A PERFECT UNION.
Maude left Paddington by an afternoon express, and reached Exeter after
a journey that was long and wearisome even to a modern traveller, for
whom the way has been smoothed so delightfully. It was late the next
evening when she reached Falmouth, after a day in a stage-coach, and put
up at the principal hotel with her maid, who was a good deal more tired
than her mistress, as it is in the nature of maids to be. The coach that
passed through Landresdale on its way to some still more remote and
savage district left Falmouth early in the morning; and Maude left with
it, this time unattended by her maid, whose curiosity had been
considerably stimulated by the erratic nature of her mistress’s
movements, and who thought it a hard thing to be left alone to look out
of the window of the hotel sitting-room, while Mrs. Tredethlyn pursued
her mysterious journey to its mysterious close.
How strange and new all the wild Cornish scenery seemed to Maude, as she
sat alone in the interior of the coach, which was not affected by the
sturdy agriculturists and miners who were generally the only passengers
on this route! How many conflicting hopes and fears found a place in her
mind as she looked out at the unknown country amidst which her husband’s
boyhood had been spent! Had he sailed for the New World by some later
vessel than the _Kingfisher_? Was he far away from the rustic homestead
towards which she was travelling with a faint hope of finding him at the
end of her journey?--an unreasoning hope, which she tried to shut out of
her mind in her dread of the cruel disappointment that might await her.
The coach put her down before the Crown Inn, and she stood alone in
Landresdale High Street, with the great gates of the marquis’s enchanted
castle frowning down upon her from the top of the hill. She inquired
about a conveyance to take her on to Tredethlyn Grange; and the landlord
of the Crown ordered the immediate preparation of a lumbering old
equipage of a tub-like character, lined with washed-out chintz, which
was brought forth on rare occasions, and charged for at a prodigious
rate. While the equipage was being prepared, the landlord contemplated
his bright young visitor with evident curiosity, and would fain have
beguiled her into conversation; but Maude had no inclination to be
communicative. If she was to receive a death-blow to all her hopes, she
did not want to take it from the hands of this coarse common man. She
wanted to go straight to the Grange and learn her fate there, and there
only. The road from Landresdale to the moorland farmhouse was longer
than the by-path through the churchyard by which Francis had gone; and
the clumsy old brown horse, and the lumbering vehicle in which Maude was
seated, progressed very slowly. The way seemed intolerably long to her;
but at last she saw a grey spot against the blue sky, and made out that
the vehicle was bearing towards it by a winding track along which heavy
waggons had left the impression of their broad wheels. The grey spot
grew bigger and bigger against the horizon, until it grew at last into a
dreary-looking habitation, with quaint old gables and moss-grown stone
walls. One slender thread of smoke curled upward, white against the
clear blue atmosphere; some sheep were grazing upon the patch of ground
that had once been a garden; and the perfume of the clover blew towards
the traveller as the fly lumbered nearer to the broken gate.
Maude looked hopelessly at the quiet house,--so little sign of
occupation, so little token of life.
“He can’t be there,” she thought; a sudden gush of tears shutting out
the grey stone walls, the clover-field and browsing sheep. “I am too
late!”
She brushed away her tears, drew down her veil, and alighted, telling
the driver to wait for her; whereupon the man took the bit out of his
horse’s mouth and abandoned himself to slumber, while the animal cropped
the stunted grass contentedly. Some sheep that had been lying in the
pathway skipped awkwardly away as Maude crossed the bare enclosure; and
as she approached the door, it was opened by a tall gaunt woman, who had
evidently been disturbed by the unwonted sound of wheels on the rough
moorland road.
“Mr. Tredethlyn has been staying here, has he not?” Maude asked,
eagerly.
“Yes, ma’am; and he’s here still. Excuse me for being a little put out
like, but you have taken me so aback. You don’t happen to be my master’s
wife, do you?”
“Yes, yes! Oh, thank Heaven, he is still here! Let me see him at once,
please!” exclaimed Maude, trying to pass the grim-looking woman who
barred her passage.
