Phantom Fortune Part 73

'If I ever expected grat.i.tude from people I might feel the injustice--the insolence--of your last remark,' she said; 'but as I never do expect grat.i.tude, I am not disappointed in this case. And now I think if there is a cabin which I can have to myself I should like to retire to it,' she added. 'My cares are thrown away here.'

There was a cabin at Lady Kirkbank's disposal. It had been already appropriated by Rilboche, and smelt of cognac; but Rilboche resigned her berth to her mistress, and laid herself meekly on the floor for the rest of the voyage.

They were in Cowes Roads at eight o'clock next morning, and Lord Hartfield went on sh.o.r.e for a doctor, whom he brought back before nine, and who p.r.o.nounced Lady Lesbia to be in a very weak and prostrate condition, and forbade her being moved within the next two days. Happily Lord Hartfield had borrowed the _Philomel_ and her crew from a friend who had given him _carte blanche_ as to the use he made of her, and who freely left her at his disposal so long as he and his party should need the accommodation. Lesbia could nowhere be better off than on the yacht, where she was away from the gossip and t.i.ttle-tattle of the town.

The roadstead was quiet enough now. All the racing yachts had melted away like a dream, and most of the pleasure yachts were off to Ryde.

Lady Lesbia lay in her curtained cabin, with Kibble keeping watch beside her bed, while Maulevrier came in every half-hour to see how she was--sitting by her a little now and then, and talking of indifferent things in a low kind voice, which was full of comfort.

She seemed grateful for his kindness, and smiled at him once in a way, with a piteous little smile; but she had the air of one in whom the mainspring of life is broken. The pallid face and heavy violet eyes, the semi-transparent hands which lay so listlessly upon the crimson coverlet, conveyed an impression of supreme despair. Hartfield, looking down at her for the last time when he came to say good-bye before leaving for London, was reminded of the story of one whose life had been thus rudely broken, who had loved as foolishly and even more fondly, and for whom the world held nothing when that tie was severed.

'She looked on many a face with vacant eye, On many a token without knowing what; She saw them watch her, without asking why, And recked not who around her pillow sat.'

But Lesbia Haselden belonged to a wider and more sophisticated world than that of the daughter of the Grecian Isle, and for her existence offered wider horizons. It might be prophesied that for her the dark ending of a girlish dream would not be a life-long despair. The pa.s.sionate love had been at fever point; the pa.s.sionate grief must have its fever too, and burn itself out.

'Do all you can to cheer her,' said Lord Hartfield to Maulevrier, 'and bring her to Fellside as soon as ever she is strong enough to bear the journey. You and Kibble, with your own man, will be able to do all that is necessary.'

'Quite able.'

'That's right. I must be in the House for the expected division to-night, and I shall go back to Grasmere to-morrow morning. Poor Mary is horribly lonely.'

Lord Hartfield went off in the boat to catch the Southampton steamer; and Maulevrier was now sole custodian of the yacht and of his sister. He and the doctor had agreed to keep her on board, in the fresh sea air, till she was equal to the fatigue of the journey to Grasmere. There was nothing to be gained by taking her on to the island or by carrying her to London. The yacht was well found, provided with all things needful for comfort, and Lesbia could be nowhere better off until she was safe in her old home:--that home she had left so gaily, in the freshness of her youthful inexperience, nearly a year ago, and to which she would return so battered and broken, so deeply degraded by the knowledge of evil.

Lady Kirkbank had started for London on the previous day.

'I am evidently not wanted _here_,' she said, with an offended air; 'and I must have everything at Kirkbank ready for a house full of people before the twelfth of August, so the sooner I get to Scotland the better. I shall make a _detour_ in order to go and see Lady Maulevrier on my way down. It is due to myself that I should let her know that _I_ am entirely blameless in this most uncomfortable business.'

'You can tell her ladyship what you please,' answered Maulevrier, bluntly. 'I shall not gainsay you, so long as you do not slander my sister; but as long as I live I shall regret that I, knowing something of London society, did not interfere to prevent Lesbia being given over to your keeping.'

'If I had known the kind of girl she is I would have had nothing to do with her,' retorted Lady Kirkbank with exasperation; and so they parted.

