SEEING A GHOST.
Under the perpetual influence of his friend and master, Harcourt
Lowther, Mr. Tredethlyn’s days and nights were so fully occupied that he
had very little leisure for serious thought. Day by day the patient
master taught his deadly lesson; day by day the luckless pupil took his
teacher’s precepts more deeply to heart. The simple, credulous nature
was as malleable as clay under the practised hand of the modeller, and
took any shape Mr. Lowther chose to give it.
Francis was fully impressed with the idea that his money had purchased a
lovely wife whose heart could never be given to him. All that fair
fabric of hopes and dreams which had been his when he married Maude
Hillary had been slowly but surely undermined, and there was nothing
left of its brightness but the memory that it once had been. He thought
of those foolish hopes now with anger and bitterness. Could he at any
time have been so mad, so blind, so besotted, as to believe that this
beautiful creature, perpetually floating in an atmosphere of frivolity
and adulation, would ever fold her wings to nestle tenderly in his rude
breast? Othello, recalled to the sense of his declining years and grimy
visage by the friendly bluntness of Iago, could scarcely have thought
more bitterly of his lovely Venetian bride than Francis thought of Maude
after six months’ daily association with his old master. But if the
poison was quick to do its deadly work, the antidote was always at hand.
With thirty thousand a year and a fine constitution, what need has a
young man for reflection? It is all very well for Mr. Young the poet,
having failed to obtain wealth or preferment, to retire from a world
which has treated him ill, and meditate upon the transitory nature of
earthly blessings that he has been unable to obtain; but with youth and
thirty thousand per annum, surely no man need be bored by such a
darksome guest as dull care. Harcourt Lowther did his best to shield his
friend from the gloomy intruder by contriving that Francis Tredethlyn’s
existence should be one perpetual fever of hurry and excitement. But
though you may carry a man from racecourse to racecourse, by shrieking
expresses tearing through the darkness of the night; though you may
steep him to the lips in theatres and dancing-halls; though you may drag
him from one scene of mad unrest to another, till his tired eyeballs
have lost their power to see anything but one wearisome confusion of gas
light and colour,--you _cannot_ prevent him from thinking. The
involuntary process goes on in spite of him. He will think in a hansom
cab tearing over the stones of the Haymarket, in an express train
rushing towards Newmarket at sixty miles an hour, on the box-seat of a
guardsman’s drag, on the rattling fire-engine of an aristocratic amateur
Braidwood, on the downs at Epsom--yes, even at the final rush, when
every eye is strained to concentrate its power of sight upon one speck
of colour, the man’s mind, for ever the veriest slave to follow that
will-o’-the-wisp called association, will wander away in spite of
him,--to mourn above a baby’s grave, to sit amidst the perfume of
honeysuckle and roses in a still summer twilight trifling with the rings
on a woman’s hand.
There were times when thought would come to Francis Tredethlyn, in spite
of all his friend’s watchful care. He would sit at the head of a
dinner-table at the Crown and Sceptre, staring vacantly at the frisky
wine-bubbles in his shallow glass, and thinking how happy he might have
been if Maude had only loved him. Ah, this poor substitute of noise
instead of mirth,--this pitiful tinsel of dissipation in place of the
pure gold of happiness,--how miserable a mockery it was even at the
best!
Mr. Lowther generally broke in upon such gloomy reveries as these by
calling to the waiter to exchange his friend’s shallow glass for a
tumbler. But there are pangs of regret not to be lulled to slumber by
all the sparkling wines that were ever grown in the fair champagne
country, and Harcourt Lowther sometimes found his work very difficult.
But amidst such perpetual hurry and excitement it was only natural that
some things should be almost entirely forgotten by Francis Tredethlyn,
and amongst these forgotten things were the sorrows of his missing
cousin. The Gray’s-Inn lawyers had _carte blanche_, and could have
employed all the detective machinery in London in a search for Susan
Tredethlyn, _alias_ Susan Lesley, had they so chosen; but your intensely
respectable family solicitor is the slowest of slow coaches, and Messrs.
Kursdale and Scardon contented themselves with the insertion of an
occasional advertisement in the second column of the “Times” supplement,
informing Susan Lesley that she might hear of something to her advantage
on applying at their office; and further offering a liberal reward for
any information respecting the above-mentioned lady.
The advertisement did not entirely escape notice. A good many Susan
Lesleys presented themselves:--one a fat old woman of seventy, who kept
a tobacconist’s shop in the neighbourhood of Seven Dials; another a bony
and pugnacious-looking person, with fiery red hair, and a fine
South-of-Ireland brogue, who threatened dire vengeance on the quiet
lawyer when he refused to recognize her pretensions to hear of something
to her advantage. All the Susan Lesleys were ready to swear anything in
order to establish their claims to that unknown advantage--which might
be anything from a five-pound note to a million of money, or a dormant
peerage,--but they all broke down lamentably under Mr. Kursdale’s
cross-questioning, and he did not even trouble Francis Tredethlyn to
confront the false syrens.
