HARCOURT GATHERS HIS FIRST FRUITS.
The party in Mrs. Tredethlyn’s opera-box that evening was a very
pleasant one. Whatever business had taken Harcourt Lowther to Richmond
must have been tolerably satisfactory in its result, for that
gentleman’s spirits were gayer than usual as he stood behind Maude’s
chair in the shadow of the crimson curtain, talking to her under cover
of all those crashing choruses and grand orchestral effects which
Meyerbeer must surely have composed with a view to comfortable
conversation. Miss Grunderson was gorgeous in thirty guineas worth of
blue moiré antique _à la Watteau_, and exhibited a small fortune in the
way of lace and artificial flowers upon her plump little person. Her
diamond earrings were the biggest in the opera-house; though it must be
confessed that a straw-coloured tint, which the connoisseur repudiates,
pervaded the gems that the market-gardener had bought for his
daughter--size, rather than purity of water, being the quality for which
Mr. Grunderson selected his diamonds. Nothing could be more striking
than the contrast between Maude’s simple toilet of white silk and Rosa’s
gaudy splendour.
But Miss Grunderson was very happy this evening, for the delightful
Roderick condescended to talk to her, while his brother was engrossed by
Mrs. Tredethlyn. He was not very polite, but Rosa thought him positively
charming. She had learnt to understand the emptiness of the attentions
that had been paid to her by enterprising young bachelors, who thought
that an alliance with the great Grunderson’s daughter would be a very
pleasant starting-point on the high-road of life; but she did not
understand that there might come a man wise enough to eschew vain
flatteries and all the ordinary allurements of the vulgar
fortune-hunter, and yet designing enough to spread his nets for any
heiress worthy of his ambition.
In his conversation with the simple-minded Rosa he affected the
sentiments of a confirmed misogynist.
“If there were such a possibility as a sensible woman,” he said, “I
might perhaps hope to end my days in the bosom of a family; but since
the age of miracles is past, I resign myself to the idea of remaining a
lonely wanderer until the day of my death.”
Thus, half in despondency, half in bitterness, Roderick Lowther replied
to some leading remark of Miss Grunderson’s. She called him a horrid man
and a dreadful creature: but she admired him amazingly notwithstanding,
and she felt a seraphic happiness in listening to this delightful
cynical being, to the utter neglect of Meyerbeer.
“With the exception of public characters,” mused the market-gardener’s
daughter, “I don’t think I was ever _really_ in love until now.”
And thus it fell out that, when Mrs. Tredethlyn said, in the course of
the evening, that she was going to spend the following day at
Twickenham, Rosa gave such broad hints about the loveliness of the
weather, and the delights of suburban scenery, that good-natured Maude
promised to take her down for a long afternoon among the roses in the
dear old garden where so much of her own happy youth had been idled
away.
“Are droppers-in to be permitted in your Arcadia, ladies?” demanded
Harcourt; “and will the balls and mallets be considered out of place
upon the lawn by the river?”
This was quite enough for Miss Grunderson, who cried out directly that
of all things in the world she admired croquet, and that “Par” had
bought her a set of Cremer’s most exquisite walnut-wood balls and
mallets. There were times when the vivacious Rosa called her indulgent
parent “Par,” in spite of those half-dozen annual accounts which he had
paid for the young lady’s education.
“I shall so enjoy a game of croquet in a real garden!” cried Rosa. “We
play it in the square sometimes; but the little boys and the bakers’ and
butchers’ young men outside the rails are so dreadfully trying,
especially when the balls won’t go where one wants them, owing to
nervousness; and I’m sure it’s enough to make anybody nervous to have a
strange chimney-sweep calling out, ‘Well done, butter-fingers!’ if one
drops a mallet; and _that_ square-keeper is never within sight when
wanted.”
“Does Tredethlyn go with you to-morrow?” asked Harcourt Lowther
presently; he had been very thoughtful for the last few minutes.
“No,” Maude answered, rather sadly. “I asked Frank to drive me down in
the mail-phaeton; but he told me he was going a little way out of town
on business.”
She was thinking how very great a change had come to pass since her
husband had been her adoring slave, only too happy to follow wherever
she pleased to lead him. Now there was no quarrel, no actual
misunderstanding between them; but there was quite a wide breach, as if
they had agreed to separate after a long series of domestic battles.
