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

She is not a deep thinker like you; is horribly ignorant of
science, metaphysics, poetry even. She asked me one day who Plato
was, and whether he took his name from the battle of Platoea; and
she says she never could understand why people make a fuss about
Shakespeare; but she has read all the secret histories and memoirs
that ever were written, and knows all the ins and outs of court life
and high life for the last three hundred years; and there is not a
person in the peerage whose family history she has not at her
fingers' ends, except my grandfather. When I asked her to tell me
all about Lord Maulevrier and his achievements as Governor of
Madras, she had not a word to say. So, perhaps, she draws upon her
invention a little in talking about other people, and felt herself
restrained when she came to speak of my grandfather.'

This passage in Lesbia's letter affected Lady Maulevrier as if a scorpion had wriggled from underneath the sheet of paper. She folded the letter, and laid it in the satin-lined box on her table, with a deep sigh.

'Yes, she is in the world now, and she will ask questions. I have never warned her against pronouncing her grandfather's name. There are some who will not be so kind as Georgie Kirkbank; some, perhaps, who will delight in humiliating her, and who will tell her the worst that can be told. My only hope is that she will make a great marriage, and speedily. Once the wife of a man with a high place in the world, worldlings will be too wise to wound her by telling her that her grandfather was an unconvicted felon.'

The die was cast. Lady Maulevrier might dread the hazard of evil tongues, of slanderous memories; but she could not recall her consent to Lesbia's _début_. The girl was already launched; she had been seen and admired. The next stage in her career must be to be wooed and won by a worthy wooer.


CHAPTER XXI.


ON THE DARK BROW OF HELVELLYN.

While these plans were being settled, and while Lesbia's future was the all-absorbing subject of Lady Maulevrier's thoughts, Mary contrived to be happier than she had ever been in her life before. It was happiness that grew and strengthened with every day; and yet there was no obvious reason for this deep joy. Her life ran in the same familiar groove. She walked and rode on the old pathways; she rowed on the lake she had known from babyhood; she visited her cottagers, and taught in the village school, just the same as of old. The change was only that she was no longer alone; and of late the solitude of her life, the ever-present consciousness that nobody shared her pleasures or sympathised with her upon any point, had weighed upon her like an actual burden. Now she had Maulevrier, who was always kind, who understood and shared almost all her tastes, and Maulevrier's friend, who, although not given to saying smooth things, seemed warmly interested in her pursuits and opinions. He encouraged her to talk, although he generally took the opposite side in every argument; and she no longer felt oppressed or irritated by the idea that he despised her.

Indeed, although he never flattered or even praised her, Mr. Hammond let her see that he liked her society. She had gone out of her way to avoid him, very fearful lest he should think her bold or masculine; but he had taken pains to frustrate all her efforts in that direction; he had refused to go upon excursions which she could not share. 'Lady Mary must come with us,' he said, when they were planning a morning's ramble. Thus it happened that Mary was his guide and companion in all his walks, and roamed with him bamboo in hand, over every one of those mountainous paths she knew and loved so well. Distance was as nothing to them--sometimes a boat helped them, and they went over wintry Windermere to climb the picturesque heights above Bowness. Sometimes they took ponies, and a groom, and left their steeds to perform the wilder part of the way on foot. In this wise John Hammond saw all that was to be seen within a day's journey of Grasmere, except the top of Helvellyn. Maulevrier had shirked the expedition, had always put off Mary and Mr. Hammond when they proposed it. The season was not advanced enough--the rugged pathway by the Tongue Ghyll would be as slippery as glass--no pony could get up there in such weather.

'We have not had any frost to speak of for the last fortnight,' pleaded Mary, who was particularly anxious to do the honours of Helvellyn, as the real lion of the neighbourhood.

'What a simpleton you are, Molly!' cried Maulevrier. 'Do you suppose because there is no frost in your grandmother's garden--and if you were to ask Staples about his peaches he would tell you a very different story--that there's a tropical atmosphere on Dolly Waggon Pike? Why, I'd wager the ice on Grisdale Tarn is thick enough for skating. Helvellyn won't run away, child. You and Hammond can dance the Highland Schottische on Striding Edge in June, if you like.'

'Mr. Hammond won't be here in June,' said Mary.

'Who knows?--the train service is pretty fair between London and Windermere. Hammond and I would think nothing of putting ourselves in the mail on a Friday night, and coming down to spend Saturday and Sunday with you--if you are good.'

There came a sunny morning soon after Easter which seemed mild enough for June; and when Hammond suggested that this was the very day for Helvellyn, Maulevrier had not a word to say against the truth of that proposition. The weather had been exceptionally warm for the last week, and they had played tennis and sat in the garden just as if it had been actually summer. Patches of snow might still linger on the crests of the hills--but the approach to those bleak heights could hardly be glacial.

