Only a clod
manner about the fortune which ought to have been his cousin’s; and,
after all, the turn which affairs had taken might not be altogether an
unlucky one.
“Looking at it in any way, Rosa was a nuisance,” said Mr. Lowther, as he
bedewed his moustache with the rose-water which the luxurious
Metropolitan provides for its guests; “and perhaps it’s better as it is.
We hadn’t come to close quarters about the settlements; and I dare say
if the _père_ Grunderson had been brought to the scratch, we should have
had a scuffle.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XLII.
A PERFECT UNION.
Maude left Paddington by an afternoon express, and reached Exeter after
a journey that was long and wearisome even to a modern traveller, for
whom the way has been smoothed so delightfully. It was late the next
evening when she reached Falmouth, after a day in a stage-coach, and put
up at the principal hotel with her maid, who was a good deal more tired
than her mistress, as it is in the nature of maids to be. The coach that
passed through Landresdale on its way to some still more remote and
savage district left Falmouth early in the morning; and Maude left with
it, this time unattended by her maid, whose curiosity had been
considerably stimulated by the erratic nature of her mistress’s
movements, and who thought it a hard thing to be left alone to look out
of the window of the hotel sitting-room, while Mrs. Tredethlyn pursued
her mysterious journey to its mysterious close.
How strange and new all the wild Cornish scenery seemed to Maude, as she
sat alone in the interior of the coach, which was not affected by the
sturdy agriculturists and miners who were generally the only passengers
on this route! How many conflicting hopes and fears found a place in her
mind as she looked out at the unknown country amidst which her husband’s
boyhood had been spent! Had he sailed for the New World by some later
vessel than the _Kingfisher_? Was he far away from the rustic homestead
towards which she was travelling with a faint hope of finding him at the
end of her journey?--an unreasoning hope, which she tried to shut out of
her mind in her dread of the cruel disappointment that might await her.
The coach put her down before the Crown Inn, and she stood alone in
Landresdale High Street, with the great gates of the marquis’s enchanted
castle frowning down upon her from the top of the hill. She inquired
about a conveyance to take her on to Tredethlyn Grange; and the landlord
of the Crown ordered the immediate preparation of a lumbering old
equipage of a tub-like character, lined with washed-out chintz, which
was brought forth on rare occasions, and charged for at a prodigious
rate. While the equipage was being prepared, the landlord contemplated
his bright young visitor with evident curiosity, and would fain have
beguiled her into conversation; but Maude had no inclination to be
communicative. If she was to receive a death-blow to all her hopes, she
did not want to take it from the hands of this coarse common man. She
wanted to go straight to the Grange and learn her fate there, and there
only. The road from Landresdale to the moorland farmhouse was longer
than the by-path through the churchyard by which Francis had gone; and
the clumsy old brown horse, and the lumbering vehicle in which Maude was
seated, progressed very slowly. The way seemed intolerably long to her;
but at last she saw a grey spot against the blue sky, and made out that
the vehicle was bearing towards it by a winding track along which heavy
waggons had left the impression of their broad wheels. The grey spot
grew bigger and bigger against the horizon, until it grew at last into a
dreary-looking habitation, with quaint old gables and moss-grown stone
walls. One slender thread of smoke curled upward, white against the
clear blue atmosphere; some sheep were grazing upon the patch of ground
that had once been a garden; and the perfume of the clover blew towards
the traveller as the fly lumbered nearer to the broken gate.
Maude looked hopelessly at the quiet house,--so little sign of
occupation, so little token of life.
“He can’t be there,” she thought; a sudden gush of tears shutting out
the grey stone walls, the clover-field and browsing sheep. “I am too
late!”
She brushed away her tears, drew down her veil, and alighted, telling
the driver to wait for her; whereupon the man took the bit out of his
horse’s mouth and abandoned himself to slumber, while the animal cropped
the stunted grass contentedly. Some sheep that had been lying in the
pathway skipped awkwardly away as Maude crossed the bare enclosure; and
as she approached the door, it was opened by a tall gaunt woman, who had
evidently been disturbed by the unwonted sound of wheels on the rough
moorland road.
“Mr. Tredethlyn has been staying here, has he not?” Maude asked,
eagerly.
“Yes, ma’am; and he’s here still. Excuse me for being a little put out
like, but you have taken me so aback. You don’t happen to be my master’s
wife, do you?”
“Yes, yes! Oh, thank Heaven, he is still here! Let me see him at once,
please!” exclaimed Maude, trying to pass the grim-looking woman who
barred her passage.
“Not yet! Oh, please, ma’am, not yet!” cried the woman, eagerly. “It
mightn’t be safe.”
“Not safe! What do you mean?”
“He has been so ill, ma’am; and the doctor’s special orders was that he
was to be kept from anything that might upset him. And he talked and
raved so about you, poor dear, when his senses were quite gone, as they
were for days together; and I’m sure nothing could upset him so much as
the sight of your coming upon him sudden. Let me see him first, and tell
him you are here. I make no doubt he’ll be overjoyed to see you; but it
mustn’t come like a shock upon him.”