“Roderick and I will come down to the Cedars to-morrow,” said Harcourt,
bending over Maude’s chair, “unless you forbid us to do so. The river is
delightful just now, and you may want the services of a couple of
boatmen.”
“We shall be very glad to see you, if you like to come,” Mrs. Tredethlyn
answered, carelessly. Looking up just then, she saw Miss Grunderson’s
round eyes fixed upon her with a very earnest expression. Rosa had heard
all sorts of insinuations respecting Mr. Lowther’s constant attendance
upon Mrs. Tredethlyn, and the young lady was wondering whether her
darling Maude did really deserve any of the reprobation that had been
showered upon her as a flirting matron.
“There’s a way of saying ‘How do you do?’ or ‘Pretty well, thanks,’ that
seems like flirting,” mused Miss Grunderson; “and Mr. Lowther always has
that way when he talks to Mrs. Tredethlyn. I _know_ she is too good to
be a flirt, in spite of all those malicious people may say about her;
and I don’t like Harcourt Lowther a bit, for _he_ must know how his
flirting manner is talked about, though she doesn’t. I’ve seen
half-a-dozen opera-glasses turned this way to-night, just because he’s
been bending over her chair in that whispering way of his. And yet he
has only been talking of croquet.”
Rosa’s friendship was quite as ardent as her love, and much more
lasting. Mrs. Tredethlyn’s gentleness had quite subdued that
affectionate little heart, and the market-gardener’s daughter would have
been willing to make any effort in her friend’s service. She was a very
energetic little girl, with a good deal of that moral courage which is
sometimes wanting in more delicate natures. To put the fact in her own
words, Rosa was able to speak her mind, and to speak it very freely too,
whenever the occasion called for candour.
The next day was one of the brightest in a brilliant July, and Mrs.
Tredethlyn’s shell-shaped barouche was waiting before the ponderous
stuccoed portico at eleven o’clock. Francis had left the house half an
hour before on foot, bent on that mysterious expedition a little way out
of town which he took so frequently now. Maude and Julia came
down-stairs at a quarter after eleven; and Miss Grunderson skipped up
the stone steps two minutes afterwards, with the bluest bonnet and the
pinkest parasol in London.
“How do you like the new contrast?” she inquired, twirling the pink
parasol triumphantly, when she had adjusted her flounces and furbelows
to the best of her ability on the front seat of Mrs. Tredethlyn’s
carriage. “I remember, when I was at school, pink and blue together were
thought bad taste, but now they’re quite _de rigger_. Ness pas ker say
joli dong? s’p’tite ombrelle?” demanded Miss Grunderson, bursting into
French. “Vingt-huit shillings, ma chère! Ness pas trèscher, chère? Et le
boutiquier ne voudrait pas prendre un six-sous là dessous, quoique je
l’ai marchandé comme un juif,” she added, with a slap-dash rendering of
the language which was peculiar to her.
The summer day was delightful, and Maude’s spirits, which had been
rather depressed of late, rose with the sunshine and the pure air, as
the high-stepping bays left Stuccoville behind them for the pleasant
country road, and the rustic odours of suburban gardens. And then, when
she found herself amongst her own birds and flower-beds, it was hard to
believe that she was no longer a girl, with a girl’s careless happiness
in beautiful things. She sat under a great drooping willow, whose lowest
branches dipped into the water, and watched her dogs gambolling with
Rosa on the grass.
“I was like that, once,” she thought, “before I knew of papa’s
difficulties--before I sold myself for money. I fancied that it was a
heroic thing to marry the man I did not love, in the hope that my esteem
might be some poor repayment of his generous devotion--his noble trust
in my father. But I know now that I could do him no baser wrong than
become his wife. I know it now, when he himself has learnt to despise
and to avoid me, even when I am anxious to win back his regard.”
