CHAPTER XLI
.
SUSAN’S GOOD NEWS.
Maude Tredethlyn sat alone in her spacious chamber: oh, so spacious, so splendid, so dreary, so ghastly, with a tall carved walnut-wood bedstead that was like one of the tombs in Père la Chaise, only not so lively, and with long panels of looking-glass shimmering ghost-like in dark walnut-wood wardrobes and armoires, and _duchesse_ dressing-tables. She might have endured her troubles better, perhaps, if her room had been furnished with white and gold rather than so much funereal walnut-wood and ghastly looking-glass. She sat alone, thinking of the husband whom she had lost, and whose worth she had only discovered when it was too late. She would accept sympathy from no one. Julia wrote her letters, and saw people who must be seen, and was very good; but the wayward heart shrank away from her in its sudden desolation. She had loved him--she had loved him--and had been ashamed to confess her real feelings either to herself or to the people who had smiled upon a mercenary marriage as if it was the most natural thing under heaven; but who would have lifted their eyebrows in scornful surprise had they known that she could care for a person whose boyhood had been spent in a humble old homestead among the Cornish moorlands. Gliding gracefully through her frivolous life, tolerably happy in a shallow kind of way, with more shopping, and driving, and riding, and calling, and kettle-drumming, and dinner-giving, and horticultural-fête attending, always to be done than it was in the power of any one woman to do, except by a perpetual scramble, she had found no time to consider her position, no time to be aware how entirely even her most frivolous pleasures depended on the faithful minister whom no influence could entirely divide from her.
Amongst the papers she had looked over on the library shelves and tables, where the dust lay thick, she had sometimes found a sheet of perfumed note-paper, and a list of items in her own writing--commissions she had given Francis to execute, troublesome ones sometimes, involving loss of time, and patient inquiry amongst West-end emporiums--orders for new books, drawing materials, ferns, music, all the frivolities of her life. She remembered with a cruel pang of remorse how faithfully the smallest details had been remembered, how patiently the most tiresome researches had been conducted, and how very lightly all this untiring service had been accepted. Circumstances which she had been too thoughtless to notice at the time flashed back upon her now, and she remembered how Harcourt Lowther had stepped between her and her husband even in this commonplace communion--how Francis had been pushed aside, politely taught to remember what an ignorant and awkward creature he was when compared to the fine gentleman.
As she sat alone, upon the evening after her interview with Harcourt Lowther, her husband’s image was more vividly present with her than it had been at any moment since his departure. The bright honest face--the faithful loving face--shone out upon her in the ghastly twilight of her ghastly chamber, and she thought how pleasant it would have been to be sitting opposite her husband in the firelight glow of a cosy parlour, far away from splendid loneliness and carved walnut-wood. She thought of him with her face hidden in her hands, and her aching head lying wearily on the sofa-cushion. She thought of him until a nervous restlessness came upon her, and she sprang suddenly to her feet, unable to bear the oppression of that dreary room, or any room in that dreary house.
“I must go away somewhere, or I shall die,” she thought; “this place seems haunted. I will go to papa. He is very good to me, but he does not understand what I feel about Francis. People speak so lightly of him, and seem to have known him so little. If I could talk to any one who really loved him; if I could talk to any one who knew his goodness as I ought to have known it--as I do know it, now that he is dead!”
She crossed the room hurriedly, and rang the bell. She had told her maid to bring lights only when she rang for them, much to the dismay of that sympathetic young person, who believed that candle-light and company were eminently consolatory in all earthly sorrows. When the candles came, Maude went to a writing-table, and wrote a few hasty lines to her husband’s simple little cousin. She had written to Susan once before, to tell her of Francis Tredethlyn’s departure; but the two women had not seen each other since their first meeting.
“MY DEAR SUSAN,--There is terrible news of your cousin: it may have reached you before this, perhaps. Will you come to me? I am so utterly miserable! and I believe that you are the only person in the world who can understand my sorrow. Come, dear, I implore you. Ever your affectionate
“MAUDE.”
Mrs. Tredethlyn was a great deal too impatient to wait for any such commonplace means of communication as the post. She summoned her maid, and entrusted her letter to that faithful attendant, with directions that a groom should mount one of the Park hacks immediately, and ride straight to Petersham with the missive. The maid obeyed; and the groom, who had made an engagement to go half-price to a West-end theatre, departed, grumbling sulkily, and determined on punishing the Park hack for the unwarrantable caprice of his mistress.
