Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  ‘Ah! we all have our trials, rich and poor,’ sighed the woman, who desired nothing better than to be allowed to unbosom her woes to the grand looking lady in the fur-bordered cloth pelisse, with beautiful dark hair piled up in clustering masses above a broad white forehead, and slender white hands on which diamonds flashed and glittered in the firelight, an unaccustomed figure by that rustic hearth.

  ‘We all have our trials — high and low.’

  ‘That reminds me,’ said Lady Maulevrier, looking up at her, ‘your husband said you were in trouble. What did that mean?’

  ‘Sickness in the house, my lady. A brother of mine that went to America to make his fortune, and seemed to be doing so well for the first five or six years, and wrote home such beautiful letters, and then left off writing all at once, and we made sure as he was dead, and never got a word from him for ten years, and just three weeks ago he drops in upon us as we was sitting over our tea between the lights, looking as white as a ghost. I gave a shriek when I saw him, for I was regular scared out of my senses. “Robert’s ghost!” I cried; but it was Robert himself, come home to us to die. And he’s lying upstairs now, with so little life in him that I expect every breath to be his last.’

  ‘What is his complaint?’

  ‘Apathy, my lady. Dear, dear, that’s not it. I never do remember the doctor’s foreign names.’

  ‘Atrophy,’ perhaps.

  ‘Yes, my lady, that was it. Happen such crack-jaw words come easy to a scholar like your ladyship.’

  ‘Does the doctor give no hope?’

  ‘Well, no, my lady. He don’t go so far as to say there’s no hope, though Robert has been badly so long. It all depends, he says, upon the rallying power of the constitution. The lungs are not gone, and the heart is not diseased. If there’s rallying power, Robert will come round, and if there isn’t he’ll sink. But the doctor says nature will have to make an effort. But I have my own idea about the case,’ added the landlady, with a sigh.

  ‘What is your idea?’

  ‘That our Robert was marked for death when he came into this house, and that he meant what he said when he spoke of coming home to die. Things had gone against him for the last ten years in America. He married and took his wife out to a farm in the Bush, and thought to make a good thing out of farming with the bit of brass he’d saved at heeam. But America isn’t Gert Langdale, you see, my lady, and his knowledge stood him in no stead in the Bush; and first he lost his money, and he fashed himself terrible about that, and then he lost a child or two, and then he lost his wife, and he came back to us a broken-hearted man, with no wish to live. The doctor may call it atrophy, but I will call it what the Scripture calls it, a broken and a wounded spirit.’

  ‘Who is your doctor?’

  ‘Mr. Evans, of Ambleside.’

  ‘That little half-blind old man!’ exclaimed her ladyship. ‘Surely you have no confidence in him?’

  ‘Not much, my lady. But I don’t believe all the doctors in London could do anything for Robert. Good nursing will bring him round if anything can; and he gets that, I can assure your ladyship. He’s my only brother, the only kith and kin that’s left to me, and he and I were gay fond of each other when he was young. You may be sure I don’t spare any trouble, and my good man thinks the best of his larder or his celler hardly good enough for Robert.’

  ‘I am sure you are kind good people,’ replied her ladyship gently; ‘but I should have thought Mr. Horton, of Grasmere, could have done more than old Evans. However, you know best. I hope his lordship is not going to add to your cares by being laid up here, but he looked very ill this evening.’

  ‘He did, my lady, mortal bad.’

  ‘However, we must hope for the best. Steadman is a splendid servant in illness. He nursed my father for years. Will you tell him to come to me, if you please? I want to hear what he thinks of his lordship, and to discuss the chances of our getting home early to-morrow.’

  The landlady retired, and summoned Mr. Steadman, who was enjoying his modest glass of grog in front of the kitchen fire. He had taught himself to dispense with the consolations of tobacco, lest he should at any time make himself obnoxious to her ladyship.

  Steadman was closeted with Lady Maulevrier for the next half-hour, during which his lordship’s condition was gravely discussed. When he left the sitting-room he told the landlord to be sure and feed the post-horses well, and make them comfortable for the night, so that they might be ready for the drive to Fellside early next morning.