Yes, it had come to this. Maude Tredethlyn deeply felt her husband’s
palpable avoidance of her. So long as he had been slavishly devoted, she
had been just a little inclined to despise him; but now that the
treasure of an honest man’s love seemed to have slipped away from her,
she awoke to the consciousness that it was a treasure, and that she had
need to be unhappy in the loss of a jewel that is not given to every
woman to possess. She sickened at the thought of the wealth which her
marriage had given her, now that it was unsanctified by the love of the
giver. Was it gone, that devoted affection which she had held so lightly
while it was hers to throw away? She began to understand now how
delicate a thing a heart is, even when it beats beneath the rudest
breast, and how soon it withers under the blighting influence of
disdain. Yes, she had been faithfully loved by an honest man who would
have given his very life for her happiness, and she had trifled with his
love until it was lost. Queen Guinivere has only one set of diamonds to
throw into the river; and when the passion has passed in whose hot
impulse she flung them away, the lady is apt to regret her lost jewels.
Miss Desmond and Miss Grunderson trifled with the balls and mallets,
while Maude wandered listlessly on the terrace thinking of the breach
between herself and her husband. She was still lingering there alone,
when Harcourt and Roderick Lowther strolled from the drawing-room on to
the lawn. The eldest set about instructing Julia Desmond and Miss
Grunderson with regard to the latest and most intricate by-laws of
croquet; and the younger made his way at once to the terrace where Maude
was walking listlessly and slowly under a coquettish white umbrella.
Harcourt Lowther took care that Mrs. Tredethlyn had no more time for
solitary musing. He brought all his talents to bear to keep her amused,
and by the aid of fashionable small-talk, sharp little criticisms on new
books, croquet, luncheon, and an incursion among Mr. Hillary’s
hothouses, he contrived to chase the shadow of care quite away from the
young wife’s girlish brow. It was about four o’clock, and the afternoon
had lapsed into a sultry sleepy brightness that was almost oppressive
even in that green retreat beside the river, when the two gentlemen
suggested the water.
“Of all things in the world the most delightful!” screamed Miss
Grunderson. “Oh, do please take us out in one of those darling little
dangerous-looking boats I saw in the Swiss boat-house down there. And
oh, what a pity I didn’t wear a hat instead of this odious blue bonnet,
which is beginning to fly already!” said Rosa, looking despondently at
the expansive ribands fluttering below her double chin, which had lost
some little of their azure intensity under the influence of the July
sun. To Miss Grunderson’s great delight, the two gentlemen proceeded
forthwith to the boat-house, and lowered a couple of wherries, as
perfect in their way as any craft that ever came out of the hands of
Messrs. Messenger. Harcourt placed Mrs. Tredethlyn and Julia Desmond in
one of these boats, and to the other descended Miss Grunderson, with
more small shrieks of terror and feminine skirmishing, and a greater
display of Balmoral boots and embroidered flounces than was absolutely
necessary to the embarkation.
“I never get into a boat without thinking I shall be drowned,” said
Rosa, plumping down upon the cushions, and all but upsetting herself at
the first start; “the water does give way so. But if one _was_ drowned,
it would be rather nice to have a paragraph all to one’s self in the
daily newspapers, or perhaps what pa calls a social leader, beginning
with something about the Moloch Pleasure having swallowed another
victim, and Youth at the prow and Pleasure at the helm, and the Pale
Horse, and so on.”
And then Miss Grunderson, finding herself quite alone with the latest
object of her adoration, exerted all her small fascinations to beguile
the woman-hater from his stern aversion to her sex. She chattered as
gaily as some talking-bird; and Roderick Lowther, who imagined that he
had by this time established himself firmly as a disinterested
individual, condescended to make himself agreeable, and to drift into
that pleasant current of meaningless small-talk which malicious people
call flirtation.
While Roderick rowed his fair companion swiftly past the verdant bank,
Harcourt let his boat drift slowly down with the current, only dipping
his oars now and then in the intervals of his discourse. Maude had
forgotten her troubled reverie upon the terrace, and gave herself up to
the enjoyment of all the old talk about books and music, poetry and
painting, which had been so delicious to her in those departed days when
she and Harcourt had drifted down that same river plighted husband and
wife. There is no monitor so sharp as rural nature when we have need to
be reminded of our inconstancy. Looking at those reedy banks, those
tranquil gardens sloping to a tranquil tide, Maude found it almost
difficult to believe in the changes of her life since she had first
floated down that stream, a child, with wild-flowers in her lap, and her
little bare arm hanging across the edge of the boat, for the infantile
pleasure of splashing.
