GONE.
All through the dreary day, and far into the still more dreary night,
Maude Tredethlyn waited and listened for her husband’s coming. She could
not believe that he would hold to the purpose so earnestly expressed in
his letter. His resolution had no doubt been fixed as the Monument
itself while he wrote, for he had written immediately after his wife’s
unjustifiable denunciation of him; but surely long before the time came
for action Francis Tredethlyn’s purpose would waver, and the faithful
slave would come back to his place at the feet of his mistress. In any
case he would surely seek some explanation of Maude’s anger.
“He never could be so cruel as to leave me because of a few foolish
words,” thought Mrs. Tredethlyn; “he could not be so unjust as not to
give me the opportunity of explaining myself.”
But on reading Francis Tredethlyn’s letter for the third or fourth time,
Maude discovered how complete the estrangement was that had divided her
from her husband. The indignant reproaches inspired by unreasoning
jealousy had been received by Francis as the deliberate utterance of a
contemptuous dislike that had reached a point at which it could no
longer be hidden under the mask of fashionable indifference. Mrs.
Tredethlyn perceived, as she read that mournful letter, that, in her
conduct of the previous night, her husband had only seen the miserable
climax of his married life. He beheld, as he fancied, his wife’s silent
scorn transformed all at once into passionate reproach; and the proud
spirit which breathes in all simple natures had asserted itself in the
farewell letter which Maude read through a mist of tears.
“He thinks I married him for his money, and that I have disliked and
despised him,” she thought sadly. “Ah, if he could know how often I have
reproached myself for being unworthy of his devotion,--if he could know
how my heart has sunk day by day as I have seen the breach grow wider
between us! I fancied that I had lost his love, and yet this letter is
full of the old devotion.”
Maude awoke from the brief morning slumber that generally succeeds a
sleepless night to a second day of suspense. She did not talk to Julia
of her troubles now. They were growing too serious for feminine
discussion or friendly sympathy. Mrs. Tredethlyn shut herself in her own
rooms, and would see no one. She pleaded a headache, and the plea was no
empty excuse; for when her all-absorbing anxieties permitted her to
remember the existence of her head, she knew that it ached with a dull
heavy pain which all the eau-de-Cologne in her dressing-case could not
assuage. She roamed hopelessly to and fro between her bedroom and
dressing-room, and failed most utterly in her attempt to hide her
distress from the omniscient eye of her maid.
The second day passed, and there was no Francis. In the evening Maude
despatched a messenger to Mr. Kursdale with a note of inquiry about
Francis: had his solicitors heard or seen anything of him; and so on.
The messenger was to wait an answer. But as old-established solicitors
do not usually reside in Gray’s Inn, the messenger found only darkness
and stout oaken doors when he obeyed his mistress’s behest. Maude wrote
another letter that evening, addressed to Harcourt Lowther, and
containing only these few lines, hurriedly written and with all the
important words underlined:
“DEAR MR. LOWTHER,--Have you seen my husband since the day
before yesterday? He _left home_ on Tuesday night, and I have
_not seen him since_. I am _terribly_ anxious about him. I have
_been to Petersham_, and have _seen the lady_. We were _quite
wrong_ about her, and I am _ashamed_ of myself for having been
_so foolish_. She is a _near relation_ of Frank’s; and his
conduct to her has been _most noble_. Pray find him
_immediately_, if possible, and show him this letter.
“Yours sincerely,
“M.T.
“_Thursday night._”
A pleasant letter this for Harcourt Lowther to receive the next day, as
he lay helpless on the lodging-house sofa, with his head and face sadly
dilapidated by the effects of his fall under a shower of broken
wine-glasses and cruets.
He groaned aloud as he read Maude’s missive.
“Is there any possibility of comprehending a woman’s tactics?” he
muttered. “She writes as if this boor were an idolized husband. Is it
all hypocrisy--or what? So the bubble of jealousy has burst, and the
young person at the Petersham cottage _is_ a cousin, after all; and
Francis has kicked up his heels; and I lie here as miserably bruised and
battered as if I had just been beaten in a fight for the championship,
at the very time when I most want to be up and astir.”
