'NOW NOTHING LEFT TO LOVE OR HATE.'
The old man sat looking at Mary in silence for some moments; not a great
space of time, perhaps, as marked by the shadow on the dial behind them,
but to Mary that gaze was unpleasantly prolonged. He looked at her as if
he could read every pulsation in every fibre of her brain, and knew
exactly what it meant.
'Who are you?' he asked, at last.
'My name is Mary Haselden.'
'Haselden,' he repeated musingly, 'I have heard that name before.'
And then he resumed his former attitude, his chin resting on the handle
of his crutch-stick, his eyes bent upon the gravel path, their unholy
brightness hidden under the penthouse brows.
'Haselden,' he murmured, and repeated the name over and over again,
slowly, dreamily, with a troubled tone, like some one trying to work out
a difficult problem. 'Haselden--when? where?'
And then with a profound sigh he muttered, 'Harmless, quite harmless.
You may trust him anywhere. Memory a blank, a blank, a blank, my lord!'
His head sank lower upon his breast, and again he sighed, the sigh of a
spirit in torment, Mary thought. Her vivid imagination was already
interested, her quick sympathies were awakened.
She looked at him wonderingly, compassionately. So old, so infirm, and
with a mind astray; and yet there were indications in his speech and
manner that told of reason struggling against madness, like the light
behind storm-clouds. He had tones that spoke of a keen sensitiveness to
pain, not the lunatic's imbecile placidity. She observed him intently,
trying to make out what manner of man he was.
He did not belong to the peasant class: of that she felt assured. The
shrunken, tapering hand had never worked at peasant's work. The profile
turned towards her was delicate to effeminacy. The man's clothes were
shabby and old-fashioned, but they were a gentleman's garments, the
cloth of a finer texture than she had ever seen worn by her brother. The
coat, with its velvet collar, was of an old-world fashion. She
remembered having seen just such a coat in an engraved portrait of Count
d'Orsay, a print nearly fifty years old. No Dalesman born and bred ever
wore such a coat; no tailor in the Dales could have made it.
The old man looked up after a long pause, during which Mary felt afraid
to move. He looked at her again with inquiring eyes, as if her presence
there had only just become known to him.
'Who are you?' he asked again.
'I told you my name just now. I am Mary Haselden.'
'Haselden--that is a name I knew--once. Mary? I think my mother's name
was Mary. Yes, yes, I remember that. You have a sweet face, Mary--like
my mother's. She had brown eyes, like yours, and auburn hair. You don't
recollect her, perhaps?'
'Alas! poor maniac,' thought Mary, 'you have lost all count of time.
Fifty years to you in the confusion of your distraught brain, are but as
yesterday.'
'No, of course not, of course not,' he muttered; 'how should she
recollect my mother, who died while I was a boy? Impossible. That must
be half a century ago.'
'Good evening to you,' said Mary, rising with a great effort, so strong
was her feeling of being spellbound by the uncanny old man, 'I must go
indoors now.'
He stretched out his withered old hand, small, semi-transparent, with
the blue veins showing darkly under the parchment-coloured skin, and
grasped Mary's arm.
'Don't go,' he pleaded. 'I like your face, child; I like your voice--I
like to have you here. What do you mean by going indoors? Where do you
live?'
'There,' said Mary, pointing to the dead wall which faced them. 'In the
new part of Fellside House. I suppose you are staying in the old part
with James Steadman.'
She had made up her mind that this crazy old man must be a relation of
Steadman's to whom he gave hospitality either with or without her
ladyship's consent. All powerful as Lady Maulevrier had ever been in her
own house, it was just possible that now, when she was a prisoner in her
own rooms, certain small liberties might be taken, even by so faithful a
servant as Steadman.
'Staying with James Steadman,' repeated the old man in a meditative
tone. 'Yes, I stay with Steadman. A good servant, a worthy person. It is
only for a little while. I shall be leaving Westmoreland next week. And
you live in that house, do you?' pointing to the dead wall. 'Whose
house?'
'Lady Maulevrier's. I am Lady Maulevrier's granddaughter.'
'Lady Mau-lev-rier.' He repeated the name in syllables. 'A good name--an
old title--as old as the conquest. A Norman race those Maulevriers. And
you are Lady Maulevrier's granddaughter! You should be proud. The
Maulevriers were always a proud race.'
