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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14174 ***
+
+THE MATING OF LYDIA
+
+by
+
+MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
+
+1913
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TO R. J. S.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+"Aye, it's a bit dampish," said Dixon, as he brought a couple more logs
+to replenish a fire that seemed to have no heart for burning.
+
+The absurd moderation of the statement irritated the person to whom it
+was addressed.
+
+"What I'm thinkin'"--said Mrs. Dixon, impatiently, as she moved to the
+window--"is that they'll mappen not get here at all! The watter'll be
+over t' road by Grier's mill. And yo' know varra well, it may be runnin'
+too fasst to get t' horses through--an' they'd be three pussons inside,
+an' luggage at top."
+
+"Aye, they may have to goa back to Pengarth--that's varra possible."
+
+"An' all t' dinner spoilin', an' t' fires wastin'--for nowt." The speaker
+stood peering discontentedly into the gloom without: "But you'll not
+trouble yoursen, Tammas, I daursay."
+
+"Well, I'm not Godamighty to mak' t' rain gie over," was the man's
+cheerful reply, as he took the bellows to the damp wood which lay feebly
+crackling and fizzing on the wide hearth. His exertions produced a
+spasmodic flame, which sent flickering tongues of light through the wide
+spaces and shadows of the hall. Otherwise the deepening gloom of the
+October evening was lightened only by the rays of one feebly burning lamp
+standing apparently in a corridor or gallery just visible beyond a richly
+pillared archway which led from the hall to the interior of the house.
+Through this archway could be seen the dim ascending lines of a great
+double staircase; while here and there a white carved doorway or cornice
+glimmered from the darkness.
+
+A stately Georgian house, built in a rich classical style, and dating
+from 1740: so a trained eye would have interpreted the architectural and
+decorative features faintly disclosed by lamp and fire. But the house and
+its contents--the house and its condition--were strangely at war.
+Everywhere the seemly lines and lovely ornament due to its original
+builders were spoilt or obliterated by the sordid confusion to which some
+modern owner had brought it. It was not a house apparently, so far as its
+present use went, but a warehouse. There was properly speaking no
+furniture in it; only a multitude of packing-cases, boxes of all shapes
+and sizes, piled upon or leaning against each other. The hall was choked
+with them, so that only a gangway a couple of yards wide was left,
+connecting the entrance door with the gallery and staircase. And any one
+stepping into the gallery, which with its high arched roof ran the whole
+length of the old house, would have seen it also disfigured in the same
+way. The huge deal cases stood on bare boards; the splendid staircase was
+carpetless. Nothing indeed could have been more repellant than the
+general aspect, the squalid disarray of Threlfall Tower, as seen from the
+inside, on this dreary evening.
+
+The fact impressed itself on Mrs. Dixon as she turned back from the
+window toward her husband.
+
+She looked round her sulkily.
+
+"Well, I've done my best, Tammas, and I daursay yo' have too. But it's
+not a place to bring a leddy to--an' that's the truth."
+
+"Foaks mun please theirsels," said Dixon with the same studied mildness
+as before. Then, having at last made the logs burn, as he hoped, with
+some brightness, he proceeded to sweep up the wide stone hearth. "Is t'
+rooms upstairs finished?"
+
+"Aye--hours ago." His wife dropped with a weary gesture upon a chair near
+the fire. "Tammas, yo' know it's a queer thing awthegither! What are they
+coomin' here for at all?"
+
+"Well, master's coom into t' property, an' I'm thinkin' it's nobbut his
+dooty to coom an' see it. It's two year sen he came into 't; an' he's
+done nowt but tak' t' rents, an' turn off men, an' clutter up t' house
+wi' boxes, iver sense. It's time, I'm thinkin', as he did coom an' luke
+into things a bit."
+
+Thomas rose from his knees, and stood warming himself at the fire, while
+he looked pensively round him. He was as tired as his wife, and quite as
+mistrustful of what might be before them; but he was not going to confess
+it. He was a lean and gaunt fellow, blue-eyed and broad-shouldered, of a
+Cumbria type commonly held to be of Scandinavian origin. His eye was a
+little wandering and absent, and the ragged gray whiskers which
+surrounded his countenance emphasized the slight incoherence of its
+expression. Quiet he was and looked. But his wife knew him for one of
+the most incurably obstinate of men; the inveterate critic moreover of
+everything and every one about him, beginning with herself. This trait of
+his led her unconsciously to throw most of her remarks to him into the
+form of questions, as offering less target to criticism than other forms
+of statement. As for instance:
+
+"Tammas, did yo' hear me say what I'd gotten from Mr. Tyson?"
+
+"Aye."
+
+"That the mistress was an Eye-talian."
+
+"Aye--by the mother--an' popish, besides."
+
+Mrs. Dixon sighed.
+
+"How far 'ull it be to t' chapel at Scargill Fell?"
+
+"Nine mile. She'll not be for takkin' much notice of her Sunday dooties
+I'm thinkin'."
+
+"An' yo' unnerstan' she'll be juist a yoong thing? An't' baby only juist
+walkin'."
+
+Dixon nodded. Suddenly there was a sound in the corridor--a girl's laugh,
+and a rush of feet. Thomas started slightly, and his wife observed him as
+sharply as the dim light permitted.
+
+"Thyrza!" she raised her voice peremptorily. "What are you doing there?"
+
+Another laugh, and the girl from whom it came ran forward into the
+lamp-light, threading her way through the packing-cases, and followed by
+a small fox-terrier who was jumping round her.
+
+"Doin'? There's nowt more to do as I know on. An' I'm most droppin'."
+
+So saying the girl jumped lightly on one of the larger packing-cases and
+sat there, her feet dangling.
+
+Mrs. Dixon looked at her with disapproval, but held her tongue. Thyrza
+was not strictly her underling, though she was helping in the housework.
+She was the daughter of the small farmer who had been for years the
+tenant of part of the old house, and had only just been evicted in
+preparation for the return of the owner of the property with his foreign
+wife. If Thyrza were too much scolded she would take her ways home, and,
+as her parents spoilt her, she would not be coerced into returning. And
+how another "day-girl" was to be found in that remote place, where,
+beyond the farm, a small house belonging to the agent, and a couple of
+cottages, the nearest house to the Tower was at least three miles away,
+Mrs. Dixon did not know.
+
+"My word! what a night!" said Thyrza with another laugh a little stifled
+by the sweets she had just transferred from her pocket to her mouth.
+"They'll be drowned oot afore they get here."
+
+As she spoke, a wild gust flung itself over the house, as though trying
+its strength against the doors and windows, and the rain swished against
+the panes.
+
+"Are t' fires upstairs burnin' reet?" asked Mrs. Dixon severely. She had
+already told Thyrza half a dozen times that day that such a greed for
+sweet things as she displayed would ruin her digestion and her teeth; and
+it ruffled a dictatorial temper to be taken no more notice of than if she
+were a duck quacking in the farmyard.
+
+"Aye, they're burnin'," said Thyrza, with a shrug. Then she looked round
+her with a toss of her decidedly graceful head. "But it's a creepy old
+place howivver. I'd not live here if I was paid. What does Muster Melrose
+want wi' coomin' here? He's got lots o' money, Mr. Tyson says. He'll
+nivver stay. What was the use o' turnin' father out, an' makkin' a lot o'
+trouble?"
+
+"This house is not a farmin' house," said Dixon slowly, surveying
+the girl, as she sat on the packing-case swinging her feet, her
+straw-coloured hair and pink cotton dress making a spot of pleasant
+colour in the darkness as the lamp-light fell on them. "It's a house for
+t' gentry."
+
+"Well, then, t' gentry might clean it up an' put decent furnishin's into
+'t," said Thyrza defiantly. "Not a bit o' paperin' doon anywhere--juist
+two three rooms colour-washed, as yo' med do 'em at t' workhouse. An'
+that big hole in t' dinin'-room ceilin', juist as 'twas--and such shabby
+sticks o' things upstairs an' down as I nivver see! I'll have a good
+sight better when _I_ get married, I know!"
+
+Contempt ran sharply through the girl's tone.
+
+As she ceased speaking a step was heard in the corridor. Thyrza leapt to
+the ground, Mrs. Dixon picked up her brush and duster, and Dixon resumed
+his tending of the fire.
+
+A man in a dripping overcoat and leggings pushed his way rapidly through
+the cases, looking round him with an air of worried authority.
+
+"I don't call that much of a fire, Dixon."
+
+"I've been at it, sir, for near an hour."
+
+"You've got some damp wood. What about the drawing-room?"
+
+He threw open a door on the right. The others followed him in.
+
+The open door revealed a room of singular architectural charm; an oval
+room panelled in dark oak, with a stucco ceiling, in free Italianate
+design. But within its stately and harmonious walls a single oil lamp, of
+the cheapest and commonest pattern, emitting a strong smell of paraffin,
+threw its light upon furniture, quite new, that most seaside lodgings
+would have disdained; viz., a cheap carpet of a sickly brown, leaving
+edges of bare boards between itself and the wainscot; an ugly "suite"
+covered with crimson rep, such as only a third-rate shop in a small
+provincial town could have provided; with a couple of tables, and a
+"chiffonier," of the kind that is hawked on barrows in an East End
+street.
+
+Mr. Tyson looked at the room uneasily. He had done his best with the
+ridiculous sum provided; but of course it was all wrong.
+
+He passed on silently through a door in the wainscoting of the
+drawing-room. The others again followed, Thyrza's mouth twitching with
+laughter.
+
+Another large room, almost dark, with a few guttering candles on the
+table. Mrs. Dixon went hastily to the fire and stirred it up. Then a
+dining-table spread for supper was seen, and a few chairs. Everything
+here was as cheap and nasty as in the drawing-room, including the china
+and glass on the table.
+
+Thyrza pointed to the ceiling.
+
+"That's a pity howivver!" she said. "Yo' might ha' had it mended up a
+bit, Mr. Tyson. Why t' rats will be coomin' through!"
+
+She spoke with the pert assurance of a pretty girl who is only playing
+the servant "to oblige." The agent looked irritably at the ugly gap in
+the fine tracing overhead, and then at Thyrza.
+
+"Mind your own business, please, Miss Thyrza!" And he walked quickly on
+toward a farther door.
+
+Thyrza flushed, and made a face at him as he turned his back. The Dixons
+followed the agent into the next room, Mrs. Dixon throwing behind her an
+injunction to Thyrza to run upstairs and give a last look to the
+bedrooms.
+
+"Why isn't there a light here?" said the agent impatiently. He struck one
+from some matches in his pocket, and Mrs. Dixon hastily brought a candle
+from a huge writing-table standing in the middle of the floor.
+
+Except for that writing-table, and some fine eighteenth-century
+bookcases, brass-latticed, which ran round the walls, fitting their every
+line and moulding with delicate precision, the room was entirely empty.
+Moreover, the bookcases did not hold a single book, and the writing-table
+was bare. But for any person of taste, looking round him in the light of
+the candle which Mrs. Dixon held, the room was furnished. All kinds of
+human and civilized suggestion breathed from the table and the bookcases.
+The contriving mind, with all its happy arts for the cheating and
+adorning of life, was to be felt.
+
+Mr. Tyson took it differently.
+
+"Look here!"--he said peremptorily to Mrs. Dixon--"you mind what you're
+doing with that table. It's worth a mint of money."
+
+The Dixons looked at it curiously, but coldly. To them it was nothing but
+a writing-table with drawers made out of a highly polished outlandish
+wood, with little devices of gilt rails, and drawer-furnishings, and tiny
+figures, and little bits of china "let in," which might easily catch a
+duster, thought Mrs. Dixon, and "mak' trooble." That it had belonged to a
+French dramatist under Louis Quinze, and then to a French Queen; that the
+plaques were Sèvres, and the table as a whole beyond the purse of any but
+a South African or American man of money, was of course nothing to her.
+
+"It bets me," said Dixon, in the tone of one making conversation, "why
+Muster Melrose didn't gie us orders to unpack soom more o' them cases.
+Summat like thatten"--he pointed to the table--"wud ha' lukit fine i'
+the drawin'-room."
+
+Tyson made no reply. He was a young man of strong will and taciturn
+habit; and he fully realized that if he once began discussing with Dixon
+the various orders received from Mr. Edmund Melrose with regard to his
+home-coming, during the preceding weeks, the position that he, Tyson,
+intended to maintain with regard to that gentleman would not be made any
+easier. If you happened by mischance to have accepted an appointment to
+serve and represent a lunatic, and you discovered that you had done so,
+there were only two things to do, either to hold on, or "to chuck it."
+But George Tyson, whose father and grandfather had been small land agents
+before him, of the silent, honest, tenacious Cumbria sort, belonged to
+a stock which had never resigned anything, till at least the next step
+was clear; and the young man had no intention whatever of "chucking it."
+But to hold on certainly meant patience, and as few words as might be.
+
+So he only stopped to give one more anxious look round the table to see
+that no scratches had befallen it in the process of unpacking, gave
+orders to Mrs. Dixon to light yet another fire in the room, which struck
+exceedingly chill, and then left them for a final tour round the
+ground-floor, heaping on coals everywhere with a generous hand. On this
+point alone--the point of warmth--had Mr. Melrose's letters shown a
+disposition to part with money, in ordinary domestic way. "The odiousness
+of your English climate is only matched by the absurdity of your English
+grates," he had written, urbanely, from Paris. "Get the house up to
+sixty, if you can. And get a man over from Carlisle to put in a furnace.
+I can see him the day after we arrive. My wife is Italian, and shivers
+already at the thought of Cumbria."
+
+Sixty indeed! In this dank rain from the northeast, and on this high
+ground, not a passage in the house could be got above forty-six; and the
+sitting-rooms were alternately stifling and vaultlike.
+
+"Well, I didn't build the house!" thought the agent with a quiet
+exasperation in his mind, the result of much correspondence; and having
+completed his tour of inspection, which included the modest supper now
+cooking according to Mr. Melrose's orders--Mrs. Melrose had had nothing
+to do with it--in the vast and distant kitchen, the young man hung up his
+wet overcoat, sat himself down by the hall fire, drew a newspaper from
+his pocket, and deliberately applied himself to it, till the carriage
+should arrive.
+
+Meanwhile through the rain and wind outside, the expected owner of
+Threlfall Tower and his wife and child were being driven through the
+endless and intricate lanes which divided the main road between Keswick
+and Pengarth from the Tower.
+
+The carriage contained Mr. Melrose, Mrs. Melrose, their infant daughter
+aged sixteen months, and her Italian nurse, Anastasia Doni.
+
+There was still some gray light left, but the little lady who sat
+dismally on her husband's right, occasionally peering through the window,
+could make nothing of the landscape, because of the driving scuds of rain
+which drenched the carriage windows, as though in their mad charges from
+the trailing clouds in front, they disputed every inch of the miry way
+with the newcomers. From the wet ground itself there seemed to rise a
+livid storm-light, reflecting the last gleams of day, and showing the
+dreary road winding ahead, dim and snakelike through intermittent trees.
+
+"Edmund!" said the lady suddenly, in a high thin voice, as though the
+words burst from her--"If the water by that mill they talked about is
+really over the road, I shall get out at once!"
+
+"What?--into it?" The gentleman beside her laughed. "I don't remember, my
+dear, that swimming is one of your accomplishments. Do you propose to
+hang the baby round your neck?"
+
+"Of course I should take her too! I won't run any risks at all with her!
+It would be simply wicked to take such a small child into danger." But
+there was a fretful desperation in the tone, as of one long accustomed to
+protest in vain.
+
+Mr. Melrose laughed once more--carelessly, as though it were not worth
+while to dispute the matter; and the carriage went on--battling, as it
+seemed, with the storm.
+
+"I never saw such an _awful_ place in my life!" said the wife's voice
+again--with the same note of explosion--after an interval. "It's
+horrible--just _horrible_! All the way from Pengarth we've hardly seen a
+house, or a light!--and we've been driving nearly an hour. You don't
+expect me to _live_ here, Edmund!" The tone was hysterical.
+
+"Don't be a fool, Netta! Doesn't it ever rain in your infernal country,
+eh? This is my property, my dear, worse luck! I regret it--but here we
+are. Threlfall has got to be my home--so I suppose it'll be yours too."
+
+"You could let or sell it, Edmund!--you know you could--if you cared a
+farthing about making me happy."
+
+"I have every reason to think it will suit me perfectly--and you too."
+
+The tone of the man which, hitherto, though mocking had been in the main
+indulgent, had suddenly, harshly, changed. The wife dropped into the
+corner of the carriage among her furs and wraps, and said no more.
+
+In another quarter of an hour the carriage turned a corner of the road,
+and came upon a tall building, of which the high irregular outline was
+just visible through the growing darkness. In front of it stood a group
+of men with lanterns, and the carriage stopped beside them.
+
+A noise of tongues arose, and Mr. Melrose let down the window.
+
+"Is this where the road is flooded?" he asked of a stout man in a whitish
+coat and cap who had come forward to speak to the coachman.
+
+"Aye, sir--but you'll get through. In an hour's time, mebbe ye couldn't
+do it. The water fro' the mill-race is over t' road, but it's nobbut a
+foot deep as yet. Yo'll do it varra well--but yo'd best not lose time!"
+
+"Edmund!"--screamed the voice from inside--"Edmund!--let me out--let me
+out at once--I shall stay here with baby for the night."
+
+Mr. Melrose took no notice whatever.
+
+"Can you send those men of yours alongside us--in case there is any
+danger of the coachman losing the road?" he said, addressing the man.
+
+"Aye, they'll keep along t' bank with the lanterns. Noa fear, missis, noa
+fear!"
+
+Another scream from inside. Mr. Melrose shut the window abruptly, and the
+coachman whipped up his horses.
+
+"Let me get out, Edmund!--I will _not_ go on!"
+
+Melrose brought a hand of iron down on his wife's wrist.
+
+"Be quiet, Netta! Of all the little idiots!--There now, the brat's
+begun!"--for the poor babe, awakened, had set up a wail. "Damn it!"--he
+turned fiercely to the nurse--"Keep it quiet, will you?"
+
+On swayed the carriage, the water splashing against the wheels. Carried
+by the two labourers who walked along a high bank beside the road, a
+couple of lanterns threw their wavering light on the flooded highway,
+the dripping, wind-lashed trees, the steaming horses. The yellow rays
+showed the whirling eddies of autumnal leaves, and found fantastic
+reflection in the turbid water through which the horses were struggling.
+Presently--after half a mile or so--a roar on the right hand. Mrs.
+Melrose screamed again, only to be once more savagely silenced by her
+husband. It was the roar of the mill-race approaching the weir, over
+which it was rushing in sheets of foam. The swollen river, a thunderous
+whiteness beside the road, seemed every moment as if it must break
+through the raised bank, and sweep carriage and horses into its own abyss
+of fury. Mrs. Melrose was now too terrified to cry out. She sat
+motionless and quivering, her baby on her lap, her white pointed face and
+straining eyes touched every now and then by a ghostly gleam from the
+lanterns. Beside her--whispering occasional words in Italian to her
+mistress--sat the Italian nurse, pale too, but motionless, a woman from
+the Campagna, of a Roman port and dignity, who would have scorned to give
+the master whom she detested any excuse for dubbing her a weakling.
+
+But the horses pulled bravely, the noise and the flood were left behind,
+and a bit of ascending road brought the travellers on to dry land again.
+
+The carriage stopped. The two labourers who had guided them approached
+the window, which Melrose had let down.
+
+"Yo'll do now!" they shouted with cheerful faces. "You've nobbut to do
+but keep straight on, an' yo'll be at t' Tower in a coople o' miles."
+
+"Thank you, my men, thank you. Here's a drink for you," said Melrose,
+stretching out his hand.
+
+The foremost labourer took the coin and held it to the lantern. He burst
+into rough laughter.
+
+"Saxpence! My word, Jim!--here's a gentleman wot's free wi' his muny.
+Saxpence! Two men--and two lanterns--fur t' best part of a mile! We're
+goin' cheap to-night, Jim. Gude meet to yer, sir, an' next time yo'
+may droon for me!"
+
+"Saxpence!" The lad behind also applied his lantern to the coin. "Gie it
+me, Bob!" And raising it with a scornful gesture he flung it into the
+river. Then standing still, with their hands on their hips, the light
+from the lanterns on the ground breaking over their ruddy rain-washed
+faces, they poured out a stream of jeers in broad Cumbrian, from which
+the coachman, angrily urged on by Melrose, escaped as quickly as he
+could.
+
+"Insolent boors!" said Melrose as men and flood disappeared from view.
+"What did we want with them after all? It was only a device for bleeding
+us."
+
+Mrs. Melrose awoke from her trance of terror with a quavering breath. She
+did not understand what had passed, nor a word of what the labourers had
+said; and in her belief over the peril escaped, and her utter fatigue,
+she gave the child to Anastasia, lay back, and closed her eyes. A sudden
+and blessed sleep fell upon her for a few minutes; from which she was
+roused all too soon by grating wheels and strange voices.
+
+"Here we are, Netta--look alive!" said Melrose. "Put something round the
+child, Anastasia. We have to walk through this court. No getting up to
+the door. Find some umbrellas!"
+
+The two women and the child descended. From the open house-door figures
+came hurrying down a flagged path, through an untidy kitchen garden, to
+the gate in a low outer wall in front of which the carriage had drawn up.
+
+Netta Melrose grasped the nurse's arm, and spoke in wailing Italian, as
+she held an umbrella over the child.
+
+"What a place, Anastasia!--what a place! It looks like a prison! I shall
+die here--I know I shall!"
+
+Her terrified gaze swept over the old red sandstone house rising dark and
+grim against the storm, and over the tangled thickets of garden dank with
+rain.
+
+But the next moment she was seized by the strong hands of Mrs. Dixon and
+Thyrza, who half led, half carried, her into the hall of the Tower, while
+Dixon and young Tyson did the same for the nurse and baby.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"A very interesting old place, built by some man with a real fine taste!
+As far as I can see, it will hold my collections very well."
+
+The new owner of Threlfall Tower was standing in the drawing-room with
+his back to the fire, alternately looking about him with an eager
+curiosity, and rubbing his hands in what appeared to be satisfaction. The
+agent surveyed him.
+
+Edmund Melrose at that moment--some thirty years ago--was a tall and
+remarkably handsome man of fifty, with fine aquiline features deeply
+grooved and cut, a delicate nostril, and a domed forehead over which fell
+thick locks of black hair. He looked what he was--a man of wealth and
+family, spoilt by long years of wandering and irresponsible living,
+during which an inherited eccentricity and impatience of restraint had
+developed into traits and manners which seemed as natural to himself as
+they were monstrous in the sight of others. He had so far treated the
+agent with the scantest civility during their progress through the house;
+and Tyson's northern blood had boiled more than once.
+
+But the inspection of the house had apparently put its owner in a good
+temper, and he seemed to be now more genially inclined. He lit a
+cigarette and offered Tyson one. Upstairs the child could be heard
+wailing. Its mother and nurse were no doubt ministering to it. Mrs.
+Melrose, so far as Tyson had observed her arrival, had cast hasty and
+shivering looks round the comfortlessness of the hall and drawing-room;
+had demanded loudly that some of the cases encumbering the hall and
+passages should be removed or unpacked at once, and had then bade Mrs.
+Dixon take her and the child to their rooms, declaring that she was
+nearly dead and would sup upstairs and go to bed. She seemed to Tyson to
+be a rather pretty woman, very small and dark, with a peevish, excitable
+manner; and it was evident that her husband paid her little or no
+attention.
+
+"I can't altogether admire your taste in carpets, Tyson," said Melrose,
+presently, with a patronizing smile, his eyes fastening on the
+monstrosity in front of him.
+
+The young man flushed.
+
+"Your cheque, sir, was not a big one, and I had to make it go a long way.
+It was no good trying the expensive shops."
+
+"Oh, well!--I daresay Mrs. Melrose can put up with it. And what about
+that sofa?" The speaker tried it--"Hm--not exactly Sybaritic--but very
+fair, very fair! Mrs. Melrose will get used to it."
+
+"Mrs. Melrose, sir, I fear, will find this place a bit lonesome, and out
+of the way."
+
+"Well, it is not exactly Piccadilly," laughed Melrose. "But a woman that
+has her child is provided for. How can she be dull? I ask you"--he
+repeated in a louder and rather hectoring voice--"how can she possibly be
+dull?"
+
+Tyson murmured something inaudible, adding to it--"And you, sir? Are you
+a sportsman?"
+
+Melrose threw up his hands contemptuously. "The usual British question!
+What barbarians we are! It may no doubt seem to you extraordinary--but I
+really never want to kill anything--except sometimes, perhaps,--a dealer.
+My amusements"--he pointed to two large cases at the end of the
+room--"are pursued indoors."
+
+"You will arrange your collections?"
+
+"Perhaps, yes--perhaps, no. When I want something to do, I may begin
+unpacking. But I shall be in no hurry. Any way it would take me months."
+
+"Is it mostly furniture you have sent home, sir?"
+
+"Oh, Lord, no! Clocks, watches, ironwork, china, stuffs,
+brasses--something of everything. A few pictures--no great shakes--as
+yet. But some day I may begin to buy them in earnest. Meanwhile,
+Tyson--_economy_!"--he lifted a monitory finger. "All my income is
+required--let me inform you at once--for what is my hobby--my passion--my
+mania, if you like--the collecting of works of art. I have gradually
+reduced my personal expenditures to a minimum, and it must be the same
+with this estate. No useless outlay of any kind. Every sixpence will be
+important to me."
+
+"Some of the cottages are in a very bad state, Mr. Melrose."
+
+"Paradises, I'll be bound, compared to some of the places I have been
+living among, in Italy. Don't encourage people to complain; that's the
+great point. Encourage them, my dear sir, to make the best of things--to
+take life _cheerfully_."
+
+Certain cottages on the estate presented themselves to the agent's mind.
+He lifted his eyebrows imperceptibly, and let the subject drop, inquiring
+instead whether his employer meant to reside at the Tower during the
+whole or the greater part of the year.
+
+Melrose smiled. "I shall always spend the winter
+here--arranging--cataloguing--writing." Again the cigarette, held in very
+long, thin fingers, described a wide semicircle in the dim light, as
+though to indicate the largeness of the speaker's thoughts. "But in March
+or April, I take flight from here--I return to the chase. To use a
+hunting metaphor, in the summer I kill--and store. In the winter I
+consume--ruminate--chew the cud. Do you follow my metaphor?"
+
+"Not precisely," said Tyson, looking at him with a quiet antagonism. "I
+suppose you mean you buy things and send them home?"
+
+Melrose nodded. "Every dealer in Europe knows me by now--and expects
+me. They put aside their best things for me. And I prefer to hunt in
+summer--even in the hot countries. Heat has no terror, for me; and
+there are fewer of your damned English and American tourists about."
+
+"I see." Tyson hesitated a moment, then said: "And I suppose, sir, Mrs.
+Melrose goes with you?"
+
+"Not at all! You cannot go dragging babies about Europe any more than is
+absolutely necessary. Mrs. Melrose will make her home here, and will no
+doubt become very much attached to this charming old house. By the way,
+what neighbours are there?"
+
+"Practically none, sir."
+
+"But there is a church--and I suppose a parson?"
+
+"Not resident. The clergyman from Gimmers Wick comes over alternate
+Sundays."
+
+"H'm. Then I don't see why I was asked to contribute to church repairs.
+What's the good of keeping the place up at all?"
+
+"The people here, sir, set great store both by their church and their
+services. They have been hoping, now that you and Mrs. Melrose have come
+to live here, that you might perhaps be willing to pay some suitable man
+to take the full duty."
+
+Melrose laughed aloud.
+
+"I? Good Heavens! I pay a parson to read me the English Church services!
+Well, I don't wish to inflict my religious opinions upon any one, Tyson;
+but I may as well tell you that they don't run at all in the direction of
+parsons. And Mrs. Melrose--why I told you she was a Catholic--a Roman
+Catholic. What does she want with a church? But a parson's wife might
+have been useful. By the way, I thought I saw a nice-looking girl when we
+arrived, who has since disappeared."
+
+"That was Thyrza Smart, sir--the daughter of Smart, the farmer."
+
+"Excellent! Mrs. Melrose shall make friends with her."
+
+"And of course, sir, both Pengarth and Keswick are within a drive."
+
+"Oh, that's no good," said Melrose, easily. "We shall have no carriage."
+
+The agent stared. "No carriage? I am afraid in that case you will find it
+very difficult getting about. There are no flys anywhere near that you
+can hire."
+
+"What do we want with them?" Melrose lit another cigarette. "I may have a
+horse--possibly. And of course there's the light cart I told you to get.
+We can't trust these things"--he pointed to the packages in the
+room--"to irresponsible people."
+
+"The cart, sir, has been constantly at work. But--it won't exactly suit
+Mrs. Melrose." Tyson smiled discreetly.
+
+"Oh! leave that to me--leave that to me!" said Melrose with an answering
+good humour. "Stable and carriage expenses are the deuce. There never was
+a coachman yet that didn't rob his employer. Well, thank you; I'm glad to
+have had this talk with you, and now, I go to bed. Beastly cold, I must
+say, this climate of yours!"
+
+And with a very evident shiver the speaker buttoned the heavy fur coat he
+had never yet taken off more closely round him.
+
+"What about that man from Carlisle--and the furnace?" he inquired
+sharply.
+
+"He comes to-morrow, sir. I could not get him here earlier. I fear it
+will be an expensive job."
+
+"No matter. With my work, I cannot risk incessant attacks of rheumatism.
+The thing must be done, and done well. Good-night to you, Tyson."
+
+Mr. Melrose waved a dismissing hand. "We shall resume our discussion
+to-morrow."
+
+The agent departed. Melrose, left solitary, remained standing a while
+before the fire, examining attentively the architecture and decorations
+of the room, so far as the miserable light revealed them. Italian, no
+doubt, the stucco work of the ceiling, with its embossed nymphs and
+cupids, its classical medallions. Not of the finest kind or period, but
+very charming--quite decorative. The house had been built on the site of
+an ancient border fortess, toward the middle of the eighteenth century,
+by the chief of a great family, from whose latest representative, his
+mother's first cousin, Edmund Melrose had now inherited it. Nothing could
+be more curious than its subsequent history. For it was no sooner
+finished, in a pure Georgian style, and lavishly incrusted in all its
+principal rooms with graceful decoration, than the man who built it died.
+His descendants, who had plenty of houses in more southern and populous
+regions, turned their backs upon the Tower, refused to live in it, and,
+failing to find a tenant of the gentry class, let part of it to the
+farmer, and put in a gardener as caretaker. Yet a certain small sum had
+always been allowed for keeping it in repair, and it was only within the
+last few years that dilapidation had made head.
+
+Melrose took up the lamp, and carried it once more through the
+ground-floor of the Tower. Save for the dying fires, and the sputtering
+lamp, everything was dark and still in the spacious house. The storm was
+dying down in fitful gusts that seemed at intervals to invade the shadowy
+spaces of the corridor, driving before them the wisps of straw and paper
+that had been left here and there by the unpacking of the great
+writing-table. There could be no ghosts in the house, for nothing but a
+fraction of it had ever sheltered life; yet from its architectural
+beauty there breathed a kind of dumb, human protest against the
+disorderly ill-treatment to which it had been subjected.
+
+In spite of his excitement and pre-occupation, Melrose felt it, and
+presently he turned abruptly, and went upstairs, still carrying the lamp;
+through the broad upper passage answering to the corridor below, where
+doors in deep recesses, each with its classical architrave, and its
+carved lintels, opened from either side. The farthest door on the right
+he had been shown as that of his wife's room; he opened one nearer, and
+let himself into his dressing-room, where Anastasia had taken care to
+light the fire, which no north country-woman would have thought of
+lighting for a mere man.
+
+Putting the lamp down in the dressing-room, he pushed open his wife's
+door, and looked in. She was apparently asleep, and the child beside her.
+The room struck cold, and, by a candle in a basin, he saw that it was
+littered from end to end with the contents of two or three trunks that
+were standing open. The furniture was no less scanty and poor than in the
+sitting-rooms, and the high panelled walls closing in upon the bed gave a
+dungeonlike aspect to the room.
+
+A momentary pity for his wife, brought to this harsh Cumbrian spot, from
+the flowers and sun, the Bacchic laughter and colour of a Tuscan vintage,
+shot through Melrose. But his will silenced it. "She will get used to
+it," he said to himself again, with dry determination. Then he turned on
+his heel. The untidiness of his wife's room, her lack of method and
+charm, and the memory of her peevishness on the journey disgusted him.
+There was a bed in his dressing-room; and he was soon soundly asleep
+there.
+
+But his wife was not asleep, and she had been well aware of his presence
+on her threshold. While he stood there, she had held her breath,
+"willing" him to go away again; possessed by a silent passion of rage and
+repulsion. When he closed the door behind him, she lay wide awake,
+trembling at all the night sounds in the house, lost in a thousand
+terrors and wild regrets.
+
+Suddenly, with a crash the casement window at the farther end of the room
+burst open under an onset of wind, Netta only just stifled the scream on
+her lips. She sat up, her teeth chattering. It was _awful_; but she must
+get up and shut it. Shivering, she crept out of bed, threw a shawl round
+her, and made one flight across the floor, possessed with a mad alarm
+lest the candle, which was flickering in the draught, should go out, and
+leave her in darkness.
+
+But now that the window was open she saw, as she approached, that the
+night was not dark. There was a strong moonlight outside, and when she
+reached the window she drew in her breath. For there, close upon her, as
+it seemed, like one of her own Apennines risen and stalking through the
+night, towered a great mountain, cloud-wreathed, and gashed with vast
+ravines. The moon was shining on it between two chasing clouds, and the
+light and shade of the great spectacle, its illumined slopes, and
+impenetrable abysses, were at once magnificent and terrible.
+
+Netta shut the window with groping, desperate hands, and rushed back to
+bed. Never had she felt so desolate, so cut off from all that once made
+her poor little life worth living. Yet, though she cried for a few
+minutes in sheer self-pity, it was not long before she too was asleep.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+The day after the Melroses' arrival at the Tower was once more a day of
+rain--not now the tempestuous storm rain which had lashed the mill
+stream to fury, and blustered round the house as they stepped into it,
+but one of those steady, gray, and featureless downpours that
+Westmoreland and Cumbria know so well. The nearer mountains which were
+wholly blotted out, and of the far Helvellyn range and the Derwentwater
+hills not a trace emerged. All colour had gone from the grass and the
+autumn trees; a few sheep and a solitary pony in the fields near the
+house stood forlorn and patient under the deluge; heaven and earth met in
+one fusion of rain just beyond the neglected garden that filled the front
+court; while on three sides of the house, and penetrating through every
+nook and corner of it, there rose, from depths far below, the roar of the
+stream which circled the sandstone rock whereon the Tower was built.
+
+Mrs. Melrose came down late. She descended the stairs slowly, rubbing her
+cold hands together, and looking forlornly about her. She wore a dress of
+some straw-coloured stuff, too thin for the climate of a Cumbria autumn,
+and round her singularly small and fleshless neck, a wisp of black
+velvet. The top of the head was rather flat, and the heavy dark hair,
+projecting stiffly on either side of the face, emphasized at once the
+sharpness of the little bony chin, the general sallowness of complexion,
+and the remarkable size and blackness of the eyes. There was something
+snakelike about the flat head, and the thin triangular face; an effect
+which certainly belied the little lady, for there was nothing malicious
+or sinister in her personality.
+
+She had not yet set eyes on her husband, who had risen early, and could
+now be heard giving directions to some one in the library to her right--a
+carpenter apparently, since there was hammering going on. She supposed
+she must find out something about the kitchen and the servants. Anastasia
+had brought up her breakfast that morning, with a flushed face, muttering
+complaint against the woman downstairs. A terror struck through her. If
+Anastasia should desert her--should give notice!
+
+Timidly she pushed open the door of the big kitchen, and prepared to
+play the mistress. Mrs. Dixon was standing at the kitchen table with a
+pastry-board before her, making a meat pie. She greeted her new mistress
+civilly, though guardedly, and went on with what she was doing.
+
+"Are you going to cook for us?" asked Mrs. Melrose, helplessly.
+
+"That's what I unnerstood fro' Muster Tyson, ma'am."
+
+"Then I came to speak to you about dinner."
+
+"Thank you, ma'am, but Muster Melrose gave me the orders a good while
+sen. There was a cart goin' into Pengarth."
+
+Pengarth was the nearest country town, some eight miles away.
+
+Mrs. Melrose coloured.
+
+"I must tell you what the baby requires," she said, drawing herself up.
+
+Mrs. Dixon looked at the speaker impassively, over her spectacles.
+
+Mrs. Melrose hurriedly named a patent food--some special
+biscuits--bananas.
+
+"Yo' can have the milk yo' want fro' t' farm," said Mrs. Dixon slowly, in
+reply; "but there's nowt of aw them things i' t' house as I knows on."
+
+"Then we must send for them."
+
+Mrs. Dixon shook her head.
+
+"There won't be anoother cart goin' in till t' day after to-morrow."
+
+"I can't have the baby neglected!" exclaimed Mrs. Melrose, with sudden
+shrillness, looking angrily at the rugged face and figure before her.
+
+"Mebbe yo'd go an talk to t' master?" suggested Mrs. Dixon, not without,
+as it seemed to Netta, a touch of slyness in eyes and voice. Of course
+they all knew by now that she was a cipher--that she was not to count.
+Edmund had been giving all the orders--in his miserly cheese-paring way.
+No comforts!--no conveniences!--not even bare necessaries, for herself
+and the child. Yet she knew very well that her husband was a rich
+man.
+
+She turned and went in search of him, making her way with difficulty
+through the piles of boxes. What could be in them all? Edmund must have
+been buying for years. Every now and then as she stooped to look at the
+labels pasted upon them, she caught names well known to her. Orbatelli,
+Via dei Bardi 13, Firenze; Bianchi, Via Mazzini 12, Lucca; Fratelli
+Masai, Via Manzoni, Pisa. And everywhere the recurrent word--_Antichità_.
+
+How she hated the word!--how she hated the associations linked with it,
+and with the names on the boxes. They were bound up with a score of
+humbling memories, the memories of her shabby, struggling youth. She
+thought of her father--the needy English artist, Robert Smeath, with just
+a streak, and no more than a streak, of talent, who had become rapidly
+"Italianate" in the Elizabethan sense--had dropped, that is, the English
+virtues, without ever acquiring the Italian. He had married her mother, a
+Florentine girl, the daughter of a small _impiegato_ living in one of the
+dismal new streets leading out of Florence on the east, and had then
+pursued a shifting course between the two worlds, the English and the
+Italian, ordering his household and bringing up his children in Italian
+fashion, while he was earning his keep and theirs, not at all by the
+showy pictures in his studio which no one would buy, but as jackal in
+_antichità_, to the richer English and American tourists. He kept a
+greedy eye on the artistic possessions still remaining in the hands of
+impoverished native owners; he knew the exact moment of debt and
+difficulty in which to bring a foreign gold to bear; he was an adept in
+all the arts by which officials are bribed, and pictures are smuggled.
+And sometimes these accomplishments of his resulted in large accessions
+of cash, so that all the family lived on the fat of the land, bought
+gorgeous attire, and went to Livorno, or Viareggio, or the Adriatic
+coast, for the summer. And sometimes there was no luck, and therefore
+no money. Owners became unkindly patriotic and would not sell. Or some
+promising buyer, after nibbling for months, went off finally unhooked.
+Then the apartment in the Via Giugno showed the stress of hard times. The
+girls wore their old clothes to rags; the mother did all the work of the
+house in a bedgown and slippers; and the door of the apartment was never
+opened more than a few inches to any applicant, lest creditors should get
+in.
+
+And the golden intervals got fewer, and the poverty more persistent, as
+the years went on. Till at last, by the providence--or malice--of the
+gods, a rich and apparently prodigal Englishman, Edmund Melrose, hungry
+for _antichità_ of all sorts, arrived on the scene. Smeath became rapidly
+the bond-slave of Melrose, in the matter of works of art. The two made
+endless expeditions together to small provincial towns, to remote villas
+in the Apuan or Pisan Alps, to _palazzi_ in Verona, or Lucca, or Siena.
+Melrose indeed had not been long in finding out that the little artist
+was both a poor judge and a bad agent. Netta's cheek always flamed when
+she thought of her father's boastings and blunderings, and of the way
+in which Edmund had come to treat him. And now the Smeath family were
+just as poor as ever again. Her little sisters had scarcely a dress to
+their backs; and she was certain her mother was both half-starved and
+over-worked. Edmund had not been at all kind to them since her
+marriage--not at all!
+
+How had he come to marry her? She was well aware that it was an
+extraordinary proceeding on his part. He was well born on both sides,
+and, by common report among the English residents in Florence, enormously
+rich, though his miserly habits had been very evident even in the first
+days of their acquaintance. He might no doubt have married anybody he
+pleased; if he would only have taken the trouble. But nothing would
+induce him to take any trouble--socially. He resented the demands and
+standards of his equals; turned his back entirely on normal English
+society at home and abroad; and preferred, it seemed, to live with his
+inferiors, where his manners might be as casual, and his dress as
+careless as he pleased. The queer evenings and the queer people in their
+horrid little flat had really amused him. Then he had been ill, and mama
+had nursed him; and she, Netta, had taken him a pot of carnations while
+he was still laid up; and so on. She had been really pretty in those
+days; much prettier than she had ever been since the baby's birth. She
+had been attractive too, simply because she was young, healthy,
+talkative, and forthcoming; goaded always by the hope of marriage, and
+money, and escape from home. His wooing had been of the most despotical
+and patronizing kind; not the kind that a proud girl would have put up
+with. Still there had been wooing; a few presents; a frugal cheque for
+the trousseau; and a honeymoon fortnight at Sorrento.
+
+Why had he done it?--just for a whim?--or to spite his English family,
+some member of which would occasionally turn up in Florence and try to
+put in claims upon him--claims which infuriated him? He was the most
+wilful and incalculable of men; caring nothing, apparently, one day for
+position and conventionality, and boasting extravagantly of his family
+and ancestors the next.
+
+"He was rather fond of me--for a little," she thought to herself wearily,
+as she stood at the hall window, looking out into the rain. At the point
+which things had now reached she knew very well that she meant nothing at
+all to him. He would not beat her, or starve her, or even, perhaps,
+desert her. Such behaviour would disturb his existence as much as hers;
+and he did not mean to be disturbed. She might go her own way--she and
+the child; he would give her food and lodging and clothes, of a sort, so
+long as she did not interfere with his tastes, or spend his money.
+
+Then, suddenly, while she stood wrathfully pondering, a gust of anger
+rose--childish anger, such as she had shown the night before, when she
+had tried to get out of the carriage. She turned, ran down the corridor
+to the door which she understood was the door of his study--and entered
+with a burst.
+
+"Edmund!--I want to speak to you!"
+
+Melrose, who was hanging, frowning and absorbed, over a carpenter who was
+freeing what seemed to be an old clock from the elaborate swathings of
+paper and straw in which it had been packed, looked up with annoyance.
+
+"Can't you see, Netta, that I'm very busy?"
+
+"I can't help it!--it's about baby."
+
+With a muttered "D--n!" Melrose came toward her.
+
+"What on earth do you want?"
+
+Netta looked at him defiantly.
+
+"I want to be told whenever the cart goes into Pengarth--there were lots
+of things to get for baby. And I must have something here that I can
+drive myself. We can't be cut off from everything."
+
+"Give your orders to Mrs. Dixon then about the cart," said Melrose
+angrily. "What has it to do with me? As for a carriage, I have no money
+to spend on any nonsense of the kind. We can do perfectly well without
+it."
+
+"I only want a little pony-cart--you could get it second-hand for ten or
+twelve pounds--and the farmer has got a pony."
+
+She looked at him--sallow, and frowning.
+
+Melrose pushed her into the passage and drew the door to, behind him, so
+that the carpenter might not hear.
+
+"Ten or twelve pounds! Do you expect I get money off the hedges? Can't
+you be content here like a reasonable woman, without getting me into
+debt?"
+
+Netta laughed and tossed her head.
+
+"You shouldn't leave your business letters about!"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"There was a cheque among your papers one day last week!--I saw it before
+you could hide it away. It was for £3,000--a dividend from something--a
+coal mine, I think. And the week before you had another--"
+
+Her husband's eyes shed lightnings.
+
+"I'll not have you prying into my affairs!" he said violently. "All I
+have is wanted--and more."
+
+"And nothing of course--to give _me_--your wife!--for any comforts or
+pleasures! That never enters into your head!"
+
+Her voice came thickly already. Her chest began to heave.
+
+"There now--crying again!" said Melrose, turning on his heel. "Can't you
+sometimes thank your stars you're not starving in Florence, and just put
+up with things a little?"
+
+Netta restrained herself.
+
+"So I would"--she said, choking--"if--"
+
+"If what--"
+
+For all answer, she turned and hurried away toward the hall. Melrose
+looked after her with what appeared like exasperation, then suddenly
+recaptured himself, smoothed his brow, and, returning to the study, gave
+himself with unruffled zest and composure to the task of unpacking the
+Boule clock.
+
+Netta repaired to the drawing-room, and threw herself on to the
+uncomfortable sofa, struggling with her tears. For about a fortnight
+after her marriage she had imagined herself in love with Melrose; then
+when the personal illusion was gone, the illusion of position and wealth
+persisted. He might be queer, and behave queerly in Italy. But when they
+returned to England she would find herself the wife of a rich English
+gentleman, and the gingerbread would once more be gilt. Alack! a few
+weeks in a poor London Lodging with no money to spend on the shops which
+tempted her woman's cupidity at every step; Edmund's final refusal, first
+laughing, then stubborn, to present her to "my devilish relations"; the
+complete indifference shown to her wishes as to the furnishings of the
+Tower; these various happenings had at last brought her to an unwelcome
+commerce with the bare truth. She had married a selfish eccentric, who
+had chosen her for a caprice and was now tired of her. She had not a
+farthing, nor any art or skill by which to earn one. Her family was as
+penniless as herself. There was nothing for it but to submit. But her
+temper and spirits had begun steadily to give way.
+
+_Firenze!_ As she sat in her cheerless drawing-room, hating its ugly
+shabbiness, and penetrated with the damp chill of the house, there swept
+through her a vision of the Piazza del Duomo, as she had last seen it on
+a hot September evening. A blaze of light--delicious all-prevailing
+warmth--the moist bronzed faces of the men--the girls with the look of
+physical content that comes in hot countries with the evening--the sun
+flooding with its last gold, now the new marbles of the _facciata_,
+now the alabaster and bronze of the Baptistery, and now the moving
+crowds--the flowers-baskets--the pigeons--
+
+She lifted her eyes with a sobbing breath, and saw the gray
+cloud-curtain--the neglected garden--the solitary pony in the
+field--with the shafts of rain striking across it. Despair stirred in
+her--the physical nostalgia of the south. A happy heart might have
+silenced the craving nerves; but hers was far from happy.
+
+The door opened. A head was thrust in--the head of a fair-haired girl.
+There was a pause.
+
+"What do you want?" said Mrs. Melrose, haughtily, determined to assert
+herself.
+
+Thyrza came in slowly. She held a bunch of dripping Michaelmas daisies.
+
+"Shall I get a glass for them? I thowt mebbe you'd like 'em in here."
+
+Netta thanked her ungraciously. She remembered having seen the girl the
+night before, and Anastasia had mentioned her as the daughter of the
+_Contadino_.
+
+Thyrza put the flowers in water, Netta watching her in silence; then
+going into the hall, she returned with a pair of white lace curtains.
+
+"Shall I put 'em up? It 'ud mebbe be more cheerful."
+
+Netta looked at them languidly.
+
+"Where do they come from?"
+
+"Mr. Tyson brought 'em from Pengarth. He thowt you might like 'em for the
+drawing-room."
+
+Mrs. Melrose nodded, and Thyrza mounted a chair, and proceeded to put up
+the curtains, turning an observant eye now and then on the thin-faced
+lady sitting on the sofa, her long fingers clasped round her knees, and
+her eyes--so large and staring as to be rather ugly than beautiful in
+Thyrza's opinion--wandering absently round the room.
+
+"It's a clashy day," Thyrza ventured at last.
+
+"It's a dreadful day," said Mrs. Melrose sharply. "Does it always rain
+like this?"
+
+"Well, it _do_ rain," was Thyrza's cautious reply. "But there that's
+better than snowin'--for t' shepherds."
+
+Mrs. Melrose found the girl's voice pleasant, and could not deny that she
+was pretty, in her rustic way.
+
+"Has your father many sheep?"
+
+"Aye, but they're all gone up to t' fells for t' winter. We had a grand
+time here in September--at t' dippin'. Yo'd never ha' thowt there was so
+mony folk about"--the girl went on, civilly, making talk.
+
+"I never saw a single house, or a single light, on the drive from the
+station last night," said Mrs. Melrose, in her fretful voice. "Where are
+all the people?"
+
+"Well, there ain't many!" laughed Thyrza. "It's a lonesome place this is.
+But when it's a shearin', or a dippin', yo' unnerstand, farmin' folk'll
+coom a long way to help yan anuther."
+
+"Are they all farmers about here?"
+
+"Mostly. Well, there's Duddon Castle!" Thyrza's voice, a little muffled
+by the tin-tacks in the mouth, came from somewhere near the top of a tall
+window--"Oh--an' I forgot!--"
+
+In a great hurry the speaker jumped down from her perch, and to Netta's
+astonishment ran out of the room.
+
+"What is she about?" thought Mrs. Melrose irritably. But the question was
+hardly framed before Thyrza reappeared, holding out her hand, in which
+lay some visiting-cards.
+
+"I should ha' given them yo' before."
+
+Mrs. Melrose took them with surprise, and read the name.
+
+"Countess Tatham--who is she?"
+
+"Why it's she that lives at Duddon Castle." Then the girl looked
+uncertainly at her companion--"Mr. Tyson did tell me she was a relation
+of Mr. Melrose."
+
+"A relation? I don't know anything about her," said Netta decidedly. "Did
+she come to call upon me?"
+
+The girl nodded--"She come over--it was last Tuesday--from Duddon, wi'
+two lovely horses--my, they were beauties! She said she'd come again."
+
+Netta asked questions. Lady Tatham, it seemed, was the great lady of the
+neighbourhood, and Duddon Castle was a splendid old place, that all the
+visitors went to see. And there were her cards. Netta's thoughts began to
+hurry thither and thither, and possibilities began to rise. A relation of
+Edmund's? She made Thyrza tell her all she knew about Duddon and the
+Tathams. Visions of being received there, of meeting rich and
+aristocratic people, of taking her place at last in society, the place
+that belonged to her as Edmund's wife, in spite of his queer miserly
+ways, ran again lightly through a mind that often harboured such dreams
+before--in vain. Her brow cleared. She made Thyrza leave the curtains,
+and sit down to gossip with her. And Thyrza, though perfectly conscious,
+as the daughter of a hard-working race, that to sit gossiping at midday
+was a sinful thing, was none the less willing to sin; and she chattered
+on in a Westmoreland dialect that grew steadily broader as she felt
+herself more at ease, till Mrs. Melrose could scarcely follow her.
+
+But she managed to seize on the facts that concerned her. Lady Tatham, it
+seemed, was a widow, with an only boy, a lad of seven, who was the heir
+to Duddon Castle, and its great estates. The Castle was ten miles from
+the Tower.
+
+"How shall I ever get there?" thought Mrs. Melrose, despairingly.
+
+As to other neighbours, they seemed to consist entirely of an old
+bachelor doctor, about three miles away, and the clergyman of Gimmers
+Wick and his wife. _She_ was sure to come. But most people were "glad to
+see the back on her." She had such a poor spirit, and was always
+complaining.
+
+In the midst of this conversation, the door of the room, which was ajar,
+slowly opened. Thyrza looked round and saw in the aperture a tiny white
+figure. It was the Melrose baby, standing silent, wide-eyed, with its
+fingers in its mouth, and Anastasia behind it. Anastasia, whose look was
+still thunderous, explained that she was unpacking and could not do with
+it. The child toddled in to its mother, and Thyrza exclaimed in
+admiration:
+
+"Oh, you _are_ a little beauty!"
+
+And she caught up one of the brass curtain rings lying on the table, and
+tried to attract the baby with it. But the little thing took not the
+smallest notice of the lure. She went straight to her mother, and,
+leaning against Netta's knee, she turned to stare at Thyrza with an
+intensity of expression, rare in a child so young. Thyrza, kneeling on
+the floor, stared back--fascinated. She thought she had never seen
+anything so lovely. The child had her father's features, etherealized;
+and great eyes, like her mother, but far more subtly beautiful. Her skin
+was pale, but of such a texture that Thyrza's roses-and-milk looked rough
+and common beside it. Every inch of the proud little head was covered
+with close short curls leaving the white neck free, and the hand lifted
+to her mouth was of a waxen delicacy.
+
+Netta opened a picture-book that Anastasia had brought down with her.
+Felicia pushed it away. Netta opened it again. Then the child, snatching
+it from her, sat down on the floor, and, before Netta could prevent her,
+tore one of the pages across with a quick, vindictive movement--her
+eyes sparkling.
+
+"Naughty--! naughty!" said Netta in a scolding voice.
+
+But Thyrza dropped her hand hastily into a gray calico pocket tied round
+her waist, and again held out something.
+
+"It is only a pear-drop," she said apologetically to Netta. "It won't
+hurt her."
+
+Felicia snatched at it at once, and sucked it, still flushed with
+passion. Her mother smiled faintly.
+
+"You like sweets?" she said, childishly, to her companion; "give me one?"
+
+Thyrza eagerly brought out a paper bag from her pocket and Netta put out
+a pair of thin fingers. She and her sisters had been great consumers of
+sweet stuff in the small dark Florentine shops. The shared greediness
+promoted friendship; and by the time Mrs. Dixon put in a reproachful face
+with a loud--"Thyrza, what _be_ you a doin'?"--Mrs. Melrose knew as much
+of the Tower, the estate, the farm, and the persons connected with them,
+as Thyrza's chattering tongue could tell her in the time.
+
+There was nothing, however, very consoling in the information. When
+Thyrza departed, Mrs. Melrose was left to fret and sigh much as before.
+The place was odious; she could never endure it. But yet the possible
+advent of "Countess Tatham" cast a faint ray on the future.
+
+A few days later Lady Tatham appeared. Melrose had been particularly
+perverse and uncommunicative on the subject. "Like her audacity!"--so
+Netta had understood his muttered comment, when she took him the cards.
+He admitted that the lady and he were cousins--the children of first
+cousins; and that he had once seen a good deal of her. He called her "an
+audacious woman"; but Mrs. Melrose noticed that he did not forbid her the
+house; nay, rather that he listened with some attention to Thyrza's
+report that the lady had promised to call again.
+
+On the afternoon of the call, the skies were clear of rain, though not of
+cloud. The great gashed mountain to the north which Dixon called
+Saddleback, while a little Cumbria "guide," produced by Tyson, called it
+Blencathra, showed sombrely in a gray light; and a November wind was busy
+stripping what leaves still remained from the woods by the stream and in
+the hollows of the mountain. Landscape and heavens were of an iron
+bracingness and bareness; and the beauty in them was not for eyes like
+Netta's. She had wandered out forlornly on the dank paths descending to
+the stream. Edmund as usual was interminably busy fitting up one of the
+lower rooms for some of his minor bric-à-brac--ironwork, small bronzes,
+watches, and clocks. Anastasia and the baby were out.
+
+Would Anastasia stay? Already she looked ill; she complained of her
+chest. She had made up her mind to come with the Melroses for the sake of
+her mother and sister in Rome, who were so miserably poor. Netta felt
+that she--the mistress--had some security against losing her, in the mere
+length and cost of the journey. To go home now, before the end of her
+three months, would swallow up all the nurse had earned; for Edmund would
+never contribute a farthing. Poor Anastasia! And yet Netta felt angrily
+toward her for wishing to desert them.
+
+"For of course I shall take her home--in March. We shall all be going
+then," she said to herself with an emphasis, almost a passion, which yet
+was full of misgiving.
+
+Suddenly, just as she had returned by a steep path to the dilapidated
+terrace on the north side of the house--a sound of horses' feet and
+wheels. Evidently a carriage--a caller. Netta's pulse fluttered. She ran
+into the house by a side door, and up to her room, where she smoothed
+her hair anxiously, and lightly powdered her face. There was no time to
+change her dress, but she took out a feather boa which she kept for great
+occasions, and prepared to descend with dignity. Oh the stairs she met
+Mrs. Dixon, who announced "Lady Tatham."
+
+"Find Mr. Melrose, please."
+
+"Oh, he's there, Ma'am, awready."
+
+Netta entered the drawing-room to see her husband pacing up and-down
+before a strange lady, who sat in one of the crimson armchairs, entirely
+at her ease.
+
+"So this is your wife, Edmund," said Lady Tatham, as she rose.
+
+"It is. You'll make mock of her no doubt--as you do of me."
+
+"Nonsense! I never make mock of anybody," said a musical voice, rich
+however through all its music in a rather formidable significance. The
+owner of it turned toward Netta.
+
+"I hope, Mrs. Melrose, that you will like Cumbria?"
+
+Netta, accustomed to Edmund's "queerness," and determined to hold her
+own, settled herself deliberately opposite her visitor, and was soon
+complaining in her shrill voice of the loneliness of the place and the
+damp of the climate. Melrose never once looked at his wife. He was
+paler than usual, with an eager combative aspect, quite new to Netta. He
+seemed for once to be unsure of his ground--both to expect attack, even
+to provoke it--and to shrink from it. His eyes were fixed upon Lady
+Tatham, and followed her every movement.
+
+Attention was certainly that lady's due; and it failed her rarely. She
+had beauty--great beauty; and a personality that refused to be
+overlooked. Her dress showed in equal measure contempt for mere fashion,
+and a close study of effect. The lines of her long cloak of dull blue
+cloth, with its garnishings of sable, matched her stately slenderness
+well; and the close-fitting cap over the coiled hair conveyed the same
+impression of something perfectly contrived and wholly successful.
+Netta thought at first that she was "made up," so dazzling was the
+white and pink, and then doubted. The beauty of the face reminded one,
+perhaps, of the beauty of a boy--of some clear-eyed, long-chinned
+athlete--masterfully simple--a careless conqueror.
+
+How well she and Edmund seemed to know each other! That was the strange,
+strange thing in Netta's eyes. Presently she sat altogether silent while
+they talked. Melrose still walking up and down--casting quick glances
+at his guest. Lady Tatham gave what seemed to be family news--how "John"
+had been sent to Teheran--and "George" was to be military secretary in
+Dublin--and "Barbara" to the astonishment of everybody had consented to
+be made a Woman of the Bedchamber--"poor Queen!"--how Reginald Pratt had
+been handsomely turned out of the Middleswick seat, and was probably
+going to "rat" to an Opposition that promised more than the
+Government--that Cecilia's eldest girl--"a pretty little minx"--had been
+already presented, and was likely to prove as skilful a campaigner for a
+husband as her mother before her--that "Gerald" had lost heavily at
+Newmarket, and was now a financial nuisance, borrowing from everybody in
+the family--and so on, and so on.
+
+Melrose received these various items of information half scornfully, half
+greedily; it might have been guessed that his interest in the teller was
+a good deal keener than his interest in the things told. The conversation
+revealed to Netta phases in her husband's existence wholly unknown to
+her. So Edmund had been in Rome--for two or three years--in the Embassy!
+That she had never known. He seemed also to have been an English member
+of Parliament for a time. In any case he had lived, apparently for years,
+like other men of his kind--shooting, racing, visiting, travelling,
+fighting, elections. She could not fit the facts to which both alluded
+with her own recollections of the misanthrope who had first made
+acquaintance with her and her family in Florence three years before this
+date; and her bewilderment grew.
+
+As for the others, they had soon, it seemed, completely forgotten the
+thin sallow-faced wife, who sat with her back to the window, restlessly
+twisting her rings.
+
+Presently Melrose stopped abruptly--in front of Lady Tatham.
+
+"Where is Edith?" He bent forward peremptorily, his hand on the table,
+his eyes on the lady's face.
+
+"At the Cape with her husband."
+
+"Has she found him out yet?"
+
+"There's nothing to find out. He's an excellent fellow."
+
+"A stupid prig," said Melrose passionately. "Well, you did it!--You did
+it!"
+
+"Yes, I did it." Lady Tatham rose quietly. She had paled, and after a
+minute's hesitation she held out her hand to Melrose. "Suppose, Edmund,
+we bury the hatchet. I should like to be friends with you and your wife,
+if you would allow it?"
+
+The change of manner was striking. Up to this moment Lady Tatham had
+been, so to speak, the aggressor, venturing audaciously on ground which
+she knew to be hostile--from bravado?--or for some hidden reason? But she
+spoke now with seriousness--even with a touch of womanly kindness.
+
+Melrose looked at her furiously.
+
+"Lady Tatham, I advise you to leave us alone!"
+
+She sighed, met his eyes a moment, gravely, then turned to Netta.
+
+"Mrs. Melrose, your husband and I have an old quarrel. He wanted to marry
+my sister. I prevented it. She is married now--and he is married. Why
+shouldn't we make friends?"
+
+"Quarrels are very foolish!" said Netta, sententiously, straightening her
+small shoulders. But she dared not look at Melrose.
+
+"Well, tell him so," laughed Lady Tatham. "And come and see me at Duddon
+Castle."
+
+"Thank you! I should like to!" cried Netta.
+
+"My wife has no carriage, Lady Tatham."
+
+"Oh, Edmund--we might hire something," said his wife imploringly.
+
+"I do not permit it," he said resolutely. "Good-bye, Lady Tatham. You are
+like all women--you think the cracked vase will hold water. It won't."
+
+"What are you going to do here, Edmund?"
+
+"I am a collector--and works of art amuse me."
+
+"And I can do nothing--for you--or your wife?"
+
+"Nothing. I am sorry if you feel us on your mind. Don't. I would have
+gone farther from you, if I could. But seven miles--are seven miles."
+
+Lady Tatham coloured. She shook hands with Netta.
+
+Melrose held the door open for her. She swept through the hall, and
+hurried into her carriage. She and Melrose touched hands ceremoniously,
+and the brougham with its fine roan horses was soon out of sight.
+
+A miserable quarrel followed between the husband and wife. Netta,
+dissolved in hysterical weeping, protested that she was a prisoner and an
+exile, that Edmund had brought her from Italy to this dreary place to
+kill her, that she couldn't and wouldn't endure it, and that return to
+Italy she must and would, if she had to beg her way. It was cruel to shut
+her up in that awful house, to deny her the means of getting about, to
+treat people who wished to be kind to her as Edmund had treated Lady
+Tatham. She was not a mere caterpillar to be trodden on. She would appeal
+to the neighbours--she would go home to her parents, etcetera--etcetera.
+
+Melrose at first tried to check her by sarcasm--a banter that stung where
+it lit. But when she would not be checked, when she followed him into his
+study, wailing and accusing, a whirlwind of rage developed in the man,
+and he denounced her with a violence and a brutality which presently
+cowed her. She ran shivering upstairs to Anastasia and the baby, bolted
+her door, and never reappeared till, twenty-four hours later, she crept
+down white and silent, to find a certain comfort in Thyrza's rough
+ministrations. Melrose seemed to be, perhaps, a trifle ashamed of his
+behaviour; and they patched up a peace over the arrangements for the
+heating of the house on which for once he had the grace to consult her.
+
+The winter deepened, and Christmas came. On the mountain-tops the snow
+lay deep, and when Netta--who on many days never left the house--after
+walking a while up and down the long corridor for the sake of exercise,
+would sink languidly on the seat below its large western window, she
+looked out upon a confusion of hills near and far, drawn in hard
+white upon an inky sky. To the south the Helvellyn range stretched in
+bold-flung curves and bosses; in the far distance rose the sharper peaks
+of Derwentwater; while close at hand Blencathra with its ravines, and all
+the harsh splendour of its white slopes and black precipices, alternately
+fascinated and repelled the little Southerner, starved morally and
+physically for lack of sun.
+
+Even for Cumbria it was a chill and sunless winter. No bracing frosts,
+and persistent northwesterly winds. Day after day the rain, which was
+snow on the heights, poured down. Derwentwater and Bassenthwaite rose
+till they mingled in one vast lake. The streams thundered from the fells;
+every road was a water-course.
+
+Netta lost flesh and appetite. She was a discontented and ailing woman,
+and the Dixons could not but notice her fragile state. Mrs. Dixon thought
+her "nobbut a silly sort of body," but would sometimes try to cook what
+pleased her, or let Anastasia use the kitchen fire for "gnocchi" or
+"risotto" or other queer messes; which, however, when they appeared, were
+generally more relished by the master than the mistress.
+
+Dixon, perceiving no signs of any desire on Netta's part to attend the
+"papish" chapel ten miles away, began to plot for her soul. His own life
+was in the little Methodist chapel to which he walked four miles every
+Sunday, wet or fine. In the summer he had accompanied the minister and
+one or two class leaders in a drive through the hayfields, shouting to
+the haymakers--"We're going to heaven!--won't you come with us!"--and he
+had been known to spend five hours at a stretch on his knees wrestling
+for the salvation of a drunken friend, in the village of Threlkeld. But
+Netta baffled him. Sometimes he would come home from chapel, radiant,
+and would take her a bunch of holly for the table by way of getting
+into conversation with her. "It was _fine_ to-day, Missis! There was
+three found peace. And the congregation was grand! There was four
+attorneys--two of 'em from as far as Pengarth." And he would lend her
+tracts--and even offer, good man, to borrow a "shandrey" from a
+neighbour, and drive her himself to the chapel service. But Netta only
+smiled or yawned at him; and as for the tracts, she hid them under the
+few sofa cushions the house possessed.
+
+Mr. Tyson, the agent, came to the house as seldom as he could, that he
+might not quarrel with his employer before it was to his own interest to
+do so. Netta discovered that he pitied her; and once or twice, drawing on
+the arts of flirtation, with which the Florentine woman is always well
+acquainted, she complained to him of her loneliness and her husband's
+unkindness. But his north-country caution protected him from any
+sentimentalizing, however innocent. And before the end of the winter
+Netta detested him. Meanwhile she and Anastasia lived for one hope only.
+From many indications it was plain that Melrose was going south in March.
+The women were determined not to stay behind him. But, instinctively,
+they never raised the subject, so as not to risk a struggle prematurely.
+
+Meanwhile Melrose passed a winter wholly satisfactory to himself. The
+partial unpacking of his collections was an endless source of amusement
+and pleasure. But his curious egotism showed itself very plainly in the
+business. He made no attempt at artistic arrangement, though there was
+some classification. As fast as one room was filled--the vacant
+packing-cases turned on their sides, serving to exhibit what they had
+once contained--he would begin upon another. And woe to Mrs. Dixon or
+Thyrza if they attempted any cleaning in one of his rooms! The
+collections were for himself only, and for the few dealers or experts to
+whom he chose to show them. And the more hugger-mugger they were, the
+less he should be pestered to let people in to see them. Occasionally he
+would rush up to London to attend what he called a "high puff sale"--or
+to an auction in one of the northern towns, and as he always bought
+largely, purchases kept arriving, and the house at the end of the winter
+was in a scarcely less encumbered and disorderly condition than it had
+been at the beginning. The few experts from the Continent or America,
+whom he did admit, were never allowed a word of criticism of the
+collections. If they ventured to differ from Melrose as to the
+genuineness or the age of a bronze or a marble, an explosion of temper
+and a speedy dismissal awaited them.
+
+One great stroke of luck befel him in February which for a time put him
+in high good-humour. He bought at York--very cheaply--a small bronze
+Hermes, which some fifteenth-century documents in his own possession,
+purchased from a Florentine family the year before, enabled him to
+identify with great probability as the work of one of the rarest and most
+famous of the Renaissance sculptors. He told no one outside the house,
+lest he should be plagued to exhibit it, but he could not help boasting
+of it to Netta and Anastasia.
+
+"That's what comes of having _an eye_! It's worth a thousand guineas of
+it's worth a penny. And those stupid idiots let me have it for twenty-two
+pounds!"
+
+"A thousand guineas!" Gradually the little bronze became to Netta the
+symbol of all that money could have bought for her--and all she was
+denied; Italy, freedom, the small pleasures she understood, and the
+salvation of her family, now in the direst poverty. There were moments
+when she could have flung it passionately out of the window into the
+stream a hundred feet below. But she was to find another use for it.
+
+March arrived. And one day Anastasia came to tell her mistress that she
+had received orders to pack Mr. Melrose's portmanteaus for departure.
+
+Netta brooded all day, sitting silent and pale in the window-seat, with
+some embroidery which she never touched on her knee. Outside, not a sign
+of spring! A bitter north wind was blowing which had blanched all colour
+from the hills, and there was ice on the edges of the streams. Thyrza was
+away in Carlisle, helping an aunt. There was no one in the house but Mrs.
+Dixon, and a deaf old woman from one of the labourer's cottages; attached
+to the farm, who had come in to help her. The poor babe had a cold, and
+could be heard fretfully crying and coughing in her nursery.
+
+And before Netta's inward eye there stretched the interminable days and
+weeks ahead, no less than the interminable weeks and months she had
+already lived through, in this discomfort of body, and this loneliness of
+spirit.
+
+After supper she walked resolutely into her husband's littered study and
+demanded that she and Anastasia and the baby should go with him to the
+Continent. He, she understood, would stop in Paris. She and the child
+would push on to Florence, where she could stay the summer with her
+people, at no greater cost than at the Tower. The change was necessary
+both for her and Felicia, and go she would.
+
+Melrose flatly and violently refused. What did she want better than the
+Tower? She had as much service, and as much luxury as her antecedents
+entitled her to; and he neither could nor would provide her with anything
+more. He was heavily in debt, and had no money to spend on railway
+tickets. And he entirely disapproved of her relations, especially of her
+father, who might any day find himself "run in" by the Italian
+authorities for illicit smuggling of pictures out of the country. He
+declined to allow his child to become familiar with such a circle.
+
+Netta listened to him with tight lips, her pale face strangely flushed.
+When she saw that her appeal was quite fruitless she went away, and she
+and Anastasia sat up whispering together far into the night.
+
+Early next morning Melrose departed, leaving a letter for his wife, in
+which he informed her that he had left money with Mr. Tyson for the
+household expenses, and for the few shillings he supposed she would want
+as pocket money. He advised her to be out a great deal, and assured her
+that the Cumbria summer, when it came, was delightful. And he signed
+himself "your affectionate husband, Edmund Melrose."
+
+Mrs. Dixon went into Pengarth for shopping on the fly which conveyed
+Melrose to the station, and was to come out by carrier. After their
+departure there was no one left in the house but the deaf old woman.
+Netta and her maid preceeded to carry out a plan they had been long
+maturing. Anastasia had a few pounds left of her Christmas wages; enough
+to carry them to London; and for the rest, they had imagined an excellent
+device.
+
+The bronze Hermes had been left by Melrose in a cupboard in a locked room
+on the first floor. When Mrs. Dixon came back that night, she discovered
+that Mrs. Melrose, with her child and maid had quitted the house. They
+had apparently harnessed the cart and horse themselves, and had driven
+into Pengarth, taking a labourer with them to bring the cart home. They
+had carried all their personal belongings away with them; and, after a
+while, Mrs. Dixon, poking about, discovered that the door of one of the
+locked rooms had been forced.
+
+She also noticed, in one of the open drawers of Mrs. Melrose's bedroom, a
+photograph, evidently forgotten, lying face downward. Examining it, she
+saw that it was a picture of Netta, with the baby, taken apparently in
+Italy during the preceding summer. The Cumbrian woman, shrewdly observant
+like all her race, was struck by the tragic differences between the woman
+of the picture and the little blighted creature who had just made a
+flitting from the Tower.
+
+She showed the photograph to her husband, returned it to the drawer, and
+thought no more about it.
+
+News was of course sent to Mr. Melrose in Paris, and within three days he
+had come rushing back to the Tower, beside himself with rage and grief,
+not at all, as George Tyson soon assured himself, for the loss of his
+wife and child, but entirely for the theft of the priceless Florentine
+bronze, a loss which he had suspected on the first receipt of the news of
+the forced door, and verified at once on his arrival.
+
+He stood positively aghast at Netta's perfidy and wickedness, and he
+wrote at once to the apartment in the Via Giugno, to denounce her in the
+most emphatic terms. As she had chosen to steal one of his most precious
+possessions, which she had of course converted into money, she had no
+further claim on him whatever, and he broke off all relations with her.
+Eighty pounds a year would be paid by his lawyers to a Florentine lawyer,
+whom he named, for his daughter's maintenance, so long as Netta left him
+unmolested. But he desired to hear and see no more of persons who
+reminded him of the most tragical event of his history as a collector, as
+well as of the utter failure of his married life. Henceforth they were
+strangers to each other, and she might arrange her future as she
+pleased.
+
+The letter was answered by Mrs. Robert Smeath in the third person, and
+all communications ceased. As a matter of fact the Smeath family were
+infinitely relieved by Melrose's letter, which showed that he did not
+intend to take any police steps to recover the bronze or its value.
+Profiting by the paternal traditions, Netta had managed the sale of the
+Hermes in London, where, owing to Melrose's miserly hiding of it, it was
+quite unknown, with considerable skill. It had realized a small fortune,
+and she had returned, weary, ill, but triumphant, to the apartment in the
+Via Giugno.
+
+Twelve months later, Melrose had practically forgotten that he had ever
+known her. He returned for the winter, to Threlfall, and entered upon a
+course of life which gradually made him the talk and wonder of the
+countryside. The rooms occupied by Netta and her child were left just as
+he had found them when he returned after her flight. He had turned the
+key on them then, and nobody had since entered them. Tyson wondered
+whether it was sentiment, or temper; and gave it for the latter.
+
+The years passed away. Melrose's hair turned from black to gray; Thyrza
+married a tradesman in Carlisle and presented him with a large family;
+the Dixons, as cook and manservant, gradually fitted themselves more and
+more closely to the queer conditions of life in the Tower, and grew old
+in the service of a master whose eccentricities became to them, in
+process of time, things to be endured without comment, like disagreeable
+facts of climate. In Dixon, his Methodist books, his Bible, and his
+weekly chapel maintained those forces of his character which were--and
+always continued to be--independent of Melrose; and Melrose knew his own
+interests well enough not to interfere with an obstinate man's religion.
+While Tyson, after five years, passed on triumphantly to a lucrative
+agency in the Dukeries, having won a reputation for tact and patience in
+the impossible service of a mad master, which would carry him through
+life. Melrose, being Melrose, found it hopeless to replace him
+satisfactorily; and, as he continued to buy land greedily year after
+year, the neglected condition of his immense estate became an
+ever-increasing scandal to the county.
+
+Meanwhile, for some years after the departure of Netta, Lady Tatham was
+obliged for reason of health to spend the winters on the Riviera, and she
+and her boy were only at Duddon for the summer months. Intercourse
+between her and her cousin Edmund Melrose was never renewed, and her son
+grew up in practical ignorance of the relationship. When, however, the
+lad was nearing the end of his Eton school days Duddon became once more
+the permanent home, summer and winter, of mother and son, and young Lord
+Tatham, curly-haired, good-humoured, and good-hearted, became
+thenceforward the favourite and princeling of the countryside. On the
+east and north, the Duddon estates marched with Melrose's property.
+Occasions of friction constantly arose, but the determination on each
+side to have no more communication with the other than was absolutely
+necessary generally composed any nascent dispute; so long at least as
+Lady Tatham and a very diplomatic agent were in charge.
+
+But at the age of twenty-four, Harry Tatham succeeded to the sole
+management of his estates, and his mother soon realized that her son was
+not likely to treat their miserly neighbour with the same patience as
+herself.
+
+And with the changes in human life, went changes even more subtle and
+enduring in the Cumbria county itself. Those were times of crisis for
+English agriculture. Wheat-lands went back to pasture; and a surplus
+population, that has found its way for generations to the factory towns,
+began now to turn toward the great Canadian spaces beyond the western
+sea. Only the mountains still rose changeless and eternal, at least to
+human sense; "ambitious for the hallowing" of moon and sun; keeping their
+old secrets, and their perpetual youth.
+
+And after twenty years Threlfall Tower became the scene of another drama,
+whereof what has been told so far is but the prologue.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+It was a May evening, and Lydia Penfold, spinster, aged twenty-four, was
+sketching in St. John's Vale, that winding valley which, diverging from
+the Ambleside-Keswick road in an easterly direction, divides the northern
+slopes of the Helvellyn range from the splendid mass of Blencathra.
+
+So beautiful was the evening, so ravishing under its sway were heaven and
+earth, that Lydia's work went but slowly. She was a professional artist,
+to whom guineas were just as welcome as to other people; and she had very
+industrious and methodical views of her business. But she was, before
+everything, one of those persons who thrill under the appeal of beauty to
+a degree that often threatens or suspends practical energy. Save for the
+conscience in her, she could have lived from day to day just for the
+moments of delight, the changes in light and shade, in colour and form,
+that this beautiful world continually presents to senses as keen as hers.
+Lydia's conscience, however, was strong; though on this particular
+evening it did little or nothing to check the sheer sensuous dreaming
+that had crept over her.
+
+The hand that held her palette had dropped upon her knee, her eyes were
+lifted to the spectacle before her, and her lips, slightly parted,
+breathed in pleasure.
+
+She looked on a pair of mountains of which one, torn and seamed from top
+to toe as though some vast Fafnir of the prime had wreaked his dragon
+rage upon it, fronted her sheer, rimmed with gold where some of its
+thrusting edges still caught the sunset, but otherwise steeped in purple
+shades already prophesying night; while the other, separated from the
+first by a gap, yet grouping with it, ran slanting away to the northwest,
+offering to the eyes only a series of lovely foreshortened planes, rising
+from the valley, one behind the other, sweeping upward and backward to
+the central peak of Skiddaw, and ablaze with light from base to summit.
+
+The evenings in the north are long. It was past seven on this May day;
+yet Lydia knew that the best of the show was still to come; she waited
+for the last act, and refused to think of supper. That golden fusion of
+all the upper air; that "intermingling of Heaven's pomp," spread on the
+great slopes of Skiddaw--red and bronze and purple, shot through each
+other, and glorified by excess of light; that sharpness of the larch
+green on the lower slopes; that richness of the river fields; that
+shining pageantry of cloud, rising or sinking with the mountain line:
+pondering these things, absorbing them, she looked at her drawing from
+time to time in a smiling despair; the happy despair of the artist, who
+amid the failure of to-day looks forward with passion to the effort of
+to-morrow.
+
+Youth and natural joy possessed her.
+
+What scents from the river-bank, under the softly breathing wind which
+had sprung up with the sunset! The girl brought her eyes down, and saw a
+bank of primroses, and beyond, in the little copse on the farther side of
+the stream, a gleam of blue, where the wild hyacinth spread among the
+birches. While close to her, at her very feet, ran the stream, with its
+slipping, murmuring water, its stones splashed with white, purple, and
+orange, its still reaches paved with evening gold.
+
+"What a mercy I wrote that letter!" she said to herself, with a sigh of
+content. She was thinking of a proposal that had come to her a few days
+before this date, to take a post as drawing mistress in a Brighton
+school. The salary was tempting; and, at the moment, money was more than
+usually scarce in the family purse. Her mother's eyes had looked at her
+wistfully.
+
+Yet she had refused; with a laughing bravado that had concealed some
+inward qualms.
+
+Whereupon the gods had immediately and scandalously rewarded her. She had
+sold four of her drawings at a Liverpool exhibition for twenty pounds;
+and there were lying beside her on the grass some agreeable press
+notices just arrived, most of which she already knew by heart.
+
+Twenty pounds! That would pay the half year's rent. And there were
+three other drawings in a London show that might very well sell too. Why
+not--now the others had sold? Meanwhile she--thank the Lord!--had saved
+herself, as a fish from the hook. She was still free; free to draw, free
+to dream. She had not bartered her mountains for a salary. Instead of
+crocodile walks, two and two, with a score of stupid schoolgirls, here
+she was, still roaming the fells, the same happy vagabond as before. She
+hugged her liberty. And at the same time she promised herself that her
+mother should have a new shawl and a new cap for Whitsuntide.
+
+Those at present in use came near in Lydia's opinion to being a family
+disgrace.
+
+The last act of the great spectacle rushed on; and again the artist held
+her breath enthralled. The gold on Skiddaw was passing into rose; and
+over the greenish blue of the lower sky, webs of crimson cirrhus spun
+themselves. The stream ran fire; and far away the windows of a white farm
+blazed. Lydia seized a spare sketching-block lying on the grass, and
+began to note down a few "passages" in the sky before her.
+
+Suddenly a gust came straying down the valley. It blew the press-cuttings
+which had dropped from her lap toward the stream. One of them fell in,
+the others, long flapping things, hung caught in a tuft of grass. Lydia
+sprang up, with an exclamation of annoyance, and went to the rescue.
+Dear, dear!--the longest and best notice, which spoke of her work as
+"agreeable and scholarly, showing, at tunes, more than a touch of high
+talent"--was quietly floating away. She must get it back. Her mother had
+not yet read it--not yet purred over it. And it was most desirable she
+should read it, so as to get rid thereby of any lingering doubt about the
+horrid school and its horrid proposal.
+
+But alack! the slip of newspaper was already out of reach, speeded by a
+tiny eddy toward a miniature rapid in the middle of the beck. Lydia,
+clinging with one hand to a stump of willow, caught up a stick lying on
+the bank with the other, and, hanging over the stream, tried to head back
+the truant. All that happened was that her foot slipping on a pebble went
+flop into the shallow water, and part of her dress followed it.
+
+It was not open to Lydia to swear, and she had no time for the usual
+feminine exclamations before she heard a voice behind her.
+
+"Allow me--can I be of any use?"
+
+She turned in astonishment, extricating her wet foot, and clambered back
+on to the bank. A young man stood there, civilly deferential. His bicycle
+lay on the grass at the edge of the road, which was only a few steps
+away.
+
+"I saw you slip in, and thought perhaps I might help. You were trying to
+reach something, weren't you?"
+
+"It doesn't matter, thank you," said Lydia, whose cheeks had gone pink.
+
+The young man looked at her, and became still more civil.
+
+"What was it? That piece of paper? Oh, I'll get it in a moment."
+
+And splashing from stone to stone in the river-bed, he had soon reached a
+point where, with the aid of Lydia's stick, the bedraggled cutting was
+soon fished out and returned to its owner. Lydia thanked him.
+
+"But you've wet both your feet!" She looked at them, with concern. "Won't
+it be very uncomfortable, bicycling?"
+
+"I haven't far to go. Oh, by the way, I was just looking out for somebody
+to ask--about this road--and I couldn't see a soul, till just as I came
+out of the little wood there"--he pointed--"I saw you--slipping in."
+
+They both laughed. Lydia returned to her camp stool, and began to put up
+her sketching things.
+
+"What is it you want to know?"
+
+"Is this the road for Whitebeck?"
+
+"Yes, certainly. You come to a bridge and the village is on the other
+side."
+
+"Thank you. I don't know these parts. But what an awfully jolly valley!"
+He waved a hand toward it. "And what do you think I saw about a mile
+higher up?" He had picked up his bicycle from the grass, and stood
+leaning easily upon it. She could not but observe that he was tall and
+slim and handsome. A tourist, no doubt; she could not place him as an
+inhabitant.
+
+"I know!" she said smiling. "You saw the otter hounds. They passed me an
+hour ago. Have they caught him?"
+
+"Who? the otter? Lord, no! He got right away from them--up a tributary
+stream."
+
+"Good!" said Lydia, as she shut her painting-box.
+
+The young man hesitated. He had clearly no right to linger any longer,
+but, as the girl before him seemed to him one of the most delicious
+creatures he had ever seen, he did linger.
+
+"I wonder if I might ask you another question? Can you tell me whether
+that fine old house over there is Duddon Castle?"