Maude slept soundly that night for the first time since the tidings of the _Kingfisher’s_ fate had reached her, and woke in the morning to see Susan looking down at her with a smile upon her face.
“Ah, you don’t know,” cried Maude, waking out of a happy dream to an instant consciousness of her sorrow,--“you don’t know what has happened: you haven’t heard?”
“Of what, dear?” Susan asked, gently, as Maude started up from amongst her pillows feverish and excited.
“The loss of the _Kingfisher_--the fire--the dreadful fire! Oh, Susan, you _cannot_ have heard!”
Mrs. Tredethlyn said this, because the girl’s face, though it was grave and sad, expressed none of that acute anguish which Susan ought to have felt for her cousin’s untimely fate. She only looked at Maude with a wondering earnestness.
“Yes, it was very dreadful,” she said. “Mrs. Clinnock read it in the paper, and told me. I am so sorry for all the sufferers. But oh, Maude, dear cousin, how grateful we ought to be for the accident that saved Francis from such a fate! If he had gone by that vessel, dear----”
She stopped suddenly, for Maude looked at her with an unnatural stare, and then fell back unconscious.
No, he had not perished with the ill-fated passengers of the _Kingfisher_. Lives as noble, friends as dear, husbands and fathers, brothers and sons, worth and genius, some tribute from all that is brightest upon earth,--had gone down to the deep waters; but Francis Tredethlyn had not made a part in the mighty sacrifice. When Maude recovered from the deadly faintness that had come upon her, Susan showed her a letter which she had received from her cousin,--a letter that had been written in an hotel at Plymouth _after_ the sailing of the _Kingfisher_. It was a kind kinsmanlike letter, stating the arrangements which the writer had made for the comfort and welfare of his cousin and her child; and, in conclusion, Francis told Susan that he had reached Plymouth too late to leave by the _Kingfisher_, a steamer which he had intended to go by, and in which he had taken his berth. Thus left with his time on his hands for some days, he had resolved on going to have a look at the old neighbourhood once more.
“It might seem a foolish fancy to many people, but I don’t think it will to you, Susy,” he wrote. “I want to gather a handful of daisies from my mother’s grave before I leave the soil that holds her for ever. I want to stand by the old hearth once more, though God knows what a pain it will be to me to see strangers in the old home. God bless you, dear, and good-bye! I shall not write again till I write from the New World.”
This was the close of the letter, which Susan gave Maude to read. Her first feeling on reading it was unbounded gratitude to the Providence that had saved Francis Tredethlyn. Her second feeling was considerable indignation against Francis himself. The mother of the comic song who bewails her missing child in such pathetic numbers, and slaps him soundly when she finds him, is not such a very impossible character.
“It was shameful of him to let me suffer so much,” she cried, “when a few lines from him would have made me so happy;” and then she was grateful to Providence again, and angry with herself for having been angry with Francis; and then she pounced upon Susan and kissed her.
“What am I to do, darling?” she asked. “I dare say he has gone off by some other horrible steamer. But wherever he is, I won’t stop idle in this dreary house. I won’t trust everything to that slow solemn lawyer. I’ll go to Cornwall myself, Susy, and find out all about my husband; how long he stayed there, and when he left. You’ll tell me where to go; won’t you, Susy?”
Of course Susan was ready to give her cousin’s wife all needful information about that forgotten corner of the earth, Landresdale. She would have volunteered to accompany Maude to the western moors, only there was the boy; and Susan had an idea that if she were to turn her back upon her son for twenty-four consecutive hours, he would inevitably be seized with measles or scarlatina in her absence. But Maude declared she wanted no one to accompany her.
“I suppose I must take my maid,” she said; “but I shall leave her at the inn at Falmouth, and go alone to that queer old house on the moor, and those queer old people Francis once told me about.”
Julia Desmond had to endure a good deal that morning, for Maude was radiant when she appeared with Susan at the breakfast-table. She was so grateful to Susan for hurrying to her in the early morning.
“Every night, when I have gone to sleep, I have thought the same thing,” she said: “if I could only wake and find it all a dream--if I could wake to find it only a dream! And this morning I did wake to find an angel standing by my bed with the best news I ever heard in all my life. But I am very sorry for those poor people who were really lost in the _Kingfisher_,” added Maude, mournfully; she felt that there was something almost incongruous in her own happiness when so many must be sorrowful for the destruction of that ill-fated vessel.
