CHAPTER XL

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AN IGNOMINIOUS FAILURE.

Harcourt Lowther had his copy of the great journal on the day when Maude read that horrible paragraph. Roderick had called at Stuccoville during Mrs. Tredethlyn’s seclusion, and had heard of the Cornishman’s departure, and the name of the vessel he had gone in, from Julia Desmond. The schemer turned deadly pale when his brother read him the brief account of one of those terrible catastrophes which come upon mortal travellers now and then, to teach them how frail is man’s hold of that wondrous power by which modern science has learnt to rule the elements. The coolest villain who ever planned a comrade’s destruction must surely suffer one sharp pang of remorse when he knows that the hand which has so often clasped his own is really cold. To Harcourt Lowther the wealthy Cornishman had never been anything worse than an impediment. He was gone now; there was little doubt of that. Midway between her starting place and her destination, the _Kingfisher_, sailing gaily on a placid sea, had succumbed to a worse foe than tempest or hurricane, and all on board her had perished. A fragment of charred timber, branded with the name of the steamer, had been picked up by a homeward-bound vessel; and in the calm moonlit night the blazing ship had been seen by distant voyagers a lurid speck upon the silvery horizon. By these and many other tokens the fact of the catastrophe had been made known; and in a hundred British households there was mourning for lost friends and kinsmen.

After the first shock that came upon him with these sudden tidings, Harcourt Lowther gave a long sigh of relief.

“It was the fellow’s own doing,” he muttered. “If he had not made a quarrel with me, this would never have happened. And he’s gone! Poor lad! He was not such a bad fellow, after all. Better to die that way than of delirium tremens,” added Mr. Lowther, with a furtive glance towards a tall smoke-coloured bottle which was apt to adorn his table very often nowadays. “And so my Maude is free--at last! Do you know, Roderick, it seems to me as if I had lived twenty years or so since my return from Van Diemen’s Land? and now that the luck turns, and the winning colour comes up for the first time, I feel as if I had almost outlived the power to care much about it. Roderick!” cried the invalid, with a sharp suddenness that startled his brother, “did Folson tell you there was any serious damage done to my head by that ugly fall the other night? I know he has talked to you about me. I heard you and him muttering together yesterday, when I was lying half asleep in the next room.”

Mr. Folson was the medical man who had attended Harcourt Lowther after the scuffle with Francis, and who had brought all his science to bear for the preservation of the handsome face without which his patient would have been so small a creature.

“Folson said very little about the damage you got in the row,” the _attaché_ answered, very coolly; “but he told me you must drop your liberal consumption of that sort of thing, or you’d find yourself very speedily in Queer Street.” Mr. Lowther pointed to the smoke-coloured bottle as he thus addressed himself to his invalid brother. “While you were teaching that fellow Tredethlyn to drink himself to death, you ought to have learnt how to keep yourself alive by not drinking,” he said presently. “However, I don’t want to say anything unpleasant, but you really must cut your very intimate acquaintance with the brandy-bottle, if you want to improve your opportunity, now that Mrs. Tredethlyn is a rich widow. If you don’t look sharp I shall throw over the Grunderson, and go in against you.”

Harcourt smiled superciliously.

“I am not afraid of _you_, for more reasons than one,” he said. “Maude is a curious girl. I sometimes fancy my own chance is not quite so good as it once was. Goethe says that a man wins in his age the prize he sighs for in his youth. Perhaps, when I am a pottering old fellow of seventy, I shall have a great fortune and a handsome wife; only the capability of caring much for either will be gone. How fond we were of toffee at Harrow! But all the toffee that was ever manufactured in Doncaster during the Sellenger week wouldn’t give me a ray of pleasure now. Madame de Maintenon began to enjoy herself when she was eighty; rather late in the day, wasn’t it? My soul is weary, Roderick; and now the chance _has_ come, I’m not the man I was. Perhaps, after all, the simple truth of the matter is that I am suffering from an attack of blue devils, engendered of solitary confinement in this detestable crib. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, old fellow. As the ugly scar across my forehead has dwindled into a romantic-looking badge of bygone prowess, and the variegated hues of my countenance are rapidly fading into an interesting pallor, I’ll get you to send me round a hack from Parsons’s, and I’ll take a spin in the Park; there won’t be many people about at this time of year, and the fresh air will blow my old self back again, I dare say. I’ll meet you at the Metropolitan afterwards, if you like,” added Harcourt, naming an adjacent restaurant at which the brothers had been wont to dine occasionally.

