Chapter IV: Book I: I (4)

Also--creeping through all his thoughts, like a wandering breeze in the dark, stole again and again the chilling consciousness of old age--and of the end, waiting. He was fiercely tenacious of life, and his seventieth birthday had rung a knell in his ears that still sounded. So defiant was he of death, that he had never yet brought himself to make a will. He would not admit to himself that he was mortal; or make arrangements that seemed to admit the grim fact--weakly accepted--into the citadel of a still warm life.

Yet the physical warnings of old age had not been absent. Some day he would feel, perhaps suddenly--the thought of it sent through him a shiver of impotent revolt against the human destiny--the clutch of the master whom none escapes.

Vague feelings, and shapeless terrors!--only subterraneously connected with the wounded man lying in his house.

And yet they were connected. The advent of the unconscious youth below had acted on the ugly stagnation of the Threlfall life with a touch of crystallizing force. Melrose felt it in his own way no less than the Dixons. Something seemed to have ended; and the mere change suggested that something might begin.

The sudden shock, indeed, of the new event, the mere interruption of habit, were serious matters in the psychology of a man, with whom neither brain nor nerves were normally attuned. Melrose moved restlessly about his room for a great part of the night. He could not get the haggard image of Faversham out of his mind; and he was actually, in the end, tormented by the thought that, in spite of nurses and doctors, he might die.

Nonsense! One could get a specialist from Edinburgh--from London if necessary.

And always, by whatever road, his thoughts came back--as it were leaping--to the gems. Amethyst, sardonyx, crystal--they twinkled and flashed through all the byways of the brain. So long as the house held their owner, it held them also. Two of them he had coveted for years. They must not--they should not--be lost to him again. By what ridiculous chance had this lad got hold of them?

With the morning came a letter from a crony of Melrose's in London, an old Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, with whom he had had not a few dealings in the past.

"Have you heard that that queer fish Mackworth has left his whole cabinet of gems to a young nephew--his sister's son, to whom they say he has been much attached? Everything else goes to the British Museum and South Kensington, and it is a queer business to have left the most precious thing of all to a youth who in all probability has neither knowledge nor taste, and may be trusted to turn them into cash as soon as possible. Do you remember the amethyst Medusa? I could shout with joy when I think of it! You will be wanting to run the nephew to earth. Make haste!--or Germany or America will grab them."

But the amethyst Medusa lay safe in her green case in the drawer of the Riesener table.

V

Duddon Castle in May was an agreeable place. Its park, lying on the eastern slopes of the mountain mass which includes Skiddaw and Blencathra, had none of the usual monotony of parks, but was a genuine "chase," running up on the western side into the heather and rock of the mountain where the deer were at home, while on the east and south its splendid oaks stood thick in bracken beside sparkling becks, overlooking dells and valleys of succulent grass where the sheep ranged at will. The house consisted of an early Tudor keep, married to a Jacobean house of rose-coloured brick, which Lady Tatham had since her widowhood succeeded in freeing from the ugly stucco which had once disguised and defaced it. It could not claim the classical charm, the learned elegance of Threlfall Tower. Duddon was romantic--a medley of beautiful things, full of history, colour, and time, fused by the trees and fern, the luxuriant creepers and mosses, and of a mild and rainy climate into a lovely irregular whole; with no outline to speak of, yet with nothing that one could seriously wish away. The size was great, yet no one but an auctioneer could have called it "superb"; it seemed indeed to take a pleasure in concealing the whole extent of its clustered building; and by the time you were aware of it, you had fallen in love with Duddon, and nothing mattered.

But if without, in its broad external features, Duddon betrayed a romantic freedom in the minds of those who had planned it, nothing could have been more orderly or exquisite than its detail, when detail had to be considered. The Italian garden round the house with its formal masses of contrasting colour, its pleached alleys, and pergolas, its steps, vases, and fountains, was as good in its way as the glorious wildness of the Chase. One might have applied to it the Sophoclean thought--"How clever is man who can make all these things!"--so diverse, and so pleasant. And indoors, Duddon was oppressive by the very ingenuity of its refinement, the rightness of every touch. No overcrowding; no ostentation. Beautiful spaces, giving room and dignity to a few beautiful objects; famous pictures, yet not too many; and, in general, things rather suggestive than perfect; sketches--fragments--from the great arts of the world; as it were, a lovely wreckage from a vast ocean set tenderly in a perfect order, breathing at once the greatness and the eternal defeat of men.

The interior beauty of Duddon was entirely due to Victoria, Lady Tatham, mother of the young man who now owned the Tatham estates. She had created it through many years; she had been terribly "advised," in the process, by a number of clever folk, English and foreign; and the result alternately pleased and tormented her. To be fastidious to such a point is to grow more so. And Victoria Tatham was nothing if not fastidious. She had money, taste, patience, yet ennui confronted her in many paths; and except for the son she adored she was scarcely a happy woman. She was personally generous and soft-hearted, but all "causes" found in her rather a critic than a supporter. The follies of her own class were particularly plain to her; her relations, with their great names, and great "places," seemed to her often the most ridiculous persons in the world--a world no longer made for them. But one must hasten to add that she was no less aware of her own absurdities; so that the ironic mind in her robbed her both of conceit for herself and enthusiasm for others.

Two or three days after the storming of Threlfall Tower, Lady Tatham came in from a mountain ramble at tea-time, expecting her son, who had been away on a short visit. She entered the drawing-room by a garden door, laden with branches of hawthorn and wild cherry. In her linen dress and shady hat she still looked youthful, and there were many who could not be got to admit that she was any less beautiful than she had ever been. These flatterers of course belonged to her own generation; young eyes were not so kind.

