Only a clod
The sprite’s widow opened a little portfolio and wrote an address on a
scrap of paper, while Francis stood by eager to take it from her.
“Do you know that there has been an advertisement appealing to my
cousin, in the columns of the “Times” newspaper, a hundred times within
the last two years?”
“Dear! dear!” murmured the ballet-dancer; “and she going through so
much, with rich friends looking for her all the time. But, you see, poor
people can’t afford to take in a newspaper; and there might be only a
threepenny paper standing between a man and a million of money, and he
none the wiser.”
She handed Francis the address, which was a very long one. And then she
gave him divers verbal directions, the gist of which was, that he was to
find a certain public-house called “The Man in the Moon,” and was then
to inquire of anybody for a certain street, and was to go a little way
farther and inquire again, thus accomplishing his journey by easy stages
and frequent inquiries.
But Francis was much too full of hope to be dashed by any small
difficulties. He grasped the dancer’s hand in his heartiest way, and
left Brydges Street in impetuous haste. The hansom cabman, who met him
at the corner of Russell Street, and drove him thence to “The Man in the
Moon,” was a lucky individual, and went home rejoicing to the bosom of
his family. But after dismissing the cabman, Francis had to thread his
way through intricacies which would have been maddening in a hansom cab,
and were only to be overcome by repeated inquiries and frequent
reference to Miss Willoughby’s written direction.
At last, however, while the bells were still ringing for afternoon
service, Francis Tredethlyn found the place, which was a damp little
street without any thoroughfare, called Pollard’s Row. Pollard’s Row,
with the summer sunlight on it, and given up entirely to the occupation
of one mongrel dog, which was lying with his head upon his forepaws,
snapping at imaginary flies, was a dreary place to contemplate; Francis
Tredethlyn troubled himself very little about the aspect of the
neighbourhood. He walked rapidly past the little row of houses until he
came to No. 17, which was occupied by the respectable elderly person,
otherwise Mrs. Clinnock.
The elderly person made some faint show of a commercial character in the
shape of three very green pickle-bottles containing confectionery, all
more or less melted out of its normal mould by long exposure to the sun,
and a few gingerbread figures of weird and ghastly outline, supposed to
represent the human form. A tattered chintz curtain hung upon a limp
string, and made a background to these wares. Looking across this
curtain Francis Tredethlyn saw a woman sitting in the ruddy glow of the
fire, with a child in her lap, and knew by the beating of his heart that
he had found his cousin Susan.
The door of No. 17 stood ajar. Francis pushed it open and went into the
passage. Three steps brought him to the door of the little room, which
was a compound of shop and parlour, with a slight flavour of bedroom. A
woman--a girlish creature still, but pale and worn-looking--was sitting
in a low nursing chair, with a child of four years old in her arms. Alas
for the handiwork of Sorrow, the destroyer! The soft brown hair, the
tender hazel eyes, alone remained of the rustic beauty which Francis
Tredethlyn remembered smiling at him upon the moorlands of his native
county.
Ah, how much of his youth came suddenly back upon the Cornishman in that
moment of recognition! His mother’s face watching him as he left the
dear old homestead in the early summer morning to go to the dame-school;
happy haymakings on his father’s farm in the days when haymaking and
harvest time were two Arcadian festivals, and not nervous crises in the
life of a hardworking farmer, who may or may not be able to pay his
rent. His childhood came back to him with all its unconscious happiness,
and he fell on his knees by his cousin’s chair in a tumult of emotion.
“Susy, my darling, my pet! at last, at last I have found you!”
The boy slid from his mother’s arms, frightened by this tumultuous
stranger. Susan rose pale and trembling, and shrank away with her hands
spread before her face, as if even now she would have hidden herself
from her cousin.
“Oh, Francis,” she cried, “don’t come near me--don’t look at me! Oh,
Heaven have pity on me! I have so prayed that none who ever knew me in
my childhood should see me now.”
“But, my darling, why, why should you hide yourself from those who love
you so fondly?”
She made him no direct answer, but covered her face with her hands and
sobbed aloud--
“Oh, my shame--my shame! Who will believe me when my father would not?”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXIX.
ENTANGLEMENTS IN THE WEB.
Harcourt Lowther, calling at the stuccoed mansion in time for Mrs.
Tredethlyn’s afternoon tea, found a dark and dashing young lady
comfortably established in a luxurious amber damask nest against a
background of amber curtain, whose glowing tints were extremely becoming
to the young lady’s clear complexion. The two ladies were quite alone,
though Maude declared gaily that she had had crowds of people that
afternoon.
“You generally come so late, Mr. Lowther,” she said. “Those were the
Dudley Boltons whom you met going out--nice people, fresh from the wolds
of Yorkshire, quite new to town, people who come once in ten years or
so, when there’s an International Exhibition, or something of that kind.
Isn’t it strange that people _can_ be so civilized living in the depths
of the country--read the last novel--see the last great picture--because
you see, nowadays, great pictures jog about the country like popular
prime ministers, and if Mahomet can’t go to the mountain in Trafalgar
Square, the mountain goes to meet Mahomet in his provincial town. But I
want to introduce you to Miss Desmond, the daughter of the late Colonel
Desmond, papa’s oldest friend. Julia dear, Mr. Lowther has heard me talk
of you perpetually, and you have heard a good deal of him,”--Mrs.
