TAKING IT QUIETLY.
“If you could know all, Harcourt, as you never can, you might
excuse--you might forgive----”
Harcourt Lowther, very quick of apprehension always, especially so where
his own interests were concerned, had taken careful note of these broken
sentences uttered by Maude Hillary, and, rowing Londonwards in the
summer darkness, pondered on them long and deliberately, only arousing
himself now and then from his sombre reverie, in order to express his
profound contempt for some amateur waterman who was just saved from a
foul by the superior skill of the young officer.
What did it mean? That was the question which Mr. Lowther set himself to
answer.
“It means something more than the caprice of a shallow-hearted jilt,” he
thought, as he rested on his oars and lighted his cigar. “How pale she
grew at sight of me! That white, agonized look in her face was real
despair. ‘If I could know all!’ she said. All _what_? There’s a mystery
somewhere. Maude Hillary is the last woman in the world to throw over a
poor lover for the sake of a rich one. The sentimental girl, who was
ready to keep her engagement with me at the sacrifice of her father’s
fortune, would scarcely marry a clownish rustic for the sake of his
thirty thousand a year. Besides, these heiresses, who have never known
what it is to have a wish denied them, are the most romantic creatures
in creation, and cherish sublimely absurd ideas upon the sordid dross
question. No, I cannot think that Maude would be influenced by any
mercenary considerations--and yet how else----?”
The villas and villages on the river-banks flitted past him like phantom
habitations in the dim light. The flat shores of Battersea; the dingy
roofs and chimneys of crowded Chelsea and manufacturing Lambeth; the
bridges and barges; the low-lying prison, lurking like some crouching
beast upon the swampy ground, shifted by as the oars dipped in the quiet
water, while Harcourt Lowther’s light wherry sped homeward with the
tide. But all the length of his water-journey he could find no
satisfactory answer to that question about Maude Hillary; and when he
relinquished his boat to its rightful owner at a certain landing-place
in Westminster, he was still undecided as to the meaning of those broken
phrases which had dropped from the lips of the merchant’s daughter in
the first moment of surprise and emotion.
“I dare say it is only the old story after all,” he thought, as he
walked towards the Strand, in the purlieus of which he had taken up his
quarters. “Lionel Hillary, being as rich as Crœsus, is determined that
no poor man shall profit by his daughter’s fortune. Water runs to the
river, and Maude’s dowry will go to swell that old Cornish miser’s
savings. It’s only my usual luck. I am engaged to a beautiful woman with
a hundred thousand or so for a fortune, and I find a victorious rival in
the man who cleans my boots.”
But Mr. Lowther had not settled the question even yet. Lying awake and
feverishly restless in his lodging in Norfolk Street, Miss Hillary’s
pale face was still before him, the sound of her imploring tones was
perpetually in his ear.
“‘If I knew all, I might forgive, I might excuse!’ There must have been
some meaning in those words, some secret involved in them. Surely, if
her father had forced this marriage upon her, after the manner of some
tyrannical old parent in a stage-play,--surely, if that had been the
case, she would have candidly told me the truth; she would have pleaded
the best excuse a woman can have. There must be some secret reason for
this marriage, and I must be a consummate fool if I fail in getting to
the bottom of the mystery.”
Mr. Lowther breakfasted early the next morning, and dressed himself with
his accustomed neatness before going out. He had no body-servant now
whom he could badger and worry when the world went ill with him; or that
individual would most assuredly have paid the penalty of Miss Hillary’s
broken faith. Harcourt Lowther, the younger son, was too poor to keep or
pay a valet. He had grown weary of waiting for promotion in the army, as
he had sickened of hoping for advancement at the bar, and had sold his
commission. The world was all before him now, as it had been seven years
ago, when he had first looked about him for a profession. The world was
all before him, and his one chance of fortune, the possibility of a
marriage with Maude Hillary, seemed entirely lost to him. It was
scarcely strange if his spirits sank before the dismal blankness of the
prospect which he contemplated that morning, as he loitered over his
breakfast of London eggs and lodging-house toast and coffee.