  ‘Do you think his lordship will be well enough to travel?’ asked the landlord.

  ‘He has made up his mind to get home — ill or well,’ answered Steadman. ‘He has wasted about a week by his dawdling ways on the road; and now he’s in a fever to get to Fellside.’

  * * *

  CHAPTER IV.

  THE LAST STAGE.

  The post-horses — which had been well fed, but accommodated somewhat poorly in stable and barn — were quite ready to go on next morning; but Lord Maulevrier was not able to leave his room, where her ladyship remained in close attendance upon him. The hills and valleys were white with snow, but there was none falling, and Mr. Evans, the elderly surgeon from Ambleside, rode over to Great Langdale on his elderly cob to look at Robert Haswell, and was called in to see Lord Maulevrier. Her ladyship had spoken lightly of his skill on the previous evening, but any doctor is better than none, so this feeble little personage was allowed to feel his lordship’s pulse, and look at his lordship’s tongue.

  His opinion, never too decidedly given, was a little more hazy than usual on this occasion, perhaps because of a certain awfulness, to unaccustomed eyes, in Lady Maulevrier’s proud bearing. He said that his lordship was low, very low, and that the pulse was more irregular than he liked, but he committed himself no further than this, and went away, promising to send such pills and potions as were appropriate to the patient’s condition.

  A boy rode the same pony over to Langdale later in the afternoon with the promised medicines.

  Throughout the short winter day, which seemed terribly long in the stillness and solitude of Great Langdale, Lady Maulevrier kept watch in the sick-room, Steadman going in and out in constant attendance upon his master — save for one half-hour only, which her ladyship passed in the parlour below, in conversation with the landlady, a very serious conversation, as indicated by Mrs. Smithson’s grave and somewhat troubled looks when she left her ladyship; but a good deal of her trouble may have been caused by her anxiety about her brother, who was pronounced by the doctor to be ‘much the same.’

  At eleven o’clock that night a mounted messenger was sent off to Ambleside in hot haste to fetch Mr. Evans, who came to the inn to find Lady Maulevrier kneeling beside her husband’s bed, while Steadman stood with a troubled countenance at a respectful distance.

  The room was dimly lighted by a pair of candles burning on a table near the window, and at some distance from the old four-post bedstead, shaded by dark moreen curtains. The surgeon looked round the room, and then fumbled in his pockets for his spectacles, without the aid of which the outside world presented itself to him under a blurred and uncertain aspect.

  He put on his spectacles, and moved towards the bed; but the first glance in that direction showed him what had happened. The outline of the rigid figure under the coverlet looked like a sculptured effigy upon a tomb. A sheet was drawn over the face of death.

  ‘You are too late to be of any use, Mr. Evans,’ murmured Steadman, laying his hand upon the doctor’s sleeve and drawing him away towards the door.

  They went softly on to the landing, off which opened the door of that other sick-room where the landlady’s brother was lying.

  ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘A quarter of an hour after the messenger rode off to fetch you,’ answered Steadman. ‘His lordship lay all the afternoon in a heavy sleep, and we thought he was going on well; but after dark there was a difficulty in his breathing which alarmed her ladyship, and she insi
sted upon you being sent for. The messenger had hardly been gone a quarter of an hour when his lordship woke suddenly, muttered to himself in a curious way, gave just one long drawn sigh, and — and all was over. It was a terrible shock for her ladyship.’

  ‘Indeed it must have been,’ murmured the village doctor. ‘It is a great surprise to me. I knew Lord Maulevrier was low, very low, the pulse feeble and intermittent; but I had no fear of anything of this kind. It is very sudden.’

  ‘Yes, it is awfully sudden,’ said Steadman, and then he murmured in the doctor’s ear, ‘You will give the necessary certificate, I hope, with as little trouble to her ladyship as possible. This is a dreadful blow, and she — —’

  ‘She shall not be troubled. The body will be removed to-morrow, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes. He must be buried from his own house. I sent a second messenger to Ambleside for the undertaker. He will be here very soon, no doubt, and if the shell is ready by noon to-morrow, the body can be removed then. I have arranged to get her ladyship away to-night.’

  ‘So late? After midnight?’

