Chapter V: Book I: I (5)

"It is very kind of you. But I have a sentiment about them. I have had many offers. But I don't intend to sell them."

Melrose was silent a moment, looking down on the patient, in whose pale cheeks two spots of feverish red had appeared. Then he turned away.

"All right. Don't excite yourself, pray."

"I thought he'd try and get them out of me," thought Faversham irritably, when he was left alone. "But I shan't sell them--whatever he offers."

And vaguely there ran through his mind the phrases of a letter handed to him by his old uncle's solicitor, together with the will: "Keep them for my sake, my dear boy; enjoy them, as I have done. You will be tempted to sell them; but don't, if you can help it. The money would be soon spent; whereas the beauty of these things, the associations connected with them, the thoughts they arouse--would give you pleasure for a lifetime. I have loved you like a father, and I have left you all the little cash I possess. Use that as you will. But that you should keep and treasure the gems which have been so much to me, for my sake--and beauty's--would give me pleasure in the shades--'quo dives Tullus et Ancus'--you know the rest. You are ambitious, Claude. That's well. But keep you heart green."

What precisely the old fellow might have meant by those last words, Faversham had often rather sorely wondered, though not without guesses at the answer. But anyway he had loved his adopted father; he protested it; and he would not sell the gems. They might represent his "luck"--such as there was of it--who knew?

* * * * *

The question of removing his patient to a convalescent home at Keswick was raised by Undershaw at the end of the third week from the accident. He demanded to see Melrose one morning, and quietly communicated the fact that he had advised Faversham to transfer himself to Keswick as soon as possible. The one nurse now remaining would accompany him, and he, Undershaw, would personally superintend the removal.

Melrose looked at him with angry surprise.

"And pray what is the reason for such an extraordinary and unnecessary proceeding?"

"I understood," said Undershaw, smiling, "that you were anxious to have your house to yourself again as soon as possible."

"I defended my house against your attack. But that's done with. And why you should hurry this poor fellow now into new quarters, in his present state, when he might stay quietly here till he is strong enough for a railway journey, I cannot conceive!"

Undershaw, remembering the first encounter between them, could not prevent his smile becoming a grin.

"I am delighted Mr. Faversham has made such a good impression on you, sir. But I understand that he himself feels a delicacy in trespassing upon you any longer. I know the house at Keswick to which I propose to take him. It is excellently managed. We can get a hospital motor from Carlisle, and of course I shall go with him."

"Do you suggest that he has had any lack of attention here from me or my servants?" said Melrose, hotly.

"By no means. But--well, sir, I will be open with you. Mr. Faversham in my opinion wants a change of scene. He has been in that room for three weeks, and--he understands there is no other to which he can be moved. It would be a great advantage, too, to be able to carry him into a garden. In fact"--the little doctor spoke with the same cool frankness he had used in his first interview with Melrose--"your house, Mr. Melrose, is a museum; but it is not exactly the best place for an invalid who is beginning to get about again."

Melrose frowned upon him.

"What does he want, eh? More space? Another room? How many rooms do you suppose there are in this house, eh?" he asked in a voice half hectoring, half scornful.

"Scores, I daresay," said Undershaw, quietly. "But when I inquired of Dixon the other day whether it would be impossible to move Mr. Faversham into another room he told me that every hole and corner in the house was occupied by your collections, except two on the ground floor that you had never furnished. We can't put Mr. Faversham into an unfurnished room. That which he occupies at present is, if I may speak plainly, rather barer of comforts than I like."

"What on earth do you mean?"

"Well, when an invalid's out of bed a pleasant and comfortable room is a help to him--a few things to look at on the walls--a change of chairs--a bookcase or two--and so on. Mr. Faversham's present room is--I mean no offence--as bare as a hospital ward, and not so cheerful. Then as to the garden"--Undershaw moved to a side window and pointed to the overgrown and gloomy wilderness outside--"nurse and I have tried in vain to find a spot to which we could carry him. I am afraid I must say that an ordinary lodging-house, with a bit of sunny lawn on which he could lie in his long chair, would suit him better, at his present stage, than this fine old house."

"Luxury!" growled Melrose, "useless luxury and expense! that's what every one's after nowadays. A man must be as _cossu_ as a pea in a pod! I'll go and speak to him myself!"

And catching up round him the sort of Tennysonian cloak he habitually wore, even in the house and on a summer day, Melrose moved imperiously toward the door.

Undershaw stood in his way.

"Mr. Faversham is really not fit yet to discuss his own plans, except with his doctor, Mr. Melrose. It would be both wise and kind of you to leave the decision of the matter to myself."

Melrose stared at him.

"Come along here!" he said, roughly. Opening the door of the library, he turned down the broad corridor to the right. Undershaw followed unwillingly. He was due at a consultation at Keswick, and had no time to waste with this old madman.

Melrose, still grumbling to himself, took a bunch of keys out of his pocket, and fitted one to the last door in the passage. It opened with difficulty. Undershaw saw dimly a large room, into which the light of a rainy June day penetrated through a few chinks in the barred shutters. Melrose went to the windows, and with a physical strength which amazed his companion unshuttered and opened them all, helped by Undershaw. One of them was a glass door leading down by steps to the garden outside. Melrose dragged the heavy iron shutter which closed it open, and then, panting, looked round at his companion.

