for an hour or so at almost all of the
parties in which she appeared; though to break away from the haunts of
Bohemianism to drop into politer life, and then return to Bohemia in the
same evening, was almost as difficult as a harlequin’s jump in a
pantomime. Harcourt Lowther did this, however, and did it very often;
and Maude Tredethlyn, enjoying all the privileges of a matron, found
herself sometimes standing amongst the statues and exotics on a crowded
staircase in Tyburnia, talking with Harcourt Lowther almost as
familiarly as they had talked in the old summer evenings by the quiet
river.
Sometimes, looking back upon such a meeting, Maude felt inclined to be
angry with Mr. Lowther for having taken something of the old tone; but
could she blame him for the lowered accents of his voice, the subdued
light in his eyes, the unconscious tenderness into which he was betrayed
in those public meetings, when she remembered how nobly he kept aloof
from her in her home? Never yet had he presumed upon his intimacy with
the husband in order to intrude himself on the presence of the wife.
What harm or danger, then, if, in crowded assemblages, he surmounted all
manner of small difficulties in order to make his way to her side? What
could it matter if he lingered just a little longer than others,
contriving all sorts of excuses for delay? It is rather a pleasant thing
for a frivolous young married woman, serene in the consciousness of her
own integrity, to know that a man’s heart is breaking for her in a
gentlemanly way. A word too much, a tone, a look, and Maude would have
taken alarm, and fled from her old admirer as from the venomous fangs of
some deadly reptile; but Harcourt Lowther knew better than to speak that
word. He had his own plans, and he was carrying them out in his own way:
neither by word nor look had he ever yet offended Maude Tredethlyn; but
now, when he tried to cut a path for himself through the crowd about
her, he found less difficulty in the progress. People began to make way
for him, and it was considered a settled thing that he should be found
somewhere near her. He had not offended her; he had only--compromised
her.
Francis awoke before the hour at which his servant had been told to call
him. The valet’s place was almost a sinecure, for the Cornishman still
retained, of his old nature, the simple independent habits of a man who
can wait upon himself. He got up at four o’clock, and had nearly
completed his toilet, when the servant brought the soda and brandy
prescribed by Harcourt Lowther.
“And if you please, sir, you were to be so good as to remember an
appointment with Mr. Lowther at half-past five, and was to please to
drive the mail phaeton,” said the valet, while his master drank the
revivifying beverage.
“Very good,” muttered Mr. Tredethlyn, with something like a groan; “you
may go and order the phaeton for five o’clock. Is Mrs. Tredethlyn at
home?”
“No, sir.”
The man departed, and Francis finished dressing. He had ten minutes to
spare after putting on his outer coat, and he sat down to look at the
newspaper which lay ready cut on his writing-table. He took up the
“Times,” but only stared vacantly at the advertisement sheet. His head
still ached, in spite of a shower-bath and a vigorous application of
hard hair-brushes; but his intellect was a good deal clearer than it had
been before he dressed.
Suddenly, out of the advertisement sheet, vivid as the figure of Banquo
at Macbeth’s uncomfortable supper-party, there arose before him a
face--a wan, faded face--in a white muslin-cap.
“Great Heaven!” he cried; “I didn’t know her!”
The ghost that he had seen upon the previous night was the ghost of the
woman he had so long been looking for--his cousin Susan.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXVIII.
“OH, MY AMY! MINE NO MORE!”
Francis Tredethlyn drove his friend down to Richmond at a rattling pace,
but he scarcely spoke half-a-dozen words throughout the journey; and
Harcourt Lowther, keeping the watchful eye of the master upon his pupil,
saw that something was amiss.
Now although the Cornishman’s guide and Mentor had his plans, very
definite plans, as clearly drawn out as the great Duke’s arrangements
for Waterloo,--which wondrous victory was _not_ quite the lucky accident
our neighbours imagine it to have been; yet he was far too wise a
diplomatist to ignore the sublime opportunities which chance sometimes
throws in the way of a schemer, shattering the complicated machinery so
dexterously and patiently put together, and opening a new and easy way
to success over the ruins of the old road.
Mr. Lowther was quite prepared to make good use of any accident which
seemed likely to help him. He was like a chess-player who takes his
place before the board with a perfect plan of action mapped out in his
mind, and who may see his entire scheme overthrown, his most brilliant
arrangements stultified by the first move of his adversary, but who will
win the game nevertheless, after his enemy’s fashion, if not after his
own, being no enthusiastic advocate of pet theories, but only a man of
the world, resolutely bent on success. Upon this particular afternoon
Harcourt saw that something had gone amiss with his friend, and he was
bent on discovering what the something was. With this view he had resort
to that imaginary instrument which his companions of Bohemia called the
“pump-handle;” but on letting down a moral plummet into the depths of
Mr. Tredethlyn’s mind, he found himself in much deeper water than usual,
and quite unable to reach the bottom.
