Phantom Fortune Part 25

'Of course. She might marry a chimney sweep. There is no answering for a girl of her erratic nature. She is silly enough and romantic enough for anything; but I shall not countenance her if she wants to throw herself away on a person without prospects or connections; and I look to you, Maulevrier, to take care of her, now that I am a wretched log chained to this room.'

'You may rely upon me, grandmother, Molly shall come to no harm, if I can help it.'

'Thank you,' said her ladyship, touching her bell twice.

The two clear silvery strokes were a summons for Halcott, the maid, who appeared immediately.

'Tell Mrs. Power to get his lordship's room ready immediately, and to give Mr. Hammond the room he had last summer,' said Lady Maulevrier, with a sigh of resignation.

While Maulevrier was with his grandmother John Hammond was smoking a solitary cigar on the terrace, contemplating the mountain landscape in its cold March greyness, and wondering very much to find himself again at Fellside. He had gone forth from that house full of pa.s.sionate indignation, shaking off the dust from his feet, sternly resolved never again to cross the threshold of that fateful cave, where he had met his cold-hearted Circe. And now, because Circe was safe out of the way, he had come back to the cavern; and he was feeling all the pain that a man feels who beholds again the scene of a great past sorrow.

Was this the old love and the old pain again, he wondered, or was it only the sharp thrust of a bitter memory? He had believed himself cured of his useless love--a great and n.o.ble love, wasted on a smaller nature than his own. He had thought that because his eyes were opened, and he understood the character of the girl he loved, his cure must needs be complete. Yet now, face to face with the well-remembered landscape, looking down upon that dull grey lake which he had seen smiling in the sunshine, he began to doubt the completeness of his cure. He recalled the lovely face, the graceful form, the sweet, low voice--the perfection of gracious womanhood, manner, dress, movements, tones, smiles, all faultless; and in the absence of that one figure, it seemed to him as if he had come back to a tenantless, dismantled house, where there was nothing that made life worth living.

The red sun went down--a fierce and lurid face that seemed to scowl through the grey--and Mr. Hammond felt that it was time to arouse himself from gloomy meditation and go in and dress for dinner.

Maulevrier's valet was to arrive by the coach with the heavier part of the luggage, and Maulevrier's valet did that very small portion of valeting which was ever required by Mr. Hammond. A man who has worked at a forge in the backwoods is not likely to be finicking in his ways, or dependent upon servants for looking after his raiment.

Despite Mr. Hammond's gloomy memories of past joys and disillusions, he contrived to make himself very agreeable, by-and-by, at dinner, and in the drawing-room after dinner, and the evening was altogether gay and sprightly. Maulevrier was in high spirits, full of his Parisian experiences, and talking slang as glibly as a student of the Quartier Latin. He would talk nothing but French, protesting that he had almost forgotten his native tongue, and his French was the language of Larchey's Dictionary of Argot, in which nothing is called by its right name. Mary was enchanted with this new vocabulary, and wanted to have every word explained to her; but Maulevrier confessed that there was a good deal that was unexplainable.

The evening was much livelier than those summer evenings when the dowager and Lady Lesbia were present. There was something less of refinement, perhaps, and Fraulein remonstrated now and then about some small violation of the unwritten laws of 'Anstand,' but there was more mirth. Maulevrier felt for the first time as if he were master at Fellside. They all went to the billiard room soon after dinner, and Fraulein and Mary sat by the fire looking on, while the two young men played. In such an evening there was no time for bitter memories: and John Hammond was surprised to find how little he had missed that enchantress whose absence had made the house seem desolate to him when he re-entered it.

He was tired with his journey and the varying emotions of the day, for it was not without strong emotion that he had consented to return to Fellside--and he slept soundly for the earlier part of the night. But he had trained himself long ago to do with a very moderate portion of sleep, and he was up and dressed while the dawn was still slowly creeping along the edges of the hills. He went quietly down to the hall, took one of the bamboos from a collection of canes and mountain sticks, and set out upon a morning ramble over the snowy slopes. The snow showers of yesterday had only sprinkled the greensward upon the lower ground, but in the upper regions the winter snows still lingered, giving an Alpine character to the landscape.

John Hammond was too experienced a mountaineer to be deterred by a little snow. He went up Silver Howe, and from the rugged breast of the mountain saw the sun leap up from amidst a chaos of hill and crag, in all his majesty, while the grey mists of night slowly floated up from the valley that had lain hidden below them, and Grasmere Lake sparkled and flashed in the light of the newly-risen sun.