"Will this do for you?"

"Wonderful!" said Undershaw heartily, staring in amazement at the lovely tracery which incrusted the ceiling, at the carving of the doors, at the stately mantelpiece, with its marble caryatides, and at the Chinese wall-paper which covered the walls, its mandarins and pagodas, and its branching trees. "I never saw such a place. But what is my patient to do with an unfurnished room?"

"Furniture!" snorted Melrose. "Have you any idea, sir, what this house contains?"

Undershaw shook his head.

Melrose pondered a moment, and took breath. Then he turned to Undershaw.

"You are going back to Pengarth? You pass that shop, Barclay's--the upholsterer's. Tell him to send me over four men here to-morrow, to do what they're told. Stop also at the nurseryman's--Johnson's. No--I'll write. Give me three days--and you'll see."

He studied the doctor's face with his hawk's eyes.

Undershaw felt considerable embarrassment. The owner of the Tower appeared to him more of a lunatic than ever.

"Well, really, Mr. Melrose--I appreciate your kindness--as I am sure my patient will. But--why should you put yourself out to this extent? It would be much simpler for everybody concerned that I should find him the quarters I propose."

"You put it to Mr. Faversham that I am quite prepared to move him into other quarters--and quarters infinitely more comfortable than he can get in any infernal 'home' you talk of--or I shall put it to him myself," said Melrose, in his most determined voice.

"Of course, if you persist in asking him to stay, I suppose he must ultimately decide." Undershaw's tone betrayed his annoyance. "But I warn you, I reserve my own right of advice. And moreover--supposing you do furnish this room for him, allow me to point out that he will soon want something else, and something more, even, than a better room. He will want cheerful society."

"Well?" The word was challenging.

"You are most kind and indefatigable in coming to see him. But, after all, a man at his point of convalescence, and inclined to be depressed--the natural result of such an accident--wants change, intellectual as well as physical, and society of his own age."

"What's to prevent his getting it?" asked Melrose, shortly. "When the room is in order, he will use it exactly as he likes."

Undershaw shrugged his shoulders, anxious to escape to his consultation.

"Let us discuss it again to-morrow. I have told you what I think best." He turned to go.

"Will you give that order to Barclay?"

Undershaw laughed.

"If I do, I mustn't be taken as aiding and abetting you. But of course--if you wish it."

"Ten o'clock to-morrow," said Melrose, accompanying him to the door. "Ten o'clock, sharp." He stood, with raised forefinger, on the threshold of the newly opened room, bowing a stiff farewell.

Undershaw escaped. But as he turned into the pillared hall, Nurse Aston hurriedly emerged from Faversham's room. She reported some fresh trouble in one of the wounds on the leg caused by the accident, which had never yet properly healed. There was some pain, and a rise in temperature.

* * * * *

The unfavourable symptoms soon subsided. But as the fear of blood-poisoning had been in Undershaw's mind from the beginning, they led him to postpone, in any case, the arrangements that had been set on foot for Faversham's departure. During three or four days afterward he saw little or nothing of Melrose. But he and Nurse Aston were well aware that unusual things were going on in the house. Owing to the great thickness of the walls, the distance of Faversham's room from the scene of action, and the vigilance of his nurse, who would allow no traffic whatever through the front hall, the patient was protected from the noise of workmen in the house, and practically knew nothing of the operations going on. Melrose appeared every evening as usual, and gave no hint.

On the afternoon of the fourth day, Melrose met Undershaw in the hall, as he entered the house.

"How is he?"

"All right again, I think, and doing well. I hope we shall have no further drawbacks."

"Be good enough to give me ten minutes--before you see Mr. Faversham?"

The invitation could not have been more _grand-seigneur_ish. Undershaw, consumed with curiosity, accepted. Melrose led the way.

But no sooner had they passed a huge lacquer screen, newly placed in position, and turned into the great corridor, than Undershaw exclaimed in amazement. Melrose was striding along toward the south wing. Behind them, screened off, lay regions no longer visible to any one coming from the hall. In front, stretched a beautiful and stately gallery, terminating in a pillared window, through which streamed a light to which both it and the gallery had been strangers for nearly a score of years. A mass of thick shrubbery outside, which had grown up close to the house, and had been allowed for years to block this window, together with many others on the ground floor, had been cut sheer away. The effect was startling, and through the panes, freed from the dust and cobwebs of a generation, the blue distant line of the Pennines could be distinctly seen far away to the southeast. The floor of the gallery was spread with a fine matting of a faint golden brown, on which at intervals lay a few old Persian or Indian rugs. The white panelling of the walls was broken here and there by a mirror, or a girandole, delicate work of the same date as the Riesener table; while halfway down two Rose du Barri tapestries faced each other, glowing in the June sun. It was all spacious--a little empty--the whole conception singularly refined--the colour lovely.

Melrose stalked on, silently, pulling at his beard. He made no reply to Undershaw's admiring comments; and the doctor wondered whether he was already ashamed of the impulse which had made him do so strange a thing.

