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

All things in the house were curiously different from that spacious mansion which Lady Maulevrier had built for herself.

A door on the landing stood ajar. The old man pushed it open and went in, followed by Mary and her husband.

They both expected to see a room humble almost to poverty--an iron bedstead, perhaps, and such furniture as the under servants in a nobleman's household are privileged to enjoy. Both were alike surprised at the luxury of the apartment they entered, and which was evidently reserved exclusively for Steadman's uncle.

It was a sitting-room. The furniture was old-fashioned, but almost as handsome as any in Lady Maulevrier's apartments. There was a large sofa of most comfortable shape, covered with dark red velvet, and furnished with pillows and foot rugs, which would have satisfied a Sybarite of the first water. Beside the sofa stood a hookah, with all appliances in the Oriental fashion; and half a dozen long cherry-wood pipes neatly arranged above the mantelpiece showed that Mr. Steadman's uncle was a smoker of a luxurious type.

In the centre of the room stood a large writing table, with a case of pigeon-holes at the back, a table which would not have disgraced a Prime Minister's study. A pair of wax candles, in tall silver candlesticks, lighted this table, which was littered with papers, in a wild confusion that too plainly indicated the condition of the owner's mind. The oak floor was covered with Persian prayer rugs, old and faded, but of the richest quality. The window curtains were dark red velvet; and through an open doorway Mary and her husband saw a corresponding luxury in the arrangements of the adjoining bedroom.

The whole thing seemed wild and strange as a fairy tale. The weird and wizened old man, grinning and nodding his head at them. The handsome room, rich with dark, subdued colour, in the dim light of four wax candles, two on the table, two on the mantelpiece. The perfume of stephanotis and tea-roses, blended faintly with the all-pervading odour of latakia and Turkish attar. All was alike strange, bearing in mind that this old man was a recipient of Lady Maulevrier's charity, a hanger-on upon a confidential servant, who might be supposed to be generously treated if he had the run of his teeth and the shelter of a decent garret. Verily, there was something regal in such hospitality as this, accorded to a pauper lunatic.

Where was Steadman, the alert, the watchful, all this time? Mary wondered. They had met no one. The house was as mute as if it were under the spell of a magician. It was like that awful chamber in the Arabian story, where the young man found the magic horse, and started on his fatal journey. Mary felt as if here, too, there, must be peril; here, too, fate was working.

The old man went to the writing table, pushed aside the papers, and then stooped down and turned a mysterious handle or winch under the knee-hole, and the writing-desk moved slowly on one side, while the pigeon-holes sank, and a deep well full of secret drawers was laid open.

From one of these secret drawers the old man took a bunch of keys, nodding, chuckling, muttering to himself as he groped for them with tremulous hand.

'Steadman is uncommonly clever--thinks he knows everything--but he doesn't know the trick of this table. I could hide a regiment of Sepoys in this table, my dear. Well, well, perhaps not Sepoys--too big, too big--but I could hide all the State papers of the Presidency. There are drawers enough for that.'

Hartfield watched him intently, with thoughtful brow. There was a mystery here, a mystery of the deepest dye; and it was for him--it must needs be his task, welcome or unwelcome, to unravel it.

This was the Maulevrier skeleton.

'Now, come with me,' said the old man, clutching Mary's wrist, and drawing her towards the half-open door leading into the bedroom.

She had a feeling of shrinking, for there was something uncanny about the old man, something that might be life or death, might belong to this world or the next; but she had no fear. In the first place, she was courageous by nature, and in the second her husband was with her, a tower of strength, and she could know no fear while he was at her side.

The strange old man led the way across his bedroom to an inner chamber, oak pannelled, with very little furniture, but holding much treasure in the shape of trunks, portmanteaux--all very old and dusty--and two large wooden cases, banded with iron.

Before one of these cases the man knelt down, and applied a key to the padlock which fastened it. He gave the candle to Lord Hartfield to hold, and then opened the box. It seemed to be full of books, which he began to remove, heaping them on the floor beside him; and it was not till he had cleared away a layer of dingy volumes that he came to a large metal strong box, so heavy that he could not lift it out of the chest.

Slowly, tremulously, and with quickened breathing, he unlocked the box where it was, and raised the lid.

'Look,' he said eagerly, 'this is her legacy--this is my little girl's legacy.'

Lord Hartfield bent down and looked at the old man's treasure, by the wavering light of the candle; Mary looking over his shoulder, breathless with wonder.

The strong box was divided into compartments. One, and the largest, was filled with rouleaux of coin, packed as closely as possible. The others contained jewels, set and unset--diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires--which flashed back the flickering flame of the candle with glintings of rainbow light.