“Not yet! Oh, please, ma’am, not yet!” cried the woman, eagerly. “It
mightn’t be safe.”
“Not safe! What do you mean?”
“He has been so ill, ma’am; and the doctor’s special orders was that he
was to be kept from anything that might upset him. And he talked and
raved so about you, poor dear, when his senses were quite gone, as they
were for days together; and I’m sure nothing could upset him so much as
the sight of your coming upon him sudden. Let me see him first, and tell
him you are here. I make no doubt he’ll be overjoyed to see you; but it
mustn’t come like a shock upon him.”
“He has been ill!” cried Maude; “dangerously ill!”
“Yes, ma’am; very dangerously. We had two doctors with him at one time.
Brain fever it was; over-fatigue and trouble of the mind, and so on, the
doctors said. He came up here after being too late for the steamer by
which he was to have gone abroad; and he came to settle everything about
the farm and the quarries, and so on; and he worked at it night and day,
without rest nor sleep, though me and my husband told him how bad it was
for him; and everything was almost settled when he woke one morning bad
in his head, and after that got from bad to worse, until his life was
almost give up.”
“But he is out of danger now?”
“Yes, ma’am, thank God, quite out of danger now; but, oh, so weak; the
smallest child that ever I had to do with wasn’t weaker than my poor
master now.”
Maude burst out crying. Until this moment she had stood, pale and
breathless, waiting to hear that she was indeed too late--that Francis
Tredethlyn had escaped the destruction of the _Kingfisher_ only to find
death waiting for him in his own home.
“Don’t mind me,” she exclaimed, as the gaunt woman made a clumsy attempt
to comfort her; “I am crying for joy. Go and tell my husband that I am
here; but not at any hazard to him. I will be very patient. Thank God I
have found him! thank God I shall be able to fall on my knees by his
bed-side and beg his forgiveness for my neglect and ingratitude!”
Martha Dryscoll looked wonderingly at this butterfly creature, who
talked hysterically of falling at her husband’s feet and begging
forgiveness. Francis had made no confidants in that Cornish house; and
Mrs. Dryscoll began to fear that his marriage had been a very
unfortunate affair, and that this sudden arrival of an elegantly dressed
penitent was to be the last act of a domestic tragedy.
“If you’ll walk in there, ma’am,” Martha said, pointing to the parlour,
with a severe aspect of countenance, “I’ll go and see my master.”
She said no more, but departed; and Maude crept into the old-fashioned
room, fearful lest the rustling of her silk dress might disturb an
invalid’s slumber. It seemed a long time that she waited, and then Mrs.
Dryscoll returned, smiling grimly this time.
“He’ll see you directly minute,” she said; “and, oh, he does seem so
pleased, poor dear!”
She led Maude to the top of the staircase, and then pointed to a
half-open door at the end of a dusky corridor, after which she went
down-stairs again, and Maude heard her sobbing quietly to herself until
the sound subsided in the distance.
The young wife went on to the half-open door, and entered the room in
which her husband lay on a white-curtained bed, very pale, very wan, and
so weak that he could not raise his hand to offer it her in token of
loving reconciliation.
She fell on her knees by the bed, and laid her cheek upon the hand that
was too feeble to be lifted.
“Oh, forgive me!” she said; “my dear, my love, my true and cherished
husband! If you wanted to give me a lesson, you have given me a very
cruel one; but you have taught me that I cannot live without you.”
She sat by his pillow, with his weak head encircled by her caressing
arms, and told him the story of her penitence and remorse. It was a
sweet exchange of forgiveness for the past, and tender promises for the
future. No denizens of Stuccoville kept watch from behind pink curtains;
the driver of the fly slumbered as profoundly as one of the seven
sleepers; the rustic sound of the sheep cropping the clover was the only
sound that stirred the drowsy stillness. Martha kept herself discreetly
out of the way; and the husband and wife, truly united for the first
time in their lives in that Cornish solitude, were loath to break the
spell which held them in such loving union.
But such spells have to be broken for the common business of life.