+
+"Duddon Castle!" Lydia lifted her eyebrows. "Duddon Castle is seven miles
+away. That place is called Threlfall Tower. Were you going to Duddon?"
+
+"No. But"--he hesitated--"I know young Tatham a little. I should like to
+have seen his house. But, that's a fine old place, isn't it?" He looked
+with curiosity at the pile of building rising beyond a silver streak of
+river, amid the fresh of the May woods.
+
+"Well--yes--in some ways," said Lydia, dubiously. "Don't you know who
+lives there?"
+
+"Not the least. I am a complete stranger here. I say, do let me do that
+up for you?" And, letting his bicycle fall, the young man seized the
+easel which had still to be taken to pieces and put into its case.
+
+Lydia shot a wavering look at him. He ought certainly to have departed by
+now, and she ought to be snubbing him. But the expression on his sunburnt
+face as he knelt on the grass, unscrewing her easel, seemed so little to
+call for snubbing that instead she gave him further information;
+interspersed with directions to him as to what to do and what not to do
+with her gear.
+
+"It belongs to a Mr. Melrose. Did you never hear of him?"
+
+"Never. Why should I?"
+
+"Not from the Tathams?"
+
+"No. You see I only knew Tatham at college--in my last year. He
+was a good deal junior to me. And I have never stayed with them at
+Duddon--though they kindly asked me--years ago."
+
+The girl beside him took not the smallest notice of his information. She
+was busy packing up brushes and paints, and her next remark showed him
+subtly that she did not mean to treat him as an acquaintance of the
+Tathams, whom she probably knew, but was determined to keep him to his
+rôle of stranger and tourist.
+
+"You had better look at Threlfall as you pass. It has a splendid
+situation."
+
+"I will. But why ought I to have heard of the gentleman? I forget his
+name."
+
+"Mr. Melrose? Oh, well--he's a legend about here. We all talk about him."
+
+"What's wrong with him? Is he a nuisance?--or a lunatic?"
+
+"It depends what you have to do with him. About here he goes by the name
+of the 'Ogre.'"
+
+"How, does he eat people up?" asked the stranger, smiling.
+
+The girl hesitated.
+
+"Ask one of his tenants!" she said at last.
+
+"Oh, he's a landlord, and a bad one?"
+
+She nodded, a sudden sharpness in her gray eyes.
+
+"But that's not the common reason for the name. It's because he shuts
+himself up--in a house full of treasures. He's a great collector."
+
+"Of works of art? You--don't need to be mad to do that! It seems to be
+one of the things that pays best nowadays--with all these Americans
+about. It's a way of investing your money. Doesn't he show them to
+anybody?"
+
+"Nobody is allowed to go near him, or his house. He has built a high wall
+round his park, and dogs are let loose at night that tear you to pieces."
+
+"Nice man! If it weren't for the dogs, I should brave him. In a small
+way, I'm a collector myself."
+
+He smiled, and Lydia understood that the personal reference was thrown
+out as a feeler, in case she might be willing to push the conversation
+further. But she did not respond, although as he spoke she happened to
+notice that he wore a remarkable ring on his left hand, which seemed
+to illustrate his remark. An engraved gem?--Greek? Her eyes were quick
+for such things.
+
+However, she was seized with shyness, and as she had now finished the
+packing of her brushes and paints, and the young man had elaborately
+fastened all the straps of the portable easel and its case, there was
+nothing for him to do but to stoop unwillingly for his soft hat which was
+lying on the grass. Then an idea struck him.
+
+"I say, what are you going to do with all these things?"
+
+"Carry them home." She smiled. "I am not a cripple."
+
+"Mightn't I--mightn't I carry them for you?"
+
+"Thank you. My way lies in quite another direction. Good-night."
+
+She held out a shapely hand. He took it, lifted his hat, and departed.
+
+As soon as he was safely past a jutting corner of the road Lydia, instead
+of going home, lazily sat down again on a rock to think about what had
+happened. She was perfectly aware that--considering the whole interview
+had only taken ten minutes--she had made an impression upon the young
+man. And as young men of such distinguished appearance were not common in
+the Whitebeck neighbourhood, the recollection of all those little signs
+in look and manner which had borne witness to the stranger's discreet
+admiration of her was not at all disagreeable.
+
+He was not a native--that she was sure of. She guessed him a Londoner.
+"Awfully good clothes!--London clothes. About thirty, I should think? I
+wonder what he does. He can't be rich, or he wouldn't be bicycling. He
+did up those straps as though he were used to them; but he can't be an
+artist, or he'd have said something. It was a face with lots of power in
+it. Not very good-tempered, I should say? But there's something about
+him--yes, distinctly, _something_! I liked his thin cheeks, and his dark
+curls. His head, too, was uncommonly well set on. I'm sure that there's a
+good deal to him, as the Americans say; he's not stuffed with sawdust. I
+can imagine--just imagine--being in love with him."
+
+She laughed to herself.
+
+Then a sudden thought occurred to her, which reddened her cheeks. Suppose
+when the young man came to think over it, he believed that she had let
+the papers fall into the river--deliberately--on purpose--just to attract
+his attention? At the very precise moment that he comes upon the scene,
+she slips into the water. Of course!--an arranged affair!
+
+She sat on, meditating in some discomfort.
+
+"It is no use deceiving ourselves," she thought. "We're not in the good
+old Tennysonian days. There's precious little chivalry now! Men don't
+idealize women as they used. They're grown far more suspicious--and
+_harder_. Perhaps because women have grown so critical of them! Anyway
+something's gone--what is it? Poetry? Illusion? And yet!--why is it that
+men still put us off our balance?--even now--that they matter so much
+less, now that we live our own lives, and can do without them? I
+shouldn't be sitting here, bothering my head, if it had been another girl
+who had come to help."
+
+Slowly she gathered up her things and took her way home, while the
+evening of blue and pearl fell around her, while the glow died on the
+fells, and Venus came out in a sky that was still too full of light to
+let any lesser stars appear.
+
+She crossed the stepping stones, and in a river field on the farther side
+she came across an old shepherd, carrying a wounded ewe across his
+shoulders, and with his dog beside him. At sight of him she paused in
+astonishment. He was an old friend of hers, but he belonged to a
+village--the village of Mainstairs--some three miles away in the lowland
+toward Pengarth. She had first come across him when sketching among some
+distant fells where he had been a shepherd for more than forty years.
+
+The old man's russet face, sharp-lined and strong, lit up as he saw her
+approaching.
+
+"Why I thowt I med coom across yer!" he said smiling. And he explained
+that he had been paying a visit to a married daughter under Naddle Fell,
+and had volunteered to carry an injured sheep down to a valley farm,
+whence it had strayed on his way home.
+
+They stopped to talk while he rested a few minutes, under his burden,
+propped against a rock. Lydia asked him after a sick grand-daughter. Her
+question showed knowledge--no perfunctory kindness.
+
+He shook his head sadly, and her grave, soft look, as she fell silent a
+little, beside him, said more than words.
+
+"Anything been done to your cottage?" she asked him presently.
+
+"Noa--nowt."
+
+"Nor to the other houses?"
+
+"Naethin'."
+
+Her brows frowned.
+
+"Horrible!" she said under her breath. But they did not pursue the
+subject. Instead the old man broke out in praise of the "won'erful 'cute"
+sheep dog beside him, and in the story of the accident which had slightly
+lamed the ewe he was carrying. Lydia's vivacious listening, her laugh,
+her comments, expressed--unconsciously--with just a touch of Cumbria
+dialect, showed them natural comrades. Some deeply human gift, some
+spontaneity in the girl, answered to the racy simplicity of the old man.
+
+"Tell me once more"--she said, as she rose from her seat upon a fallen
+tree, and prepared to go on her way--"those counting words you told me
+last week. I tried to tell them to my mother--but I couldn't remember
+them all. They made us laugh so."
+
+"Aye, they're the owd words," said the shepherd complacently. "We doan't
+use 'em now. But my feyther minds how his feyther used allus to count by
+'em."
+
+And he began the catalogue of those ancient numerals by which the
+northern dalesman of a hundred years ago were still accustomed to reckon
+their sheep, words that go back to the very infancy of man.
+
+"Yan--tyan--tethera--methera--pimp;
+sethera--lethera--hovera--dovera--dick."
+
+Lydia's face dissolved in laughter--and when the old man delighting in
+her amusement went on to the compounds of ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen,
+and the rest:
+
+"Yan-a-dick--tyan-a-dick--tethera-a-dick--methera-a-dick--bumfit."
+
+At "bumfit" (fifteen) they both rocked with merriment, the old man
+carried away by the infection of hers.
+
+"Go on," said Lydia--the tears of laughter in her eyes--"up to twenty,
+and then hear me say them."
+
+"Yan-a-bumfit--tyan-a-bumfit--tethera-a-bumfit--methera-a-bumfit--giggot"
+(twenty).
+
+"Giggot" set them both off again--and then Lydia--stumbling, laughing,
+and often corrected, said her lesson.
+
+By the time she was fairly perfect, and the old man had straightened
+himself again under his load--a veritable "good shepherd," glorified by
+the evening light--they parted with a friendly nod, glad to have met and
+sure to meet again.
+
+"I'll come and see Bessie soon," she said gently, as she moved on.
+
+"Aye. Yo'll be varra welcome."
+
+She stepped forward briskly, gained the high road, and presently saw in
+front of her a small white house, recently built, and already embowered
+in a blossoming garden. Lilacs sent their fragrance to greet her;
+rhododendrons glowed through the twilight, and a wild-cherry laden with
+bloom reared its white miracle against the walls of the house.
+
+Lydia stood at the gate devouring the tree with her eyes. The blossom
+had already begun to drop. "Two days more"--she said to herself,
+sighing--"and it'll be gone--till next year. And it's been out such a
+little, little while! I seem hardly to have looked at it. It's horrible
+how short-lived all the beautiful things are."
+
+"Lydia!" A voice called from an open window.
+
+"Yes, mother."
+
+"You're dreadfully late, Lydia! Susan and I have finished supper long
+ago."
+
+Lydia walked into the house, and put her head into the drawing-room.
+
+"Sorry, mother! It was so lovely, I couldn't come in. And I met a dear
+old shepherd I know. Don't bother about me. I'll get some milk and cake."
+
+She closed the door again, before her mother could protest.
+
+"Girls will never think of their meals!" said Mrs. Penfold to herself in
+irritation. "And then all of a sudden they get nerves--or consumption--or
+something."
+
+As she spoke, she withdrew from the window, and curled herself up on a
+sofa, where a knitted coverlet lay, ready to draw over her feet. Mrs.
+Penfold was a slight, pretty woman of fifty with invalidish Sybaritic
+ways, and a character which was an odd mixture of humility and
+conceit--diffidence and audacity. She was quite aware that she was not as
+clever as her daughters. She could not write poetry like Susan, or paint
+like Lydia. But then, in her own opinion, she had so many merits they
+were without; merits which more than maintained her self-respect, and
+enabled her to hold her ground with them. For instance: by the time she
+was four and twenty, Lydia's age, she had received at least a dozen
+proposals. Lydia's scalps, so far as her mother knew, were only
+two--fellow-students at South Kensington, absurd people, not to be
+counted. Then, pretty as Lydia was, her nose could not be compared for
+delicacy with her mother's. "My nose was always famous"--Mrs. Penfold
+would say complacently to her daughters--"it was that which first
+attracted your dear father. 'It was,' he said--you know he always
+expressed himself so remarkably--'such a sure sign of "race."' His own
+people--oh! they were quite nice people--but quite middle-class." Again,
+her hands and feet were smaller and more aristocratic than either Lydia's
+or Susan's. She liked to remind herself constantly how everybody had
+admired them and talked about them when she was a girl.
+
+Drawing her work-box toward her, while she waited for Lydia's return,
+Mrs. Penfold fell to knitting, while the inner chatter of the mind went
+as fast as her needles--concerned chiefly with two matters of absorbing
+interest: Lydia's twenty pounds, and a piece of news about Lydia,
+recently learnt from the rector's wife.
+
+As to the twenty pounds, it was the greatest blessing! Of course the
+school salary would have been a certainty--and Lydia had hardly
+considered it with proper seriousness. But there--all was well! The extra
+twenty pounds would carry them on, and now that Lydia had begun to earn,
+thought the maternal optimist, she would of course go on earning--at
+higher and higher prices--and the family income of some three hundred a
+year would obtain the increment it so desperately needed. And as Mrs.
+Penfold looked upon a girls' school as something not far removed from a
+nunnery, a place at any rate painfully devoid of the masculine element;
+and as her whole mind was set--sometimes romantically, sometimes
+financially--on the marriage of her daughters, she felt that both she and
+Lydia had escaped what might have been an unfortunate necessity.
+
+Yes, indeed!--what a _providential_ escape, if--
+
+Mrs. Penfold let fall her knitting; her face sparkled. Why had Lydia
+never communicated the fact, the thrilling fact that she had been meeting
+at the rectory--more than once apparently--not merely _a_ young man, but
+_the_ young man of the neighbourhood. And with results--favourable
+results--quite evident to the Rector and the Rector's wife, if Lydia
+herself chose to ignore and secrete them. It was really unkind....
+
+The door opened. A white figure slipped into the room through its mingled
+lights, and found a stool beside Mrs. Penfold.
+
+"Dear--are you all right?"
+
+Mrs. Penfold stroked the speaker's head.
+
+"Well, I thought I was going to have a headache this morning,
+darling--but I didn't--it went away. Lydia! the Rector and Mrs. Deacon
+have been here. _Why_ didn't you tell me you have been meeting Lord
+Tatham at the rectory?"
+
+Lydia laughed.
+
+"Didn't I? Well, he's quite decent."
+
+"Mrs. Deacon says he admired you. She's sure he did!" Mrs. Penfold
+stooped eagerly toward her daughter, trying to see her face in the
+twilight.
+
+"Mrs. Deacon's a goose! You know she is, mother,--you often say so. I met
+him first, of course, at the Hunt Ball. And you saw him there too. You
+saw me dancing with him."
+
+"But that was only once," said Mrs. Penfold, candidly. "I didn't think
+anything of that. When I was a girl, if a young man liked me at a dance,
+we went on till we made everybody talk. Or else, there was nothing in
+it."
+
+"Well, there was nothing in it, dear--in this case. And I wouldn't advise
+you to give me to Lord Tatham--just yet!"
+
+Mrs. Penfold sighed.
+
+"Of course one knows that that kind of young man has his marriage made
+for him--just like royalty. But sometimes--they break out. There _are_
+dukes that have married plain Misses--no better than you, Lydia--and
+not American either. But--Lydia--you _did_ like him?"
+
+"Who? Lord Tatham? Certainly."
+
+"I expect most girls do! He's the great _parti_ about here."
+
+"Mother, _really_!" cried Lydia. "He's just a pleasant youth--not at all
+clever. And oh, how badly he plays bridge!"
+
+"That doesn't matter. Mrs. Deacon says you got on with him, splendidly."
+
+"I chaffed him a good deal. He really plays worse than I do--if you can
+believe it."
+
+"They like being chaffed"--said Mrs. Penfold pensively--"if a girl does
+it well."
+
+"I don't care, darling, whether they like it or not. It amuses me, and so
+I do it."
+
+"But you mustn't let them think they're being laughed at. If you do that,
+Lydia, you'll be an old maid. Oh, Lydia!"--the speaker sighed like a
+furnace--"I _do_ wish you saw more young men!"
+
+"Well, I saw another one--much handsomer than Lord Tatham--this
+afternoon," laughed Lydia.
+
+Mrs. Penfold eagerly inquired. The story was told, and Mrs. Penfold, as
+easily lured by a new subject as a child by a new doll, fell into many
+speculations as to who the youth could have been, and where he was going.
+Lydia soon ceased to listen. But when the coverlet slipped away she did
+not fail to replace it tenderly over her mother's feet, and every now and
+then her fingers gave a caressing touch to the delicate hand of which
+Mrs. Penfold was so proud. It was not difficult to see that of the two
+the girl was really the mother, in spirit; the maturer, protecting soul.
+
+Presently she roused herself to ask:
+
+"Where is Susan?"
+
+"She went up to write directly after supper, and we mustn't disturb her.
+She hopes to finish her tragedy to-night. She said she had an
+inspiration."
+
+"Inspiration or no, I shall hunt her to bed, if I don't hear her door
+shut by twelve," said Lydia with sisterly determination.
+
+"Do you think, darling, that Susy--will ever make a great deal of money
+by her writings?" The tone was wistful.
+
+"Well, no, mother, candidly, I don't. There's no money in tragedies--so
+I'm told."
+
+Mrs. Penfold sighed. But Lydia, changed the subject, entered upon a
+discussion, so inventively artistic, of the new bonnet, and the new dress
+in which her mother was to appear on Whitsunday, that when bedtime came
+Mrs. Penfold had seldom passed a pleasanter evening.
+
+After her mother had gone to bed, Lydia wandered into the moonlit garden,
+and strolled about its paths, lost in the beauty of its dim flowers and
+the sweetness of its scents. The spring was in her veins, and she felt
+strangely shaken and restless. She tried to think of her painting, and
+the prospect she had of getting into an artistic club, a club of young
+landscapists, which exhibited every May, and was beginning to make a
+mark. But her thoughts strayed perpetually.
+
+So her mother imagined that Lord Tatham had only danced once with her at
+the Hunt Ball? As a matter of fact, he had danced with her once, and
+then, as dancing was by no means the youth's strong point, they had sat
+out in a corner of the hotel garden, by the river, through four supper
+dances. And if the fact had escaped the notice both of Mrs. Penfold and
+Susy, greatly to Lydia's satisfaction, she was well aware that it had not
+altogether escaped the notice of the neighbourhood, which kept an eager
+watch on the doings of its local princeling in matters matrimonial.
+
+And as to the various meetings at the rectory, Lydia could easily have
+made much of them, if she had wished. She had come to see that they were
+deliberately sought by Lord Tatham, and encouraged by Mrs. Deacon. And
+because she had come to see it, she meant to refuse another invitation
+from Mrs. Deacon, which was in her pocket--without consulting her mother.
+Besides--said youthful pride--if Lord Tatham really wished to know them,
+Lady Tatham must call. And Lady Tatham had not called.
+
+Her mother was quite right. The marriage of young earls are, generally
+speaking, "arranged," and there are hovering relations, and unwritten
+laws in the background, which only the foolish forget. "And as I am not a
+candidate for the place," thought Lydia, "I won't be misunderstood!"
+
+She did not intend indeed to be troubled--for the present--with such
+matters at all.
+
+"Marrying is not in the bill!" She declaimed it to a lilac-bush, standing
+with her hands behind her, and face uplifted. "I have no money, and no
+position--therefore the vast majority of men won't want to marry me.
+And as to scheming to make them want it--why!--good heavens!--when there
+are such amusing things to do in the world!"
+
+She paced the garden paths, thinking passionately, defiantly of her art,
+yet indignant with herself for these vague yearnings and languors that
+had to be so often met and put down.
+
+"Men!--_men!_--what do they matter to me, except for talk--and fun!
+Yet there one goes thinking about them--like any fool. It's sex of
+course--and youth. I can no more escape them than anybody else. But I
+Can be mistress of them. I will. That's where this generation differs.
+We needn't drift--we see clear. Oh! those clouds--that blue!--those
+stars! Dear world! Isn't beauty enough?"
+
+She lifted her arms above her head in a wild aspiration. And all in a
+moment it surprised her to feel her eyes wet with tears.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile the young man who had rescued her press cuttings had fallen,
+barely an hour after his parting from her, upon evil fortunes.
+
+His bicycle had carried him swiftly down the valley toward the Whitebeck
+bridge. Just above the bridge, a steep pitch of hill, one of those
+specimens of primitive road-making that abound in Cumbria, descended
+rapidly into a dark hollow, with a high wall on one side, overhung by
+trees, and on the other a bank, broken three parts of tie way down by the
+entrance of a side road. At the top of the hill, Faversham, to give the
+youth his name, stopped to look at the wall, which was remarkable for
+height and strength. The thick wood on his right hid any building there
+might be on the farther side of the stream. But clearly this was the
+Ogre's wall--ogreish indeed! A man might well keep a cupboard full of
+Fatimas, alive or dead, on the other side of it, or a coiner's press, or
+a banknote factory, or any other romantic and literary villainy.
+Faversham found himself speculating with amusement on the old curmudgeon
+behind the wall; always with the vision, drawn by recollection on the
+leafy background, of a girl's charming face--clear pale skin, beautiful
+eyes, more blue surely than gray--the whitest neck, with coils of brown
+hair upon it--the mouth with its laughing freedom--yet reticent--no mere
+silly sweetness!
+
+Then putting on his brake, he began to coast down the hill, which opened
+gently only to turn without notice into something scandalously
+precipitous. The bicycle had been hired in Keswick, and had had a hard
+season's use. The brake gave way at the worst moment of the hill, and
+Faversham, unable to save himself, rushed to perdition. And by way of
+doubling his misfortune, as in the course of his mad descent he reached
+the side road on the left, there came the loud clatter of a cart, and a
+young horse emerged almost at a gallop, with a man tugging vainly at its
+rein.
+
+Ten minutes later a group of men stood consulting by the side of the road
+over Faversham's prostrate form. He was unconscious; his head and face
+were covered with blood, and his left ankle was apparently broken. A
+small open motor stood at the bottom of the hill, and an angry dispute
+was going on between an old man in mire-stained working-clothes, and the
+young doctor from Pengarth to whom the motor belonged.
+
+"I say, Mr. Dixon, that you've got to take this man into Mr. Melrose's
+house and look after him, till he is fit to be moved farther, or you'll
+be guilty of his death, and I shall give evidence accordingly!" said the
+doctor, with energy, as he raised himself from the injured man.
+
+"Theer's noa place for him i' t' Tower, Mr. Undershaw, an' I'll take noa
+sich liberty!"
+
+"Then I will. Where's Mr. Melrose?"
+
+"I' London--till to-morrow. Yo'll do nowt o' t' soart, doctor."
+
+"We shall see. To carry him half a mile to the farm, when you might carry
+him just across that bridge to the house, would be sheer murder. I won't
+see it done. And if you do it, you'll be indicted for manslaughter. Now
+then--why doesn't that hurdle come along?" The speaker looked impatiently
+up the road; and, as he spoke, a couple of labourers appeared at the top
+of the hill, carrying a hurdle between them.
+
+Dixon threw looks of mingled wrath and perplexity at the doctor, and the
+men.
+
+"I tell yo', doctor, it conno' be done! Muster Melrose's orders mun be
+obeyed. I have noa power to admit onybody to his house withoot his leave.
+Yo' knaw yoursel'," he added in the doctor's ear, "what Muster Melrose
+is."
+
+Undershaw muttered something--expressing either wrath or scorn--behind
+his moustache; then said aloud:
+
+"Never you mind, Dixon; I shall take the responsibility. You let me
+alone. Now, my boys, lend a hand with the hurdle, and give me some
+coats."
+
+Faversham's leg had been already placed in a rough splint and his head
+bandaged. They lifted him, quite unconscious, upon the hurdle, and made
+him as comfortable as they could. The doctor anxiously felt his pulse,
+and directed the men to carry him, as carefully as possible, through a
+narrow gate in the high wall opposite which was standing open, across the
+private foot-bridge over the stream, and so to the Terrace whereon stood
+Threlfall Tower. Impenetrably hidden as it was behind the wall and the
+trees, the old house was yet, in truth, barely sixty yards away. Dixon
+followed, lamenting and protesting, but in vain.
+
+"Hold your tongue, man!" said Undershaw at last, losing his temper. "You
+disgrace your master. It would be a public scandal to refuse to help a
+man in this plight! If we get him alive through to-night, it will be a
+mercy. I believe the cart's been over him somewhere!" he added, with a
+frowning brow.
+
+Dixon silenced, but by no means persuaded, followed the little
+procession, till it reached a side door of the Tower, opening on the
+terrace just beyond the bridge. The door was shut, and it was not till
+the doctor had made several thunderous attacks upon it, beside sending
+men round to the other doors of the house, that Mrs. Dixon at last
+cautiously opened it.
+
+Fresh remonstrance and refusal followed on the part both of husband and
+wife. Fresh determination also on the part of the doctor, seconded by the
+threatening looks and words of Faversham's bearers, stout Cumbria
+labourers, to whom the storming of the Tower was clearly a business
+they enjoyed. At last the old couple, bitterly protesting, gave way, and
+the procession entered.
+
+They found themselves in a long corridor, littered with a strange
+multitude of objects, scarcely distinguishable in the dim light shed by
+one unshuttered window through which some of the evening glow still
+penetrated. Dixon and his wife whispered excitedly together; after which
+Dixon led the way through the corridor into the entrance hall--which was
+equally encumbered--and so to a door on the right.
+
+"Yo' can bring him in there," he said sulkily to Undershaw. "There's
+mebbe a bed upstairs we can bring doon."
+
+He threw open the drawing-room--a dreary, disused room, with its carpets
+rolled up in one corner, and its scanty furniture piled in another. The
+candle held by Mrs. Dixon lit up the richly decorated ceiling.
+
+"Can't you do anything better?" asked Undershaw, turning upon her
+vehemently. "Don't you keep a spare bedroom in this place?"
+
+"Noa, we doan't!" said Mrs. Dixon, with answering temper. "There isn't a
+room upstairs but what's full o' Muster Melrose's things. Yo' mun do wi'
+this, or naethin'."
+
+Undershaw submitted, and Faversham's bearers gently laid him down,
+spreading their coats on the bare floor to receive him, till a bed could
+be found. Dixon and his wife, in a state of pitiable disturbance, went
+off to look for one, while Undershaw called after them:
+
+"And I warn you that to-morrow you'll have to find quarters for two
+nurses!"
+
+Thus, without any conscious action on his own part, and in the absence of
+its formidable master, was Claude Faversham brought under the roof of
+Threlfall Tower.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+On the evening of the following day, Mr. Edmund Melrose arrived in
+Pengarth by train from London, hired a one-horse wagonette, and drove out
+to the Tower.
+
+His manners were at no time amiable, but the man who had the honour of
+driving him on this occasion, and had driven him occasionally before, had
+never yet seen him in quite so odious a temper. This was already evident
+at the time of the start from Pengarth, and thenceforward the cautious
+Cumbrian preserved an absolute and watchful silence, to the great
+annoyance of Melrose, who would have welcomed any excuse for ill-humour.
+But as nothing beyond the curtest monosyllables were to be got out of his
+companion, and as the rich beauty of the May landscape was entirely lost
+upon himself, Melrose was reduced at last in the course of his ten miles'
+drive to scanning once more the copy of the _Times_ which he had brought
+with him from the south. The news of various strikes and industrial
+arbitrations which it contained had already enraged him; and enraged him
+again as he looked through it. The proletariat, in his opinion, must be
+put down and kept down; that his own class began to show a lamentable
+want of power to do either was the only public matter that ever really
+troubled him. So far as his life was affected by the outside world at
+all, except as a place where auctions took place, and dealers' shops
+abounded, it was through this consciousness of impending social disaster,
+this terror as of a rapidly approaching darkness bearing the doom of the
+modern world in its bosom, which intermittently oppressed him, as it has
+oppressed and still overshadows innumerable better men of our day.
+
+At this moment, in the month of May, 190--, Edmund Melrose had just
+passed his seventieth birthday. But the extraordinary energy and vivacity
+of his good looks had scarcely abated since the time when, twenty-three
+years before this date, Netta Smeath had first seen him in Florence;
+although his hair had whitened, and the bronzed skin of the face had
+developed a multitude of fine wrinkles that did but add to its character.
+His aspect, even on the threshold of old age, had still something of the
+magnificence of an Italian captain of the Renaissance, something also of
+the pouncing, peering air that belongs to the type. He seemed indeed to
+be always on the point of seizing or appropriating some booty or other.
+His wandering eyes, his long acquisitive fingers, his rapid movements
+showed him still the hunter on the trail, to whom everything else was in
+truth indifferent but the satisfaction of an instinct which had grown and
+flourished on the ruins of a man.
+
+As they drove along, through various portions of the Tower estates, the
+eyes of the taciturn driver beside him took note of the dilapidated farm
+buildings and the broken gates which a miserly landlord could not be
+induced to repair, until an exasperated tenant actually gave notice.
+Melrose meanwhile was absorbed in trying to recover a paragraph in the
+_Times_ he had caught sight of on a first reading, and had then lost in
+the excitement of studying the prices of a sale at Christie's, held the
+day before, wherein his own ill luck had led to the bad temper from which
+he was suffering. He tracked the passage at last. It ran as follows:
+
+"The late Professor William Mackworth has left the majority of his costly
+collections to the nation. To the British Museum will go the marbles and
+bronzes, to the South Kensington, the china and the tapestries. Professor
+Mackworth made no stipulations, and the authorities of both museums are
+free to deal with his bequests as they think best."
+
+Melrose folded the newspaper and put it back into his pocket with a short
+sudden laugh, which startled the man beside him. "Stipulations! I should
+rather think not! What museum in its senses would accept such piffling
+stuff with any _stipulations_ attached? As it is, the greater part will
+go into the lumber-rooms; they'll never show them! There's only one
+collection that Mackworth ever had that was worth having. Not a word
+about _that_. People don't give their best things to the country--not
+they. Hypocrites! What on earth has he done with them? There are several
+things _I want_."
+
+And he fell into a long and greedy meditation, in which, as usual, his
+fancy pursued a quarry and brought it down. He took no notice meanwhile
+of the objects passed as they approached the Tower, although among them
+were many that might well have roused the attention of a landlord; as,
+for instance, the condition of the long drive leading up to the house,
+with its deep ruts and grass-grown sides; a tree blown down, not
+apparently by any very recent storm, and now lying half across the
+roadway, so that the horse and carriage picked their way with difficulty
+round its withered branches; one of the pillars of the fine gateway,
+which gave access to the walled enclosure round the house, broken away;
+and the enclosure within, which had been designed originally as a formal
+garden in the Italian style, and was now a mere tangled wilderness of
+weeds and coarse grass, backed by dense thickets of laurel and yew which
+had grown up in a close jungle round the house, so that many of the lower
+windows were impenetrably overgrown.
+
+As they drew up at the gate, the Pengarth driver looked with furtive
+curiosity at the house-front. Melrose, in the words of Lydia to young
+Faversham, had "become a legend" to his neighbourhood, and many strange
+things were believed about him. It was said that the house contained a
+number of locked and shuttered rooms which were never entered; that
+Melrose slept by day, and worked or prowled by night; that his only
+servants were the two Dixons, no one else being able to endure his
+company; that he and the house were protected by savage dogs, and that
+his sole visitors were occasional strangers from the south, who arrived
+with black bags, and often departed pursued with objurgations by Melrose,
+and in terror of the dogs. It was said also that the Tower was full of
+precious and marvellous things, including hordes of gold and silver; that
+Melrose, who was detested in the countryside, lived in the constant dread
+of burglary or murder; and finally--as a clue to the whole situation
+which the popular mind insisted on supplying--that he had committed some
+fearful crime, during his years in foreign parts, for which he could not
+be brought to justice; but remorse and dread of discovery had affected
+his brain, and turned him into a skulking outcast.
+
+Possessed by these simple but interesting ideas, the Pengarth man sharply
+noticed, first that the gate of the enclosure was padlocked, Melrose
+himself supplying a key from his pocket; next that most of the windows of
+the front were shuttered; and lastly--strange and unique fact, according
+to his own recollections of the Tower--that two windows on the ground
+floor were standing wide open, giving some view of the large room within,
+so far as two partially drawn curtains allowed. As Melrose unlocked the
+gate, the house door opened, and three huge dogs came bounding out, in
+front of a gray-haired man, whom the driver of the wagonette knew to be
+"owd Dixon," Melrose's butler and factotum. The driver was watching the
+whole scene with an absorbed curiosity, when Melrose turned, threw him a
+sudden look, paid him, and peremptorily bade him be off. He had therefore
+no time to observe the perturbation of Dixon who was coming with slow
+steps to meet his master; nor that a woman in white cap and apron had
+appeared behind him on the steps.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Melrose on opening the gate found himself surrounded by his dogs, a fine
+mastiff and two young collies. He was trying to drive them off, after a
+gruff word to Dixon, when he was suddenly brought to a standstill by the
+sight of the woman on the steps.
+
+"D----n it!--whom have you got here?" he said, fiercely perceiving at the
+same moment the open windows on the ground floor.
+
+"Muster Melrose--it's noan o' my doin'," was Dixon's trembling reply, as
+he pointed a shaky finger at the windows. "It was t' yoong doctor from
+Pengarth--yo' ken him--"
+
+A woman's voice interrupted.
+
+"Please, sir, would you stop those dogs barking? They disturb the
+patient."
+
+Melrose looked at the speaker in stupefaction.
+
+"What the deuce have you been doing with my house?"--he turned furiously
+to Dixon--"who are these people?"
+
+"Theer's a yoong man lyin' sick i' the drawin'-room," said Dixon
+desperately. "They do say 'at he's in a varra parlish condition; an' they
+tell me there's to be no barkin' nor noise whativer."
+
+"Well, upon my word!" Melrose was by this time pale with rage. "A young
+man--sick--in my drawing-room!--and a young woman giving orders in my
+house!--you're a precious lot--you are!" He strode on toward the young
+woman, who, as he now saw, was in the dress of a nurse. She had descended
+the steps, and was vainly trying to quiet the dogs.
+
+"I'll uphold yer!" muttered Dixon, following slowly after; "it's the
+queerest do-ment that iver I knew!"
+
+"Madam! I should like to know what your business is here. I never invited
+you that I know of, and I am entirely at a loss to understand your
+appearance in my house!"
+
+The girl whom Melrose addressed with this fierce mock courtesy turned on
+him a perplexed face.
+
+"I know nothing about it, sir, except that I was summoned from Manchester
+last night to an urgent case, and arrived early this morning. Can't you,
+sir, quiet your dogs? Mr. Faversham is very ill."
+
+"In _my_ house!" cried Melrose, furiously. "I won't have it. He shan't
+remain here. I will have him removed."
+
+The girl looked at him with amazement.
+
+"That, sir, would be quite impossible. It would kill him to move him.
+_Please_, Mr. Dixon, help me with the dogs."
+
+She turned imploringly to Dixon, who obediently administered various
+kicks and cuffs to the noisy trio which at last procured silence.
+
+Her expression lightened, and with the professional alertness of one who
+has no time to spend in gossiping, she turned and went quickly back into
+the house.
+
+Dixon approached his master.
+
+"That's yan o' them," he said, gloomily. "T'other's inside."
+
+"T'other who?--what? Tell me, you old fool, at once what the whole cursed
+business is! Are you mad or am I?"
+
+Dixon eyed him calmly. He had by this time summoned to his aid the
+semi-mystical courage given him occasionally by his evangelical faith. If
+it was the Lord's will that such a thing should happen, why it was the
+Lord's will; and it was no use whatever for Mr. Melrose or any one else
+to kick against the pricks. So with much teasing deliberation, and
+constantly interrupted by his angry master, he told the story of the
+accident on the evening before, of Doctor Undershaw's appearance on the
+scene, and of the storming of the Tower.
+
+"Well, of all the presuming rascals!" said Melrose with slow fury, under
+his breath, when the tale was done. "But we'll be even with him! Send a
+man from the farm, at once, to the cottage hospital at Whitebeck. They've
+got an ambulance--I commission it. It's a hospital case. They shall see
+to it. Be quick! March!--do you hear?--I intended to quit of them--bag
+and baggage!"
+
+Dixon did not move.
+
+"Doctor said if we were to move un now, it 'ud be manslaughter," he said
+stolidly, "an' he'd have us 'op."
+
+"Oh, he would, would he!" roared Melrose, "I'll see to that. Go along,
+and do what you're told. D----n it! am I not to be obeyed, sir?"
+
+Wherewith he hurried toward the house. Dixon looked after him, shook his
+head, and instead of going toward the farm, quietly retreated round the
+farther corner of the house to the kitchen. He was the only person at the
+Tower who had ever dared to cross Melrose. He attempted it but rarely;
+but when he did, Melrose was each time freshly amazed to discover that,
+in becoming his factotum, Dixon had not altogether ceased to be a man.
+
+Melrose entered the house by the front door. As he walked into the hall,
+making not the slightest effort to moderate the noise of his approach,
+another woman--also in white cap and apron--ran toward him, with quick
+noiseless steps from the corridor, her finger on her lip.
+
+"Please, sir!--it is most important for the patient that the house should
+be absolutely quiet."
+
+"I tell you the house is mine!" said Melrose, positively stamping. "What
+business have you--or the other one--to give orders in it? I'll turn you
+all out!--you shall march, I tell you!"
+
+The nurse--an older woman than the first who had spoken to him
+outside--drew back with dignity.
+
+"I am sorry if I offended you, sir. I was summoned from Carlisle this
+morning as night nurse to an urgent case. I have been helping the other
+nurse all day, for Mr. Faversham has wanted a great deal of attention. I
+am now just going on duty, while the day nurse takes some rest."
+
+"Show me where he is," said Melrose peremptorily. "I wish to see him."
+
+The nurse hesitated. But if this was really the master of the house, it
+was difficult to ignore him entirely. She looked at his feet.
+
+"You'll come in quietly, sir? I am afraid--your boots--"
+
+"Oh, go on! Order me about! What's wrong with my boots?" The pale grin
+was meant for sarcasm.
+
+"They're rather heavy, sir, for a sick-room. Would you--would you
+mind--taking them off?"
+
+"Upon my word, you're a cool one!"
+
+But there was something in the quiet self-possession of the woman which
+coerced, while it exasperated him. He perceived plainly that she took him
+for a madman to be managed. Yet, after glaring at her for a moment, he
+sat down fuming, and removed his boots. She smiled.
+
+"That'll do nicely, sir. Now if you don't mind coming _very_ quietly--"
+
+She glided to the door of the drawing-room, opened it noiselessly and
+beckoned to Melrose. He went in, and, against his will, he went on
+tiptoe, and holding his breath.
+
+Inside, he looked round the darkened room in angry amazement. It had been
+wholly transformed. The open windows had been cleaned and curtained; the
+oak floor shone as though it had been recently washed; there was a table
+on which were medicine bottles and glasses, with a chair or two; while in
+the centre of the room, carefully screened from light, was a white bed.
+Upon it, a motionless form.
+
+"Poor young fellow!" whispered the nurse, standing beside Melrose, her
+kind face softening. "He has been conscious a little to-day--the doctor
+is hopeful. But he has been very badly hurt."
+
+Melrose surveyed him--the interloper!--who represented to him at that
+moment one of those unexpected checks and annoyances in life, which
+selfish men with strong wills cannot and do not attempt to bear. His
+privacy, his habits, his freedom--all at the mercy of this white-faced
+boy, these two intolerable women, and the still more intolerable doctor,
+on whom he intended to inflect a stinging lesson! No doubt the whole
+thing had been done by the wretched pill-man with a view to his own fees.
+It was a plant!--an infamous conspiracy.
+
+He came closer. Not a boy, after all. A young man of thirty--perhaps
+more. The brow and head were covered with bandages; the eyes were closed;
+the bloodless mouth hung slightly open, with a look of pain. The
+comeliness of the dark, slightly bearded face was not entirely disguised
+by the dressings in which the head was swathed; and the chest and arms,
+from which the bedclothes had been folded back, were finely, though
+sparely, moulded. Melrose, whose life was spent among artistic objects
+was not insensible to the young man's good looks, as they were visible
+even under his bandages and in the dim light, and for the first time he
+felt a slight stir of pity.
+
+He left the room, beckoning to the night nurse.
+
+"What's his name?"
+
+"We took some cards from his pocket. I think, sir, the doctor put them
+here for you to see."
+
+The nurse went to the hall table and brought one.
+
+"Claude Faversham, 5 Temple Buildings, E.C."
+
+"Some young loafer, pretending to be a barrister," said Melrose
+contemptuously. "What's he doing here--in May? This is not the tourist
+season. What business had he to be here at all? I have no doubt whatever
+that he was drunk, otherwise why should he have had an accident? Nobody
+else ever had an accident on that hill. Why should he, eh? Why should he?
+And how the deuce are we to get at his relations?"
+
+The nurse could only reply that she had no ideas on the subject, and had
+hardly spoken when the sound of wheels outside brought a look of relief
+to her face.
+
+"That's the ice," she said, rejoicingly. "We sent for it to Pengarth this
+afternoon."
+
+And she fled on light steps to the front door.
+
+"Sent whom? _My_ man--_My_ cart!" growled Melrose, following her, to
+verify the outrage with his own eyes. And there indeed at the steps stood
+the light cart, the only vehicle which the master of the Tower possessed,
+driven by his only outdoor servant, Joe Backhouse, who had succeeded
+Dixon as gardener. It was full of packages, which the nurse was eagerly
+taking out, comparing them with a list she held in her hand.
+
+"And of course I'm to pay for them!" thought Melrose furiously. No doubt
+his credit has been pledged up to the hilt already for this intruder,
+this beggar at his gates by these impertinent women. He stood there
+watching every packet and bundle with which the nurse was loading her
+strong arms, feeling himself the while an utterly persecuted and injured
+being, the sport of gods and men; when the sight of a motor turning the
+corner of the grass-grown drive, diverted his thoughts.
+
+The doctor--the arch-villain of the plot!
+
+Melrose bethought himself a moment. Then he went along the corridor to
+his library, half expecting to see some other invader ensconced in his
+own chair. He rang the bell and Dixon hurriedly appeared.
+
+"Show Doctor Undershaw in here."
+
+And standing on the rug, every muscle in his tall and still vigorous
+frame tightening in expectation of the foe, he looked frowning round the
+chaos of his room. Pictures, with or without frames, and frames without
+pictures; books in packing-cases with hinged sides, standing piled one
+upon another, some closed and some with the sides open and showing the
+books within; portfolios of engravings and drawings; inlaid or ivory
+boxes, containing a medley of objects--miniatures, snuff-boxes, buttons,
+combs, seals; vases and plates of blue and white Nankin; an Italian
+stucco or two; a Renaissance bust in painted wood; fragments of stuff,
+cabinets, chairs, and tables of various dates and styles--all were
+gathered together in one vast and ugly confusion. It might have been a
+_salone_ in one of the big curiosity shops of Rome or Venice, where the
+wrecks and sports of centuries are heaped into the _piano nobile_ of
+some great building, once a palazzo, now a chain of lumber rooms. For
+here also, the large and stately library, with its nobly designed
+bookcases--still empty of books--its classical panelling, and embossed
+ceiling, made a setting of which the miscellaneous plunder within it was
+not worthy. A man of taste would have conceived the beautiful room itself
+as suffering from the disorderly uses to which it was put.
+
+Only, in the centre, the great French table, the masterpiece of Riesener,
+still stood respected and unencumbered. It held nothing but a Sèvres
+inkstand and pair of candle-sticks that had once belonged to Madame
+Elisabeth. Mrs. Dixon dusted it every morning, with a feather brush,
+generally under the eyes of Melrose. He himself regarded it with a
+fanatical veneration; and one of the chief pleasures of his life was to
+beguile some passing dealer into making an offer for it, and then
+contemptuously show him the door.
+
+"Doctor Undershaw, Muster Melrose."
+
+Melrose stood to arms.
+
+A young man entered, his step quick and decided. He was squarely built,
+with spectacled gray eyes, and a slight brown moustache on an otherwise
+smooth face. He looked what he was--competent, sincere, and unafraid.
+
+Melrose did not move from his position as the doctor approached, and
+barely acknowledged his bow. Behind the sarcasm of his voice the inner
+fury could be felt.
+
+"I presume, sir, you have come to offer me your apologies?"
+
+Undershaw looked up.
+
+"I am very sorry, Mr. Melrose, to have inconvenienced you and your
+household. But really after such an accident there was nothing else to be
+done. I am certain you would have done the same yourself. When I first
+saw him, the poor fellow was in a dreadful state. The only thing to do
+was to carry him into the nearest shelter and look after him. It was--I
+assure you--a case of life and death."
+
+Melrose made an effort to control himself, but the situation was too much
+for him.
+
+He burst out, storming:
+
+"I wonder, sir, that you have the audacity to present yourself to me at
+all. Who or what authorized you, I should like to know, to take
+possession of my house, and install this young man here? What have I to
+do with him? He has no claim on me--not the hundredth part of a farthing!
+My servant tells me he offered to help you carry him to the farm, which
+is only a quarter of a mile distant. That of course would have been the
+reasonable, the gentlemanly thing to do, but just in order to insult me,
+to break into the privacy of a man who, you know, has always endeavoured
+to protect himself and his life from vulgar tongues and eyes, you must
+needs browbeat my servants, and break open my house. I tell you, sir,
+this is a matter for the lawyers! It shan't end here. I've sent for an
+ambulance, and I'll thank you to make arrangements at once to remove this
+young man to some neighbouring hospital, where, I understand, he will
+have every attention."
+
+Melrose, even at seventy, was over six feet, and as he stood towering
+above the little doctor, his fine gray hair flowing back from strong
+aquiline features, inflamed with a passion of wrath, he made a
+sufficiently magnificent appearance. Undershaw grew a little pale, but he
+fronted his accuser quietly.
+
+"If you wish him removed, Mr. Melrose, you must take the responsibility
+yourself, I shall have nothing to do with it--nor will the nurses."
+
+"What do you mean, sir? You get yourself and me into this d----d hobble,
+and then you refuse to take the only decent way out of it! I request
+you--I command you--as soon as the Whitebeck ambulance comes, to remove
+your patient _at once_, and the two women who are looking after him."
+
+Undershaw slipped his hands into his pockets. The coolness of the gesture
+was not lost on Melrose.
+
+"I regret that for a few days to come I cannot sanction anything of the
+kind. My business, Mr. Melrose, as a doctor, is not to kill people, but,
+if I can, to cure them."
+
+"Don't talk such nonsense to me, sir! Every one knows that any serious
+case can be safely removed in a proper ambulance. The whole thing is
+monstrous! By G--d, sir, what law obliges me to give up my house to a man
+I know nothing about, and a whole tribe of hangers-on, besides?"
+
+And, fairly beside himself, Melrose struck a carved chest, standing
+within reach, a blow which made the china and glass objects huddled upon
+it ring again.
+
+"Well," said Undershaw slowly, "there is such a thing as--a law of
+humanity. But I imagine if you turn out that man against my advice, and
+he dies on the road to hospital, that some other kind of law might have
+something to say to it."
+
+"You refuse!"
+
+The shout made the little doctor, always mindful of his patient, look
+behind him, to see that the door was closed.
+
+"He cannot be moved for three or four days," was the firm reply. "The
+chances are that he would collapse on the road. But as soon as ever the
+thing is possible you shall be relieved of him. I can easily find
+accommodation for him at Pengarth. At present he is suffering from very
+severe concussion. I hope there is not actual brain lesion--but there may
+be. And, if so, to move him now would be simply to destroy his chance of
+recovery."
+
+The two men confronted each other, the unreasonable fury of the one met
+by the scientific conscience of the other. Melrose was dumfounded by the
+mingled steadiness and audacity of the little doctor. His mad self-will,
+his pride of class and wealth, surviving through all his eccentricities,
+found it unbearable that Undershaw should show no real compunction
+whatever for what he had done, nay, rather, a quiet conviction that, rage
+as he might, the owner of Threlfall Tower would have to submit. It was
+indeed the suggestion in the doctor's manner, of an unexplained
+compulsion behind--ethical or humanitarian--not to be explained, but
+simply to be taken for granted, which perhaps infuriated Melrose more
+than anything else.
+
+Nevertheless, as he still glared at his enemy, Melrose suddenly realized
+that the man was right. He would have to submit. For many reasons, he
+could not--at this moment in particular--excite any fresh hue and cry
+which might bring the whole countryside on his back. Unless the doctor
+were lying, and he could get another of the craft to certify it, he would
+have to put up--for the very minimum of time--with the intolerable plague
+of this invasion.
+
+He turned away abruptly, took a turn up and down the only free space the
+room contained, and returned.
+
+"Perhaps you will kindly inform me, sir--since you have been good
+enough to take this philanthropic business on yourself--or rather to
+shovel it on to me"--each sarcastic word was flung like a javelin at
+the doctor--"whether you know anything whatever of this youth you are
+thrusting upon me? I don't imagine that he has dropped from the skies! If
+you don't know, and haven't troubled yourself to find out, I shall set
+the police on at once, track his friends, and hand him over!"
+
+Undershaw was at once all civility and alacrity.
+
+"I have already made some inquiries at Keswick, Mr. Melrose, where I was
+this morning. He was staying, it appears, with some friends at the
+Victoria Hotel--a Mr. and Mrs. Ransom, Americans. The hotel people
+thought that he had been to meet them at Liverpool, had taken them
+through the Lakes, and had then seen them off for the south. He himself
+was on his way to Scotland to fish. He had sent his luggage to Pengarth
+by rail, and chose to bicycle, himself, through the Vale of St. John,
+because the weather was so fine. He intended to catch a night train on
+the main line."
+
+"Just as I supposed! Idle scapegrace!--with nothing in the world to do
+but to get himself and other people into trouble!"
+
+"You saw the card that I left for you on the hall table? But there is
+something else that we found upon him in undressing him which I should
+greatly prefer, if I might, to hand over to your care. You, I have no
+doubt, understand such things. They seem to be valuable, and neither
+the nurses nor I at all wish to have charge of them. There is a
+ring"--Undershaw searched his pockets--"and this case."
+
+He held out two small objects. Melrose--still breathing quick with
+anger--took them unwillingly. With the instinctive gesture of the
+collector, however, he put up his eyeglass to look at the ring. Undershaw
+saw him start.
+
+"Good heavens!"
+
+The voice was that of another man. He looked frowning at Undershaw.
+
+"Where did you get this?"
+
+"He wore it on his left hand. It is sharp as you see, and rather large,
+and the nurse was afraid, while he is still restless and sometimes
+delirious, he might do himself some hurt with it."
+
+Melrose opened the case--a small flat case of worn green leather some six
+inches long; and looked at its contents in a speechless amazement. The
+ring was a Greek gem of the best period--an Artemis with the towered
+crown, cut in amethyst. The case contained six pieces,--two cameos, and
+four engraved gems--amethyst, cornelian, sardonyx, and rock crystal;
+which Melrose recognized at once as among the most precious things of
+this kind in the world! He turned abruptly, walked to his writing-table,
+took out the gems, weighed them in his hand, examined them with a
+magnifying glass, or held them to the light, muttering to himself, and
+apparently no longer conscious of the presence of Undershaw.
+Recollections ran about his brain: "Mackworth showed me that Medusa
+himself last year in London. He bought that Mars at the Castellani sale.
+And that's the Muse which that stupid brute Vincent had my commission
+for, and let slip through his fingers at the Arconati sale!"
+
+Undershaw observed him, with an amusement carefully concealed. He had
+suspected from the beginning that in these possessions of the poor
+stricken youth means might be found for taming the formidable master of
+the Tower. For himself he scorned "la curiosité," and its devotees, as
+mere triflers and shell-gatherers on shores bathed by the great ocean of
+science. But like all natural rulers of men he was quick to seize on any
+weakness that suited his own ends; and he said to himself that Faversham
+was safe.
+
+"They are valuable?" he asked, as Melrose still sat absorbed.
+
+"They are," was the curt reply.
+
+"I am glad they have fallen into such good hands. They show I think"--the
+speaker smiled amicably--"that we have not to do with any mere penniless
+adventurer. His friends are probably at this moment extremely anxious
+about him. I hope we may soon get some clue to them. Now"--the voice
+sharpened to the practical note--"may I appeal to you, Mr. Melrose, to
+make arrangements for the nurses as soon as is convenient to you. Their
+wants are very simple--two beds--plain food--small amount of
+attendance--and some means of communicating without too much delay with
+myself, or the chemist. I promise they shall give as little trouble as
+possible!"
+
+Melrose rose slowly without replying. He took a bunch of keys from is
+pocket, and opened one of the drawers in the Riesener table. As he did
+so, the drawer, under a stream of sunset light from the window beyond it,
+seemed to give out a many-coloured flash--a rapid Irislike effect, lost
+in a moment. The impression made on Undershaw was that the drawer already
+contained gems like those in the case--or jewels--or both.
+
+Melrose seemed to have opened the drawer in a fit of abstraction during
+which he had forgotten Undershaw's presence. But, if so, the act roused
+him, and he looked round half angrily, half furtively at his visitor, as
+he hastily relocked the drawer.
+
+Then speaking with renewed arrogance, he said:
+
+"Well, sir, I will see to these things. For to-night, I consent--for
+to-night only, mind you--reserving entirely my liberty of action for
+to-morrow."
+
+Undershaw nodded, and they left the room together.
+
+Dixon and Mrs. Dixon were both waiting in the passage outside, watching
+for Melrose, and hanging on his aspect. To their amazement they were told
+that a room was to be got ready for the nurses, a girl was to be fetched
+to wait on them from the farm, and food was to be cooked.
+
+The faces of both the old servants showed instant relief. Dixon went
+off to the farm, and Mrs. Dixon flew to her kitchen. She was getting
+old, and the thought of the extra work to be done oppressed her.
+Nevertheless after these years of solitude, passed as it were in a
+besieged camp--Threlfall and its inmates against the world--this new and
+tardy contact with humanity, this momentary return to neighbourly, kindly
+ways brought with it a strange sweetness. And when night fell, and a
+subdued, scarcely perceptible murmur of life began to creep about the
+passages of the old house, in general so dead and silent, Mrs. Dixon
+might have been heard hoarsely crooning an old song to herself as she
+went to and fro in the kitchen. All the evening she and Dixon were
+restless, inventing work, when work was finished, running from yard to
+house and house to yard, calling to each other without reason, and
+looking at each other with bewildered eyes. They were like beetles under
+a stone, when the stone is suddenly lifted.
+
+Gradually the house sank to rest. Dixon creeping past the door of the
+sick-room, on his stockinged feet, could hear the moaning, the hoarse
+indeterminate sounds, now loud, now plaintive, made by the sufferer. The
+day nurse came out with an anxious face, on her way to bed. Mr. Faversham
+she said was very ill--what could be done if it did become necessary to
+summon the doctor? Dixon assured her the gardener who was also the groom
+was sleeping in the house, and the horse was in the stable. She had only
+to wake Mrs. Dixon--he showed her where and how. In the dark corridor,
+amid all its obstructive lumber, these two people who had never seen each
+other before, man and woman, took anxious counsel for the help of an
+unconscious third, a complete stranger to both of them.
+
+The night nurse gave a dose of morphia according to directions, and sat
+down on a low chair at the foot of the bed watching her patient.
+
+About two o'clock in the morning, just as the darkness was beginning to
+thin, she was startled by a sound outside. She half rose, and saw the
+door open to admit a tall and gaunt figure, whom she recognized as the
+master of the house.
+
+She held up an anxious finger, but Melrose advanced in spite of it. His
+old flowered dressing-gown and gray head came within the range of the
+night-light, and the nurse saw his shadow projected, grotesque and
+threatening, on the white traceries of the ceiling. But he made no sound,
+and never looked at the nurse. He stood surveying young Faversham for
+some time, as he lay hot and haggard with fever, yet sleeping under the
+power of morphia. And at last, without a word, the nurse saw her
+formidable visitor depart.
+
+Melrose returned to his own quarters. The window of his room was open,
+and outside the great mountains, in a dewy dawn, were beginning to show
+purple through dim veils of silvery cloud. He stood still, looking out.
+His mind was churning like a yeasty sea. Old facts came to the surface;
+faces once familiar; the form and countenance of a brother drowned at
+twenty in Sandford lasher on the Oxford Thames; friends of his early
+manhood, riding beside him to hounds, or over the rolling green of the
+Campagna. Old instincts long suppressed, yet earlier and more primitive
+in him than those of the huckster and the curio-hunter, stirred uneasily.
+It was true that he was getting old, and had been too long alone. He
+thought with vindictive bitterness of Netta, who had robbed and deserted
+him. And then, again, of his involuntary guest.
+
+The strangest medley of ideas ran through his mind. Self-pity;
+recollections connected with habits on which he had deliberately turned
+his back some thirty years before--the normal pleasures, friendships,
+occupations of English society; fanatical hatred and resentment--against
+two women in particular, the first of whom had, in his opinion,
+deliberately spoilt his life by a double cruelty, while the second--his
+wife--whom he had plucked up out of poverty, and the dust-heap of her
+disreputable relations, had ungratefully and wickedly rebelled against
+and deserted him.
+
+Also--creeping through all his thoughts, like a wandering breeze in the
+dark, stole again and again the chilling consciousness of old age--and of
+the end, waiting. He was fiercely tenacious of life, and his seventieth
+birthday had rung a knell in his ears that still sounded. So defiant
+was he of death, that he had never yet brought himself to make a will. He
+would not admit to himself that he was mortal; or make arrangements that
+seemed to admit the grim fact--weakly accepted--into the citadel of a
+still warm life.
+
+Yet the physical warnings of old age had not been absent. Some day he
+would feel, perhaps suddenly--the thought of it sent through him a shiver
+of impotent revolt against the human destiny--the clutch of the master
+whom none escapes.
+
+Vague feelings, and shapeless terrors!--only subterraneously connected
+with the wounded man lying in his house.
+
+And yet they were connected. The advent of the unconscious youth below
+had acted on the ugly stagnation of the Threlfall life with a touch of
+crystallizing force. Melrose felt it in his own way no less than the
+Dixons. Something seemed to have ended; and the mere change suggested
+that something might begin.
+
+The sudden shock, indeed, of the new event, the mere interruption of
+habit, were serious matters in the psychology of a man, with whom neither
+brain nor nerves were normally attuned. Melrose moved restlessly about
+his room for a great part of the night. He could not get the haggard
+image of Faversham out of his mind; and he was actually, in the end,
+tormented by the thought that, in spite of nurses and doctors, he might
+die.
+
+Nonsense! One could get a specialist from Edinburgh--from London if
+necessary.
+
+And always, by whatever road, his thoughts came back--as it were
+leaping--to the gems. Amethyst, sardonyx, crystal--they twinkled and
+flashed through all the byways of the brain. So long as the house held
+their owner, it held them also. Two of them he had coveted for years.
+They must not--they should not--be lost to him again. By what ridiculous
+chance had this lad got hold of them?
+
+With the morning came a letter from a crony of Melrose's in London, an
+old Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, with whom he had had not a few
+dealings in the past.
+
+"Have you heard that that queer fish Mackworth has left his whole cabinet
+of gems to a young nephew--his sister's son, to whom they say he has been
+much attached? Everything else goes to the British Museum and South
+Kensington, and it is a queer business to have left the most precious
+thing of all to a youth who in all probability has neither knowledge nor
+taste, and may be trusted to turn them into cash as soon as possible. Do
+you remember the amethyst Medusa? I could shout with joy when I think of
+it! You will be wanting to run the nephew to earth. Make haste!--or
+Germany or America will grab them."
+
+But the amethyst Medusa lay safe in her green case in the drawer of the
+Riesener table.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Duddon Castle in May was an agreeable place. Its park, lying on the
+eastern slopes of the mountain mass which includes Skiddaw and
+Blencathra, had none of the usual monotony of parks, but was a genuine
+"chase," running up on the western side into the heather and rock of the
+mountain where the deer were at home, while on the east and south its
+splendid oaks stood thick in bracken beside sparkling becks, overlooking
+dells and valleys of succulent grass where the sheep ranged at will. The
+house consisted of an early Tudor keep, married to a Jacobean house of
+rose-coloured brick, which Lady Tatham had since her widowhood succeeded
+in freeing from the ugly stucco which had once disguised and defaced it.
+It could not claim the classical charm, the learned elegance of Threlfall
+Tower. Duddon was romantic--a medley of beautiful things, full of
+history, colour, and time, fused by the trees and fern, the luxuriant
+creepers and mosses, and of a mild and rainy climate into a lovely
+irregular whole; with no outline to speak of, yet with nothing that one
+could seriously wish away. The size was great, yet no one but an
+auctioneer could have called it "superb"; it seemed indeed to take a
+pleasure in concealing the whole extent of its clustered building; and by
+the time you were aware of it, you had fallen in love with Duddon, and
+nothing mattered.
+
+But if without, in its broad external features, Duddon betrayed a
+romantic freedom in the minds of those who had planned it, nothing could
+have been more orderly or exquisite than its detail, when detail had to
+be considered. The Italian garden round the house with its formal masses
+of contrasting colour, its pleached alleys, and pergolas, its steps,
+vases, and fountains, was as good in its way as the glorious wildness of
+the Chase. One might have applied to it the Sophoclean thought--"How
+clever is man who can make all these things!"--so diverse, and so
+pleasant. And indoors, Duddon was oppressive by the very ingenuity of its
+refinement, the rightness of every touch. No overcrowding; no
+ostentation. Beautiful spaces, giving room and dignity to a few beautiful
+objects; famous pictures, yet not too many; and, in general, things
+rather suggestive than perfect; sketches--fragments--from the great arts
+of the world; as it were, a lovely wreckage from a vast ocean set
+tenderly in a perfect order, breathing at once the greatness and the
+eternal defeat of men.
+
+The interior beauty of Duddon was entirely due to Victoria, Lady Tatham,
+mother of the young man who now owned the Tatham estates. She had created
+it through many years; she had been terribly "advised," in the process,
+by a number of clever folk, English and foreign; and the result
+alternately pleased and tormented her. To be fastidious to such a point
+is to grow more so. And Victoria Tatham was nothing if not fastidious.
+She had money, taste, patience, yet ennui confronted her in many paths;
+and except for the son she adored she was scarcely a happy woman. She was
+personally generous and soft-hearted, but all "causes" found in her
+rather a critic than a supporter. The follies of her own class were
+particularly plain to her; her relations, with their great names, and
+great "places," seemed to her often the most ridiculous persons in the
+world--a world no longer made for them. But one must hasten to add that
+she was no less aware of her own absurdities; so that the ironic mind in
+her robbed her both of conceit for herself and enthusiasm for others.
+
+Two or three days after the storming of Threlfall Tower, Lady Tatham came
+in from a mountain ramble at tea-time, expecting her son, who had been
+away on a short visit. She entered the drawing-room by a garden door,
+laden with branches of hawthorn and wild cherry. In her linen dress and
+shady hat she still looked youthful, and there were many who could not be
+got to admit that she was any less beautiful than she had ever been.
+These flatterers of course belonged to her own generation; young eyes
+were not so kind.
+
+Tea had been brought in, and she was busy with the arrangement of a
+branch of wild cherry in a corner of the room where its pearl and silver
+blossoms shone out against a background of dull purple, when the door was
+hastily opened, and a curly-haired youth stood on the threshold who
+smiled at sight of her.
+
+"You are here, mother! That's jolly! I thought I might find you gone."
+
+"I put off London till next week. Mind my hat, you wretch."
+
+For the young fellow had put his arms round her, kissing her heartily.
+She disengaged herself and her hat, affecting to scold; but her eyes
+betrayed her. She put up her hand and smoothed back the thick and
+tumbling hair from his forehead.
+
+"What a ruffian you look! Where have you been all this time?"
+
+"I stopped in Keswick to do various things--and then--I say, shan't we
+have some tea? I've got lots to tell you. Well, in the first place,
+mother, I'd better warn you, you may have some visitors directly!"
+
+Lady Tatham opened her eyes, struck by the elation of the tone.
+
+"Strangers?"
+
+"Well, nearly--but I think you've seen them. You know that lady and her
+daughters who came to White Cottage about two years ago?"
+
+"A Mrs. Penfold?"
+
+"Just so. I told you I met them--in April, when you were abroad--at the
+Hunt Ball. But--well, really, I've met them several times since. The
+Deacons know them." The slight consciousness in the voice did not escape
+his mother. "You know you've never called on them. Mother, you are
+disgraceful about calling! Well, I met them again this afternoon, just
+the other side of Whitebeck. They were in a pony-carriage, and I was in
+the motor. It's a jolly afternoon, and they didn't seem to have anything
+particular to do, so I just asked them to come on here, and have tea, and
+we'd show them the place."
+
+"All right, dear. I'll bear up. Do you think they'll come?"
+
+"Well, I don't know," said her son dubiously. "You see--I think Miss
+Penfold thought you ought to have called on them before they came here!
+But Mrs. Penfold's a nice old thing--she _said_ they'd come."
+
+"Well, there's plenty of tea, and I'll go and call if you want me to."
+
+"How many years?" laughed Tatham. "I remember somebody you took eight
+years to call on, and when you got there you'd forgotten their names."
+
+"Pure invention. Never mind, sit down and have your tea. How many
+daughters?"
+
+"How many Miss Penfolds? Well, there are two, and I danced with them
+both. But"--the young man shook his head slowly--"I haven't got any use
+for the elder one."
+
+"Plain?"
+
+"Not at all--rather pretty. But she talks philosophy and stuff. Not my
+sort."
+
+"And the younger one doesn't talk philosophy?"
+
+"Not she. She's a deal too clever. But she paints--like a bird. I've seen
+some of her things."
+
+"Oh!--so _you_'ve been to call?"
+
+Lady Tatham lifted her beautiful eyes upon her son. Harry Tatham fidgeted
+with his cup and spoon.
+
+"No. I was shy, because you hadn't been. But--"
+
+"Harry," interrupted his mother, her look all vivacity, "did she paint
+those two water-colours in your sitting-room?"
+
+The boyish, bluntly cut face beside her broke into a charming laugh.
+
+"I bought 'em out of the Edinburgh exhibition. Wasn't it 'cute of me? She
+told me she had sent them there. So I just wrote to the secretary and
+bought them."
+
+There was silence a moment. Lady Tatham continued to look at her son. The
+eyebrows on her brow, as they slowly arched themselves, expressed the
+half-amused, half-startled inquiry she did not put into words. He flushed
+scarlet, still smiling, and suddenly he laid his hand on hers.
+
+"I say, mummie, don't tease me, and don't talk to me about it. There may
+be nothing in it--nothing at all."
+
+His mother's face deepened into gravity.
+
+"You take my breath away. Remember--there's only me, Harry, to look after
+you."
+
+"I know. But you're not like other mothers," said the youth impatiently.
+"You want me to be happy and please myself. At least if you'd wanted the
+usual thing, you should have brought me up differently!" He smiled upon
+her again, patting her hand.
+
+"What do you mean by the 'usual thing'?"
+
+"Well, family and money, I suppose. As if we hadn't got enough for ten!"
+
+Lady Tatham hesitated.
+
+"One talks in the air," she said, frowning a little. "I can't promise
+you, Harry, exactly how I should behave, if--"
+
+"If what?"
+
+"If you put me to the _test_."
+
+"Oh, yes, you can," he said, affectionately. Then he got up restlessly
+from the table. "But don't let's talk about it. Somehow I can't stand
+it--yet. I just wanted you to know that I liked them--and I'd be glad if
+you'd be civil to them--that's all. Hullo--here they are!" For as he
+moved across the room he caught sight, through a side window commanding
+the park, of a pony-carriage just driving into the wide gravel space
+before the house.
+
+"Already? Their pony must have seven-leagued boots, to have caught you up
+in this time."
+
+"Oh! I was overtaken by Undershaw, and he kept me talking. He told me the
+most extraordinary thing! You've no idea what's been happening at the
+Tower. That old brute Melrose! But I say--!" He made a dash across the
+room.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"I must go and put those pictures away, in case--"
+
+A far door opened and shut noisily behind him. He was gone.
+
+"In case he asks her to go and see his sitting-room? This is all very
+surprising."
+
+Lady Tatham sat on at the tea-table, her chin in her hands. It was quite
+true that she had brought up her son with unconventional ideas; that she
+had unconventional ideas herself on family and marriage. All the same,
+her mind at this moment was in a most conventional state of shock. She
+knew it, perceiving quite clearly the irony of the situation. Who were
+the Penfolds? A little artist girl?--earning her living--with humble,
+perhaps hardly presentable relations--to mate with her glorious, golden
+Harry?--Harry whom half the ambitious mothers of England courted and
+flattered?
+
+The thought of defeating the mothers of England was however so pleasant
+to her sense of humour that she hurriedly abandoned this line of
+reflection. What had she been about? to be so blind to Harry's
+proceedings? She had been lately absorbed, with that intensity she could
+still, at fifty, throw into the most diverse things, in a piece of new
+embroidery, reproducing a gorgeous Italian design; and in a religious
+novel of Fogazzaro's. Also she had been watching birds, for hours, with a
+spy-glass in the park. She said to herself that she had better have been
+watching her son.
+
+Meanwhile she was quite aware of the slight sounds from the hall which
+heralded the approaching visitors. The footman threw the door open; and
+she rose.
+
+There came in, with hurrying steps, a little lady in widow's dress, her
+widow's veil thrown back from her soft brown hair and childish face.
+Behind her, a tall girl in white, wearing a shady hat.
+
+The little lady held out a hand--eager but tremulous.
+
+"I _hope_, Lady Tatham, we are not intruding? We know it isn't
+correct--indeed we are quite aware of it--that we should call upon you
+first. But then we know your son--he is such a charming young man!--and
+he asked us to come. I don't think Lydia wanted to come--she always wants
+to do things properly. No, indeed, she didn't want to come. It's all my
+doing. I persuaded her."
+
+"That was very kind of you," said Lady Tatham as she shook hands first
+with the mother, and then with the silent daughter. "Oh, I'm a dreadful
+neighbour. I confess it in sackcloth and ashes. I ought to have called
+upon you long ago. I don't know what to say. I'm incorrigible! Please
+will you sit down, and will you have some tea? My son will be here
+directly."
+
+But instead of sitting down Mrs. Penfold ran to the window, exclaiming on
+the beauty of the view, the garden, the trees, and the bold profile of
+the old keep, thrown forward among the flowers. There was nothing the
+least distinguished in her ecstasy. But it flowed and bubbled with
+perfect sincerity; and Lady Tatham did not dislike it at all.
+
+"A lady"--she thought--"quite a lady, though rather a goose. The daughter
+is uncomfortable."
+
+And she glanced at the slightly flushed face of Lydia, who followed in
+their wake, every now and then replying, as politeness demanded, to some
+appeal from her mother. It was indeed clear that the visit had been none
+of her doing.
+
+Grace?--personality?--Lady Tatham divined them, from the way the girl
+moved, from the look in her gray-blue eyes, from the carriage of her
+head. She was certainly pretty, with that proud virginal beauty which
+often bears itself on the defensive, in our modern world where a certain
+superfluity of women has not tended to chivalry. But how little
+prettiness matters, beside the other thing!--the indefinable,
+irresistible something--which gives the sceptre and the crown! All the
+time she was listening to Mrs. Penfold's chatter, and the daughter's
+occasional words, Victoria Tatham was on the watch for this something;
+and not without jealousy and a critical mind. She had been taken by
+surprise; and she resented it.
+
+Harry was very long in coming back!--in order she supposed to give her
+time to make acquaintance.
+
+But at last she had them at the tea-table, and Mrs. Penfold's adjectives
+were a little quenched. Each side considered the other. Lady Tatham's
+dress, her old hat, and country shoes attracted Lydia, no less than the
+boyish, open-air look, which still survived through all the signs of a
+complex life and a cosmopolitan experience. Mrs. Penfold, on her part,
+thought the old hat, and the square-toed shoes "unsuitable." In her young
+days great ladies "dressed" in the afternoons.
+
+"Do you like your cottage?" Lady Tatham inquired.
+
+Mrs. Penfold replied that nothing could be more to their taste--except
+for the motors and the dust.
+
+"Ah! that's my fault," said a voice behind her. "All motorists are
+brutes. I say, it was jolly of you to come!"
+
+So saying, Tatham found a place between his mother and Mrs. Penfold,
+looking across at Lydia. Youth, happiness, manly strength came in with
+him. He had no features to speak of--round cheeks, a mouth generally
+slightly open, and given to smiling, a clear brow, a red and white
+complexion, a babyish chin, thick fair hair, and a countenance neither
+reserved nor foolishly indiscreet. Tatham's physical eminence--and it was
+undisputed--lay not in his plain, good-tempered face, but in the young
+perfection of his athlete's form. Among spectacles, his mother, at least,
+asked nothing better than to see him on horseback or swinging a
+golf-club.
+
+"How did you come?--through the Glendarra woods?" he asked of Lydia. The
+delight in his eyes as he turned them upon her was already evident to his
+mother.
+
+Lydia assented.
+
+"Then you saw the rhododendrons? Jolly, aren't they?"
+
+Lydia replied with ardour. There is a place in the Glendarra woods, where
+the oaks and firs fall away to let a great sheet of rhododendrons sweep
+up from the lowland into a mountain boundary of gray crag and tumbling
+fern. Rose-pink, white and crimson, the waves of colour roll among the
+rocks, till Cumbria might seem Kashmir. Lydia's looks sparkled, as she
+spoke of it. The artist in her had feasted.
+
+"Won't you come and paint it?" said Tatham bending forward eagerly.
+"You'd make a glorious thing of it. Mother could send a motor for you so
+easily. Couldn't you, mother?"
+
+"Delighted," said Lady Tatham, rather perfunctorily. "They are just in
+their glory--they ought to be painted."
+
+"Thank you so much!"--Lydia's tone was a little hurried--"but I have so
+many subjects on hand just now."
+
+"Oh, but nothing half so beautiful as that, Lydia!" cried her mother, "or
+so uncommon. And they'll be over directly. If Lady Tatham would _really_
+send the motor for you--"
+
+Lydia murmured renewed thanks. Tatham, observing her, retreated, with a
+laugh and a flush.
+
+"I say, we mustn't bother you to paint what _we_ like. That would be too
+bad."
+
+Lydia smiled upon him.
+
+"I'm so busy with a big view of the river and Threlfall."
+
+"Threlfall? Oh, do you know--mother! do you know what's been happening at
+Threlfall. Undershaw told me. The most marvellous thing!" He turned to
+Mrs. Penfold. "You've heard the stories they tell about here of old
+Melrose?"
+
+Lydia laughed softly.
+
+"Mother collects them!"
+
+Mrs. Penfold confessed that, being a timid person, she went in fear,
+sometimes of Mr. Melrose, sometimes of his bloodhounds. She did not like
+passing the gate of Threlfall, and the high wall round the estate made
+her shudder. Of course the person that put up that wall _must_ be mad.
+
+"A queer sort of madman!" said Tatham, with a shrug. "They say he gets
+richer every year in spite of the state of the property. And meanwhile no
+human being, except himself or the Dixons, has ever slept in that house,
+or taken bite or sup in it for at least twenty years. And as for his
+behaviour to everybody round about--well, I can tell you all about that
+whenever you want to know! However, now they've stormed him--they've
+smoked him out like a wasp's nest. My goodness--he did buzz! Undershaw
+found a man badly hurt, lying on the road by the bridge--bicycle
+accident--run over too, I believe--and carried him into the Tower,
+willy-nilly!" The speaker chuckled. "Melrose was away. Old Dixon said
+they should only come in over his body--but was removed. Undershaw got
+four labourers to help him, and, by George, they carried the man in! They
+found the drawing-room downstairs empty, no furniture in it, or next to
+none--turned it into a bedroom in no time. Undershaw telegraphed for a
+couple of nurses--and when Melrose came home next day--_tableau_! There
+was a jolly row! Undershaw enjoyed it. I'd have given anything in the
+world to be there. And Melrose'll have to stick it out they say for weeks
+and weeks--the fellow's so badly hurt--and--"
+
+Lydia interrupted him.
+
+"What did Doctor Undershaw say of him to-day?"
+
+She bent forward across the tea-table, speaking earnestly.
+
+Tatham looked at her in surprise.
+
+"The report is better. Had you heard about it?"
+
+"I must have seen him just before the accident--"
+
+"Lydia! I never understood," said Mrs. Penfold rather bewildered.
+
+Lydia explained that she too had seen Doctor Undershaw that morning, on
+his way to the Tower, in Whitebeck village, and he had told her the
+story. She was particularly interested, because of the little meeting by
+the river, which she described in a few words. Twenty minutes or so after
+her conversation with the stranger the accident must have happened.
+
+Mrs. Penfold meanwhile was thinking, "Why didn't Lydia tell me all this
+on the drive?" Then she remembered one of Lydia's characteristics--a kind
+of passionate reticence about things that moved her. Had the fate then of
+the young man--whom she could only have seen for a few minutes--touched
+her so much?
+
+Lady Tatham had listened attentively to Lydia's story--the inner mind of
+her all the time closely and critically observant of the story-teller,
+her beauty, the manner and quality of it, her movements, her voice. Her
+voice particularly. When the girl's little speech came to an end,
+Victoria still had the charm of it in her ears.
+
+"Does any one know the man's name?" she inquired.
+
+"I forgot to ask Undershaw," said Tatham.
+
+Lydia supplied the information. The name of the young man was Claude
+Faversham. He seemed to have no relations whatever who could come and
+nurse him.
+
+"Claude Faversham!" Tatham turned upon her with astonishment. "I say! I
+know a Claude Faversham. I was a term with him at Oxford--at least if
+it's the same man. Tall?--dark?--good-looking?"
+
+Lydia thought the adjectives fitted.
+
+"He had the most beautiful ring!" she added. "I noticed it when he was
+tying up my easel."
+
+"A ring!" cried Tatham, wrinkling up his forehead. "By George, that is
+odd! I remember Faversham's ring perfectly. An uncle gave it him--an old
+Professor at Oxford, who used to collect things. My tutor sent me to a
+lecture once, when I was in for schools. Mackworth--that was the old
+boy's name--was lecturing, and Faversham came down to help him show his
+cases. Faversham's own ring was supposed to be something special, and
+Mackworth talked no end about it. Goodness!--so that's the man. Of course
+I must go and see him!--ask after him anyway."
+
+But the tone had grown suddenly dubious. Lady Tatham's eyebrows rose
+slightly.
+
+"Go to Threlfall, Harry?"
+
+"Well, not to call on Melrose, mother! I should have to make sure he was
+out of the way. But I feel as if I ought to do something about Faversham.
+The fact is he did me a great kindness my first term at Oxford--he got me
+into a little club I wanted to belong to."
+
+"Oh, but _you_ could belong to any club you wished!" cried Mrs. Penfold.
+
+Tatham laughed and coloured. Lady Tatham slipped the slightest look at
+Lydia.
+
+"Not at all. Faversham was awfully useful. I must see what can be done.
+He can't stay on at that place."
+
+"You never go to Threlfall?" Mrs. Penfold addressed her hostess.
+
+"Never," said Lady Tatham quietly. "Mr. Melrose is impossible."
+
+"I should jolly well think he is!" said Tatham; "the most grasping
+and tyrannical old villain! He's got a business on now of the most
+abominable kind. I have been hearing the whole story this week. A man
+who dared to county court him for some perfectly just claim. And Melrose
+in revenge has simply ruined him. Then there's a right of way dispute
+going on--scandalous!--nothing to do with me!--but I'm helping other
+people to fight him. And his _cottages_!--you never saw such pigsties!
+He's defied every sort of inspector. I believe everybody's afraid of him.
+And you can't get a yard of land out of him for any public purpose
+whatever. Well, now that I'm on the County Council, I mean to _go for
+him!"_
+
+The young man sprang up, apparently to fetch cigarettes, really that
+he might once more obtain a full view of Lydia, who had moved from the
+tea-table to a more distant seat.
+
+Mrs. Penfold waved the silver box aside. "I never learnt"--she said,
+adding with soft, upturned eyes--confidingly--"sometimes I wish I did.
+Oh, Lydia will!"
+
+And Lydia, following Lady Tatham's lead, quietly lit up. Tatham who
+cherished some rather strict and old-fashioned notions about women, very
+imperfectly revealed even to his mother, was momentarily displeased; then
+lost himself in the pleasure of watching a white hand and arm--for the
+day was hot and sleeves short--in new positions.
+
+Lady Tatham looked round in answer to her son's last words.
+
+"I wish, Harry, you'd leave him alone."
+
+"Who? Melrose? _Mother!_ Oh, I forgot--he's a sort of cousin, isn't he?"
+
+"My second cousin."
+
+"Worse luck! But that's nothing, unless one chooses it shall be. I
+believe, mother, you know a heap of things about Melrose you've never
+told me!"
+
+Lady Tatham smiled faintly, but did not reply. Whereat Mrs. Penfold whose
+curiosity was insatiable, within lady-like bounds, tried to ask questions
+of her hostess. A wife? Surely there had been a wife?
+
+"Certainly--twenty years ago. I saw her." The answer came readily.
+
+"She ran away?"
+
+"Not in the usual sense. There was no one, I understand, to run with.
+But she could not stand Threlfall--nor--I suppose--her husband. So one
+day--when he had gone to Italy, and she was left behind--she just--"
+
+"'Elopes--down a ladder of ropes'" laughed Tatham; "and took the child?"
+
+"Yes--and a bronze, worth a thousand pounds."
+
+"Sensible woman! And where are they now?"
+
+Lady Tatham shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Oh, they can't be alive, surely," said Lydia. "Mr. Melrose told Doctor
+Undershaw that he had no relations in the world, and didn't wish to be
+troubled with any."
+
+Contempt sat on Tatham's ruddy countenance.
+
+"Well, as far as we're concerned, he may take it easy. His family
+affections don't matter to anybody! But the way he behaves as a landowner
+does really matter to all of us. He brings disgrace on the whole show."
+
+He rose, straightening his young shoulders as he spoke. Lydia noted the
+modest involuntary consciousness of power and responsibility which for a
+moment dignified the boyish countenance; and as her eyes met his Tatham
+was startled by the passionate approval expressed in the girl's look.
+
+She asked if there was no agent on the Melrose estates to temper the
+tyrannies of their master.
+
+Tatham came to her side--explaining--looking down upon her with an
+eagerness which had but a superficial connection with the thing said.
+
+"You see no decent man would ever stay with him. He'd never do the things
+Melrose does. He'd cut his hand off first. And if he didn't, the old
+villain would kick him out in no time. But that's enough about him, isn't
+it? I get him on the brain! Won't you come and see the pictures?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The quartet inspecting the house had passed through the principal rooms,
+and had returned to the drawing-room. There Tatham said something to
+Lydia, and they moved away together. His mother looked after them. Tatham
+was leading the way toward the door in the farther wall which led to his
+own sitting-room. Their young faces were turned toward each other. The
+girl's shyness seemed to have broken up. She was now talking fast, with
+smiles. Ah, no doubt they would have plenty to say to each other, as soon
+as they were together.
+
+It was one of the bitter-sweet moments of life. Lady Tatham steadied
+herself.
+
+"That is a sketch," she said mechanically, "by Burne-Jones, for one of
+the Pygmalion and Galatea series. We have one or two others on the same
+subject."
+
+Mrs. Penfold clasped her small hands in rapture.
+
+"Oh! but _how_ interesting! Do you know I was once Galatea? When I was a
+girl I used to act a great deal. Well, not act exactly--for I didn't have
+to speak. I never could remember my lines. But I had two great parts.
+There was Hermione, in 'The Winter's Tale'; and Galatea. I made hundreds
+of pounds for hospitals--hundreds. It's not vain now, is it, to say one
+was pretty in one's youth?"
+
+"You like remembering it? Some people don't."
+
+"Ah, no, that's wrong! I'd liked to have been beautiful once, if I'm old
+and ugly now," cried Mrs. Penfold with fervour. "Of course"--she looked
+shyly at the sketch--"I had beautiful draperies on. My Galatea was not
+like that."
+
+"Draperies?" Lady Tatham laughed. "Pygmalion had only just made
+her--there had been no time to dress her."
+
+"_We_ dressed her," said Mrs. Penfold decidedly, "from top to toe. Some
+day I must show you the drawings of it--it's not like that at all. The
+girls think I'm silly to talk of it--oh! they don't say it--they're very
+good to me. But I can see they do. Only--they've so many things to be
+proud of. Susy's so clever--she knows Greek and all that kind of thing.
+And Lydia's drawing is so wonderful. Do you know she has made twenty
+pounds out of her sketches this week!"
