Phantom Fortune, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [free e novels .txt] 📗

way to sloth. She rose at seven, summer and winter, but she spent the early part of the day in her own rooms, reading, writing, giving orders to her housekeeper, and occasionally interviewing Steadman, who, without any onerous duties, was certainly the most influential person in the house. People in the village talked of him, and envied him so good a berth. He had a gentleman's house to live in, and to all appearance lived as a gentleman. This tranquil retirement, free from care or labour, was a rich reward for the faithful service of his youth. And it was known by the better informed among the Grasmere people that Mr. Steadman was saving money, and had shares in the North-Western Railway. These facts had oozed out, of themselves, as it were. He was not a communicative man, and rarely wasted half an hour at the snug little inn near St. Oswald's Church, amidst the cluster of habitations that was once called Kirktown. He was an unsociable man, people said, and thought himself better than Grasmere folk, the lodging-house keepers, and guides, and wrestlers, and the honest friendly souls who were the outcome of that band of Norwegian exiles which found a home in these peaceful vales.

Miss Müller, more commonly known as Fräulein, officiated at breakfast. She never appeared at the board when Lady Maulevrier was present, but in her ladyship's absence Miss Müller was guardian of the proprieties. She was a stout, kindly creature, and by no means a formidable dragon. When the gong sounded, John Hammond went into the dining-room, where he found Miss Müller seated alone in front of the urn.

He bowed, quick to read 'governess' or 'companion' in the lady's appearance; and she bowed.

'I hope you have had a nice walk,' she said. 'I saw you from my bedroom window.'

'Did you? Then I suppose yours is one of the few windows which look into that curious old quadrangle?'

'No, there are no windows looking into the quadrangle. Those that were in the original plan of the house were walled up at her ladyship's orders, to keep out the cold winds which sweep down from the hills in winter and early spring, when the edge of Loughrigg Fell is white with snow. My window looks into the gardens, and I saw you there with his lordship and Lady Mary.'

Lady Lesbia came in at this moment, and saluted Mr. Hammond with a haughty inclination of her beautiful head. She looked lovelier in her simple morning gown of pale blue cambric than in her more elaborate toilette of last evening; such purity of complexion, such lustrous eyes; the untarnished beauty of youth, breathing the delicate freshness of a newly-opened flower. She might be as scornful as she pleased, yet John Hammond could not withhold his admiration. He was inclined to admire a woman who kept him at a distance; for the general bent of young women now-a-days is otherwise.

Maulevrier and Mary came in, and everyone sat down to breakfast. Lady Lesbia unbent a little presently, and smiled upon the stranger. There was a relief in a stranger's presence. He talked of new things, places and people she had never seen. She brightened and became quite friendly, deigned to invite the expression of Mr. Hammond's opinions upon music and art, and after breakfast allowed him to follow her into the drawing-room, and to linger there fascinated for half an hour, looking over her newest books, and her last batch of music, but looking most of all at her, while Maulevrier and Mary were loafing on the lawn outside.

'What are you going to do with yourself this morning?' asked Maulevrier, appearing suddenly at the window.

'Anything you like,' answered Hammond. 'Stay, there is one pilgrimage I am eager to make. I must see Wordsworth's grave, and Wordsworth's house.'

'You shall see them both, but they are in opposite directions--one at your elbow, the other a four mile walk. Which will you see first? We'll toss for it,' taking a shilling from a pocketful of loose cash, always ready for moments of hesitation. 'Heads, house; tails, grave. Tails it is. Come and have a smoke, and see the poet's grave. The splendour of the monument, the exquisite neatness with which it is kept, will astound you, considering that we live in a period of Wordsworth worship.'

Hammond hesitated, and looked at Lady Lesbia.

'Aren't you coming?' called Maulevrier from the lawn. 'It was a fair offer. I've got my cigarette case.'

'Yes, I'm coming,' answered the other, with a disappointed air.

He had hoped that Lesbia would offer to show him the poet's grave. He could not abandon that hope without a struggle.

'Will you come with us, Lady Lesbia? We'll suppress the cigarettes!'

'Thanks, no,' she said, becoming suddenly frigid. 'I am going to practice.'

'Do you never walk in the morning--on such a lovely morning as this?'

'Not very often.'

She had re-entered those frozen regions from which his attentions had lured him for a little while. She had reminded herself of the inferior social position of this person, in whose conversation she had allowed herself to be interested.

'_Filons_!' cried Maulevrier from below, and they went.

Mary would have very much liked to go with them, but she did not want to be intrusive; so she went off to the kennels to see the terriers eat their morning and only meal of dog biscuit.


CHAPTER VIII.


THERE IS ALWAYS A SKELETON.

The two young men strolled through the village, Maulevrier pausing to exchange greetings with almost everyone he met, and so to the rustic churchyard, above the beck.