Tredethlyn blushed a little as she said this,--“so I expect you to be
intensely intimate immediately.”
This introduction took place towards the close of June, nearly a month
after the Oaks day; and during the time that had elapsed since that
event, Harcourt Lowther, in his character of Mephistopheles, had found
Faust what is popularly called a very troublesome customer. Francis
Tredethlyn had a secret, and so far it had been a secret which Mr.
Lowther could neither penetrate nor turn to his own use.
Yes, this simple-minded Cornishman, whose confiding candour had revealed
every feeling, and every shade of feeling, to his baneful companion, had
his secret now, and seemed to know very well how to keep it.
There were days on which he had business which took him a little way out
of town; and Harcourt Lowther, pumping never so wisely, could pump no
further information out of the secret depths of his friend’s mind. He
had even proposed to accompany Francis on these mysterious excursions,
but his friendly offers had been met by a point-blank refusal. He had
ventured a little playful _badinage_; he had gone so far as to make an
occasional insinuation; but Francis Tredethlyn had repelled his hints
with the fiery indignation of a man whose tenderest and noblest feelings
are involved in the subject of his friend’s _persiflage_.
“I know you get plenty of pleasant little witticisms of that kind out of
those flimsy-covered books Mr. Jeffs supplies you with; but hadn’t you
better keep them for Mrs. de Rothsay’s next evening party? They tell so
much better amongst people who understand the French phrases you’re so
fond of using. Some of your best things might as well be Greek, so far
as I am concerned,” Mr. Tredethlyn said, coolly.
Mephistopheles shrugged his shoulders in mild deprecation of his pupil’s
impertinence. Faust was positively beginning to acquire the tone of good
society. He was learning to be insolent.
Harcourt Lowther left no stone unturned in his endeavours to discover
the Cornishman’s secret, but unluckily there were not many stones to
turn: and when Mr. Lowther had pumped Francis, and pumped Francis’s
valet, who could give no clue whatever to his master’s conduct, there
remained nothing more to be done; unless, indeed, Mr. Lowther had cared
to resort to the private-inquiry system, and employ a shabby-genteel
person at three or four guineas a week to track the footsteps of Mr.
Tredethlyn. But this was a plan to which Harcourt Lowther could only
have resorted in the most desperate extremity. If possible, he wanted to
do dirty work _without_ soiling his fingers. The private-inquiry system
would have been a dangerous kind of machinery to put into
motion--dangerous even if successful--utterly fatal in the case of
failure; and it was just possible that the shabby-genteel person might
do his spiriting awkwardly, and make his watchfulness sufficiently
intrusive to arouse suspicion, and bring impetuous Francis Tredethlyn
down upon him in an avalanche of manly rage.
“Pshaw!” thought Mr. Lowther, after a meditative and leisurely review of
his position. “It’s only a matter of so much time. ‘_Point de zèle_,’
said Talleyrand; but he only meant, don’t be in a hurry. Your zealous
diplomatist may be a very valuable person, provided he knows now to keep
the secret of his earnestness; but your impatient diplomatist is a
certain failure. Yet there are people who _will_ gather their fruit
before it is ripe. When your true diplomatist comes to an awkward knot
in the airy network of his scheme, the best thing he can do is to sit
down quietly before the web until some accidental hand unravels the
entanglement. Chance is the unfailing friend of the schemer; but the
goddess is very capricious in her visiting routine, and there are stupid
creatures who won’t wait for a morning call. Luckily, I am not one of
them. I can afford to be patient. Maude is an angel; the Stuccoville
dinners are excellent, and the Stuccoville wines are my own selection;
and for the rest I do pretty well. Ecarté is a most agreeable game;
especially when one plays with a man who is half his time so
absent-minded as to forget to mark the king. Yes, dear Francis, I can
afford to wait for the lucky accident which is to put me in possession
of the clue to those little trips of yours, in hansom cabs, which you
prefer to pick up for yourself; thereby depriving your valet of any help
to be derived by an examination of the number of the vehicle, and a
subsequent chat with the driver.”
Harcourt Lowther came very frequently to Mrs. Tredethlyn’s
drawing-rooms, now that she was to be found always accompanied by her
darling Julia, and entirely unembarrassed by his visits. He did not
always come at the orthodox hour, but would make his appearance between
eleven and twelve o’clock on a hopelessly rainy morning, with a new
book, or a roll of music, or something delightfully hideous in the way
of jelly-fish for Maude’s aquarium, or the last fashion in ferns or
orchids for Maude’s conservatories; and the back of Mrs. Tredethlyn’s
house broke out into ferneries and conservatories wherever the ingenuity
of a fashionable builder could find an excuse for carrying out Mrs.
Tredethlyn’s graceful ideas, and swelling Mr. Tredethlyn’s little
account.
Mr. Lowther had contrived to make himself the friend of the house, so
there was always some very plausible excuse for visits at unorthodox
hours, and pleasant dawdling in Maude’s pretty morning-room; and
Stuccoville, furtively observant behind rose-coloured curtains in
opposite houses, took note of Mr. Lowther’s morning calls, and kept a