Only a clod
and transportation, and Van Diemen’s Land, till I’ve been
inclined to get up and do something to him with a carving-knife;
and oh, the self-satisfied manner of the creature, and the way
he has lifted his eyebrows and looked at _me_, if I ventured to
express any opinion upon the subject! In South America there may
be fever and disease, perhaps--privation, danger; but there will
be no Barkley Square. I may meet with Aztecs, who may maltreat
or even assassinate me; but they won’t have little bits of glass
that they can’t see through to hitch into their eyes whenever I
speak to them. And they won’t lift their eyebrows and begin to
whisper about me the moment I enter a room. And I shall never
hear them say, ‘Oh, the _rich_ Tredethlyn, is it? Gad, what a
clodhopper!’
“Why do I write about these things, Maude, when I am writing to
bid you good-bye for ever? Only because I want you to believe
there is _something_ wanting even in the perfect world in which
you live. If my death should set you free in your youth, marry
again, dear, by all means; but marry a man whose truth and
loyalty have been proved by a life of unblemished honour; marry
a man who has set his mark upon the age--who has _done
something_; for such a man is scarcely likely to be a scoundrel.
Above all, darling, accept my warning against _one_ man: _do not
marry Harcourt Lowther_.
“All the privileges that you have enjoyed during your bondage
you shall retain in your freedom. Before sailing, I shall make
my will, in which you will be left residuary legatee, and
recipient of the bulk of my fortune. While I live, your income
will be large enough to support the style in which you have
lived during the past year; and there will be a wide margin left
for the indulgence of every impulse of your generous heart. I
shall place full directions as to the management of my fortune
in the hands of my solicitors, Messrs. Kursdale and Scardon; and
they will call on you by my direction to explain your position
immediately after receiving my instructions. You will find
yourself the mistress of the larger part of the income derived
from my late uncle’s investments and from the Cornish estate,
and you will have no further trouble than to sign your name now
and then, when the lawyers want you to do so. In the interim I
enclose a cheque for £500, so that you may not be without ready
money. Your father’s affairs are now, he tells me, in a very
easy state, and I do not leave him in troubled water. He may
consider you his creditor for the interest of the thirty
thousand sunk in his business; and I don’t suppose he will find
you a very importunate one.
“And now good-bye indeed. I leave you with all confidence in
your noble heart, your high principles. You are too good and
pure to be otherwise than happy. Far away on the Pampas, lying
under canvas, with the long silvery trail of the moonlight on
the grey expanse beyond my tent, the whisper of faint winds
among the long grasses sounding in my ears, I shall think of
you, and see you happy in the old English garden at Twickenham,
loitering on the terrace by your father’s side. In that
trackless loneliness, fever-parched perhaps, and far away from
the chance of water, I shall think of the blue English river,
but _never_ think of it without seeing your image standing by
the tide, your bright face reflected in the glassy stream. Oh,
Maude, I have loved you so dearly, so fondly! and now that it
comes to saying good-bye, it seems almost as difficult to tear
myself from this lifeless sheet of paper, as it would be to take
my lips away from yours in a last long kiss. My pet, my darling,
God bless you, and good-bye! Think of me sometimes; but never
with pain. Some midnight, when you are waltzing in a crowded
ball-room, with a brazen band braying in your ears, and the hum
of a hundred voices round about you, think that in some savage
wilderness a man is kneeling under God’s blue sky, praying for
you as few people are prayed for on this earth; think sometimes,
if a special peace comes down upon you, like the cool shadow we
have watched drop slowly upon the river when the sun was down,
think, darling, that I am saying, ‘God keep and guard her safely
through the night! God fill her heart with peace and gladness,
whether she sleeps or wakes!’
“And so, my own dear wife, for the first and last time in my
life, I sign myself your true and loyal husband,
“FRANCIS TREDETHLYN.”
Julia had fluttered out of the room and into the little conservatory,
where there were always faded leaves to be snipped off, or bird-cages to
be replenished with fresh water. Miss Desmond, in her darkest mood, was
too much a lady to sit by and stare while Maude possessed herself of the
contents of her husband’s letter. She lingered among the twittering
canary-birds and sprawling ferns so long as she considered that delicacy
demanded she should be absent, and then she strolled back to the
breakfast-table with a look of supreme unconsciousness. But she gave a
little scream as she glanced across the table at Mrs. Tredethlyn, and
flew to the bell. Maude had finished her letter, which lay in scattered
sheets at her feet, and she had fallen back upon the sofa-pillows in a
dead faint.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXXVII.
ELEANOR DROPS IN UPON ROSAMOND.
It is strange what virtues we are apt to discover in the thing we have
lost. After recovering from her fainting-fit, Maude Tredethlyn wept as
bitterly for the loss of her husband as if he had been the first choice
of her maiden heart. A young lady told Mr. de Quincey that, being on the
point of drowning, she saw in one instant her whole life exhibited
before her in its minutest details, like a vast picture;--and so the
young wife, reading her husband’s solemn farewell, beheld in a moment
the picture of her courtship and married life, and saw how good he had
been to her. Yes, in that one moment a thousand instances--such trifling
instances, some of them--of his goodness and devotion, his enduring
love, his patient self-abnegation, flashed upon her, and her heart smote
her with a bitter anguish as she perceived her own unworthiness.
