Only a clod
“Oh, we’ll drive.”
“Your ponies?” asked Julia, spitefully.
The “steppers” were a late acquisition. Maude’s childish cry of rapture
at the sight of the Countess of Zarborough’s equipage had sent Francis
off to Tattersall’s to bid for a pair of black ponies that Harcourt
Lowther and his set had pronounced “clippers.” You see an ignorant man’s
love is such a vulgar passion that it will express itself in this sordid
way.
“Oh, Julia,” cried Maude, “how _could_ you? As if I would drive those
frivolous ponies with a frivolous parasol fastened to my whip, and those
two listening grooms behind me, when my heart is almost broken by
Frank’s conduct.”
“Then you will go in the barouche?”
“Yes, and I can leave the carriage some distance from the house,” Maude
answered, with her hand upon the bell; “and we’ll go at once, Julia
dear,--if you’re sure you’ve finished breakfast,” added Mrs. Tredethlyn,
looking piteously at the cup of stagnant chocolate and unbroken roll,
which bore witness to her own incapacity to eat or drink.
Of course Julia declared that she had breakfasted--as completely as a
companion had any right to breakfast, she inferred by her manner; so the
two ladies adjourned to their apartments. Mrs. Tredethlyn found her maid
in her dressing-room, oppressed by such tender anxieties with regard to
the adjustment of Maude’s bonnet and shawl, that she was not to be
shaken off till her mistress stepped into the barouche, and even then
contrived to be the medium of communication with the coachman, to the
setting aside of a stolid Jeames, who was so utterly weary of life in
general as not even to be often interested in other people’s business.
The confidante in white muslin is apt to have a hard time of it when
Tilburina’s affairs go badly; but Julia endured her burden with sublime
patience. Maude, bewailing the inconstancy of her husband one moment,
and lauding his devotion in the next, might now and then degenerate into
an inconsistent bore; but, at the worst, she was more endurable than
Maude insolently happy,--a radiant floating creature, all lace flounces
and gauzy sleeves, like one of Mr. Buckner’s portraits. Julia enacted
her part of confidante very creditably during the drive from Stuccoville
to Petersham, and submitted graciously to be left in the carriage, in a
shady curve of the winding road, with the Skye terriers and the last new
novel to keep her company, while Mrs. Tredethlyn went alone to face her
rival.
Perhaps Maude’s heart sank just a little with something akin to fear, as
she tripped along the dusty road in dainty high-heeled boots and
flounced petticoats, whose embroideries flickered to and fro in shadowy
arabesques upon the sunlit ground. She was not at all strong-minded.
Imagine Waller’s Sacharissa stepping out of her coach in Eastchepe, with
a negro page behind her, and one of the Duchess of Portsmouth’s
favourite spaniels nestling in the perfumed lining of her muff, bent
upon a visit to a money-lender; or Pope’s Belinda alighting from her
sedan to attend a meeting of creditors. Imagine anything that is
incongruous, or absurd, or impossible, and it will be scarcely more out
of keeping than this picture of Maude Tredethlyn going alone to meet her
rival, under the shelter of a point-lace parasol. And yet this injured
young wife was as sincerely miserable as if she had worn sackcloth and
ashes, or the sombre draperies which Miss Bateman has made so familiar
to us in her impersonation of the jilted Leah.
Mrs. Tredethlyn went straight to the cottage with the old-fashioned iron
gate and the ivy-bordered wall. A womanly instinct guided her, as by a
kind of inspiration, to the spot where she had seen her husband so much
at home with a nameless and unknown creature. An air of prim
respectability pervaded the place, which Maude inspected as she waited
for admission, and peered inquisitively through the iron scroll-work.
There were none of the rose-coloured curtains and china flower-stands,
the yelping lap-dogs and twittering birds, which Mrs. Tredethlyn had
been taught to associate with those inhabitants of an outer world, in
whom she perceived only overdone imitations of herself. Everything here
had a prim countrified prettiness of its own; and looking across the
smooth lawn, Maude saw a slender girlish figure in a cotton dress
bending over a flower-bed, while a little boy stood by with a tiny
watering-pot, whose contents he dribbled industriously over his own
toes.
Maude’s summons was responded to by an elderly woman in black. She was
very grim and stern, as people who dote upon small children usually are;
and she was no other than the eminently respectable person at Chelsea,
who wore rusty bombazine in mourning for the better days which lay far
back in some remote period beyond the memory of her oldest acquaintance.
This person carried Maude’s card to the lady in the cotton dress, and
then swooped down upon the little boy with the watering-pot, and carried
him away struggling.
Maude, still without the citadel, watched the girlish face as it bent
over her card. She expected astonishment, confusion, defiance,--anything
except what she saw, which was a half-pleased smile, a look of
hesitation, and then a little glance towards the gate, and a cry of
remonstrance to the elderly person now invisible.
“Oh, Mrs. Clinnock, how could you leave that lady outside? The key! ah,
I see it’s in the gate.” Maude’s fancied rival had crossed the little
lawn by this time, and Rosamond was only separated from Eleanor by the
iron scroll-work. “Dear Mrs. Tredethlyn, how very rude you must think my
nurse! But so many people have called, out of mere curiosity I am sure,
and I am so afraid of strangers--Francis knows that--for he knows how
often he has begged me to see you; and it was only yesterday that I gave
way, and said he might tell you all about me. But I didn’t think you
would come so soon,” said Rosamond, with sudden tears welling up to her
innocent brown eyes. She had opened the gate and admitted Maude while
she talked, and the two women were now standing face to face.