Tea had been brought in, and she was busy with the arrangement of a branch of wild cherry in a corner of the room where its pearl and silver blossoms shone out against a background of dull purple, when the door was hastily opened, and a curly-haired youth stood on the threshold who smiled at sight of her.

"You are here, mother! That's jolly! I thought I might find you gone."

"I put off London till next week. Mind my hat, you wretch."

For the young fellow had put his arms round her, kissing her heartily. She disengaged herself and her hat, affecting to scold; but her eyes betrayed her. She put up her hand and smoothed back the thick and tumbling hair from his forehead.

"What a ruffian you look! Where have you been all this time?"

"I stopped in Keswick to do various things--and then--I say, shan't we have some tea? I've got lots to tell you. Well, in the first place, mother, I'd better warn you, you may have some visitors directly!"

Lady Tatham opened her eyes, struck by the elation of the tone.

"Strangers?"

"Well, nearly--but I think you've seen them. You know that lady and her daughters who came to White Cottage about two years ago?"

"A Mrs. Penfold?"

"Just so. I told you I met them--in April, when you were abroad--at the Hunt Ball. But--well, really, I've met them several times since. The Deacons know them." The slight consciousness in the voice did not escape his mother. "You know you've never called on them. Mother, you are disgraceful about calling! Well, I met them again this afternoon, just the other side of Whitebeck. They were in a pony-carriage, and I was in the motor. It's a jolly afternoon, and they didn't seem to have anything particular to do, so I just asked them to come on here, and have tea, and we'd show them the place."

"All right, dear. I'll bear up. Do you think they'll come?"

"Well, I don't know," said her son dubiously. "You see--I think Miss Penfold thought you ought to have called on them before they came here! But Mrs. Penfold's a nice old thing--she _said_ they'd come."

"Well, there's plenty of tea, and I'll go and call if you want me to."

"How many years?" laughed Tatham. "I remember somebody you took eight years to call on, and when you got there you'd forgotten their names."

"Pure invention. Never mind, sit down and have your tea. How many daughters?"

"How many Miss Penfolds? Well, there are two, and I danced with them both. But"--the young man shook his head slowly--"I haven't got any use for the elder one."

"Plain?"

"Not at all--rather pretty. But she talks philosophy and stuff. Not my sort."

"And the younger one doesn't talk philosophy?"

"Not she. She's a deal too clever. But she paints--like a bird. I've seen some of her things."

"Oh!--so _you_'ve been to call?"

Lady Tatham lifted her beautiful eyes upon her son. Harry Tatham fidgeted with his cup and spoon.

"No. I was shy, because you hadn't been. But--"

"Harry," interrupted his mother, her look all vivacity, "did she paint those two water-colours in your sitting-room?"

The boyish, bluntly cut face beside her broke into a charming laugh.

"I bought 'em out of the Edinburgh exhibition. Wasn't it 'cute of me? She told me she had sent them there. So I just wrote to the secretary and bought them."

There was silence a moment. Lady Tatham continued to look at her son. The eyebrows on her brow, as they slowly arched themselves, expressed the half-amused, half-startled inquiry she did not put into words. He flushed scarlet, still smiling, and suddenly he laid his hand on hers.

"I say, mummie, don't tease me, and don't talk to me about it. There may be nothing in it--nothing at all."

His mother's face deepened into gravity.

"You take my breath away. Remember--there's only me, Harry, to look after you."

"I know. But you're not like other mothers," said the youth impatiently. "You want me to be happy and please myself. At least if you'd wanted the usual thing, you should have brought me up differently!" He smiled upon her again, patting her hand.

"What do you mean by the 'usual thing'?"

"Well, family and money, I suppose. As if we hadn't got enough for ten!"

Lady Tatham hesitated.

"One talks in the air," she said, frowning a little. "I can't promise you, Harry, exactly how I should behave, if--"

"If what?"

"If you put me to the _test_."

"Oh, yes, you can," he said, affectionately. Then he got up restlessly from the table. "But don't let's talk about it. Somehow I can't stand it--yet. I just wanted you to know that I liked them--and I'd be glad if you'd be civil to them--that's all. Hullo--here they are!" For as he moved across the room he caught sight, through a side window commanding the park, of a pony-carriage just driving into the wide gravel space before the house.

"Already? Their pony must have seven-leagued boots, to have caught you up in this time."

"Oh! I was overtaken by Undershaw, and he kept me talking. He told me the most extraordinary thing! You've no idea what's been happening at the Tower. That old brute Melrose! But I say--!" He made a dash across the room.

"What's the matter?"

"I must go and put those pictures away, in case--"

A far door opened and shut noisily behind him. He was gone.

"In case he asks her to go and see his sitting-room? This is all very surprising."

Lady Tatham sat on at the tea-table, her chin in her hands. It was quite true that she had brought up her son with unconventional ideas; that she had unconventional ideas herself on family and marriage. All the same, her mind at this moment was in a most conventional state of shock. She knew it, perceiving quite clearly the irony of the situation. Who were the Penfolds? A little artist girl?--earning her living--with humble, perhaps hardly presentable relations--to mate with her glorious, golden Harry?--Harry whom half the ambitious mothers of England courted and flattered?

The thought of defeating the mothers of England was however so pleasant to her sense of humour that she hurriedly abandoned this line of reflection. What had she been about? to be so blind to Harry's proceedings? She had been lately absorbed, with that intensity she could still, at fifty, throw into the most diverse things, in a piece of new embroidery, reproducing a gorgeous Italian design; and in a religious novel of Fogazzaro's. Also she had been watching birds, for hours, with a spy-glass in the park. She said to herself that she had better have been watching her son.