+
+"Capital!" said Lady Tatham smiling.
+
+"Ah, it means a great deal to us! You see"--Mrs. Penfold looked round
+her--"when you're very rich, and have everything you want, you can't
+understand--at least I don't think you can--how it feels to have twenty
+pounds you don't expect. Lydia just danced about the room. And I'm to
+have a new best dress--she insists on it. Well, you see"--the little pink
+and white face of the speaker broke into smiles--"that's all so
+_amusing_. It puts one in good spirits. It's just as though one were
+rich, and made a thousand pounds. I daresay"--she looked, awestruck, at
+the Burne-Jones sketch--"that's worth our whole income. But we're very
+happy. We never fret. Lydia and Susy both help in the housework. And I
+make their blouses."
+
+"How clever of you! That's a Fra Angelico"--said Lady Tatham pointing,
+and not knowing what to do with these confidences--"an Annunciation."
+
+Mrs. Penfold thought it quite lovely. Lydia, when she was studying
+in London, had copied one like it in the National Gallery. And her
+poor father had liked it so. As they wandered on through the pictures,
+indeed, Lady Tatham soon came to know a great deal about Lydia's "poor
+father"--that he had been a naval officer, a Captain Penfold, who had
+had to retire early on half-pay because of ill-health, and had died
+just as the girls had grown up. "He felt it so--he was so proud of
+them--but he always said, 'If one of us is to go, why, it had better be
+me, Rosina--because you have such spirits--you're so cheerful.' And I am.
+I can't help it."
+
+It was all sincere. There was neither snobbishness nor affectation in the
+little widow, even when she prattled most embarrassingly about her own
+affairs, or stood frankly wondering at the Tatham wealth. But no one
+could deny it was untutored. Lady Tatham thought of all the Honourable
+Johns, and Geralds, and Barbaras on the Tatham side--Harry's uncles and
+cousins--and the various magnificent people, ranging up to royalty, on
+her own; and envisaged the moment when Mrs. Penfold should look them all
+in the face, with her pretty, foolish eyes, and her chatter about Lydia's
+earnings and Lydia's blouses. And not all the inward laughter which the
+notion provoked in one to whom life was largely comedy, in the
+Meredithian sense, could blind her to the fact that the shock would be
+severe.
+
+Had she really injured the prospects of her boy by the way--the romantic,
+idealist way--in which she had brought him up. Her Harry!--with whom she
+had read poetry, and talked of heroes, into whose ears she had poured
+Ruskin and Carlyle from his youth up; who was the friend and comrade of
+all the country folk, because of a certain irrepressible interest in his
+kind, a certain selflessness that were his cradle gifts; who shared in
+his boyish way, her own amused contempt for shams and shows--had she,
+after all, been training him for a mistake in the most serious step of
+life?
+
+For, like it or despise it, English society was there, and he must fill
+his place in it. And things are seemly and unseemly, fitting and
+unfitting--as well as good and bad. This inexperienced girl, with her
+prettiness, and her art, and her small world--was it fair to her? Is
+there not something in the unconscious training of birth and position,
+when, _bon gré, mal gré_, there is a big part in the world's social
+business to be played?
+
+And meanwhile, with a fraction of her mind, she went on talking
+"Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff." She did the honours of half their
+possessions. Then it suddenly seemed to her that the time was long, and
+she led the way back once more to the drawing-room, in a rather
+formidable silence, of which even her cheerful companion became aware.
+
+But as they entered the room, the door at the farther end opened again,
+and Tatham and Lydia emerged.
+
+Good heavens!--had he been proposing already? But a glance dispelled
+the notion. Lydia was laughing as they came in, and a little flushed,
+as though with argument. It seemed to his mother that Harry's look, on
+the other hand, was overcast. Had the girl been trampling on him?
+Impossible! In any case, there was no denying the quiet ease, the
+complete self-possession, with which the "inexperienced" one moved
+through Harry's domain, and took leave of Harry's mother. Your modern
+girl?--of the intellectual sort--quite unmoved by gewgaws! Minx!
+
+Harry saw the two ladies into their pony-carriage. When he returned to
+his mother, it was with an absent brow. He went to the window and stood
+softly whistling, with his hands in his pockets. Lady Tatham waited a
+little, then went up to him, and took him by the arms--her eyes smiling
+into his, without a word.
+
+He disengaged himself, almost roughly.
+
+"I wish I knew something about art!" he said discontentedly. "And why
+should anybody want to be independent all their lives--economically
+independent?"
+
+He slowly repeated the words, evidently from another mouth, in a land of
+wonder.
+
+"That's the young woman of to-day, Harry."
+
+"Isn't it better to be happy?" he broke out, and then was silent.
+
+"Harry!--you didn't propose to her?"
+
+He laughed out.
+
+"Propose to her! As if I dare! I haven't even made friends with her
+yet--though I thought I had. She talks of things I don't understand."
+
+"Not philosophy and stuff?"
+
+"Lord, no!" he said, shrugging his shoulders. "It's much worse. It's as
+though she despised--" He paused again.
+
+"Courting?" said his mother at last, her head against his shoulder.
+
+"Well, anything of that sort, in comparison with art--and making a
+career--and earning money--and things of that kind. Oh, I daresay I'm a
+stupid ass!--"
+
+Lady Tatham laughed softly.
+
+"You can buy all her pictures, Harry."
+
+"I don't believe she'd like it a bit, if she knew!" he said, gloomily.
+
+The young man's chagrin and bewilderment were evident. His mother could
+only guess at the causes.
+
+"How long have you known her, Harry?"
+
+"Just two months."
+
+Lady Tatham took him again by the shoulders, and looked into his face.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me before? Do you want her?" she asked slowly.
+
+"Yes--but I shall never get her," was the half desperate reply.
+
+"Pooh!" she said, releasing him, after she had kissed him. "We shall
+see."
+
+And straightway, with a wave of the hand as it were, she dismissed all
+thought of the Honourable Johns and Geralds. Mrs. Penfold and her chatter
+sank out of sight and hearing. She was her son's champion--against the
+world.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+It was the tenth day since the evening when Claude Faversham had been
+carried unconscious into Threlfall Tower, and the first one which
+anything like clearness of mind had returned to him. Before that there
+had been passing gleams and perceptions, soon lost again in the delusions
+of fever, or narcotic sleep. A big room--strange faces--pain--a doctor
+coming and going--intervals of misery following intervals of
+nothingness--helplessness--intolerable oppression--horrible struggles
+with food--horrible fear of being touched--gradually, little by little,
+these ideas had emerged in consciousness.
+
+Then had followed the first moments of relief--incredibly sweet--but
+fugitive, soon swallowed up in returning discomfort; yet lengthening,
+deepening, passing by degrees into a new and tremulous sense of security
+of a point gained and passed. And at last on this tenth morning--a still
+and cloudy morning of early June, he found himself suddenly fully awake,
+and as it seemed to him once more in possession of himself. A dull, dumb
+anguish lay behind him, already half effaced; and the words of a psalm
+familiar at school and college ran idly through his mind: "My soul hath
+escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowler."
+
+"Where am I?" Not in a hospital. Hospital ceilings are not adorned with
+wreaths and festoons in raised stucco, or with medallion groups of winged
+children playing with torches, or bows and arrows.
+
+"I have a gem like that one," he thought, sleepily.
+
+"A genius with a torch."
+
+Then for a long time he was only vaguely conscious of more light than
+usual in the room--of an open window somewhere--of rustling leaves
+outside--and of a chaffinch singing....
+
+Another couple of days passed, and he began to question the kind woman
+whom he had come to regard as a sort of strong, protective force between
+him and anguish, without any desire to give it a name, or realize an
+individual. But now he saw that he had been nursed by hands as refined as
+they were skilful, and he dimly perceived that he owed his life mainly to
+the wholly impersonal yet absorbed devotion of two women--gentle,
+firm-faced, women--who had fought death for him and won. Just a
+professional service for a professional fee; yet his debt was
+measureless. These are the things, he feebly understood, that women do
+for men; and what had been mere hearsay to his strong manhood had become
+experience.
+
+Actually a ray of sunshine had been allowed to penetrate the shaded room.
+He watched it enchanted. Flowers were on the table near him. There was a
+delicious sense of warmth and summer scents.
+
+"Where am I?" He turned his bandaged head stiffly toward the nurse beside
+him.
+
+"In Threlfall Tower--the house of Mr. Edmund Melrose," she said, bending
+over him.
+
+The nurse saw him smile.
+
+"That's queer. What happened?"
+
+His companion gave him a short account of the accident and of Undershaw's
+handling of it. Then she refused to let her patient talk any more, and
+left him with instructions not to tire his head with trying to remember.
+He lay disconnectedly dreaming. A stream of clear water, running shallow
+over greenish pebbles and among stones, large and small--and some white
+things floating on it. The recollection teased him, and a slight headache
+warned him to put it aside. He tried to go to sleep.
+
+Suddenly, there floated into view a face vaguely seen, a girl's figure,
+in a blue dress, against a background of mountain. Who was it?--where had
+he come across her?
+
+A few days later, when, for the first time, he was sitting up raised on
+pillows, and had been allowed to lift a shaking hand to help the nurse's
+hand as it guided a cup of soup to his lips, she said to him in her low,
+pleasant voice:
+
+"Several people have been to inquire for you to-day. I'll bring you the
+cards."
+
+She fetched them from a table near and read the names. "Lord Tatham, and
+his mother, Lady Tatham. They've sent you flowers every day. These are
+Duddon roses." She held up a glass vase before him. "Mrs. Penfold and
+Miss Penfold."
+
+He shook his head feebly.
+
+"Don't know any of them."
+
+Nurse Aston laughed at him.
+
+"Oh, yes, you do. Lord Tatham was at college with you. He's coming to see
+you one day soon. And Miss Penfold saw you just before the accident. She
+was sketching in St. John's Vale, and you helped her fish something
+out of the water."
+
+"By Jove!--so I did," he said, slowly. "Tatham?" He pondered. "Tell Lady
+Tatham I'm much obliged to her."
+
+And he went to sleep again.
+
+The next time he woke, he saw an unfamiliar figure sitting beside him.
+His hold upon himself seemed to have grown much stronger. It was evening,
+and though the windows were still wide open a lamp had been lit.
+
+"Are you Mr. Melrose?" he asked, amazed at the clearness of his own
+voice.
+
+A gray-haired man moved his chair nearer.
+
+"That's all right. You'll soon be well now. Do you feel much better?"
+
+"I--I feel nearly well. How long have I been here?"
+
+"About three weeks."
+
+"I say--that's a nuisance! I'm very sorry to put you to inconvenience."
+
+"Wasn't your fault. It was the doctor who brought you here." The tone of
+the words was round and masterful. "Are you comfortable? Have you all you
+want?"
+
+"Everything. The nurses are A1. I say--has some one written to my uncle?"
+
+"Undershaw wrote to a Mr. George Faversham last week. He was ill with
+rheumatic gout, couldn't come. Is that the uncle you mean?"
+
+The young man nodded.
+
+"He's the only relation I've got. The other one died. Hullo!"
+
+He made a sudden movement. His hand slipped into his breast and found
+nothing. He raised himself in bed, with a frowning brow.
+
+"I say!"--he looked urgently at Melrose. "Where are my gems?--and my
+ring?"
+
+"Don't trouble yourself. They were brought to me. I have them locked up."
+
+Faversham's expression relaxed. He let himself slide down upon his
+pillows.
+
+"By George!--if I'd lost them."
+
+Melrose studied him closely.
+
+"They're all right. What do you know about gems?"
+
+"Only what Uncle Mackworth taught me. We were great pals. He was my
+guardian. I lived with him in the holidays after my parents died. I knew
+all his gems. And now he's left them to me."
+
+"Where are the rest?"
+
+"I left the cabinet in charge of a man I know at the British Museum. He
+promised to lock it up in one of their strong rooms. But those six I
+always carry with me."
+
+Melrose laughed.
+
+"But those are just the six that should have been locked up. They are
+worth all the rest."
+
+The young man slowly turned his head.
+
+"Did you know my Uncle Mackworth?"
+
+"Certainly. And I too knew all his gems. I could tell you the histories
+of those six, anyway, for generations. If it hadn't been for a fool of an
+agent of mine, your uncle would never have had the Arconati Bacchus."
+
+Faversham was silent--evidently trying to feel his way through some
+induction of thought. But he gave it up as too much for him, and merely
+said--nervously--with the sudden flush of weakness:
+
+"I'm afraid you've been put to great expense, sir. But it's all right. As
+soon as they'll let me sign a check, I'll pay my debts."
+
+"Good gracious, don't trouble your head about that!" said Melrose rising.
+"This house is at your disposal. Undershaw I daresay will tell you tales
+of me. Take 'em with a grain of salt. He'll tell you I'm mad, and I
+daresay I am. I'm a hermit anyway, and I like my own society. But you're
+welcome here, as long as you've any reason to stay. I should like you to
+know that I do not regard Mackworth's nephew as a stranger."
+
+The studied amiability of these remarks struck Faversham as surprising,
+he hardly knew why. Suddenly, a phrase emerged in memory.
+
+"Every one about here calls him the Ogre."
+
+The girl by the river--was it? He could not remember. Why!--the Ogre was
+tame enough. But the conversation--the longest he had yet held--had
+exhausted him. He turned on his side, and shut his eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then gradually, day by day, he came to understand the externals, at any
+rate, of the situation. Undershaw gave him a guarded, though still
+graphic, account of how, as unconscious as the dead Cid strapped on his
+warhorse, he and his bodyguard had stormed the Tower. The jests of the
+nurse, as to the practical difficulties of living in such a house,
+enlightened him further. Melrose, it appeared, lived like a peasant, and
+spent like a peasant. They brought him tales of the locked rooms, of the
+passages huddled and obstructed with bric-à-brac, of the standing feuds
+between Melrose and his tenants. None of the ordinary comforts of life
+existed in the Tower, except indeed a vast warming apparatus which kept
+it like an oven in winter; the only personal expenditure, beyond bare
+necessaries, that Melrose allowed himself. Yet it was commonly believed
+that he was enormously rich, and that he still spent enormously on his
+collections. Undershaw had attended a London stockbroker staying in one
+of the Keswick hotels, who had told him, for instance, that Melrose was
+well known to the "House" as one of the largest holders of Argentine
+stock in the world, and as having made also immense sums out of Canadian
+land and railways. "The sharpest old fox going," said the Londoner,
+himself, according to Undershaw, no feeble specimen of the money-making
+tribe. "_His_ death duties will be worth raking in!"
+
+Occasional gossip of this, or a more damaging kind, enlivened
+convalescence. Undershaw and the nurses had no motives for reticence.
+Melrose treated them uncivilly throughout; and Undershaw knew very well
+that he should never be forgiven the forcing of the house. And as he, the
+nurses, and the Dixons were firmly convinced that for every farthing of
+the accommodation supplied him Faversham would ultimately have to pay
+handsomely, there seemed to be no particular call for gratitude, or for
+a forbearance based upon it.
+
+Meanwhile Faversham himself did not find the character and intentions of
+his host so easy to understand. Although very weak, and with certain
+serious symptoms still persisting to worry the minds of doctor and nurse,
+he was now regularly dressed of an afternoon, and would sit in a large
+armchair--which had had to be hired from Keswick--by one of the windows
+looking out on the courtyard. Punctually at tea-time Melrose appeared.
+And there was no denying that in general he proved himself an agreeable
+companion--a surprisingly agreeable companion. He would come slouching
+in, wearing the shabbiest clothes, and a black skullcap on his flowing
+gray hair; looking one moment like the traditional doctor of the Italian
+puppet-play, gaunt, long-fingered, long-featured, his thin, pallid face a
+study in gray amid its black surroundings; and the next, playing the man
+of family and cosmopolitan travel, that he actually was. Faversham indeed
+began before long to find a curious attraction in his society. There was
+flattery, moreover, in the fact that nobody else in living memory had
+Melrose ever been known to pay anything like the attention he was now
+daily devoting to his invalid guest. The few inmates and visitors of the
+Tower, permanent and temporary, became gradually aware of it. They were
+astonished, but none the less certain that Melrose had only modified his
+attitude for some selfish reason of his own which would appear in due
+time.
+
+The curious fact, however, emerged, after a while, that between the two
+men, so diverse in age, history, and circumstance, there was a surprising
+amount in common. Faversham, in spite of his look of youth, much impaired
+for the present by the results of his accident, was not so very young; he
+had just passed his thirtieth birthday, and Melrose soon discovered that
+he had seen a good deal both of the natural and the human worlds. He was
+the son, it seemed, of an Indian Civil Servant, and had inherited from
+his parents, who were both dead, an income--so Melrose shrewdly gathered
+from various indications--just sufficient to keep him; whereby a will,
+ambitious rather than strong, had been able to have its way. He had
+dabbled in many things, journalism, law, politics; had travelled a good
+deal; and was now apparently tired of miscellaneous living, and looking
+out discontentedly for an opening in life--not of the common sort--that
+was somewhat long in presenting itself. He seemed to have a good many
+friends and acquaintances, but not any of overmastering importance to
+him; his intellectual powers were evidently considerable, but not working
+to any great advantage either for himself or society.
+
+Altogether an attractive, handsome, restless fellow; persuaded that he
+was destined to high things, hungry for them, yet not seeing how to
+achieve them; hungry for money also--probably as the only possible means
+of achieving them--and determined, meanwhile, not to accept any second
+best he could help. It was so, at least--from the cynical point of view
+of an observer who never wasted time on any other--that Melrose read him.
+
+Incidentally he discovered that Faversham was well acquainted with the
+general lines and procedure of modern financial speculation, was in fact
+better versed in the jargon and gossip of the Stock Exchange than Melrose
+himself; and had made use now and then of the large amount of information
+and the considerable number of useful acquaintances he possessed to
+speculate cautiously on his own account--without much result, but without
+disaster. Also it was very soon clear that, independently of his special
+reasons for knowing something about engraved gems and their value, he had
+been, through his Oxford uncle, much brought across collectors and
+collecting. He could, more or less, talk the language of the tribe, and
+indeed his mere possession of the famous gems had made him, willy-nilly,
+a member of it.
+
+So that, for the first time in twenty years, Melrose found himself
+provided with a listener, and a spectator who neither wanted to buy from
+him nor sell to him. When a couple of vases and a statuette, captured in
+Paris from some remains of the Spitzer sale, arrived at the Tower, it was
+to Faversham's room that Melrose first conveyed them; and it was from
+Faversham's mouth that he also, for the first time, accepted any remarks
+on his purchases that were not wholly rapturous. Faversham, with the
+arrogance of the amateur, thought the vases superb, and the statuette
+dear at the price. Melrose allowed it to be said; and next morning the
+statuette started on a return journey to Paris, and the Tower knew it no
+more.
+
+Meanwhile the old collector would appear at odd moments with a lacquered
+box, or a drawer from a cabinet, and Faversham would find a languid
+amusement in turning over the contents, while Melrose strolled smoking up
+and down the room, telling endless stories of "finds" and bargains. Of
+the store, indeed, of precious or curious objects lying heaped together
+in the confusion of Melrose's den, the only treasures of a portable kind
+that Faversham found any difficulty in handling were his own gems.
+Melrose would bring them sometimes, when the young man specially asked
+for them, would keep a jealous eye on them the whole time they were in
+their owner's hands, and hurry them back to their drawer in the Riesener
+table as soon as Faversham could be induced to give them up.
+
+One night the invalid made a show of slipping them back into the
+breast-pocket from which they had been taken while he lay unconscious.
+
+"I'm well enough now to look after them," he had said, smiling, to his
+host. "Nurse and I will mount guard."
+
+Whereupon Melrose protested so vehemently that the young man, in his
+weakness, did not resist. Rather sulkily, he handed the case back to the
+greedy hand held out for it.
+
+Then Melrose smiled; if so pleasant a word may be applied to the queer
+glitter that for a moment passed over the cavernous lines of his face.
+
+"Let me make you an offer for them," he said abruptly.
+
+"Thank you--I don't wish to sell them."
+
+"I mean a good offer--an offer you are not likely to get
+elsewhere--simply because they happen to fit into my own collection."
+
+"It is very kind of you. But I have a sentiment about them. I have had
+many offers. But I don't intend to sell them."
+
+Melrose was silent a moment, looking down on the patient, in whose pale
+cheeks two spots of feverish red had appeared. Then he turned away.
+
+"All right. Don't excite yourself, pray."
+
+"I thought he'd try and get them out of me," thought Faversham irritably,
+when he was left alone. "But I shan't sell them--whatever he offers."
+
+And vaguely there ran through his mind the phrases of a letter handed to
+him by his old uncle's solicitor, together with the will: "Keep them for
+my sake, my dear boy; enjoy them, as I have done. You will be tempted to
+sell them; but don't, if you can help it. The money would be soon spent;
+whereas the beauty of these things, the associations connected with them,
+the thoughts they arouse--would give you pleasure for a lifetime. I have
+loved you like a father, and I have left you all the little cash I
+possess. Use that as you will. But that you should keep and treasure the
+gems which have been so much to me, for my sake--and beauty's--would give
+me pleasure in the shades--'quo dives Tullus et Ancus'--you know the
+rest. You are ambitious, Claude. That's well. But keep you heart green."
+
+What precisely the old fellow might have meant by those last words,
+Faversham had often rather sorely wondered, though not without guesses at
+the answer. But anyway he had loved his adopted father; he protested it;
+and he would not sell the gems. They might represent his "luck"--such as
+there was of it--who knew?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The question of removing his patient to a convalescent home at Keswick
+was raised by Undershaw at the end of the third week from the accident.
+He demanded to see Melrose one morning, and quietly communicated the fact
+that he had advised Faversham to transfer himself to Keswick as soon as
+possible. The one nurse now remaining would accompany him, and he,
+Undershaw, would personally superintend the removal.
+
+Melrose looked at him with angry surprise.
+
+"And pray what is the reason for such an extraordinary and unnecessary
+proceeding?"
+
+"I understood," said Undershaw, smiling, "that you were anxious to have
+your house to yourself again as soon as possible."
+
+"I defended my house against your attack. But that's done with. And why
+you should hurry this poor fellow now into new quarters, in his present
+state, when he might stay quietly here till he is strong enough for a
+railway journey, I cannot conceive!"
+
+Undershaw, remembering the first encounter between them, could not
+prevent his smile becoming a grin.
+
+"I am delighted Mr. Faversham has made such a good impression on you,
+sir. But I understand that he himself feels a delicacy in trespassing
+upon you any longer. I know the house at Keswick to which I propose to
+take him. It is excellently managed. We can get a hospital motor from
+Carlisle, and of course I shall go with him."
+
+"Do you suggest that he has had any lack of attention here from me or my
+servants?" said Melrose, hotly.
+
+"By no means. But--well, sir, I will be open with you. Mr. Faversham in
+my opinion wants a change of scene. He has been in that room for three
+weeks, and--he understands there is no other to which he can be moved.
+It would be a great advantage, too, to be able to carry him into a
+garden. In fact"--the little doctor spoke with the same cool frankness he
+had used in his first interview with Melrose--"your house, Mr. Melrose,
+is a museum; but it is not exactly the best place for an invalid who is
+beginning to get about again."
+
+Melrose frowned upon him.
+
+"What does he want, eh? More space? Another room? How many rooms do you
+suppose there are in this house, eh?" he asked in a voice half hectoring,
+half scornful.
+
+"Scores, I daresay," said Undershaw, quietly. "But when I inquired of
+Dixon the other day whether it would be impossible to move Mr. Faversham
+into another room he told me that every hole and corner in the house was
+occupied by your collections, except two on the ground floor that you had
+never furnished. We can't put Mr. Faversham into an unfurnished room.
+That which he occupies at present is, if I may speak plainly, rather
+barer of comforts than I like."
+
+"What on earth do you mean?"
+
+"Well, when an invalid's out of bed a pleasant and comfortable room is a
+help to him--a few things to look at on the walls--a change of chairs--a
+bookcase or two--and so on. Mr. Faversham's present room is--I mean
+no offence--as bare as a hospital ward, and not so cheerful. Then as to
+the garden"--Undershaw moved to a side window and pointed to the
+overgrown and gloomy wilderness outside--"nurse and I have tried in vain
+to find a spot to which we could carry him. I am afraid I must say that
+an ordinary lodging-house, with a bit of sunny lawn on which he could lie
+in his long chair, would suit him better, at his present stage, than this
+fine old house."
+
+"Luxury!" growled Melrose, "useless luxury and expense! that's what every
+one's after nowadays. A man must be as _cossu_ as a pea in a pod! I'll go
+and speak to him myself!"
+
+And catching up round him the sort of Tennysonian cloak he habitually
+wore, even in the house and on a summer day, Melrose moved imperiously
+toward the door.
+
+Undershaw stood in his way.
+
+"Mr. Faversham is really not fit yet to discuss his own plans, except
+with his doctor, Mr. Melrose. It would be both wise and kind of you to
+leave the decision of the matter to myself."
+
+Melrose stared at him.
+
+"Come along here!" he said, roughly. Opening the door of the library, he
+turned down the broad corridor to the right. Undershaw followed
+unwillingly. He was due at a consultation at Keswick, and had no time to
+waste with this old madman.
+
+Melrose, still grumbling to himself, took a bunch of keys out of his
+pocket, and fitted one to the last door in the passage. It opened with
+difficulty. Undershaw saw dimly a large room, into which the light of a
+rainy June day penetrated through a few chinks in the barred shutters.
+Melrose went to the windows, and with a physical strength which amazed
+his companion unshuttered and opened them all, helped by Undershaw. One
+of them was a glass door leading down by steps to the garden outside.
+Melrose dragged the heavy iron shutter which closed it open, and then,
+panting, looked round at his companion.
+
+"Will this do for you?"
+
+"Wonderful!" said Undershaw heartily, staring in amazement at the lovely
+tracery which incrusted the ceiling, at the carving of the doors, at the
+stately mantelpiece, with its marble caryatides, and at the Chinese
+wall-paper which covered the walls, its mandarins and pagodas, and its
+branching trees. "I never saw such a place. But what is my patient to do
+with an unfurnished room?"
+
+"Furniture!" snorted Melrose. "Have you any idea, sir, what this house
+contains?"
+
+Undershaw shook his head.
+
+Melrose pondered a moment, and took breath. Then he turned to Undershaw.
+
+"You are going back to Pengarth? You pass that shop, Barclay's--the
+upholsterer's. Tell him to send me over four men here to-morrow, to do
+what they're told. Stop also at the nurseryman's--Johnson's. No--I'll
+write. Give me three days--and you'll see."
+
+He studied the doctor's face with his hawk's eyes.
+
+Undershaw felt considerable embarrassment. The owner of the Tower
+appeared to him more of a lunatic than ever.
+
+"Well, really, Mr. Melrose--I appreciate your kindness--as I am sure my
+patient will. But--why should you put yourself out to this extent? It
+would be much simpler for everybody concerned that I should find him
+the quarters I propose."
+
+"You put it to Mr. Faversham that I am quite prepared to move him into
+other quarters--and quarters infinitely more comfortable than he can get
+in any infernal 'home' you talk of--or I shall put it to him myself,"
+said Melrose, in his most determined voice.
+
+"Of course, if you persist in asking him to stay, I suppose he must
+ultimately decide." Undershaw's tone betrayed his annoyance. "But I warn
+you, I reserve my own right of advice. And moreover--supposing you do
+furnish this room for him, allow me to point out that he will soon want
+something else, and something more, even, than a better room. He will
+want cheerful society."
+
+"Well?" The word was challenging.
+
+"You are most kind and indefatigable in coming to see him. But,
+after all, a man at his point of convalescence, and inclined to be
+depressed--the natural result of such an accident--wants change,
+intellectual as well as physical, and society of his own age."
+
+"What's to prevent his getting it?" asked Melrose, shortly. "When the
+room is in order, he will use it exactly as he likes."
+
+Undershaw shrugged his shoulders, anxious to escape to his consultation.
+
+"Let us discuss it again to-morrow. I have told you what I think best."
+He turned to go.
+
+"Will you give that order to Barclay?"
+
+Undershaw laughed.
+
+"If I do, I mustn't be taken as aiding and abetting you. But of
+course--if you wish it."
+
+"Ten o'clock to-morrow," said Melrose, accompanying him to the door. "Ten
+o'clock, sharp." He stood, with raised forefinger, on the threshold of
+the newly opened room, bowing a stiff farewell.
+
+Undershaw escaped. But as he turned into the pillared hall, Nurse Aston
+hurriedly emerged from Faversham's room. She reported some fresh trouble
+in one of the wounds on the leg caused by the accident, which had never
+yet properly healed. There was some pain, and a rise in temperature.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The unfavourable symptoms soon subsided. But as the fear of
+blood-poisoning had been in Undershaw's mind from the beginning, they led
+him to postpone, in any case, the arrangements that had been set on foot
+for Faversham's departure. During three or four days afterward he saw
+little or nothing of Melrose. But he and Nurse Aston were well aware that
+unusual things were going on in the house. Owing to the great thickness
+of the walls, the distance of Faversham's room from the scene of action,
+and the vigilance of his nurse, who would allow no traffic whatever
+through the front hall, the patient was protected from the noise of
+workmen in the house, and practically knew nothing of the operations
+going on. Melrose appeared every evening as usual, and gave no hint.
+
+On the afternoon of the fourth day, Melrose met Undershaw in the hall, as
+he entered the house.
+
+"How is he?"
+
+"All right again, I think, and doing well. I hope we shall have no
+further drawbacks."
+
+"Be good enough to give me ten minutes--before you see Mr. Faversham?"
+
+The invitation could not have been more _grand-seigneur_ish. Undershaw,
+consumed with curiosity, accepted. Melrose led the way.
+
+But no sooner had they passed a huge lacquer screen, newly placed in
+position, and turned into the great corridor, than Undershaw exclaimed in
+amazement. Melrose was striding along toward the south wing. Behind them,
+screened off, lay regions no longer visible to any one coming from the
+hall. In front, stretched a beautiful and stately gallery, terminating in
+a pillared window, through which streamed a light to which both it and
+the gallery had been strangers for nearly a score of years. A mass of
+thick shrubbery outside, which had grown up close to the house, and had
+been allowed for years to block this window, together with many others on
+the ground floor, had been cut sheer away. The effect was startling, and
+through the panes, freed from the dust and cobwebs of a generation, the
+blue distant line of the Pennines could be distinctly seen far away to
+the southeast. The floor of the gallery was spread with a fine matting of
+a faint golden brown, on which at intervals lay a few old Persian or
+Indian rugs. The white panelling of the walls was broken here and there
+by a mirror, or a girandole, delicate work of the same date as the
+Riesener table; while halfway down two Rose du Barri tapestries faced
+each other, glowing in the June sun. It was all spacious--a little
+empty--the whole conception singularly refined--the colour lovely.
+
+Melrose stalked on, silently, pulling at his beard. He made no reply to
+Undershaw's admiring comments; and the doctor wondered whether he was
+already ashamed of the impulse which had made him do so strange a thing.
+
+Presently, he threw open the door he had unlocked the week before,
+Undershaw stepped into a room no less attractive than the gallery
+outside. A carpet of old Persian, of a faded blue--a few cabinets spaced
+along the walls--a few bookcases full of books old and new--a pillared
+French clock on the mantelpiece--a comfortable modern sofa, and some
+armchairs--branches of white rhododendron in a great enamelled vase--and
+two oval portraits on the walls, a gentleman in red, and a gentleman in
+blue, both pastels by Latour--in some such way one might have catalogued
+the contents of the room. But no catalogue could have rendered its effect
+on Undershaw, who was not without artistic leanings of a mild kind
+himself--an effect as of an old debt paid, an injustice remedied, a
+beautiful creation long abused and desecrated, restored to itself. The
+room was at last what it had been meant to be; and after a hundred and
+fifty years the thought of its dead architect had found fruition.
+
+But this was not all. The garden door stood open, and outside, as he
+walked up to it, Undershaw saw a stretch of smooth grass, with groups of
+trees--the survivors of a ragged army--encircling it; a blaze of flowers;
+and beyond the low parapet wall of lichened stone, from which also a
+dense thicket of yew and laurel had been removed, the winding course of
+the river, seventy feet below the Tower, showed blue under a clear sky. A
+deck chair stood on the grass and a garden table beside it, holding an
+ash-tray and cigarettes.
+
+Undershaw, after a pause of wonder, warmly expressed his admiration.
+Melrose received it ungraciously.
+
+"Why, the things were all in the house. Clumsy brutes!--Barclay's men
+would have broken the half of them, if I hadn't been here," he said,
+morosely. "Now will you tell Mr. Faversham this room is at his disposal,
+or shall I?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Half an hour later Faversham, assisted by his nurse, had limped along the
+corridor, and was sitting beside the glass door in an utter yet not
+unpleasant bewilderment. What on earth had made the strange old fellow
+take such an odd fancy to him? He had had singularly little "spoiling" in
+his orphaned life so far, except occasionally from "Uncle Mackworth." The
+experience was disturbing, yet certainly not disagreeable.
+
+He must of course stay on for a while, now that such extraordinary pains
+had been taken for his comfort. It would be nothing less than sheer
+ingratitude were he not to do so. At the same time, his temperament was
+cautious; he was no green youngster; and he could not but ask himself,
+given Melrose's character and reputation, what ulterior motive there
+might be behind a generosity so eccentric.
+
+Meanwhile Melrose, in high spirits, and full of complaisance, now that
+the hated Undershaw had departed, walked up and down as usual, talking
+and smoking. It was evident that the whole process of unpacking his
+treasures had put him in a glow of excitement. The sudden interruption of
+habit had acted with stimulating power, his mind, like his home, had
+shaken off some of its dust. He talked about the pictures and furniture
+he had unearthed; the Latour pastels, the Gobelins in the gallery;
+rambling through scenes and incidents of the past, in a vivacious,
+egotistical monologue, which kept Faversham amused.
+
+In the middle of it, however, he stopped abruptly, eying his guest.
+
+"Can you write yet?"
+
+"Pretty well. My arm's rather stiff."
+
+"Make your nurse write some notes for you. That man--Undershaw--says you
+must have some society--invite some people."
+
+Faversham laughed.
+
+"I don't know a soul, either at Keswick or Pengarth."
+
+"There have been some people inquiring after you."
+
+"Oh, young Tatham? Yes, I knew him at Oxford."
+
+"And the women--who are they?"
+
+Faversham explained.
+
+"Miss Penfold seems to have recognized me from Undershaw's account. They
+are your nearest neighbours, aren't they?" He looked smiling at his host.
+
+"I don't know my neighbours!" said Melrose, emphatically. "But as for
+that young ass, Tatham--ask him to come and see you."
+
+"By all means--if you suggest it."
+
+Melrose chuckled.
+
+"But he won't come, unless he knows I am safely out of the way. He and I
+are not on terms, though his mother and I are cousins. I dare say
+Undershaw's told you--he's thick with them. The young man has been
+insolent to me on one or two occasions. I shall have to take him down.
+He's one of your popularity-hunting fools. However you ask him by all
+means if you want him. He'll come to see you. Ask him Thursday. I shall
+be at Carlisle for the day. Tell him so."
+
+He paused, his dark eyeballs, over which the whites had a trick of
+showing disagreeably, fixing his visitor; then added:
+
+"And ask the women too. I shan't bite 'em. I saw them from the window
+the day they came to inquire. The mother looked perfectly scared. The
+daughter's good looking."
+
+Manner and tone produced a vague irritation in Faversham. But he merely
+said that he would write to Mrs. Penfold.
+
+Two notes were accordingly despatched that evening from the Tower; one to
+Duddon Castle, the other to Green Cottage. Faversham had succeeded in
+writing them himself; and in the exhilaration of what seemed to him a
+much-quickened convalescence, he made arrangements the following morning
+to part with his nurse within a few days. "Do as you like, in
+moderation," said Undershaw, "no railway journey for a week or two."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Melrose had gone to Carlisle. The Cumbria landscape lay in a misty
+sunshine, the woods and fields steaming after a night of soaking rain.
+All the shades of early summer were melting into each other; reaches of
+the river gave back a silvery sky, while under the trees the shadows
+slept. The mountains were indistinct, drawn in pale blues and purples, on
+a background of lilac and pearl. And all the vales "were up," drinking
+in the streams that poured from the heights.
+
+Tatham and his mother were walking through the park together. He was in
+riding-dress, and his horse awaited him at the Keswick gate. Lady Tatham
+beside him was attired as usual in the plainest and oldest of clothes.
+Her new gowns, which she ordered from time to time mechanically, leaving
+the whole designing of them to her dress-maker, served her at Duddon, in
+her own phrase, mainly "for my maid to show the housekeeper." They lay in
+scented drawers, daintily folded in tissue paper, and a maid no less
+ambitious than her fellows for a well-dressed mistress kept mournful
+watch over them. This carelessness of dress had grown upon Victoria
+Tatham with years. In her youth the indulgence of a taste for beautiful
+and artistic clothes had taken up a great deal of her time. Then suddenly
+it had all become indifferent to her. Devotion to her boy, books, and
+natural history absorbed a mind more and more impatient of ordinary
+conventions.
+
+"You are quite sure that Melrose will be out of the way?" she asked her
+son as they entered on the last stretch of their walk.
+
+"Well, you saw the letter."
+
+"No--give it me."
+
+He handed it. She read it through attentively.
+
+"Mr. Melrose asks me to say that he will not be here. He is going over to
+the neighbourhood of Carlisle on business, and cannot be home till ten
+o'clock at night."
+
+"He has the decency not to 'regret,'" said Lady Tatham.
+
+"No. It is awkward of course going at all"--Tatham's brow was a little
+furrowed--"but I somehow think I ought to go."
+
+"Oh, go," said his mother. "If he does play a trick you will know how
+to meet it. It would be very like him to play some trick," she added,
+thoughtfully.
+
+"Mother," said Tatham impetuously, "was Melrose ever in love with you?"
+
+He coloured boyishly as he spoke. Lady Tatham looked up startled; a faint
+red appeared in her cheeks also.
+
+"I believe he supposed himself to be. I knew him very well, and I
+might--possibly--have accepted him--but that some information came to my
+knowledge. Then, later on, largely I think to punish me, he nearly
+succeeded in entangling my younger sister--your Aunt Edith. I stood in
+his way. He hates me, of course. I think he suffered. In those days he
+was very different. But his pride and self-will were always a madness.
+And gradually they have devoured everything else." She paused. "I cannot
+tell you anything more, Harry. There were other people concerned."
+
+"Dearest, as if I should ask! He did my mother no injury?"
+
+Under the shadow of the woods the young man threw his arm round her
+shoulders, looking down upon her with a proud tenderness.
+
+"None. I escaped; and I won all along the line. I was neither to be
+pitied--nor he," she added slowly, "though I daresay he would put down
+his later mode of life to me."
+
+"As if any woman could ever have put up with him!"
+
+Lady Tatham's expression showed a mind drawn back into the past.
+
+"When I first saw him, he was a magnificent creature. For several years I
+was dazzled by him. Then when I--and others--broke with him, he turned
+his back on England and went to live abroad. And gradually he quarrelled
+with everybody who had ever known him."
+
+"But you never did care about him, mother?" cried Tatham, outraged by the
+mere notion of any such thing.
+
+"No--never." There was a deliberate emphasis on the words. The smile that
+followed was slight but poignant. "I knew that still more plainly, when,
+six months after I ceased to see him, your father came along."
+
+Tatham who had drawn her hand within his arm, laid his own upon it for a
+moment. He was in the happy position of a son in whom filial affection
+represented no enforced piety, but the spontaneous instinct of his
+nature. His mother had been so far his best friend; and though he rarely
+spoke of his father his childish recollections of him, and the impression
+left by his mother's constant and deliberate talk of him, during the
+boyish years of her son, had entered deep into the bases of character. It
+is on such feelings and traditions that all that is best in our still
+feudal English life is reared; Tatham had known them without stint; and
+in their absence he would have been merely the trivially prosperous young
+man that he no doubt appeared to the Radical orators of the
+neighbourhood.
+
+The wood thinned. They emerged from it to see the Helvellyn range lying
+purple under a southwest sky, and Tatham's gray mare waiting a hundred
+yards away.
+
+"You have no note?"
+
+Tatham tapped his breast pocket.
+
+"Rather!"
+
+"All right--go along!" Lady Tatham came to a halt. "And Harry--don't call
+too often! Is this the third visit this week?"
+
+"Oh, but the others were such little ones!" he said eagerly.
+
+"Don't try to go too quick." The tone was serious.
+
+"Too quick! I make no way at all," he protested, his look clouding.
+
+Tatham rode slowly along the Darra, the little river which skirted his
+own land and made its way at last into that which flowed beneath the
+Tower. He was going to Threlfall, but on his way he was to call at Green
+Cottage and deliver a note from his mother.
+
+He had seen a good deal of Lydia Penfold during the weeks since her first
+appearance at Duddon. The two sisters had been induced to lunch there
+once or twice; there had been a picnic in the Glendarra woods; and for
+himself, in spite of his mother's attack, he thought he had been fairly
+clever in contriving excuses for calls. On one occasion he had carried
+with him--by his mother's suggestion--a portfolio containing a dozen
+early proofs of the "Liber Studiorium," things about which he knew little
+or nothing; but Lydia's eyes had sparkled when he produced them, which
+was all he cared for. On the second, he had called to offer them a key
+which would admit their pony-carriage to some of the private drives of
+the park, wild enchanted ways which led up to the very eastern heart of
+Blencathra. That was not quite so successful, because both Lydia and her
+mother were out, and his call had been made chiefly on Susan, who had
+been even queerer than usual. After taking the key, she had let it fall
+absently into a waste-paper basket, while she talked to him about Ibsen;
+and he had been forced to rescue it himself, lest Lydia should never know
+of his visit. On all other occasions he had found Lydia, and she had been
+charming--always charming--but as light and inaccessible as mountain
+birds. He had been allowed to see the drawing she was now busy on--the
+ravines of Blencathra, caught sideways through a haze of light, edge
+beyond edge, distance behind distance; a brave attempt on the artist's
+part at poetic breadth and selection. She had been much worried about the
+"values," whatever they might be. "They're quite vilely wrong!" she had
+said, impatiently. "And I don't know how to get them right." And all he
+could do was to stand like an oaf and ask her to explain. Nor could he
+ignore the fact--so new and strange to a princeling!--that her
+perplexities were more interesting to her than his visit.
+
+Yet of course Tatham had his own natural conceit of himself, like any
+normal young man, in the first bloom of prosperous life. He was
+accustomed to be smiled on; to find his pleasure consulted, and his
+company welcome, whether as the young master of Duddon, or as a comrade
+among his equals of either sex. The general result indeed of his happy
+placing in the world had been to make him indifferent to things that most
+men desire. No merit in that! As he truly said, he had so much of them!
+But he was proud of his health and strength--his shooting and the steady
+lowering of his golf handicap. He was proud also of certain practical
+aptitudes he possessed, and would soon allow no one to interfere with
+him--hardly to advise him--in the management of his estate. He liked
+nothing better than to plan the rebuilding of a farm, or a set of new
+cottages. He was a fair architect, of a rough and ready sort, and a
+decent thatcher and bricklayer. All the older workmen on the estate had
+taught him something at one time or another; and of these various
+handicrafts he was boyishly vain.
+
+None of these qualifications, however, gave him the smallest confidence
+in himself, with regard to Lydia Penfold. Ever since he had first met
+her, he had realized in her the existence of standards just as free as
+his own, only quite different. Other girls wished to be courted; or they
+courted him. Miss Penfold gave no sign that she wished to be courted; and
+she certainly had never courted anybody. Many pretty girls assert
+themselves by a kind of calculated or rude audacity, as though to say
+that gentleness and civility are not for the likes of them. Lydia was
+always gentle--kind, at least--even when she laughed at you. Unless she
+got upon her "ideas." Then--like Susan--she could harangue a little, and
+grow vehement--as she had at Duddon that day, talking of the new
+independence of women. But neither her gentleness nor her vehemence
+seemed to have any relation to what a man--or men--might desire of her.
+She lived for herself; not indeed in any selfish sense; for it was plain
+that she was an affectionate daughter and sister; but simply the world
+was so interesting to her in other ways that she seemed to have no need
+of men and matrimony. And as to money, luxury, a great _train de vie_--he
+had felt from the beginning that those things mattered nothing at all to
+her. It might be inexperience, it might be something loftier. But, at any
+rate, if she were to be bribed, it must be with goods of another kind.
+
+As to himself, he only knew that from his first sight of her at the Hunt
+Ball, she had filled his thoughts. Her delicate, pale beauty, lit by
+those vivacious eyes; so quiet, so feminine, yet with its suggestion of
+something unconquerable, moving in a world apart--he could not define
+it in any such words; but there it was, the attraction, the lure.
+Something difficult; something delightful! A dear woman, a woman to be
+loved; and yet a thorn hedge surrounding her--how else can one put the
+eternal challenge, the eternal chase?
+
+But as three parts of love is hope, and hope is really the mother of
+invention, Tatham, though full of anxiety, was also, like General Trochu,
+full of plans. He had that morning made his mother despatch an invitation
+to one of the great painters of the day; a man who ruled the beauties of
+the moment _en Sultan_; painted whom he would; when he would; and at what
+price he would. But while those who were dying to be painted by him must
+often wait for years, and put up with manners none too polite, there were
+others who avenged them; women, a few, very few women, whom the great
+man, strange to say, sighed to paint, and sighed in vain. Such women were
+generally women of a certain age; none of your soft-cheeked beauties. And
+Lady Tatham was one of them. The great artist had begged her to let
+herself be painted by him. And Victoria had negligently replied that,
+perhaps, at Duddon, some day, there might be time. Several reminders,
+launched from the Chelsea studio, had not brought her to the point; but
+now for her son's sake she had actually named a time; and a jubilant
+telegram from London had clenched the bargain. The great man was to
+arrive in a fortnight from now, for a week's visit; and Tatham had in his
+pocket a note from Lady Tatham to Mrs. Penfold requesting the pleasure of
+her company and that of her two daughters at dinner, to meet Mr. Louis
+Delorme, the day after his arrival.
+
+And all this, because, at a mention of the illustrious name, Lydia had
+looked up with a flutter of enthusiasm. "You know him? How lucky for you!
+He's _wonderful_! I? Oh, no. How should I? I saw him once in the
+distance--he was giving away prizes. I didn't get one--alack! That's the
+nearest I shall ever come to him."
+
+Tatham chuckled happily as he thought of it.
+
+"She shall sit next the old boy at dinner, and she shall talk to him just
+as much as she jolly well pleases. And of course he'll take to her, and
+offer to give her lessons--or paint her--or something. Then we can get
+her over--lots of times!"
+
+Still dallying with these simple plans, Tatham arrived at Green Cottage,
+and tying up his horse went in to deliver his note.
+
+He had no sooner entered the little drive than he saw Lydia under a
+laburnum tree on the lawn. Hat in hand, the smiling youth approached her.
+She was sewing, apparently mending house-linen, which she quietly put
+down to greet him. There was a book before her; a book of poetry, he
+thought. She slipped it among the folds of the linen.
+
+He could not flatter himself that his appearance disturbed her composure
+in the least. She was evidently glad to see him; she was gratefully sure
+that they would all be delighted to dine with Lady Tatham on the day
+named; she came with him to the gate, and admired his horse. But as to
+any flutter of hand or eye; any consciousness in her, answering to the
+eager feeling in him--he knew very well there was nothing of the kind.
+Never mind! There was an inner voice in him that kept reassuring him all
+the time; telling him to be patient; to go at it steadily. There was no
+other fellow in the way, anyhow! He had a joyous sense of all the
+opportunities to come, the summer days, the open country, the resources
+of Duddon.
+
+With his hand on his horse's neck, and loath to ride away, he told her
+that he was on his way to the Tower to call on Faversham.
+
+"Oh, but we're coming too, mother and I!" she said, in surprise. "Mr.
+Faversham sent us a note. I don't believe he ought to have two sets of
+visitors just yet."
+
+Tatham too was surprised. "How on earth Faversham is able to entertain
+anybody, I can't think! Undershaw told me last week he must get him away,
+as soon as possible, into decent quarters. He doesn't get on very fast."
+
+"He's been awfully ill!" said Lydia, with a soft concern in her voice,
+which made the splendid young fellow beside her envious at once of the
+invalid. "Well, good-bye! for the moment. We have ordered the pony in
+half an hour."
+
+"You'll see a queer place; the piggery that old fellow lives in! You
+didn't know Faversham--I think you said--before that day of the
+accident?" He looked down on her from the saddle.
+
+"Not the least. I feel a horrid pang sometimes that I didn't warn him of
+that hill!"
+
+"Any decent bike ought to have managed that hill all right," said Tatham
+scornfully. "Scores of tourists go up and down it every day in the
+summer."
+
+Lydia bade him speak more respectfully of his native hills, lest they
+bring him also to grief. Then she waved good-bye to him; received the
+lingering bow and eager look, which betrayed the youth; thought of "young
+Harry with his beaver on," as she watched the disappearing horseman, and
+went back for a while to her needlework and cogitation.
+
+That she was flattered and touched, that she liked him--the kind,
+courteous boy--that was certain. Must she really assume anything
+else on his part--take his advances seriously--check them--put up
+restrictions--make herself disagreeable? Why? During her training in
+London, Lydia had drunk of the modern spring like other girls. She had
+been brought up in a small old-fashioned way, by her foolish little
+mother, and by a father--a stupid, honourable, affectionate man--whom
+she had loved with a half-tender, half-rebellious affection. There had
+been no education to speak of, for either her or Susy. But the qualities
+and gifts of remoter ancestors had appeared in them--to the bewilderment
+of their parents. And when after her father's death Lydia, at nineteen,
+had insisted on entering the Slade School, she had passed through some
+years of rapid development. At bottom her temperament always remained, on
+the whole, conservative and critical; the temperament of the humourist,
+in whose heart the old loyalties still lie warm. But that remarkable
+change in the whole position and outlook of women which has marked the
+last half century naturally worked upon her as upon others. For such
+persons as Lydia it has added dignity and joy to a woman's life, without
+the fever and disorganization which attend its extremer forms. While
+Susy, attending lectures at University College, became a Suffragist,
+Lydia, absorbed in the pleasures and pains of her artistic training,
+looked upon the suffrage as a mere dusty matter of political machinery.
+
+But the ideas of her student years--those "ideas" which Tatham felt so
+much in his way--were still dominant. Marriage was not necessary. Art and
+knowledge could very well suffice. On the whole, in her own case, she
+aspired to make them suffice.
+
+But not in any cloistered world. Women who lived merely womanish lives,
+without knowledge of and comradeship with men, seemed to her limited and
+parochial creatures. She was impatient of her sex, and the narrowness
+of her sex's sphere. She dreamed of a broadly human, practical,
+disinterested relation between men and women, based on the actual work of
+the world; its social, artistic, intellectual work; all that has made
+civilization.
+
+"We women are starved"--she thought, "because men will only marry
+us--or make playthings of us. But the world is only just--these last
+years--open to us, as it has been open to men for thousands of
+generations. We want to taste and handle it for ourselves; as men do.
+Why can't they take us by the hand--a few of us--teach us, confide in
+us, open the treasure-house to us?--and let us alone! To be treated as
+good fellows!--that's all we ask. Some of us would make such fratchy
+wives--and such excellent friends! I vow I should make a good friend! Why
+shouldn't Lord Tatham try?"
+
+And letting her work fall upon the grass, she sat smiling and thinking,
+her pale brown hair blown back by the wind. In her simple gray dress,
+which showed the rippling beauty of every line, she was like one of these
+innumerable angels or virtues, by artists illustrious or forgotten, which
+throng the golden twilight of an Italian church; drawing back the
+curtains of a Doge; hovering in quiet skies; or offering the Annunciation
+lily, from one side of a great tomb, to the shrinking Madonna on the
+other. These creations of Italy in her early prime are the most
+spontaneous of the children of beauty. There are no great differences
+among them; the common type is lovely; they spring like flowers from one
+root, in which are the forces both of Greece and the Italy of Leonardo.
+It was their harmony, their cheerfulness, their touch of something
+universal, that were somehow reproduced in this English girl, and that
+made the secret of her charm.
+
+She went on thinking about Tatham.
+
+Presently she had built a castle high in air; she had worked it out--how
+she was to make Lord Tatham clearly understand, before he had any chance
+of proposing (if that were really in the wind, and she were not a mere
+lump of conceit), that marrying was not her line; but that, as a friend,
+he might rely upon her. Anything--in particular--that she could do to
+help him to a wife, short of offering herself, was at his service. She
+would be eyes and ears for him; she would tell him things he did not in
+the least suspect about the sex.
+
+But as to marrying! She rose from her seat, stretching her arms toward
+the sky and the blossoming trees, in that half-wild gesture which so
+truly expressed her. Marrying Duddon! that vast house, and all those
+possessions; those piles of money; those county relations, and that web
+of inherited custom which would lay its ghostly compulsion on Tatham's
+wife the very instant he had married her--it was not to be thought of for
+a moment! She, the artist with art and the world before her; she, with
+her soul in her own keeping, and all the beauty of sky and fell and
+stream to be had for the asking, to make herself the bond slave of
+Duddon--of that formidably beautiful, that fond, fastidious mother!--and
+of all the ceremonial and paraphernalia that must come with Duddon! She
+saw herself spending weeks on the mere ordering of her clothes, calling
+endlessly on stupid people, opening bazaars, running hospitals,
+entertaining house parties, with the _clef des champs_ gone forever--a
+little drawing at odd times--and all the meaning of life drowned in its
+trappings. No--no--_no!_--a thousand times, no! Not though her mother
+implored her, and every creature in Cumbria and the universe thought her
+stark staring mad. No!--for her own sake first; but, above all, for Lord
+Tatham's sake.
+
+Whereat she repentantly reminded herself that after all, if she despised
+the world and the flesh, there was no need to give herself airs; for
+certainly Harry Tatham was giving proof--stronger proof indeed, of doing
+the same; if it were really his intention to offer his handsome person,
+and his no less handsome possessions to a girl as insignificant as
+herself. Custom had not staled _him_. And there was his mother too; who,
+instead of nipping the silly business in the bud, and carrying the
+foolish young man to London, was actually aiding and abetting--sending
+gracious invitations to dinner, of the most unnecessary description.
+
+What indeed could be more detached, more romantic--apparently--than
+the attitude of both Tatham and his mother toward their own immense
+advantages?
+
+Yes. But they were born to them; they had had time to get used to them.
+"It would take me half a lifetime to find out what they mean, and another
+half to discover what to do with them."
+
+"And, if one takes the place, ought one not to earn the wages? Lady
+Tatham sits loose to all her social duties, scorns frocks, won't call,
+cuts bazaars, has never been known to take the chair at a meeting. But I
+should call that shirking. Either refuse the game; or play it! And of all
+the games in the world, surely, surely the Lady Bountiful game is the
+dullest! I _won't_ be bored with it!"
+
+She went toward the house, her smiling eyes on the grass. "But, of
+course, if I could not get on without the young man, I should put up with
+any conditions. But I can get on without him perfectly! I don't want to
+marry him. But I do--I _do_ want to be friends!"
+
+"Lydia! Mother says you'll be late if you don't get ready," said a voice
+from the porch.
+
+"Why, I am ready! I have only to put on my hat."
+
+"Mother thought you'd change."
+
+"Then mother was quite wrong. My best cotton frock is good enough for any
+young man!" laughed Lydia.
+
+Susan descended the garden steps. She was a much thinner and dimmer
+version of her sister. One seemed to see her pale cheeks, her dark eyes
+and hair, her small mouth, through mist, like a Whistler portrait. She
+moved very quietly, and her voice was low, and a little dragging. The
+young vicar of a neighbouring hamlet in the fells, who admired her
+greatly, thought of her as playing "melancholy"--in the contemplative
+Miltonic sense--to Lydia's "mirth." She was a mystery to him; a mystery
+he would have liked to unravel. But she was also a mystery to her family.
+She shut herself up a good deal with her books; she had written two
+tragedies in blank verse; and she held feminist views, vague yet fierce.
+She was apparently indifferent to men, much more so than Lydia, who
+frankly preferred their society to that of her own sex; but Lydia noticed
+that if the vicar, Mr. Franklin, did not call for a week Susan would
+ingeniously invent some device or other for peremptorily inducing him to
+do so. It was understood in the family, that while Lydia enjoyed life,
+Susan only endured it. All the same she was a good deal spoilt. She
+breakfasted in bed, which Mrs. Penfold never thought of doing; Lydia
+mended her stockings, and renewed her strings and buttons; while Mrs.
+Penfold spent twice the time and money on Susan's wardrobe that she did
+on Lydia's. There was no reason whatever for any of these indulgences;
+but when three women live together, one of them has only to sit still, to
+make the others her slaves. Mrs. Penfold found her reward in the belief
+that Susan was a genius and would some day astonish the world; Lydia had
+no such illusion; and yet it would have given her a shock to see Susan
+mending her own stockings.
+
+Susan approached her now languidly, her hand to her brow. Lydia looked at
+her severely.
+
+"I suppose you have got a headache?"
+
+"A little."
+
+"That's because you will go and write poetry directly after lunch. Why it
+would even give _me_ a headache!"
+
+"I had an idea," said Susan plaintively.
+
+"What does that matter? Ideas'll keep. You have just to make a note of
+them--put salt on their tails--and then go and take a walk. Indigestion,
+my dear--which is the plain English for your headache--is very bad for
+ideas. What have you been doing to your collar?"
+
+And Lydia took hold of her sister, straightening her collar, pinning up
+her hair, and generally putting her to rights. When the operation was
+over, she gave a little pat to Susan's cheek and kissed her.
+
+"You can come with us to Threlfall, that would take your headache away;
+and I don't mind the back seat."
+
+"I wasn't asked," said Susan with dignity. "I shall go for a walk by
+myself. I want to think."
+
+Lydia received the intimation respectfully, merely recommending her
+sister to keep out of the sun; and was hurrying into the house to fetch
+her hat when Susan detained her.
+
+"Was that Lord Tatham who came just now?"
+
+"It was." Lydia faced her sister, holding up the note from Lady Tatham.
+"We are all to dine with them next week."
+
+"He has been here nearly every other day for a fortnight," said Susan,
+with feminine exaggeration. "It is becoming so marked that everybody
+talks."
+
+"Well, I can't help it," said Lydia defiantly. "We are not a convent; and
+we can hardly padlock the gate."
+
+"You should discourage him--if you don't mean to marry him."
+
+"My dear, I like him so!" cried Lydia, her hands behind her, and tossing
+her fair head. "Marrying!--I hate the word."
+
+"He cares--and you don't," said Susan slowly, "that makes it very
+unfair--to him."
+
+Lydia frowned for a moment, but only for a moment.
+
+"I'm _not_ encouraging him, Susy--not in the way you mean. But why should
+I drive him away, or be rude to him? I want to put things on a proper
+footing--so that he'll understand."
+
+"He's going to propose to you," said Susan bluntly.
+
+"Well, then, we shall get it over," said Lydia, reluctantly. "And you
+don't imagine that such a golden youth will trouble about such a trifle
+for long. Think of all the other things he has to amuse him. Why, if I
+broke my heart, you know I should still want to paint," she added,
+flippantly.
+
+"I'd give a good deal to see you break your heart!" said the tragedienne,
+her dark eyes kindling--"you'd be just splendid!"
+
+"Thanks, awfully! There's the pony."
+
+Susan held her.
+
+"You're really going to the Tower?"
+
+"I am. It's mean of me. When you hate a man, you oughtn't to go to his
+house. But I can't help it. I'm so curious."
+
+"Yes, but not about Mr. Melrose," said Susan slowly.
+
+Lydia flushed suddenly from brow to chin.
+
+"Goose! let me go."
+
+Susan let her go, and then stood a while, absorbed, looking at the
+mysterious Tower. Her power of visualization was uncannily strong; it
+amounted almost to second sight. She seemed to be in the Tower--in one of
+its locked and shuttered rooms; to be looking at a young man stretched
+on a sofa--a wizardlike figure in a black cloak standing near--and in the
+doorway, Lydia entering, bringing the light on her fair hair....
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+Tatham had to open the gate of Threlfall Park for himself. The lodge
+beside it, of the same date and architecture as the house, had long
+ceased to be inhabited. The gate was a substantial iron affair, and
+carried a placard, peremptorily directing the person entering to close it
+behind him. And on either side of it, the great wall stretched away with
+which, some ten years before this date, Melrose, at incredible cost, had
+surrounded the greater part of his property, in consequence of a quarrel
+with the local hunt, and to prevent its members from riding over his
+land.
+
+Tatham, having carefully shut the gate, rode slowly through the park,
+casting a curious and hostile eye over the signs of parsimonious neglect
+which it presented. Sheep and cattle were feeding in part of it; part of
+it was standing for hay; and everywhere the fences were ruinous, and the
+roads grass-grown. It was, Tatham knew, let out to various small farmers,
+who used it as they pleased. As to the woods which studded it, "the man
+must be a simple fool who could let them get into such a state!" Tatham
+prided himself hugely on the admirable forestry with which the large
+tracts of woodland in his own property were managed. But then he paid a
+proper salary to a trained forester, a man of education. Melrose's woods,
+with their choked and ruined timber, were but another proof that a miser
+is, scientifically, only a species of idiot.
+
+Only once before in his life had he been within the park--on one of the
+hunts of his boyhood, the famous occasion when the fox, started on the
+other side of the river, had made straight for Threlfall, and, the gate
+closing the private foot-bridge having been, by a most unusual chance,
+left open, had slipped thereby into the park, with the hounds in full cry
+after him. The hunt had momentarily paused, and then breaking loose from
+all control had dashed through the yard of the Home Farm in joyous
+pursuit, while the enraged Melrose, who with Dixon and another man had
+rushed out with sticks to try and head them back, had to confine himself
+and his followers to manning the enclosure round the house--impotent
+spectators of the splendid run through the park--which had long remained
+famous in Cumbrian annals. Tatham was then a lad of fourteen, mounted on
+one of the best of ponies, and he well remembered the mad gallop which
+had carried him past the Tower, and the tall figure of its furious
+master. The glee, the malicious triumph of the moment ran through his
+pulses again as he thought of it.
+
+A short-lived triumph indeed, as far as the hunt was concerned; for the
+building of the ten-foot wall had followed, and Melrose's final breach
+with the gentry of his county. Never since had Tatham set foot in the
+Ogre's demesne; and he examined every feature of it with the most lively
+interest. The dilapidated buildings of the Home Farm reminded him of a
+lawsuit brought by a former tenant against his landlord, in which a story
+of mean and rapacious dealing on the part of Melrose, toward a decent
+though unfortunate man, had excited the disgust of the whole countryside.
+Melrose had never since been able to find a tenant for the farm, and the
+bailiff he had put in was a drunken creature whose mismanagement of it
+was notorious. Such doings by a man so inhumanly shrewd as Melrose in
+many of his affairs could only be accounted for by the combination in him
+of miserly dislike of spending, with a violent self-will. Instances,
+however, had been known when to get his own way, or gain a sinister
+advantage over an opponent, Melrose had been willing to spend
+extravagantly.
+
+After passing the farm, Tatham pressed on eagerly, expecting the first
+sight of the house. The dense growth of shrub and creeper, which had been
+allowed to grow up around it, the home according to the popular legend of
+uncanny multitudes of owls and bats, tickled imagination; and Tatham had
+often brought a field-glass to bear upon the house from one of the
+neighbouring hills. But as he turned the last corner of the drive he drew
+up his horse in amazement.
+
+The jungle was gone--! and the simple yet stately architecture of the
+house stood revealed in the summer sunshine. In the west wing, indeed,
+the windows were still shuttered, and many of them overgrown with ivy;
+but the dingy thickets of laurel and yew were everywhere shorn away; and
+to the east all the windows stood free and open. Moreover, two men were
+at work in the front garden, clearing the flagged paths, traced in the
+eighteenth century, from encumbrance, and laying down turf in a green
+circle round one of the small classical fountains that stood on either
+side of the approach.
+
+"What on earth is the old villain up to now?" was the natural comment of
+the surprised Tatham.
+
+Was it simply the advent of a guest--an invalid guest--that had wrought
+such changes?
+
+One of the gardeners, seeing him as he approached the gate, came running
+up to hold his horse. Tatham, who knew everybody and prided himself on
+it, recognized him as the son of an old Duddon keeper.
+
+"Well, Backhouse, you're making a fine clearance here!"
+
+"Aye! It's took us days, your lordship. But we're about through wi' this
+side, howivver." He pointed to the east wing.
+
+"One can see now what a jolly old place it is," said Tatham, pausing in
+the gateway to survey the scene.
+
+Backhouse grinned responsively.
+
+"I do believe, my lord, Muster Melrose hissel' is pleased. He stood a
+lang while lookin' at it this morning, afore he started oot."
+
+"Well, no one can deny it's an improvement!" laughed Tatham, as he walked
+toward the house.
+
+Dixon had already opened the door. Slave and factotum of Melrose as he
+was, he shared the common liking of the neighbourhood for young Lord
+Tatham. Two of his brothers were farmers on the Duddon estate; and one
+of them owed his recovery from a dangerous and obscure illness to the
+fact that, at the critical moment, Tatham had brought over a specialist
+from Leeds to see him, paying all expenses. These things--and others
+besides--were reflected in the rather tremulous smile with which Dixon
+received the visitor.
+
+"Mr. Faversham expects me?"
+
+"Aye, aye, my lord." The old man quickly led the way through the front
+hall, more quickly than Tatham's curiosity liked. He had time to notice,
+however, the domed and decorated ceiling, the classical mantelpiece, with
+its medallions and its pillars of Sienese marble, a couple of bold
+Renaissance cabinets on either side, and a central table, resting on
+carved sphinxes, such as one might find in the _sala_ of a Venetian
+palace.
+
+But as they turned into the corridor or gallery Tatham's exclamation
+brought Dixon to a halt. He faced round upon the young man, revealing a
+face that worked with hardly repressed excitement, and explained that the
+furnishing and arrangement had been only completed that day. It had taken
+them eight days, and Barclay's men were only just gone.
+
+Tatham frankly expressed his surprise and admiration. The whole gallery
+and both of its terminal windows had now been cleared. The famous series
+of rose-coloured tapestries, of which Undershaw had seen the first
+specimens, had been hung at intervals throughout its length; and from the
+stores of the house had been brought out more carpets, more cabinets,
+mirrors, pictures, fine eighteenth-century chairs, settees, occasional
+tables, and what not. Hastily as it had been done, the brilliance of the
+effect was great. There was not, there could not be, the beauty that
+comes from old use and habit--from the ordered life of generations moving
+among and gradually adapting to itself a number of lovely things. Tatham
+brought up amid the surroundings of Duddon was scornfully conscious of
+the bric-à-brac element in the show, as he stood contemplating Melrose's
+latest performance. Nevertheless a fine taste had presided both at the
+original selection of the things shown, and at the arrangement of them in
+the stately gallery, which both harmonized and displayed them.
+
+"There's not a thing yo' see, my lord, that hasna been here--i' this
+house--for years and years!" said Dixon, pointing a shaky finger at
+the cabinets on either side. "There's soom o' them has been i' their
+packing-cases ever sin' I can remember, an' the carpets rolled up aw
+deep in dust. And there's not a thing been unpacked now i' the house
+itsel', for fear o' t' dust, an' Mr. Faversham. The men carried it aw oot
+o' that door"--he pointed to the far western end of the gallery--"an'
+iverything was doon out o' doors, all t' carpets beaten an' aw, where Mr.
+Faversham couldna hear a sound. An' yesterday Muster Melrose and Muster
+Faversham--we browt him in his wheeled chair yo' unnerstan'--fixed up a
+lot o' things together. We havna nailed doon th' matting yet, for fear
+o't' noise. But Muster Faversham says noo he won't mind it."
+
+"Is Mr. Faversham staying on some time?"
+
+"I canno' say, my lord, I'm sure," was the cautious reply. "But they do
+say 'at he's not to tak' a journey for a while yet."
+
+Tatham's curiosity was hot within him, but his very dislike of Melrose
+restrained him from indulging it. He followed Dixon through the gallery
+in silence.
+
+There was no one in the new sitting-room. But outside on some newly laid
+grass, Tatham perceived the invalid on a deck chair, with a table holding
+books and cigarettes beside him.
+
+Dixon had departed. Faversham offered cigarettes.
+
+"Thank you," said Tatham, "I have my own."
+
+And he produced his case with a smile, handing it to Faversham.
+
+"A drink?"
+
+Tatham declined again. As he sat there smoking, his hat on the back of
+his head, and his ruddy, good-humoured face beaming on his companion, it
+did not occur to Faversham that Tatham was thereby refusing the "salt" of
+an enemy.
+
+"They'll bring some tea when Mrs. and Miss Penfold come," said Faversham.
+
+Tatham nodded, then grinned irrepressibly.
+
+"I say! I told Miss Penfold she'd find you in 'piggery.'"
+
+Faversham's dark face showed a certain discomposure. Physical delicacy
+had given a peculiar distinction to the gaunt black and white of his
+eyes, hair, and complexion, and to the thinness of his long frame, so
+that Tatham, who would have said before seeing him that he remembered
+him perfectly, found himself looking at him from time to time in
+surprise. As to his surroundings, Faversham appeared not only willing but
+anxious to explain.
+
+"It's a queer business," he said frankly. "I can assure I you I never
+asked for anything, never wished for anything of the sort. Everything was
+arranged for me to go to Keswick--to a home there--when--this happened."
+
+"When old Melrose broke out!" Tatham threw back his head and gurgled with
+laughter. "I suppose you know that nobody but yourself has ever had bite
+or sup in this house for twenty years, unless it were some of the
+dealers, who--they say--come occasionally. What have you done to him?
+You've cast a spell on him!"
+
+Faversham replied again that he had done nothing, and was as much puzzled
+as anybody.
+
+"My mother was afraid you would be anything but comfortable," said
+Tatham. "She knows this gentleman of old. But she didn't know your powers
+of soothing the savage breast! However, you have only to say the word,
+and we shall be delighted to take you in for as long as you like."
+
+"Oh, I must stay here now," said Faversham decidedly. "One couldn't be
+ungrateful for what has been done. But my best thanks to Lady Tatham all
+the same. I hope I may get over to see her some day."
+
+"You must, of course. Dixon tells me there is a carriage coming--perhaps
+a motor; why not!"
+
+A flush rose in Faversham's pale cheek.
+
+"Mr. Melrose talked of hiring one yesterday," he said, unwillingly. "How
+far are you?"
+
+They fell into talk about Duddon and the neighbourhood, avoiding any
+further discussion of Melrose. Then Faversham described his accident, and
+spoke warmly of Undershaw, an occupation in which Tatham heartily joined.
+
+"I owe my life to him," said Faversham; adding with sudden sharpness, "I
+suppose I must count it an advantage!"
+
+"That would be the common way of looking at it!" laughed Tatham. "What
+are you doing just now?"
+
+"Nothing in particular. I am one of the large tribe of briefless
+barristers. I suppose I've never given enough of my mind to it. The fact
+is I don't like the law--never have. I've tried other things--fatal, of
+course!--but they haven't come off, or at least only very moderately.
+But, as you may suppose--I'm not exactly penniless. I have a few
+resources--just enough to live on--without a wife."
+
+Tatham felt a little awkward. Faversham's tone was already that of a man
+to some extent disappointed and embittered.
+
+"You had always so much more brains than the rest of us," he said
+cordially. "You'll be all right."
+
+"It's not brains that matter nowadays--it's money. What do you get by
+brains? A civil service appointment--and a pension of seven hundred a
+year. What's the good of slaving for that?"
+
+Faversham turned to his companion with a smile, in which however there
+was no good-humour. It made Tatham disagreeably conscious of his own
+wealth.
+
+"Well, of course, there are the prizes--"
+
+"A few. So few that they don't count. A man may grind for years, and get
+passed over or forgotten--just by a shave--at the end. I've seen that
+happen often. Or you get on swimmingly for a while, and everybody
+supposes you're going to romp in; and then something crops up you never
+thought of. Some boss takes a dislike to you--or you make a mistake, and
+cut your own throat. And there you are--pulled!"
+
+Tatham was silent a moment, his blunt features expressing some
+bewilderment. Then he said--awkwardly:
+
+"So you don't really know what you're going to take up?"
+
+Faversham lit another cigarette.
+
+"Oh, well, I have some friends--and some ideas. If I once get a foothold,
+a beginning--I daresay I could make money like other people. Every idiot
+one meets seems to be doing it."
+
+"Do you want to go into politics--or something of that kind?"
+
+"I want to remain my own master, and do the things I want to do--and not
+the things I must do," laughed Faversham. "That seems to me the dividing
+line in life--whether you are under another man's orders or your own. And
+broadly speaking it's the line between poverty and money. But you don't
+know much about it, old fellow!" He looked round with a laugh.
+
+Tatham screwed up his blue eyes, not finding reply very easy, and not
+certain that he liked the "old fellow," though their college familiarity
+justified it. He changed the subject, and they fell into some gossip
+about Oxford acquaintances and recollections, which kept the conversation
+going.
+
+But at the end of it the two men were each secretly conscious that
+the other jarred upon him; and in spite of the tacit appeal made by
+Faversham's physical weakness and evident depression to Tatham's
+boundless good-nature, there had arisen between them at the end an
+incipient antagonism which a touch might develop. Faversham appeared to
+the younger man as querulous, discontented, and rather sordidly
+ambitious; while the smiling optimism of a youth on whom Fortune had
+showered every conceivable gift--money, position, and influence--without
+the smallest effort on his own part, rang false or foolish in the ears of
+his companion. Tatham, cut off from the county, agricultural, or sporting
+subjects in which he was most at home, fumbled a good deal in his efforts
+to adjust himself; while Faversham found it no use to talk of travel,
+art, or music to one who, in spite of an artistic and literary mother and
+wonderful possessions, had himself neither literary nor artistic faculty,
+and in the prevailing manner of the English country gentleman, had always
+found the pleasures of England so many and superior that there was no
+need whatever to cross the Channel in pursuit of others. Both were soon
+bored; and Tatham would have hurried his departure, but for the hope
+of Lydia. With that to fortify him, however, he sat on.
+
+And at last she came. Mrs. Penfold, it will easily be imagined, entered
+upon the scene, in a state of bewildered ravishment.
+
+"She had never expected--she could not have believed--it was like a
+fairy-tale--a _real_ fairy-tale--wasn't the house _too_ beautiful--Mr.
+Melrose's _taste_!--and such _things_!" In the wake of this soft,
+gesticulating whirlwind, followed Lydia, waiting patiently with her
+bright and humorous look till her mother should give her the chance of a
+word. Her gray dress, and white hat, her little white scarf, a trifle
+old-fashioned, and the pansies at her belt seemed to Tatham's eager eyes
+the very perfection of dress. He watched her keenly as she came in; the
+kind look at Faversham; then the start--was it, of pity?--for his altered
+aspect, the friendly greeting for himself; and all so sweet, so detached,
+so composed. His heart sank, he could not have told why.
+
+"I ought to have warned you of that hill!" she said, standing beside
+Faversham, and looking down upon him.
+
+"You couldn't know I was such a duffer!" laughed Faversham. "It wasn't
+me--it was the bike. At least, they tell me so. As for me, everything,
+from the moment I left you till I woke up here six weeks ago, is wiped
+out. Did you finish your sketch? Were the press notices good?"
+
+She smiled. "Did you see what they were?"
+
+"Certainly. I saw your name in one as I picked it out."
+
+"I still sleep with it under my pillow--when I feel low," said Lydia. "It
+said the nicest things. And I sold my pictures."
+
+"Magnificent!" said Faversham. "But of course you sold them."
+
+"Oh, no, Mr. Faversham, not 'of course'!" cried Mrs. Penfold, turning
+round upon him. "You can't think how Lydia was envied! Hardly anybody
+sold. There were friends of hers exhibiting--and it was dreadful. The
+secretary said they had hardly ever had such a bad year--something to do
+with a bank breaking--or the influenza--or something. But Lydia, lucky
+girl, sold hers within the first week. And we don't know at all who
+bought them. The secretary said he was not to tell. There are many
+buyers, he told us, who won't give their names--for fear of being
+bothered afterward. As if Lydia would ever bother any one!"
+
+The guilty Tatham sat with his cane between his knees twirling it, his
+eyes on the ground. No one noticed him.
+
+"And the sketch you were making that day?" said Faversham.
+
+"As you liked it, I brought it to show you," said Lydia shyly. And she
+produced a thin parcel she had been carrying under her arm.
+
+Faversham praised the drawing warmly. It reminded him, he said, of some
+work he had seen in March, at one of the Bond Street galleries; a one-man
+show by a French water-colourist. He named him. Lydia flushed a little.
+
+"Next to Mr. Delorme"--she glanced gratefully at Tatham--"he is the man
+of all the world I admire most! I am afraid I can't help imitating him."
+
+"But you don't!" cried Faversham. "You are quite independent. I didn't
+mean that for a moment."
+
+Lydia's eyes surveyed him with a look of amusement, which seemed to say
+that she was not at all duped by his compliment. He proceeded to justify
+it.
+
+"I'll tell you who do imitate him--"
+
+And forthwith he began to show a remarkable knowledge of certain advanced
+groups among the younger artists and their work. Lydia's face kindled.
+She listened; she agreed; she interrupted; she gave her view; it was
+evident that the conversation both surprised and delighted her.
+
+Tea came out, and, at Faversham's invitation, Lydia presided. The talk
+between her and Faversham flowed on, in spite of the girl's pretty
+efforts to make it general, to bring Tatham into it. He himself defeated
+her. He wanted to listen; so did Mrs. Penfold, who sat in open-mouthed
+wonder at Lydia's cleverness; while Tatham was presently conscious of a
+strong discomfort, a jealous discomfort, which spoilt for him this
+nearness to Lydia, and the thrill stirred in him by her movements and
+tones, her soft laugh, her white neck, her eyes....
+
+Here, between these two people, Faversham and Lydia, who had only seen
+each other for some ten minutes in their lives before, there seemed to
+have arisen, at once, an understanding, a freemasonry, such as he himself
+had never reached in all his meetings with Lydia Penfold.
+
+How had it come about? They talked of people, struggling people, to whom
+art was life, though also livelihood; of men and women, for whom nothing
+else counted, beside the fascination and the torment of their work; Lydia
+speaking from within, as a humble yet devout member of the band;
+Faversham, as the keen spectator and amateur--not an artist, but the
+frequenter of artists.
+
+And all the time Lydia's face wore a happy animation which redoubled its
+charm. Faversham was clearly making a good impression upon her, was
+indeed set on doing so, helped always by the look of delicacy, the traces
+of suffering, which appealed to her pity. Tatham moved restlessly in his
+chair, and presently he got up, and proposed to Mrs. Penfold that they
+should examine the improvements in the garden.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+When they returned, Lydia and Faversham were still talking and still
+absorbed.
+
+"Lydia, my dear," cried her mother, "I am afraid we shall be tiring Mr.
+Faversham! Now you must let Lord Tatham show you the garden--that's been
+made in a _week_! It's like that part in 'Monte Cristo,' where he orders
+an avenue at breakfast-time, that's to be ready by dinner--don't you
+remember? It's _thrilling_!"
+
+Lydia rose obediently, and Mrs. Penfold slipped into her seat. Lydia,
+strolling with Tatham along the rampart wall which crowned the sandstone
+cliff, was now and then uncomfortably aware as they passed the tea-table
+of the soft shower of questions that her mother was raining upon
+Faversham.
+
+"You really think, Mr. Faversham"--the tone was anxiously lowered--"the
+daughter is dead?--the daughter _and_ the mother?"
+
+"I know nothing!"
+
+"She would be the heiress?"
+
+"If she were alive? Morally, I suppose, not legally, unless her father
+pleased."
+
+"Oh! Mr. Faversham!--but you would never suggest--"
+
+Lydia came to the rescue:
+
+"Mother, really we ought to ask for the pony-carriage."
+
+Faversham protested, but Lydia was firm, and the hand-bell beside him was
+rung. Mrs. Penfold flushed. She quite understood that Lydia thought it
+unseemly to be putting a guest through a string of questions about the
+private affairs of his host; but the inveterate gossip in her whimpered.
+
+"You see when one has watched a place for months--and people tell
+you such tales--and you come and find it so different--and so--so
+fascinating--"
+
+She paused, her plaintive look, under her wistful eyebrows, appealing to
+Faversham to come to her aid, to justify her curiosity.
+
+Suddenly, a sound of wheels from the front.
+
+Lydia offered her hand to Faversham.
+
+"I'm afraid we've tired you!"
+
+"_Tired!_ When will you come to see me again?"
+
+"Will it be permitted?" She laid a finger on her lip, as she glanced
+smiling at the house.
+
+He begged them to repeat their visit. Tatham looked on in silence. The
+figure of Lydia, delicately bright against the dark background of the
+Tower, absorbed him, and this time there was something painful and
+strained in his perception of it. In his first meeting with her that
+day he had been all hopefulness--content to wait and woo. Now, as he saw
+her with Faversham, as he perceived the nascent comradeship between them,
+and the reason for it, he felt a first vague suffering.
+
+A step approached through the sitting-room of which the door was open to
+the terrace.
+
+The two ladies escorted by Tatham moved toward the house expecting Dixon
+with the announcement of their carriage.
+
+A tall figure stood in the doorway. There was a checked exclamation
+from Tatham, and Faversham perceived to his amazement that it was not
+Dixon--but--Melrose!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Melrose surveyed the group. Removing his old hat he bowed gravely to the
+ladies. His flowing hair, and largely cut classical features gave him an
+Apollonian aspect as he towered above the startled group, looking down on
+them with an expression half triumphant, half sarcastic. Tatham was the
+first to recover himself. He approached Melrose with a coolness like his
+own.
+
+"You are back early, sir? I apologize for my intrusion, which will not be
+prolonged. I came, as you see, to inquire after my old friend, Mr.
+Faversham."
+
+"So I understand. Well--what's wrong with him? Isn't he doing well--eh?
+Faversham, will you introduce me to your friends?"
+
+Mrs. Penfold, so much shaken by the sudden appearance of the Ogre that
+words failed her, bowed profoundly; Lydia slightly. She was indignant for
+Tatham. Mr. Melrose, having announced his absence for the day, ought not
+to have returned upon them by surprise, and his manner convinced her that
+it had been done on purpose.
+
+"They gave you tea?" said Melrose to Mrs. Penfold, with gruff civility,
+as he descended the steps. "Oh, we keep open house nowadays. You're
+going?" This was in answer to Tatham's bow which he slightly
+acknowledged. "Good-day, good-day! You'll find your horse. Sorry you're
+so hurried."
+
+Followed by the old man's insolent eyes, Tatham shook hands with
+Faversham and the Penfolds; then without reentering the house, he took a
+short cut across the garden and disappeared.
+
+"Hm!" said Melrose, looking after him, "I can't say he resembles his
+mother. His father was a plain fellow."
+
+No one answered him. Mrs. Penfold nervously pressed for her carriage,
+throwing herself on the help of Dixon, who was removing the tea things.
+Melrose meanwhile seated himself, and with a magnificent gesture invited
+the ladies to do the same. Mrs. Penfold obeyed; Lydia remained standing
+behind her mother's chair. The situation reminded her of a covey of
+partridges when a hawk is hovering.
+
+Mrs. Penfold at once began to make conversation, saying the most
+dishevelled things for sheer fright. Melrose threw her a monosyllable now
+and then, reserving all his attention for the young girl, whose beauty he
+instantly perceived. His piercing eyes travelled from Faversham to Lydia
+repeatedly, and the invalid rather angrily divined the conjectures which
+might be passing in their owner's brain.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+"How are you?" asked Melrose abruptly, when he returned from accompanying
+the Penfolds to the front door.
+
+Faversham replied with some coldness. He was disgusted that Melrose
+should have spoilt the final success of his little _festa_ by the breach
+of a promise he had himself volunteered.