He went out a little after twelve o’clock, hailed the first prowling
hansom he encountered in the Strand, and ordered the man to drive to a
certain street in the City, sacred to the stockbroking and money-making
interests. Here he alighted, dismissed the cab, turned into a narrow
court, still more entirely sacred to stockbroking, and entered a little
office, where there was a desk, two or three horsehair chairs, a great
many bills hanging against the wall, all relating to the stockbroking
interests, and a six-foot screen of wooden panelling, dividing the small
outer office from a larger inner office.
Mr. Lowther walked straight to this screen, and standing on tip-toe,
looked over into the second office.
A gentleman with sandy whiskers, a light overcoat, and a white hat, was
standing at a desk, and jotting some pencil memoranda upon the margins
of a file of documents, which he was turning over with a certain
rapidity and precision of touch peculiar to a man of business.
“Can you spare a quarter of an hour of your valuable time from the
calculation of last year’s prices for the Fiji Island Grand Junction
Stock in order to devote it to the claims of friendship?” asked Mr.
Lowther.
The clerks smiled as they looked up from their desks; and the gentleman
in the white hat dropped his pencil, and ran to a little wooden door in
the partition, over which Harcourt Lowther’s hat made itself visible.
“My dear Lowther!” he exclaimed, presenting himself in the smaller
office, and stretching out both his hands towards the intruder; “this
_is_ a surprise; I thought you were at the Antipodes.”
“Yes, that’s the way of the world,” answered Mr. Lowther, rather
peevishly; “a man is banished to some outlandish hole at the remotest
end of the universe, _ergo_ he’s never to return to the civilized half
of the globe.”
“But it seems only yesterday when----”
“And that’s another cruel thing a man’s friends say to him when he does
turn up in the civilized hemisphere,” interrupted Mr. Lowther. “‘It
seems only yesterday when you left us;’ that is to say, life has been so
pleasant and rapid for us, amidst all the gaieties and luxuries and
successes of the most wonderful city in the world, that we are utterly
unable to believe in the dreary months and years that you’ve had to drag
out, poor devil, in your hole on the other side of the line. That’s what
a fellow’s friends _mean_ when they talk their confounded humbug about
it’s only seeming yesterday.”
Harcourt Lowther’s City friend was not the most brilliant or original of
men when you took him away from the stockbroking interests. He stared
blankly during Mr. Lowther’s discontented remarks upon the selfishness
of mankind.
“Haw! that’s good. Meant no offence by allusion to yesterday; only meant
that I was jolly glad to see you, you know, and so on. But, you see, a
fellow turning up in the City when you’ve been given to understand that
he’s in Van Diemen’s Land is rather a surprise, you know. Can I do
anything for you? I’ll tell you what, old fellow; I can put you up to a
good thing in the Etruscan Loan,--panic prices,--nine percent, and
certain to turn up trumps in the long run.”
Mr. Lowther smiled bitterly.
“Do you suppose that I’ve any money to invest; or that if I had money,
I’m the sort of man to sink the glorious principal for the sake of some
miserable dribblings in the way of interest? No, my dear Wilderson, you
_can_ do me a good turn, but it’s in quite another direction. Just step
this way.”
He put his hand on his friend’s shoulder, and led him to the door
leading into the court. Here, safely out of the hearing of the clerks at
work in the inner office, Mr. Lowther lowered his voice to a
confidential tone.
“Wilderson,” he said, “I think you know Lionel Hillary, the Australian
merchant?”
“Hillary and Co.?” exclaimed Mr. Wilderson,--“I should flatter myself I
did.”
“I want you to tell me all about him--how he stands--how he has stood
for some time past; in short, all you know about him.”
The stockbroker pulled his hay-coloured whiskers thoughtfully, and shook
his head.
“These sort of things are rather difficult to _know_,” he said, “but a
man may have his thoughts about ’em.”
“And what are your thoughts? Hang it, man, speak out. You talked just
now of being ready to serve me. You can serve me in this matter, if you
choose.”
Mr. Wilderson shrugged his shoulders, and again pulled his whiskers in a
reflective mood.
“Dear boy,” he said presently, “come out into the court.”
