Phantom Fortune Part 47

She owed three thousand pounds. It seemed incredible that she should owe so much, that a girl's frivolous fancies and extravagances could amount to such a sum within so short a span. But thoughtless purchases, ignorant orders, had run on from week to week, and the main result was an indebtedness of close upon three thousand pounds.

Three thousand pounds! The sum was continually sounding in her ears like the cry of a screech owl. The very ripple of the river flowing so peacefully under the blue summer sky seemed to repeat the words. Three thousand pounds! 'Is it much?' she wondered, having no standard of comparison. 'Is it very much more than my grandmother will expect me to have spent in the time? Will it trouble her to have to pay those bills?

Will she be very angry?'

These were questions which Lesbia kept asking herself, in every pause of her frivolous existence; in such a pause as this, for instance, while the people round her were standing breathless, open-mouthed, gazing after the boats. She did not care a straw for the boats, who won, or who lost the race. It was all a hollow mockery. Indeed it seemed just now that the only real thing in life was those accursed bills, which would have to be paid somehow.

She had told Lady Maulevrier nothing about them as yet. She had allowed herself to be advised by Lady Kirkbank, and she had taken time to think.

But thought had given her no help. The days were gliding onward, and Lady Maulevrier would have to be told.

She meditated perplexedly about her grandmother's income. She had never heard the extent of it, but had taken for granted that Lady Maulevrier was rich. Would three thousand pounds make a great inroad on that income? Would it be a year's income?--half a year's? Lesbia had no idea.

Life at Fellside was carried on in an elegant manner--with considerable luxury in house and garden--a luxury of flowers, a lavish expenditure of labour. Yet the expenditure of Lady Maulevrier's existence, spent always on the same spot, must be as nothing to the money spent in such a life as Lady Kirkbank's, which involved the keeping up of three or four houses, and costly journeys to and fro, and incessant change of attire.

No doubt Lady Maulevrier had saved money; yes, she must have saved thousands during her long seclusion, Lesbia argued. Her grandmother had told her that she was to look upon herself as an heiress. This could only mean that Lady Maulevrier had a fortune to leave her; and this being so, what could it matter if she had antic.i.p.ated some of her portion? And yet there was in her heart of hearts a terrible fear of that stern dowager, of the cold scorn in those splendid eyes when she should stand revealed in all her foolishness, her selfish, mindless, vain extravagances. She, who had never been reproved, shrank with a sickly dread from the idea of reproof. And to be told that her career as a fashionable beauty had been a failure! That would be the bitterest pang of all.

Soon came luncheon, and Heidseck, and then an afternoon which was gayer than the morning had been, inasmuch as every one babbled and laughed more after luncheon. And then there was five o'clock tea on deck, under the striped j.a.panese awning, to the jingle of banjos, enlivened by the wit of black-faced minstrels, amidst wherries and canoes and gondolas, and ponderous houseboats, and snorting launches, crowding the sides of the sunlit river, in full view of the crowd yonder in front of the Red Lion, and here on this nearer bank, and all along either sh.o.r.e, fringing the green meadows with a gaudy border of smartly-dressed humanity.

It was a gay scene, and Lesbia gave herself up to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the hour, and talked and chaffed as she had learned to talk and chaff in one brief season, holding her own against all comers.

Rood Hall looked lovely when they went back to it in the gloaming, an Elizabethan pile crowned with towers. The four wings with their conical roofs, the ma.s.sive projecting windows, grey stone, ruddy brickwork, lattices reflecting the sunlight, Italian terrace and blue river in the foreground, cedars and yews at the back, all made a splendid picture of an English ancestral home.

'Nice old place, isn't it?' asked Mr. Smithson, seeing Lesbia's admiring gaze as the launch neared the terrace. They two were standing in the bows, apart from all the rest.

'Nice! it is simply perfect.'

'Oh no, it isn't. There is one thing wanted yet.'

'What is that?'

'A wife. You are the only person who can make any house of mine perfect.

Will you?' He took her hand, which she did not withdraw from his grasp.

He bent his head and kissed the little hand in its soft Swedish glove.

'Will you, Lesbia?' he repeated earnestly; and she answered softly, 'Yes.'

That one brief syllable was more like a sigh than a spoken word, and it seemed to her as if in the utterance of that syllable the three thousand pounds had been paid.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

'KIND IS MY LOVE TO-DAY, TO-MORROW KIND.'