Presently, he threw open the door he had unlocked the week before, Undershaw stepped into a room no less attractive than the gallery outside. A carpet of old Persian, of a faded blue--a few cabinets spaced along the walls--a few bookcases full of books old and new--a pillared French clock on the mantelpiece--a comfortable modern sofa, and some armchairs--branches of white rhododendron in a great enamelled vase--and two oval portraits on the walls, a gentleman in red, and a gentleman in blue, both pastels by Latour--in some such way one might have catalogued the contents of the room. But no catalogue could have rendered its effect on Undershaw, who was not without artistic leanings of a mild kind himself--an effect as of an old debt paid, an injustice remedied, a beautiful creation long abused and desecrated, restored to itself. The room was at last what it had been meant to be; and after a hundred and fifty years the thought of its dead architect had found fruition.

But this was not all. The garden door stood open, and outside, as he walked up to it, Undershaw saw a stretch of smooth grass, with groups of trees--the survivors of a ragged army--encircling it; a blaze of flowers; and beyond the low parapet wall of lichened stone, from which also a dense thicket of yew and laurel had been removed, the winding course of the river, seventy feet below the Tower, showed blue under a clear sky. A deck chair stood on the grass and a garden table beside it, holding an ash-tray and cigarettes.

Undershaw, after a pause of wonder, warmly expressed his admiration. Melrose received it ungraciously.

"Why, the things were all in the house. Clumsy brutes!--Barclay's men would have broken the half of them, if I hadn't been here," he said, morosely. "Now will you tell Mr. Faversham this room is at his disposal, or shall I?"

* * * * *

Half an hour later Faversham, assisted by his nurse, had limped along the corridor, and was sitting beside the glass door in an utter yet not unpleasant bewilderment. What on earth had made the strange old fellow take such an odd fancy to him? He had had singularly little "spoiling" in his orphaned life so far, except occasionally from "Uncle Mackworth." The experience was disturbing, yet certainly not disagreeable.

He must of course stay on for a while, now that such extraordinary pains had been taken for his comfort. It would be nothing less than sheer ingratitude were he not to do so. At the same time, his temperament was cautious; he was no green youngster; and he could not but ask himself, given Melrose's character and reputation, what ulterior motive there might be behind a generosity so eccentric.

Meanwhile Melrose, in high spirits, and full of complaisance, now that the hated Undershaw had departed, walked up and down as usual, talking and smoking. It was evident that the whole process of unpacking his treasures had put him in a glow of excitement. The sudden interruption of habit had acted with stimulating power, his mind, like his home, had shaken off some of its dust. He talked about the pictures and furniture he had unearthed; the Latour pastels, the Gobelins in the gallery; rambling through scenes and incidents of the past, in a vivacious, egotistical monologue, which kept Faversham amused.

In the middle of it, however, he stopped abruptly, eying his guest.

"Can you write yet?"

"Pretty well. My arm's rather stiff."

"Make your nurse write some notes for you. That man--Undershaw--says you must have some society--invite some people."

Faversham laughed.

"I don't know a soul, either at Keswick or Pengarth."

"There have been some people inquiring after you."

"Oh, young Tatham? Yes, I knew him at Oxford."

"And the women--who are they?"

Faversham explained.

"Miss Penfold seems to have recognized me from Undershaw's account. They are your nearest neighbours, aren't they?" He looked smiling at his host.

"I don't know my neighbours!" said Melrose, emphatically. "But as for that young ass, Tatham--ask him to come and see you."

"By all means--if you suggest it."

Melrose chuckled.

"But he won't come, unless he knows I am safely out of the way. He and I are not on terms, though his mother and I are cousins. I dare say Undershaw's told you--he's thick with them. The young man has been insolent to me on one or two occasions. I shall have to take him down. He's one of your popularity-hunting fools. However you ask him by all means if you want him. He'll come to see you. Ask him Thursday. I shall be at Carlisle for the day. Tell him so."

He paused, his dark eyeballs, over which the whites had a trick of showing disagreeably, fixing his visitor; then added:

"And ask the women too. I shan't bite 'em. I saw them from the window the day they came to inquire. The mother looked perfectly scared. The daughter's good looking."

Manner and tone produced a vague irritation in Faversham. But he merely said that he would write to Mrs. Penfold.

Two notes were accordingly despatched that evening from the Tower; one to Duddon Castle, the other to Green Cottage. Faversham had succeeded in writing them himself; and in the exhilaration of what seemed to him a much-quickened convalescence, he made arrangements the following morning to part with his nurse within a few days. "Do as you like, in moderation," said Undershaw, "no railway journey for a week or two."

VII

Melrose had gone to Carlisle. The Cumbria landscape lay in a misty sunshine, the woods and fields steaming after a night of soaking rain. All the shades of early summer were melting into each other; reaches of the river gave back a silvery sky, while under the trees the shadows slept. The mountains were indistinct, drawn in pale blues and purples, on a background of lilac and pearl. And all the vales "were up," drinking in the streams that poured from the heights.

Tatham and his mother were walking through the park together. He was in riding-dress, and his horse awaited him at the Keswick gate. Lady Tatham beside him was attired as usual in the plainest and oldest of clothes. Her new gowns, which she ordered from time to time mechanically, leaving the whole designing of them to her dress-maker, served her at Duddon, in her own phrase, mainly "for my maid to show the housekeeper." They lay in scented drawers, daintily folded in tissue paper, and a maid no less ambitious than her fellows for a well-dressed mistress kept mournful watch over them. This carelessness of dress had grown upon Victoria Tatham with years. In her youth the indulgence of a taste for beautiful and artistic clothes had taken up a great deal of her time. Then suddenly it had all become indifferent to her. Devotion to her boy, books, and natural history absorbed a mind more and more impatient of ordinary conventions.

