Only a clod
almost as grumpy as Rochester in ‘Jane Eyre;’ but when those grumpy
people do begin to pay one compliments, it is so nice. Of course, with
regard to Mario, Lord Palmerston, Sir Edwin Landseer, and Charles
Mathews, my feelings will be unchanged to my dying day. But the worship
of public characters need not interfere with the happiness of domestic
life; and as Roderick’s position in the _corps diplomatique_ will take
us abroad, his jealousy need never be aroused in the slightest degree.”
Miss Grunderson entertained the two ladies for some time with minute
details of her own affairs, and she confessed presently that Roderick
had promised to call for her.
“He doesn’t want to see Mrs. Tredethlyn, you know,” she said; “he was
only anxious to express to you how sorry he is, and so on--though, of
course, now he hasn’t any occasion to be sorry, thank goodness!--but you
don’t mind his coming to fetch me, do you, dear? The carriage is waiting
for me, and I’m going to take him on to the Haymarket, where we’re to
see about the resetting of some old-fashioned diamond earrings that
Roderick’s ma has sent me. They’re not nearly as handsome as my own, you
know; but, of course, I feel grateful to her for the attention. And I’m
to go down to Lowther Hall to stay before our marriage; and I’m to be
introduced to a maiden aunt of Roderick’s, from whom he has
expectations, this very afternoon--I mean I’m to be introduced to her
this very afternoon,” added Rosa.
While she was chattering the door was opened, and a servant announced
Mr. Lowther. He came out of the bright white daylight on the staircase
into the room which was kept cool and shadowy by closed Venetian
shutters. As he looked about him, unaccustomed to the obscurity, he
heard a faint shriek, and a woman who had been sitting with her back to
the window started suddenly from her chair.
“Robert!” she cried; “Robert, is it you?” And then she sank down again,
pale and breathless.
“Robert!” exclaimed Miss Grunderson; “you must mistake Mr. Lowther for
some one else, Mrs. Lesley. His name is not Robert.”
“Perhaps not,” Susan answered, sadly. “He kept his real name a secret
from the poor girl who was once proud to call herself his wife; but
whatever his name may be he is my husband nevertheless, and Providence
has brought about our meeting to-day. Oh, don’t add a falsehood to the
wrong you have done me!” she cried, appealing to Roderick Lowther, who
stood pale and confounded, with the faces of the three women all turned
towards him, and with the knowledge that those scrutinizing eyes were
upon him. “I shall claim very little of you. I only want you to give me
the name I have a right to bear; I only want you to acknowledge your
son.”
Roderick Lowther did not reply to this appeal. After a moment’s pause he
turned to Julia:
“Where do you pick up your acquaintance, Miss Desmond?” he said. “I
should scarcely have expected to meet this lady here.”
“This lady is my husband’s cousin,” answered Maude, who had entered the
room while he was speaking; “and I do not know any one who has a better
right to be here. What is the matter, Susy darling?”
Roderick Lowther’s heart was stirred faintly by the sound of that
familiar name--the name which he had whispered so often beside a grey
wintry sea, under a wintry sky, in the desolate region which had been
brightened for him by his discarded wife’s innocence and love.
“There is nothing that can be spoken of here,” Susan answered; “I have
met some one whom I never expected to see again. I will wait till my
cousin comes back. I will say no more till then.”
“But, good gracious me!” exclaimed Miss Grunderson, “I’m not going to be
treated in this sort of way. What does it all mean, Roderick? That lady
starts up all of a sudden, and calls you her husband, and then says
she’ll wait till her cousin comes home. I can’t be expected to wait till
her cousin comes home. I can’t take matters so coolly. With my trousseau
ordered, and all! I must and will have an explanation!”
“You shall, Rosa; but, for mercy’s sake, hold your tongue. There is some
infernal mistake. You had better go home; never mind about the earrings
to-day. If this lady mistakes me for some one she knows, or has a claim
upon, I have no doubt I shall be able to demonstrate her mistake, if I
can talk to her for a few minutes quietly. And now let me take you to
your carriage, Rosa.”
Miss Grunderson would have resisted such a summary way of disposing of
her and her wrongs; but Roderick Lowther was firm. He led her
down-stairs, and he put her into her carriage, and he sent her home as
coolly as if she had been a packet of dry goods consigned to his
temporary care, to be sent on to Mr. Grunderson.
“Awkward,” he muttered, as he went back to the house; “but things always
do happen awkwardly just when a fellow fancies he’s swimming with the
tide all in his favour.”
He looked very grave as he went to Mrs. Tredethlyn’s morning-room to
demand an interview with Susan; but he looked a great deal more grave as
he left the house after that interview and made his way back to his
brother’s lodgings.
He found Harcourt sitting moodily by the empty fireplace, the slim
foreign bottle on the table by his side, and a cigar in his mouth.
“What is the matter with you?” asked the younger brother, listlessly, as
he perceived the scowl upon his senior’s face.
“There is this much the matter with me,” answered Roderick; “I trusted a
fellow to help me in a delicate business, and I’ve reason to think that
he took advantage of my confidence to get me into a dilemma that it will
take me all my life to get out of. I have seen Susan Turner to-day.”