While Lady Lesbia was draining the cup of London folly and London care to the dregs, Lady Mary was leading her usual quiet life beside the gla.s.sy lake, where the green hill-sides and sheep walks were reflected in all their summer verdure under the cloudless azure of a summer sky. A monotonous life--pa.s.sing dull as seen from the outside--and yet Mary was very happy, happy even in her solitude, with the grave deep joy of a satisfied heart, a mind at rest. All life had taken a new colour since her engagement to John Hammond. A sense of new duties, an awakening earnestness had given a graver tone to her character. Her spirits were less wild, yet not less joyous than of old. The joy was holier, deeper.

Her lover's letters were the chief delight of her lonely days. To read them again and again, and ponder upon them, and then to pour out all her heart and mind in answering them. These were pleasures enough for her young like. Hammond's letters were such as any woman might be proud to receive. They were not love-letters only. He wrote as friend to friend; not descending from the proud pinnacle of masculine intelligence to the lower level of feminine silliness; not writing down to a simple country girl's capacity; but writing-fully and fervently, as if there were no subject too lofty or too grave for the understanding of his betrothed.

He wrote as one sure of being sympathised with, wrote as to his second self: and Mary showed herself not unworthy of the honour thus rendered to her intellect.

There was one world which had newly opened to Mary since her engagement, and that was the world of politics. Hammond had told her that his ambition was to succeed as a politician--to do some good in his day as one of the governing body; and of late she had made it her business to learn how England and the world outside England were governed.

She had no natural leaning to the study of political economy. Instead, she had always imagined any question relating to the government of her country to be inherently dry-as-dust and uninviting. But had John Hammond devoted his days to the study of Coptic ma.n.u.scripts, or the arrow headed inscriptions upon a.s.syrian tablets, she would have toiled her hardest in the endeavour to make herself a Coptic scholar, or an adept in the cuneiform characters. If he had been a student of Chinese, she would not have been discomfited by such a trifle as the fifty thousand characters in the Chinese alphabet.

And so, as he was to make his name in the arena of public life, she set herself to acquire a proper understanding of the science of politics; and to this end she gorged herself with English history,--Hume, Hallam, Green, Justin McCarthy, Palgrave, Lecky, from the days of Witenagemote to the Reform Bill; the Repeal of the Corn Laws, the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, Ballot, Trade Unionism, and unreciprocated Free Trade.

No question was deep enough to repel her; for was not her lover interested in the dryest thereof; and what concerned him and his welfare must needs be full of interest for her.

To this end she read the debates religiously day by day; and she one day ventured shyly to suggest that she should read them aloud to Lady Maulevrier.

'Would it not be a little rest for you if I were to read your Times aloud to you every afternoon, grandmother?' she asked. 'You read so many books, French, English, and German, and I think your eyes must get a little tired sometimes.'

Mary ventured the remark with some timidity, for those falcon eyes were fixed upon her all the time, bright and clear and steady as the eyes of youth. It seemed almost an impertinence to suggest that such eyes could know weariness.

'No, Mary, my sight, holds out wonderfully for an old woman,' replied her ladyship, gently. 'The new theory of the last oculist whose book I dipped into--a very amusing and interesting book, by-the-bye--is that the sight improves and strengthens by constant use, and that an agricultural labourer, who hardly uses his eyes at all, has rarely in the decline of life so good a sight as the watchmaker or the student. I have read immensely all my life, and find myself no worse for that indulgence. But you may read the debates to me if you like, my dear, for if my eyes are strong, I myself am very tired. Sick to death, Mary, sick to death.'

The splendid eyes turned from Mary, and looked away to the blue sky, to the hills in their ineffable beauty of colour and light--shifting, changing with every moment of the summer day. Intense weariness, a settled despair, were expressed in that look--tearless, yet sadder than all tears.

'It must be very monotonous, very sad for you,' murmured Mary, her own eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with tears. 'But it will not be always so, dear grandmother. I hope a time will come when you will be able to go about again, to resume your old life.'

'I do not hope, Mary. No, child, I feel and know that time will never come. My strength is ebbing slowly day by day. If I live for another year, live to see Lesbia married, and you, too, perhaps--well, I shall die at peace. At peace, no; not----' she faltered, and the thin, semi-transparent hand was pressed upon her brow. 'What will be said of me when I am dead?'

Mary feared that her grandmother's mind was wandering. She came and knelt beside the couch, laid and her head against the satin pillows, tenderly, caressingly.

'Dear grandmother, pray be calm,' she murmured.