The _Philomel_ had been lying off Cowes three days before Mr. Smithson appeared upon the scene. He had got wind somehow from a sailor, who had talked with one of the foreign crew, of the destination of the _Cayman_, and he had crossed from Southampton to Havre on the steamer _Wolf_ during that night in which Lesbia had been carried back to Cowes on the _Philomel_.

He was at Havre when the _Cayman_ arrived, with Montesma and his tawny-visaged crew on board, no one else.

'You may examine every corner of your ship,' Montesma cried, scornfully, when Smithson came on board and swore that Lesbia must be hidden somewhere in the vessel. 'The bird has flown: she will shelter in neither your nest nor in mine, Smithson. You have lost her--and so have I. We may as well be friends in misfortune.'

He was haggard, livid with grief and anger. He looked ten years older than he had looked the other night at the ball, when his dash and swagger, and handsome Spanish head had been the admiration of the room.

Smithson was very angry, but he was not a fighting man. He had enjoyed various opportunities for distinguishing himself in that line in the island of Cuba; but he had always avoided such opportunities. So now, after a good deal of bl.u.s.ter and violent language, which Montesma took as lightly as if it had been the whistling of the wind in the shrouds, poor Smithson calmed down, and allowed Gomez de Montesma to leave the yacht, with his portmanteaux, unharmed. He meant to take the first steamer for the Spanish Main, he told Smithson. He had had quite enough of Europe.

'I daresay it will end in your marrying her,' he said, at the last moment. 'If you do, be kind to her.'

His voice faltered, choked by a sob, at those last words. After all, it is possible for a man without principle, without morality, to begin to make love to a woman in a mere spirit of adventure, in sheer devilry, and to be rather hard hit at the last.

Horace Smithson sailed his yacht back to Cowes without loss of time, and sent his card to Lord Maulevrier on board the _Philomel_. His lordship replied that he would wait upon Mr. Smithson that afternoon at four o'clock, and at that hour Maulevrier again boarded the _Cayman_; but this time very quietly, as an expected guest.

The interview that followed was very painful. Mr. Smithson was willing that this unhappy episode in the life of his betrothed, this folly into which she had been beguiled by a man of infinite treachery, a man of all other men fatal to women, should be forgotten, should be as if it had never been.

'It was her very innocence which made her a victim to that scoundrel,'

said Smithson, 'her girlish simplicity and Lady Kirkbank's folly. But I love your sister too well to sacrifice her lightly, Lord Maulevrier; and if she can forget this midsummer madness, why, so can I.'

'She cannot forget, Mr. Smithson,' answered Maulevrier, gravely. 'She has done you a great wrong by listening to your false friend's addresses; but she did you a still greater wrong when she accepted you as her husband without one spark of love for you. She and you are both happy in having escaped the degradation, the deep misery of a loveless union. I am glad--yes, glad even of this shameful escapade with Montesma--though it has dragged her good name through the gutter,--glad of the catastrophe that has saved her from such a marriage. You are very generous in your willingness to forget my sister's folly. Let your forgetfulness go a step further, and forget that you ever met her.'

'That cannot be, Lord Maulevrier. She has ruined my life.'

'Not at all. An affair of a season,' answered Maulevrier, lightly. 'Next year I shall hear of you as the accepted husband of some new beauty. A man of Mr. Smithson's wealth--and good nature--need not languish in single blessedness.'

With this civil speech Lord Maulevrier went back to the _Philomel's_ gig, and this was his last meeting with Mr. Smithson, until they met a year later in the beaten tracks of society.

CHAPTER XLV.

'THAT FELL ARREST, WITHOUT ALL BAIL.'

It was the beginning of August before Lesbia was p.r.o.nounced equal to the fatigue of a long journey; and even then it was but the shadow of her former self which returned to Fellside, the pale spectre of joys departed, of trust deceived.

Maulevrier had been very good to her, patient, unselfish as a woman, in his ministering to the broken-hearted girl. That broken heart would be whole again, no doubt, in the future, as many other broken hearts have been; but the grief, the despair, the sense of hopelessness and aimlessness in life were very real in the present. If the picturesque seclusion of Fellside had seemed dull and joyless to Lesbia in days gone by, it was much duller to her now. She was shocked at the change in her grandmother, and she showed a good deal of feeling and affection in her intercourse with the invalid; but once out of her presence Lady Maulevrier was forgotten, and Lesbia's thoughts drifted back into the old current. They dwelt obstinately, unceasingly upon Montesma, the man whose influence had awakened the slumbering soul from its torpor, had stirred the deeps of a pa.s.sionate nature.