While she was making preparations for her departure, Mr. Kursdale, the solicitor, was announced. He came radiant and red-faced to tell her the result of inquiries which he had considered it expedient to have made at Plymouth before taking any legal steps with regard to the supposed demise of his respected client; and the result was that Francis had not sailed in the _Kingfisher_; and he was very proud and happy to announce to Mrs. Tredethlyn----
He would have gone on in a ponderous manner for some time longer, if Maude had not interrupted him by the assurance that she knew all about it.
“You did not ascertain that my husband had left Plymouth by any other vessel?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then we may hope he is still in England. I am going to Cornwall immediately to look for him. At the worst, I shall there hear all about him.”
Mr. Kursdale evidently thought this very unprofessional, and suggested the expediency of a clerk acting as Mrs. Tredethlyn’s proxy; but Maude shook her head.
“I will go myself,” she said. “If my husband is still in England, I will find him. There can be no further misunderstanding between us, if once we can meet face to face.”
Mr. Kursdale submitted, and departed. Maude ran away to superintend her maid’s packing of a small portmanteau, and Susan sat in the morning-room with Julia. It had been settled that Miss Desmond should drive her back to Petersham after luncheon.
They were talking rather ceremoniously, when the door was suddenly opened by an impetuous hand, and Miss Grunderson burst in upon them, more intensely pink than usual.
“They wanted me to go to the drawing-room, and they’d go and see if Mrs. Tredethlyn was at home!” exclaimed Rosa. “I know what their going and seeing is. Not at home always, and I do so want to see that poor darling; and I’m sure there’s no one in the world more truly sorry for her than I am; and if going into half-mourning would have been considered a tribute of sincere respect, and not an intrusion or uncalled for, I would have ordered a crape bonnet, trimmed with lilies of the valley and jet beads, directly I heard of it.”
Julia interrupted Miss Grunderson with a simple statement of the fact which had put an end to Maude’s brief time of mourning. Rosa’s delight was very genuine, and on being introduced to Mrs. Lesley, she expanded as it was her wont to expand on all occasions.
“You can’t think how glad I am!” she exclaimed; “for I assure you when I heard of that _dreadful_ event, I felt as if it was quite hard-hearted of me to be happy, and I have been very happy for the last week or so. In point of fact,” added Miss Grunderson, dragging at the button of a very tight glove in evident embarrassment, “I’m engaged to be married.”
“Indeed!” said Julia, politely.
“Yes. You see as par has long objected to my running after public characters, which of course was tiresome to him,--for of all the people to tear about to all sorts of inaccessible places, and oblige one’s getting up unreasonably early in the morning to hear them or to see them, public characters are the worst,--so par was really glad for me to be seriously engaged to anybody that would keep me quiet, he said, even if the person was not rich; so when Mr. Lowther--Mr. Roderick Lowther, you know--proposed, par happening to be in a good temper, it was all settled immediately.”
“I am very glad to hear it,” answered Miss Desmond; “but I am not at all surprised. I quite expected as much.”
“Did you really, now? Well, upon my word, I thought at first he was almost as grumpy as Rochester in ‘Jane Eyre;’ but when those grumpy people do begin to pay one compliments, it is so nice. Of course, with regard to Mario, Lord Palmerston, Sir Edwin Landseer, and Charles Mathews, my feelings will be unchanged to my dying day. But the worship of public characters need not interfere with the happiness of domestic life; and as Roderick’s position in the _corps diplomatique_ will take us abroad, his jealousy need never be aroused in the slightest degree.”
Miss Grunderson entertained the two ladies for some time with minute details of her own affairs, and she confessed presently that Roderick had promised to call for her.
“He doesn’t want to see Mrs. Tredethlyn, you know,” she said; “he was only anxious to express to you how sorry he is, and so on--though, of course, now he hasn’t any occasion to be sorry, thank goodness!--but you don’t mind his coming to fetch me, do you, dear? The carriage is waiting for me, and I’m going to take him on to the Haymarket, where we’re to see about the resetting of some old-fashioned diamond earrings that Roderick’s ma has sent me. They’re not nearly as handsome as my own, you know; but, of course, I feel grateful to her for the attention. And I’m to go down to Lowther Hall to stay before our marriage; and I’m to be introduced to a maiden aunt of Roderick’s, from whom he has expectations, this very afternoon--I mean I’m to be introduced to her this very afternoon,” added Rosa.
While she was chattering the door was opened, and a servant announced Mr. Lowther. He came out of the bright white daylight on the staircase into the room which was kept cool and shadowy by closed Venetian shutters. As he looked about him, unaccustomed to the obscurity, he heard a faint shriek, and a woman who had been sitting with her back to the window started suddenly from her chair.
