‘No, it is the past that is always before me,’ answered Lesbia. ‘My future is a blank.’
The bills came pouring in; dressmaker, milliner, glover, bootmaker, tailor, stationer, perfumer; awful bills which made Lady Maulevrier’s blood run cold, so degrading was their story of selfish self-indulgence, of senseless extravagance. But she paid them all without a word. She took upon her shoulders the chief burden of Lesbia’s wrongdoing. It was her indulgence, her weak preference which had fostered her granddaughter’s selfishness, trained her to vanity and worldly pride. The result was ignominious, humiliating, bitter beyond all common bitterness; but the cup was of her own brewing, and she drank it without a murmur.
Parliament was prorogued; the season was over; and Lord Hartfield was established at Fellside for the autumn — he and his wife utterly happy in their affection for each other, but not without care as to their surroundings, which were full of trouble. First there was Lesbia’s sorrow. Granted that it was a grief which would inevitably wear itself out, as other such griefs have done from time immemorial; but still the sorrow was there, at their doors. Next, there was the state of Lady Maulevrier’s health, which gave her old medical adviser the gravest fears. At Lord Hartfield’s earnest desire a famous doctor was summoned from London; but the great man could only confirm Mr. Horton’s verdict. The thread of life was wearing thinner every day. It might snap at any hour. In the meantime the only regime was repose of body and mind, an all-pervading calm, the avoidance of all exciting topics. One moment of violent agitation might prove fatal.
Knowing this, how could Lord Hartfield call her ladyship to account for the presence of that mysterious old man under Steadman’s charge? — how venture to touch upon a topic which, by Mary’s showing, had exercised a most disturbing influence upon her ladyship’s mind on that solitary occasion when the girl ventured to approach the subject?
He felt that any attempt at an explanation was impossible. It was not for him to precipitate Lady Maulevrier’s end by prying into her secrets. Granted that shame and dishonour of some kind were involved in the existence of that strange old man, he, Lord Hartfield, must endure his portion in that shame — must be content to leave the dark riddle unsolved.
He resigned himself to this state of things, and tried to forget the cloud that hung over the house of Haselden; but the sense of a mystery, a fatal family secret, which must come to light sooner or later — since all such secrets are known at last — known, sifted, and bandied about from lip to lip, and published in a thousand different newspapers, and cried aloud in the streets — the sense of such a secret, the dread of such a revelation weighed upon him heavily.
Maulevrier, the restless, was off to Argyleshire for the grouse shooting as soon as he had deposited Lady Lesbia comfortably at Fellside.
‘I should only be in your way if I stopped,’ he said, ‘for you and Molly have hardly got over the honeymoon stage yet, though you put on the airs of Darby and Joan. I shall be back in a week or ten days.’
‘In Lady Maulevrier’s state of health I don’t think you ought to stay away very long,’ said Hartfield.
‘Poor Lady Maulevrier! She never cared much for me, don’t you know. But I suppose it would seem unkind if I were to be out of the way when the end comes. The end! Good heavens! how coolly I talk of it; and a year ago I thought she was as immortal as Fairfield yonder.’
He went away, his spirits dashed by that awful thought of death, and Lord and Lady Hartfield had the house to themselves, since Lesbia hardly counted. She seldom left her own rooms, except to sit with her grandmother for an hour. She lay on her sofa — or sat in a low arm-chair by the window, reading Keats or Shelley — or only dreaming — dreaming over the brief golden time of her life, with its fond delusions, its false brightness. Mr. Horton went to see her every day — felt the feeble little pulse which seemed hardly to have force enough to beat — urged her to struggle against apathy and inertia, to walk a little, to go for a long drive every day, to live in the open air — to which instructions she paid not the slightest attention. The desire for life was gone. Disappointed in her ambition, betrayed in her love, humiliated, duped, degraded — a social failure. What had she to live for? She felt as if it would have been a good thing, quite the best thing that could happen, if she could turn her face to the wall and die. All that past season, its triumphs, its pleasures, its varieties, was like a garish dream, a horror to look back upon, hateful to remember.
In vain did Mary and Hartfield urge Lesbia to join in their simple pleasures, their walks and rides and drives, and boating excursions. She always refused.
‘You know I never cared much for roaming about these everlasting hills,’ she told Mary. ‘I never had your passion for Lakeland. It is very good of you to wish to have me, but it is quite impossible. I have hardly strength enough for a little walk in the garden.’
‘You would have more strength if you went out more,’ pleaded Mary, almost with tears. ‘Mr. Horton says sun and wind are the best doctors for you. Lesbia, you frighten me sometimes. You are just letting yourself fade away.’
