Part 12 (1/2)

'Yes, I came. It was my duty to come, knowing her ladys.h.i.+p's habits. I am a light sleeper, and that scream woke me instantly. If her ladys.h.i.+p'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 ladys.h.i.+p's service more than forty years. I have reason to be faithful. I know her ladys.h.i.+p'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 ladys.h.i.+p 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 ladys.h.i.+p'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 ladys.h.i.+p'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's _Globe_. Lord Denyer, the son of one of her oldest friends, has been making a great speech at Liverpool in the Conservative interest, and her ladys.h.i.+p 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.'