“I had no right to take his love as I take the love of my dogs,” she
thought; “giving him nothing in return for his devotion.” At first, as
she read her husband’s epistle, she smiled at his talk of leaving her,
and thought how easy a thing it would be to lay her hand upon his
shoulder and draw him down to his old place at her feet. She forgot all
about the cottage at Petersham when she thought this. And then, as she
read farther and farther, she recognized the solemn meaning of the
letter, and felt that it was indeed a farewell. Then a sudden mist came
between her and the page; all the machinery in London seemed buzzing and
booming in her ears; and she fell back amongst the downy cushion, whiter
than the pure ground of the rosebud chintz which Harcourt Lowther had
selected for the upholstery of her nest.
She recovered very quickly under the influence of half a bottle of
toilet-vinegar; and then there were more confidences to be poured into
Julia’s ear, when the maid, who was so sympathetic, and so ravenously
eager to know why her mistress had fainted, was fairly out of the room.
Maude read Julia little bits of the letter, leaving off every now and
then to demand pathetically _what_ she was to do.
“He surely c-c-couldn’t write like that, Julia, if he were what Harcourt
Lowther says he is,” sobbed Mrs. Tredethlyn. “He says I spoke to him
coldly and deliberately. Oh, if he could only know what a passion I was
in! There must be some horrible mistake; and if there is, what a wretch
I must have seemed to him last night! Julia, advise me! give me some
help! My husband must not go to America. There is a whole week for me to
act in. What am I to do?”
“How _can_ I advise you?” asked Julia. “I am so entirely in the
dark--and you too. If Mr. Tredethlyn had given you _any_ explanation of
his presence at that strange house, domiciled so familiarly with that
strange woman, you might accept it--if you could--and believe him. But
he does not even attempt to explain or to justify his conduct. He passes
it over in a manner which, I must confess, seems very ominous. To me,
Maude, his silence is a tacit confession of his guilt.”
Poor Maude turned the leaves of her husband’s letter, and looked
wistfully at the blotted pages. If she could have only found some brief
explanation of that Petersham business anywhere--in a postscript--a
parenthesis! But there was none; and Mrs. Tredethlyn put the epistle
into her pocket, and looked at Julia with a very rueful countenance.
Unluckily, she forgot that she had brought no specific charge against
her husband, but had only attacked him in that vaguely denunciatory
manner which is so essentially feminine.
“What a child she is!” thought Miss Desmond, as she watched her friend’s
tear-blotted face and quivering lip. “If _I_ had a pair of high-stepping
ponies to drive in the Park, and a couple of grooms to sit behind me, I
would demand no explanation of my husband’s absences, though he were to
stay away from me for ten years at a stretch.”
But it was the very reverse of this convenient code of morality to which
Julia gave utterance presently, when she spoke to Maude.
“You ask me for my advice,” she said. “If I am to give it frankly, I
must own that in your place I would not touch Mr. Tredethlyn’s hand in
friendship until he had accounted fully and conclusively for his
presence in that garden yesterday. I would permit no reservations on the
part of my husband; and I should be inclined to think that a secret kept
from me was only another name for a wrong done to me.”
Maude was silent for some minutes, wiping the tears from her face, and
trying to escape from the demonstrative sympathy of a Skye terrier, who
had been frantic at the sight of his mistress’s distress; and then she
exclaimed, with sudden energy that almost startled Miss Desmond,--
“Yes, I will take your advice, Julia; and Francis _shall_ explain
himself--as--as I’m sure he can.”
This was a challenge which Julia was too wise to take up; for she saw
that the wind had set violently in Francis Tredethlyn’s favour since
Maude’s perusal of his letter.
“I will insist upon an explanation from my husband; but before seeing
him I will do what I should have done yesterday. I will go to that
cottage at Petersham, and _see_ the lady who was sitting in the garden
with Francis yesterday afternoon. It is my right as a wife to know my
husband’s friends.”
“You will see the--person,” exclaimed Julia, on the tips of her lips, as
the French say.
“I will.”
“Well, perhaps, after all, it is not a bad plan,” answered Miss Desmond,
after a pause. “And if you _do_ see that person, I dare say you will
hear something unpleasant,” she thought: “it is only fair there should
be some counterbalance to your grooms and ponies, even beyond Pickford’s
vans, and the sharp corner in Dean Street, Park Lane.”
“Julia, you will go with me?” asked Maude, putting down her Skye
terrier. “No, Floss, not to-day. Oh, I wonder whether _you_ were ever
married, and had this sort of thing to go through!--You’ll go to
Petersham with me, won’t you, Julia dear?”
“Of course I will,” answered Miss Desmond promptly; “it is a part of my
_métier_. But how do you mean to go?”