CHAPTER XXVII
.
SEEING A GHOST.
Under the perpetual influence of his friend and master, Harcourt Lowther, Mr. Tredethlyn’s days and nights were so fully occupied that he had very little leisure for serious thought. Day by day the patient master taught his deadly lesson; day by day the luckless pupil took his teacher’s precepts more deeply to heart. The simple, credulous nature was as malleable as clay under the practised hand of the modeller, and took any shape Mr. Lowther chose to give it.
Francis was fully impressed with the idea that his money had purchased a lovely wife whose heart could never be given to him. All that fair fabric of hopes and dreams which had been his when he married Maude Hillary had been slowly but surely undermined, and there was nothing left of its brightness but the memory that it once had been. He thought of those foolish hopes now with anger and bitterness. Could he at any time have been so mad, so blind, so besotted, as to believe that this beautiful creature, perpetually floating in an atmosphere of frivolity and adulation, would ever fold her wings to nestle tenderly in his rude breast? Othello, recalled to the sense of his declining years and grimy visage by the friendly bluntness of Iago, could scarcely have thought more bitterly of his lovely Venetian bride than Francis thought of Maude after six months’ daily association with his old master. But if the poison was quick to do its deadly work, the antidote was always at hand. With thirty thousand a year and a fine constitution, what need has a young man for reflection? It is all very well for Mr. Young the poet, having failed to obtain wealth or preferment, to retire from a world which has treated him ill, and meditate upon the transitory nature of earthly blessings that he has been unable to obtain; but with youth and thirty thousand per annum, surely no man need be bored by such a darksome guest as dull care. Harcourt Lowther did his best to shield his friend from the gloomy intruder by contriving that Francis Tredethlyn’s existence should be one perpetual fever of hurry and excitement. But though you may carry a man from racecourse to racecourse, by shrieking expresses tearing through the darkness of the night; though you may steep him to the lips in theatres and dancing-halls; though you may drag him from one scene of mad unrest to another, till his tired eyeballs have lost their power to see anything but one wearisome confusion of gas light and colour,--you _cannot_ prevent him from thinking. The involuntary process goes on in spite of him. He will think in a hansom cab tearing over the stones of the Haymarket, in an express train rushing towards Newmarket at sixty miles an hour, on the box-seat of a guardsman’s drag, on the rattling fire-engine of an aristocratic amateur Braidwood, on the downs at Epsom--yes, even at the final rush, when every eye is strained to concentrate its power of sight upon one speck of colour, the man’s mind, for ever the veriest slave to follow that will-o’-the-wisp called association, will wander away in spite of him,--to mourn above a baby’s grave, to sit amidst the perfume of honeysuckle and roses in a still summer twilight trifling with the rings on a woman’s hand.
There were times when thought would come to Francis Tredethlyn, in spite of all his friend’s watchful care. He would sit at the head of a dinner-table at the Crown and Sceptre, staring vacantly at the frisky wine-bubbles in his shallow glass, and thinking how happy he might have been if Maude had only loved him. Ah, this poor substitute of noise instead of mirth,--this pitiful tinsel of dissipation in place of the pure gold of happiness,--how miserable a mockery it was even at the best!
Mr. Lowther generally broke in upon such gloomy reveries as these by calling to the waiter to exchange his friend’s shallow glass for a tumbler. But there are pangs of regret not to be lulled to slumber by all the sparkling wines that were ever grown in the fair champagne country, and Harcourt Lowther sometimes found his work very difficult.
But amidst such perpetual hurry and excitement it was only natural that some things should be almost entirely forgotten by Francis Tredethlyn, and amongst these forgotten things were the sorrows of his missing cousin. The Gray’s-Inn lawyers had _carte blanche_, and could have employed all the detective machinery in London in a search for Susan Tredethlyn, _alias_ Susan Lesley, had they so chosen; but your intensely respectable family solicitor is the slowest of slow coaches, and Messrs. Kursdale and Scardon contented themselves with the insertion of an occasional advertisement in the second column of the “Times” supplement, informing Susan Lesley that she might hear of something to her advantage on applying at their office; and further offering a liberal reward for any information respecting the above-mentioned lady.