“No, thanks. I dine at the Grundersons’.”

“_Déjà!_ We go fast, my friend!”

“If your military experience had extended farther than the superintendence of penitent burglars, you might have known that where the assailing party is weak, a fortress must be taken quickly, or not at all. I declared myself to Rosa this morning. She is delighted with the idea of flourishing at foreign courts in _écrasant_ pink dresses. How I shall tone her down, poor child! and what a hard time we shall both have of it before the scent of the market-garden ceases to cling to her still! I am to speak to papa Grunderson this evening, over his wine. He consumes the best part of a bottle of old port every night, and finishes off at a neighbouring tavern with the gin-and-water of his early manhood. Rosa tells me that he is an indulgent old party, and that I shall not have any difficulty in bringing him to book.”

“Then you really think of marrying?” asked Harcourt, thoughtfully.

“Really think of marrying? Of course I do. What else should I think of whereby to improve my fortunes? And Rosa will not be so _very_ disagreeable after a good deal of toning down.”

“I thought perhaps you might have some lingering regard for----that other person.”

The diplomatist turned upon his brother with a frown.

“I thought I told you that I didn’t care to discuss that subject,” he said, haughtily. “Drop it, if you please. There are plenty of disagreeable things in _your_ life, I dare say, that I might remember, if I wanted to make myself obnoxious. However, as you have been existing upon a limited supply of oxygen for the last six weeks, I suppose you’re privileged to be cantankerous. I’ll look in at the stables and send you the hack; and if I find you here when I come home to dress, I dare say we shall hit it better. _A bientôt!_”

Harcourt Lowther had his gallop in the Park, and punished the livery-stable hack rather severely. It was dusk before he went back to town, and he left the Park by the Prince’s Gate, and rode slowly through the gorgeous dismality of Stuccoville. He walked his horse down the street in which Francis Tredethlyn’s household had been established. Glimmering lights burned feebly in the windows on the second floor, but the gaslit dining-room was blank and empty.

Looking up at the dimly lighted windows, Harcourt Lowther wondered if Maude Tredethlyn’s heart, set free all at once from its mercenary bondage, had fluttered back to the lover of her youth. He was strangely tormented by conflicting fancies, and found it hard to strike the balance between his low estimate of woman’s constancy and his very high opinion of his own merits.

“She loved me once,” he thought, “and my hold upon her ought to be stronger now than ever it was. I have quires of schoolgirl letters filled with protestations of eternal constancy and reliance in a bright future waiting for us somewhere in the cloudy distance of our lives. And now the happy future is ours, my Maude; you are free and you are rich; so we can afford to build the castle of our dreams, and live in it very respectably.”

Riding slowly homeward through the crowded streets, Mr. Lowther found it very difficult to shut out of his mind the picture of a burning ship, and the image of the man whom he had called his friend, prominent amidst a wild night-scene of death and horror.

“I’m glad I had nothing to do with the fellow’s going in that vessel,” thought Mr. Lowther, as he tried to shake off the uncomfortable feeling which oppressed him. “_I_ had no hand in his mad freak of bolting off to Buenos Ayres; so I needn’t worry myself about the business. If he had lived to get there safely, I dare say he’d have been finished off by fever or small-pox.”

