Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  ‘I shall leave it, sir, with all due respect.’

  A frightful change came over the old man’s face at this determined refusal. His eyes glowered at Lord Hartfield under the heavy scowling brows; his bloodless lips worked convulsively.

  ‘Do you take me for a thief?’ he exclaimed. ‘Are you afraid to touch my gold — that gold for which men and women sell their souls, blast their lives with shame, and pain, and dishonour, all the world over? Do you stand aloof from it — refuse to touch it, as if it were infected? And you, too, girl! Have you no sense? Are you an idiot?’

  ‘I can do nothing against my husband’s wish,’ Mary answered, quietly; ‘and, indeed, there is no need for us to take your money. We are rich without it. Please leave that chest to a hospital. It will be ever so much better than giving it to us.’

  ‘You told me you were going to marry a poor man?’

  ‘I know. But he cheated me, and turned out to be a rich man. He was a horrid impostor,’ said Mary, drawing closer to her husband, and smiling up at him.

  The old man flung down the lid of his strong box, which shut with a sonorous clang. He locked it, and put the key in his pocket.

  ‘I have done with you.’ he said. ‘You can go your ways, both of you. Fools, fools, fools! The world is peopled with rogues and fools; and, by heaven, I would rather have to do with the rogues!’

  He flung himself into an arm-chair, one of the few objects of furniture in the room, and left them to find their way back alone.

  ‘Good-night, sir,’ said Lord Hartfield; but the old man made no reply. He sat frowning sullenly.

  ‘Good-night, sir,’ said Mary, in her gentle voice, breathing infinite pity.

  ‘Good-night, child,’ he growled. ‘I am sorry you have married an ass.’

  This was more than Mary could stand, and she was about to reply with some acrimony, when her husband put his hand upon her lips and hurried her away.

  On the landing they met Mrs. Steadman, a stout, commonplace person, who always had the same half-frightened look, as of one who lived in the shadow of an abiding terror, obviously cowed and brow-beaten by her husband, according to the Fellside household.

  At sight of Lord Hartfield and his wife she looked a little more frightened than usual.

  ‘Goodness gracious, Lady Mary! how ever did you come here?’ she gasped, not yet having quite realised the fact that Mary had been promoted.

  ‘We came to please Steadman’s uncle — he brought us in here,’ Mary answered, quietly.

  ‘But where did you find him?’

  ‘In the corridor — just by her ladyship’s room.’

  ‘Then he must have taken the key out of Steadman’s pocket, or Steadman must have left it about somewhere,’ muttered Mrs. Steadman, as if explaining the matter to herself, rather than to Mary. ‘My poor husband is not the man he was. And so you met him in the corridor, and he brought you in here. Poor old gentleman! He gets madder and madder every day.’

  ‘There is method in his madness,’ said Lord Hartfield. ‘He talked very much like sanity just now. Has your husband had the charge of him long?’

  Mrs. Steadman answered somewhat confusedly.

  ‘A goodish time, sir. I can’t quite exactly say — time passes so quiet in a place like this. One hardly keeps count of the years.’

  ‘Forty years, perhaps?’

  Mrs. Steadman blenched under Lord Hartfield’s steadfast look — a look which questioned more searchingly than his words.

  ‘Forty years,’ she repeated, with a faint laugh. ‘Oh, dear no, sir, not a quarter as long. It isn’t so many years, after all, since Steadman’s poor old uncle went a little queer in his head; and Steadman, having such a quiet home here, and plenty of spare room, made bold to ask her ladyship if he might give the poor old man a home, where he would be in nobody’s way.’

  ‘And the poor old man seems to have a very luxurious home,’ answered Lord Hartfield. ‘Pray when and where did Mr. Steadman’s uncle learn to smoke a hookah?’

  Simple as the question was, it proved too much for Mrs. Steadman. She only shook her head, and faltered some unintelligible reply.

  ‘Where is your husband?’ asked Lord Hartfield; ‘I should like to have a little talk with him, if he is disengaged.’