+
+But Melrose appeared to be in an unusually good temper, and he took no
+notice. He had had considerable success that morning, it appeared, at an
+auction of some fine things at a house near Carlisle; having not only
+secured what he wanted himself, but having punished two or three of his
+most prominent rivals, by bidding high for some inferior thing, exciting
+their competition, and then at the critical moment dropping it on the
+nose, as he explained it, of one of his opponents. "Wilson of York came
+to me nearly in tears, and implored me to take some beastly pot or other
+that I had made him buy at a ridiculous price. I told him he might keep
+it, as a reminder that I always paid those out who bid against me. Then
+I found I could get an earlier train home; and I confess I was curious to
+see how young Tatham would look, on my premises. He did not expect that I
+should catch him here." The Ogre chuckled.
+
+"You told me, if you remember," said Faversham, not without emphasis,
+"that I was to say to him you would not be at home."
+
+"I know. But sometimes there are impulses--of different kinds--that I
+can't resist. Of different kinds--" repeated Melrose, his glittering,
+absent look fixed on Faversham.
+
+There was silence a little. Then Melrose said slowly, as he rose from his
+chair: "I have--a rather important proposition to make to you. That
+fellow Undershaw would attack me if I began upon it now. Moreover, it
+will want a fresh mind. Will it suit you if I come to see you at eleven
+o'clock to-morrow?"
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+On the following morning, Faversham, for the first time, dressed without
+assistance, and walked independently--save for his stick--into his
+sitting-room. The July day was rather chill and rainy and he decided to
+await Melrose indoors.
+
+As to the "important proposal" his mind was full of conjectures. What he
+thought most probable was that Melrose intended, according to various
+fresh hints and indications, to make him another and a more serious offer
+for his gems--no doubt a big offer. They were worth at least three
+thousand pounds, and Melrose of course knew their value to a hair.
+
+"Well, I shall not sell them," thought Faversham, his hands behind his
+head, his eyes following the misty course of the river, and the rain
+showers scudding over the fells. "I shall not sell them."
+
+His mind clung obstinately to this resolve. His ambitions with regard to
+money went, in fact, so far beyond anything that three thousand pounds
+could satisfy, that the inducement to sell at such a price--which he knew
+to be the market price--and wound thereby the deepest and sincerest of
+his affections, was not really great. The little capital on which he
+lived was nearly double the sum, and could be made to yield a fair income
+by small and judicious speculation. He did not see that he should be much
+better off for the addition to it of three thousand pounds; and on the
+other hand, were the gems sold, he should have lost much that he keenly
+valued--the prestige of ownership; the access which it gave him to
+circles, learned or wealthy, which had been else closed to him; the
+distinction attaching thereby to his otherwise obscure name in catalogues
+and monographs, English or foreign. So long as he possessed the
+"Mackworth gems" he was, in the eyes of the world of connoisseurs, at any
+rate, a personage. Without them he was a personage nowhere. Every month,
+every week, almost, he was beginning to receive requests to be allowed
+to see and study them, or appeals to lend them for exhibition. In the
+four months since his uncle's death, both the Louvre and the Berlin
+Museum had approached him, offering to exhibit them, and hinting that the
+loan might lead, should he so desire it, to a very profitable sale. If he
+did anything of the kind, he was pledged of course to give the British
+Museum the first chance. But he was not going to do it--he was not even
+going to lend them--yet a while. To possess them, and the _kudos_ that
+went with them; _not_ to sell them, for sentimental reasons, and even at
+a money loss, made a poor man proud, and ministered in strange ways to
+his self-respect, which went often rather hungry; gave him, in short, a
+standing with himself, and with the world. All the more, that the poor
+man's mind was in fact, set passionately on the conquest of wealth--real
+and substantial wealth--to which the paltry sum of three thousand pounds
+bore no sort of relation.
+
+No, he would not sell them. But he braced himself to a tussle with
+Melrose, for he seemed to have gathered from a number of small
+indications that the fierce old collector had set his heart upon them.
+And no doubt this business of the newly furnished rooms, and all the
+luxuries that had been given or promised, made it more difficult--had
+been intended, perhaps, to make it more difficult? Well, he could but say
+his No and depart, expressing his gratitude--and insisting on the payment
+of his score!
+
+But--depart where? The energies of renewed health were pulsing through
+him, and yet he had seldom felt more stranded, or, except in connection
+with the gems, more insignificant, either to himself or others; in
+spite of this palace which had been oddly renovated for his convenience.
+His uncle's death had left him singularly forlorn, deprived of the only
+home he had ever possessed, and the only person who felt for him a close
+and spontaneous affection. For his other uncle--his only remaining
+relation--was a crusty and selfish widower, with whom he had been on
+little more than formal terms. The rheumatic gout pleaded in the letter
+to Undershaw had been, he was certain, a mere excuse.
+
+Well--something must be done; some fresh path opened up. He had in
+Fact left London in a kind of secret exasperation with himself and
+circumstance, making an excuse out of meeting the Ransoms--mere
+acquaintances--at Liverpool; and determined, after the short tour to
+which they had invited him, to plunge himself for a week or two in the
+depths of a Highland glen where he might fish and think.
+
+The Ransoms, machine manufacturers from St. Louis, had made matters
+worse. Such wealth!--such careless, vulgar, easily gotten wealth!--heaped
+up by means that seemed to the outsider so facile, and were, in truth,
+for all but a small minority, so difficult. A commonplace man and a
+frivolous woman; yet possessed, through their mere money, of a power over
+life and its experiences, such as he, Faversham, might strive for all his
+days and never come near. It might be said of course--Herbert Ransom
+would probably say it--that all men are worth the wages they get; with an
+obvious deduction in his own case. But when or where had he ever _got his
+chance_--a real chance? Visions of the rich men among his acquaintance,
+sleek, half-breed financiers, idle, conceited youths of the "classes,"
+pushed on by family interest; pig-headed manufacturers, inheritors of
+fortunes they could never have made; the fatteners on colonial land and
+railway speculation--his whole mind rose in angry revolt against the
+notion that he could not have done, personally, as well as any of them,
+had there only been the initial shove, the favourable moment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He envied those who had beaten him in the race, he frankly admitted it;
+but he must also allow himself the luxury of despising them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Melrose was late.
+
+Faversham rose and hobbled to the window, his hands on his sides,
+frowning--a gaunt figure in the rainy light. With the return of physical
+strength there had come a passionate renewal of desire--desire for
+happiness and success. The figure of Lydia Penfold hovered perpetually
+in his mind. Marriage!--his whole being, moral and physical, cried out
+for it. But how was he ever to marry?--how could he ever give such a
+woman as that the setting and the scope she could reasonably claim?
+
+"A bad day!" said a harsh voice behind him, "but all the better for
+business."
+
+Faversham turned to greet his host, the mental and physical nerves
+tightening.
+
+"Good morning. Well, here I am"--his laugh showed his nervousness--"at
+your disposal."
+
+He settled himself in his chair. Melrose took a cigarette from the table,
+and offered one to his guest. He lit and smoked in silence for a few
+moments, then began to speak with deliberation:
+
+"I gather from our conversations, Faversham, during the last few weeks
+that you have at the present moment no immediate or pressing occupation?"
+
+Quick colour leapt in Faversham's lean cheek.
+
+"That is true. It happens to be true--for various reasons. But if you
+mean to imply by that, that I am necessarily--or willingly--an idler, you
+are mistaken."
+
+"I did not mean to imply anything of the kind. I merely wished, so to
+speak, to clear the way for what I have to propose."
+
+Faversham nodded. Melrose continued:
+
+"For clearly it would be an impertinence on my part were I to
+attempt--suddenly--to lift a man out of a fixed groove and career, and
+suggest to him another. I should expect to be sent to the devil--and
+serve me right. But in your case--correct me if I am wrong--you seem
+not yet to have discovered the groove that suits you. Now I am here to
+propose to you a groove--and a career."
+
+Faversham looked at him with astonishment. The gems, which had been so
+urgently present to his mind, receded from it. Melrose in his skullcap,
+sitting sideways in his chair, his cigarette held aloft, presented a
+profile which might have been that of some Venetian Doge, old, withered
+and crafty, engaged, say, in negotiation with a Genoese envoy.
+
+"When you were first brought here," Melrose continued--"your presence,
+as Undershaw has no doubt told you--of course he has told you, small
+blame to him--was extremely distasteful to me. I am a recluse. I like no
+women--and d----d few men. I can do without them, that's all; their
+intimate company, anyway: and my pursuits bring me all the amusement I
+require. Such at any rate was my frame of mind up to a few weeks ago. I
+don't apologize for it in the least. Every man has a right to his own
+idiosyncrasies. But I confess that your society during the last few
+weeks--I am in no mood for mere compliment--has had a considerable
+effect upon me. It has revealed to me that I am no longer so young as
+I was, or so capable--apparently--of entertaining myself. At any rate
+your company--I put it quite frankly--instead of being a nuisance--has
+been a godsend. It has turned out that we have many of the same tastes;
+and your inheritance of the treasures collected by my old friend
+Mackworth"--("Ah!" thought Faversham, "now we come to it!")--"has made
+from the first, I think, a link between us. Have I your assent?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+Melrose paused a moment, and then resumed. The impression he made was
+that of one rehearsing, point by point, a prepared speech.
+
+"At the same time, I have become more aware than usual of the worries and
+annoyances connected with the management of my estates. We live, sir, in
+a world of robbers"--Melrose suddenly rounded on his companion, his
+withered face aflame--"a world of robbers, and of rapine! Not a single
+Tom, Dick, and Harry in these parts that doesn't think himself my equal
+and more. Not a single tenant on my estate that doesn't try at every
+point to take advantage of his landlord! Not a single tramp or poacher
+that doesn't covet my goods--that wouldn't murder me if he could, and
+sleep like a baby afterward. I tell you, sir, we shall see a _jacquerie_
+in England, before we are through with these ideas that are now about
+us like the plague; that every child imbibes from our abominable
+press!--that our fools of clergy--our bishops even--are not ashamed to
+preach. There is precious little sense of property, and not a single
+rag of loyalty or respect left in this country! But when you think of the
+creatures that rule us--and the fanatics who preach to us--and the fools
+who bring up our children, what else can you expect! The whole state is
+rotten! The men in our great towns are ripe for any revolutionary
+villainy. We shall come to blood, Faversham!"--he struck his hand
+violently on the arm of his chair--"and then a dictator--the inevitable
+round. Well, I have done my part. I have fought the battle of property in
+this country--the battle of every squire in Cumbria, if the dolts did but
+know their own interests. Instead they have done nothing but thwart and
+bully me for twenty years. And young Tatham with his County Council
+nonsense, and his popularity hunting, is one of the very worst of them!
+Well, now I've done!--personally. I daresay they'll crow--they'll say I'm
+beat. Anyway, I've done. There'll have to be fighting, but some one else
+must see to it. I intend to put my affairs into fresh hands. It is my
+purpose to appoint a new agent--and to give him complete control of my
+property!"
+
+Melrose stopped abruptly. His hard eyes in their deep, round orbits
+were fixed on Faversham. The young man was mainly conscious of a
+half-hysterical inclination to laugh, which he strangled as he best
+could. Was he to be offered the post?
+
+"And, moreover," Melrose resumed, "I want a secretary--I want a
+companion--I want some one who will help me to arrange the immense, the
+priceless collections there are stacked in this house--unknown to
+anybody--hardly known, in the lapse of years, even to myself. I desire to
+unravel my own web, so to speak--to spin off my own silk--to examine and
+analyze what I have accumulated. There are rooms here--containing
+_masterpieces_--unique treasures--that have never been opened for
+years--whose contents I have myself forgotten. That's why people call me
+a madman. Why? What did I want with a big establishment eating up my
+income?--with a lot of prying idiots from outside--museum bores,
+bothering me for loans--common tourists, offering impertinent tips to my
+housekeeper, or picking and stealing, perhaps, when her back was turned!
+I bought the things, and _shut them up_. They were safe, anyway. But now
+that process has gone on for a quarter of a century. You come along. A
+chance--a freak--a caprice, if you like, makes me arrange these rooms for
+you. That gives me new ideas--"
+
+He turned and looked with sharp, slow scrutiny round the walls:
+
+"The fact is I have been so far engaged in hoarding--heaping together.
+The things in this house--my extraordinary collections--have been the
+nuts--and I, the squirrel. But now the nuts are bursting out of the hole,
+and the squirrel wants to see what he's got. That brings me to my point!"
+
+He turned emphatically toward Faversham, leaning hard on a marqueterie
+table that stood between them:
+
+"I offer you, sir, the post, the double post, of agent to my property,
+and of private secretary, or assistant to myself. I offer you a salary of
+three thousand a year--three thousand pounds, a year--if you will
+undertake the management of my estates, and be my lieutenant in the
+arrangement of my collections. I wish--as I have said--to unpack this
+house; and I should like to leave my property in order before I die.
+Which reminds me, I should of course be perfectly ready to make proper
+provision, by contract, or otherwise, so that in the event of any sudden
+termination of our agreement--my death for instance--you should be
+adequately protected. Well, there, in outline, is my proposal!"
+
+During this extraordinary speech Faversham's countenance had reflected
+with tolerable clearness the various impressions made by it--incredulous
+or amused astonishment--bewilderment--deepening gravity--coming round
+again to astonishment. He raised himself in his chair.
+
+"You wish to make me your agent--the agent for these immense estates?"
+
+"I do. I had an excellent agent once--twenty years ago. But old Dovedale
+stole him from me--bribed him by higher pay. Since then I have had
+nothing but clerks--rent-collectors--rascally makeshifts, all of them."
+
+"But I know nothing about land--I have had no experience!"
+
+"A misfortune--but in some ways to the good. I don't want any cocksure
+fellow, with brand-new ideas lording it over me. I should advise you of
+course."
+
+"But--at the same time--I should not be content with a mere clerk's
+place, Mr. Melrose," said Paversham, a momentary flash in his dark eye.
+"I am one of those men who are better as principals than as subordinates.
+Otherwise I should be in harness by now."
+
+Melrose eyed him askance for a moment--then said: "I understand. I should
+be willing to steer my course accordingly--to give you a reasonable
+freedom. There are two old clerks in the estate-office, who know
+everything that is to be known about the property, and there are my
+solicitors both in Carlisle and Pengarth. For the rest, you are a lawyer,
+and there are some litigations pending. Your legal knowledge would be of
+considerable service. If you are the clever fellow I take you for, a
+month or two's hard work, the usual technical books, some expert
+advice--and I have little doubt you would make as good an agent as any of
+them. Mind, I am _not_ prepared to spend unlimited money--nor to run my
+estates as a Socialist concern. But I gather you are as good a
+Conservative as myself."
+
+Faversham was silent a moment, observing the man before him. The whole
+thing was too astounding. At last he said: "You are not prepared, sir,
+you say, to spend unlimited money. But the sum you offer me is unheard
+of."
+
+"For an agent, yes--for a secretary, yes--for a combination of the two,
+under the peculiar circumstances, the market offers no precedents. You
+and I make a market--and a price."
+
+"You would expect me to live in this house?"
+
+"I gather these rooms are not disagreeable to you?"
+
+"Disagreeable! They are too sumptuous. If _I_ did this thing, sir, I
+should want to do it in a businesslike way."
+
+"You want an office? Take your choice." Melrose's gesture indicated the
+rest of the house. "There are rooms enough. But you will want some place,
+I imagine, where you can be at home, receive friends--like the young lady
+and her mother yesterday--and so on."
+
+His smile made him more Ogreish than before.
+
+He resumed:
+
+"And by the way, if you accepted my proposal, I should naturally expect
+that for a time you would devote yourself wholly to the organization of
+the collections, inside the house, and to the work of the estate, outside
+it. But you are of an age when a man hopes to marry. I should of course
+take that into account. In a year or two--"
+
+"Oh, I have no immediate ideas of that kind," said Faversham, hastily.
+
+There was a pause. At the end of it Faversham turned on his companion. A
+streak of feverish colour, a sparkling vivacity in the eyes, showed the
+effect produced by the conversation. But he had kept his head throughout
+the whole interview, and a certain unexpected strength in his personality
+had revealed itself to Melrose:
+
+"You will hardly expect me, sir, to give an immediate answer to these
+proposals?"
+
+"Take your time--take your time--in moderation," said Melrose, drumming
+on the table before him.
+
+"And there are of course a few things that I on my side should wish to
+know."
+
+A series of inquiries followed: as to the term of the proposed
+engagement; the degree of freedom that would be granted him; the date at
+which his duties would begin, supposing he undertook them--("To-morrow,
+if it pleases you!" said Melrose, jovially)--passing on to the general
+circumstances of the estates, and the nature of the pending litigations.
+The questions were put with considerable tact, but were none the less
+shrewd. Melrose's strange character with its mixture of sagacity, folly,
+and violence, had never been more acutely probed--though quite
+indirectly.
+
+At the end of them his companion rose.
+
+"You have a talent for cross-examination," he said with a rather sour
+smile. "I leave you. We have talked enough."
+
+"Let me at least express before you go the gratitude I feel for proposals
+so flattering--so generous," said Faversham, not without emotion; "and
+for all the kindness I have received here, a kindness that no man could
+ever forget."
+
+Melrose looked at him oddly, seemed about to speak--then muttered
+something hardly intelligible, ceased abruptly, and departed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The master of the Tower went slowly to his library through the splendid
+gallery, where Mrs. Dixon and the new housemaid were timidly dusting. But
+he took no notice of them. He went into his own room, locked his door,
+and having lit his own fire, he settled down to smoke and ruminate. He
+was exhausted, and his seventy years asserted themselves. The radical
+alteration in his habits and outlook which the preceding six weeks had
+produced, the excitement of unpacking the treasures now displayed in the
+gallery, the constant thinkings and plannings connected with Faversham
+and the future, and, lastly, the interview just concluded, had tried
+his strength. Certain symptoms--symptoms of old age--annoyed him though
+he would not admit it. No doubt some change was wanted. He must smoke
+less--travel less--give himself more variety and more amusement. Well, if
+Faversham consented, he should at least have bought for himself a
+companionship that was agreeable to him, and relief from a number of
+routine occupations which he detested.
+
+Suddenly--a child's voice--a child's shrill voice, ringing through the
+gallery--followed by scufflings and hushings, on the part of an older
+person--then a wail--and silence. Melrose had risen to his feet with an
+exclamation. Some peculiar quality in the voice--some passionate,
+thrilling quality--had produced for the moment an extraordinary illusion.
+
+He recovered himself in a moment. It was of course the child of the
+upholstress who had been working in the house for a week or so. He
+remembered to have noticed the little girl. But the sound had inevitably
+suggested thoughts he had no wish to entertain. He had a letter in his
+pocket at that moment which he did not mean to answer--the first he had
+received for many years. If he once allowed a correspondence to grow
+up--with that individual--on the subject of money, there would be no end
+to it; it would spread and spread, till his freedom was once more
+endangered. He did not intend that persons, who had been once banished
+from his life, should reenter it--on any pretext. Netta had behaved to
+him like a thief and a criminal, and with the mother went the child. They
+were nothing to him, and never should be anything. If she was in trouble,
+let her go to her own people.
+
+He took out the letter, and dropped it into the midst of the burning logs
+before him. Then he turned to a heap of sale catalogues lying near him,
+and after going through them, he rose, and as though drawn to it by a
+magnetic power, he went to the Riesener table, and unlocked the drawer
+which held the gems.
+
+Bringing them back to the fireside he watched the play of the flames on
+their shining surfaces, delighting greedily in their beauty; in the long
+history attaching to each one of them, every detail of which he knew; in
+the sense of their uniqueness. Nothing like them of their kind, anywhere;
+and there they were in his hand, after these years of fruitless coveting.
+He had often made Mackworth offers for them; and Mackworth had laughed at
+him.
+
+Well, he had bid high enough this time, not for the gems themselves, but
+for the chance of some day persuading their owner to entertain the notion
+of selling them. It pleased him to guess at what had been probably
+Faversham's secret expectation that morning of a proposal for them; and
+to think that he had baffled it.
+
+He might, of course, have made some quite preposterous offer which would
+have forced the young man's hand. But that might have meant, probably
+would have meant, the prompt departure of the enriched Faversham. But he
+wanted both Faversham and the gems; as much as possible--that is, for his
+money. The thought of returning to his former solitariness was rapidly
+becoming intolerable to him. Meanwhile the adorable things were still
+under his roof; and with a mad pleasure he relocked the drawer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Faversham spent the rest of the morning in cogitations that may be easily
+imagined. He certainly attributed some share in the extraordinary
+proposal that had been made to him, to his possession of the gems, and to
+Melrose's desire to beguile them from him. But what then? Sufficient for
+the day! He would decide how to deal with that crisis when it should
+arrive.
+
+Meanwhile, the amazing proposal itself was before him. If it were
+accepted, he should be at once a comparatively rich man, with an infinity
+of chances for the future; for Melrose's financial interest and influence
+were immense. If not free to marry immediately, he would certainly be
+free--as Melrose himself had hinted--to prepare for marriage. But could
+he do the work?--could he get on with the old man?--could he endure the
+life?
+
+After luncheon Dixon, with the subdued agitation of manner which showed
+the advent of yet another change in the household, came in to announce
+that a motor had come from Carlisle, that Mr. Melrose did not propose to
+use it himself, and hoped that Mr. Faversham would take a drive.
+
+It was the invalid's first excursion into the outer world.
+
+He sat breathing in great draughts of the scented summer air, feeling his
+life and strength come back into him.
+
+The rain had passed, and the fells rose clear and high above the moist
+hay meadows and the fresh-leaved trees.
+
+As they emerged upon the Keswick road he tapped the chauffeur on the
+shoulder. "Do you know Green Cottage?"
+
+"Mrs. Penfold's, sir? Certainly."
+
+"How far is it?"
+
+"I should say about two miles."
+
+"Go there, please."
+
+The two miles passed for Faversham in a double excitement he had some
+difficulty in concealing; the physical excitement of change and movement,
+of this reentry upon a new world, which was the old; and the mental
+excitement of his own position.
+
+At the cottage door, he dismounted slowly. The maid-servant said she
+thought Mrs. Penfold was in the garden. Would the gentleman please come
+in?
+
+Faversham, leaning on his stick, made his way through the tiny hall of
+the cottage, and the drawing-room door was thrown open for him. A young
+lady was sitting at the farther end, who rose with a slight cry of
+astonishment. It was Lydia.
+
+Through her reception of him Faversham soon learnt what are the
+privileges of the wounded, and how glad are all good women of excuses to
+be kind. Lydia placed him in the best chair, in front of the best view,
+ordered tea, and hovered round him with an eager benevolence. Her mother,
+she said, would be in directly. Faversham, on his side, could only
+secretly hope that Mrs. Penfold's walk might be prolonged.
+
+They were not interrupted. Lydia, with concern, conjectured that Mrs.
+Penfold and Susan had gone to visit a couple of maiden ladies, living
+half a mile off along the road. But she showed not the smallest
+awkwardness in entertaining her guest. The rain of the morning had left
+the air chilly, and a wood fire burnt on the hearth. Its pleasant flame
+gave an added touch of intimity to the little drawing-room, with its wild
+flowers, its books, its water-colours, and its modest furnishings. After
+the long struggle of his illness, and the excitement of the morning,
+Faversham was both soothed and charmed. His whole nature relaxed;
+happiness flowed in. Presently, on an impulse he could not resist, he
+told her of the offer which had been made to him.
+
+Lydia's embroidery dropped on her lap.
+
+"Mr. Melrose's agent!" she repeated, in wonder. "He has offered you
+that?"
+
+"He has--on most generous terms. Shall I take it?"
+
+She flushed a little, for the ardent deference in his eyes was not easy
+to ignore. But she examined his news seriously--kindling over it.
+
+"His _agent_--agent for his miserable, neglected property! Heavens, what
+a chance!"
+
+She looked at him, her soul in her face. Something warned him to be
+cautious.
+
+"You think it so neglected?"
+
+"I know it: but ask Lord Tatham! He's chairman of some committee or
+other--he'll tell you."
+
+"But perhaps I shall have to fight Tatham? Suppose that turns out to be
+my chief business?"
+
+"Oh, no, you can't--you can't! He's too splendid--in all those things."
+
+"He is of course the model youth," said Faversham dryly.
+
+"Ah, but you can't hate him either!" cried Lydia, divining at once the
+shade of depreciation. "He is the kindest, dearest fellow! I agree--it's
+provoking not to be able to sniff at him--_such_ a Prince Charming--with
+all the world at his feet. But one can't--one really can't!"
+
+Jealousy sprang up sharply in Faversham, though a wider experience of the
+sex might have suggested to him that women do not generally shower public
+praise on the men they love. Lydia, however, quickly left the subject,
+and returned to his own affairs. Nothing, he confessed, could have been
+friendlier or sincerer than her interest in them. They plunged into the
+subject of the estate; and Faversham stood amazed at her knowledge of the
+dales-folk, their lives and their grievances. At the end, he drew a long
+breath.
+
+"By George!--can I do it?"
+
+"Oh, yes, yes, _yes_!" said Lydia eagerly, driving her needle into the
+sofa cushion. "You'll reform him!"
+
+Faversham laughed.
+
+"He's a tough customer. He has already warned me I am not to manage his
+estates like a Socialist."
+
+"No--but like a human being!" cried Lydia, indignantly--"that's all we
+want. Come and talk to Lord Tatham!"
+
+"Parley with my employer's opponent!"
+
+"Under a flag of truce," laughed Lydia, "and this shall be the neutral
+ground. You shall meet here--and mamma and I will hold the lists."
+
+"You think--under those circumstances--we should get through much
+business?" His dark eyes, full of gaiety, searched hers. She flushed a
+little.
+
+"Ah, well, you should have the chance anyway."
+
+Faversham rose unwillingly to go. Lydia bent forward, listening.
+
+"At last--here comes my mother."
+
+For outside in the little hall there was suddenly much chatter and
+swishing of skirts. Some one came laughing to the drawing-room and threw
+it open. Mrs. Penfold, flushed and excited, stood in the doorway.
+
+"My dear, did you _ever_ know such kind people!"
+
+Her arms were laden with flowers, and with parcels of different sorts.
+Susy came behind, carrying two great pots of Japanese lilies.
+
+"You said you'd like to see those old drawings of Keswick--by I forget
+whom. Lady Tatham has sent you the whole set--they had them--you may
+keep them as long as you like. And Lord Tatham has sent flowers. Just
+look at those roses!" Mrs. Penfold put down the basket heaped with them
+at Lydia's feet, while Susy--demurely--did the same with the lilies.
+"And there is a fascinating parcel of books for Susy--_all_ the new
+reviews! ... _Oh_! Mr. Faversham--I declare--why, I never saw you!"
+
+Voluble excuses and apologies followed. Meanwhile Lydia, with a bright
+colour, stood bewildered, the flowers all about her, and the drawings in
+her hands. Faversham escaped as soon as he could. As he approached Lydia
+to say good-bye, she looked up, put the drawings aside, and hurriedly
+came with him to the door.
+
+"_Accept_!" she said. "Be sure you accept!"
+
+He had a last vision of her standing in the dark hall, and of her soft,
+encouraging look. As he drove away, two facts stood out in consciousness:
+first, that he was falling fast and deep in love; next, that--by the look
+of things--he had a rival, with whom, in the opinion of all practical
+people, it would be mere folly for him to think of competing.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+While Faversham was driving back to Threlfall, his mind possessed by a
+tumult of projects and images--which was a painful tumult, because
+his physical strength was not yet equal to coping with it--a scene was
+passing in a bare cottage beside the Ulls-water road, whence in due time
+one of those events was to arise which we call sudden or startling only
+because we are ignorant of the slow [Greek: anankê ] which has produced
+them.
+
+An elderly man had just entered the cottage after his day's work. He was
+evidently dead tired, and he had sunk down on a chair beside a table
+which held tea things and some bread and butter. His wife could be heard
+moving about in the lean-to scullery behind the living-room.
+
+The man sat motionless, his hands hanging over his knees, his head bent.
+He seemed to be watching the motes dancing in a shaft of dusty sunlight
+that had found its way into the darkened room. For the western sun was
+blazing on the front, the blinds were down, and the little room was like
+an oven. The cottage was a new one and stood in a bare plot of garden,
+unshaded and unsheltered, on a stretch of road which crossed the open
+fell. It was a labourer's cottage, but the furniture of the living-room
+was superior in quality to that commonly found in the cottages of the
+neighbourhood. A piano was crowded into one corner, and a sideboard, too
+large for the room, occupied the wall opposite the fireplace.
+
+The man sitting in the chair also was clearly not an ordinary labourer.
+His brown suit, though worn and frayed, had once been such a suit as
+Messrs. Carter, tailors, of Pengarth, were accustomed to sell to their
+farmer clients, and it was crossed by an old-fashioned chain and seal.
+The suit was heavily splashed with mud; so were the thick boots; and on
+the drooped brow shone beads of sweat. John Brand was not much over
+fifty, but he was tired out in mind and body; and his soul was bitter
+within him.
+
+A year before this date he had been still the nominal owner of a small
+freehold farm between Pengarth and Carlisle, bordering on the Threlfall
+property. But he was then within an ace of ruin, and irreparable calamity
+had since overtaken him.
+
+How it was that he had fallen into such a plight was still more or less
+mysterious to a dull brain. Up to the age of forty-seven, he had been
+employed on his father's land, with little more than the wages of a
+labourer, possessing but small authority over the men working on the
+farm, and no liberty but such as the will of a tyrannical master allowed
+him. Then suddenly the father died, and Brand succeeded to the farm. All
+his long-checked manhood asserted itself. There was a brief period of
+drinking, betting, and high living. The old man had left a small sum of
+ready money in the bank, which to the son, who had always been denied the
+handling of money, seemed riches. It was soon spent, and then unexpected
+burdens and claims disclosed themselves. There was a debt to the bank,
+which there were no means of paying. And he discovered to his dismay that
+a spinster cousin of his mother's had lent money to his father within the
+preceding five years, on the security of his stock and furniture. Where
+the borrowed money had gone no one knew, but the spinster cousin, alarmed
+perhaps by exaggerated accounts of the new man's drinking habits, pressed
+for repayment.
+
+Brand set his teeth, ceased to spend money, and did his best to earn it.
+But he was a stupid man, and the leading-strings in which his life had
+been held up to middle age had enfeebled such natural powers as he
+possessed. His knowledge was old-fashioned, his methods slovenly; and his
+wife, as harmless as himself, but no cleverer, could do nothing to help
+him. By dint, however, of living and working hard he got through two or
+three years, and might just have escaped his fate--for his creditors, at
+that stage, were all ready to give him time--had not ill-fortune thrown
+him across the path of Edmund Melrose. The next farm to his belonged to
+the Threlfall estate. Melrose's methods as a landlord had thrown out one
+tenant after another, till he could do nothing but put in a bailiff and
+work it himself. The bailiff was incompetent, and a herd of cattle made
+their way one morning through a broken fence that no one had troubled to
+mend, and did serious damage to Brand's standing crops. Melrose was asked
+to compensate, and flatly declined. The fence was no doubt his; but he
+claimed that it had been broken by one of Brand's men. Hence the
+accident. The statement was false, and the evidence supporting it
+corrupt. Moreover the whole business was only the last of a series of
+unneighbourly acts on the part both of the bailiff and landowner, and a
+sudden fury blazed up in Brand's slow mind. He took his claim to the
+county court and won his case; the judge allowing himself a sharp
+sentence or two on the management of the Threlfall property. Brand spent
+part of his compensation money in entertaining a group of friends at a
+Pengarth public. But that was the last of his triumph. Thenceforward
+things went mysteriously wrong with him. His creditors, first one, then
+all, began to tighten their pressure on him; and presently the bank
+manager--the Jove of Brand's little world--passed abruptly from civility
+or indulgence, to a peremptory reminder that debts were meant to be paid.
+A fresh bill of sale on furniture and stock staved off disaster for a
+time. But a bad season brought it once more a long step nearer, and the
+bank, however urgently appealed to, showed itself adamant, not only as to
+any further advance, but as to any postponement of their own claim.
+Various desperate expedients only made matters worse, and after a few
+more wretched months during which his farm deteriorated, and his business
+went still further to wreck, owing largely to his own distress of mind,
+Brand threw up the sponge. He sold his small remaining interest in his
+farm, which did not even suffice to pay his debts, and went out of it a
+bankrupt and broken man, prematurely aged. A neighbouring squire,
+indignant with what was commonly supposed to be the secret influences
+at work in the affair, offered him the post of bailiff in a vacant farm;
+and he and his family migrated to the new-built cottage on the Ullswater
+road.
+
+As to these secret influences, they were plain enough to many people.
+Melrose who had been present on the day when the case was tried had left
+the court-house in a fury, in company with a certain ill-famed solicitor,
+one Nash, who had worked up the defence, and had served the master of
+Threlfall before in various litigations connected with his estates, such
+as the respectable family lawyers in Carlisle and Pengarth would have
+nothing to do with. Nash told his intimates that night that Brand would
+rue his audacity, and the prophecy soon dismally fulfilled itself. The
+local bank to which Brand owed money had been accustomed for years to
+deal with very large temporary balances--representing the rents of half
+the Threlfall estates. Nash was well known to the manager, as one of
+those backstairs informants, indispensable in a neighbourhood where every
+farmer wanted advances--now on his crops--now on his stock--and the
+leading bank could only escape losses by the maintenance of a surprising
+amount of knowledge as to each man's circumstances and character. Nash
+was observed on one or two occasions going in and out of the bank's
+private room, at moments corresponding with some of the worst crises of
+Brand's fortunes. And with regard to other creditors, no one could say
+precisely how they were worked on, but they certainly showed a surprising
+readiness to join in the harrying of a struggling and helpless man.
+
+In any case Brand believed, and had good cause for believing, that he had
+been ruined by Melrose in revenge for the county court action. His two
+sons believed it also.
+
+The tired man sat brooding over these things in the little hot room. His
+wife came in, and stood at the door observing him, twisting her apron in
+a pair of wet hands.
+
+"Yo'll have your tea?"
+
+"Aye. Where are t' lads?"
+
+"Johnnie's gotten his papers. He's gane oot to speak wi' the
+schoolmaster. He's thinkin' o' takkin' his passage for t' laast week
+in t' year."
+
+Brand made no reply. Johnnie, the elder son, was the apple of his eye.
+But an uncle had offered him half his passage to Quebec, and his parents
+could not stand in the way.
+
+"An' Will?"
+
+"He's cleanin' hissel'."
+
+As she spoke, wavering steps were heard on the stairs, and while she
+returned to her kitchen the younger son, Will Brand, opened the door of
+the front room.
+
+He was a lanky, loose-jointed youth of twenty, with a long hatchet face.
+His movements were strangely clumsy, and his eye wandered. The neighbours
+had always regarded him as feeble-witted; and about a year before this
+time an outburst of rough practical joking on the lad's part--sudden
+jumpings out from hedges to frighten school-children going home, or the
+sudden whoopings and howlings of a white-sheeted figure, for the
+startling of lovers in the gloaming--had drawn the attention of the
+Whitebeck policeman to his "queerness." Only his parents knew of what
+fits of rage he was capable.
+
+He wore now, as he came into the living-room, an excited,
+quasi-triumphant look, which did not escape his father.
+
+"What you been after, Will?"
+
+"Helpin' Wilson."
+
+Wilson was a neighbouring keeper, who in June and July, before the young
+pheasants were returned to the woods, occasionally employed Will Brand as
+a watcher, especially at night.
+
+Brand made no reply. His wife brought in the tea, and he and Will helped
+themselves greedily. Presently Will said abruptly:
+
+"A've made that owd gun work all right."
+
+"Aye?" Brand's tone was interrogative, but listless.
+
+"I shot a kestrel an' a stoat wi' un this morning."
+
+"Yo'did, eh?"
+
+Will nodded, his mouth crammed with bread and butter, strange lights and
+flickering expressions playing over his starved, bony face.
+
+"Wilson says I'm gettin' a varra fair shot."
+
+"Aye? I've heard tha' practisin'." Brand turned a pair of dull eyes upon
+his son.
+
+"An' I wish tha' wudn't do't i' my garden!" said Mrs. Brand, with energy.
+"I doan't howd wi' guns an' shootin' aboot, in a sma' garden, wi' t'
+washin' an' aw."
+
+"It's feyther's garden, ain't it, as long as he pays t' rent!" said Will,
+bringing his hand down on the table with sudden passion. "Wha's to hinder
+me? Mebbe yo' think Melrose 'ull be aboot."
+
+"Howd your tongue, Willie," said his mother, mildly. "We werena taakin'
+o' Melrose."
+
+"Noa--because we're aye thinkin'!"
+
+The lad's eyes blazed as he roughly pushed his cup for a fresh supply.
+His mother endeavoured to soothe him by changing the subject. But neither
+husband nor son encouraged her. A gloomy silence fell over the tea-table.
+Presently Brand moved, and with halting step went to the little horsehair
+sofa, and stretched himself full length upon it. Such an action on his
+part was unheard of. Both wife and son stared at him without speaking.
+Then Mrs. Brand got up, fetched an old shawl, and put it over her husband
+who had closed his eyes. Will left the room, and sitting on a stool
+outside the cottage door, with the old gun between his knees, he watched
+the sunset as it flushed the west, and ran along the fell-tops, till
+little by little the summer night rose from the purple valley, or fell
+softly from the emerging stars, and day was done.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A fortnight later, Mr. Louis Delorme, the famous portrait painter,
+arrived at Duddon Castle. Various guests had been invited to meet him.
+Two guests--members of the Tatham family--had invited themselves, much to
+Lady Tatham's annoyance. And certain neighbours were coming to dine;
+among them Mrs. Penfold and her daughters.
+
+Dinner was laid in a white-pillared loggia, built by an "Italianate" Lord
+Tatham in the eighteenth century on the western side of the house,
+communicating with the dining-room behind it, and with the Italian garden
+in front. It commanded the distant blue line of the Keswick and Ullswater
+mountains, and a foreground of wood and crag, while the Italian garden to
+which the marble steps of the loggia descended, with its formal patterns
+of bright colour, blue, purple, and crimson, lay burning in the afterglow
+of sunset light, which, in a northern July, will let you read till ten
+o'clock.
+
+The guests gathered on the circle of smooth-shaven grass that in the
+centre made a space around a fountain, with a gleaming water nymph. A
+broad grass pathway led them to the house, so that guests emerging from
+it arrived in rather spectacular fashion--well seen, against the ivied
+walls of the castle, to the unfair advantage, as usual, of grace and good
+looks.
+
+Before hostess or neighbours appeared, however, Mr. Delorme and a certain
+Gerald Tatham, Lady Tatham's brother-in-law, had the green circle to
+themselves. Gerald Tatham was one of the uninvited guests. He considered
+himself entitled to descend on Duddon twice a year, and generally left it
+having borrowed money of his nephew, in elaborate forgetfulness of a
+similar transaction twelve months earlier still undischarged. He was
+married, but his wife did not pay visits with him. Victoria greatly
+preferred her--plain and silent as she was--to her husband; but realizing
+what a relief it must be to a woman to get such a man off her hands as
+often as possible, she never pressed her to come to Duddon. Meanwhile
+Gerald Tatham passed as an agreeable person, well versed in all those
+affairs of his neighbours which they would gladly have kept to
+themselves, and possessed of certain odd pockets of knowledge, sporting
+or financial, which helped him to earn the honest or doubtful pennies on
+which his existence depended.
+
+Delorme and he got on excellently. Gerald respected the painter as a
+person whose brush, in a strangely constituted world, was able to supply
+him with an income which even the sons of land or commerce might envy;
+and secretly despised him for a lack of grandfathers, for his crop of
+black curls, his southern complexion and his foreign birth. Delorme
+thought Gerald an idler of no account, and perceived in him the sure
+signs of a decadence which was rapidly drawing the English aristocratic
+class into the limbo of things that were. But Gerald was an insatiable
+hawker of gossip; and a fashionable painter, with an empire among young
+and pretty women, must keep himself well stocked with that article.
+
+So the two walked up and down together, talking pleasantly enough.
+Presently Delorme, sweeping a powerful hand before him, exclaimed on
+the beauty of the castle and its surroundings.
+
+"Yes--a pretty place," said Gerald, carelessly, "and, for once, money
+enough to keep it up."
+
+"Your nephew is a lucky fellow. Why don't they marry him."
+
+"No hurry! When it does come off my sister-in-law will do something
+absurd."
+
+"Something sentimental? I'll bet you she doesn't! Democracy is all very
+well--except when it comes to marriage. Then even idealists like Lady
+Tatham knock under."
+
+"I wish you may be right. Anyway, she won't send him to New York!"
+
+"No need! Blue blood--impoverished!--that's my forecast."
+
+Gerald smiled--ungenially.
+
+"Victoria would positively dislike an heiress. Jolly easy to take that
+sort of line--on forty thousand a year! But as to birth, the family, in
+my opinion, has a right to be considered."
+
+Delorme hesitated a moment, then threw a provocative look at his
+companion, the look of the alien to whom English assumptions are
+sometimes intolerable.
+
+"Pretty mixed--your stocks--some of them--by now!"
+
+"Not ours. You'd find, if you looked into it, that we've descended very
+straight. There's been no carelessness."
+
+Delorme threw up his hands.
+
+"Good heavens! Carelessness, as you call it, is the only hope for a
+family nowadays. A strong blood--that's what you want--a blood that will
+stand this modern life--and you'll never get that by mating in and in.
+Ah! here come the others."
+
+They turned, and saw a stream of people coming round the corner of the
+house. The rector and Mrs. Deacon--the gold cross on the rector's
+waistcoat shining in the diffused light. Lady Barbara Woolson, the other
+uninvited guest, Victoria's first cousin; a young man in a dinner jacket
+and black tie walking with Lady Tatham; a Madonnalike woman in black,
+hand in hand with a tall schoolboy; and two elderly gentlemen.
+
+But in front--some little way in front--there walked a pair for whom all
+the rest appeared to be mere escort and attendance; so vivid, so charged
+with meaning they seemed, among the summer flowers, and under the summer
+sky.
+
+A slender girl in white, and a tall youth looking down upon her, treading
+the grass just slightly in advance of her, with a happy deference, as
+though he led in the fairy queen. So delicate were her proportions, so
+bright her hair, and so compelling the charm that floated round her, that
+Delorme, dropping his cigarette, hastily put up his eyeglasses, and fell
+into his native tongue.
+
+"Sapristi!--quelle petite fée avez-vous là?"
+
+"My sister-in-law talked of some neighbours--"
+
+"Mais elle entre en reine! My dear fellow, it looks dangerous."
+
+Gerald pulled his moustaches, looking hard at the advancing pair.
+
+"A pretty little minx--I must have it out with Victoria." But his tone
+was doubtful. It was not easy to have things out with Victoria.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The dinner under the loggia went gaily. Not many courses; much fruit; a
+shimmer of tea-roses before the guests; and the scent of roses blowing in
+from the garden outside.
+
+Victoria had Delorme on her right, and Lydia sat next the great man.
+Tatham could only glance at her from afar. On his right, he had his
+cousin, Lady Barbara, whom he cordially disliked. Her yearly visit,
+always fixed and announced by herself, was a time of trial both for him
+and his mother, but they endured it out of a sentimental and probably
+mistaken belief that the late Lord Tatham had--in her youth--borne her a
+cousinly affection. Lady Barbara was a committee-woman, indefatigable,
+and indiscriminate. She lived and gloried in a chronic state of overwork,
+for which no one but herself saw the necessity. Her conversation about it
+only confirmed the frivolous persons whom she tried to convert to "social
+service," in their frivolity. After a quarter of an hour's conversation
+with her, Tatham was generally dumb, and as nearly rude as his
+temperament allowed. While, as to his own small efforts, his cottages,
+County Council, and the rest, no blandishments would have drawn from him
+a word about them; although, like many of us, Lady Barbara would gladly
+have purchased leave to talk about her own achievements by a strictly
+moderate amount of listening to other people's.
+
+On his other side sat a very different person--the sweet-faced lady,
+whose boy of fourteen sitting opposite kept up with her through dinner a
+shy telegraphy of eye and smile. They were evidently alone in the world,
+and everything to each other. She was a widow--a Mrs. Edward Manisty,
+whose husband, a brilliant but selfish man of letters, had died some four
+years before this date. His wife had never found out that he was selfish;
+her love had haloed him; though she had plenty of character of her own.
+She herself was an American, a New Englander by birth, carrying with her
+still the perfume of a quiet life begun among the hills of Vermont, and
+in sight of the Adirondacks; a life fundamentally Puritan and based on
+Puritan ideals; yet softened and expanded by the modern forces of art,
+travel, and books. Lucy Manisty had attracted her husband, when he, a
+weary cosmopolitan, had met her first in Rome, by just this touch of
+something austerely sweet, like the scent of lavender or dewy grass; and
+she had it still--mingled with a kind humour--in her middle years, which
+were so lonely but for her boy. She and Victoria Tatham had made friends
+on the warm soil of Italy, and through a third person, a rare and
+charming woman, whose death had first made them really known to each
+other.
+
+"I never saw anything so attractive!" Mrs. Manisty was murmuring in
+Tatham's ear.
+
+He followed the direction of her eyes, and his fair skin reddened.
+
+"She is very pretty, isn't she?"
+
+"Very--like a Verrocchio angel--who has been to college! She is an
+artist?"
+
+"She paints. She admires Delorme."
+
+"That one can see. And he admires her!"
+
+"We--my mother--wants him to paint her."
+
+"He will--if he knows his own business."
+
+"A Miss Penfold?" said Lady Barbara, putting up her eyeglass. "You say
+she paints. The modern girl must always _do_ something! _My_ girls have
+been brought up for _home_."
+
+A remark that drove Tatham into a rash defence of the modern girl to
+which he was quite unequal, and in which indeed he was half-hearted, for
+his fundamental ideas were quite as old-fashioned as Lady Barbara's. But
+Lydia, for him, was of no date; only charm itself, one with all the magic
+and grace that had ever been in the world, or would be.
+
+Suddenly he saw that she was looking at him--a bright, signalling look,
+only to tell him how hugely well she was getting on with Delorme. He
+smiled in return, but inwardly he was discontented. Always this gay
+camaraderie--like a boy's. Not the slightest tremor in it. Not a touch of
+consciousness--or of sex. He could not indeed have put it so. All he knew
+was that he was always thirstily seeking something she showed no signs of
+giving him.
+
+But he himself was being rapidly swept off his feet. Since their meeting
+at Threlfall, which had been interrupted by Melrose's freakish return,
+there had been other meetings, as delightful as before, yet no more
+conclusive or encouraging. He and Lydia had indeed grown intimate. He had
+revealed to her thoughts and feelings which he had unveiled for no one
+else--not even for Victoria--since he was a boy at school with boyish
+friendships. And she had handled them with such delicacy, such sweetness;
+such frankness too, in return as to her own "ideas," those stubborn
+intractable ideas, which made him frown to think of. Yet all the time--he
+knew it--there had been no flirting on her part. Never had she given him
+the smallest ground to think her in love with him. On the contrary, she
+had maintained between them for all her gentleness, from beginning to
+end, that soft, intangible barrier which at once checked and challenged
+him.
+
+Passion ran high in him. And, moreover, he was beginning to be more than
+vaguely jealous. He had seen for himself how much there was in common
+between her and Faversham; during the last fortnight he had met Faversham
+at the cottage on several occasions; and there had been references to
+other visits from the new agent. He understood perfectly that Lydia was
+broadly, humanly interested in the man's task: the poet, the enthusiast
+in her was stirred by what he might do, if he would, for the humble folk
+she loved. But still, there they were--meeting constantly. "And he can
+talk to her about all the things I can't!"
+
+His earlier optimism had quite passed by now; probably, though
+unconsciously, under the influence of Lydia's nascent friendship
+with Faversham. There had sprung up in him instead a constant agitation
+and disquiet that could no longer be controlled. No help--but rather
+danger--lay in waiting....
+
+Delorme had now turned away from Lydia to his hostess, and Lydia was
+talking to Squire Andover on her other side, a jolly old boy, with a
+gracious, absent look, who inclined his head to her paternally. Tatham
+knew very well that there was no one in the county who was more rigidly
+tied to caste or rank. But he was kind always to the outsider--kind
+therefore to Lydia. Good heavens!--as if there was any one at the table
+fit to tie her shoe-string!
+
+His pulses raced. The heat, the golden evening, the flowers, all the
+lavish colour and scents of nature, seemed to be driving him toward
+speech--toward some expression of himself, which must be risked, even if
+it lead him to disaster.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The dinner which appeared to Tatham interminable, and was really so
+short, by Victoria's orders, that Squire Andover felt resentfully he had
+had nothing to eat, at last broke up. The gentlemen lingered smoking on
+the loggia. The ladies dispersed through the garden, and Delorme--after a
+look round the male company--quietly went with them. So did the gentleman
+in the dinner jacket and black tie. Tatham, impatiently doing his duty as
+host, could only follow the fugitives with his eyes, their pale silks
+and muslins, among the flowers and under the trees.
+
+But his guests, over their cigars, were busy with some local news, and,
+catching Faversham's name, Tatham presently recalled his thoughts
+sufficiently to listen to what was being said. The topic, naturally, was
+Faversham's appointment. Every landowner there was full of it. He had
+been seen in Brampton on market day driving in a very decent motor; and
+since his accession he had succeeded in letting two or three of the
+derelict farms, on a promise of repairs and improvements which had been
+at last wrung out of Melrose. It was rumoured also that the most
+astonishing things were happening in the house and the gardens.
+
+"Who on earth is the man, and where does he come from?" asked a short,
+high-shouldered man with a blunt, pugnacious face. He was an ex-officer,
+a J.P., and one of the most active Conservative wire-pullers of the
+neighbourhood. He and Victoria Tatham were the best of friends. They
+differed on almost all subjects. He was a mass of prejudices, large and
+small, and Victoria laughed at him. But when she wanted to help any
+particularly lame dog over any particularly high stile, she always went
+to Colonel Barton. A cockney doctor attached to the Workhouse had once
+described him to her as--'eart of gold, 'edd of feathers'--and the label
+had stuck.
+
+"A Londoner, picked up badly hurt on the road, by Undershaw, I
+understand, and carried into the lion's den," said Andover, in answer to
+Barton. "And now they say he is obtaining the most extraordinary
+influence over the old boy."
+
+"And the house--turned into a perfect palace!" said the rector, throwing
+up his hands.
+
+The others, except Tatham, crowded eagerly round, while the rector
+described a visit he had paid to Faversham, within a few days of the
+agent's appointment, on behalf of a farmer's widow, a parishioner, under
+notice to quit.
+
+"Hadn't been in the house for twenty years. The place is absolutely
+transformed! It used to be a pigsty. Now Faversham's rooms are fit
+for a prince. Nothing short of one of your rooms here"--he addressed
+Tatham, with a laughing gesture toward the house--"comparable to his
+sitting-room. Priceless things in it! And close by, an excellent office,
+with room for two clerks--one already at work--piles of blue-books,
+pamphlets, heavens knows what! And they are fitting up a telephone
+between Threlfall and some new rooms that he has taken for estate
+business in Pengarth."
+
+"A _telephone_--at Threlfall!" murmured Andover.
+
+"And Undershaw tells me that Melrose has taken the most extraordinary
+fancy for the young man. Everything is done for him. He may have anything
+he likes. And, rumour says--an enormous salary!"
+
+"Sounds like an adventurer," grumbled Barton, "probably is."
+
+Tatham broke in. "No, you're wrong there, Colonel. I knew Faversham at
+college. He's a very decent fellow--and awfully clever."
+
+Yet, somehow, his praise stuck in his throat.
+
+"Well, of course," said Andover with a shrug, "if he _is_ a decent
+fellow, as Tatham says, he won't stay long. Do you imagine Melrose is
+going to change his spots?--not he!"
+
+"Somebody must really go and talk to this chap," said Barton gloomily. "I
+believe Melrose will lose us the next election up here. You really can't
+expect people to vote for Tories, if Tories are that sort."
+
+The talk flowed on. But Tatham had ceased to listen. For some little time
+there had been no voices or steps in the garden outside. They had melted
+into the wood beyond. But now they had returned. He perceived a white
+figure against a distant background of clipped yew.
+
+Rising joyously he threw down his cigarette.
+
+"Shall we join the ladies?"
+
+"I say, you've had a dose of Delorme."
+
+For he had found her still with the painter, who as soon as Tatham
+appeared had subsided languidly into allowing Lady Barbara to talk to
+him.
+
+"Oh! but so amusing!" cried Lydia, her face twinkling. "We've picked all
+the Academy to pieces and danced on their bones."
+
+"Has he asked you to sit to him?"
+
+Lydia hesitated, and in the soft light he saw her flush.
+
+"He said something. Of course it would be a great, great honour!"
+
+"An honour to him," said Tatham hotly.
+
+"I'm afraid you don't know how to respect great men!" she said laughing,
+as they drew out of the shadow of the Italian garden with its clipped
+yews and cypresses, and reached a broad terrace whence the undulations of
+the park stretched westward and upward into the purple fissures and
+clefts of the mountains. Trees, fells, grass were steeped in a wan, gold
+light, a mingling of sunset and moonrise. The sky was clear; the
+gradations of colour on the hills ethereally distinct. From a clump of
+trees came a soft hooting of owls; and close behind them a tall hedge of
+roses red and white made a bower for Lydia's light form, and filled the
+night with perfume.
+
+"What do great men matter?" said Tatham incoherently as they paused;
+"what does anything matter--but--_Lydia!_"
+
+It was a cry of pain. A hand groped for hers. Lydia startled, looked up
+to see the face of Tatham looking down upon her through the warm
+dusk--transfigured.
+
+"You'll let me speak, won't you? I daresay it's much too soon--I daresay
+you can't think of it--yet. But I love you. I love you so dearly! I can't
+keep it to myself. I have--ever since I first saw you. You won't be angry
+with me for speaking? You won't think I took you by surprise? I don't
+want to hurry you--I only want you to know--"
+
+Emotion choked him. Lydia, after a murmur he couldn't catch, hid her face
+in her hands.
+
+He waited; and already there crept through him the dull sense of
+disaster. The impulse to speak had been irresistible, and now--he wished
+he had not spoken.
+
+At last she looked up.
+
+"Oh, you have been so good to me--so sweet to me," and before he knew
+what she was doing, she had lifted one of his hands in her two slender
+ones and touched it with her lips.
+
+Outraged--enchanted--bewildered--he tried to catch her in his arms. But
+she slipped away from him and with her hands behind her, she looked at
+him, smiling through tears, her fair hair blown back from her temples,
+her delicate face alive with feeling.
+
+"I can't say yes--it wouldn't be honest if I did--it wouldn't be fair
+to you. But, oh, dear, I'm so sorry--so dreadfully sorry--if it's my
+fault--if I've misled you. I thought I'd tried hard to show what I really
+felt--that I wanted to be friends--but not--not this. Dear Lord Tatham, I
+do like and admire you so much--but--"
+
+"You don't want to marry me!" he said bitterly, turning away.
+
+She paused a moment.
+
+"No"--the word came with soft decision--"no. And if I were to marry you
+without--without that feeling--you have a right to--I should be doing
+wrong--to you--and to myself. You see"--she looked down, the points of
+her white shoe drawing circles on the grass, as though to help out her
+faltering speech--"I--I'm not what I believe you think me. I've got all
+sorts of hard, independent notions in my mind. I want to paint--and
+study--and travel--I want to be free--"
+
+"You should be free as air!" he interrupted passionately.
+
+"Ah, but no!--not if I married. I shouldn't want to be free in that way,
+if--"
+
+"If you were in love? I understand. And you're not in love with me. Why
+should you be?" said poor Tatham, with a new and desperate humility. "Why
+on earth should you be? But I'd adore you--I'd give you anything in the
+world you wanted."
+
+Sounds of talking and footsteps emerged from the dusk behind them; the
+high notes of Lady Barbara, and the answering bass of Delorme.
+
+"Don't let them find us," said Lydia impetuously--"I've _so_ much to
+say."
+
+Tatham turned, and led the way to the pillared darkness of a pergola to
+their left. One side of it was formed by a high yew hedge; on the other,
+its rose-twined arches looked out upon the northern stretches of the
+park, and on the garden front of Duddon. There it lay, the great house,
+faintly lit; and there in front stretched its demesne, symbol of its
+ancient rule and of its modern power. A natural excitement passed through
+Lydia as they paused, and she caught its stately outline through the
+night. And then, the tameless something in her soul, which was her very
+self, rose up, rejoicing in its own strength, and yet--wistful, full of
+tenderness. Now!--let her play her stroke--her stroke in the new great
+game that was to be, in the new age, between men and women.
+
+"Why shouldn't we just be friends?" she urged. "I know it sounds an old,
+stale thing to say. But it isn't. There's a new meaning in it now,
+because--because women are being made new. It used to be offering what
+we couldn't give. We could be lovers; we weren't good enough--we hadn't
+stuff enough--to be friends. But now--dear Lord Tatham--just try me--"
+She held out to him two hands, which he took against his will. "I like
+you so much!--I know that I should love your mother. Now that we've had
+this out, why shouldn't we build up something quite fresh? I want a
+friend--so badly!"
+
+"And I want something--so much more than a friend!" he said, pressing her
+hands fiercely.
+
+"Ah, but give it up!" she pleaded. "If you can't, I mustn't come here any
+more, nor you to us. And why? It would be such a waste--of what our
+friendship might be. You could teach me so many things. I think I could
+teach you some."
+
+He dropped her hands, mastering himself with difficulty.
+
+"It's nonsense," he said shortly; "I know it's nonsense! But--if I
+promised not to say anything of this kind again for a year?"
+
+She pondered. There were compunctions, remorses, in her. As Susan had
+warned her, was she playing with a man's heart and life?
+
+But her trust in her own resources, the zest of spiritual adventure, and
+a sheer longing to comfort him prevailed.
+
+"You'll promise that; and I'll promise--just to be as nice to you as ever
+I can!" She paused. They looked at each other; the trouble in his eyes
+questioning the smile in hers. "Now please!--my friend!"--she slid
+dexterously, though very softly, into the everyday tone--"will you advise
+me? Mr. Delorme has asked me to sit to him. Just a sketch in the
+garden--for a picture he's at work on. You would like me to accept?"
+
+She stood before him, her eyes raised, with the frank gentleness of a
+child. Yet there was a condition implied in the question.
+
+Tatham broke out--passionately,
+
+"Just tell me. There's--there's no one else?"
+
+She suffered for him; she hastened to comfort him.
+
+"No, no--indeed there's no one else. Though, mind, I'm free. And so are
+you. Shall I come to-morrow?" she asked again, with quiet insistence.
+
+There was a gulp in Tatham's throat. Yet he rose--dismally--to her
+challenge.
+
+"You would do what I like?" he asked, quivering.
+
+"Indeed I would."
+
+"I invited Delorme here--just to please you--and because I hoped he'd
+paint you."
+
+"Then that's settled!" she said, with a little sigh of satisfaction.
+
+"And what, please, am I to do--that _you'd_ like?" She looked up
+mischievously.
+
+"Call me Lydia--forget that you ever wanted to marry me--and don't mind a
+rap what people say!"
+
+He laughed, through his pain, and gravely took her hand.
+
+"And now," said Lydia, "I think it's time to go home."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When all the guests were gone, when Gerald and Delorme had smoked their
+last interminable cigars, and Delorme had made his last mocking comments
+on the "old masters" who adorned the smoking-room, Tatham saw him safely
+to bed, and returned to his sitting-room on the ground floor. The French
+window was open, and he passed out into the garden. Soon, in his struggle
+with himself, he had left the garden and the park behind, and was
+climbing the slope of the fells. The play of the soft summer winds under
+the stars, the scents of bracken and heather and rushes, the distant
+throbbing sounds that rose from the woods as the wind travelled through
+them--and soon, the short mountain turf beneath his feet, and around and
+below him, the great shapes of the hills, mysteriously still, and yet, as
+it seemed to him, mysteriously alive--these things spoke to him and,
+little by little, calmed his blood.
+
+It was the first anguish of a happy man. When, presently, he lay safe
+hidden in a hollow of the lonely fell, face downward among the moonlit
+rocks, some young and furious tears fell upon the sod. That quiet
+strength of will in so soft a creature--a will opposed to his will--had
+brought him up against the unyieldingness of the world. The joyous
+certainties of life were shaken to their base; and yet he could not, he
+did not, cease to hope.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+Victoria was sitting to Delorme in a corner of the Italian garden. He
+wished to paint her _en plein air_, and he was restlessly walking to and
+fro, about her, choosing a point of view. Victoria was vaguely pleased by
+the picturesqueness of his lion head set close on a pair of powerful
+shoulders, no less than by the vivacity of his dark face and southern
+gesture. He wore a linen jacket with bulging pockets, and a black
+skullcap, which gave him a masterful, pontifical air. To Victoria's
+thinking, indeed, he "pontified" at all times, a great deal more than was
+necessary.
+
+However she sat resigned. She did not like Delorme, and her preference
+was all for another school of art. She had moreover a critical respect
+for her own features, and she did not want at all to see them rendered by
+what seemed to her the splashing violence of Delorme's brushwork. But
+Harry had asked it of her, and here she was.
+
+Her thoughts, moreover, were full of Harry's affairs, so that the
+conversation between her and the painter was more or less pretence on her
+part.
+
+Delorme, meanwhile, was divided between the passion of a new subject and
+the wrath excited in him by a newspaper article which had reached him at
+breakfast.
+
+"A little more to the left, please, Lady Tatham. Admirable! One moment!"
+The scrabble of charcoal on paper.
+
+Delorme stepped back. Victoria sat languidly passive.
+
+"Did you read that article on me in _The Weekly_? The man's a
+fool!--knows nothing, and writes like God Almighty. A little more full
+face. That's it! I suppose all professions are full of these jealous
+beasts. Ours is cluttered up with them--men who never sell a picture,
+and make up by living on the compliments of their own little snarling
+set. But, upon my word, it makes one rather sick. Ah, that's good! You
+moved a trifle--that's better--just a moment!"
+
+"I'm glad you let me sit," said Victoria absently. "I _stood_ to Whistler
+once. It nearly killed me."
+
+"Ah, Jimmy!" said Delorme. "Jimmy was a Tartar!"
+
+He went off at score into recollections of Whistler, drawing hard all the
+time.
+
+Victoria did not listen. She was thinking of those sounds of footsteps
+she had heard under her window at dawn, and passing her room. This
+morning Harry looked as usual, except for something in the eyes, which
+none but she would notice. What had he been doing all those hours? There
+was nothing erratic or abnormal about Harry. Sound sleep from the moment
+he put his head on his pillow to the moment at eight o'clock when his
+servant with great difficulty woke him, was the rule with him.
+
+What could have happened the night before--while he and Lydia Penfold
+were alone together? Victoria had seen them come back into the general
+company, had indeed been restlessly on the watch for their return. It
+had seemed to her--though how be sure in that mingled light?--both at the
+moment of their reappearance and afterward, that Harry was somewhat
+unusually pale and quiet, while the girl's look had struck her as
+singular--_exalteé_--the eyes shining--yet the manner composed and sweet
+as usual. She already divined the theorist in Lydia, the speculator with
+life and conduct. "But not with my Harry!" thought the mother, fiercely.
+
+But how could she prevent it? What could she do? What can any mother do
+when the wave of energy--spiritual and physical--has risen or is rising
+to its height in the young creature, and the only question is how and
+where it shall break; in crash and tempest, or in a summer sea?
+
+Delorme suddenly raised his great head from his easel.
+
+"That was a delicious creature that sat by me last night."
+
+"Miss Penfold? She is one of your devotees."
+
+"She paints, so she said. _Mon Dieu_! Why do women paint?"
+
+Victoria, roused, hotly defended the right of her sex to ply any honest
+art in the world that might bring them either pleasure or money.
+
+"_Mais la peinture_!" Delorme's shoulder shrugged still higher. "It is an
+infernal thing, milady, painting. What can a woman make of it? She can
+only unsex herself. And in the end--what she produces--what is it?"
+
+"If it pays the rent--isn't that enough?"
+
+"But a young girl like that! What, in God's name, has she do to with
+paying the rent? Let her dance and sing--have a train of lovers--look
+beautiful!"
+
+"The whole duty of woman!" laughed Victoria with a touch of scorn; "for
+our grandmothers."
+
+"No: for all time," said Delorme stoutly. "Ask milord." He looked toward
+the house, and Victoria saw Tatham emerging. But she had no intention
+whatever of asking him. She rose hastily, excused herself on the score of
+needing a few minutes' rest, and went to meet her son.
+
+"I forgot to tell you, mother," he said, as they approached each other,
+"Faversham's coming this afternoon. I had a letter from him this morning.
+He seems to be trying to make the old man behave."
+
+"I shall be glad to see him."
+
+Struck by something lifeless and jaded in the voice she loved, Victoria
+shot a glance at her son, then slipped her hand into his arm, and walked
+back with him to his library.
+
+He sat down silently to his books and papers. A couple of official
+reports lay open, and Victoria knew that he was going to an important
+county meeting that evening, where he was to be in the chair. Many older
+men, men who had won their spurs in politics or business, would be there,
+and it was entirely by their wish--their kindly wish--that Harry would
+take the lead. They desired to see him treading in the steps of his
+forefathers.
+
+Perched on the end of his writing table, she watched her son a moment. It
+seemed to her she saw already what the young face would be like when it
+was old. A pang struck her.
+
+"Harry--is there anything wrong?"
+
+He looked up quite simply and stretched his hand to her.
+
+"I asked her to marry me last night."
+
+"Well?" The colour rushed into the mother's face.
+
+"No go. She doesn't love me. She wants us to be friends."
+
+Victoria gasped.
+
+"But she's coming to sit to Delorme this afternoon!"
+
+"Because I asked her."
+
+"Harry, dear boy, for both your sakes--either all or nothing! If she
+doesn't care--break it off."
+
+"There's nothing to break off, dearest. And don't ask me not to see her.
+I couldn't. Who knows? She's got her ideas. Of course I've got mine.
+Perhaps--after all--I may win. Or, if not--perhaps"--he shaded his face
+with his hand--"she'll show me--how not to mind. I know she wants to."
+
+Silence a moment. Then the lad's hand dropped. He smiled at Victoria.
+
+"Let's fall in! There's nothing else to do anyway. She's not like other
+girls. When she says a thing--she means it. But so long as I can see
+her--I'm happy!"
+
+"You ought to forget her!" said Victoria angrily, kissing his hair.
+"These things should _end_--one way or the other."
+
+He looked perplexed.
+
+"She doesn't think so--and I'm thankful she doesn't, mother--don't say
+anything to her. Promise me. She said last night--she loved you. She
+wants to come here. Let's give her a jolly time. Perhaps--"
+
+The patience in his blue eyes nearly made her cry. And there was also the
+jealousy that no fond mother escapes, the commonest of all jealousies. He
+was passing out of her hands, this creature of her own flesh. Till now
+she had moulded and shaped him. Henceforward the lightest influence
+rained by this girl's eyes would mean more to him than all the intensity
+of her own affection.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Victoria's mind for the rest of the sitting was in a state of
+abstraction, and she sat so still that Delorme was greatly pleased with
+her. At luncheon she was still absent-minded, and Lady Barbara whispered
+in Gerald Tatham's ear that Victoria was always a poor hostess, but this
+time her manners were really impossible.
+
+"But you intend to stay a fortnight, don't you?" said Gerald, not without
+malice.
+
+"If I can possibly stay it out." The reply was lofty, but the situation,
+as Gerald knew, was commonplace. Lady Barbara's house in town was let for
+another fortnight, and Duddon's Castle was more agreeable and more
+economical than either lodgings or a hotel.
+
+Meanwhile a pair of eyes belonging to the young man whose dinner jacket
+and black tie had marked him out amid the other male guests of the night
+before were observing matters with a more subtle and friendly spirit
+behind them. Cyril Boden was a Fellow of All Souls, a journalist, an
+advanced Radical, a charmer, and a fanatic. He hated no man. That indeed
+was the truth. But he hated the theories and the doings of so many men,
+that the difference between him and the mere revolutionary was hard to
+seize. He had a smooth and ruddy face, in which the eyebrows seemed to be
+always rising interrogatively; longish hair; stooping shoulders, and an
+amiable, lazy, mocking look that belied a nature of singular passion,
+always occupied with the most tremendous problems of life, and afraid of
+no solution.
+
+He had been overworking himself in the attempt to settle a dock strike,
+and had come to Duddon to rest. Victoria was much attached to him in a
+motherly way, and he to her. They sparred a good deal; she attacking
+"agitators" and "demagogues," he, fierce on "feudal tyranny," especially
+when masked in the beauties and amenities of such a place as Duddon. But
+they were friends all the same, exchanging the unpaid services of
+friends.
+
+In the afternoon, before Lydia Penfold appeared, Boden found amusement
+in teasing Delorme--an old acquaintance. Delorme was accustomed to pose
+in all societies as Whistler's lawful and only successor. "Pattern" and
+"harmony" possessed him; "finish" was only made for fools, and the
+story-teller in art was the unclean thing. His ambition, like Whistler's,
+was to paint a full length in three days, and hear it hailed a
+masterpiece. And, like Whistler, he had no sooner painted it than he
+scraped it out; which most sitters found discouraging.
+
+Boden, meanwhile, made amends for all that was revolutionary in his
+politics or economics, by reaction on two subjects--art and divorce. He
+had old-fashioned ideas on the family, and did not want to see divorce
+made easy. And he was quaintly Ruskinian in matters of art, believing
+that all art should appeal to ethical or poetic emotion.
+
+"Boden admires a painter because he is a good man and pays his washing
+bills," drawled Delorme behind his cigarette, from the lazy depths of a
+garden chair. "His very colours are virtues, and his pictures must be
+masterpieces, because he subscribes to the Dogs' Home, and doesn't beat
+his wife."
+
+"Excellently put," said Boden, his hat on the back of his head, his eyes
+beginning to shine. "Do men gather grapes off thistles?"
+
+"Constantly. There is no relation whatever between art and morality."
+Delorme smoked pugnaciously. "The greater the artist, generally speaking,
+the worse the man."
+
+"I say! Really as bad as that?"
+
+Boden waved a languid hand toward the smoke-wreathed phantom of Delorme.
+The circle round the two laughed, languidly also, for it was almost too
+hot laugh. The circle consisted of Victoria, Gerald Tatham, Mrs. Manisty,
+and Colonel Barton, who had reappeared at luncheon, in order to urge
+Tatham to see Faversham as soon as possible on certain local affairs.
+
+"Oh! I give you my head in a charger," said Delorme, not without heat.
+"For you, Burne-Jones is 'pure' and I am 'decadent'; because he paints
+anemic knights in sham armour and I paint what I see."
+
+"The one absolutely fatal course! Don't you agree?"
+
+Boden turned smiling to Mrs. Manisty, of whose lovely head and soft eyes
+he was conscious through all the chatter.
+
+The eyes responded.
+
+"What do we see?" she said, with her shy smile. "Surely we only see what
+we think--or dream!"
+
+"True!" cried Delorme; "but a painter thinks _in paint_."
+
+"There you go," said Boden, "with your esoteric stuff. All your great
+painters have thought and felt with the multitude--painted for the
+multitude."
+
+"Never." The painter jerked away his cigar, and sat up. "The multitude is
+a brute beast!"
+
+"A just beast," murmured Boden.
+
+"Anything but!" said the painter. "But you know my views. In every
+generation, so far as art is concerned, there are about thirty men who
+matter--in all the world!"
+
+"Artists?" The voice was Lucy Manisty's.
+
+"Good heavens, no! Artists--and judges--together. The gate of art is a
+deal straiter than the gate of Heaven."
+
+Boden caught Victoria's laugh.
+
+"Let him alone," he said, indulgently. "His is the only aristocracy I can
+stand--with apologies to my hostess."
+
+"Oh, we're done for," said Victoria, quietly.
+
+Boden turned a humorous eye, first to the great house basking in the
+sunshine, then to his hostess.
+
+"Not yet. But you're doomed. As the old Yorkshireman said to his son,
+when they were watching the triumphs of a lion-tamer in the travelling
+menagerie--that 'genelman's to be wooried _soom_ day.' When the real
+Armageddon comes, it'll not find you in possession. _You'll_ have gone
+down long before."
+
+"Really? Then who will be in possession?" asked Gerald Tatham, a very
+perceptible sneer in his disagreeable voice. He disliked Boden as one of
+"the infernal Radicals" whom Victoria would inflict on the sacred
+precincts of Duddon, but he was generally afraid of him in conversation.
+
+"Merely the rich"--the tone was still nonchalant--"the Haves against the
+Haven'ts. No nonsense left, by that time, about 'blood' and 'family.'
+Society will have dropped all those little trimmings and embroideries.
+We shall have come to the naked fundamental things."
+
+"The struggle of rich and poor?" said Delorme. "Precisely. That's what
+all you fellows who go and preach revolution to dockers are after. And
+what on earth would the world do without wealth? Wealth is only
+materialized intelligence! What's wrong with it?"
+
+"Only that we're dying of it."
+
+The young man paused. He sat silently smoking, his eyes--unseeing--fixed
+upon the house. Lucy Manisty looked at him with sympathy.
+
+"You mean," she said, "that no one who has the power to be rich has now
+ever the courage to be poor?"
+
+He nodded, and turning to her he continued in a lower voice: "And
+think what's lost! Are we _all_ to be smothered in this paraphernalia
+of servants, and motor cars and gluttonous living? There's scarcely a
+man--for instance--among my friends who'll dare to marry! Hundreds used
+to be enough--now they must have thousands--or say their wives must. And
+they'll sell their souls to get the thousands. Who's the better--who's
+the happier for it in the end? We have left ourselves nothing to love
+with--nothing to be happy with. What does natural beauty--or human
+feeling--matter to the men who spend their days speculating in the City?
+I know 'em. I have watched some of them for years. It's a thirst that
+destroys a man. To want to be rich is bad enough--to want to be rich
+_quick_ is death and damnation ..."
+
+There was silence again, till suddenly Boden addressed Colonel Barton,
+who was sitting opposite half asleep in the sun.
+
+"I say, what's the name of a village, about two miles from here, I walked
+through while you were all at church this morning?--the most God-forsaken
+place I ever saw!--a horrible, insanitary hole!"
+
+"Mainstairs!" said Barton, promptly, waking up. "That's the only village
+hereabout that fits the description. But Melrose owns two or three of
+them."
+
+"The man that owns that village ought to be hung," said Boden with quiet
+ferocity. "In any decent state of society he would be hung."
+
+Barton shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I'm on the sanitary authority. We've summoned him till we're tired, to
+put those cottages in repair. No use. Now, we've told him that we shall
+repair them ourselves and send in the bill to him. That's stirred him,
+and he's immediately given everybody notice to quit--says he'll close the
+whole village. But the people won't go. There are no other cottages for
+miles--they've taken to stoning our inspectors."
+
+"And you think our land system's going to last on these terms?" said
+Boden, his eyes flaming.
+
+The little Tory opposite drew himself up.
+
+"It's not the system--it's the man."
+
+"The system's judged--that permits the man."
+
+"Melrose is unique," said Barton, hotly; "we are a model county, but for
+the Melrose estate."
+
+"But the exception is damning! It compromises you all. That such a place
+as Mainstairs should be _possible_--that's the point!"
+
+"For you Socialists, I daresay!" cried Barton. "The rest of us know
+better than to expect a perfect world!"
+
+Boden laughed, the passion dying from his face.
+
+"Ah, well, we shall have to make you march--you fellows in possession. No
+hope--unless we are 'behind you with a bradawl!'"
+
+"On the contrary! We marched before you Socialists were thought of. Who
+have put the bulk of the cottages of England in repair during the last
+half century, I should like to know--and built most of the new ones? The
+landlords of England! Who stands in the way of reform at the present
+moment? The small owner. And who are the small owners? Mainly Radical
+tradesmen."
+
+Boden looked at him--then queerly smiled. "I daresay. I trust no
+man--further than I can see him. But if what you say is true, why don't
+you Conservatives--in your own interest--coerce men like Melrose? He's
+giving you away, every month he exists."
+
+"Well, Tatham's at it," said Barton quietly; "we're all at it. And
+there's a new agent just appointed. Something to be hoped from him."
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+"You didn't hear us discussing him last night? A man called Claude
+Faversham."
+
+"Claude Faversham? A tall, dark fellow--writes a little--does a little
+law--but mostly unemployed? Oh, I know him perfectly. Faversham? You
+don't mean it!" Boden threw himself back in his chair with a sarcastic
+lip, and relit his pipe. As he watched the spirals of smoke he recalled
+the few incidents of his acquaintance with the young man. They had both
+been among the original members of a small club in London, frequented
+by men of letters and junior barristers. Faversham had long since dropped
+out of the club, and was now the companion, so Boden understood, of much
+richer men, and a great frequenter of the Stock Exchange, where money is
+mysteriously made without working for it. That fact alone was enough for
+Cyril Boden. He felt an instinctive, almost a fanatical, antipathy toward
+the new agent. On the one side the worshippers of the Unbought and the
+Unpriced; on the other Mammon and all his troop. It was so that Boden
+habitually envisaged his generation. It was so, and by no other test,
+that he divided the sheep from the goats.
+
+Meanwhile, Lydia Penfold, driving a diminutive pony, was slowly
+approaching the castle through the avenue of splendid oaks which led up
+to it. Faversham was walking beside her. He had overtaken her at the
+beginning of the avenue, and had sent on his motor that he might have
+the pleasure of her society.
+
+The daintiness of her white dress, with all its pretty details, the touch
+of blue in her hat, and at her waist, delighted his eyes. It pleased him
+that there was not a trace in her of Bohemian carelessness in these
+respects. Everything was simple, but everything was considered. She knew
+her own beauty; that was clear. It gave her self-possession; but, so far
+as he could see, without a trace of conceit. He had never met a young
+girl with whom he could talk so easily.
+
+She had greeted him with her most friendly smile. But it seemed to him
+nevertheless that she was a little pensive and overcast.
+
+"You dined here last night?" he asked her. "Did the lion roar properly?"
+
+"Magnificently. You weren't there?"
+
+"No. Undershaw put down his foot. I shan't submit much longer!"
+
+"You're really getting strong?"
+
+Her kind eyes considered him. He had often marveled that one so young
+should be mistress of such a look--so softly frank and unafraid.
+
+"A Hercules! Besides, the work's so interesting, one's no time to think
+of one's game leg!"
+
+"You're getting to know the estate?"
+
+"I've been motoring about it for a fortnight, that's something for a
+beginning. And I've got plenty of things to tell you."
+
+He plunged into them. It was evident that he was resuming topics familiar
+to them both. Their talk indeed showed them already intimate, sharers in
+a common enterprise, where she was often inspiration, and he executive
+and practical force. Ever since, indeed, she had said to him with that
+kindled, eager look--"Accept! Accept!"--he had been sharply aware of how
+best to approach, to attract her. She was, it seemed, no mere passive
+girl. She was in her measure a thinker--a character. He perceived in
+her--deep down--enthusiasms and compassions, that seemed often as though
+they shook her beyond her strength. They made him uncomfortable; they
+were strange to his own mind; and yet they moved and influenced him.
+During the short time, for instance, that she had lived in their midst,
+she had made friends everywhere--so he discovered--among these Cumbria
+folk. She never harangued about them; a few words, a few looks, burning
+from an inward fire--these expressed her: as when, twice, he had met her
+at dusk, with the aspect of a wounded spirit, coming out of hovels that
+he himself must now be ashamed of, since they were Melrose's hovels.
+
+"I've just come from Mainstairs," he said to her abruptly, as the house
+in front drew nearer.
+
+The colour rushed into Lydia's cheeks.
+
+"Are you going to put that right?"
+
+"I'm going to try. I've been talking to your old friend Dobbs. I saw his
+poor daughter, and I went into most of the cottages."
+
+Somewhat to his dismay he saw the delicate face beside him quiver, and
+the eyes cloud. But the emotion was driven back.
+
+"You're too late--for Bessie!" she said--how sadly! The accent touched
+him.
+
+"The girl is really dying? Was it diphtheria?"
+
+"She has been dying for months--and in such _pain_."
+
+"It is paralysis?"
+
+"After diphtheria. Did they show you the graves in the churchyard?--they
+call it the Innocents' Corner. Thirty children died in that village last
+year and the year before."
+
+There was silence a little.
+
+"I wonder what I can do," said Faversham, at last, reflectively. "I have
+been working out a number of new proposals--and I submit them to Mr.
+Melrose to-night."
+
+She looked wistfully at the speaker.
+
+"Good luck! But Mr. Melrose is hard to move."
+
+Faversham assented.
+
+"The hope lies in his being now an old man--and anxious to get rid of
+responsibilities. I shall try to show him that bad citizenship costs more
+money than good."
+
+"I hope--oh! I _hope_--you'll succeed!" she said fervently. Her emotion
+infected him. He smiled down upon her.
+
+"That ought to make me succeed! But of course I have no experience. I am
+a townsman."
+
+"You've always been a Londoner?"
+
+"Practically, always. But I was tired of London before all this
+happened--dying to get out of it."
+
+And he began a short account of himself, more intimate than any he had
+yet given her; to which Lydia listened with her open, friendly look,
+perhaps a little shyer than before. And so different, instinctively, is
+the way in which a man will tell his story to a woman, from that in which
+he tells it to a man, that the same half-ironic, half-bitter narrative
+which had repelled Tatham, attracted Lydia. Her sympathy rose at once to
+meet it. He was an orphan, and till now lonely and unsuccessful;
+tormented, too, by unsatisfied ideals and ambitions. Her imagination was
+pitiful and quick; she imagined she understood. She liked his frankness;
+it flattered and touched her. She liked his deep rich voice, and his dark
+face, with its lean strength, and almost southern colour. During his
+illness he had grown a small peaked beard, and it pleased her artistic
+sense, by giving him a look of Cardinal Richelieu--as that great man
+stood figured in an old French print she had picked up once in a box on
+the Paris quays. Moreover his friendship offered her so much fresh
+knowledge of the world and life. Here, again, was comradeship. She was
+lucky indeed. Harry Tatham--and now this clever, interesting man,
+entering on his task. It was a great responsibility. She would not fail
+either of her new friends! They knew--she had made--she would make it
+quite plain, that she was not setting her cap at either. Wider insights,
+fresh powers, honourable, legitimate powers, for her sex--it was these
+she was after.
+
+In all all this Lydia was perfectly sincere. But the Comic Spirit sitting
+aloft took note.
+
+They paused a moment on the edge of the plateau on which the house
+stood--the ground breaking from it to the west. A group of cottages
+appeared amid the woods far away.
+
+"If all estates were like this estate!" cried Lydia, pointing to them,
+"and all cottages like their cottages!"
+
+Faversham flushed and stiffened.
+
+"Oh! the Tathams are always perfection!"
+
+Lydia's eyebrows lifted.
+
+"It is a crime?"
+
+"No--but one hears too much of it."
+
+"Not from them!" The tone was indignant.
+
+"I daresay."
+
+Suddenly, he threw her a look which startled her. She descended from her
+pony-cart at the steps of the castle, her breath fluttering a little.
+What had happened?
+
+"Her ladyship is in the garden," said the footman who received them. And
+he led the way through a door in the wall of the side court. They
+followed--in a constrained silence. Lydia felt puzzled, and rather angry.
+
+Faversham recovered himself.
+
+"I apologize! They have all the virtues."
+
+His voice was lowered--for her ear; there was deference in his smile. But
+somehow Lydia was conscious of a note of stormy self-assertion in him,
+which was new to her; something strong and stubborn, which refused to
+take her lead as usual.
+
+Lady Tatham advanced. The eyes of a group of people sitting in a circle
+under the shade of a spreading yew tree turned toward them.
