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

fetters which the chain of past events had forged--stern facts which the man himself may forget, or try to forget, but which other people never forget. There is generally some dark spot in the history of such men as Smithson--men who climb the giddiest heights of this world with that desperate rapidity which implies many a perilous leap from crag to crag, many a moraine skimmed over, and many an awful gulf spanned by a hair-breadth bridge. Mr. Smithson's history was not without such spots; and the darkest of all had relation to his career in Cuba. The story had been known by very few--perhaps completely known only by one man; and that man was Gomez de Montesma.

For the last fifteen years the most fervent desire of Horace Smithson's heart had been the hope that tropical nature, in any one of her various disagreeable forms, would be obliging enough to make an end of Gomez. But the forces of nature had not worked on Mr. Smithson's side. No loathsome leprosy had eaten his enemy's flesh; neither cayman nor crocodile, neither Juba snake nor poisonous spider had marked him for its prey. The tropical sun had left him unsmitten. He had lived and he had prospered; and he was here, like a guilty conscience incarnate, to spoil Horace Smithson's peace.

'I must be diplomatic,' Smithson said to himself, as he walked up and down an avenue of Irish yews, in a solitary part of the grounds, smoking his cigarette, and hearing the music swell and sink in the distance. 'I will give her a hint as to that man's character, and I will keep them apart as much as I can. But if he forces himself upon me there is no help for it. I cannot afford to be uncivil to him.'

'Cannot afford' in this instance meant 'dare not,' and Horace Smithson's thoughts as he paced the yew-tree walk were full of gloom.

During that long meditation he made up his mind on one point, namely, that, let him suffer what pangs he might, he must not betray his jealousy. To do that would be to lower himself in Lesbia's eyes, and to play into his rival's hand; for a jealous man is almost always contemptible in the sight of his mistress. He would carry himself as if he were sure of her fidelity; and this very confidence, with a woman of honour, a girl reared as Lesbia had been reared, would render it impossible for her to betray him. He would show himself high-minded, confident, generous, chivalrous, even; and he would trust to chance for the issue. Chance were Mr. Smithson's only idea of Divinity; and Chance had hitherto been kind to him. There had been dark hours in his life, but the darkness had not lasted long; and the lucky accidents of his career had been of a nature to beguile him into the belief that among the favourites of Destiny he stood first and foremost.

While Mr. Smithson mused thus, alone and in the darkness, Montesma and Lady Lesbia were wandering arm in arm in another and lovelier part of the grounds, where golden lights were scattered like Cuban fire-flies among the foliage of seringa and magnolia, arbutus and rhododendron, while at intervals a sudden flush of rosier light was shed over garden and river, as if by enchantment, surprising a couple here and there in the midst of a flirtation which had begun in darkness.

The grounds were lovely in the balmy atmosphere of a July night, the river gliding with mysterious motion under the stars, great masses of gloom darkening the stream with an almost awful look where the woods of Petersham and Ham House cast their dense shadows on the water. Don Gomez and his companion wandered by the river side to a spot where a group of magnolias sheltered them from the open lawn, and where there were some rustic chairs close to the balustrade which protected the parapet. In this spot, which was a kind of island, divided from the rest of the grounds by the intervening road, they found themselves quite alone, and in the midst of a summer stillness which was broken only by the low, lazy ripple of the tide running seawards. The lights of Richmond looked far away, and the little town with its variety of levels had an Italian air in the distance.

From the ballroom, faint and fitful, came the music of a waltz.

'I'm afraid I've brought you too far,' said Don Gomez.

'On the contrary, it is a relief to get away from the lights and the people. How delicious this river is! I was brought up on the shores of a lake; but after all a lake is horribly tame. Its limits are always staring one in the face. There is no room for one's imagination to wander. Now a river like this suggests an infinity of possibilities, drifting on and on and on into undiscovered regions, by ever-varying shores. I feel to-night as if I should like to step into that little boat yonder,' pointing to a light skiff bobbing gently up and down with the tide, at the bottom of a flight of steps, 'and let the stream take me wherever it chose.'

'If I could but go with you,' said Gomez, in that deep and musical tone which made the commonest words seem melody, 'I would ask for neither compass nor rudder. What could it matter whither the boat took me? There is no place under the stars which would not be a paradise--with you.'

'Please don't make a dreamy aspiration the occasion for a compliment,' exclaimed Lesbia, lightly. 'What I said was so silly that I don't wonder you thought it right to say something just a little sillier. But moonlight and running water have a curious effect upon me; and I, who am the most prosaic among women, become ridiculously sentimental.'