“Robert!” she cried; “Robert, is it you?” And then she sank down again, pale and breathless.
“Robert!” exclaimed Miss Grunderson; “you must mistake Mr. Lowther for some one else, Mrs. Lesley. His name is not Robert.”
“Perhaps not,” Susan answered, sadly. “He kept his real name a secret from the poor girl who was once proud to call herself his wife; but whatever his name may be he is my husband nevertheless, and Providence has brought about our meeting to-day. Oh, don’t add a falsehood to the wrong you have done me!” she cried, appealing to Roderick Lowther, who stood pale and confounded, with the faces of the three women all turned towards him, and with the knowledge that those scrutinizing eyes were upon him. “I shall claim very little of you. I only want you to give me the name I have a right to bear; I only want you to acknowledge your son.”
Roderick Lowther did not reply to this appeal. After a moment’s pause he turned to Julia:
“Where do you pick up your acquaintance, Miss Desmond?” he said. “I should scarcely have expected to meet this lady here.”
“This lady is my husband’s cousin,” answered Maude, who had entered the room while he was speaking; “and I do not know any one who has a better right to be here. What is the matter, Susy darling?”
Roderick Lowther’s heart was stirred faintly by the sound of that familiar name--the name which he had whispered so often beside a grey wintry sea, under a wintry sky, in the desolate region which had been brightened for him by his discarded wife’s innocence and love.
“There is nothing that can be spoken of here,” Susan answered; “I have met some one whom I never expected to see again. I will wait till my cousin comes back. I will say no more till then.”
“But, good gracious me!” exclaimed Miss Grunderson, “I’m not going to be treated in this sort of way. What does it all mean, Roderick? That lady starts up all of a sudden, and calls you her husband, and then says she’ll wait till her cousin comes home. I can’t be expected to wait till her cousin comes home. I can’t take matters so coolly. With my trousseau ordered, and all! I must and will have an explanation!”
“You shall, Rosa; but, for mercy’s sake, hold your tongue. There is some infernal mistake. You had better go home; never mind about the earrings to-day. If this lady mistakes me for some one she knows, or has a claim upon, I have no doubt I shall be able to demonstrate her mistake, if I can talk to her for a few minutes quietly. And now let me take you to your carriage, Rosa.”
Miss Grunderson would have resisted such a summary way of disposing of her and her wrongs; but Roderick Lowther was firm. He led her down-stairs, and he put her into her carriage, and he sent her home as coolly as if she had been a packet of dry goods consigned to his temporary care, to be sent on to Mr. Grunderson.
“Awkward,” he muttered, as he went back to the house; “but things always do happen awkwardly just when a fellow fancies he’s swimming with the tide all in his favour.”
He looked very grave as he went to Mrs. Tredethlyn’s morning-room to demand an interview with Susan; but he looked a great deal more grave as he left the house after that interview and made his way back to his brother’s lodgings.
He found Harcourt sitting moodily by the empty fireplace, the slim foreign bottle on the table by his side, and a cigar in his mouth.
“What is the matter with you?” asked the younger brother, listlessly, as he perceived the scowl upon his senior’s face.
“There is this much the matter with me,” answered Roderick; “I trusted a fellow to help me in a delicate business, and I’ve reason to think that he took advantage of my confidence to get me into a dilemma that it will take me all my life to get out of. I have seen Susan Turner to-day.”
“Indeed!”
“And she has told me something about the Registrar--something that I can scarcely bring myself to believe. Do you remember what I asked you to do for me, Harcourt?”
“Perfectly. And I have got the letter containing your request in my possession--such a nice letter! You tell me in it that you have fallen over head and ears in love with an innocent little country girl, too poor and insignificant to be your wife, too virtuous to be your mistress. Another man might have accepted his fate, and either resigned the lady, or made some sacrifice of his own interests and married her. You were inclined to do neither, and you fell back upon a villanous expedient familiar to the readers of old-fashioned novels, and known as a mock marriage. You wrote to me about this in a half-playful tone, as if it were the simplest thing in the world--an elegant little comedy, out of which it would be your care, of course, to see that no harm should arise; and so on. The carrying out of the little conspiracy would be very easy. You suggested how it might be done. I had only to engage some clever scapegrace to enact the Registrar; hire a parlour in some obscure street _near_ a District Registrar’s Office--in the same street, if practicable; the ceremony would only occupy about ten minutes, and could be got over as quietly as the most commonplace morning call, if the fellow engaged to personate the Registrar knew what he was about. The dear little girl was the last person in the world to suspect anything amiss. In short, it was the simplest possible business, and all our dear good Harcourt had to do was to find the handy scamp who would act the official, and get himself well up in the little professional formula of signing and counter-signing, and so on, in some big books that he would get for the purpose. The certificate business would have to be finessed of course. The dear little girl would ask for no certificate, and the dear little girl’s witnesses must be conveniently shut up if they made their noses unpleasantly prominent.”