Nearly a week elapsed before Harcourt Lowther approached the woman who had once been his plighted wife, and who was now free to renew her broken vows as speedily as common decency would allow her to accept the addresses of a second husband. The schemer wanted to be sure of his triumph. One interview with Maude, one look in her face, would be enough to tell him whether his hold on her was undiminished, whether his future happiness was secure. Assured of this, he would be contented to stand apart until the usages of society would permit him to take his place by her side as her acknowledged suitor. But he was eager to be quite sure of his position. A nervous restlessness that was foreign to his temperament had come upon him since the tidings of the _Kingfisher’s_ destruction had reached his ears; and he could not endure anything like uncertainty or suspense.

He called at Stuccoville one morning. He was told that Mrs. Tredethlyn would see no one; but that Miss Desmond was at home, and would receive him, if he pleased.

He did please; and was ushered into the morning-room, where Julia sat writing at a little table near the window. There was a door opening from Mrs. Tredethlyn’s dressing-room into this morning-room; and as Harcourt entered at one door, a pale wan creature in black appeared at the other.

It was Maude--so changed that a sudden pang shot through the schemer’s heart as he looked at her; a sudden pang that must have been remorse, but which gave place immediately to a feeling of jealous anger.

Was the loss of her husband so deep a sorrow that it should change her like this?

She had seen the visitor, and was drawing back, when he ran to her and seized her hand.

“Maude!” he cried, passionately, “I must speak to you. Surely you are not going to treat _me_ like a stranger.”

She tried to take her hand from his, but he held it firmly and drew her into the room; as he did so, Julia, who had risen on his entrance, went quietly out at the other door. Maude and Harcourt were alone.

“What can you have to say to me?” asked Mrs. Tredethlyn. “It is cruel of you to force yourself upon me at such a time as this. I have grief enough and trouble enough without being tortured by the sight of you.”

Harcourt Lowther looked at her aghast.

“Tortured by the sight of me!” he repeated.

“Yes,” answered Maude, indignantly. “It was your fault that my husband left me. It was you who planted base suspicions in my mind when there was no need for suspicion. If I had gone back to the cottage at Petersham--as I would have done, but for you--I should have discovered the folly of my jealous fancies--inspired by you--yes, by you alone. For when I saw Francis and his cousin, my first impulse was to call him by his name. It was your exclamation that frightened me; it was your manner that filled me with absurd alarm. Why did you poison my mind against the best husband a woman ever had? How could you be so base as to repay his trusting friendship with such malicious treachery?”

“Because I loved you, Mrs. Tredethlyn, and I believed that your husband had wronged you. Was _I_ likely to be a very lenient judge of his conduct towards you, when I had loved you so passionately, and had been jilted by you so cruelly for him? You questioned me, and I spoke. Can you forget or deny that I spoke reluctantly? You hang your head, Mrs. Tredethlyn; ah, I see that you remember.”

“Yes,” answered Maude, piteously, as she sank into a chair; “you are right. I made you speak. It was my own jealous folly from first to last. If others doubted and suspected, I ought to have trusted him. What a pitiful return I made him for so much devotion, when I could not even give him my confidence!” She was silent for some moments, lost in thought. It was of her husband, and not of the man standing before her, that she was thinking. Harcourt Lowther could see that.

She looked up at him presently, as if she suddenly remembered his presence. “Have you anything more to say to me?” she asked, coldly.

“Have I anything more to say! Are you mad, Mrs. Tredethlyn, that you ask me such a question? I have outraged propriety perhaps in coming to see you so soon, you will tell me; but a man who has suffered as much as I have at the hands of the woman he loves is not very likely to be held back by ceremonial constraints when the hour comes in which he may claim atonement for the wrong that has been done him. I respect your natural sorrow for the terrible fate of your husband; but I should despise you if you were so false-hearted a prude as to affect forgetfulness of what is due to me.”