“If he has secrets from me, he’ll throw all my machinery out of gear,”
mused Mr. Lowther; “and yet I don’t quite know that--a secret might be
worked into something _with her_. What a wonderful creature that Iago
was, by the bye! especially when one considers that he took all that
trouble for no better motive than jealous twinges about a wife whom he
treated like a dog, and an envious grudge of Cassio’s advancement. Aha,
my divine Williams, that’s the only flaw in your _magnum opus_; your
motive power isn’t equal to your ponderous machinery! Now if Othello had
been the owner of thirty thousand a year and a beautiful wife whom Iago
loved, there might have been some reason for the exhibition of a little
Italian diplomacy. But revenge! Bah! The luxury of a maniac. The pet
wickedness of a woman. Your novelist cannot write a story, your
playwright cannot devise a drama, but he must have recourse to revenge
to keep the action going. Yet, in the history of men how small and
pitiful a part the heroic passion plays! A Cromwell condemns a Charles
Stuart to the scaffold. For revenge? No; simply because Charles is in
his way. A Robespierre drowns his country in the blood of her sons; and
yet I doubt if he bore a hearty grudge against one of his victims--a
little political jealousy, perhaps, at the worst. A Richelieu
extinguishes the haughty _noblesse_ of France--out of revenge? No; but
the _noblesse_ interfere with the schemes of my Lord Cardinal. A
Countess of Essex connives at the poisoning of her husband: revenge? not
a bit of it, but because she wants to marry some one else; and poor Sir
Thomas Overbury must die, not that any one hates the man, but the
creature is so tiresome. And Arabella Stuart pines in prison; and the
heads of the regicides rot on Temple Bar; and Charles, the merry
monarch, the pet of the painters and romancers, the man whose sins have
been dealt with so lightly that we are apt to mistake them for
virtues--can be as hard as a Nero when it suits him that the patriots
Russell and Sidney shall perish in their prime; and James II. sends
young Monmouth to the block. Why? Is revenge the impulse that stirs
these men’s hearts? Not at all. Not man’s passionate hatred of his
neighbour, but man’s devoted love of himself is the motive power that
moves the headsman’s arms, and bids the swooping axe descend upon fair
young necks from which the lovelocks have been newly shorn. Revenge?
Pshaw! Has it a feather’s weight in the balance of history? In all the
story of our land, what has revenge to answer for? A semi-mythical
Rosamond poisoned in her bower--an Essex condemned in passionate haste,
and lamented in dreary leisure by the Queen who loved him--a
Konigsmark’s handsome face trampled upon by a German tigress.”
With such random reflections as these Mr. Lowther beguiled the silence
of the drive to Richmond. During dinner and throughout the evening he
watched his friend closely; but all the fascinations of Bohemia were
powerless to arouse Francis Tredethlyn from the thoughtful mood. Indeed,
the Bohemians had a charming faculty for enjoying themselves amongst
themselves without any reference to the host and paymaster, who was
generally looked at rather in the light of a bore and an intruder--the
death’s head at the banquet. Some of Mr. Tredethlyn’s new friends had
christened him the Necessary Evil; and to-night, while he sat moodily
brooding over the story of his cousin, pretty lips made faces at the
company over his shoulder; and one lovely Bohemian, more playful than
the rest, amused herself and her acquaintances by filling the pockets of
his dress-coat with the empty shells of the lobsters, and the corks of
the champagne.
For the rest, what did it matter in what dreary regions his mind
wandered, so long as he was there to write a cheque for the bill? Only
one pair of eyes looked at him with any show of interest; and those eyes
watched him as the serpent watches the bird; with as deadly a purpose,
with as quiet a gaze. But, watch him as closely as he would to-night,
there was something in Francis Tredethlyn’s mind which Harcourt Lowther
could not read quite as easily as a page in an open book, and as it was
his habit to read most things relating to the Cornishman.
“What does it matter?” thought Mr. Lowther, abandoning himself to
reflection again during the homeward drive; “let him keep his secret
from me if he likes, and I’ll use it for my own benefit when he plays
against me. He is my dummy, and he plays _my_ game. When he leads a suit
of his own choosing, I am ready on his right hand with a cluster of