So, amid Newmarket meetings and Greenwich dinners, chicken-hazard,
billiards, and unlimited loo, poor Susan’s rustic image melted quite
away; and Francis forgot the solemn promise he had made, and the sacred
duty he had set himself to do when his Uncle Oliver’s heritage first
fell into his hands. And Francis Tredethlyn’s forgetfulness might have
lasted very long, if an accident had not awakened him to a most vivid
recollection of the past.
It was the May-time saturnalia of the turf, the Epsom week, and Mr.
Tredethlyn’s drag had been to and fro upon the dusty roads carrying a
heavy load of Bohemianism under convoy of the indefatigable Harcourt
Lowther. Francis had been rather unlucky, and a good deal of money had
changed hands after the Derby, the larger part of it finding its way
into the pockets of Mr. Tredethlyn’s obliging friend. The Oaks day was
to have redeemed his fortunes, but the day was over, and Francis drove
home amongst the noisy ruck of landaus and waggonettes, ponderous double
dog-carts, and heavily-laden sociables, tax-carts and costermongers’
barrows, with the outer leaves of an attenuated cheque-book peeping from
his breast-pocket, and the dim consciousness that he had distributed
hastily-scribbled cheques to the amount of some thousands, floating
confusedly in his brain. He drove to town through the spring twilight,
with Dutch dolls in his hat, and a heavy pain in his heart. The _papier
mâché_ noses of his companions were scarcely more false and hollow than
their gaiety.
Of course it would be impossible to conclude such a day without a
dinner. The sort of people amongst whom Francis Tredethlyn lived are
perpetually dining and giving dinners; only the dinner-givers are as one
to twenty of the diners; so, at some time between nine and ten o’clock,
Maude’s husband found himself in his usual place at the head of a
glittering table, in an odorous atmosphere of asparagus soup and fried
mullet, and with a racking headache, that was intensified by every
jingle of glasses and rattle of knives and forks.
He had lost heavily, and had drunk deeply under the warm May sunshine on
the Downs. To lose cheerfully is given to many men, but how very few
have the power to lose quietly! Francis had taken his disappointment in
a rather uproarious spirit; slapping his companions on the shoulder, and
making new engagements right and left; backing the same horses by whose
shortcomings he had just lost his money; and huskily protesting the
soundness of his own judgment in despite of the misfortunes of to-day.
He went on talking now at the head of the dinner-table, though the sound
of his own voice by no means improved the splitting pain in his head. He
went on talking amidst a clamour of many voices, through which one sober
and silent toady, sitting next Mr. Tredethlyn, made a vain effort to
understand his discourse. He poured forth misty vaticinations on coming
events, gave general invitations for a great dinner at Virginia Water on
the Ascot cup day, and galloped noisily along the road to ruin in which
Harcourt Lowther had set him going. That splitting headache of his was
getting worse every minute, when some one proposed an adjournment to an
adjacent theatre.
There had been counsel taken with a waiter. A West-end waiter is no mean
dramatic critic, though he never sees a play; the opinions of playgoers
percolating perpetually through his ears must leave some residuum in the
shape of knowledge. The waiter opined that the best entertainment in
London was to be had at Drury Lane, where a melodramatic spectacle of
some celebrity was being played that evening for the last time but one.
Inspired by the waiter, Mr. Tredethlyn’s party made their way to the
theatre, bearing Mr. Tredethlyn along with them, indifferent where he
went, and carrying his headache with him everywhere.
It was past ten o’clock, and the last scene of the great spectacle was
on. The house was full, and the audience were chiefly of that restless
and vociferous order who drop into a theatre at half-price on great
race-nights. Mr. Tredethlyn and his party could only find standing-room
at the back of the dress-circle, and from this position Francis beheld
the grand final _tableau_.
The piece was an adaptation of some great Parisian success--some story
of the Reign of Terror,--and in this last scene the stage was crowded by
a clamorous populace. Upwards of three hundred men, women, and children
were engaged in the scene. Blouses and uniforms, the picturesque
head-dresses of the provincial peasantry, the scarlet cap of liberty,
the cocked hats of the gendarmerie,--all blended in one grand mass of
movement and colour, while the rapid action of the piece drew to its
triumphant close.
