Chapter VIII: Book II: X (2)

"Mainstairs!" said Barton, promptly, waking up. "That's the only village hereabout that fits the description. But Melrose owns two or three of them."

"The man that owns that village ought to be hung," said Boden with quiet ferocity. "In any decent state of society he would be hung."

Barton shrugged his shoulders.

"I'm on the sanitary authority. We've summoned him till we're tired, to put those cottages in repair. No use. Now, we've told him that we shall repair them ourselves and send in the bill to him. That's stirred him, and he's immediately given everybody notice to quit--says he'll close the whole village. But the people won't go. There are no other cottages for miles--they've taken to stoning our inspectors."

"And you think our land system's going to last on these terms?" said Boden, his eyes flaming.

The little Tory opposite drew himself up.

"It's not the system--it's the man."

"The system's judged--that permits the man."

"Melrose is unique," said Barton, hotly; "we are a model county, but for the Melrose estate."

"But the exception is damning! It compromises you all. That such a place as Mainstairs should be _possible_--that's the point!"

"For you Socialists, I daresay!" cried Barton. "The rest of us know better than to expect a perfect world!"

Boden laughed, the passion dying from his face.

"Ah, well, we shall have to make you march--you fellows in possession. No hope--unless we are 'behind you with a bradawl!'"

"On the contrary! We marched before you Socialists were thought of. Who have put the bulk of the cottages of England in repair during the last half century, I should like to know--and built most of the new ones? The landlords of England! Who stands in the way of reform at the present moment? The small owner. And who are the small owners? Mainly Radical tradesmen."

Boden looked at him--then queerly smiled. "I daresay. I trust no man--further than I can see him. But if what you say is true, why don't you Conservatives--in your own interest--coerce men like Melrose? He's giving you away, every month he exists."

"Well, Tatham's at it," said Barton quietly; "we're all at it. And there's a new agent just appointed. Something to be hoped from him."

"Who is it?"

"You didn't hear us discussing him last night? A man called Claude Faversham."

"Claude Faversham? A tall, dark fellow--writes a little--does a little law--but mostly unemployed? Oh, I know him perfectly. Faversham? You don't mean it!" Boden threw himself back in his chair with a sarcastic lip, and relit his pipe. As he watched the spirals of smoke he recalled the few incidents of his acquaintance with the young man. They had both been among the original members of a small club in London, frequented by men of letters and junior barristers. Faversham had long since dropped out of the club, and was now the companion, so Boden understood, of much richer men, and a great frequenter of the Stock Exchange, where money is mysteriously made without working for it. That fact alone was enough for Cyril Boden. He felt an instinctive, almost a fanatical, antipathy toward the new agent. On the one side the worshippers of the Unbought and the Unpriced; on the other Mammon and all his troop. It was so that Boden habitually envisaged his generation. It was so, and by no other test, that he divided the sheep from the goats.

Meanwhile, Lydia Penfold, driving a diminutive pony, was slowly approaching the castle through the avenue of splendid oaks which led up to it. Faversham was walking beside her. He had overtaken her at the beginning of the avenue, and had sent on his motor that he might have the pleasure of her society.

The daintiness of her white dress, with all its pretty details, the touch of blue in her hat, and at her waist, delighted his eyes. It pleased him that there was not a trace in her of Bohemian carelessness in these respects. Everything was simple, but everything was considered. She knew her own beauty; that was clear. It gave her self-possession; but, so far as he could see, without a trace of conceit. He had never met a young girl with whom he could talk so easily.

She had greeted him with her most friendly smile. But it seemed to him nevertheless that she was a little pensive and overcast.

"You dined here last night?" he asked her. "Did the lion roar properly?"

"Magnificently. You weren't there?"

"No. Undershaw put down his foot. I shan't submit much longer!"

"You're really getting strong?"

Her kind eyes considered him. He had often marveled that one so young should be mistress of such a look--so softly frank and unafraid.

"A Hercules! Besides, the work's so interesting, one's no time to think of one's game leg!"

"You're getting to know the estate?"

"I've been motoring about it for a fortnight, that's something for a beginning. And I've got plenty of things to tell you."

He plunged into them. It was evident that he was resuming topics familiar to them both. Their talk indeed showed them already intimate, sharers in a common enterprise, where she was often inspiration, and he executive and practical force. Ever since, indeed, she had said to him with that kindled, eager look--"Accept! Accept!"--he had been sharply aware of how best to approach, to attract her. She was, it seemed, no mere passive girl. She was in her measure a thinker--a character. He perceived in her--deep down--enthusiasms and compassions, that seemed often as though they shook her beyond her strength. They made him uncomfortable; they were strange to his own mind; and yet they moved and influenced him. During the short time, for instance, that she had lived in their midst, she had made friends everywhere--so he discovered--among these Cumbria folk. She never harangued about them; a few words, a few looks, burning from an inward fire--these expressed her: as when, twice, he had met her at dusk, with the aspect of a wounded spirit, coming out of hovels that he himself must now be ashamed of, since they were Melrose's hovels.

"I've just come from Mainstairs," he said to her abruptly, as the house in front drew nearer.

The colour rushed into Lydia's cheeks.

"Are you going to put that right?"

"I'm going to try. I've been talking to your old friend Dobbs. I saw his poor daughter, and I went into most of the cottages."

Somewhat to his dismay he saw the delicate face beside him quiver, and the eyes cloud. But the emotion was driven back.

