Only a clod
rather depressed of late, rose with the sunshine and the pure air, as
the high-stepping bays left Stuccoville behind them for the pleasant
country road, and the rustic odours of suburban gardens. And then, when
she found herself amongst her own birds and flower-beds, it was hard to
believe that she was no longer a girl, with a girl’s careless happiness
in beautiful things. She sat under a great drooping willow, whose lowest
branches dipped into the water, and watched her dogs gambolling with
Rosa on the grass.
“I was like that, once,” she thought, “before I knew of papa’s
difficulties--before I sold myself for money. I fancied that it was a
heroic thing to marry the man I did not love, in the hope that my esteem
might be some poor repayment of his generous devotion--his noble trust
in my father. But I know now that I could do him no baser wrong than
become his wife. I know it now, when he himself has learnt to despise
and to avoid me, even when I am anxious to win back his regard.”
Yes, it had come to this. Maude Tredethlyn deeply felt her husband’s
palpable avoidance of her. So long as he had been slavishly devoted, she
had been just a little inclined to despise him; but now that the
treasure of an honest man’s love seemed to have slipped away from her,
she awoke to the consciousness that it was a treasure, and that she had
need to be unhappy in the loss of a jewel that is not given to every
woman to possess. She sickened at the thought of the wealth which her
marriage had given her, now that it was unsanctified by the love of the
giver. Was it gone, that devoted affection which she had held so lightly
while it was hers to throw away? She began to understand now how
delicate a thing a heart is, even when it beats beneath the rudest
breast, and how soon it withers under the blighting influence of
disdain. Yes, she had been faithfully loved by an honest man who would
have given his very life for her happiness, and she had trifled with his
love until it was lost. Queen Guinivere has only one set of diamonds to
throw into the river; and when the passion has passed in whose hot
impulse she flung them away, the lady is apt to regret her lost jewels.
Miss Desmond and Miss Grunderson trifled with the balls and mallets,
while Maude wandered listlessly on the terrace thinking of the breach
between herself and her husband. She was still lingering there alone,
when Harcourt and Roderick Lowther strolled from the drawing-room on to
the lawn. The eldest set about instructing Julia Desmond and Miss
Grunderson with regard to the latest and most intricate by-laws of
croquet; and the younger made his way at once to the terrace where Maude
was walking listlessly and slowly under a coquettish white umbrella.
Harcourt Lowther took care that Mrs. Tredethlyn had no more time for
solitary musing. He brought all his talents to bear to keep her amused,
and by the aid of fashionable small-talk, sharp little criticisms on new
books, croquet, luncheon, and an incursion among Mr. Hillary’s
hothouses, he contrived to chase the shadow of care quite away from the
young wife’s girlish brow. It was about four o’clock, and the afternoon
had lapsed into a sultry sleepy brightness that was almost oppressive
even in that green retreat beside the river, when the two gentlemen
suggested the water.
“Of all things in the world the most delightful!” screamed Miss
Grunderson. “Oh, do please take us out in one of those darling little
dangerous-looking boats I saw in the Swiss boat-house down there. And
oh, what a pity I didn’t wear a hat instead of this odious blue bonnet,
which is beginning to fly already!” said Rosa, looking despondently at
the expansive ribands fluttering below her double chin, which had lost
some little of their azure intensity under the influence of the July
sun. To Miss Grunderson’s great delight, the two gentlemen proceeded
forthwith to the boat-house, and lowered a couple of wherries, as
perfect in their way as any craft that ever came out of the hands of
Messrs. Messenger. Harcourt placed Mrs. Tredethlyn and Julia Desmond in
one of these boats, and to the other descended Miss Grunderson, with
more small shrieks of terror and feminine skirmishing, and a greater
display of Balmoral boots and embroidered flounces than was absolutely
necessary to the embarkation.
“I never get into a boat without thinking I shall be drowned,” said
Rosa, plumping down upon the cushions, and all but upsetting herself at
the first start; “the water does give way so. But if one _was_ drowned,
it would be rather nice to have a paragraph all to one’s self in the
daily newspapers, or perhaps what pa calls a social leader, beginning
with something about the Moloch Pleasure having swallowed another
victim, and Youth at the prow and Pleasure at the helm, and the Pale
Horse, and so on.”
And then Miss Grunderson, finding herself quite alone with the latest
object of her adoration, exerted all her small fascinations to beguile
the woman-hater from his stern aversion to her sex. She chattered as
gaily as some talking-bird; and Roderick Lowther, who imagined that he
had by this time established himself firmly as a disinterested
individual, condescended to make himself agreeable, and to drift into
that pleasant current of meaningless small-talk which malicious people
call flirtation.
While Roderick rowed his fair companion swiftly past the verdant bank,
Harcourt let his boat drift slowly down with the current, only dipping
his oars now and then in the intervals of his discourse. Maude had
forgotten her troubled reverie upon the terrace, and gave herself up to
the enjoyment of all the old talk about books and music, poetry and
painting, which had been so delicious to her in those departed days when
she and Harcourt had drifted down that same river plighted husband and
wife. There is no monitor so sharp as rural nature when we have need to
be reminded of our inconstancy. Looking at those reedy banks, those
tranquil gardens sloping to a tranquil tide, Maude found it almost
difficult to believe in the changes of her life since she had first
floated down that stream, a child, with wild-flowers in her lap, and her
little bare arm hanging across the edge of the boat, for the infantile
pleasure of splashing.