Harcourt Lowther found his brother’s boat moored to a little quay in a
shady corner of the river below the Star and Garter, and the splendid
colouring of Miss Grunderson’s toilet made that young lady conspicuous
as she ascended a little pathway sloping upwards to the terrace,
attended by her cavalier. Harcourt shipped his oars, and proposed a
stroll in the Petersham meadows. Maude looked at her watch; it was a
quarter to five, and Mr. Hillary’s dinner-hour was half-past seven.
There was plenty of time for a stroll across those verdant meadows, and
Mrs. Tredethlyn, having the interval to dispose of somehow, had only to
choose in wasting it in this way or in some other fashion. Harcourt had
his wish therefore. He assisted the two ladies to disembark, gave his
coat into the custody of one of the lounging watermen at the rustic
landing-stage, and then strolled with his two companions into the
meadows leading towards Petersham.
There is little need to tell the English reader what Petersham is like.
Almost everybody knows that rural cluster of modern villas and grand old
red brick mansions nestling so comfortably under the shadow of Richmond
Hill. Surely the next best thing to inhabiting Earl Russell’s house in
Richmond Park, or that magic château of Monsieur Fould’s, hidden deep in
the woody heart of grand old St. Germain’s, would be to own one of those
Georgian mansions at Petersham, with cool fishponds and shady gardens,
long ranges of narrow windows, and a marble-paved vestibule, with a
ceiling by Thornhill, and old family portraits by polite Sir Joshua
himself. It was the afternoon of afternoons for listless dawdling about
such a place as Petersham, and Mr. Lowther and the two ladies were alike
enthusiastic in their admiration of the Georgian mansions.
“I wish Francis would buy a nice old house down here,” said Maude. “I am
so tired of London; it is all the same thing over, and over, and over
again; the same flock of sheep jumping through the same gap in the same
hedge, and not one of them--no, not even the leader--knowing why they do
it. I should be near papa here, and all my old friends. In town I seem
to know everybody, and yet not to have a single friend.”
There was a rustic bench in the lane through which they were walking as
Maude said this. The two ladies sat down to rest for a few minutes, and
Harcourt Lowther took out his cigar-case.
“I shall leave you just long enough to smoke a cigarette,” he said, “and
then I will take you back to the water-side by a still prettier road, if
you like.”
He went away at a leisurely pace, lighting his cigar as he went; but he
walked a good deal faster when he was out of Maude Tredethlyn’s ken, and
he was flushed with heat when he returned after a quarter of an hour’s
absence.
“Now, ladies,” he said, “if we are not to keep Mr. Hillary waiting for
his dinner, it is high time for us to go back to the boat.”
Maude and Julia rose, and the little party strolled into the road at the
end of the lane in the straggling order usual to people who walk for
their own pleasure in a country village. Mrs. Tredethlyn’s white
umbrella was a little way ahead of her companions, when Harcourt Lowther
laid his gloved hand lightly upon Julia’s shoulder.
She looked up at him, startled by the gesture.
“You have had some reason to complain of your friend Miss Hillary and
Francis Tredethlyn,” he said. “I am going to give you your revenge.”
Julia stared in amazement at the speaker; but he did not wait to be
interrogated.
“Come, Mrs. Tredethlyn,” he said, “your papa will have to wait for his
dinner, unless you walk a little faster.”
He had not much reason to complain of Maude, who had been ahead of him
until this moment, but he hurried her along the dusty road until, at a
spot where it curved round to the river, he stopped suddenly, pointing
to a cottage-garden, seen through the iron rails of a high old-fashioned
gate set in a framework of clematis.
“Look at that, Mrs. Tredethlyn! Isn’t it a pretty picture?”
It was a little rustic _tableau_ composed of two figures grouped under a
mulberry-tree,--a delicate-looking woman, with soft brown hair, touched
here and there with a glimmer of gold, seated on a rustic bench. Her
face was turned away from the road, and she was looking up at a man who
leaned against the trunk of a tree. It was only a glimpse of this
picture which Maude caught between the iron scroll-work of the gate, but
she saw quite enough.
The man was Francis Tredethlyn.
“Great Heaven!” exclaimed Harcourt Lowther, in an audible whisper; “it
_is_ Francis!”
Maude looked at him with a vague alarm in her face, which had grown
almost as white as the umbrella that sheltered it. Harcourt’s whisper
had frightened her a hundredfold more than the sight of her husband, at
home in that unknown garden with a woman she had never seen or heard of.
