Her lover’s letters were the chief delight of her lonely days. To read them again and again, and ponder upon them, and then to pour out all her heart and mind in answering them. These were pleasures enough for her young like. Hammond’s letters were such as any woman might be proud to receive. They were not love-letters only. He wrote as friend to friend; not descending from the proud pinnacle of masculine intelligence to the lower level of feminine silliness; not writing down to a simple country girl’s capacity; but writing-fully and fervently, as if there were no subject too lofty or too grave for the understanding of his betrothed. He wrote as one sure of being sympathised with, wrote as to his second self: and Mary showed herself not unworthy of the honour thus rendered to her intellect.
There was one world which had newly opened to Mary since her engagement, and that was the world of politics. Hammond had told her that his ambition was to succeed as a politician — to do some good in his day as one of the governing body; and of late she had made it her business to learn how England and the world outside England were governed.
She had no natural leaning to the study of political economy. Instead, she had always imagined any question relating to the government of her country to be inherently dry-as-dust and uninviting. But had John Hammond devoted his days to the study of Coptic manuscripts, or the arrow headed inscriptions upon Assyrian tablets, she would have toiled her hardest in the endeavour to make herself a Coptic scholar, or an adept in the cuneiform characters. If he had been a student of Chinese, she would not have been discomfited by such a trifle as the fifty thousand characters in the Chinese alphabet.
And so, as he was to make his name in the arena of public life, she set herself to acquire a proper understanding of the science of politics; and to this end she gorged herself with English history — Hume, Hallam, Green, Justin McCarthy, Palgrave, Lecky, from the days of Witenagemote to the Reform Bill; the Repeal of the Corn Laws, the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, Ballot, Trade unionism, and unreciprocated Free Trade. No question was deep enough to repel her; for was not her lover interested in the dryest thereof; and what concerned him and his welfare must needs be full of interest for her.
To this end she read the debates religiously day by day; and she one day ventured shyly to suggest that she should read them aloud to Lady Maulevrier.
‘Would it not be a little rest for you if I were to read your Times aloud to you every afternoon, grandmother?’ she asked. ‘You read so many books, French, English, and German, and I think your eyes must get a little tired sometimes.’
Mary ventured the remark with some timidity, for those falcon eyes were fixed upon her all the time, bright and clear and steady as the eyes of youth. It seemed almost an impertinence to suggest that such eyes could know weariness.
‘No, Mary, my sight, holds out wonderfully for an old woman,’ replied her ladyship, gently. ‘The new theory of the last oculist whose book I dipped into — a very amusing and interesting book, by-the-bye — is that the sight improves and strengthens by constant use, and that an agricultural labourer, who hardly uses his eyes at all, has rarely in the decline of life so good a sight as the watchmaker or the student. I have read immensely all my life, and find myself no worse for that indulgence. But you may read the debates to me if you like, my dear, for if my eyes are strong, I myself am very tired. Sick to death, Mary, sick to death.’
The splendid eyes turned from Mary, and looked away to the blue sky, to the hills in their ineffable beauty of colour and light — shifting, changing with every moment of the summer day. Intense weariness, a settled despair, were expressed in that look — tearless, yet sadder than all tears.
‘It must be very monotonous, very sad for you,’ murmured Mary, her own eyes brimming over with tears. ‘But it will not be always so, dear grandmother. I hope a time will come when you will be able to go about again, to resume your old life.’
‘I do not hope, Mary. No, child, I feel and know that time will never come. My strength is ebbing slowly day by day. If I live for another year, live to see Lesbia married, and you, too, perhaps — well, I shall die at peace. At peace, no; not ——’ she faltered, and the thin, semi-transparent hand was pressed upon her brow. ‘What will be said of me when I am dead?’
Mary feared that her grandmother’s mind was wandering. She came and knelt beside the couch, laid and her head against the satin pillows, tenderly, caressingly.
‘Dear grandmother, pray be calm,’ she murmured.
‘Mary, do not look at me like that, as if you would read my heart. There are hearts that must not be looked into. Mine is like a charnel-house. Monotonous, yes; my life has been monotonous. No conventual gloom was ever deeper than the gloom of Fellside. My boy did nothing to lighten it for me, and his son followed in his father’s footsteps. You and Lesbia have been my only consolation. Lesbia! I was so proud of her beauty, so proud and fond of her, because she was like me, and recalled my own youth. And see how easily she forgets me. She has gone into a new world, in which my age and my infirmities have no part; and I am as nothing to her.’
