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

not be happy. She likes a brilliant life; and Mr. Smithson can give her as much gaiety and variety as she can possibly desire. And, after all, yachts, and horses, and villas, and diamonds _are_ nice things.'

'They are the things for which half the world is ready to cheat or murder the other half,' said Lady Maulevrier, bitterly. She had told herself long ago that wealth was power, and she had sacrificed many things, her own peace, her own conscience among them, in order that her children and grandchildren should be rich; and, knowing this, she felt it ill became her to be scrupulous, and to inquire too, closely as to the sources of Mr. Smithson's wealth. He was rich, and the world had no fault to find with him. He had attended the last _levée_. He went into reputable society. And he could give Lesbia all those things which the world calls good.

Fräulein Müller had packed her heavy old German trunks, and had gone back to the _Heimath_, laden with presents of all kinds from Lady Maulevrier; so Mary and her husband felt as if Fellside was really their own. They dined with her ladyship, and left her for the night an hour after dinner; and then they went down to the gardens, and roamed about in the twilight, and talked, and talked, and talked, as only true lovers can talk, be they Strephon and Daphne in life's glad morning, or grey-haired Darby and Joan; and lastly they went down to the hike, and rowed about in the moonlight, and talked of King Arthur's death, and of that mystic sword, Excalibur, 'wrought by the lonely maiden of the lake.'

They spent three happy days in wandering about the neighbourhood, revisiting in the delicious freedom of their wedded life those spots which they had seen together, when Mary was still in bondage, and the eye of propriety, as represented by Miss Müller, was always upon her. Now they were free to go where they pleased--to linger where they liked--they belonged to each other, and were under no other dominion.

The dogcart, James Steadman's dogcart, which he had rarely used during the last six months, was put in requisition and Lord Hartfield drove his wife about the country. They went to the Langdale Pikes, and to Dungeon Ghyll; and, standing beside the waterfall, Mary told her husband how miserable she had felt on that very spot a little less than a year ago, when she believed that he thought her plain and altogether horrid. Whereupon he had to console her with many kisses and sweet words, for the bygone pain on her part, the neglect of his.

'I was a wretch,' he said, 'blind, besotted, imbecile.'

'No, no, no. Lesbia is very lovely--and I could not expect you would care for me till she was gone away. How glad I am that she went,' added Mary, naïvely.

The sky, which had been cloudless all day, began to darken as Lord Hartfield drove back to Fellside, and Mary drew a little closer to the driver's elbow, as if for shelter from an impending tempest.

'You have no waterproof, of course,' he said, looking down at her, as the first big drops of a thunder shower dashed upon the splash-board. 'No young woman in the Lake country would think of being without a waterproof.'

Mary was duly provided, and with the help of the groom put herself into a snug little tartan Inverness, while Hartfield sent the cart spinning along twelve miles an hour.

They were at Fellside before the storm developed its full power, but the sky was leaden, the landscape dull and blotted, the atmosphere heavy and stifling. The thunder grumbled hoarsely, far away yonder in the wild gorges of Borrowdale; and Mary and her husband made up their minds that the tempest would come before midnight.

Lady Maulevrier was suffering from the condition of the atmosphere. She had gone to bed, prostrate with a neuralgic headache, and had given orders that no one but her maid should go near her. So Lord Hartfield and his wife dined by themselves, in the room where Mary had eaten so many uninteresting dinners _tête-à-tête_ with Fräulein; and in spite of the storm which howled, pelted, and lightened every now and then, Mary felt as if she were in Paradise.

There was no chance of going out after dinner. The lake looked like a pool of ink, the mountains were monsters of dark and threatening aspect, the rain rattled against the windows, and ran from the verandah in miniature water-spouts. There was nothing to do but stay in doors, in the sultry, dusky house.

'Let us go to my boudoir,' said Mary. 'Let me enjoy the full privilege of having a boudoir--my very own room. Wasn't it too good of grandmother to have it made so smart for me?'

'Nothing can be too good for my Mary,' answered her husband, still in the doting stage, 'but it was very nice of her ladyship--and the room is charming.'

Delightful as the new boudoir might be, they dawdled in the picture gallery, that long corridor on which all the upper rooms opened, and at one end of which was the door of Lady Maulevrier's bedroom, at right angles with that red-cloth door, which was never opened, except to give egress or ingress to James Steadman, who kept the key of it, as if the old part of Fellside House had been an enchanted castle. Lord Hartfield had not forgotten that summer midnight last year, when his meditations were disturbed by a woman's piercing cry. He thought of it this evening, as Mary and he lowered their voices on drawing near Lady Maulevrier's door. She was asleep within there now, perhaps, that strange old woman; and at any moment an awful shriek, as of a soul in mortal agony, might startle them in the midst of their bliss.