Maude looked at him as she had never looked at him before. Wonder, indignation, disgust--all mingled in the expression of her countenance. He had woven his network to ensnare a frivolous shallow-hearted girl, and behold, on the completion of the schemer’s web, a woman arose in the strength of her truth and purity, and shook herself free from the toils as easily as if they had been so much gossamer. “There is something due from me to you?” she asked, haughtily. “What is it?”

“The fulfilment of your broken promise. I have waited, Maude, and waited patiently. Another man would have revenged himself on your inconstancy by proving to you that he too could be inconstant. Hopeless but patient, I have given you a disinterested devotion which is without a parallel in the history of man’s sacrifice for the woman of his choice. Now that you are free, I ask some atonement for the past, some reward for my patience. Tell me that the past is not quite forgotten--that the tender protestations which consoled me in my miserable exile were not utterly meaningless and false. Why do you look at me like that? Have I been the dupe of a coquette from first to last, Mrs. Tredethlyn, and does your husband’s death only leave you free to jilt me again? Have I been fooled to the top of my bent by a woman who has never loved me?”

“No, Mr. Lowther,” Maude answered, very quietly; “I did love you once. I look back now, and wonder at myself as I remember how dearly. But my love died--a very sudden death.”

“When you discovered the advantages of a wealthy marriage for the penniless daughter of a commercial defaulter,” cried Harcourt.

“No; my love for you was a girlish fancy, if you like; though Heaven only knows how deeply I felt for you in your exile--how willing I would have been to resign my imaginary wealth for love of you, if you had asked me to do so. But you never did ask that. You did not want the wife without the fortune. When you came home and found me engaged to another man--about to sacrifice myself in a mercenary marriage, as you thought--there was yet time to have exacted the fulfilment of my promise. I loved you then, Harcourt Lowther. A word from you, and I would have told Francis Tredethlyn the truth, and demanded my release. He was far too generous to have withheld it. But in doing that I should have offended my father, and I should have come to you penniless. You did not want me on those terms, Harcourt. The honest indignation of a disinterested lover never found an utterance on your lips. You were contented to assume the position of friend and confidant to your unconscious rival; and it is only since I have been left alone to think of my past life, that I have fully understood the dishonour involved in keeping our broken engagement a secret from my husband. I loved you when you came back to England, Harcourt. It was a hard battle which duty had to fight against the unaltered affection of my girlhood. I prayed to God night and day for strength to do my duty, and to keep my promise to the man who had a claim upon me, which you have never known. I prayed for power to blot your image from my mind; and my prayer was heard. My first foolish love died on my wedding-day, Harcourt, when you stood by to see me married to Francis Tredethlyn. From that hour to this you have been no more to me than any other man who has paid me the conventional attentions which I imagined I had a right to receive. If I had ever seen more than this in your conduct, Mr. Lowther, you would have found me quite capable of asserting my position.”

“The world has chosen to see a good deal more than conventional courtesy in my attendance upon you, Mrs. Tredethlyn,” answered Harcourt. He had lost the game. Utterly defeated in the moment of his expected triumph, he was careless as to the rest of his play. How can the whist-player, who knows that he is beaten, be expected to pay any great attention to the order in which he plays the two or three insignificant cards that he holds at the close of the rubber? “People have been good enough to make us the subject of considerable discussion, Mrs. Tredethlyn,” continued Harcourt. “A man is apt to hear these things, though they rarely reach the ears of the lady most interested in hearing them. The people amongst whom we live have made up their minds about us, I know, and will be considerably astonished if you throw me over now that you are free to reward the patient devotion which, has endured so much in the hope of this hour.”

He saw Maude’s look of unutterable scorn; a look which revealed her to him in a new and higher light, and inspired him with a more passionate love than he had ever felt for her yet--and at his worst he had loved her.

