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

he thoroughly approved of Steadman's conduct in the matter. However agreeable Mary's society might be to the lunatic, Mary's life was far too precious to be put within the possibility of peril by any such _tête-à-têtes_. If the person was the same old man whom Hammond had seen on the Fell, he was a most sinister-looking creature, of whom any evil act might be fairly anticipated. In a word Mr. Hammond took Steadman's view of the matter, and entreated his dearest Mary to be careful, and not to allow her warm heart to place her in circumstances of peril.

This was most disappointing to Mary, who expected her lover to agree with her upon every point; and if he had been at Fellside the difference of opinion might have given rise to their first quarrel. But as she had a few hours' leisure for reflection before the post went out, she had time to get over her anger, and to remember that promise of obedience given, half in jest, half in earnest, at the little inn beyond Dunmail Raise. So she wrote submissively enough, only with just a touch of reproach at Jack's want of compassion for a poor old man who had such strong claims upon everybody's pity.

The image of the poor old man was not to be banished from her thoughts, and on that very afternoon, when her letter was dispatched, Mary went on a visit of exploration to the stables, to see if by any chance Mr. Steadman's plans for isolating his unhappy relative might be circumvented.

She went all over the stables--into loose boxes, harness and saddle rooms, sheds for wood, and sheds for roots, but she found no door opening into the quadrangle, save that door by which she had entered, and which was securely defended by a barricade of straw that had been doubled by a fresh delivery of trusses since she first saw it. But while she was prowling about the sweet-scented stable, much disappointed at the result of her investigations, she stumbled against a ladder which led to an open trap-door. Mary mounted the ladder, and found herself amidst the dusty atmosphere of a large hayloft, half in shadow, half in the hot bright sunlight. A large shutter was open in the sloping roof, the roof that sloped towards the quadrangle, an open patch admitting light and air. Mary, light and active as a squirrel, sprang upon a truss of hay, and in another moment had swung herself in the opening of the shutter, and was standing with her feet on the wooden ledge at the bottom of the massive frame, and her figure supported against the slope of thick thatched roof. Perched, or half suspended, thus, she was just high enough to look over the top of the yew-tree hedge into the circle round the sundial.

Yes, there was the unhappy victim of fate, and man's inhumanity to man. There sat the shrunken figure, with drooping head, and melancholy attitude--the bent shoulders of feeble old age, the patriarchal locks so appealing to pity. There he sat with eyes poring upon the ground just as she had seen him the first time. And while she had sat with him and talked with him he had seemed to awaken out of that dull despondency, gleams of pleasure had lighted up his wrinkled face--he had grown animated, a sentient living instead of a corpse alive. It was very hard that this little interval of life, these stray gleams of gladness should be denied to the poor old creature, at the behest of James Steadman.

Mary would have felt less angrily upon the subject had she believed in Steadman's supreme carefulness of her own safety; but in this she did not believe. She looked upon the house-steward's prudence as a hypocritical pretence, an affectation of fidelity and wisdom, by which he contrived to gratify the evil tendencies of his own hard and cruel nature. For some reasons of his own, perhaps constrained thereto by necessity, he had given the old man an asylum for his age and infirmity: but while thus giving him shelter he considered him a burden, and from mere perversity of mind refused him all such consolations as were possible to his afflicted state, mewed him up as a prisoner, cut him off from the companionship of his fellow-men.

Two years ago, before Mary emerged from her Tomboyhood, she would have thought very little of letting herself out of the loft window and clambering down the side of the stable, which was well furnished with those projections in the way of gutters, drain-pipes, and century-old ivy, which make such a descent easy. Two years ago Mary's light figure would have swung itself down among the ivy leaves, and she would have gloried in the thought of circumventing James Steadman so easily. But now Mary was a young lady--a young lady engaged to be married, and impressed with the responsibilities of her position, deeply sensible of a new dignity, for the preservation of which she was in a manner answerable to her lover.

'What would _he_ think of me if I went scrambling down the ivy?' she asked herself; 'and after he has approved of Steadman's heartless restrictions, it would be rank rebellion against him if I were to do it. Poor old man, "Thou art so near and yet so far," as Lesbia's song says.'

She blew a kiss on the tips of her fingers towards that sad solitary figure, and then dropped back into the dusty duskiness of the loft. But although her new ideas upon the subject of 'Anstand'--or good behaviour--prevented her getting the better of Steadman by foul means, she was all the more intent upon having her own way by fair means, now that the impression of the old man's sadness and solitude had been renewed by the sight of the drooping figure by the sundial.