Punctual to the appointed moment Mrs. Dryscoll appeared with her
master’s medicine; and then the lumbering fly was sent back empty to
Landresdale; and after that Mrs. Tredethlyn was banished from the sick
room, and made some faint show of taking a little of the refreshment
which had been provided for her by Martha.
After dinner she wrote two brief notes--one to her maid at Falmouth, who
was to follow her immediately with the portmanteau; the other to Julia,
who was to be so good as to send her such luggage as would be necessary
to her in a stay of some weeks.
After this Mrs. Tredethlyn had no more to do but to nurse her husband
through the slow stages of convalescence. It was very long before he was
strong enough to get up to a little Arcadian tea-drinking. It was very
long after that before he was able to take a few turns in the
clover-field, leaning on Maude’s arm. It was still longer before he was
well enough to think of turning his back upon Cornwall, to plunge into
busy commonplace life again.
If he could have been an invalid for the rest of his days, he would have
resigned himself uncomplainingly to his fate; for what period of his
chequered existence had been so sweet as this, in which he and Maude
were all in all to each other?--this perpetual _tête-à-tête_, unbroken
by the intrusion of morning callers, undisturbed by the conflicting
emotions which attend social intercourse in high latitudes. And they
were not idle either during these autumn months. Hidden among those wild
Cornish moors, the husband and wife were very busy together--_improving
their minds_; for Maude had confessed to her husband, with a good deal
of girlish giggling and blushing, that her own education had been very
nearly as defective as his, and that the wide fields of knowledge, which
were such strange and bewildering regions to him, were scarcely more
familiar to her.
“And you are so clever, Frank,” she exclaimed, in conclusion--she
always called him Frank now. “You remember what those American
phrenologists--Messrs. Somebody and Something--said about your
perceptive faculties? You could learn anything, they said. And we’ll
learn together, dear; for I’m ashamed to say I’ve forgotten everything
my governesses and masters taught me, except French and music, and a
smattering of German and Italian. And I’m sure if you’d seen how, as
soon as one master had beaten anything into my brains, another master
came and beat it out again with something else, you’d scarcely wonder
that I’m ignorant. So we’ll begin together, Frank dear, and learn
everything. Won’t it be fun?”
A young lady who looked upon the acquisition of universal knowledge as
an agreeable joke would scarcely be expected to drink very deeply of the
Pierian spring. Maude imbibed the classic water in little fitful sips,
and wasted a good deal of it in frolicsome splashing; but Francis had
read considerably, even in the midst of his London dissipation, and he
had a happy knack of remembering what he read. Mrs. Tredethlyn wrote to
a popular librarian for his catalogue; and in the pages of this pamphlet
she ticked off the solid works which she considered adapted to the
improvement of her own and her husband’s mind.
“Merivale’s ‘History of the Romans under the Empire!’” she exclaimed;
“_that_ of course we must read. I’m sure I haven’t the faintest idea of
Julius Cæsar, except that he always seemed to have a laurel-wreath on
his head and a kind of rolling-pin--if I remember right--in his hand,
and that he once passed something called the Rubicon, though _what_ it
was I haven’t the slightest notion. We’ll have the ‘Roman Empire;’ and
when we’ve got through that, we’ll have Gibbon in _one_ volume, you
know,” said Maude, triumphantly; “he’ll _seem_ shorter in one volume,
even if the small print is rather trying to one’s eyes. Newman’s ‘Phases
of Faith’--that sounds like theology, doesn’t it? and I don’t think we
need begin theology yet, because if we got into the early schisms of the
Church, and Gnostics, and Arians, and so on, our brains wouldn’t be
clear enough for Julius Cæsar. There’s a life of Madame de Maintenon, by
the Duc de Noailles; I think we’ll have that: she’ll be quite a relief
after the ‘Roman Empire,’ because one _has_ a kind of idea about her,
and that she was a nasty old frump, and said rude things about the king,
who was so kind to her, and so on.”
