Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  ‘But it is not the first,’ wrote Lady Maulevrier. ‘My pride has received crushing blows in days past, and I ought to be humbled to the dust. But there is a stubborn resistance in some natures which stands firm against every shock. You and Lesbia will both be surprised to hear that Mary, from whom I expected so little, has made a really great match. She was married yesterday afternoon in my morning room, by special licence, to the Earl of Hartfield, the lover of her choice, whom we at Fellside have all known as plain John Hammond. He is an admirable young man, and sure to make a great figure in the world, as no doubt you know better than I do, for you are in the way of hearing all about him. His courtship of Mary is quite an idyll; and the happy issue of this romantic love-affair has cheered and comforted me more than anything that has happened since Lesbia left me.’

  This letter, written in Fräulein’s niggling little hand, Lady Kirkbank handed to Lesbia, who read it through in silence; but when she came to that part of the letter which told of her sister’s marriage, her cheek grew ashy pale, her brow contracted, and she started to her feet and stared at Lady Kirkbank with wild, dilated eyes, as if she had been stung by an adder.

  ‘A strange mystification, wasn’t it?’ said Lady Kirkbank, almost frightened at the awful look in Lesbia’s face, which was even worse than Belle Trinder’s expression when she read the announcement of Mr. Smithson’s flight.

  ‘Strange mystification! It was base treachery — a vile and wicked lie!’ cried Lesbia, furiously. ‘What right had he to come to us under false colours, to pretend to be poor, a nobody — with only the vaguest hope of making a decent position in the future? — and to offer himself under such impossible conditions to a girl brought up as I had been — a girl educated by one of the proudest and most ambitious of women — to force me to renounce everything except him? How could he suppose that any girl, so placed, could decide in his favour? If he had loved me he would have told me the truth — he would not have made it impossible for me to accept him.’

  ‘I believe he is a very high flown young man,’ said Lady Kirkbank, soothingly; ‘he was never in my set, you know, dear. And I suppose he had some old Minerva-press idea that he would find a girl who would marry him for his own sake. And your sister, no doubt, eager to marry anybody, poor child, for the sake of getting away from that very lovely dungeon of Lady Maulevrier’s, snapped at the chance; and by a mere fluke she becomes a countess.’

  Lesbia ignored these consolatory remarks. She was pacing the room like a tigress, her delicate cambric handkerchief grasped between her two hands, and torn and rent by the convulsive action of her fingers. She could have thrown herself from the balcony on to the spikes of the area railings, she could have dashed herself against yonder big plate-glass window looking towards the Green Park, like a bird which shatters his little life against the glass barrier which he mistakes for the open sky. She could have flung herself down on the floor and grovelled, and torn her hair — she could have done anything mad, wicked, desperate, in the wild rage of this moment.

  ‘Loved me!’ she exclaimed; ‘he never loved me. If he had he would have told me the truth. What, when I was in his arms, my head upon his breast, my whole being surrendered to him, adoring him, what more could he want? He must have known that this meant real love. And why should he put it upon me to fight so hard a fight — to brave my grandmother’s anger — to be cursed by her — to face poverty for his sake? I never professed to be a heroine. He knew that I was a woman, with all a woman’s weakness, a woman’s fear of trial and difficulty in the future. It was a cowardly thing to use me so.’

  ‘It was,’ said Lady Kirkbank, in the same soothing tone; ‘but if you liked this Hammond-Hartfield creature a little in those old days, I know you have outlived that liking long ago.’

  ‘Of course; but it is a hard thing to know one has been fooled, cheated, weighed in the balance and found wanting,’ said Lesbia, scornfully.

  She was taming down a little by this time, ashamed of that outbreak of violent passion, feeling that she had revealed too much to Lady Kirkbank.

  ‘It was a caddish thing to do,’ said Georgie; ‘and this Hartfield is just what I always thought him — an insufferable prig. However, my sweetest girl, there is really nothing to lament in the matter. Your sister has made a good alliance, which will score high in your favour by-and-by, and you are going to marry a man who is three times as rich as Lord Hartfield.’

