'THE GREATER CANTLE OF THE WORLD IS LOST.'
The sky was still cloudless when John Hammond strolled slowly up the
leafy avenue at Fellside. He had been across the valley and up the hill
to Easedale Tarn, and then by rough untrodden ways, across a chaos of
rock and heather, into a second valley, long, narrow, and sterile, known
as Far Easedale, a desolate gorge, a rugged cleft in the heart of the
mountains. The walk had been long and laborious; but only in such
clambering and toiling, such expenditure of muscular force and latent
heat, could the man's restless soul endure those long hours of suspense.
'How will she answer me? Oh, my God! how will she answer?' he said
within himself, as he walked up the romantic winding road, which made so
picturesque an approach to Lady Maulevrier's domain, 'Is my idol gold or
clay? How will she come through the crucible? Oh, dearest, sweetest,
loveliest, only be true to the instinct of your womanhood, and my cup
will be full of bliss, and all my days will flow as sweetly as the
burden of a song. But if you prove heartless, if you love the world's
wealth better than you love me--ah! then all is over, and you and I are
lost to each other for ever. I have made up my mind.'
His face settled into an expression of indomitable determination, as of
a man who would die rather than be false to his own purpose. There was
no glow of hope in his heart. He had no deep faith in the girl he loved;
indeed in his heart of hearts he knew that this being to whom he had
trusted his hopes of bliss was no heroine. She was a lovely, loveable
girl, nothing more. How would she greet him when they met presently on
the tennis lawn? With tears and entreaties, and pretty little
deprecating speeches, irresolution, timidity, vacillation, perhaps;
hardly with heroic resolve to act and dare for his sake.
There was no one on the tennis lawn when he went there, though the hour
was close at hand at which Lesbia had promised to give him his answer.
He sat down in one of the low chairs, glad to rest after his long ramble
having had no refreshment but a bottle of soda-water and a biscuit at
the cottage by Easedale Tarn. He waited, calmly as to outward seeming,
but with a heavy heart.
'If it were Mary now whom I loved, I should have little fear of the
issue,' he thought, weighing his sweetheart's character, as he weighed
his chances of success. 'That young termagant would defy the world for
her lover.'
He sat in the summer silence for nearly half-an-hour, and still there
was no sign of Lady Lesbia. Her satin-lined workbasket, with the work
thrown carelessly across it, was still on the rustic table, just as she
had left it when they went to the pine wood. Waiting was weary work when
the bliss of a lifetime trembled in the balance; and yet he did not want
to be impatient. She might find it difficult to get away from her
family, perhaps. She was closely watched and guarded, as the most
precious thing at Fellside.
At last the clock struck five, and Hammond could endure delay no longer.
He went round by the flower garden to the terrace before the
drawing-room windows, and through an open window to the drawing-room.
Lady Maulevrier was in her accustomed seat, with her own particular
little table, magazines, books, newspapers at her side. Lady Mary was
pouring out the tea, a most unusual thing; and Maulevrier was sitting on
a stool at her feet, with his knees up to his chin, very warm and dusty,
eating pound cake.
'Where the mischief have you been hiding yourself all day, Jack?' he
called out as Hammond appeared, looking round the room as he entered,
with eager, interrogating eyes, for that one figure which was absent.
'I have been for a walk.'
'You might have had the civility to announce your design, and Molly and
I would have shared your peregrinations.'
'I am sorry that I lost the privilege of your company.'
'I suppose you lost your luncheon, which was of more importance,' said
Maulevrier.
'Will you have some tea?' asked Mary, who looked more womanly than usual
in a cream-coloured surah gown--one of her Sunday gowns.
She had a faint hope that by this essentially feminine apparel she might
lessen the prejudicial effect of Maulevrier's cruel story about the
fox-hunt.
Mr. Hammond answered absently, hardly looking at Mary, and quite
unconscious of her pretty gown.
'Thanks, yes,' he said, taking the cup and saucer, and looking at the
door by which he momently expected Lady Lesbia's entrance, and then, as
the door did not open, he looked down at Mary, very busy with china
teapots and a brass kettle which hissed and throbbed over a spirit lamp.
'Won't you have some cake,' she asked, looking up at him gently, grieved
at the distress and disappointment in his face. 'I am sure you must be
dreadfully hungry.'
'Not in the least, thanks. How came you to be entrusted with those
sacred vessels, Lady Mary? What has become of Fräulein and your sister?'
'They have rushed off to St. Bees. Grandmother thought Lesbia looking
pale and out of spirits, and packed her off to the seaside at a minute's
notice.'
'What! She has left Fellside?' asked Hammond, paling suddenly, as if a
man had struck him. 'Lady Maulevrier, do I understand that Lady Lesbia
has gone away?'
He asked the question in an authoritative tone, with the air of a man
who had a right to be answered. The dowager wondered at his surpassing
insolence.
'My granddaughter has gone to the seaside with her governess,' she said,
haughtily.
'At a minute's notice?'
'At a minute's notice. I am not in the habit of hesitating about any
step which I consider necessary for my grandchildren's welfare.'
She looked him full in the face, with those falcon eyes of hers; and he
gave her back a look as resolute, and every whit as full of courage and
of pride.
'Well,' he said, after a very perceptible pause, 'no doubt your ladyship
has done wisely, and I must submit to your jurisdiction. But I had asked
Lady Lesbia a question, and I had been promised an answer.'
'Your question has been answered by Lady Lesbia. She left a note for
you,' replied Lady Maulevrier.
