CHAPTER XIX

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MR. HILLARY SPEAKS HIS MIND.

After that meeting in Hyde Park, Francis Tredethlyn came very often to the Cedars; so often, as to engender a vague uneasiness in Miss Hillary’s mind. She knew that he loved her. If that sudden declaration in the study had never occurred to reveal the fact, Maude must have been something less than a woman had she been blind to a devotion that was made manifest by every look and tone of her adorer. She knew that he loved her, and that he had done battle with his love in order that she might be happily ignorant of the pangs that tormented his simple heart. The highly educated girl was able to read the innermost secrets of that honest uncultivated mind, and was fain to pity Francis Tredethlyn’s wasted suffering. Alas! had she not indeed traded upon his devotion, and obtained her father’s safety at the expense of her own honour?

Such thoughts as these tormented Miss Hillary perpetually now that Francis spent so much of his life at Twickenham. She perceived with inexpressible pain that her father encouraged the young man’s visits,--her father, who could not surely shut his eyes to the real state of the Cornishman’s feelings; yet who knew of her engagement to Harcourt Lowther. She did not know that Julia Desmond had taken good care to inform Francis of that engagement, and that the young man came knowingly to his delicious torture. She did not know this; and all that womanly compassion which was natural to her, that pitying tenderness which showed itself in the injudicious relief of barefaced tramps and vagabonds about the Twickenham lanes, and the pampering of troublesome pet dogs and canary birds--all her womanly pity, I say, was aroused by the thought that she was loved, and loved in vain, by an honest and generous heart.

Thus it came to pass that she could no longer endure the course which events were taking, and she determined upon speaking to her father. They had dined alone one bright June evening: they were not often thus together now, for Mr. Hillary had fallen into his old habit of bringing visitors from London, and the ponderous matrons and croquet-playing young ladies inflicted a good deal of their company upon Maude. They had dined alone, and Miss Hillary seized the opportunity of speaking to her father upon that one subject which had so long occupied her thoughts.

“Mr. Tredethlyn comes here very often, papa,” she said, breaking ground very gently.

Lionel Hillary filled his glass, retiring an it were behind the claret-jug, from which comfortable shelter he replied to his daughter’s remark,--

“Often?--yes--I suppose he does spend a good deal of his time here. I am glad that he should do so; he is an excellent young man, a noble-hearted young fellow--the best friend I have in the world.”

Mr. Hillary was a long time filling that one glass of claret, and his face was quite hidden by the crystal jug.

“Yes, papa, he is very good; but do you think it is quite right--quite wise to invite him so often?”

“Right--wise?” cried Mr. Hillary; “what, in the name of all that’s absurd, can you mean by talking of the right or wisdom of an invitation to dinner? The young man likes to come here, and I like the young man, and like to see him here. That is about all that can be said upon the subject.”

Maude was silent for some moments. It was very difficult to discuss this question with her father, but she had grown familiar with difficulties within the past few months, and was no longer the frivolous girl who had known no loftier cause of anxiety than the uncertain health of her Skye terrier. She returned to the charge presently.

“Dear papa, I am sorry to worry you about this business,” she said, gently, “but there are such peculiar circumstances in our acquaintance with Mr. Tredethlyn--we are under so deep an obligation to him, and----”

“And on that account we ought to shut our doors in his face, I suppose!” exclaimed Mr. Hillary, with some show of impatience. “My dear Maude, what mare’s-nest have you lighted upon?”

“It is so difficult for me to explain myself, papa: you can never imagine how difficult. But I think you ought to understand what I mean. When Julia was here, Mr. Tredethlyn’s visits were quite natural, and I was always glad to see him; but it was my application to him for the loan of that money which resulted in the breaking of Julia’s engagement. I cannot forget that night, papa; nothing but desperation would have prompted me to appeal to Francis Tredethlyn; and now that we are under this great obligation to him, I feel that we are bound to him by a kind of duty. We have, at least, no right to deceive him.”

“Deceive him! Who does deceive him?”

“Willingly, no one. But he may deceive himself, papa. You force me to speak very plainly. Upon the night on which I appealed to him for that loan, he told me that he loved me, even though he was then engaged to Julia. There was something in his manner that convinced me of his sincerity, though I was shocked at the want of honour involved in such a declaration. But now that his engagement to Julia has been broken off, indirectly through my agency, he may think it likely that----”

“He may think it likely that you would be wise enough to accept one of the best fellows that ever lived for your husband. Is that what you mean, Maude?”

“Papa!”

“Oh, my dear, I have no doubt you think me a cruel father, because I venture to make such a suggestion. But surely, Maude, you cannot have been blind to this young man’s devotion. From the very first it has been obvious to anyone gifted with the smallest power of perception. Julia Desmond contrived, by her consummate artifice, to inveigle the poor fellow into a false position; but in spite even of that foolish engagement, he has been devoted to you, Maude, from the first. I have seen it, and have counted, Heaven knows how fully, upon a marriage between you and him.”

“You have done this, papa, and yet you knew all about Harcourt,” exclaimed Maude, reproachfully.

“I knew that you were a foolishly sentimental girl, ready to believe in any yellow-whiskered young Admirable Crichton, who could make pretty speeches, and criticise the newest Italian opera, or Tennyson’s last poem. But I knew something more than this, Maude; I knew the state of my own affairs, and that my only hope for you lay in a wealthy marriage.”