'I cannot believe that you are prosaic.'

'I assure you it is perfectly true. I am of the earth, earthy; a woman of the world, in my first season, ambitious, fond of pleasure, vain, proud, exacting, all those things which I am told a woman ought not to be.'

'You pain me when you so slander yourself; and I shall make it the business of my life to find out how much truth there is in that self-slander. For my own part I do not believe a word of it; but as it is rude to contradict a lady I will only say that I reserve my opinion.'

'Are you to stay long in England?' asked Lesbia.

She was leaning against the stone balustrade in a careless attitude, as of one who was weary, her elbow on the stone slab, and her head thrown hack against her arm. The white satin gown, moulded to her figure, had a statuesque air, and she looked like a marble statue in the dim light, every line of the graceful form expressive of repose.

'That will depend. I am not particularly fond of London. A very little of your English Babylon satisfies me, in a general way; but there are conditions which might make England enchanting. Where do you go at the end of the season?'

'First to Goodwood, and then to Cowes. Mr. Smithson is so kind as to place his yacht at Lady Kirkbank's disposal, and I am to be her guest on board the Cayman, just as I am in Arlington Street.'

'The Cayman! That name is a reminiscence of Mr. Smithson's South American travels.'

'No doubt! Was he long in South America?'

'Three or four years.'

'But not in Cuba all that time, I suppose?'

'He had business relations with Cuba all that time, and oscillated between our island and the main. He was rather fortunate in his little adventures with us--made almost as much money as General Tacon, of blessed memory. But I dare say Smithson has told you all his adventures in that part of the world.'

'No, he very rarely talks about his travels: and I am not particularly interested in commercial speculations. There is always so much to think of and talk about in the business of the moment. Are you fond of Cuba?'

'Not passionately. I always feel as if I were an exile there, and yet one of my ancestors was with Columbus when be discovered the island, and my race were among the earliest settlers. My family has given three Captain-generals to Cuba: but I cannot forget that I belong to an older world, and have forfeited that which ought to have been a brilliant place in Europe for the luxurious obscurity of a colony.'

'But you must be attached to a place in which your family have lived for so many generations?'

'I like the stars and the sea, the mountains and savannas, the tropical vegetation, and the dreamy, half-oriental life; but at best it is a kind of stagnation, and after a residence of a few months in the island of my birth I generally spread my wings for the wider world of the old continent or the new.'

'You must have travelled so much,' said Lesbia, with a sigh. 'I have been nowhere and seen nothing. I feel like a child who has been shut up in a nursery all its life, and knows of no world beyond four walls.'

'Not to travel is not to live,' said Don Gomez.

'I am to be in Italy next November, I believe,' said Lesbia, not caring to own that this Italian trip was to be her honeymoon.

'Italy!' exclaimed the Spaniard, contemptuously. 'Once the finishing school of the English nobility; now the happy hunting-ground of the Cockney tourist and the prosperous Yankee. All the poetry of Italy has been dried up, and the whole country vulgarised. If you want romance in the old world go to Spain; in the new, try Peru or Brazil, Mexico or California.'

'I am afraid I am not adventurous enough to go so far.'

'No: women cling to beaten tracks.'

'We obey our masters,' answered Lesbia, meekly.

'Ah, I forgot. You are to have a master--and soon. I heard as much before I saw you to-night.'

Lesbia half rose, as if to leave this cool retreat above the rippling tide.

'Yes, it is all settled,' she said; 'and now I think I must go back. Lady Kirkbank will be wondering what has become of me.'

'Let her wonder a little longer,' said Don Gomez. 'Why should we hurry away from this delightful spot? Why break the spell of--the river? Life has so few moments of perfect contentment. If this is one with you--as it is with me--let us make the most of it. Lady Lesbia, do you see those weeds yonder, drifting with the tide, drifting side by side, touching as they drift? They have met heaven knows how, and will part heaven knows where, on their way to the sea; but they let themselves go with the tide. We have met like those poor weeds. Don't let us part till the tide parts us.'

Lesbia gave a little sigh, and submitted. She had talked of women obeying their masters; and the implication was that she meant to obey Mr. Smithson. But there is a fate in these things; and the man who was to be her master, whose lightest breath was to sway her, whose lightest look was to rule her, was here at her side in the silence of the summer night.

They talked long, but of indifferent subjects; and their talk might have been heard by every member of the Orleans Club, and no harm done. Yet words and phrases