+
+Boden, who had given Faversham a perfunctory greeting, fell back into his
+chair again, and watched the new agent's reception with coolly smiling
+eyes.
+
+Tatham came hurrying up to greet them. No one but Lydia could have
+distinguished any change in the boyish voice and look. But it was there.
+She felt it.
+
+He turned from her to Faversham.
+
+"Awfully glad to see you. Hope you're quite fit again."
+
+"Very nearly all right, thank you."
+
+"Are you actually at work? Great excitement everywhere about you!"
+
+Tatham stood, with his straw hat tilted toward the back of his head, and
+his hands on his sides, observing his guest.
+
+Faversham shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I feel horribly nervous!"
+
+"Well you may!" laughed Tatham. "Never mind. We'll all back you up, if
+you'll let us."
+
+"As far as I am concerned--the smallest contributions thankfully
+received. Who are these people here?"
+
+Tatham introduced him.
+
+Then to Lydia:
+
+"Delorme is waiting for you." He carried her off.
+
+By this time Mr. Andover, the old grizzled squire who had been Lydia's
+partner at dinner the night before, had dropped in, and various other
+residents from the neighbourhood. They gathered eagerly round Faversham,
+in the deep shade of the yews.
+
+And before long, the new man had produced an excellent first impression
+upon these country gentlemen who were now to be his neighbours. It was
+evident that he was anxious to remove grievances. His tone as to his
+employer was guarded, but not at all servile; and he made the impression
+of a man of ability accustomed to business, though modestly avowing his
+ignorance of rural affairs; independent, yet anxious to do his best with
+a great trust.
+
+After half an hour's discussion, Barton drew Victoria aside, and said to
+her excitedly that the new agent was "a capital fellow!"
+
+"He'll do the job, you'll see! Melrose is breaking up--thank God! Every
+one who's seen him lately says he's not half the man he was. He'll have
+to give this fellow a free hand. That estate has been a plague-spot!
+But we'll get it cleared up now."
+
+Victoria wondered. Secretly, she doubted the power of any man to manage
+Melrose even _moriturus_.
+
+Meanwhile it had not escaped her that the new agent and Lydia Penfold had
+arrived together. It had struck her also that their manner toward each
+other, as she went to meet them, had been the manner of persons just
+emerged from a somewhat intimate conversation. And she already perceived
+the nascent jealousy in Harry.
+
+Well, no doubt the agent also was to be practised on by these
+newfangled arts. For no girl could have had the audacity to make the
+compact Lydia Penfold had made with Harry, if she were already in love
+with another man! No. Faversham, it was plain, would be the next added
+to her train. Victoria beheld the golden-haired creature as the modern
+Circe, surrounded by troops of ex-suitors--lovers transmogrified to
+Friends--docile at the heel of the sorceress. You took your chance,
+received your "No," and subsided cheerfully into the pen. Victoria vowed
+to herself that her Harry should do nothing of the kind!
+
+She looked round her for the presumptuous maiden. There she was, under a
+fountain wall in the Italian garden, her white dress gleaming from the
+warm shadow in which the stone was steeped; Delorme, with an easel, in
+front. He was making a rapid charcoal sketch of her, and she was sitting
+daintily erect, talking and smiling at intervals. A little way off, a
+group of people, critical observers of the proceeding, lounged on the
+grass or in garden chairs; among them, Tatham. And as he sat watching the
+sitting, his hat drawn forward over his brow and eyes, although he
+chatted occasionally with Mrs. Manisty beside him, his mother was
+miserably certain that he was in truth alive to nothing but the white
+vision under the wall--the delicate three-quarter face, with its pointed
+chin, and the wisps of gold hair blowing about the temples.
+
+And the owner of the face! Was she quite unmoved by a situation which
+might, Victoria felt, have strained the nerves even of the experienced?
+
+A slight incident seemed to show that she was not unmoved. Lydia had
+shown a keen, girlish pleasure in the prospect of sitting to Delorme, the
+god, professionally, of her idolatry. Yet the sketch, for that afternoon,
+came to nothing. For after an hour's sitting Delorme, as usual, became
+restless and excited, exclaimed at the difficulty of the subject, cursed
+the light, and finally, in a fit of disgust, wiped out everything he had
+done. Lydia rose from her seat, looking rather white, and threw a
+strange, appealing glance--the mother caught it--at her young host.
+Tatham sprang up, released her instantly and peremptorily, though Delorme
+implored for another half-hour. Lydia, unheard by the artist, gave soft
+thanks to her deliverer, and, presently, there they were--she and
+Harry--strolling up and down the rose-alleys together, as though nothing,
+absolutely nothing, had happened.
+
+And yet Harry had only asked her to marry him the night before, and she
+had only refused! Impossible to suppose that it was the mere plotting of
+the finished coquette. This lover required neither teasing nor kindling.
+
+However, there it was. This little struggling artist had refused Harry;
+and she had refused Duddon.
+
+For one could not be so absurd as to ignore _that_. Victoria, sitting in
+the shade beside Lady Barbara, who had gone to sleep, looked dreamily
+round on the rose-red pile of building, on the great engirdling woods,
+the hills, the silver reaches of river--interwoven now with the dark
+tree-masses, now with glades of sunlit pasture. Duddon was one of the
+great possessions of England. And this slip of a girl, with her home-made
+blouses, and her joy in making twenty pounds out of her drawings,
+wherewith to pay the rent, had put it aside, apparently without a
+moment's hesitation. Magnanimity--or stupidity?
+
+The next moment Victoria was despising her own amazement. "One takes
+one's own lofty feelings for granted--but never other people's! She says
+she doesn't love him--and that's the reason. And I straightway don't
+believe her. What snobs we all are! One's astonishment betrays one's
+standard. Gerald says, 'What have the poor to do with fine feelings?' and
+I detest him for it. But I'm no better."
+
+Suddenly, on the other side of the yew hedge behind her--voices. Harry
+and Lydia Penfold, in eager and laughing discussion. And all at once a
+name reached her ears:
+
+"Lydia"--pronounced rather shyly, in Tatham's voice.
+
+"_Lydia!"_ No doubt by the bidding of the young lady.
+
+"I did not know I was so old-fashioned," thought Lady Tatham indignantly.
+
+Yet the tone in which the name was given was neither caressing nor
+tender. It simply meant, of course, that the young woman was breaking him
+in to her ideas; her absurd ideas, from which Harry must be protected.
+
+They emerged from the shrubbery and came toward her. Lydia timidly
+approached Victoria. With Tatham she had not apparently been timid. But
+for his mother she was all deference.
+
+"Isn't there a flower-show here to-morrow? May Susan and I come and
+help?"
+
+The speaker raised her eyes to Lady Tatham, and Victoria read in them
+something beautiful and appealing, that at once moved and angered her.
+The girl seemed to offer her heart to Tatham's mother.
+
+"_I can't marry your son!--but let me love you--be your friend!--the
+friend of both_."
+
+Was that what it meant?
+
+What could Victoria do? There was Harry hovering in the background, with
+that eager, pale look. She was helpless. Mechanically she said, "We shall
+be delighted--grateful. I will send for you."
+
+Thenceforward, however, Lydia allowed Tatham no more private speech with
+her. She made herself agreeable to all Victoria's guests in turn. Delorme
+fell head over ears in love with her, so judicious, yet so evidently
+sincere were the flatteries she turned upon him, and so docile her
+consent to another sitting. Sweet, grave Lucy Manisty watched her with
+fascination. The Manisty boy dragged her to the Long Pond, to show her
+the water-beasts there, as the best way of marking his approval. Colonel
+Barton forgot politics to chat with her; and the mocking speculation in
+Cyril Boden's eyes gradually softened, as the girl's charm and beauty
+penetrated, little by little, through all the company.
+
+Faversham alone seemed to have no innings with her till he was
+about to take his departure. Then Victoria noticed that Lydia made a
+quick movement toward him, and they stood together a few minutes,
+talking--certainly not as strangers.
+
+Gerald Tatham also noticed it. There were few things, within his powers,
+that he left unnoticed.
+
+"Now _that_ would be suitable!" he said in Lady Barbara's ear, nodding
+toward the pair. "You saw how they came in together. But of course it's a
+blind. Any one with half an eye can see that she's just fishing for
+Harry!"
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+Faversham sped home through the winding Cumbrian lanes, driven by the new
+chauffeur just imported from Manchester. The hedges were thick with
+meadow-sweet and its scent, mingled with that of new-mown hay, hung in
+the hot, still air. In front of him the Ullswater mountains showed dimly
+blue. It was a country he was beginning to love. His heart rose to it.
+
+Small wonder in that! For here, in this northern landscape, so strange to
+him but three months ago, he had first stumbled on Success--and he had
+first met Lydia.
+
+Was there any chance for him? Through all his talks with the country
+neighbours, or with Lady Tatham, he had been keenly on the watch for
+anything that might show him what Lydia's position in the Duddon Castle
+circle actually was. That Tatham was in love with her was clear. Mrs.
+Penfold's chatter as to the daily homage paid by the castle to the
+cottage, through every channel--courtesies or gifts--that the Tathams'
+delicacy could invent, or the Penfolds' delicacy accept, had convinced
+him on that point. And Faversham had seen for himself at Duddon that
+Tatham hung upon her every movement and always knew where she was and to
+whom she was talking; nor had the long conversation in the rose-walk
+escaped him.
+
+Well, of course, in the case of any other girl in the world than Lydia,
+such things would be conclusive. Who was likely to refuse Tatham, plus
+the Tatham estates? But unless he had mistaken her altogether--her
+detachment, her unworldliness, her high spirit--Lydia Penfold was not
+the girl to marry an estate. And if Tatham himself had touched her
+heart--"would she have allowed me the play with her that she has done
+this last fortnight?" She would have been absorbed, preoccupied; and she
+had been neither. He thought of her kind eyes, her frank, welcoming ways,
+her intense interest in his fortunes. Impossible--if she were in love
+with or on the point of an engagement to Harry Tatham.
+
+She had forgiven him for his touch of jealous ill-temper! As they stood
+together at the last in the Duddon garden, she had said, "I _must_ hear
+about to-night! send me a word!" And he carried still, stamped upon his
+mind, the vision of her--half shy, half eager--looking up.
+
+For the rest, the passion that was rapidly rising in the veins of a man
+full of life and will, surprised the man himself, excited in him a new
+complacency and self-respect. For years he had said to himself that he
+could only marry money. He remembered with a blush one or two rather
+sordid steps in that direction--happily futile. But Lydia was penniless;
+and he could make her rich. For his career was only beginning; and on
+wealth, the wealth which is power, he was more than ever determined.
+
+A turn in the road brought Threlfall into view. The new agent sat with
+folded arms, gazing at the distant outline, and steadily pulling himself
+together to meet the ordeal of the evening. It was by Melrose's own wish
+he had drawn up a careful scheme of the alterations and improvements
+which seemed to him imperatively necessary in the financial interests of
+the estate; and he had added to it a statement--very cautious and
+diplomatic--of the various public and private quarrels in which Melrose
+was now concerned, with suggestions as to what could be done to
+straighten them out. With regard to two or three of them litigation was
+already going on; had, indeed, been going on interminably. Faversham was
+certain that with a little good-will and a very moderate amount of money
+he could settle the majority of them in a week.
+
+So far Melrose had been fairly amenable--had given a curt assent, for
+instance, to the conditions on which Faversham had proposed to relet two
+of the vacant farms, and to one or two other changes. But Faversham
+realized that he possessed no true knowledge of the old man's mind and
+temperament. Exultant though he often felt in his new office, and the
+preposterously large salary attached to it, he reminded himself
+constantly that he trod on unsure ground. Once or twice he had been
+conscious of a strange sense as of some couchant beast beside him ready
+to spring; also of some curious weakening and disintegration in Melrose,
+even since he had first known him. He seemed to be more incalculable,
+less to be depended on. His memory was often faulty, and his irritability
+hardly sane.
+
+Faversham indeed was certain, from his own observation, that the mere
+excitement of opening and exploring the huge collections he had
+accumulated, during these twenty years, in the locked rooms of the house,
+had imposed a sharp nervous strain on a man now past seventy, who for all
+the latter part of his life had taken no exercise and smoked incessantly.
+
+Supposing he were suddenly to fall ill and die--what would happen to the
+house and its collections, or to the immense fortune, the proportions of
+which the new agent was now slowly beginning to appreciate? All sorts of
+questions with regard to the vanished wife and child were now rising
+insistently in Faversham's mind. Were they really dead, and if so, how
+and where? Once or twice, since his acceptance of the agency, Melrose had
+repeated to him with emphasis: "I am alone in the world." Dixon and his
+wife preserved an absolute silence on the subject, and loyalty to his
+employer forbade Faversham to question them or any other of Melrose's
+dependents. It struck him, indeed, that Mrs. Dixon had shown a curious
+agitation when, that morning, Faversham had conveyed to her Melrose's
+instructions to prepare a certain room on the first floor as the agent's
+future bedroom.
+
+"Aye, sir, aye--but it wor Mrs. Melrose's room," she had said, looking
+down, her lip twitching a little, her old hands fumbling with the strings
+of her apron.
+
+Faversham had asked uncomfortably whether there were not some other room
+in a less conspicuous part of the house to which he might be transferred,
+the once dismantled drawing-room being now wanted to house the fine
+things that were constantly coming to light. Mrs. Dixon shook her head.
+All the available rooms were still full of what she called "stoof." And
+then she had abruptly left him.
+
+The light was fast failing as he approached the house. By the shearing
+away of trees and creeper, at least from all its central and eastern
+parts, Threlfall had now lost much of its savage picturesqueness; the
+formal garden within the forecourt had been to some extent restored;
+and the front door had received a coat or two of paint. But the whole of
+the west wing was still practically untouched. There they still were--the
+shuttered and overgrown windows. Faversham looked at them expectantly.
+The exploration of the house roused in him now the same kind of
+excitement that drives on the excavators of Delphi or Ephesus, or the
+divers for Spanish treasure. He and Melrose had already dug out so many
+precious things--things many of them which had long sunk below the
+surface of the old man's memory--that heaven only knew what might turn
+up. The passion of adventure ran high; he longed to be at the business
+again and was sorry to think it must some day have an end.
+
+That broken window, for instance, now widely open in the west wing, was
+the window of the room they had forced on the previous day. In general,
+Melrose possessed some rough record of the contents of the locked rooms,
+and their labelled keys; but in this case both record and label had been
+lost. A small amount of violence, however, had sufficed to open the
+half-rotten door. Inside--thick darkness, save for one faint gleam
+through a dilapidated shutter. As Faversham advanced, groping into the
+room, there was a sudden scurry of mice, and a sudden flapping of
+something in a corner, which turned out to be a couple of bats. When he
+made for the window, dense cobwebs brushed against his face, and half the
+shutter on which he laid his hand came away at his touch and lay in
+fragments at his feet. The rain had come in for twenty years through a
+broken pane, and had completely rotted the wood. Strange noises in the
+chimney showed that owls had built there; and as the shutter fell a
+hideous nest of earwigs was disturbed, and ran hither and thither over
+the floor.
+
+And when Faversham turned to look at the contents of the room, he saw
+Melrose in his skullcap, poking about among a medley of black objects on
+the floor and in a open cupboard, his withered cheeks ghastly in the
+sudden daylight.
+
+"What are they?" asked Faversham, wondering.
+
+"Silver," was the sharp reply. "Some of the finest things known."
+
+And from the filthy cupboard Melrose's shaking hand had drawn out a ewer
+and basin, whence some ragged coverings fell away. It was almost entirely
+black; but the exquisite work of it--the spiral fluting of the ewer, its
+shell-like cover, the winged dragon on the handle, and, round the oval
+basin, the rim of chasing dolphins, could still be seen.
+
+"That came from the Wolfgang sale--I gave six hundred for it. It's
+worth six thousand now--you can't find such a piece anywhere. Ah! by
+George!"--with a stifled shout--"and that's the Demidoff tazza!"--as
+Faversham lifted up a thing lying in a half-open box that might have been
+ebony--a shallow cup on a stem, with a young vine-crowned Bacchus for a
+handle. Melrose took it eagerly, put up his eyeglass, and, rubbing away
+with his handkerchief, searched for the mark. "There it is!--a Caduceus
+and 1620. And the signature--see!--'A.D. Viana.' There was a cup signed
+by Viana sold last week at Christie's--fetched a fabulous sum! Every
+single thing in this room is worth treble and quadruple what I gave for
+it. Talk of investments! There are no such investments as works of art.
+Buy 'em, I say--lock 'em up--and forget 'em for twenty years!"
+
+With much labour, they had at last ranged the most important pieces on
+some trestle tables and in the cupboards of the room. A number of smaller
+boxes and packages still remained to be looked through. Faversham, by
+Melrose's directions, had written to a London firm of dealers in antique
+silver, directing them to send down two of their best men to clean, mend,
+and catalogue. Proper glazed cupboards, baize-lined, were to be put up
+along each side of the room; the room itself was to be repaired,
+whitened, and painted. Faversham already foresaw the gleaming splendour
+of the show, when all should be done, and these marvels of a most lovely
+art--these silver nymphs and fauns, these dainty sea-horses and dolphins,
+these temples and shrines, now holding a Hercules, now a St. Sebastian,
+these arabesques, garlands, festoons, running in a riot of beauty over
+the surface of cup and salver--had been restored to daylight and men's
+sight, after the burial of a generation.
+
+But the value of what the house contained! In these days of huge prices
+and hungry buyers, it must be simply enormous.
+
+Faversham often found himself speculating eagerly upon it, and always
+with the query in the background "For _whom_ is it all piling up?"
+
+As they left the silver room, Melrose had made the grim remark that the
+contents of that room alone would make it prudent to let loose an extra
+couple of bloodhounds in the park at night. Dixon's frowning countenance
+as he followed in their wake showed an answering anxiety. For he had now
+been made guardian of the collections; and a raw nephew of his, chosen
+apparently for his honesty and his speechlessness, had been put on as
+manservant, Mrs. Dixon had two housemaids under her, and a girl in the
+kitchen. It was sometimes evident to Faversham that the agitation of
+these changes which had come so suddenly upon them, had aged the two old
+servants, just as it had tried their master.
+
+Faversham on dismounting was told by Joseph, the new man, that Mr.
+Melrose would dine alone, but would be glad to see Mr. Faversham in the
+library after dinner.
+
+Faversham made a quick and sparing meal in his own room, and then
+adjourning to his newly furnished office ran eagerly through the various
+papers and proposals which he had to lay before his employer.
+
+As he did so, he was more conscious than ever before of the enormity
+of Melrose's whole career as a landowner. The fact was that the estate
+had been for years a mere field for the display of its owner's worst
+qualities--caprice, miserliness, jealous or vindictive love of power.
+The finance of it mattered nothing to him. Had he been a poorer man his
+landed property might have had a chance; he would have been forced to
+run it more or less on business lines. But his immense income came to
+him apparently from quite other sources--mines, railways, foreign
+investments; and with all the human relations involved in landowning he
+was totally unfit to deal.
+
+Hence these endless quarrels with his tenants to whom he never allowed a
+lease; these constant evictions; these litigations as to improvements,
+compensation, and heaven knows what. The land was naturally of excellent
+quality, and many a tenant came in with high hopes, only to find that the
+promises on the strength of which he had taken his farm were never
+fulfilled, and that if it came to lawyers, Melrose generally managed "to
+best it." Hence, too, the rotten, insanitary cottages--maintained,
+Faversham could almost swear, for the mere sake of defying the local
+authorities and teaching "those Socialist fools" a lesson. Hence the
+constant charges of persecution for political reasons; and hence, too,
+this bad case of the Brands, which had roused such a strong and angry
+sympathy in the neighbourhood that Faversham felt the success of his own
+regime must be endangered unless some means could be found, compatible
+with Melrose's arrogance, of helping the ruined family.
+
+Well, there in those clear typewritten sheets, lay his suggestions for
+dealing with these various injustices and infamies. They were moderate.
+Expensive for the moment, they would be economical in the long run. He
+had given them his best brains and his hardest work. And he had taken the
+best advice. But they meant, no doubt, a complete change in the
+administration and _personnel_ of the estate.
+
+Faversham stepped into the garden, and, hanging over the low wall which
+edged the sandstone cliff, he looked out over the gorge of the river,
+across the woods, into the ravines and gullies of the fells. Mountain and
+wood stood dark against a saffron sky. In the dim blue above it Venus
+sailed. A light wind stirred the trees and the stream. Along the river
+meadows he could hear the cows munching and see their dusky forms moving
+through a thin mist. The air was amethyst and gold, and the beautiful
+earth shone through it, ennobled by the large indistinctness, the quiet
+massing of the evening tones.
+
+His heart withdrew itself into some inner shrine where it might be with
+Lydia. She represented to him some force, some help, to which he turned.
+
+Please God, he would win her!--and through a piece of honourable
+work--the cleansing of an ugly corner of human life. A nobler ambition
+than he had ever yet been conscious of, entered in. He felt himself a
+better man, with a purpose in the world.
+
+Nor, at this critical moment, did he forget his uncle--the man who had
+been a father to him in his orphaned boyhood. What pleasure the dear old
+fellow would have taken in this new opening--and in Melrose's marvellous
+possessions! By the way--Melrose had said nothing about the gems for a
+long time past, and Faversham was well content to leave them in his
+temporary keeping. But his superstitious feeling about them--and all men
+have some touch of superstition--was stronger than ever. It was as though
+he protested anew to some hovering shape, which took the aspect now of
+Mackworth, now of Fortuna--"Stand by me!--even as I hold by them."
+
+The chiming clock in the gallery--a marvel of French _horlogerie_, made
+for the Regent Orleans--had just finished striking eleven. Melrose, who
+had been speaking with energy through the soft, repeated notes, threw
+himself back in his chair, and lit a cigarette. His white hair shone
+against the panelled background of the room, and, beneath it, framed in
+bushy brows still black, a pair of menacing eyes fixed themselves on
+Faversham.
+
+Faversham remained for a minute at the table, looking down upon it, his
+hand resting on the document from which he had been reading. Then he too
+pushed his chair slowly backward, and looked up.
+
+"I understand then, Mr. Melrose, that these proposals of mine do not meet
+with your approval?"
+
+"I have told you what I approve."
+
+"You have approved a few matters--of minor importance. But my chief
+proposals"--he ran his finger lightly over the pages of his memorandum,
+enumerating the various headings--"these, if I have understood you
+correctly, are not to your mind, and you refuse to sanction them?"
+
+The face before him was as iron.
+
+"Let half these things wait, I tell you, and they will settle themselves.
+I pointed out to you when we made our bargain, that I would not have my
+estate run on any damned Socialist principles."
+
+Faversham smiled; but he had grown very pale. "Your financial profit, Mr.
+Melrose, and the business management of your property have been my sole
+concern."
+
+"I am sure that you think so. But as to what is profit and what is
+business, you must allow me to be the final judge."
+
+Faversham thought a moment, then rose, and walked quietly up and down the
+length of the room, his hands in his pockets. The old man watched him,
+his haughty look and regular features illuminated by the lamp beside him.
+In front of him was the famous French table, crowded as usual with a
+multitude of miscellaneous _objets d'art_, conspicuous among them a pair
+of Tanagra figures, white visions of pure grace, amid the dusty confusion
+of their surroundings.
+
+Suddenly Melrose flung his cigarette vehemently away.
+
+"Faversham! Don't be a fool! I have something to say to you a deal more
+important than this damned nonsense!" He struck his hand on the open
+memorandum.
+
+Faversham turned in astonishment.
+
+"Sit down again!" said Melrose peremptorily, "and listen to me. I desire
+to put things as plainly and simply as possible. But I must have all your
+attention."
+
+Faversham sat down. Melrose was now standing, his hands on the back of
+the chair from which he had risen.
+
+"I have just made my will," he said abruptly. "Tomorrow I hope to sign
+it. It depends on you whether I sign it or not."
+
+As the speaker paused, Faversham, leaning back and fronting him, grew
+visibly rigid. An intense and startled expectancy dawned in his face; his
+lips parted.
+
+"My will," Melrose continued, in a deliberately even voice, "concerns a
+fortune of rather more--than a million sterling--allowing little or
+nothing for the contents of this house. I inherited a great deal, and by
+the methods I have adopted--not the methods, my dear Faversham, I may
+say, that you have been recommending to me to-night. I have more than
+doubled it. I have given nothing away to worthless people, and no sloppy
+philanthropies have stood between me and the advantages to which my
+knowledge and my brains entitled me. Hence these accumulations. Now, the
+question is, what is to be done with them? I am alone in the world. I
+have no interest whatever in building universities, or providing free
+libraries, or subsidizing hospitals. I didn't make the world, and I have
+never seen why I should spend my energies in trying to mend what the
+Demiurge has made a mess of. In my view the object of everybody should be
+to _live_, as acutely as possible--to get as many sensations, as many
+pleasant reactions as possible--out of the day. Some people get their
+sensations--or say they do--out of fussing about the poor. Forty years
+ago I got them out of politics--or racing--or high play. For years past,
+as you know, I have got them out of collecting works of art--and fighting
+the other people in the world who want the same things that I do.
+Perfectly legitimate in my belief! I make no apology whatever for my
+existence. Well, now then, I begin to be old--don't interrupt me--I don't
+like it, but I recognize the fact. I have various ailments. Doctors are
+mostly fools; but I admit that in my case they may be right; though I
+intend to live a good while yet in spite of them. Still--there it is--who
+is to have this money--and these collections? Sooner than let any
+rascally Chancellor of the Exchequer get at them, I would leave them to
+Dixon. But I confess I think Dixon would be embarrassed to know what to
+do with them. I don't think I possess a single relation that I don't
+dislike. So now we come to the point. With your leave--and by your
+leave--I propose to leave the money and the collections--to you!" The
+young man--flushed and staring--half rose in his chair.
+
+"To _me_? What can you possibly mean, sir?"
+
+"Precisely what I say. On conditions, of course. It depends on yourself.
+But you were brought into this house by a strange chance--you happen to
+suit me--to interest me. 'Provvy' as Bentham would say, seems to point to
+you. Here--in this drawer"--he brought his hand down strongly on the
+writing table--"is a will which I wrote last night. It leaves the whole
+of my property to you, subject to certain directions as to the works of
+art--to a provision for old Dixon, and so on. You can't witness it, of
+course, nor can Dixon; otherwise it might be signed to-night. But if we
+come to an understanding to-night, I can sign it to-morrow morning and
+get a couple of men from the farm to witness it. I think I can promise to
+live so long!"
+
+There was silence. With an uncertain, swaying movement Melrose returned
+to his chair. The physical weakness betrayed by the action was strangely
+belied, however, by his imperious aspect, as of an embodied Will. His
+eyes never left Faversham, even while he rested heavily on the table
+before him for support.
+
+Suddenly, Faversham, who had been sitting pale and motionless, looked up.
+
+"Mr. Melrose--have you no natural heirs?"
+
+Melrose could not altogether disguise the shock of the question. He threw
+himself back, however, with a smile.
+
+"You have been listening I see to the stories that people tell."
+
+Faversham bent forward and spoke earnestly: "I understand that your wife
+and child left you twenty years ago. Are they still living?"
+
+Melrose shrugged his shoulders. "Whether they are or not, really matters
+nothing at all either to you or me: Mrs. Melrose left this house of her
+own free will. That ended the connection between us. In any case, you
+need have no alarm. There is no entail--even were there a son, and there
+never was a son. I do what I will with my own. There is no claim on
+me--there would be no claim on you."
+
+"There must be--there would be--a moral claim!"
+
+The colour rushed into Melrose's face. He drummed the table impatiently.
+
+"We will not, if you please, argue the matter, which is for me a _chose
+jugée_. And no one who wishes to remain a friend of mine"--he spoke with
+emphasis--"will ever attempt to raise ghosts that are better left in
+their graves. I repeat--my property is unencumbered--my power to deal
+with it absolute. I propose to make you my heir--on conditions. The first
+is"--he looked sombrely and straight at his companion--"that I should not
+be harassed or distressed by any such references as those you have just
+made."
+
+Faversham made no sound. His chin was propped on his hand, and his eyes
+pursued the intricacies of a silver cup studded with precious stones
+which stood on the table beside him. He thought, "The next condition will
+be--the gems."
+
+"The second," Melrose resumed, after a somewhat long pause, and with a
+sarcastic intonation, "is that you should resist the very natural
+temptation of exhibiting me to the world as a penitent and reformed
+character. In that document you have just read you suggest to me--first,
+that I should retire from three lawsuits in which, whatever other people
+may think, I conceive that I have a perfectly good case; second"--he
+ticked the items off on the long tapering finger of his left hand--"that
+I should rebuild a score or two of cottages it would not pay me to
+rebuild--in which I force no one to live--and which I shall pull down
+when it pleases me, just to teach a parcel of busybodies to mind their
+own business; third--that I should surrender, hands down, to a lot of
+trumpery complaints and grievances got up partly to spite a landlord,
+partly to get money out of him; and fourthly--with regard to the right of
+way--that I should let that young prig Tatham, a lad just out of the
+nursery, dictate to me, bring the whole country about my ears, and
+browbeat me out of my rights. Now--I warn you--I shall do none of these
+things!"
+
+The speaker paused a moment, and then turned impetuously on his
+companion.
+
+"Have you any reason so far to complain of my conduct toward you?"
+
+"Complain? You have been only too amazingly, incredibly generous."
+
+Melrose's hand made a disdainful movement.
+
+"I did what suited me. And I told you, to begin with, it would _not_ suit
+me to run my estate as though it were a University Settlement. Handle me
+gently--that's all. You've had your way about some of the farms--you'll
+get it no doubt with regard to others. But don't go about playing the
+reformer--on this dramatic scale!--at my expense. I don't believe in this
+modern wish-wash; and I don't intend to don the white sheet."
+
+He rose, and lighting another cigarette, he dropped a log on the fire,
+and stood with his back to it, quietly smoking. But his eyes were all
+fierce life under the dome of his forehead, and his hand shook a little.
+
+Faversham sat absolutely still. Rushing through his veins was the sense
+of something incredible and intoxicating. The word "million" rang in his
+ears. He was conscious of the years behind him--their poverty, their
+thwarted ambitions, their impotent discontent. And suddenly the years
+before him lit up; all was possible; all was changed. Yet as he sat there
+his pulses hurrying, words coming to his lips which dropped away again,
+he became conscious of two or three extremely sharp visualizations.
+
+A room in one of the Mainstairs cottages, containing a bed, and on it a
+paralyzed girl, paralyzed after diphtheria--the useless hands--the
+vacant, miserable look--other beds in the same room filling it up--the
+roof so low that it seemed to be crushing down on the girl--holes in the
+thatch rudely mended.
+
+Again--a corner in the Mainstairs churchyard, filled with small, crowded
+graves, barely grass-grown; the "Innocents' Corner."
+
+And again, a wretched one-roomed cottage in the same row of hovels,
+kitchen, bedroom, and living-room in one, mud-floored, the outer door
+opening into it, the bed at the back, and an old husband and wife,
+crippled with rheumatism, sitting opposite each other on a day of pouring
+rain, shivering in the damp and the draughts.
+
+Then, driving these out--the face of Colonel Barton with its blunt,
+stupid kindliness, and that whole group at Duddon, welcoming the new man,
+believing in him, ready to help him, with the instinctive trust of honest
+folk.
+
+And last, but flashing through all the rest, Lydia's eyes--the light in
+them--and the tones of her voice--"You'll do it!--you'll do it!--you'll
+set it all right!"
+
+He perfectly realized at that moment--before the brain had begun to
+refine on the situation--what was asked of him. He was to be Melrose's
+tool and accomplice in all that Melrose's tyrannical caprice chose to do
+with the lives of human beings; he was to forfeit the respect of good
+men; he was to make an enemy of Harry Tatham; and he was to hurt--and
+possibly alienate--Lydia.
+
+And the price of it was a million.
+
+He rose rather heavily to his feet, and gathered up his papers--a slim
+and comely figure amid the queer medley of the room.
+
+"I must have some time to think about what you have said to me, Mr.
+Melrose. You've taken my breath away--you won't be surprised at that."
+
+Melrose smiled grimly.
+
+"Not at all. That's natural! Very well then--we meet to-morrow morning.
+Before eleven o'clock the will must be either signed--or cancelled. And
+for the present--please!--silence!"
+
+They exchanged good-nights. Melrose looked oddly after the young man, as
+the door closed.
+
+"He took it well. I suppose he's been sitting up nights over that
+precious memorandum. He was to be the popular hero, and I the 'shocking
+example.' Well, he'll get over it. I think--I have--both him--and the
+Medusa. And what does the will matter to me? Any one may have the gear,
+when I can't have it. But I'll not be dictated to--_this_ side of the
+Styx!"
+
+Faversham wandered out once more into the summer night. A little path
+along the cliff took him down to the riverside, and he paced beside the
+dimly shining water, overhung by the black shadow of the woods. When he
+returned to the Tower, just as the light was altering, and the chill of
+dawn beginning, a long process of tumultuous reflection had linked the
+mood of the preceding evening to the mood of this new day, and of the
+days that were to follow. He had determined on his answer to Melrose; and
+he was exultantly sure of his power to deal with the future. The scruples
+and terrors of the evening were gone. His intelligence rose to his task.
+
+This old man, already ill, liable at any moment to the accidents of age,
+and still madly absorbed, to the full extent of his powers and his time,
+in the pursuits of connoisseurship--what could he really do in the way of
+effective supervision of his agent? A little tact, a little prudent
+maneuvering; some money here, possibly out of his, Faversham's, own
+pocket; judicious temporizing there; white lying when necessary--a
+certain element of intrigue in Faversham rose to the business with
+alacrity. In the pride of his young brain and his recovered strength he
+did not regard it as possible that he should fail in it. After all, the
+law was now squeezing Melrose; and might be gently and invisibly
+assisted. If, as to the will itself, his lips were sealed, it would be
+possible to give some hint to Lydia, for friendship to interpret; to
+plead with her for patience, in view of the powers, the beneficent
+powers, that must be his--aye and hers--the darling!--some day.
+
+The thought of them was intoxicating! A man to whom wealth had always
+appeared as the only gate of opportunity, was now to be rich beyond the
+utmost dream of his ambition. The world lay at his feet. He would use it
+well; he would do all things honourably. Ease, travel, a political
+career, wide influence, the possession of beautiful things--in a very
+short time they would all be in his grasp; for Melrose was near his end.
+Some difficulty first, but not too much; the struggle that leads to the
+prize!
+
+As he softly let himself in at the side door of the Tower, and mounted to
+his new room, his whole nature was like a fiercely sped arrow, aflight
+for its goal. Of what obstacles might lie between him and his goal he had
+ceased to take account. Compunctions had disappeared.
+
+Only--once--as he stood dreamily looking round the strange bedroom to
+which his personal possessions had been transferred, an image crossed his
+mind which was disagreeable. It was that of Nash, the shady solicitor in
+Pengarth, Melrose's factotum in many disreputable affairs, and his agent
+in the ruin of the Brands. A little reptile if ever there was one!
+Faversham had come across the creature a good deal since his appointment
+as agent; and was well aware that he had excited Nash's jealousy and
+dislike. A man to be guarded against no doubt; but what could he do?
+Faversham contemptuously dismissed the thought of him.
+
+A charming old room!--though the height and the dark tone of the oak
+panelling sucked all the light from his pair of candles. That would be
+altered as soon as the electric installation, for which Melrose had just
+signed the contract, was complete. In the centre of the wall opposite
+the window, through which a chill dawn was just beginning to penetrate,
+stood a fine _armoire_ of carved Norman work. Faversham went to look at
+it, and vaguely opened one of its drawers.
+
+There was something at the back of the drawer, a picture, apparently an
+old photograph, lying face downward. He drew it out, and looked at it.
+
+He beheld a young and rather pretty woman, with a curiously flat head,
+staring black eyes, and sharp chin. She had a child on her knee of about
+a year old, an elf with delicately proud features, and a frowning,
+passionate look.
+
+Who were they? The photograph was stained with age and damp; deep, too,
+in dust. From the woman's dress it must be a good many years old.
+
+The answer suggested itself at once. He was now inhabiting Mrs. Melrose's
+room, which, according to Mrs. Dixon, had been closed for years, from the
+date of her flight. The photograph must have been hers; the child was
+hers--and Melrose's! The likeness indeed cried out.
+
+He replaced the photograph, his mind absorbed in the excitement of its
+discovery. Where were they now--the forlorn pair? He had no doubt
+whatever that they were alive--at the old man's mercy, somewhere.
+
+He let in the dawn, and stood long in thought beside the open window. But
+in the end, he satisfied himself. He would find a way of meeting all just
+claims, when the time arrived. Why not?
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+When Delorme left Duddon, carrying with him a huge full-length of
+Victoria, which must, Victoria felt, entirely cut her off from London
+during the ensuing spring and summer--for it was to go into the Academy,
+and on no account could she bear to find herself in the same room with
+it--he left behind him a cordial invitation to the "little painting girl"
+to come and work in his Somersetshire studio--where he was feverishly
+busy with a great commission for an American town-hall for the remainder
+of August and September. Such invitations were extraordinarily coveted;
+and Lydia, "advanced" as she was, should have been jubilant. She accepted
+for her art's sake; but no one could have called her jubilant.
+
+Mrs. Penfold, who for some weeks had been in a state of nervous and
+rather irritable mystification with regard to Lydia, noticed the fact at
+once. She consulted Susy.
+
+"I can't make her out!" said the mother plaintively. "Oh, Susy, do you
+know what's been going on? Lydia has been at Duddon at least six times
+this last fortnight--and Lord Tatham has been here--and _nothing_
+happens. And all the time Lydia keeps telling me she's not in love with
+him, and doesn't mean to marry him. But what's _he_ doing?"
+
+Susan was looking dishevelled and highly strung. She had spent the
+afternoon in writing the fifth act of a tragedy on Belisarius; and it
+was more than a fortnight since Mr. Weston, the young vicar of Dunscale,
+had been to call. Her cheeks were sallow; her dark eyes burnt behind
+their thick lashes.
+
+"Suppose he's done it?" she said gloomily.
+
+Mrs. Penfold gave a little shriek.
+
+"Done what? What do you mean?"
+
+"He's proposed--and she's said 'No.'"
+
+"Lord Tatham! Oh, Susy!" wailed Mrs. Penfold; "you don't think that?"
+
+"Yes, I do," said Susan, with resolution. "And now she's letting him down
+gently."
+
+"And never said a word to you or me! Oh, Susy, she couldn't be so
+unkind."
+
+Mrs. Penfold's pink and white countenance, on which age had as yet laid
+so light a finger, showed the approach of tears. She and Susy were
+sitting in a leafy recess of the garden; Lydia had gone after tea to see
+old Dobbs and his daughter.
+
+"That's all this _friendship_ business, she's so full of," said Susy. "If
+she'd accepted him, she'd have told us, of course. Now he's plucked as a
+lover, and readmitted as a friend. And one doesn't betray a friend's
+secrets--even to one's relations. There it is."
+
+"I never heard such nonsense," cried Mrs. Penfold. "I used to try that
+kind of thing--making friends with young men. It was no use at all. They
+always proposed."
+
+Susan's state of tension--caused by the fact that her Fifth Act had been
+a veritable shambles--broke up in laughter. She couldn't help kissing her
+mother.
+
+"You're priceless, darling, you really are. I wouldn't say anything to
+her about it, if I were you," she added, more seriously. "I shall attack
+her, of course, some day."
+
+"But she still goes on seeing him," said Mrs. Penfold, pursuing her own
+bewildered thoughts.
+
+"That's her theory. She sees him--they write to each other--they probably
+call each other 'Lydia' and 'Harry.'"
+
+"Susy!"
+
+"Why not? Christian names are very common nowadays."
+
+"In my youth if any girl called a young man by his Christian name, it
+meant she was engaged to him," said Mrs. Penfold with energy, her look
+clearing. "And if they do call each other 'Lydia' and 'Harry' you may say
+what you like, Susy, but she will be engaged to him some day--if not now,
+in the winter, or some time."
+
+"Well, you may be right. Anyway, don't talk to her, mother. Leave her
+alone!"
+
+Mrs. Penfold sighed deeply.
+
+"Just think, Susy, what it would be like"--she dropped her
+voice--"'_Countess_ Tatham!'--can't you see her going to the
+drawing-room--with her feathers and her tiara? Wouldn't she be
+lovely--wouldn't she have the world at her feet? Think what your
+father would have said."
+
+"I don't believe those things ever enter Lydia's mind!"
+
+Mrs. Penfold slowly shook her head.
+
+"It isn't human," she said plaintively, "it really isn't." And in a
+mournful silence she returned to her embroidery.
+
+Susan invaded her sister's bedroom late that night, and found Lydia
+before her looking-glass enveloped in shimmering clouds of hair. The
+younger sister sat down on the edge of the bed with her arms folded.
+
+"Why are you so slack about this Delorme plan, Lydia? I don't believe you
+want to go."
+
+Lydia turned with a start.
+
+"But of course I want to go! It's the greatest chance. I shall learn a
+heap of things."
+
+Susan nodded.
+
+"All the same you don't seem a bit keen."
+
+Lydia fidgeted.
+
+"Well, you see, I admire Mr. Delorme's work as much as ever. But--"
+
+"You don't like Mr. Delorme? The greatest egotist I ever saw," said the
+uncompromising Susan, who, as a dramatist, prided herself on a knowledge
+of character.
+
+"Ah, but a great, great painter!" cried Lydia. "Don't dissuade me, Susan.
+Professionally--I must do it!"
+
+"It's not because Mr. Delorme is an egotist, that you don't want to go
+away," said Susan, quietly. "It's for quite a different reason."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"It's because--no, I don't mind if I do make you angry!--it's because
+you're so desperately interested in Mr. Faversham."
+
+"Really, Susan!" The cloud of hair was thrown back, and Lydia's face
+emerged, the clear, indignant eyes shining in the candlelight.
+
+"Oh, I don't mean that you're in love with him--wish you were! But you're
+roping him in--just like Lord Tatham. And as he's the latest, he's the
+most--well, exciting!"
+
+Susan with her chin in her hands, and her dusky countenance very much
+alive, seemed to be playing her sister with cautious mockery--feeling her
+way.
+
+"Dear Susy--I don't know why you're so unkind--and unjust," said Lydia,
+after a moment, in the tone of one wounded.
+
+"How am I unkind? You're the practical one of us three. You run us and
+take care of us. We know we're stupids compared to you. But really mamma
+and I stand aghast at the way in which you manage your love affairs!"
+
+"My love affairs!" cried Lydia, "but I haven't got any!"
+
+"Do you mean to say that Lord Tatham is not in love with you?" said Susan
+severely--"that he wouldn't marry you to-morrow if you'd let him?"
+
+Lydia flushed, but her look was neither resentful nor repentant.
+
+"Why should we put it in that way?" she said, ardently. "Isn't it
+possible to look at men in some other light than as possible husbands?
+Haven't they got hearts and minds--don't they think and feel--just like
+us?"
+
+"Oh, no, not like us," said Susan hastily--"never."
+
+Lydia smiled.
+
+"Well, enough like us, anyway. Do you ever think, Susy!" she seized her
+sister's wrist and looked her in the eyes--"that there are a million more
+women than men in this country? It is evident we can't all be married.
+Well, then, I withdraw from the competition! It's demoralizing to women;
+and it's worse for men. But I don't intend to confine myself to women
+friends."
+
+"They bore you," said Susy sharply; "confess it at once!"
+
+"How unkind of you!" Lydia's protest was almost tearful. "You know I have
+at least four"--she recalled their names--"who love me, and I them. But
+neither men nor women should live in a world apart. They complete each
+other."
+
+"Yes--in marriage," said Susan.
+
+"No!--in a thousand other ways--we hardly dream of yet. Not marriage
+only--but comradeship--help--in all the great--impersonal--delightful
+things!"
+
+"You look like a prophetess," said Susan, appraising her sister's kindled
+beauty, with an artistic eye; "but I should like to know what Lady Tatham
+has to say!"
+
+Lydia was silent, her lip quivering a little.
+
+"And I warn you," Susan continued, greatly daring, "that Faversham won't
+let you do what you like with him!"
+
+Lydia rose slowly, gathered up her golden veil into one big knot without
+speaking, and went on with her preparations for bed.
+
+Susy too uncoiled her small figure and stood up.
+
+"I've told mamma not to bother you," she said
+abruptly.
+
+Lydia threw an arm round her tormentor.
+
+"Dear Sue, I don't want to scold, but if you only knew how you spoil
+things!"
+
+Susy's eyes twinkled. She let Lydia kiss her, and then walking very
+slowly to the door, so as not to have an appearance of being put to
+flight, she disappeared.
+
+Lydia was left to think--and think--her eyes on the ground. Never had
+life run so warmly and richly; she was amply conscious of it. And what,
+pray, in spite of Susy's teasing, had love to say to it? Passion was
+ruled out--she held the senses in leash, submissive. Harry Tatham,
+indeed, was now writing to her every day; and she to him, less often.
+Faversham, too, was writing to her, coming to consult her; and all that a
+woman's sympathy, all that mind and spirit could do to help him in his
+heavy and solitary task she would do. Toward Tatham she felt with a
+tender sisterliness; anxious often; yet confident in herself, and in the
+issue. In Faversham's case, it was rather a keen, a romantic curiosity,
+to see how a man would quit himself in a great ordeal suddenly thrust
+upon him; and a girlish pride that he should turn to her for help.
+
+His first note to her lay there--inside her sketch book. It had reached
+her the morning after his interview with Mr. Melrose.
+
+"I didn't find Mr. Melrose in a yielding mood last night. I beg of you
+don't expect too much. Please, please be patient, and remember that if I
+can do as yet but little, I honestly believe nobody else could do
+anything. We must wait and watch--here a step, and there a step. But I
+think I may ask you to trust me; and, if you can, suggest to others to do
+the same. How much your sympathy helps me I cannot express."
+
+Of course she would be patient. But she was triumphantly certain of
+him--and his power. What Susy said to her unwillingness to go south was
+partly true. She would have liked to stay and watch the progress of
+things on the Melrose estates; to be at hand if Mr. Faversham wanted her.
+She thought of Mainstairs--that dying girl--the sickly children--the
+helpless old people. Indignant pity gripped her. That surely would be the
+first--the very first step; a mere question of weeks--or days. It was so
+simple, so obvious! Mr. Melrose would be _shamed_ into action! Mr.
+Faversham could not fail there.
+
+But she must go. She had her profession; and she must earn money.
+
+Also--the admission caused her discomfort--the sooner she went, the
+sooner would it be possible for Lady Tatham to induce her son to migrate
+to the Scotch moor where, as a rule, she and he were always to be found
+settled by the first days of August. It was evident that she was anxious
+to be gone. Lydia confessed it, sorely, to herself. It seemed to her that
+she had been spending some weeks in trying hard to make friends with Lady
+Tatham; and she had not succeeded.
+
+"Why won't she talk to me!" she thought; "and I daren't--to her. It would
+be so easy to understand each other!"
+
+Three days later, Green Cottage was in the occupation of a Manchester
+solicitor, who was paying a rent for it, which put Mrs. Penfold in
+high spirits; especially when coupled with the astonishing fact that
+Lydia had sold all her three drawings which had been sent to a London
+exhibition--also, apparently, to a solicitor. Mrs. Penfold expressed her
+surprise to her daughter that the practice of the law should lead both to
+a love of scenery and the patronage of the arts; she had been brought up
+to think of it as a deadening profession.
+
+Lydia had gone south; Mrs. Penfold and Susy were paying visits to
+relations; and Duddon was closed till the end of September. It was known
+that Mr. Melrose had gone off on one of his curio-hunting tours; and the
+new agent ruled. A whole countryside, or what was left of it in August,
+settled down to watch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+High on the moors of Ross-shire, Lady Tatham too watched. The lodge
+filled up with guests, and one charming girl succeeded another, by
+Victoria's careful contrivance. None of your painted and powdered
+campaigners with minds torn between the desire to "best" a rival, and
+the terror of their dressmakers' bills; but the freshest, sweetest,
+best-bred young women she could discover among the daughters of her
+friends. Tatham was delightful with them all, patiently played golf with
+them, taught them to fish, and tramped with them over the moors. And when
+they said good-bye, and the motor took them to the station, Victoria
+believed that he remembered them just about as much, or as little, as the
+"bag" of the last shoot.
+
+Her own feeling was curiously mixed. There were many days when she would
+have liked to beat Lydia Penfold, and at all times her pride lay wounded,
+bitterly wounded, at the girl's soft hands. When Harry had first confided
+in her, she had been certain that no nice girl could long resist him, if
+only she, Harry's mother, gave opportunities and held the lists. It would
+not be necessary for her to take any active steps. Mere propinquity would
+do it. Then, when Tatham stumbled prematurely into his proposal, Victoria
+might have intervened to help, but for Lydia's handling of the situation.
+She had refused the natural place offered her in Harry's life--the place
+of lover and wife. But she had claimed and was now holding a place only
+less intimate, only less important; and Victoria felt herself disarmed
+and powerless. To try and separate them was to deal a blow at her son of
+which she was incapable; and at the same time there was the gnawing
+anxiety lest their absurd "friendship" should stand in the way of her
+boy's marriage--should "queer the pitch" for the future.
+
+Meanwhile, day by day, Tatham's letters travelled south to Lydia, and
+twice a week or thereabout, letters addressed in a clear and beautiful
+handwriting arrived by an evening post from the south. And gradually
+Victoria became aware of new forces and new growths in her son. "What
+does she write to you about?" she had said to him once, with her
+half-sarcastic smile. And after a little hesitation--silently, Tatham had
+handed over to her the letter of the afternoon. "I'd like you to see it,"
+he had said simply. "She makes one think a lot."
+
+And, indeed, it was a remarkable letter, full of poetry but also full of
+fun. The humours of Delorme's studio--a play she had seen in London--a
+book she had read--the characteristics of a Somersetshire village--the
+eager pen ran on without effort, without pretence. But it was the pen of
+youth, of feeling, of romance; and it revealed the delicate heart and
+mind of a woman. There was a liberal education in it; and Victoria
+watched the process at work, sometimes with jealousy, sometimes with
+emotion. After all, might it not be a mere stage--and a useful one. She
+reserved her judgment, waiting for the time when these two should meet
+again, face to face.
+
+September was more than halfway through, when one morning Tatham tossed a
+letter to his mother across the breakfast table with the remark:
+
+"I say, mother, the new broom doesn't seem to be sweeping very well!"
+
+The letter was from Undershaw. Tatham--in whom the rural reformer was
+steadily developing--kept up a fairly regular correspondence with the
+active young doctor, on medical and sanitary matters, connected with
+his own estate and the county.
+
+"Matters are going rather oddly in this neighbourhood. I must say I can't
+make Faversham out. You remember what an excellent beginning he seemed to
+make a couple of months ago. Colonel Barton told me that he had every
+hope of him; he was evidently most anxious to purge some at least of Mr.
+Melrose's misdeeds; seemed businesslike, conciliatory, etc. Well, I
+assure you, he has done almost nothing! It is not really a question of
+giving him time. There were certain scandalous things, years old, that he
+ought to have put right _at once_--on the nail--or thrown up his post.
+The Mainstairs cottages for instance. We are in for another diphtheria
+epidemic there. The conditions are simply horrible. Melrose, as before,
+will do nothing, and defies anybody else to do anything; says he has
+given the tenants notice that he intends to pull the cottages down, and
+the people stay in them at their own peril. The local authority can do
+nothing; the people say they have nowhere to go, and cling like limpets
+to the rock. Melrose could put those sixteen cottages in order for a
+couple of thousand pounds, which would be about as much to him as
+half-a-crown to me. It is all insane pride and obstinacy--he won't be
+dictated to--and the rest. I shall be a land-nationalizer if I hear much
+more of Melrose.
+
+"Meanwhile, Faversham will soon come in for his master's hideous
+unpopularity, if he can't manage him better. He is looking white and
+harassed, and seems to avoid persons like myself who might attack him.
+But I gather that he has been trying to come round Melrose by attempting
+some reforms behind his back, and probably with his own money. Something,
+for instance, was begun at Mainstairs, while Melrose was away in Holland,
+after the fresh diphtheria cases broke out. There was an attempt made to
+get at the pollutions infecting the water supply, and repairs were begun
+on the worst cottage.
+
+"But in the middle Melrose came home, and was, I believe, immediately
+informed of what was going on by that low scoundrel Nash who used to
+be his factotum, and has shown great jealousy of Faversham since his
+appointment. What happened exactly I can't say, but from something old
+Dixon said to me the other day--I have been attending him for
+rheumatism--I imagine there was a big row between the two men. Why
+Faversham didn't throw up there and then, I can't understand. However
+there he is still, immersed they tell me in the business of the estate,
+but incessantly watched and hampered by Melrose himself, an extraordinary
+development in so short a time; and able, apparently, even if he is
+willing, which I assume--to do little or nothing to meet the worst
+complaints of the tenants. They are beginning to turn against him
+furiously.
+
+"Last week the sight of Mainstairs and the horrible suffering there got
+on my nerves. I sat down and wrote to Melrose peremptorily demanding a
+proper supply of antitoxin at once, at his expense. A post-card from him
+arrived, refusing, and bidding me apply to a Socialist government. That
+night, however, on arriving at my surgery, I found a splendid supply of
+antitoxin, labelled 'for Mainstairs,' without another word. I have reason
+to think Faversham had been in Carlisle himself that day to get it; he
+must have cleared out the place.
+
+"Next day I saw him in the village. He specially haunts a cottage where
+there is a poor girl of eighteen, paralyzed after an attack of diphtheria
+last year, and not, I think, long for this world. The new epidemic has
+now attacked her younger sister, a pretty child of eight. I doubt whether
+we shall save her. Miss Penfold has always been very kind in coming to
+visit them. She will be dreadfully sorry.
+
+"Faversham, I believe, has tried to move the whole family. But where are
+they to go? The grandfather is a shepherd on a farm near--too old for a
+new place. There isn't a vacant cottage in the whole neighbourhood--as
+you know; and scores that ought to be built.
+
+"As to the right-of-way business, Melrose's fences are all up again, his
+rascally lawyers, Nash at the head, are as busy as bees trumping up his
+case; and I can only suppose that he has been forcing Faversham to write
+the unscrupulous letters about it that have been appearing in some of the
+papers.
+
+"What makes it all rather gruesome is that there are the most persistent
+rumours that the young man has been adopted by Melrose, and will probably
+be his heir. I can't give you any proofs, but I am certain that all the
+people about the Tower believe it. If so, he will no doubt be well paid
+for his soul! But sell it he must, or go. I have no doubt he thought he
+could manage Melrose. Poor devil!
+
+"The whole thing makes me very sick--I liked him so much while he was my
+patient. And I expect you and Lady Tatham will be pretty disappointed
+too."
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+Victoria returned the letter to her son, pointing to the last sentence.
+
+"It depends on what you expected. I never took to the young man."
+
+"Why doesn't he insist--or go!" cried Tatham.
+
+"Apparently Melrose has bought him."
+
+"I say, don't let's believe that till we know!"
+
+When his mother left him, Tatham took his way to the moor, and spent
+an uncomfortable hour in rumination. Lydia had spoken of Faversham once
+or twice in her early letters from the south; but lately there had been
+no references to him at all. Was she disappointed--or too much
+interested?--too deeply involved? A vague but gnawing jealousy was
+fastening on Tatham day by day; and he had not been able to conceal it
+from his mother. Lydia was free--of course she was free! But friends have
+their right too. "If she is really going that way, I ought to know,"
+thought poor Tatham.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile Lydia herself would have been hard put to it to say whither she
+was going. But that moral and intellectual landscape which had lain so
+clear before her when she left Green Cottage was certainly beginning to
+blur; the mists were descending upon it.
+
+She spent the August and September days working feverishly hard in
+Delorme's studio, and her evenings in a pleasant society of young
+artists, of both sexes, all gathered at the feet of the great man. But
+her mind was often far away; and rational theories as to the true
+relations between men and women were neither so clear nor so supporting
+as they had been.
+
+She had now two intimate men friends; two ardent and devoted
+correspondents. Scarcely a day passed that she was not in touch with both
+of them. Her knowledge of the male temperament and male ways of looking
+at things was increasing fast. So far she had her desire. And in her
+correspondence with the two men, she had amply "played up." She had given
+herself--her thoughts, feelings, imaginations--to both; in different
+ways, and different degrees.
+
+And what was happening? Simply a natural, irresistible discrimination,
+which was like the slow inflooding of the tide through the river mouth
+it forces. Tatham's letters were all pleasure. Not a word of wooing in
+them. He had given his word, and he kept it. But the unveiling of a
+character so simple, strong, and honest, to the eyes of this girl of
+four-and-twenty, conveyed of itself a tribute that could not but rouse
+both gratitude and affection in Lydia. She did her best to reward him;
+and so far her "ideas" had worked.
+
+Faversham's letters, on the other hand, from the governing event of the
+day, had now become a pain and a distress. The exultant and exuberant
+self-confidence of the earlier correspondence, the practical dreams on
+paper which had stirred her enthusiasm and delight--they came, it seemed
+to her, to a sudden and jarring end, somewhere about the opening of
+September. The change was evidently connected with the return of Mr.
+Melrose from abroad just at that time. The letters grew rambling,
+evasive, contradictory. Doubt and bitterness began to appear in them.
+She asked for facts about his work, and they were not given her. Instead
+the figure of Melrose rose on the horizon, till he dominated the
+correspondence, a harsh and fantastic task-master, to whose will and
+conscience it was useless to appeal.
+
+When two months of this double correspondence had gone by, and in the
+absence of Lydia's usual friends and correspondents from the Pengarth
+neighbourhood, no other information from the north had arrived to
+supplement Faversham's letters, Susy, who was in the Tyrol with a friend,
+might have drawn ample "copy," from her sister's condition, had she
+witnessed it. Lydia was most clearly unhappy. She was desperately
+interested, and full of pity; yet apparently powerless to help. There
+was a tug at her heart, a grip on her thoughts, which increased
+perpetually. Faversham wrote to her often like a guilty man; why, she
+could not imagine. The appeal of his letters to her had begun to shake
+her nerves, to haunt her nights. She longed for the October day when
+Green Cottage would be free from its tenants, and she once more on the
+spot.
+
+With the second week of October, Lady Tatham returned to Duddon. Tatham
+would have been with her, but that he was detained, grumbling, by a
+political demonstration at Newcastle. Never had he felt political
+speech-making so tedious. But for a foolish promise to talk drivel to a
+crowd of people who knew even less about the subject than he, he might
+have been spending the evening with Lydia. For the strangers in Green
+Cottage had departed, and Lydia was again within his reach.
+
+The return to Duddon after an absence had never lost its freshness for
+Victoria. Woman of fifty as she was, she was still a bundle of passions,
+in the intellectual and poetic sense. The sight of her own fells and
+streams, the sound of the Cumbrian "aa's," and "oo's," the scurrying of
+the sheep among the fern, the breath of the wind in the Glendarra woods,
+the scent of moss and heather--these things rilled her with just the same
+thrills and gushes of delight as in her youth. Such thrills and gushes
+were for her own use only; she never offered them for inspection by other
+people.
+
+She had no sooner looked at her letters, and chatted with her
+housekeeper, on the day of her return, than clothed in her oldest gown
+and thickest shoes, she went out wandering by herself through the October
+dusk; ravished by the colour in which autumn had been wrapping the
+Cumbrian earth since she had beheld it last; the purples and golds and
+amethysts, the touches of emerald green, the fringes of blue and purple
+mist; by the familiar music of the streams, which is not as the Scotch
+music; and the scents of the hills, which are not as the scents of the
+Highlands. Yet all the time she was thinking of Harry and Lydia Penfold;
+trying to plan the winter, and what she was to do.
+
+It was dark, with a rising moon when she got back to Duddon. The butler,
+an old servant, was watching for her in the hall. She noticed disturbance
+in his manner.
+
+"There are two ladies, my lady, in the drawing-room."
+
+"Two ladies!--Hurst!" The tone was reproachful. Victoria did not always
+suffer her neighbours gladly, and Hurst knew her ways. The first evening
+at home was sacred.
+
+"I could not help it, my lady. I told them you were out, and might not be
+in till dark. They said they must see you--they had come from Italy--and
+it was most important."
+
+"From Italy!" repeated Victoria, wondering--"who on earth--Did they give
+their name?"
+
+"No, my lady, they said you'd know them quite well."
+
+Victoria hurried on to the drawing-room. Two figures rose as she entered
+the room, which was only lit by the firelight; and then stood motionless.
+
+Victoria advanced bewildered.
+
+"Will you kindly tell me your names?"
+
+"Don't you remember me, Lady Tatham?" said a low, excited voice.
+
+Victoria turned on an electric switch close to her hand, and the room was
+suddenly in a blaze of light. She looked in scrutinizing astonishment at
+the figure in dingy black, standing before her, and at a girl, looking
+about sixteen--deathly pale--who seemed to be leaning on a chair in the
+background.
+
+That strange, triangular face, with the sharp chin, and the abnormal
+eyes--where, in what dim past, had she seen it before? For some seconds
+memory wrestled. Then, old and new came together; and she recognized her
+visitor.
+
+"Mrs. Melrose!" she said, in incredulous amazement. The woman in black
+came nearer, and spoke brokenly--the bitter emotion beneath gradually
+forcing its way.
+
+"I am in great distress--I don't know what to do. My daughter and I are
+starving--and I remembered you'd come to see me--that once--at Threlfall.
+I knew all about you. I've asked English people often. I thought perhaps
+you'd help me--you'd tell me how to make my husband do something for
+me--for me--and for his daughter! Look at her"--Netta paused and
+pointed--"she's ill--she's dropping. We had to hurry through from Lucca.
+We couldn't afford to stop on the way. We sold everything we had; some
+people collected a hundred francs for us; and we just managed to buy our
+tickets. Felicia didn't want to come, but I made her. I couldn't see her
+die before my eyes. We've starved for months. We've parted with
+everything, and I've written to Mr. Melrose again and again. He's never
+answered--till a few weeks ago, and he said if we troubled him again
+he'd stop the money. He's a bad, bad man."
+
+Shaking, her teeth chattering, her hands clenched at her side, the
+forlorn creature stared at Victoria. She was not old, but she was a
+wreck; a withered, emaciated wreck of the woman Victoria had once seen
+twenty years before.
+
+Victoria, laying a gentle hand upon her, drew an armchair forward.
+
+"Sit down, please, and rest. You shall have food directly. I will have
+rooms got ready. And this is your daughter?"
+
+She went up to the girl who stood shivering like her mother, and
+speechless. But her proud black eyes met Victoria's with a passion in
+them that seemed to resent a touch, a look. "She ought to be lovely!"
+thought Victoria; "she is--if one could feed and dress her."
+
+"You poor child! Come and lie down."
+
+She took hold of the girl and guided her to a sofa. When they reached it,
+the little creature fell half fainting upon it. But she controlled
+herself by an astonishing effort, thanked Victoria in Italian, and
+curling herself up in a corner she closed her eyes. The white profile on
+the dark sofa cushion was of a most delicate perfection, and as Victoria
+helped to remove her hat she saw a small dark head covered with short
+curls like a boy's.
+
+Netta Melrose looked round the beautiful room, its pictures, its deep
+sofas and chairs, its bright fire, and then at the figures of Victoria
+and the housekeeper in the distance. Victoria was giving her orders. The
+tears were on Netta's cheeks. Yet she had the vague, ineffable feeling of
+one just drawn from the waves. She had done right. She had saved herself
+and Felicia.
+
+Food was brought, and wine. They were coaxed to eat, warmed and
+comforted. Then Victoria took them up through the broad, scented passages
+of the beautiful house to rooms that had been got ready for them.
+
+"Don't talk any more to-night. You shall tell me everything to-morrow. My
+maid will help you. I will come back presently to see you have everything
+you want."
+
+Felicia, frowning, wished to unpack their small hand-bag, with its shabby
+contents, for herself. But she was too feeble, and the maid, in spite of
+what seemed to the two forlorn ones her fine clothes and fine ways, was
+kind and tactful. Victoria's wardrobe was soon laid under contribution;
+beautiful linen, and soft silken things she possessed but seldom wore,
+were brought out for her destitute guests.
+
+Victoria came in to say good-night. Netta looked at the stately woman,
+the hair just beginning to be gray, the strong face with its story of
+fastidious thought, of refined and sheltered living.
+
+"You're awfully good to us. It's twenty years!--" Her voice failed her.
+
+"Twenty years--yes, indeed! since I drove over to see you that time! Your
+daughter was a little toddling thing."
+
+"We've had such a life--these last few years--oh, such an awful
+life! My old father's still alive--but would be better if he were dead.
+My mother depended on us entirely--she's dead. But I'll explain
+everything--everything."
+
+It was clear, however, that till sleep had knit up the ravelled nerves of
+the poor lady, no coherent conversation was possible. Victoria hastened
+to depart.
+
+"To-morrow you shall tell me all about yourself. My son will be home
+to-morrow. We will consult him and see what can be done."
+
+Mother and daughter were left alone. Felicia rose feebly to go to her own
+room, which adjoined her mother's. She was wearing a dressing-gown of
+embroidered silk--pale blue, and shimmering--which Victoria's maid had
+wrapped her in, after the child's travelling clothes, thread-bare and
+mud-stained, had been taken off. The girl's tiny neck and wrists emerged
+from it, her little head, and her face from which weariness and distress
+had robbed all natural bloom. What she was wearing, or how she looked,
+she did not know and did not care. But her mother, in whom dress had been
+for years a passion never to be indulged, was suddenly--though all her
+exhaustion--enchanted with her daughter's appearance.
+
+"Oh, Felicia, you look so nice!"
+
+She took up the silk of the dressing-gown and passed it through her
+fingers covetously; then her tired eyes ran over the room, the white bed
+standing ready, the dressing-table with its silver ornaments and flowers,
+the chintz-covered sofas and chairs.
+
+"Why shouldn't we be rich too?" she said angrily. "Your father is richer
+than the Tathams. It's a wicked, wicked shame!"
+
+Felicia put her hand to her head.
+
+"Oh, do let me go to bed," she said in Italian.
+
+Netta put her arm round her, supporting her. Presently they passed a
+portrait on the wall, an enlarged photograph of a boy in cricketing
+dress.
+
+Underneath it was written:
+
+"_Harry. Eton Eleven. July 189---_."
+
+Felicia for the first time showed a gleam of interest. She stopped to
+look at the picture.
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+"It must be her son, Lord Tatham."
+
+The girl's sunken eyes seemed to drink in the pleasant image of the
+English boy.
+
+"Shall we see him?"
+
+"Of course. To-morrow. Now come to bed!"
+
+Felicia's head was no sooner on the pillow than she plunged into sleep.
+Netta, on the other hand, was for a long time sleepless. The luxury of
+the bed and the room was inexpressibly delightful and reviving to her.
+Recollections of a small bare house in the Apuan Alps above Lucca, and of
+all that she and Felicia had endured there, ran through her mind, mingled
+with visions of Threlfall as she had known it of old, its choked
+passages--the locked room from which she had stolen the Hermes--the
+great table in Edmund's room with its litter of bric-à-brac--Edmund
+himself....
+
+She trembled; alternately desperate, and full of fears. The thought that
+Melrose was only a few miles from her--that she was going to face and
+brave him after all these years--turned her cold with terror. And yet
+misery had made her reckless.
+
+"He _shall_ provide for us!" She gathered up her weak soul into this
+supreme resolve. How wise she had been to follow the sudden impulse which
+had bade her appeal to the Tathams! Were they not her kinsfolk by
+marriage?
+
+They knew what Edmund was! They were kind and powerful. They would
+protect her, and take up her cause. Edmund was now an old man. If he
+died, who else had a right to his money but she and Felicia? Oh! Lady
+Tatham would help them; she'd see them righted! Cradled in that hope,
+Netta Melrose at last fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+Tatham arrived at Duddon by the earliest possible train on the following
+morning.
+
+On crossing the hall he perceived in the distance a very slight thin
+girl, dressed in black, coming out of his mother's sitting-room. When she
+saw him she turned hurriedly to the stairs and ran up, only pausing once
+on the first landing to flash upon him a singularly white face, lit by
+singularly black eyes. Then she disappeared.
+
+"Who is that lady?" he asked of Hurst in astonishment.
+
+"Her ladyship expects you, my lord," replied Hurst evasively, throwing
+open the door of the morning-room. Victoria was disclosed; pacing up and
+down, her hands in the pockets of her tweed jacket. Tatham saw at once
+that something had happened.
+
+She put her hands on his shoulders, kissed him, and delivered her news.
+She did so with a peculiar and secret zest. To watch how he took the
+fresh experiences of life, and to be exultantly proud and sure of him the
+while, was all part of her adoration of him.
+
+"Melrose's wife and daughter! Great Scot! So they're not dead?" Tatham
+stood amazed.
+
+"He seems to have done his best to kill them. They're starved--and
+destitute. But here they are."
+
+"And why in the name of fortune do they come to us?"
+
+"We are cousins, my dear--and I saw her twenty years ago. It isn't a bad
+move. Indeed the foolish woman might have come before."
+
+"But what on earth can we do for them?"
+
+The young man sat down bewildered, while his mother told the story,
+piecing it together from the rambling though copious narrative, which she
+had gathered that morning from Netta in her bed, where she had been
+forced to remain, at least for breakfast.
+
+After her flight, Melrose's fugitive wife had settled down with her child
+in Florence, under the wing of her own family. But they were a shiftless,
+importunate crew, and, in the course of years, every one of them came
+more or less visibly to grief. Her sisters married men of the same
+dubious world as themselves, and were always in difficulties. Netta's
+eldest brother got into trouble with the bank where he was employed, and
+another brother, as a deserter from the army, had to make his escape to
+South America. The father, Robert Smeath, had found it more and more
+difficult to earn anything on which to keep his belongings, and as a
+picture dealer seemed to have fallen into bad odour with the Italian
+authorities, for reasons of which Netta could give no account.
+
+"And how much do you think Mr. Melrose allowed his wife and child?" asked
+Victoria, her eyes sparkling. "_Eighty pounds a year_!--on which in the
+end the whole family seem to have lived. Finally, the mother died, and
+Mr. Smeath got into some scrape or other--I naturally avoided the
+particulars--which involved pledging half Mrs. Melrose's allowance for
+five years. And on the rest--forty pounds--she and her daughter, and her
+old father have been trying to live for the last two. You never heard
+such a story! They found a small half-ruined villa in the mountains north
+of Pisa, and there they somehow existed. They couldn't afford nursing or
+doctoring for the old father; they were half starved; the mother and
+daughter have both actually worked in the vineyards; and, of course, they
+had no servant. You should see the poor woman's hands! Then she began to
+write to her husband. No reply--for eighteen months, no reply--till just
+lately, an intimation from the Florentine bank, that if any more similar
+letters were addressed to Mr. Melrose the allowance would be stopped."
+
+"Old fiend!" cried Tatham, "now we'll get at him!"
+
+Victoria went on to describe how, at last, an English family who had
+taken one of the old villas on the Luccan Alps for the summer had come
+across the forlorn trio. They were scandalized by the story, and they
+had impressed on Mrs. Melrose that she and her daughter had a legal
+right to suitable maintenance from her husband. Urged by them--and
+starvation--Netta had at last plucked up courage. The old father was left
+in the charge of a _contadino_ family, a small loan was raised for them
+to which the English visitors contributed, and the mother and daughter
+started for home.
+
+"But without us, or some one else to help her," said Victoria, "she would
+never--never!--get through the business. Her terror of Melrose is a
+perfect disease. She shakes if you mention his name. That was what made
+her think of me--and that visit I paid her. Poor thing! she was rather
+pretty then. But it was plain enough what their relations were. Well,
+now, Harry, it's for you to say. But my blood's up! I suggest we see this
+thing through!"
+
+The door slowly opened as she spoke, and two small figures came in
+silently, closing it behind them. There they stood, a story in
+themselves; Netta, with the bearing and the dress of a shabby little
+housekeeper; the girl ghastly thin, her shoulder-blades cutting her
+flimsy dress, blue shadows in all the hollows of the face, but with
+extraordinary pride of bearing, and extraordinary possibilities of beauty
+in the modelling of her delicate features, and splendid melancholy eyes.
+Tatham could not help staring at her. She was indeed the disinherited
+princess.
+
+Then he walked up to them, and shook hands with boyish heartiness.
+
+"I say, you do look pumped out! But don't you worry too much. My mother
+and I'll see what can be done. We'll set the lawyers on, if there's
+nothing else. It's a beastly shame, anyway! But now, you take it easy.
+We'll look after you. Sit down, won't you? Mother's chairs are the most
+comfortable in the house!"
+
+He installed them; and then at once took the serious, business air,
+which still gave his mother a pleasure which was half amusement. Felicia,
+sitting in a corner behind her mother's sofa, could not take her eyes
+from him. The tall, fair English youth, six foot two, and splendidly
+developed, the pink of health, modesty, and kindly courtesy, was
+different from all other beings that had ever swum into her view. She
+watched him close and furtively--his features, his dress, his gestures;
+comparing the living man in her mind with the photograph upstairs, and so
+absorbed in her study of him that she scarcely heard a word of the
+triangular discussion going on between her mother, Tatham, and Victoria.
+The whole time she was drinking in impressions, as of a god-like
+creature, all beneficence.
+
+After an hour's cross-examination of the poor, shrinking Netta, Tatham's
+blood too was up; he was eager for the fray. To attack Melrose was a joy;
+made none the less keen by the reflection that to help these two helpless
+ones was a duty. Lydia's approval, Lydia's sympathy were certain; he
+kindled the more.
+
+"All right!" he said, rising. "Now I think we are agreed on the first
+step. Faversham is our man. I must see Faversham at once, and set him to
+work! If I find him, I will report the result to you, Mrs. Melrose--so
+far--by luncheon time."
+
+He departed, to ring up the Threlfall office in Pengarth and inquire
+whether Faversham could be seen there. Victoria left the room with him.
+
+"Have you forgotten these rumours of which Undershaw wrote you?"
+
+"What, as to Faversham? No, I have not forgotten them. But I shan't take
+any notice of them. He can't accept anything for himself till these two
+have got their due! What right has he to Melrose's property at all?"
+said the young man indignantly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The mother and son had scarcely left the room when Netta turned to her
+daughter with trembling lips.
+
+"I haven't"--half whispering--"told them anything about the Hermes!"
+
+"It was no theft!" said Felicia passionately. "I would tell anybody!"
+
+Netta was silent, her face working with unspoken fear. Suddenly, Felicia
+said in her foreign English, pronounced with a slight effort, and very
+precisely:
+
+"That is a very beautiful young man!"
+
+Netta was startled.
+
+"Lord Tatham? Not at all, Felicia. He is very nice, but I do not even
+call him good-looking."
+
+"He is a very beautiful young man," repeated Felicia with emphasis, "and
+I am going to marry him!"
+
+"Felicia! for heaven's sake--do not show your mad ways here!" cried
+Netta, white with new alarm.
+
+For the first time for many, many days Felicia smiled. She got up and
+went to a glass that hung on the wall. Taking one of the sidecombs from
+her curls, she began to pull them out, winding them round her tiny
+fingers, making more of them, and patting them back into place, till her
+head was one silky mass of ripples. Then she looked at herself.
+
+"I must have a new dress at once!" she said peremptorily.
+
+"I don't know where you'll get it!" cried Netta--"you foolish child!"
+
+"The young man will give it me." And still before the glass, she gave a
+little bound, like a kitten. Then she ran back to her mother, took
+Netta's face in her hands, dashed a kiss at it, and subsided, weak and
+gasping, on to a sofa. When Victoria reappeared Felicia was motionless
+as before, but there was a first streak of colour in her thin, cheeks,
+and a queer brightness in her eyes.
+
+Faversham was sitting in his Pengarth office, turning over the morning's
+post. He had just ridden in from the Tower. Before him lay a telephone
+message taken down for him by his clerk, before his arrival:
+
+"Lord Tatham will be at Mr. Faversham's office by 12:30. He wishes to
+speak to Mr. Faversham on important business."
+
+Something, no doubt, to do with the right-of-way proceedings to which
+Tatham was a party; or, possibly, with a County Council notice which had
+roused Melrose to fury, to the effect that some Threlfall land would be
+taken compulsorily for allotments under a recent Act, if the land were
+not provided by arrangement.
+
+"Perfectly reasonable! And every complaint that Tatham will make--if he
+has come to complain--will be perfectly reasonable. And I shall have to
+tell him to go to the devil!"
+
+He sat pen in hand, staring at the paper on his desk, his mind divided
+between a bitter disgust with his day's work and the consciousness of a
+deep central resolve, which that disgust did not affect, and would not be
+allowed to affect. He was looking harassed, pale, and perceptibly older.
+No doubt his general health had not yet fully recovered from his
+accident. But those who disliked in him a certain natural haughtiness,
+said that he had now more "side on" than ever.
+
+A bell below warned him of Tatham's arrival. He hurriedly took out papers
+from various drawers, and arranged them on the office table. They related
+to the matter on which he thought Tatham might wish to confer with him.
+
+His door opened.
+
+"Hullo, Faversham! Hope you're quite strong," said the incomer.
+
+"All right, thank you." The two men shook hands. "You've been doing
+Scotland as usual?"
+
+"Two months of it. Beastly few birds. Not at all sorry to come back.
+Well, now--I've got something very surprising to talk to you about. I
+say"--he looked round him--"we shan't be disturbed?"
+
+Faversham rose, gave a telephone order and resumed his seat.
+
+"Who do you think we've got staying at Duddon?"
+
+"I haven't an idea. Have a cigarette?"
+
+"Thanks. Has Melrose ever talked to you about his wife and daughter?"
+
+Faversham stared, took a whiff at his cigarette, and put it down.
+
+"Are you her to tell me anything about them?"
+
+"They are staying at Duddon at this moment," said Tatham, watching his
+effect; "arrived last night--penniless and starving."
+
+Faversham flushed.
+
+"You're sure they are the right people?" he said after a pause.
+
+Tatham laughed.
+
+"My mother remembers Mrs. Melrose twenty years ago; and the daughter, if
+it weren't that she's little more than skin and bone, would be the image
+of Melrose--on a tiny scale. Now, look here! this is their story."
+
+The young man settled down to it, telling it just as it had been told to
+him, until toward the end a tolerably hot indignation forced its way, and
+he used some strong language with regard to Melrose, under which
+Faversham sat silent.
+
+"I've no doubt he's told you the same lies he's told everybody else!"
+exclaimed Tatham, after waiting a little for comments that were slow in
+coming.
+
+"I was quite aware they were alive," said Faversham, slowly.
+
+"You were, by Jove!"
+
+"And I have already appealed to Melrose to behave reasonably toward
+them."
+
+"Reasonably! Good heavens!" Tatham had flushed in his turn. "A man is
+bound to behave rather more than 'reasonably'--toward his daughter,
+anyway--I don't care what the mother had done. I tell you the girl's a
+real beauty, or will be, when she's properly fed and dressed. She's a
+girl anybody might be proud of. And there he's been wallowing in wealth,
+while his child has been starving. And threatening to stop their wretched
+allowance! Well, you know as well as I, what public opinion will be, if
+these facts get about. Public opinion is pretty strong already. But, by
+George, when this is added to the rest! Can't you persuade him to behave
+himself before it all gets into the papers? It will get into them of
+course. There the poor things are, and we mean to stand by them. There
+must be a proper provision for the wife--that the courts can get out of
+him. And as to the girl--why, she is his heiress!--and ought to be
+acknowledged as such."
+
+Tatham turned suddenly, as he spoke, and fixed a pair of very straight
+blue eyes on his companion.
+
+"Mr. Melrose is not bound to make her his heir," said Faversham quietly.
+
+"Not bound! I daresay. But who else is there? He's not very likely to
+leave it to any of _us_," said Tatham with a grin. "And he's not the kind
+of gentleman to be endowing missions. Who is there?" he repeated.
+
+"Mr. Melrose will please himself," said Faversham, coldly. "Of that we
+may be sure. Now then--what is it exactly that these ladies have come to
+ask?" he continued, in a sharp businesslike tone. "You are aware of
+course that Mrs. Melrose left her husband of her own free will--without
+any provocation?"
+
+"You won't get a judge to believe that very easily--in the case of
+Melrose! Anyway she's done nothing criminal. And she's willing, poor
+wretch! to go back to him. But if not, she asks for a maintenance
+allowance, suitable to his wealth and position, and that the daughter
+should be provided for. _You_ can't surely refuse to support us so far?"
+
+Tatham had insensibly stiffened in his chair. His manner which at first,
+though not exactly cordial, had still been that of the college friend and
+contemporary, had unconsciously, in the course of the conversation,
+assumed a certain tone of authority, as though there spoke through him
+the force of a settled and traditional society, of which he knew himself
+to be one of the natural chiefs.
+
+To Faversham, full of a secret bitterness, this second manner of Tatham's
+was merely arrogance. His own pride rose against it, and what he felt it
+implied. Not a sign of that confidence in the new agent which had been so
+freely expressed at Duddon a couple of months before! His detractors had
+no doubt been at work with this jolly, stupid fellow, whom everybody
+liked. He would have to fight for himself. Well, he would fight!
+
+"I shall certainly support any just claim," he said, as Tatham rose, "but
+I warn you that Mr. Melrose is ill--he is very irritable--and Mrs.
+Melrose had better not attempt to spring any surprises on him. If she
+will write me a letter, I will see that it gets to Mr. Melrose, and I
+will do my best for her."
+
+"No one could ask you to do any more," said Tatham heartily, repenting
+himself a little. "They will be with us for the present. Mrs. Melrose
+shall write you a full statement and you will reply to Duddon?"
+
+"By all means."
+
+"There are a good many other things," said Tatham--uncertainly--as
+he lingered, hat in hand--"that you and I might discuss--Mainstairs, for
+instance! I ought to tell you that my mother has just sent two nurses
+there. The condition of things is simply appalling."
+
+Faversham straightened his tall figure.
+
+"Mainstairs is a deadlock. Mr. Melrose won't repair the cottages. He
+intends to pull them down. He has given the people notice, and he is
+receiving no rent. They won't go. I suppose the next step will be to
+apply for an ejectment order. Meanwhile the people stay at their own
+peril. There you have the whole thing."
+
+"I hear the children are dying like flies."
+
+"I can do nothing," said Faversham.
+
+Again a shock of antagonism passed through the two men. "Yes, you can!"
+thought Tatham; "you can resign your fat post, and your expectations, and
+put the screw on the old man, that's what you could do." Aloud he said:
+
+"A couple of thousand pounds, according to Undershaw, would do the job.
+If you succeed in forcing them out, where are they to go?"
+
+"That's not our affair."
+
+Tatham caught up his hat and stick, and abruptly departed; reflecting
+indeed when he reached the street, that he had not been the most
+diplomatic of ambassadors on Mrs. Melrose's behalf.
+
+Faversham, after some ten minutes of motionless reflection, heavily
+returned to his papers, ordering his horse to be ready in half an hour.
+He forced himself to write some ordinary business letters, and to eat
+some lunch, and immediately after he started on horseback to find his way
+through the October lanes to the village of Mainstairs.
+
+A man more harassed, and yet more resolved, it would have been difficult
+to find. For six weeks now he had been wading deeper and deeper into a
+moral quagmire from which he saw no issue at all--except indeed by the
+death of Edmund Melrose! That event would solve all difficulties.
+
+For some time now he had been convinced, not only that the mother and
+daughter were living, but that there had been some recent communication
+between them and Melrose. Various trifling incidents and cryptic sayings
+of the old man, not now so much on his guard as formerly, had led
+Faversham to this conclusion. He realized that he himself had been
+haunted of late by the constant expectation that they might turn up.