‘If you knew how I hate the world and the sky, Mary, you wouldn’t urge me to go out of doors,’ Lesbia answered, moodily. ‘Indoors I can read, and get away from my own thoughts somehow, for a little while. But out yonder, face to face with the hills and the lake — the scenes I have known all my life — I feel a heart-sickness that is worse than death. It maddens me to see that old, old picture of mountain and water, the same for ever and ever, no matter what hearts are breaking.’
Mary crept close beside her sister’s couch, put her arm round her neck, laid her cheek — rich in the ruddy bloom of health — against Lesbia’s pallid and sunken cheek, and comforted her as much as she could with tender murmurs and loving kisses. Other comfort, she could give none. All the wisdom in the world will not cure a girl’s heart-sickness when she has flung away the treasures of her love upon a worthless object.
And so the days went by, peacefully, but sadly; for the shadow of doom hung heavily over the house upon the Fell. Nobody who looked upon Lady Maulevrier could doubt that her days were numbered, that the oil was waxing low in the lamp of life. The end, the awful, mysterious end, was drawing near; and she who was called was making no such preparations as the Christian makes to answer the dread summons. As she had lived, she meant to die — an avowed unbeliever. More than once Mary had taken courage, and had talked to her grandmother of the world beyond, the blessed hope of re-union with the friends we have lost, in a new and brighter life, only to be met by the sceptic’s cynical smile, the materialist’s barren creed.
‘My dearest, we know nothing except the immutable laws of material life. All the rest is a dream — a beautiful dream, if you like — a consolation to that kind of temperament which can take comfort from dreams; but for anyone who has read much, and thought much, and kept as far as possible on a level with the scientific intellect of the age — for such an one, Mary, these old fables are too idle. I shall die as I have lived, the victim of an inscrutable destiny, working blindly, evil to some, good to others. Ah! love, life has begun very fairly for you. May the fates be kind always to my gentle and loving girl!’
There was more talk between them on this dark mystery of life and death. Mary brought out her poor little arguments, glorified by the light of perfect faith; but they were of no avail against opinions which had been the gradual growth of a long and joyless life. Time had attuned Lady Maulevrier’s mind to the gospel of Schopenhauer and the Pessimists, and she was contented to see the mystery of life as they had seen it. She had no fear, but she had some anxiety as to the things that were to happen after she was gone. She had taken upon herself a heavy burden, and she had not yet come to the end of the road where her burden might be laid quietly down, her task accomplished. If she fell by the wayside under her load the consequences for the survivors might be full of trouble.
Her anxieties were increased by the fact that her faithful servant and adviser, James Stead
man, was no longer the man he had been. The change in him was painfully evident — memory failing, energy gone. He came to his mistress’s room every morning, received her orders, answered her questions; but Lady Maulevrier felt that he went through the old duties in a mechanical way, and that his dull brain but half understood their importance.
One evening at dusk, just as Hartfield and Mary were leaving Lady Maulevrier’s room, after dinner, an appalling shriek ran through the house — a cry almost as terrible as that which Lord Hartfield heard in the summer midnight just a year ago. But this time the sound came from the old part of the house.
‘Something has happened,’ exclaimed Hartfield, rushing to the door of communication.
It was bolted inside. He knocked vehemently; but there was no answer. He ran downstairs, followed by Mary, breathless, in an agony of fear. Just as they approached the lower door, leading to the old house, it was flung open, and Steadman’s wife stood before them pale with terror.
‘The doctor,’ she cried; ‘send for Mr. Horton, somebody, for God’s sake. Oh, my lord,’ with a sudden burst of sobbing, ‘I’m afraid he’s dead.’
‘Mary, despatch some one for Horton,’ said Lord Hartfield. Keeping his wife back with one hand, he closed the door against her, and then followed Mrs. Steadman through the long low corridor to her husband’s sitting-room.
James Steadman was lying upon his back upon the hearth, near the spot were Lord Hartfield had seen him sleeping in his arm-chair a month ago.
One look at the distorted face, dark with injected blood, the dreadful glassy glare of the eyes, the foam-stained lips, told that all was over. The faithful servant had died at his post. Whatever his charge had been, his term of service was ended. There was a vacancy in Lady Maulevrier’s household.
* * *
CHAPTER XLVI.
THE DAY OF RECKONING.
Lord Hartfield stayed with the frightened wife while she knelt beside that awful figure on the hearth, wringing her hands with piteous bewailings and lamentations over the unconscious clay. He had always been a good husband to her, she murmured; hard and stern perhaps, but a good man. And she had obeyed him without a question. Whatever he did or said she had counted right.