"You are quite sure that Melrose will be out of the way?" she asked her son as they entered on the last stretch of their walk.

"Well, you saw the letter."

"No--give it me."

He handed it. She read it through attentively.

"Mr. Melrose asks me to say that he will not be here. He is going over to the neighbourhood of Carlisle on business, and cannot be home till ten o'clock at night."

"He has the decency not to 'regret,'" said Lady Tatham.

"No. It is awkward of course going at all"--Tatham's brow was a little furrowed--"but I somehow think I ought to go."

"Oh, go," said his mother. "If he does play a trick you will know how to meet it. It would be very like him to play some trick," she added, thoughtfully.

"Mother," said Tatham impetuously, "was Melrose ever in love with you?"

He coloured boyishly as he spoke. Lady Tatham looked up startled; a faint red appeared in her cheeks also.

"I believe he supposed himself to be. I knew him very well, and I might--possibly--have accepted him--but that some information came to my knowledge. Then, later on, largely I think to punish me, he nearly succeeded in entangling my younger sister--your Aunt Edith. I stood in his way. He hates me, of course. I think he suffered. In those days he was very different. But his pride and self-will were always a madness. And gradually they have devoured everything else." She paused. "I cannot tell you anything more, Harry. There were other people concerned."

"Dearest, as if I should ask! He did my mother no injury?"

Under the shadow of the woods the young man threw his arm round her shoulders, looking down upon her with a proud tenderness.

"None. I escaped; and I won all along the line. I was neither to be pitied--nor he," she added slowly, "though I daresay he would put down his later mode of life to me."

"As if any woman could ever have put up with him!"

Lady Tatham's expression showed a mind drawn back into the past.

"When I first saw him, he was a magnificent creature. For several years I was dazzled by him. Then when I--and others--broke with him, he turned his back on England and went to live abroad. And gradually he quarrelled with everybody who had ever known him."

"But you never did care about him, mother?" cried Tatham, outraged by the mere notion of any such thing.

"No--never." There was a deliberate emphasis on the words. The smile that followed was slight but poignant. "I knew that still more plainly, when, six months after I ceased to see him, your father came along."

Tatham who had drawn her hand within his arm, laid his own upon it for a moment. He was in the happy position of a son in whom filial affection represented no enforced piety, but the spontaneous instinct of his nature. His mother had been so far his best friend; and though he rarely spoke of his father his childish recollections of him, and the impression left by his mother's constant and deliberate talk of him, during the boyish years of her son, had entered deep into the bases of character. It is on such feelings and traditions that all that is best in our still feudal English life is reared; Tatham had known them without stint; and in their absence he would have been merely the trivially prosperous young man that he no doubt appeared to the Radical orators of the neighbourhood.

The wood thinned. They emerged from it to see the Helvellyn range lying purple under a southwest sky, and Tatham's gray mare waiting a hundred yards away.

"You have no note?"

Tatham tapped his breast pocket.

"Rather!"

"All right--go along!" Lady Tatham came to a halt. "And Harry--don't call too often! Is this the third visit this week?"

"Oh, but the others were such little ones!" he said eagerly.

"Don't try to go too quick." The tone was serious.

"Too quick! I make no way at all," he protested, his look clouding.

Tatham rode slowly along the Darra, the little river which skirted his own land and made its way at last into that which flowed beneath the Tower. He was going to Threlfall, but on his way he was to call at Green Cottage and deliver a note from his mother.

He had seen a good deal of Lydia Penfold during the weeks since her first appearance at Duddon. The two sisters had been induced to lunch there once or twice; there had been a picnic in the Glendarra woods; and for himself, in spite of his mother's attack, he thought he had been fairly clever in contriving excuses for calls. On one occasion he had carried with him--by his mother's suggestion--a portfolio containing a dozen early proofs of the "Liber Studiorium," things about which he knew little or nothing; but Lydia's eyes had sparkled when he produced them, which was all he cared for. On the second, he had called to offer them a key which would admit their pony-carriage to some of the private drives of the park, wild enchanted ways which led up to the very eastern heart of Blencathra. That was not quite so successful, because both Lydia and her mother were out, and his call had been made chiefly on Susan, who had been even queerer than usual. After taking the key, she had let it fall absently into a waste-paper basket, while she talked to him about Ibsen; and he had been forced to rescue it himself, lest Lydia should never know of his visit. On all other occasions he had found Lydia, and she had been charming--always charming--but as light and inaccessible as mountain birds. He had been allowed to see the drawing she was now busy on--the ravines of Blencathra, caught sideways through a haze of light, edge beyond edge, distance behind distance; a brave attempt on the artist's part at poetic breadth and selection. She had been much worried about the "values," whatever they might be. "They're quite vilely wrong!" she had said, impatiently. "And I don't know how to get them right." And all he could do was to stand like an oaf and ask her to explain. Nor could he ignore the fact--so new and strange to a princeling!--that her perplexities were more interesting to her than his visit.