"You're too late--for Bessie!" she said--how sadly! The accent touched him.

"The girl is really dying? Was it diphtheria?"

"She has been dying for months--and in such _pain_."

"It is paralysis?"

"After diphtheria. Did they show you the graves in the churchyard?--they call it the Innocents' Corner. Thirty children died in that village last year and the year before."

There was silence a little.

"I wonder what I can do," said Faversham, at last, reflectively. "I have been working out a number of new proposals--and I submit them to Mr. Melrose to-night."

She looked wistfully at the speaker.

"Good luck! But Mr. Melrose is hard to move."

Faversham assented.

"The hope lies in his being now an old man--and anxious to get rid of responsibilities. I shall try to show him that bad citizenship costs more money than good."

"I hope--oh! I _hope_--you'll succeed!" she said fervently. Her emotion infected him. He smiled down upon her.

"That ought to make me succeed! But of course I have no experience. I am a townsman."

"You've always been a Londoner?"

"Practically, always. But I was tired of London before all this happened--dying to get out of it."

And he began a short account of himself, more intimate than any he had yet given her; to which Lydia listened with her open, friendly look, perhaps a little shyer than before. And so different, instinctively, is the way in which a man will tell his story to a woman, from that in which he tells it to a man, that the same half-ironic, half-bitter narrative which had repelled Tatham, attracted Lydia. Her sympathy rose at once to meet it. He was an orphan, and till now lonely and unsuccessful; tormented, too, by unsatisfied ideals and ambitions. Her imagination was pitiful and quick; she imagined she understood. She liked his frankness; it flattered and touched her. She liked his deep rich voice, and his dark face, with its lean strength, and almost southern colour. During his illness he had grown a small peaked beard, and it pleased her artistic sense, by giving him a look of Cardinal Richelieu--as that great man stood figured in an old French print she had picked up once in a box on the Paris quays. Moreover his friendship offered her so much fresh knowledge of the world and life. Here, again, was comradeship. She was lucky indeed. Harry Tatham--and now this clever, interesting man, entering on his task. It was a great responsibility. She would not fail either of her new friends! They knew--she had made--she would make it quite plain, that she was not setting her cap at either. Wider insights, fresh powers, honourable, legitimate powers, for her sex--it was these she was after.

In all all this Lydia was perfectly sincere. But the Comic Spirit sitting aloft took note.

They paused a moment on the edge of the plateau on which the house stood--the ground breaking from it to the west. A group of cottages appeared amid the woods far away.

"If all estates were like this estate!" cried Lydia, pointing to them, "and all cottages like their cottages!"

Faversham flushed and stiffened.

"Oh! the Tathams are always perfection!"

Lydia's eyebrows lifted.

"It is a crime?"

"No--but one hears too much of it."

"Not from them!" The tone was indignant.

"I daresay."

Suddenly, he threw her a look which startled her. She descended from her pony-cart at the steps of the castle, her breath fluttering a little. What had happened?

"Her ladyship is in the garden," said the footman who received them. And he led the way through a door in the wall of the side court. They followed--in a constrained silence. Lydia felt puzzled, and rather angry.

Faversham recovered himself.

"I apologize! They have all the virtues."

His voice was lowered--for her ear; there was deference in his smile. But somehow Lydia was conscious of a note of stormy self-assertion in him, which was new to her; something strong and stubborn, which refused to take her lead as usual.

Lady Tatham advanced. The eyes of a group of people sitting in a circle under the shade of a spreading yew tree turned toward them.

Boden, who had given Faversham a perfunctory greeting, fell back into his chair again, and watched the new agent's reception with coolly smiling eyes.

Tatham came hurrying up to greet them. No one but Lydia could have distinguished any change in the boyish voice and look. But it was there. She felt it.

He turned from her to Faversham.

"Awfully glad to see you. Hope you're quite fit again."

"Very nearly all right, thank you."

"Are you actually at work? Great excitement everywhere about you!"

Tatham stood, with his straw hat tilted toward the back of his head, and his hands on his sides, observing his guest.

Faversham shrugged his shoulders.

"I feel horribly nervous!"

"Well you may!" laughed Tatham. "Never mind. We'll all back you up, if you'll let us."

"As far as I am concerned--the smallest contributions thankfully received. Who are these people here?"

Tatham introduced him.

Then to Lydia:

"Delorme is waiting for you." He carried her off.

By this time Mr. Andover, the old grizzled squire who had been Lydia's partner at dinner the night before, had dropped in, and various other residents from the neighbourhood. They gathered eagerly round Faversham, in the deep shade of the yews.

And before long, the new man had produced an excellent first impression upon these country gentlemen who were now to be his neighbours. It was evident that he was anxious to remove grievances. His tone as to his employer was guarded, but not at all servile; and he made the impression of a man of ability accustomed to business, though modestly avowing his ignorance of rural affairs; independent, yet anxious to do his best with a great trust.

After half an hour's discussion, Barton drew Victoria aside, and said to her excitedly that the new agent was "a capital fellow!"

"He'll do the job, you'll see! Melrose is breaking up--thank God! Every one who's seen him lately says he's not half the man he was. He'll have to give this fellow a free hand. That estate has been a plague-spot! But we'll get it cleared up now."

Victoria wondered. Secretly, she doubted the power of any man to manage Melrose even _moriturus_.