The advertisement did not entirely escape notice. A good many Susan Lesleys presented themselves:--one a fat old woman of seventy, who kept a tobacconist’s shop in the neighbourhood of Seven Dials; another a bony and pugnacious-looking person, with fiery red hair, and a fine South-of-Ireland brogue, who threatened dire vengeance on the quiet lawyer when he refused to recognize her pretensions to hear of something to her advantage. All the Susan Lesleys were ready to swear anything in order to establish their claims to that unknown advantage--which might be anything from a five-pound note to a million of money, or a dormant peerage,--but they all broke down lamentably under Mr. Kursdale’s cross-questioning, and he did not even trouble Francis Tredethlyn to confront the false syrens.
So, amid Newmarket meetings and Greenwich dinners, chicken-hazard, billiards, and unlimited loo, poor Susan’s rustic image melted quite away; and Francis forgot the solemn promise he had made, and the sacred duty he had set himself to do when his Uncle Oliver’s heritage first fell into his hands. And Francis Tredethlyn’s forgetfulness might have lasted very long, if an accident had not awakened him to a most vivid recollection of the past.
It was the May-time saturnalia of the turf, the Epsom week, and Mr. Tredethlyn’s drag had been to and fro upon the dusty roads carrying a heavy load of Bohemianism under convoy of the indefatigable Harcourt Lowther. Francis had been rather unlucky, and a good deal of money had changed hands after the Derby, the larger part of it finding its way into the pockets of Mr. Tredethlyn’s obliging friend. The Oaks day was to have redeemed his fortunes, but the day was over, and Francis drove home amongst the noisy ruck of landaus and waggonettes, ponderous double dog-carts, and heavily-laden sociables, tax-carts and costermongers’ barrows, with the outer leaves of an attenuated cheque-book peeping from his breast-pocket, and the dim consciousness that he had distributed hastily-scribbled cheques to the amount of some thousands, floating confusedly in his brain. He drove to town through the spring twilight, with Dutch dolls in his hat, and a heavy pain in his heart. The _papier mâché_ noses of his companions were scarcely more false and hollow than their gaiety.
Of course it would be impossible to conclude such a day without a dinner. The sort of people amongst whom Francis Tredethlyn lived are perpetually dining and giving dinners; only the dinner-givers are as one to twenty of the diners; so, at some time between nine and ten o’clock, Maude’s husband found himself in his usual place at the head of a glittering table, in an odorous atmosphere of asparagus soup and fried mullet, and with a racking headache, that was intensified by every jingle of glasses and rattle of knives and forks.
He had lost heavily, and had drunk deeply under the warm May sunshine on the Downs. To lose cheerfully is given to many men, but how very few have the power to lose quietly! Francis had taken his disappointment in a rather uproarious spirit; slapping his companions on the shoulder, and making new engagements right and left; backing the same horses by whose shortcomings he had just lost his money; and huskily protesting the soundness of his own judgment in despite of the misfortunes of to-day.
He went on talking now at the head of the dinner-table, though the sound of his own voice by no means improved the splitting pain in his head. He went on talking amidst a clamour of many voices, through which one sober and silent toady, sitting next Mr. Tredethlyn, made a vain effort to understand his discourse. He poured forth misty vaticinations on coming events, gave general invitations for a great dinner at Virginia Water on the Ascot cup day, and galloped noisily along the road to ruin in which Harcourt Lowther had set him going. That splitting headache of his was getting worse every minute, when some one proposed an adjournment to an adjacent theatre.
There had been counsel taken with a waiter. A West-end waiter is no mean dramatic critic, though he never sees a play; the opinions of playgoers percolating perpetually through his ears must leave some residuum in the shape of knowledge. The waiter opined that the best entertainment in London was to be had at Drury Lane, where a melodramatic spectacle of some celebrity was being played that evening for the last time but one.
Inspired by the waiter, Mr. Tredethlyn’s party made their way to the theatre, bearing Mr. Tredethlyn along with them, indifferent where he went, and carrying his headache with him everywhere.
It was past ten o’clock, and the last scene of the great spectacle was on. The house was full, and the audience were chiefly of that restless and vociferous order who drop into a theatre at half-price on great race-nights. Mr. Tredethlyn and his party could only find standing-room at the back of the dress-circle, and from this position Francis beheld the grand final _tableau_.
The piece was an adaptation of some great Parisian success--some story of the Reign of Terror,--and in this last scene the stage was crowded by a clamorous populace. Upwards of three hundred men, women, and children were engaged in the scene. Blouses and uniforms, the picturesque head-dresses of the provincial peasantry, the scarlet cap of liberty, the cocked hats of the gendarmerie,--all blended in one grand mass of movement and colour, while the rapid action of the piece drew to its triumphant close.