  ‘Why not? She cannot stay in this small house — so near the dead. There is a moon, and there is no snow falling, and we are within seven miles of Fellside.’

  The doctor had nothing further to say against the arrangement, although such a drive seemed to him a somewhat wild and reckless proceeding. Mr. Steadman’s grave, self-possessed manner answered all doubts. Mr. Evans filled in the certificate for the undertaker, drank a glass of hot brandy and water, and remounted his nag, in nowise relishing his midnight ride, but consoling himself with the reflection that he would be handsomely paid for his trouble.

  An hour later Lady Maulevrier’s travelling carriage stood ready in the stable yard, in the deep shadow of wall and gables. It was at Steadman’s order that the carriage waited for her ladyship at an obscure side door, rather than in front of the inn. An east wind was blowing keenly along the mountain road, and the careful Steadman was anxious his mistress should not be exposed to that chilly blast.

  There was some delay, and the four horses jingled their bits impatiently, and then the door of the inn opened, a feeble light gleamed in the narrow passage within, Steadman stood ready to assist her ladyship, there was a bustle, a confusion of dark figures on the threshold, a huddled mass of cloaks and fur wraps was lifted into the carriage, the door was clapped to, the horses went clattering out of the yard, turned sharply into the snowy road, and started at a swinging pace towards the dark sullen bulk of Loughrigg Fell.

  The moon was shining upon Elterwater in the valley yonder — the mountain ridges, the deep gorges below those sullen heights, looked back where the shadow of night enfolded them, but all along the snow-white road the silver light shone full and clear, and the mountain way looked like a path through fairyland.

  * * *

  CHAPTER V.

  FORTY YEARS AFTER.

  ‘What a horrid day!’ said Lady Mary, throwing down her book with a yawn, and looking out of the deep bay window into a world of mountain and lake which was clouded over by a dense veil of rain and dull grey mist; such rain as one sees only in a lake district, a curtain of gloom which shuts off sky and distance, and narrows the world to one solitary dwelling, suspended amidst cloud and water, like another ark in a new deluge.

  Rain — such rain as makes out-of-door exercise impossible — was always an affliction to Lady Mary Haselden. Her delight was in open air and sunshine — fishing in the lake and rivers — sitting in some sheltered hollow of the hills more fitting for an eagle’s nest than for the occupation of a young lady, trying to paint those ever-varying, unpaintable mountain peaks, which change their hues with every change of the sky — swimming, riding, roving far and wide over hill and heather — pleasures all more or less masculine in their nature, and which were a subject of regret with Lady Maulevrier.

  Lady Lesbia was of a different temper. She loved ease and elegance, the gracious luxuries of life. She loved art and music, but not to labour hard at either. She played and sang a little — excellently within that narrow compass which she had allotted to herself — played Mendelssohn’s ‘Lieder’ with finished touch and faultless phrasing, sang Heine’s ballads with consummate expression. She painted not at all. Why should anyone draw or paint indifferently, she asked, when Providence has furnished the world with so many great painters in the past and present? She could not understand Mary’s ardent desire to do the thing herself, — to be able with her own pencil and her own brush to reproduce the lakes and valleys, the wild brown hills she loved so passionately. Lesbia did not care two straws for the lovely lake district amidst which she had been reared, — every pike and force, every beck and gill whereof was distinctly dear to her younger sister. She thought it a very hard thing to have spent so much of her life at Fellside, a trial that would have hardly been endurable if it were not for grandmother. Grandmother and Lesbia adored each other. Lesbia was the one person for whom Lady Maulevrier’s stateliness was subjugated by perfect love. To all the rest of the world the Countess was marble, but to Lesbia she was wax. Lesbia could mould her as she pleased; but happily Lesbia was not the kind of young person to take advantage of this privilege; she was thoroughly ductile or docile, and had no desire, at present, which ran counter to her grandmother.