Meanwhile it had not escaped her that the new agent and Lydia Penfold had arrived together. It had struck her also that their manner toward each other, as she went to meet them, had been the manner of persons just emerged from a somewhat intimate conversation. And she already perceived the nascent jealousy in Harry.

Well, no doubt the agent also was to be practised on by these newfangled arts. For no girl could have had the audacity to make the compact Lydia Penfold had made with Harry, if she were already in love with another man! No. Faversham, it was plain, would be the next added to her train. Victoria beheld the golden-haired creature as the modern Circe, surrounded by troops of ex-suitors--lovers transmogrified to Friends--docile at the heel of the sorceress. You took your chance, received your "No," and subsided cheerfully into the pen. Victoria vowed to herself that her Harry should do nothing of the kind!

She looked round her for the presumptuous maiden. There she was, under a fountain wall in the Italian garden, her white dress gleaming from the warm shadow in which the stone was steeped; Delorme, with an easel, in front. He was making a rapid charcoal sketch of her, and she was sitting daintily erect, talking and smiling at intervals. A little way off, a group of people, critical observers of the proceeding, lounged on the grass or in garden chairs; among them, Tatham. And as he sat watching the sitting, his hat drawn forward over his brow and eyes, although he chatted occasionally with Mrs. Manisty beside him, his mother was miserably certain that he was in truth alive to nothing but the white vision under the wall--the delicate three-quarter face, with its pointed chin, and the wisps of gold hair blowing about the temples.

And the owner of the face! Was she quite unmoved by a situation which might, Victoria felt, have strained the nerves even of the experienced?

A slight incident seemed to show that she was not unmoved. Lydia had shown a keen, girlish pleasure in the prospect of sitting to Delorme, the god, professionally, of her idolatry. Yet the sketch, for that afternoon, came to nothing. For after an hour's sitting Delorme, as usual, became restless and excited, exclaimed at the difficulty of the subject, cursed the light, and finally, in a fit of disgust, wiped out everything he had done. Lydia rose from her seat, looking rather white, and threw a strange, appealing glance--the mother caught it--at her young host. Tatham sprang up, released her instantly and peremptorily, though Delorme implored for another half-hour. Lydia, unheard by the artist, gave soft thanks to her deliverer, and, presently, there they were--she and Harry--strolling up and down the rose-alleys together, as though nothing, absolutely nothing, had happened.

And yet Harry had only asked her to marry him the night before, and she had only refused! Impossible to suppose that it was the mere plotting of the finished coquette. This lover required neither teasing nor kindling.

However, there it was. This little struggling artist had refused Harry; and she had refused Duddon.

For one could not be so absurd as to ignore _that_. Victoria, sitting in the shade beside Lady Barbara, who had gone to sleep, looked dreamily round on the rose-red pile of building, on the great engirdling woods, the hills, the silver reaches of river--interwoven now with the dark tree-masses, now with glades of sunlit pasture. Duddon was one of the great possessions of England. And this slip of a girl, with her home-made blouses, and her joy in making twenty pounds out of her drawings, wherewith to pay the rent, had put it aside, apparently without a moment's hesitation. Magnanimity--or stupidity?

The next moment Victoria was despising her own amazement. "One takes one's own lofty feelings for granted--but never other people's! She says she doesn't love him--and that's the reason. And I straightway don't believe her. What snobs we all are! One's astonishment betrays one's standard. Gerald says, 'What have the poor to do with fine feelings?' and I detest him for it. But I'm no better."

Suddenly, on the other side of the yew hedge behind her--voices. Harry and Lydia Penfold, in eager and laughing discussion. And all at once a name reached her ears:

"Lydia"--pronounced rather shyly, in Tatham's voice.

"_Lydia!"_ No doubt by the bidding of the young lady.

"I did not know I was so old-fashioned," thought Lady Tatham indignantly.

Yet the tone in which the name was given was neither caressing nor tender. It simply meant, of course, that the young woman was breaking him in to her ideas; her absurd ideas, from which Harry must be protected.

They emerged from the shrubbery and came toward her. Lydia timidly approached Victoria. With Tatham she had not apparently been timid. But for his mother she was all deference.

"Isn't there a flower-show here to-morrow? May Susan and I come and help?"

The speaker raised her eyes to Lady Tatham, and Victoria read in them something beautiful and appealing, that at once moved and angered her. The girl seemed to offer her heart to Tatham's mother.

"_I can't marry your son!--but let me love you--be your friend!--the friend of both_."

Was that what it meant?

What could Victoria do? There was Harry hovering in the background, with that eager, pale look. She was helpless. Mechanically she said, "We shall be delighted--grateful. I will send for you."

Thenceforward, however, Lydia allowed Tatham no more private speech with her. She made herself agreeable to all Victoria's guests in turn. Delorme fell head over ears in love with her, so judicious, yet so evidently sincere were the flatteries she turned upon him, and so docile her consent to another sitting. Sweet, grave Lucy Manisty watched her with fascination. The Manisty boy dragged her to the Long Pond, to show her the water-beasts there, as the best way of marking his approval. Colonel Barton forgot politics to chat with her; and the mocking speculation in Cyril Boden's eyes gradually softened, as the girl's charm and beauty penetrated, little by little, through all the company.

Faversham alone seemed to have no innings with her till he was about to take his departure. Then Victoria noticed that Lydia made a quick movement toward him, and they stood together a few minutes, talking--certainly not as strangers.

