The peril had to be faced, for the weather did not favour Lady Maulevrier's hopes. Westmoreland skies forgot to shed their accustomed showers. Westmoreland hills seemed to have lost their power of drawing down the rain. That August was a lovely month, and the young people at Fellside revelled in ideal weather. Maulevrier took his friend everywhere—by hill and stream and force and gill—to all those chosen spots which make the glory of the Lake country—on Windermere and Thirlmere, away through the bleak pass of Kirkstone to Ullswater—on driving excursions, and on boating excursions, and pedestrian rambles, which latter the homely-minded Hammond seemed to like best of all, for he was a splendid walker, and loved the freedom of a mountain ramble, the liberty to pause and loiter and waste an hour at will, without being accountable to anybody's coachman, or responsible for the well-being of anybody's horses.
On some occasions the two girls and Miss Müller were of the party, and then it seemed to John Hammond as if nothing were needed to complete the glory of earth and sky. There were other days—rougher journeys—when the men went alone, and there were days when Lady Mary stole away from her books and music, and all those studies which she was supposed still to be pursuing—no longer closely supervised by her governess, but on parole, as it were—and went with her brother and his friend across the hills and far away. Those were happy days for Mary, for it was always delight to her to be with Maulevrier; yet she had a profound conviction of John Hammond's indifference, kind and courteous as he was in all his dealings with her, and a sense of her own inferiority, of her own humble charms and little power to please, which was so acute as to be almost pain. One day this keen sense of humiliation broke from her unawares in her talk with her brother, as they two sat on a broad heathy slope face to face with one of the Langdale pikes, and with a deep valley at their feet, while John Hammond was climbing from rock to rock in the gorge on their right, exploring the beauties of Dungeon Ghyll.
'I wonder whether he thinks me very ugly?' said Mary, with her hands clasped upon her knees, her eyes fixed on Wetherlam, upon whose steep brow a craggy mass of brown rock clothed with crimson heather stood out from the velvety green of the hill-side.
'Who thinks you ugly?'
'Mr. Hammond. I'm sure he does. I am so sunburnt and so horrid!'
'But you are not ugly. Why, Molly, what are you dreaming about?'
'Oh, yes, I am ugly. I may not seem so to you, perhaps, because you are used to me, but I know he must think me very plain compared with Lesbia, whom he admires so much.'
'Yes, he admires Lesbia. There is no doubt of that.'
'And I know he thinks me plain,' said Molly, contemplating Wetherlam with sorrowful eyes, as if the sequence were inevitable.
'My dearest girl, what nonsense! Plain, forsooth? Ugly, quotha? Why, there are not a finer pair of eyes in Westmoreland than my Molly's, or a prettier smile, or whiter teeth.'
'But all the rest is horrid,' said Mary, intensely in earnest. 'I am sunburnt, freckled, and altogether odious—like a haymaker or a market woman. Grandmother has said so often enough, and I know it is the truth. I can see it in Mr. Hammond's manner.'
'What! freckles and sunburn, and the haymaker, and all that?' cried Maulevrier, laughing. 'What an expressive manner Jack's must be, if it can convey all that—like Lord Burleigh's nod, by Jove. Why, what a goose you are, Mary. Jack thinks you a very nice girl, and a very pretty girl, I'll be bound; but aren't you clever enough to understand that when a man is over head and ears in love with one woman, he is apt to seem just a little indifferent to all the other women in the world? and there is no doubt Jack is desperately in love with Lesbia.'
'You ought not to let him be in love with her,' protested Mary. 'You know it can only lead to his unhappiness. You must know what grandmother is, and how she has made up her mind that Lesbia is to marry some great person. You ought not to have brought Mr. Hammond here. It is like letting him into a trap.'
'Do you think it was wrong?' asked her brother, smiling at her earnestness. 'I should be very sorry if poor Jack should come to grief. But still, if Lesbia likes him—which I think she does—we ought to be able to talk over the dowager.'
'Never,' cried Mary. 'Grandmother would never give way. You have no idea how ambitious she is. Why, once when Lesbia was in a poetical mood, and said she would marry the man she liked best in the world, if he were a pauper, her ladyship flew into a terrible passion, and told her she would renounce her, that she would curse her, if she were to marry beneath her, or marry without her grandmother's consent.'
'Hard lines for Hammond,' said Maulevrier, rather lightly. 'Then I suppose we must give up the idea of a match between him and Lesbia.'
'You ought not to have brought him here,' retorted Mary. 'You had better invent some plan for sending him away. If he stay it will be only to break his heart.'
'Dear child, men's hearts do not break so easily. I have fancied that mine was broken more than once in my life, yet it is sound enough, I assure you.'
'Oh!' sighed Mary, 'but you are not like him; wounds do not go so deep with you.'