‘We have not had a happy life, though there are many who have envied us her ladyship’s favour,’ she said in the midst of her lamentations. ‘No one knows where the shoe pinches but those who have to wear it. Poor James! Early and late, early and late, studying her ladyship’s interests, caring and thinking, in order to keep trouble away from her. Always on the watch, always on the listen. That’s what wore him out, poor fellow!’
‘My good soul, your husband was an old man,’ argued Lord Hartfield, in a consolatory tone, ‘and the end must come to all of us somehow.’
‘He might have lived to be a much older man if he had had less worry,’ said the wife, bending her face to kiss the cold dead brow. ‘His days were full of care. We should have been happier in the poorest cottage in Grasmere than we ever were in this big grand house.’
Thus, in broken fragments of speech, Mrs. Steadman lamented over her dead, while the heavy pendulum of the eight-day clock in the hall sounded the slowly-passing moments, until the coming of the doctor broke upon the quiet of the house, with the noise of opening doors and approaching footsteps.
James Steadman was dead. Medicine could do nothing for that lifeless clay, lying on the hearth by which he had sat on so many winter nights, for so many years of faithful unquestioning service. There was nothing to be done for that stiffening form, save the last offices for the dead; and Lord Hartfield left Mr. Horton to arrange with the weeping woman as to the doing of these. He was anxious to go to Lady Maulevrier, to break to her, as gently as might be, the news of her servant’s death.
And what of that strange old man in the upper rooms? Who was to attend upon him, now that the caretaker was laid low?
While Lord Hartfield lingered on the threshold of the door that led from the old house to the new, pondering this question, there came the sound of wheels on the carriage drive, and then a loud ring at the hall door.
It was Maulevrier, just arrived from Scotland, smelling of autumn rain and cool fresh air.
‘Dreadfully bored on the moors,’ he said, as they shook hands. ‘No birds — nobody to talk to — couldn’t stand it any longer. How are the sisters? Lesbia better? Why, man alive, how queer you look! Nothing amiss, I hope?’
‘Yes, there is something very much amiss. Steadman is dead.’
‘Steadman! Her ladyship’s right hand. That’s rather bad. But you will drop into his stewardship. She’ll trust your long head, I know. Much better that she should look to her granddaughter’s husband for advice in all business matters than to a servant. When did it happen?’
‘Half an hour ago. I was just going to Lady Maulevrier’s room when you rang the bell. Take off your Inverness, and come with me.’
‘The poor grandmother,’ muttered Maulevrier. ‘I’m afraid it will be a blow.’
He had much less cause for fear than Lord Hartfield, who knew of deep and secret reasons why Steadman’s death should be a calamity of dire import for his mistress. Maulevrier had been told nothing of that scene with the strange old man — the hidden treasures — the Anglo-Indian phrases — which had filled Lord Hartfield’s mind with the darkest doubts.
If that half-lunatic old man, described by Lady Maulevrier as a kinsman of Steadman’s, were verily the person Lord Hartfield believed, his presence under that roof, unguarded by a trust-worthy attendant, was fraught with danger. It would be for Lady Maulevrier, helpless, a prisoner to her sofa, at death’s door, to face that danger. The very thought of it might kill her. And yet it was imperative that the truth should be told her without delay.
The two young men went to her ladyship’s sitting room. She was alone, a volume of her favourite Schopenhauer open before her, under the light of the shaded reading-lamp. Sorry comfort in the hour of trouble!
Maulevrier went over to her and kissed her; and then dropped silently into a chair near at hand, his face in shadow. Hartfield seated himself nearer the sofa, and nearer the lamp.
‘Dear Lady Maulevrier, I have come to tell you some very bad news—’
‘Lesbia?’ exclaimed her ladyship, with a frightened look.
‘No, there is nothing wrong with Lesbia. It is about your old servant Steadman.’
‘Dead?’ faltered Lady Maulevrier, ashy pale, as she looked at him in the lamplight.
He bent his head affirmatively.
‘Yes. He was seized with apoplexy — fell from his chair to the hearth, and never spoke or stirred again.’
Lady Maulevrier uttered no word of sorrow or surprise. She lay, looking straight before her into vacancy, the pale attenuated features rigid as if they had been marble. What was to be done — what must be told — whom could she trust? Those were the questions repeating themselves in her mind as she stared into space. And no answer came to them.
No answer came, except the opening of the door opposite her couch. The handle turned slowly, hesitatingly, as if moved by feeble fingers; and then the door was pushed slowly open, and an old man came with shuffling footsteps towards the one lighted spot in the middle of the room.
