Only a clod
phrenologists--Messrs. Somebody and Something--said about your
perceptive faculties? You could learn anything, they said. And we’ll
learn together, dear; for I’m ashamed to say I’ve forgotten everything
my governesses and masters taught me, except French and music, and a
smattering of German and Italian. And I’m sure if you’d seen how, as
soon as one master had beaten anything into my brains, another master
came and beat it out again with something else, you’d scarcely wonder
that I’m ignorant. So we’ll begin together, Frank dear, and learn
everything. Won’t it be fun?”
A young lady who looked upon the acquisition of universal knowledge as
an agreeable joke would scarcely be expected to drink very deeply of the
Pierian spring. Maude imbibed the classic water in little fitful sips,
and wasted a good deal of it in frolicsome splashing; but Francis had
read considerably, even in the midst of his London dissipation, and he
had a happy knack of remembering what he read. Mrs. Tredethlyn wrote to
a popular librarian for his catalogue; and in the pages of this pamphlet
she ticked off the solid works which she considered adapted to the
improvement of her own and her husband’s mind.
“Merivale’s ‘History of the Romans under the Empire!’” she exclaimed;
“_that_ of course we must read. I’m sure I haven’t the faintest idea of
Julius Cæsar, except that he always seemed to have a laurel-wreath on
his head and a kind of rolling-pin--if I remember right--in his hand,
and that he once passed something called the Rubicon, though _what_ it
was I haven’t the slightest notion. We’ll have the ‘Roman Empire;’ and
when we’ve got through that, we’ll have Gibbon in _one_ volume, you
know,” said Maude, triumphantly; “he’ll _seem_ shorter in one volume,
even if the small print is rather trying to one’s eyes. Newman’s ‘Phases
of Faith’--that sounds like theology, doesn’t it? and I don’t think we
need begin theology yet, because if we got into the early schisms of the
Church, and Gnostics, and Arians, and so on, our brains wouldn’t be
clear enough for Julius Cæsar. There’s a life of Madame de Maintenon, by
the Duc de Noailles; I think we’ll have that: she’ll be quite a relief
after the ‘Roman Empire,’ because one _has_ a kind of idea about her,
and that she was a nasty old frump, and said rude things about the king,
who was so kind to her, and so on.”
The selection of these and a great many more books was eminently
delightful; but when they came, Maude insisted on dipping into “Roman
Empires” and ponderous histories of different ages just as if they had
been so many novels; and she frisked among the records of the Reign of
Terror with a very confused idea as to the difference between the
“Mountain” and the “Gironde,” but a vivid notion of Charlotte Corday
having her portrait painted just before her death, and Citizen Roland’s
beautiful wife declaiming on the scaffold.
They were very happy together. If Francis read in real earnest, and his
wife only played at reading, they were not the less united in their
studies. The industrious honey-bee and the frivolous butterfly may hover
about the same flower, happy according to their different natures in the
same summer noon. Francis Tredethlyn and his wife were so happy in the
quiet old farmhouse that they let the autumn days drift by them in their
moorland retreat, even after the Cornishman had grown strong enough for
a new skirmish with Harcourt Lowther, had there been any need of a
physical contest between the two men.
“We have been so happy here, Francis,” Maude said one dim November
evening, as the husband and wife walked side by side upon the moorland
before the Grange; “but I think we have learnt to understand each other
so well now, that no one in the world will be able to divide us again.
And by-and-by, when you have read a great deal about Julius Cæsar and
political economy, and so on, and go into the HOUSE”--Maude opened her
eyes to the widest extent as she pronounced the high-sounding
substantive--“how proud I shall be of you; and I shall go to the Ladies’
Gallery when you are going to speak! And then, when you have settled all
about the Berkshire estate, how delightful it will be to arrange our
model farm, and model stables, and pineries, and vineries, and
conservatories, and orchid-houses, and a model dairy, and a model
poultry-yard, almost as pretty as the one at Frogmore! and then how much
we shall have to think of and talk about, shan’t we, Frank?”
“And you’ll never be ashamed of me again, Maude?”
“Ashamed of you!” cried Mrs. Tredethlyn, innocently; “was I ever ashamed
of you?” And then she looked at her husband archly, blushing and
laughing. “Well, perhaps once, when you knocked those _petits timbales
de gibier_ into the duchess’s lap,--half-a-dozen of them at the very
least, Frank; and the night you tore Lady Ophelia Fitzormond’s old
point: but you are so refined, Frank, so improved, if I may venture to
say as much without offending you.”
“I should be a churlish brute indeed, if I had not improved in the
society of the sweetest wife in Christendom, to say nothing of Julius
Cæsar. My great-grandfather was a gentleman, Maude; and there are few
names older than Tredethlyn, even in this land of ancient lineages. We
dropped down until we came to be represented by my grandfather, who
lived like a peasant for the sake of hoarding his money, and in whose
steps my uncle Oliver followed. I shall try to make myself a gentleman
for your sake, Maude--it would never do for people to say that the
lovely Mrs. Tredethlyn had allied herself to a man who was only a clod.”