+
+Well, now they had turned up. Was he at once to make way for them, as
+Tatham clearly took for granted?--to advise Melrose to tear up his newly
+made will, and gracefully surrender his expectations as Melrose's heir to
+this girl of twenty-one? By no means!
+
+What is the claim of birth in such a case, if you come to that? Look at
+it straight in the face. A child is born to a certain father; is then
+torn from that father against his will, and brought up for twenty years
+out of his reach. What claim has that child, when mature, upon the
+father--beyond, of course, a claim for reasonable provision--unless
+he chooses to acknowledge a further obligation? None whatever. The father
+has lived his life, and accumulated his fortune, without the child's
+help, without the child's affection or tendance. His possessions are
+morally and legally his own, to deal with as he pleases.
+
+In the course of life, other human beings become connected with him,
+attached to him, and he to them. Natural claims must be considered and
+decently satisfied--agreed! But for the disposal of a man's
+superfluities, of such a fortune as Melrose's, there is no law--there
+ought to be no law; and the English character, as distinct from the
+French, has decided that there shall be no law. "If his liking, or his
+caprice even," thought Faversham passionately, "chooses to make me his
+heir, he has every right to give, and I to accept. I am a stranger to
+him; so, in all but the physical sense, is his daughter. But I am not a
+stranger to English life. My upbringing and experience--even such as they
+are--are better qualifications than hers. What can a girl of twenty,
+partly Italian, brought up away from England, hardly speaking her
+father's tongue, do for this English estate, compared to what I could
+do--with a free hand, and a million to draw on? Whom do I wrong by
+accepting what a miraculous chance has brought me--by standing by it--by
+fighting for it? No one--justly considered. And I will fight for
+it--though a hundred Tathams call me adventurer!"
+
+So much for the root determination of the man; the result of weeks of
+excited brooding over wealth, and what can be done with wealth, amid
+increasing difficulties and problems from all sides.
+
+His determination indeed did not protect him from the attacks of
+conscience; of certain moral instincts and prepossessions, that is,
+natural to a man of his birth and environment.
+
+The mind, however, replied to them glibly enough. "I shall do the just
+and reasonable thing! As I promised Tatham, I shall look into the story
+of these two women, and if it is what it professes to be, I shall press
+Melrose to provide for them."
+
+Conscience objected: "If he refuses?"
+
+"They can enforce their claim legally, and I shall make him realize it."
+
+"Can you?" said Conscience. "Have you any hold upon him at all?"
+
+A flood of humiliation, indeed, rushed in upon him, as he recalled his
+effort, while Melrose was away in August, to make at least some temporary
+improvement in the condition of the Mainstairs cottages--secretly--out of
+his own money--by the help of the cottagers themselves. The attempt had
+been reported to Melrose by that spying little beast, Nash, and
+peremptorily stopped by telegram--"Kindly leave my property alone. It is
+not yours to meddle with."
+
+And that most abominable scene, after Melrose's return to the Tower!
+Faversham could never think of it without shame and disgust. Ten times
+had he been on the point of dashing down his papers at Melrose's feet,
+and turning his back on the old madman, and his house, forever. It was,
+of course, the thought of the gifts he had already accepted, and of that
+vast heritage waiting for him when Melrose should be in his grave, which
+had restrained him--that alone; no cynic could put it more nakedly than
+did Faversham's own thoughts. He was tied and bound by his own actions,
+and his own desires; he had submitted--grovelled to a tyrant; and he knew
+well enough that from that day he had been a lesser and a meaner man.
+
+But--no silly exaggeration! He straightened himself in his saddle. He was
+doing plenty of good work elsewhere, work with which Melrose did not
+trouble himself to interfere; work which would gradually tell upon the
+condition and happiness of the estate. Put that against the other. Men
+are not plaster saints--or, still less, live ones, with the power of
+miracle; but struggling creatures of flesh and blood, who do, not what
+they will, but what they can.
+
+And suddenly he seemed once more to be writing to Lydia Penfold. How
+often he had written to her during these two months! He recalled the joy
+of the earlier correspondence, in which he had been his natural self,
+pleading, arguing, planning; showing all the eagerness--the sincere
+eagerness--there was in him, to make a decent job of his agency, to stand
+well with his new neighbours--above all with "one slight girl."
+
+And her letters to him--sweet, frank, intelligent, sympathetic--they had
+been his founts of refreshing, his manna by the way. Until that fatal
+night, when Melrose had crushed in him all that foolish optimism and
+self-conceit with which he had entered into the original bargain! Since
+then, he knew well that his letters had chilled and disappointed her;
+they had been the letters of a slave.
+
+And now this awful business at Mainstairs! Bessie Dobbs, the girl of
+eighteen--Lydia's friend--who had been slowly dying since the diphtheria
+epidemic of the year before, was dead at last, after much suffering; and
+he did not expect to find the child of eight, her little sister, still
+alive. There were nearly a score of other cases, and there were three
+children down with scarlet fever, besides some terrible attacks of
+blood-poisoning--one after childbirth--due probably to some form of the
+scarlet fever infection, acting on persons weakened by the long effect of
+filthy conditions. What would Lydia say, when she knew--when she came?
+From her latest letter it was not clear to him on what day she would
+reach home. After making his inspection he would ride on to Green Cottage
+and inquire. He dreaded to meet her; and yet he was eager to defend
+himself; his mind was already rehearsing all that he would say.
+
+A long lane, shaded by heavy trees, made an abrupt turning, and he saw
+before him the Mainstairs village--one straggling street of wretched
+houses, mostly thatched, and built of "clay-lump," whitewashed. In a
+county of prosperous farming, and good landlords, where cottages had
+been largely rebuilt during the preceding century, this miserable
+village, with various other hamlets and almost all the cottages attached
+to farms on the Melrose estate, were the scandal of the countryside.
+Roofs that let in rain and wind, clay floors, a subsoil soaked in every
+possible abomination, bedrooms "more like dens for wild animals than
+sleeping-places for men and women," to quote a recent Government report,
+and a polluted water supply!--what more could reckless human living,
+aided by human carelessness and cruelty, have done to make a hell of
+natural beauty?
+
+Over the village rose the low shoulder of a grassy fell, its patches of
+golden fern glistening under the October sunshine; great sycamores, with
+their rounded masses of leaf, hung above the dilapidated roofs, as though
+Nature herself tried to shelter the beings for whom men had no care; the
+thatched slopes were green with moss and weed; and the blue smoke wreaths
+that rose from the chimneys, together with the few flowers that gleamed
+in the gardens, the picturesque irregularity of the houses, and the
+general setting of wood and distant mountain, made of the poisoned
+village a "subject," on which a wandering artist, who had set up his
+canvas at the corner of the road, was at the moment, indeed, hard at
+work. There might be death in those houses; but out of the beauty which
+sunshine strikes from ruin, a man, honestly in search of a few pounds,
+was making what he could.
+
+To Faversham's overstrung mind the whole scene was as the blood-stained
+palace of the Atreidae to the agonized vision of Cassandra. He saw it
+steeped in death--death upon death--and dreaded of what new "murder" he
+might hear as soon as he approached the houses. For what was it but
+murder? His conscience, arguing with itself, did not dispute the word.
+Had Melrose, out of his immense income, spent a couple of thousand pounds
+on the village at any time during the preceding years, a score of deaths
+would have been saved, and the physical degeneracy of a whole population
+would have been prevented.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Heavens! that light figure in Dobbs's garden, talking with the old
+shepherd--his heart leapt and then sickened. It was Lydia.
+
+A poignant fear stirred in him. He gave his horse a touch of the whip,
+and was at her side.
+
+"Miss Penfold!--you oughtn't to be here! For heaven's sake go home!"
+
+Lydia, who in the absorption of her talk with the shepherd had not
+heard his approach, turned with a start. Her face was one of passionate
+grief--there were tears on her cheek.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Faversham--"
+
+"The child?" he asked, as he dismounted.
+
+"She died--last night."
+
+"Aye, an' there's another doon--t' li'le boy--t' three-year-old," said
+old Dobbs sharply, straightening himself on his stick, at sight of the
+agent.
+
+"The nurses are here?" said Faversham after a pause.
+
+"Aye," said the shepherd, turning toward his cottage, "but they can do
+nowt. The childer are marked for deein afore they're sick." And he walked
+away, his inner mind shaken with a passion that forbade him to stay and
+talk with Melrose's agent.
+
+Two or three labourers who were lounging in front of their houses came
+slowly toward the agent. It was evident that there was unemployment as
+well as disease in the village, and that the neighbouring farms, where
+there were young children, were cutting themselves off, as much as they
+could, from the Mainstairs infection, by dismissing the Mainstairs men.
+
+Faversham meanwhile again implored Lydia to go home. "This whole place
+reeks with infection. You ought not to be here."
+
+"They say that nothing has been done!"
+
+Her tone was quiet, but her look pierced.
+
+"I tried. It was impossible. The only thing that could be done was that
+the people should go. They are under notice. Every single person is here
+in defiance of the law. The police will have to be called in."
+
+"And where are we to goa, sir!" cried one of the men who had come up.
+"Theer's noa house to be had nearer than Pengarth--yo' know that
+yoursen--an' how are we to be waakin' fower mile to our work i' t'
+mornin', an' fower mile back i' t' evening? Why, we havena got t'
+strength! It isna exactly a health resort--yo' ken--Mainstairs!"
+
+"I'll tell yo' where soom on us might goa, Muster Faversham," said
+another older man, removing the pipe he had been stolidly smoking;
+"theer's two farmhouses o' Melrose's, within half a mile o' this
+place--shut oop--noabody there. They're big houses--yan o' them wor an'
+owd manor-house, years agone. A body might put oop five or six families
+in 'em at a pinch. Thattens might dëa for a beginnin'; while soom o'
+these houses were coomin' doon."
+
+Lydia turned eagerly to Faversham.
+
+"_Couldn't_ that be done--some of the families with young children that
+are not yet attacked?" Her eyes hung on him.
+
+He shook his head. He had already proposed something of the sort to
+Melrose. It had been vetoed.
+
+The men watched him. At last one of them--a lanky youth, with a frowning,
+ironic expression and famous as a heckler at public meetings--said with
+slow emphasis:
+
+"There'll coom a day i' this coontry, mates, when men as treat poor foak
+like Muster Melrose, 'ull be pulled off t' backs of oos an' our like. And
+may aa live to see 't!"
+
+"Aye! aye!" came in deep assent from the others, as they turned away. But
+one white and sickly fellow looked back to say:
+
+"An' it's a graat pity for a yoong mon like you, sir, to be doin' Muster
+Melrose's dirty work--taakin' o' the police--as though yo' had 'em oop
+your sleeve!"
+
+"Haven't I done what I could for you?" cried Faversham, stung by the
+reproach, and its effect on Lydia's face.
+
+"Aye--mebbe--but it's nowt to boast on." The man, middle aged but
+prematurely old, stood still, trembling from head to foot. "My babe as
+wor born yesterday, deed this mornin'; an' they say t' wife 'ull lig
+beside it afore night."
+
+There was a sombre silence. Faversham broke it. "I must see the nurses,"
+he said to Lydia; "but again, I beg of you to go! I will send you news."
+
+"I will wait for you. Don't be afraid. I won't go indoors."
+
+He went round the houses, watched by the people, as they stood at their
+doors. He himself was paying two nurses, and now Lady Tatham had sent two
+more. He satisfied himself that they had all the stores which Undershaw
+had ordered; he left a donation of money with one of them, and then he
+returned to Lydia.
+
+They walked together in silence; while a boy from the village led
+Faversham's horse some distance in the rear. All that Faversham had meant
+to say had dropped away from him. His planned defence of himself could
+find no voice.
+
+"You too blame me?" he said, at last, hoarsely.
+
+She shook her head sadly.
+
+"I don't know what to think. But when we last met--you were so hopeful--"
+
+"Yes--like a fool. But what can you do--with a madman."
+
+"Can you bear--to be still in his employ?"
+
+She looked up, her beautiful eyes bright and challenging.
+
+"Mainstairs is not the whole estate. If I'm powerless here--I'm not
+elsewhere--"
+
+She was silent. He turned upon her.
+
+"If _you_ are to misunderstand and mistrust me--then indeed I shall lose
+heart!"
+
+The feeling, one might almost say the anguish, in his dark, commanding
+face moved her strangely. Condemnation and pity--aye, and something else
+than pity--struggled within her. For the first time Lydia began to know
+herself. She was strangely shaken.
+
+"I will try--and understand," she said in a voice that trembled.
+
+"All my power of doing anything depends on it!" he said, passionately. "I
+can say truly that things would have been infinitely worse if I had not
+been here. And I have worked like a horse to better them--before you
+came."
+
+She was silent. His appeal to her as to his judge hurt her poignantly.
+Yet what could she do or say? Her natural longing was to console; but
+where were the elements of consolation? _Could_ anything be worse than
+what she had seen and heard?
+
+The mingled emotion which silenced her, warned her not to continue the
+conversation. She perceived the opening of a side-lane leading back to
+the river and the Keswick road.
+
+"This is my best way, I think," she said, pausing, and holding out her
+hand. "The pony-cart is waiting for me at Whitebeck."
+
+He looked at her in distress, yet also in anger. A friend might surely
+have stood by him more cordially, believed in him more simply.
+
+"You are at home again? I may come and see you."
+
+"Please! We shall want to hear."
+
+Her tone was embarrassed. They parted almost coldly.
+
+Lydia walked quickly home, down a sloping lane from which the ravines of
+Blencathra, edge behind edge, chasm beyond chasm, were to be seen against
+the sunset, and all the intermediate landscape--wood, and stubble, and
+ferny slope--steeped in stormy majesties of light. But for once the quick
+artist sense was shut against Nature's spectacles. She walked in a blind
+anguish of self-knowledge and self-scorn. She who had plumed herself on
+the poised mind, the mastered senses!
+
+She moaned to herself.
+
+"Why didn't he tell me--warn me! To sell himself to that man--to act for
+him--defend him--apologize for him--and for those awful, awful things! An
+agent must."
+
+And she thought of some indignant talk of Undershaw, which she had heard
+that morning.
+
+Her moral self was full of repulsion; her heart was torn. Friend? She
+owned her weakness, and despised it. Turning aside, she leant a while
+against a gate, hiding her face from the glory of the evening. Week by
+week--she knew it now!--through that frank interchange of mind with mind,
+of heart with heart, represented by that earlier correspondence, still
+more perhaps through the checks and disappointments of its later phases,
+Claude Faversham had made his way into the citadel.
+
+The puny defences she had built about the freedom of her maiden life and
+will lay in ruins. Her theories were scattered like the autumn leaves
+that were scuddering over the fields. His voice, the very roughened
+bitterness of it; his eyes, with their peremptory challenge, their sore
+accusingness; the very contradictions of the man's personality, now
+delightful, now repellent, and, breathing through them all, the passion
+she must needs divine--of these various impressions, small and great, she
+was the struggling captive. Serenity, peace were gone.
+
+Meanwhile, as Faversham rode toward the Tower, absorbed at one moment in
+a misery of longing, and the next in a heat of self-defence, perhaps the
+strongest feeling that finally emerged was one of dismay that her
+abrupt leave-taking had prevented him from telling her of that other
+matter of which Tatham's visit had informed him. She must hear of it
+immediately, and from those who would judge and perhaps denounce him.
+
+Nevertheless, as he dismounted at the Tower, neither the burden of
+Mainstairs, nor the fear of Lydia's disapproval, nor the agitation of the
+news from Duddon, had moved him one jot from his purpose. A man surely is
+a coward and a weakling, he thought, who cannot grasp the "skirts of
+happy chance," while they are there for the grasping; cannot take what
+the gods offer, while they offer it, lest they withdraw it forever.
+
+Yet, suppose, that by his own act, he raised a moral barrier between
+himself and Lydia Penfold which such a personality would never permit
+itself to pass?
+
+His vanity, a touch of natural cynicism, refused, in the end, to let him
+believe it. His hope lay in a frank wrestle with her, a frank attack upon
+her intelligence. He promised himself to attempt it without delay.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+The day following the interview between Tatham and Faversham was a day of
+expectation for the inmates of Duddon. On the evening before, Tatham with
+much toil had extracted a more or less, coherent statement from Netta
+Melrose, persuading her to throw it into the form of an appeal to her
+husband. "If we can't do anything by reasoning, why then we must try
+pressure," he had said to her, in his suavest County Council manner; "but
+we won't talk law to begin with." The statement when finished and written
+out in Netta's childish hand was sent by messenger, late in the evening,
+within a covering letter to Faversham, written by Tatham.
+
+Tatham afterward devoted himself till nearly midnight to composing a
+letter to Lydia. He had unaccountably missed her that afternoon, for when
+he arrived at the cottage from Pengarth she was out, and neither Mrs.
+Penfold nor Susy knew where she was. In fact she was at Mainstairs, and
+with Faversham. She had mistaken a phrase in Tatham's note of the
+morning, and did not expect him till later. He had waited an hour for
+her, under the soft patter of Mrs. Penfold's embarrassed conversation;
+and had then ridden home, sorely disappointed, but never for one instant
+blaming the beloved.
+
+But later, in the night silence, he poured out to her all his budget: the
+arrival of the Melroses; their story; his interview with Faversham; and
+his plans for helping them to their rights. To a "friend" it was only
+allowed, besides, to give restrained expression to his rapturous joy in
+being near her again, and his disappointment of the afternoon. He thought
+over every word, as he wrote it down, his eyes sometimes a little dim in
+the lamp-light. The very reserve imposed upon him did but strengthen his
+passion. Nor could young hopes believe in ultimate defeat.
+
+At the same time, the thought of Faversham held the background of his
+mind. Though by now he himself cordially disliked Faversham, he was quite
+aware of the attraction the new agent's proud and melancholy personality
+might have for women. He had seen it working in Lydia's case, and he had
+been uncomfortably aware at one time of the frequent references to
+Faversham in Lydia's letters. It was evident that Faversham had pushed
+the acquaintance with the Penfolds as far as he could; that he was
+Lydia's familiar correspondent, and constantly appealing for help to her
+knowledge of the country folk. An excellent road to intimacy, as Tatham
+uneasily admitted, considering Lydia's love for the people of the dales,
+and her passionate sympathy with the victims of Melrose's ill-deeds.
+
+Ah! but the very causes which had been throwing her into an intimacy with
+Faversham must surely now be chilling and drawing her back? Tatham, the
+young reformer, felt an honest indignation with the failure of Claude
+Faversham to do the obvious and necessary work he had promised to do.
+Tatham, the lover, knew very well that if he had come back to find
+Faversham the hero of the piece, with a grateful countryside at his feet,
+his own jealous anxiety would have been even greater than it was. For it
+was great, argue with himself as he might. A dread for which he could not
+account often overshadowed him. It was caused perhaps by his constant
+memory of Faversham and Lydia on the terrace at Threlfall--of the two
+faces turned to each other--of the sudden fusion as it were of the two
+personalities in a common rush of memories, interests, and sympathies, in
+which he himself had no part....
+
+He put up his letter on the stroke of midnight, and then walked his room
+a while longer, struggling with himself and the passion of his desire;
+praying that he might win her. Finally he took a well-worn Bible from a
+locked drawer, and read some verses from the Gospel of St. John, quieting
+himself. He never went to sleep without reading either a psalm or some
+portion of the New Testament. The influence of his Eton tutor had made
+him a Christian of a simple and convinced type; and his mother's
+agnosticism had never affected him. But he and she never talked of
+religion.
+
+Nothing arrived from Threlfall the following day during the morning.
+After luncheon, Victoria announced her intention of going to call on the
+Penfolds.
+
+"You can follow me there in the motor," she said to her son; "and if any
+news comes, bring it on."
+
+They were in the drawing-room. Netta, white and silent, was stretched on
+the sofa, where Victoria had just spread a shawl over her. Felicia
+appeared to be turning over an illustrated paper, but was in reality
+watching the mother and son out of the corners of her eyes. Everything
+that was said containing a mention of the Penfolds struck in her an
+attentive ear. The casual conversation of the house had shown her already
+that there were three ladies--two of them young--who were living not far
+from Duddon, and were objects of interest to both Lady Tatham and her
+son. Flowers were sent them, and new books. They were not relations; and
+not quite ordinary acquaintances. All this had excited a furious
+curiosity in Felicia. She wished--was determined indeed--to see these
+ladies for herself.
+
+"You will hardly want to go out," said Victoria gently, standing by
+Netta's sofa, and looking down with kind eyes on the weary woman lying
+there.
+
+Netta shook her head; then putting out her hand she took Victoria's and
+pressed it. Victoria understood that she was waiting feverishly for the
+answer from Threlfall, and could do nothing and think of nothing till it
+arrived.
+
+"And your daughter?" She looked round for Felicia.
+
+"I wish to drive in a motor," said Felicia, rising and speaking with a
+decision which amused Victoria. Pending the arrival from London of some
+winter costumes on approval, Victoria's maid had arranged for the little
+Italian a picturesque dress of dark blue silk, from a gown of her
+mistress', by which the emaciation of the girl's small frame was somewhat
+disguised; while the beauty of the material, and of the delicate
+embroideries on the collar and sleeves, strangely heightened the grace of
+her curly head, and the effect of her astonishing eyes, so liquidly
+bright, in a face too slight for them.
+
+In forty-eight hours, even, of comfort and cosseting her elfish thinness
+had become a shade less ghastly; and the self-possession which had
+emerged from the state of collapse in which she had arrived amazed
+Victoria. A week before, so it appeared, she had been earning a franc
+a day in the vineyard of a friendly _contadino_. And already one might
+have thought her bred in castles. She was not abashed or bewildered by
+the luxuries of Duddon, as Netta clearly was. Rather, she seemed to seize
+greedily and by a natural instinct upon all that came her way--motors,
+pretty frocks, warm baths in luxurious bathrooms, and the attentions of
+Victoria's maid. Victoria believed that she had grasped the whole
+situation with regard to Threlfall. She was quite aware, it seemed, of
+the magnitude of her father's wealth; of all that hung upon her own
+chances of inheritance; and of the value, to her cause and her mother's,
+of the support of Duddon. Her likeness to her father came out hour by
+hour, and there were moments when the tiny creature carried herself like
+a Melrose in miniature.
+
+Victoria's advent was awaited at Green Cottage, she having telephoned to
+Mrs. Penfold in the morning, with something of a flutter. Her visits
+there had not been frequent; and this was the first time she had called
+since Tatham's proposal to Lydia. That event had never been avowed by
+Lydia, as we have seen, even to her mother; Lydia and Victoria had never
+exchanged a word on the subject. But Lydia was aware of the shrewd
+guessing of her family, and she did not suppose for one moment that Lady
+Tatham was ignorant of anything that had happened.
+
+Mrs. Penfold, scarcely kept in order by Susy, was in much agitation. She
+felt terribly guilty. Lady Tatham must think them all monsters of
+ingratitude, and she wondered how she could be so kind as to come and see
+them at all. She became at last so incoherent and tearful that Lydia
+prepared for the worst, while Susy, the professed psychologist, revelled
+in the prospect of new "notes."
+
+But when Victoria arrived, entering the cottage drawing-room with her
+fine mannish face, her stately bearing, and her shabby clothes, the news
+she brought seized at once on Mrs. Penfold's wandering wits, and for the
+moment held them fast. For Victoria, whose secret object was to discover,
+if she could, any facts about Lydia's doings and feelings during the
+interval of separation, that might throw light upon her Harry's
+predicament, made it cunningly appear that she had come expressly to tell
+her neighbours of the startling event which was now agitating Duddon, as
+it would soon be agitating the countryside.
+
+Mrs. Penfold--steeped in long years of three-decker fiction--sat
+entranced. The cast-off and ill-treated wife returning to the scene of
+her misery--with the heiress!--grown up--and beautiful: she saw it all;
+she threw it all into the moulds dear to the sentimentalist. Victoria
+demurred to the adjective "beautiful"; suggesting "pretty--when we have
+fed her!" But Mrs. Penfold, with soft, shining eyes, already beheld the
+mother and child weeping at the knees of the Ogre, the softening of the
+Ogre's heart, the opening of the grim Tower to its rightful heiress, the
+happy ending, the marriage gown in the distance.
+
+"For suppose!"--she turned gayly to her daughters for sympathy--"suppose
+she were to marry Mr. Faversham! And then Mr. Melrose can have a stroke,
+and everything will come right!"
+
+Lydia and Susy smiled dutifully. Victoria sat silent. Her silence checked
+Mrs. Penfold's flow, and brought her back, bewildered to realities; to
+the sad remembrance of Lydia's astonishing and inscrutable behaviour.
+Whereupon her manner and conversation became so dishevelled, in her
+effort to propitiate Lady Tatham without betraying either herself or
+Lydia, that the situation grew quickly unbearable.
+
+"May I see your garden?" said Victoria abruptly to Lydia. Lydia rose with
+alacrity, opened the glass door into the garden, and by a motion of the
+lips only visible to Susy appealed to her to keep their mother indoors.
+
+A misty October sun reigned over the garden. The river ran sparkling
+through the valley, and on the farther side the slopes and jutting crags
+of the Helvellyn range showed ghostly through the sunlit haze.'
+
+A few absent-minded praises were given to the phloxes and the begonias.
+Then Victoria said, turning a penetrating eye on Lydia:
+
+"You heard from Harry of the Melroses' arrival?"
+
+"Yes--this morning."
+
+Bright colour rushed into Lydia's cheeks. Tatham's letter of that
+morning, the longest perhaps ever written by a man who detested
+letter-writing, had touched her profoundly, caused her an agonized
+searching of conscience. Did Lady Tatham blame and detest her? Her
+manner was certainly cool. The girl's heart swelled as she walked along
+beside her guest.
+
+"Everything depends on Mr. Faversham," said Victoria. "You are a friend
+of his?" She took the garden chair that Lydia offered her.
+
+"Yes; we have all come to know him pretty well."
+
+Lydia's face, as she sat on the grass at Lady Tatham's feet, looking
+toward the fells, was scarcely visible to her companion. Victoria could
+only admire the beauty of the girl's hair, as the wind played with it,
+and the grace of her young form.
+
+"I am afraid he is disappointing all his friends," she said gravely.
+
+"Is it his fault?" exclaimed Lydia. "Mr. Melrose must be mad!"
+
+"I wonder if that excuses Mr. Faversham?"
+
+"It's horrible for him!" said Lydia in a low, smothered voice. "He
+_wants_ to put things right?"
+
+It was on the tip of Victoria's tongue to say, "Does he too write to you
+every day?" but she refrained.
+
+"If he really wants to put things right, why has he done nothing all
+these seven weeks?" she asked severely. "I saw Colonel Barton this
+morning. He and Mr. Andover are in despair. They felt such confidence in
+Mr. Faversham. The state of the Mainstairs village is too terrible!
+Everybody is crying out. The Carlisle papers this week are full of it.
+But there are scores of other things almost as bad. Mr. Faversham rushes
+about--here, there, and everywhere--but with no result, they tell us, as
+far as any of the real grievances are concerned. Mr. Melrose seems to be
+infatuated about him personally; will give him everything he wants; and
+pays no attention whatever to his advice. And you know the latest
+report?"
+
+"No." Lydia's face was bent over the grass, as she tried to aid a
+bumble-bee which was lying on its back.
+
+"It is generally believed that Mr. Melrose has made him his heir."
+
+Lydia lifted a face of amazement, at first touched strangely with relief.
+"Then--surely--he will be able to do what he wants!"
+
+"On the contrary. His silence has been bought--that's what people say.
+Mr. Melrose has bribed him to do his work, and defend his iniquities."
+
+"_Oh!_ Is that fair?" The humble-bee was so hastily poked on to his legs
+that he tumbled over again.
+
+"Well, now, we shall test him!" said Victoria quietly. "We shall see what
+he does with regard to Mrs. Melrose and her daughter. Harry will have
+told you how he went to him yesterday. We had a telephone message this
+morning to say that a letter would reach us this afternoon from Mr.
+Faversham. Harry will bring it on here; and I asked him to bring Felicia
+Melrose with him in the car. We thought you would be interested to see
+her."
+
+There was a pause. At last Lydia said slowly:
+
+"How will you test Mr. Faversham? I don't understand."
+
+"Unless the man is an adventurer," said Victoria, straightening her
+shoulders, "he will, of course, do his best to put this girl--who is the
+rightful heiress--into her proper place. What business has he with Mr.
+Melrose's estates?"
+
+Lady Tatham spoke with imperious energy.
+
+Lydia's eyes showed an almost equal animation.
+
+"May he not share with her? Aren't they immense?"
+
+"At present he takes everything--so they say. It looks ugly. A complete
+stranger--worming himself in a few weeks or months into an old man's
+confidence--and carrying off the inheritance from a pair of helpless
+women! And making himself meanwhile the tool of a tyrant!--aiding and
+abetting him in all his oppressions!"
+
+"Oh, Lady Tatham! no, no!" cried Lydia--the cry seemed wrung from
+her--"I--we--have only known Mr. Faversham this short time--but _how_
+can one believe--"
+
+She paused, her eyes under their vividly marked eyebrows painfully
+searching the face of her companion.
+
+Victoria said to herself, "Heavens!--she _is_ in love with him--and she
+is letting Harry sit up at nights to write to her!"
+
+Her mother's heart beat fast with anger. But she held herself in hand.
+
+"Well; as I have said, we shall soon be able to test him," she repeated,
+coldly; "we shall soon know what to think. His letter will show whether
+he is a man with feeling and conscience--a gentleman--or an adventurer!"
+
+There was silence. Lydia was thinking passionately of Mainstairs and
+of the deep tones of a man's voice--"If _you_ condemn and misunderstand
+me--then indeed I shall lose heart!"
+
+A humming sound could be heard in the far distance.
+
+"Here they are," said Lady Tatham rising. Victoria's half-masculine
+beauty had never been so formidable as it was this afternoon. Deep in her
+heart, she carried both pity for Harry, and scorn for this foolish girl
+walking beside her, who could not recognize her good fortune when it
+cried out to her.
+
+They hastened back to the drawing-room; and at the same moment Tatham and
+Felicia walked in.
+
+Felicia advanced with perfect self-command, her small face flushed with
+pink by the motion of the car. In addition to the blue frock, Victoria's
+maid had now provided her with a short cape of black silk, and a wide
+straw hat, to which the girl herself had given a kind of tilt, a touch of
+audacity, in keeping with all the rest of her personality.
+
+As she came in, she glanced round the room with her uncannily large
+eyes--her mother's eyes--taking in all the company. She dropped a little
+curtsey to Mrs. Penfold, in whom the excitement of this sudden appearance
+of Melrose's daughter had produced sheer and simple dumbness. She allowed
+her hand to be shaken by Lydia and Susy, looking sharply at the former;
+while Susy looked sharply at her. Then she subsided into a corner by Lady
+Tatham. It was evident that she regarded herself as under that lady's
+particular protection.
+
+"Well?" said Lady Tatham in an eager aside to her son. She read his
+aspect as that of a man preoccupied.
+
+Tatham shrugged his shoulders with a glance at Felicia. Victoria
+whispered to Lydia: "Will you tell your mother I want to speak a few
+words to Harry on business?"
+
+Mother and son passed into the garden together.
+
+"A declaration of war!" said Tatham, as he handed a letter to her. "I
+propose to instruct our solicitors at once."
+
+Victoria read hastily. The writing was Faversham's. But the mind
+expressed was Melrose's. Victoria read him in every line. She believed
+the letter to have been simply dictated.
+
+"DEAR LORD TATHAM:
+
+"I have laid Mrs. Melrose's statement before Mr. Melrose. I regret to say
+that he sees no cause to modify the arrangements made years ago with
+regard to his wife, except that, in consideration of the fact that Miss
+Melrose is now grown up, he will add £20 yearly to Mrs. Melrose's
+allowance, making it £100 a year. Provision will be made for the
+continuance of this allowance to Mrs. Melrose till her death, and
+afterward to the daughter for her lifetime; _on condition that_ Mr.
+Melrose is not further molested in any way. Otherwise Mr. Melrose
+acknowledges and will acknowledge no claim upon him whatever.
+
+"I am to add that if Mrs. Melrose is in difficulties, it is entirely
+owing to the dishonest rapacity of her family who have been living upon
+her. Mr. Melrose is well acquainted with both the past and recent history
+of Mr. Robert Smeath, who made a tool of Mrs. Melrose in the matter of a
+disgraceful theft of a valuable bronze from Mr. Melrose's collection--"
+
+"The Hermes!" cried Victoria. "She has never said one word to me about
+it."
+
+"Miss Melrose has been telling me the story," said Tatham, smiling at the
+recollection. "By George, that's a rum little girl! She glories in it.
+But she says her mother has been consumed with remorse ever since. Go
+on."
+
+"And if any attempt is made to blackmail or coerce Mr. Melrose, he will
+be obliged, much against his will, to draw the attention of the Italian
+police to certain matters relating to Mr. Smeath, of which he has the
+evidence in his possession. He warns Mrs. Melrose that her father's
+career cannot possibly bear examination.
+
+"I regret that my reply cannot be more satisfactory to you.
+
+"Believe me,
+
+"Yours faithfully,
+
+"CLAUDE FAVERSHAM."
+
+Victoria had turned pale.
+
+"How _abominable_! Why, her father is bedridden and dying!"
+
+"So I told Faversham--like a fool. For it only--apparently--gives Melrose
+a greater power of putting on the screw. Well, now look here--here's
+something else." He drew another letter from his pocket, and handed it to
+her.
+
+Victoria unfolded a second note from Faversham--marked "confidential,"
+and written in evident agitation.
+
+"MY DEAR TATHAM:
+
+"I am powerless. Let me implore you to keep Mrs. Melrose quiet! Privately
+a great deal may be done for her. If she will only trust herself to me,
+in my private capacity, I will see that she is properly supplied for the
+future. But she will simply bring disaster on herself if she attempts to
+force Melrose. She--and you--know what he is. I beg of you to be
+guided--and to guide her--as I advise."
+
+"An attempt, you see, to buy us off," said Tatham scornfully. "I propose
+to take the night train from Pengarth this evening, and consult old
+Fledhow to-morrow morning."
+
+"Old Fledhow," _alias_ James Morton Fledhow, solicitor, head of one of
+that small group of firms which, between them, have the great estates of
+England in their pigeon-holes, had been the legal adviser of the Tatham
+family for two generations. Precipitation is not the badge of his tribe;
+but Victoria threw herself upon this very natural and youthful impulse,
+before even it could reach "old Fledhow."
+
+"My dear Harry, be cautious! What did Mrs. Melrose say? Of course you
+showed her the letter?"
+
+Tatham candidly admitted that he hardly knew what Mrs. Melrose had said.
+The letter had thrown her into a great state of agitation, and she had
+cried a good deal. "Poor pápa, poor pápa!" pronounced with the accent on
+the first syllable, seemed to have been all that she had been able to
+articulate.
+
+"You know, Harry, there may be a great deal in it?" Victoria's
+countenance showed her doubts.
+
+"In the threat about her father? Pure bluff, mother!--absolute bluff! As
+for the bronze--a wife can't steal from her husband. And under these
+circumstances!--I should like to see a British jury that would touch
+her!"
+
+"But she admits that half the proceeds went to her father."
+
+"Twenty years ago?" Tatham's shrug was magnificent. "I tell you he'll get
+no change out of that!"
+
+"But he hints at other things?"
+
+"Bluff again! Why the man's helpless in his bed!"
+
+"I suppose even dying can be made more unpleasant by the police," said
+Victoria. She pondered, walking thoughtfully beside a rather thwarted and
+impatient youth, eager to play the champion of the distressed in his own
+way; and that, possibly, from more motives than one. Suddenly her face
+cleared.
+
+"I will go myself!" she said, laying her hand on her son's arm.
+
+"Mother!"
+
+"Yes! I'll go myself. Leave it to me, Harry. I will drive over to
+Threlfall to-morrow evening--quite alone and without notice. I had some
+influence with him once," she said, with her eyes on the ground.
+
+Tatham protested warmly. The smallest allusion to any early relation
+between his mother and Melrose was almost intolerable to him. But Lady
+Tatham fought for her idea. She pointed out again that Melrose might very
+well have some information that could be used with ghastly effect even
+upon a dying man; that Netta was much attached to her father, and would
+probably not make up her mind to any drastic step whatever in face of
+Melrose's threats.
+
+"I don't so much care about Mrs. Melrose," exclaimed Tatham. "We can
+give her money, and make her comfortable, if it comes to that. But
+it's the girl--and the hideous injustice of that fellow there--that
+Faversham--ousting her from her rights--getting the old man into his
+power--boning his property--and then writing hypocritical notes like
+that!"
+
+He stood before her, flushed and excited; a broad-shouldered avenger of
+the sex, such as any distressed maiden might have been glad to light
+upon. But again Victoria was aware that the case was not as simple as it
+sounded. However, she was no less angry than he. Mother and son were on
+the brink of making common cause against a grasping impostor; who was not
+to be allowed to go off--either with money that did not belong to him, or
+with angelic sympathies that still less belonged to him. Meanwhile on
+this point, whatever may have been in their minds, they said on this
+occasion not a word. Victoria pressed her plan. And in the end Tatham
+most reluctantly consented that she should endeavour to force a surprise
+interview with Melrose the following day.
+
+They returned to the little drawing-room where Felicia Melrose, it
+seemed, had been giving the Penfolds a difficult half hour. For as soon
+as the Tathams had stepped into the garden, she had become entirely
+monosyllabic; after a drive from Duddon at Harry Tatham's side, during
+which, greatly to her host's surprise, she had suddenly and unexpectedly
+found her tongue, talking, in a torrent of questions, all the way,
+insatiably.
+
+Mrs. Penfold, on her side, could do little but stare at "the heiress of
+Threlfall." Susy, studying her with shining eyes, tried to make her talk,
+to little purpose.
+
+But Lydia in particular could get nothing out of her. It seemed to her
+that Felicia looked at her as though she disliked her. And every now and
+then the small stranger would try to see herself in the only mirror that
+the cottage drawing-room afforded; lengthening out her long, thin neck,
+and turning her curly head stealthily from side to side like a swan
+preening. Once, when she thought no one was observing her, she took a
+carnation from a vase near her--it had been sent over from Duddon that
+morning!--and put it in her dress. And the next moment, having pulled off
+her glove, she looked with annoyance at her own roughened hand, and then
+at Lydia's delicate fingers playing with a paper-knife. Frowning, she
+hastily slipped her glove on again.
+
+As soon as Tatham and his mother reappeared, she jumped up with alacrity,
+a smile breaking with sudden and sparkled beauty on her pinched face, and
+went to stand by Victoria's side, looking up at her with eager docility
+and admiration.
+
+Victoria, however, left her, in order to draw Lydia into a corner beside
+a farther window.
+
+"I am sorry to say Harry has received a very unsatisfactory letter from
+Mr. Faversham."
+
+"May I ask him about it?"
+
+"He wants to tell you. I am carrying Miss Melrose back with me. But Harry
+will stay."
+
+Words which cost Victoria a good deal. If what she now believed was the
+truth, how monstrous that her Harry should be kept dangling here! Her
+pride was all on edge. But Harry ruled her. She could make no move till
+his eyes too were opened.
+
+Meanwhile, on all counts, Faversham was the enemy. To that _chasse_ first
+and foremost, Victoria vowed herself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, what do you think of her?" said Tatham, good-humouredly, as he
+raised his hat to Felicia and his mother disappearing in the car. "She's
+more alive to-day; but you can see she has been literally starved. That
+_brute_ Melrose!"
+
+Lydia made some half audible reply, and with a view to prolonging his
+_tête-à-tête_ with her, he led her strolling along the road, through a
+golden dusk, touched with moonrise. She followed, but all her pleasant
+self-confidence with regard to him was gone; she walked beside him,
+miserable and self-condemned; a theorist defeated by the incalculable
+forces of things. How to begin with him--what line to take--how to undo
+her own work--she did not know; her mind was in confusion.
+
+As for him, he was no sooner alone with her than bliss descended on him.
+He forgot Faversham and the Melroses. He only wished to talk to her, and
+of himself. Surely, so much, "friendship" allowed.
+
+He began, accordingly, to comment eagerly on her letters to him, and his
+to her, explaining this, questioning that. Every word showed her afresh
+that her letters had been the landmarks of his Scotch weeks, the chief
+events of his summer; and every word quickened a new remorse. At last she
+could bear it no longer. She broke abruptly on his talk.
+
+"Mayn't I know what's happened at Threlfall? Your mother told me--you had
+heard."
+
+He pulled himself together, while many things he would rather have
+forgotten rushed back upon him.
+
+"We're no forrader!" he said impatiently. "I don't believe we shall
+get a brass farthing out of Melrose, if you ask me; at least without
+going to law and making a scandal; partly because he's Melrose, and
+that sort--sooner die than climb down, and the rest of it--but mostly--"
+
+He broke off.
+
+"Mostly?" repeated Lydia.
+
+"I don't know whether I'd better go on. Faversham's a friend of yours."
+
+Tatham looked down upon her, his blunt features reddening.
+
+"Not so much a friend that I can't hear the truth about him," said Lydia,
+smiling rather faintly. "What do you accuse him of?"
+
+He hesitated a moment; then the inner heat gathered, and flashed out.
+Wasn't it best to be frank?--best for her, best for himself?
+
+"Don't you think it looks pretty black?" he asked her, breathing
+quick; "there he is, getting round an old man, and plotting for money
+he's no right to! Wouldn't you have thought that any decent fellow
+would sooner break stones than take the money that ought to have been
+that girl's--that at least he'd have said to Melrose 'provide for her
+first--your own child--and then do what you like for me.' Wouldn't that
+have been the honest thing to do? But I went to him yesterday--told him
+the story--he promised to look into it--and to use his influence. We sent
+him a statement in proper form, a few hours later. It's horrible what
+those two have suffered! And then, to-day--it's too dark for you to
+read his precious letter, but if you really don't mind, I'll
+tell you the gist of it."
+
+He summarized it--quite fairly--yet with a contempt he did not try to
+conceal. The girl at his side, muffled in a blue cloak, with a dark hood
+framing the pale gold of the hair, and the delicate curves of the face,
+listened in silence. At the end she said:
+
+"Tell me on what grounds you think Mr. Melrose has left his property to
+Mr. Faversham?"
+
+"Everybody believes it! My Carlisle lawyers whom I saw this morning are
+convinced of it. Melrose is said to have spoken quite frankly about it to
+many persons."
+
+"Not very strong evidence on which to condemn a man so utterly as you
+condemn him," said Lydia, with sudden emotion. "Think of the difficulty
+of his position! May he not be honestly trying to steer his way? And may
+not we all be doing our best to make his task impossible, putting the
+worst construction--the very worst!--on everything he does?"
+
+There was silence a moment. Tatham and Lydia were looking into each
+other's faces; the girl's soul, wounded and fluttering, was in her
+eyes. Tatham felt a sudden and choking sense of catastrophe. Their
+house of cards had fallen about them, and his stubborn hopes with it.
+She, with her high standards, could not possibly defend--could not
+possibly plead--for a man who was behaving so shabbily, so dishonourably,
+except--for one reason! He leapt indignantly at certainty; although it
+was a certainty that tortured him.
+
+"There is evidence enough!" he said, in a changed voice. "I don't
+understand how you can stick up for him."
+
+"I don't," she said sadly, "not if it's true. But I don't want to believe
+it. Why should one want to believe the worst, you and I, about anybody?"
+
+Tatham kept an explosive silence for a moment, and then broke out
+hoarsely:
+
+"Do you remember, we promised we'd be real friends?--we'd be really frank
+with each other? I've kept my bargain. Are you keeping it? Isn't there
+something you haven't told me!--something I ought to know?"
+
+"No, nothing!" cried Lydia, with sudden energy. "You misunderstand--you
+offend me."
+
+She drew her breath quickly. There were angry tears in her eyes, hidden
+by the hood.
+
+A gust of passion swept through Tatham, revealing his manhood to itself.
+He stopped, caught her hands, and held them fiercely, imprisoned against
+his breast. She must needs look up at him; male strength compelled;
+they stood motionless a few seconds under the shadows of the trees.
+
+"If there _is_ nothing--if I _do_ misunderstand--if I'm wrong in what I
+think--for God's sake listen to me--give me back my promise. I can't--I
+can't keep it!"
+
+He stooped and kissed the fingers he held, once, twice, repeatedly; then
+turned away, shading his eyes with his hand.
+
+Lydia said, with a little moan:
+
+"Oh, Harry!--we've broken the spell."
+
+Tatham recovered himself with difficulty.
+
+"Can't you--can't you ever care for me?" The voice
+was low, the eyes still hidden.
+
+"We oughtn't to have been writing and meeting!" cried Lydia, in despair.
+"It was foolish, wrong! I see it now. I ask your pardon. We must say
+good-bye, Harry--and--oh!--oh!--I'm so sorry I let you--"
+
+Her voice died away.
+
+In the distance of the lane, a labourer emerged whistling from a gate,
+with his dog. Tatham's hands dropped to his sides; they walked on
+together as before. The man passed them with a cheerful good-night.
+
+Tatham spoke slowly.
+
+"Yes--perhaps--we'd better not meet. I can't--control myself. And I
+should go on offending you."
+
+A chasm seemed to have opened between them. They turned and walked back
+to the gate of the cottage. When they reached it, Tatham crushed her hand
+again in his.
+
+"Good-bye! If ever I can do anything to serve you--let me know!
+Good-bye!--dearest--_dearest_ Lydia." His voice sank and lingered on
+the name. The lamp at the gate showed him that her eyes were swimming
+in tears.
+
+"You'll forgive me?" she said, imploringly.
+
+He attempted a laugh, which ended in a sound of pain. Then he lifted her
+hand again, kissed it, and was gone; running--head down--through the
+dimness of the lane.
+
+Meanwhile, wrapped in the warm furs of the motor, Felicia and Lady Tatham
+sped toward Duddon.
+
+Felicia was impenetrably silent at first; and Victoria, who never
+found it easy to adapt herself to the young, made no effort to rouse
+her. Occasionally some passing light showed her the girl's pallid
+profile--slightly frowning brow, and pinched lips--against the dark
+lining of the car. And once or twice as she saw her thus, she was
+startled by the likeness to Melrose.
+
+When they were halfway home, a thin, high voice struck into the silence,
+deliberately clear:
+
+"Who is the Signorina Penfold?"
+
+"Her mother is a widow. They have lived here about two years."
+
+"She is not pretty. She is too pale. I do not like that hair," said
+Felicia, viciously.
+
+Victoria could not help an unseen smile.
+
+"Everybody here thinks her pretty. She is very clever, and a beautiful
+artist," she said, with slight severity.
+
+The gesture beside her was scarcely discernible. But Victoria thought it
+was a toss of the head.
+
+"Everybody in Italy can paint. It is as common--as common as
+lizards! There are dozens of people in Lucca who can paint--a whole
+villa--ceilings, walls--what you like. Nobody thinks anything at all
+about them. But Italian girls are very clever also! There were two girls
+in Lucca--Marchesine--the best family in Lucca. They got all the prizes
+at the Licéo, and then they went to Pisa to the University; and one of
+them was a Doctor of Law; and when they came home, all the street in
+which they lived and their _palazzo_ were lit up. And they were very
+pretty too!"
+
+"And you--did you go to the Licéo, Felicia?"
+
+"No! I had never any education--none, none, _none_! But I could get it,
+if I wanted," said the voice, defiantly.
+
+"Of course you could. I have asked your mother to stay with us till
+Christmas. You might get some lessons in Carlisle. We could send you in."
+
+Felicia, however, made no response to this at all, and Victoria felt that
+her proposal had fallen flat. But, after a minute or two, she heard:
+
+"I should like--to learn--to _ride_!"
+
+Much emphasis on the last word; accompanied by nodding of the fantastic
+little head.
+
+"Well, we shall see!" laughed Victoria, indulgently.
+
+"And then--I would go out--with Lord Tatham!" said Felicia. "Oh, but he
+is too _divine_ on horseback! There were some Italian cavalry officers at
+Lucca. I used to run to the window every time to see them pass by. But he
+is nobler--he is handsomer!"
+
+Victoria, taken by surprise, wondered if it would not be well to
+administer a little snubbing to compliments so unabashed. She tried. But
+Felicia interrupted her:
+
+"Do you not admire him--your son?" she said eagerly, slipping up close to
+Victoria. "Can he jump and swim rivers--on his horse--and come down
+mountains--on his haunches--like our _cavalleria_? I am certain he can!"
+
+"He can do most things on a horse. When the hunting begins, you will
+see," said Victoria, smiling in spite of herself.
+
+"Tell me, please, what is the hunting? And about the shooting, too. Lord
+Tatham told me--this afternoon--some ladies shoot. Oh, but I will learn
+to shoot! I swear it--yes! Now tell me!"
+
+Thus attacked, the formidable Victoria capitulated. She was soon in the
+midst of stories of her Harry, from his first pony upward. And she had
+not gone far before a tiny hand slipped itself into hers and nestled
+there; moving and quivering occasionally, like a wild bird voluntarily
+tame. And when the drive ended, Victoria was quite sorry to lose its
+lithe softness.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+Victoria very soon perceived that a crisis had come and gone. She had
+been accustomed for a while before they went to Scotland to send about
+once a week a basket of flowers and fruit from the famous gardens of
+Duddon, with her "kind regards" to Mrs. Penfold. The basket was generally
+brought into the hall, and Tatham would slip into it the new books or
+magazines that seemed to him likely to attract the cottage party. He had
+always taken a particular pleasure in the dispatch of the basket, and in
+the contrivance of some new offering of which it might be the bearer.
+Victoria, on the other hand, though usually a lavish giver, had taken but
+a grudging part in the business, and merely to please her son.
+
+On the day following the visit to the cottage, the basket, in obedience
+to a standing order, lay in the hall as usual, heaped with a gorgeous
+mass of the earliest chrysanthemums. Victoria observed it--with an
+unfriendly eye--as she passed through the hall on her way to breakfast.
+
+Harry came up behind her, and she turned to give him her morning kiss.
+
+"Please don't send it," he said abruptly, pointing to the basket. "It
+wouldn't be welcome."
+
+She started, but made no reply. They went into breakfast. Victoria gave
+the butler directions that the flowers should be sent to the Rectory.
+
+After breakfast she followed Tatham into the library. He stood silent a
+while by the window, looking out, his hands in his pockets; she beside
+him, leaning her head against his arm.
+
+"It's all over," he said at last; "we decided it last night."
+
+"What's over, dear old boy?"
+
+"I broke our compact--I couldn't help it--and we saw it couldn't go on."
+
+"You--asked her again?"
+
+He nodded. "It's no good. And now it only worries her that I should hang
+about. We can't--even be friends. It's all my fault."
+
+"You poor darling!" cried his mother indignantly. "She has played with
+you abominably."
+
+He flushed with anger.
+
+"You mustn't say that--you mustn't think it, mother! All these weeks have
+been--to the good. They haven't been the real thing. But I shall always
+have them--to remember. Now it's done with."
+
+Silence fell upon them again, while their minds went back over the
+history of the preceding six months. Victoria felt very bitter. And so,
+apparently, in his own way, did he. For he presently said, with a
+vehemence which startled her:
+
+"I'd sooner be shot than see her marry that fellow!"
+
+"Ah! you suspect that?"
+
+"It looks like it," he said reluctantly. "And unless I'm much mistaken,
+he's a mean cad! But--for her sake--we'll make sure--we'll give him every
+chance."
+
+"It is of course possible," said Victoria grudgingly, "that he has
+honestly tried to do something for the Melroses."
+
+"I daresay!" said Tatham, with a shrug.
+
+"And it is possible also that if he is the heir, he means to make it up
+to Felicia, when he comes into it all."
+
+Tatham laughed.
+
+"To throw her a spare bone? Very likely. But how are we to know that
+Melrose won't bind him by all sorts of restrictions? A vindictive
+old villain like that will do anything. Then we shall have Faversham
+calmly saying, 'Very sorry I can't oblige you! But if I modify the
+terms of the will in your favour, I forfeit the estates.' Besides
+isn't it monstrous--damnable--that Melrose's daughter should owe to
+_charity_--the charity of a fellow who had never heard of Melrose or
+Threlfall six months ago--what is her _right_--her plain and simple
+right?"
+
+Victoria agreed. All these ancestral ideas of family maintenance, and the
+practical rights dependent on family ties, which were implied in Harry's
+attitude, were just as real to her as to his simpler mind. Yet she knew
+very well that Netta and Felicia Melrose were fast becoming to him the
+mere symbols and counters of a struggle that affected him more
+intimately, more profoundly than any crusading effort for the legal and
+moral rights of a couple of strangers could possibly have done.
+
+Lydia had broken with him, and his hopes were dashed. Why? Because
+another man had come upon the scene whose influence upon her was
+clear--disastrously clear.
+
+"If he were a decent fellow--I'd go out of her life--without a word. But
+he's a thievish intriguer!--and I don't intend to hold my hand till I've
+brought him out in his true colours before her and the world. Then--if
+she chooses--with her eyes open--let her take him!" It was thus his
+mother imagined his thought, and she was not far from the truth. And
+meanwhile the sombre changes in the boyish face made her own heart sore.
+For they told of an ill heat of blood, and an embittered soul.
+
+At luncheon he sat depressed and silent, doing his duty with an effort to
+his mother's guests. Netta also was in the depths. She had lost the power
+of rapid recuperation that youth gave to Felicia, and in spite of the
+comforts of Threlfall her aspect was scarcely less deplorable than when
+she arrived. Moreover she had cried much since the delivery of the
+Threlfall letter the day before. Her eyes were red, and her small face
+disfigured. Felicia, on the other hand, sat with her nose in the air,
+evidently despising her mother's tears, and as sharply observant as ever
+of the sights about her--the quietly moving servants, the flowers, and
+silver, the strange, nice things to eat. Tatham, absorbed in his own
+thoughts, did not perceive how, in addition, she watched the master of
+the house; Victoria was uncomfortably aware of it.
+
+After luncheon Tatham took up a Bradshaw lying on a table in the panelled
+hall, where they generally drank coffee, and looked up the night mail to
+Euston.
+
+"I shall catch it at Carlisle," he said to his mother, book in hand.
+"There will be time to hear your report before I go."
+
+She nodded. Her own intention was to start at dusk for Threlfall.
+
+"Why are you going away?" said Felicia suddenly.
+
+He turned to her courteously:
+
+"To try to straighten your affairs!"
+
+"That won't do us any good--to go away." Her voice was shrill, her black
+eyes frowned. "We shan't know what to do--by ourselves."
+
+"And it's precisely because I also don't know exactly what to do next,
+that I'm going to town. We must get some advice--from the lawyers."
+
+"I hate lawyers!" The girl flushed angrily. "I went to one in Lucca
+once--we wanted a paper drawn up. Mamma was ill. I had to go by myself.
+He was a brute!"
+
+"Oh, my old lawyer is not a brute," said Tatham, laughing. "He's a jolly
+old chap."
+
+"The man in Lucca was a horrid brute!" repeated Felicia. "He wanted to
+kiss me! There was a vase of flowers standing on his desk. I threw them
+at him. It cut him. I was so glad! His forehead began to bleed, and the
+water ran down from his hair. He looked so ugly and silly! I walked all
+the way home up the mountains, and when I got home I fainted. We never
+went to that man again."
+
+"I should think not!" exclaimed Tatham, with disgust. For the first time
+he looked at her attentively. An English girl would not have told him
+that story in the same frank, upstanding way. But this little elfish
+creature, with her blazing eyes, friendless and penniless in the world,
+had probably been exposed to experiences the English girl would know
+nothing of. He did not like to think of them. That beast, her father!
+
+He was going away, when Felicia said, her curly head a
+little on one side, her tone low and beguiling:
+
+"When you come back, will you teach me to ride? Lady Tatham
+said--perhaps--"
+
+Tatham was embarrassed--and bored--by the request.
+
+"I have no doubt we can find you a pony," he said evasively, and taking
+up the Bradshaw he walked away.
+
+Felicia stood alone and motionless in the big hall, amid its
+Gainsboroughs and Romneys, its splendid cabinets and tapestries, a
+childish figure in a blue dress, with crimson cheeks, and compressed
+lips. Suddenly she ran up to a mirror on the wall, and looked at herself
+vindictively.
+
+"It is because you are so ugly," she said to the image in the glass.
+"Ugh, you are so ugly! And yet I can't have yellow hair like that
+other girl. If I dyed it, he would know--he would laugh. And she is all
+round and soft; but my bones are all sticking out! I might be cut out of
+wood. Ah"--her wild smile broke out--"I know what I'll do! I'll drink
+_panna_--cream they call it here. Every night at tea they bring in what
+would cost a _lira_ in Florence. I'll drink a whole cup of it!--I'll eat
+pounds of butter--and lots, lots of pudding--that's what makes English
+people fat. I'll be fat too. You'll see!" And she threw a threatening nod
+at the scarecrow reflected in the tortoise-shell mirror.
+
+The October evening had fallen when Tatham put his mother into the motor,
+and stood, his hands in his pockets--uncomfortable and disapproving--on
+the steps of Duddon, watching the bright lights disappearing down the
+long avenue. What could she do? He hated to think of her in the old
+miser's house, browbeaten and perhaps insulted, when he was not there to
+protect her.
+
+However she was gone, on what he was certain would prove a futile errand,
+and he turned heavily back into the house.
+
+The head keeper was waiting in the inner hall, in search of orders for a
+small "shoot" of neighbours on the morrow, planned some weeks before.
+
+"Arrange it as you like, Thurston!" said Tatham hurriedly, as he came in
+sight of the man, a magnificent grizzled fellow in gaiters and a green
+uniform. "I don't care where we go."
+
+"I thought perhaps the Colley Wood beat, my lord--"
+
+"Yes, capital. That'll do. I leave it to you. Sorry I can't stay to talk
+it over. Good-night!"
+
+"There's a pair of foxes, my lord, in the Nowers spinney that have been
+doing a shocking amount of damage lately...."
+
+But the door of the library was already shut. Thurston went away, both
+astonished and aggrieved. There were few things he liked better than a
+chat with the young fellow whom he had taught to hold a gun; and Tatham
+was generally the most accessible of masters and the keenest of
+sportsmen, going into every detail of the shooting parties himself, with
+an unfailing spirit.
+
+Meanwhile Victoria was speeding eastward in her motor along the Pengarth
+road. Darkness was fast rushing on. To her left she saw the spreading
+waste of Flitterdale Common, its great stretches of moss livid in the
+dusk: and beyond it, westward, the rounded tops and slopes of the range
+that runs from Great Dodd to Helvellyn. Presently she made out, in the
+distance, looking southward from the high-level road on which the car was
+running, the great enclosure of Threlfall Park, on either side of the
+river which ran between her and Flitterdale; the dim line of its circling
+wall; its scattered woods; and farther on, the square mass of the Tower
+itself, black above the trees.
+
+The car stopped at a gate, a dark and empty lodge beside it. The footman
+jumped down. Was the gate locked?--and must she go round to Whitebeck,
+and make her attack from that side? No, the gate swung open, and in sped
+the car.
+
+Victoria sat upright, her mood strung to an intensity which knew no
+fears. It was twenty years since she had last seen Edmund Melrose, and it
+was thirty years and more since she had rescued her sister from his
+grasp, and the duel between herself and him had ended in her final
+victory.
+
+How dim they seemed, those far-off days!--when for some two or three
+years, either in London or in Paris, where her father was Ambassador, she
+had been in frequent contact with a group of young men--of young
+"bloods"--conspicuous in family and wealth, among whom Edmund Melrose was
+the reckless leader of a dare-devil set. She thought of a famous picture
+of the young Beckford, by Lawrence, to which Melrose on the younger
+side of forty had been frequently compared. The same romantic beauty of
+feature, the same liquid depth of eye, the same splendid carriage; and,
+combined with these, the same insolence and selfishness. There had been
+in Victoria's earlier youth moments when to see him enter a ballroom was
+to feel her head swim with excitement; when to carry him off from a rival
+was a passionate delight; when she coveted his praise, and dreaded his
+sarcasm. And yet--it was perfectly true what she had said to Harry. She
+had never been in love with him. The imagination of an "unlessoned girl"
+had been fired; but when the glamour in which it had wrapped the man had
+been torn away by the disclosure of some ugly facts concerning him; when
+she broke with him in disgust, and induced others to break with him; it
+was not her feelings, not her heart, which had suffered.
+
+Nevertheless, so complex a thing is a woman, that as Victoria Tatham drew
+nearer to the Tower, and to Melrose, she felt herself strangely melting
+toward him--a prey to pity and the tears of things. She alone in this
+countryside had been a witness of his meteor like youth; she alone could
+set it beside his sordid and dishonoured age.
+
+What did she hope to do with him? The plight of his wife and daughter had
+roused her strongest and most indignant sympathy. The cry of wrong or
+injustice had always found her fiercely responsive. Whatever an outsider
+could do to help Melrose's local victims she had done, not once but many
+times. Her mind was permanently in revolt against him, both as a man and
+a landlord. She had watched and judged him for years. Yet, now that
+yet another of his misdeeds was to bring her again into personal contact
+with him, her pulse quickened; some memory of the old ascendency
+survived.
+
+It was a still and frosty evening. As the motor drew up in the walled
+enclosure before the Tower, the noise of its brakes echoed through the
+profound silence in which the Tower was wrapped. No sign of life in the
+dark front; no ray of light anywhere from its shuttered windows.
+
+Yet, to her astonishment, as she alighted, and before she had rung the
+bell, the front door was thrown open, and Dixon with a couple of dogs at
+his heels ran down the steps.
+
+At sight however of the veiled and cloaked lady who had descended from
+the motor, the old man stopped short, evidently surprised. With an
+exclamation Victoria did not catch, he retreated to the threshold of the
+house.
+
+She mounted rapidly, not noticing that a telegraph boy on a bicycle had
+come wheeling into the forecourt behind her.
+
+"Is Mr. Melrose at home?"
+
+As she threw back her veil, Dixon stared at her in dumb amazement. Then
+she suddenly perceived behind him a tall figure advancing. She made a few
+steps forward through the dimly lighted hall, and found herself within a
+foot of Edmund Melrose himself.
+
+He gave a start--checked himself--and stood staring at her. He wore
+spectacles, and was leaning on a stick. She had a quick impression of
+physical weakness and decay.
+
+Without any visible embarrassment she held out her hand.
+
+"I am lucky to have found you at home, Mr. Melrose. Will you give me
+twenty minutes' conversation on some important business?"
+
+"Excuse me!" he said with a profound bow, and a motion of the left
+hand toward the stick on which he supported himself--"or rather my
+infirmities."
+
+Victoria's hand dropped.
+
+His glittering eyes surveyed her. Dixon approached him holding out a
+telegram.
+
+"Allow me," said Melrose, as he tore open the envelope and perused
+the message. "Ah! I thought so! You were mistaken, Lady Tatham--for
+another visitor--one of those foreign fellows who waste so much of
+my time--coming to see a few little things of mine. Shut the door,
+Dixon--the man has missed his train. Now, Lady Tatham!--you have some
+business to discuss with me. Kindly step this way."
+
+He turned toward the gallery. Victoria followed, and Dixon was left in
+the hall, staring after them in a helpless astonishment.
+
+The gallery lit by hanging lamps made a swift impression of splendid
+space and colour on Lady Tatham as she passed through it in Melrose's
+wake. He led the way without a word, till he reached the door of his own
+room.
+
+She passed into the panelled library which has been already described in
+the course of this narrative. On this October evening, however, its
+aspect was not that generally presented by Melrose's "den." Its ordinary
+hugger-mugger had been cleared away--pushed back into corners and out of
+sight. But on the splendid French bureau, and on various other tables and
+cabinets of scarcely less beauty, there stood ranged in careful order
+a wealth of glorious things. The light of a blazing fire, and of many
+lamps played on some fifty or sixty dishes and vases from the great days
+of Italian majolica--specimens of Gubbio, Faenza, Caffagiolo, of the
+rarest and costliest quality. The room glowed and sparkled with colour.
+The gold of Italian sunshine, the azure of Italian skies, the purple of
+Italian grapes seemed to have been poured into it, and to have taken
+shape in these lustrous ewers and plaques, in their glistering greens and
+yellows, their pale opalescence, their superb orange and blue. While as a
+background to the show, a couple of curtains--Venetian cut-velvet of the
+seventeenth century, of faded but still gorgeous blue and rose--had been
+hung over a tall screen.
+
+"What marvellous things!" cried Victoria, throwing up her hands and
+forgetting everything else for the moment but the pleasure of a trained
+eye.
+
+Melrose smiled.
+
+"Pray take that chair!" he said, with exaggerated deference. "Your
+visits are rare, Lady Tatham! Is it--twenty years? I regret I have no
+drawing-room in which to receive you. But Mr. Faversham and I talk of
+furnishing it before long. You are, I believe, acquainted with Mr.
+Faversham?"
+
+He waved his hand, and suddenly Victoria became aware of another person
+in the room. Faversham standing tall and silent, amid the show of
+majolica, bowed to her formally, and Victoria slightly acknowledged the
+greeting. It seemed to her that Melrose's foraging eyes travelled
+maliciously between her and the agent.
+
+"Mr. Faversham and I only unpacked a great part of this stuff yesterday,"
+said Melrose, with much apparent good humour. "It has been shut up in one
+of the north rooms ever since a sale in Paris at which I bought most of
+the pieces. Crockett wished to see it" (he named the most famous American
+collector of the day). "He shall see it. I understand he will be here
+to-morrow, having missed his train to-day. He will come no doubt with his
+check-book. It amuses me to lead these fellows on, and then bid them good
+morning. They have the most infernal assumptions. One has to teach them
+that an Englishman is a match for any American!"
+
+Victoria sat passive. Faversham took up a pile of letters and moved
+toward the door. As he opened it, he turned and his eyes met Victoria's.
+She wavered a moment under the passionate and haughty resentment they
+seemed to express, no doubt a reflection of the reply to his letter sent
+him by Harry that morning. Then the door shut and she was alone with
+Melrose.
+
+That gentleman leant back in his chair observing her. He wore the curious
+cloaklike garment of thin black stuff, in which for some years past he
+had been accustomed to dress when indoors; and the skullcap on his
+silvery white hair gave added force to the still splendid head and
+aquiline features. A kind of mocking satisfaction seemed to flicker
+through the wrinkled face; and the general aspect of the man was still
+formidable indeed. And yet it was the phantom of a man that she beheld.
+He had paled to the diaphanous whiteness of the Catholic ascetic; his
+hand shook upon his stick; the folds of the cloak barely concealed the
+emaciation of his body. Victoria, gazing at him, seemed to perceive
+strange intimations and presages, and, in the deep harsh eyes, a spirit
+at bay.
+
+She began quietly, bending forward:
+
+"Mr. Melrose, I have come to speak to you on behalf of your wife."
+
+"So I imagined. I should not allow any one else, Lady Tatham, to address
+me on the subject."
+
+"Thank you. I resolved--as you see--to appeal once more to our old--"
+
+"Friendship?" he suggested.
+
+"Yes--friendship," she repeated, slowly. "It might have been called
+so--once."
+
+"Long ago! So long ago that--I do not see how anything practical can come
+of appealing to it," he said, pointedly. "Moreover, the manner in which
+the friendship was trampled on--by you--not once, but twice, not only
+destroyed it, but--if I may say so--replaced it."
+
+His hollow eyes burned upon her. Wrapped in his cloak, his white hair
+gleamimg amid the wonderful ewers and dishes, he had the aspect of some
+wizard or alchemist, of whom a woman might ask poison for her rival, or a
+philter for her lover. Victoria, fascinated, was held partly by the
+apparition before her, partly by an image--a visualization in the mind.
+She saw the ballroom in that splendid house, now the British Embassy in
+Paris, and once the home of Pauline Borghese. She saw herself in white, a
+wreath of forget-me-nots in her hair. She has just heard, and from a
+woman friend, a story of lust and cruelty in which Edmund Melrose was the
+principal actor. He comes to claim her for a dance; she dismisses him, in
+public, with a manner and in words that scathe--that brand. She sees his
+look of rage, as of one struck in the face--she feels again the shudder
+passing through her--a shudder of release, horror passing into
+thanksgiving.
+
+But--what long tracts of life since then!--what happiness for her!--what
+decay and degeneracy for him! A pang of sheer pity, not so much for him
+as for the human lot, shot through her, as she realized afresh to what
+evening of life he had come, from what a morning.
+
+At any rate her manner in reply showed no resentment of his tone.
+
+"All these things are dead for both of us," she said quietly.
+
+He interrupted her.
+
+"You are right--or partly right. Edith is dead--that makes it easier for
+you and me to meet."
+
+"Yes. Edith is dead," she said, with sudden emotion. "And in her last
+days she spoke to me kindly of you."
+
+He made no comment. She resumed:
+
+"I desire, if I can--and if you will allow me--to recall to you the years
+when we were cousins and friends together--blotting out all that has
+happened since. If you remember--twenty years ago, when you and your wife
+arrived to settle here, I then came to ask you to bury the feud between
+us, and to let us meet again at least as neighbours and acquaintances.
+You refused. Then came the breakdown of your marriage. I was honestly
+sorry for it."
+
+He smiled. She was quite conscious of the mockery in the smile; but she
+persevered.
+
+"And now, for many years, I have not known--nobody here has known,
+whether your wife was alive or dead. Suddenly, a few days ago, she and
+your daughter arrived at Duddon, to ask me to help them."
+
+"Precisely. To make use of you, in order to bring pressure to bear on me!
+I do not mean to lend myself to the proceeding!"
+
+Victoria flushed.
+
+"In attempting to influence me, Mrs. Melrose, I assure you, had no weapon
+whatever but her story. And to look at her was to see that it was true.
+She admits--most penitently--that she was wrong to leave you--"
+"And to rob me! You forget that."
+
+Victoria threw back her head. He remembered that scornful gesture in her
+youth.
+
+"What did that matter to you? In this house!"
+
+She looked round the room, with its contents.
+
+"It did matter to me," he said stubbornly. "My collections are the only
+satisfaction left to me--by you, Lady Tatham--and others. They are to me
+in the place of children. I love my bronzes--and my marbles--as you--I
+suppose--love your son. It sounds incredible to you, no doubt"--the sneer
+was audible--"but it is so."
+
+"Even if it were so--it is twenty years ago. You have replaced what you
+lost a hundred times."
+
+"I have never replaced it. And it is now out of my reach--in the Berlin
+Museum--bought by that fellow Jensen, their head man, who goes nosing
+like a hound all over Europe--and is always poaching in my preserves."
+
+Victoria looked at him in puzzled amazement. Was this mad, this childish
+bitterness, a pose?--or was there really some breakdown of the once
+powerful brain? She began again--less confidently.
+
+"I have told you--I repeat--how sorry she is--how fully she admits she
+was wrong. But just consider how she has paid for it! Your allowance to
+her--you must let me speak plainly--could not keep her and her child
+decently. Her family have been unfortunate; she has had to keep them as
+well as herself. And the end of it is that she--and your child--your own
+child--have come pretty near to starvation."
+
+He sat immovable. But Victoria rose to her task. Her veil thrown back
+from the pale austerity of her beauty, she poured out the story of Netta
+and Felicia, from a heart sincerely touched. The sordid years in
+Florence, the death of Netta's mother, the bankruptcy of her father, the
+bitter struggle amid the Apuan Alps to keep themselves and their wretched
+invalid alive--she described them, as they had been told to her, not
+rhetorically, for neither she nor Netta Melrose was capable of rhetoric,
+but with the touches and plain details that bring conviction.
+
+"They have been _hungry_--for the peasants' food. Your wife and child
+have had to be content day after day with a handful of bread and a
+_salata_ gathered from the roadside; while every franc they could earn
+was spent upon a sick man. Mrs. Melrose is a shadow. I suspect incurable
+illness. Your little daughter arrived fainting and emaciated at my house.
+But with a few days' rest and proper food she has revived. She is young.
+She has not suffered irreparably. One sees what a lovely little creature
+she might be--and how full of vivacity and charm. Mr. Melrose--you would
+be proud of her! She is like you--like what you were, in your youth. When
+I think of what other people would give for such a daughter! Can you
+possibly deny yourself the pleasure of taking her back into your life?"
+
+"Very easily! Your sentimentalism will resent it; I assure you,
+nevertheless, that it would give me no pleasure whatever."
+
+"Ah, but consider it again," she pleaded, earnestly. "You do not know
+what you are refusing--how much, and how little. All that is asked is
+that you should acknowledge them--provide for them. Let them stay here a
+few weeks in the year--what could it matter to you in this immense
+house?--or if that is impossible, at least give your wife a proper
+allowance--you would spend it three times over in a day on things like
+these"--her eye glanced toward a superb ewer and dish, of _verre
+églomisée_, standing between her and Melrose--"and let your daughter take
+her place as your heiress! She ought to marry early--and marry
+brilliantly. And later--perhaps--in her children--"
+
+Melrose stood up.
+
+"I shall not follow you into these dreams," he said fiercely. "She is not
+my heiress--and she never will be. The whole of my property"--he spoke
+with hammered emphasis--"will pass at my death to my friend and agent and
+adopted son--Claude Faversham."
+
+He spoke with an excitement his physical state no longer allowed him to
+conceal. At last--he was defeating this woman who had once defeated him;
+he was denying and scorning her, as she had once denied and scorned him.
+That her cause was an impersonal and an unselfish one made no difference.
+He knew the strength of her character and her sympathies. It was sweet to
+him to refuse her something she desired. She had never yet given him the
+opportunity! In the twenty years since they had last faced each other, he
+was perfectly conscious that he had lost mentally, morally, physically;
+whereas she--his enemy--bore about with her, even in her changed beauty,
+the signs of a life lived fruitfully--a life that had been worth while.
+His bitter perception of it, his hidden consciousness that he had
+probably but a short time, a couple of years at most, to live, only
+increased his satisfaction in the "No"--the contemptuous and final "No!"
+that he had opposed, and would oppose, to her impertinent interference
+with his affairs.
+
+Victoria sat regarding him silently, as he walked to the
+mantelpiece, rearranged a few silver objects standing upon it, and
+then turned--confronting her again.
+
+"You have made Mr. Faversham your heir?" she asked him after a pause.
+
+"I have. And I shall take good care that he does nothing with my property
+when he inherits it so as to undo my wishes with regard to it."
+
+"That is to say--you will not even allow him to make--himself--provision
+for your wife and daughter?"
+
+"Beyond what was indicated in the letter to your son? No! certainly not.
+I shall take measures against anything of the sort."
+
+Victoria rose.
+
+"And he accepts your condition--your bequest to him, on these terms?"
+
+Melrose smiled.
+
+"Certainly. Why not?"
+
+"I am sorry for Mr. Faversham!" said Victoria, in a different voice, the
+colour sparkling on her cheek.
+
+"Because you think there will be a public opinion against him--that he
+will be boycotted in this precious county? Make yourself easy, Lady
+Tatham. A fortune such as he will inherit provides an easy cure for such
+wounds."
+
+Victoria's self-control began to break down.
+
+"I venture to think he will not find it so," she said, with quickened
+breath. "In these days it is not so simple to defy the common
+conscience--as it once was. I fear indeed that Mr. Faversham has already
+lost the respect of decent men!"
+
+"By becoming my agent?"
+
+"Your tool--for actions--cruel, inhuman things--degrading to both you and
+him."
+
+She had failed. She knew it! And all that remained was to speak the truth
+to him, to defy and denounce him.
+
+Melrose surveyed her.
+
+"The ejectment order has been served at Mainstairs to-day, I believe; and
+the police have at last plucked up their courage to turn those shiftless
+people out. There, too, I understand, Lady Tatham, you have been
+meddling."
+
+"I have been trying to undo some of your wrong-doing," she said, with
+emotion. "And now--before I go--you shall not prevent me from saying that
+I regard it perhaps as your last and worst crime to have perverted the
+conscience of this young man! He has been well thought of till now: a
+decent fellow sprung from decent people. You are making an outcast--a
+pariah of him. And you think _money_ will compensate him! When you and I
+knew each other, Edmund"--the name slipped out--"you had a _mind_--one of
+the shrewdest I ever knew. I appeal to that. It is not so much now that
+you are wicked or cruel--you are playing the _fool_! And you are teaching
+this young man to do the same."
+
+She stood confronting him, holding herself tensely erect--a pale,
+imperious figure--the embodiment of all the higher ideals and traditions
+of the class to which they both belonged.
+
+In her agitation she had dropped her glove. Melrose picked it up.
+
+"On that I think, Lady Tatham, we will say farewell. I regret I have not
+been able to oblige you. My wife comes from a needy class--accustomed to
+manage on a little. My daughter has not been brought up to luxury. Had
+she remained with me, of course, the case would have been different. But
+you will find they will do very well on what I have provided for them. I
+advise you not to waste your pity. And as for Mr. Faversham, he will take
+good care of himself. He frames excellently. And I hope before long to
+see him married--to a very suitable young lady."
+
+They remained looking at each other, for a few seconds, in silence. Then
+Victoria said quietly, with a forward step:
+
+"I bid you good evening."
+
+He stood at the door, his fingers on the handle, his eyes glittering and
+malicious.
+
+"I should have liked to have shown you some of my little collections,"
+he said, smiling. "That _verre églomisée_, for instance"--he pointed to
+it--"it's magnificent, though rather decadent. They have nothing like it
+in London or Paris. Really--you must go?"
+
+He threw the door open, bowing profoundly.
+
+"Dixon!"
+
+A voice responded from the farther end of the corridor.
+
+"Tell her ladyship's car to come round. Excuse my coming to the door,
+Lady Tatham. I am an old man."
+
+The car sped once more through the gloom of the park. Victoria sat with
+hands locked on her knee, possessed by the after tremors of battle.
+
+In Melrose's inhuman will there was something demonic, which appalled.
+The impotence of justice, of compassion, in the presence of certain
+shameless and insolent forces of the human spirit--the lesson goes deep!
+Victoria quivered under it.
+
+But there were other elements besides in her tumult of feeling. The tone,
+the taunting look, with which Melrose had spoken of Faversham's possible
+marriage--did he, did all the world know, that Harry had been played with
+and jilted? For that, in plain English, was what it came to. Her heart
+burnt with anger--with a desire to punish.
+
+The car passed out of the lodge gates. Its brilliant lamps under the
+trees seemed to strike into the very heart of night. And suddenly, in the
+midst of the light they made, two figures emerged, an old man carrying a
+sack, a youth beside him, with a gun over his shoulder.
+
+They were the Brands--father, and younger son. Victoria bent forward with
+a hasty gesture of greeting. But they never turned to look at the motor.
+They passed out of the darkness, and into the darkness again, their
+frowning, unlovely faces, their ragged clothes and stooping gait,
+illuminated for an instant.
+
+Victoria had tried that very week, at her son's instance, to try and
+persuade the father to take a small farm on the Duddon estate, Tatham
+offering to lend him capital. And Brand had refused. Independence,
+responsibility, could no longer be faced by a spirit so crushed. "I
+darena' my lady," he had said to her. "I'm worth nobbut my weekly wage. I
+canna' tak' risks--no more. Thank yo' kindly; but yo' mun let us be!"
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+On the morning following her vain interview with Melrose, Victoria,
+sorely conscious of defeat, conveyed the news of it to the depressed and
+disprited Netta.
+
+They were in Victoria's sitting-room. Netta sat, a lamentable figure, on
+the edge of the sofa, twisting her disfigured hands, her black eyes
+glancing restlessly about her. Ever since she had read Faversham's letter
+to Tatham she had been an altered being. The threats as to her father,
+which it contained, seemed to have withered her afresh. All that small
+and desperate flicker of hope in which she had arrived had died away, and
+her determination with it. Her consent to Victoria's interview with
+Melrose had been only obtained from her with difficulty. And now she was
+all for retreat--precipitate retreat.
+
+"It's no use. I was a fool to come. We must go back. I always told
+Felicia it would be no use. We'd better not have come. I'll not have papa
+tormented!"
+
+While she was speaking a footman entered, bringing a telegram for
+Victoria. It was from Tatham in London.
+
+"Have just seen lawyers. They are of opinion we could not fail in
+application for proper allowance and provision for both mother and
+daughter. Hope you will persuade Mrs. Melrose to let us begin proceedings
+at once. Very sorry for your telegram this morning, but only what I
+expected."
+
+Victoria read the message to her guest, and then did her best to urge
+boldness--an immediate stroke. But Netta shook her head despairingly. She
+could not and would not have her father harassed. Mr. Melrose would do
+anything--bribe anybody--to get his way. They would have the police
+coming, and dragging her father to prison. It was not to be thought of.
+
+Victoria tried gently to investigate what skeleton might be lying in the
+Smeath closet, whereof Mr. Melrose possessed such very useful
+information. But Netta held her tongue. "Papa had been very unfortunate,
+and the Government would like to put him in prison if they could. Edmund
+had been always so cruel to him." Beyond this Victoria could not get.
+
+But the determination of the frail, faded woman was unshakable, although
+she glanced nervously at her daughter from time to time, as if much more
+in dread of her opinion than of Victoria's.
+
+Felicia, who had listened in silence to the conversation between her
+mother and Victoria, turned round from the window in which she was
+staring, as soon as Lady Tatham seemed to be finally worsted.
+
+"Mother, you promised to stay here till Christmas!"
+
+The voice was imperious. Felicia's manner to her mother indeed was often
+of an unfilial sharpness, and Victoria was already meditating some gentle
+discipline on the point.
+
+"Oh, no, Felicia!" said Netta, helplessly, "not till Christmas." Then,
+remembering herself, she turned toward her hostess: "It's so kind of you,
+I'm sure."
+
+"Yes, till Christmas!" repeated Felicia. "You know grandpapa's no worse.
+You know," the girl flushed suddenly a bright crimson, "Lord Tatham sent
+him money--and he's quite comfortable. _I_ am not going home just yet! I
+am not going back to Italy--till--I have seen my father!"
+
+She faced round upon Victoria and her mother, her hands on her hips, her
+breath fluttering.
+
+"Felicia!" cried her mother, "you can't. I tell you--you can't! I should
+never allow it!"
+
+"Yes, you would, mother! What are you afraid of? He can't kill me. It's
+ridiculous. I must see my father. I will! He is getting old--he may die.
+I will see him before I leave England. I don't care whether he gives us
+the money or not!"
+
+Victoria's bright eyes showed her sympathy; though she did not interfere.
+But Netta shrank into herself.
+
+"You are always such a wilful child, Felicia! You mustn't do anything
+without my leave. You'll kill me if you do."
+
+And ashen-pale, she got up and left the room. Victoria glanced at
+Felicia.
+
+"Don't do anything against your mother's will," she said gently. "You are
+too young to decide these things for yourself. But, if you can, persuade
+her to follow Lord Tatham's advice. He is most anxious to help you in the
+best way. And he does not believe that Mr. Melrose could hurt your
+grandfather."
+
+Felicia shook her curly head, frowning.
+
+"One cannot persuade mother--one cannot. She is obstinate--oh, so
+obstinate! If it were me, I would do anything Lord Tatham asked
+me!--anything in the world."
+
+She stood with her hands behind her back, her slight figure drawn up, her
+look glowing.
+
+Victoria bent over her embroidery, smiling a little, unseen, and, in
+truth, not ill pleased. Yet there was something disturbing in these
+occasional outbursts. For the little Southerner's own sake, one must take
+care they led to nothing serious. For really--quite apart from any other
+consideration--Harry never took the smallest notice of her. And who could
+know better than his mother that his thoughts were still held, still
+tormented by the vision of Lydia?
+
+Felicia slipped out of a glass door that led to the columned veranda
+outside. Victoria, mindful of the girl's delicate look, hurried after her
+with a fur wrap. Felicia gratefully but absently kissed her hand, and
+Victoria left her to her own thoughts.
