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

it her mission to appear and to conquer. A crowd of suitors would sigh around her, like the loves and graces round that fair Belinda whose story she had read so often; and it would be her part to choose the most worthy. The days are gone when a girl would so much as look at such a fribble as Sir Plume. Her virgin fancy demands the Tennysonian ideal, the grave and knightly Arthur.

But when Lesbia thought of the most worthy, it was always of the worthiest in her own particular sphere; and he of course would be titled and wealthy, and altogether fitted to be her husband. He would take her by the hand and lead her to a higher seat on the dais, and place upon her head, or at least upon her letter-paper and the panels of her carriage, a coronet in which the strawberry leaves should stand out more prominently than in her brother's emblazonment. Lesbia's mind could not conceive an ignoble marriage, or the possibility of the most worthy happening to be found in a lower circle than her own.

And now it was the end of July, and the season which should have been glorified by Lady Lesbia's _début_ was over and done with. She had read in the society papers of all the balls, and birthdays, and race meetings, and regattas, and cricket matches, and gowns, and parasols, and bonnets--what this beauty wore on such an occasion, and how that other beauty looked on another occasion--and she felt as she read like a spell-bound princess in a fairy tale, mewed up in a battlemented tower, and deprived of her legitimate share in all the pleasures of earth. She had no patience with Mary--that wild, unkempt, ungraceful creature, who could be as happy as summer days are long, racing about the hills with her bamboo alpenstock, rioting with a pack of fox-terriers, practising long losers, rowing on the lake, doing all things unbecoming Lady Maulevrier's granddaughter.

That long rainy day dragged its slow length to a close; and then came fine days, in which Molly and her fox-terriers went wandering over the sunlit hills, skipping and dancing across the mountain streamlets--gills, as they were called in this particular world--almost as gaily as the shadows of fleecy cloudlets dancing up yonder in the windy sky. Molly spent half her days among the hills, stealing off from governess and grandmother and the stately beauty sister, and sometimes hardly being missed by them, so ill did her young exuberance harmonise with their calmer life.

'One can tell when Mary is at home by a perpetual banging of doors,' said Lesbia, which was a sisterly exaggeration founded upon fact, for Molly was given to impetuous rushing in and out of rooms when that eager spirit of hers impelled the light lithe body upon some new expedition. Nor is the society of fox-terriers conducive to repose or stateliness of movement; and Maulevrier's terriers, although strictly forbidden the house, were for ever breaking bonds and leaping in upon Molly's retirement at all unreasonable hours. She and they were enchanted to get away from the beautiful luxurious rooms, and to go roving by hill-side and force, away to Easedale Tarn, to bask for hours on the grassy margin of the deep still water, or to row round and round the mountain lake in a rotten boat. It was here, or in some kindred spot, that Molly got through most of her reading--here that she read Shakespeare, Byron, and Shelley, and Wordsworth--dwelling lingeringly and lovingly upon every line in which that good old man spoke of her native land. Sometimes she climbed to higher ground, and felt herself ever so much nearer heaven upon the crest of Silver Howe, or upon the rugged stony steep of Dolly Waggon pike, half way up the dark brow of Helvellyn; sometimes she disappeared for hours, and climbed to the summit of the hill, and wandered in perilous pathways on Striding Edge, or by the dark still water of the Red Tarn. This had been her life ever since she had been old enough to have an independent existence; and the hills and the lakes, and the books of her own choosing, had done a great deal more in ripening her mind than Fräulein Müller and that admirable series of educational works which has been provided for the tuition of modern youth. Grammars and geographies, primers and elementary works of all kinds, were Mary's detestation; but she loved books that touched her heart and filled her mind with thoughts wide and deep enough to reach into the infinite of time and space, the mystery of mind and matter, life and death.

Nothing occurred to break the placid monotony of life at Fellside for three long days after that rainy morning; and then came an event which, although commonplace enough in itself, marked the beginning of a new era in the existence of Lady Maulevrier's granddaughters.

It was evening, and the two girls were dawdling about on the sloping lawn before the drawing-room windows, where Lady Maulevrier read the newspapers in her own particular chair by one of those broad Tudor windows, according to her infallible custom. Remote as her life had been from the busy world, her ladyship had never allowed her knowledge of public life and the bent of modern thought to fall into arrear. She took a keen interest in politics, in progress of all kinds. She was a staunch Conservative, and looked upon every Liberal politician as her personal enemy; but she took care to keep herself informed of everything that was being said or done in the enemy's camp. She had an intense respect for Lord Bacon's maxim: Knowledge is power. It was a kind of power secondary to the power of wealth, perhaps; but wealth unprotected by wisdom would soon dwindle into poverty.

Lady Lesbia sauntered about the lawn, looking very elegant in her cream-coloured Indian silk gown, very listless, very tired of her lovely surroundings. Neither lake nor mountain possessed any charm for her. She had had too much of them. Mary roamed about with a swifter footstep, looking at the roses, plucking off a dead leaf, or a cankered bud here and there. Presently she tore across the lawn to the shrubbery which screened the lawn and flower gardens from the winding carriage drive sunk many feet below, and disappeared in a thicket of arbutus and Irish yew.