“I begin to understand you,” said Roderick, with suppressed fury. “You have sold me; and you are going to defend yourself upon high grounds, conscientious scruples; and so on. Pray proceed. That sort of talk will sound so well from your lips.”
“I am not going to do anything of the kind. I am only going to remind you that, as you never in your life did a generous thing for me, or stepped aside from your own interest or your own pleasure by so much as a hair’s breadth to serve me, it wasn’t very likely that I should get myself into a legal hobble--that mock marriage would have been something like felony, I should imagine--and inflict a cruel wrong upon an innocent little girl to oblige you. I didn’t want to be too disobliging, so I arranged a marriage, but it was a real and not a sham one; and you are as tightly tied to your pretty little wife as if the business had been transacted at St. George’s, Hanover Square, by a popular bishop, assisted by an aristocratic uncle to the bride.”
“You are a remorseless scoundrel!” exclaimed Mr. Lowther, coolly. “And I am very happy to tell you that your own pretty little plans are knocked on the head. Francis Tredethlyn did not sail in the _Kingfisher_!”
Harcourt gave a little start of surprise; but his countenance did not express the profound vexation and disappointment that his brother had expected to see in it. The schemer had failed so completely, that it mattered very little to him now what course events took.
“Yes, Francis Tredethlyn is alive and well, I have no doubt,” resumed Roderick. “And my little Susy turns out to be Francis Tredethlyn’s first cousin. I have a recollection of her telling me, after our marriage, that her real name was something outlandish, of a Cornish character; but the name had slipped my memory completely before I met your wealthy Cornishman.”
“Then the likeness which I fancied I saw in that daub of a portrait and the similarity of name were not mere coincidences, after all,” muttered Harcourt. “And the lady at Petersham is my little sister-in-law. It’s a pity you didn’t treat her rather better,” he added; “for Francis Tredethlyn could afford to give her a handsome fortune, if he pleased. It is from her father he inherits his money; and if you had declared your marriage, and made things square with the old man, your wife need not have been disinherited, and would have been as rich a prize as any Miss Grunderson.”
“Hold your tongue!” cried Roderick; “I know what I have lost as well as you do. If you had been above-board with me, and told me that you had sold me about the marriage, I might have acted differently. Why did you get me into such a mess?”
“Because I didn’t choose to be your catspaw. I have been sacrificed to your interests all my life, and I was determined to keep my hold upon you when I had got it.”
“And you would have allowed me to marry Rosa Grunderson?”
“_C’est selon!_ I _think_ I should have spoken at the last moment--and yet it might have been very convenient to hold an awkward little secret about one’s wealthy brother. A man must be very hard up before he descends to that undignified mode of livelihood which the French galley-slaves call _chantage_; but when a fellow _is_ hard up there’s no knowing how low he may descend.”
“You are a scoundrel!”
“And you are--I can’t finish the sentence without sinking to slang. We resemble each other in character as we do in person.”
In this fashion the brothers bandied civilities for some time; but they ended matters by dining together at the Metropolitan. Arabian traditions as to the sanctity of bread and salt cannot hold good against the exigencies of civilized life; and men may dine together in a friendly way, and reserve the right of hating each other nevertheless.
Warmed by a good dinner and a bottle of Moselle, Roderick grew hopeful as to the future. Susan would relent from her calm determination never to hold any communication with the husband she had loved so tenderly, by whom she had been so cruelly abandoned. Francis might act in a handsome manner about the fortune which ought to have been his cousin’s; and, after all, the turn which affairs had taken might not be altogether an unlucky one.
“Looking at it in any way, Rosa was a nuisance,” said Mr. Lowther, as he bedewed his moustache with the rose-water which the luxurious Metropolitan provides for its guests; “and perhaps it’s better as it is. We hadn’t come to close quarters about the settlements; and I dare say if the _père_ Grunderson had been brought to the scratch, we should have had a scuffle.”
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