Gerald Tatham also noticed it. There were few things, within his powers, that he left unnoticed.

"Now _that_ would be suitable!" he said in Lady Barbara's ear, nodding toward the pair. "You saw how they came in together. But of course it's a blind. Any one with half an eye can see that she's just fishing for Harry!"

XII

Faversham sped home through the winding Cumbrian lanes, driven by the new chauffeur just imported from Manchester. The hedges were thick with meadow-sweet and its scent, mingled with that of new-mown hay, hung in the hot, still air. In front of him the Ullswater mountains showed dimly blue. It was a country he was beginning to love. His heart rose to it.

Small wonder in that! For here, in this northern landscape, so strange to him but three months ago, he had first stumbled on Success--and he had first met Lydia.

Was there any chance for him? Through all his talks with the country neighbours, or with Lady Tatham, he had been keenly on the watch for anything that might show him what Lydia's position in the Duddon Castle circle actually was. That Tatham was in love with her was clear. Mrs. Penfold's chatter as to the daily homage paid by the castle to the cottage, through every channel--courtesies or gifts--that the Tathams' delicacy could invent, or the Penfolds' delicacy accept, had convinced him on that point. And Faversham had seen for himself at Duddon that Tatham hung upon her every movement and always knew where she was and to whom she was talking; nor had the long conversation in the rose-walk escaped him.

Well, of course, in the case of any other girl in the world than Lydia, such things would be conclusive. Who was likely to refuse Tatham, plus the Tatham estates? But unless he had mistaken her altogether--her detachment, her unworldliness, her high spirit--Lydia Penfold was not the girl to marry an estate. And if Tatham himself had touched her heart--"would she have allowed me the play with her that she has done this last fortnight?" She would have been absorbed, preoccupied; and she had been neither. He thought of her kind eyes, her frank, welcoming ways, her intense interest in his fortunes. Impossible--if she were in love with or on the point of an engagement to Harry Tatham.

She had forgiven him for his touch of jealous ill-temper! As they stood together at the last in the Duddon garden, she had said, "I _must_ hear about to-night! send me a word!" And he carried still, stamped upon his mind, the vision of her--half shy, half eager--looking up.

For the rest, the passion that was rapidly rising in the veins of a man full of life and will, surprised the man himself, excited in him a new complacency and self-respect. For years he had said to himself that he could only marry money. He remembered with a blush one or two rather sordid steps in that direction--happily futile. But Lydia was penniless; and he could make her rich. For his career was only beginning; and on wealth, the wealth which is power, he was more than ever determined.

A turn in the road brought Threlfall into view. The new agent sat with folded arms, gazing at the distant outline, and steadily pulling himself together to meet the ordeal of the evening. It was by Melrose's own wish he had drawn up a careful scheme of the alterations and improvements which seemed to him imperatively necessary in the financial interests of the estate; and he had added to it a statement--very cautious and diplomatic--of the various public and private quarrels in which Melrose was now concerned, with suggestions as to what could be done to straighten them out. With regard to two or three of them litigation was already going on; had, indeed, been going on interminably. Faversham was certain that with a little good-will and a very moderate amount of money he could settle the majority of them in a week.

So far Melrose had been fairly amenable--had given a curt assent, for instance, to the conditions on which Faversham had proposed to relet two of the vacant farms, and to one or two other changes. But Faversham realized that he possessed no true knowledge of the old man's mind and temperament. Exultant though he often felt in his new office, and the preposterously large salary attached to it, he reminded himself constantly that he trod on unsure ground. Once or twice he had been conscious of a strange sense as of some couchant beast beside him ready to spring; also of some curious weakening and disintegration in Melrose, even since he had first known him. He seemed to be more incalculable, less to be depended on. His memory was often faulty, and his irritability hardly sane.

Faversham indeed was certain, from his own observation, that the mere excitement of opening and exploring the huge collections he had accumulated, during these twenty years, in the locked rooms of the house, had imposed a sharp nervous strain on a man now past seventy, who for all the latter part of his life had taken no exercise and smoked incessantly.

Supposing he were suddenly to fall ill and die--what would happen to the house and its collections, or to the immense fortune, the proportions of which the new agent was now slowly beginning to appreciate? All sorts of questions with regard to the vanished wife and child were now rising insistently in Faversham's mind. Were they really dead, and if so, how and where? Once or twice, since his acceptance of the agency, Melrose had repeated to him with emphasis: "I am alone in the world." Dixon and his wife preserved an absolute silence on the subject, and loyalty to his employer forbade Faversham to question them or any other of Melrose's dependents. It struck him, indeed, that Mrs. Dixon had shown a curious agitation when, that morning, Faversham had conveyed to her Melrose's instructions to prepare a certain room on the first floor as the agent's future bedroom.

"Aye, sir, aye--but it wor Mrs. Melrose's room," she had said, looking down, her lip twitching a little, her old hands fumbling with the strings of her apron.

Faversham had asked uncomfortably whether there were not some other room in a less conspicuous part of the house to which he might be transferred, the once dismantled drawing-room being now wanted to house the fine things that were constantly coming to light. Mrs. Dixon shook her head. All the available rooms were still full of what she called "stoof." And then she had abruptly left him.

