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

the old granite dial, with its octagonal pedestal and moss-grown steps. There, as in a closely-shaded arbour, Lady Mary and her old friend were alone and unobserved. The yew-tree boundary was at least eight feet high, and Mary and her companion could hardly have been seen even from the upper windows of the low, old house.

Mary had fallen into the habit of going for her walk or her ride at five o'clock every day, when she was not in attendance on Lady Maulevrier, and after her walk or ride she slipped through the stable, and joined her ancient friend. Stables and courtyard were generally empty at this hour, the men only appearing at the sound of a big bell, which summoned them from their snuggery when they were wanted. Most of Lady Maulevrier's servants had arrived at that respectable stage of long service in which fidelity is counted as a substitute for hard work.

The old man was not particularly conversational, and was apt to repeat the same things over and over again, with a sublime unconsciousness of being prosy; but he liked to hear Mary talk, and he listened with seeming intelligence. He questioned her about the world outside his cloistered life--the wars and rumours of wars--and, although the names of the questions and the men of the day seemed utterly strange to him, and he had to have them repeated to him again and again, he seemed to take an intelligent interest in the stirring facts of the time, and listened intently when Mary gave him a synopsis of her last newspaper reading.

When the news was exhausted, Mary hit upon a more childish form of amusement, and that was to tell the story of any novel or poem she had been lately reading. This was so successful that in this manner Mary related the stories of most of Shakespeare's plays; of Byron's Bride of Abydos, and Corsair; of Keats's Lamia; of Tennyson's Idylls; and of a heterogenous collection of poetry and romance, in all of which stories the old man took a vivid interest.

'You are better to me than the sunshine,' he told Mary one day when she was leaving him. 'The world grows darker when you leave me.'

Once at this parting moment he took both her hands, and drew her nearer to him, peering into her face in the clear evening light.

'You are like my mother,' he said. 'Yes, you are very like her. And who else is it that you are like? There is some one else, I know. Yes, some one else! I remember! It is a face in a picture--a picture at Maulevrier Castle.'

'What do you know of Maulevrier Castle?' asked Mary, wonderingly.

Maulevrier was the family seat in Herefordshire, which had not been occupied by the elder branch for the last forty years. Lady Maulevrier had let it during her son's minority to a younger branch of the family, a branch which had intermarried with the world of successful commerce, and was richer than the heads of the house. This occupation of Maulevrier Castle had continued to the present time, and was likely still to continue, Maulevrier having no desire to set up housekeeping in a feudal castle in the marches.

'How came you to know Maulevrier Castle?' repeated Mary.

'I was there once. There is a picture by Lely, a portrait of a Lady Maulevrier in Charles the Second's time. The face is yours, my love. I have heard of such hereditary faces. My mother was proud of resembling that portrait.'

'What did your mother know of Maulevrier Castle?'

The old man did not answer. He had lapsed into that dream-like condition into which he often sank, when his brain was not stimulated to attention and coherency by his interest in Mary's narrations.

Mary concluded that this man had once been a servant in the Maulevrier household, perhaps at the place in Herefordshire, and that all his old memories ran in one grove--the house of Maulevrier.

The freedom of her intercourse with him was undisturbed for about three weeks; and at the end of that time she came face to face with James Steadman as she emerged from the circle of greenery.

'You here, Lady Mary?' he exclaimed with an angry look.

'Yes, I have been sitting talking to that poor old man,' Mary answered, cheerily, concluding that Steadman's look of vexation arose from his being detected in the act of harbouring a contraband relation. 'He is a very interesting character. A relation of yours, I suppose?'

'Yes, he is a relation,' replied Steadman. 'He is very old, and his mind has long been gone. Her ladyship is kind enough to allow me to give him a home in her house. He is quite harmless, and he is in nobody's way.'

'Of course not, poor soul. He is only a burden to himself. He talks as if his life had been very weary. Has he been long in that sad state?'

'Yes, a long time.'

Steadman's manner to Lady Mary was curt at the best of times. She had always stood somewhat in awe of him, as a person delegated with authority by her grandmother, a servant who was much more than a servant. But to-day his manner was more abrupt than usual.

'He spoke of Maulevrier Castle just now,' said Mary, determined not to be put down too easily. 'Was he once in service there?'

'He was. Pray how did you find your way into this garden, Lady Mary?'

'I came through the stable. As it is my grandmother's garden I suppose I did not take an unwarrantable liberty in coming,' said Mary, drawing herself up, and ready for battle.

