Only a clod
researches had been conducted, and how very lightly all this untiring
service had been accepted. Circumstances which she had been too
thoughtless to notice at the time flashed back upon her now, and she
remembered how Harcourt Lowther had stepped between her and her husband
even in this commonplace communion--how Francis had been pushed aside,
politely taught to remember what an ignorant and awkward creature he was
when compared to the fine gentleman.
As she sat alone, upon the evening after her interview with Harcourt
Lowther, her husband’s image was more vividly present with her than it
had been at any moment since his departure. The bright honest face--the
faithful loving face--shone out upon her in the ghastly twilight of her
ghastly chamber, and she thought how pleasant it would have been to be
sitting opposite her husband in the firelight glow of a cosy parlour,
far away from splendid loneliness and carved walnut-wood. She thought of
him with her face hidden in her hands, and her aching head lying wearily
on the sofa-cushion. She thought of him until a nervous restlessness
came upon her, and she sprang suddenly to her feet, unable to bear the
oppression of that dreary room, or any room in that dreary house.
“I must go away somewhere, or I shall die,” she thought; “this place
seems haunted. I will go to papa. He is very good to me, but he does not
understand what I feel about Francis. People speak so lightly of him,
and seem to have known him so little. If I could talk to any one who
really loved him; if I could talk to any one who knew his goodness as I
ought to have known it--as I do know it, now that he is dead!”
She crossed the room hurriedly, and rang the bell. She had told her maid
to bring lights only when she rang for them, much to the dismay of that
sympathetic young person, who believed that candle-light and company
were eminently consolatory in all earthly sorrows. When the candles
came, Maude went to a writing-table, and wrote a few hasty lines to her
husband’s simple little cousin. She had written to Susan once before, to
tell her of Francis Tredethlyn’s departure; but the two women had not
seen each other since their first meeting.
“MY DEAR SUSAN,--There is terrible news of your cousin: it may
have reached you before this, perhaps. Will you come to me? I am
so utterly miserable! and I believe that you are the only person
in the world who can understand my sorrow. Come, dear, I implore
you. Ever your affectionate
“MAUDE.”
Mrs. Tredethlyn was a great deal too impatient to wait for any such
commonplace means of communication as the post. She summoned her maid,
and entrusted her letter to that faithful attendant, with directions
that a groom should mount one of the Park hacks immediately, and ride
straight to Petersham with the missive. The maid obeyed; and the groom,
who had made an engagement to go half-price to a West-end theatre,
departed, grumbling sulkily, and determined on punishing the Park hack
for the unwarrantable caprice of his mistress.
Maude slept soundly that night for the first time since the tidings of
the _Kingfisher’s_ fate had reached her, and woke in the morning to see
Susan looking down at her with a smile upon her face.
“Ah, you don’t know,” cried Maude, waking out of a happy dream to an
instant consciousness of her sorrow,--“you don’t know what has happened:
you haven’t heard?”
“Of what, dear?” Susan asked, gently, as Maude started up from amongst
her pillows feverish and excited.
“The loss of the _Kingfisher_--the fire--the dreadful fire! Oh, Susan,
you _cannot_ have heard!”
Mrs. Tredethlyn said this, because the girl’s face, though it was grave
and sad, expressed none of that acute anguish which Susan ought to have
felt for her cousin’s untimely fate. She only looked at Maude with a
wondering earnestness.
“Yes, it was very dreadful,” she said. “Mrs. Clinnock read it in the
paper, and told me. I am so sorry for all the sufferers. But oh, Maude,
dear cousin, how grateful we ought to be for the accident that saved
Francis from such a fate! If he had gone by that vessel, dear----”
She stopped suddenly, for Maude looked at her with an unnatural stare,
and then fell back unconscious.
No, he had not perished with the ill-fated passengers of the
_Kingfisher_. Lives as noble, friends as dear, husbands and fathers,
brothers and sons, worth and genius, some tribute from all that is
brightest upon earth,--had gone down to the deep waters; but Francis
Tredethlyn had not made a part in the mighty sacrifice. When Maude
recovered from the deadly faintness that had come upon her, Susan showed
her a letter which she had received from her cousin,--a letter that had
been written in an hotel at Plymouth _after_ the sailing of the
_Kingfisher_. It was a kind kinsmanlike letter, stating the arrangements
which the writer had made for the comfort and welfare of his cousin and
her child; and, in conclusion, Francis told Susan that he had reached
Plymouth too late to leave by the _Kingfisher_, a steamer which he had
intended to go by, and in which he had taken his berth. Thus left with
his time on his hands for some days, he had resolved on going to have a
look at the old neighbourhood once more.
“It might seem a foolish fancy to many people, but I don’t think it will
to you, Susy,” he wrote. “I want to gather a handful of daisies from my
mother’s grave before I leave the soil that holds her for ever. I want
to stand by the old hearth once more, though God knows what a pain it
will be to me to see strangers in the old home. God bless you, dear, and
good-bye! I shall not write again till I write from the New World.”