Yet of course Tatham had his own natural conceit of himself, like any normal young man, in the first bloom of prosperous life. He was accustomed to be smiled on; to find his pleasure consulted, and his company welcome, whether as the young master of Duddon, or as a comrade among his equals of either sex. The general result indeed of his happy placing in the world had been to make him indifferent to things that most men desire. No merit in that! As he truly said, he had so much of them! But he was proud of his health and strength--his shooting and the steady lowering of his golf handicap. He was proud also of certain practical aptitudes he possessed, and would soon allow no one to interfere with him--hardly to advise him--in the management of his estate. He liked nothing better than to plan the rebuilding of a farm, or a set of new cottages. He was a fair architect, of a rough and ready sort, and a decent thatcher and bricklayer. All the older workmen on the estate had taught him something at one time or another; and of these various handicrafts he was boyishly vain.

None of these qualifications, however, gave him the smallest confidence in himself, with regard to Lydia Penfold. Ever since he had first met her, he had realized in her the existence of standards just as free as his own, only quite different. Other girls wished to be courted; or they courted him. Miss Penfold gave no sign that she wished to be courted; and she certainly had never courted anybody. Many pretty girls assert themselves by a kind of calculated or rude audacity, as though to say that gentleness and civility are not for the likes of them. Lydia was always gentle--kind, at least--even when she laughed at you. Unless she got upon her "ideas." Then--like Susan--she could harangue a little, and grow vehement--as she had at Duddon that day, talking of the new independence of women. But neither her gentleness nor her vehemence seemed to have any relation to what a man--or men--might desire of her. She lived for herself; not indeed in any selfish sense; for it was plain that she was an affectionate daughter and sister; but simply the world was so interesting to her in other ways that she seemed to have no need of men and matrimony. And as to money, luxury, a great _train de vie_--he had felt from the beginning that those things mattered nothing at all to her. It might be inexperience, it might be something loftier. But, at any rate, if she were to be bribed, it must be with goods of another kind.

As to himself, he only knew that from his first sight of her at the Hunt Ball, she had filled his thoughts. Her delicate, pale beauty, lit by those vivacious eyes; so quiet, so feminine, yet with its suggestion of something unconquerable, moving in a world apart--he could not define it in any such words; but there it was, the attraction, the lure. Something difficult; something delightful! A dear woman, a woman to be loved; and yet a thorn hedge surrounding her--how else can one put the eternal challenge, the eternal chase?

But as three parts of love is hope, and hope is really the mother of invention, Tatham, though full of anxiety, was also, like General Trochu, full of plans. He had that morning made his mother despatch an invitation to one of the great painters of the day; a man who ruled the beauties of the moment _en Sultan_; painted whom he would; when he would; and at what price he would. But while those who were dying to be painted by him must often wait for years, and put up with manners none too polite, there were others who avenged them; women, a few, very few women, whom the great man, strange to say, sighed to paint, and sighed in vain. Such women were generally women of a certain age; none of your soft-cheeked beauties. And Lady Tatham was one of them. The great artist had begged her to let herself be painted by him. And Victoria had negligently replied that, perhaps, at Duddon, some day, there might be time. Several reminders, launched from the Chelsea studio, had not brought her to the point; but now for her son's sake she had actually named a time; and a jubilant telegram from London had clenched the bargain. The great man was to arrive in a fortnight from now, for a week's visit; and Tatham had in his pocket a note from Lady Tatham to Mrs. Penfold requesting the pleasure of her company and that of her two daughters at dinner, to meet Mr. Louis Delorme, the day after his arrival.

And all this, because, at a mention of the illustrious name, Lydia had looked up with a flutter of enthusiasm. "You know him? How lucky for you! He's _wonderful_! I? Oh, no. How should I? I saw him once in the distance--he was giving away prizes. I didn't get one--alack! That's the nearest I shall ever come to him."

Tatham chuckled happily as he thought of it.

"She shall sit next the old boy at dinner, and she shall talk to him just as much as she jolly well pleases. And of course he'll take to her, and offer to give her lessons--or paint her--or something. Then we can get her over--lots of times!"

Still dallying with these simple plans, Tatham arrived at Green Cottage, and tying up his horse went in to deliver his note.

He had no sooner entered the little drive than he saw Lydia under a laburnum tree on the lawn. Hat in hand, the smiling youth approached her. She was sewing, apparently mending house-linen, which she quietly put down to greet him. There was a book before her; a book of poetry, he thought. She slipped it among the folds of the linen.

He could not flatter himself that his appearance disturbed her composure in the least. She was evidently glad to see him; she was gratefully sure that they would all be delighted to dine with Lady Tatham on the day named; she came with him to the gate, and admired his horse. But as to any flutter of hand or eye; any consciousness in her, answering to the eager feeling in him--he knew very well there was nothing of the kind. Never mind! There was an inner voice in him that kept reassuring him all the time; telling him to be patient; to go at it steadily. There was no other fellow in the way, anyhow! He had a joyous sense of all the opportunities to come, the summer days, the open country, the resources of Duddon.

With his hand on his horse's neck, and loath to ride away, he told her that he was on his way to the Tower to call on Faversham.

"Oh, but we're coming too, mother and I!" she said, in surprise. "Mr. Faversham sent us a note. I don't believe he ought to have two sets of visitors just yet."

Tatham too was surprised. "How on earth Faversham is able to entertain anybody, I can't think! Undershaw told me last week he must get him away, as soon as possible, into decent quarters. He doesn't get on very fast."