The subject of their conversation came out of the rocky cleft in the hills as Mary spoke. She saw his hat appearing out of the gorge, and then the man himself emerged, a tall well-built figure, clad in brown tweed, coming towards them, with sketch-book and colour-box in his pocket. He had been making what he called memoranda of the waterfall, a stone or two here, a cluster of ferns there, or a tree torn up by the roots, and yet green and living, hanging across the torrent, a rude natural bridge.
This round by the Langdale Pikes and Dungeon Ghyll was one of their best days; or, at least, Molly and her brother thought so; for to those two the presence of Lesbia and her chaperon was always a restraint.
Mary could walk twice as far as her elder sister, and revelled in hill-side paths and all manner of rough places. They ordered their luncheon at the inn below the waterfall, and had it carried up on to the furzy slope in front of Wetherlam, where they could eat and drink and be merry to the music of the force as it came down from the hills behind them, while the lights and shadows came and went upon yonder rugged brow, now gray in the shadow, now ruddy in the sunshine.
Mary was as gay as a bird during that rough and ready luncheon. No one would have suspected her uneasiness about John Hammond's peril or her own plainness. She might let her real self appear to her brother, who had been her trusted friend and father confessor from her babyhood; but she was too thorough a woman to let Mr. Hammond discover the depth of her sympathy, the tenderness of her compassion for his woes. Later, as they were walking home across the hills, by Great Langdale and Little Langdale, and Fox Howe and Loughrigg Fell, she fell behind a few paces with Maulevrier, and said to him very earnestly—
'You won't tell, will you, dear?'
'Tell what?' he asked, staring at her.
'Don't tell Mr. Hammond what I said about his thinking me ugly. He might want to apologise to me, and that would be too humiliating. I was very childish to say such a silly thing.'
'Undoubtedly you were.'
'And you won't tell him?'
'Tell him anything that would degrade my Mary? Assail her dignity by so much as a breath? Sooner would I have this tongue torn out with red-hot pincers.'
On the next day, and the next, sunshine and summer skies still prevailed; but Mr. Hammond did not seem to care for rambling far afield. He preferred loitering about in the village, rowing on the lake, reading in the garden, and playing lawn tennis. He had only inclination for those amusements which kept him within a stone's throw of Fellside: and Mary knew that this disposition had arisen in his mind since Lesbia had withdrawn herself from all share in their excursions. Lesbia had not been rude to her brother or her brother's friend; she had declined their invitations with smiles and sweetness; but there was always some reason—a new song to be practised, a new book to be read, a letter to be written—why she should not go for drives or walks or steamboat trips with Maulevrier and his friend.
So Mr. Hammond suddenly found out that he had seen all that was worth seeing in the Lake country, and that there was nothing so enjoyable as the placid idleness of Fellside; and at Fellside Lady Lesbia could not always avoid him without a too-marked intention, so he tasted the sweetness of her society to a much greater extent than was good for his peace, if the case were indeed as hopeless as Lady Mary declared. He strolled about the grounds with her; he drank the sweet melody of her voice in Heine's tenderest ballads; he read to her on the sunlit lawn in the lazy afternoon hours; he played billiards with her; he was her faithful attendant at afternoon tea; he gave himself up to the study of her character, which, to his charmed eyes, seemed the perfection of pure and placid womanhood. There might, perhaps, be some lack of passion and of force in this nature, a marked absence of that impulsive feeling which is a charm in some women: but this want was atoned for by sweetness of character, and Mr. Hammond argued that in these calm natures there is often an unsuspected depth, a latent force, a grandeur of soul, which only reveals itself in the great ordeals of life.
So John Hammond hung about the luxurious drawing-room at Fellside in a manner which his friend Maulevrier ridiculed as unmanly.
'I had no idea you were such a tame cat,' he said: 'if when we were salmon fishing in Canada anybody had told me you could loll about a drawing-room all day listening to a girl squalling and reading novels, I shouldn't have believed a word of it.'
'We had plenty of roughing on the shores of the St. Lawrence,' answered Hammond. 'Summer idleness in a drawing-room is an agreeable variety.'
It is not to be supposed that John Hammond's state of mind could long remain unperceived by the keen eyes of the dowager. She saw the gradual dawning of his love, she saw the glow of its meridian. She was pleased to behold this proof of Lesbia's power over the heart of man. So would she conquer the man foredoomed to be her husband when the coming time should bring them together. But agreeable as the fact of this first conquest might be, as an evidence of Lesbia's supremacy among women, the situation was not without its peril; and Lady Maulevrier felt that she could no longer defer the duty of warning her granddaughter. She had wished, if possible, to treat the thing lightly to the very last, so that Lesbia should never know there had been danger. She had told her, a few days ago, that those drives, and walks with the two young men were undignified, even although guarded by the Fräulein's substantial presence.
'You are making yourself too much a companion to Maulevrier and his friend,' said the dowager. 'If you do not take care you will grow like Mary.'
'I would do anything in the world to avoidthat,' replied Lesbia. 'Our walks and drives have been very pleasant. Mr. Hammond is extremely clever, and can talk about everything.'