Mr. Tredethlyn did not trouble himself to wonder what the piece had been about. He saw somebody killed--a villain it was to be supposed, since the crowd set up a well-organized yell of rejoicing; then there was a reconciliation, an embrace, a young lady in short-waisted white muslin clasped to the breast of a young man in a long-tailed blue coat and low top-boots, adorned with many-coloured bunches of riband. Then the band broke into the stately measure of the “Marseillaise Hymn,” the crowd clamoured a shrill chorus, and the curtain fell.
It was while the curtain was descending very slowly to that triumphant music that Francis Tredethlyn saw something which startled him like the sight of a ghost.
It was a face--a woman’s face in a high Normandy cap, looking out of the many faces in the crowd, a thin, worn, melancholy countenance, very sad to look upon, among all those other faces fronting the audience with a stereotyped smile.
“My God!” cried Mr. Tredethlyn, clasping his two hands upon his hot forehead, and pushing back the rumpled hair, “who is it? What’s the matter with me? I feel as if I’d seen a ghost!”
There was a little piece after the melodrama, a slender little production, popularly known as a “screaming” farce. It was not the most strikingly original dramatic invention, and its chief point consisted in one gentleman in tartan trousers being perpetually mistaken for another gentleman in tartan trousers, whole both gentlemen were alternately sitting upon bonnet-boxes and dropping trays of crockery.
There was certainly not very much in the farce, but the audience laughed uproariously, and Francis Tredethlyn’s party joined in the laughter. He found himself laughing, too, as loudly as the rest of them; but amidst all that confusion and clamour, the wan, sad face, with two inartistic patches of rouge upon its hollow cheeks, kept surging up ever and anon out of the chaos of his brain, and haunting him like the face of a ghost.
Who was it? What was it? Was it some accidental likeness? Was it a face that he had seen and known in the past? Alas for the steady, clear-headed soldier, who had been so prompt to obey military orders, so strict in the performance of duty! Francis Tredethlyn’s muddled senses refused to help him to-night. The author of “What will he do with it?” tells us that light wines are the most treacherous of liquors; “they inflame the brain like fire, while melting on the palate like ice.” Mr. Tredethlyn had been drinking a mixture of divers champagnes and Moselles all day long, and he tried in vain to fix the vague image which floated amidst the confusion of his brain.
He went home in the early grey of the May morning; but not to sleep. He lay tossing from side to side, tormented by that preternatural wakefulness which is apt to succeed a long period of riot and excitement. The course at Epsom, the gipsy fortune-tellers, the betting-men in white hats and green veils, the Dutch dolls and pink calico pincushions, the dust and clamour of the homeward drive, the jingling of broken glass, the popping of corks, the revolutionary crowd in the drama, the tartan trousers and broken bandboxes in the farce,--all mixed themselves in his brain, falling to pieces, and putting themselves together again like the images in a kaleidoscope.
Mr. Lowther, coming to see his friend at the correct visiting hour, found Francis still in bed, in a little room behind the library, which he had fitted up for himself at Harcourt’s instigation, as a bedroom and dressing-room, a kind of refuge to which he might betake himself when he was unfit to encounter the calm gaze of Maude’s clear blue eyes fixed upon him in sorrowful wonder. Her manner to him had never quite recovered its old kindness since that unlucky encounter on the stairs. She was still kind to him; but he could see that it was by an effort only that she retained anything of her old friendliness. He could see this, and the knowledge of it galled him to the quick. Harcourt Lowther’s work was more than half done by this time. He had no longer any difficulty in beguiling Francis abroad, for the Cornishman no longer cared to remain at home.
Mr. Tredethlyn had not very long fallen into a feverish slumber after long hours of wakeful weariness, when his friend called upon him. Harcourt seated himself by the side of the narrow brass bedstead, and stared contemplatively at the sleeper, while he spoke to the valet who had admitted him to the darkened chamber.
“You can let your master sleep till four o’clock, Jervois,” he said. “At four give him some soda and brandy. He has an appointment with me at half-past five. Take care that he doesn’t oversleep himself. I’ll write him a line by way of reminder.”
He drew a little writing-table towards him, and wrote a few lines on a sheet of note-paper:
“DEAR TREDETHLYN,--Remember your engagement at my quarters; 5.30 sharp. You had better bring the mail phaeton, and can give me a lift to the S. and G.
“Yours faithfully,
“H. L.”
He slipped his note into an envelope, and dipped his pen into the ink; but before writing the address, he stopped suddenly, and tore the note into fragments.