She went back to the house, and walked straight to her grandmother's room. Lady Maulevrier's couch had been placed in front of the open window, from which she was watching the westward-sloping sun above the long line of hills, dark Helvellyn, rugged Nabb Scarr, and verdant Fairfield, with its two giant arms stretched out to enfold and shelter the smiling valley.

'Heavens! child, what an object you are;' exclaimed her ladyship, as Mary drew near. 'Why, your gown is all over dust, and your hair is--why your hair is sprinkled with hay and clover. I thought you had learnt to be tidy, since your engagement. What have you been doing with yourself?'

'I have been up in the hayloft,' answered Mary, frankly; and, intent on one idea, she said impetuously, 'Dear grandmother, I want you to do me a favour--a very great favour. There is a poor old man, a relation of Steadman's, who lives with him, out of his mind, but quite harmless, and he is so sad and lonely, so dreadfully sad, and he likes me to sit with him in the garden, and tell him stories, and recite verses to him, poor soul, just as if he were a child, don't you know, and it is such a pleasure to me to be a little comfort to him in his lonely wretched life, and James Steadman says I mustn't go near him, because he may change at any moment into a dangerous lunatic, and do me some kind of harm, and I am not a bit afraid, and I'm sure he won't do anything of the kind, and, please grandmother, tell Steadman, that I am to be allowed to go and sit with his poor old prisoner half an hour every afternoon.'

Carried along the current of her own impetuous thoughts, Mary had talked very fast, and had not once looked at her grandmother while she was speaking. But now at the end of her speech her eyes sought Lady Maulevrier's face in gentle entreaty, and she recoiled involuntarily at the sight she saw there.

The classic features were distorted almost as they had been in the worst period of the paralytic seizure. Lady Maulevrier was ghastly pale, and her eyes glared with an awful fire as they gazed at Mary. Her whole frame was convulsed, and she, the cripple, whose right limbs lay numbed and motionless upon the couch, made a struggling motion as she raised herself a little with the left arm, as if, by very force of angry will, she would have lifted herself up erect before the girl who had offended her.

For a few moments her lips moved dumbly; and there was something unspeakably awful in those convulsed features, that livid countenance, and those voiceless syllables trembling upon the white dry lips.

At last speech came.

'Girl, you were created to torment me;' she exclaimed.

'Dear grandmother, what harm have I done?' faltered Mary.

'What harm? You are a spy. Your very existence is a torment and a danger. Would to God that you were married. Yes, married to a chimney-sweep, even--and out of my way.'

'If that is your only difficulty,' said Mary, haughtily, 'I dare say Mr. Hammond would be kind enough to marry me to-morrow, and take me out of your ladyship's way.'

Lady Maulevrier's head sank back upon her pillows, those velvet and satin pillows, rich with delicate point lace and crewel-work adornment, the labour of Mary and Fräulein, pillows which could not bring peace to the weary head, or deaden the tortures of memory. The pale face recovered its wonted calm, the heavy lips drooped over the weary eyes, and for a few moments there was silence in the room.

Then Lady Maulevrier raised her eyelids, and looked at her granddaughter imploringly, pathetically.

'Forgive me, Mary,' she said. 'I don't know what I was saying just now; but whatever it was, forgive and forget it. I am a wretched old woman, heart sick, heart sore, worn out by pain and weariness. There are times when I am beside myself; moments when I am not much saner than Steadman's lunatic uncle. This is one of my worst days, and you came bouncing in upon me, and tortured my nerves by your breathless torrent of words. Pray forgive me, if I said anything rude.'

'If,' thought Mary: but she tried to be charitable, and to believe that Lady Maulevrier's attack upon her was a new phase of hysteria, so she murmured meekly, 'There is nothing for me to forgive, grandmother, and I am very sorry I disturbed you.'

She was going to leave the room, thinking that her absence would be a relief to the invalid, when Lady Maulevrier called her back.

'You were asking me something--something about that old man of Steadman's,' she said with a weary air, half indifference, half the lassitude natural to an invalid who sinks under the burden of monotonous days. 'What was it all about? I forget.'

Mary repeated her request, but this time in measured tones.

'My dear, I am sure that Steadman was only properly prudent.' answered Lady Maulevrier, 'and that it would never do for me to interfere in this matter. It stands to reason that he must know his old kinsman's temperament much better than you can, after your half-hour interviews with him in the garden. Pray how long have these garden scenes been going on, by-the-by?' asked her ladyship, with a searching look at Mary's downcast face.

The girl had not altogether recovered from the rude shock of her grandmother's late attack.

'About three weeks,' faltered Mary. 'But it is more than a week now since I was in the garden. It was quite by accident that I first went there. Perhaps I ought to explain.'

And Mary, not being gainsayed, went on to describe that first afternoon when