The light was fast failing as he approached the house. By the shearing away of trees and creeper, at least from all its central and eastern parts, Threlfall had now lost much of its savage picturesqueness; the formal garden within the forecourt had been to some extent restored; and the front door had received a coat or two of paint. But the whole of the west wing was still practically untouched. There they still were--the shuttered and overgrown windows. Faversham looked at them expectantly. The exploration of the house roused in him now the same kind of excitement that drives on the excavators of Delphi or Ephesus, or the divers for Spanish treasure. He and Melrose had already dug out so many precious things--things many of them which had long sunk below the surface of the old man's memory--that heaven only knew what might turn up. The passion of adventure ran high; he longed to be at the business again and was sorry to think it must some day have an end.

That broken window, for instance, now widely open in the west wing, was the window of the room they had forced on the previous day. In general, Melrose possessed some rough record of the contents of the locked rooms, and their labelled keys; but in this case both record and label had been lost. A small amount of violence, however, had sufficed to open the half-rotten door. Inside--thick darkness, save for one faint gleam through a dilapidated shutter. As Faversham advanced, groping into the room, there was a sudden scurry of mice, and a sudden flapping of something in a corner, which turned out to be a couple of bats. When he made for the window, dense cobwebs brushed against his face, and half the shutter on which he laid his hand came away at his touch and lay in fragments at his feet. The rain had come in for twenty years through a broken pane, and had completely rotted the wood. Strange noises in the chimney showed that owls had built there; and as the shutter fell a hideous nest of earwigs was disturbed, and ran hither and thither over the floor.

And when Faversham turned to look at the contents of the room, he saw Melrose in his skullcap, poking about among a medley of black objects on the floor and in a open cupboard, his withered cheeks ghastly in the sudden daylight.

"What are they?" asked Faversham, wondering.

"Silver," was the sharp reply. "Some of the finest things known."

And from the filthy cupboard Melrose's shaking hand had drawn out a ewer and basin, whence some ragged coverings fell away. It was almost entirely black; but the exquisite work of it--the spiral fluting of the ewer, its shell-like cover, the winged dragon on the handle, and, round the oval basin, the rim of chasing dolphins, could still be seen.

"That came from the Wolfgang sale--I gave six hundred for it. It's worth six thousand now--you can't find such a piece anywhere. Ah! by George!"--with a stifled shout--"and that's the Demidoff tazza!"--as Faversham lifted up a thing lying in a half-open box that might have been ebony--a shallow cup on a stem, with a young vine-crowned Bacchus for a handle. Melrose took it eagerly, put up his eyeglass, and, rubbing away with his handkerchief, searched for the mark. "There it is!--a Caduceus and 1620. And the signature--see!--'A.D. Viana.' There was a cup signed by Viana sold last week at Christie's--fetched a fabulous sum! Every single thing in this room is worth treble and quadruple what I gave for it. Talk of investments! There are no such investments as works of art. Buy 'em, I say--lock 'em up--and forget 'em for twenty years!"

With much labour, they had at last ranged the most important pieces on some trestle tables and in the cupboards of the room. A number of smaller boxes and packages still remained to be looked through. Faversham, by Melrose's directions, had written to a London firm of dealers in antique silver, directing them to send down two of their best men to clean, mend, and catalogue. Proper glazed cupboards, baize-lined, were to be put up along each side of the room; the room itself was to be repaired, whitened, and painted. Faversham already foresaw the gleaming splendour of the show, when all should be done, and these marvels of a most lovely art--these silver nymphs and fauns, these dainty sea-horses and dolphins, these temples and shrines, now holding a Hercules, now a St. Sebastian, these arabesques, garlands, festoons, running in a riot of beauty over the surface of cup and salver--had been restored to daylight and men's sight, after the burial of a generation.

But the value of what the house contained! In these days of huge prices and hungry buyers, it must be simply enormous.

Faversham often found himself speculating eagerly upon it, and always with the query in the background "For _whom_ is it all piling up?"

As they left the silver room, Melrose had made the grim remark that the contents of that room alone would make it prudent to let loose an extra couple of bloodhounds in the park at night. Dixon's frowning countenance as he followed in their wake showed an answering anxiety. For he had now been made guardian of the collections; and a raw nephew of his, chosen apparently for his honesty and his speechlessness, had been put on as manservant, Mrs. Dixon had two housemaids under her, and a girl in the kitchen. It was sometimes evident to Faversham that the agitation of these changes which had come so suddenly upon them, had aged the two old servants, just as it had tried their master.

Faversham on dismounting was told by Joseph, the new man, that Mr. Melrose would dine alone, but would be glad to see Mr. Faversham in the library after dinner.

Faversham made a quick and sparing meal in his own room, and then adjourning to his newly furnished office ran eagerly through the various papers and proposals which he had to lay before his employer.

As he did so, he was more conscious than ever before of the enormity of Melrose's whole career as a landowner. The fact was that the estate had been for years a mere field for the display of its owner's worst qualities--caprice, miserliness, jealous or vindictive love of power. The finance of it mattered nothing to him. Had he been a poorer man his landed property might have had a chance; he would have been forced to run it more or less on business lines. But his immense income came to him apparently from quite other sources--mines, railways, foreign investments; and with all the human relations involved in landowning he was totally unfit to deal.