Her colour heightened ever so little as she spoke of him, an indication duly observed by Lady Maulevrier.
'No doubt the man is clever; all adventurers are clever; and you have sense enough to see that this man is an adventurer—a mere sponge and toady of Maulevrier's.'
'There is nothing of the sponge or the toady in his manner,' protested Lady Lesbia, with a still deeper blush, the warm glow of angry feeling.
'My dear child, what do you know of such people—or of the atmosphere in which they are generated? The sponge and toady of to-day is not the clumsy fawning wretch you have read about in old-fashioned novels. He can flatter adroitly, and feed upon his friends, and yet maintain a show of manhood and independence. I'll wager Mr. Hammond's trip to Canada did not cost him sixpence, and that he hardly opened his purse all the time he was in Germany.'
'If my brother wants the company of a friend who is much poorer than himself, he must pay for it,' argued Lesbia. 'I think Maulevrier is lucky to have such a companion as Mr. Hammond.'
Yet, even while she so argued, Lady Lesbia felt in some manner humiliated by the idea that this man who so palpably worshipped her was too poor to pay his own travelling expenses.
Poets and philosophers may say what they will about the grandeur of plain living and high thinking; but a young woman thinks better of the plain liver who is not compelled to plainness by want of cash. The idea of narrow means, of dependence upon the capricious generosity of a wealthy friend is not without its humiliating influence. Lesbia was barely civil to Mr. Hammond that evening when he praised her singing; and she refused to join in a four game proposed by Maulevrier, albeit she and Mr. Hammond had beaten Mary and Maulevrier the evening before, with much exultant hilarity.
Hammond had been at Fellside nearly a month, and Maulevrier was beginning to talk about a move further northward. There was a grouse moor in Argyleshire which the two young men talked about as belonging to some unnamed friend of the Earl's, which they had thought of shooting over before the grouse season was ended.
'Lord Hartfield has property in Argyleshire,' said the dowager, when they talked of these shootings. 'Do you know his estate, Mr. Hammond?'
'Hammond knows that there is such a place, I daresay,' replied Maulevrier, replying for his friend.
'But you do not know Lord Hartfield, perhaps,' said her ladyship, not arrogantly, but still in a tone which implied her conviction that John Hammond would not be hand-in-glove with earls, in Scotland or elsewhere.
'Oh, yes! I know him by sight—every one in Argyleshire knows him by sight.'
'Naturally. A young man in his position must be widely known. Is he popular?'
'Fairly so.'
'His father and I were friends many years ago,' said Lady Maulevrier, with a faint sigh. 'Have you ever heard if he resembles his father?'
'I believe not. I am told he is like his mother's family.'
'Then he ought to be handsome. Lady Florence Ilmington was a famous beauty.'
They were sitting in the drawing-room after dinner, the room dimly lighted by darkly-shaded lamps, the windows wide open to the summer sky and moonlit lake. In that subdued light Lady Maulevrier looked a woman in the prime of life. The classical modelling of her features and the delicacy of her complexion were unimpaired by time, while those traces of thought and care which gave age to her face in the broad light of day were invisible at night. John Hammond contemplated that refined and placid countenance with profound admiration. He remembered how her ladyship's grandson had compared her with the Sphinx; and it seemed to him to-night, as he studied her proud and tranquil beauty, that there was indeed something of the mysterious, the unreadable in that countenance, and that beneath its heroic calm there might be the ashes of tragic passion, the traces of a life-long struggle with fate. That such a woman, so beautiful, so gifted, so well fitted to shine and govern in the great world, should have been content to live a long life of absolute seclusion in this remote valley was in itself a social mystery which must needs set an observant young man wondering. It was all very well to say that Lady Maulevrier loved a country life, that she had made Fellside her earthly Paradise, and had no desire beyond it. The fact remained that it was not in Lady Maulevrier's temperament to be satisfied with such an existence; that falcon eye was never meant to gaze for ever upon one narrow range of mountain and lake; that lip was made to speak among the great ones of the world.
Lady Maulevrier was particularly gracious to her grandson's friend this evening. Maulevrier spoke so decisively about a speedy migration northward, seemed so inclined to regret the time wasted since the twelfth of the month, that she thought the danger was past, and she could afford to be civil. She really liked the young man, had no doubt in her own mind that he was a gentleman in the highest and broadest sense of the word, but not in the sense which made him an eligible husband for either of her granddaughters.
Lesbia was in a pensive mood this evening. She sat in the verandah, looking dreamily at the lake, and at Fairfield yonder, a broad green slope, silvered with moonlight, and seeming to stretch far away into unfathomable distance.
If one could but take one's lover by the hand and go wandering over those mystic moonlit slopes into some new unreal world where it would not matter whether a man were rich or poor, high-born or low-born, where there should be no such things as rank and state to be won or lost! Lesbia felt to-night as if she would like to live out her life in dreamland. Reality was too hard, too much set round by difficulties and sacrifices.