The selection of these and a great many more books was eminently
delightful; but when they came, Maude insisted on dipping into “Roman
Empires” and ponderous histories of different ages just as if they had
been so many novels; and she frisked among the records of the Reign of
Terror with a very confused idea as to the difference between the
“Mountain” and the “Gironde,” but a vivid notion of Charlotte Corday
having her portrait painted just before her death, and Citizen Roland’s
beautiful wife declaiming on the scaffold.
They were very happy together. If Francis read in real earnest, and his
wife only played at reading, they were not the less united in their
studies. The industrious honey-bee and the frivolous butterfly may hover
about the same flower, happy according to their different natures in the
same summer noon. Francis Tredethlyn and his wife were so happy in the
quiet old farmhouse that they let the autumn days drift by them in their
moorland retreat, even after the Cornishman had grown strong enough for
a new skirmish with Harcourt Lowther, had there been any need of a
physical contest between the two men.
“We have been so happy here, Francis,” Maude said one dim November
evening, as the husband and wife walked side by side upon the moorland
before the Grange; “but I think we have learnt to understand each other
so well now, that no one in the world will be able to divide us again.
And by-and-by, when you have read a great deal about Julius Cæsar and
political economy, and so on, and go into the HOUSE”--Maude opened her
eyes to the widest extent as she pronounced the high-sounding
substantive--“how proud I shall be of you; and I shall go to the Ladies’
Gallery when you are going to speak! And then, when you have settled all
about the Berkshire estate, how delightful it will be to arrange our
model farm, and model stables, and pineries, and vineries, and
conservatories, and orchid-houses, and a model dairy, and a model
poultry-yard, almost as pretty as the one at Frogmore! and then how much
we shall have to think of and talk about, shan’t we, Frank?”
“And you’ll never be ashamed of me again, Maude?”
“Ashamed of you!” cried Mrs. Tredethlyn, innocently; “was I ever ashamed
of you?” And then she looked at her husband archly, blushing and
laughing. “Well, perhaps once, when you knocked those _petits timbales
de gibier_ into the duchess’s lap,--half-a-dozen of them at the very
least, Frank; and the night you tore Lady Ophelia Fitzormond’s old
point: but you are so refined, Frank, so improved, if I may venture to
say as much without offending you.”
“I should be a churlish brute indeed, if I had not improved in the
society of the sweetest wife in Christendom, to say nothing of Julius
Cæsar. My great-grandfather was a gentleman, Maude; and there are few
names older than Tredethlyn, even in this land of ancient lineages. We
dropped down until we came to be represented by my grandfather, who
lived like a peasant for the sake of hoarding his money, and in whose
steps my uncle Oliver followed. I shall try to make myself a gentleman
for your sake, Maude--it would never do for people to say that the
lovely Mrs. Tredethlyn had allied herself to a man who was only a clod.”
After this, need it be said that all went very smoothly with Mr. and
Mrs. Tredethlyn?--so smoothly, that poor discontented Julia abandoned
the happy couple in disgust, and went abroad as travelling companion to
a rheumatic old countess, who leads her a dreadful life, and insists
upon being read to sleep out of German metaphysical works at weird hours
of the night. She has met with Roderick Lowther in the course of her
travels, lonely and cynical, looking at everything in life through the
medium of his own disappointments; for he has sought in vain for a
reconciliation with his young wife, and has found to his cost how very
firmly a gentlewoman can hold to her resolution, when her firmness is
justified by the sense of a deep and deadly wrong.
They are very happy, Francis and Maude. The Berkshire estate is just one
of those exceptionally delightful places which drop now and then into
the hands of rich commoners when the aristocratic proprietors go to the
dogs; and the Stuccoville mansion only sees its owners during the few
months in which they skim the cream of the London season, before
scudding off to the Continent to improve their minds among the monuments
of the past, or in the most fashionable watering-places of the present.
