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

I am deeply grateful for such an assurance.'

'But I like him better than anyone I ever saw in my life before.'

'You have seen to many people. You have had such a wide area for choice.'

'No; I know I have been kept like a nun in a convent: but I don't think when I go into the world I shall ever see anyone I should like better than Mr. Hammond.'

'Wait till you have seen the world before you make up your mind about that. And now, Lesbia, leave off talking and thinking like a child; look me in the face and listen to me, for I am going to speak seriously; and with me, when I am in earnest, what is said once is said for ever.'

Lady Maulevrier grasped her granddaughter's arm with long slender fingers which held it as tightly as the grasp of a vice. She drew the girl's slim figure round till they were face to face, looking into each other's eyes, the dowager's eagle countenance lit up with impassioned feeling, severe, awful as the face of one of the fatal sisters, the avengers of blood, the harbingers of doom.

'Lesbia, I think I have been good to you, and kind to you,' she said.

'You have been all that is kind and dear,' faltered Lesbia.

'Then give me measure for measure. My life has been a hard one, child; hard and lonely, and loveless and joyless. My son, to whom I devoted myself in the vigour of youth and in the prime of life, never loved me, never repaid me for my love. He spent his days far away from me, when his presence would have gladdened my difficult life. He died in a strange land. Of his three children, you are the one I took into my heart. I did my duty to the others; I lavished my love upon you. Do not give me cursing instead of blessing. Do not give me a stone instead of bread. I have built every hope of happiness or pleasure in this world upon you and your obedience. Obey me, be true to me, and I will make you a queen, and I will sit in the shadow of your throne. I will toil for you, and be wise for you. You shall have only to shine, and dazzle, and enjoy the glory of life. My beautiful darling, for pity's sake do not give yourself over to folly.'

'Did not you marry for love, grandmother?'

'No, Lesbia. Lord Maulevrier and I got on very well together, but ours was no love-match.'

'Does nobody in our rank ever marry for love? are all marriages a mere exchange and barter?'

'No, there are love-matches now and then, which often turn out badly. But, my darling, I am not asking you to marry for rank or for money. I am only asking you to wait till you find your mate among the noblest in the land. He may be the handsomest and most accomplished of men, a man born to win women's hearts; and you may love him as fervently as ever a village girl loved her first lover. I am not going to sacrifice you, or to barter you, dearest. I mean to marry you to the best and noblest young man of his day. You shall never be asked to stoop to the unworthy, not even if worthlessness wore strawberry leaves in his cap, and owned the greatest estate in the land.'

'And if--instead of waiting-for this King Arthur of yours--I were to do as Iseult did--as Guinevere did--choose for myself----'

'Iseult and Guinevere were wantons. I wonder that you can name them in comparison with yourself.'

'If I were to marry a good and honourable man who has his place to make in the world, would you never forgive me?'

'You mean Mr. Hammond? You may just as well speak plainly,' said Lady Maulevrier, freezingly. 'If you were capable of such idiocy as that, Lesbia, I would pluck you out of my heart like a foul weed. I would never look upon you, or hear your name spoken, or think of you again as long as I lived. My life would not last very long after that blow. Old age cannot bear such shocks. Oh, Lesbia, I have been father and mother to you; do not bring my grey hairs in sorrow to the grave.'

Lesbia gave a deep sigh, and brushed the tears from her cheeks. Yes, the very idea of such a marriage was foolishness. Just now, in the pine wood, carried away by the force of her lover's passion, by her own softer feelings, it had seemed to her as if she could count the world well lost for his sake; but now, at Lady Maulevrier's feet, she became again true to her training, and the world was too much to lose.

'What can I do, grandmother?' she asked, submissively, despairingly. 'He loves me, and I love him. How can I tell him that he and I can never be anything to each other in this world?'

'Refer him to me. I will give him his answer.'

'No, no; that will not do. I have promised to answer him myself. He has gone for a walk on the hills, and will come back at four o'clock for my answer.'

'Sit down at that table, and write as I dictate.'

'But a letter will be so formal.'

'It is the only way in which you can answer him. When he comes back from his walk you will have left Fellside. I shall send you off to St. Bees with Fräulein. You must never look upon that man's face again.'

Lesbia brushed away a few more tears, and obeyed. She had been too well trained to attempt resistance. Defiance was out of the question.


CHAPTER XII.


'THE GREATER CANTLE OF THE WORLD IS LOST.'