Meanwhile she was quite aware of the slight sounds from the hall which heralded the approaching visitors. The footman threw the door open; and she rose.

There came in, with hurrying steps, a little lady in widow's dress, her widow's veil thrown back from her soft brown hair and childish face. Behind her, a tall girl in white, wearing a shady hat.

The little lady held out a hand--eager but tremulous.

"I _hope_, Lady Tatham, we are not intruding? We know it isn't correct--indeed we are quite aware of it--that we should call upon you first. But then we know your son--he is such a charming young man!--and he asked us to come. I don't think Lydia wanted to come--she always wants to do things properly. No, indeed, she didn't want to come. It's all my doing. I persuaded her."

"That was very kind of you," said Lady Tatham as she shook hands first with the mother, and then with the silent daughter. "Oh, I'm a dreadful neighbour. I confess it in sackcloth and ashes. I ought to have called upon you long ago. I don't know what to say. I'm incorrigible! Please will you sit down, and will you have some tea? My son will be here directly."

But instead of sitting down Mrs. Penfold ran to the window, exclaiming on the beauty of the view, the garden, the trees, and the bold profile of the old keep, thrown forward among the flowers. There was nothing the least distinguished in her ecstasy. But it flowed and bubbled with perfect sincerity; and Lady Tatham did not dislike it at all.

"A lady"--she thought--"quite a lady, though rather a goose. The daughter is uncomfortable."

And she glanced at the slightly flushed face of Lydia, who followed in their wake, every now and then replying, as politeness demanded, to some appeal from her mother. It was indeed clear that the visit had been none of her doing.

Grace?--personality?--Lady Tatham divined them, from the way the girl moved, from the look in her gray-blue eyes, from the carriage of her head. She was certainly pretty, with that proud virginal beauty which often bears itself on the defensive, in our modern world where a certain superfluity of women has not tended to chivalry. But how little prettiness matters, beside the other thing!--the indefinable, irresistible something--which gives the sceptre and the crown! All the time she was listening to Mrs. Penfold's chatter, and the daughter's occasional words, Victoria Tatham was on the watch for this something; and not without jealousy and a critical mind. She had been taken by surprise; and she resented it.

Harry was very long in coming back!--in order she supposed to give her time to make acquaintance.

But at last she had them at the tea-table, and Mrs. Penfold's adjectives were a little quenched. Each side considered the other. Lady Tatham's dress, her old hat, and country shoes attracted Lydia, no less than the boyish, open-air look, which still survived through all the signs of a complex life and a cosmopolitan experience. Mrs. Penfold, on her part, thought the old hat, and the square-toed shoes "unsuitable." In her young days great ladies "dressed" in the afternoons.

"Do you like your cottage?" Lady Tatham inquired.

Mrs. Penfold replied that nothing could be more to their taste--except for the motors and the dust.

"Ah! that's my fault," said a voice behind her. "All motorists are brutes. I say, it was jolly of you to come!"

So saying, Tatham found a place between his mother and Mrs. Penfold, looking across at Lydia. Youth, happiness, manly strength came in with him. He had no features to speak of--round cheeks, a mouth generally slightly open, and given to smiling, a clear brow, a red and white complexion, a babyish chin, thick fair hair, and a countenance neither reserved nor foolishly indiscreet. Tatham's physical eminence--and it was undisputed--lay not in his plain, good-tempered face, but in the young perfection of his athlete's form. Among spectacles, his mother, at least, asked nothing better than to see him on horseback or swinging a golf-club.

"How did you come?--through the Glendarra woods?" he asked of Lydia. The delight in his eyes as he turned them upon her was already evident to his mother.

Lydia assented.

"Then you saw the rhododendrons? Jolly, aren't they?"

Lydia replied with ardour. There is a place in the Glendarra woods, where the oaks and firs fall away to let a great sheet of rhododendrons sweep up from the lowland into a mountain boundary of gray crag and tumbling fern. Rose-pink, white and crimson, the waves of colour roll among the rocks, till Cumbria might seem Kashmir. Lydia's looks sparkled, as she spoke of it. The artist in her had feasted.

"Won't you come and paint it?" said Tatham bending forward eagerly. "You'd make a glorious thing of it. Mother could send a motor for you so easily. Couldn't you, mother?"

"Delighted," said Lady Tatham, rather perfunctorily. "They are just in their glory--they ought to be painted."

"Thank you so much!"--Lydia's tone was a little hurried--"but I have so many subjects on hand just now."

"Oh, but nothing half so beautiful as that, Lydia!" cried her mother, "or so uncommon. And they'll be over directly. If Lady Tatham would _really_ send the motor for you--"

Lydia murmured renewed thanks. Tatham, observing her, retreated, with a laugh and a flush.

"I say, we mustn't bother you to paint what _we_ like. That would be too bad."

Lydia smiled upon him.

"I'm so busy with a big view of the river and Threlfall."

"Threlfall? Oh, do you know--mother! do you know what's been happening at Threlfall. Undershaw told me. The most marvellous thing!" He turned to Mrs. Penfold. "You've heard the stories they tell about here of old Melrose?"

Lydia laughed softly.

"Mother collects them!"

Mrs. Penfold confessed that, being a timid person, she went in fear, sometimes of Mr. Melrose, sometimes of his bloodhounds. She did not like passing the gate of Threlfall, and the high wall round the estate made her shudder. Of course the person that put up that wall _must_ be mad.