'Then I am no true Maulevrier,' answered Mary gaily.
She was beginning to feel more at her ease with the old man. He was
evidently mad, as mad as a March hare; but his madness seemed only the
harmless lunacy of extreme old age. He had flashes of reason, too. Mary
began to feel a friendly interest in him. To youth in its flush of life
and vigour there seems something so unspeakably sad and pitiable in
feebleness and age--the brief weak remnant of life, the wreck of body
and mind, sunning itself in the declining rays of a sun that is so soon
to shine upon its grave.
'What, are you not proud?' asked the old man.
'Not at all. I have been taught to consider myself a very insignificant
person; and I am going to marry a poor man. It would not become me to be
proud.'
'But you ought not to do that,' said the old man. 'You ought not to
marry a poor man. Poverty is a bad thing, my dear. You are a pretty
girl, and ought to marry a man with a handsome fortune. Poor men have no
pleasure in this world--they might just as well be dead. I am poor, as
you see. You can tell by this threadbare coat'--he looked down at the
sleeve from which the nap was worn in places--'I am as poor as a church
mouse.'
'But you have kind friends, I dare say,' Mary said, soothingly. 'You are
well taken care of, I am sure.'
'Yes, I am well taken care of--very well taken care of. How long is it,
I wonder--how many weeks, or months, or years, since they have taken
care of me? It seems a long, long time; but it is all like a dream--a
long dream. Once I used to try and wake myself. I used to try and
struggle out of that weary dream. But that was ages ago. I am satisfied
now--I am quite content now--so long as the weather is warm, and I can
sit out here in the sun.'
'It is growing chilly now,' said Mary, 'and I think you ought to go
indoors. I know that I must go.'
'Yes, I must go in now--I am getting shivery,' answered the old man,
meekly. 'But I want to see you again, Mary--I like your face--and I like
your voice. It strikes a chord here,' touching his breast, 'which has
long been silent. Let me see you again, child. When can I see you
again?'
'Do you sit here every afternoon when it is fine?'
'Yes, every day--all day long sometimes when the sun is warm.'
'Then I will come here to see you.'
'You must keep it a secret, then,' said the old man, with a crafty look.
'If you don't they will shut me up in the house, perhaps. They don't
like me to see people, for fear I should talk. I have heard Steadman say
so. Yet what should I talk about, heaven help me? Steadman says my
memory is quite gone, and that I am childish and harmless--childish and
harmless. I have heard him say that. You'll come again, won't you, and
you'll keep it a secret?'
Mary deliberated for a few minutes.
'I don't like secrets,' she said, 'there is generally something
dishonourable in them. But this would be an innocent secret, wouldn't
it? Well, I'll come to see you somehow, poor old man; and if Steadman
sees me here I will make everything right with him.'
'He mustn't see you here,' said the old man. 'If he does he will shut me
up in my own rooms again, as he did once, years and years ago.'
'But you have not been here long, have you?' Mary asked, wonderingly.
'A hundred years, at least. That's what it seems to me sometimes. And
yet there are times when it seems only a dream. Be sure you come again
to-morrow.'
'Yes, I promise you to come; good-night.'
'Good-night.'
Mary went back to the stable. The door was still open, but how could she
be sure that it would be open to-morrow? There was no other access that
she knew of to the quadrangle, except through the old part of the house,
and that was at times inaccessible to her.
She found a key--a big old rusty key--in the inside of the door, so she
shut and locked it, and put the key in her pocket. The door she supposed
had been left open by accident; at any rate this key made her mistress
of the situation. If any question should arise as to her conduct she
could have an explanation with Steadman; but she had pledged her word to
the poor mad old man, and she meant to keep her promise, if possible.
As she left the stable she saw Steadman riding towards the gate on his
grey cob. She passed him as she went back to the house.
Next day, and the day after that, and for many days, Mary used her key,
and went into the quadrangle at sundown to sit for half an hour or so
with the strange old man, who seemed to take an intense pleasure in her
company. The weather was growing warmer as May wore on towards June, and
this evening hour, between six and seven, was deliciously bright and
balmy. The seat by the sundial was screened on every side by the clipped
yew hedge, dense and tall, surrounding the circular, gravelled space, in
the centre of which stood the old granite dial, with its octagonal
pedestal and moss-grown steps. There, as in a closely-shaded arbour,
Lady Mary and her old friend were alone and unobserved. The yew-tree
boundary was at least eight feet high, and Mary and her companion could
hardly have been seen even from the upper windows of the low, old house.