While Lesbia was losing herself in that dream-world, Lady Maulevrier unbent considerably to John Hammond, and talked to him with more appearance of interest in his actual self, and in his own affairs, than she had manifested, hitherto although she had been uniformly courteous.
She asked him his plans for the future—had he chosen a profession?
He told her that he had not. He meant to devote himself to literature and politics.
'Is not that rather vague?' inquired her ladyship.
'Everything is vague at first.'
'But literature now—as an amusement, no doubt, it is delightful—but as a profession—does literature ever pay?'
'There have been such cases.'
'Yes, I suppose so. Walter Scott, Gibbon, Macaulay, Froude, those made money no doubt. But there is a suspicion of hopelessness in the idea of a young man starting in life intending to earn his bread by literature. One remembers Chatterton. I should have thought that in your case the law or the church would have been better. In the latter Maulevrier might have been useful to you. He is patron of three or four livings.'
'You are too good even to think of such a thing,' said Hammond; 'but I have set my heart upon a political career. I must swim or sink in that sea.'
Lady Maulevrier looked at him with a compassionate smile Poor young man! No doubt he thought himself a genius, and that doors which had remained shut to everybody else would turn on their hinges directly he knocked at them. She was sincerely sorry for him. Young, clever, enthusiastic, and doomed to bitterest disappointment.
'You have parents, perhaps, who are ambitious for you—a mother who thinks her son a heaven-born statesman!' said her ladyship, kindly.
'Alas, no! that incentive to ambition is wanting in my case. I have neither father nor mother living.'
'That is very sad. No doubt that fact has been a bond of sympathy between you and Maulevrier?'
'I believe it has.'
'Well, I hope Providence will smile upon your path.'
'Come what may, I shall never forget the happy weeks I have spent at Fellside,' said Hammond, 'or your ladyship's gracious hospitality.'
He took up the beautiful hand, white to transparency, showing the delicate tracing of blue veins, and pressed his lips upon it in chivalrous worship of age and womanly dignity.
Lady Maulevrier smiled upon him with her calm, grave smile. She would have liked to say, 'You shall be welcome again at Fellside,' but she felt that the man was dangerous. Not while Lesbia remained single could she court his company. If Maulevrier brought him she must tolerate his presence, but she would do nothing to invite that danger.
There was no music that evening. Maulevrier and Mary were playing billiards; Fräulein Müller was sitting in her corner working at a high-art counterpane. Lesbia came in from the verandah presently, and sat on a low stool by her grandmother's arm-chair, and talked to her in soft, cooing accents, inaudible to John Hammond, who sat a little way off turning the leaves of theContemporary Review: and this went on till eleven o'clock, the regular hour for retiring, when Mary came in from the billiard-room, and told Mr. Hammond that Maulevrier was waiting for a smoke and a talk. Then candles were lighted, and the ladies all departed, leaving John Hammond and his friend with the house to themselves.
They played a fifty game, and smoked and talked till the stroke of midnight, by which time it seemed as if there were not another creature awake in the house. Maulevrier put out the lamps in the billiard-room, and then they went softly up the shadowy staircase, and parted in the gallery, the Earl going one way, and his friend the other.
The house was large and roomy, spread over a good deal of ground, Lady Maulevrier having insisted upon there being only two stories. The servants' rooms were all in a side wing, corresponding with those older buildings which had been given over to Steadman and his wife, and among the villagers of Grasmere enjoyed the reputation of being haunted. A wide panelled corridor extended from one end of the house to the other. It was lighted from the roof, and served as a gallery for the display of a small and choice collection of modern art, which her ladyship had acquired during her long residence at Fellside. Here, too, in Sheraton cabinets, were those treasures of old English china which Lady Maulevrier had inherited from past generations.
Her ladyship's rooms were situated at the southern end of this corridor, her bed-chamber being at the extreme end of the house, with windows commanding two magnificent views, one across the lake and the village of Grasmere to the green slopes of Fairfield, the other along the valley towards Rydal Water. This and the adjoining boudoir were the prettiest rooms in the house, and no one wondered that her ladyship should spend so much of her life in the luxurious seclusion of her own apartments.
John Hammond went to his room, which was on the same side of the house as her ladyship's; but he was in no disposition for sleep. He opened the casement, and stood looking out upon the moonlit lake and the quiet village, where one solitary light shone like a faint star in a cottage window, amidst that little cluster of houses by the old church, once known as Kirktown. Beyond the village rose gentle slopes, crowned with foliage, and above those wooded crests appeared the grand outline of the hills, surrounding and guarding Easedale's lovely valley, as the hills surrounded Jerusalem of old.
He looked at that delicious landscape with eyes that hardly saw its beauty. The image of a lovely face came between him and all the glory of earth and sky.