  ‘Rich, yes; and nothing but rich; while Lord Hartfield is a man of the very highest standing, belongs to the flower of English nobility. Rich, yes; Mr. Smithson is rich; but, as Lady Maulevrier says, he has made his money heaven knows how.’

  ‘Mr. Smithson has not made his money heaven knows how,’ answered Lady Kirkbank, indignantly. ‘He has made it in cochineal, in iron, in gunpowder, in coal, in all kinds of commodities. Everybody in the City knows how he has made his money, and that he has a genius for turning everything into gold. If the gold changes back into one of the baser metals, it is only when Mr. Smithson has made all he wanted to make. And now he has quite done with the City. The House is the only business of his life; and he is becoming a power in the House. You have every reason to be proud of your choice, Lesbia.’

  ‘I will try to be proud of it,’ said Lesbia, resolutely. ‘I will not be scorned and trampled upon by Mary.’

  ‘She seemed a harmless kind of girl,’ said Lady Kirkbank, as if she had been talking of a housemaid.

  ‘She is a designing minx,’ exclaimed Lesbia, ‘and has set her cap at that man from the very beginning.’

  ‘But she could not have known that he was Lord Hartfield.’

  ‘No; but he was a man; and that was enough for her.’

  From this time forward there was a change in Lady Lesbia’s style and manner — a change very much for the worse, as old-fashioned people thought; but to the taste of some among Lady Kirkbank’s set, the change was an improvement. She was gayer than of old, gay with a reckless vivacity, intensely eager for action and excitement, for cards and racing, and all the strongest stimulants of fashionable life. Most people ascribed this increased vivacity, this electric manner, to the fact of her engagement to Horace Smithson. She was giddy with her triumph, dazzled by a vision of the gold which was soon to be hers.

  ‘Egad, if I saw myself in a fair way of being able to write cheques upon such an account as Smithson’s I should be as wild as Lady Lesbia,’ said one of the damsel’s military admirers at the Rag. ‘And I believe the young lady was slightly dipped.’

  ‘Who told you that?’ asked his friend.

  ‘A mother of mine,’ answered the youth, with an apologetic air, as if he hardly cared to own such a humdrum relationship. ‘Seraphine, the dressmaker, was complaining — wanted to see the colour of Lady Lesbia Haselden’s money — vulgar curiosity — asked my old mother if she thought the account was safe, and so on. That’s how I came to know all about it.’

  ‘Well, she’ll be able to pay Seraphine next season.’

  Lord Maulevrier came back to London directly after his sister’s wedding. The event, which came off so quietly, so happily, filled him with unqualified joy. He had hoped from the very first that his Molly would win the cup, even while Lesbia was making all the running, as he said afterwards. And Molly had won, and was the wife of one of the best young men in England. Maulevrier, albeit unused to the melting-mood, shed a tear or two for very joy as the sister he loved and the friend of his boyhood and youth stood side by side in the quiet room at Grasmere, and spoke the solemn words that made them one for ever.

  The first news he heard after his return to town was of Lesbia’s engagement, which was common talk at the clubs. The visitors at Rood Hall had come back to London full of the event, and were proud of giving a detailed account of the affair to outsiders.

  They all talked patronisingly of Smithson, and seemed to think it rather a wonderful fact that he did not drop his aspirates or eat peas with a knife.

  ‘A man of stirling metal,’ said the g
ossips, ‘who can hold his own with many a fellow born in the purple.’

  Maulevrier called in Arlington Street, but Lady Kirkbank and her protégée were out; and it was at a cricket match at the Orleans Club that the brother and sister met for the first time after Lord Hartfield’s wedding, which by this time had been in all the papers; a very simple announcement:

  ‘On the 29th inst., at Grasmere, by the Reverend Douglass Brooke, the Earl of Hartfield to Mary, younger daughter of the ninth Earl of Maulevrier.’

  Lesbia was the centre of a rather noisy little court, in which Mr. Smithson was conspicuous by his superior reserve.

  He did not exert himself as a lover, paid no compliments, was not sentimental. The pearl was won, and he wore it very quietly; but wherever Lesbia went he went; she was hardly ever out of his sight.