“Who is that lady?” she asked, when they had passed the gate. “Do you
know her, Mr. Lowther? You know all my husband’s associates much better
than I do.”
She tried to speak quite calmly, but failed miserably in the effort.
Harcourt’s whisper had expressed so much.
“No, I do not know the lady,” he answered, gravely. “I think you had
better make no inquiries about her. Mr. Tredethlyn did not tell you that
he was to spend the day at Petersham?”
“No. He only said that he was going a little way out of town.”
“Then in that case it will be better for you to leave him to finish his
day as he pleases, since you have made no arrangement for meeting him
here, and do not know the lady.”
Maude did not answer him just then. She walked on a little faster than
before; and Harcourt kept by her side, looking furtively every now and
then at the pale profile, the tremulous lower lip. He could see that
Mrs. Tredethlyn was profoundly agitated, and that she was trying to
conceal her agitation. He could see this; and he was determined to make
her speak, and speak freely.
“She is not the sort of woman to suffer in silence,” he thought. “This
kind of trouble is new to her, and she will cry out presently.”
Mr. Lowther was not very much at fault in his estimate of Maude’s
heroism. She spoke to him when they were a few paces from Julia, whose
face was lighted by a look of triumph under her gauzy veil.
“You say you do not know that lady. You must at least know who she is?”
This was said in a tone of almost piteous entreaty.
“Upon my honour, no,” Harcourt answered, gravely.
There was a pause for some moments. They were in one of the meadows by
this time, nearing the water’s edge, Julia still in the rear, and Maude
still walking very fast, as it is the habit of most people to walk under
the influence of agitation. Perhaps in that unreasoning, unnecessary
haste, there lurks a vague fancy that we can hurry _away_ from our
trouble.
All at once Maude turned to Harcourt Lowther and laid her hand upon his
arm.
“Tell me what it all means,” she cried,--“tell me the worst, however bad
it is. I know that you are hiding something from me. I know by your
manner just now that there is some horrible meaning in Frank’s presence
in that garden with that woman.”
“My dear Mrs. Tredethlyn, you ask me to interfere in a matter which I
have no right to approach. It may be everything to you where your
husband goes,--whom he associates with. I have been his friend,--for
your sake; and I have done my best to steer him clear of dangerous
acquaintance and dangerous amusements--still for your sake. I may have
found it a hard matter to keep him out of mischief, and may have
regretted the natural tendencies of his character--always for your sake.
Beyond this I can have nothing to do with him. I had good reason for
being sorry when you married him--on my own account. Of late I have been
even more sorry--on yours.”
Maude looked at him, white and trembling. The schemer was pleased to see
what deadly mischief had been done, and yet stung to the very heart to
find that any falsehood of his victim’s could wound so deeply. There are
triumphs which have a shadow of humiliation upon their brightness, and
this was one of them. Julia, seeing that her companions were loitering,
seated herself on the lower step of a stile. She had no desire to
interrupt this conversation.
“Speak to me plainly,” Mrs. Tredethlyn cried, passionately, “or I will
go back to that cottage and ask my husband himself for an explanation.
Perhaps that would be best. He has a better right to explain his conduct
than any one else.”
She walked a few paces from her companion; but Harcourt Lowther followed
her, and caught her gently by the arm.
“Will Francis Tredethlyn tell you the truth if you question him?” he
asked. “My dear Mrs. Tredethlyn, how could you endure the _esclandre_ of
such a scene as _must_ ensue if you go back to that house, and confront
your husband in the presence of that woman?”
“Why should there be a scene, or any _esclandre_? The lady may be the
wife or daughter of some friend of my husband’s. Have I any right to
imagine something horrible because I see Frank with a person who is a
stranger to me? It was only your manner that frightened me.”
“I am very sorry my manner was so foolish. Let us drop the subject.
Only--take my advice--don’t go back to that house.”
“Why should I not, if my husband is innocent? as I am sure he is.”
Mr. Lowther shrugged his shoulders.
“Because it is an unpleasant thing to intrude where one is not invited,”
he answered. “Whatever questions you wish to ask your husband can be
reserved until you are both at home; and in the meantime pray let the
matter drop. Believe me, it is not a fit subject for discussion between
you and me.”