"A queer sort of madman!" said Tatham, with a shrug. "They say he gets richer every year in spite of the state of the property. And meanwhile no human being, except himself or the Dixons, has ever slept in that house, or taken bite or sup in it for at least twenty years. And as for his behaviour to everybody round about--well, I can tell you all about that whenever you want to know! However, now they've stormed him--they've smoked him out like a wasp's nest. My goodness--he did buzz! Undershaw found a man badly hurt, lying on the road by the bridge--bicycle accident--run over too, I believe--and carried him into the Tower, willy-nilly!" The speaker chuckled. "Melrose was away. Old Dixon said they should only come in over his body--but was removed. Undershaw got four labourers to help him, and, by George, they carried the man in! They found the drawing-room downstairs empty, no furniture in it, or next to none--turned it into a bedroom in no time. Undershaw telegraphed for a couple of nurses--and when Melrose came home next day--_tableau_! There was a jolly row! Undershaw enjoyed it. I'd have given anything in the world to be there. And Melrose'll have to stick it out they say for weeks and weeks--the fellow's so badly hurt--and--"

Lydia interrupted him.

"What did Doctor Undershaw say of him to-day?"

She bent forward across the tea-table, speaking earnestly.

Tatham looked at her in surprise.

"The report is better. Had you heard about it?"

"I must have seen him just before the accident--"

"Lydia! I never understood," said Mrs. Penfold rather bewildered.

Lydia explained that she too had seen Doctor Undershaw that morning, on his way to the Tower, in Whitebeck village, and he had told her the story. She was particularly interested, because of the little meeting by the river, which she described in a few words. Twenty minutes or so after her conversation with the stranger the accident must have happened.

Mrs. Penfold meanwhile was thinking, "Why didn't Lydia tell me all this on the drive?" Then she remembered one of Lydia's characteristics--a kind of passionate reticence about things that moved her. Had the fate then of the young man--whom she could only have seen for a few minutes--touched her so much?

Lady Tatham had listened attentively to Lydia's story--the inner mind of her all the time closely and critically observant of the story-teller, her beauty, the manner and quality of it, her movements, her voice. Her voice particularly. When the girl's little speech came to an end, Victoria still had the charm of it in her ears.

"Does any one know the man's name?" she inquired.

"I forgot to ask Undershaw," said Tatham.

Lydia supplied the information. The name of the young man was Claude Faversham. He seemed to have no relations whatever who could come and nurse him.

"Claude Faversham!" Tatham turned upon her with astonishment. "I say! I know a Claude Faversham. I was a term with him at Oxford--at least if it's the same man. Tall?--dark?--good-looking?"

Lydia thought the adjectives fitted.

"He had the most beautiful ring!" she added. "I noticed it when he was tying up my easel."

"A ring!" cried Tatham, wrinkling up his forehead. "By George, that is odd! I remember Faversham's ring perfectly. An uncle gave it him--an old Professor at Oxford, who used to collect things. My tutor sent me to a lecture once, when I was in for schools. Mackworth--that was the old boy's name--was lecturing, and Faversham came down to help him show his cases. Faversham's own ring was supposed to be something special, and Mackworth talked no end about it. Goodness!--so that's the man. Of course I must go and see him!--ask after him anyway."

But the tone had grown suddenly dubious. Lady Tatham's eyebrows rose slightly.

"Go to Threlfall, Harry?"

"Well, not to call on Melrose, mother! I should have to make sure he was out of the way. But I feel as if I ought to do something about Faversham. The fact is he did me a great kindness my first term at Oxford--he got me into a little club I wanted to belong to."

"Oh, but _you_ could belong to any club you wished!" cried Mrs. Penfold.

Tatham laughed and coloured. Lady Tatham slipped the slightest look at Lydia.

"Not at all. Faversham was awfully useful. I must see what can be done. He can't stay on at that place."

"You never go to Threlfall?" Mrs. Penfold addressed her hostess.

"Never," said Lady Tatham quietly. "Mr. Melrose is impossible."

"I should jolly well think he is!" said Tatham; "the most grasping and tyrannical old villain! He's got a business on now of the most abominable kind. I have been hearing the whole story this week. A man who dared to county court him for some perfectly just claim. And Melrose in revenge has simply ruined him. Then there's a right of way dispute going on--scandalous!--nothing to do with me!--but I'm helping other people to fight him. And his _cottages_!--you never saw such pigsties! He's defied every sort of inspector. I believe everybody's afraid of him. And you can't get a yard of land out of him for any public purpose whatever. Well, now that I'm on the County Council, I mean to _go for him!"_

The young man sprang up, apparently to fetch cigarettes, really that he might once more obtain a full view of Lydia, who had moved from the tea-table to a more distant seat.

Mrs. Penfold waved the silver box aside. "I never learnt"--she said, adding with soft, upturned eyes--confidingly--"sometimes I wish I did. Oh, Lydia will!"

And Lydia, following Lady Tatham's lead, quietly lit up. Tatham who cherished some rather strict and old-fashioned notions about women, very imperfectly revealed even to his mother, was momentarily displeased; then lost himself in the pleasure of watching a white hand and arm--for the day was hot and sleeves short--in new positions.

Lady Tatham looked round in answer to her son's last words.

"I wish, Harry, you'd leave him alone."

"Who? Melrose? _Mother!_ Oh, I forgot--he's a sort of cousin, isn't he?"

"My second cousin."

"Worse luck! But that's nothing, unless one chooses it shall be. I believe, mother, you know a heap of things about Melrose you've never told me!"