  ‘He is not very well, my lord,’ answered Mrs. Steadman. ‘He has been ailing off and on for the last six months, but I couldn’t get him to see the doctor, or to tell her ladyship that he was in bad health. And about a week ago he broke down altogether, and fell into a kind of drowsy state. He keeps about, and he does his work pretty much the same as usual, but I can see that it’s too much for him. If you like to come downstairs I can let you through the lower door into the hall; and if he should have woke up since I have left him he’ll be at your lordship’s service. But I’d rather not wake him out of his sleep.’

  ‘There is no occasion. What I have to say will keep till to-morrow.’

  Lord Hartfield and his wife followed Mrs. Steadman downstairs to the low dark hall, where an old eight-day clock ticked with hoarse and solemn beat, and a fine stag’s head over each doorway gave evidence of some former Haselden’s sporting tastes. The door of a small panelled parlour stood half-way open; and within the room Lord Hartfield saw James Steadman asleep in an arm-chair by the fire, which burned as brightly as if it had been Christmas time.

  ‘He was so chilly and shivery this afternoon that I was obliged to light a fire,’ said Mrs. Steadman.

  ‘He seems to be sleeping heavily,’ said Hartfield. ‘Don’t awaken him. I’ll see him to-morrow morning before I go to London.’

  ‘He sleeps half the day just as heavy as that, my lord,’ said the wife, with a troubled air. ‘I don’t think it can be right.’

  ‘I don’t think so either,’ answered Lord Hartfield. ‘You had better call in the doctor.’

  ‘I will, my lord, to-morrow morning. James will be angry with me, I daresay; but I must take upon myself to do it without his leave.’

  She led the way along a passage corresponding with the one above, and unlocked a door opening into a lobby near the billiard-room.

  ‘Come, Molly, see if you can beat me at a fifty game,’ said Lord Hartfield, with the air of a man who wants to shake off the impression of some dominant idea.

  ‘Of course you will annihilate me, but it will be a relief to play,’ answered Mary. ‘That strange old man has given me a shock. Everything about his surroundings is so different from what I expected. And how could an uncle of Steadman’s come by all that money — and those jewels — if they were jewels, and not bits of glass which the poor old thing has chopped up, in order to delude himself with an imaginary treasure?’

  ‘I do not think they are bits of glass, Molly.’

  ‘They sparkled tremendously — almost as much as my — our — the family diamonds,’ said Mary, puzzled how to describe that property which she held in right of her position as countess regnant; ‘but if they are real jewels, and all those rouleaux real money, how could Steadman’s uncle become possessed of such wealth?’

  ‘How, indeed?’ said Lord Hartfield, choosing his cue

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXXVIII.

  ON BOARD THE ‘CAYMAN.’

  Goodwood had come and gone, a brief bright season of loss and gain, fine gowns, flirtation, lobster en mayonaise, champagne, sunshine, dust, glare, babble of many voices, successes, failures, triumphs, humiliations. A very pretty picture to contemplate from the outside, this little world in holiday clothes, framed in greenery! but just on the Brocken, where the nicest girl among the dancers had the unpleasant peculiarity of dropping a little red mouse out of her mouth — so too here under different forms there were red mice dropping about among the company. Here a hint of coming insolvency; there a whisper of a threatened divorce suit, staved off for a while, compromises, family secrets, little difficulties everywhere; betrothed couples smilingly accepting congratulations, who should never have been affianced were truth and honour the ru
le of life; forsaken wives pretending to think their husbands models of fidelity; jovial creatures with ruin staring in their faces; households divided and shamming union; almost everybody living above his or her means; and the knowledge that nobody is any better or any happier than his neighbour society’s only fountain of consolation.

  Lady Lesbia’s gowns and parasols had been admired, her engagement had furnished an infinity of gossip, and the fact of Montesma’s constant attendance upon her had given zest to the situation, just that flavour of peril and fatality which the soul of society loveth.

  ‘Is she going to marry them both?’ asked an ancient dowager of the ever-young type.

  ‘No, dear Lady Sevenoaks, she can only marry one, don’t you know; but the other is nice to go about with; and I believe it is the other she really likes.’