The beck was swollen with late rains, and was brawling merrily over its stony bed; the churchyard grass was deep and cool and shadowy under the clustering branches. The poet's tomb was disappointing in its unlovely simplicity, its stern, slatey hue. The plainest granite cross would have satisfied Mr. Hammond, or a cross in pure white marble, with a sculptured lamb at the base. Surely the lamb, emblem at once pastoral and sacred, ought to enter into any monument to Wordsworth; but that gray headstone, with its catalogue of dates, those stern iron railings--were these fit memorials of one whose soul so loved nature's loveliness?

After Mr. Hammond had seen the little old, old church, and the medallion portrait inside, had seen all that Maulevrier could show him, in fact, the two young men went back to the place of graves, and sat on the low parapet above the beck, smoking their cigarettes, and talking with that perfect unreserve which can only obtain between men who are old and tried friends. They talked, as it was only natural they should talk, of that household at Fellside, where all things were new to John Hammond.

'You like my sister Lesbia?' said Maulevrier.

'Like her! well, yes. The difficulty with most men must be not to worship her.'

'Ah, she's not my style. And she's beastly proud.'

'A little _hauteur_ gives piquancy to her beauty; I admire a grand woman.'

'So do I in a picture. Titian's Queen of Cyprus, or any party of that kind; but for flesh and blood I like humility--a woman who knows she is human, and not infallible, and only just a little better than you or me. When I choose a wife, she will be no such example of cultivated perfection as my sister Lesbia. I want no goddess, but a nice little womanly woman, to jog along the rough and tumble road of life with me.'

'Lady Maulevrier's influence, no doubt, has in a great measure determined the bent of your sister's character: and from what you have told me about her ladyship, I should think a fixed idea of her own superiority would be inevitable in any girl trained by her.'

'Yes, she is a proud woman--a proud, hard woman--and she has steeped Lesbia's mind in all her own pet ideas and prejudices. Yet, God knows, we have little reason to hold our heads high,' said Maulevrier, with a gloomy look.

John Hammond did not reply to this remark: perhaps there was some difficulty for a man situated as he was in finding a fit reply. He smoked in silence, looking down at the pure swift waters of the Rotha tumbling over the crags and boulders below.

'Doesn't somebody say there is always a skeleton in the cupboard, and the nobler and more ancient the race the bigger the skeleton?' said Maulevrier, with a philosophical air.

'Yes, your family secret is an attribute of a fine old race. The Pelopidae, for instance--in their case it was not a single skeleton, but a whole charnel house. I don't think your skeleton need trouble you, Maulevrier. It belongs to the remote past.'

'Those things never belong to the past,' said the young man. 'If it were any other kind of taint--profligacy--madness, even--the story of a duel that went very near murder--a runaway wife--a rebellious son--a cruel husband. I have heard such stories hinted at in the records of families. But our story means disgrace. I seldom see strangers putting their heads together at the club without fancying they are telling each other about my grandfather, and pointing me out as the grandson and heir of a thief.'

'Why use unduly hard words?'

'Why should I stoop to sophistication, with you, my friend. Dishonesty is dishonesty all the world over; and to plunder Rajahs on a large scale is no less vile than to pick a pocket on Ludgate Hill.'

'Nothing was ever proved against your grandfather.'

'No, he died in the nick of time, and the inquiry was squashed, thanks to the Angersthorpe interest, and my grandmother's cleverness. But if he had lived a few weeks longer England would have rung with the story of his profligacy and dishonour. Some people say he committed suicide in order to escape the inquiry; but I have heard my mother emphatically deny this. My father told her that he had often talked with the people who kept the little inn where his father died, and they were clear enough in their assertion that the death was a natural death--the sudden collapse of an exhausted constitution.'

'Was it on account of this scandal that your father spent the best part of his life away from England?' Hammond asked, feeling that it was a relief to Maulevrier to talk about this secret burden of his.

The young Earl was light-hearted and frivolous by nature, yet even he had his graver moments; and upon this subject of the old Maulevrier scandal he was peculiarly sensitive, perhaps all the more so because his grandmother had never allowed him to speak to her about it, had never satisfied his curiosity upon any details of that painful story.

'I have very little doubt it was so--though I wasn't old enough when he died to hear as much from his own lips. My father went straight from the University to Vienna, where he began his career in the diplomatic service, and where he soon afterwards married a dowerless English girl of good family. He went to Rio as first secretary, and died of fever within seven years of his marriage, leaving a widow and three babies, the youngest in long clothes. Mother and babies all came over to England, and were at once established at Fellside. I can remember the voyage--and I can remember my poor mother who never recovered the blow of my father's death, and who died in yonder house, after five years of broken health and broken spirits. We had no one but the dowager to look to as children--hardly