There are lawyers who generally inaugurate a consultation by advising
their clients not to go to law. They know it is a very safe display of
magnanimity. It is only the old story of standing on the shore to reason
with a tempestuous ocean, or interfering with the appetite of a famished
wolf in favour of the lamb on which he means to dine. To try to restrain
a woman whose jealousy has once been aroused from any investigation of
her fancied wrongs, is no less wasted labour; and Harcourt Lowther knew
quite enough of human nature to be very sure of this.
Mrs. Tredethlyn turned upon him fiercely. He had never seen the woman he
loved in a passion until this moment; and though he had so much else to
employ his thoughts just now, he could not help pausing for a moment to
think now beautiful she looked with that new light in her eyes, that
feverish glow so suddenly kindled in the cheeks that had been deadly
pale.
“I will not let the matter drop,” she cried. “You are keeping some
hideous secret hidden from me. I know you are. I could not be mistaken
in your tone just now when you saw Francis in that garden. If there were
no harm in his being there, why should you express such amazement?
Harcourt Lowther, we were friends once, and you affect to be my friend
now. If you are what you pretend to be, tell me the meaning of my
husband’s conduct?”
“You love him very much, Maude, to feel his conduct so deeply.”
She was too agitated to notice that her old lover had called her by her
Christian name. He had perhaps been scarcely aware of it himself. He
loved her better at this moment than he had ever loved her in his life,
now that she stood before him a beautiful, angry, passionate creature,
appealing to him against the husband for whose sake he had been jilted.
“You must be very much in love with your husband,” he repeated,
bitterly; “and yet I should have scarcely thought it possible you could
care for that sort of person.”
“He _is_ my husband,” answered Maude, “and I have a right to be angry if
he does any wrong.”
“I acknowledge your right to be as angry as you please, but I am sorry
to see you so agitated. I am very sorry we happened to walk this way.”
“Will you tell me the truth? I have appealed to you by our old
friendship. I shall never again believe in you as a friend unless you
speak plainly to-day.”
“If you say _that_, you oblige me to speak. Will you take my arm, and
walk up and down by the hedge yonder? I see people coming into the
meadow, and we look rather conspicuous standing just here.”
Mrs. Tredethlyn accepted the proffered arm. Harcourt Lowther was silent
for some moments, while they strolled slowly under the shadow of a tall
hawthorn hedge. He was waiting until Maude should have recovered some
little calmness, and be in a condition to appreciate the full value of
what he was going to say.
“It would be going over very old ground, and awakening very bitter
recollections--on my part, at least,” he began at last, in a subdued and
pensive tone, “were I to tell you what I thought of your marriage with
Francis Tredethlyn. When I thought of it most mildly, I believed it the
maddest sacrifice that was ever made to the Moloch Wealth since this
world began. You had your reasons, you told me, and they were very
powerful reasons, but they were to be kept a secret. I had no more to
say. All I could do was to hope that you might not be utterly miserable
with the man you married--to my mind, the man of all others least
adapted to make you a happy wife. I should have done well had I been
wise enough to keep aloof from you and your husband after that unhappy
marriage. I was so mad as to hang about your house, and accept the
friendship of my rival, in the belief that I might save the vessel
wherein you had embarked from some of those rocks which I saw a little
ahead of the calm bay whence you sailed, with all the stereotyped
paraphernalia of pennants flying and guns firing. I _have_ saved you
from a good deal; but I have not been able to change your husband’s
nature, and he has taken his own way in spite of me.”
“What do you mean?” Maude demanded, breathlessly.
“I cannot, and will not, enter into the details of Francis Tredethlyn’s
life for the last twelve months. No, Maude, not even your entreaties
shall wring from me more than I have a right to tell, or you to hear.
