Only a clod
“Yes,” he thought, as he sank moodily down into the nearest chair, and
covered his face with his hands, as heedless of Miss Grunderson’s
presence as if that young lady had been one of her father’s
cabbages,--“yes, it is no lie of Julia Desmond’s. A hundred
recollections arise in my mind to bear witness to its truth. Maude’s
confession about the some one whom she had loved, but whose poverty was
a hindrance to a marriage with her. Harcourt Lowther’s letters from that
beautiful heiress, whose father’s wealth stood between him and
happiness. I knew that they had known each other before he sailed for
Van Diemen’s Land; but I believed him implicitly when he told me
casually one day that they had never been more than the most indifferent
acquaintances. He had a careless, half-contemptuous way of talking of my
wife that galled me to the quick, and that I have sometimes resented.
Fool and dupe that I was! That affected cynicism, that pretended
indifference, was only a part of his scheme. He loved her all the time;
and while with one hand he pushed me away from her into the drunken
orgies that only kill a little more slowly than the secret doses of the
assassin, with the other he held fast the chain that bound him to her;
waiting till he should be able to say, ‘You are free, and I claim the
fulfilment of your broken promise. You are enriched by the death of the
poor dupe who loved you, and poverty need separate us no longer.’ Oh,
God of Heaven, what a fool I have been! and how clearly I can see my
folly, now when it is too late! False wife, false friend! so deeply,
fondly loved, so blindly trusted. I can remember my wife’s face the day
she spoke to me of Harcourt Lowther. Has she been in the base plot
against me? No, I will not believe it. If I have been this man’s blind
dupe, his helpless tool, she may have been as blind, as helpless as
myself. O God, give me strength to trust her still, for my heart must
break if she is base and cruel.”
A man’s ideas are not apt to arrange themselves very consecutively at
such a time; but it was something after this fashion that Francis
Tredethlyn reflected upon his friend’s treachery, while Rosa stood by
watching him very anxiously, with that fiery eagerness which had
prompted her to speak her mind considerably cooled down by the aspect of
her companion’s distress.
“Miss Grunderson,” said Francis presently, “whatever the world may have
said against Harcourt Lowther, it is a false and lying world if it ever
slandered the goodness and purity of my wife.”
“I know that,” answered Rosa, becoming energetic once more; “for of all
the sweet darlings that ever were, she’s the sweetest and the dearest.
And how should _she_ know that people made nasty disagreeable remarks
about Mr. Lowther’s always happening to go to the parties she went to
and calling here oftener than other people, and so on----”
“He went to parties!” cried Francis. “He told me that he hated parties;
that he scarcely went anywhere.”
“Ah, but he did, though; and it has been his flirting way--not the
things he has said, you know, but his way or saying them--his
_ompressmong_, you know, that has caused those ill-natured remarks about
Mrs. Tredethlyn. Nothing sets people talking like _ompressmong_.”
Francis did not answer. Little by little the mists cleared away from his
mental vision; and he saw that Harcourt Lowther had been from first to
last the subtlest schemer who ever plotted the ruin of an honest
blockhead. It had needed only Miss Grunderson’s feminine guesswork to
let sudden light into the cavernous depths of the foulest pitfall that
ever treachery dug under the ignorant footsteps of its victim. Francis
remembered all the bitter ridicule, the sneering compassion, that
Harcourt Lowther had heaped upon the respectable world, from which he
held his dupe aloof, while he plunged him to the very lips in the
dissipations of Bohemia. By this means he had effected as complete a
separation between the husband and wife as if the same roof had ceased
to shelter them.
“I have thought--when my tempter gave me time to think--that it was
Maude’s coldness alone which separated us; but I know now that it was
the schemer’s work from first to last. She did not love me,--O Heaven,
have pity upon my poor tortured heart!--she loved him, perhaps: but I
might have had some little chance of winning her love if I had remained
at her feet--her slave, her worshipper; but he has held me away from
her, and now she abhors me. She has no feeling but disgust and disdain
for the wretch who has abandoned her to waste his days on a racecourse,
his nights in the drunken orgies of a gaming-house.”
Francis Tredethlyn sat with his face hidden in his hands, thinking of
his folly, and hating himself for it. Why had he given himself up body
and soul into the power of Harcourt Lowther? why had he been so poor a
dupe in the toils of this man? It was not that he had entertained any
special regard for the gentleman who had pretended to be his friend. In
Van Diemen’s Land he had often had good reason to despise the peevish
grumbler, the selfish Sybarite; and yet for the last year he had taken
the man’s dictum upon every subject, even upon that one vital question
on which the happiness of his life depended. Why had he trusted so
blindly; why had he submitted so slavishly to follow the guiding-strings
that led him into places where he found no pleasure, amongst people who
inspired him with disgust?