The church clock was striking eight as Hammond came at a brisk pace down to the valley. There was still an hour before breakfast, so he took a circuitous path to Fellside, and descended upon the house from the Fell, as he had done that summer morning when he saw James Steadman sauntering about in his garden.

Within about a quarter of a mile of Lady Maulevrier's shrubberies Mr.

Hammond encountered a pedestrian, who, like himself, was evidently taking a const.i.tutional ramble in the morning air, but on a much less extended scale, for this person did not look capable of going far afield.

He was an old man, something under middle height, but looking as if he had once been taller; for his shoulders were much bent, and his head was sunk on his chest. His whole form looked wasted and shrunken, and John Hammond thought he had never seen so old a man--or at any rate any man who was so deeply marked with all the signs of extreme age; and yet in the backwoods of America he had met ancient settlers who remembered Franklin, and who had been boys when the battle of Bunker's Hill was fresh in the memory of their fathers and mothers.

The little old man was clad in a thick grey overcoat of some s.h.a.ggy kind of cloth which looked like homespun. He wore a felt hat, and carried a thick oak stick, and there was nothing in his appearance to indicate that he belonged to any higher grade than that of the shepherds and guides with whom Hammond had made himself familiar during his previous visit. And yet there was something distinctive about the man, Hammond thought, something wild and uncanny, which made him unlike any of those hale and hearty-looking dalesmen on whom old age sate so lightly. No, John Hammond could not fancy this man, with his pallid countenance and pale crafty eyes, to be of the same race as those rugged and honest-looking descendants of the Nors.e.m.e.n.

Perhaps it was the man's exceeding age, for John Hammond made up his mind that he must be a centenarian, which gave him so strange and unholy an air. He had the aspect of a man who had been buried and brought back to life again.

So might look one of those Indian Fakirs who have the power to suspend life by some mysterious process, and to lie in the darkness of the grave for a given period, and then at their own will to resume the functions of the living. His long white hair fell upon the collar of his grey coat, and would have given him a patriarchal appearance had the face possessed the dignity of age: but it was a countenance without dignity, a face deeply scored with the lines of evil pa.s.sions and guilty memories--the face of the vulture, with a touch of the ferret--altogether a most unpleasant face, Mr. Hammond thought.

And yet there was a kind of fascination about that bent and shrunken figure, those feeble movements, and shuffling gait. John Hammond turned to look after the old man when he had pa.s.sed him, and stood to watch him as he went slowly up the Fell, plant his crutch stick upon the ground before every footstep, as if it were a third leg, and more serviceable than either of the other two.

Mr. Hammond watched him for two or three minutes, but, as the old man's movements had an automatic regularity, the occupation soon palled, and he turned and walked toward Fellside. A few yards nearer the grounds he met James Steadman, walking briskly, and smoking his morning pipe.

'You are out early this morning,' said Hammond, by way of civility.

'I am always pretty early, sir. I like a mouthful of morning air.'

'So do I. By-the-bye, can you tell me anything about a queer-looking old man I pa.s.sed just now a little higher up the Fell? Such an old, old man, with long white hair.'

'Yes, sir. I believe I know him.'

'Who is he? Does he live in Grasmere?'

Steadman looked puzzled.

'Well, you see, sir, your description might apply to a good many; but if it's the man I think you mean he lives in one of the cottages behind the church. Old Barlow, they call him.'

'There can't be two such men--he must be at least a century old. If any one told me he were a hundred and twenty I shouldn't be inclined to doubt the fact. I never saw such a shrivelled, wrinkled visage, bloodless, too, as if the poor old wretch never felt your fresh mountain air upon his hollow cheeks. A dreadful face. It will haunt me for a month.'

'It must be old Barlow,' replied Steadman. 'Good day, sir.'

He walked on with his swinging step, and at such a pace that he was up the side of the Fell and close upon old Barlow's heels when Hammond turned to look after him five minutes later.

'There's a man who shows few traces of age, at any rate,' thought Hammond. 'Yet her ladyship told me that he is over seventy.'

CHAPTER XIX.

THE OLD MAN ON THE FELL.