"He's been awfully ill!" said Lydia, with a soft concern in her voice, which made the splendid young fellow beside her envious at once of the invalid. "Well, good-bye! for the moment. We have ordered the pony in half an hour."

"You'll see a queer place; the piggery that old fellow lives in! You didn't know Faversham--I think you said--before that day of the accident?" He looked down on her from the saddle.

"Not the least. I feel a horrid pang sometimes that I didn't warn him of that hill!"

"Any decent bike ought to have managed that hill all right," said Tatham scornfully. "Scores of tourists go up and down it every day in the summer."

Lydia bade him speak more respectfully of his native hills, lest they bring him also to grief. Then she waved good-bye to him; received the lingering bow and eager look, which betrayed the youth; thought of "young Harry with his beaver on," as she watched the disappearing horseman, and went back for a while to her needlework and cogitation.

That she was flattered and touched, that she liked him--the kind, courteous boy--that was certain. Must she really assume anything else on his part--take his advances seriously--check them--put up restrictions--make herself disagreeable? Why? During her training in London, Lydia had drunk of the modern spring like other girls. She had been brought up in a small old-fashioned way, by her foolish little mother, and by a father--a stupid, honourable, affectionate man--whom she had loved with a half-tender, half-rebellious affection. There had been no education to speak of, for either her or Susy. But the qualities and gifts of remoter ancestors had appeared in them--to the bewilderment of their parents. And when after her father's death Lydia, at nineteen, had insisted on entering the Slade School, she had passed through some years of rapid development. At bottom her temperament always remained, on the whole, conservative and critical; the temperament of the humourist, in whose heart the old loyalties still lie warm. But that remarkable change in the whole position and outlook of women which has marked the last half century naturally worked upon her as upon others. For such persons as Lydia it has added dignity and joy to a woman's life, without the fever and disorganization which attend its extremer forms. While Susy, attending lectures at University College, became a Suffragist, Lydia, absorbed in the pleasures and pains of her artistic training, looked upon the suffrage as a mere dusty matter of political machinery.

But the ideas of her student years--those "ideas" which Tatham felt so much in his way--were still dominant. Marriage was not necessary. Art and knowledge could very well suffice. On the whole, in her own case, she aspired to make them suffice.

But not in any cloistered world. Women who lived merely womanish lives, without knowledge of and comradeship with men, seemed to her limited and parochial creatures. She was impatient of her sex, and the narrowness of her sex's sphere. She dreamed of a broadly human, practical, disinterested relation between men and women, based on the actual work of the world; its social, artistic, intellectual work; all that has made civilization.

"We women are starved"--she thought, "because men will only marry us--or make playthings of us. But the world is only just--these last years--open to us, as it has been open to men for thousands of generations. We want to taste and handle it for ourselves; as men do. Why can't they take us by the hand--a few of us--teach us, confide in us, open the treasure-house to us?--and let us alone! To be treated as good fellows!--that's all we ask. Some of us would make such fratchy wives--and such excellent friends! I vow I should make a good friend! Why shouldn't Lord Tatham try?"

And letting her work fall upon the grass, she sat smiling and thinking, her pale brown hair blown back by the wind. In her simple gray dress, which showed the rippling beauty of every line, she was like one of these innumerable angels or virtues, by artists illustrious or forgotten, which throng the golden twilight of an Italian church; drawing back the curtains of a Doge; hovering in quiet skies; or offering the Annunciation lily, from one side of a great tomb, to the shrinking Madonna on the other. These creations of Italy in her early prime are the most spontaneous of the children of beauty. There are no great differences among them; the common type is lovely; they spring like flowers from one root, in which are the forces both of Greece and the Italy of Leonardo. It was their harmony, their cheerfulness, their touch of something universal, that were somehow reproduced in this English girl, and that made the secret of her charm.

She went on thinking about Tatham.

Presently she had built a castle high in air; she had worked it out--how she was to make Lord Tatham clearly understand, before he had any chance of proposing (if that were really in the wind, and she were not a mere lump of conceit), that marrying was not her line; but that, as a friend, he might rely upon her. Anything--in particular--that she could do to help him to a wife, short of offering herself, was at his service. She would be eyes and ears for him; she would tell him things he did not in the least suspect about the sex.

But as to marrying! She rose from her seat, stretching her arms toward the sky and the blossoming trees, in that half-wild gesture which so truly expressed her. Marrying Duddon! that vast house, and all those possessions; those piles of money; those county relations, and that web of inherited custom which would lay its ghostly compulsion on Tatham's wife the very instant he had married her--it was not to be thought of for a moment! She, the artist with art and the world before her; she, with her soul in her own keeping, and all the beauty of sky and fell and stream to be had for the asking, to make herself the bond slave of Duddon--of that formidably beautiful, that fond, fastidious mother!--and of all the ceremonial and paraphernalia that must come with Duddon! She saw herself spending weeks on the mere ordering of her clothes, calling endlessly on stupid people, opening bazaars, running hospitals, entertaining house parties, with the _clef des champs_ gone forever--a little drawing at odd times--and all the meaning of life drowned in its trappings. No--no--_no!_--a thousand times, no! Not though her mother implored her, and every creature in Cumbria and the universe thought her stark staring mad. No!--for her own sake first; but, above all, for Lord Tatham's sake.

