THERE IS ALWAYS A SKELETON.
The two young men strolled through the village, Maulevrier pausing to
exchange greetings with almost everyone he met, and so to the rustic
churchyard, above the beck.
The beck was swollen with late rains, and was brawling merrily over its
stony bed; the churchyard grass was deep and cool and shadowy under the
clustering branches. The poet's tomb was disappointing in its unlovely
simplicity, its stern, slatey hue. The plainest granite cross would have
satisfied Mr. Hammond, or a cross in pure white marble, with a
sculptured lamb at the base. Surely the lamb, emblem at once pastoral
and sacred, ought to enter into any monument to Wordsworth; but that
gray headstone, with its catalogue of dates, those stern iron
railings--were these fit memorials of one whose soul so loved nature's
loveliness?
After Mr. Hammond had seen the little old, old church, and the medallion
portrait inside, had seen all that Maulevrier could show him, in fact,
the two young men went back to the place of graves, and sat on the low
parapet above the beck, smoking their cigarettes, and talking with that
perfect unreserve which can only obtain between men who are old and
tried friends. They talked, as it was only natural they should talk, of
that household at Fellside, where all things were new to John Hammond.
'You like my sister Lesbia?' said Maulevrier.
'Like her! well, yes. The difficulty with most men must be not to
worship her.'
'Ah, she's not my style. And she's beastly proud.'
'A little _hauteur_ gives piquancy to her beauty; I admire a grand
woman.'
'So do I in a picture. Titian's Queen of Cyprus, or any party of that
kind; but for flesh and blood I like humility--a woman who knows she is
human, and not infallible, and only just a little better than you or me.
When I choose a wife, she will be no such example of cultivated
perfection as my sister Lesbia. I want no goddess, but a nice little
womanly woman, to jog along the rough and tumble road of life with me.'
'Lady Maulevrier's influence, no doubt, has in a great measure
determined the bent of your sister's character: and from what you have
told me about her ladyship, I should think a fixed idea of her own
superiority would be inevitable in any girl trained by her.'
'Yes, she is a proud woman--a proud, hard woman--and she has steeped
Lesbia's mind in all her own pet ideas and prejudices. Yet, God knows,
we have little reason to hold our heads high,' said Maulevrier, with a
gloomy look.
John Hammond did not reply to this remark: perhaps there was some
difficulty for a man situated as he was in finding a fit reply. He
smoked in silence, looking down at the pure swift waters of the Rotha
tumbling over the crags and boulders below.
'Doesn't somebody say there is always a skeleton in the cupboard, and
the nobler and more ancient the race the bigger the skeleton?' said
Maulevrier, with a philosophical air.
'Yes, your family secret is an attribute of a fine old race. The
Pelopidæ, for instance--in their case it was not a single skeleton, but
a whole charnel house. I don't think your skeleton need trouble you,
Maulevrier. It belongs to the remote past.'
'Those things never belong to the past,' said the young man. 'If it were
any other kind of taint--profligacy--madness, even--the story of a duel
that went very near murder--a runaway wife--a rebellious son--a cruel
husband. I have heard such stories hinted at in the records of families.
But our story means disgrace. I seldom see strangers putting their heads
together at the club without fancying they are telling each other about
my grandfather, and pointing me out as the grandson and heir of a
thief.'
'Why use unduly hard words?'
'Why should I stoop to sophistication with you, my friend. Dishonesty
is dishonesty all the world over; and to plunder Rajahs on a large scale
is no less vile than to pick a pocket on Ludgate Hill.'
'Nothing was ever proved against your grandfather.'
'No, he died in the nick of time, and the inquiry was squashed, thanks
to the Angersthorpe interest, and my grandmother's cleverness. But if he
had lived a few weeks longer England would have rung with the story of
his profligacy and dishonour. Some people say he committed suicide in
order to escape the inquiry; but I have heard my mother emphatically
deny this. My father told her that he had often talked with the people
who kept the little inn where his father died, and they were clear
enough in their assertion that the death was a natural death--the sudden
collapse of an exhausted constitution.'