Lady Tatham smiled faintly, but did not reply. Whereat Mrs. Penfold whose curiosity was insatiable, within lady-like bounds, tried to ask questions of her hostess. A wife? Surely there had been a wife?

"Certainly--twenty years ago. I saw her." The answer came readily.

"She ran away?"

"Not in the usual sense. There was no one, I understand, to run with. But she could not stand Threlfall--nor--I suppose--her husband. So one day--when he had gone to Italy, and she was left behind--she just--"

"'Elopes--down a ladder of ropes'" laughed Tatham; "and took the child?"

"Yes--and a bronze, worth a thousand pounds."

"Sensible woman! And where are they now?"

Lady Tatham shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh, they can't be alive, surely," said Lydia. "Mr. Melrose told Doctor Undershaw that he had no relations in the world, and didn't wish to be troubled with any."

Contempt sat on Tatham's ruddy countenance.

"Well, as far as we're concerned, he may take it easy. His family affections don't matter to anybody! But the way he behaves as a landowner does really matter to all of us. He brings disgrace on the whole show."

He rose, straightening his young shoulders as he spoke. Lydia noted the modest involuntary consciousness of power and responsibility which for a moment dignified the boyish countenance; and as her eyes met his Tatham was startled by the passionate approval expressed in the girl's look.

She asked if there was no agent on the Melrose estates to temper the tyrannies of their master.

Tatham came to her side--explaining--looking down upon her with an eagerness which had but a superficial connection with the thing said.

"You see no decent man would ever stay with him. He'd never do the things Melrose does. He'd cut his hand off first. And if he didn't, the old villain would kick him out in no time. But that's enough about him, isn't it? I get him on the brain! Won't you come and see the pictures?"

* * * * *

The quartet inspecting the house had passed through the principal rooms, and had returned to the drawing-room. There Tatham said something to Lydia, and they moved away together. His mother looked after them. Tatham was leading the way toward the door in the farther wall which led to his own sitting-room. Their young faces were turned toward each other. The girl's shyness seemed to have broken up. She was now talking fast, with smiles. Ah, no doubt they would have plenty to say to each other, as soon as they were together.

It was one of the bitter-sweet moments of life. Lady Tatham steadied herself.

"That is a sketch," she said mechanically, "by Burne-Jones, for one of the Pygmalion and Galatea series. We have one or two others on the same subject."

Mrs. Penfold clasped her small hands in rapture.

"Oh! but _how_ interesting! Do you know I was once Galatea? When I was a girl I used to act a great deal. Well, not act exactly--for I didn't have to speak. I never could remember my lines. But I had two great parts. There was Hermione, in 'The Winter's Tale'; and Galatea. I made hundreds of pounds for hospitals--hundreds. It's not vain now, is it, to say one was pretty in one's youth?"

"You like remembering it? Some people don't."

"Ah, no, that's wrong! I'd liked to have been beautiful once, if I'm old and ugly now," cried Mrs. Penfold with fervour. "Of course"--she looked shyly at the sketch--"I had beautiful draperies on. My Galatea was not like that."

"Draperies?" Lady Tatham laughed. "Pygmalion had only just made her--there had been no time to dress her."

"_We_ dressed her," said Mrs. Penfold decidedly, "from top to toe. Some day I must show you the drawings of it--it's not like that at all. The girls think I'm silly to talk of it--oh! they don't say it--they're very good to me. But I can see they do. Only--they've so many things to be proud of. Susy's so clever--she knows Greek and all that kind of thing. And Lydia's drawing is so wonderful. Do you know she has made twenty pounds out of her sketches this week!"

"Capital!" said Lady Tatham smiling.

"Ah, it means a great deal to us! You see"--Mrs. Penfold looked round her--"when you're very rich, and have everything you want, you can't understand--at least I don't think you can--how it feels to have twenty pounds you don't expect. Lydia just danced about the room. And I'm to have a new best dress--she insists on it. Well, you see"--the little pink and white face of the speaker broke into smiles--"that's all so _amusing_. It puts one in good spirits. It's just as though one were rich, and made a thousand pounds. I daresay"--she looked, awestruck, at the Burne-Jones sketch--"that's worth our whole income. But we're very happy. We never fret. Lydia and Susy both help in the housework. And I make their blouses."

"How clever of you! That's a Fra Angelico"--said Lady Tatham pointing, and not knowing what to do with these confidences--"an Annunciation."

Mrs. Penfold thought it quite lovely. Lydia, when she was studying in London, had copied one like it in the National Gallery. And her poor father had liked it so. As they wandered on through the pictures, indeed, Lady Tatham soon came to know a great deal about Lydia's "poor father"--that he had been a naval officer, a Captain Penfold, who had had to retire early on half-pay because of ill-health, and had died just as the girls had grown up. "He felt it so--he was so proud of them--but he always said, 'If one of us is to go, why, it had better be me, Rosina--because you have such spirits--you're so cheerful.' And I am. I can't help it."

It was all sincere. There was neither snobbishness nor affectation in the little widow, even when she prattled most embarrassingly about her own affairs, or stood frankly wondering at the Tatham wealth. But no one could deny it was untutored. Lady Tatham thought of all the Honourable Johns, and Geralds, and Barbaras on the Tatham side--Harry's uncles and cousins--and the various magnificent people, ranging up to royalty, on her own; and envisaged the moment when Mrs. Penfold should look them all in the face, with her pretty, foolish eyes, and her chatter about Lydia's earnings and Lydia's blouses. And not all the inward laughter which the notion provoked in one to whom life was largely comedy, in the Meredithian sense, could blind her to the fact that the shock would be severe.