Hence these endless quarrels with his tenants to whom he never allowed a lease; these constant evictions; these litigations as to improvements, compensation, and heaven knows what. The land was naturally of excellent quality, and many a tenant came in with high hopes, only to find that the promises on the strength of which he had taken his farm were never fulfilled, and that if it came to lawyers, Melrose generally managed "to best it." Hence, too, the rotten, insanitary cottages--maintained, Faversham could almost swear, for the mere sake of defying the local authorities and teaching "those Socialist fools" a lesson. Hence the constant charges of persecution for political reasons; and hence, too, this bad case of the Brands, which had roused such a strong and angry sympathy in the neighbourhood that Faversham felt the success of his own regime must be endangered unless some means could be found, compatible with Melrose's arrogance, of helping the ruined family.

Well, there in those clear typewritten sheets, lay his suggestions for dealing with these various injustices and infamies. They were moderate. Expensive for the moment, they would be economical in the long run. He had given them his best brains and his hardest work. And he had taken the best advice. But they meant, no doubt, a complete change in the administration and _personnel_ of the estate.

Faversham stepped into the garden, and, hanging over the low wall which edged the sandstone cliff, he looked out over the gorge of the river, across the woods, into the ravines and gullies of the fells. Mountain and wood stood dark against a saffron sky. In the dim blue above it Venus sailed. A light wind stirred the trees and the stream. Along the river meadows he could hear the cows munching and see their dusky forms moving through a thin mist. The air was amethyst and gold, and the beautiful earth shone through it, ennobled by the large indistinctness, the quiet massing of the evening tones.

His heart withdrew itself into some inner shrine where it might be with Lydia. She represented to him some force, some help, to which he turned.

Please God, he would win her!--and through a piece of honourable work--the cleansing of an ugly corner of human life. A nobler ambition than he had ever yet been conscious of, entered in. He felt himself a better man, with a purpose in the world.

Nor, at this critical moment, did he forget his uncle--the man who had been a father to him in his orphaned boyhood. What pleasure the dear old fellow would have taken in this new opening--and in Melrose's marvellous possessions! By the way--Melrose had said nothing about the gems for a long time past, and Faversham was well content to leave them in his temporary keeping. But his superstitious feeling about them--and all men have some touch of superstition--was stronger than ever. It was as though he protested anew to some hovering shape, which took the aspect now of Mackworth, now of Fortuna--"Stand by me!--even as I hold by them."

The chiming clock in the gallery--a marvel of French _horlogerie_, made for the Regent Orleans--had just finished striking eleven. Melrose, who had been speaking with energy through the soft, repeated notes, threw himself back in his chair, and lit a cigarette. His white hair shone against the panelled background of the room, and, beneath it, framed in bushy brows still black, a pair of menacing eyes fixed themselves on Faversham.

Faversham remained for a minute at the table, looking down upon it, his hand resting on the document from which he had been reading. Then he too pushed his chair slowly backward, and looked up.

"I understand then, Mr. Melrose, that these proposals of mine do not meet with your approval?"

"I have told you what I approve."

"You have approved a few matters--of minor importance. But my chief proposals"--he ran his finger lightly over the pages of his memorandum, enumerating the various headings--"these, if I have understood you correctly, are not to your mind, and you refuse to sanction them?"

The face before him was as iron.

"Let half these things wait, I tell you, and they will settle themselves. I pointed out to you when we made our bargain, that I would not have my estate run on any damned Socialist principles."

Faversham smiled; but he had grown very pale. "Your financial profit, Mr. Melrose, and the business management of your property have been my sole concern."

"I am sure that you think so. But as to what is profit and what is business, you must allow me to be the final judge."

Faversham thought a moment, then rose, and walked quietly up and down the length of the room, his hands in his pockets. The old man watched him, his haughty look and regular features illuminated by the lamp beside him. In front of him was the famous French table, crowded as usual with a multitude of miscellaneous _objets d'art_, conspicuous among them a pair of Tanagra figures, white visions of pure grace, amid the dusty confusion of their surroundings.

Suddenly Melrose flung his cigarette vehemently away.

"Faversham! Don't be a fool! I have something to say to you a deal more important than this damned nonsense!" He struck his hand on the open memorandum.

Faversham turned in astonishment.

"Sit down again!" said Melrose peremptorily, "and listen to me. I desire to put things as plainly and simply as possible. But I must have all your attention."

Faversham sat down. Melrose was now standing, his hands on the back of the chair from which he had risen.

"I have just made my will," he said abruptly. "Tomorrow I hope to sign it. It depends on you whether I sign it or not."

As the speaker paused, Faversham, leaning back and fronting him, grew visibly rigid. An intense and startled expectancy dawned in his face; his lips parted.

"My will," Melrose continued, in a deliberately even voice, "concerns a fortune of rather more--than a million sterling--allowing little or nothing for the contents of this house. I inherited a great deal, and by the methods I have adopted--not the methods, my dear Faversham, I may say, that you have been recommending to me to-night. I have more than doubled it. I have given nothing away to worthless people, and no sloppy philanthropies have stood between me and the advantages to which my knowledge and my brains entitled me. Hence these accumulations. Now, the question is, what is to be done with them? I am alone in the world. I have no interest whatever in building universities, or providing free libraries, or subsidizing hospitals. I didn't make the world, and I have never seen why I should spend my energies in trying to mend what the Demiurge has made a mess of. In my view the object of everybody should be to _live_, as acutely as possible--to get as many sensations, as many pleasant reactions as possible--out of the day. Some people get their sensations--or say they do--out of fussing about the poor. Forty years ago I got them out of politics--or racing--or high play. For years past, as you know, I have got them out of collecting works of art--and fighting the other people in the world who want the same things that I do. Perfectly legitimate in my belief! I make no apology whatever for my existence. Well, now then, I begin to be old--don't interrupt me--I don't like it, but I recognize the fact. I have various ailments. Doctors are mostly fools; but I admit that in my case they may be right; though I intend to live a good while yet in spite of them. Still--there it is--who is to have this money--and these collections? Sooner than let any rascally Chancellor of the Exchequer get at them, I would leave them to Dixon. But I confess I think Dixon would be embarrassed to know what to do with them. I don't think I possess a single relation that I don't dislike. So now we come to the point. With your leave--and by your leave--I propose to leave the money and the collections--to you!" The young man--flushed and staring--half rose in his chair.