They are very happy. As time speeds on, there appears on the lawn in
Berkshire a little rolling bundle of white muslin and expensive lace,
which, inspected closely, turns out to be a baby, and which, if it could
speak at all, would answer to the name of Lionel Hillary Tredethlyn; and
by-and-by, when the young couple travel in the bright autumn weather, a
prim English nurse and a French _bonne_ follow in their rear, and there
is a little girl baby in a white hood; and papa and mamma are alike
concerned for the safe conveyance of these domestic treasures. The girl
baby is called Maude; but she owns a string of other names; and her two
godmothers are Susan Lowther, who lives happily with her boy in the
Petersham cottage, and Rosa Grunderson, who declares that, in
consequence of the distracting influence of public characters, and her
fatal experience of the perfidy of private individuals in the person of
Roderick Lowther, she will descend a spinster to the grave.
One day, at a German watering-place, Francis and his wife hear of a man
living in the same hotel with them, their countryman; a man who is
young, has been handsome, and who for the last few months has been
conspicuous in the gaming-saloons of the Kursaal as a desperate, and
sometimes a very lucky, player--a traveller who can scarcely be an
adventurer, for he has been admired and caressed by elegant women and
well-born men, but who has been a hard drinker from first to last, and
within the last fortnight has fallen a victim to the most hideous
disease which vice ever engendered as the scorpion-whip to work its own
retribution,--a disease called delirium tremens.
The landlord of the hotel tells Mr. Tredethlyn how this wretched
Englishman has his bad fits and his intervals of quiet; how he will lie
down calmly enough perhaps at night, to start up mad in the dim grey
morning, to walk far out into the country, hurrying wildly before the
fiend that pursues him; and to fall exhausted in some desolate spot, and
lie there till some passing peasant picks him up and conveys him back to
his lodging. The landlord describes, with considerable vivacity and
gesticulation, how this poor afflicted creature will sit for hours
together catching at imaginary insects that buzz about him and torment
him; how he will watch and point to falling snow, that never falls; how
with a power that is hideously graphic, he will describe the devils that
dance and gibber round his miserable bed. He tells how the shutting of a
door, the rustling of a newspaper, the flutter of a falling leaf, will
startle this unhappy sufferer more than an unexpected peal of thunder
would startle another man. He describes the sleeplessness which no
opiate is strong enough to conquer, the restlessness and depression with
which medical science struggles in vain. He tells Francis Tredethlyn, in
confidence, that the poor ailing wretch is all but penniless, and that
very scanty supplies of money come to him in reply to the letters he
writes to England now and then in his rational moments.
It scarcely needs Maude’s appealing look to inspire Francis with the
wish to help this unhappy countryman. He says nothing to his wife, but
he goes by-and-by to smoke his cigar in the lamplit quadrangle, where
there is a café, and a smoking-room, and a reading-room, and a
post-office, and a perpetual chatter of divers tongues, and clatter of
hurrying feet. He is a long time smoking that cigar; and yet Maude feels
no displeasure in his absence, as she sits alone in her balcony looking
out at the lamplit town and the solemn forest looming darkly in the
distance. She knows that whatever impulse stirs her own heart is almost
sure to find an answering impulse in her husband’s; and she can guess
what keeps him so long to-night.
He has spoken to the landlord, he tells her, when he comes back, and has
given him a cheque which is to keep things smooth for the present, and
has promised more money, if more should be needed; for in any case the
Englishman is not to be worried about money matters while he is ill; and
above all he is not to know that a stranger’s help has saved him from
annoyance.
“The landlord persuaded me to go into the--poor fellow’s room,
afterwards,” said Francis, slowly. “He thought it would cheer him up a
little to shake a countryman by the hand; and I did go in, Maude,--and I
saw him.”
“Yes, dear; and the interview has made you unhappy, I’m sure. You are
looking dreadfully pale!”
“The man is very ill, Maude, very ill. Yes, the sight of him did almost
knock me over, I assure you.”
It was a week after this when Mr. and Mrs. Tredethlyn left the German
watering-place. They were on the point of starting from the hotel when
Maude noticed the closed shutters of some windows on an upper story, and
on questioning one of the waiters, was told that the Englishman was
dead. She asked her husband to tell her more about the painful end of
this lonely Englishman, as they sat alone in the _coupé_ of a railway
carriage.