Yes, Mr. Lowther was a prisoner. He had been seriously shaken by the
scuffle with Francis, and had been in the doctor’s hands since the
unpleasant termination of his supper-party. But this was not the worst.
It was the disfigurement of his handsome face which Harcourt took most
deeply to heart. A black eye or a scarred forehead will keep a man as
close a captive as a warrant of committal to the Tower. At the very
moment when the sudden entanglement of his web threatened to render all
past efforts useless, when the schemer had most need of his dexterity,
Harcourt Lowther found himself an unpresentable object, and knew that he
must spend dreary weeks of seclusion before he dared emerge into the
world once more, and take up the disordered threads which he still hoped
to weave into a harmonious network. Imagine Paris, with all his plans
laid for the abduction of Helen, brought suddenly to a standstill by a
score of vulgar cuts and bruises, the sight of any one of which might
have restored the lady to a sense of her duty. Harcourt Lowther, with
his face bandaged, felt himself a contemptible creature, a modern Samson
without the glorious remnant of a Samson’s strength. For the first time
in his life the fine gentleman discovered how much he depended on his
handsome face, and what a lost wretch he would be without it.
He felt a savage rage against Roderick, who strolled in and out of the
room half the morning, dressing and breakfasting by instalments,
smoking, and writing letters, and crackling the daily papers, as it
seemed to Harcourt, more persistently than newspapers were ever crackled
before. _He_ was free to sally forth after his careful toilet, while his
junior lay on that rickety sofa as furious in his wretched helplessness
as some wounded hyena. Roderick had volunteered to call upon Francis at
the Covent Garden hotel, to demand a reckoning for the scuffle at the
supper-party; but Harcourt declined the friendly offer.
“As soon as I can leave the house, I will go to him myself,” he said.
“The fellow’s talk about going abroad is all bombast, I dare say. He
will be sneaking back to his wife’s apron-string now that I am laid by
the heels.”
When Harcourt had read Maude’s letter, he tossed it over to his brother.
“Do you know how to reckon that up?” he asked. “What does it mean?”
Mr. Lowther the elder had by no means a high estimate of the female
character. In his idea of the sex, the woman who was not a profound
simpleton was only something very much worse than a simpleton.
“The fellow has _not_ gone back to his wife; so that’s one point in your
favour, at any rate,” said Roderick, after reading Maude’s epistle. “I
dare say he’ll go altogether to the bad now, at a railroad pace, and
finish himself off before the year is out. The lady’s anxious inquiries
about her husband may be read in more ways than one. This letter _may_
be only intended to put _you_ _au courant_ as to the state of affairs.
Unluckily, that ugly scar about your nose will prevent your calling on
Mrs. Tredethlyn for some weeks. But I don’t mind being brotherly for
once in a way; and I’ll look in at the Stuccoville mansion this
afternoon, if you like. Virtue is sometimes rewarded, and there is just
a chance that I may see the lovely Grunderson, and improve the
occasion.”
Harcourt, after a little deliberation, consented to this arrangement.
His confidence in the honour of his brother was about as small as it
could be; but as the interests of the two Antipholi were in this
instance not antagonistic, he could scarcely have anything to fear from
Roderick’s intervention.
“You can tell Mrs. Tredethlyn that I am seriously ill,” he said, when
his brother was leaving him. “If you could drop a hint or two about a
rapid decline--a secret sorrow undermining a constitution that was
originally delicate--the sword and the scabbard, and so on, it would
only be friendly to do so. Of course I have seen nothing of Francis
since Tuesday, which is perfectly true; only you need say nothing of
Tuesday night--curse him!” muttered Harcourt, with a lively recollection
of the wounds inflicted by a broken vinegar-cruet, and the pernicious
effects of the adulterated vinegar, as exhibited in his inflamed eyes.
“You can take care to let Mrs. Tredethlyn understand that her husband
has returned to his old haunts and his old companions; and that any
anxiety she may be so absurd as to feel about him is wasted upon a
person who would be the first to laugh at her folly.”