  ‘It is always the other that a woman likes,’ answered the dowager; ‘I am madly in love with this Peruvian — no, I think you said Cuban — myself. I wish some good-natured creature would present him to me. If you know anybody who knows him, tell them to bring him to my next afternoon — Saturday. But why does — chose — machin — Smithson allow such a handsome hanger-on? After marriage I could understand that he might not be able to help himself; but before marriage a man generally has some kind of authority.’

  The world wondered a little, just as Lady Sevenoaks wondered, at Smithson’s complacency in allowing a man so attractive as Montesma to be so much in the society of his future wife, yet even the censorious could but admit that the Cuban’s manner offered no ground for offence. He came to Goodwood ‘on his own hook,’ as society put it: and every man who wears a decent coat and is not a welsher has a right to enjoy the prettiest race-course in England. He spent a considerable part of the day in Lesbia’s company; but since she was the centre of a little crowd all the time, there could be no offence in this. He was a stranger, knowing very few people, and having nothing to do but to amuse himself. Smithson was an old and familiar friend, and was in a measure bound to give him hospitality.

  Mr. Smithson had recognised that obligation, but in a somewhat sparing manner. There were a dozen unoccupied bedchambers in the Park Lane Renaissance villa; but Smithson did not invite his Cuban acquaintance to shift his quarters from the Bristol to Park Lane. He was civil to Don Gomez: but anyone who had taken the trouble to watch and study the conduct and social relations of these two men would have seen that his civility was a forced civility, and that he endured the Spaniard’s society under constraint of some kind.

  And now all the world was flocking to Cowes for the regatta, and Lesbia and her chaperon were established on board Mr. Smithson’s yacht, the Cayman; and the captain of the Cayman and all her crew were delivered over to Lesbia to be her slaves and to obey her lightest breath. The Cayman was to lie at anchor off Cowes for the regatta week; and then she was to sail for Hyde, and lie at anchor there for another regatta week; and she was to be a floating hotel for Lady Lesbia so long as the young lady would condescend to occupy her.

  The captain was an altogether exceptional captain, and the crew were a picked crew, ruddy faced, sandy whiskered for the most part, Englishmen all, honest, hardy fellows from between the Nore and the Wash, talking in an honest provincial patois, dashed with sea slang. They were the very pink and pattern of cleanliness, and the Cayman herself from stem to stern was dazzling and spotless to an almost painful degree.

  Not content with the existing arrangements of the yacht, which were at once elegant and luxurious, Mr. Smithson had sent down a Bond Street upholsterer to refit the saloon and Lady Lesbia’s cabin. The dark velvet and morocco which suited a masculine occupant would not have harmonised with girlhood and beauty; and Mr. Smithson’s saloon, as originally designed, had something of the air of a tabagie. The Bond Street man stripped away all the velvet and morocco, plucked up the Turkey carpet, draped the scuttle-ports with pale yellow cretonne garnished with orange pompons, subdued the glare of the skylight by a blind of oriental silk, covered the divans with Persian saddlebags, the floor with a delicate Indian matting, and furnished the saloon with all that was most feminine in the way of bamboo chairs and tea-tables, Japanese screens and fans of gorgeous colouring. Here and there against the fluted yellow drapery he fastened a large Rhodes plate; and the thing was done. Lady Lesbia’s cabin was all bamboo and embroidered India muslin. An oval glass, framed in Dresden biscuit, adorned the side, a large white bearskin covered the floor. The berth was pretty enough for the cradle of a duchess’s first baby. Even Lesbia, spoiled by much indulgence and unlimited credit, gave a little cry of pleasure at sight of the nest that had been made ready for her.

  ‘Really, Mr. Smithson is immensely kind!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Smithson is always kind,’ answered Lady Kirkbank, ‘and you don’t half enough appreciate him. He has given me his very own cabin — such a dear little den! There are his cigar boxes and everything lovely on the shelves, and his own particular dressing-case put open for me to use — all the backs of all the brushes repoussé silver, and all the scent-bottles filled expressly for me. If the yacht would only stand quite still, I should think it more delicious than the best house I ever stayed in: only I don’t altogether enjoy that little way it has of gurgling up and down perpetually.’