Evidently in Mr. Wilderson’s mind the court was as some primeval forest,
wherein no listener’s ears could penetrate.
Out in the court the stockbroker hitched his arm through that of
Harcourt Lowther, and began to discourse upon Lionel Hillary, or Hillary
and Co., as Mr. Wilderson preferred to designate him. He said a great
deal in a low, confidential voice, and Harcourt Lowther’s lower jaw fell
a little as he listened. One thing was made clear to the ex-officer, and
that was, that Lionel Hillary’s affairs had been hinted at by the
knowing ones as rather shaky; that there had been even whispers of that
awful word, “suspension:” but that somehow or other Hillary and Co. had
contrived to right themselves; and that it was supposed by the aforesaid
knowing ones that the Australian merchant had found a wealthy backer.
“There’s fresh blood been let into his business, you may rely upon it,
dear boy,” said Mr. Wilderson. “I know that he was in Queer Street last
Christmas. Bills referred to drawer, and that sort of thing. The bankers
were beginning to get shy of his paper. I held a little of it myself,
and a deuced deal of trouble I had to plant it.”
This and much more to hear did Harcourt Lowther seriously incline. Then
he asked Mr. Wilderson to dine with him at a certain noted establishment
in the Strand, and left the court very grave of aspect and slow of step.
“So my lovely Maude is not a millionaire’s daughter after all,” he
thought. “And my friend Hillary has been dipping his capacious paw into
Francis Tredethlyn’s purse. I ought to have known that half these
reputed rich men are as rotten as a pear. So this is the explanation of
my simple Maude’s heroics. Poor little girl, _she_ has been the pretty
fly with which that accomplished angler, Mr. Hillary, has whipped the
stream for his big gudgeon! Any little card I may have arranged to play
for myself has been very neatly taken out of my hands; and I find my
friend provided with a needy father-in-law and an extravagant wife.
However, I dare say there’s some small part left for me to play: and
perhaps the best thing I can do is to take it quietly.”
Harcourt Lowther’s servant!
The man to whom Maude Hillary was now engaged had once been the valet of
her discarded lover. This could scarcely be a pleasant thought to any
young lady early imbued with all the ordinary prejudices of society.
Miss Hillary was not a strong-minded woman; she could not console
herself with a neat aphorism from Burns to the effect that “a man’s a
man for a’ that;” and to her Harcourt Lowther’s revelation seemed
cruelly humiliating. She had heard of young women in her own position
marrying grooms, or perhaps even footmen, for love, and she had
shuddered at the very idea of their iniquity. But was it not quite as
degrading to marry a valet for money, as to elope with a groom for love?
“He blacked Harcourt’s boots!” thought poor Maude; and it is impossible
to describe the utter despair expressed in that brief sentence. She met
her lover with a very pale face the next day, and, seating himself in
his accustomed place by her embroidery frame, Francis Tredethlyn saw
that there was something wrong. Alas! poor--Francis, he had already
learned to watch every change upon that beautiful face; already, before
the marriage vows had been spoken, all the miserable tortures of doubt
had begun to prey upon his devoted heart. She had promised to marry him,
but she had not promised to love him. He remembered that. She had given
herself to him in payment of her father’s debt. She had sacrificed
herself in accordance with the loyal instincts of her noble nature.
Francis, generous and loyal himself, could understand this, much better
than it was understood by Lionel Hillary, for whose sake the sacrifice
was made.
There were times when the young man reproached himself for his
selfishness in accepting the supreme desire of his soul. Ought he not
rather to have wrestled with himself and let this bright young creature
go? But there were other times when Francis Tredethlyn suffered himself
to be beguiled by delicious hopes. Had not true and honest love
sometimes triumphed over circumstance? Might not the day come when Maude
Hillary would be able to return his affection, to reward his patience?
“I can afford to be so patient,” he thought; “for it will be such
happiness to be her slave.” To-day, watching her pale face in pensive
contemplation, Francis puzzled himself vainly to guess what was amiss
with his promised wife. It was not only that she was paler than
usual,--and the brightness of her colour had faded very much of
late,--but to-day, there was a shade of coldness in her manner which was
quite new to her affianced husband, and which sent a chill to his heart,
always ready to sink under some vague apprehension where Maude Hillary
was concerned. We hold these supreme joys of life by so slender a
thread, that half our delight in them is poisoned by the dread of their
possible loss.
