Phantom Fortune, a Novel - M. E. Braddon

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she loved with all the strength of her proud nature—his future was to be blighted by his father's misdoings—overshadowed by shame and dishonour in the very dawn of life. It was a wicked wish—an unnatural wish to find room in a woman's breast; but the wish was there. Would to God he had died before the ship touched an English port.

      But he was living, and would have to face his accusers—and she, his wife, must give him all the help she could.

      She sat long by the waning fire. She took nothing but a cup of tea, although the landlady had sent in substantial accompaniments to the tea-tray in the shape of broiled ham, new-laid eggs, and hot cakes, arguing that a traveller on such a night must be hungry, albeit disinclined for a ceremonious dinner. She had been sitting for nearly an hour in almost the same attitude, when there came a knock at the door, and, on being bidden to enter, the landlady came in, with some logs in her apron, under pretence of replenishing the fire.

      'I was afraid your fire must be getting low, and that you'd be amost starved, my lady,' she said, as she put on the logs, and swept up the ashes on the hearth. 'Such a dreadful night. So early in the year, too. I'm thinking we shall have a gay hard winter.'

      'That does not always follow,' said Lady Maulevrier. 'Has Steadman come downstairs?'

      'Yes, my lady. He told me to tell your ladyship that his lordship is pretty comfortable, and hopes to pass a good night.'

      'I am glad to hear it. You can give me another room, I suppose. It would be better for his lordship not to be disturbed, as he is very much out of health.'

      'There is another room, my lady, but it's very small.'

      'I don't mind how small, if it is clean and airy.'

      'Yes, my lady. I am thankful to say you won't find dirt or stuffiness anywhere in this house. His lordship do look mortal badly,' added the landlady, shaking her head dolefully; 'and I remember him such a fine young gentleman, when he used to come down the Rothay with the otter hounds, running along the bank—joomping in and out of the beck—up to his knees in the water—and now to see him, so white and mashiated, and broken-down like, in the very prime of life, all along of living out in a hot country, among blackamoors, which is used to it—poor, ignorant creatures—and never knew no better. It must be a hard trial for you, my lady.'

      'It is a hard trial.'

      'Ah! we all have our trials, rich and poor,' sighed the woman, who desired nothing better than to be allowed to unbosom her woes to the grand looking lady in the fur-bordered cloth pelisse, with beautiful dark hair piled up in clustering masses above a broad white forehead, and slender white hands on which diamonds flashed and glittered in the firelight, an unaccustomed figure by that rustic hearth.

      'We all have our trials—high and low.'

      'That reminds me,' said Lady Maulevrier, looking up at her, 'your husband said you were in trouble. What did that mean?'

      'Sickness in the house, my lady. A brother of mine that went to America to make his fortune, and seemed to be doing so well for the first five or six years, and wrote home such beautiful letters, and then left off writing all at once, and we made sure as he was dead, and never got a word from him for ten years, and just three weeks ago he drops in upon us as we was sitting over our tea between the lights, looking as white as a ghost. I gave a shriek when I saw him, for I was regular scared out of my senses. "Robert's ghost!" I cried; but it was Robert himself, come home to us to die. And he's lying upstairs now, with so little life in him that I expect every breath to be his last.'

      'What is his complaint?'

      'Apathy, my lady. Dear, dear, that's not it. I never do remember the doctor's foreign names.'

      'Atrophy,' perhaps.

      'Yes, my lady, that was it. Happen such crack-jaw words come easy to a scholar like your ladyship.'

      'Does the doctor give no hope?'

      'Well, no, my lady. He don't go so far as to say there's no hope, though Robert has been badly so long. It all depends, he says, upon the rallying power of the constitution. The lungs are not gone, and the heart is not diseased. If there's rallying power, Robert will come round, and if there isn't he'll sink. But the doctor says nature will have to make an effort. But I have my own idea about the case,' added the landlady, with a sigh.

      'What is your idea?'

      'That our Robert was marked for death when he came into this house, and that he meant what he said when he spoke of coming home to die. Things had gone against him for the last ten years in America. He married and took his wife out to a farm in the Bush, and thought to make a good thing out of farming with the bit of brass he'd saved at heeam. But America isn't Gert Langdale, you see, my lady, and his knowledge stood him in no stead in the Bush; and first he lost his money, and he fashed himself terrible about that, and then he lost a child or two, and then he lost his wife, and he came back to us a broken-hearted man, with no wish to live. The doctor may call it atrophy, but I will call it what the Scripture calls it, a broken and a wounded spirit.'

      'Who is your doctor?'

      'Mr. Evans, of Ambleside.'

      'That little half-blind old man!' exclaimed her ladyship. 'Surely you have no confidence in him?'

      'Not much, my lady. But I don't believe all the doctors in London could do anything for Robert. Good nursing will bring him round if anything can; and he gets that, I can assure your ladyship. He's my only brother, the only kith and kin that's left to me, and he and I were gay fond of each other when he was young. You may be sure I don't spare any trouble, and my good man thinks the best of his larder or his celler hardly good enough for Robert.'

      'I am sure you are kind good people,' replied her ladyship gently; 'but I should have thought Mr. Horton, of Grasmere, could have done more than old Evans. However, you know best. I hope his lordship is not going to add to your cares by being laid up here, but he looked very ill this evening.'

      'He did, my lady, mortal bad.'

      'However, we must hope for the best. Steadman is a splendid servant in illness. He nursed my father for years. Will you tell him to come to me, if you please? I want to hear what he thinks of his lordship, and to discuss the chances of our getting home early to-morrow.'

      The landlady retired, and summoned Mr. Steadman, who was enjoying his modest glass of grog in front of the kitchen fire. He had taught himself to dispense with the consolations of tobacco, lest he should at any time make himself obnoxious to her ladyship.

      Steadman was closeted with Lady Maulevrier for the next half-hour, during which his lordship's condition was gravely discussed. When he left the sitting-room he told the landlord to be sure and feed the post-horses well, and make them comfortable for the night, so that they might be ready for the drive to Fellside early next morning.

      'Do you think his lordship will be well enough to travel?' asked the landlord.

      'He has made up his mind to get home—ill or well,' answered Steadman. 'He has wasted about a week by his dawdling ways on the road; and now he's in a fever to get to Fellside.'

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       Table of Contents

      The post-horses—which had been well fed, but accommodated somewhat poorly in stable and barn—were quite ready to go on next morning; but Lord Maulevrier was not able to leave his room, where her ladyship remained in close attendance upon him. The hills and valleys were white with snow, but there was none falling, and Mr. Evans, the elderly surgeon from Ambleside, rode over to Great Langdale on his elderly cob to look at Robert Haswell, and was called in to see Lord Maulevrier. Her ladyship had

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