CHAPTER XVII
.
SOMETHING LIKE FRIENDSHIP.
Maude Hillary did not rise very early after that New Year’s entertainment at the Cedars; painful emotions, troubles, doubts, and perplexities, that had been unknown to her through all her previous lifetime, had crowded suddenly upon her within the last few weeks, and it was scarcely strange if she well-nigh fainted under the burden. She slept for some hours on that first night of the year,--slept the feverish, heavy slumber that waits upon trouble of mind and exhaustion of body. The winter sun shone with a chill brightness between the rose-coloured draperies of her window when she awoke from a painful dream to a dim sense of actual trouble that was still more painful. She remembered the scene of the previous night, her own desperate appeal for help, Francis Tredethlyn’s avowal, and Julia’s indignation. She remembered all this with a burning sense of shame, and with a tender and pitying regret for Julia’s wrongs.
“And he did not love her!” she thought, “when I fancied they were so happy and united, so much what lovers ought to be; it was all false, after all, and he had deceived her. But why? What motive could he have for doing her so great a wrong?”
Miss Hillary pondered upon this mystery while she dressed,--unaided this morning, for she did not care to endure her maid’s sympathetic remarks upon her pale face and heavy eyes; unaided, for how soon that pretty Twickenham paradise, with all its dependencies, might pass away from her, unsubstantial as the fairy palace in which Princess Balroubadour floated away to Africa! Maude put on her plainest morning dress, and went straight to Julia’s room, intending to make her peace with that young lady, at any cost of self-humiliation. No base thought of Julia’s obligations, no remembrance of the favours that had been heaped upon the Irish girl in that hospitable habitation, had any place in Maude Hillary’s mind. She thought of her friend as tenderly as she might have thought of an only sister, and she remembered nothing except the great wrong that had been done to Julia by the defection of her lover. The breach between them was not to be narrowed. When Maude entered her friend’s bedroom, she only found an empty and desolate-looking apartment, in which open wardrobes and drawers, and a dressing-table, cleared of all its pretty frivolities, bore witness to the angry Julia’s departure.
Miss Hillary’s maid came running along the corridor, while her mistress stood amazed in Miss Desmond’s deserted chamber.
“Oh, Miss,” cried the girl, “to think as you should get up and dress yourself without a bit of help, while I’ve been waiting and listening for the bell these last two hours! Miss Desmond, she have gone, Miss, above an hour ago, and have took all her boxes in a fly to the station, but wouldn’t have none of the servants to go with her; and Oh, Miss, she looked as white as that toilet-cover.”
That was all Maude could hear of her sometime friend’s abrupt departure from that pleasant dwelling-place, in which she had enjoyed such a luxurious home. This was all that the servants could tell their young mistress about the splendid Julia; but in the study, where the scene of the previous night had been enacted, Maude found a letter directed to herself, in Miss Desmond’s handwriting. It was a very brief missive; almost such a one as an English Elizabeth, or a Russian Catherine, might have written.
“For your father’s hospitality,” wrote Miss Desmond, “I shall always remain grateful, and shall be sorry to hear of any evil that may befall him. The debt I owe to _you_ I shall also know how to remember, and shall wait the time and opportunity for its repayment.--J. D.”
Maude sat for some time musing sorrowfully upon this oracular epistle. She was not in any wise terrified by her friend’s threats; she was only sorry for Julia’s disappointment.
“She must have loved Francis Tredethlyn very dearly,” Miss Hillary thought, sorrowfully, “or she would never feel his conduct so deeply. And yet I have often fancied that she spoke of him coldly, almost contemptuously.”
Poor Maude Hillary’s lessons in the mysteries of every-day life had only just begun; she had yet to learn that there are other disappointments than those which wait upon true love, other pains and sorrows than those which have their root in the heart; and that there are such things as marrying and giving in marriage for the love of thirty thousand a year.
She spent a weary day in the pleasant drawing-room, where the red glow of a great fire illuminated as much prettiness in the way of china, and Parian, and bronze, and ormolu, and enamel, as would have stocked a _bric-à-brac_ shop in Wardour Street. She spent a tiresome day, that seemed interminably long, lying on a low sofa near the fire, thinking of her father’s troubles and Julia’s desertion. She thought also of that cruel scene, in which she had seemed to play so contemptible a part. What bitter humiliation it was to look back upon, now that the mad impulse of the moment, the desperate courage that had made her snatch at _any_ chance of help for her father, had altogether passed away! How mean and pitiful the whole business seemed now to her calmer judgment, looked upon in the cold light of common, sense! A borrower, a beggar almost, a miserable suppliant to her friend’s affianced husband. What wonder that Francis Tredethlyn had basely taken advantage of that false position, to avow a passion whose least expression was an insult to her on the lips of Julia Desmond’s lover? And then what wasted humiliation, what unnecessary shame; for had not she turned upon him and upbraided him in the next moment, forgetful of her father’s desperate need!