'I think she likes me,' he was saying to himself. 'There was a look in her eyes to-night that told me the time was come when----'
The thought died unfinished in his brain. Through the silent house, across the placid lake, there rang a wild, shrill cry that froze the blood in his veins, or seemed so to freeze it—a shriek of agony, and in a woman's voice. It rang out from an open window near his own. The sound seemed close to his ear.
Only for an instant did John Hammond stand motionless after hearing that unearthly shriek. In the next moment he rushed into the corridor, expecting to hear the sound repeated, to find himself face to face with some midnight robber, whose presence had caused that wild cry of alarm. But in the corridor all was silent as the grave. No open door suggested the entrance of an intruder. The dimly-burning lamps showed only the long empty gallery. He stood still for a few moments listening for voices, footsteps, the rustle of garments: but there was nothing.
Nothing? Yes, a groan, a long-drawn moaning sound, as of infinite pain. This time there was no doubt as to the direction from which the sound came. It came from Lady Maulevrier's room. The door was ajar, and he could see the faint light of the night-lamp within. That fearful cry had come from her ladyship's room. She was in peril or pain of some kind.
Convinced of this one fact, Mr. Hammond had not an instant's hesitation. He pushed open the door without compunction, and entered the room, prepared to behold some terrible scene.
But all was quiet as death itself. No midnight burglar had violated the sanctity of Lady Maulevrier's apartment. The soft, steady light of the night-lamp shone on the face of the sleeper. Yes, all was quiet in the room, but not in that sleeper's soul. The broad white brow was painfully contracted, the lips drawn down and distorted, the delicate hand, half hidden by the deep Valenciennes ruffle, clutched the coverlet with convulsive force. Sigh after sigh burst from the agitated breast. John Hammond gazed upon the sleeper in an agony of apprehension, uncertain what to do. Was this dreaming only; or was it some kind of seizure which called for medical aid? At her ladyship's age the idea of paralysis was not too improbable for belief. If this was a dream, then indeed the visions of Lady Maulevrier's head upon her bed were more terrible than the dreams of common mortals.
In any case Mr. Hammond felt that it was his duty to send some attendant to Lady Maulevrier, some member of the household who was familiar with her ladyship's habits, her own maid if that person could be unearthed easily. He knew that the servants slept in a separate wing; but he thought it more than likely that her ladyship's personal attendant occupied a room near her mistress.
He went back to the corridor and looked round him in doubt, for a moment or two.
Close against her ladyship's door there was a swing door, covered with red cloth, which seemed to communicate with the old part of the house. John Hammond pushed this door, and it yielded to his hand, revealing a lamp-lit passage, narrow, old-fashioned, and low. He thought it likely that Lady Maulevrier's maid might occupy a room in this half-deserted wing. As he pushed open the door he saw an elderly man coming towards him, with a candle in his hand, and with the appearance of having huddled on his clothes hastily.
'You heard that scream?' said Hammond.
'Yes. It was her ladyship, I suppose. Nightmare. She is subject to nightmare.'
'It is very dreadful. Her whole countenance was convulsed just now, when I went into her room to see what was wrong. I was almost afraid of a fit of some kind. Ought not her maid to go to her?'
'She wants no assistance,' the man answered, coolly. 'It was only a dream. It is not the first time I have been awakened by a shriek like that. It is a kind of nightmare, no doubt; and it passes off in a few minutes, and leaves her sleeping calmly.'
He went to her ladyship's door, pushed it open a little way, and looked in. 'Yes, she is sleeping as quietly as an infant,' he said, shutting the door softly as he spoke.
'I am very glad; but surely she ought to have her maid near her at night, if she is subject to those attacks.'
'It is no attack, I tell you. It is nothing but a dream,' answered Steadman impatiently.
'Yet you were frightened, just as I was, or you would not have got up and dressed,' said Hammond, looking at the man suspiciously.
He had heard of this old servant Steadman, who was supposed to enjoy more of her ladyship's confidence than any one else in the household; but he had never spoken to the man before that night.
'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'sGlobe. 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 institution,—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, nobody 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 gods 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 Fräulein Müller, who, up to this point, had been busily engaged with muffins 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 buttons, 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.
'Fine feathers make fine birds,' said Fräulein Müller. 'I should hardly have known you.'
'I wish you would always dress like that,' said Lesbia; 'you really look like a young lady;' and Mary danced about on the lawn, feeling sylph-like, and quite in love with her own elegance, when a sudden uplifting of canine voices in the distance had sent her flying to see what was the matter with the terrier pack.
In the kennel there was riot and confusion. Ahab was demolishing Angelina, Absalom had Agamemnon in a deadly grip. Dog-whip in hand, Mary rushed to the rescue, and laid about her, like the knights of old, utterly forgetful of her frock. She soon succeeded in restoring order, but the Madras muslin, the Breton lace had perished in the conflict. She left the kennel panting, and in rags and tatters, some of the muslin and lace hanging about her in strips a yard long, but the greater part remaining in the possession of the terriers, who had mauled and munched her finery to their hearts' content, while she was reading the Riot Act.