Little by little the answers to these questions shaped themselves in
Francis Tredethlyn’s mind; and he saw that his uncle Oliver’s hoarded
wealth had been at the root of all his misery. The wealth which had
lifted him suddenly into a world that was strange to him; the wealth
which had made him the mark for every schemer; the wealth which had won
him the hand of the woman whose heart could never have been won by his
true and honest love. Adrift in that strange world, the man who had kept
his name unsullied, his soul untainted, his head erect before the faces
of his fellow-men, while his pockets were empty, and his very existence
dependent upon the day’s work that earned him a day’s food, found
himself all at once the most helpless creature that had ever floated at
the mercy of the winds and waves upon a trackless ocean; and he had been
very glad to grasp the first rope that was thrown out to him in all
friendly seeming to guide him safely to the shore. His ignorance had
flung him, unarmed and powerless, into Harcourt Lowther’s arms; and the
man to whom he had felt himself superior while blacking his boots and
obeying his orders out in Van Diemen’s Land became all at once, indeed,
the master, free to work his own will with that most helpless of all
creatures, an uneducated millionaire.
“If I had a son,” thought Francis Tredethlyn,--and a faint thrill was
stirred in his breast by the mere hypothesis,--“I should send him to
school before I turned him out into the world. Yet I, who am as ignorant
as a baby of the world in which I live, have plunged recklessly into its
vortex, expecting to emerge unhurt. My own folly is the cause of my
destruction. And yet I might have met with an honest friend; I might
have had a loving wife.”
“A loving wife!” Ah, how the poor faithful heart ached as Francis
thought this! A man’s fireside is the same peaceful sanctuary, whether
the hearth is gorgeous with encaustic tiles and an Axminster rug, or
poorly covered with a scrap of faded Kidderminster, in some humble
chamber where the firelight glimmers on the delf platters that adorn a
cottage-dresser.
“If Maude had loved me,” Francis argued, brooding moodily upon his
wrongs, “my money need have brought me no misery; my ignorance would
have beguiled me into no danger. Her voice would have regulated my life;
her counsel would have prompted every action. Her smallest wish would
have been my law. And it would have been very hard if the companionship
of a lady had not in time transformed me into a gentleman. But _what_
are the people with whom I have herded since my marriage--the
acquaintances whom Harcourt Lowther has chosen for me? What! pshaw! why
do I stop to think of all this? She never loved me. I should have tried
to win her love if _he_ had left me to do so. I might have failed even
then as miserably as I have failed now.”
He groaned aloud as he thought this, and startled Miss Grunderson, who
was sitting at a respectful distance from him folding and unfolding her
parasol, and wondering why she had got into this _galère_, and how she
was to get out of it; and registering a mental vow that she would never
again be tempted by her recollection of her duty to her neighbour to
depart from the manners and customs of polite society. But to her relief
Francis looked up presently, and addressed her.
“I thank you heartily for having spoken so frankly to me,” he said; “it
is only right that I should be acquainted with the common talk about the
man whose hand I have clasped in friendship almost every day for the
last twelve months. But I hope you will believe that, whatever Mr.
Lowther may or may not be, my wife is good and pure, and worthy of the
warmest affection you can feel for her. Your warmth of feeling has
touched me deeply, Miss Grunderson. I have been living in so false an
atmosphere lately, that I must be dull indeed if I were not affected by
your friendly candour. If--if anything should happen to separate Maude
and me, I should be very glad to think she had such a friend as you.
And--if ever you saw her trusting, as I have trusted, in the truth and
honour of Harcourt Lowther, you would stand between her and that
dangerous adviser, that false friend--would you not, Miss Grunderson?”
“I would,” answered Rosa, valiantly; “I should speak my mind to her and
to Mr. Lowther into the bargain, as candidly as I have spoken it to you
to-night.”
“I believe you would,” said Francis. “And now, my dear, God bless you,
and good night!”
He held out both his hands and clasped Rosa’s pudgy little paws in a
brief grasp, and then strode past her on his way towards the door.
“You’re not going out to-night, are you, Mr. Tredethlyn?” she asked
anxiously; “it is so _very_ late.”
Poor little Rosa was rather alarmed by that resolute stride towards the
door, which might only be the first step in some ghastly vengeance to be
taken upon Harcourt Lowther by the stalwart Cornishman.
“I shouldn’t like to have his blood upon my head, though I _do_ hate and
detest him,” thought Miss Grunderson; “for in these days of
spirit-rapping there’s no knowing how he might spite himself upon me. I
might have him tilting and tip-toeing every table I ever sat down to.”
“I’m only going to my room to write a letter,” answered Mr. Tredethlyn;
“shall I order my wife’s carriage for you?”
“No, thank you; as our house is so near, I think I’ll ask one of your
servants to see me home,” replied Rosa, who had no idea of leaving the
ground just yet. “I’ll run up to Mrs. Tredethlyn’s room and say
good-bye. Shall I take her any message from you?”
“None, thank you; good night.”
“Good night.”
Rosa left him still standing in the drawing-room. The spacious and
grandiose apartment, in all of whose costly adornment--from the pictures
on the walls to the Louis-Seize snuff-boxes and lapis-lazuli
_bonbonnières_, and all the expensive frivolities so lavishly scattered
on the tables--there was no single object which had been chosen with any
reference to his taste, with any thought of his comfort or pleasure. No
exquisite toys of “picking-up;” no delicious bargaining with dirty
brokers in the purlieus of Holborn; no evening excursions,
treasure-hunting, among dingy by-ways, where remnants of choice old
china lurk sometimes, unrecognized and unvalued, amongst the rubbish in