And if I spoke the plainest words that ever sullied a woman’s ear, I
should only be talking a strange language which would convey no meaning
to your innocent mind. There are places in London whose names you have
never heard in your life--places whose very existence might never be
known to honest people, if men did not write about them in the
newspapers; and amongst the _habitués_ of those places your husband has
been conspicuous since the first week of his return from the village
where you and he spent your honeymoon. There are dinners given, up at
that hotel yonder, to women whose costume is an extravagant copy of
yours, but who in everything except their dress differ from you as
entirely as darkness differs from light; and Francis Tredethlyn has been
foremost amongst the dinner-givers ever since he has had a fortune to
squander. So long as he was amused by open follies and dissipations I
cherished a lingering hope that custom would bring weariness, and that
the very monotony of these poisonous pleasures would render them their
own antidote. I made excuses for the man who had so newly succeeded to a
fortune large enough to intoxicate a weak brain; and I fancied when the
novelty of his wealth had ceased to bewilder him, he would awake to a
bitter sense of the degrading path in which he was treading. I thought
this, Maude, and I believed also that your loveliness, your purity,
rendered all the more obvious by contrast with the people among whom he
wasted his life, must lure him back to your side. How could I think
otherwise than this?--_I_, who had loved and lost you!”
It never occurred to Mrs. Tredethlyn that these were the very last words
that Harcourt Lowther should have spoken to her, at this moment above
all other moments. It seemed as if she scarcely heard this allusion to
the past, any more than she had heard her old lover’s frequent utterance
of her Christian name.
“I think my husband loved me--once,” she murmured in a low sorrowful
voice. “He was so noble in his conduct--so generous to my father.”
“My poor girl,” exclaimed Harcourt, with supreme compassion, “how should
_you_ know the difference between a good man’s generosity and a
profligate’s lavish bid for the fair young bride who happens to be the
fancy of a moment? There are men who will give as exaggerated a price
for a picture as ever Francis Tredethlyn offered when he won you for his
wife; but you would scarcely call a man ‘generous’ because he bid
extravagantly for a Raffaelle or a Murillo at Christie’s. There is no
creature in this world so selfish as a profligate.”
Maude turned sick and cold to the very heart as Mr. Lowther said this.
A profligate! The horrible word wounded her like the stroke of a knife.
In a moment this innocent girl, who until now had only known the
existence of “profligacy” as an unspeakable noun substantive hidden away
somewhere in the close columns of unexpurgated dictionaries, felt the
veil rudely torn from the purity of her mind; and was told that her
husband--the other part of herself, united to her by the solemn service
of the Church--was the obnoxious thing which until this hour no one had
ever dared to name in her presence. The generosity she had believed in
was a sham. The noble nature which had commanded her regard and esteem,
even when it could not win her love, had never existed out of her own
imagination. She had been wronged, betrayed, humiliated; while in her
schoolgirl simplicity she had been lamenting her unworthiness of a
devoted husband’s love. She had been bought for money like a slave in
some Oriental market-place, when she had imagined herself a free
sacrifice offered as the recompense of a sacred debt.
She did not speak; but looking at her face Harcourt Lowther saw that his
words had gone home. The breach between husband and wife yawned wide
enough now. The undermining of the ground had been slow, laborious work,
but the result repaid this social engineer for all his trouble. With
what a crash the earth fell in when it was time for the convulsion! So
some huge mass of Kentish chalk, which sappers and miners have been
manipulating for a month or so, and at which a crowd of tired spectators
have been straining hopelessly for two hours at a stretch, breaks away
all at once from the bosom of the cliff with a thunderous noise, and
crumbles into powder.
But Mr. Lowther had not finished yet.
“I thought I could win you back to your husband, Maude, and restore him
to you a better man,” he said; “but I soon discovered how futile such a
hope was. I have been by his side in scenes that were horribly repugnant
to my own nature, in order that I might hold him back from the verge of
deeper gulfs than those into which he had already fallen. Within the
last few months I have known that he kept a secret from me, and I knew
that it must be a disgraceful one. Only a few days ago it came to my
knowledge that he had lately furnished a house somewhere in the suburbs.
This gave me a clue to those mysterious absences, those journeys on
business a little way out of town, about which your husband had been so
reticent. Men of Francis Tredethlyn’s calibre do not furnish houses from
benevolent motives. I had no means of knowing where the house was,--how
little could I imagine that it was in this neighbourhood, or that
accident would lead our footsteps to its very threshold! Mrs.
Tredethlyn, you shall not wring another word from me. I am sorry that
you have tempted me to tell you so much,” exclaimed Mr. Harcourt, who
had said all he wanted to say.
It was a long time before Maude answered him; and then she said, very
slowly, and with a painful effort--
“I thank you--for having told me the truth. It is always best to know
the truth.”
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