SOMETHING LIKE FRIENDSHIP.
Maude Hillary did not rise very early after that New Year’s
entertainment at the Cedars; painful emotions, troubles, doubts, and
perplexities, that had been unknown to her through all her previous
lifetime, had crowded suddenly upon her within the last few weeks, and
it was scarcely strange if she well-nigh fainted under the burden. She
slept for some hours on that first night of the year,--slept the
feverish, heavy slumber that waits upon trouble of mind and exhaustion
of body. The winter sun shone with a chill brightness between the
rose-coloured draperies of her window when she awoke from a painful
dream to a dim sense of actual trouble that was still more painful. She
remembered the scene of the previous night, her own desperate appeal for
help, Francis Tredethlyn’s avowal, and Julia’s indignation. She
remembered all this with a burning sense of shame, and with a tender and
pitying regret for Julia’s wrongs.
“And he did not love her!” she thought, “when I fancied they were so
happy and united, so much what lovers ought to be; it was all false,
after all, and he had deceived her. But why? What motive could he have
for doing her so great a wrong?”
Miss Hillary pondered upon this mystery while she dressed,--unaided this
morning, for she did not care to endure her maid’s sympathetic remarks
upon her pale face and heavy eyes; unaided, for how soon that pretty
Twickenham paradise, with all its dependencies, might pass away from
her, unsubstantial as the fairy palace in which Princess Balroubadour
floated away to Africa! Maude put on her plainest morning dress, and
went straight to Julia’s room, intending to make her peace with that
young lady, at any cost of self-humiliation. No base thought of Julia’s
obligations, no remembrance of the favours that had been heaped upon the
Irish girl in that hospitable habitation, had any place in Maude
Hillary’s mind. She thought of her friend as tenderly as she might have
thought of an only sister, and she remembered nothing except the great
wrong that had been done to Julia by the defection of her lover. The
breach between them was not to be narrowed. When Maude entered her
friend’s bedroom, she only found an empty and desolate-looking
apartment, in which open wardrobes and drawers, and a dressing-table,
cleared of all its pretty frivolities, bore witness to the angry Julia’s
departure.
Miss Hillary’s maid came running along the corridor, while her mistress
stood amazed in Miss Desmond’s deserted chamber.
“Oh, Miss,” cried the girl, “to think as you should get up and dress
yourself without a bit of help, while I’ve been waiting and listening
for the bell these last two hours! Miss Desmond, she have gone, Miss,
above an hour ago, and have took all her boxes in a fly to the station,
but wouldn’t have none of the servants to go with her; and Oh, Miss, she
looked as white as that toilet-cover.”
That was all Maude could hear of her sometime friend’s abrupt departure
from that pleasant dwelling-place, in which she had enjoyed such a
luxurious home. This was all that the servants could tell their young
mistress about the splendid Julia; but in the study, where the scene of
the previous night had been enacted, Maude found a letter directed to
herself, in Miss Desmond’s handwriting. It was a very brief missive;
almost such a one as an English Elizabeth, or a Russian Catherine, might
have written.
“For your father’s hospitality,” wrote Miss Desmond, “I shall always
remain grateful, and shall be sorry to hear of any evil that may befall
him. The debt I owe to _you_ I shall also know how to remember, and
shall wait the time and opportunity for its repayment.--J. D.”
Maude sat for some time musing sorrowfully upon this oracular epistle.
She was not in any wise terrified by her friend’s threats; she was only
sorry for Julia’s disappointment.
“She must have loved Francis Tredethlyn very dearly,” Miss Hillary
thought, sorrowfully, “or she would never feel his conduct so deeply.
And yet I have often fancied that she spoke of him coldly, almost
contemptuously.”
Poor Maude Hillary’s lessons in the mysteries of every-day life had only
just begun; she had yet to learn that there are other disappointments
than those which wait upon true love, other pains and sorrows than those
which have their root in the heart; and that there are such things as
marrying and giving in marriage for the love of thirty thousand a year.
She spent a weary day in the pleasant drawing-room, where the red glow
of a great fire illuminated as much prettiness in the way of china, and
Parian, and bronze, and ormolu, and enamel, as would have stocked a
_bric-à-brac_ shop in Wardour Street. She spent a tiresome day, that
seemed interminably long, lying on a low sofa near the fire, thinking of
her father’s troubles and Julia’s desertion. She thought also of that
cruel scene, in which she had seemed to play so contemptible a part.
