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

that is where I want you to dwell for ever!'

'Don't be frightened,' said Mary. 'I know every step of the way.'

So, leaning on her lover, and yet guiding him, slowly, step by step, groping their way through the darkness, Lady Mary led Mr. Hammond down the winding track along which the ponies and the guides travel so often in the summer season. And soon they began to descend out of that canopy of fog which enveloped the brow of Helvellyn, and to see the whole world smiling beneath them, a world of green pastures and sheepfolds, with a white homestead here and there amidst the fields, looking so human and so comfortable after that gloomy mountain top, round which the tempest howled so outrageously. Beyond those pastures stretched the dark waters of Thirlmere, looking like a broad river.

The descent was passing steep, but Hammond's strong arm and steady steps made Mary's progress very easy, while she had in no wise exaggerated her familiarity with the windings and twistings of the track. Yet as they had need to travel very slowly so long as the fog still surrounded them, the journey downward lasted a considerable time, and it was past five when they arrived at the little roadside inn at the foot of the hill.

Here Mr. Hammond insisted that Mary should rest at least long enough to take a cup of tea. She was very white and tired. She had been profoundly agitated, and looked on the point of fainting, although she protested that she was quite ready to walk on.

'You are not going to walk another step,' said Hammond. 'While you are taking your tea I will get you a carriage.'

'Indeed, I had rather hurry on at once,' urged Mary. 'We are so late already.'

'You will get home all the sooner if you obey me. It is your duty to obey me now,' said Hammond, in a lowered voice.

She smiled at him, but it was a weak, wan little smile, for that descent in the wind and the fog had quite exhausted her. Mr. Hammond took her into a snug little parlour where there was a cheerful fire, and saw her comfortably seated in an arm chair by the hearth, before he went to look after a carriage.

There was no such thing as a conveyance to be had, but the Windermere coach would pass in about half an hour, and for this they must wait. It would take them back to Grasmere sooner than they could get there on foot, in Mary's exhausted condition.

The tea-tray was brought in presently, and Hammond poured out the tea and waited upon Lady Mary. It was a reversal of the usual formula but it was very pleasant to Mary to sit with her feet on the low brass fender and be waited upon by her lover. That fog on the brow of Helvellyn--that piercing wind--had chilled her to the bone, and there was unspeakable comfort in the glow and warmth of the fire, in the refreshment of a good cup of tea.

'Mary, you are my own property now, remember,' said Hammond, watching her tenderly as she sipped her tea.

She glanced up at him shyly, now and then, with eyes full of innocent wonder. It was so strange to her, as strange as sweet, to know that he loved her; such a marvellous thing that she had pledged herself to be his wife.

'You are my very own--mine to guard and cherish, mine to think and work for,' he went on, 'and you will have to trust me, sweet one, even if the beginning of things is not altogether free from trouble.'

'I am not afraid of trouble.'

'Bravely spoken! First and foremost, then, you will have to announce your engagement to Lady Maulevrier. She will take it ill, no doubt; will do her utmost to persuade you to give me up. Have you courage and resolution, do you think, to stand against her arguments? Can you hold to your purpose bravely, and cry, no surrender?'

'There shall be no surrender,' answered Mary, 'I promise you that. No doubt grandmother will be very angry. But she has never cared for me very much. It will not hurt her for me to make a bad match, as it would have done in Lesbia's case. She has had no day-dreams--no grand ambition about me!'

'So much the better, my wayside flower! When you have said all that is sweet and dutiful to her, and have let her know at the same time that you mean to be my wife, come weal come woe, I will see her, and will have my say. I will not promise her a grand career for my darling: but I will pledge myself that nothing of that kind which the world calls evil--no penury, or shabbiness of surroundings--shall ever touch Mary Haselden after she is Mary Hammond. I can promise at least so much as that.'

'It is more than enough,' said Mary. 'I have told you that I would gladly share poverty with you.'

'Sweet! it is good of you to say as much, but I would not take you at your word. You don't know what poverty is.'

'Do you think I am a coward, or self-indulgent? You are wrong, Jack. May I call you Jack, as Maulevrier does?'

'May you?'

The question evoked such a gush of tenderness that he was fain to kneel beside her chair and kiss the little hand holding the cup, before he considered he had answered properly.

'You are wrong, Jack. I do know what poverty means. I have studied the ways of the poor, tried to console them, and help them a little in their troubles; and I know there is no pain that want of money can bring which I would not share willingly with you. Do you suppose my happiness is dependent on a fine house and powdered footmen? I should like to go to the Red River with you, and wear cotton gowns, and tuck up my sleeves and clean our cottage.'