Harcourt Lowther found his brother’s boat moored to a little quay in a
shady corner of the river below the Star and Garter, and the splendid
colouring of Miss Grunderson’s toilet made that young lady conspicuous
as she ascended a little pathway sloping upwards to the terrace,
attended by her cavalier. Harcourt shipped his oars, and proposed a
stroll in the Petersham meadows. Maude looked at her watch; it was a
quarter to five, and Mr. Hillary’s dinner-hour was half-past seven.
There was plenty of time for a stroll across those verdant meadows, and
Mrs. Tredethlyn, having the interval to dispose of somehow, had only to
choose in wasting it in this way or in some other fashion. Harcourt had
his wish therefore. He assisted the two ladies to disembark, gave his
coat into the custody of one of the lounging watermen at the rustic
landing-stage, and then strolled with his two companions into the
meadows leading towards Petersham.
There is little need to tell the English reader what Petersham is like.
Almost everybody knows that rural cluster of modern villas and grand old
red brick mansions nestling so comfortably under the shadow of Richmond
Hill. Surely the next best thing to inhabiting Earl Russell’s house in
Richmond Park, or that magic château of Monsieur Fould’s, hidden deep in
the woody heart of grand old St. Germain’s, would be to own one of those
Georgian mansions at Petersham, with cool fishponds and shady gardens,
long ranges of narrow windows, and a marble-paved vestibule, with a
ceiling by Thornhill, and old family portraits by polite Sir Joshua
himself. It was the afternoon of afternoons for listless dawdling about
such a place as Petersham, and Mr. Lowther and the two ladies were alike
enthusiastic in their admiration of the Georgian mansions.
“I wish Francis would buy a nice old house down here,” said Maude. “I am
so tired of London; it is all the same thing over, and over, and over
again; the same flock of sheep jumping through the same gap in the same
hedge, and not one of them--no, not even the leader--knowing why they do
it. I should be near papa here, and all my old friends. In town I seem
to know everybody, and yet not to have a single friend.”
There was a rustic bench in the lane through which they were walking as
Maude said this. The two ladies sat down to rest for a few minutes, and
Harcourt Lowther took out his cigar-case.
“I shall leave you just long enough to smoke a cigarette,” he said, “and
then I will take you back to the water-side by a still prettier road, if
you like.”
He went away at a leisurely pace, lighting his cigar as he went; but he
walked a good deal faster when he was out of Maude Tredethlyn’s ken, and
he was flushed with heat when he returned after a quarter of an hour’s
absence.
“Now, ladies,” he said, “if we are not to keep Mr. Hillary waiting for
his dinner, it is high time for us to go back to the boat.”
Maude and Julia rose, and the little party strolled into the road at the
end of the lane in the straggling order usual to people who walk for
their own pleasure in a country village. Mrs. Tredethlyn’s white
umbrella was a little way ahead of her companions, when Harcourt Lowther
laid his gloved hand lightly upon Julia’s shoulder.
She looked up at him, startled by the gesture.
“You have had some reason to complain of your friend Miss Hillary and
Francis Tredethlyn,” he said. “I am going to give you your revenge.”
Julia stared in amazement at the speaker; but he did not wait to be
interrogated.
“Come, Mrs. Tredethlyn,” he said, “your papa will have to wait for his
dinner, unless you walk a little faster.”
He had not much reason to complain of Maude, who had been ahead of him
until this moment, but he hurried her along the dusty road until, at a
spot where it curved round to the river, he stopped suddenly, pointing
to a cottage-garden, seen through the iron rails of a high old-fashioned
gate set in a framework of clematis.
“Look at that, Mrs. Tredethlyn! Isn’t it a pretty picture?”
It was a little rustic _tableau_ composed of two figures grouped under a
mulberry-tree,--a delicate-looking woman, with soft brown hair, touched
here and there with a glimmer of gold, seated on a rustic bench. Her
face was turned away from the road, and she was looking up at a man who
leaned against the trunk of a tree. It was only a glimpse of this
picture which Maude caught between the iron scroll-work of the gate, but
she saw quite enough.
The man was Francis Tredethlyn.
“Great Heaven!” exclaimed Harcourt Lowther, in an audible whisper; “it
_is_ Francis!”
Maude looked at him with a vague alarm in her face, which had grown
almost as white as the umbrella that sheltered it. Harcourt’s whisper
had frightened her a hundredfold more than the sight of her husband, at
home in that unknown garden with a woman she had never seen or heard of.
“Who is that lady?” she asked, when they had passed the gate. “Do you
know her, Mr. Lowther? You know all my husband’s associates much better
than I do.”
She tried to speak quite calmly, but failed miserably in the effort.
Harcourt’s whisper had expressed so much.
“No, I do not know the lady,” he answered, gravely. “I think you had
better make no inquiries about her. Mr. Tredethlyn did not tell you that
he was to spend the day at Petersham?”
“No. He only said that he was going a little way out of town.”
“Then in that case it will be better for you to leave him to finish his
day as he pleases, since you have made no arrangement for meeting him