What bitter humiliation it was to look back upon, now that the mad
impulse of the moment, the desperate courage that had made her snatch at
_any_ chance of help for her father, had altogether passed away! How
mean and pitiful the whole business seemed now to her calmer judgment,
looked upon in the cold light of common, sense! A borrower, a beggar
almost, a miserable suppliant to her friend’s affianced husband. What
wonder that Francis Tredethlyn had basely taken advantage of that false
position, to avow a passion whose least expression was an insult to her
on the lips of Julia Desmond’s lover? And then what wasted humiliation,
what unnecessary shame; for had not she turned upon him and upbraided
him in the next moment, forgetful of her father’s desperate need!
Such thoughts as these were scarcely pleasant company all through that
brief January day, which seemed so long to Maude Hillary. The slow hours
crept on, and she still lay tossing restlessly on the sofa, which
offered all that upholstery can offer for the consolation of a troubled
mind. A servant brought lamps, and crept from window to window, drawing
the curtains as stealthily as a burglar would have cut a square out of
the iron door of Mr. Hillary’s plate-room. The first dinner-bell rang
out in the old-fashioned cupola upon the roof, and informed all
Twickenham that it was time for the people at the Cedars to array
themselves for the evening meal: but Maude still lay upon the sofa,
hiding her flushed face in the pillows, and trying to quiet the
throbbing in her burning head. What did it matter? The poor
inexperienced girl broke down all at once in her social comedy. She
could act the wearisome play no longer; she wanted to give up all her
share in this world, and to go to bed and lie there quietly until she
died. All the common business of life seemed unutterably loathsome to
her,--the dressing and dining, the simpering small-talk, the finery of a
grand house no longer honestly maintained. Oh, that it could all be
swept away like the vision engendered out of some troubled slumber;
giving place to a suburban cottage and a life of decent toil!
“I have seen girls--well-bred, good-looking girls, trudging in the muddy
London streets, with music portfolios in their arms, while I have been
out shopping in my carriage,” she thought. “Oh, if I could only be like
one of these, and work for papa, and see him happy, smiling at me across
our little table, as I gave him his dinner, and not brooding as he does
now, hour after hour, hour after hour, in this grand drawing-room, with
the same settled look of trouble on his face!”
It was not only of late that Maude had watched her father anxiously and
sadly. Very often during the year just passed, and even in the year
preceding that, the girl had been alarmed by Lionel Hillary’s moody
looks and long gloomy reveries, out of which it was his wont to rouse
himself in a mechanical kind of way when strangers were present. But the
merchant always gave the same explanation of his sombre looks. Those
headaches, those constitutional headaches, which came upon him
constantly through the fatigue and worry of business--those terrible
headaches made an excuse for everything, and Maude’s fears about her
father related solely to his health. How should she understand the
dismal diagnosis of commercial disease? How should she imagine that
there was any limit to the fairy purse of Fortunatus--any chance of a
blight in Aladdin’s orchard of jewelled fruits?
The second dinner-bell rang, and there was no sign of the merchant’s
return. It had been a common thing lately for Lionel Hillary to keep his
cook in a fever of vexation over the hot plates and furnaces where the
viands for the diurnal banquet simmered and frizzled in their copper
receptacles. Maude felt no special alarm about her father. Why should he
hurry home to lengthen the long evening of brooding thought and care?
Why should she wish him home, when, out of all the depth of her love and
devotion, she could not conjure one word of comfort wherewith to greet
him?
She was thinking this when the door was opened suddenly by an eager
hand, and Mr. Hillary came into the room.
His daughter rose from the sofa, startled by the suddenness of his
entrance. It is a small action, that of opening a door, and entering a
room; but there was as great a change in Mr. Hillary’s performance of
it, as if twenty years had suddenly been lifted from his life.
“My darling!” he cried, taking his daughter in his arms, “it is you whom
I have to thank. It was your doing, was it not?”
“What, papa?”
“The money--the twenty thousand pounds.”
“Twenty thousand pounds!”
She thought the burning pain in her head had engendered some sudden
delirium. She could not believe that this was her father’s face, lighted
by a hopeful smile, such as she had not seen upon it during the last
three years.
“What twenty thousand pounds, papa?”
“The sum that has been placed to my credit to-day anonymously. The bank
people refused to tell me the name of my benefactor. I look to you,
Maude, to solve the mystery. There is only one man whom I know of, rich
enough to advance such a sum of money--young enough to do it in so
Utopian a manner. There is only one man, Maude, and his name is Francis
Tredethlyn. Tell me, my dear, have I guessed rightly?”
“You have, papa. Yes, I am sure you have. Poor fellow! and I was so
angry with him last night. It was very good of him to do this, papa.”
“Good of him!” cried the merchant--“good of him to lend twenty thousand
pounds, without a halfpennyworth of security! Upon my word, Maude, it
_is_ good; and I can assure you it’s a kind of goodness that is very
uncommon in the City.”
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