Such thoughts as these were scarcely pleasant company all through that brief January day, which seemed so long to Maude Hillary. The slow hours crept on, and she still lay tossing restlessly on the sofa, which offered all that upholstery can offer for the consolation of a troubled mind. A servant brought lamps, and crept from window to window, drawing the curtains as stealthily as a burglar would have cut a square out of the iron door of Mr. Hillary’s plate-room. The first dinner-bell rang out in the old-fashioned cupola upon the roof, and informed all Twickenham that it was time for the people at the Cedars to array themselves for the evening meal: but Maude still lay upon the sofa, hiding her flushed face in the pillows, and trying to quiet the throbbing in her burning head. What did it matter? The poor inexperienced girl broke down all at once in her social comedy. She could act the wearisome play no longer; she wanted to give up all her share in this world, and to go to bed and lie there quietly until she died. All the common business of life seemed unutterably loathsome to her,--the dressing and dining, the simpering small-talk, the finery of a grand house no longer honestly maintained. Oh, that it could all be swept away like the vision engendered out of some troubled slumber; giving place to a suburban cottage and a life of decent toil!
“I have seen girls--well-bred, good-looking girls, trudging in the muddy London streets, with music portfolios in their arms, while I have been out shopping in my carriage,” she thought. “Oh, if I could only be like one of these, and work for papa, and see him happy, smiling at me across our little table, as I gave him his dinner, and not brooding as he does now, hour after hour, hour after hour, in this grand drawing-room, with the same settled look of trouble on his face!”
It was not only of late that Maude had watched her father anxiously and sadly. Very often during the year just passed, and even in the year preceding that, the girl had been alarmed by Lionel Hillary’s moody looks and long gloomy reveries, out of which it was his wont to rouse himself in a mechanical kind of way when strangers were present. But the merchant always gave the same explanation of his sombre looks. Those headaches, those constitutional headaches, which came upon him constantly through the fatigue and worry of business--those terrible headaches made an excuse for everything, and Maude’s fears about her father related solely to his health. How should she understand the dismal diagnosis of commercial disease? How should she imagine that there was any limit to the fairy purse of Fortunatus--any chance of a blight in Aladdin’s orchard of jewelled fruits?
The second dinner-bell rang, and there was no sign of the merchant’s return. It had been a common thing lately for Lionel Hillary to keep his cook in a fever of vexation over the hot plates and furnaces where the viands for the diurnal banquet simmered and frizzled in their copper receptacles. Maude felt no special alarm about her father. Why should he hurry home to lengthen the long evening of brooding thought and care? Why should she wish him home, when, out of all the depth of her love and devotion, she could not conjure one word of comfort wherewith to greet him?
She was thinking this when the door was opened suddenly by an eager hand, and Mr. Hillary came into the room.
His daughter rose from the sofa, startled by the suddenness of his entrance. It is a small action, that of opening a door, and entering a room; but there was as great a change in Mr. Hillary’s performance of it, as if twenty years had suddenly been lifted from his life.
“My darling!” he cried, taking his daughter in his arms, “it is you whom I have to thank. It was your doing, was it not?”
“What, papa?”
“The money--the twenty thousand pounds.”
“Twenty thousand pounds!”
She thought the burning pain in her head had engendered some sudden delirium. She could not believe that this was her father’s face, lighted by a hopeful smile, such as she had not seen upon it during the last three years.
“What twenty thousand pounds, papa?”
“The sum that has been placed to my credit to-day anonymously. The bank people refused to tell me the name of my benefactor. I look to you, Maude, to solve the mystery. There is only one man whom I know of, rich enough to advance such a sum of money--young enough to do it in so Utopian a manner. There is only one man, Maude, and his name is Francis Tredethlyn. Tell me, my dear, have I guessed rightly?”
“You have, papa. Yes, I am sure you have. Poor fellow! and I was so angry with him last night. It was very good of him to do this, papa.”
“Good of him!” cried the merchant--“good of him to lend twenty thousand pounds, without a halfpennyworth of security! Upon my word, Maude, it _is_ good; and I can assure you it’s a kind of goodness that is very uncommon in the City.”
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