“Maude,” he cried, in a sudden access of mingled rage and despair, “why do you goad me to say these things? I know how detestable I seem to you. And yet, as there is a heaven above me, I have loved you truly from first to last. Pity me if, while I prayed for no better fate than to face the enemy’s guns on an Indian battle-field, I was a coward in social life and dared not brave genteel poverty even for your sake. Pity me if I shrank from thrusting myself between you and a wealthy marriage. I had been poor all my life; and I knew what you have never learnt--the horrors of a gentleman’s poverty. I have smiled at your girlish talk of pretty cottages and tiny suburban gardens; an elegant little drawing-room, in which you and I might spend the winter evenings together with our books and music. The poor gentleman’s cottage is never pretty; the poor gentleman’s drawing-room is never elegant. His wife’s tastes may be ever so simple, his own aspirations may be ever so pure; but poverty countenances no taste, permits no aspiration. His wife is fond of music, perhaps. Heaven help her! she cannot be sure of an hour in which her piano may not be seized by the broker. She delights in flowers; but the nosegays she arranges so gaily to-day may entail a writ for the florist’s account to-morrow. You would have thought me a model of all that is noble and disinterested if I had exposed you to such miseries as these: you think me a scoundrel because I was not selfish enough to say to you, ‘Reject Francis Tredethlyn and a life of elegant ease, and accept my devotion and an existence of penury and trouble.’”

“And you ask me now to fulfil my broken promise? Have you inherited a fortune? or how is it that your ideas upon matrimony have altered?”

The schemer flushed crimson to the roots of his hair, and then grew deadly pale. For the life of him he could not answer that question. He could not say, “_My_ position is unchanged, but _you_ are rich. Give me your fortune and the heart I did not choose to claim when it was unaccompanied by fortune.”

“Had we not better wish each other good morning, Mr. Lowther?” Maude said, after a little pause. “Your visit is ill-timed and most unwelcome. Your presence reminds me of a cruel wrong done to a noble friend, a devoted husband, whose worth I have learned only too late; whom I have loved unconsciously, only to discover the depth of my affection when its object is lost to me for ever.”

“You loved your husband!” cried Harcourt, with a cynical laugh; “you seem determined to astonish me to-day. You loved your husband?”

“Yes--dearly and truly; and love his memory better than ever I loved you. I have learned to think, since I have been released from your influence; for it was your influence that regulated my life as well as my husband’s; it was your influence that kept us asunder, and plunged both of us into a whirlpool of dissipation. I have had time to think during the long miserable days and nights in which I have watched for the coming of him who was never to return to me; and if I had not discovered the shallowness of your love before my marriage, I should have made that discovery since. You are base enough to tell me that the world has linked my name with yours. I can afford to despise a world in which I have never found real happiness, and in which I no longer wish to hold a place. I shall go back to my father’s house, and my life will be one long atonement for the past. I tell you this, Mr. Lowther, in order that you may understand that we must be strangers to each other henceforward.”

She laid her hand upon the bell as she spoke. Harcourt Lowther stood for some moments looking at her. A strange compound of passionate admiration and vengeful fury flamed in his eyes.

“I have sometimes wondered at the madmen who murder the women they have loved; but God help you, Maude Tredethlyn, if I had a loaded pistol in my pocket to-day!”

He folded his arms, locking them together with a convulsive suddenness, as if he could only thus restrain the impulse by which he would have struck her down where she stood defying him; and then he turned, and slowly left the room.

He had left his hired horse in the quiet street, in charge of a boy; but the boy’s back was turned when his employer left the house, and Harcourt Lowther drove back to town in a hansom. It was only when his brother reminded him of the horse, that he remembered how he had gone to Stuccoville; and sent a man to recover the missing steed. After that he left the noisy regions of the Strand, and wandered across one of the bridges out to some dismal waste ground in the neighbourhood of Battersea; a remote and forgotten tract, that was almost as lonely as an African desert: there he laid himself down amongst the rubbish of a deserted brickfield, and cried like a child.

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