Whereat she repentantly reminded herself that after all, if she despised the world and the flesh, there was no need to give herself airs; for certainly Harry Tatham was giving proof--stronger proof indeed, of doing the same; if it were really his intention to offer his handsome person, and his no less handsome possessions to a girl as insignificant as herself. Custom had not staled _him_. And there was his mother too; who, instead of nipping the silly business in the bud, and carrying the foolish young man to London, was actually aiding and abetting--sending gracious invitations to dinner, of the most unnecessary description.

What indeed could be more detached, more romantic--apparently--than the attitude of both Tatham and his mother toward their own immense advantages?

Yes. But they were born to them; they had had time to get used to them. "It would take me half a lifetime to find out what they mean, and another half to discover what to do with them."

"And, if one takes the place, ought one not to earn the wages? Lady Tatham sits loose to all her social duties, scorns frocks, won't call, cuts bazaars, has never been known to take the chair at a meeting. But I should call that shirking. Either refuse the game; or play it! And of all the games in the world, surely, surely the Lady Bountiful game is the dullest! I _won't_ be bored with it!"

She went toward the house, her smiling eyes on the grass. "But, of course, if I could not get on without the young man, I should put up with any conditions. But I can get on without him perfectly! I don't want to marry him. But I do--I _do_ want to be friends!"

"Lydia! Mother says you'll be late if you don't get ready," said a voice from the porch.

"Why, I am ready! I have only to put on my hat."

"Mother thought you'd change."

"Then mother was quite wrong. My best cotton frock is good enough for any young man!" laughed Lydia.

Susan descended the garden steps. She was a much thinner and dimmer version of her sister. One seemed to see her pale cheeks, her dark eyes and hair, her small mouth, through mist, like a Whistler portrait. She moved very quietly, and her voice was low, and a little dragging. The young vicar of a neighbouring hamlet in the fells, who admired her greatly, thought of her as playing "melancholy"--in the contemplative Miltonic sense--to Lydia's "mirth." She was a mystery to him; a mystery he would have liked to unravel. But she was also a mystery to her family. She shut herself up a good deal with her books; she had written two tragedies in blank verse; and she held feminist views, vague yet fierce. She was apparently indifferent to men, much more so than Lydia, who frankly preferred their society to that of her own sex; but Lydia noticed that if the vicar, Mr. Franklin, did not call for a week Susan would ingeniously invent some device or other for peremptorily inducing him to do so. It was understood in the family, that while Lydia enjoyed life, Susan only endured it. All the same she was a good deal spoilt. She breakfasted in bed, which Mrs. Penfold never thought of doing; Lydia mended her stockings, and renewed her strings and buttons; while Mrs. Penfold spent twice the time and money on Susan's wardrobe that she did on Lydia's. There was no reason whatever for any of these indulgences; but when three women live together, one of them has only to sit still, to make the others her slaves. Mrs. Penfold found her reward in the belief that Susan was a genius and would some day astonish the world; Lydia had no such illusion; and yet it would have given her a shock to see Susan mending her own stockings.

Susan approached her now languidly, her hand to her brow. Lydia looked at her severely.

"I suppose you have got a headache?"

"A little."

"That's because you will go and write poetry directly after lunch. Why it would even give _me_ a headache!"

"I had an idea," said Susan plaintively.

"What does that matter? Ideas'll keep. You have just to make a note of them--put salt on their tails--and then go and take a walk. Indigestion, my dear--which is the plain English for your headache--is very bad for ideas. What have you been doing to your collar?"

And Lydia took hold of her sister, straightening her collar, pinning up her hair, and generally putting her to rights. When the operation was over, she gave a little pat to Susan's cheek and kissed her.

"You can come with us to Threlfall, that would take your headache away; and I don't mind the back seat."

"I wasn't asked," said Susan with dignity. "I shall go for a walk by myself. I want to think."

Lydia received the intimation respectfully, merely recommending her sister to keep out of the sun; and was hurrying into the house to fetch her hat when Susan detained her.

"Was that Lord Tatham who came just now?"

"It was." Lydia faced her sister, holding up the note from Lady Tatham. "We are all to dine with them next week."

"He has been here nearly every other day for a fortnight," said Susan, with feminine exaggeration. "It is becoming so marked that everybody talks."

"Well, I can't help it," said Lydia defiantly. "We are not a convent; and we can hardly padlock the gate."

"You should discourage him--if you don't mean to marry him."

"My dear, I like him so!" cried Lydia, her hands behind her, and tossing her fair head. "Marrying!--I hate the word."

"He cares--and you don't," said Susan slowly, "that makes it very unfair--to him."

Lydia frowned for a moment, but only for a moment.

"I'm _not_ encouraging him, Susy--not in the way you mean. But why should I drive him away, or be rude to him? I want to put things on a proper footing--so that he'll understand."

"He's going to propose to you," said Susan bluntly.

"Well, then, we shall get it over," said Lydia, reluctantly. "And you don't imagine that such a golden youth will trouble about such a trifle for long. Think of all the other things he has to amuse him. Why, if I broke my heart, you know I should still want to paint," she added, flippantly.

"I'd give a good deal to see you break your heart!" said the tragedienne, her dark eyes kindling--"you'd be just splendid!"