“Maude,” he said by-and-by, after a few commonplace phrases, and after
he had watched her for some minutes in silence, “I am sure there is
something amiss with you to-day. You are ill--you----”
“Oh, no, not ill. Only a little worried.”
“Worried--but about what?”
“I heard something about you last night, Mr. Tredethlyn,” said Miss
Hillary,--it was the first time she had called him Mr. Tredethlyn since
their engagement,--“something which you never told me yourself. Mr.
Lowther,--a friend of papa’s, who has just come home from Van Diemen’s
Land, told me--that--that--you had been----”
“His servant! Yes, Maude, it is quite true. I was a soldier, and I was
obliged to obey orders. I was ordered to attend upon Ensign Lowther, and
I did my best to serve him well. When I enlisted in her Majesty’s
service, I had all sorts of foolish fancies about fighting and glory,
but they all dwindled down to the usual routine. No fighting, no glory,
no desperate attacks upon Indian fortresses, no scaling walls to plant
the British flag upon the enemy’s ramparts; but any amount of drill and
hard work, and a discontented fine gentleman to wait upon.”
A flood of crimson rushed into Maude’s face as Francis said this; but
the young man’s head was drooping over the embroidery frame, and he was
trifling mechanically with the loose Berlin wool lying on Miss Hillary’s
canvas.
“I am afraid you think it a kind of degradation to you, that _I_ should
have been a servant, Maude?” he said presently.
“You never told me----”
“No--I told you I had been a private in the 51st. The other business was
only a part of my duty.”
Maude was silent for some moments after this. She sat looking dreamily
out of the window, while Francis still twisted the Berlin wools in his
strong fingers. Maude was the first to speak.
“Was it Mr. Lowther you meant just now, when you spoke of a discontented
fine gentleman?” she asked, with some slight hesitation.
“Yes; I never served any other master. Ensign Lowther was horribly
discontented. He was one of those men who can’t take things easily; but
I can understand a good deal of his peevish restlessness now. I can
sympathize with him now, Maude.”
His voice grew low and tender as he said this.
“Why?” asked Miss Hillary, rather coldly.
“He was in love, Maude,--an unhappy attachment, as I understood, to some
lady--an heiress, I think--whose money was a hindrance to a marriage
between them.”
From the beginning to the end of this conversation Maude Hillary’s
thoughts had been employed in debating one question--should she, or
should she not, tell her future husband that Harcourt Lowther was the
man to whom she had been previously engaged? He knew of that broken
engagement, but he did not know the name of her lover. Was it her duty
to tell him? It would be very unpleasant to do so; but then duty is so
often unpleasant. She was still silently debating this subject; the
words which she should speak were forming themselves in her mind; when
the drawing-room door was opened, and a servant announced Mr. Lowther.
Maude’s heart beat violently. Would there be a scene? Why had Harcourt
come, when he knew----? But Mr. Lowther very speedily relieved her fears
upon this subject. Nothing could be more delightful than his manner. He
was cordial to his old servant, without attempting any airs of
patronage. He could not have been more entirely at his ease with Maude,
had he been the most indifferent of first-cousins.
Mr. Lowther was only acting up to his determination to take things
quietly. He had met Lionel Hillary in the City that morning, and had
surprised the merchant by speaking of Maude’s engagement to Francis
Tredethlyn.
“But don’t alarm yourself, my dear Hillary,” he said with a frank smile.
“To say that I adored, and do adore, your daughter, is only to admit a
fact to which, I dare say, every male visitor at the Cedars would be
happy to testify in a round-robin. Miss Hillary is made to be
worshipped. I have only been one among a score of worshippers. If ever I
hoped to overcome your very natural prejudice against my disgusting
poverty, I have long ceased to hope it; so it was scarcely such a
death-blow to me to discover what had happened during my exile. Will you
let me renew my old relations with your household? Will you let me be
one of the moths again? I know now that the candle will burn, and that
its dangerous glare alone, and not its tender warmth, is reserved for
me, so I shall have only myself to blame if I come away with a scorched
wing.”
