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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/14174-0.txt b/14174-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..13680bb --- /dev/null +++ b/14174-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,15301 @@ +*** 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 *** diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..906612a --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #14174 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14174) diff --git a/old/14174-8.txt b/old/14174-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..440ca93 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/14174-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,15691 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Mating of Lydia, by Mrs. Humphry Ward + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Mating of Lydia + +Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward + +Release Date: November 27, 2004 [eBook #14174] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MATING OF LYDIA*** + + +E-text prepared by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and +the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + +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 THE MATING OF LYDIA*** + + +******* This file should be named 14174-8.txt or 14174-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/1/7/14174 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. 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Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + diff --git a/old/14174-8.zip b/old/14174-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..a9207a0 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/14174-8.zip diff --git a/old/14174.txt b/old/14174.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4e047b2 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/14174.txt @@ -0,0 +1,15691 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Mating of Lydia, by Mrs. Humphry Ward + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Mating of Lydia + +Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward + +Release Date: November 27, 2004 [eBook #14174] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MATING OF LYDIA*** + + +E-text prepared by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and +the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + +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 Sevres, 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--_Antichita_. + +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 +_antichita_, 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 _antichita_ 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 L3,000--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-a-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 +role 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 Sevres +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 curiosite," 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 gre, mal gre_, 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-a-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-a-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: ananke ] 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 fee avez-vous la?" + +"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--_exaltee_--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 +jugee_. 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-a-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 dea 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 L20 yearly to Mrs. Melrose's +allowance, making it L100 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 papa, poor papa!" 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 +_tete-a-tete_ 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 Liceo, 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 Liceo, 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 +eglomisee_, 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 eglomisee_, 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 bete!_ "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 daeater!" 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 daeater! 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 Maeaker 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 Sevres. 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 Sevres 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 role, +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 L2,000 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 THE MATING OF LYDIA*** + + +******* This file should be named 14174.txt or 14174.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/1/7/14174 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. 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