'What terribly hoydenish manners!' murmured Lesbia, with a languid shrug of her shoulders, as she strolled back to the drawing-room.

She cared very little for the newspapers, for politics not at all; but anything was better than everlasting-contemplation of the blue still water, and the rugged crest of Helm Crag.

'What was the matter with Mary that she rushed off like a mad woman?' inquired Lady Maulevrier, looking up from the _Times_.

'I haven't the least idea. Mary's movements are quite beyond the limits of my comprehension. Perhaps she has gone after a bird's-nest.'

Mary was intent upon no bird's-nest. Her quick ear had caught the sound of manly voices in the winding drive under the pine wood; and surely, yes, surely one was a clear and familiar voice, which heralded the coming of happiness. In such a moment she seemed to have wings. She became unconscious that she touched the earth; she went skimming bird-like over the lawn, and in and out, with fluttering muslin frock, among arbutus and bay, yew and laurel, till she stood poised lightly on the top of the wooded bank which bordered the steep ascent to Lady Maulevrier's gate, looking down at two figures which were sauntering up the drive.

They were both young men, both tall, broad-shouldered, manly, walking with the easy swinging movement of men accustomed to active exercise. One, the handsomer of the two in Mary's eyes, since she thought him simply perfection, was fair-haired, blue-eyed, the typical Saxon. This was Lord Maulevrier. The other was dark, bronzed by foreign travel, perhaps, with black hair, cut very close to an intelligent-looking head, bared to the evening breeze.

'Hulloa!' cried Maulevrier. 'There's Molly. How d'ye do, old girl?'

The two men looked up, and Molly looked down. Delight at her brother's return so filled her heart and mind that there was no room left for embarrassment at the appearance of a stranger.

'O, Maulevrier, I am so glad! I have been pining for you. Why didn't you write to say you were coming? It would have been something to look forward to.'

'Couldn't. Never knew from day to day what I was going to be up to; besides, I knew I should find you at home.'

'Of course. We are always at home,' said Mary; 'go up to the house as fast as ever you can. I'll go and tell grandmother.'

'And tell them to get us some dinner,' said Maulevrier.

Mary's fluttering figure dipped and was gone, vanishing in the dark labyrinth of shrubs. The two young men sauntered up to the house.

'We needn't hurry,' said Maulevrier to his companion, whom he had not taken the trouble to introduce to his sister. 'We shall have to wait for our dinner.'

'And we shall have to change our dusty clothes,' added the other; 'I hope that man will bring our portmanteaux in time.'

'Oh, we needn't dress. We can spend the evening in my den, if you like!'

Mary flew across the lawn again, and bounded up the steps of the verandah--a picturesque Swiss verandah which made a covered promenade in front of the house.

'Mary, may I ask the meaning of this excitement,' inquired her ladyship, as the breathless girl stood before her.

'Maulevrier has come home.'

'At last?'

'And he has brought a friend.'

'Indeed! He might have done me the honour to inquire if his friend's visit would be agreeable. What kind of person?'

'I have no idea. I didn't look at him. Maulevrier is looking so well. They will be here in a minute. May I order dinner for them?'

'Of course, they must have dinner,' said her ladyship, resignedly, as if the whole thing were an infliction; and Mary ran out and interviewed the butler, begging that all things might be made particularly comfortable for the travellers. It was nine o'clock, and the servants were enjoying their eventide repose.

Having given her orders, Mary went back to the drawing-room, impatiently expectant of her brother's arrival, for which event Lesbia and her grandmother waited with perfect tranquillity, the dowager calmly continuing the perusal of her _Times_, while Lesbia sat at her piano in a shadowy corner, and played one of Mendelssohn's softest Lieder. To these dreamy strains Maulevrier and his friend presently entered.

'How d'ye do, grandmother? how do, Lesbia? This is my very good friend and Canadian travelling companion, Jack Hammond--Lady Maulevrier, Lady Lesbia.'

'Very glad to see you, Mr. Hammond,' said the dowager, in a tone so purely conventional that it might mean anything. 'Hammond? I ought to remember your family--the Hammonds of----'

'Of nowhere,' answered the stranger in the easiest tone; 'I spring from a race of nobodies, of whose existence your ladyship is not likely to have heard.'


CHAPTER VI.


MAULEVRIER'S HUMBLE FRIEND.

That faint interest which Lady Lesbia had felt in the advent of a stranger dwindled to nothing after Mr. Hammond's frank avowal of his insignificance. At the very beginning of her career, with the world waiting to be conquered by her, a high-born beauty could not be expected to feel any interest in nobodies. Lesbia shook hands with her brother, honoured the stranger with a stately bend of her beautiful throat, and then withdrew herself from their society altogether