Mary had fallen into the habit of going for her walk or her ride at five
o'clock every day, when she was not in attendance on Lady Maulevrier,
and after her walk or ride she slipped through the stable, and joined
her ancient friend. Stables and courtyard were generally empty at this
hour, the men only appearing at the sound of a big bell, which summoned
them from their snuggery when they were wanted. Most of Lady
Maulevrier's servants had arrived at that respectable stage of long
service in which fidelity is counted as a substitute for hard work.
The old man was not particularly conversational, and was apt to repeat
the same things over and over again, with a sublime unconsciousness of
being prosy; but he liked to hear Mary talk, and he listened with
seeming intelligence. He questioned her about the world outside his
cloistered life--the wars and rumours of wars--and, although the names
of the questions and the men of the day seemed utterly strange to him,
and he had to have them repeated to him again and again, he seemed to
take an intelligent interest in the stirring facts of the time, and
listened intently when Mary gave him a synopsis of her last newspaper
reading.
When the news was exhausted, Mary hit upon a more childish form of
amusement, and that was to tell the story of any novel or poem she had
been lately reading. This was so successful that in this manner Mary
related the stories of most of Shakespeare's plays; of Byron's Bride of
Abydos, and Corsair; of Keats's Lamia; of Tennyson's Idylls; and of a
heterogenous collection of poetry and romance, in all of which stories
the old man took a vivid interest.
'You are better to me than the sunshine,' he told Mary one day when she
was leaving him. 'The world grows darker when you leave me.'
Once at this parting moment he took both her hands, and drew her nearer
to him, peering into her face in the clear evening light.
'You are like my mother,' he said. 'Yes, you are very like her. And who
else is it that you are like? There is some one else, I know. Yes, some
one else! I remember! It is a face in a picture--a picture at Maulevrier
Castle.'
'What do you know of Maulevrier Castle?' asked Mary, wonderingly.
Maulevrier was the family seat in Herefordshire, which had not been
occupied by the elder branch for the last forty years. Lady Maulevrier
had let it during her son's minority to a younger branch of the family,
a branch which had intermarried with the world of successful commerce,
and was richer than the heads of the house. This occupation of
Maulevrier Castle had continued to the present time, and was likely
still to continue, Maulevrier having no desire to set up housekeeping in
a feudal castle in the marches.
'How came you to know Maulevrier Castle?' repeated Mary.
'I was there once. There is a picture by Lely, a portrait of a Lady
Maulevrier in Charles the Second's time. The face is yours, my love. I
have heard of such hereditary faces. My mother was proud of resembling
that portrait.'
'What did your mother know of Maulevrier Castle?'
The old man did not answer. He had lapsed into that dream-like
condition into which he often sank, when his brain was not stimulated to
attention and coherency by his interest in Mary's narrations.
Mary concluded that this man had once been a servant in the Maulevrier
household, perhaps at the place in Herefordshire, and that all his old
memories ran in one groove--the house of Maulevrier.
The freedom of her intercourse with him was undisturbed for about three
weeks; and at the end of that time she came face to face with James
Steadman as she emerged from the circle of greenery.
'You here, Lady Mary?' he exclaimed with an angry look.
'Yes, I have been sitting talking to that poor old man,' Mary answered,
cheerily, concluding that Steadman's look of vexation arose from his
being detected in the act of harbouring a contraband relation. 'He is a
very interesting character. A relation of yours, I suppose?'
'Yes, he is a relation,' replied Steadman. 'He is very old, and his mind
has long been gone. Her ladyship is kind enough to allow me to give him
a home in her house. He is quite harmless, and he is in nobody's way.'
'Of course not, poor soul. He is only a burden to himself. He talks as
if his life had been very weary. Has he been long in that sad state?'
'Yes, a long time.'
Steadman's manner to Lady Mary was curt at the best of times. She had
always stood somewhat in awe of him, as a person delegated with
authority by her grandmother, a servant who was much more than a
servant. But to-day his manner was more abrupt than usual.
'He spoke of Maulevrier Castle just now,' said Mary, determined not to
be put down too easily. 'Was he once in service there?'
'He was. Pray how did you find your way into this garden, Lady Mary?'