Had she really injured the prospects of her boy by the way--the romantic, idealist way--in which she had brought him up. Her Harry!--with whom she had read poetry, and talked of heroes, into whose ears she had poured Ruskin and Carlyle from his youth up; who was the friend and comrade of all the country folk, because of a certain irrepressible interest in his kind, a certain selflessness that were his cradle gifts; who shared in his boyish way, her own amused contempt for shams and shows--had she, after all, been training him for a mistake in the most serious step of life?

For, like it or despise it, English society was there, and he must fill his place in it. And things are seemly and unseemly, fitting and unfitting--as well as good and bad. This inexperienced girl, with her prettiness, and her art, and her small world--was it fair to her? Is there not something in the unconscious training of birth and position, when, _bon gré, mal gré_, there is a big part in the world's social business to be played?

And meanwhile, with a fraction of her mind, she went on talking "Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff." She did the honours of half their possessions. Then it suddenly seemed to her that the time was long, and she led the way back once more to the drawing-room, in a rather formidable silence, of which even her cheerful companion became aware.

But as they entered the room, the door at the farther end opened again, and Tatham and Lydia emerged.

Good heavens!--had he been proposing already? But a glance dispelled the notion. Lydia was laughing as they came in, and a little flushed, as though with argument. It seemed to his mother that Harry's look, on the other hand, was overcast. Had the girl been trampling on him? Impossible! In any case, there was no denying the quiet ease, the complete self-possession, with which the "inexperienced" one moved through Harry's domain, and took leave of Harry's mother. Your modern girl?--of the intellectual sort--quite unmoved by gewgaws! Minx!

Harry saw the two ladies into their pony-carriage. When he returned to his mother, it was with an absent brow. He went to the window and stood softly whistling, with his hands in his pockets. Lady Tatham waited a little, then went up to him, and took him by the arms--her eyes smiling into his, without a word.

He disengaged himself, almost roughly.

"I wish I knew something about art!" he said discontentedly. "And why should anybody want to be independent all their lives--economically independent?"

He slowly repeated the words, evidently from another mouth, in a land of wonder.

"That's the young woman of to-day, Harry."

"Isn't it better to be happy?" he broke out, and then was silent.

"Harry!--you didn't propose to her?"

He laughed out.

"Propose to her! As if I dare! I haven't even made friends with her yet--though I thought I had. She talks of things I don't understand."

"Not philosophy and stuff?"

"Lord, no!" he said, shrugging his shoulders. "It's much worse. It's as though she despised--" He paused again.

"Courting?" said his mother at last, her head against his shoulder.

"Well, anything of that sort, in comparison with art--and making a career--and earning money--and things of that kind. Oh, I daresay I'm a stupid ass!--"

Lady Tatham laughed softly.

"You can buy all her pictures, Harry."

"I don't believe she'd like it a bit, if she knew!" he said, gloomily.

The young man's chagrin and bewilderment were evident. His mother could only guess at the causes.

"How long have you known her, Harry?"

"Just two months."

Lady Tatham took him again by the shoulders, and looked into his face.

"Why didn't you tell me before? Do you want her?" she asked slowly.

"Yes--but I shall never get her," was the half desperate reply.

"Pooh!" she said, releasing him, after she had kissed him. "We shall see."

And straightway, with a wave of the hand as it were, she dismissed all thought of the Honourable Johns and Geralds. Mrs. Penfold and her chatter sank out of sight and hearing. She was her son's champion--against the world.

VI

It was the tenth day since the evening when Claude Faversham had been carried unconscious into Threlfall Tower, and the first one which anything like clearness of mind had returned to him. Before that there had been passing gleams and perceptions, soon lost again in the delusions of fever, or narcotic sleep. A big room--strange faces--pain--a doctor coming and going--intervals of misery following intervals of nothingness--helplessness--intolerable oppression--horrible struggles with food--horrible fear of being touched--gradually, little by little, these ideas had emerged in consciousness.

Then had followed the first moments of relief--incredibly sweet--but fugitive, soon swallowed up in returning discomfort; yet lengthening, deepening, passing by degrees into a new and tremulous sense of security of a point gained and passed. And at last on this tenth morning--a still and cloudy morning of early June, he found himself suddenly fully awake, and as it seemed to him once more in possession of himself. A dull, dumb anguish lay behind him, already half effaced; and the words of a psalm familiar at school and college ran idly through his mind: "My soul hath escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowler."

"Where am I?" Not in a hospital. Hospital ceilings are not adorned with wreaths and festoons in raised stucco, or with medallion groups of winged children playing with torches, or bows and arrows.

"I have a gem like that one," he thought, sleepily.

"A genius with a torch."

Then for a long time he was only vaguely conscious of more light than usual in the room--of an open window somewhere--of rustling leaves outside--and of a chaffinch singing....

Another couple of days passed, and he began to question the kind woman whom he had come to regard as a sort of strong, protective force between him and anguish, without any desire to give it a name, or realize an individual. But now he saw that he had been nursed by hands as refined as they were skilful, and he dimly perceived that he owed his life mainly to the wholly impersonal yet absorbed devotion of two women--gentle, firm-faced, women--who had fought death for him and won. Just a professional service for a professional fee; yet his debt was measureless. These are the things, he feebly understood, that women do for men; and what had been mere hearsay to his strong manhood had become experience.

Actually a ray of sunshine had been allowed to penetrate the shaded room. He watched it enchanted. Flowers were on the table near him. There was a delicious sense of warmth and summer scents.

