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

gifts from her lover, save the plain gold engagement ring, and a few new books sent straight from the publishers. Clara took care to inform her young mistress that Miss Freeman's sweetheart had sent her all manner of splendid presents, scent bottles, photograph albums, glove boxes, and other things of beauty, albeit his means were supposed to be _nil_. It was evident that Clara disapproved of Mr. Hammond's conduct in this matter, and even suspected him of meanness.

'He did ought to have sent you his photograph, Lady Mary,' said Clara, with a reproachful air.

'I daresay he would have done so, Clara, but he has been photographed only once in his life.'

'Lawk a mercy, Lady Mary! Why most young gentlemen have themselves photographed in every new place they go to; and as Mr. Hammond has been a traveller, like his lordship, I made sure he'd have been photographed in knickerbockers and every other kind of attitude.'

Mary had not refrained from asking for her lover's portrait; and he had told her that he had carefully abstained from having his countenance reproduced in any manner since his fifteenth year, when he had been photographed at his mother's desire.

'The present fashion of photographs staring out of every stationer's window makes a man's face public property,' he told Mary. 'I don't want every street Arab in London to recognise me.'

'But you are not a public man,' said Mary. 'Your photograph would not be in all the windows; although, in my humble opinion, you are a very handsome man.'

Hammond blushed, laughed, and turned the conversation, and Mary had to exist without any picture of her lover.

'Millais shall paint me in his grand Reynolds manner by-and-by,' he told Mary.

'Millais! Oh, Jack! When will you and I be able to give a thousand or so for a portrait?'

'Ah, when, indeed? But we may as well enjoy our day-dreams, like Alnaschar, without smashing our basket of crockery.'

And now Mary, who had managed to exist without the picture, was to have the original. He was to be all her own--her master, her lord, her love, after to-morrow--unto eternity, in life, and in the grave, and in the dim hereafter beyond the grave, they two were to be one. In heaven there was to be no marrying or giving in marriage, Mary was told; but her own heart cried aloud to her that the happily wedded must remain linked in heaven. God would not part the blessed souls of true lovers.

A short sleep, broken by happy dreams, and it was morning, Mary's wedding morning, fairest of summer days, July in all her beauty. Mary went to her grandmother's room, and waited upon her at breakfast.

Lady Maulevrier was in excellent spirits.

'Everything is arranged, Mary, I have had a telegram from Hammond, who has got the licence, and will come at half-past one. At three the Vicar will come to marry you, his daughters, Katie and Laura, acting as your bridesmaids.'

'Bridesmaids!' exclaimed Mary. 'I forgot all about bridesmaids. Am I really to have any?'

'You will have two girls of your own age to bear you company, at any rate. I have asked dear old Horton to be present; and he, Fräulein, and Maulevrier will complete the party. It will not be a brilliant wedding, Mary, or a costly ceremonial, except for the licence.'

'And poor Jack will have to pay for that,' said Mary, with a long face.

'Poor Jack refused to let me pay for it,' answered Lady Maulevrier. 'He is vastly independent, and I fear somewhat reckless.'

'I like him for his independence; but he mustn't be reckless,' said Mary, severely.

He was to be the master in all things! and yet she was to exercise a restraining influence, she was to guard him against his own weaknesses, his too generous impulses. Her voice was to be the voice of prudence. This is how Mary understood the marriage tie.

Under ordinary conditions Mary would have been in the avenue, lying in wait for her lover, eager to get the very first glimpse of him when he arrived, to see him before he had brushed the dust of the journey from his raiment. But to-day she hung back. She stayed in her grandmother's room and sat beside the sofa, shy, and even a little downcast. This lover who was so soon to be transformed into a husband was a formidable personage. She dare not rush forth to greet him. Perhaps he had changed his mind by this time, and was sorry he had ever asked her to marry him. Perhaps he thought he was being hustled into a marriage. He had been told that he was to wait at least a year. And now, all in a moment, he was sent off to get a special licence. How could she be quite sure that he liked this kind of treatment?

If there is any faith to be placed in the human countenance, Mr. Hammond was in no wise an unwilling bridegroom; for his face teamed with happy light as he came into the room presently, followed by an elderly man with grey hair and whiskers, and in a strictly professional frock coat, whom the butler announced as Mr. Dorncliffe. Lady Maulevrier looked startled, somewhat offended even at this intrusion, and she gave Mr. Dorncliffe a very haughty salutation, which was almost more crushing than no salutation at all.

Mary stood up by her grandmother's sofa, and looked rather frightened.