After this, need it be said that all went very smoothly with Mr. and
Mrs. Tredethlyn?--so smoothly, that poor discontented Julia abandoned
the happy couple in disgust, and went abroad as travelling companion to
a rheumatic old countess, who leads her a dreadful life, and insists
upon being read to sleep out of German metaphysical works at weird hours
of the night. She has met with Roderick Lowther in the course of her
travels, lonely and cynical, looking at everything in life through the
medium of his own disappointments; for he has sought in vain for a
reconciliation with his young wife, and has found to his cost how very
firmly a gentlewoman can hold to her resolution, when her firmness is
justified by the sense of a deep and deadly wrong.
They are very happy, Francis and Maude. The Berkshire estate is just one
of those exceptionally delightful places which drop now and then into
the hands of rich commoners when the aristocratic proprietors go to the
dogs; and the Stuccoville mansion only sees its owners during the few
months in which they skim the cream of the London season, before
scudding off to the Continent to improve their minds among the monuments
of the past, or in the most fashionable watering-places of the present.
They are very happy. As time speeds on, there appears on the lawn in
Berkshire a little rolling bundle of white muslin and expensive lace,
which, inspected closely, turns out to be a baby, and which, if it could
speak at all, would answer to the name of Lionel Hillary Tredethlyn; and
by-and-by, when the young couple travel in the bright autumn weather, a
prim English nurse and a French _bonne_ follow in their rear, and there
is a little girl baby in a white hood; and papa and mamma are alike
concerned for the safe conveyance of these domestic treasures. The girl
baby is called Maude; but she owns a string of other names; and her two
godmothers are Susan Lowther, who lives happily with her boy in the
Petersham cottage, and Rosa Grunderson, who declares that, in
consequence of the distracting influence of public characters, and her
fatal experience of the perfidy of private individuals in the person of
Roderick Lowther, she will descend a spinster to the grave.
One day, at a German watering-place, Francis and his wife hear of a man
living in the same hotel with them, their countryman; a man who is
young, has been handsome, and who for the last few months has been
conspicuous in the gaming-saloons of the Kursaal as a desperate, and
sometimes a very lucky, player--a traveller who can scarcely be an
adventurer, for he has been admired and caressed by elegant women and
well-born men, but who has been a hard drinker from first to last, and
within the last fortnight has fallen a victim to the most hideous
disease which vice ever engendered as the scorpion-whip to work its own
retribution,--a disease called delirium tremens.
The landlord of the hotel tells Mr. Tredethlyn how this wretched
Englishman has his bad fits and his intervals of quiet; how he will lie
down calmly enough perhaps at night, to start up mad in the dim grey
morning, to walk far out into the country, hurrying wildly before the
fiend that pursues him; and to fall exhausted in some desolate spot, and
lie there till some passing peasant picks him up and conveys him back to
his lodging. The landlord describes, with considerable vivacity and
gesticulation, how this poor afflicted creature will sit for hours
together catching at imaginary insects that buzz about him and torment
him; how he will watch and point to falling snow, that never falls; how
with a power that is hideously graphic, he will describe the devils that
dance and gibber round his miserable bed. He tells how the shutting of a
door, the rustling of a newspaper, the flutter of a falling leaf, will
startle this unhappy sufferer more than an unexpected peal of thunder
would startle another man. He describes the sleeplessness which no
opiate is strong enough to conquer, the restlessness and depression with
which medical science struggles in vain. He tells Francis Tredethlyn, in
confidence, that the poor ailing wretch is all but penniless, and that
very scanty supplies of money come to him in reply to the letters he
writes to England now and then in his rational moments.
It scarcely needs Maude’s appealing look to inspire Francis with the
wish to help this unhappy countryman. He says nothing to his wife, but
he goes by-and-by to smoke his cigar in the lamplit quadrangle, where
there is a café, and a smoking-room, and a reading-room, and a
post-office, and a perpetual chatter of divers tongues, and clatter of
hurrying feet. He is a long time smoking that cigar; and yet Maude feels
no displeasure in his absence, as she sits alone in her balcony looking
out at the lamplit town and the solemn forest looming darkly in the
distance. She knows that whatever impulse stirs her own heart is almost
sure to find an answering impulse in her husband’s; and she can guess
what keeps him so long to-night.
He has spoken to the landlord, he tells her, when he comes back, and has
given him a cheque which is to keep things smooth for the present, and
has promised more money, if more should be needed; for in any case the
Englishman is not to be worried about money matters while he is ill; and
above all he is not to know that a stranger’s help has saved him from
annoyance.
“The landlord persuaded me to go into the--poor fellow’s room,
afterwards,” said Francis, slowly. “He thought it would cheer him up a
little to shake a countryman by the hand; and I did go in, Maude,--and I
saw him.”
“Yes, dear; and the interview has made you unhappy, I’m sure. You are
looking dreadfully pale!”
“The man is very ill, Maude, very ill. Yes, the sight of him did almost
knock me over, I assure you.”
It was a week after this when Mr. and Mrs. Tredethlyn left the German
watering-place. They were on the point of starting from the hotel when
Maude noticed the closed shutters of some windows on an upper story, and
on questioning one of the waiters, was told that the Englishman was
dead. She asked her husband to tell her more about the painful end of