She went back to the house, bowed down by shame and confusion, and marched straight to the dowager's morning-room.
'Look what the terriers have done to me, grandmother,' she said, with a sob. 'It is all my own fault, of course. I ought not to have gone near them in that stupid muslin. Please forgive me for being so foolish. I am not fit to have pretty frocks.'
'I think, my dear, you can now have no doubt that the tailor gowns are fittest for you,' answered Lady Maulevrier, with crushing placidity. 'We have tried the experiment of dressing you like Lesbia, and you see it does not answer. Tell Kibble to throw your new gown in the rag-bag, and please let me hear no more about it.'
After this dismal failure Mary could not feel herself ill-used in having to wear tailor gowns all the year round. She was allowed cotton frocks for very warm weather, and she had pretty gowns for evening wear; but her usual attire was cloth or linsey woolsey, made by the local tailor. Sometimes Maulevrier ordered her a gown or a coat from his own man in Conduit Street, and then she felt herself smart and fashionable. And even the local tailor contrived to make her gowns prettily, having a great appreciation of her straight willowy figure, and deeming it a privilege to work for her, so that hitherto Mary had felt very well content with her cloth and linsey. But now that John Hammond so obviously admired Lesbia's delicate raiment, poor Mary began to think her woollen gowns odious.
After breakfast Mary and Maulevrier went straight off to the kennels. His lordship had numerous instructions to give on this last day, and his lieutenant had to receive and register his orders. Lesbia went to the garden with her book and with Fräulein—the inevitable Fräulein as Hammond thought her—in close attendance.
It was a lovely morning, sultry, summer-like, albeit September had just begun. The tennis lawn, which had been levelled on one side of the house, was surrounded on three sides by shrubberies planted forty years ago, in the beginning of Lady Maulevrier's widowhood. All loveliest trees grew there in perfection, sheltered by the mighty wall of the mountain, fed by the mists from the lake. Larch and mountain ash, and Lawsonian cyprus,—deodara and magnolia, arbutus, and silver broom, acacia and lilac, flourished here in that rich beauty which made every cottage garden in the happy district a little paradise; and here in a semi-circular recess at one end of the lawn were rustic chairs and tables and an umbrella tent. This was Lady Lesbia's chosen retreat on summer mornings, and a favourite place for afternoon tea.
Mr. Hammond followed the two ladies to their bower.
'This is to be my last morning,' he said, looking at Lesbia. 'Will you think me a great bore if I spend it with you?'
'We shall think it very nice of you,' answered Lesbia, without a vestige of emotion; 'especially if you will read to us.'
'I will do any thing to make myself useful. What shall I read?'
'Anything you like. What do you say to Tennyson?'
'That he is a noble poet, a teacher of all good; but too philosophical for my present mood. May I read you some of Heine's ballads, those songs which you sing so exquisitely, or rather some you do not sing, and which will be fresher to you. My German is far from perfect, but I am told it is passable, and Fräulein Müller can throw her scissors at me when my accent is too dreadful.'
'You speak German beautifully,' said Fräulein. 'I wonder where you learned it?'
'I have been a good deal in Germany, and I had a Hanoverian valet who was quite a gentleman, and spoke admirably. I think I learned more from him than from grammars or dictionaries. I'll go and fetch Heine.'
'What a very agreeable person Mr. Hammond is,' said Fräulein, when he was gone. 'We shall quite miss him.'
'Yes, I have no doubt we shall miss him,' said Lesbia, again without the faintest emotion.
The governess began to think that the ordeal of an agreeable young man's presence at Fellside had been passed in safety, and that her pupil was unscathed. She had kept a close watch on the two, as in duty bound. She knew that Hammond was in love with Lesbia; but she thought Lesbia was heart-whole.
Mr. Hammond came back with a shabby little book in his hand and established himself comfortably in one of the two Beaconsfield chairs.
He opened his book at that group of short poems called Heimkehr, and read here and there, as fancy led him. Sometimes the strain was a love-song, brief, passionate as the cry of a soul in pain; sometimes the verses were bitter and cynical; sometimes full of tenderest simplicity, telling of childhood, and youth and purity; sometimes dark with hidden meanings, grim, awful, cold with the chilling breath of the charnel-house. Sometimes Lesbia's heart beat a little faster as Mr. Hammond read, for it seemed as if it was he who was speaking to her, and not the dead poet.
An hour or more passed in this way. Fräulein Müller was charmed at hearing some of her favourite poems, asking now for this little bit, and anon for another, and expatiating upon the merits of German poets in general, and Heine in particular, in the pauses of the lecture. She was quite carried away by her delight in the poet, and was so entirely uplifted to the ideal world that, when a footman came with a message from Lady Maulevrier requesting her presence, she tripped gaily off at once, without a thought of danger in leaving those two together on the lawn. She had been a faithful watch-dog up to this point; but she was now lulled into a false sense of security by the idea that the time of peril was all but ended.