This was the close of the letter, which Susan gave Maude to read. Her
first feeling on reading it was unbounded gratitude to the Providence
that had saved Francis Tredethlyn. Her second feeling was considerable
indignation against Francis himself. The mother of the comic song who
bewails her missing child in such pathetic numbers, and slaps him
soundly when she finds him, is not such a very impossible character.
“It was shameful of him to let me suffer so much,” she cried, “when a
few lines from him would have made me so happy;” and then she was
grateful to Providence again, and angry with herself for having been
angry with Francis; and then she pounced upon Susan and kissed her.
“What am I to do, darling?” she asked. “I dare say he has gone off by
some other horrible steamer. But wherever he is, I won’t stop idle in
this dreary house. I won’t trust everything to that slow solemn lawyer.
I’ll go to Cornwall myself, Susy, and find out all about my husband; how
long he stayed there, and when he left. You’ll tell me where to go;
won’t you, Susy?”
Of course Susan was ready to give her cousin’s wife all needful
information about that forgotten corner of the earth, Landresdale. She
would have volunteered to accompany Maude to the western moors, only
there was the boy; and Susan had an idea that if she were to turn her
back upon her son for twenty-four consecutive hours, he would inevitably
be seized with measles or scarlatina in her absence. But Maude declared
she wanted no one to accompany her.
“I suppose I must take my maid,” she said; “but I shall leave her at the
inn at Falmouth, and go alone to that queer old house on the moor, and
those queer old people Francis once told me about.”
Julia Desmond had to endure a good deal that morning, for Maude was
radiant when she appeared with Susan at the breakfast-table. She was so
grateful to Susan for hurrying to her in the early morning.
“Every night, when I have gone to sleep, I have thought the same thing,”
she said: “if I could only wake and find it all a dream--if I could wake
to find it only a dream! And this morning I did wake to find an angel
standing by my bed with the best news I ever heard in all my life. But I
am very sorry for those poor people who were really lost in the
_Kingfisher_,” added Maude, mournfully; she felt that there was
something almost incongruous in her own happiness when so many must be
sorrowful for the destruction of that ill-fated vessel.
While she was making preparations for her departure, Mr. Kursdale, the
solicitor, was announced. He came radiant and red-faced to tell her the
result of inquiries which he had considered it expedient to have made at
Plymouth before taking any legal steps with regard to the supposed
demise of his respected client; and the result was that Francis had not
sailed in the _Kingfisher_; and he was very proud and happy to announce
to Mrs. Tredethlyn----
He would have gone on in a ponderous manner for some time longer, if
Maude had not interrupted him by the assurance that she knew all about
it.
“You did not ascertain that my husband had left Plymouth by any other
vessel?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then we may hope he is still in England. I am going to Cornwall
immediately to look for him. At the worst, I shall there hear all about
him.”
Mr. Kursdale evidently thought this very unprofessional, and suggested
the expediency of a clerk acting as Mrs. Tredethlyn’s proxy; but Maude
shook her head.
“I will go myself,” she said. “If my husband is still in England, I will
find him. There can be no further misunderstanding between us, if once
we can meet face to face.”
Mr. Kursdale submitted, and departed. Maude ran away to superintend her
maid’s packing of a small portmanteau, and Susan sat in the morning-room
with Julia. It had been settled that Miss Desmond should drive her back
to Petersham after luncheon.
They were talking rather ceremoniously, when the door was suddenly
opened by an impetuous hand, and Miss Grunderson burst in upon them,
more intensely pink than usual.
“They wanted me to go to the drawing-room, and they’d go and see if Mrs.
Tredethlyn was at home!” exclaimed Rosa. “I know what their going and
seeing is. Not at home always, and I do so want to see that poor
darling; and I’m sure there’s no one in the world more truly sorry for
her than I am; and if going into half-mourning would have been
considered a tribute of sincere respect, and not an intrusion or
uncalled for, I would have ordered a crape bonnet, trimmed with lilies
of the valley and jet beads, directly I heard of it.”
Julia interrupted Miss Grunderson with a simple statement of the fact
which had put an end to Maude’s brief time of mourning. Rosa’s delight
was very genuine, and on being introduced to Mrs. Lesley, she expanded
as it was her wont to expand on all occasions.
“You can’t think how glad I am!” she exclaimed; “for I assure you when I
heard of that _dreadful_ event, I felt as if it was quite hard-hearted
of me to be happy, and I have been very happy for the last week or so.
In point of fact,” added Miss Grunderson, dragging at the button of a
very tight glove in evident embarrassment, “I’m engaged to be married.”
“Indeed!” said Julia, politely.
“Yes. You see as par has long objected to my running after public
characters, which of course was tiresome to him,--for of all the people
to tear about to all sorts of inaccessible places, and oblige one’s
getting up unreasonably early in the morning to hear them or to see
them, public characters are the worst,--so par was really glad for me to
be seriously engaged to anybody that would keep me quiet, he said, even
if the person was not rich; so when Mr. Lowther--Mr. Roderick Lowther,
you know--proposed, par happening to be in a good temper, it was all
settled immediately.”
“I am very glad to hear it,” answered Miss Desmond; “but I am not at all
surprised. I quite expected as much.”
“Did you really, now? Well, upon my word, I thought at first he was