Slave-dealer, gambler, adventurer, liar--his name blackened by the suspicion of a still darker crime. She shuddered at the thought of the villain from whose snare she had been rescued: and yet, his image as he had been to her in the brief golden time when she believed him n.o.ble, and chivalrous, and true, haunted her lonely days, mixed itself with her troubled dreams, came between her and every other thought.

Everybody was good to her. That pale and joyless face, that look of patient, hopeless suffering which she tried to disguise every now and then with a faint forced smile; and silvery little ripple of society laughter, seemed unconsciously to implore pity and pardon. Lady Maulevrier uttered no word of reproach. 'My dearest, Fate has not been kind to you,' she said, gently, after telling Lesbia of Lady Kirkbank's visit. 'The handsomest women are seldom the happiest. Destiny seems to have a grudge against them. And if things have gone amiss it is I who am most to blame. I ought never to have entrusted you with such a woman as Georgina Kirkbank. But you will be happier next season, I hope, dearest.

You can live with Mary and Hartfield. They will take care of you.'

Lesbia shuddered.

'Do you think I am going back to the society treadmill?' she exclaimed.

'No, I have done with the world. I shall end my days here, or in a convent.'

'You think so now, dear, but you will change your mind by-and-by. A fancy that has lasted only a few weeks cannot alter your life. It will pa.s.s as other dreams have pa.s.sed. At your age you have the future before you.'

'No, it is the past that is always before me,' answered Lesbia. 'My future is a blank.'

The bills came pouring in; dressmaker, milliner, glover, bootmaker, tailor, stationer, perfumer; awful bills which made Lady Maulevrier's blood run cold, so degrading was their story of selfish self-indulgence, of senseless extravagance. But she paid them all without a word. She took upon her shoulders the chief burden of Lesbia's wrongdoing. It was her indulgence, her weak preference which had fostered her granddaughter's selfishness, trained her to vanity and worldly pride.

The result was ignominious, humiliating, bitter beyond all common bitterness; but the cup was of her own brewing, and she drank it without a murmur.

Parliament was prorogued; the season was over; and Lord Hartfield was established at Fellside for the autumn--he and his wife utterly happy in their affection for each other, but not without care as to their surroundings, which were full of trouble. First there was Lesbia's sorrow. Granted that it was a grief which would inevitably wear itself out, as other such griefs have done from time immemorial; but still the sorrow was there, at their doors. Next, there was the state of Lady Maulevrier's health, which gave her old medical adviser the gravest fears. At Lord Hartfield's earnest desire a famous doctor was summoned from London; but the great man could only confirm Mr. Horton's verdict.

The thread of life was wearing thinner every day. It might snap at any hour. In the meantime the only regime was repose of body and mind, an all-pervading calm, the avoidance of all exciting topics. One moment of violent agitation might prove fatal.

Knowing this, how could Lord Hartfield call her ladyship to account for the presence of that mysterious old man under Steadman's charge?--how venture to touch upon a topic which, by Mary's showing, had exercised a most disturbing influence upon her ladyship's mind on that solitary occasion when the girl ventured to approach the subject?

He felt that any attempt at an explanation was impossible. It was not for him to precipitate Lady Maulevrier's end by prying into her secrets.

Granted that shame and dishonour of some kind were involved in the existence of that strange old man, he, Lord Hartfield, must endure his portion in that shame--must be content to leave the dark riddle unsolved.

He resigned himself to this state of things, and tried to forget the cloud that hung over the house of Haselden; but the sense of a mystery, a fatal family secret, which must come to light sooner or later--since all such secrets are known at last--known, sifted, and bandied about from lip to lip, and published in a thousand different newspapers, and cried aloud in the streets--the sense of such a secret, the dread of such a revelation weighed upon him heavily.

Maulevrier, the restless, was off to Argyleshire for the grouse shooting as soon as he had deposited Lady Lesbia comfortably at Fellside.