“Yes, he is dead, Maude,” Francis answered, sadly. “It was a very
melancholy fate. The doctors could not conquer the sleeplessness, and he
sank at last into a state of coma from which he never rallied. It was a
very miserable ending. He will he buried in the little Protestant
cemetery. I left all necessary directions, and I have written to his
friends in England. Perhaps some one who cared for him will come over to
stand beside his grave. He was no friend of mine; but there seems
something very shocking in this solitary death in a foreign country.”
“He was no friend of yours!” repeated Maude, wonderingly; “how strangely
you say that, Frank! You knew him, then?”
“Yes, Maude, and you knew him too. The man who died last night was
Harcourt Lowther!”
THE END.
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Transcriber’s Notes
This file uses _underscores_ to indicate italic text. New original cover
art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain. Itemized
changes from the original text:
• Table of Contents: Supplied missing period after chapter number IV.
• p. 10: Changed “Deptfort” to “Deptford” in phrase “embarked at
Deptford on a misty morning in October.”
• p. 16: Changed exclamation mark after “child” to comma in phrase “his
only child, too, for the matter of that.”
• p. 16: Supplied missing closing quotation mark after phrase “bring
out your desk, and write at once.”
• p. 22: Replaced double with single closing quotation mark in phrase
“the lawyer’s letter!--‘Francis Tredethlyn, Esq.!’ eh?”
• p. 35: Supplied missing closing quotation mark after phrase “I’m
every bit as far from Susy now as ever I was out yonder.”
• p. 51: Changed “Hilary” to “Hillary” in phrase “Lionel Hillary,
Australian merchant, of Moorgate Street.”
• p. 69: Supplied missing period after “Mr.” in phrase “She sighed as
she admitted to Mr. Tredethlyn that her name was Burfield.”
• p. 72: Supplied missing closing quotation mark after phrase “with her
relations in the country.”
• p. 80: Supplied missing period after “Mrs.” in phrase “He had only
been able to read Mrs. Burfield’s story in one fashion.”
• p. 111: Omitted repeated word “as” in phrase “appeared to resent any
inquiries as to his state.”
• p. 169: Changed “gaities” to “gaieties” in phrase “amidst all the
gaieties and luxuries and successes of the most wonderful city in the
world.”
• p. 188: Replaced double with single closing quotation mark after
phrase “what have you done with Robert?”
• p. 202: Changed “Cliquot” to “Clicquot” in phrase “under the
influence of unlimited Moet or Clicquot.”
• p. 214: Supplied missing period after phrase “some one proposed an
adjournment to an adjacent theatre.”
• p. 224: Supplied missing letter “s” in “Turner’s” in phrase “I’ll
slip over and get Miss Turner’s direction.”
• p. 227: Supplied missing single closing quotation mark after phrase
“I don’t think I shall ever bring my mind to go there, or to see
them.”
• p. 241: Several words at the top of this page were missing from the
images used to produce this eBook. The words “said,” “set,” and
“heiress” were confirmed from the original 1864-65 serial
publication.
• p. 246: Changed “Burlegh” to “Burleigh” in phrase “And long he
mourned, the Lord of Burleigh.”
• p. 250: Changed “looing” to “looking” in phrase “looking sharply at
the myosotis in her nephew’s button-hole.”
• p. 266: Changed dash to period after phrase “exclaimed Mr. Harcourt,
who had said all he wanted to say.”
• p. 268: Changed “reurned” to “returned” in phrase “when the
water-party returned to the Cedars.”
• p. 271: Omitted closing double quotation mark after phrase “willing
to lay down his very life for her pleasure.”
• p. 280: Added semicolon after phrase “I have been face to face with
starvation, Frank, very often within the last two years.”
• p. 286: Supplied missing period after “Mr.” in phrase “The quiet
rubber at Mr. Lowther’s lodgings generally led to other rubbers
elsewhere.”
• p. 289: Supplied missing period after phrase “while Francis was
shaking hands with some of the men.”
• p. 292: Supplied missing letter “n” in “man” in phrase “a big man
with a black moustache.”