"To _me_? What can you possibly mean, sir?"

"Precisely what I say. On conditions, of course. It depends on yourself. But you were brought into this house by a strange chance--you happen to suit me--to interest me. 'Provvy' as Bentham would say, seems to point to you. Here--in this drawer"--he brought his hand down strongly on the writing table--"is a will which I wrote last night. It leaves the whole of my property to you, subject to certain directions as to the works of art--to a provision for old Dixon, and so on. You can't witness it, of course, nor can Dixon; otherwise it might be signed to-night. But if we come to an understanding to-night, I can sign it to-morrow morning and get a couple of men from the farm to witness it. I think I can promise to live so long!"

There was silence. With an uncertain, swaying movement Melrose returned to his chair. The physical weakness betrayed by the action was strangely belied, however, by his imperious aspect, as of an embodied Will. His eyes never left Faversham, even while he rested heavily on the table before him for support.

Suddenly, Faversham, who had been sitting pale and motionless, looked up.

"Mr. Melrose--have you no natural heirs?"

Melrose could not altogether disguise the shock of the question. He threw himself back, however, with a smile.

"You have been listening I see to the stories that people tell."

Faversham bent forward and spoke earnestly: "I understand that your wife and child left you twenty years ago. Are they still living?"

Melrose shrugged his shoulders. "Whether they are or not, really matters nothing at all either to you or me: Mrs. Melrose left this house of her own free will. That ended the connection between us. In any case, you need have no alarm. There is no entail--even were there a son, and there never was a son. I do what I will with my own. There is no claim on me--there would be no claim on you."

"There must be--there would be--a moral claim!"

The colour rushed into Melrose's face. He drummed the table impatiently.

"We will not, if you please, argue the matter, which is for me a _chose jugée_. And no one who wishes to remain a friend of mine"--he spoke with emphasis--"will ever attempt to raise ghosts that are better left in their graves. I repeat--my property is unencumbered--my power to deal with it absolute. I propose to make you my heir--on conditions. The first is"--he looked sombrely and straight at his companion--"that I should not be harassed or distressed by any such references as those you have just made."

Faversham made no sound. His chin was propped on his hand, and his eyes pursued the intricacies of a silver cup studded with precious stones which stood on the table beside him. He thought, "The next condition will be--the gems."

"The second," Melrose resumed, after a somewhat long pause, and with a sarcastic intonation, "is that you should resist the very natural temptation of exhibiting me to the world as a penitent and reformed character. In that document you have just read you suggest to me--first, that I should retire from three lawsuits in which, whatever other people may think, I conceive that I have a perfectly good case; second"--he ticked the items off on the long tapering finger of his left hand--"that I should rebuild a score or two of cottages it would not pay me to rebuild--in which I force no one to live--and which I shall pull down when it pleases me, just to teach a parcel of busybodies to mind their own business; third--that I should surrender, hands down, to a lot of trumpery complaints and grievances got up partly to spite a landlord, partly to get money out of him; and fourthly--with regard to the right of way--that I should let that young prig Tatham, a lad just out of the nursery, dictate to me, bring the whole country about my ears, and browbeat me out of my rights. Now--I warn you--I shall do none of these things!"

The speaker paused a moment, and then turned impetuously on his companion.

"Have you any reason so far to complain of my conduct toward you?"

"Complain? You have been only too amazingly, incredibly generous."

Melrose's hand made a disdainful movement.

"I did what suited me. And I told you, to begin with, it would _not_ suit me to run my estate as though it were a University Settlement. Handle me gently--that's all. You've had your way about some of the farms--you'll get it no doubt with regard to others. But don't go about playing the reformer--on this dramatic scale!--at my expense. I don't believe in this modern wish-wash; and I don't intend to don the white sheet."

He rose, and lighting another cigarette, he dropped a log on the fire, and stood with his back to it, quietly smoking. But his eyes were all fierce life under the dome of his forehead, and his hand shook a little.

Faversham sat absolutely still. Rushing through his veins was the sense of something incredible and intoxicating. The word "million" rang in his ears. He was conscious of the years behind him--their poverty, their thwarted ambitions, their impotent discontent. And suddenly the years before him lit up; all was possible; all was changed. Yet as he sat there his pulses hurrying, words coming to his lips which dropped away again, he became conscious of two or three extremely sharp visualizations.

A room in one of the Mainstairs cottages, containing a bed, and on it a paralyzed girl, paralyzed after diphtheria--the useless hands--the vacant, miserable look--other beds in the same room filling it up--the roof so low that it seemed to be crushing down on the girl--holes in the thatch rudely mended.

Again--a corner in the Mainstairs churchyard, filled with small, crowded graves, barely grass-grown; the "Innocents' Corner."