'Very pretty sport, dear, for a summer day; but my Mary shall have a sweeter life, and shall occasionally walk in silk attire.'

That tea-drinking by the fireside in the inn parlour was the most delicious thing within John Hammond's experience. Mary was a bewitching compound of earnestness and simplicity, so humble, so confiding, so perplexed and astounded at her own bliss.

'Confess, now, in the summer, when you were in love with Lesbia, you thought me a horrid kind of girl,' she said, presently, when they were standing side by side at the window, waiting for the coach.

'Never, Mary. My crime is to have thought very little about you in those days. I was so dazzled by Lesbia's beauty, so charmed by her accomplishments and girlish graces, that I forgot to take notice of anything else in the world. If I thought of you at all it was as another Maulevrier--a younger Maulevrier in petticoats, very gay, and good-humoured, and nice.'

'But when you saw me rushing about with the terriers--I must have seemed utterly horrid.'

'Why, dearest There is nothing essentially horrible in terriers, or in a bright lively girl running races with them. You made a very pretty picture in the sunlight, with your hat hanging on your shoulder, and your curly brown hair and dancing hazel eyes. If I had not been deep in love with Lesbia's peerless complexion and Grecian features, I should have looked below the surface of that Gainsborough picture, and discovered what treasures of goodness, and courage, and truth and purity those frank brown eyes and that wide forehead betokened. I was sowing my wild oats last summer, Mary, and they brought me a crop of sorrow But I am wiser now--wiser and happier.

'But if you were to see Lesbia again would not the old love revive?'

'The old love is dead, Mary. There is nothing left of it but a handful of ashes, which I scatter thus to the four winds,' with a wave of his hand towards the open casement. 'The new love absorbs and masters my being. If Lesbia were to re-appear at Fellside this evening, I could offer her my hand in all brotherly frankness, and ask her to accept me as a brother. Here comes the coach. We shall be at Fellside just in time for dinner.'


CHAPTER XXII.


WISER THAN LESBIA.

Lady Mary and Mr. Hammond were back at Fellside at a quarter before eight, by which time the stars were shining on pine woods and Fell. They managed to be in the drawing-room when dinner was announced, after the hastiest of toilets; yet her lover thought Mary had never looked prettier than she looked that night, in her limp white cashmere gown, and with her brown hair brushed into a largo loose knot on the top of her head. There had been great uneasiness about them at Fellside when evening began to draw in, and the expected hour of their return had gone by. Scouts had been sent in quest of them, but in the wrong direction.

'I did not think you would be such idiots as to come down the north side of the hill in a tempest,' said Maulevrier; 'we could see the clouds racing over the crest of Seat Sandal, and knew it was blowing pretty hard up there, though it was calm enough down here.'

'Blowing pretty hard;' echoed Hammond, 'I don't think I was ever out in a worse gale; and yet I have been across the Bay of Biscay when the waves struck the side of the steamer like battering rams, and when the whole surface of the sea was white with seething foam.'

'It was a most imprudent thing to go up Helvellyn in such weather,' said Fräulein Müller, shaking her head gloomily as she ate her fish.

Mary felt that the Fräulein's manner boded ill. There was a storm brewing. A scolding was inevitable. Mary felt quite capable of doing battle with the Fräulein; but her feelings were altogether different when she thought of facing that stern old lady upstairs, and of the confession she had to make. It was not that her courage faltered. So far as resolutions went she was as firm as a rock. But she felt that there was a terrible ordeal to be gone through; and it seemed a mockery to be sitting there and pretending to eat her dinner and take things lightly, with that ordeal before her.

'We did not go up the hill in bad weather, Miss Müller,' said Mr. Hammond. 'The sun was shining and the sky was blue when we started. We could not foresee darkness and storm at the top of the hill. That was the fortune of war.'

'I am very sorry Lady Mary had not more good sense,' replied Fräulein with unabated gloom; but on this Maulevrier took up the cudgels.

'If there was any want of sense in the business, that's my look-out, Fräulein,' he said, glaring angrily at the governess. 'It was I who advised Hammond and Lady Mary to climb the hill. And here they are, safe and sound after their journey I see no reason why there should be any fuss about it.'

'People have different ways of looking at things, replied Fräulein, plodding steadily on with her dinner. Mary rose directly the dessert had been handed round, and marched out of the room: like a warrior going to a battle in which the chances of defeat were strong. Fräulein Müller shuffled after her.

'Will you be kind