“Dear boy, I have not served my country for nothing,” answered the
diplomatist. “You may trust in my discretion and in my power to make the
best of an opportunity. The people who plan a conversation beforehand
never are able to talk according to their programme. The other party
doesn’t give the necessary cues. The man who trusts to the inspiration
of the moment never makes a failure. The divine _afflatus_ is always
right; but you can’t pump the sacred wind into a man with vulgar
bellows. It comes, dear boy; and it will come to your humble servant, I
have no doubt. I shall dine at the St. James’s, and I’ve two or three
places to go to in the evening; so I leave you to your reflections and
the goulard-water. Adieu!”
The diplomatist had no opportunity of serving his brother by any
sentimental hints about secret sorrows and mortal illness; for Maude
sent Julia Desmond to receive her visitor, and to hear anything he might
have to say about Francis. Mrs. Tredethlyn would see no one and would go
nowhere. Julia had been busy all the morning writing excuses to people
whose invitations had been accepted. Miss Grunderson had called, and had
sent up pencilled supplications upon the backs of cards, imploring her
dear Mrs. Tredethlyn to see her, if only for a few minutes; but Maude
had been inexorable. There are sorrows which friendship is powerless to
soothe; and in the time of such sorrow noisy friendship is above all
things intolerable. Maude shuddered as she thought of Miss Grunderson’s
warm paws and schoolgirl endearments; so Rosa was sent away
disconsolate.
Roderick Lowther would have been very well contented to loiter in Mrs.
Tredethlyn’s morning-room talking to Julia, whose half-haughty,
half-defiant manner had a wonderful fascination for him; but that young
lady gave him no opportunity of dawdling. She had seen his tactics with
regard to Miss Grunderson, and took care to let him know that she
understood his diplomacy; but she listened to all his insinuations
against Francis, and he saw her eyes brighten as he uttered them.
“She will convey my hints to Mrs. Tredethlyn,” thought the diplomatist,
“and they won’t lose by her interpretation; so I’ve done that fellow a
service, and wasted my morning, since Miss Grunderson is not to be
seen.”
But on leaving Julia Mr. Lowther decided on speculating a call upon
Rosa’s papa. There was always the chance of seeing the young lady; and
as Mrs. Tredethlyn’s house could no longer afford a platform for the
carrying out of Roderick’s matrimonial schemes, it was absolutely
necessary that he should try a bold stroke and advance matters. He had
ascertained Rosa’s address, and had no difficulty in finding the
Grunderson mansion, which was close at hand. He was not very certain
about the number of the house, but selected it unhesitatingly from its
fellows for the vivid greenness of its blinds, and the intense newness
which pervaded every object that was visible through unshrouded windows
of plate-glass. The Grunderson mansion bared its inner splendours
unflinchingly to the eyes of the passer-by; and Mr. Grunderson’s
dining-room, superb in pollard oak, and with the Grunderson arms blazing
on the scarlet morocco backs of the chairs, revealed itself to the very
core of its heart to every butterman’s apprentice or butcher’s boy who
brought his wares to the area-gate. Thus Roderick Lowther found it very
difficult not to make his perception of Mr. Grunderson, seated at the
head of his table with a substantial luncheon before him, unpleasantly
palpable while he rang the visitors’ bell. Fortune favoured the
diplomatist, for the hospitable millionaire insisted on his being
ushered into the dining-room; very much to the discomfiture of Rosa, who
was partaking of an unfashionable plate of underdone beef from the
sirloin before her papa, and who had a big bottle containing some yellow
compound in the way of pickle, and ornamented by a blazing label, on her
right hand, and an imperial pint of Guinness’s stout on her left. The
stout and the embarrassment produced by Mr. Lowther’s appearance
combined to dye Rosa’s cheeks with a very vivid carnation; but the
diplomatist would have been less than a diplomatist if he had not
appeared supremely unconscious of the two bottles and the underdone
beef.