And again, a wretched one-roomed cottage in the same row of hovels, kitchen, bedroom, and living-room in one, mud-floored, the outer door opening into it, the bed at the back, and an old husband and wife, crippled with rheumatism, sitting opposite each other on a day of pouring rain, shivering in the damp and the draughts.

Then, driving these out--the face of Colonel Barton with its blunt, stupid kindliness, and that whole group at Duddon, welcoming the new man, believing in him, ready to help him, with the instinctive trust of honest folk.

And last, but flashing through all the rest, Lydia's eyes--the light in them--and the tones of her voice--"You'll do it!--you'll do it!--you'll set it all right!"

He perfectly realized at that moment--before the brain had begun to refine on the situation--what was asked of him. He was to be Melrose's tool and accomplice in all that Melrose's tyrannical caprice chose to do with the lives of human beings; he was to forfeit the respect of good men; he was to make an enemy of Harry Tatham; and he was to hurt--and possibly alienate--Lydia.

And the price of it was a million.

He rose rather heavily to his feet, and gathered up his papers--a slim and comely figure amid the queer medley of the room.

"I must have some time to think about what you have said to me, Mr. Melrose. You've taken my breath away--you won't be surprised at that."

Melrose smiled grimly.

"Not at all. That's natural! Very well then--we meet to-morrow morning. Before eleven o'clock the will must be either signed--or cancelled. And for the present--please!--silence!"

They exchanged good-nights. Melrose looked oddly after the young man, as the door closed.

"He took it well. I suppose he's been sitting up nights over that precious memorandum. He was to be the popular hero, and I the 'shocking example.' Well, he'll get over it. I think--I have--both him--and the Medusa. And what does the will matter to me? Any one may have the gear, when I can't have it. But I'll not be dictated to--_this_ side of the Styx!"

Faversham wandered out once more into the summer night. A little path along the cliff took him down to the riverside, and he paced beside the dimly shining water, overhung by the black shadow of the woods. When he returned to the Tower, just as the light was altering, and the chill of dawn beginning, a long process of tumultuous reflection had linked the mood of the preceding evening to the mood of this new day, and of the days that were to follow. He had determined on his answer to Melrose; and he was exultantly sure of his power to deal with the future. The scruples and terrors of the evening were gone. His intelligence rose to his task.

This old man, already ill, liable at any moment to the accidents of age, and still madly absorbed, to the full extent of his powers and his time, in the pursuits of connoisseurship--what could he really do in the way of effective supervision of his agent? A little tact, a little prudent maneuvering; some money here, possibly out of his, Faversham's, own pocket; judicious temporizing there; white lying when necessary--a certain element of intrigue in Faversham rose to the business with alacrity. In the pride of his young brain and his recovered strength he did not regard it as possible that he should fail in it. After all, the law was now squeezing Melrose; and might be gently and invisibly assisted. If, as to the will itself, his lips were sealed, it would be possible to give some hint to Lydia, for friendship to interpret; to plead with her for patience, in view of the powers, the beneficent powers, that must be his--aye and hers--the darling!--some day.

The thought of them was intoxicating! A man to whom wealth had always appeared as the only gate of opportunity, was now to be rich beyond the utmost dream of his ambition. The world lay at his feet. He would use it well; he would do all things honourably. Ease, travel, a political career, wide influence, the possession of beautiful things--in a very short time they would all be in his grasp; for Melrose was near his end. Some difficulty first, but not too much; the struggle that leads to the prize!

As he softly let himself in at the side door of the Tower, and mounted to his new room, his whole nature was like a fiercely sped arrow, aflight for its goal. Of what obstacles might lie between him and his goal he had ceased to take account. Compunctions had disappeared.

Only--once--as he stood dreamily looking round the strange bedroom to which his personal possessions had been transferred, an image crossed his mind which was disagreeable. It was that of Nash, the shady solicitor in Pengarth, Melrose's factotum in many disreputable affairs, and his agent in the ruin of the Brands. A little reptile if ever there was one! Faversham had come across the creature a good deal since his appointment as agent; and was well aware that he had excited Nash's jealousy and dislike. A man to be guarded against no doubt; but what could he do? Faversham contemptuously dismissed the thought of him.

A charming old room!--though the height and the dark tone of the oak panelling sucked all the light from his pair of candles. That would be altered as soon as the electric installation, for which Melrose had just signed the contract, was complete. In the centre of the wall opposite the window, through which a chill dawn was just beginning to penetrate, stood a fine _armoire_ of carved Norman work. Faversham went to look at it, and vaguely opened one of its drawers.

There was something at the back of the drawer, a picture, apparently an old photograph, lying face downward. He drew it out, and looked at it.

He beheld a young and rather pretty woman, with a curiously flat head, staring black eyes, and sharp chin. She had a child on her knee of about a year old, an elf with delicately proud features, and a frowning, passionate look.

Who were they? The photograph was stained with age and damp; deep, too, in dust. From the woman's dress it must be a good many years old.

The answer suggested itself at once. He was now inhabiting Mrs. Melrose's room, which, according to Mrs. Dixon, had been closed for years, from the date of her flight. The photograph must have been hers; the child was hers--and Melrose's! The likeness indeed cried out.

He replaced the photograph, his mind absorbed in the excitement of its discovery. Where were they now--the forlorn pair? He had no doubt whatever that they were alive--at the old man's mercy, somewhere.