Mrs. Tredethlyn’s mystification was depicted upon her countenance, which
at first expressed only her complete bewilderment; then a chilling
expression came over her face, a scornful smile curved her lip, and she
looked at her rival with her head poised as haughtily as ever Eleanor’s
could have been when she offered Lord Clifford’s daughter that agreeable
choice between the bowl and the dagger.
“Oh, I see,” she thought; “this person is trying to disarm my suspicions
by her cool impertinence.”
“It was so kind of you to come,” murmured Rosamond, timidly. She was
beginning to feel rather afraid of this haughty lady, who made no
response to her warm greeting. “I did not think that I should see you so
soon.”
“No, I dare say not,” answered Mrs. Tredethlyn; “I should scarcely
imagine that you expected to see me at all.”
Rosamond, otherwise Susan, clasped her hands and flushed crimson to the
roots of her hair.
“Ah, then, you too are unkind, like my father,” she cried piteously.
“You do not believe what Francis told you.”
Maude was almost too indignant to remark that piteous accent. It was not
a gentle creature in distress that she saw. Jealousy looks through a
medium that distorts the simplest objects into evil and threatening
shapes. Mrs. Tredethlyn imagined that she beheld a shameless
adventuress, who sought to disarm her justifiable suspicions by social
histrionics.
“By what right do you call my husband by his Christian name?” she asked,
indignantly.
“By what right!” stammered Susan, alarmed by the angry tones in which
the question had been asked. “What else should I call him? I have called
him Francis all my life, except when we were children, and then I called
him Frank. Oh, he has been so good to me, Mrs. Tredethlyn! and he knows
that the marriage was a real one. Oh, pray, pray don’t look so coldly at
me! don’t doubt my word and his. I am as true and pure a wife as you
are, though I have no husband’s arm to lean upon, though even the name
my husband gave me may be a false one.”
Maude stared at the earnest face in new bewilderment. Not even jealousy
could distort the expression of that face into anything but innocence.
“What does it all mean?” she cried at last; “who and what are you?”
“Susan Turner, Oliver Tredethlyn’s daughter and Francis Tredethlyn’s
cousin,” answered Susan, considerably puzzled in her turn; “who else
could you suppose me to be, Mrs. Tredethlyn? Surely Francis told you all
about me, or you could never have known where to find me.”
“No, he told me nothing,” exclaimed Maude; and then she pounced suddenly
upon poor astonished Susy, and kissed her as she had never in all her
life kissed any one before.
“Oh, you dear!” she cried; “oh, you darling! To think that you should be
only his cousin after all, when I thought that--when I was wicked enough
to think----”
Mrs. Tredethlyn did not say what she had thought, but bestowed another
shower of kisses upon Susan.
“You pet!” she exclaimed; “and to think that I should never guess you
were his cousin; and that he should never tell me, the silly fellow! And
he let me go on at him too last night as if he had committed all sorts
of crimes, and did not even deny them. And you are like him too. Yes,
I’m sure you are; there’s an expression about the eyes. Yes, there
really is. Oh, how dearly I shall love you! I remember Francis speaking
of you once; but he was very reserved upon the subject, and I did not
like to question him. And so you really are his uncle Oliver’s daughter!
then we are cousins, you know, dear; almost sisters--and I never had a
sister--or even a friend who was _quite_ like a sister,” added Maude,
with a remorseful recollection of Miss Desmond waiting in the carriage.
She could have run on for an hour at a stretch, in her delight at the
discovery that her husband was not a villain. The two women walked up
and down the lawn together, while Susan related all her sad little
history, and received Maude’s tender assurances of sympathy and love.
Mrs. Tredethlyn was told how good her husband had been to his friendless
cousin; and was pleased to dwell fondly on the story of Frank’s
kindness, his selection of that pretty house, his purchase of the
furniture, and, above all, his goodness to the little boy.
Maude wanted Susan to go straight home with her in the carriage; but the
Cornish girl clung to her sheltered home, and the iron gate that
screened her from intrusive strangers.
“I am not used to the people amongst whom you live,” she said; “it is
very kind of you to wish to take me--but I could never be happy amongst
strangers; and Robert and I are _so_ happy here.”
“And I came to break in upon your happiness like a horrible jealous
fury,” cried Maude; “but you see good has come out of evil; for now we
have met, we shall love each other dearly always, shan’t we, Susan? Call
me Maude, please. And oh, my dear Susan, I have all sorts of troubles
still to go through; for Frank was so offended by what I said last
night, that he has written me a dreadful letter, in which he says he
means to sail for America directly. But of course he won’t. He never
could leave me like that, could he, dear? And when I leave you, I shall
drive straight home; and if he hasn’t been home, I shall go on to his
solicitors, Messrs. Something and Something, Gray’s Inn,--I shall know
their names when I see them in the Directory,--and of course they’ll
know his address wherever he is; and I shall go to him, and ask him to
forgive me for having behaved so badly, and to-morrow he and I will come
together, Susan. And now kiss me once more, dear, and _au revoir_; for I
have a friend waiting for me in the carriage a little way off; and if