“Sit ye down, Mr. Lowther, and make yourself at home,” exclaimed the
hospitable Mr. Grunderson. “A knife and fork for this gentleman, Thomas;
and look sharp about it. You’ll find this here as fine a bit of beef as
ever was cut from an Aberdeen bullock; and there ain’t no bullocks equal
to a Scotch short-horn, go where you will. Let me give you a slice out
of the alderman’s walk, which was a name my father always gave to the
undercut; and a very good father he was too, though he never thought of
my sittin’ down to table upon the very spot where he built hisself a
tool-house forty year ago, when you couldn’t have got six pound an acre
per annum for any ground about here. There’s a pigeon-pie at the other
end of the table, and there’s some of your foreign kickshaws,--cutlets a
la curlpapers, and mutton-chops a la smashed potato, _I_ call ’em; for
I’m not a young man, Mr. Lowther, and I can’t remember your _soubeeses_,
and your _maintenongs_, and your _jardineers_, and so on, as my daughter
can. We don’t have the men to wait at lunch, for my daughter says it
isn’t manners; and I’m very glad it ain’t, for I can’t say I enjoy my
meals when I have to take ’em with a couple of fellows shoving
vegetable-dishes and sauce-boats at me every two minutes, and never
shoving the right ones; for I’m blest if I ever knew ’em yet to shove me
the cucumber before I’d half finished my salmon, though they do call
themselves experienced servants. Howsomedever, if we must dine ally
Rousse, and wrap our mutton-chops in greasy paper and call ’em
maintennong, we must, and there’s an end of it; but I don’t mind
confessing to you, Mr. Lowther, that this is the time I make _my_
dinner, and it’s no use frowning at me, Rosa, for I don’t care who knows
it.”
Mr. Lowther, whose luncheon generally consisted of a glass of
seltzer-and-sherry and one small biscuit, escaped the infliction of one
of Mr. Grunderson’s plates of beef by a judicious manœuvre, and helped
himself to a morsel of pigeon-pie. But before doing so, he allowed his
eyes to wander about the walls in contemplation of some impossible
conglomerations of brown rockery and soapsud sky, which Mr. Grunderson
called his Sallivaters; and thus gave Rosa time to dismiss her bottles
and her plate, and to recover from her embarrassment.
After this everything went very smoothly. Mr. Grunderson expanded under
the influence of bottled stout and Madeira, and was very loquacious; but
sinking presently into a rather stertorous slumber, which he called
forty winks, and which generally lasted about an hour and a half, the
_ci-devant_ market-gardener left Rosa and Roderick to their own
resources. On this Mr. Lowther would have departed, but the candid Rosa
begged him to remain. She had kept up a visiting acquaintance with most
of her old school-fellows, and as she was perpetually making new
acquaintances, she was positively besieged by callers, and had a
tea-drinking institution, which she called a kettle-drum, almost every
afternoon. The idea of exhibiting the elegant diplomatist to her
feminine circle was eminently delightful to Miss Grunderson; and as soon
as her papa had begun to snore with undisguised vehemence, she conducted
Roderick to the drawing-room, where there were as many albums, and
perfume-caskets, and ormolu workboxes, and enamelled book-slides, and
_solitaire_ boards, as would have stocked one of Messrs. Parkins and
Gotto’s show-rooms, and where a grand piano, scattered with all the
easiest polkas in the gaudiest covers, testified to Rosa’s taste for
music.
Miss Grunderson’s kettle-drum visitors began to assemble almost
immediately; and before long Rosa’s drawing-room was full of young
ladies in overpowering bonnets and transparent cloaks of every
imaginable tissue. The male element was very much in the minority at
Miss Grunderson’s gatherings, and was chiefly represented by speechless
younger brothers, who came in sulky submission to overbearing sisters,
and who lounged in uncomfortable attitudes upon Rosa’s most fragile
chairs, spilt their tea upon the velvet table-covers, rarely moved
without knocking something down, and left dingy thumb-marks in all
Rosa’s albums. Amongst such as these Roderick shone like a star of the
first magnitude, and Miss Grunderson exhibited him with unspeakable
pride. The kettle-drum lasted for two mortal hours, and Mr. Lowther was
one of the last to depart, bored to death, as he told his brother
afterwards.
“But a fellow must bring his mind to go through a good deal if he wants
to marry a millionaire’s only daughter in these hard times,” thought the
_attaché_, despondently, as he went yawning to bed. “If my lovely Rosa
does become Mrs. Lowther, she will have to renounce her _penchant_ for
bad French and violent pink dresses; but she may cram her drawing-room
with acquaintance of _quasi_-gentility, and drink tea all day, so far as
I shall be concerned in the matter.”
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