'Was it on account of this scandal that your father spent the best part
of his life away from England?' Hammond asked, feeling that it was a
relief to Maulevrier to talk about this secret burden of his.
The young Earl was light-hearted and frivolous by nature, yet even he
had his graver moments; and upon this subject of the old Maulevrier
scandal he was peculiarly sensitive, perhaps all the more so because his
grandmother had never allowed him to speak to her about it, had never
satisfied his curiosity upon any details of that painful story.
'I have very little doubt it was so--though I wasn't old enough when he
died to hear as much from his own lips. My father went straight from the
University to Vienna, where he began his career in the diplomatic
service, and where he soon afterwards married a dowerless English girl
of good family. He went to Rio as first secretary, and died of fever
within seven years of his marriage, leaving a widow and three babies,
the youngest in long clothes. Mother and babies all came over to
England, and were at once established at Fellside. I can remember the
voyage--and I can remember my poor mother who never recovered the blow
of my father's death, and who died in yonder house, after five years of
broken health and broken spirits. We had no one but the dowager to look
to as children--hardly another friend in the world. She did what she
liked with us; she kept the girls as close as nuns, so _they_ have never
heard a hint of the old history; no breach of scandal has reached
_their_ ears. But she could not shut me up in a country house for ever,
though she did succeed in keeping me away from a public school. The time
came when I had to go to the University, and there I heard all that had
been said about Lord Maulevrier. The men who told me about the old
scandal in a friendly way pretended not to believe it; but one night,
when I had got into a row at a wine-party with a tailor's son, he told
me that if his father was a snip my grandfather was a thief, and so he
thought himself the better bred of the two. I smashed his nose for him,
but as it was a decided pug before the row began, that hardly squared
the matter.'
'Did you ever hear the exact story?'
'I have heard a dozen stories; and if only a quarter of them are true my
grandfather was a scoundrel. It seems that he was immensely popular for
the first year or so of his government, gave more splendid
entertainments than had been given at Madras for half a century before
his time, lavished his wealth upon his favourites. Then arose a rumour
that the governor was insolvent and harassed by his creditors, and then
a new source of wealth seemed to be at his command; he was more
reckless, more princely than ever; and then, little by little, there
arose the suspicion that he was trafficking in English interests,
selling his influence to petty princes, winking at those mysterious
crimes by which rightful heirs are pushed aside to make room for
usurpers. Lastly it became notorious that he was the slave of a wicked
woman, false wife, suspected murderess, whose husband, a native prince,
disappeared from the scene just when his existence became perilous to
the governor's reputation. According to one version of the story, the
scandal of this Rajah's mysterious disappearance, followed not long
after by the Ranee's equally mysterious death, was the immediate cause
of my grandfather's recall. How much, or how little of this story--or
other dark stories of the same kind--is true, whether my grandfather was
a consummate scoundrel, or the victim of a baseless slander,--whether he
left India a rich man or a poor man, is known to no mortal except Lady
Maulevrier, and compared with her the Theban Sphinx was a communicative
individual.'
'Let the dead bury their dead,' said Hammond. 'Neither you nor your
sisters can be the worse for this ancient slander. No doubt every part
of the story has been distorted and exaggerated in the telling; and a
great deal of it may be pure invention, evolved from the inner
consciousness of the slanderer. God forbid that any whisper of scandal
should ever reach Lady Lesbia's ears.'
He ignored poor Mary. It was to him as if there were no such person. Her
feeble light was extinguished by the radiance of her sister's beauty;
her very individuality was annihilated.
'As for you, dear old fellow,' he said, with warm affection, 'no one
will ever think the worse of you on account of your grandfather's
peccadilloes.'
'Yes, they will. Hereditary genius is one of our modern crazes. When a
man's grandfather was a rogue, there must be a taint in his blood.
People don't believe in spontaneous generation, moral or physical,
now-a-days. Typhoid breeds typhoid, and typhus breeds typhus, just as
dog breeds dog; and who will believe that a cheat and a liar can be the
father of honest men?'
'In that case, knowing what kind of man the grandson is, I will never
believe that the grandfather was a rogue,' said Hammond, heartily.
Maulevrier put out his hand without a word, and it was warmly grasped by
his friend.