“_She_ might see it!” he muttered, thoughtfully, “and that might show her the nature of my cards. The only wise man is the one who can do his work without that most dangerous of all machinery--pen and paper. Poor Francis! he looks a little worn.”
Mr. Lowther looked down upon the sleeper with the most benign expression. He had no dislike whatever to the simple Cornishman; he had only--his own plans.
“These fellows who come suddenly into a large fortune are sure to kill themselves before they have done spending it,” he murmured, complacently. “Jervois,” he said, as he went out, “you won’t forget your master’s engagement. He’d better drive up to my place in the mail phaeton.”
Mr. Lowther’s “place” was the same lodging which he had taken for himself when he first returned to England. He was an adventurer; but he was not a vulgar adventurer, and in all his dealings with Francis Tredethlyn he had not sponged upon that gentleman’s purse for so much as a five-pound note. He had his plans; but they were not the plans of a man who lives from hand to mouth. He won a good deal of his friend’s money; but he never cheated Francis out of a sixpence. His sole advantage was that which must always accompany skill and experience as opposed to ignorance and inexperience. In the meanwhile, Harcourt Lowther lived as best he might on his winnings and a small allowance made him by his mother.
The Lowthers were great people in their way, and Harcourt had admission to some of the best houses in London. He was very well received in that circle in which Maude Tredethlyn had taken her place, and contrived somehow or other to be present for an hour or so at almost all of the
## parties in which she appeared; though to break away from the haunts of
Bohemianism to drop into politer life, and then return to Bohemia in the same evening, was almost as difficult as a harlequin’s jump in a pantomime. Harcourt Lowther did this, however, and did it very often; and Maude Tredethlyn, enjoying all the privileges of a matron, found herself sometimes standing amongst the statues and exotics on a crowded staircase in Tyburnia, talking with Harcourt Lowther almost as familiarly as they had talked in the old summer evenings by the quiet river.
Sometimes, looking back upon such a meeting, Maude felt inclined to be angry with Mr. Lowther for having taken something of the old tone; but could she blame him for the lowered accents of his voice, the subdued light in his eyes, the unconscious tenderness into which he was betrayed in those public meetings, when she remembered how nobly he kept aloof from her in her home? Never yet had he presumed upon his intimacy with the husband in order to intrude himself on the presence of the wife. What harm or danger, then, if, in crowded assemblages, he surmounted all manner of small difficulties in order to make his way to her side? What could it matter if he lingered just a little longer than others, contriving all sorts of excuses for delay? It is rather a pleasant thing for a frivolous young married woman, serene in the consciousness of her own integrity, to know that a man’s heart is breaking for her in a gentlemanly way. A word too much, a tone, a look, and Maude would have taken alarm, and fled from her old admirer as from the venomous fangs of some deadly reptile; but Harcourt Lowther knew better than to speak that word. He had his own plans, and he was carrying them out in his own way: neither by word nor look had he ever yet offended Maude Tredethlyn; but now, when he tried to cut a path for himself through the crowd about her, he found less difficulty in the progress. People began to make way for him, and it was considered a settled thing that he should be found somewhere near her. He had not offended her; he had only--compromised her.
Francis awoke before the hour at which his servant had been told to call him. The valet’s place was almost a sinecure, for the Cornishman still retained, of his old nature, the simple independent habits of a man who can wait upon himself. He got up at four o’clock, and had nearly completed his toilet, when the servant brought the soda and brandy prescribed by Harcourt Lowther.
“And if you please, sir, you were to be so good as to remember an appointment with Mr. Lowther at half-past five, and was to please to drive the mail phaeton,” said the valet, while his master drank the revivifying beverage.
“Very good,” muttered Mr. Tredethlyn, with something like a groan; “you may go and order the phaeton for five o’clock. Is Mrs. Tredethlyn at home?”
“No, sir.”
The man departed, and Francis finished dressing. He had ten minutes to spare after putting on his outer coat, and he sat down to look at the newspaper which lay ready cut on his writing-table. He took up the “Times,” but only stared vacantly at the advertisement sheet. His head still ached, in spite of a shower-bath and a vigorous application of hard hair-brushes; but his intellect was a good deal clearer than it had been before he dressed.
Suddenly, out of the advertisement sheet, vivid as the figure of Banquo at Macbeth’s uncomfortable supper-party, there arose before him a face--a wan, faded face--in a white muslin-cap.
“Great Heaven!” he cried; “I didn’t know her!”
The ghost that he had seen upon the previous night was the ghost of the woman he had so long been looking for--his cousin Susan.
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