Chapter XI: Book III: XIII (2)

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.