+
+It was a sunny day, and although November was well in, there was almost
+an Italian warmth in this southern loggia where roses were still
+blooming. Felicia walked up and down, her gaze wandering over the
+mountain landscape to the south--the spreading flanks and slopes of
+the high fells, scarlet with withered fern, and capped with new-fallen
+snow. Through the distant landscape she perceived the line of the stream
+which ran under Flitterdale Common with its high cliff-banks, and hanging
+woods, now dressed in the last richness of autumn. That distant wall of
+trees--behind it, she knew, was Threlfall Tower. Her father--her unkind,
+miserly father, who hated both her and her mother--lived there.
+
+How far was it? A long way! But she would get there somehow.
+
+"It is my right to see my father!" she said to herself passionately;
+adding with a laugh which swept away heroics, "After all, he might take a
+fancy to me in these clothes!"
+
+And she looked down complacently on the pretty tailor-made skirt and
+the new shoes that showed beneath Victoria's fur cloak. In less than
+a fortnight her own ambition and the devotion of Victoria's maid,
+Hesketh, only too delighted to dress somebody so eager to be dressed, for
+whom the mere operations of the toilette possessed a kind of religious
+joy, on whom, moreover, "clothes" in the proper and civilized sense of
+the word, sat so amazingly well--had turned the forlorn little drudge
+into a figure more than creditable to the pains lavished upon her.
+Felicia aimed high. The thought and trouble which the young lady had
+spent, since her arrival, on her hair, her hands, and the minor points of
+English manners, not to mention the padding and plumping of her small
+person--which in spite of all her efforts, however, remained of a most
+sylphlike slimness--by a generous diet of cream and butter, only she and
+Hesketh knew. Victoria guessed, and felt a new and most womanish pleasure
+in the details of her transformation. She realized, poignantly, how
+pleasant it would have been to dress and spoil a daughter.
+
+All the more, as Felicia, after a first eager grasping at pretty things,
+as a child holds out covetous hands for toys and sweets, had shown sudden
+scruples, an unexpected and pretty recoil.
+
+"Don't give me so many things!" she had said, almost with a stamp, the
+sudden, astonishing tears in her great eyes; when, after the first week,
+the new clothes began to shower upon her. "I can't help wanting them! I
+adore them! But I won't be a beggar--no! You will think we only came here
+for this--to get things out of you. We didn't--we _didn't_.'"
+
+"My dear, won't you give me the pleasure?" Victoria had said,
+shamefacedly, putting out a hand to stroke the girl's hair. Whereupon
+Felicia had thrown herself impulsively on her knees, with her arms round
+the speaker, and there had been a mingled moment of laughter and emotion
+which had left Victoria very much astonished at herself, and given
+Hesketh a free hand. Victoria's solitary pursuits, the awkward or stately
+reserve of her ordinary manner, were deplorably interfered with, indeed,
+by the advent of this lovely, neglected child, who on her side had fallen
+passionately in love with Victoria at first sight and seemed to be now
+rarely happy out of her company.
+
+After which digression we may return for a moment to Felicia on the
+loggia, admiring her new shoes.
+
+From that passing ecstasy, she emerged resolved.
+
+"We will stay here till Christmas--and--"
+
+But on the rest of her purpose she shut her small lips firmly. Before
+she turned indoors, however, she gave some attention to the course of a
+white road in the middle distance, on which she had travelled with Lord
+Tatham the day he had taken her to Green Cottage. The cottage where the
+yellow-haired girl lived lay beyond that nearer hill. Ah! but nobody
+spoke of that yellow-haired girl now. Nobody sent flowers or books.
+Nobody so much as mentioned her name. It was strange--but singularly
+pleasing. Felicia raised herself triumphantly on tiptoe, as though she
+would peer over the hill into the cottage; and so see for herself how the
+Signorina Penfold took this sudden and complete neglect.
+
+Tatham returned from London the following day, bringing Cyril Boden--who
+was again on the sick list--with him.
+
+He arrived full of plans for the discomfiture of Melrose, only to be
+brought up irrevocably against the stubborn resolve which Netta, wrapped
+in an irritable and tearful melancholy, opposed to them all. She would
+not hear of the legal proceedings he urged upon her; and it was only on
+an assurance that nothing could or would be done without her consent,
+coupled with a good report of her father, that she at last consented to
+stay at Duddon till the New Year, so that further ways of helping her
+might be discussed.
+
+Felicia, when the thing was settled, danced about Victoria's room, kissed
+her mother and ran off at once, with Victoria's permission, to ask the
+old coachman who ruled the Duddon stables to give her riding-lessons.
+Victoria noticed that she carefully avoided consulting Tatham in any way
+about her lessons. Indeed the earlier, half-childish, half-audacious
+efforts she had made to attract his attention entirely ceased about this
+time.
+
+And he, as soon as it was evident that Mrs. Melrose would not take
+his advice, and that legal proceedings must be renounced, felt a
+natural slackening of interest in his mother's guests. He was perfectly
+kind and polite to them but Netta's cowardice disgusted him; and it was a
+personal disappointment to be thus balked of that public campaign against
+Melrose's enormities which would have satisfied the just and long-baffled
+feelings of a whole county; and--incidentally--would surely have unmasked
+a greedy and unscrupulous adventurer.
+
+Meanwhile the whole story of Mrs. Melrose and her daughter had spread
+rapidly through the neighbourhood. The local papers, now teeming with
+attacks on Melrose, and the management of the Melrose property, had
+fastened with avidity on the news of their arrival. "Mrs. Edmund Melrose
+and her daughter, after an absence of twenty years have arrived in
+Cumbria. They are now staying at Duddon Castle with Countess Tatham. Mr.
+Claude Faversham is at Threlfall Tower." These few sentences served as
+symbols of a dramatic situation which was being discussed in every house
+of the district, in the farms and cottages no less eagerly than by the
+Andovers and the Bartons. The heiress of Threlfall was not dead! After
+twenty years she and her mother had returned to claim their rights from
+the Ogre; and Duddon Castle, the headquarters of all that was powerful
+and respected in the county, had taken up their cause. Meanwhile the
+little heiress had been, it seemed, supplanted. Claude Faversham was in
+possession at Threlfall, and was being treated as the heir. Mr. Melrose
+had flatly refused even to see his wife and daughter whom he had left in
+poverty and starvation for twenty years.
+
+Upon these facts the twin spirit of romance and hatred swooped
+vulturelike. Any story of inheritance, especially when charm and youth
+are mixed up with it, kindles the popular mind. It was soon known that
+Miss Melrose was pretty, and small; though, said report, worn to a
+skeleton by paternal ill-usage. Romance likes its heroines small. The
+countryside adopted the unconscious Felicia, and promptly married her to
+Harry Tatham. What could be more appropriate? Duddon could afford to risk
+a dowry; and what maiden in distress could wish for a better Perseus than
+the splendid young man who was the general favourite of the
+neighbourhood?
+
+As to the hatred of Melrose which gave zest to the tale of his daughter,
+it was becoming a fury. The whole Mainstairs village had now been
+ejected, by the help of a large body of police requisitioned from
+Carlisle for the purpose. Of the able-bodied, some had migrated to the
+neighbouring towns, some were camped on Duddon land, in some wood and
+iron huts hastily run up for their accommodation. And thus a village
+which might be traced in Doomsday Book had been wiped out. For the sick
+Tatham had offered a vacant farmhouse as a hospital; and Victoria, Mrs.
+Andover, and other ladies had furnished and equipped it. Some twenty
+cases of enteric and diphtheria, were housed there, a few of them doomed
+beyond hope. Melrose had been peremptorily asked for a subscription to
+the fund raised, and had replied in his own handwriting that owing to the
+heavy expenses he had been put to by the behaviour of his Mainstairs
+tenants, as reported to him by his agent, Mr. Faversham, he must
+respectfully decline. The letter was published in the two local papers
+with appropriate comments, and a week later an indignation meeting to
+protest against the state of the Threlfall property, and to petition the
+Local Government Board to hold an inquiry on the spot, was held in
+Carlisle, with Tatham in the chair. And everywhere the public indignation
+which could not get at Melrose, who now, except for railway journeys,
+never showed himself outside the wall of his park, was beginning to fall
+upon the "adventurer" who was his tool and accomplice, and had become the
+supplanter of his young and helpless daughter. Men who four months before
+had been eager to welcome Faversham to his new office now passed him in
+the street without recognition. At the County Club to which he had been
+easily elected, Colonel Barton proposing him, he was conspicuously cut by
+Barton himself, Squire Andover and many others following suit. "An
+impostor, and a cad!" said Barton fiercely to Undershaw. "He took me
+in--and I can't forgive him. He is doing all Melrose's dirty work for
+him, better than Melrose could do it himself. His letters, for instance,
+to our Council Committee about the allotments we are trying to get out of
+the old villain have been devilish clever, and devilish impudent! Melrose
+couldn't have written them. And now this business of the girl!--and the
+fortune!--sickening!"
+
+"He is a queer chap," said Undershaw thoughtfully. "I've been as mad with
+him as anybody--but somehow--don't know. Suppose we wait a bit. Melrose's
+life is a bad one."
+
+But Barton refused to wait, and went off storming.
+The facts, he vowed, were more than enough.
+
+The weeks passed on. Duddon knew no longer what Green Cottage was
+doing. Victoria, at any rate, was ignorant, and forbore to ask--by
+word of mouth; though her thoughts were one long interrogation on the
+subject of Lydia, both as to the present and the past. Was she still in
+correspondence with Faversham, as Victoria now understood from Tatham she
+had been all the summer? Was she still defending him? Perhaps engaged to
+him? For a fair-minded and sensible woman, Victoria fell into strange
+bogs of prejudice and injustice in the course of these ponderings.
+
+In her drives and walks at this time, Victoria generally avoided the
+neighbourhood of the cottage. But one afternoon at the very end of
+October, she overtook--walking--a slight, muffled figure in the Whitebeck
+road, and recognized Susy Penfold. A constrained greeting passed between
+them, and Lady Tatham learnt that Lydia was away--had been away, indeed,
+since the day following her last interview with Harry. The very next
+morning she and her mother had been summoned to London by the grave
+illness of Mrs. Penfold's elder sister. And there they were still; though
+Lydia was expected home shortly.
+
+Victoria walked on, with relieved feelings, she scarcely knew why. At any
+rate there had been no personal contact between Faversham and a charming
+though foolish girl, during these weeks of popular indignation.
+
+By what shabby arts had the mean and grasping fellow now installed at
+Threlfall ever succeeded in obtaining a hold over a being so refined, so
+fastidious and--to all appearances--so high-minded, as Lydia Penfold?
+To refuse Harry and decline on Claude Faversham! Victoria acknowledged
+indeed a certain pseudo-Byronic charm in the man. She could not forget
+the handsome head as she had seen it last at the door of Melrose's
+library; or the melodramatic black and white of the face, of the small,
+peaked beard, the dark brows, pale lantern cheeks, and heavy-lidded eyes.
+All the picturesque adventurers of the world betray something, she
+thought, of a common stamp.
+
+At last one evening, when Tatham was away on county business, and Felicia
+had gone to bed, Victoria suddenly unburdened herself to Cyril Boden, as
+they sat one on either side of a November fire, while a southwesterly
+gale from the high fells blustered and raged outside.
+
+Boden was the confessor of a good many people. Not that he was by any
+means an orthodox Christian; his ascetic ways had very little to do with
+any accepted form of doctrine. But there was in him the natural priestly
+power, which the priest by ordination may have or miss. It was because
+men and women realized in himself the presence of a travailing,
+questioning, suffering soul, together with an iron self-repression, that
+those who suffered and questioned came to him, and threw themselves upon
+him; often getting more buffeting than balm for their pains; but always
+conscious of some mysterious attractions in him, as of one who, like Sir
+Boris, had seen the Grail, but might never tell of the vision.
+
+Victoria was truly attached to him. He had been with her during the days
+of her husband's sudden illness and death; he had advised her with regard
+to the passing difficulties of Tatham's school and college days and
+pointed a way for her through many perplexities of her own. Duddon was as
+much of a home to him, as he probably possessed in the world. When he had
+worn himself out with some one or other of the many causes he pursued in
+South London, working with a sombre passion which had in it very little
+of the mystical joy or hope which sustain others in similar efforts; when
+he had scarcely a coat to his back, or a shoe to his feet; when his
+doctor began to talk of tuberculin tests and the high Alps; then he would
+wire to Duddon, and come and vegetate under Victoria's wing, for just as
+many weeks as were necessary to send him back to London restored to a
+certain physical standard. To watch Harry Tatham's wholesome, kindly,
+prosperous life, untroubled by any of the nightmares that weighed upon
+his own, was an unfailing pleasure to a weary man. He loved both Harry
+and his mother. Nevertheless, as soon as he arrived, both felt him the
+gadfly in the house. His mind was nothing if not critical. And
+undoubtedly the sight of easy wealth was an irritation to him. He
+struggled against it; but sometimes it would out.
+
+As he sat this evening crouched over the fire, his hands spread to
+the blaze, he looked more frail than usual; a fact which perhaps,
+half-consciously, affected Victoria and drew out her confidence. His
+dress suit, primevally old, would scarcely, she reflected, hold together
+another winter. But how it was to be replaced had already cost her and
+Harry much thought. There was nobody more personally, fanatically proud
+than Boden toward his well-to-do friends. His clothes indeed were a
+matter of tender anxiety in the Duddon household, and Tatham's valet
+and Victoria's maids did him many small services, some of which he repaid
+with a smile and a word--priceless to the recipient; and some he was
+never aware of. When his visits to Duddon first began, the contents of
+his Gladstone bag used to provide merriment in the servants' hall, and
+legend said that a young footman had once dared to be insolent to him.
+Had any one ventured the same conduct now he would have been sent to
+Coventry by every servant in the house.
+
+It was to this austere, incalculable, yet always attractive listener,
+that Victoria told the story of Harry and Lydia, of the Faversham
+adventure, and the Melrose inheritance. If she wanted advice, a little
+moral guidance for herself--and indeed she did want it--she did not get
+any; but of comment there was plenty.
+
+"That's the girl I saw here last time," mused Boden, nursing his
+knee--"lovely creature--with some mind in her face. So she's refused
+Harry--and Duddon?"
+
+"Which no doubt will commend her to you!" said Victoria, not without a
+certain bristling of her feathers.
+
+"It does," said Boden quietly. "Upon my word, it was a fine thing to do."
+
+"Just because we happen to be rich?" Victoria's eyelids fluttered a
+little.
+
+"No! but because it throws a little light on what we choose to call the
+soul. It brings one back to a faint belief in the existence of the thing.
+Here is one of the great fortunes, and one of the splendid houses of the
+world, and a little painting girl who makes a few pounds by her drawings
+says 'No, thank you!' when they are laid at her feet--because--of a
+little trifle called love which she can't bring to the bargain. I confess
+that bucks one up. 'The day-star doth his beams restore.'"
+
+He took up the tongs, and began absently to rebuild the fire. Victoria
+waited on his remarks with heightened colour.
+
+"Of course I'm sorry for Harry," he said, after a moment, with his queer
+smile. "I saw there was something wrong when I arrived. But it's
+salutary--very salutary! Hasn't he had everything in the world he wanted
+from his cradle? And isn't it as certain as anything can be that he'll
+find some other charming girl, who'll faint with joy, when he asks her,
+and give you all the grandchildren you want? And meanwhile we have this
+bit of the heroic--this defiance of a miry world, cropping up--to help us
+out of our mud-holes. I'm awfully sorry for Harry--but I take off my hat
+to the girl."
+
+Victoria's expression became sarcastic.
+
+"Who will ultimately marry," she said, "according to _my_ interpretation
+of the business, a first-class adventurer--possessed of a million of
+money--stolen from its proper owners."
+
+"I don't believe it. I've seen her! But, upon my word, what a queer
+parable it all is! Shall I tell you how it shapes itself to me?" He
+looked, tongs in hand, at Victoria, his greenish eyes all alive. "I see
+you all--you, Harry, Faversham, and Melrose, Miss Lydia--grouped round a
+central point. The point is wealth. You are all in different relations to
+wealth. You and Harry are indifferent to wealth, because you have always
+had it. It has come to you without toiling and spinning--can you imagine
+being without it?--but it has not spoilt you. You sit loose to it;
+because you have never _struggled_ for it. But I doubt whether the
+Recording Angel, when it comes to reckoning up, will give you very high
+marks for your indifference! Dear friend!"--he put out a sudden hand
+and touched Victoria's--"bear with me! There's one thing you'll hear, if
+any one does, at the last day--'I was a stranger and ye took me in.'" His
+eyes shone upon her.
+
+After which, he resumed in his former tone: "Then take Melrose. He too is
+determined by his relation to wealth. Wealth has just ruined him--burnt
+him up--made out of him so much refuse for the nether fires. Faversham
+again! Wealth, the crucial, deciding factor! The testing with him is
+still going on. He seems, from your account, to be coming out badly. And
+lastly, the girl--who, like you, is indifferent to wealth, but for
+different reasons; who probably hates and shrinks from it; like a wild
+bird that fears the cage. You, my dear lady--you and Harry--have got so
+used to wealth, its trammels no longer gall you. You carry the weight of
+it, as the horse of the Middle Ages carried his trappings; it's second
+nature. And you can enjoy, you can move, you can feel, in spite of it.
+You have risked your soul, without knowing it; but you have kept your
+soul! This girl, I take it, is afraid to risk her soul. She is not in
+love with Harry--worse luck for Harry!--she is in love--remember I have
+talked to her a little!--with something she calls beauty, with liberty,
+with an unfettered course for the spirit, with all the lovely,
+intangible, priceless _best_, which the world holds for its true lovers.
+Wealth grasping at that best has a way of killing it--as the child kills
+the butterfly. _That's_ what she's afraid of. As to Faversham"--he got up
+from his seat, and with his thumbs in his waistcoat began to pace the
+room--"Faversham no doubt is in a bad way. He's on the road to damnation.
+Melrose of course is damned and done with. But Faversham? I reserve
+judgment. If he's in love with that girl, and she with him--I can't make
+out, however, that you have much reason to think it--but suppose he is,
+she'll have the handling of him. Shan't we back her?"
+
+He turned with vivacity to his hostess.
+
+Victoria laughed indignantly.
+
+"You may if you like. The odds are too doubtful for me."
+
+"That's because you're Harry's mother!" he said with his sly, but most
+winning, smile. "Well--there's the parable--writ large. _Mammon!_--how
+you get it--how you use it--whether you dominate it--or it dominates
+you. Whether it is the greater curse, or the greater blessing to men--it
+was the question in Christ's day--it's the question now. But it has never
+been put with such intensity, as to this generation! As to your
+particular version of the parable--I wait to see! The tale's not through
+yet."
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+A few days later, Lady Tatham received a letter, which she opened with
+some agitation. It was from Lydia in London:
+
+"DEAR LADY TATHAM:
+
+"I have waited some weeks before writing to you, partly because, as Susy
+I hear has told you, I have been busy nursing my mother's sister, but
+still more because my heart failed me--again and again.
+
+"And yet I feel I ought to write--partly in justice to myself--partly to
+ask you to forgive the pain I fear I may have caused you. I know--for he
+has told me--that Lord Tatham never concealed from you all that has
+passed between us; and so I feel sure that you know what happened about a
+month ago, when we agreed that it would be wiser not to meet again for
+the present.
+
+"I don't exactly want to defend myself. It still seems to me true that,
+in the future, men and women will find it much more possible to be
+comrades and friends, without any thought of falling in love or marrying,
+than they do now; and that it will be a good thing for both. And if it
+is true, are not some of us justified in making experiments now? Lord
+Tatham I know will have told you I was quite frank from the beginning. I
+did not wish to marry; but I meant to be a very true friend; and I wanted
+to be allowed to love you both, as one loves one's friends, and to share
+your life a little. And the thing I most wished was that Lord Tatham
+should marry--some one quite different from myself.
+
+"So we agreed that we would write, and share each other's feelings and
+thoughts as far as we could. And I hoped that any other idea with regard
+to me would soon pass out of Lord Tatham's mind. I did--most sincerely;
+and I think he believes that I did. How good and dear he always was to
+me!--how much I have learnt from him! And yet I am afraid it was all very
+blind, and ill-considered--perhaps very selfish--on my part. I did not
+understand what harm I _might_ do; though I hope with all my heart--and
+believe--that I have not done anything irreparable. It is very hard
+for me to regret it; because all my life I shall be the richer and the
+wiser for having known so good a man; one so true, so unselfish, so
+high-minded. Women so rarely come to know men, except in marriage, or
+through books; and your son's character has sweetened and ennobled whole
+sides of life for me--forever.
+
+"But if--in return--I have given him pain--and you, who love him! I was
+always afraid of you--but I would have done anything in the world to
+serve you. Will you let me have a little word--just to tell me that you
+forgive, and understand. I ask it with a very sore heart--full, full of
+gratitude to him and to you, for all your goodness."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Victoria was oddly affected by this letter. It both touched and angered
+her. She was touched by what it said, deeply touched; and angered by what
+it omitted. And yet how could the writer have said anything more!--or
+anything else! Victoria admitted that her thoughts had run far beyond
+what she knew--in any true sense--or had any right to conjecture.
+Nevertheless the fact in her belief remained a fact, that but for
+Faversham and some disastrous influence he had gained over her almost at
+once, Harry would have had his chance with Lydia Penfold. As it was, she
+had been allowing Harry to offer her his most intimate thoughts and
+feelings, while she was actually falling in love with his inferior. This
+was what enraged Victoria. Whatever Cyril Boden might say, it seemed to
+her maternal jealousy something equivalent to the betrayal of a sacred
+confidence.
+
+Yet clearly she could not say so to Lydia Penfold--nor could Lydia
+confess it! She wrote as follows:
+
+"MY DEAR MISS PENFOLD:
+
+"It was very kind of you to write to me, I am sure you meant no harm,
+and I do not pretend to judge another person's conduct by what I might
+myself have thought wisest or best. But I think we all have to learn
+that the deepest feelings in life are very sensitive, and very
+incalculable things; and that the old traditions and conventions
+respecting them have probably much more to say for themselves than we
+like to admit--especially in our youth. Men and women in middle life may
+have true and intimate friendships without any thought of marriage. I
+doubt whether this is possible for young people, though I know it is the
+fashion nowadays to behave as though it were. And especially is it
+difficult--or impossible--where there has been any thought of love--on
+either side. For love is the great, unmanageable, explosive thing, which
+cannot be tamed down, at a word, into friendship--not in youth at any
+rate. The attempt to treat it as a negligible quantity can only bring
+suffering and misunderstanding.
+
+"But I must not preach to you like this. I am sure you know--now--that
+what I say has truth in it. Thank you again for the feeling that dictated
+your letter. Harry is very well and very busy. We hoped to go to London
+before Christmas, but this most difficult and unhappy affair of Mrs.
+Melrose and her daughter detains us. Whether we shall obtain justice for
+them in the end I do not know. At present the adverse influences are very
+strong--and the indignation of all decent people seems to make no
+difference. Mr. Faversham's position is indeed difficult to understand.
+
+"Please remember me kindly to your mother and sister. Next year I hope we
+shall be able to meet as usual. But for the present, as you and Harry
+have agreed, it is better not."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Victoria was extremely dissatisfied with this letter when she had done
+it. But she knew very well that Harry would have resented a single harsh
+word from her toward the misguided Lydia; and she did not know how better
+to convey the warning that burnt on her lips with regard to Faversham.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lydia received Victoria's letter on the day of her return to the cottage.
+Her mother remained in London.
+
+Susy welcomed her sister affectionately, but with the sidelong looks of
+the observer. Ever since the evening of Lady Tatham's visit when Lydia
+had come back with white face and red eyes from her walk with Harry
+Tatham, and when the following night had been broken for Susy by the
+sound of her sister's weeping in the room next to her, it had been
+recognized by the family that the Tatham affair had ended in disaster,
+and that Duddon was henceforth closed to them. Lydia told her mother
+enough to plunge that poor lady into even greater wonder than before at
+the hopeless divergence of young people to-day from the ways and customs
+of their grandmothers; and then begged piteously that nothing more might
+be said to her. Mrs. Penfold cried and kissed her; and for many days
+tears fell on the maternal knitting needles, as the fading vision of
+Lydia, in a countess' coronet, curtesying to her sovereign, floated
+mockingly through the maternal mind. To Susy Lydia was a little more
+explicit; but she showed herself so sunk in grief and self-abasement,
+that Susy had not the heart for either probing or sarcasm. It was not a
+broken heart, but a sore conscience--a warm, natural penitence, that she
+beheld. Lydia was not yet "splendid," and Susy could not make anything
+tragic out of her.
+
+At least, on what appeared. And not even Susy's impatience could
+penetrate beyond appearance. She longed to say, "Enough of the Tatham
+affair--now let us come to business. How do you stand with Claude
+Faversham?" A number of small indications pointed her subtly,
+irresistibly in that direction. But the strength of Lydia's personality
+stood guard over her secret--if she had one.
+
+All Susy could do was to give Lydia the gossip of the neighbourhood,
+which she did--copiously, including the "cutting" of Faversham at the
+County Club, by Colonel Barton and others. Lydia said nothing.
+
+In the course of the evening, however, a letter arrived for Lydia,
+brought by messenger from Threlfall Tower. Lydia was alone in the
+sitting-room; Susy was writing upstairs. The letter ran:
+
+"I hear you have returned to-day. May I come and see you to-morrow
+afternoon--late?"
+
+To which Lydia replied in her firmest handwriting, "Come by all means. I
+shall be here between five and six to-morrow." After which she went about
+with head erect and shining eyes, like one who has secretly received and
+accepted a challenge. She was going to sift this matter for herself.
+Since a hurried note reporting the latest news of the Mainstairs victims,
+which had reached her from Faversham on the morning of her departure for
+London, she had heard nothing from him; and during her weeks of nursing
+in a darkened room, she had sounded the dim and perilous ways of her own
+heart as best she could.
+
+She spent the following day in sketching the Helvellyn range, still
+radiant under its first snow-cap; sitting warmly sheltered on a southern
+side of a wall, within sound of the same stream beside which she and
+Faversham had met for the first time in the spring, amid the splendid
+light and colour of the May sunset.
+
+And now it was already winter. The fell-sides were red with withered
+fern; their round or craggy tops showed white against a steely sky; down
+the withered copses by the stream, the north wind swept; a golden oak
+showered its dead leaf upon her. Gray walls, purple fells, the brown and
+silver of the stream, all the mountain detail that she loved--she drew it
+passionately into her soul. Nature and art--why had she been so faithless
+to them--she "the earth's unwearied lover?" She was miserably, ironically
+conscious of her weakness; of the gap between her spring and her autumn.
+
+On her return, she told Susy quietly of her expected visitor. Susy raised
+her eyebrows.
+
+"I shall give him tea," said Susan, "just to save the proprieties with
+Sarah." Sarah was the house parlour-maid. "But _then_ you won't need to
+give me hints."
+
+Susy had departed. Lydia and Faversham sat opposite each other in the
+little drawing-room.
+
+Lydia's first impression on seeing him had been one of dismay. He looked
+much older; and a certain remoteness, a cold and nervous manner seemed to
+have taken the place of the responsive ease she remembered. It began to
+cost her an effort to remember the emotion of their last meeting in the
+Mainstairs lane.
+
+But when they were alone together, he drew a long breath, and leaning
+forward over the table before them, his face propped on his hand, he
+looked at her earnestly.
+
+"I wonder what you have been hearing about me?"
+
+Lydia made a brave effort, and told him. She repeated to him
+the gist of what Susan had reported the night before, putting it
+lightly--apologetically--as though statements so extravagant had only
+to be made to be disproved. His mind meanwhile was divided between
+strained attention, and irrepressible delight in the spectacle of Lydia
+enthroned in her mother's chair, of the pale golden hair rippling back
+from the broad forehead, and the clear eyes beneath the thin dark arch of
+the brows, so delicately traced on the white skin; of all the play of
+gesture and expression that made up her beauty. Existence for him during
+these weeks of her absence had largely meant expectation of this moment.
+He had discounted all that she would probably say to him; his replies
+were ready.
+
+And she no sooner paused than he began an eager and considered defence of
+himself. A defence which, as he explained, he had intended to make weeks
+before. He had called the very day after their hurried departure for
+London; and having missed them, had then decided to wait till they could
+talk face to face. _Le papier est bête!_ "I had too much to say!"
+
+Well, when he had said it, to what did it amount? He claimed the right to
+tell the whole story; and began therefore by tracing the steps by which
+he had become necessary to Melrose; by describing his astonishment when
+the offer of the agency was made to him; and the sudden rush of plans and
+hopes for the future. Then, by a swift and effective digression he
+sketched the character of Melrose, as he had come to know it; the
+ferocity of the old man's will; his mad obstinacy, in which there was
+always a touch of fantastic imagination; and those alternations of
+solitude and excitement, with the inevitable, accompanying defiance of
+all laws of health, physical and moral, which for years had made up his
+life.
+
+"Let us remember that he is undoubtedly a sick man. He will tell me
+nothing of what his doctors say to him. But I put two and two together. I
+don't believe he can possibly live long. A year or two at most; perhaps
+much less. When I accepted the agency, I confess I thought his physical
+weakness would oblige him to put the whole management of the estate into
+my hands. It has not been so. The mind, the will are iron, whatever the
+physical weakness may be. He conceives himself as a rock in the Socialist
+torrent, bound to oppose reforms, and concessions, and innovations, just
+because they are asked of him by a revolutionary society. He reckons that
+his life will last out his resistance--his successful resistance--and
+that he will go down with the flag flying. So that he takes an insane
+pleasure in disappointing and thwarting the public opinion about him. For
+it _is_ insane--remember that! The moral state, the moral judgments, are
+all abnormal; the will and the brain are, so far as his main pursuits are
+concerned, still superb."
+
+He paused. Her gaze--half-shrinking--was fixed on the face so near to
+her; on the profound and resolute changes which had passed over the
+features which when she first saw them had still the flexibility of
+youth. The very curls and black hair lying piled above the forehead
+in which there were already two distinct transverse lines, seemed to have
+grown harsher and stronger.
+
+"This, of course, is what I discovered as soon as I had taken the agency.
+I did not know my man when I accepted. I began to know him, as soon as we
+really came to business. I found him opposed to all reform--incapable
+even of decent humanity. Very well! Was I to throw up?"
+
+His eyes pierced into hers. Lydia could only murmur: "Go on."
+
+"Suppose I had thrown up!--what would have happened? The estate would
+have sunk, more and more lamentably, into the power of a certain low
+attorney who has been Melrose's instrument in all his worst doings for
+years--and of a pair of corrupt clerks in the local office. Who would
+have gained? Not a soul! On the contrary, much would have been lost.
+Heaven knows I have been able to do little enough. But I have done
+something!--I have done _something_!--that is what people forget."
+
+He looked at her passionately; a distress rising in his eyes, which he
+could not hide. Was it her silence--the absence of any cheering,
+approving sound from her?
+
+She lifted her hand, and let it drop.
+
+"Mainstairs!" she said. It was just breathed--a cry of pain.
+
+"Yes--Mainstairs! I know--let us tackle Mainstairs. Mainstairs is a
+horror--a tragedy. If I had been allowed, I should have set the whole
+thing right a couple of months ago; I should have re-housed some of the
+people, closed some of the cottages, repaired others. Mr. Melrose stopped
+everything. There again--what good could I do by throwing up? I had
+plenty of humdrum work elsewhere that was not being interfered with--work
+that will tell in the long run. I left Mainstairs to Melrose; the
+responsibility was his, not mine. I went on with what I was doing. He and
+the police--thank heaven!--cleared the place."
+
+"And in the clearing, Mr. Melrose, they say, never lifted a finger to
+help--did not even give money," said Lydia in the same low, restrained
+voice, as she looked away from her guest into the fire. "And one sits
+thinking--of all the _dead_--that might have been saved!"
+
+His frowning distress was evident.
+
+"Do I not feel it as much as any one?" he said, with emotion. "I was
+helpless!"
+
+There was silence. Then Lydia turned sharply toward him.
+
+"Mr. Faversham! Is it true that Mr. Melrose has made you his heir?"
+
+His face changed.
+
+"Yes--it is true."
+
+"And he has refused to make any provision for his wife and daughter?"
+
+"He has. And more than that"--he looked at her with a defiant
+candour--"he has tried to bind me in his will to do nothing for them."
+
+"And you have allowed it?"
+
+"I shall soon get round that," he said, scornfully. "There are a thousand
+ways. Such restrictions are not worth the paper they are written on."
+
+"And meanwhile they are living on charity? And Mr. Melrose, as you say,
+may last some years. I saw Mrs. Melrose pass this morning in a carriage.
+She looked like a dying woman."
+
+"I have done my best," he said doggedly. "I have argued--and entreated.
+To no avail!"
+
+"But you are taking the money"--the quiet intensity of the tone affected
+him strangely--"the money, that should be theirs--the money which has
+been wrung--partly--from this wretched estate. You are accepting gifts
+and benefits from a man you must loathe and despise!"
+
+She was trembling all over. Her eyes avoided his as she sat downcast; her
+head bent under the weight of her own words.
+
+There was silence. But a silence that spoke. For what was in truth the
+meaning of this interview--of his pleading--and her agonized, reluctant
+judgment? No ordinary acquaintance, no ordinary friendship could have
+brought it about. Things unspoken, feelings sprung from the flying seeds
+of love, falling invisible on yielding soil, and growing up a man knoweth
+not how--at once troubled and united them. The fear of separation had
+grown, step by step, with the sense of attraction and of yearning. It was
+because their hearts reached out to each other that they dreaded so to
+find some impassable gulf between them.
+
+He mastered himself with difficulty.
+
+"That is one way of putting it. Now let me put it my way. I am a man who
+has had few chances in life--and great ambitions--which I have never had
+the smallest means of satisfying. I may be the mere intriguer that Tatham
+and his mother evidently think me. But I am inclined to believe in
+myself. Most men are. I feel that I have never had my opportunity. What
+is this wealth that is offered me, but an opportunity? There never was so
+much to be done with wealth--so much sheer _living_ to be got out of it,
+as there is to-day. Luxury and self-indulgence are the mere abuse of
+wealth. Wealth means everything nowadays that a man is most justified
+in desiring!--supposing he has the brains to use it. That at any rate is
+my belief. It always has been my belief. Trust me--that is all I ask of
+my friends. Give me time. If Mr. Melrose were to die soon--immediately--I
+should be able all the quicker to put everything to rights. But if his
+death is delayed a year or two--my life indeed will be a dog's life"--he
+spoke with sudden emotion--"but the people on the estate will not be the
+worse, but the better, for my being there; and in the end the power will
+come to me--and I shall use it. So long as Melrose lives his wife and
+daughter can get nothing out of him, whether I am there or not. His
+obstinacy is immovable, as Lady Tatham has found, and when he dies, their
+interests will be safe with me."
+
+Lydia had grown very pale. The man before her seemed to her Faversham,
+yet not Faversham. Some other personality, compounded of all those ugly,
+sophistic things that lurk in every human character, seemed to be
+wrestling with, obscuring the real man.
+
+"And the years till this stage comes to an end?" she asked
+him. "When every day you have to do what you feel to be
+wrong?--to obey--to be at the beck and call of such a man as Mr.
+Melrose?--hateful--cruel--tyrannical!--when you must silence all
+that is generous and noble--"
+
+Her voice failed her.
+
+Faversham's lips tightened. They remained looking at each other. Then
+Faversham rose suddenly. He stooped over her. She heard his voice, hoarse
+and broken in her ears:
+
+"Lydia--I love you!--I _love you_--with all my heart!--and all my
+strength! Don't, for God's sake, let us make believe with each other!
+And--I believe," he added, after a moment, in a lower tone, "I
+believe--that you love me!"
+
+His attitude, his manner were masterful--violent. She trembled under it.
+He tried to take her hand.
+
+"Speak to me!" he said, peremptorily. "Oh, my darling--speak to me! I
+only ask you to trust to me--to be guided by me--"
+
+She withdrew her hand. He could see her heart fluttering under the soft
+curves of the breast.
+
+"I can't--I can't!"
+
+The words were said with anguish. She covered her face with her hands.
+
+"Because I won't do what you wish? What is it you wish?"
+
+They had come to the deciding moment.
+
+She looked up, recovering self-control, her heart rushing to her lips.
+
+"Give it up!" she said, stretching out her hands to him, her head thrown
+back, all her delicate beauty one prayer. "Don't touch this money! It is
+stained--it is corrupt. You lose your honour in taking it--and honour--is
+life. What does money matter? The great things that make one happy have
+nothing to do with money. They can be had for so little! And if one loses
+them--honour and self-respect--and a clear conscience--how can _money_
+make up! If I were to marry you--and we had to live on Mr. Melrose's
+money--everything in life would be poisoned for me. I should always see
+the faces--of those dead people--whom I loved. I should hear their
+voices--accusing. We should be in slavery--slavery to a bad man--and our
+souls would die--"
+
+Her voice dropped--drowned in the passion of its own entreaty.
+
+Faversham pressed her hands, released them, and slowly straightened
+himself to his full height, as he stood beside her on the hearthrug.
+A vision rose and spread through the mind. In place of the little
+sitting-room, the modest home of refined women living on a slender
+income, he saw the great gallery at Threlfall with its wonderful
+contents, and the series of marvellous rooms he had now examined and set
+in order. Vividly, impressively the great house presented itself to him
+in memory, in all its recovered grace and splendour; a treasury of art,
+destined to be a place of pilgrimage for all who adore that lovely record
+of itself in things subtle and exquisite which the human spirit has
+written on time. Often lately he had wrung permission from Melrose to
+take an English or foreign visitor through some of the rooms. He had
+watched their enthusiasm and their ardour. And mingled with such
+experience, there had been now for months the intoxicating sense that
+everything in that marvellous house was potentially his--Claude
+Faversham's, and would all some day come into his hands, the hands of a
+man specially prepared by education and early circumstance to enjoy, to
+appreciate.
+
+And the estate. As in a map, he saw its green spreading acres, its
+multitude of farms, its possessions of all kind, spoilt and neglected by
+one man's caprice, but easily to be restored by the prudent care of his
+successor. He realized himself in the future as its owner; the inevitable
+place that it would give him in the political and social affairs of the
+north. And the estate was not all. Behind the estate lay the great
+untrammelled fortune drawn from quite other sources of wealth; how great
+he was only now beginning to know.
+
+A great sigh shook him--a sigh of decision. What he had been listening to
+had been the quixotism of a tender heart, ignorant of life and affairs,
+and all the wider possibilities open to man's will. He could not yield.
+In time she must be the one to yield. And she would yield. Let him wait,
+and be patient. There were many ways in which to propitiate, to work upon
+her.
+
+He looked down upon her gravely, his dark pointed face quivering a
+little. Instinctively she drew back. Her expression changed.
+
+"I can't do that." His voice was low but firm. "I feel the call to me.
+And after all, Melrose has claims on me. To me, personally, his
+generosity--has been incredible. He is old--and ill. I must stay by him."
+
+Her mind cried out, "Yes--but on your own terms, not his!"
+
+But she did not say it. Her pride came to her aid. She sprang up, a
+glittering animation flashing back into her face, transforming its
+softness, its tenderness.
+
+"I understand--I quite understand. Thank you for being so plain--and
+bearing with my--strange ideas. Now--I don't think we can be of any
+further use to each other--though--" she clasped her hands
+involuntarily--"I shall always hope and pray--"
+
+She did not finish. He broke into a cry.
+
+"Lydia! you send me away?"
+
+"I don't accept your conditions--nor you mine. There is no more to be
+said."
+
+He looked at her sombrely, remorse struggling with his will. But also
+anger--the anger of a naturally arrogant temperament--that he should find
+her so resistant.
+
+"If you loved me--"
+
+"Ah--no," she shook her head fiercely, the bright tears in her eyes;
+"don't let's talk of love! That has nothing to say to it."
+
+She turned, and took up a piece of embroidery lying on a table near. He
+accepted the indication, turning very white. But still he lingered.
+
+"Is there nothing I could say that would alter your mind?"
+
+"I am afraid--nothing."
+
+She gave him her hand. He scarcely dared to press it; she had become
+suddenly so strong, so hostile. Her light beauty had turned as it were to
+fire; one saw the flame of the spirit.
+
+A tumult of thoughts and regrets rushed through him. But things
+inexorable held him. With a long, lingering look at her, he turned and
+went.
+
+A little later, Susy entering timidly found Lydia sitting alone in a room
+that was nearly dark. Some instinct guided her. She came in, took a stool
+beside her sister, and leant her head against Lydia's knee. Lydia said
+nothing, but their hands joined, and for long they sat in the firelight,
+the only sounds, Lydia's stifled sobbing, and the soft crackling of a
+dying flame.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+Tatham was returning alone from a run with the West Cumbrian hounds. The
+December day was nearly done, and he saw the pageant of its going from a
+point on the outskirts of his own park. The park, a great space of wild
+land extending some miles to the north through a sparsely peopled county,
+was bounded and intersected throughout its northerly section by various
+high moorland roads. At a cross-road, leading to Duddon on the left, and
+to a remote valley running up the eastern side of Blencathra on the
+right, he reined up his horse to look for a moment at the sombre glow
+which held the western heaven; amid which the fells of Thirlmere and
+Derwentwater stood superbly ranged in threatening blacks and purples. To
+the east and over the waste of Flitterdale, that great flat "moss" in
+which the mountains die away, there was the prophecy of moonrise; a
+pearly radiance in the air, a peculiar whiteness in the mists that had
+gathered along the river, a silver message in the sky. But the wind was
+rising, and the westerly clouds rushing up. The top of Blencathra was
+already hidden; it might be a wild night.
+
+Only one luminous point was to be seen, at first, in all the wide and
+splendid landscape. It shone from Threlfall Tower, a dark and
+indistinguishable mass amid its hanging woods.
+
+"Old Melrose--counting out his money!"
+
+But as the scornful fancy crossed his mind, a few other dim and scattered
+lights began to prick the gloom of the fast-darkening valley. That
+twinkle far away, in the direction of St. John's Vale, might it not be
+the light of Green Cottage--of Lydia's lamp?
+
+He sat his horse, motionless, consumed with longing and grief. Yet, hard
+exercise in the open air, always seemed to bring him a kind of physical
+comfort. "It _was_ a jolly _run_!" he thought, yet half ashamed. His
+young blood was in love with life, through all heartache.
+
+Suddenly, a whirring sound from the road on his right, and the flash of
+moving lamps. He saw that a small motor was approaching, and his mare
+began to fidget.
+
+"Gently, old girl!"
+
+The motor approached and slowed at the corner.
+
+"Hallo Undershaw! is that you?"
+
+The motor stopped and Undershaw jumped out, and turned off his engine.
+Tatham's horse was pirouetting.
+
+"All right," said Undershaw; "I'll walk by you a bit. Turn her up your
+road."
+
+The beautiful mare quieted down, and presently the two were in close
+talk, while the motor left to itself blazed on the lonely moorland road.
+
+Undershaw was describing a visit he had paid that morning to old Brand,
+the bailiff, who was now quietly and uncomplainingly losing hold on life.
+
+"He may go any time--perhaps to-night. The elder son's departure has
+finished him. I told the lad that if he cared to stay till his father's
+death, you would see that he got work meanwhile on the estate; but he was
+wild to go--not a scrap of filial affection that I could make out!--and
+the poor old fellow has scarcely spoken since he left the house. So there
+he is, left with the feeble old wife, and the half-witted son, who grows
+queerer and madder than ever. I needn't say the woman was very
+grateful--"
+
+"Don't!" said Tatham; "it's a beastly world."
+
+They moved on in silence, till Undershaw resumed:
+
+"Dixon came to the surgery this afternoon, and I understood from him that
+he thinks Melrose is breaking up fast. He tries to live as usual; and his
+temper is appalling. But Dixon sees a great change."
+
+"Well, it'll scarcely be possible to say that his decease 'cast a gloom
+over the countryside.' Will it?" laughed Tatham.
+
+"What'll Faversham do? That's what I keep asking myself."
+
+"Do? Why, go off with the shekels, and be damned to us! I understand that
+just at present he's paying rather high for them, which is some
+satisfaction. That creature Nash told one of our men the other day that
+Melrose now treats him like dirt, and finds his chief amusement in
+stopping anything he wants to do."
+
+"Then he'd better look sharp after the will," said Undershaw, with a
+smile. "Melrose is game for any number of tricks yet. But I don't judge
+Faversham quite as you do. I believe he has all sorts of grand ideas in
+his head about what he'll do when he comes in."
+
+"I daresay! You need 'em when you begin with taking soiled money. Mrs.
+Melrose got the quarterly payment of her allowance yesterday, from an
+Italian bank--twenty-five pounds minus ten pounds, which seems to be
+mortgaged in some way. Melrose's solicitors gracefully let her know
+that the allowance was raised by twenty pounds! On fifteen pounds
+therefore she and the girl are expected to exist for the quarter--_and_
+support the old father. And yesterday just after my mother had shown me
+the check, I saw Faversham in Pengarth, driving a Rolls-Royce car,
+brand-new, with a dark fellow beside him whom I know quite well as a
+Bond Street dealer. I conclude Faversham was taking him to see the
+collections--_his_ collections!"
+
+"It looks ugly I grant. But I believe he'll provide for the girl as soon
+as he can."
+
+"And I hope she'll refuse it!" cried Tatham. "And I believe she will.
+She's a girl of spirit. She talks of going on the stage. My mother has
+found out that she's got a voice, and she dances divinely. My mother's
+actually got a teacher for her from London, whom we put up in the
+village."
+
+"A lovely little girl!" said Undershaw. "And she's getting over her
+hardships. But the mother--" He shook his head.
+
+"You think she's in a bad way?"
+
+"Send her back to Italy as soon as you can. She's pining for her own
+people. Life's been a bit too hard for her, and she never was but a poor
+thing. Well, I must go."
+
+Tatham stayed his horse. Undershaw, added as though by an afterthought:
+
+"I was at Green Cottage this morning. Mrs. Penfold's rather knocked up
+with nursing her sister. She chattered to me about Faversham. He used to
+be a good deal there but they've broken with him too; apparently, because
+of Mainstairs. Miss Lydia couldn't stand it. She was _so_ devoted to the
+people."
+
+The man on horseback made some inaudible reply, and they began to talk of
+a couple of sworn inquiries about to be held on the Threlfall estate by
+the officials of the Local Government Board, into the housing and
+sanitation of three of the chief villages on Melrose's property. The
+department had been induced to move by a committee of local gentlemen, in
+which Tatham had taken a leading part. The whole affair had reduced
+itself indeed so far to a correspondence duel between Tatham, as
+representing a scandalized neighbourhood, and Faversham, as representing
+Melrose.
+
+Tatham's letters, in which a man, with no natural gift for the pen, had
+developed a surprising amount of effective sarcasm, had all appeared in
+the local press; with Faversham's ingenious and sophistical replies.
+Tatham discussed them now with Undershaw in a tone of passionate
+bitterness. The doctor said little. He had his own shrewd ideas on the
+situation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Undershaw left him, Tatham rode on, up the forest lane, till again
+the trees fell away, the wide valley with its boundary fells opened
+before him, and again his eye sought through the windy dusk for the
+far-gleaming light that spoke to him of Lydia. His mind was full of fresh
+agitation, stirred by Undershaw's remark about her. The idea of a breach
+between Lydia and Faversham was indeed most welcome, since it seemed to
+restore Lydia to that pedestal from which it had been so hard and strange
+to see her descend. It gave him back the right to worship her! And yet,
+the notion did nothing--now--to revive any hope for himself. He kept the
+distant light in view for long, his heart full of a tenderness which,
+though he did not know it, had already parted with much of the bitterness
+of unsatisfied passion. Unconsciously, the healing process was on its
+way; the healing of the normal man, on whom a wound is no sooner
+inflicted than all the reparative powers of life rush together for its
+cure.
+
+      *       *       *       *
+
+But while Tatham, wrapped in thoughts of Lydia, was thus drawing
+homeward, across the higher ground of the estate, down through the Duddon
+woods, as they fell gently to the river, a little figure was hurrying,
+with the step of a fugitive, and half-nervous, half-exultant looks
+from side to side. The moon had risen. It was not dark in the woods, and
+Felicia, amid the _boschi_ of the Apuan Alps, had never been frightened
+of the night or of any ill befalling her. In Lucca itself she might be
+insulted; on the hills, never. She had the independence, and--generally
+speaking--the strength of the working girl. So that the enterprise on
+which she was launched--the quest of her father--presented itself to her
+as nothing particularly difficult. She had indeed to keep it from her
+mother and Lady Tatham, and to find means of escaping them. That she
+calmly took steps to do, not bothering her head much about it.
+
+As to the rest of the business, there was a station on the Keswick line
+close to the gate of the park, and she had looked out a train which would
+take her conveniently to Whitebeck, which was only half a mile from
+Threlfall. From Duddon to Whitebeck took eight minutes in the train. She
+would be at Whitebeck a little after five; allowing an hour for her
+adventure at the Tower, and some little margin, she would catch a train
+back between six and seven, which would allow of her slipping into Duddon
+a little after seven, unnoticed, and in good time to dress for dinner.
+Her Italian blood betrayed itself throughout, alike in the keen pleasure
+she took in the various devices of her small plot; in the entire absence
+of any hampering scruples as to the disobedience and deceit which it
+involved; and in the practical intelligence with which she was ready to
+carry it out. She had brooded over it for days; and this afternoon a
+convenient opportunity had arisen. Her mother was in her room with a
+headache; Lady Tatham had had to go to Carlisle on business.
+
+As she hastened, almost running, through the park, she was planning, by
+fits and starts, what she would say to her father. But still more was the
+thinking of Tatham--asking herself questions about him, with little
+thrills of excitement, and little throbbings of delicious fear.
+
+Here she was, at the gate of the park. Just ten minutes to her train! She
+hurried on. A few labourers were in the road coming home tired from their
+work; a few cottage doors were ajar, showing the bright fire, and the
+sprawling children within. Some of the men as they passed looked with
+curiosity at the slim stranger; but she was well muffled up in her new
+furs--Victoria's gift--and her large felt hat; they saw little more than
+the tips of her small nose and chin.
+
+The train came in just as she reached the station. She took her ticket
+for Whitebeck, and as the train jogged along, she looked out of the
+window at the valley in the dim moonrise, her mind working tumultuously.
+Lady Tatham had told her much; Hesketh, Lady Tatham's maid, and the old
+coachman who had been teaching her to ride, had told her more. She knew
+that before she reached Whitebeck she would have passed the boundary
+between the Duddon and Threlfall estates. She was now indeed on her
+father's land, the land which in justice ought to be hers some day; which
+in Italy would be hers by law, or part of it anyway, whatever pranks her
+father might play. But here in England a man might rob his child of every
+penny if he pleased. That was strange when England was such a great
+country--such a splendid country. "I _love_ England!" she thought
+passionately, as she leant back with folded arms and closed eyes.
+
+And straightway on the dusk rose the image of Tatham--Tatham on
+horseback, as she had seen him set out for the hunt that morning; and she
+felt her eyes grow a little wet. Why? Oh! because he was so tall and
+splendid--and he sat his horse like a king--and everybody loved him--and
+she was living in his house--and so, whether he would or no, he must take
+notice of her sometimes. One evening had he not let her mend his glove?
+And another evening, when she was practising her dancing for Lady Tatham,
+had he not come in to look? Ah, well, wait till she could sing and dance
+properly, till--perhaps--he saw her on the stage! Her newly discovered
+singing voice, which was the excitement of the moment for Lady Tatham and
+Netta, was to Felicia like some fairy force within her, struggling to be
+at large, which would some day carve out her fortunes, and bring her to
+Tatham--on equal terms.
+
+For her pride had flourished and fed upon her love. She no longer talked
+of Tatham to her mother or any one else. But deep in her heart lay the
+tenacious, pursuing instinct.
+
+And besides--suppose--she made an impression on her father--on his cruel
+old heart? Such things do happen. It's silly to say they don't. "I _am_
+pretty--and now my clothes are all right--and my hands have come nearly
+white. He'll see I'm not a girl to be ashamed of. And if my father did
+give me a _dot_--why then I'd send my mother to _his_ mother! That's how
+we'd do it in Italy. I'm as well-born as he--nearly--and if I had a
+_dot_--"
+
+The yellow-haired girl at any rate was quite out of the way. No one spoke
+of her; no one mentioned her. That was all right.
+
+And as to Threlfall and her father, if she was able to soften him at all
+it would not be in the least necessary to drive that bad young man, Mr.
+Faversham, to despair. Compromise--bargaining--settle most things. She
+fell to imagining--with a Latin clearness and realism--how it might be
+handled. Only it would have to be done before her father died. For if Mr.
+Faversham once took all the money and all the land, there would be no
+_dot_ for her, even if he were willing to give it her. For Lord Tatham
+would never take a farthing from Mr. Faversham, not even through his
+wife. "And so it would be no use to me," thought Felicia, quietly, but
+regretfully.
+
+Whitebeck station. Out she tripped, asked her way to Threlfall,
+and hurried off into the dark, followed by the curious looks of the
+station-master.
+
+She was soon at the park gate, and passed through it with a beating
+heart. She had heard of the bloodhounds; and the sound of a bark in the
+distance--though it was only the collie at the farm--gave her a start of
+terror.
+
+The Whitebeck gate was but a short distance from the house, and as
+she turned a corner, the Tower rose suddenly before her. She held her
+breath; it looked so big, so darkly magnificent. She thought of all the
+tales that had been told her, the rooms full of silver and gold--the
+_arazzi_--the _stucchi_--the cabinets and sculpture. She had grown up in
+an atmosphere of perpetual bric-a-brac; she had seen the big Florentine
+shops; she could imagine what it was like.
+
+There were lights in two of the windows; and the smoke from several
+chimneys rose wind-beaten against the woods behind. The moon stood
+immediately over the roof, and the shadow of the house stretched beyond
+the forecourt almost to her feet.
+
+She lingered a few minutes, fascinated, gazing at this huge place where
+her father lived--her father whom she had never seen since she was a
+baby. The moon lit up her tiny figure, and her small white face, as she
+stood in the open, alone in the wintry silence.
+
+Then, swiftly, and instead of going up to the front door, she turned to
+the right along a narrow flagged path that skirted the forecourt and led
+to the back of the house.
+
+She knew exactly what to do. She had planned it all with Hesketh,
+Hesketh, who was the daughter of a farmer on the Duddon estate, fifty
+years old, a born gossip, and acquainted with every man, woman and
+child in the neighbourhood. Did not Hesketh go to the same chapel with
+Thomas Dixon and his wife? And had she not a romantic soul, far above
+furbelows--a soul which had flung itself into the cause of the "heiress,"
+to the point of keeping the child's secret, even from her ladyship?
+Hesketh indeed had suffered sharply from qualms of conscience in this
+respect. But Felicia had spared her as much as possible, by keeping the
+precise moment of her escapade to herself.
+
+She groped her way round, till she came to a side path leading to an
+entrance. The path indeed was that by which Faversham had been originally
+carried into the Tower, across the foot-bridge. Peering over a low wall
+that bounded the path, she looked startled into an abyss of leafless
+trees, with a bright gleam of moonlit water far below. In front of her
+was a door and steps, and some rays of light penetrating through the
+shuttered windows beside the door, showed that there was life within.
+
+Felicia mounted the steps and knocked. No one came. At last she found a
+bell and rang it--cautiously. Steps approached. The door was opened, and
+a gray-haired woman stood on the threshold.
+
+"Well, what's your business?" she said sharply. It was evident that she
+was short-sighted, and did not clearly see the person outside.
+
+"Please, I want to speak to Mr. Melrose."
+
+The clear, low voice arrested the old woman.
+
+"Eh?" she said testily. "And who may you be? You cawn't see Mr. Melrose,
+anyways."
+
+"I want to see him particularly. Are you Mrs. Dixon?"
+
+"Aye--a'am Mrs. Dixon. But aa've no time to goa chatterin' at doors wi'
+yoong women; soa if yo'll juist gie me yor business, I'll tell Muster
+Faversham, when he's got time to see to 't."
+
+"It's not Mr. Faversham I want to see--it's Mr. Melrose. Mrs. Dixon,
+don't you remember me?"
+
+Mrs. Dixon stepped back in puzzled annoyance, so as to let a light from
+the passage shine upon the stranger's face. She stood motionless.
+
+Felicia stepped within.
+
+"I am Miss Melrose," she said, with composure, "Felicia Melrose. You knew
+me when I was a child. And I wish to see my father."
+
+Mrs. Dixon's face seemed to have fallen into chaos under the shock. She
+stood staring at the visitor, her mouth working.
+
+"Muster Melrose's däater!" she said, at last. "T' baby--as was! Aye--yo'
+feature him! An' yo're stayin' ower ta Duddon--wi' her ladyship. I know.
+Dixon towd me. Bit yo' shouldna' coom here, Missie! Yo' canno' see your
+feyther."
+
+"Why not?" said Felicia imperiously. "I mean to see him. Here I am in the
+house. Take me to him at once!"
+
+And suddenly closing the entrance door behind her, she moved on toward an
+inner passage dimly lit, of which she had caught sight.
+
+Mrs. Dixon clung to her arm.
+
+"Noa, noa! Coom in here, Missie--coom in _here_! Dixon!--where are yo'?
+Dixon!"
+
+She raised her voice. A chair was pushed back in the kitchen, on the
+other side of the passage. An old man who, to judge from his aspect, had
+been roused by his wife's call from a nap after his tea, appeared in a
+doorway.
+
+Mrs. Dixon drew Felicia toward him, and into the kitchen, as he retreated
+thither. Then she shut and bolted the door.
+
+"This is t' yoong lady!" she said in a breathless whisper to her husband.
+"Muster-Melrose's däater! She's coom fra Duddon. An' she's fer seein' her
+feyther."
+
+Old Dixon had grown very pale. But otherwise he showed no surprise. He
+looked frowning at Felicia.
+
+"Yo' canno' do that, Miss Melrose. Yo'r feyther wunna see yo'. He's an
+owd man noo, and we darena disturb him."
+
+Felicia argued with the pair, first quietly, then with a heaving breast,
+and some angry tears. Dixon soon dropped the struggle, so far as words
+went. He left that to his wife. But he stood firmly against the door,
+looking on.
+
+"You shan't keep me here!" said Felicia at last with a stamp. "I'll call
+some one! I'll make a noise!"
+
+A queer, humorous look twinkled over Dixon's face. Then--suddenly--he
+moved from the door. His expression had grown hesitating--soft.
+
+"Varra well, then. Yo' shall goa--if you mun goa."
+
+His wife protested. He turned upon her.
+
+"She shall goa!" he repeated, striking the dresser beside him. "Her
+feyther's an old man--an' sick. Mebbe he'll be meetin' his Mäaker face to
+face, before the year's oot; yo' canno' tell. He's weakenin' fasst. An'
+he's ben a hard mon to his awn flesh and blood. There'll be a reckonin'!
+An' the Lord's sent him this yan chance o' repentance. I'll not stan' i'
+the Lord's way--whativer. Coom along, Missie!"
+
+And entirely regardless of his wife's entreaties, the old Methodist
+resolutely opened the kitchen door, and beckoned to Felicia. He was lame
+now and walked with a stick, his shoulders bent. But he neither paused,
+nor spoke to her again. Murmuring to himself, he led her along the inner
+passage, and opened the door into the great gallery.
+
+A blaze of light and colour, a rush of heated air. Felicia was dazzled by
+the splendour of the great show within--the tapestries, the pictures, the
+gleaming reflections on lacquer and intarsia, on ebony or Sèvres. But the
+atmosphere was stifling. Melrose now could only live in the temperature
+of a hothouse.
+
+Dixon threw open a door, and without a word beckoned to Felicia to enter.
+He hesitated a moment, evidently as to whether he should announce her;
+and then, stepping forward, he cleared his throat.
+
+"Muster Melrose, theer's soom one as wants to speak to you!"
+
+"What do you mean, you old fool!" said a deep, angry voice on the other
+side of a great lacquer screen; "didn't I tell you I wasn't to be
+disturbed?"
+
+Felicia walked round the screen. Dixon, with an excited look at her,
+retired through the door which he closed behind him.
+
+"Father!" said Felicia, in a low, trembling voice.
+
+An old man who was writing at a large inlaid table, in the midst of a
+confusion of objects which the girl's eyes had no time to take in, turned
+sharply at the sound.
+
+The two stared at each other. Melrose slowly revolved on his chair, pen
+in hand. Felicia stood, with eyes downcast, her cheeks burning, her hands
+lightly clasped.
+
+Melrose spoke first.
+
+"H'm--so they've sent _you_ here?"
+
+She looked up.
+
+"No one sent me. I--I wished to see you--before we went away; because you
+are my father--and I mightn't ever see you--if I didn't now. And I wanted
+to ask you"--her voice quivered--"not to be angry any more with mother
+and me. We never meant to vex you--by coming. But we were so poor--and
+mother is ill. Yes, she _is_ ill!--she is--it's no shamming. Won't you
+forgive us?--won't you give mother a little more money?--and won't
+you"--she clasped her hands entreatingly--"won't you give me a _dot_? I
+may want to be married--and you are so rich? And I wouldn't ever trouble
+you again--I--"
+
+She broke off, intimidated, paralyzed by the strange fixed look of the
+old wizard before her--his flowing hair, his skullcap, his white and
+sunken features. And yet mysteriously she recognized herself in him. She
+realized through every fibre that he was indeed her father.
+
+"You would have done better not to trouble me again!" said Melrose, with
+slow emphasis. "Your mother seems to pay no attention whatever to what I
+say. We shall see. So you want a _dot_? And, pray, what do you want a
+_dot_ for? Who's going to marry you? Tatham?"
+
+The tone was more mocking than fierce; but Felicia shrank under it.
+
+"Oh, no, _no_! But I _might_ want to marry," she added piteously. "And in
+Italy--one can't marry--without a _dot_!"
+
+"Your mother should have thought of these things when she ran away."
+
+Felicia was silent a moment. Then, without invitation, she seated herself
+on the edge of a chair that stood near him.
+
+"That was so long ago," she said timidly--yet confidingly. "And I was a
+baby. Couldn't you--couldn't you forget it now?"
+
+Melrose surveyed her.
+
+"I suppose you like being at Duddon?" he asked her abruptly, without
+answering her question.
+
+She clasped her hands fervently.
+
+"It's like heaven! They're so good to us."
+
+"No doubt!"--the tone was sarcastic. "Well, let them provide for you. Who
+gave you those clothes? Lady Tatham?"
+
+She nodded. Her lip trembled. Her startled eyes looked at him piteously.
+
+"You've been living at Lucca?"
+
+"Near Lucca--on the mountains."
+
+"H'm. Is that all true--about your grandfather?"
+
+"That he's ill? Of course, it's true!" she said indignantly. "We don't
+tell lies. He's had a stroke--he's dying. And we could hardly give him
+any food he could eat. You see--"
+
+She edged a little closer, and began a voluble, confidential account of
+their life in the mountains. Her voice was thin and childish, but sweet;
+and every now and then she gave a half-frightened, half-excited laugh.
+Melrose watched her frowning; but he did not stop her. Her bright eyes
+and brows, with their touches of velvet black, the quick movement of her
+pink lips, the rose-leaf delicacy of her colour, seemed to hold him.
+Among the pretty things with which the room was crowded she was the
+prettiest; and he probably was conscious of it. Propped up against the
+French bureau stood a Watteau drawing in red chalk--a _sanguine_--he had
+bought in Paris on a recent visit. The eyes of the old connoisseur went
+from the living face to the drawing, comparing them.
+
+At last Felicia paused. Her smiles died away. She looked at him
+wistfully.
+
+"Mother's awfully sorry she--she offended you so. Won't you forgive her
+now--and poor Babbo--about the little statue?"
+
+She hardly dared breathe the last words, as she timidly dropped her eyes.
+
+There were tears in her voice, and yet she was not very far from
+hysterical laughter. The whole scene was so fantastic--ridiculous! The
+room with its lumber; its confusion of glittering things; this old man
+frowning at her--for no reason! For after all--what had she done? Even
+the _contadini_--they were rough often--they couldn't read or write--but
+they loved their grandchildren.
+
+As he caught her reference to the bronze Hermes, Melrose's face changed.
+He rose, stretching out a hand toward a bell on the table.
+
+"You must go!" he said, sharply. "You ought never to have come. You'll
+get nothing by it. Tell your mother so. This is the second attack she has
+made on me--through her tools. If she attempts another, she may take the
+consequences!"
+
+Felicia too stood up. A rush of anger and despair choked her.
+
+"And you won't--you won't even say a kind word to me!" she said, panting.
+"You won't kiss me?"
+
+For answer, he seized her by the hands, and drew her toward the light.
+There, for a few intolerable seconds he looked closely, with a kind of
+savage curiosity, into her face, studying her features, her hair, her
+light form. Then pushing her from him, he opened that same drawer in the
+French cabinet that Undershaw had once seen him open, fumbled a little,
+and took out something that glittered.
+
+"Take that. But if you come here again it will be the worse for you, and
+for your mother. When I say a thing I mean it. Now, go! Dixon shall take
+you to the train."
+
+Felicia glanced at the Renaissance jewel in her hand--delicate Venus in
+gold and pearl, set in a hoop of diamonds. "I won't have it!" she said,
+dashing it from her with a sob of passion. "And we won't take your money
+either--not a farthing! We've got friends who'll help us. And I'll keep
+my mother myself. You shan't give her anything--nor my grandfather. So
+you needn't threaten us! You can't do us any harm!"
+
+She looked him scornfully over from head to foot, a little fury, with
+blazing eyes.
+
+Melrose laughed.
+
+"I thought you came to get a _dot_ out of me," he said, with lifted
+brows, admiring her in spite of himself. "You seem to have a good spice
+of the Melrose temper in you. I'm sorry I can't treat you as you seem to
+wish. Your mother settled that. Well--that'll do--that'll do! We can't
+bandy words any more. Dixon!"
+
+He touched the hand-bell beside him.
+
+Felicia hurried to the door, sobbing with excitement. As she reached it
+Dixon entered. Melrose spoke a few peremptory words to him, and she found
+herself walking through the gallery, Dixon's hand on her arm, while he
+muttered and lamented beside her.
+
+"'And the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart.' Aye, it's the Lord--it's the
+Lord. Oh! Missie, Missie--I was a fool to let yo' in. Yo've been nowt but
+a new stone o' stumblin'; an' the Lord knows there's offences enoof
+already!"
+
+Meanwhile, in the room from which his daughter had been driven, Melrose
+had risen from his seat, and was moving hither and thither, every now and
+then taking up some object in the crowded tables, pretending to look at
+it, and putting it down again. He was pursued, tormented all the while by
+swarming thoughts--visualizations. That child would outlive him--her
+father--perhaps by a half century. The flesh and blood sprung from his
+own life, would go on enjoying and adventuring, for fifty years, perhaps,
+after he had been laid in his resented grave. And the mind which would
+have had no existence had he not lived, would hold till death the
+remembrance of what he had just said and done--a child's only remembrance
+of her father.
+
+He stood, looking back upon his life, and quite conscious of some fatal
+element in the moment which had just gone by. It struck him as a kind of
+moral tale. Some men would say that God had once more, and finally,
+offered him "a place of repentance"--through this strange and tardy
+apparition of his daughter. A ghostly smile flickered. The man of the
+world knew best. "Let no man break with his own character." That was the
+real text which applied. And he had followed it. Circumstance and his own
+will had determined, twenty years earlier, that he had had enough of
+women-kind. His dealings with them had been many and various! But at a
+given moment he had put an end to them forever. And no false
+sentimentalism should be allowed to tamper with the thing done.
+
+At this point he found himself sinking into his chair; and must needs
+confess himself somewhat shaken by what had happened. He was angry with
+his physical weakness, and haunted in spite of himself by the hue and
+fragrance of that youth he had just been watching--there--at the corner
+of the table--beside the Watteau sketch. He sat staring at the
+drawing....
+
+Till the threatened vitality within again asserted itself; beat off the
+besieging thoughts; and clutched fiercely at some new proof of its own
+strength. The old man raised himself, and laid his hand on the telephone
+which connected his room with that of Faversham.
+
+How, in Dixon's custody, Felicia reached the station, and stumbled into
+the train, and how, at the other end, she groped her way into the gates
+of Duddon and began the long woodland ascent to the castle, Felicia never
+afterward knew. But when she had gone a few steps along the winding drive
+Where the intermittent and stormy moonlight was barely enough to guide
+her, she felt her strength suddenly fail her. She could never climb the
+long hill to the house--she could never fight the wind that was rising
+in her face. She must sit down, till some one came--to help.
+
+She sank down upon a couch of moss, at the foot of a great oak-tree which
+was still thick with withered leaf. The mental agitation, and the sheer
+physical fatigue of her mad attempt had utterly worn out her barely
+recovered strength. "I shall faint," she thought, "and no one will know
+where I am!" She tried to concentrate her will on the resolution not to
+faint. Straightening her back and head against the tree, she clasped her
+hands rigidly on her knee. From time to time a wave of passionate
+recollection would rush through her; and her heart would beat so fast,
+that again the terror of sinking into some unknown infinite would string
+up her will to resistance. In this alternate yielding and recoil, this
+physical and mental struggle, she passed minutes which seemed to her
+interminable. At last resistance was all but overwhelmed.
+
+"Come to me!--oh, do come to me!"
+
+She seemed to be pouring her very life into the cry. But, probably, the
+words were only spoken in the mind.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A little later she woke up in bewilderment. She was no longer on the
+moss. She was being carried--carried firmly and speedily--in some one's
+arms. She tried to open her eyes.
+
+"Where am I?"
+
+A voice said:
+
+"That's better! Don't be afraid. You'd fainted I think. I can carry you
+quite safely."
+
+Infinite bliss rushed in upon the girl's fluttering sense. She was too
+feeble, too weak, to struggle. Instead she let her head sink on Tatham's
+shoulder. Her right hand clung to his coat.
+
+The young man mounted the hill, marvelling at the lightness of the burden
+he held; touched, embarrassed, yet sometimes inclined to laugh or scold.
+What had she been about? He had come in from hunting to find her absence
+just discovered, and the house roused. Victoria and Cyril Boden were
+exploring other roads through the garden and park; he had run down the
+long hill to the station lodge in case the theory started at once by
+Victoria that she had escaped, unknown to any one, in order to force an
+interview with her father should turn out to be the right one.
+
+Presently a trembling voice said in the darkness, while some soft curls
+of hair tickled his cheek:
+
+"I've been to Threlfall. Will Lady Tatham be very angry?"
+
+"Well, she was a bit worried," said Tatham, wondering if the occasion
+ought not to be improved. "She guessed--you might have gone there.
+There's bad weather coming--and she was anxious what might happen to you.
+Ah! there's the rain!"
+
+Two or three large drops descended on Felicia's cheek as it lay upturned
+on his shoulder; a pattering began on the oak-leaves overhead; the
+moonlight was blotted out, and when Felicia opened her eyes, it was on a
+heavy darkness.
+
+"Stupid!" cried Tatham. "Why didn't I think of bringing a mackintosh
+cape?"
+
+"Mayn't I walk?" asked Felicia, meekly. "I think I could."
+
+"I expect you'd better not. You were pretty bad when I found you. It's no
+trouble to me to carry you, and I know every inch of these roads."
+
+And indeed by now he would have been very loath to quit his task. There
+was something tormentingly attractive in this warm softness of the girl's
+tiny form upon his breast. The thought darted across him--"If I had ever
+held Lydia so!" It was a pang; but it passed; and what remained was a
+tenderness of soul, evoked by Lydia, but passing out now beyond Lydia.
+
+Poor little foolish thing! He supposed she had been trampled on, as his
+mother had been. But his mother could defend herself. What chance had
+this child against the old tyrant! An eager, protective sympathy--a
+warm pity--arose in him; greatly quickened by this hand and arm that
+clung to him.
+
+The rain began to drive against them.
+
+"Do you mind getting wet?" he said laughing, almost in her ear.
+
+"Not a bit! I--I didn't mean to give any trouble."
+
+The tone was penitent. Tatham, forgetting all thoughts of admonition,
+reassured her.
+
+"You didn't give any. Except--Your mother of course was very anxious
+about you."
+
+"But I couldn't tell her!" sighed the voice on his shoulder. "She'd have
+stopped it."
+
+Tatham smiled unseen.
+
+"I'm afraid your father wasn't kind to you," he said, after a pause.
+
+"It was horrible--horrible!" The little body he held shuddered closer to
+him. "Why does he hate us so? and I lost my temper too--I stamped at him.
+But he looks so old--so old! I think he'll die soon."
+
+"That would be happiest," said Tatham, gravely.
+
+"I told him we would never take any money from him again. I must earn
+it--I will! Your mother will lend me a little--for my training. I'll pay
+it back."
+
+"You poor child!" he murmured.
+
+At that moment they emerged upon the last section of the broad avenue
+leading to the house. And the electric light in the pillared porch threw
+long rays toward them.
+
+"Please put me down," said Felicia, with decision. "I can walk quite
+well."
+
+He obeyed her. But her weakness was still such, that she could only walk
+with help. Guiding, supporting her, he half led, half carried her along.
+
+As they reached the lighted porch, she looked up, her face sparkling with
+rain, a touch of mischief in her hollow-ringed eyes.
+
+"How much will they scold?"
+
+"Can't say, I am sure! I think you'll have to bear it."
+
+"Never mind!" Her white cheeks dimpled. "It's Duddon! I'd rather be
+scolded at Duddon, than petted anywhere else."
+
+Tatham flushed suddenly. So did she. And as the door opened Felicia
+walked with composure past the stately butler.
+
+"Is Lady Tatham in the library?"
+
+Netta Melrose, full of fears, wept that evening over her daughter's rash
+disobedience. Victoria administered what reproof she could; and Felicia
+was reduced to a heated defence of herself, sitting up in bed, with a
+pair of hot cheeks and tearful eyes. But when all the lights were out,
+and she was alone, she thought no more of any such nips and pricks. The
+night was joy around her, and as she sank to sleep; Tatham, in dream,
+still held her, still carried her through the darkness and the rain.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+While Felicia was making her vain attempt upon her father's pity,
+Faversham was sitting immersed in correspondence in his own room at the
+farther end of the gallery. He heard nothing of the girl's arrival or
+departure. Sound travelled but little through the thick walls of the
+Tower, and the gallery, muffled with rich carpets, with hangings and
+furniture, deadened both step and voice.
+
+The agent was busy with some typewritten evidence that Melrose was
+preparing wherewith to fight the Government officials now being sent down
+from London to inquire into the state of some portion of the property.
+The evidence had been collected by Nash, and Faversham read it with
+disgust. He knew well that the great mass of it was perjured stuff,
+bought at a high price. Yet both in public and private he would have to
+back up all the lies and evasions that his master, and the pack of
+obscure hangers-on who lived upon his pay, chose to put forward.
+
+He set his teeth as he read. The iron of his servitude was cutting its
+way into life, deeper and deeper. Could he go on bearing it? For weeks he
+had lived with Melrose on terms of sheer humiliation--rated, or mocked
+at, his advice spurned, the wretched Nash and his crew ostentatiously
+preferred to him, even put over him. "No one shall ever say I haven't
+earned my money," he would say to himself fiercely, as the intolerable
+days went by. His only abiding hope and compensation lay in his intense
+belief that Melrose was a dying man. All those feelings of natural
+gratitude, with which six months before he had entered on his task,
+were long since rooted up. He hated his tyrant, and he wished him dead.
+But the more he dwelt for consolation on the prospect of Melrose's
+disappearance, the more attractive became to him the vision of his own
+coming reign. Some day he would be his own master, and the master of
+these hoards. Some day he would emerge from the cloud of hatred and
+suspicion in which he habitually walked; some day he would be able once
+more to follow the instincts of an honest man; some day he would be able
+again--perhaps--to look Lydia Penfold in the face! Endurance for a few
+more months, on the best terms he could secure, lest the old madman
+should even yet revoke his gifts; and then--a transformation scene--on
+the details of which his thoughts dwelt perpetually, by way of relief
+from the present. Tatham and the rest of his enemies, who were now
+hunting and reviling him, would be made to understand that if he had
+stooped, he had stooped with a purpose; and that the end _did_ in this
+case justify the means.
+
+A countryside cleansed, comforted, remade; a great estate ideally
+managed; a great power to be greatly used; scope for experiment, for
+public service, for self-realization--he greedily, passionately, foresaw
+them all. Let him be patient. Nothing could interfere with his dream,
+but some foolish refusal of the conditions on which alone it could come
+true.
+
+Often, when this mood of self-assertion was on him, he would go back in
+thought to his boyish holidays in Oxford, and to his uncle. He saw the
+kind old fellow in his shepherd plaid suit, black tie, and wide-awake,
+taking his constitutional along the Woodstock road, or playing a mild
+game of croquet in the professorial garden; or he recalled him among his
+gems--those rare and beautiful things, bought with the savings of a
+lifetime, loved, each of them, for its own sake, and bequeathed at death,
+with the tender expression of a wish--no tyrannical condition!--to
+the orphan boy whom he had fathered.
+
+The thought of what would--what must be--Uncle Mackworth's judgment on
+his present position, was perhaps the most tormenting element in
+Faversham's consciousness. He faced it, however, with frankness. His
+uncle would have condemned him--wholly. The notion of serving a bad man,
+for money, would have been simply inconceivable to that straight and
+innocent soul. Are there not still herbs to be eaten under hedgerows,
+with the sauce of liberty and self-respect?
+
+No doubt. But man is entitled to self-fulfilment; and men pursue vastly
+different ways of obtaining it. The perplexities of practical ethics are
+infinite; and mixed motives fit a mixed world.
+
+At least he had not bartered away his uncle's treasure. The gems still
+stood to him as the symbol of something he had lost, and might some day
+recover. It was really time he got them out of Melrose's clutches...
+
+...The room was oppressively hot! It was a raw December night, but the
+heating system of the Tower was now so perfect, and to Faversham's mind
+so excessive, that every corner of the large house was bathed in a
+temperature which seemed to keep Melrose alive, while it half suffocated
+every other inmate.
+
+Suddenly the telephone bell on his writing-desk rang. His room was now
+connected with Melrose's room, at the other end of the house, as well as
+with Pengarth. He put his ear to the receiver.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I want to speak to you."
+
+He rose unwillingly. But at least he could air the room, which he would
+not have ventured to do, if Melrose were coming to him as usual for the
+ten minutes' hectoring, which now served as conversation between them,
+before bedtime. Going to the window which gave access to the terrace
+outside, he unclosed the shutters, and threw open the glass doors. He
+perceived that it had begun to rain, and that the night was darkening. He
+stood drinking in the moist coolness of the air for a few seconds, and
+then leaving the window open, and forgetting to extinguish the electric
+light on his table he went out of the room.
+
+He found Melrose in his chair, his aspect thunderous and excited.
+
+"Was it by your plotting, sir, that that girl got in?" said the old man,
+as he entered.
+
+Faversham stood amazed.
+
+"What girl?"
+
+Melrose angrily described Felicia's visit, adding that if Faversham knew
+nothing about it, it was his duty to know. Dixon deserved dismissal for
+his abominable conduct; "and you, sir, are paid a large salary, not only
+to manage--or mismanage--my affairs, but also to protect your employer
+from annoyance. I expect you to do it!"
+
+Faversham took the charge quietly. His whole relation to Melrose
+had altered so rapidly for the worse during the preceding weeks that
+no injustice or unreason surprised him. And yet there was something
+strange--something monstrous--in the old man's venomous temper. After
+all his bribes, after all his tyranny, did he still feel something
+in Faversham escape him?--some deep-driven defiance, or hope,
+intangible? He seemed indeed to be always on the watch now for fresh
+occasions of attack that should test his own power, and Faversham's
+submission.
+
+Presently, he abruptly left the subject of his daughter, and Faversham
+did not pursue it. What was the good of inquiring into the details of the
+girl's adventure? He guessed pretty accurately at what had happened; the
+scorn which had been poured on the suppliant; the careless indifference
+with which she had been dismissed--through the rain and the night. Yet
+another scandal for a greedy neighbourhood!--another story to reach the
+ears of the dwellers in a certain cottage, with the embellishments, no
+doubt, which the popular hatred of both himself and Melrose was certain
+to supply. He felt himself buried a little deeper under the stoning of
+his fellows. But at the same time he was conscious--as of a danger
+point--of a new and passionate exasperation in himself. His will must
+control it.
+
+Melrose, however, proceeded to give it fresh cause. He took up a letter
+from Nash containing various complaints of Faversham, which had reached
+him that evening.
+
+"You have been browbeating our witnesses, sir! Nash reports them as
+discouraged, and possibly no longer willing to come forward. What
+business had you to jeopardize my interests by posing as the superior
+person? The evidence had been good enough for Nash--and myself. It might
+have been good enough for you."
+
+Faversham smiled, as he lit his cigarette.
+
+"The two men you refer to--whom you asked me to see yesterday--were a
+couple of the feeblest liars I ever had to do with. Tatham's counsel
+would have turned them inside out in five minutes. You seem to forget the
+other side are employing counsel."
+
+"I forgot nothing!" said Melrose hotly. "But I expect you to follow your
+instructions."
+
+"The point is--am I advising you in this matter, or am I merely your
+agent? You seem to expect me to act in both capacities. And I confess I
+find it difficult."
+
+Melrose fretted and fumed. He raised one point after another, criticising
+Faversham's action and advice in regard to the housing inquiries, as
+though he were determined to pick a quarrel. Faversham met him on the
+whole with wonderful composure, often yielding in appearance, but in
+reality getting the best of it throughout. Under the mask of the
+discussion, however, the temper of both men was rising fast. It was as
+though two deep-sea currents, converging far down, were struggling unseen
+toward the still calm surface, there to meet in storm and convulsion.
+
+Again, Melrose changed the conversation. He was by now extraordinarily
+pale. All the flushed excitement in which Faversham had found him had
+disappeared. He was more spectral, more ghostly--and ghastly--than
+Faversham had ever seen him. His pincerlike fingers played with the jewel
+which Felicia had thrown down upon the table. He took it up, put on his
+eyeglass, peered at it, put it down again. Then he turned an intent and
+evil eye on Faversham.
+
+"I have now something of a quite different nature to say to you. You
+have, I imagine, expected it. You will, perhaps, guess at it. And I
+cannot imagine for one moment that you will make any difficulty about
+it."
+
+Faversham's pulse began to race.
+
+He suspended his cigarette.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"I am asked to send a selection of antique gems to the Loan Exhibition
+which is being got up by the 'Amis du Louvre' in Paris, after Christmas.
+I desire to send both the Arconati Bacchus and the Medusa--in fact all
+those now in the case committed to my keeping."
+
+"I have no objection," said Faversham. But he had suddenly lost colour.
+
+"I can only send them in my own name," said Melrose slowly.
+
+"That difficulty is not insurmountable. I can lend them to you."
+
+Melrose's composure gave way. He brought his hand heavily down on the
+table.
+
+"I shall send them in--as my own property--in my own name!"
+
+Faversham eyed him.
+
+"But they are not--they will not be--your property."
+
+"I offer you three thousand pounds for them!--four thousand--five
+thousand--if you want more you can have it. Drive the best bargain you
+can!" sneered Melrose, trying to smile.
+
+"I refuse your offer--your very generous offer--with great regret--but I
+refuse!" Faversham had risen to his feet.
+
+"And your reason?--for a behaviour so--so vilely ungrateful!"
+
+"Simply, that the gems were left to me--by an uncle I loved--who was a
+second father to me--who asked me not to sell them. I have warned you not
+once, or twice, that I should never sell them."
+
+"No! You expected both to get hold of my property--and to keep your own!"
+
+"Insult me as you like," said Faversham, quietly. "I probably deserve it.
+But you will not alter my determination."
+
+He stood leaning on the back of a chair, looking down on Melrose. Some
+bondage had broken in his soul! A tide of some beneficent force seemed to
+be flooding its dry wastes.