  Maulevrier received the coolest possible greeting. Lesbia turned pale with anger at sight of him, for his presence reminded her of the most humiliating passage in her life; but the big red satin sunshade concealed that pale angry look, and nothing in Lesbia’s manner betrayed emotion.

  ‘Where have you been hiding yourself all this time, and why were you not at Henley?’ she asked.

  ‘I have been at Grasmere.’

  ‘Oh, you were a witness of that most romantic marriage. The Lady of Lyons reversed, the gardener’s son turning out to be an earl. Was it excruciatingly funny?’

  ‘It was one of the most solemn weddings I ever saw.’

  ‘Solemn! what, with my Tomboy sister as bride! Impossible!’

  ‘Your sister ceased to be a Tomboy when she fell in love. She is a sweet and womanly woman, and will make an adorable wife to the finest fellow I know. I hear I am to congratulate you, Lesbia, upon your engagement with Mr. Smithson.’

  ‘If you think I am the person to be congratulated, you are at liberty to do so. My engagement is a fact.’

  ‘Oh, of course, Mr. Smithson is the winner. But as I hope you intend to be happy, I wish you joy. I am told Smithson is a really excellent fellow when one gets to know him; and I shall make it my business to be better acquainted with him.’

  Smithson was standing just out of hearing, watching the bowling. Maulevrier went over to him and shook hands, their acquaintance hitherto having been of the slightest, and very shy upon his lordship’s part; but now Smithson could see that Maulevrier meant to be cordial.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXXVI.

  A RASTAQUOUÈRE.

  There was a dinner party in one of the new houses in Grosvenor Place that evening, to which Lady Kirkbank and Lesbia had been bidden. The new house belonged to a new man, who was supposed to have made millions out of railways, and other gigantic achievements in the engineering line; and the new man and his wife were friends of Mr. Smithson, and had made the simple Georgie’s acquaintance only within the last three weeks.

  ‘Of course they are stupid, my dear,’ she remarked, in response to some slighting remark of Lesbia’s, ‘but I am always willing to know rich people. One drops in for so many good things; and they never want any return in kind. It is quite enough for them to be allowed to spend their money upon us.’

  The house was gorgeous in all the glory of the very latest fashions in upholstery; hall Algerian; dining-room Pompeian; drawing-room Early Italian; music-room Louis Quatorze; billiard-room mediæval English. The dinner was as magnificent as dinner can be made. Three-fourths of the guests were the haute gomme of the financial world, and perspired gold. The other third belonged to a class which Mr. Smithson described somewhat contemptuously as the shake-back nobility. An Irish peer, a younger son of a ducal house that had run to seed, a political agitator, a grass widow whose titled husband was governor of an obscure colony, an ancient dowager with hair which was too luxuriant to be anything but a wig, and diamonds which were so large as to suggest paste.

  Lesbia sat by her affianced at the glittering table, lighted with clusters of wax candles, which shone upon a level parterre of tea roses, gardenias, and gloire de Malmaison carnations; from which rose at intervals groups of silver-gilt dolphins, supporting shallow golden dishes piled with peaches, grapes, and all the costliest produce of Covent Garden.

  Conversation was not particularly brilliant, nor had the guests an elated air. The thermometer was near eighty, and at this period of the season everybody was tired of this kind of dinner, and would gladly have foregone the greatest achievements of culinary art, in favour of a chicken and a salad, eaten under green leaves, in a garden at Wargrave or Henley, within sound of the rippling river.

  On Lesbia’s right hand there was a portly personage of Jewish type, dark to swarthiness, and somewhat oily, whose every word suggested bullion. He and Mr. Smithson were evidently acquaintances of long standing, and Mr. Smithson presented him to Lesbia, whereupon he joined in their conversation now and then.

  His talk was of the usual standard. He had seen everything worth seeing in London and in Paris, between which cities he seemed to oscillate with such frequency that he might be said to live in both places at once. He had his stall at Covent Garden, and his stall at the Grand Opera. He was a subscriber at the Theatre Français. He had seen all the races at Longchamps and Chantilly, as well as at Sandown and Ascot. But every now and then he and Mr. Smithson drifted from the customary talk about operas and races, pictures and French novels, to the wider world of commerce and speculation, mines, waterworks, and foreign loans — and Lesbia leant back in her chair, and fanned herself languidly, with half-closed eyelids, while two or three courses went round, she giving the little supercilious look at each entrée offered to her, to be observed on such occasions, as if the thing offered were particularly nasty.