"Where am I?" He turned his bandaged head stiffly toward the nurse beside him.

"In Threlfall Tower--the house of Mr. Edmund Melrose," she said, bending over him.

The nurse saw him smile.

"That's queer. What happened?"

His companion gave him a short account of the accident and of Undershaw's handling of it. Then she refused to let her patient talk any more, and left him with instructions not to tire his head with trying to remember. He lay disconnectedly dreaming. A stream of clear water, running shallow over greenish pebbles and among stones, large and small--and some white things floating on it. The recollection teased him, and a slight headache warned him to put it aside. He tried to go to sleep.

Suddenly, there floated into view a face vaguely seen, a girl's figure, in a blue dress, against a background of mountain. Who was it?--where had he come across her?

A few days later, when, for the first time, he was sitting up raised on pillows, and had been allowed to lift a shaking hand to help the nurse's hand as it guided a cup of soup to his lips, she said to him in her low, pleasant voice:

"Several people have been to inquire for you to-day. I'll bring you the cards."

She fetched them from a table near and read the names. "Lord Tatham, and his mother, Lady Tatham. They've sent you flowers every day. These are Duddon roses." She held up a glass vase before him. "Mrs. Penfold and Miss Penfold."

He shook his head feebly.

"Don't know any of them."

Nurse Aston laughed at him.

"Oh, yes, you do. Lord Tatham was at college with you. He's coming to see you one day soon. And Miss Penfold saw you just before the accident. She was sketching in St. John's Vale, and you helped her fish something out of the water."

"By Jove!--so I did," he said, slowly. "Tatham?" He pondered. "Tell Lady Tatham I'm much obliged to her."

And he went to sleep again.

The next time he woke, he saw an unfamiliar figure sitting beside him. His hold upon himself seemed to have grown much stronger. It was evening, and though the windows were still wide open a lamp had been lit.

"Are you Mr. Melrose?" he asked, amazed at the clearness of his own voice.

A gray-haired man moved his chair nearer.

"That's all right. You'll soon be well now. Do you feel much better?"

"I--I feel nearly well. How long have I been here?"

"About three weeks."

"I say--that's a nuisance! I'm very sorry to put you to inconvenience."

"Wasn't your fault. It was the doctor who brought you here." The tone of the words was round and masterful. "Are you comfortable? Have you all you want?"

"Everything. The nurses are A1. I say--has some one written to my uncle?"

"Undershaw wrote to a Mr. George Faversham last week. He was ill with rheumatic gout, couldn't come. Is that the uncle you mean?"

The young man nodded.

"He's the only relation I've got. The other one died. Hullo!"

He made a sudden movement. His hand slipped into his breast and found nothing. He raised himself in bed, with a frowning brow.

"I say!"--he looked urgently at Melrose. "Where are my gems?--and my ring?"

"Don't trouble yourself. They were brought to me. I have them locked up."

Faversham's expression relaxed. He let himself slide down upon his pillows.

"By George!--if I'd lost them."

Melrose studied him closely.

"They're all right. What do you know about gems?"

"Only what Uncle Mackworth taught me. We were great pals. He was my guardian. I lived with him in the holidays after my parents died. I knew all his gems. And now he's left them to me."

"Where are the rest?"

"I left the cabinet in charge of a man I know at the British Museum. He promised to lock it up in one of their strong rooms. But those six I always carry with me."

Melrose laughed.

"But those are just the six that should have been locked up. They are worth all the rest."

The young man slowly turned his head.

"Did you know my Uncle Mackworth?"

"Certainly. And I too knew all his gems. I could tell you the histories of those six, anyway, for generations. If it hadn't been for a fool of an agent of mine, your uncle would never have had the Arconati Bacchus."

Faversham was silent--evidently trying to feel his way through some induction of thought. But he gave it up as too much for him, and merely said--nervously--with the sudden flush of weakness:

"I'm afraid you've been put to great expense, sir. But it's all right. As soon as they'll let me sign a check, I'll pay my debts."

"Good gracious, don't trouble your head about that!" said Melrose rising. "This house is at your disposal. Undershaw I daresay will tell you tales of me. Take 'em with a grain of salt. He'll tell you I'm mad, and I daresay I am. I'm a hermit anyway, and I like my own society. But you're welcome here, as long as you've any reason to stay. I should like you to know that I do not regard Mackworth's nephew as a stranger."

The studied amiability of these remarks struck Faversham as surprising, he hardly knew why. Suddenly, a phrase emerged in memory.

"Every one about here calls him the Ogre."

The girl by the river--was it? He could not remember. Why!--the Ogre was tame enough. But the conversation--the longest he had yet held--had exhausted him. He turned on his side, and shut his eyes.

* * * * *

Then gradually, day by day, he came to understand the externals, at any rate, of the situation. Undershaw gave him a guarded, though still graphic, account of how, as unconscious as the dead Cid strapped on his warhorse, he and his bodyguard had stormed the Tower. The jests of the nurse, as to the practical difficulties of living in such a house, enlightened him further. Melrose, it appeared, lived like a peasant, and spent like a peasant. They brought him tales of the locked rooms, of the passages huddled and obstructed with bric-à-brac, of the standing feuds between Melrose and his tenants. None of the ordinary comforts of life existed in the Tower, except indeed a vast warming apparatus which kept it like an oven in winter; the only personal expenditure, beyond bare necessaries, that Melrose allowed himself. Yet it was commonly believed that he was enormously rich, and that he still spent enormously on his collections. Undershaw had attended a London stockbroker staying in one of the Keswick hotels, who had told him, for instance, that Melrose was well known to the "House" as one of the largest holders of Argentine stock in the world, and as having made also immense sums out of Canadian land and railways. "The sharpest old fox going," said the Londoner, himself, according to Undershaw, no feeble specimen of the money-making tribe. "_His_ death duties will be worth raking in!"