Having made up his mind to stay at Fellside until after Easter, Maulevrier settled down very quietly--for him. He rode a good deal, fished a little, looked after his dogs, played billiards, made a devout appearance in the big square pew at St. Oswald's on Sunday mornings, and behaved altogether as a reformed character. Even his grandmother was fain to admit that Maulevrier was improved, and that Mr. Hammond's influence upon him must be exercised for good and not for evil.

'I plunged awfully last year, and the year before that,' said Maulevrier, sitting at tea in her ladyship's morning room one afternoon about a week after his return, when she had expressed her gracious desire that the two young men should take tea with her.

Mary was in charge of the tea-pot and bra.s.s kettle, and looked as radiant and as fresh as a summer morning. A regular Gainsborough girl, Hammond called her, when he praised her to her brother; a true English beauty, unsophisticated, a little rustic, but full of youthful sweetness.

'You see, I didn't know what a racing stable meant,' continued Maulevrier, mildly apologetic--'in fact, I thought it was an easy way for a n.o.bleman to make as good a living as your City swells, with their soft goods or their Brummagem ware, a respectable trade for a gentleman to engage in. And it was only when I was half ruined that I began to understand the business; and as soon as I did understand it I made up my mind to get out of it; and I am happy to say that I sold the very last of my stud in February, and Tony Lumpkin is his own man again. So you may welcome the prodigal grandson, and order the fatted calf to be slain, grandmother!'

Lady Maulevrier stretched out her left hand to him, and the young man bent over it and kissed it affectionately. He felt really touched by her misfortunes, and was fonder of her than he had ever been before. She had been somewhat hard with him in his boyhood, but she had always cared for his dignity and protected his interests: and, after all, she was a n.o.ble old woman, a grandmother of whom a man might be justly proud. He thought of the painted harridans, the bare-shouldered skeletons, whom some of his young friends were obliged to own in the same capacity, and he was thankful that he could reverence his father's mother.

'That is the best news I have heard for a long time, Maulevrier,' said her ladyship graciously; 'better medicine for my nerves than any of Mr.

Horton's preparations. If Mr. Hammond's advice has influenced you to get rid of your stable I am deeply grateful to Mr. Hammond.'

Hammond smiled as he sipped his tea, sitting close to Mary's tray, ready to fly to her a.s.sistance on the instant should the brazen kettle become troublesome. It had a threatening way of hissing and bubbling over its spirit lamp.

'Oh, you have no idea what a fellow Hammond is to lecture,' answered Maulevrier. 'He is a tremendous Radical, and he thinks that every young man in my position ought to be a reformer, and devote the greater part of his time and trouble to turning out the dirty corners of the world, upsetting those poor dear families who like to pig together in one room, ordering all the children off to school, marrying the fathers and mothers, thrusting himself between free labour and free beer, and interfering with the liberty of the subject in every direction.'

'All that may sound like Radicalism, but I think it is the true Conservatism, and that every young man ought to do as much, if he wants this timeworn old country to maintain its power and prosperity,'

answered Lady Maulevrier, with an approving glance at John Hammond's thoughtful face.

'Right you are, grandmother,' returned Maulevrier, 'and I believe Hammond calls himself a Conservative, and means to vote with the Conservatives.'

Means to vote! An idle phrase, surely, thought her ladyship, where the young man's chance of getting into Parliament was so remote.

That afternoon tea in Lady Maulevrier's room was almost as cheerful as the tea-drinkings in the drawing-room, unrestrained by her ladyship's presence. She was pleased with her grandson's conduct, and was therefore inclined to be friendly to his friend. She could see an improvement in Mary, too. The girl was more feminine, more subdued, graver, sweeter; more like that ideal woman of Wordsworth's, whose image embodies all that is purest and fairest in womanhood.

Mary had not forgotten that unlucky story about the fox-hunt, and ever since Hammond's return she had been as it were on her best behaviour, refraining from her races with the terriers, and holding herself aloof from Maulevrier's masculine pursuits. She sheltered herself a good deal under the Fraulein's substantial wing, and took care never to intrude herself upon the amus.e.m.e.nts of her brother and his friend. She was not one of those young women who think a brother's presence an excuse for a perpetual _tete-a-tete_ with a young man. Yet when Maulevrier came in quest of her, and entreated her to join them in a ramble, she was not too prudish to refuse the pleasure she so thoroughly enjoyed. But afternoon tea was her privileged hour--the time at which she wore her prettiest frock, and forgot to regret her inferiority to Lesbia in all the graces of womanhood.