"Thanks, awfully! There's the pony."

Susan held her.

"You're really going to the Tower?"

"I am. It's mean of me. When you hate a man, you oughtn't to go to his house. But I can't help it. I'm so curious."

"Yes, but not about Mr. Melrose," said Susan slowly.

Lydia flushed suddenly from brow to chin.

"Goose! let me go."

Susan let her go, and then stood a while, absorbed, looking at the mysterious Tower. Her power of visualization was uncannily strong; it amounted almost to second sight. She seemed to be in the Tower--in one of its locked and shuttered rooms; to be looking at a young man stretched on a sofa--a wizardlike figure in a black cloak standing near--and in the doorway, Lydia entering, bringing the light on her fair hair....

VIII

Tatham had to open the gate of Threlfall Park for himself. The lodge beside it, of the same date and architecture as the house, had long ceased to be inhabited. The gate was a substantial iron affair, and carried a placard, peremptorily directing the person entering to close it behind him. And on either side of it, the great wall stretched away with which, some ten years before this date, Melrose, at incredible cost, had surrounded the greater part of his property, in consequence of a quarrel with the local hunt, and to prevent its members from riding over his land.

Tatham, having carefully shut the gate, rode slowly through the park, casting a curious and hostile eye over the signs of parsimonious neglect which it presented. Sheep and cattle were feeding in part of it; part of it was standing for hay; and everywhere the fences were ruinous, and the roads grass-grown. It was, Tatham knew, let out to various small farmers, who used it as they pleased. As to the woods which studded it, "the man must be a simple fool who could let them get into such a state!" Tatham prided himself hugely on the admirable forestry with which the large tracts of woodland in his own property were managed. But then he paid a proper salary to a trained forester, a man of education. Melrose's woods, with their choked and ruined timber, were but another proof that a miser is, scientifically, only a species of idiot.

Only once before in his life had he been within the park--on one of the hunts of his boyhood, the famous occasion when the fox, started on the other side of the river, had made straight for Threlfall, and, the gate closing the private foot-bridge having been, by a most unusual chance, left open, had slipped thereby into the park, with the hounds in full cry after him. The hunt had momentarily paused, and then breaking loose from all control had dashed through the yard of the Home Farm in joyous pursuit, while the enraged Melrose, who with Dixon and another man had rushed out with sticks to try and head them back, had to confine himself and his followers to manning the enclosure round the house--impotent spectators of the splendid run through the park--which had long remained famous in Cumbrian annals. Tatham was then a lad of fourteen, mounted on one of the best of ponies, and he well remembered the mad gallop which had carried him past the Tower, and the tall figure of its furious master. The glee, the malicious triumph of the moment ran through his pulses again as he thought of it.

A short-lived triumph indeed, as far as the hunt was concerned; for the building of the ten-foot wall had followed, and Melrose's final breach with the gentry of his county. Never since had Tatham set foot in the Ogre's demesne; and he examined every feature of it with the most lively interest. The dilapidated buildings of the Home Farm reminded him of a lawsuit brought by a former tenant against his landlord, in which a story of mean and rapacious dealing on the part of Melrose, toward a decent though unfortunate man, had excited the disgust of the whole countryside. Melrose had never since been able to find a tenant for the farm, and the bailiff he had put in was a drunken creature whose mismanagement of it was notorious. Such doings by a man so inhumanly shrewd as Melrose in many of his affairs could only be accounted for by the combination in him of miserly dislike of spending, with a violent self-will. Instances, however, had been known when to get his own way, or gain a sinister advantage over an opponent, Melrose had been willing to spend extravagantly.

After passing the farm, Tatham pressed on eagerly, expecting the first sight of the house. The dense growth of shrub and creeper, which had been allowed to grow up around it, the home according to the popular legend of uncanny multitudes of owls and bats, tickled imagination; and Tatham had often brought a field-glass to bear upon the house from one of the neighbouring hills. But as he turned the last corner of the drive he drew up his horse in amazement.

The jungle was gone--! and the simple yet stately architecture of the house stood revealed in the summer sunshine. In the west wing, indeed, the windows were still shuttered, and many of them overgrown with ivy; but the dingy thickets of laurel and yew were everywhere shorn away; and to the east all the windows stood free and open. Moreover, two men were at work in the front garden, clearing the flagged paths, traced in the eighteenth century, from encumbrance, and laying down turf in a green circle round one of the small classical fountains that stood on either side of the approach.

"What on earth is the old villain up to now?" was the natural comment of the surprised Tatham.

Was it simply the advent of a guest--an invalid guest--that had wrought such changes?

One of the gardeners, seeing him as he approached the gate, came running up to hold his horse. Tatham, who knew everybody and prided himself on it, recognized him as the son of an old Duddon keeper.

"Well, Backhouse, you're making a fine clearance here!"

"Aye! It's took us days, your lordship. But we're about through wi' this side, howivver." He pointed to the east wing.

"One can see now what a jolly old place it is," said Tatham, pausing in the gateway to survey the scene.

Backhouse grinned responsively.

"I do believe, my lord, Muster Melrose hissel' is pleased. He stood a lang while lookin' at it this morning, afore he started oot."

"Well, no one can deny it's an improvement!" laughed Tatham, as he walked toward the house.