'I came through the stable. As it is my grandmother's garden I suppose I
did not take an unwarrantable liberty in coming,' said Mary, drawing
herself up, and ready for battle.
'It is Lady Maulevrier's wish that this garden should be reserved for my
use,' answered Steadman. 'Her ladyship knows that my uncle walks here of
an afternoon, and that, owing to his age and infirmities, he can go
nowhere else; and if only on that account, it is well that the garden
should be kept private. Lunatics are rather dangerous company, Lady
Mary, and I advise you to give them a wide berth wherever you may meet
them.'
'I am not afraid of your uncle,' said Mary, resolutely. 'You said
yourself just now that he is quite harmless: and I am really interested
in him, poor old creature. He likes me to sit with him a little of an
afternoon and to talk to him; and if you have no objection I should like
to do so, whenever the weather is fine enough for the poor old man to be
out in the garden at this hour.'
'I have a very great objection, Lady Mary, and that objection is chiefly
in your interest,' answered Steadman, firmly. 'No one who is not
experienced in the ways of lunatics can imagine the danger of any
association with them--their consummate craftiness, their capacity for
crime. Every madman is harmless up to a certain point--mild,
inoffensive, perhaps, up to the very moment in which he commits some
appalling crime. And then people cry out upon the want of prudence, the
want of common-sense which allowed such an act to be possible. No, Lady
Mary, I understand the benevolence of your motive, but I cannot permit
you to run such a risk.'
'I am convinced that the poor old creature is perfectly harmless,' said
Mary, with suppressed indignation. 'I shall certainly ask Lady
Maulevrier to speak to you on the subject. Perhaps her influence may
induce you to be a little more considerate to your unhappy relation.'
'Lady Mary, I beg you not to say a word to Lady Maulevrier on this
subject. You will do me the greatest injury if you speak of that man. I
entreat you--'
But Mary was gone. She passed Steadman with her head held high and her
eyes sparkling with anger. All that was generous, compassionate, womanly
in her nature was up in arms against her grandmother's steward. Of all
other things, Mary Haselden most detested cruelty; and she could see in
Steadman's opposition to her wish nothing but the most cold-hearted
cruelty to a poor dependent on his charity.
She went in at the stable door, shut and locked it, and put the key in
her pocket as usual. But she had little hope that this mode of access
would be left open to her. She knew enough of James Steadman's
character, from hearsay rather than from experience, to feel sure that
he would not easily give way. She was not surprised, therefore, on
returning from her ride on the following afternoon, to find the disused
harness-room half filled with trusses of straw, and the door of
communication completely blocked. It would be impossible for her to
remove that barricade without assistance; and then, how could she be
sure that the door itself was not nailed up, or secured in some way?
It was a delicious sunny afternoon, and she could picture the lonely old
man sitting in his circle of greenery beside the dial, which for him had
registered so many dreary and solitary hours, waiting for the little ray
of social sunlight which her presence shed over his monotonous life. He
had told her that she was like the sunshine to him--better than
sunshine--and she had promised not to forsake him. She pictured him
waiting, with his hand clasped upon his crutch-stick, his chin resting
upon his hands, his eyes poring on the ground, as she had seen him for
the first time. And as the stable clock chimed the quarters he would
begin to think himself abandoned, forgotten; if, indeed, he took any
count of the passage of time, of which she was not sure. His mind seemed
to have sunk into a condition which was between dreaming and waking, a
state to which the outside world seemed only half real--a phase of being
in which there was neither past nor future, only the insufferable
monotony of an everlasting _now_.
Pity is so near akin to love that Mary, in her deep compassion for this
lonely, joyless, loveless existence, felt a regard which was almost
affection for this strange old man, whose very name was unknown to her.
True that there was much in his countenance and manner which was
sinister and repellant. He was a being calculated to inspire fear rather
than love; but the fact that he had courted her presence and looked to
her for consolation had touched Mary's heart, and she had become
reconciled to all that was forbidding and disagreeable in the lunatic
physiognomy. Was he not the victim of a visitation which entitled him to
respect as well as to pity?
For some days Mary held her peace, remembering Steadman's vehement
entreaty that she should not speak of this subject to her grandmother.