  She wondered how long the two men were going to prose about mines and shares, in those subdued half-mysterious voices, telling each other occult facts in half-expressed phrases, utterly dark to the outside world; but, while she was languidly wondering, a change in her lover’s manner startled her into keenest curiosity.

  ‘Montesma is in Paris,’ said Mr. Sampayo, the dark gentleman; ‘I dined last week with him at the Continental.’

  Mr. Smithson’s complexion faded curiously, and a leaden darkness came over his countenance, as of a man whose heart and lungs suddenly refuse their office. But in a few moments he was smiling feebly.

  ‘Indeed! I thought he was played out years ago.’

  ‘A man of that kind is never played out. Don Gomez de Montesma is as clever as Satan, as handsome as Apollo, and he bears one of the oldest names in Castile. Such a man will always come to the front. C’est un rastaquouère mais rastaquouère de bon genre. You knew him intimately là bas, I believe?’

  ‘In Cuba; yes, we were pretty good friends once.’

  ‘And were useful to each other, no doubt,’ said Mr. Sampayo, pleasantly. ‘Was that Argentiferous Copper Company in sixty-four yours or his?’

  ‘There were a good many people concerned in it.’

  ‘No doubt; it takes a good many people to work that kind of thing, but I fancy you and Montesma were about the only two who came out of it pleasantly. And he and you did a little in the shipping line, didn’t you — African produce? However, that’s an old song. You have had so many good things since then.’

  ‘Did Montesma talk of coming to London?’

  ‘He did not talk about it; but he would hardly go back to the tropics without having a look round on both sides of the Channel. He was always fond of society, pretty women, dancing, and amusements of all kinds. I have no doubt we shall see him here before the end of the season.’

  Mr. Smithson pursued the subject no further. He turned to Lesbia, who had been curiously interested in this little bit of conversation — interested first because Smithson had seemed agitated by the mention of the Spaniard’s name; secondly, because of the description of the man, which had a romantic sound. The very word tropic suggested a romance. And Lesbia, whose mind was jaded by the monotony of a London season, the threadbare fabric of society conversation, kindled at any
image which appealed to her fancy.

  Clever as Satan, handsome as Apollo, scion of an old Castilian family, fresh from the tropics. Her imagination dwelt upon the ideas which these words had conjured up.

  Three days after this she was at the opera with her chaperon, her lover in attendance as usual. The opera was “Faust,” with Nillson as Marguerite. After the performance they were to drive down to Twickenham on Mr. Smithson’s drag, and to dance and sup at the Orleans. The last ball of the season was on this evening; and Lesbia had been persuaded that it was to be a particular recherché ball, and that only the very nicest people were to be present. At any rate, the drive under the light of a July moon would be delicious; and if they did not like the people they found there they could eat their supper and come away immediately after, as Lady Kirkbank remarked philosophically.

  The opera was nearly over — that grand scene of Valentine’s death was on — and Lesbia was listening breathlessly to every note, watching every look of the actors, when there came a modest little knock at the door of her box. She darted an angry glance round, and shrugged her shoulders vexatiously. What Goth had dared to knock during that thrilling scene?

  Mr. Smithson rose and crept to the door and quietly opened it.

  A dark, handsome man, who was a total stranger to Lesbia, glided in, shaking hands with Smithson as he entered.

  Till this moment Lesbia’s whole being had been absorbed in the scene — that bitter anathema of the brother, the sister’s cry of anguish and shame. Where else is there tragedy so human, so enthralling — grief that so wrings the spectator’s heart? It needed a Goethe and a Gounod to produce this masterpiece.

  In an instant, in a flash, Lesbia’s interest in the stage was gone. Her first glance at the stranger told her who he was. The olive tint, the eyes of deepest black, the grand form of the head and perfect chiselling of the features could belong only to that scion of an old Castilian race whom she had heard described the other evening—’clever as Satan, handsome as Apollo.’