  Lesbia was a beauty. In her nineteenth year she was a curious reproduction in face and figure, expression and carriage, of that Lady Diana Angersthorpe who five and forty years ago fluttered the dove-cots of St. James’s and Mayfair by her brilliant beauty and her keen intelligence. There in the panelled drawing-room at Fellside hung Harlow’s portrait of Lady Diana in her zenith, in a short-waisted, white satin frock, with large puffed gauze sleeves, through which the perfect arm showed dimly. Standing under that picture Lady Lesbia looked as if she had stepped out of the canvas. She was to be painted by Millais next year. Lady Maulevrier said, when she had been introduced, and society was beginning to talk about her: for Lady Maulevrier made up her mind five or six years ago that Lesbia should be the reigning beauty of her season. To this end she had educated and trained her, furnishing her with all those graces best calculated to please and astonish society. She was too clever a woman not to discover Lesbia’s shallowness and lack of all great gifts, save that one peerless dower of perfect beauty. She knew exactly what Lesbia could be trained to do; and to this end Lesbia had been educated; and to this end Lady Maulevrier brought down to Fellside the most accomplished of Hanoverian governesses, who had learned French in Paris, and had toiled in the educational mill with profit to herself and her pupils for a quarter of a century. To this lady the Countess entrusted the education of her granddaughters’ minds, while for their physical training she provided another teacher in the person of a clever little Parisian dancing mistress, who had set up at the West-End of London as a teacher of dancing and calisthenics, and had utterly failed to find pupils enough to pay her rent and keep her modest pot-au-feu going. Mademoiselle Thiebart was very glad to exchange the uncertainties of a first floor in North Audley Street for the comfort and security of Fellside Manor, with a salary of one hundred and fifty pounds a year.

  Both Fräulein and Mademoiselle had been quick to discover that Lady Lesbia was the apple of her grandmother’s eye, while Lady Mary was comparatively an outsider.

  So it came about that Mary’s education was in somewise a mere picking-up of the crumbs which fell from Lesbia’s table, and that she was allowed in a general way to run wild. She was much quicker at any intellectual exercise than Lesbia. She learned the lessons that were given her at railroad speed, and rattled off her exercises with a slap-dash penmanship which horrified the neat and niggling Fräulein, and then rushed off to the lake or mountain, and by this means grew browner and browner, and more indelibly freckled day by day, thus widening the gulf between herself and her beauty sister.

  But it is not to be supposed that because Lesbia was beautiful, Mary was plain. This is very far from the truth. Mary had splendid hazel eyes, with
a dancing light in them when she smiled, ruddy auburn hair, white teeth, a deeply-dimpled chin, and a vivacity and archness of expression, which served only in her present state of tutelage for the subjugation of old women and shepherd boys. Mary had been taught to believe that her chances of future promotion were of the smallest; that nobody would ever talk of her, or think of her by-and-by when she in her turn would make her appearance in London society, and that it would be a very happy thing for her if she were so fortunate as to attract the attention of a fashionable physician, a Canon of Westminster or St. Paul’s, or a barrister in good practice.

  Mary turned up her pert little nose at this humdrum lot.

  ‘I would much rather spend all my life among these dear hills than marry a nobody in London,’ she said, fearless of that grand old lady at whose frown so many people shivered. ‘If you don’t think people will like me and admire me — a little — you had better save yourself the trouble of taking me to London. I don’t want to play second fiddle to my sister.’

  ‘You are a very impertinent person, and deserve to be taken at your word,’ replied my lady, scowling at her; ‘but I have no doubt before you are twenty you will tell another story.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Mary, now just turned seventeen, ‘then I am not to come out till I am twenty.’

  ‘That will be soon enough,’ answered the Countess. ‘It will take you as long to get rid of those odious freckles. And no doubt by that time Lesbia will have made a brilliant marriage.’

  And now on this rainy July morning these two girls, neither of whom had any serious employment for her life, or any serious purpose in living, wasted the hours, each in her own fashion.

  Lesbia reclined upon a cushioned seat in the deep embrasure of a Tudor window, her pose perfection — it was one of many such attitudes which Mademoiselle had taught her, and which by assiduous training had become a second nature. Poor Mademoiselle, having finished her mission and taught Lesbia all she could teach, had now departed to a new and far less luxurious situation in a finishing school at Passy; but Fräulein Müller was still retained, as watch-dog and duenna.