She was silent, but the image of the old man haunted her at all times
and seasons. She saw him even in her dreams--those happy dreams of the
girl who loves and is beloved, and before whom the pathway of the future
smiles like a vision of Paradise. She heard him calling to her with a
piteous cry of distress, and on waking from this troubled dream she
fancied that he must be dying, and that this sound in her dreams was one
of those ghostly warnings which give notice of death. She was so unhappy
about him, altogether so distressed at being compelled to break her
word, that she could not prevent her thoughts from dwelling upon him,
not even after she had poured out all her trouble to John Hammond in a
long letter, in which her garden adventures and her little skirmish with
Steadman were graphically described.
To her intense discomfiture Hammond replied that he thoroughly approved
of Steadman's conduct in the matter. However agreeable Mary's society
might be to the lunatic, Mary's life was far too precious to be put
within the possibility of peril by any such _tête-à-têtes_. If the
person was the same old man whom Hammond had seen on the Fell, he was a
most sinister-looking creature, of whom any evil act might be fairly
anticipated. In a word Mr. Hammond took Steadman's view of the matter,
and entreated his dearest Mary to be careful, and not to allow her warm
heart to place her in circumstances of peril.
This was most disappointing to Mary, who expected her lover to agree
with her upon every point; and if he had been at Fellside the
difference of opinion might have given rise to their first quarrel. But
as she had a few hours' leisure for reflection before the post went out,
she had time to get over her anger, and to remember that promise of
obedience given, half in jest, half in earnest, at the little inn beyond
Dunmail Raise. So she wrote submissively enough, only with just a touch
of reproach at Jack's want of compassion for a poor old man who had such
strong claims upon everybody's pity.
The image of the poor old man was not to be banished from her thoughts,
and on that very afternoon, when her letter was dispatched, Mary went on
a visit of exploration to the stables, to see if by any chance Mr.
Steadman's plans for isolating his unhappy relative might be
circumvented.
She went all over the stables--into loose boxes, harness and saddle
rooms, sheds for wood, and sheds for roots, but she found no door
opening into the quadrangle, save that door by which she had entered,
and which was securely defended by a barricade of straw that had been
doubled by a fresh delivery of trusses since she first saw it. But while
she was prowling about the sweet-scented stable, much disappointed at
the result of her investigations, she stumbled against a ladder which
led to an open trap-door. Mary mounted the ladder, and found herself
amidst the dusty atmosphere of a large hayloft, half in shadow, half in
the hot bright sunlight. A large shutter was open in the sloping roof,
the roof that sloped towards the quadrangle, an open patch admitting
light and air. Mary, light and active as a squirrel, sprang upon a truss
of hay, and in another moment had swung herself in the opening of the
shutter, and was standing with her feet on the wooden ledge at the
bottom of the massive frame, and her figure supported against the slope
of thick thatched roof. Perched, or half suspended, thus, she was just
high enough to look over the top of the yew-tree hedge into the circle
round the sundial.
Yes, there was the unhappy victim of fate, and man's inhumanity to man.
There sat the shrunken figure, with drooping head, and melancholy
attitude--the bent shoulders of feeble old age, the patriarchal locks so
appealing to pity. There he sat with eyes poring upon the ground just as
she had seen him the first time. And while she had sat with him and
talked with him he had seemed to awaken out of that dull despondency,
gleams of pleasure had lighted up his wrinkled face--he had grown
animated, a sentient living instead of a corpse alive. It was very hard
that this little interval of life, these stray gleams of gladness should
be denied to the poor old creature, at the behest of James Steadman.
Mary would have felt less angrily upon the subject had she believed in
Steadman's supreme carefulness of her own safety; but in this she did
not believe. She looked upon the house-steward's prudence as a
hypocritical pretence, an affectation of fidelity and wisdom, by which
he contrived to gratify the evil tendencies of his own hard and cruel
nature. For some reasons of his own, perhaps constrained thereto by
necessity, he had given the old man an asylum for his age and infirmity:
but while thus giving him shelter he considered him a burden, and from
mere perversity of mind refused him all such consolations as were
possible to his afflicted state, mewed him up as a prisoner, cut him off
from the companionship of his fellow-men.