Mr. Tredethlyn did not trouble himself to wonder what the piece had been
about. He saw somebody killed--a villain it was to be supposed, since
the crowd set up a well-organized yell of rejoicing; then there was a
reconciliation, an embrace, a young lady in short-waisted white muslin
clasped to the breast of a young man in a long-tailed blue coat and low
top-boots, adorned with many-coloured bunches of riband. Then the band
broke into the stately measure of the “Marseillaise Hymn,” the crowd
clamoured a shrill chorus, and the curtain fell.
It was while the curtain was descending very slowly to that triumphant
music that Francis Tredethlyn saw something which startled him like the
sight of a ghost.
It was a face--a woman’s face in a high Normandy cap, looking out of the
many faces in the crowd, a thin, worn, melancholy countenance, very sad
to look upon, among all those other faces fronting the audience with a
stereotyped smile.
“My God!” cried Mr. Tredethlyn, clasping his two hands upon his hot
forehead, and pushing back the rumpled hair, “who is it? What’s the
matter with me? I feel as if I’d seen a ghost!”
There was a little piece after the melodrama, a slender little
production, popularly known as a “screaming” farce. It was not the most
strikingly original dramatic invention, and its chief point consisted in
one gentleman in tartan trousers being perpetually mistaken for another
gentleman in tartan trousers, whole both gentlemen were alternately
sitting upon bonnet-boxes and dropping trays of crockery.
There was certainly not very much in the farce, but the audience laughed
uproariously, and Francis Tredethlyn’s party joined in the laughter. He
found himself laughing, too, as loudly as the rest of them; but amidst
all that confusion and clamour, the wan, sad face, with two inartistic
patches of rouge upon its hollow cheeks, kept surging up ever and anon
out of the chaos of his brain, and haunting him like the face of a
ghost.
Who was it? What was it? Was it some accidental likeness? Was it a face
that he had seen and known in the past? Alas for the steady,
clear-headed soldier, who had been so prompt to obey military orders, so
strict in the performance of duty! Francis Tredethlyn’s muddled senses
refused to help him to-night. The author of “What will he do with it?”
tells us that light wines are the most treacherous of liquors; “they
inflame the brain like fire, while melting on the palate like ice.” Mr.
Tredethlyn had been drinking a mixture of divers champagnes and Moselles
all day long, and he tried in vain to fix the vague image which floated
amidst the confusion of his brain.
He went home in the early grey of the May morning; but not to sleep. He
lay tossing from side to side, tormented by that preternatural
wakefulness which is apt to succeed a long period of riot and
excitement. The course at Epsom, the gipsy fortune-tellers, the
betting-men in white hats and green veils, the Dutch dolls and pink
calico pincushions, the dust and clamour of the homeward drive, the
jingling of broken glass, the popping of corks, the revolutionary crowd
in the drama, the tartan trousers and broken bandboxes in the
farce,--all mixed themselves in his brain, falling to pieces, and
putting themselves together again like the images in a kaleidoscope.
Mr. Lowther, coming to see his friend at the correct visiting hour,
found Francis still in bed, in a little room behind the library, which
he had fitted up for himself at Harcourt’s instigation, as a bedroom and
dressing-room, a kind of refuge to which he might betake himself when he
was unfit to encounter the calm gaze of Maude’s clear blue eyes fixed
upon him in sorrowful wonder. Her manner to him had never quite
recovered its old kindness since that unlucky encounter on the stairs.
She was still kind to him; but he could see that it was by an effort
only that she retained anything of her old friendliness. He could see
this, and the knowledge of it galled him to the quick. Harcourt
Lowther’s work was more than half done by this time. He had no longer
any difficulty in beguiling Francis abroad, for the Cornishman no longer
cared to remain at home.
Mr. Tredethlyn had not very long fallen into a feverish slumber after
long hours of wakeful weariness, when his friend called upon him.
Harcourt seated himself by the side of the narrow brass bedstead, and
stared contemplatively at the sleeper, while he spoke to the valet who
had admitted him to the darkened chamber.
“You can let your master sleep till four o’clock, Jervois,” he said. “At
four give him some soda and brandy. He has an appointment with me at
half-past five. Take care that he doesn’t oversleep himself. I’ll write
him a line by way of reminder.”
He drew a little writing-table towards him, and wrote a few lines on a
sheet of note-paper:
“DEAR TREDETHLYN,--Remember your engagement at my quarters; 5.30
sharp. You had better bring the mail phaeton, and can give me a
lift to the S. and G.
“Yours faithfully,
“H. L.”
He slipped his note into an envelope, and dipped his pen into the ink;
but before writing the address, he stopped suddenly, and tore the note
into fragments.