'It is Lady Maulevrier's wish that this garden should be reserved for my use,' answered Steadman. 'Her ladyship knows that my uncle walks here of an afternoon, and that, owing to his age and infirmities, he can go nowhere else; and if only on that account, it is well that the garden should be kept private. Lunatics are rather dangerous company, Lady Mary, and I advise you to give them a wide berth wherever you may meet them.'

'I am not afraid of your uncle,' said Mary, resolutely. 'You said yourself just now that he is quite harmless: and I am really interested in him, poor old creature. He likes me to sit with him a little of an afternoon and to talk to him; and if you have no objection I should like to do so, whenever the weather is fine enough for the poor old man to be out in the garden at this hour.'

'I have a very great objection, Lady Mary, and that objection is chiefly in your interest,' answered Steadman, firmly. 'No one who is not experienced in the ways of lunatics can imagine the danger of any association with them--their consummate craftiness, their capacity for crime. Every madman is harmless up to a certain point--mild, inoffensive, perhaps, up to the very moment in which he commits some appalling crime. And then people cry out upon the want of prudence, the want of common-sense which allowed such an act to be possible. No, Lady Mary, I understand the benevolence of your motive, but I cannot permit you to run such a risk.'

'I am convinced that the poor old creature is perfectly harmless,' said Mary, with suppressed indignation. 'I shall certainly ask Lady Maulevrier to speak to you on the subject. Perhaps her influence may induce you to be a little more considerate to your unhappy relation.'

'Lady Mary, I beg you not to say a word to Lady Maulevrier on this subject. You will do me the greatest injury if you speak of that man. I entreat you--'

But Mary was gone. She passed Steadman with her head held high and her eyes sparkling with anger. All that was generous, compassionate, womanly in her nature was up in arms against her grandmother's steward. Of all other things, Mary Haselden most detested cruelty; and she could see in Steadman's opposition to her wish nothing but the most cold-hearted cruelty to a poor dependent on his charity.

She went in at the stable door, shut and locked it, and put the key in her pocket as usual. But she had little hope that this mode of access would be left open to her. She knew enough of James Steadman's character, from hearsay rather than from experience, to feel sure that he would not easily give way. She was not surprised, therefore, on returning from her ride on the following afternoon, to find the disused harness-room half filled with trusses of straw, and the door of communication completely blocked. It would be impossible for her to remove that barricade without assistance; and then, how could she be sure that the door itself was not nailed up, or secured in some way?

It was a delicious sunny afternoon, and she could picture the lonely old man sitting in his circle of greenery beside the dial, which for him had registered so many dreary and solitary hours, waiting for the little ray of social sunlight which her presence shed over his monotonous life. He had told her that she was like the sunshine to him--better than sunshine--and she had promised not to forsake him. She pictured him waiting, with his hand clasped upon his crutch-stick, his chin resting upon his hands, his eyes poring on the ground, as she had seen him for the first time. And as the stable clock chimed the quarters he would begin to think himself abandoned, forgotten; if, indeed, he took any count of the passage of time of which she was not sure. His mind seemed to have sunk into a condition which was between dreaming and waking, a state to which the outside world seemed only half real--a phase of being in which there was neither past nor future, only the insufferable monotony of an everlasting _now_.

Pity is so near akin to love that Mary, in her deep compassion for this lonely, joyless, loveless existence, felt a regard which was almost affection for this strange old man, whose very name was unknown to her. True that there was much in his countenance and manner which was sinister and repellant. He was a being calculated to inspire fear rather than love; but the fact that he had courted her presence and looked to her for consolation had touched Mary's heart, and she had become reconciled to all that was forbidding and disagreeable in the lunatic physiognomy. Was he not the victim of a visitation which entitled him to respect as well as to pity?

For some days Mary held her peace, remembering Steadman's vehement entreaty that she should not speak of this subject to her grandmother. She was silent, but the image of the old man haunted her at all times and seasons. She saw him even in her dreams--those happy dreams of the girl who loves and is beloved, and before whom the pathway of the future smiles like a vision of Paradise. She heard him calling to her with a piteous cry of distress, and on waking from this troubled dream she fancied that he must be dying, and that this sound in her dreams was one of those ghostly warnings which give notice of death. She was so unhappy about him, altogether so distressed at being compelled to break her word, that she could not prevent her thoughts from dwelling upon him, not even after she had poured out all her trouble to John Hammond in a long letter, in which her garden adventures and her little skirmish with Steadman were graphically described.

To her intense discomforture Hammond replied that