So she left them; but could she have looked back two minutes afterwards she would have perceived the unwisdom of that act.
No sooner had the Fräulein turned the corner of the shrubbery than Hammond laid aside his book and drew nearer Lesbia, who sat looking downward, with her eyes upon the delicate piece of fancy work which had occupied her fingers all the morning.
'Lesbia, this is my last day at Fellside, and you and I may never have a minute alone together again while I am here. Will you come for a little walk with me on the Fell? There is something I must say to you before I go.'
Lesbia's delicate cheek grew a shade more pale. Instinct told her what was coming, though never mortal man had spoken to her of love. Nor until now had Mr. Hammond ever addressed her by her Christian name without the ceremonious prefix. There was a deeper tone in his voice, a graver look in his eyes, than she had ever noticed before.
She rose, and took up her sunshade, and went with him meekly through the cultivated shrubbery of ornamental timber to the rougher pathway that wound through a copse of Scotch fir, which formed the outer boundary of Lady Maulevrier's domain. Beyond the fir trees rose the grassy slope of the hill, on the brow of which sheep were feeding. Deep down in the hollow below the lawns and shrubberries of Fellside the placid bosom of the lake shone like an emerald floor in the sunlight, reflecting the verdure of the hill, and the white sheep dotted about here and there.
There was not a breath in the air around them as those two sauntered slowly side by side in the pine wood, not a cloud in the dazzling blue sky above; and for a little time they too were silent, as if bound by a spell which neither dared to break. Then at last Hammond spoke.
'Lesbia, you know that I love you,' he began, in his low, grave voice, tremulous with feeling. 'No words I can say to-day can tell you of my love more plainly than my heart has been telling you in every hour of this happy, happy time that you and I have spent together. I love you as I never hoped to love, fervently, completely, believing that the perfection of earthly bliss will be mine if I can but win you. Dearest, is there such a sweet hope for me; are you indeed my own, as I am yours, heart and soul, and mind and being, till the last throb of life in this poor clay?'
He tried to take her hand, but she drew herself away from him with a frightened look. She was very pale, and there was infinite distress in the dark violet eyes, which looked entreatingly, deprecatingly at her lover.
'I dare not answer as you would like me to answer,' she faltered, after a painful pause. 'I am not my own mistress. My grandmother has brought me up, devoted herself to me almost, and she has her own views, her own plans. I dare not frustrate them!'
'She would like to marry you to a man of rank and fortune—a man who will choose you, perhaps, because other people admire you, rather than because he himself loves you as you ought to be loved; who will choose you because you are altogether the best and most perfect thing of your year; just as he would buy a yearling at Newmarket or Doncaster. Her ladyship means you to make a great alliance—coronets, not hearts, are the counters for her game; but, Lesbia, would you, in the bloom and freshness of youth—you with the pulses of youth throbbing at your heart—lend yourself to the calculations of age which has lived its life and forgotten the very meaning of love? Would you submit to be played as a card in the game of a dowager's ambition? Trust me, dearest, in the crisis of a woman's life there is one only counsellor she should listen to, and that counsellor is her own heart. If you love me—as I dare to hope you do—trust in me, hold by me, and leave the rest to Heaven. I know that I can make your life happy.'
'You frighten me by your impetuosity,' said Lesbia. 'Surely you forget how short a time we have known each other.'
'An age. All my life before the day I saw you is a dead, dull blank as compared with the magical hours I have spent with you.'
'I do not even know who and what you are.'
'First, I am a gentleman, or I should not be your brother's friend. A poor gentleman, if you like, with only my own right arm to hew my pathway through the wood of life to the temple of fortune; but trust me, only trust me, Lesbia, and I will so hew my path as to reach that temple. Look at me, love. Do I look like a man born to fail?'
She looked up at him shyly, with eyes that were dim with tears. He looked like a demi-god, tall, straight as the pine trunks amongst which he was standing, a frame formed for strength and activity, a face instinct with mental power, dark eyes that glowed with the fire of intellect and passion. The sunlight gave an almost unearthly radiance to the clear dark of his complexion, the curly brown hair cut close to the finely shaped head, the broad brow and boldly modelled features.
Lesbia felt in her heart that such a man must be destined for success, born to be a conqueror in all strifes, a victor upon every field.
'Have I the thews and sinews of a man doomed to be beaten in the battle?' he asked her. 'No, dearest; Heaven meant me to succeed; and with you to fight for I shall not be beaten by adverse fortune. Can you not trust Providence and me?'
'I cannot disobey my grandmother. If she will consent----'
'She will not consent. You must defy Lady Maulevrier, Lesbia, if you mean to reward my love. But I will promise you this much, darling, that if you will be my wife—with your brother's consent—which I am sure of before I ask for it, within one year of our marriage I will find means of reconciling her ladyship to the match, and winning her entire forgiveness for you and me.'