'As for her ladyship, I respect and honour her as a woman who has led a
life of self-sacrifice, and has worn her pride as an armour,' continued
Hammond.
'Yes, I believe the dowager's character is rather fine,' said
Maulevrier; 'but she and I have never hit our horses very well together.
She would have liked such a fellow as you for a grandson, Jack--a man
who took high honours at Oxford, and could hold his own against all
comers. Such a grandson would have gratified her pride, and would have
repaid her for the trouble she had taken in nursing the Maulevrier
estate; for however poor a property it was when her husband went to
India there is no doubt that it is a very fine estate now, and that the
dowager has been the making of it.'
The two young men strolled up to Easedale Tarn before they went back to
Fellside, where Lady Maulevrier received them with a stately
graciousness, and where Lady Lesbia unbent considerably at luncheon, and
condescended to an animated conversation with her brother's friend. It
was such a new thing to have a stranger at the family board, a man whose
information was well abreast with the march of progress, who could talk
eloquently upon every subject which people care to talk about. In this
new and animated society Lesbia seemed like an enchanted princess
suddenly awakened from a spell-bound slumber. Molly looked at her sister
with absolute astonishment. Never had she seen her so bright, so
beautiful--no longer a picture or a statue, but a woman warm with the
glow of life.
'No wonder Mr. Hammond admires her,' thought poor Molly, who was quite
acute enough to see the stranger's keen appreciation of her sister's
charms, and positive indifference towards herself.
There are some things which women find out by instinct, just as the
needle turns towards the magnet. Shut a girl up in a tower till she is
eighteen years old, and on the day of her release introduce her to the
first man her eyes have ever looked upon, and she will know at a glance
whether he admires her.
After luncheon the four young people started for Rydal Mount; with
Fräulein as chaperon and watch-dog. The girls were both good walkers.
Lady Lesbia even, though she looked like a hot-house flower, had been
trained to active habits, could walk and ride, and play tennis, and
climb a hill as became a mountain-bred damsel. Molly, feeling that her
conversational powers were not appreciated by her brother's friend, took
half a dozen dogs for company, and with three fox-terriers, a little
Yorkshire dog, a colley and an otter-hound, was at no loss for society
on the road, more especially as Maulevrier gave her most of his company,
and entertained her with an account of his Black Forest adventures, and
all the fine things he had said to the fair-haired, blue-eyed Baden
girls, who had sold him photographs or wild strawberries, or had
awakened the echoes of the hills with the music of their rustic flutes.
Fräulein was perfectly aware that her mission upon this particular
afternoon was not to let Lady Lesbia out of her sight for an instant, to
hear every word the young lady said, and every word Mr. Hammond
addressed to her. She had received no specific instructions from Lady
Maulevrier. They were not necessary, for the Fräulein knew her
ladyship's intentions with regard to her elder granddaughter,--knew
them, at least, so far as that Lesbia was intended to make a brilliant
marriage; and she knew, therefore, that the presence of this handsome
and altogether attractive young man was to the last degree obnoxious to
the dowager. She was obliged to be civil to him for her nephew's sake,
and she was too wise to let Lesbia imagine him dangerous: but the fact
that he was dangerous was obvious, and it was Fräulein's duty to protect
her employer's interests.
Everybody knew Lord Maulevrier, so there was no difficulty about getting
admission to Wordsworth's garden and Wordsworth's house, and after Mr.
Hammond and his companions had explored these, they went back to the
shores of the little lake, and climbed that rocky eminence upon which
the poet used to sit, above the placid waters of silvery Rydal. It is a
lovely spot, and that narrow lake, so poor a thing were magnitude the
gauge of beauty, had a soft and pensive loveliness in the clear
afternoon light.
'Poor Wordsworth' sighed Lesbia, as she stood on the grassy crag looking
down on the shining water, broken in the foreground by fringes of
rushes, and the rich luxuriance of water-lilies. 'Is it not pitiable to
think of the years he spent in this monotonous place, without any
society worth speaking of, with only the shabbiest collection of books,
with hardly any interest in life except the sky, and the hills, and the
peasantry?'