Mary clasped her hands delightedly.

'Dear old Maulevrier!' she exclaimed, 'you are always good to me. And now I shall be able to show you the Red Tarn, the highest pool of water in England,' she said, turning to Hammond. 'And you will see Windermere winding like a silvery serpent between the hills, and Grasmere shining like a jewel in the depth of the valley, and the sea glittering like a line of white light between the edges of earth and heaven, and the dark Scotch hills like couchant lions far away to the north.'

'That is to say these things are all supposed to be on view from the top of the mountain; but as a peculiar and altogether exceptional state of the atmosphere is essential to their being seen, I need not tell you that they are rarely visible,' said Maulevrier. 'You are talking to old mountaineers, Molly. Hammond has done Cotapaxi and had his little clamber on the equatorial Andes, and I--well, child, I have done my Righi, and I have always found the boasted panorama enveloped in dense fog.'

'It won't be foggy to-day,' said Mary. 'Shall we do the whole thing on foot, or shall I order the ponies?'

Mr. Hammond inquired the distance up and down, and being told that it involved only a matter of eight miles, decided upon walking.

'I'll walk, and lead your pony,' he said to Mary, but Mary declared herself quite capable of going on foot, so the ponies were dispensed with as a possible encumbrance.

This was planned and discussed in the garden before breakfast. Fräulein was told that Mary was going for a long walk with her brother and Mr. Hammond; a walk which might last over the usual luncheon hour; so Fräulein was not to wait luncheon. Mary went to her grandmother's room to pay her duty visit. There were no letters for her to write that morning, so she was perfectly free.

The three pedestrians started an hour after breakfast, in light marching order. The two young men wore their Argyleshire shooting clothes--homespun knickerbockers and jackets, thick-ribbed hose knitted by Highland lasses in Inverness. They carried a couple of hunting flasks filled with claret, and a couple of sandwich boxes, and that was all. Mary wore her substantial tailor-gown of olive tweed, and a little toque to match, with a silver mounted grouse-claw for her only ornament.

It was a delicious morning, the air fresh and sweet, the sun comfortably warm, a little too warm, perhaps, presently, when they had trodden the narrow path by the Tongue Ghyll, and were beginning to wind slowly upwards over rough boulders and last year's bracken, tough and brown and tangled, towards that rugged wall of earth and stone tufted with rank grasses, which calls itself Dolly Waggon Pike. Here they all came to a stand-still, and wiped the dews of honest labour from their foreheads; and here Maulevrier flung himself down upon a big boulder, with the soles of his stout shooting boots in running water, and took out his cigar case.

'How do you like it?' he asked his friend, when he had lighted his cigarette. 'I hope you are enjoying yourself.'

'I never was happier in my life,' answered Hammond.

He was standing on higher ground, with Mary at his elbow, pointing out and expatiating upon the details of the prospect. There were the lakes--Grasmere, a disk of shining blue; Rydal, a patch of silver; and Windermere winding amidst a labyrinth of wooded hills.

'Aren't you tired?' asked Maulevrier.

'Not a whit.'

'Oh, I forgot you had done Cotapaxi, or as much of Cotapaxi as living mortal ever has done. That makes a difference. I am going home.'

'Oh, Maulevrier!' exclaimed Mary, piteously.

'I am going home. You two can go to the top. You are both hardened mountaineers, and I am not in it with either of you. When I rashly consented to a pedestrian ascent of Helvellyn I had forgotten what the gentleman was like; and as to Dolly Waggon I had actually forgotten her existence. But now I see the lady--as steep as the side of a house, and as stony--no, naught but herself can be her parallel in stoniness. No, Molly, I will go no further.'

'But we shall go down on the other side,' urged Mary. 'It is a little steeper on the Cumberland side, but not nearly so far.'

'A little steeper! I Can anything be steeper than Dolly Waggon? Yes, you are right. It is steeper on the Cumberland side. I remember coming down a sheer descent, like an exaggerated sugar-loaf; but I was on a pony, and it was the brute's look-out. I will not go down the Cumberland side on my own legs. No, Molly, not even for you. But if you and Hammond want to go to the top, there is nothing to prevent you. He is a skilled mountaineer. I'll trust you with him.'

Mary blushed, and made no reply. Of all things in the world she least wanted to abandon the expedition. Yet to climb Helvellyn alone with her brother's friend would no doubt be a terrible violation of those laws of maidenly propriety which Fräulein was always expounding. If Mary were to do this thing, which she longed to do, she must hazard a lecture from her governess, and probably a biting reproof from her grandmother.

'Will you trust yourself with me, Lady Mary?' asked Hammond,