+
+Melrose paused. In the silence each measured the other. Then Melrose said
+in a voice which had grown husky:
+
+"So--the first return you are asked to make, for all that has been
+lavished upon you, you meet with--this refusal. That throws a new light
+upon your character. I never proposed to leave my fortune to an
+adventurer! I proposed to leave it to a gentleman, capable of
+understanding an obligation. We have mistaken each other--and our
+arrangement--drops. Unless you consent to the very small request--the
+very advantageous proposal rather--which I have just made you--you will
+leave this room--as penniless--except for any savings you may have made
+out of your preposterous salary--as penniless--as you came into it!"
+
+Faversham raised himself. He drew a long breath, as of a man delivered.
+
+"Do what you like, Mr. Melrose. There was a time when it seemed as if
+our cooperation might have been of service to both. But some devil in
+you--and a greedy mind in me--the temptation of your money--oh, I
+confess it, frankly--have ruined our partnership--and indeed--much
+else! I resume my freedom--I leave your house to-morrow. And now,
+please--return me my gems!"
+
+He peremptorily held out his hand. Melrose glared upon him. Then slowly
+the old man reopened the little drawer at his elbow, took thence the
+shagreen case, and pushed it toward Faversham.
+
+Faversham replaced it in his breast pocket.
+
+"Thank you. Now, Mr. Melrose, I should advise you to go to bed. Your
+health is not strong enough to stand these disputes. Shall I call Dixon?
+As soon as possible my accounts shall be in your hands."
+
+"Leave the room, sir!" cried Melrose, choking with rage, and motioning
+toward the door.
+
+On the threshold Faversham turned, and gave one last look at the dark
+figure of Melrose, and the medley of objects surrounding it; at Madame
+Elisabeth's Sèvres vases, on the upper shelf of the Riesener table; at
+the Louis Seize clock, on the panelled wall, which was at that moment
+striking eight.
+
+As he closed the door behind him, he was aware of Dixon who had just
+entered the gallery from the servants' quarters. The old butler hurried
+toward him to ask if he should announce dinner. "Not for me," said
+Faversham; "you had better ask Mr. Melrose. To-morrow, Dixon, I shall be
+leaving this house--for good."
+
+Dixon stared, his face working:
+
+"I thowt--I heard yo'--" he said, and paused.
+
+"You heard us disputing. Mr. Melrose and I have had a quarrel. Bring me
+something to my room, when you have looked after him. I will come and
+speak to you later."
+
+Faversham walked down the gallery to his own door. He had to pass on the
+way a splendid Nattier portrait of Marie Leczinska which had arrived only
+that morning from Paris, and was standing on the floor, leaning sideways
+against a chair, as Melrose had placed it himself, so as to get a good
+light on it. The picture was large. Faversham picked his way round it. If
+his thoughts had not been so entirely preoccupied, he would probably have
+noticed a slight movement of something behind the portrait as he passed.
+But exultation held him; he walked on air.
+
+He returned to his own room, where the window was still wide open. As he
+entered, he mechanically turned on the central light, not noticing that
+the reading lamp upon his table was not in its place. But he saw that
+some papers which had been on his desk when he left the room were now on
+the floor. He supposed the wind which was rising had dislodged them.
+Stooping to lift them up, he was surprised to see a large mud-stain on
+the topmost sheet. It looked like a footprint, as though some one had
+first knocked the papers off the table, and then trodden on them. He
+turned on a fresh switch. There was another mark on the floor just beyond
+the table--and another--nearer the door. They were certainly footprints!
+But who could have entered the room during his absence? And where was the
+invader? At the same time he perceived that his reading lamp had been
+overturned and was lying on the floor, broken.
+
+Filled with a vague anxiety, he returned to the door he had just closed.
+As he laid his hand upon it, a shot rang through the house--a cry--the
+sound of a fierce voice--a fall.
+
+And the next minute the door he held was violently burst open in his
+face, he himself was knocked backward over a chair, and a man carrying a
+gun, whose face was muffled in some dark material, rushed across the
+room, leapt through the window, and disappeared into the night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Faversham ran into the gallery. The first thing he saw was the Nattier
+portrait lying on its face beside a chair overturned. Beyond it, a dark
+object on the floor. At the same moment, he perceived Dixon standing
+horror-struck, at the farther end of the gallery, with the handle of the
+door leading to the servants' quarters still in his grasp. Then the old
+man too ran.
+
+The two men were brought up by the same obstacle. The body of Edmund
+Melrose lay between them.
+
+Melrose had fallen on his face. As Faversham and Dixon lifted him, they
+saw that he was still breathing, though _in extremis_. He had been shot
+through the breast, and a pool of blood lay beneath him, blotting out the
+faded blues and yellow greens of a Persian carpet.
+
+At the command of her husband, Mrs. Dixon, who had hurried after him, ran
+for brandy, crying also for help. Faversham snatched a cushion, put it
+under the dying man's head, and loosened his clothing. Melrose's eyelids
+fluttered once or twice, then sank. With a low groan, a gush of blood
+from the mouth, he passed away while Dixon prayed.
+
+"May the Lord have mercy--mercy!"
+
+The old man rocked to and fro beside the corpse in an anguish. Mrs. Dixon
+coming with the brandy in her hand was stopped by a gesture from
+Faversham.
+
+"No use!" He touched Dixon on the shoulder. "Dixon--this is murder! You
+must go at once for Doctor Undershaw and the police. Take the motor. Mrs.
+Dixon and I will stay here. But first--tell me--after I spoke to you
+here--did you go in to Mr. Melrose?"
+
+"I knocked, sir. But he shouted to me--angry like--to go away--till he
+rang. I went back to t' kitchen, and I had nobbut closed yon door behind
+me--when I heard t' firin'. I brast it open again--an' saw a man--wi'
+summat roun' his head--fleein' doon t' gallery. My God!--my God!--"
+
+"The man who did it was in the gallery while you and I were speaking to
+each other," said Faversham, calmly, as he rose; "and he got in through
+my window, while I was with Mr. Melrose." He described briefly the
+passage of the murderer through his own room. "Tell the police to have
+the main line stations watched without a moment's delay. The man's game
+would be to get to one or other of them across country. There'll be no
+marks on him--he fired from a distance--but his boots are muddy. About
+five foot ten I should think--a weedy kind of fellow. Go and wake Tonson,
+and be back as quick as you possibly can. And listen!--on your way to the
+stables call the gardener. Send him for the farm men, and tell them to
+search the garden, and the woods by the river. They'll find me there. Or
+stay--one of them can come here, and remain with Mrs. Dixon, while I'm
+gone. Let them bring lanterns--quick!"
+
+In less than fifteen minutes the motor, with Dixon and the new chauffeur,
+Tonson, had left the Tower, and was rushing at forty miles an hour along
+the Pengarth road.
+
+Meanwhile, Faversham and the farm-labourers were searching the garden,
+the hanging woods, and the river banks. Footprints were found all along
+the terrace, and it was plain that the murderer had climbed the low
+enclosing wall. But beyond, and all in the darkness, nothing could be
+traced.
+
+Faversham returned to the house, and began to examine the gallery. The
+hiding-place of Melrose's assailant was soon discovered. Behind the
+Nattier portrait, and the carved and gilt chair which Melrose had himself
+moved from its place in the morning, there were muddy marks on the floor
+and the wainscotting, which showed that a man had been crouching there.
+The picture, a large and imposing canvas--Marie Leczinska, sitting on
+a blue sofa, in a gala dress of rose-pink velvet with trimming of black
+fur--had been more than sufficient to conceal him. Then--had he knocked
+to attract Melrose's attention, having ascertained from Dixon's short
+colloquy at the library door, after Faversham had left the room, that the
+master of the Tower was still within?--or had Melrose suddenly come out
+into the gallery, perhaps to give some order to Dixon?
+
+Faversham thought the latter more probable. As Melrose appeared, the
+murderer had risen hastily from his hiding-place, upsetting the picture
+and the chair. Melrose had received a charge of duck shot full in the
+breast, with fatal effect. The range was so short that the shot had
+scattered but little. A few pellets, however, could be traced in the
+wooden frames of the tapestries; and one had broken a majolica dish
+standing on a cabinet.
+
+A man of the people then--using probably some old muzzle-loader, begged
+or borrowed? Faversham's thought ran to the young fellow who had
+denounced Melrose with such fervour at Mainstairs the day of Lydia
+Penfold's visit to the stricken village. But, good heavens!--there were a
+score of men on Melrose's estate, with at least as good reason--or
+better--for shooting, as that man. Take the Brands! But old Brand was
+gone to his rest, the elder son had sailed for Canada, and the younger
+seemed to be a harmless, half-witted chap, of no account.
+
+Yet, clearly the motive had been revenge, not burglary. There were plenty
+of costly trifles on the tables and cabinets of the gallery. Not one of
+them had been touched.
+
+Faversham moved to and fro in the silence, while Mrs. Dixon sat moaning
+to herself beside the dead man, whose face she had covered. The lavish
+electric light in the gallery, which had been Melrose's latest whim,
+shone upon its splendid contents; on the nymphs and cupids, the wreaths
+and temples of the Boucher tapestries, on the gleaming surfaces of the
+china, the dull gold of the _ormolu_. The show represented the desires,
+the huntings, the bargains of a lifetime; and in its midst lay Melrose,
+tripped at last, silenced at last, the stain of his life-blood spreading
+round him.
+
+Faversham looked down upon him, shuddering. Then perceiving that the door
+into the library stood ajar, he entered the room. There stood the chair
+on which he had leant, when the chains of his slavery fell from him.
+There--on the table--was the jewel--the little Venus with fluttering
+enamel drapery, standing tiptoe within her hoop of diamonds, which he had
+seen Melrose take up and handle during their dispute. Why was it there?
+Faversham had no idea.
+
+And there on the writing-desk lay a large sheet of paper with a single
+line written upon it in Melrose's big and sprawling handwriting. That was
+new. It had not been there, when Faversham last stood beside the table.
+The pen was thrown down upon it, and a cigar lay in the ashtray, as
+though the writer had been disturbed either by a sudden sound, or by the
+irruption of some thought which had led him into the gallery to call
+Dixon.
+
+Faversham stooped to look at it:
+
+"I hereby revoke all the provisions of the will executed by me on ..."
+
+No more. The paper was worthless. The will would stand. Faversham stood
+motionless, the silence booming in his ears.
+
+"A fool would put that in his pocket," he said to himself,
+contemptuously. Then conscious of a new swarm of ideas assailing him,
+of new dangers, and a new wariness, he returned to the gallery, pacing
+it till the police appeared. They came in force, within the hour,
+accompanied by Undershaw.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The old chiming clock set in the garden-front of Duddon had not long
+struck ten. Cyril Boden had just gone to bed. Victoria sat with her feet
+on the fender in Tatham's study still discussing with him Felicia's
+astonishing performance of the afternoon. She found him eagerly
+interested in it, to a degree which surprised her; and they passed from
+it only to go zealously together into various plans for the future of
+mother and daughter--plans as intelligent as they were generous. The buzz
+of a motor coming up the drive surprised them. There were no visitors in
+the house, and none expected. Victoria rose in amazement as Undershaw
+walked into the room.
+
+"A horrible thing has happened. I felt that you must know before
+anybody--with those two poor things in your house. Dixon has told me that
+Miss Melrose saw her father this afternoon. I have come to bring you the
+sequel."
+
+He told his story. Mother and son turned pale looks upon each other.
+Within a couple of hours of the moment when he had turned his daughter
+from his doors! Seldom indeed do the strokes of the gods fall so fitly.
+There was an awful satisfaction in the grim story to some of the deepest
+instincts of the soul.
+
+"Some poor devil he has ruined, I suppose!" said Tatham, his grave young
+face lifted to the tragic height of the event. "Any clue?"
+
+"None--except that, as I have told you, Faversham himself saw the
+murderer, except his face, and Dixon saw his back. A slight man in
+corduroys--that's all Dixon can say. Faversham and the Dixons were alone
+in the house, except for a couple of maids. Perhaps"--he hesitated--"I
+had better tell you some other facts that Faversham told me--and the
+Superintendent of Police. They will of course come out at the inquest.
+He and Melrose had had a violent quarrel immediately before the murder.
+Melrose threatened to revoke his will, and Faversham left him,
+understanding that all dispositions in his favour would be cancelled. He
+came out of the room, spoke to Dixon in the gallery and walked to
+his own sitting-room. Melrose apparently sat down at once to write a
+codicil revoking the will. He was disturbed, came out into the gallery,
+and was shot dead. The few lines he wrote are of course of no validity.
+The will holds, and Faversham is the heir--to everything. You see"--he
+paused again--"some awkward suggestions might be made."
+
+"But," cried Tatham, "you say Dixon saw the man? And the muddy
+footmarks--in the house--and on the terrace!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Don't mistake me, for heaven's sake," said Undershaw, quickly. "It is
+impossible that Faversham should have fired the shot! But in the present
+state of public opinion you will easily imagine what else may be said.
+There is a whole tribe of Melrose's hangers-on who hate Faversham like
+poison; who have been plotting to pull him down, and will be furious to
+find him after all in secure possession of the estate and the money. I
+feel tolerably certain they will put up some charge or other."
+
+"What--of procuring the thing?"
+
+Undershaw nodded.
+
+Tatham considered a moment. Then he rang, and when Hurst appeared, all
+white and disorganized under the stress of the news just communicated to
+him by Undershaw's chauffeur, he ordered his horse for eight o'clock in
+the morning. Victoria looked at him puzzled; then it seemed she
+understood.
+
+But every other thought was soon swallowed up in the remembrance of the
+widow and daughter.
+
+"Not to-night--not to-night," pleaded Undershaw who had seen Netta
+Melrose professionally, only that morning. "I dread the mere shock for
+Mrs. Melrose. Let them have their sleep! I will be over early to-morrow."
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+By the first dawn of the new day Tatham was in the saddle. Just as he was
+starting from the house, there arrived a messenger, and a letter was
+put into his hand. It was from Undershaw, who, on leaving Duddon the
+night before, had motored back to the Tower, and taken Faversham in
+charge. The act bore testimony to the little doctor's buffeted but still
+surviving regard for this man, whom he had pulled from the jaws of death.
+He reported in his morning letter that he had passed some of the night in
+conversation with Faversham, and wished immediately to pass on certain
+facts learnt from it, first of all to Tatham, and then to any friend of
+Faversham's they might concern.
+
+He told, accordingly, the full story of the gems, leading up to the
+quarrel between the two men, as Faversham had told it to him.
+
+"Faversham," he wrote, "left the old man, convinced that all was at an
+end as to the will and the inheritance. And now he is as much the heir as
+ever! I find him bewildered; for his _mind_, in that tragic half-hour,
+had absolutely renounced. What he will do, no one can say. As to the
+murderer, we have discussed all possible clues--with little light. But
+the morning will doubtless bring some new facts. That Faversham has not
+the smallest fraction of responsibility for the murder is clear to any
+sane man who talks with him. But that there will be a buzz of slanderous
+tongues as soon as ever the story is public property, I am convinced. So
+I send you these fresh particulars as quickly as possible--for your
+guidance."
+
+Tatham thrust the letter into his pocket, and rode away through the
+December dawn. His mother would soon be in the thick of her own task with
+the two unconscious ones at Duddon. _His_ duty lay--with Lydia! The
+"friend" was all alive in him, reaching out to her in a manly and
+generous emotion.
+
+The winter sunrise was a thing of beauty. It chimed with the intensity of
+feeling in the young man's breast. The sky was a light saffron over the
+eastern fells, and the mountains rose into it indistinguishably blue, the
+light mists wrapped about their feet. Among the mists, plane behind
+plane, the hedgerow trees, still faintly afire with their last leaf,
+stood patterned on the azure of the fells. And as he rode on, the first
+rays of the light mounting a gap in the Helvellyn range struck upon the
+valleys below. The shadows ran blue along the frosty grass; here and
+there the withered leaf began to blaze; the streams rejoiced. Under their
+sycamores and yews, the white-walled farms sent up their morning smoke;
+the cocks were crowing; and as he mounted the upland on which the cottage
+stood, from a height in front of him, a tiny church--one of the smallest
+and loneliest in the fells--sent forth a summoning bell. The sound, with
+all its weight of association, sank and echoed through the morning
+stillness; the fells repeated it, a voice of worship toward God, of
+appeal toward man.
+
+In Tatham, fashioned to the appeal by all the accidents of blood and
+nurture, the sound made for a deepened spirit and a steadied mood. He
+pressed on toward the little house and garden that now began to show
+through the trees.
+
+Lydia had not long come downstairs when she heard the horse at the gate.
+The cottage breakfast was nominally at half-past eight. But Mrs. Penfold
+never appeared, and Susy was always professionally late, it being
+understood that inspiration--when it alights--is a midnight visitant, and
+must be wooed at suitable hours.
+
+Lydia was generally down to the minute, and read prayers to their two
+maids. Mrs. Penfold made a great point of family prayers, but rarely or
+never attended them. Susy did not like to be read to by anybody. Lydia
+therefore had the little function to herself. She chose her favourite
+psalms, and prayers from the most various sources. The maids liked it
+because they loved Lydia; and Lydia, having once begun, would not
+willingly have given it up.
+
+But the ceremony was over; and she had just opened the casement to see
+who their visitor might be, when Tatham rode up to the porch.
+
+"May I speak to you for ten minutes?"
+
+His aspect warned her of things unusual. He tied up his horse, and she
+took him into their little sitting-room, and closed the door.
+
+"You haven't seen a newspaper?"
+
+She assured him their post would not arrive from Keswick for another
+hour, and stood expectant.
+
+"I wanted to tell you before any one else, because there are things to
+explain. We're friends--Lydia?"
+
+He approached her eagerly. His colour had leapt; but his eyes reassured.
+
+"Always," she said simply, and she put her hand in his.
+
+Then he told her. He saw her waver, and sink, ghost-like, on a chair. It
+was clear enough that the news had for her no ordinary significance. His
+heart knew pain--the reflex of a past anguish; only to be lost at once in
+the desire to soothe and shield her.
+
+"Mr. Faversham was there?" she asked him, trembling.
+
+"He did not see the shot fired. The murderer rushing from the gallery
+brushed past him as he was coming out of his room, and escaped."
+
+"There had been a quarrel?"
+
+He gave her in outline the contents of Undershaw's letter.
+
+"He still inherits?" Her eyes, shone as he came to the climax of the
+story--Faversham's refusal of the gems--Melrose's threat. The trembling
+of her delicate mouth urged him for more--and yet more--light.
+
+"Everything--land, money, collections--under the will made in August. You
+see"--he added, sorely against his will, yet compelled, by the need of
+protecting her from shock--"the opportuneness of the murder. Their
+relations had been very bad for some time."
+
+"Opportuneness?" She just breathed it. He put out his hand again, and
+took hers.
+
+"You know--Faversham has enemies?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"I've been one myself," he said frankly. "I believe you knew it. But this
+thing's brought me up sharp. One may think as one likes of Faversham's
+conduct--but you knew--and I know--that he's not the man to pay another
+man to commit murder!"
+
+"And that's what they'll say?" The colour had rushed back into her
+cheeks.
+
+"That's what some fool _might_ say, because of the grudge against him.
+Well, now, we've got to find the murderer!" He rose, speaking in his most
+cheerful and practical voice, "I'm going on to see what the police have
+been doing. The inquest will probably begin to-morrow. But I wanted to
+prevent your being startled by this horrible news. Trust me to let you
+know--and to help--all I can."
+
+Then for a moment, he seemed to lose his self-possession. He stood before
+her awkwardly conscious--a moral trespasser--who might have been passing
+bounds. But it was her turn to be frank. She came and put both her hands
+on his arm--looking up--drawing her breath with difficulty.
+
+"Harry, I'm going to tell you. I ought to have told you more that
+night--but how could I? It was only just then I knew--that I cared.
+A little later Mr. Faversham asked me to marry him, and I refused,
+because--because of this money. I couldn't take it--I begged him not
+to. Never mind!" She threw her head back, gulping down tears. "He
+thought me unreasonable. But--"
+
+"He refused--and left you!" cried Tatham, drinking in the sweetness of
+her pale beauty, as Orpheus might have watched the vanishing Eurydice.
+
+"He had such great ambitions--as to what he'd do--with this money," she
+said, lightly brushing her wet eyes, and trying to smile. "It wasn't the
+mere fortune! Oh, I knew that!"
+
+Tatham was silent. But he gently touched her hand with his own.
+
+"You'll stand by him?--if he needs it?" she asked piteously.
+
+He assured her. Then, suddenly, raising herself on tiptoe, she
+kissed him on the cheek. The blood flew into his face, and bending
+forward--timidly--he laid his lips on her soft brow. There was a
+pledge in it--and a farewell. She drew herself away.
+
+"The first--and the last," she said, smiling, and sighing. "Now we're
+comrades. I await your news. Tell me if I can help--throw light? I know
+the people--the neighbourhood, well. And when you see Mr. Faversham,
+greet him from me. Tell him his friends here feel with him--and for him.
+And as to what you say--ah, no!--I'm not going to believe--I can't
+believe--that any one can have such--such vile thoughts! The truth
+will soon come out!"
+
+She held herself steadily.
+
+"We must find the-murderer," Tatham repeated, and took up his cap.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lydia was left alone in the little breakfast-room. Susy could be heard
+moving about overhead; she would be down directly. Meanwhile the winter
+sunshine came broadly in; the singing of the tea-kettle, the crackle of
+the fire made domestic music. But Lydia's soul was far away. It stood
+beside Faversham, exulting.
+
+"Free!"--she said to herself, passionately--"free!" and then with the
+hyperbole of love--"I talked and moralized--he _did it_!"
+
+A splendid pride in him possessed her; so that for long she
+scarcely realized the tragedy of the murder, or the horror of the
+slanderous suspicion now starting through the dales. But yet, long
+before the day was over, she was conquered by grief and fear--a very
+miserable and restless Lydia. No word came from him; and she could not
+write. These were men's affairs, and women must hold their peace. Yet,
+in spirit, as the hours passed, she gave herself wholly to the man she
+loved; she glorified him; she trampled on her own past doubts; she
+protected him against a world in arms. The plant of love grew fast and
+furiously--watered by pity--by indignation.
+
+Meanwhile Susy treated her sister very kindly. She specially insisted on
+ordering dinner, and writing various business letters; though Lydia would
+have been thankful to do both. And when the evening came on, Mrs. Penfold
+trembling with excitement and horror, chattered endlessly about the
+murder, as each visitor to the cottage brought some fresh detail. Lydia
+seldom answered her. She sat on the floor, with her face against her
+mother's knee, while the soft, silly voice above her head rambled and
+rambled on.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tatham rode back to Pengarth. As he approached one of the lodge gates of
+Duddon, a man came toward him on a bicycle. Boden, hot and dishevelled,
+dismounted as he saw Tatham.
+
+"I thought I should just meet you. Lady Tatham has had a telephone
+message from the Chief Constable, Colonel Marvell. There is a man
+missing--and a gun. Brand's younger son has not been seen for thirty-six
+hours. He has been helping Andover's head keeper for part of the year, as
+a watcher; and this man, Simpson, had let him have an old gun of his--a
+muzzle-loader--some months ago. That gun can't be found."
+
+Tatham sat thunderstruck, lights breaking on his face.
+
+"Well--there was cause enough."
+
+Boden's eyes shone.
+
+"Cause? It smelled to heaven! Wild justice--if you like! I was in the
+house yesterday afternoon," he added quietly, "just before the old man
+died."
+
+"You were?" cried Tatham, amazed. Yet he knew well that whenever Boden
+came to recruit at Duddon, he spent half of his time among the fell-farms
+and cottages. His mind was invincibly human, greedy of common life and
+incident, whether in London or among the dales. He said little of his
+experiences at Duddon; not a word, for instance, to Tatham or Victoria,
+the night before, had revealed his own share in the old farmer's death
+scene; but, casually, often, some story would drop out, some unsuspected
+facts about their next-door neighbours, their very own people, which
+would set Victoria and Tatham looking at each other, and wondering.
+
+He turned now to walk beside Tatham's horse. His plain face with its
+beautiful eyes, and lanky straying hair, spoke of a ruminating mind.
+
+Tatham asked if there was any news from the railway.
+
+"No trace so far, anywhere. All the main line stations have been closely
+watched. But Marvell is of opinion that if young Brand had anything to do
+with it he would certainly give the railway a wide berth. He is much more
+likely to take to the fells. They tell the most extraordinary tales of
+his knowledge of the mountains--especially in snow and wild weather. They
+say that shepherds who have lost sheep constantly go to him for help!"
+
+"--You know him?"
+
+"I have talked to him sometimes. A queer sulky fellow with one or two
+fixed ideas. He certainly hated Melrose. Whether he hated him enough to
+murder him is another question. When I visited them, the mother told me
+that Will had rushed out of the house the night before, because he could
+not endure the sight of his father's sufferings. The jury I suppose will
+have to know that. Well!--You were going on to Pengarth?"
+
+Tatham assented. Boden paused, leaning on his bicycle.
+
+"Take Threlfall on your way. I think Faversham would like to see you.
+There are some strange things being said. Preposterous things! The hatred
+is extraordinary."
+
+The two men eyed each other gravely. Boden added:
+
+"I have been telling your mother that I think I shall go over to
+Threlfall for a bit, if Faversham will have me."
+
+Tatham wondered again. Faversham, prosperous, had been, it seemed to him,
+a special target for Boden's scorn, expressed with a fine range of
+revolutionary epithet.
+
+But calamity of any kind--for this queer saint--was apt to change all the
+values of things.
+
+They were just separating when Tatham, with sudden compunction, asked for
+news of Mrs. Melrose, and Felicia.
+
+"I had almost forgotten them!"
+
+"Your mother did not tell me much. They were troubled about Mrs. Melrose,
+I think, and Undershaw was coming. The poor little girl turned very
+white--no tears--but she was clinging to your mother."
+
+Tatham's face softened, but he said nothing. The road to Threlfall
+presented itself, and he turned his horse toward it.
+
+"And Miss Penfold?" said Boden, quietly. "You arrived before the
+newspapers? Good. I think, before I return, I shall go and have a talk
+with Miss Penfold."
+
+And mounting his bicycle he rode off. Tatham looking after him, felt
+uncomfortably certain that Boden knew pretty well all there was to know
+about Lydia--Faversham--and himself. But he did not resent it.
+
+Tatham found Threlfall a beleaguered place, police at the gates and in
+the house; the chief constable and the Superintendent of police
+established in the dining-room, as the only room tolerably free from the
+all encumbering collections, and interviewing one person after another.
+
+Tatham asked to see the chief constable. He made his way into the
+gallery, which was guarded by police, for although the body of Melrose
+had been removed to an upper room, the blood-stain on the Persian carpet,
+the overturned chair and picture, the mud-marks on the wall remained
+untouched, awaiting the coroner's jury, which was to meet in the house
+that evening.
+
+As Tatham approached the room which was now the headquarters of the
+police, he met coming out of it a couple of men; one small and sinewy,
+with the air of a disreputable athlete, the other a tall pasty-faced man
+in a shabby frock coat, with furtive eyes. The first was Nash, Melrose's
+legal factotum through many years; the other was one of the clerks in the
+Pengarth office, who was popularly supposed to have made much money out
+of the Threlfall estate, through a long series of small peculations never
+discovered by his miserly master. They passed Tatham with downcast eyes
+and an air of suppressed excitement which did not escape him. He found
+the chief constable pacing up and down, talking in subdued tones, and
+with a furrowed brow, to the Superintendent of police.
+
+"Come in, come in," said Marvell heartily, at sight of the young man, who
+was the chief landowner of the district, and likely within a couple of
+years to be its lord lieutenant. "We want your help. Everything points to
+young Brand, and there is much reason to think he is still in the
+neighbourhood. What assistance can you give us?"
+
+Tatham promised a band of searchers from the estate. The Duddon estate
+itself included a great deal of mountain ground, some of the loneliest
+and remotest in the district, where a man who knew the fells might very
+well take hiding. Marvell brought out a map, and they pored over it.
+
+The superintendent of police departed.
+
+Then Marvell, with a glance at the door to see that it was safely shut,
+said abruptly:
+
+"You know, Faversham has done some unlucky things!"
+
+Tatham eyed him interrogatively.
+
+"It has come out that he was in the Brands' cottage about a week ago,
+and that he left money with the family. He says he never saw the younger
+son, and did not in fact know him by sight. He offered the elder one
+some money in order to help him with his Canadian start. The lad refused,
+not being willing, so his mother says--I have seen her myself this
+morning--to accept anything from Melrose's agent. But she, not knowing
+where to look for the expenses of her husband's illness, took five pounds
+from Faversham, and never dared tell either of her sons."
+
+"All perfectly straightforward and natural," said Tatham.
+
+Marvell looked worried.
+
+"Yes. But you see how the thing may be twisted by men like those
+two--curs!--who have just been here. You saw them? They came, ostensibly,
+to answer my questions as to whether they could point us to any one
+with a particular grudge against Mr. Melrose."
+
+"They could have named you a hundred!" interrupted Tatham.
+
+"No doubt. But what their information in the end amounted to"--the chief
+constable came to stand immediately in front of Tatham, lowering his
+voice--"was that the only person with a really serious motive for
+destroying Melrose, was"--he jerked his thumb in the direction of
+Faversham's sitting-room--"our friend! They claim--both of them--to have
+been spectators of the growing friction between the two men. Nash says
+that Melrose had spoken to him once or twice of revoking, or altering
+his will; and both of them declare that Faversham was quite aware of the
+possibility. Of course these things were brought out apologetically--you
+understand!--with a view of 'giving Mr. Faversham the opportunity
+of meeting the reports in circulation,' and so on--'calming public
+opinion'--and the rest of it. But I see how they will work it up! Then,
+of course, that the man got access to the house through Faversham's
+room--Faversham's window left open, and the light left burning--by his
+own story--is unfortunate."
+
+"But what absurdity," cried Tatham, indignantly, as he rose. "As if the
+man to profit by the plot would have left that codicil on the table!"
+
+Marvell shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"That too might be twisted. Why not a supremely clever stroke? Well, of
+course the thing is absurd--but disagreeable--considering the
+circumstances. The moral is--find the man! Good-day, Lord Tatham. I
+understand you will have fifty men out by this evening, assisting the
+police in their search?"
+
+"At least," said Tatham, and departed.
+
+Outside, after a moment's hesitation, he inquired of the police in charge
+whether Faversham was in his room. Being told that he was, he asked leave
+to pass along the gallery. An officer took him in charge, and he stepped,
+not without a shudder, past the blood-stained spot, where a cruel spirit
+had paid its debt. The man who led him pointed out the picture, the
+chair, the marks of the muddy soles on the wainscotting, and along the
+gallery--reconstructing the murder, in low tones, as though the dead man
+still lay there. A hideous oppression indeed hung over the house.
+Melrose's ghost held it.
+
+The police officer knocked at Faversham's door. "Would Mr. Faversham
+receive Lord Tatham?"
+
+Faversham, risen from his writing-table, looked at his visitor in a dull
+astonishment.
+
+"I have come to bring you a message," said Tatham advancing, neither man
+offering to shake hands. "I saw Miss Penfold early this morning--before
+she got the newspapers. She wished me to bring you her--her sympathy. She
+was very much shocked." He spoke with a certain boyish embarrassment. But
+his blue eyes looked very straight at Faversham.
+
+Faversham changed colour a little, and thanked him. But his aspect was
+that of a man worn out, incapable for the time of the normal responses of
+feeling. He showed no sense of strangeness, with regard to Tatham's
+visit, though for weeks they had not been on speaking terms. Absently
+offering his visitor a chair, he talked a little--disjointedly--of
+the events of the preceding evening, with frequent pauses for
+recollection.
+
+Tatham eyed him askance.
+
+"I say! I suppose you had no sleep?"
+
+Faversham smiled.
+
+"Look here--hadn't you better come to us to-night?--get out of this
+horrible place?" exclaimed Tatham, on a sudden but imperative impulse.
+
+"To Duddon?" Faversham shook his head. "Thank you--impossible." Then he
+looked up. "Undershaw told you what I told him?"
+
+Tatham assented. There was an awkward pause--broken at last by Faversham.
+
+"How did Miss Melrose get home?"
+
+"Luckily I came across her at the foot of the Duddon hill, and I helped
+her home. She's all right--though of course it's a ghastly shock for
+them."
+
+"I never knew she was here--till she had gone," exclaimed Faversham, with
+sudden animation, "Otherwise--I should have helped her."
+
+He stood erect, his pale look fixed threateningly on Tatham.
+
+"I'm sure you would," said Tatham, heartily. "Well now, I must be off. I
+have promised Marvell to put as many men as possible to work in with the
+police. You have no idea at all as to the identity of the man who ran
+past you?"
+
+"None!" Faversham repeated the word, as though groping in his memory.
+"None. I never saw Will Brand that I can recollect. But the description
+of him seems to tally with the man who knocked me over."
+
+"Well, we'll find him," said Tatham briskly. "Any message for Green
+Cottage?"
+
+"My best thanks. I am very grateful to them."
+
+The words were formal. He sank heavily into his chair, as though wishing
+to end the interview. Tatham departed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The inquest opened in the evening. Faversham and the Dixons gave their
+evidence. So did Undershaw and the police. The jury viewed the body, and
+leave to bury was granted. Then the inquiry adjourned.
+
+For some ten days afterward, the whole of the Lake district hung upon the
+search for Brand. From the Scawfell and Buttermere group on its western
+verge, to the Ullswater mountains on the east; from Skiddaw and
+Blencathra on the north, southward through all the shoulders and edges,
+the tarns and ghylls of the Helvellyn range; through the craggy fells of
+Thirlmere, Watendlath, Easedale; over the high plateaus that run up to
+the Pikes, and fall in precipice to Stickle Tarn; through the wild clefts
+and corries of Bowfell, the Crinkles, Wetherlam and the Old Man; over the
+desolate backs and ridges that stretch from Kirkstone to Kentmere and
+Long Sleddale, the great man-hunt passed, enlisting ever fresh feet, and
+fresh eyes in its service. Every shepherd on the high fells became a
+detective, speeding news, or urging suggestions, by the old freemasonry
+of their tribe; while every farmhouse in certain dales, within reach of
+the scene of the murder, sent out its watchers by day and night, eagerly
+contributing its men and its wits to the chase.
+
+For in this chase there was a hidden motive which found no expression
+in the local papers; of which men spoke to each other under their
+breaths, when they spoke at all; but which none the less became in a
+very short time, by the lightning spread of a few evil reports, through
+the stubble of popular resentment, the animating passion at the heart of
+it. The police and Faversham's few friends were searching for the
+murderer of Melrose; the public in general were soon hunting Faversham's
+accomplice. The discovery of Will Brand meant, in the one case, the
+arrest of a poor crazy fellow who had avenged by murder his father's
+persecution and ruin; in the other case, it meant the unmasking of an
+educated and smooth-spoken villain, who, finding a vast fortune in
+danger, had taken ingenious means to secure it. In this black suspicion
+there spoke the accumulated hatred of years, stored up originally, in the
+mind of a whole countryside, against a man who had flouted every law of
+good citizenship, and strained every legal right of property to breaking
+point; and discharging itself now, with pent-up force, upon the tyrant's
+tool, conceived as the murderous plotter for his millions. To realize the
+strength of the popular feeling, as it presently revealed itself, was to
+look shuddering into things elemental.
+
+It was first made plain on the day of Melrose's funeral. In order to
+avoid the concourse which might attend a burial in Whitebeck parish
+church, lying near the main road, and accessible from many sides, it
+was determined to bury him in the graveyard of the little mountain
+chapel on the fell above the Penfolds' cottage. The hour was sunrise; and
+all the preparations had been as secretly made as possible. But when the
+dark December morning arrived, with sleet showers whitening all the
+slopes of Helvellyn and the gashed breast of Blencathra, a dense crowd
+thronged all the exits of the Tower, and lined the steep lanes leading to
+the chapel. Faversham, Cyril Boden, and a Carlisle solicitor occupied the
+only carriage which followed the hearse. Tatham and his mother met the
+doleful procession at the chapel. Lady Tatham, very pale and queenly,
+walked hand in hand with a slight girl in mourning. As the multitude
+outside the churchyard caught sight of the pair, a thrill ran through its
+ranks. Melrose's daughter, and rightful heiress--disinherited, and
+supplanted--by the black-haired man standing bareheaded behind the
+coffin. The crowd endured the mockery of the burial service in a sullen
+silence. Not a head uncovered. Not a voice joined in the responses.
+
+Felicia threw back her veil, and the onlookers pressed to the churchyard
+railings to see the delicate face, with its strong likeness to her
+father. She meanwhile saw only Tatham. Her eyes were fixed on him from
+first to last.
+
+But there were two other ladies in the churchyard. After the hurried
+ceremony was over, one of them approached Faversham. He took her hand in
+silence, looking down into the eyes--the soul--of Lydia. With what
+angelic courage and cheer that look was charged, only its recipient knew.
+
+"Come and see us," she said, softly.
+
+He shook his head, with a look of pain. Then he pressed her hand and they
+separated. As he appeared at the churchyard gate, about to enter the
+carriage which was waiting, a grim low groan ran through the throng
+which filled the lane. There was something in the sound to strike a
+shiver through the strongest. Faversham grew perhaps a little paler, but
+as he seated himself in the carriage he examined the scowling faces near
+him with a quiet indifference, which scarcely altered when Tatham came
+conspicuously to the carriage-door to bid him farewell.
+
+The days that followed reminded some of the older dalesmen of the stories
+told by their fathers of the great and famous hunt, a century ago, after
+the sheep-slaying "dog of Ennerdale," who for five months held a whole
+district at bay; appearing and disappearing phantom-like among the crags
+and mists of the high fells, keeping shepherds and farming-folk in
+perpetual excitement, watched for by night and day, hunted by hounds and
+by men, yet never to be captured; frightening lovers from their trysts,
+and the children from school; a presence and a terror prevading men's
+minds, and suspending the ordinary operations of life. So in some sort
+was it with the hunt for Will Brand. It was firmly believed that in the
+course of it he was twice seen; once in the loneliness of Skiddaw Forest,
+not far from the gamekeeper's hut, the only habitation in that moorland
+waste; and once in a storm on the slopes of Great Dodd, when a shepherd,
+"latin" his sheep, had suddenly perceived a wild-looking fellow, with a
+gun between his knees, watching him from the shelter of a rock. So far
+from making any effort to capture the man, the shepherd had fled in
+terror; but both neighbours and police firmly believed that he had seen
+the murderer. There were also various mysterious thefts of food reported
+from mountain farms, indications hotly followed up but to no purpose.
+Would the culprit, starved out, be forced in time to surrender; or would
+he die of privation and exposure among the high fells, in the snowdrifts,
+and leave the spring, when it came, to uncover his bones?
+
+Toward the end of the month the snowstorms of its earlier days passed
+into a chilly and continuous rain; there was still snow on the heights.
+The steady downpour presently flooded the rivers, and sent the streams
+racing in torrents down the hills.
+
+Christmas was over. The new year was at hand. One afternoon, Boden,
+oppressed in spirit, sallied forth from the Tower into the floods and
+mists of St. John's Vale. He himself had taken no part in the great
+pursuit. He believed now that the poor hunted creature would find his
+lonely end among the wintry mountains, and rejoiced to think it might be
+so. The adjourned inquest was to be resumed the following day, and no
+doubt some verdict would be returned. It was improbable, in spite of the
+malice at work, that any attempt would be made--legally--to incriminate
+Faversham.
+
+It was of Faversham that he was chiefly thinking. When he had first
+proposed his companionship, the day after the murder, it had been quietly
+accepted, with a softened look of surprise, and he and Undershaw had
+since kept watch over a bewildered man, protecting him as far as they
+could from the hostile world at his gates.
+
+How he would emerge--what he meant to do with Melrose's vast heritage,
+Boden had no idea. His life seemed to have shrunk into a dumb, trancelike
+state. He rarely or never left the house; he could not be induced to
+go either to Duddon or to the Cottage; nor would he receive visitors. He
+had indeed seen his solicitors, but had said not a word to Boden on the
+subject. It was rumoured that Nash was already endeavouring to persuade
+a distant cousin of Melrose and Lady Tatham to dispute the will.
+
+Meanwhile, through Boden, Lydia Penfold had been kept in touch with a man
+who could not apparently bring himself to reopen their relation. Boden
+saw her nearly every day; they had become fast friends. Victoria too was
+as often at the cottage as the state of Netta Melrose allowed, and she
+and Lydia, born to understand each other, had at last arrived thereat.
+
+But Mrs. Melrose was dying; and her little daughter, a more romantic
+figure than ever, in the public eye, was to find, it said, a second
+mother in Lady Tatham.
+
+ The rain clouds were swirling through the dale, as Boden reached its
+middle point, pushing his way against a cold westerly blast. The stream,
+which in summer chatters so gently to the travellers beside it, was
+rushing in a brown swift flood, and drowning the low meadows on its
+western bank. He mounted a stone foot-bridge to look at it, when, of a
+sudden, the curtain of cloud shrouding Blencathra was torn aside, and
+its high ridge, razor-sharp, appeared spectrally white, a seat of the
+storm-god, in a far heaven. The livid lines of just-fallen snow,
+outlining the cliffs and ravines of the great mountain, stamped its
+majesty, visionlike, on the senses. Below it, some scattered woods, inky
+black, bent under the storm, and the crash and darkness of the lower air
+threw into clear relief the pallid splendour of the mountain-top.
+
+Boden stood enthralled, when a voice said at his elbow:
+
+"Yo're oot on a clashy night, Muster Boden!"
+
+He turned. Beside him stood the fugitive!--grinning weakly. Boden beheld
+a tottering and ghastly figure. Distress--mortal fatigue--breathed from
+the haggard emaciation of face and limbs. Round the shoulders was folded
+a sack, from which the dregs of some red dipping mixture it had once
+contained had dripped over the youth's chest and legs, his tattered
+clothes and broken boots, in streams of what, to Boden's startled sense,
+looked like blood. And under the slouched hat, a pair of sunken eyes
+looked out, expressing the very uttermost of human despair.
+
+"Brand!--where have you been?"
+
+"Don't touch me, sir! I'll go--don't touch me! There ha' been hunnerds
+after me--latin me on t' fells. They've not catcht me--an' they'd not ha'
+catcht me noo--but I'm wore oot. I ha' been followin yo' this half-hour,
+Muster Boden. I could ha' put yo' i' the river fasst enoof."
+
+A ghastly chuckle in the darkness. Boden considered.
+
+"Well, now--are you going to give yourself up? You see--I can do nothing
+to force you! But if you take my advice, you'll go quietly with me, to
+the police--you'll make a clean breast of it."
+
+"Will they hang me, Muster Boden?"
+
+"I don't think so," said Boden slowly. "What made you do it?"
+
+"I'd planned it for months--I've follered owd Melrose many times--I've
+been close oop to 'im--when he had noa noshun whativver. I might ha'
+killt him--a doosen times over. He wor a devil--an' I paid him oot! I was
+creepin' round t' hoose that night--and ov a suddent, there was a door
+openin', an' a light. It seemed to be God sayin', 'Theer's a way, mon!
+go in, and do't! So I went in. An' I saw Muster Faversham coom oot--an'
+Dixon. An' I knew that he wor there--alone--the owd fox!--an' I
+waited--an' oot he came. I shot 'un straight, Muster Boden! I shot 'un
+straight!"
+
+"You never told any one what you were going to do, Brand? Nobody helped
+you?"
+
+"Not a soul! I'm not yo'r blabbin' sort! But now I'm done--I'm clemmed!"
+
+And he tottered against the bridge as he spoke. Baden caught him.
+
+"Can you walk with my help? I have some brandy."
+
+And taking from his pocket the tiny flask that a man with a weak heart is
+apt to carry, he put it into a shaking hand. Brand drank it greedily.
+
+They stumbled on together, down the narrow road, through the
+streaming rain. It was a mile to the Whitebeck police station. Brand
+gave a gasping, incoherent account of his doings during his ten days
+of hiding--the various barns and outhouses he had sheltered in--the
+food he had been able to steal--the narrow escapes he had run. And every
+now and then, the frenzy of his hatred for the murdered man would break
+in, and he would throw out hints of the various mad schemes he had
+entertained at different times for the destruction of his enemy.
+
+But presently he ceased to talk. It was evident that his weakness was
+great; he clung heavily to Boden's arm.
+
+They reached a point where a road branched to the left. A roar of furious
+water greeted their ears.
+
+"That's t' beck unner Wanthwaite Bridge," said Brand feebly. "Wait a bit,
+sir."
+
+He sank down on a stone by the roadside. Through the trees on the left
+the foaming river glimmered in the departing light. Boden bent over him,
+encouraging him with the promise of shelter and food, murmuring also of
+God, the help of the sinner. Suddenly the lad leapt up.
+
+"Aye! that'll end it!--an' a good job!"
+
+He began to run up the left-hand road. Boden pursued him, struggled with
+him, but in vain. Brand threw him off, reached the bridge, mounted the
+parapet, and from there flung himself headlong into the spate rushing
+furiously below.
+
+At the same moment a dog-cart driven by two young farmers appeared on the
+main road of the valley. Boden's shouts reached them, and they came to
+his aid. But Brand had disappeared. The river swept him down like a
+withered branch; and it was many hours before the body was recovered,
+half a mile from the spot where he sank.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+Boden was just coming to the end of his evidence. The adjourned
+inquest on Melrose, held in the large parlour of the old Whitebeck
+inn, was densely crowded, and the tension of a charged moment might be
+felt. Men sat gaping, their eyes wandering from the jury to the witness
+or the gray-haired coroner; to young Lord Tatham sitting beside the tall
+dark man who had been Mr. Melrose's agent, and was now the inheritor of
+his goods; to the alert and clean-shaven face of Undershaw, listening
+with the concentration of the scientific habit to the voice from the
+witness-box. And through the strained attention of the room there ran the
+stimulus of that gruesome new fact--the presence overhead of yet another
+dead man, dragged only some twenty-four hours earlier from the swollen
+waters of the river.
+
+The murderer had been found--a comparatively simple proceeding. But, in
+the finding him, the ulcer of a hideous suspicion, spread by popular
+madness, and inflamed by popular hatred, had also been probed and
+cleansed. As Boden's evidence progressed, building up the story of
+Brand's sleuth-hound pursuit of his victim, and silently verified from
+point to point by the local knowledge of the audience, the change in the
+collective mind of this typical gathering of shepherds, farmers, and
+small tradesmen might have been compared to the sudden coming of soft
+weather into the iron tension, the black silence, of a great frost. Gales
+of compunction blew; of self-interest also; and the common judgment
+veered with them.
+
+After the inevitable verdict had been recorded, a fresh jury was
+empanelled, and there was a stamping of sturdy Cumbrian feet up the inn
+stairs to view the pitiful remains of another human being, botched by
+Nature in the flesh, no less lamentably than Melrose in the spirit. The
+legal inquiry into Brand's flight and death was short and mostly formal;
+but the actual evidence--as compared with current gossip--of his luckless
+mother, now left sonless and husbandless, and as to the relations of the
+family with Faversham, hastened the melting process in the public mind.
+It showed a man in bondage indeed to a tyrant; but doing what he could to
+lighten the hand of the tyrant on others; privately and ineffectively
+generous; remorseful for the sins of another; and painfully aware of his
+mixed responsibility.
+
+Yet naturally there were counter currents. Andover, the old Cumbrian
+squire, whose personal friction with Faversham had been sharpest, left
+the inn with a much puzzled mind, but not prepared as yet to surrender
+his main opinion of a young man, who after all had feathered his nest so
+uncommonly well. "They may say what they d--n please," said the furious
+and disappointed Nash, as he departed in company with his shabby
+accomplice, the sallow-faced clerk, "but he's walked off with the dibs,
+an' I suppose he thinks he'll jolly well keep 'em. The 'cutest young
+scoundrel I ever came across!" which, considering the range of the
+speaker's experience, was testimony indeed.
+
+Regret, on the one hand, for a monstrous and exposed surmise; on the
+other, instinctive resentment of the man's huge, unearned luck under the
+will that Melrose would have revoked had he lived a few more hours, as
+contrasted with the plight of Felicia Melrose; between these poles men's
+minds went wavering. Colonel Barton stood at the door of the inn before
+Faversham emerged for a few undecided moments, and finally walked away,
+like Andover, with the irritable reflection that the grounds on which he
+had originally cut the young man still largely stood; and he was not
+going to kow-tow to mere money. He would go and have tea with Lady
+Tatham; she was a sensible woman. Harry's behaviour seemed to him
+sentimental.
+
+Faversham, Boden, and Harry Tatham left the inn together and were joined
+by Undershaw outside. They walked silently through the irregular village
+street where groups stood at the cottage doors to see them pass. As they
+emerged upon the high road the three others perceived that they were
+alone. Faversham had disappeared.
+
+"Where is he?" said Tatham, standing amazed and looking back. They had
+gained the crest of a hill whence, beyond the roofs of Whitebeck in the
+hollow, a section of the main road could be dimly seen, running west a
+white streak piercing the wintry dusk. Along the white streak moved
+something black--the figure of a man. Boden pointed to it.
+
+"Where's he going?" The question fell involuntarily from Undershaw.
+
+Boden did not reply. But as Undershaw spoke there flashed out a distant
+light on the rising ground beyond the streak of road. Above it, huddled
+shapes of mountains, dying fast into the darkness. They all knew it for a
+light in Green Cottage; the same that Tatham had watched from the Duddon
+moorland on the evening of the murder. They turned and walked on silently
+toward the lower gate of Duddon.
+
+"What's he going to do about the money?" said Undershaw abruptly.
+
+Boden turned upon him, almost with rage.
+
+"For heaven's sake, give him time!--it's positively indecent to rush a
+man who's gone through what that man's gone through!"
+
+Faversham pursued his way toward the swelling upland which looks south
+over St. John's Vale, and north toward Skiddaw. He went, led by a
+passionate impulse, sternly restrained till this moment. Led also by the
+vision of her face as it had been lifted to him beside the grave of
+Melrose. Since then he had never seen her. But that Boden had written to
+her that morning, early, after the recovery of Brand's body, he knew.
+
+The moon shone suddenly behind him, across the waste of Flitterdale, and
+the lower meadows of St. John's Vale. It struck upon the low white house
+amid its trees.
+
+"Is Miss Penfold at home?"
+
+The maid recognized him at once, and in her agitation almost lost her
+head. As she led him in, a little figure in a white cap with streamers
+fluttered across the hall.
+
+"_Oh_, Mr. Faversham!" said a soft, breathless voice.
+
+But Mrs. Penfold did not stop to speak to him. Gathering up her
+voluminous black skirts, and her shawls that were falling off her
+shoulders, she hurried upstairs. There followed a thin girl with dark
+hair piled above dark eyes.
+
+"Lydia is in the drawing-room," said Susy, with dramatic depth of voice;
+and the two disappeared.
+
+When he entered, Lydia was standing by the fire. The light of some
+blazing wood, and of one small lamp, filled the pretty room with colour
+and soft shadows. Among them, the slender form in its black dress, the
+fair head thrown back, the outstretched hands were of a loveliness that
+arrested him--almost unmanned him.
+
+She came forward.
+
+"You've been so long coming!"
+
+The intonation of the words expressed the yearning of many days and
+nights. They were not a reproach; rather, an exquisite revelation.
+
+He took her hands, and slowly, irresistibly he drew her; and she came
+to him. He bowed his face upon hers, and the world stood still! Through
+the emotion of that supreme moment, with its mingled cup of joy and
+remembered bitterness there ran for him a touch of triumph natural to
+his temperament. She had asked no promise from him; reminded him of no
+condition; made no reservation. There she was upon his breast. The male
+pride in him was appeased. Self-respect seemed once more possible.
+
+Hand in hand, they sat down together by the fire. He gave her an account
+of the double inquest, and the result.
+
+"When we came out," he added, calmly, "there were not quite so many ready
+to lynch me as before."
+
+Her hand trembled in his. The horror of his experience, the anguished
+sympathy of hers, spoke in the slight movement, and the pressure that
+answered it. Some day, but not yet, it would be possible to put it into
+words.
+
+"And I might do nothing!" she breathed.
+
+"Nothing!" He smiled upon her, but his tone brought a shudder--the
+shudder of the traveller who looks back upon the inch which has held him
+from the abyss. But for Cyril Boden's adventure of the night before,
+would she ever have seen him again?
+
+"I was a long time with my solicitors this morning," he said abruptly.
+
+"Yes?" She turned her face to his; but his morbid sense could detect in
+it no sign of any special interest.
+
+"The will was opened on the day of the funeral. It was a great surprise.
+I had reason to suppose that it contained a distinct provision
+invalidating all bequests to me should I propose to hand over any of the
+property, or money derived from the property, to Felicia Melrose, or
+her mother. But it contained nothing of the kind. The first draft of the
+will was sent to his solicitors at the end of July. They put it into
+form, and it was signed the day after he communicated his intentions to
+me. There is no doubt whatever that he meant to insert such a clause. He
+spoke of it to me and to others. I thought it was done But as a matter of
+fact he never either drafted it himself, or gave final instructions for
+it. His Carlisle man--Hanson--thought it was because of his horror of
+death. He had put off making his will as long as possible--got it
+done--and then could not bring himself to touch it again! To send for it
+back--to finger and fuss with it--seemed to bring death nearer and he did
+not mean to die."
+
+He paused, shading his eyes with his hand. The visualising sense,
+stimulated by the nerve strain of the preceding weeks, beheld with
+ghastly clearness the face of Melrose in death, with the blood-stain on
+the lips.
+
+"And so," he resumed, "there was no short way out. By merely writing to
+Miss Melrose, to offer her a fortune, it was not possible to void the
+will."
+
+He paused. The intensity of his look held her motionless.
+
+"You remember--how I refused--when you asked me--to take any steps toward
+voiding it?"
+
+Her lips made a dumb movement of assent.
+
+"But--at last--I took them. In the final interview I had with Melrose, he
+threatened me with the cancelling of his will, unless I consented--Tatham
+has told you--to sell him my uncle's gems. I refused. And so far as words
+could, he there and then stripped me of his property. It is by the mere
+accident of his murder at that precise moment that it has come to me. Now
+then--what is to be done?"
+
+Her hand slipped further into his. For a few minutes he seemed to be
+absorbed in the silent reconstruction of past trains of thought, emerging
+with a cry--though it was under his breath:
+
+"If I took his money now--against his will--I should feel his yoke--his
+hateful yoke--again, on my neck! I should be his slave still."
+
+"You shall not take it!" she said with passion.
+
+He smiled at her suddenly.
+
+"It is nothing to Lydia, to be poor?"
+
+"And free--and happy--and alive!--no, nothing!"
+
+At that he could only draw her to him again. She herself must needs bring
+him back to the point.
+
+"You have decided?"
+
+"I could of course refuse the succession. That would throw the whole
+property into Chancery; the personalty would go to the mother and
+daughter, the real estate to whatever legal heirs could be discovered.
+There are same distant cousins of Lady Tatham, I believe. However--that
+did not attract me at all."
+
+He rose from his seat beside her, and stood looking down upon her.
+
+"You'll realize?--you'll understand?--that it seems to me just--and
+desirable--that I should have some voice in the distribution of this
+money, this and land, rather than leave it all to the action of a court.
+Everything--as things are--is legally mine. The personalty is immense;
+there are about thirty thousand acres of land, here and elsewhere; and
+the collections can't be worth much less than half a million. I decline
+to own them; but I intend to settle what becomes of them! Nash and others
+say they will dispute the will. They won't. There is no case. As to the
+personalty and the land--well, well, you'll see! As to the collections--I
+mean to make them, if I can, of some use to the community. And in that
+effort"--he spoke slowly--"I want you to help me!"
+
+Their eyes met; hers full of tears. She tried to speak, and could not. He
+came to kneel down by her and took her in his arms.
+
+"Did you think I had sold myself to the devil last time I was here?"
+
+"I was so harsh!--forgive ..." she said brokenly.
+
+"No. You called things by their right names."
+
+There was silence till he murmured:
+
+"Isn't it strange? I had quite given up prayer--till these last weeks. To
+pray for any definite physical or material thing would seem to me now--as
+it always has done--absurd. But to reach out--to the Power beyond our
+weakness!"
+
+He paused a moment and resumed:
+
+"Boden did that for me. He came to me--at the worst. He never preached to
+me. He has his black times--like the rest of us. But something upholds
+him--and--oh! so strangely--I don't think he knew--through him--I too
+laid hold. But for that--I might have put an end to myself--more than
+once--these last weeks."
+
+She clung to him--whispering:
+
+"Neither of us--can ever suffer--again--without the other--to help."
+
+They kissed once more, love and youth welling up in them, and drowning
+out of sight, for the moment at least, the shapes and images of pain.
+Then recovering his composure, hand fast in hand, Faversham began to talk
+more calmly, drawing out for her as best he could, so that it need not be
+done again--and up to the very evening of the murder--the history of the
+nine months which had, so to speak, thrown his whole being into the
+melting-pot, and through the fusing and bruising of an extraordinary
+experience, had remade a man. She listened in a happy bewilderment. It
+struck her newly--astonishingly. Her love for him had always included a
+tenderly maternal, pitying element. She had felt herself the maturer
+character. Sympathy for his task, flattered pleasure in her Egeria rôle,
+deepening into something warmer and intenser with every letter from him
+and every meeting, even when she disputed with and condemned him; love in
+spite of herself; love with which conscience, taste, aspiration, all
+quarrelled; but love nevertheless, the love which good women feel for the
+man that is both weaker and stronger than themselves--it was so she might
+have read her own past, if the high passion of this ultimate moment had
+not blurred it.
+
+But "Life at her grindstone" had been busy with Faversham, and in the
+sifted and sharpened soul laid bare to her, the woman recognized her
+mate indeed. Face to face with cruelty and falsehood, in others, and with
+the potentialities of them in his own nature; dazzled by money and power;
+and at last, delivered from the tyranny of the as though by some fierce
+gaol-delivering angel, Faversham had found himself; and such a self as
+could never have been reasonably prophesied for the discontented idler
+who in the May meadows had first set eyes on Lydia Penfold.
+
+He sketched for her his dream of what might be done with the treasures of
+the Tower.
+
+Through all his ugly wrestle with Melrose, with its disappointments and
+humiliations, his excavator's joy in the rescue and the setting in order
+of Melrose's amazing possessions had steadily grown of late, the only
+pleasure of his day had come from handling, cleaning and cataloguing the
+lovely forgotten things of which the house was full. These surfaces of
+ivory and silver, of stucco or marble, of wood or canvas, pottery or
+porcelain, on which the human mind, in love with some fraction of the
+beauty interwoven with the world, had stamped an impress of itself,
+sometimes exquisite, sometimes whimsical, sometimes riotous--above all,
+_living_, life reaching to life, through the centuries: these, from a
+refuge or an amusement, had become an abiding delight, something,
+moreover, that seemed to point to a definite lifework--paid honourably by
+cash as well as pleasure.
+
+What would she think, he asked her, of a great Museum for the north--a
+centre for students--none of your brick and iron monstrosities, rising
+amid slums, but a beautiful house showing its beautiful possessions to
+all who came; and set amid the streams and hills? And in one wing of it,
+perhaps, curator's rooms--where Lydia, the dear lover of nature and art,
+might reign and work--fitly housed?...
+
+But his brow contracted before she could smile.
+
+"Some time perhaps--some time--not now! Let's forget--for a little.
+Lydia--come away with me--let's be alone. Oh, my dear!--let's be alone!"
+
+She was in his arms again, calming the anguish that would recur--of those
+nights in the Tower after the murder, when it had seemed to him that not
+Brand, but himself, was the prey that a whole world was hunting, with
+Hate for the huntsman.
+
+But presently, as they clung to each other in the firelight, he roused
+himself to say:
+
+"Now, let me see your mother; and then I must go. There is much to do.
+You will get a note from Lady Tatham to-night."
+
+She looked up startled. And then it came over her, that he had never
+really told her what he meant to do with Melrose's money. She had no
+precise idea. Their minds jumped together, and she saw the first laugh in
+his dark eyes.
+
+"I shan't tell you! Beloved--be good and wait! But you guess already. We
+meet to-morrow--at Duddon."
+
+She asked no question. The thin mystery--for her thoughts did indeed
+drive through it--pleased her; especially because it seemed to please
+him.
+
+Then Mrs. Penfold and Susy were brought down, and Mrs. Penfold sat amid
+explanations and embraces, more feather-headed and inconsequent even than
+usual, but happy, because Lydia caressed her, and this handsome though
+pale young man on the hearthrug kissed her hand and even, at command, her
+still pink cheek; and it seemed there was to be a marriage--only not the
+marriage there should have been--a substitution, clearly, of Threlfall
+for Duddon? Lydia would live at Threlfall; would be immensely rich; and
+there would be no more bloodhounds in the park.
+
+But when Faversham was gone, and realities began to sink into the little
+lady's mind, as Lydia sitting at her feet, and holding her hand, tried to
+infuse them, dejection followed. No coronet!--and now, no fortune! She
+did not understand these high-stepping morals, and she went sadly to bed;
+though never had Lydia been so sweet to her, so ready to brush her hair
+by the fire as long as ever she chose, so full of daughterly promises.
+
+Susy kissed her sister when they were alone, tenderly but absently.
+
+"You're a rare case, Lydia--unique, I think. The Greeks would call you
+something--I forget! I should really like to understand the psychology of
+it. It might be useful."
+
+Lydia bantered her a little--rather sorely. But the emotions of her
+family would always be so much "copy" to Susy; and the fact did not in
+the least prevent her being a warm-hearted, and, in her own way,
+admirable little person.
+
+Finally, Lydia turned the tables on her, by throwing an arm round her
+neck, and inquiring whether Mr. Weston had not paid her a very long
+call the day before. Susy quietly admitted it, and added: "But I told
+him not to call again. I'm afraid--I'm bored with him. There are no
+mysteries in his character--no lights and shades at all. He is too
+virtuous--monotonously so. It would be of no technical advantage to me
+whatever, to fall in love with him."
+
+That evening came a note from Lady Tatham:
+
+"MY DEAR LYDIA:
+
+"We expect you to-morrow at 11:30. Mr. Faversham has asked that we--and
+you--Cyril Boden, Doctor Undershaw, old Dixon, and Felicia (her poor
+mother is _very_ ill, and we hear news to-day of the sudden death of the
+old grandfather)--should meet him at that hour in Harry's library. And
+afterward, you will stay to lunch? My dear, you have in this house two
+warm friends who love you and long to see you. Each hour that passes
+grows more thrilling than the last....
+
+"I have been spending some time with old Mrs. Brand--and I told her I
+knew you would go to her to-morrow. They have given her her dead son--and
+she sits with his feet against her breast. She loved him best of all. One
+thinks of Rizpah gathering the bones."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Next morning Tatham was in his library before eleven, making a pretence
+of attending to some County Council business, but in truth restless with
+expectation, and thinking of nothing but the events immediately ahead.
+
+What was going to happen?
+
+Faversham no doubt was going to propose some division of the Melrose
+inheritance with Felicia, and some adequate provision for the mother.
+Only a few weeks before this date Tatham had been in a mood to loathe the
+notion that Felicia should owe a fortune, small or great, to the charity
+of a greedy intruder. To-day he awaited Faversham's visit as a friend,
+prepared to welcome his proposals in the spirit of a friend, to put, that
+is, the best and not the worst interpretation upon them. After all, the
+fortune was legally his; and if Melrose had died intestate, Felicia and
+her mother would only have shared with some remote heirs with far less
+claim than Faversham.
+
+He owed this change of temper--he knew--simply to the story which
+Undershaw had brought him of the last scene between Faversham and
+Melrose. That final though tardy revolt had fired the young man's
+feelings and drowned his wraths. In his secret mind, he left Brand's shot
+uncondemned; and the knowledge that before that final _coup_ was given,
+the man whom Melrose had alternately bribed and bullied had at last found
+strength to turn upon him in defiance, flinging his money in his face,
+had given infinite satisfaction to Harry's own hatred of a tyrant.
+Faversham, even more than Brand, had avenged them all. The generous,
+pugnacious youth was ready to take Faversham to his heart.
+
+And yet, not without uneasiness, some dread of reaction in himself,
+if--by chance--they were all mistaken in their man! Neither Boden, nor
+Undershaw, nor he had any definite idea of the conclusions to which
+Faversham had come. He had not had a word to say to them on that head;
+although, during these ghastly weeks, when they had acted as buffers
+between him and an enraged populace, relations of intimacy had clearly
+grown up between him and Boden, and both Undershaw and Tatham had been
+increasingly conscious of liking, even respect, for a much-abused man.
+
+Oh, it was--it would be--all right! Lydia would see to it!
+
+Lydia! What a letter that was the post had brought him--what a letter,
+and what a woman! He sighed, thinking with a rueful though satiric spirit
+of all those protestations of hers in the summer, as to independence,
+a maiden life, and the rest. And now she confessed that, from the
+beginning, it had been Faversham. Why? What had she seen in him? The
+young man's vanity no less than his love had been sore smitten. But the
+pain was passing. And she was, and would always be, a dear woman, to whom
+he was devoted.
+
+He had pushed aside his letters, and was pacing his library. Presently he
+turned and went into a small inner room, his own particular den, where he
+kept his college photographs, some stuffed and now decaying beasts,
+victims of his earliest sport, and many boxes of superb toy soldiers, the
+passion of his childhood. There on the wall, screened from vulgar eyes,
+hung five water-colour drawings. He went to look at them--sentimentally.
+Had the buying of anything in the world ever given him so much pleasure?
+
+As he stood there, he was suddenly aware of a voice--girl's voice
+overhead, singing. He turned and saw that the window was open to the mild
+December air. No doubt the window on the story above was open too. It
+was Felicia--and the sound ceased as suddenly as it had risen. Just a
+phrase, a stormy phrase, from an Italian folk-song which he had heard
+her sing to his mother. He caught the usual words--"_morte"_--"_amore."_
+They were the staple of all her songs; to tell the truth he was often
+bored by them. But the harsh, penetrating note--as though it were a note
+of anger--in the sudden sound, arrested him; and when it became silent,
+he still thought of it. It was a strange, big voice for so small a
+creature.
+
+He was glad to hear that she could sing again. Nobody imagined that she
+could regret her father; but certainly the murder had sharply affected
+her nerves and imagination. She had got hold of the local paper before
+they could keep it from her; and for nights afterward, according to his
+mother she had not been able to sleep. He himself had tried of late to
+distract her. He had asked her to ride with him; he had brought her books
+and flowers. To no avail. She was very short and shy with him; only
+happy, apparently, with his mother, to whom her devotion was
+extraordinary. To her own mother, so Lady Tatham reported, she was as
+good--as gentle even--as her temperament allowed. But there was a deep
+discrepancy between them.
+
+As to Mrs. Melrose, whose life, according to the doctor, was only a
+matter of weeks, possibly months, Victoria believed that the shock of her
+old father's death had affected her much more acutely than the murder of
+her husband. She fretted perpetually that she had left her father to
+strangers, and that she could not help to lay him in his grave. Felicia
+too had cried a little, but had soon consoled herself with the sensible
+reflection--so it seemed to Tatham--that at least her poor old Babbo was
+now out of his troubles.
+
+His thoughts strayed on to the coming hour and Felicia's future. It
+amused the young man's mere love of "eventful living" to imagine her
+surprise, if what he shrewdly supposed was going to happen, did happen.
+But no one could say--little incalculable thing!--how she would take it.
+
+The handle of the door was turned, and some one entered. He looked round,
+and saw Felicia. Her black dress emphasized the fairylike delicacy of her
+face and hands; and something in her look--some sign of smothered misery
+or revolt--touched Tatham sharply. He hurried to her, biding her good
+morning, for she had not appeared at breakfast.
+
+"And I wanted to see you before they all come. How is your mother?"
+
+"Just the same." She allowed him but the slightest touch of her small
+fingers before she turned abruptly to the row of water-colours. "Who
+painted those?"
+
+"Miss Penfold. Don't you know what a charming artist she is?"
+
+"They are not at all well done!" said Felicia. "Amateurs have no business
+to paint."
+
+"She is not an amateur!" cried Tatham. "She--"
+
+Then again he noticed that she was hollowed-eyed, and her lip
+was twitching. Poor little girl!--in her black dress--soon to be
+motherless--and with this critical moment in front of her!
+
+He came nearer to her in the shy, courteous way that made a dissonance so
+attractive with his great height and strength.
+
+"Dear Felicia! I may, mayn't I? We're cousins. Don't be nervous--or
+afraid. I think it's all coming right."
+
+She looked at him angrily.
+
+"I'm not nervous--not the least bit! I don't care what happens."
+
+And holding her curly head absurdly high, she went back into the library,
+which Victoria, Undershaw, and Cyril Boden had just entered. Tatham
+regretted that he had not made more time to talk with her; to prepare her
+mind for alternatives. It might have been wiser. But Faversham's summons
+had been sudden; and his own expectations were so vague!
+
+However, there was no time now. Lydia arrived, and she and Tatham
+withdrew into the inner room for a few minutes, deep in consultation.
+Felicia watched them with furious eyes. And when they came out again, a
+soft flush on Lydia's cheeks, it was all that Felicia could do to prevent
+herself from rushing upstairs again, leaving them to have their horrid
+meeting to themselves.
+
+But flight was barred. Faversham entered, accompanied by the senior
+solicitor to the Threlfall estate and by old Dixon, shaking with
+nervousness, in a black Sunday suit. Chairs had been provided. They took
+their seats. Tatham cleared his own table.
+
+"No need!" said the solicitor, a gentleman with a broad, benevolent face
+slightly girdled by whiskers. "It's very short!"
+
+And smiling, he took out of his pocket a document consisting apparently
+of two sheets of square letter paper, and amid the sudden silence, he
+began to read.
+
+The first and longer sheet was done. Felicia, sitting on the edge of a
+stiff chair, her small feet dangling, was staring at the lawyer. Victoria
+was looking at her son bewildered. Boden wore an odd sort of smile.
+Undershaw, impassive, was playing with his watch-chain. Lydia radiant and
+erect, in a dress of gray-blue tweed, a veil of the same tint falling
+back from the harmonious fairness of her face, had her eyes on Felicia.
+There was a melting kindness in the eyes--as though the maternity deep in
+the girl's nature spoke.
+
+A deed of gift, _inter vivos_, conveying the whole personality and real
+estate, recently bequeathed to Claude Faversham by Edmund Melrose,
+consisting of so-and-so, and so-and-so,--a long catalogue of shares and
+land which had taken some time to read--to Felicia Melrose, daughter of
+the late Edmund Melrose, subject only to an annuity to her mother,
+Antonetta Melrose, of £2,000 a year, to a pension for Thomas Dixon and
+his wife, and various other pensions and small annuities; Henry, Earl
+Tatham, and Victoria, Countess Tatham, appointed trustees, and to act as
+guardians, till the said Felicia Melrose should attain the age of
+twenty-four; no mention of any other person at all; the whole vast
+property, precisely as it had passed from Melrose to Faversham, just
+taken up and dropped in the lap of this little creature with the dangling
+feet without reservation, or deduction--now that it was done, and not
+merely guessed at, it showed plain for what in truth it was--one of those
+acts wherein the energies of the human spirit, working behind the
+material veil, swing for a moment into view, arresting and stunning the
+spectator.
+
+"But the collections!" said Tatham, remembering them almost with relief,
+speaking in his mother's ear; "what about the collections?"
+
+"We come now to the second part of the deed of gift," said the silvery
+voice of the lawyer. And again the astounded circle set itself to listen.
+
+"The collections of works of art now contained in Threlfall Tower, I
+also convey in full property and immediate possession to the said Felicia
+Melrose, but on the following conditions:
+
+"Threlfall Tower, or such portions of it as may be necessary, to be
+maintained permanently as a museum in which to house the said collection:
+a proper museum staff to be appointed; a sum of money, to be agreed upon
+between Claude Faversham and Felicia Melrose, to be set aside for the
+maintenance of the building, the expenses of installation, and the
+endowment of the staff; and a set of rooms in the west wing to be
+appropriated to the private residence of a curator, who is to be
+appointed, after the first curatorship, by--"
+
+Certain public officials were named, and a few other stipulations made.
+Then with a couple of legal phrases and a witnessed signature, the second
+sheet came to an end.
+
+There was a silence that could be heard. In the midst of it Faversham
+rose. He was agitated and a little incoherent.
+
+"The rest of what has to be said is not a formal matter. If Miss
+Melrose, or her guardians, choose to make me the first Curator of the
+Threlfall Tower Museum, I am willing to accept that office at their
+hands, and--after, perhaps, a year--I should like to occupy the rooms
+I have mentioned in the west wing--with the lady who has now promised to
+be my wife. I know perhaps better than any one else what the house
+contains; and I could spend, if not my life, at any rate a term of years,
+in making the Tower a palace of art, a centre of design, of training, of
+suggestion--a House Beautiful, indeed, for the whole north of England.
+And my promised wife says she will help me."
+
+He looked at Lydia. She put her hand in his. The sight of most people in
+the room had grown dim.
+
+But Felicia had jumped up.
+
+"I don't want it all! I won't have it all!" she said in a passionate
+excitement. "My father hated me. I told him I would never take his money.
+Why didn't you tell me--why didn't you warn me?" She turned to Tatham,
+her little body shaking, and her face threatening tears.
+
+"Why should Mr. Faversham do such a thing? Don't let him!--don't let him!
+And I ought--I ought--to have been told!"
+
+Faversham and Lydia approached her. But suddenly; putting her hands to
+her face, she ran to the French window of the library, opened it, and
+rushed into the garden.
+
+Tatham and his mother looked at each other aghast.
+
+"Run after her!" said Victoria in his ear. "Take this shawl!" She handed
+him a wrap she had brought in upon her arm.
+
+"Yes--it's December," said Boden, smiling, to Lady Tatham; "but
+perhaps"--the accent was ironical--"when she comes back the seasons
+will have changed!"
+
+The session broke up in excited conversation, of which Faversham was the
+centre.
+
+"This is final?" said Undershaw, eying him keenly. "You intend to stand
+by it?"
+
+"'Fierce work it were to do again!'" said Faversham, in a quotation
+recognized by Undershaw, who generally went to bed with a scientific book
+on one side of him, and a volume of modern poets on the other. Faversham
+was now radiant. He stood with his arm round Lydia. Victoria had her
+hand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile in the Italian garden and through the yew hedges, Daphne fled,
+and Apollo pursued. At last he caught her, and she sank upon a garden
+seat. He put the shawl round her, and stood with his hands in his pockets
+surveying her.
+
+"What was the matter, Felicia?" he asked her, gently.
+
+"It is ridiculous!" she said, sobbing. "Why wasn't I asked? I don't want
+a guardian! I won't have you for a guardian!" And she beat her foot
+angrily on the paved path.
+
+Tatham laughed.
+
+"You'll have to go back and behave nicely, Felicia. Haven't you any
+thanks for Faversham?"
+
+"I never asked him to do it! How can I look after all that! It'll kill
+me. I want to sing! I want to go on the stage!"
+
+He sat down beside her. Her dark head covered with its silky curls, her
+very black eyes and arched brows in her small pink face, the pointed
+chin, and tiny mouth, made a very winning figure of her, as she sat
+there, under a garden vase, and an overhanging yew. And that, although
+the shawl was huddled round her shoulders, and the eyes were red with
+tears.
+
+"You will be able to do anything you like, Felicia. You will be terribly
+rich."
+
+She gazed at him, the storm in her breast subsiding a little.
+
+"How rich?" she asked him, pouting.
+
+He tried to give her some idea. She sighed. "It's dreadful! What shall I
+do with it all!"
+
+Then as her eyes still searched him, he saw them change--first to
+soft--then wild. Her colour flamed. She moved farther from him, and tried
+to put on a businesslike air.
+
+"I want to ask a question."
+
+"Ask it."
+
+"Am I--am I as rich as any girl you would be likely to marry?"
+
+"What an odd question! Do you think I want money?"
+
+"I know you don't!" she said, with a wail. "That's what's so horrid! Why
+can't you all leave me alone?"
+
+Then recovering herself fiercely, she began again:
+
+"In my country--in Italy--when two people are about equally rich--a man
+and a girl--their relations go and talk to each other. They say, 'Will it
+suit you?'--the man has so much--the girl has so much--they like each
+other--and--wouldn't it do very well!"
+
+She sprang up. Tatham had flushed. He looked at her in speechless
+amazement. She stood opposite him, making herself as tall as she could,
+her hands behind her.
+
+"Lord Tatham--my mother is ill--my father is dead. You're not my guardian
+yet--and I don't think I'll ever let you be! So there's nobody but me to
+do it. I'm sorry--I know it's not quite right, quite--quite English.
+Well, any way! Lord Tatham, you say I have a _dot_! So that's all right.
+There's my hand. Will you marry me?"
+
+She held it out. All her excitement had gone, and her colour. She was
+very pale, and quite calm.
+
+"My dear Felicia!" cried Tatham, in agitation, taking the hand, "what a
+position to put your guardian in! You are a great heiress. I can't run
+off with you like this--before you've had any other chances--before
+you've seen anybody else."
+
+"If you don't, I won't take a farthing! What good would it be to me!"
+
+She came closer, and put her little hands on his shoulders as he sat--the
+centre of one of those sudden tumults of sense and spirit that sweep a
+strong man from his feet.
+
+"Oh, won't you take care of me? I love you so!"
+
+It was a cry of Nature. Tatham gave a great gulp, put out his arms, and
+caught her. There she was on the bench beside him, laughing and sobbing,
+gathered against his heart.
+
+The cheerful December day shone upon them: a robin sang in the yew tree
+overhead....
+
+Meanwhile the library was still full. Nobody had yet left it; and
+instinctively everybody was watching the French window.
+
+Two figures appeared there, Felicia in front. She came in, her eyes cast
+down, a bright spot on either cheek. And while every one in the room held
+their breath she crossed the floor and paused in front of Faversham.
+
+"Mr. Faversham, I ask your pardon, that I was so rude. I--" A sob rose
+in her throat, and she stopped a moment to control it. "Till the other
+day--I was just a poor girl--who never had a _lira_ to spend. All that we
+ate--my mother and I--we had to work for. And now--you have made me rich.
+It's--it's very wonderful. I only wish"--the sob rose again--"just that
+last time--my father had been kind to me. I thank you with all my heart.
+But I can't take it all, you know--I _can't!_"
+
+She looked at him appealing--almost threatening. Faversham smiled at her.
+
+"That doesn't lie with you! One of your trustees has already signed the
+deed--here comes the other." He pointed to Tatham.
+
+"But he isn't my trustee!" insisted Felicia, the tears brimming over;
+"he's--"
+
+Tatham came up to her, and gravely took her hand.
+
+Felicia looked at him, then at Victoria, then at the circle of amazed
+faces. With a low cry of "Mother" she turned and fled from the room,
+drawing Lady Tatham with her.
+
+A little while later, Lydia, the lawyers and Faversham having departed,
+found herself alone a moment in the library. In the tumult of happy
+excitement which possessed her, she could not sit still. Without any
+clear notion of where she was going, she wandered through the open door
+into the farther room. There, with a start, and a flush, she recognized
+her own drawings--five of them--in a row. So here, all the time, was her
+unknown friend; and she had never guessed!
+
+At a sound in the room behind, she turned, hoping it was Lady Tatham who
+had come back to her. But she saw that it was Tatham himself. He came
+into the little room, and stood silently beside her, as though wanting
+her to speak first. With deep emotion she held out her hand, and wished
+him joy; her gesture, her eyes, all tenderness.
+
+"She is so lovely--so touching! She will win everybody's heart!"
+
+He looked down upon her oddly, like some one oppressed by feelings and
+thoughts beyond his own unravelling.
+
+"She has been very unhappy," he said simply. "I think I can take care of
+her."
+
+Lydia looked at him anxiously. A sudden slight darkening seemed to
+come into the day; and for one terrified moment she seemed to see
+Tatham--dear, generous youth!--as the truly tragic figure in their
+high mingled comedy.
+
+Not Melrose--but Tatham! Then, swiftly, the cloud passed, and she laughed
+at herself.
+
+"Take care of her! You will be the happiest people in the world--save
+two!"
+
+He let her talk to him, the inner agitation whatever it was,
+disappearing. She soothed, she steadied him. Now, at last, they were to
+be true friends--comrades in the tasks and difficulties of life. Without
+words, her heart promised it--to him and Felicia.
+
+As they left the room, she pointed, smiling, to the drawings.
+
+"So you were the elderly solicitor, with a taste for art, I used to see
+in my dreams!"
+
+His eyes lit up boyishly.
+
+"I had to keep them here, for fear you'd find out. Now, we'll hang them
+properly."
+
+It was Victoria who broke the news to Netta Melrose. She, a little wasted
+ghost among her pillows, received it calmly; yet with a certain
+bitterness mingled in the calm. What did the money matter to her? And
+what had she to do with this English world, and this young lord Felicia
+was to marry? Far within, she hungered, on the threshold of death, as she
+had hungered twenty years before, for the Italian sun, and the old
+Italian streets, with the deep eaves and the sculptured doorways, and the
+smells of leather and macaroni. Her father had loved them, and she had
+loved her father; all the more passionately the more the world disowned
+him. She sat in spirit beside his crushed and miserable old age, finding
+her only comfort in the memory of how his feeble hands had clung to her,
+how she had worked and starved for him.
+
+Yet, when Felicia came to her, she cried and blessed her. And Felicia,
+softened by happiness, knelt down beside her, and begged and prayed her
+to get well. To please them all, Netta made her nurse do her hair, and
+put on a white jacket which Victoria had embroidered for her. And when
+Tatham came in to see her, she would have timidly kissed his hand had he
+not been so quick to see and prevent her.
+
+Meanwhile Victoria, still conscious of the clinging of Felicia's arms
+about her, was comparing--secretly and inevitably--the daughter-in-law
+that might have been, with the daughter-in-law that was to be. Now
+that Fate's throw was irrevocably made, she found herself appreciating
+Lydia as she had never done while the chances were still open. Lydia
+had refused her Harry; Felicia had captured him. Perhaps she resented
+both actions; and would always--secretly--resent them. But yet, in
+Lydia--Lydia with her early maturity, her sweet poise and strength of
+nature, she foresaw the companion; in Felicia, the child and darling of
+her old age. And looking round on this crooked world, she acknowledged,
+now as always, that she had got more than she deserved, more--much
+more--than her share.
+
+A conviction that Cyril Boden did his best to sharpen in her. With the
+invincible optimism of his kind, he scoffed at the misgivings which she
+confided to him, and to him only, on the score of Felicia's lack of
+training, her touchy and passionate temper, and the little unscrupulous
+ways that offended a fastidious observer.
+
+"What does it matter?" he said to her--"she is in love--head over ears.
+You and he can make of her what you like. She will beat him if he looks
+at anybody else; but she will have ten children, and never have a thought
+or an interest that isn't his. And as to the money--"
+
+"Yes--the money!" said Victoria, dejectedly. "What on earth will they do
+with it all? Harry is so rich already."
+
+"Do with it!" Boden turned upon her. "Grow a few ideas in your landlord
+garden! Turn the ground of it--enrich it--change it--try experiments!
+How long will this England leave the land to you landowners, unless you
+bring some mind to it--aye, and the best of your _souls_! you--the
+nation's servants! Here is a great tract left desolate by one man's
+wickedness. Restore the waste places--build--people--teach! Heavens,
+what a chance!" His eyes kindled. "And when Faversham and Lydia come
+back--yoke them in too. Curator!--stuff! If he won't own that estate,
+make him govern it, and play the man. Disinterested power!--with such a
+wife--and such a friend! Could a man ask better of the gods! Now is your
+moment. Rural England turns to you, its natural leaders, to shape it
+afresh. Shirk--refuse--at your peril!"
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14174 ***