'Dear Lady Maulevrier,' said Hammond, 'I ventured to telegraph to my lawyer to meet me at York last night, and come on here with me this morning. He has prepared a settlement, which I should like you to hear him read, and which he will explain to you, if necessary, while Molly and I go for a stroll in the grounds.'

He had never called her Molly before. He put his arm round her with a proud air of possession, even under her grandmother's eyes. And she nestled close up to his side, forgetting everything but the delight of belonging to him.

They went downstairs, and through the billiard room to the terrace, and from the terrace to the tennis lawn, where John Hammond sat reading Heine nearly a year ago, just before he proposed to Lesbia.

'Do you remember that day?' asked Mary, looking at him, solemnly.

'I remember every day and every hour we have spent together since I began to love you,' answered Hammond.

'Ah, but this was before you began to love me,' said Mary, with a piteous little grimace. 'This was while you were loving Lesbia as hard as ever you could. Don't you remember the day you proposed to her--a lovely summer day like this, the lake just as blue, the sun shining upon Fairfield just as it is shining now, and you sat there reading Heine--those sweet, sweet verses, that seemed made of sighs and tears; and every now and then you paused and looked up at Lesbia, and there was more love in your eyes than in all Heine's poetry, though that brims over with love.'

'But how did you know all this, Molly? You were not here.'

'I was not very far off. I was behind those bushes, watching and listening. I knew you were in love with Lesbia, and I thought you despised me, and I was very, very wretched; and I listened afterwards when you proposed to her there--behind the pine trees--and I hated her for refusing you, and I am afraid I hated you for proposing to her.'

'When I ought to have been proposing to my Molly, blind fool that I was,' said Hammond, smiling tenderly at her, smiling, though his eyes were dim with tears. 'My own sweet love, it was a terrible mistake, a mistake that might have cost me the happiness of a lifetime. But Fate was very good to me, and let me have my Mary after all. And now let us sit down under the old red beech and talk till it is time to go and get ready for our wedding. I suppose one ought to brush one's hair and wash one's hands for that kind of thing, even when the function is not on a ceremonious scale.'

Mary laughed.

'I have a prettier gown than this to be married in, although it isn't a wedding gown,' she said.

'Oh, by-the-by, I have something for you,' said her lover, 'something in the way of ornaments, but I don't suppose you'd care to wear them to-day. I'll run and get them.'

He went back to the house, leaving Mary sitting on the rustic bench under the fine old copper beech, a tree that had been standing long before Lady Maulevrier enlarged the old stone house into a stately villa. He returned in a few minutes, bringing a morocco bag about the size of those usually carried by lawyers or lawyers' clerks.

'I don't think I have given you anything since we were engaged, Mary,' he said, as he seated himself by her side.

Mary blushed, remembering how Clara, the maid, had remarked upon this fact.

'You gave me my ring,' she said, looking down at the massive band of gold, 'and you have given me ever so many delightful books.'

'Those were very humble gifts, Molly: but to-day I have brought you a wedding present.'

He opened the bag and took out a red morocco case, and then half-a-dozen more red morocco cases of various shapes and sizes. The first looked new, but the others were old-fashioned and passing shabby, as if they had been knocking about brokers' shops for the last quarter of a century.

'There is my wedding gift, Mary,' he said, handing her the new case.

It contained an exquisitely painted miniature of a very beautiful woman, in a large oval locket set with sapphires.

'You have asked me for my portrait, dearest,' he said. 'I give you my mother's rather than my own, because I loved her as I never thought to love again, till I knew you. I should like you to wear that locket sometimes, Mary, as a kind of link between the love of the past and the love of the present. Were my mother living, she would welcome and cherish my bride and my wife. She is dead, and you and she can never meet on earth: but I should like you to be familiar with the face which was once the light of my life.'

Mary's eyes filled with tears as she gazed at the face in the miniature. It was the portrait of a woman of about thirty--a face of exquisite refinement, of calm and pensive beauty.

'I shall treasure this picture always, above all things,' she said: but 'why did you have it set so splendidly, Jack? No gems were needed to give your mother's portrait value in my eyes.'

'I know that, dearest, but I wanted to make the locket worth wearing. And now for the other cases. The locket is your lover's free gift, and is yours to keep and to bequeath to your children. These are heirlooms, and yours only during your husband's lifetime.'

He opened one of the largest cases, and on a bed of black velvet Mary beheld a magnificent diamond necklace, with a large pendant. He opened another and displayed a set of sprays for the hair. Another contained earrings, another bracelets, the last a tiara.

'What are they for?' gasped Mary.

'For my wife to wear.'

'Oh, but I could never wear such things,' she exclaimed, with an idea that