'Mary, do not look at me like that, as if you would read my heart. There are hearts that must not be looked into. Mine is like a charnel-house.

Monotonous, yes; my life has been monotonous. No conventual gloom was ever deeper than the gloom of Fellside. My boy did nothing to lighten it for me, and his son followed in his father's footsteps. You and Lesbia have been my only consolation. Lesbia! I was so proud of her beauty, so proud and fond of her, because she was like me, and recalled my own youth. And see how easily she forgets me. She has gone into a new world, in which my age and my infirmities have no part; and I am as nothing to her.'

Mary changed from red to pale, so painful was her embarra.s.sment. What could she say in defence of her sister? How could she deny that Lesbia was an ingrate, when those rare and hurried letters, so careless in their tone, expressing the selfishness of the writer in every syllable, told but too plainly of forgetfulness and ingrat.i.tude?

'Dear grandmother, Lesbia has so much to do--her life is so full of engagements,' she faltered feebly.

'Yes, she goes from party to party--she gives herself up heart and mind and soul to pleasures which she ought to consider only as the trivial means to great ends; and she forgets the woman who reared her, and cared for her, and watched over her from her infancy, and who tried to inspire her with a n.o.ble ambition.--Yes, read to me, child, read. Give me new thoughts, if you can, for my brain is weary with grinding the old ones.

There was a grand debate in the Lords last night, and Lord Hartfield spoke. Let me hear his speech. You can read what was said by the man before him; never mind the rest.'

Mary read Lord Somebody's speech, which was pa.s.sing dull, but which prepared the ground for a magnificent and exhaustive reply from Lord Hartfield. The question was an important one, affecting the well-being of the ma.s.ses, and Lord Hartfield spoke with an eloquence which rose in force and fire as he wound himself like a serpent into the heart of his subject--beginning quietly, soberly, with no opening flashes of rhetoric, but rising gradually to the topmost heights of oratory.

'What a speech!' cried Lady Maulevrier, delighted, her cheeks glowing, her eyes kindling; 'what a n.o.ble fellow the speaker must be! Oh, Mary, I must tell you a secret. I loved that man's father. Yes, my dear, I loved him fondly, dearly, truly, as you love that young man of yours; and he was the only man I ever really loved. Fate parted us. But I have never forgotten him--never, Mary, never. At this moment I have but to close my eyes and I can see his face--see him looking at me as he looked the last time we met. He was a younger son, poor, his future quite hopeless in those days; but it was not my fault we were parted. I would have married him--yes, wedded poverty, just as you are going to marry this Mr.

Hammond; but my people would not let me; and I was too young, too helpless, to make a good fight. Oh, Mary, if I had only fought hard enough, what a happy woman I might have been, and how good a wife.'

'You were a good wife to my grandfather, I am sure,' faltered Mary, by way of saying something consolatory.

A dark frown came over Lady Maulevrier's face, which had softened to deepest tenderness just before.

'A good wife to Maulevrier,' she said, in a mocking tone. Well, yes, as good a wife as such a husband deserved. 'I was better than Caesar's wife, Mary, for no breath of suspicion ever rested upon my name. But if I had married Ronald Hollister, I should have been a happy woman; and that I have never been since I parted from him.'

'You have never seen the present Lord Hartfield, I think?'

'Never; but I have watched his career, I have thought of him. His father died while he was an infant, and he was brought up in seclusion by a widowed mother, who kept him tied to her ap.r.o.n-strings till he went to Oxford. She idolised him, and I am told she taught herself Latin and Greek, mathematics even, in order to help him in his boyish, studies, and, later on, read Greek plays and Latin poetry with him, till she became an exceptional cla.s.sic for a woman. She was her son's companion and friend, sympathised with his tastes, his pleasures, his friendships; devoted every hour of her life, every thought of her mind to his welfare, his interests, walked with him, rode with him, travelled half over Europe, yachted with him. Her friends all declared that the lad would grow up an odious milksop; but I am told that there never was a manlier man than Lord Hartfield. From his boyhood he was his mother's protector, helped to administer her affairs, acquired a premature sense of responsibility, and escaped almost all those vices which make young men detestable. His mother died within a few months of his majority. He was broken-hearted at losing her, and left Europe immediately after her death. From that time he has been a great traveller. But I suppose now that he has taken his seat in the House of Lords, and has spoken a good many times, he means to settle down and take his place among the foremost men of his day. I am told that he is worthy to take such a place.'