“He has been ill!” cried Maude; “dangerously ill!”
“Yes, ma’am; very dangerously. We had two doctors with him at one time.
Brain fever it was; over-fatigue and trouble of the mind, and so on, the
doctors said. He came up here after being too late for the steamer by
which he was to have gone abroad; and he came to settle everything about
the farm and the quarries, and so on; and he worked at it night and day,
without rest nor sleep, though me and my husband told him how bad it was
for him; and everything was almost settled when he woke one morning bad
in his head, and after that got from bad to worse, until his life was
almost give up.”
“But he is out of danger now?”
“Yes, ma’am, thank God, quite out of danger now; but, oh, so weak; the
smallest child that ever I had to do with wasn’t weaker than my poor
master now.”
Maude burst out crying. Until this moment she had stood, pale and
breathless, waiting to hear that she was indeed too late--that Francis
Tredethlyn had escaped the destruction of the _Kingfisher_ only to find
death waiting for him in his own home.
“Don’t mind me,” she exclaimed, as the gaunt woman made a clumsy attempt
to comfort her; “I am crying for joy. Go and tell my husband that I am
here; but not at any hazard to him. I will be very patient. Thank God I
have found him! thank God I shall be able to fall on my knees by his
bed-side and beg his forgiveness for my neglect and ingratitude!”
Martha Dryscoll looked wonderingly at this butterfly creature, who
talked hysterically of falling at her husband’s feet and begging
forgiveness. Francis had made no confidants in that Cornish house; and
Mrs. Dryscoll began to fear that his marriage had been a very
unfortunate affair, and that this sudden arrival of an elegantly dressed
penitent was to be the last act of a domestic tragedy.
“If you’ll walk in there, ma’am,” Martha said, pointing to the parlour,
with a severe aspect of countenance, “I’ll go and see my master.”
She said no more, but departed; and Maude crept into the old-fashioned
room, fearful lest the rustling of her silk dress might disturb an
invalid’s slumber. It seemed a long time that she waited, and then Mrs.
Dryscoll returned, smiling grimly this time.
“He’ll see you directly minute,” she said; “and, oh, he does seem so
pleased, poor dear!”
She led Maude to the top of the staircase, and then pointed to a
half-open door at the end of a dusky corridor, after which she went
down-stairs again, and Maude heard her sobbing quietly to herself until
the sound subsided in the distance.
The young wife went on to the half-open door, and entered the room in
which her husband lay on a white-curtained bed, very pale, very wan, and
so weak that he could not raise his hand to offer it her in token of
loving reconciliation.
She fell on her knees by the bed, and laid her cheek upon the hand that
was too feeble to be lifted.
“Oh, forgive me!” she said; “my dear, my love, my true and cherished
husband! If you wanted to give me a lesson, you have given me a very
cruel one; but you have taught me that I cannot live without you.”
She sat by his pillow, with his weak head encircled by her caressing
arms, and told him the story of her penitence and remorse. It was a
sweet exchange of forgiveness for the past, and tender promises for the
future. No denizens of Stuccoville kept watch from behind pink curtains;
the driver of the fly slumbered as profoundly as one of the seven
sleepers; the rustic sound of the sheep cropping the clover was the only
sound that stirred the drowsy stillness. Martha kept herself discreetly
out of the way; and the husband and wife, truly united for the first
time in their lives in that Cornish solitude, were loath to break the
spell which held them in such loving union.
But such spells have to be broken for the common business of life.
Punctual to the appointed moment Mrs. Dryscoll appeared with her
master’s medicine; and then the lumbering fly was sent back empty to
Landresdale; and after that Mrs. Tredethlyn was banished from the sick
room, and made some faint show of taking a little of the refreshment
which had been provided for her by Martha.
After dinner she wrote two brief notes--one to her maid at Falmouth, who
was to follow her immediately with the portmanteau; the other to Julia,
who was to be so good as to send her such luggage as would be necessary
to her in a stay of some weeks.
After this Mrs. Tredethlyn had no more to do but to nurse her husband
through the slow stages of convalescence. It was very long before he was
strong enough to get up to a little Arcadian tea-drinking. It was very
long after that before he was able to take a few turns in the
clover-field, leaning on Maude’s arm. It was still longer before he was
well enough to think of turning his back upon Cornwall, to plunge into
busy commonplace life again.
If he could have been an invalid for the rest of his days, he would have
resigned himself uncomplainingly to his fate; for what period of his
chequered existence had been so sweet as this, in which he and Maude
were all in all to each other?--this perpetual _tête-à-tête_, unbroken
by the intrusion of morning callers, undisturbed by the conflicting
emotions which attend social intercourse in high latitudes. And they
were not idle either during these autumn months. Hidden among those wild
Cornish moors, the husband and wife were very busy together--_improving
their minds_; for Maude had confessed to her husband, with a good deal
of girlish giggling and blushing, that her own education had been very
nearly as defective as his, and that the wide fields of knowledge, which
were such strange and bewildering regions to him, were scarcely more
familiar to her.
“And you are so clever, Frank,” she exclaimed, in conclusion--she
always called him Frank now. “You remember what those American