'You are talking of impossibilities,' said Lesbia, frowning. 'Why do you talk to me as if I were a child? I know hardly anything of the world, but I do know the woman who has reared and educated me. My grandmother would never forgive me if I married a poor man. I should be an outcast.'
'We would be outcasts together—happy outcasts. Besides, we should not always be poor. I tell you I am predestined to conquer fate.'
'But we should have to begin from the beginning.'
'Yes, we should have to begin from the beginning, as Adam and Eve did when they left Paradise.'
'We are not told in the Bible that they had any happiness after that. It seems to have been all trouble and weariness, and toil and death, after the angel with the flaming sword drove them out of Eden.'
'They were together, and they must have been happy. Oh, Lesbia, if you do not feel that you can face poverty and the world's contempt by my side, and for my sake, you do not love me. Love never calculates so nicely; love never fears the future; and yet you do love me, Lesbia,' he said, trying to fold her in his arms; but again she drew herself away from him—this time with a look almost of horror—and stood facing him, clinging to one of the pine trunks, like a scared wood-nymph.
'You have no right to say that,' she said.
'I have the divine right of my own deep love—of heart which cries out to heart. Do you think there is no magnetic power in true love which can divine the answering love in another? Lesbia, call me an insolent coxcomb if you like, but I know you love me, and that you and I may be utterly happy together. Oh, why—why do you shrink from me, my beloved; why withhold yourself from my arms! Oh, love, let me hold you to my heart—let me seal our betrothal with a kiss!'
'Betrothal—no, no; not for the world,' cried Lesbia. 'Lady Maulevrier would cast me off for ever; she would curse me.'
'What would the curse of an ambitious woman weigh against my love? And I tell you that her anger would be only a passing tempest. She would forgive you.'
'Never—you don't know her.'
'I tell you she would forgive you, and all would be well with us before we had been married a year. Why cannot you believe me, Lesbia?'
'Because I cannot believe impossibilities, even from your lips,' she answered sullenly.
She stood before him with downcast eyes, the tears streaming down her pale cheeks, exquisitively lovely in her agitation and sorrow. Yes, she did love him; her heart was beating passionately; she was longing to throw herself on his breast, to be folded upon that manly heart, in trust in that brave, bright look which seemed to defy fortune. Yes, he was a man born to conquer; he was handsome, intellectual, powerful in all mental and physical gifts. A man of men. But he was, by his own admission, a very obscure and insignificant person, and he had no money. Life with him meant a long fight with adverse circumstances; life for his wife must mean patience, submission, long waiting upon destiny, and perhaps with old age and grey hairs the tardy turning of Fortune's wheel. And was she for this to resign the kingdom that had been promised to her, the giddy heights which she was born to scale, the triumphs and delights and victories of the great world? Yes, Lesbia loved this fortuneless knight; but she loved herself and her prospects of promotion still better.
'Oh, Lesbia, can you not be brave for my sake—trustful for my sake? God will be good to us if we are true to each other.'
'God will not be good to me if I disobey my grandmother. I owe her too much; ingratitude in me would be doubly base. I will speak to her. I will tell her all you have said, and if she gives me the faintest encouragement----'
'She will not; that is a foregone conclusion. Tell her all, if you like; but let us be prepared for the answer. When she denies the right of your heart to choose its own mate, then rise up in the might of your womanhood and defy her. Tell her, "I love him, and be he rich or poor, I will share his fate;" tell her boldly, bravely, nobly, as a true woman should; and if she be adamant still, proclaim your right to disobey her worldly wisdom rather than the voice of your own heart. And then come to me, darling, and be my own, and the world which you and I will face together shall not be a bad world. I will answer for that. No trouble shall come near you. No humiliation shall ever touch you. Only believe in me.'
'I can believe in you, but not in the impossible,' answered Lesbia, with measured accents.
The voice was silver-sweet, but passing cold. Just then there was a rustling among the pine branches, and Lesbia looked round with a startled air.
'Is there any one listening?' she exclaimed. 'What was that?'
'Only the breath of heaven. Oh, Lesbia, if you were but a little less wise, a little more trustful. Do not be a dumb idol. Say that you love me, or do not love me. If you can look me in the face and say the last, I will leave you without another word. I will take my sentence and go.'
But this was just what Lesbia could not do. She could not deny her love; and yet she could not sacrifice all things for her love. She lifted the heavy lids which veiled those lovely eyes, and looked up at him imploringly.
'Give me time to breathe, time to think,' she said.
'And then will you answer me plainly, truthfully, without a shadow of reserve, remembering that the fate of two lives hangs on your words.'
'I will.'
'Let it be so, then. I'll go for a ramble over the hills, and return in time for afternoon tea. I shall look for you on the tennis lawn at half-past four.'
He took her in his arms, and this time she yielded herself to him, and the beautiful head rested for a few moments upon his breast, and the soft eyes looked up at him in confiding fondness. He bent and kissed her once only, but a kiss that meant for life and death. In the next moment he was gone, leaving her alone among the pine trees.