Two years ago, before Mary emerged from her Tomboyhood, she would have
thought very little of letting herself out of the loft window and
clambering down the side of the stable, which was well furnished with
those projections in the way of gutters, drain-pipes, and century-old
ivy, which make such a descent easy. Two years ago Mary's light figure
would have swung itself down among the ivy leaves, and she would have
gloried in the thought of circumventing James Steadman so easily. But
now Mary was a young lady--a young lady engaged to be married, and
impressed with the responsibilities of her position, deeply sensible of
a new dignity, for the preservation of which she was in a manner
answerable to her lover.
'What would _he_ think of me if I went scrambling down the ivy?' she
asked herself; 'and after he has approved of Steadman's heartless
restrictions, it would be rank rebellion against him if I were to do it.
Poor old man, "Thou art so near and yet so far," as Lesbia's song says.'
She blew a kiss on the tips of her fingers towards that sad solitary
figure, and then dropped back into the dusty duskiness of the loft. But
although her new ideas upon the subject of 'Anstand'--or good
behaviour--prevented her getting the better of Steadman by foul means,
she was all the more intent upon having her own way by fair means, now
that the impression of the old man's sadness and solitude had been
renewed by the sight of the drooping figure by the sundial.
She went back to the house, and walked straight to her grandmother's
room. Lady Maulevrier's couch had been placed in front of the open
window, from which she was watching the westward-sloping sun above the
long line of hills, dark Helvellyn, rugged Nabb Scarr, and verdant
Fairfield, with its two giant arms stretched out to enfold and shelter
the smiling valley.
'Heavens! child, what an object you are;' exclaimed her ladyship, as
Mary drew near. 'Why, your gown is all over dust, and your hair is--why
your hair is sprinkled with hay and clover. I thought you had learnt to
be tidy, since your engagement. What have you been doing with yourself?'
'I have been up in the hayloft,' answered Mary, frankly; and, intent on
one idea, she said impetuously, 'Dear grandmother, I want you to do me a
favour--a very great favour. There is a poor old man, a relation of
Steadman's, who lives with him, out of his mind, but quite harmless, and
he is so sad and lonely, so dreadfully sad, and he likes me to sit with
him in the garden, and tell him stories, and recite verses to him, poor
soul, just as if he were a child, don't you know, and it is such a
pleasure to me to be a little comfort to him in his lonely wretched
life, and James Steadman says I mustn't go near him, because he may
change at any moment into a dangerous lunatic, and do me some kind of
harm, and I am not a bit afraid, and I'm sure he won't do anything of
the kind, and, please grandmother, tell Steadman, that I am to be
allowed to go and sit with his poor old prisoner half an hour every
afternoon.'
Carried along the current of her own impetuous thoughts, Mary had talked
very fast, and had not once looked at her grandmother while she was
speaking. But now at the end of her speech her eyes sought Lady
Maulevrier's face in gentle entreaty, and she recoiled involuntarily at
the sight she saw there.
The classic features were distorted almost as they had been in the worst
period of the paralytic seizure. Lady Maulevrier was ghastly pale, and
her eyes glared with an awful fire as they gazed at Mary. Her whole
frame was convulsed, and she, the cripple, whose right limbs lay numbed
and motionless upon the couch, made a struggling motion as she raised
herself a little with the left arm, as if, by very force of angry will,
she would have lifted herself up erect before the girl who had offended
her.
For a few moments her lips moved dumbly; and there was something
unspeakably awful in those convulsed features, that livid countenance,
and those voiceless syllables trembling upon the white dry lips.
At last speech came.
'Girl, you were created to torment me;' she exclaimed.
'Dear grandmother, what harm have I done?' faltered Mary.
'What harm? You are a spy. Your very existence is a torment and a
danger. Would to God that you were married. Yes, married to a
chimney-sweep, even--and out of my way.'
'If that is your only difficulty,' said Mary, haughtily, 'I dare say Mr.
Hammond would be kind enough to marry me to-morrow, and take me out of
your ladyship's way.'
Lady Maulevrier's head sank back upon her pillows, those velvet and
satin pillows, rich with delicate point lace and crewel-work adornment,
the labour of Mary and Fräulein, pillows which could not bring peace to
the weary head, or deaden the tortures of memory. The pale face
recovered its wonted calm, the heavy lips drooped over the weary eyes,
and for a few moments there was silence in the room.
Then Lady Maulevrier raised her eyelids, and looked at her granddaughter
imploringly, pathetically.