It was the old man Lord Hartfield had last seen gloating over his treasury of gold and jewels — the man whom Maulevrier had never seen — whose existence for forty years had been hidden from every creature in that house, except Lady Maulevrier and the Steadmans, until Mary found her way into the old garden.
He came close up to the little table in front of Lady Maulevrier’s couch, and looked down at her, a strange, uncanny being, withered and bent, with pale, faded eyes in which there was a glimmer of unholy light.
‘Good-evening to you, Lady Maulevrier,’ he said in a mocking voice. ‘I shouldn’t have known you if we had met anywhere else. I think, of the two of us, you are more changed than I.’
She looked up at him, her features quivering, her haughty head dra
wn back; as a bird shrinks from the gaze of a snake, recoiling, but too fascinated to fly. Her eyes met his with a look of unutterable horror. For some moments she was speechless, and then, looking at Lord Hartfield, she said, piteously —
‘Why did you let him come here? He ought to be taken care of — shut up. It is Steadman’s old uncle — a lunatic — I sheltered. Why is he allowed to come to my room?’
‘I am Lord Maulevrier,’ said the old man, drawing himself up and planting his crutch stick upon the floor; ‘I am Lord Maulevrier, and this woman is my wife. Yes, I am mad sometimes, but not always. I have my bad fits, but not often. But I never forget who and what I am, Algernon, Earl of Maulevrier, Governor of Madras.’
‘Lady Maulevrier, is this horrible thing true?’ cried her grandson, vehemently.
‘He is mad, Maulevrier. Don’t you see that he is mad?’ she exclaimed, looking from Hartfield to her grandson, and then with a look of loathing and horror at her accuser.
‘I tell you, young man, I am Maulevrier,’ said the accuser; ‘there is no one else who has a right to be called by that name, while I live. They have shut me up — she and her accomplice — denied my name — hidden me from the world. He is dead, and she lies there — stricken for her sins.’
‘My grandfather died at the inn at Great Langdale, faltered Maulevrier.
‘Your grandfather was brought to this house — ill — out of his wits. All cloud and darkness here,’ said the old man, touching his forehead. ‘How long has it been? Who can tell? A weary time — long, dark nights, full of ghosts. Yes, I have seen him — the Rajah, that copper-faced scoundrel, seen him as she told me he looked when she gave the signal to her slaves to strangle him, there in the hall, where the grave was dug ready for the traitor’s carcass. She too — yes, she has haunted me, calling upon me to give up her treasure, to restore her son.’
‘Yes,’ cried the paralytic woman, suddenly lifted out of herself, as it were, in a paroxysm of fury, every feature convulsed, every nerve strained to its utmost tension; ‘yes, this is Lord Maulevrier. You have heard the truth, and from his own lips. You, his only son’s only son. You his granddaughter’s husband. You hear him avow himself the instigator of a diabolical murder; you hear him confess how his paramour’s husband was strangled at his false wife’s bidding, in his own palace, buried under the Moorish pavement in the hall of many arches. You hear how he inherited the Rajah’s treasures from a mistress who died strangely, swiftly, conveniently, as soon so he had wearied of her, and a new favourite had begun to exercise her influence. Such things are done in the East — dynasties annihilated, kingdoms overthrown, poison or bowstring used at will, to gratify a profligate’s passion, or pay for a spendthrift’s extravagances. Such things were done when that man was Governor of Madras as were never done by an Englishman in India before his time. He went there fettered by no prejudices — he was more Mussulman than the Mussulmen themselves — a deeper, darker traitor. And it was to hide such crimes as these — to interpose the great peacemaker Death between him and the Government which was resolved upon punishing him — to save the honour, the fortune of my son, and the children who were to come after him, the name of a noble race, a name that was ever stainless until he defiled it — it was for this great end I took steps to hide that feeble, useless life of his from the world he had offended; it was for this end that I caused a peasant to be buried in the vault of the Maulevriers, with all the pomp and ceremony that befits the funeral of one of England’s oldest earls. I screened him from his enemies — I saved him from the ignominy of a public trial — from the execration of his countrymen. His only punishment was to eat his heart under this roof, in luxurious seclusion, his comfort studied, his whims gratified so far as they could be by the most faithful of servants. A light penance for the dark infamies of his life in India, I think. His mind was all but gone when he came here, but he had his rational intervals, and in these the burden of his lonely life may have weighed heavily upon him. But it was not such a heavy burden as I have borne — I, his gaoler, I who have devoted my existence to the one task of guarding the family honour.’
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 787