'I think Wordsworth's was an essentially happy life, in spite of his
narrow range,' answered Hammond. 'You, with your ardent youth and vivid
desire for a life of action, cannot imagine the calm blisses of reverie
and constant communion with nature. Wordsworth had a thousand companions
you and I would never dream of; for him every flower that grows was an
individual existence--almost a soul.'
'It was a mild kind of lunacy, an everlasting opium dream without the
opium; but I am grateful to him for living such a life, since it has
bequeathed us some exquisite poetry,' said Lesbia, who had been too
carefully cultured to fleer or flout at Wordsworth.
'I do believe there's an otter just under that bank,' cried Molly, who
had been watching the obvious excitement of her bandy-legged hound; and
she rushed down to the brink of the water, leaping lightly from stone to
stone, and inciting the hound to business.
'Let him alone, can't you?' roared Maulevrier; 'leave him in peace till
he's wanted. If you disturb him now he'll desert his holt, and we may
have a blank day. The hounds are to be out to-morrow.'
'I may go with you?' asked Mary, eagerly.
'Well, yes, I suppose you'll want to be in it.' Molly and her brother
went on an exploring ramble along the edge of the water towards
Ambleside, leaving John Hammond in Lesbia's company, but closely guarded
by Miss Müller. These three went to look at Nab Cottage, where poor
Hartley Coleridge ended his brief and clouded days; and they had gone
some way upon their homeward walk before they were rejoined by
Maulevrier and Mary, the damsel's kilted skirt considerably the worse
for mud and mire.
'What would grandmother say if she were to see you!' exclaimed Lesbia,
looking contemptuously at the muddy petticoat.
'I am not going to let her see me, so she will say nothing,' cried Mary,
and then she called to the dogs, 'Ammon, Agag, Angelina;' and the three
fox terriers flew along the road, falling over themselves in the
swiftness of their flight, darting, and leaping, and scrambling over
each other, and offering the spectators the most intense example of
joyous animal life.
The colley was far up on the hill-side, and the otter-hound was still
hunting the water, but the terriers never went out of Mary's sight. They
looked to her to take the initiative in all their sports.
They were back at Fellside in time for a very late tea. Lady Maulevrier
was waiting for them in the drawing-room.
'Oh, grandmother, why did you not take your tea!' exclaimed Lesbia,
looking really distressed. 'It is six o'clock.'
'I am used to have you at home to hand me my cup,' replied the dowager,
with a touch of reproachfulness.
'I am so sorry,' said Lesbia, sitting down before the tea-table, and
beginning her accustomed duty. 'Indeed, dear grandmother, I had no idea
it was so late; but it was such a lovely afternoon, and Mr. Hammond is
so interested in everything connected with Wordsworth--'
She was looking her loveliest at this moment, all that was softest in
her nature called forth by her desire to please her grandmother, whom
she really loved. She hung over Lady Maulevrier's chair, attending to
her small wants, and seeming scarcely to remember the existence of
anyone else. In this phase of her character she seemed to Mr. Hammond
the perfection of womanly grace.
Mary had rushed off to her room to change her muddy gown, and came in
presently, dressed for dinner, looking the picture of innocence.
John Hammond received his tea-cup from Lesbia's hand, and lingered in
the drawing-room talking to the dowager and her granddaughters till it
was time to dress. Lady Maulevrier found herself favourably impressed by
him in spite of her prejudices. It was very provoking of Maulevrier to
have brought such a man to Fellside. His very merits were objectionable.
She tried with exquisite art to draw him into some revealment as to his
family and antecedents: but he evaded every attempt of that kind. It was
too evident that he was a self-made man, whose intellect and good looks
were his only fortune. It was criminal in Maulevrier to have brought
such a person to Fellside. Her ladyship began to think seriously of
sending the two girls to St. Bees or Tynemouth for change of air, in
charge of Fräulein. But any sudden proceeding of that kind would
inevitably awaken Lesbia's suspicions; and there is nothing so fatal to
a woman's peace as this idea of danger. No, the peril must be faced. She
could only hope that Maulevrier would soon tire of Fellside. A week's
Westmoreland weather--gray skies and long rainy days, would send these
young men away.