“And you thought that I would marry for money--you could think so meanly of me, papa!”

“I thought that you were a sensible, high-spirited girl, and that when you came to know the desperation of the case, you would show yourself of the true metal--as you did that night at Brighton; as you did when you asked Tredethlyn for the loan which saved me from ruin.”

Lionel Hillary stretched out his hand as he spoke, and grasped that of his daughter. In the next minute she was by his side, bending over him and caressing him. Only lately it had begun to dawn dimly upon Maude Hillary, that perhaps this father, whom she loved so dearly, was not the noblest and most honourable of men: but if any such knowledge had come to her, it had only intensified the tenderness with which, from her earliest childhood, she had regarded that indulgent father. The experience of sorrow had transformed and exalted her nature; and she was able to look upon Lionel Hillary’s weaknesses with pitying regret, rather than with any feeling of contempt or indignation.

“Dear papa,” she said, very gravely, “you and I love each other so dearly, that there should be no possibility of any misunderstanding between us. I can never marry Mr. Tredethlyn; I know that he is good and generous-minded and simple-hearted; I feel the extent of our obligation to him, but I can never be his wife. It is for this reason that I am fearful lest any false impression may arise in his mind. Pray, dear papa, take this into consideration, and do not let him come here so often--at any rate, not until you have been able to repay him his money, not until the burden of this great obligation has been removed from us.”

Lionel Hillary laughed aloud.

“Not until the money has been paid! I’m afraid, in that case, Tredethlyn will stop away from this house for a long time to come.”

“A long time, papa! But you told me you would be able to repay the twenty thousand pounds,” said Maude, turning very pale.

“And I dare say I shall be able to pay the money some day. Such a loan as that is not repaid in a few months, Maude. How should you understand these matters? The twenty thousand pounds went to fill a yawning gulf in my business, and it would be about as easy for me to get the same amount of money back out of that gulf as it would for a single diver to bring up the treasures of a sunken argosy.”

Maude sighed wearily. It seemed as if a kind of net had been woven round her, and that she suddenly found herself in the centre of it, unable to move.

“Papa,” she cried, “you don’t mean that Mr. Tredethlyn’s money is lost?”

“Lost! No, child; but it may be a very long time before I shall be able to pay him. If you were not so foolish as to throw away one of the noblest hearts in Christendom--to say nothing of the fortune that goes along with it--there would be very little need for me to worry myself about this money.”

“Oh, I understand, papa. If I were Mr. Tredethlyn’s wife, you would not be obliged to pay the twenty thousand pounds,” said Maude, very slowly.

“I should not be tormented about it as I am now. Say no more, my dear; you don’t understand these things, and you drive me very nearly mad with your questions about my affairs.”

“Forgive me, papa. No, I don’t understand--I can’t understand all at once; it seems so strange to me.”

She bent her head and kissed her father on the forehead, and then went quietly out of the room; leaving him alone in the still summer twilight, with a belated wasp buzzing feebly amongst the fruit and flowers on the table. Maude went to her own room, and sitting there in the dusk, shed some of the bitterest tears that had ever fallen from her eyes. The discovery of her father’s views with regard to her had humiliated her to the very dust. The idea that Francis Tredethlyn’s loan would never be repaid was torture to her keen sense of honour; torture which was rendered still more poignant by the recollection of her own part in the transaction. Would he ever be paid? Would that money, for the loan of which--and never more than the loan--she had supplicated her friend’s betrothed husband, would that money ever be returned to the generous young man who had so freely lent it? Her father had said that it would in due course; but there was something in his manner that had neutralized the effect of his words. To Maude Hillary’s mind this debt was a very sacred one, a debt which _must_ be repaid, and for which she herself was responsible. Twenty thousand pounds;--all the faculties of her brain seemed to swim in a great sea of confusion as she thought of that terrible sum--twenty thousand pounds, which she was bound to see duly paid; and she was no longer an heiress, to whom money was dross. She was a penniless, helpless girl: worse off than other penniless girls by reason of her inexperience of poverty.

She thought of Harcourt Lowther; and his image seemed to shine upon her across a wilderness of troubles; a bright and pleasant thing to look at, but with no promise of help, no inspiration of hope, no pledge of comfort in its brightness.

“Perhaps papa is right, after all,” she thought, “and Harcourt would scarcely care to burden himself with a penniless wife.”

She was ashamed of this brief treason against her lover, almost as soon as the thought had shaped itself; only in her despair it seemed to her as if there could be no security of any happiness upon this earth.

“I will tell Francis Tredethlyn the truth about myself,” she thought; “he shall not be deceived as to anything in which I am concerned. He shall know of my engagement to Harcourt.”

Maude did not go downstairs again that night, nor did Mr. Hillary send for her, as it was his wont to do when she was long away from him. It may be that he scarcely cared to encounter his daughter after that conversation in the dining-room, which had been far from pleasant to him. He was not a father of Mr. Capulet’s class, who could order his daughter to marry the County Paris at a few days’ notice; or in the event of her refusal, bid her rot in the streets of Verona. But from the very first he had been bent upon bringing about a union between Francis and Maude, and he brooded moodily over the girl’s resolute rejection of any such alliance.

“What would become of her if I were to die to-morrow?” he thought; “and what is to become of my business if I fail to secure a rich partner?”

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