'Forgive me, Mary,' she said. 'I don't know what I was saying just now;
but whatever it was, forgive and forget it. I am a wretched old woman,
heart sick, heart sore, worn out by pain and weariness. There are times
when I am beside myself; moments when I am not much saner than
Steadman's lunatic uncle. This is one of my worst days, and you came
bouncing in upon me, and tortured my nerves by your breathless torrent
of words. Pray forgive me, if I said anything rude.'
'If,' thought Mary: but she tried to be charitable, and to believe that
Lady Maulevrier's attack upon her was a new phase of hysteria, so she
murmured meekly, 'There is nothing for me to forgive, grandmother, and I
am very sorry I disturbed you.'
She was going to leave the room, thinking that her absence would be a
relief to the invalid, when Lady Maulevrier called her back.
'You were asking me something--something about that old man of
Steadman's,' she said with a weary air, half indifference, half the
lassitude natural to an invalid who sinks under the burden of monotonous
days. 'What was it all about? I forget.'
Mary repeated her request, but this time in measured tones.
'My dear, I am sure that Steadman was only properly prudent.' answered
Lady Maulevrier, 'and that it would never do for me to interfere in this
matter. It stands to reason that he must know his old kinsman's
temperament much better than you can, after your half-hour interviews
with him in the garden. Pray how long have these garden scenes been
going on, by-the-by?' asked her ladyship, with a searching look at
Mary's downcast face.
The girl had not altogether recovered from the rude shock of her
grandmother's late attack.
'About three weeks,' faltered Mary. 'But it is more than a week now
since I was in the garden. It was quite by accident that I first went
there. Perhaps I ought to explain.'
And Mary, not being gainsayed, went on to describe that first afternoon
when she had seen the old man brooding in the sun. She drew quite a
pathetic picture of his joyless solitude, whilst all nature around and
about him was looking so glad in the spring sunshine. There was a long
silence, a silence of some minutes, when she had done; and Lady
Maulevrier lay with lowered eyelids, deep in thought. Mary began to hope
that she had touched her grandmother's heart, and that her request would
be granted: but she was soon undeceived.
'I am sorry to be obliged to refuse you a favour, Mary, but I must stand
by Steadman,' said her ladyship. 'When I gave Steadman permission to
shelter his aged kinsman in my house, I made it a condition that the old
man should be kept in the strictest care by himself and his wife, and
that nobody in this establishment should be troubled by him. This
condition has been so scrupulously adhered to that the old man's
existence is known to no one in this house except you and me; and you
have discovered the fact only by accident. I must beg you to keep this
secret to yourself. Steadman has particular reasons for wishing to
conceal the fact of his uncle's residence here. The old man is not
actually a lunatic. If he were we should be violating the law by keeping
him here. He is only imbecile from extreme old age; the body has
outlived the mind, that is all. But should any officious functionary
come down upon Fellside, this imbecility might be called madness, and
the poor old creature whom you regard so compassionately, and whose case
you think so pitiable here, would be carried off to a pauper lunatic
asylum, which I can assure you would be a much worse imprisonment than
Fellside Manor.'
'Yes, indeed, grandmother,' exclaimed Mary, whose vivid imagination
conjured up a vision of padded cells, strait-waist-coats,
murderously-inclined keepers, chains, handcuffs, and bread and water
diet, 'now I understand why the poor old soul has been kept so
close--why nobody knows of his existence. I beg Steadman's pardon with
all my heart. He is a much better fellow than I thought him.'
'Steadman is a thoroughly good fellow, and as true as steel,' said her
ladyship. 'No one can know that so well as the mistress he has served
faithfully for nearly half a century. I hope, Mary, you have not been
chattering to Fräulein or any one else about your discovery.'
'No, grandmother, I have not said a word to a mortal, but----'
'Oh, there is a "but," is there? I understand. You have not been so
reticent in your letters to Mr. Hammond.'
'I tell him all that happens to me. There is very little to write about
at Fellside; yet I contrive to send him volumes. I often wonder what
poor girls did in the days of Miss Austen's novels, when letters cost a
shilling or eighteen pence for postage, and had to be paid for by the
recipient. It must have been such a terrible check upon affection.'
'And upon twaddle,' said Lady Maulevrier. 'Well you told Mr. Hammond
about Steadman's old uncle. What did he say?'
'He thoroughly approved Steadman's conduct in forbidding me to go and
see him,' answered Mary. 'I couldn't help thinking it rather unkind of
him; but, of course, I feel that he must be right,' concluded Mary, as
much as to say that her lover was necessarily infallible.