'Thanks,' answered Mr. Hammond, briefly, and he hurried from the room
without another word.
The letter was on the table in his bedroom. He had little hope of any
good waiting for him in a letter so written. The dowager and the world
had triumphed over a girl's dawning love, no doubt.
This was Lesbia's letter:
'Dear Mr. Hammond,--Lady Maulevrier desires me to say that the
proposal which you honoured me by making this morning is one which I
cannot possibly accept, and that any idea of an engagement between
you and me could result only in misery and humiliation to both. She
thinks it best, under these circumstances, that we should not again
meet, and I shall therefore have left Fellside before you receive
this letter.
'With all good wishes, very faithfully yours,
'LESBIA HASELDEN.'
'Very faithfully mine--faithful to her false training, to the worldly
mind that rules her; faithful to the gods of this world--Belial and
Mammon, and the Moloch Fashion. Poor cowardly soul! She loves me, and
owns as much, yet weakly flies from me, afraid to trust the strong arm
and the brave heart of the man who loves her, preferring the glittering
shams of the world to the reality of true and honest love. Well, child,
I have weighed you in the balance and found you wanting. Would to God it
had been otherwise! If you had been brave and bold for love's sake,
where is that pure and perfect chrysolite for which I would have
bartered you?'
He flung himself into a chair, and sat with his head bowed upon his
folded arms, and his eyes not innocent of tears. What would he not have
given to find truth and courage and scorn of the world's wealth in that
heart which he had tried to win. Did he think her altogether heartless
because she so glibly renounced him? No, he was too just for that. He
called her only half-hearted. She was like the cat in the adage,
'Letting I dare not, wait upon I would.' But he told himself with one
deep sigh of resignation that she was lost to him for ever.
'I have tried her, and found her not worth the winning,' he said.
The house, even the lovely landscape smiling under his windows, the
pastoral valley, smooth lake and willowy island, seemed hateful to him.
He felt himself hemmed round by those green hills, by yonder brown and
rugged wall of Nabb Scar, stifled for want of breathing space. The
landscape was lovely enough, but it was like a beautiful grave. He
longed to get away from it.
'Another man would follow her to St. Bees,' he said. 'I will not.'
He flung a few things into a Gladstone bag, sat down, and wrote a brief
note to Maulevrier, asking him to make his excuses to her ladyship. He
had made up his mind to go to Keswick that afternoon, and would rejoin
his friend to-morrow, at Carlisle. This done, he rang for Maulevrier's
valet, and asked that person to look after his luggage and bring it on
to Scotland with his master's things; and then, without a word of adieu
to anyone, John Hammond went out of the house, with the Gladstone bag in
his hand, and shook the dust of Fellside off his feet.
He ordered a fly at the Prince of Wales's Hotel, and drove to Keswick,
whence he went on to the Lodore. The gloom and spaciousness of
Derwentwater, grey in the gathering dusk, suited his humour better than
the emerald prettiness of Grasmere--the roar of the waterfall made music
in his ear. He dined in a private room, and spent the evening roaming on
the shores of the lake, and at eleven o'clock went back to his hotel and
sat late into the night reading Heine, and thinking of the girl who had
refused him.
Mr. Hammond's letter was delivered to Lord Maulevrier five minutes
before dinner, as he sat in the drawing-room with her ladyship and Mary.
Poor Mary had put on another pretty gown for dinner, still bent upon
effacing Mr. Hammond's image of her as a tousled, frantic creature in
torn and muddy raiment. She sat watching the door, just as Hammond had
watched it three hours ago.
'So,' said Maulevrier, 'your ladyship has succeeded in driving my friend
away. Hammond has left Fellside, and begs me to convey to you his
compliments and his grateful acknowledgment of all your kindness.'
'I hope I have not been uncivil to him,' answered Lady Maulevrier
coldly. 'As you had both made up your minds to go to-morrow, it can
matter very little that he should go to-day.'
Mary looked down at the ribbon and lace on her prettiest frock, and
thought that it mattered a great deal to her. Yet, if he had stayed,
would he have seen her frock or her? With his bodily eyes, perhaps, but
not with the eyes of his mind. Those eyes saw only Lesbia.
'No, perhaps it hardly matters,' answered Maulevrier, with suppressed
anger. 'The man is not worth talking about or thinking about. What is
he? Only the best, truest, bravest fellow I ever knew.'
'There are shepherds and guides in Grasmere of whom we could say almost
as much,' said Lady Maulevrier, 'yet you would scarcely expect me to
encourage one of them to pay his addresses to your sister? Pray spare us
all nonsense-talk, Maulevrier. This business is very well ended. You
ought never to have brought Mr. Hammond here.'
'I am sure of that now. I am very sorry I did bring him.'
'Oh, the man will not die for love. A disappointment of that kind is
good for a young man in his position. It will preserve him from more
vulgar entanglements, and perhaps from the folly of a too early
marriage.'
'That is a mighty philosophical way of looking at the matter.'
'It is the only true way. I hope when you are my age you will have
learnt to look at everything in a philosophical spirit.'
'Well, Lady Maulevrier, you have had it all your own way,' said the
young man, walking up and down the room in an angry mood. 'I hope you
will never be sorry for having come between two people who loved each
other, and might have made each other happy.'
'I shall never be sorry for having saved my granddaughter from an
imprudent marriage. Give me your arm, Maulevrier, and let me hear no
more about Mr. Hammond. We have all had quite enough of him,' said her
ladyship, as the butler announced dinner.