“Indeed!”
“And she has told me something about the Registrar--something that I can
scarcely bring myself to believe. Do you remember what I asked you to do
for me, Harcourt?”
“Perfectly. And I have got the letter containing your request in my
possession--such a nice letter! You tell me in it that you have fallen
over head and ears in love with an innocent little country girl, too
poor and insignificant to be your wife, too virtuous to be your
mistress. Another man might have accepted his fate, and either resigned
the lady, or made some sacrifice of his own interests and married her.
You were inclined to do neither, and you fell back upon a villanous
expedient familiar to the readers of old-fashioned novels, and known as
a mock marriage. You wrote to me about this in a half-playful tone, as
if it were the simplest thing in the world--an elegant little comedy,
out of which it would be your care, of course, to see that no harm
should arise; and so on. The carrying out of the little conspiracy would
be very easy. You suggested how it might be done. I had only to engage
some clever scapegrace to enact the Registrar; hire a parlour in some
obscure street _near_ a District Registrar’s Office--in the same street,
if practicable; the ceremony would only occupy about ten minutes, and
could be got over as quietly as the most commonplace morning call, if
the fellow engaged to personate the Registrar knew what he was about.
The dear little girl was the last person in the world to suspect
anything amiss. In short, it was the simplest possible business, and all
our dear good Harcourt had to do was to find the handy scamp who would
act the official, and get himself well up in the little professional
formula of signing and counter-signing, and so on, in some big books
that he would get for the purpose. The certificate business would have
to be finessed of course. The dear little girl would ask for no
certificate, and the dear little girl’s witnesses must be conveniently
shut up if they made their noses unpleasantly prominent.”
“I begin to understand you,” said Roderick, with suppressed fury. “You
have sold me; and you are going to defend yourself upon high grounds,
conscientious scruples; and so on. Pray proceed. That sort of talk will
sound so well from your lips.”
“I am not going to do anything of the kind. I am only going to remind
you that, as you never in your life did a generous thing for me, or
stepped aside from your own interest or your own pleasure by so much as
a hair’s breadth to serve me, it wasn’t very likely that I should get
myself into a legal hobble--that mock marriage would have been something
like felony, I should imagine--and inflict a cruel wrong upon an
innocent little girl to oblige you. I didn’t want to be too disobliging,
so I arranged a marriage, but it was a real and not a sham one; and you
are as tightly tied to your pretty little wife as if the business had
been transacted at St. George’s, Hanover Square, by a popular bishop,
assisted by an aristocratic uncle to the bride.”
“You are a remorseless scoundrel!” exclaimed Mr. Lowther, coolly. “And I
am very happy to tell you that your own pretty little plans are knocked
on the head. Francis Tredethlyn did not sail in the _Kingfisher_!”
Harcourt gave a little start of surprise; but his countenance did not
express the profound vexation and disappointment that his brother had
expected to see in it. The schemer had failed so completely, that it
mattered very little to him now what course events took.
“Yes, Francis Tredethlyn is alive and well, I have no doubt,” resumed
Roderick. “And my little Susy turns out to be Francis Tredethlyn’s first
cousin. I have a recollection of her telling me, after our marriage,
that her real name was something outlandish, of a Cornish character; but
the name had slipped my memory completely before I met your wealthy
Cornishman.”
“Then the likeness which I fancied I saw in that daub of a portrait and
the similarity of name were not mere coincidences, after all,” muttered
Harcourt. “And the lady at Petersham is my little sister-in-law. It’s a
pity you didn’t treat her rather better,” he added; “for Francis
Tredethlyn could afford to give her a handsome fortune, if he pleased.
It is from her father he inherits his money; and if you had declared
your marriage, and made things square with the old man, your wife need
not have been disinherited, and would have been as rich a prize as any
Miss Grunderson.”
“Hold your tongue!” cried Roderick; “I know what I have lost as well as
you do. If you had been above-board with me, and told me that you had
sold me about the marriage, I might have acted differently. Why did you
get me into such a mess?”
“Because I didn’t choose to be your catspaw. I have been sacrificed to
your interests all my life, and I was determined to keep my hold upon
you when I had got it.”
“And you would have allowed me to marry Rosa Grunderson?”
“_C’est selon!_ I _think_ I should have spoken at the last moment--and
yet it might have been very convenient to hold an awkward little secret
about one’s wealthy brother. A man must be very hard up before he
descends to that undignified mode of livelihood which the French
galley-slaves call _chantage_; but when a fellow _is_ hard up there’s no
knowing how low he may descend.”
“You are a scoundrel!”
“And you are--I can’t finish the sentence without sinking to slang. We
resemble each other in character as we do in person.”
In this fashion the brothers bandied civilities for some time; but they
ended matters by dining together at the Metropolitan. Arabian traditions
as to the sanctity of bread and salt cannot hold good against the
exigencies of civilized life; and men may dine together in a friendly
way, and reserve the right of hating each other nevertheless.
Warmed by a good dinner and a bottle of Moselle, Roderick grew hopeful
as to the future. Susan would relent from her calm determination never
to hold any communication with the husband she had loved so tenderly, by
whom she had been so cruelly abandoned. Francis might act in a handsome