'I always thought Mr. Hammond a sensible young man, and I am glad to
find that his conduct does not belie my good opinion,' said Lady
Maulevrier. 'And now, my dear, you had better go and make yourself
decent before dinner. I am very weary this afternoon, and even our
little talk has exhausted me.'
'Yes, dear grandmother, I am going this instant. But let me ask one
question: What is the poor old man's name?'
'His name!' said her ladyship, looking at Mary with a puzzled air, like
a person whose thoughts are far away. 'His name--oh, Steadman, I
suppose, like his nephew's; but if I ever heard the name I have
forgotten it, and I don't know whether the kinship is on the father's or
the mother's side. Steadman asked my permission to give shelter to a
helpless old relative, and I gave it. That is really all I remember.'
'Only one other question,' pleaded Mary, who was brimful of curiosity
upon this particular subject. 'Has he been at Fellside very long?'
'Oh, I really don't know; a year, or two, or three, perhaps. Life in
this house is all of a piece. I hardly keep count of time.'
'There is one thing that puzzles me very much,' said Mary, still
lingering near her grandmother's couch, the balmy evening air caressing
her as she leaned against the embrasure of the wide Tudor window, the
sun drawing nearer to the edge of the hills, an orb of yellow flame,
soon to change to a gigantic disk of lurid fire. 'I thought from the old
man's talk that he, too, must be an old servant in our family. He talked
of Maulevrier Castle, and said that I reminded him of a picture by Lely,
a portrait of a Lady Maulevrier.
'It is quite possible that he may have been in service there, though I
do not remember to have heard anything about it,' answered her ladyship,
carelessly. 'The Steadmans come from that part of the country, and
theirs is a hereditary service. Good-night, Mary, I am utterly weary.
Look at that glorious light yonder, that mighty world of fire and flame,
without which our little world would be dark and dreary. I often think
of that speech of Macbeth's, "I 'gin to be aweary of the sun." There
comes a time, Mary, when even the sun is a burden.'
'Only for such a man as Macbeth,' said Mary, 'a man steeped in crime.
Who can wonder that he wanted to hide himself from the sun? But, dear
grandmother, there ought to be plenty of happiness left for you, even if
your recovery is slow to come. You are so clever, you have such
resources in your own mind and memory, and you have your grandchildren,
who love you dearly,' added Mary, tenderly.
Her nature was so full of pity that an entirely new affection had grown
up in her mind for Lady Maulevrier since that terrible evening of the
paralytic stroke.
'Yes, and whose love, as exemplified by Lesbia, is shown in a hurried
scrap of a letter scrawled once a week--a bone thrown to a hungry dog,'
said her ladyship, bitterly.
'Lesbia is so lovely, and she is so surrounded by flatterers and
admirers,' murmured Mary, excusingly.
'Oh, my dear, if she had a heart she would not forget me, even in the
midst of her flatterers. Good-night again, Mary. Don't try to console
me. For some natures consolations and soothing suggestions are like
flowers thrown upon a granite tomb. They do just as much and just as
little good to the heart that lies under the stone. Good-night.'
Mary stooped to kiss her grandmother's forehead, and found it cold as
marble. She murmured a loving good-night, and left the mistress of
Fellside in her loneliness.
A footman would come in and light the lamps, and draw the velvet
curtains, presently, and shut out the later glories of sunset. And then
the butler himself would come and arrange the little dinner table by her
ladyship's couch, and would himself preside over the invalid's simple
dinner, which would be served exquisitely, with all that is daintiest
and most costly in Salviati glass and antique silver. Yet better the
dinner of herbs, and love and peace withal, than the choicest fare or
the most perfect service.
Before the coming of the servants and the lamps there was a pause of
silence and loneliness, an interval during which Lady Maulevrier lay
gazing at the declining orb, the lower rim of which now rested on the
edge of the hill. It seemed to grow larger and more dazzling as she
looked at it.
Suddenly she clasped her left hand across her eyes, and said aloud--
'Oh, what a hateful life! Almost half a century of lies and hypocricies
and prevarications and meannesses! For what? For the glory of an empty
name; and for a fortune that may slip from my dead hand to become the
prey of rogues and adventurers. Who can forecast the future?'