The lamps were lighted below; but this upper part of the house was wrapped in the dull grey twilight of a stormy evening. A single lamp burned dimly at the further end of the corridor, and all the rest was shadow.

Mary and her husband walked up and down, talking in subdued tones. He was explaining the necessity of his being in London next week, and promising to come back to Fellside directly his business at the House was over.

'It will be delightful to read your speeches,' said Mary; 'but I am silly and selfish enough to wish you were a country squire, with no business in London. And yet I don't wish that either, for I am intensely proud of you.'

'And some day, before we are much older, you will sit in your robes in the peeress's gallery.'

'Oh, I couldn't,' cried Mary. 'I should make a fool of myself, somehow. I should look like a housemaid in borrowed plumes. Remember, I have no _Anstand_--I have been told so all my life.'

'You will be one of the prettiest peeresses who ever sat in that gallery, and the purest, and truest, and dearest,' protested her lover-husband.

'Oh, if I am good enough for you, I am satisfied. I married _you_, and not the House of Lords. But I am afraid your friends will all say, "Hartfield, why in heaven's name did you marry that uncultivated person?" Look!'

She stopped suddenly, with her hand on her husband's arm. It was growing momentarily darker in the corridor. They were at the end near the lamp, and that other end by Lady Maulevrier's door was in deeper darkness, yet not too dark for Lord Hartfield to see what it was to which Mary pointed.

The red-cloth door was open, and a faint glimmer of light showed within. A man was standing in the corridor, a small, shrunken figure, bent and old.

'It is Steadman's uncle,' said Mary 'Do let me go and speak to him, poor, poor old man.'

'The madman!' exclaimed Hartfield. 'No, Mary; go to your room at once. I'll get him back to his own den.'

'But he is not mad--at any rate, he is quite harmless. Let me just say a few words to him. Surely I am safe with you.'

Lord Hartfield was not inclined to dispute that argument; indeed, he felt himself strong enough to protect his wife from all the lunatics in Bedlam. He went towards the end of the corridor, keeping Mary well behind him; but Mary did not mean to lose the opportunity of renewing her acquaintance with Steadman's uncle.

'I hope you are better, poor old soul,' she murmured, gently, lovingly almost, nestling at her husband's side.

'What, is it you?' cried the old man, tremulous with joy.

'Oh, I have been looking for you--looking--looking--waiting, waiting for you. I have been hoping for you every hour and every minute. Why didn't you come to me, cruel girl?'

'I tried with all my might,' said Mary, 'but people blocked up the door in the stables, and they wouldn't let me go to you; and I have been rather busy for the last fortnight,' added Mary, blushing in the darkness, 'I--I--am married to this gentleman.'

'Married! Ah, that is a good thing. He will take care of you, if he is an honest man.'

'I thought he was an honest man, but he has turned out to be an earl,' answered Mary, proudly. 'My husband is Lord Hartfield.' 'Hartfield--Hartfield,' the old man repeated, feebly. 'Surely I have heard that name before.'

There was no violence in his manner, nothing but imbecility: so Lord Hartfield made up his mind that Mary was right, and that the old man was quite harmless, worthy of all compassion and kindly treatment.

This was the same old man whom he had met on the Fell in the bleak March morning. There was no doubt in his mind about that, although he could hardly see the man's face in the shadowy corridor.

'Come,' said the man, 'come with me, my dear. You forgot me, but I have not forgotten you. I mean to leave you my fortune. Come with me, and I'll show you your legacy. It is all for you--every rupee--every jewel.'

This word rupee startled Lord Hartfield. It had a strange sound from the lips of a Westmoreland peasant.

'Come, child, come!' said the man impatiently. 'Come and see what I have left you in my will. I make a new will every day, but I leave everything to you--every will is in your favour; But if you are married you had better have your legacy at once. Your husband is strong enough to take care of you and your fortune.'

'Poor old man,' whispered Mary; 'pray let us humour him.'

It was the usual madman's fancy, no doubt. Boundless wealth, exalted rank, sanctity, power--these things all belong to the lunatic. He is the lord of creation, and, fed by such fancies, he enjoys flashes of wild happiness in the midst of his woe.

'Come, come, both of you,' said the old man, eagerly, breathless with impatience.

He led the way across the sacred threshold, looking back, beckoning to them with his wasted old hand, and Mary for the first time in her life entered that house which had seemed to her from her very childhood as a temple of silence and mystery. The passage was dimly lighted by a little lamp on a bracket. The old man crept along stealthily, looking back, with a face full of cunning, till he came to a broad landing, from which an old staircase, with massive oak banisters, led down to the square hall below. The ceilings were low, the passages were narrow.