The sky was still cloudless when John Hammond strolled slowly up the leafy avenue at Fellside. He had been across the valley and up the hill to Easedale Tarn, and then by rough untrodden ways, across a chaos of rock and heather, into a second valley, long, narrow, and sterile, known as Far Easedale, a desolate gorge, a rugged cleft in the heart of the mountains. The walk had been long and laborious; but only in such clambering and toiling, such expenditure of muscular force and latent heat, could the man's restless soul endure those long hours of suspense.

'How will she answer me? Oh, my God! how will she answer?' he said within himself, as he walked up the romantic winding road, which made so picturesque an approach to Lady Maulevrier's domain, 'Is my idol gold or clay? How will she come through the crucible? Oh, dearest, sweetest, loveliest, only be true to the instinct of your womanhood, and my cup will be full of bliss, and all my days will flow as sweetly as the burden of a song. But if you prove heartless, if you love the world's. wealth better than you love me--ah! then all is over, and you and I are lost to each other for ever. I have made up my mind.'

His face settled into an expression of indomitable determination, as of a man who would die rather than be false to his own purpose. There was no glow of hope in his heart. He had no deep faith in the girl he loved; indeed in his heart of hearts he knew that this being to whom he had trusted his hopes of bliss was no heroine. She was a lovely, loveable girl, nothing more. How would she greet him when they met presently on the tennis lawn? With tears and entreaties, and pretty little deprecating speeches, irresolution, timidity, vacillation, perhaps; hardly with heroic resolve to act and dare for his sake.

There was no one on the tennis lawn when he went there, though the hour was close at hand at which Lesbia had promised to give him his answer. He sat down in one of the low chairs, glad to rest after his long ramble having had no refreshment but a bottle of soda-water and a biscuit at the cottage by Easedale Tarn. He waited, calmly as to outward seeming, but with a heavy heart.

'If it were Mary now whom I loved, I should have little fear of the issue,' he thought, weighing his sweetheart's character, as he weighed his chances of success. 'That young termagant would defy the world for her lover.'

He sat in the summer silence for nearly half-an-hour, and still there was no sign of Lady Lesbia. Her satin-lined workbasket, with the work thrown carelessly across it, was still on the rustic table, just as she had left it when they went to the pine wood. Waiting was weary work when the bliss of a lifetime trembled in the balance; and yet he did not want to be impatient. She might find it difficult to get away from her family, perhaps. She was closely watched and guarded, as the most precious thing at Fellside.

At last the clock struck five, and Hammond could endure delay no longer. He went round by the flower garden to the terrace before the drawing-room windows, and through an open window to the drawing-room.

Lady Maulevrier was in her accustomed seat, with her own particular little table, magazines, books, newspapers at her side. Lady Mary was pouring out the tea, a most unusual thing; and Maulevrier was sitting on a stool at her feet, with his knees up to his chin, very warm and dusty, eating pound cake.

'Where the mischief have you been hiding yourself all day, Jack?' he called out as Hammond appeared, looking round the room as he entered, with eager, interrogating eyes, for that one figure which was absent.

'I have been for a walk.'

'You might have had the civility to announce your design, and Molly and I would have shared your peregrinations.'

'I am sorry that I lost the privilege of your company.'

'I suppose you lost your luncheon, which was of more importance,' said Maulevrier.

'Will you have some tea?' asked Mary, who looked more womanly than usual in a cream-coloured surah gown--one of her Sunday gowns.

She had a faint hope that by this essentially feminine apparel she might lessen the prejudicial effect of Maulevrier's cruel story about the fox-hunt.

Mr. Hammond answered absently, hardly looking at Mary, and quite unconscious of her pretty gown.

'Thanks, yes,' he said, taking the cup and saucer, and looking at the door by which he momently expected Lady Lesbia's entrance, and then, as the door did not open, he looked down at Mary, very busy with china teapots and a brass kettle which hissed and throbbed over a spirit lamp.

'Won't you have some cake,' she asked, looking up at him gently, grieved at the distress and disappointment in his face. 'I am sure you must be dreadfully hungry.'

'Not in the least, thanks. How came you to be entrusted with those sacred vessels, Lady Mary? What has become of Fräulein and your sister?'

'They have rushed off to St. Bees. Grandmother thought Lesbia looking pale and out of spirits, and packed her off to the seaside at a minute's notice.'

'What! She has left Fellside?' asked Hammond, paling suddenly, as if a man had struck him. 'Lady Maulevrier, do I understand that Lady Lesbia has gone away?'

He asked the question in an authoritative tone, with the air of a man who had a right to be answered. The dowager wondered at his