Mary changed from red to pale, so painful was her embarrassment. What could she say in defence of her sister? How could she deny that Lesbia was an ingrate, when those rare and hurried letters, so careless in their tone, expressing the selfishness of the writer in every syllable, told but too plainly of forgetfulness and ingratitude?
‘Dear grandmother, Lesbia has so much to do — her life is so full of engagements,’ she faltered feebly.
‘Yes, she goes from party to party — she gives herself up heart and mind and soul to pleasures which she ought to consider only as the trivial means to great ends; and she forgets the woman who reared her, and cared for her, and watched over her from her infancy, and who tried to inspire her with a noble ambition. — Yes, read to me, child, read. Give me new thoughts, if you can, for my brain is weary with grinding the old ones. There was a grand debate in the Lords last night, and Lord Hartfield spoke. Let me hear his speech. You can read what was said by the man before him; never mind the rest.’
Mary read Lord Somebody’s speech, which was passing dull, but which prepared the ground for a magnificent and exhaustive reply from Lord Hartfield. The question was an important one, affecting the well-being of the masses, and Lord Hartfield spoke with an eloquence which rose in force and fire as he wound himself like a serpent into the heart of his subject — beginning quietly, soberly, with no opening flashes of rhetoric, but rising gradually to the topmost heights of oratory.
‘What a speech!’ cried Lady Maulevrier, delighted, her cheeks glowing, her eyes kindling; ‘what a noble fellow the speaker must be! Oh, Mary, I must tell you a secret. I loved that man’s father. Yes, my dear, I loved him fondly, dearly, truly, as you love that young man of yours; and he was the only man I ever really loved. Fate parted us. But I have never forgotten him — never, Mary, never. At this moment I have but to close my eyes and I can see his face — see him looking at me as he looked the last time we met. He was a younger son, poor, his future quite hopeless in those days; but it was not my fault we were parted. I would have married him — yes, wedded poverty, just as you are going to marry this Mr. Hammond; but my people would not let me; and I was too young, too helpless, to make a good fight. Oh, Mary, if I had only fought hard enough, what a happy woman I might have been, and how good a wife.’
‘You were a good wife to my grandfather, I am sure,’ faltered Mary, by way of saying something consolatory.
A dark frown came over Lady Maulevrier’s face, which had softened to deepest tenderness just before.
‘A good wife to Maulevrier,’ she said, in a mocking tone. Well, yes, as good a wife as such a husband deserved. ‘I was better than Caesar’s wife, Mary, for no breath of suspicion ever rested upon my name. But if I had married Ronald Hollister, I should have been a happy woman; and that I have never been since I parted from him.’
‘You have never seen the present Lord Hartfield, I think?’
‘Never; but I have watched his career, I have thought of him. His father died while he was an infant, and he was brought up in seclusion by a widowed mother, who kept him tied to her apron-strings till he went to Oxford. She idolised him, and I am told she taught herself Latin and Greek, mathematics even, in order to help him in his boyish, studies, and, later on, read Greek plays and Latin poetry with him, till she became an exceptional classic for a woman. She was her son’s companion and friend, sympathised with his tastes, his pleasures, his friendships; devoted every hour of her life, every thought of her mind to his welfare, his interests, walked with him, rode with him, travelled half over Europe, yachted with him. Her friends all declared that the lad would grow up an odious milksop; but I am told that there never was a manlier man than Lord Hartfield. From his boyhood he was his mother’s protector, helped to administer her affairs, acquired a premature sense of responsibility, and escaped almost all those vices which make young men detestable. His mother died within a few months of his majority. He was broken-hearted at losing her, and left Europe immediately after her death. From that time he has been a great traveller. But I suppose now that he has taken his seat in the House of Lords, and has spoken a good many times, he means to settle down and take his place among the foremost men of his day. I am told that he is worthy to take such a place.’
‘You must feel warmly interested in watching his career,’ said Mary, sympathetically.
‘I am interested in everything that concerns him. I will tell you another secret, Mary. I think I am getting into my dotage, my dear, or I should hardly talk to you like this,’ said Lady Maulevrier, with a touch of bitterness.
Mary was sitting on a stool by the sofa, close to the invalid’s pillow. She clasped her grandmother’s hand and kissed it fondly.
‘Dear grandmother, I think you are talking to me like this to-day because you are beginning to care for me a little,’ she said, tenderly.
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