Chapter X: Book III: XIII (1)

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.