Phantom Fortune Part 12

'Yes, I came. It was my duty to come, knowing her ladyship's habits. I am a light sleeper, and that scream woke me instantly. If her ladyship's maid were wanted I should call her. I am a kind of watch-dog, you see, sir.'

'You seem to be a very faithful dog.'

'I have been in her ladyship's service more than forty years. I have reason to be faithful. I know her ladyship's habits better than any one in the house. I know that she had a great deal of trouble in her early life, and I believe the memory of it comes back upon her sometimes in her dreams, and gets the better of her.'

'If it was memory that wrung that agonised shriek from her just now, her recollections of the past must be very terrible.'

'Ah, sir, there is a skeleton in every house,' answered James Steadman, gravely.

This was exactly what Maulevrier had said under the yew trees which Wordsworth planted.

'Good-night, sir,' said Steadman.

'Good-night. You are sure that Lady Maulevrier may be left safely--that there is no fear of illness of any kind?'

'No, sir. It was only a bad dream. Good-night, sir.'

Steadman went back to his own quarters. Mr. Hammond heard him draw the bolts of the swing door, thus cutting off all communication with the corridor.

The eight-day clock on the staircase struck two as Mr. Hammond returned to his room, even less inclined for sleep than when he left it. Strange, that nocturnal disturbance of a mind which seemed so tranquil in the day. Or was that tranquillity only a mask which her ladyship wore before the world: and was the bitter memory of events which happened forty years ago still a source of anguish to that highly strung nature?

'There are some minds which cannot forget,' John Hammond said to himself, as he meditated upon her ladyship's character and history. 'The story of her husband's crime may still be fresh in her memory, though it is only a tradition for the outside world. His crime may have involved some deep wrong done to herself, some outrage against her love and faith as a wife. One of the stories Maulevrier spoke of the other day was of a wicked woman's influence upon the governor--a much more likely story than that of any traffic in British interests or British honour, which would have been almost impossible for a man in Lord Maulevrier's position. If the scandal was of a darker kind--a guilty wife--the mysterious disappearance of a husband--the horror of the thing may have made a deeper impression on Lady Maulevrier than even her nearest and dearest dream of: and that superb calm which she wears like a royal mantle may be maintained at the cost of struggles which tear her heart-strings. And then at night, when the will is dormant, when the nervous system is no longer ruled by the power of waking intelligence, the old familiar agony returns, the hated images flash back upon the brain, and in proportion to the fineness of the temperament is the intensity of the dreamer's pain.'

And then he went on to reflect upon the long monotonous years spent in that lonely house, shut in from the world by those everlasting hills.

Albeit the house was an ideal house, set in a landscape of infinite beauty, the monotony must be none the less oppressive for a mind burdened with dark memories, weighed down by sorrows which could seek no relief from sympathy, which could never become familiarised by discussion.

'I wonder that a woman of Lady Maulevrier's intellect should not have better known how to treat her own malady,' thought Hammond.

Mr. Hammond inquired after her ladyship's health next morning, and was told she was perfectly well.

'Grandmother is in capital spirits,' said Lady Lesbia. 'She is pleased with the contents of yesterday's _Globe_. Lord Denyer, the son of one of her oldest friends, has been making a great speech at Liverpool in the Conservative interest, and her ladyship thinks we shall have a change of parties before long.'

'A general shuffle of the cards,' said Maulevrier, looking up from his breakfast. 'I'm sure I hope so. I'm no politician, but I like a row.'

'I hope you are a Conservative, Mr. Hammond,' said Lesbia.

'I had hoped you would have known that ever so long ago, Lady Lesbia.'

Lesbia blushed at his tone, which was almost a reproach.

'I suppose I ought to have understood from the general tenor of your conversation,' she said; 'but I am terribly stupid about politics. I take so little interest in them. I am always hearing that we are being badly governed--that the men who legislate for us are stupid or wicked; yet the world seems to go on somehow, and we are no worse.'

'It is just the same with sport,' said Maulevrier. 'Every rainy spring we are told that all the young birds have been drowned, or that the grouse-disease has decimated the fathers and mothers, and that we shall have nothing to shoot; but when August comes the birds are there all the same.'

'It is the nature of mankind to complain,' said Hammond. 'Cain and Abel were the first farmers, and you see one of them grumbled.'

They were rather lively at breakfast that morning--Maulevrier's last breakfast but one--for he had announced his determination of going to Scotland next day. Other fellows would shoot all the birds if he dawdled any longer. Mary was in deep despondency at the idea of his departure, yet she laughed and talked with the rest. And perhaps Lesbia felt a little moved at the thought of losing Mr. Hammond. Maulevrier would come back to Mary, but John Hammond was hardly likely to return. Their parting would be for ever.

'You needn't sit quite in my pocket, Molly,' said Maulevrier to his younger sister.

'I like to make the most of you, now you are going away,' sighed Mary.

'Oh, dear, how dull we shall all be when you are gone.'

'Not a bit of it! You will have some fox-hunting, perhaps, before the snow is on the hills.'

At the very mention of fox-hounds Lady Mary's bright young face crimsoned, and Maulevrier began to laugh in a provoking way, with side-long glances at his younger sister.

'Did you ever hear of Molly's fox-hunting, by-the-by, Hammond?' he asked.

Mary tried to put her hand before his lips, but it was useless.

'Why shouldn't I tell?' he exclaimed. 'It was quite a heroic adventure.