Mr. Hillary’s only reply to this rather sentimental speech was a hearty
invitation to dinner.
“I can give you your favourite Rüdesheimer with the oysters. Chablis is
a mistake, when you can get good hock. Sharp seven, remember; but you
may go earlier if you care for croquet. I dare say you’ll find
Tredethlyn there.”
“The poor fellow is very hard hit, I suppose?”
Mr. Hillary smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
“I never saw such a devoted creature. Good day.”
The merchant hurried off, and Harcourt walked slowly away, pondering as
he went.
“A devoted creature. Yes, and there has been new blood let into the
commercial anatomy of Hillary and Co. I dare say that poor devil
Tredethlyn has been bled to a hideous extent.”
The dinner at the Cedars went off very pleasantly. What dinner could
fail to go off tolerably well, enlivened by Harcourt Lowther, when that
gentleman cared to exercise his genius for making conversation? There
were other guests at the merchant’s round table; and after dinner people
showed an inclination to stroll out of the lamplit drawing-room on to
the dusky lawn, and down to the terrace, drawn perhaps by the magnetic
influence of the river, which _will_ be looked at.
It happened somehow--I suppose Mr. Lowther himself managed it--that he
and Maude were left a little way behind the rest of the loiterers upon
the twilit terrace. Ah! how vividly in the memory of both arose the
picture of a time long ago, when they had stood there side by side, by
the same river, in a twilight calm like this, with the same star
glimmering faintly in a low rose-tinted western sky! In Maude’s breast
that memory awakened cruel pangs of shame and remorse! In Harcourt
Lowther’s breast there was a strangely mingled feeling of bitterness and
regret;--bitterness against the Destiny which had given him so few of
life’s brightest possessions; regret for the vanished time in which some
natural earnestness, some touch of fresh and manly feeling, had yet
lingered in his heart.
“Poor, simple, unworldly Maude,” he thought, as he contemplated the
girl’s pale face, “what a penitent look she has! and yet if she
knew----”
He smiled, and left the thought unfinished. Then, turning to Maude, he
said, with a little touch of melancholy solemnity, worthy of Edgar
Ravenswood himself, “Miss Hillary, let us be friends. If you can bury
the past, so can I. We may yet strew sweet flowers of friendship on the
grave of our dead love.”
“And I really don’t want to let Francis Tredethlyn slip through my
fingers altogether,” Mr. Lowther added, mentally, as a sort of rider to
that pretty little speech.
Maude looked at him with rather a puzzled expression.
“You are very generous,” she faltered, embarrassed, and at a loss how to
express herself, “but--don’t you think it would be better for us--to--to
say good-bye to each other--for ever? I--I--hope you will marry some
one--worthy of you--some one who is less the slave of circumstances than
I am. I want to do my duty to Mr. Tredethlyn--and I think it is a part
of my duty to tell him of our broken engagement.”
“My dear Miss Hillary, you would surely never do anything so foolish.
Poor Francis is the best fellow in the world, but he is just the man to
be ferociously jealous if he once got any foolish crotchet into his
head. I have lived in the same house with him, remember, and must
therefore know him better than you do. As for saying farewell for ever,
and all that kind of thing, your eternal parting reads remarkably well
in a novel, but it isn’t practicable between civilized people who belong
to the same rank of society. Georgina bids Algernon an irrevocable adieu
on Tuesday morning, and there is burning of letters and love-locks, and
weeping and wailing in Brompton Crescent; and on Wednesday evening the
same Algernon takes her down to dinner in Westbourne Terrace. We can
bury the past in as deep a grave as you like, and lay the ghost of
memory with any exorcism you please, but we can’t pledge ourselves not
to meet any day in the week in the houses of our common friends.”
Maude was quite unable to argue with so specious a reasoner as Mr.
Lowther. She did her best to defend her position, and urged the
necessity of telling Francis Tredethlyn the whole truth. But Harcourt
overruled her objections, and in the end obtained from her a promise
that she would still remain silent as to the name of her discarded
lover.
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