“_She_ might see it!” he muttered, thoughtfully, “and that might show
her the nature of my cards. The only wise man is the one who can do his
work without that most dangerous of all machinery--pen and paper. Poor
Francis! he looks a little worn.”
Mr. Lowther looked down upon the sleeper with the most benign
expression. He had no dislike whatever to the simple Cornishman; he had
only--his own plans.
“These fellows who come suddenly into a large fortune are sure to kill
themselves before they have done spending it,” he murmured,
complacently. “Jervois,” he said, as he went out, “you won’t forget your
master’s engagement. He’d better drive up to my place in the mail
phaeton.”
Mr. Lowther’s “place” was the same lodging which he had taken for
himself when he first returned to England. He was an adventurer; but he
was not a vulgar adventurer, and in all his dealings with Francis
Tredethlyn he had not sponged upon that gentleman’s purse for so much as
a five-pound note. He had his plans; but they were not the plans of a
man who lives from hand to mouth. He won a good deal of his friend’s
money; but he never cheated Francis out of a sixpence. His sole
advantage was that which must always accompany skill and experience as
opposed to ignorance and inexperience. In the meanwhile, Harcourt
Lowther lived as best he might on his winnings and a small allowance
made him by his mother.
The Lowthers were great people in their way, and Harcourt had admission
to some of the best houses in London. He was very well received in that
circle in which Maude Tredethlyn had taken her place, and contrived
somehow or other to be present for an hour or so at almost all of the
parties in which she appeared; though to break away from the haunts of
Bohemianism to drop into politer life, and then return to Bohemia in the
same evening, was almost as difficult as a harlequin’s jump in a
pantomime. Harcourt Lowther did this, however, and did it very often;
and Maude Tredethlyn, enjoying all the privileges of a matron, found
herself sometimes standing amongst the statues and exotics on a crowded
staircase in Tyburnia, talking with Harcourt Lowther almost as
familiarly as they had talked in the old summer evenings by the quiet
river.
Sometimes, looking back upon such a meeting, Maude felt inclined to be
angry with Mr. Lowther for having taken something of the old tone; but
could she blame him for the lowered accents of his voice, the subdued
light in his eyes, the unconscious tenderness into which he was betrayed
in those public meetings, when she remembered how nobly he kept aloof
from her in her home? Never yet had he presumed upon his intimacy with
the husband in order to intrude himself on the presence of the wife.
What harm or danger, then, if, in crowded assemblages, he surmounted all
manner of small difficulties in order to make his way to her side? What
could it matter if he lingered just a little longer than others,
contriving all sorts of excuses for delay? It is rather a pleasant thing
for a frivolous young married woman, serene in the consciousness of her
own integrity, to know that a man’s heart is breaking for her in a
gentlemanly way. A word too much, a tone, a look, and Maude would have
taken alarm, and fled from her old admirer as from the venomous fangs of
some deadly reptile; but Harcourt Lowther knew better than to speak that
word. He had his own plans, and he was carrying them out in his own way:
neither by word nor look had he ever yet offended Maude Tredethlyn; but
now, when he tried to cut a path for himself through the crowd about
her, he found less difficulty in the progress. People began to make way
for him, and it was considered a settled thing that he should be found
somewhere near her. He had not offended her; he had only--compromised
her.
Francis awoke before the hour at which his servant had been told to call
him. The valet’s place was almost a sinecure, for the Cornishman still
retained, of his old nature, the simple independent habits of a man who
can wait upon himself. He got up at four o’clock, and had nearly
completed his toilet, when the servant brought the soda and brandy
prescribed by Harcourt Lowther.
“And if you please, sir, you were to be so good as to remember an
appointment with Mr. Lowther at half-past five, and was to please to
drive the mail phaeton,” said the valet, while his master drank the
revivifying beverage.
“Very good,” muttered Mr. Tredethlyn, with something like a groan; “you
may go and order the phaeton for five o’clock. Is Mrs. Tredethlyn at
home?”
“No, sir.”
The man departed, and Francis finished dressing. He had ten minutes to
spare after putting on his outer coat, and he sat down to look at the
newspaper which lay ready cut on his writing-table. He took up the
“Times,” but only stared vacantly at the advertisement sheet. His head
still ached, in spite of a shower-bath and a vigorous application of
hard hair-brushes; but his intellect was a good deal clearer than it had
been before he dressed.
Suddenly, out of the advertisement sheet, vivid as the figure of Banquo
at Macbeth’s uncomfortable supper-party, there arose before him a
face--a wan, faded face--in a white muslin-cap.
“Great Heaven!” he cried; “I didn’t know her!”
The ghost that he had seen upon the previous night was the ghost of the
woman he had so long been looking for--his cousin Susan.
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