Occasional gossip of this, or a more damaging kind, enlivened convalescence. Undershaw and the nurses had no motives for reticence. Melrose treated them uncivilly throughout; and Undershaw knew very well that he should never be forgiven the forcing of the house. And as he, the nurses, and the Dixons were firmly convinced that for every farthing of the accommodation supplied him Faversham would ultimately have to pay handsomely, there seemed to be no particular call for gratitude, or for a forbearance based upon it.

Meanwhile Faversham himself did not find the character and intentions of his host so easy to understand. Although very weak, and with certain serious symptoms still persisting to worry the minds of doctor and nurse, he was now regularly dressed of an afternoon, and would sit in a large armchair--which had had to be hired from Keswick--by one of the windows looking out on the courtyard. Punctually at tea-time Melrose appeared. And there was no denying that in general he proved himself an agreeable companion--a surprisingly agreeable companion. He would come slouching in, wearing the shabbiest clothes, and a black skullcap on his flowing gray hair; looking one moment like the traditional doctor of the Italian puppet-play, gaunt, long-fingered, long-featured, his thin, pallid face a study in gray amid its black surroundings; and the next, playing the man of family and cosmopolitan travel, that he actually was. Faversham indeed began before long to find a curious attraction in his society. There was flattery, moreover, in the fact that nobody else in living memory had Melrose ever been known to pay anything like the attention he was now daily devoting to his invalid guest. The few inmates and visitors of the Tower, permanent and temporary, became gradually aware of it. They were astonished, but none the less certain that Melrose had only modified his attitude for some selfish reason of his own which would appear in due time.

The curious fact, however, emerged, after a while, that between the two men, so diverse in age, history, and circumstance, there was a surprising amount in common. Faversham, in spite of his look of youth, much impaired for the present by the results of his accident, was not so very young; he had just passed his thirtieth birthday, and Melrose soon discovered that he had seen a good deal both of the natural and the human worlds. He was the son, it seemed, of an Indian Civil Servant, and had inherited from his parents, who were both dead, an income--so Melrose shrewdly gathered from various indications--just sufficient to keep him; whereby a will, ambitious rather than strong, had been able to have its way. He had dabbled in many things, journalism, law, politics; had travelled a good deal; and was now apparently tired of miscellaneous living, and looking out discontentedly for an opening in life--not of the common sort--that was somewhat long in presenting itself. He seemed to have a good many friends and acquaintances, but not any of overmastering importance to him; his intellectual powers were evidently considerable, but not working to any great advantage either for himself or society.

Altogether an attractive, handsome, restless fellow; persuaded that he was destined to high things, hungry for them, yet not seeing how to achieve them; hungry for money also--probably as the only possible means of achieving them--and determined, meanwhile, not to accept any second best he could help. It was so, at least--from the cynical point of view of an observer who never wasted time on any other--that Melrose read him.

Incidentally he discovered that Faversham was well acquainted with the general lines and procedure of modern financial speculation, was in fact better versed in the jargon and gossip of the Stock Exchange than Melrose himself; and had made use now and then of the large amount of information and the considerable number of useful acquaintances he possessed to speculate cautiously on his own account--without much result, but without disaster. Also it was very soon clear that, independently of his special reasons for knowing something about engraved gems and their value, he had been, through his Oxford uncle, much brought across collectors and collecting. He could, more or less, talk the language of the tribe, and indeed his mere possession of the famous gems had made him, willy-nilly, a member of it.

So that, for the first time in twenty years, Melrose found himself provided with a listener, and a spectator who neither wanted to buy from him nor sell to him. When a couple of vases and a statuette, captured in Paris from some remains of the Spitzer sale, arrived at the Tower, it was to Faversham's room that Melrose first conveyed them; and it was from Faversham's mouth that he also, for the first time, accepted any remarks on his purchases that were not wholly rapturous. Faversham, with the arrogance of the amateur, thought the vases superb, and the statuette dear at the price. Melrose allowed it to be said; and next morning the statuette started on a return journey to Paris, and the Tower knew it no more.

Meanwhile the old collector would appear at odd moments with a lacquered box, or a drawer from a cabinet, and Faversham would find a languid amusement in turning over the contents, while Melrose strolled smoking up and down the room, telling endless stories of "finds" and bargains. Of the store, indeed, of precious or curious objects lying heaped together in the confusion of Melrose's den, the only treasures of a portable kind that Faversham found any difficulty in handling were his own gems. Melrose would bring them sometimes, when the young man specially asked for them, would keep a jealous eye on them the whole time they were in their owner's hands, and hurry them back to their drawer in the Riesener table as soon as Faversham could be induced to give them up.

One night the invalid made a show of slipping them back into the breast-pocket from which they had been taken while he lay unconscious.

"I'm well enough now to look after them," he had said, smiling, to his host. "Nurse and I will mount guard."

Whereupon Melrose protested so vehemently that the young man, in his weakness, did not resist. Rather sulkily, he handed the case back to the greedy hand held out for it.

Then Melrose smiled; if so pleasant a word may be applied to the queer glitter that for a moment passed over the cavernous lines of his face.

"Let me make you an offer for them," he said abruptly.

"Thank you--I don't wish to sell them."

"I mean a good offer--an offer you are not likely to get elsewhere--simply because they happen to fit into my own collection."