'These are all for her--all--all,' exclaimed the old man. 'They are worth a prince's ransom. Those rouleaux are all gold; those gems are priceless. They were the dowry of a princess. But they are hers now--yes, my dear, they are yours--because you spoke sweetly, and smiled prettily, and were very good to a lonely old man--and because you have my mother's face, dear, a smile that recalls the days of my youth. Lift out the box and take it away with you, if you are strong enough,--you, you,' he said, touching Lord Hartfield. 'Hide it somewhere--keep it from _her_. Let no one know--no one except your wife and you must be in the secret.'

'My dear sir, it is out of the question--impossible that my wife or I should accept one of those coins--or the smallest of those jewels.'

'Why not, in the devil's name?'

'First and foremost, we do not know how you came in possession of them; secondly, we do not know who you are.'

'They came to me fairly enough--bequeathed to me by one who had the right to leave them. Would you have had all that gold left for an adventurer to wallow in?'

'You must keep your treasure, sir, however it may have come to you,' answered Lord Hartfield firmly. 'My wife cannot take upon herself the burden of a single gold coin--least of all from a stranger. Remember, sir, to us your possession of this wealth--nay, your whole existence--is a mystery.'

'You want to know who I am?' said the old man drawing himself up, with a sudden _hauteur_ which was not without dignity, despite his shrunken form and grotesque appearence. 'Well, sir. I am----'

He checked himself abruptly, and looked round the room with a scared expression.

'No, no, no,' he muttered; 'caution, caution! They have not done with me yet; she warned me--they are lying in wait; I mustn't walk into their trap.' And then turning to Lord Hartfield, he said, haughtily, 'I shall not condescend to tell you who I am, sir. You must know that I am a gentleman, and that is enough for you. There is my gift to your wife'--pointing to the chest--'take it or leave it.'

'I shall leave it, sir, with all due respect.'

A frightful change came over the old man's face at this determined refusal. His eyes glowered at Lord Hartfield under the heavy scowling brows; his bloodless lips worked convulsively.

'Do you take me for a thief?' he exclaimed. 'Are you afraid to touch my gold--that gold for which men and women sell their souls, blast their lives with shame, and pain, and dishonour, all the world over? Do you stand aloof from it--refuse to touch it, as if it were infected? And you, too, girl! Have you no sense? Are you an idiot?'

'I can do nothing against my husband's wish,' Mary answered, quietly; 'and, indeed, there is no need for us to take your money. We are rich without it. Please leave that chest to a hospital. It will be ever so much better than giving it to us.'

'You told me you were going to marry a poor man?'

'I know. But he cheated me, and turned out to be a rich man. He was a horrid impostor,' said Mary, drawing closer to her husband, and smiling up at him.

The old man flung down the lid of his strong box, which shut with a sonorous clang. He locked it, and put the key in his pocket.

'I have done with you.' he said. 'You can go your ways, both of you. Fools, fools, fools! The world is peopled with rogues and fools; and, by heaven, I would rather have to do with the rogues!'

He flung himself into an arm-chair, one of the few objects of furniture in the room, and left them to find their way back alone.

'Good-night, sir,' said Lord Hartfield; but the old man made no reply. He sat frowning sullenly.

'Good-night, sir,' said Mary, in her gentle voice, breathing infinite pity.

'Good-night, child,' he growled. 'I am sorry you have married an ass.'

This was more than Mary could stand, and she was about to reply with some acrimony, when her husband put his hand upon her lips and hurried her away.

On the landing they met Mrs. Steadman, a stout, commonplace person, who always had the same half-frightened look, as of one who lived in the shadow of an abiding terror, obviously cowed and brow beaten by her husband, according to the Fellside household.

At sight of Lord Hartfield and his wife she looked a little more frightened than usual.

'Goodness gracious, Lady Mary! how ever did you come here?' she gasped, not yet having quite realised the fact that Mary had been promoted.

'We came to please Steadman's uncle--he brought us in here,' Mary answered, quietly.

'But where did you find him?'

'In the corridor--just by her ladyship's room.'

'Then he must have taken the key out of Steadman's pocket, or Steadman must have left it about somewhere,' muttered Mrs. Steadman, as if explaining the matter to herself, rather than to Mary. 'My poor husband is not the man he was. And so you met him in the corridor, and he brought you in here. Poor old gentleman! He gets madder and madder every day.'

'There is method in his madness,' said Lord Hartfield. 'He talked very much like sanity just now. Has your husband had the charge of him long?'

Mrs. Steadman answered somewhat confusedly.

'A goodish time, sir. I can't quite exactly say--time passes so quiet in a place like this. One hardly keeps count of the years.'

'Forty years, perhaps?'

Mrs. Steadman blenched under Lord Hartfield's steadfast look--a look which questioned more searchingly than his words.

'Forty years,' she repeated, with a faint laugh. 'Oh, dear no, sir, not