You must know our fox-hunting here is rather a peculiar inst.i.tution,--very good in its way, but strictly local. No horse could live among our hills, so we hunt on foot, and as the pace is good, and the work hard, n.o.body who starts with the hounds is likely to be in at the death, except the huntsmen. We are all mad for the sport, and off we go, over the hills and far away, picking up a fresh field as we go. The ploughman leaves his plough, and the shepherd leaves his flock, and the farmer leaves his thrashing, to follow us; in every field we cross we get fresh blood, while those who join us at the start fall off by degrees. Well, it happened one day late in October, when there were long ridges of snow on Helvellyn, and patches of white on Fairfield, Mistress Mary here must needs take her bamboo staff and start for the Striding Edge. It was just the day upon which she might have met her death easily on that perilous point, but happily something occurred to divert her juvenile fancy, for scarcely had she got to the bottom of Dolly Waggon Pike--you know Dolly----'

'Intimately,' said Hammond, with a nod.

'Scarcely had she neared the base of Dolly Waggon when she heard the huntsman's horn and the hounds at full cry, streaming along towards Dunmail Raise. Off flew Molly, all among the butcher boys, and farmers'

men, and rosy-cheeked squireens of the district--racing over the rugged fields--clambering over the low stone walls--up hill, down hill--shouting when the others shouted--never losing sight of the waving sterns--winding and doubling, and still going upward and upward, till she stood, panting and puffing like a young grampus, on the top of Seat Sandal, still all among the butcher boys and the farmer's men, and the guides and the red-cheeked squireens, her frock torn to ribbons, her hat lost in a ditch, her hair streaming down her back, and every inch of her, from her nose downwards, splashed and spattered with mire and clay.

What a spectacle for G.o.ds and men, guides and butcher boys. And there she stood with the sun going down beyond Coniston Old Man, and a seven-mile walk between her and Fellside.

'Poor Lady Mary!' said Hammond, looking at her very kindly: but Mary did not see that friendly glance, which betokened sympathy rather than scorn. She sat silent and very red, with drooping eyelids, thinking her brother horribly cruel for thus publishing her foolishness.

'Poor, indeed!' exclaimed Maulevrier. 'She came crawling home after dark, footsore and draggled, looking like a beggar girl, and as evil fate would have it, her ladyship, who so seldom goes out, must needs have been taking afternoon tea at the Vicarage upon that particular occasion, and was driving up the avenue as Mary crawled to the gate. The storm that followed may be more easily imagined than described.'

'It was years and years ago,' expostulated Mary, looking very angry.

'Grandmother needn't have made such a fuss about it.'

'Ah, but in those days she still had hopes of civilising you,' answered Maulevrier. 'Since then she has abandoned all endeavour in that direction, and has given you over to your own devices--and me. Since then you have become a chartered libertine. You have letters of mark.'

'I don't care what you call me,' said Mary. 'I only know that I am very happy when you are at home, and very miserable when you are away.'

'It is hardly kind of you to say that, Lady Mary,' remonstrated Fraulein Muller, who, up to this point, had been busily engaged with m.u.f.fins and gooseberry jam.

'Oh, I don't mean that any one is unkind to me or uses me badly,' said Mary. 'I only mean that my life is empty when Maulevrier is away, and that I am always longing for him to come back again.'

'I thought you adored the hills, and the lake, and the villagers, and your pony, and Maulevrier's dogs,' said, Lesbia faintly contemptuous.

'Yes, but one wants something human to love,' answered Mary, making it very obvious that there was no warmth of affection between herself and the feminine members of her family.

She had not thought of the significance of her speech. She was very angry with Maulevrier for having held her up to ridicule before Mr.

Hammond, who already despised her, as she believed, and whose contempt was more galling than it need have been, considering that he was a mere casual visitor who would go away and return no more. Never till his coming had she felt her deficiencies; but in his presence she writhed under the sense of her unworthiness, and had an almost agonising consciousness of all those faults which her grandmother had told her about so often with not the slightest effect. In those days she had not cared what Lady Maulevrier or any one else might say of her, or think of her. She lived her life, and defied fortune. She was worse than her reputation. To-day she felt it a bitter thing that she had grown to the age of womanhood lacking all those graces and accomplishments which made her sister adorable, and which might make even a plain woman charming.

Never till John Hammond's coming had she felt a pang of envy in the contemplation of Lesbia's beauty or Lesbia's grace; but now she had so keen a sense of the difference between herself and her sister that she began to fear that this cruel pain must indeed be that lowest of all vices. Even the difference in their gowns was a source of humiliation to her how. Lesbia was looking her loveliest this morning, in a gown that was all lace and soft Madras muslin, flowing, cloud-like; while Mary's tailor gown, with its trim tight bodice, horn b.u.t.tons, and kilted skirt, seemed to cry aloud that it had been made for a Tomboy. And this tailor gown was a costume to which Mary had condemned herself by her own folly.

Only a year ago, moved by an artistic admiration for Lesbia's delicate breakfast gowns, Mary had told her grandmother that she would like to have something of the same kind, whereupon the dowager, who did not take the faintest interest in Mary's toilet, but who had a stern sense of justice, replied--

'I do not think Lesbia's frocks and your habits will agree, but you can have some pretty morning gowns if you like;' and the order had been given for a confection in muslin and lace for Lady Mary.

Mary came down to breakfast one bright June morning, in the new frock, feeling very proud of herself, and looking very pretty.