  Mr. Smithson’s chief butler, a German Swiss, and a treasure of intelligence, had come down to take the domestic arrangements of the yacht into his control. The Park Lane chef was also on board, Mr. Smithson’s steward acting as his subordinate. This great man grumbled sorely at the smallness of his surroundings; for the most luxurious yacht was a poor substitute for the spacious kitchens and storerooms and stillrooms of the London mansion. There was a cabin for Lady Kirkbank’s Rilboche and Lady Lesbia’s Kibble, where the two might squabble at their leisure; in a word, everything had been done that forethought could do to make the yacht as perfect a place of sojourn as any floating habitation, from Noah’s Ark to the Orient steamers, had ever been made.

  It was between four and five upon a delicious July afternoon that Lady Kirkbank and her charge came on board. The maids and the luggage had been sent a day in advance, so that everything might be in its place, and the empty boxes all stowed away, before the ladies arrived. They had nothing to do but walk on board and fling themselves into the low luxurious chairs ready for them on the deck, a little wearied by the heat and dust of a railway journey, and with that delicious sense of languid indifference to all the cares of life which seems to be in the very atmosphere of a perfect summer afternoon.

  A striped awning covered the deck, and great baskets of roses — pink, and red, and yellow — were placed about here and there. Tea was ready on a low table, a swinging brass kettle hissing merrily, with an air of supreme homeliness.

  Mr. Smithson had accompanied his fiancée from town, and now sat reading the Globe, and meekly waiting for his tea, while Lesbia took a languid survey of the shore and the flotilla of boats, little and big, and while Lady Kirkbank rhapsodised about the yacht, praising everything, and calling everything by a wrong name. He was to be their guest all day, and every day. They were to have enough of him, as Lesbia had observed to her chaperon, with a spice of discontent, not quite so delighted with the arrangement as her faithful swain. To him the idea was rapture.

  ‘You have contrived somehow to keep me very much at a distance hitherto,’ he told Lesbia, ‘and I feel sometimes as if we were almost strangers; but a yacht is the best place in the world to bring two people together, and a week at Cowes will make us nearer to each other and more to each other than three months in London;’ and Lesbia had said nothing, inwardly revolting at the idea of becoming any nearer and dearer to this man whom she had pledged herself to marry. She was to be his wife — yes, some day — and it was his desire the some day should be soon: but in the interval her dearest privilege was the power to keep him at a distance.

  And yet she could not make up her mind to break with him, to say honestly, ‘I never liked you much, and now we are engaged I fin
d myself liking you less and less every day. Save me from the irrevocable wickedness of a loveless marriage. Forgive me, and let me go.’ No, this she could not bring herself to say. She did not like Mr. Smithson, but she valued the position he was able to give her. She wanted to be mistress of that infinite wealth — she could not renounce that right to which she fancied she had been born, her right to be one of the Queens of Society: and the only man who had offered to crown her as queen, to find her a palace and a court, was Horace Smithson. Without Mr. Smithson her first season would have resulted in dire failure. She might perhaps have endured that failure, and been content to abide the chances of a second season, had it not been for Mary’s triumph. But for Mary to be a Countess, and for Lesbia to remain Lesbia Haselden, a nobody, dependent upon the caprices of a grandmother whose means might after all be but limited — no, such a concatenation as that was not to be endured. Lesbia told herself that she could not go back to Fellside to remain there indefinitely, a spinster and a dependent. She had learnt the true value of money; she had found out what the world was like; and it seemed to her that some such person as Mr. Smithson was essential to her existence, just as a butler is a necessity in a house. One may not like the man, but the post must be filled.

  Again, if she were to throw over Mr. Smithson, and speculate upon her chances of next year, what hope had she of doing better in her second season than in her first? The horizon was blank. There was no great parti likely to offer himself for competition. She had seen all that the market could produce. Wealthy bachelors, high-born lovers, could not drop from the moon. Lesbia, schooled by Lady Kirkbank, knew her peerage by heart; and she knew that, having missed Lord Hartfield, there was really no one in the Blue Book worth waiting for. Thus, caring only for those things which wealth can buy, she had made up her mind that she could not do without Horace Smithson’s money; and she must therefore needs resign herself to the disagreeable necessity of taking Smithson and his money together. The great auctioneer Fate would not divide the lot.