BOOK I

I

"Aye, it's a bit dampish," said Dixon, as he brought a couple more logs

to replenish a fire that seemed to have no heart for burning.

The absurd moderation of the statement irritated the person to whom it

was addressed.

"What I'm thinkin'"--said Mrs. Dixon, impatiently, as she moved to the

window--"is that they'll mappen not get here at all! The watter'll be

over t' road by Grier's mill. And yo' know varra well, it may be runnin'

too fasst to get t' horses through--an' they'd be three pussons inside,

an' luggage at top."

"Aye, they may have to goa back to Pengarth--that's varra possible."

"An' all t' dinner spoilin', an' t' fires wastin'--for nowt." The speaker

stood peering discontentedly into the gloom without: "But you'll not

trouble yoursen, Tammas, I daursay."

"Well, I'm not Godamighty to mak' t' rain gie over," was the man's

cheerful reply, as he took the bellows to the damp wood which lay feebly

crackling and fizzing on the wide hearth. His exertions produced a

spasmodic flame, which sent flickering tongues of light through the wide

spaces and shadows of the hall. Otherwise the deepening gloom of the

October evening was lightened only by the rays of one feebly burning lamp

standing apparently in a corridor or gallery just visible beyond a richly

pillared archway which led from the hall to the interior of the house.

Through this archway could be seen the dim ascending lines of a great

double staircase; while here and there a white carved doorway or cornice

glimmered from the darkness.

A stately Georgian house, built in a rich classical style, and dating

from 1740: so a trained eye would have interpreted the architectural and

decorative features faintly disclosed by lamp and fire. But the house and

its contents--the house and its condition--were strangely at war.

Everywhere the seemly lines and lovely ornament due to its original

builders were spoilt or obliterated by the sordid confusion to which some

modern owner had brought it. It was not a house apparently, so far as its

present use went, but a warehouse. There was properly speaking no

furniture in it; only a multitude of packing-cases, boxes of all shapes

and sizes, piled upon or leaning against each other. The hall was choked

with them, so that only a gangway a couple of yards wide was left,

connecting the entrance door with the gallery and staircase. And any one

stepping into the gallery, which with its high arched roof ran the whole

length of the old house, would have seen it also disfigured in the same

way. The huge deal cases stood on bare boards; the splendid staircase was

carpetless. Nothing indeed could have been more repellant than the

general aspect, the squalid disarray of Threlfall Tower, as seen from the

inside, on this dreary evening.

The fact impressed itself on Mrs. Dixon as she turned back from the

window toward her husband.

She looked round her sulkily.

"Well, I've done my best, Tammas, and I daursay yo' have too. But it's

not a place to bring a leddy to--an' that's the truth."

"Foaks mun please theirsels," said Dixon with the same studied mildness

as before. Then, having at last made the logs burn, as he hoped, with

some brightness, he proceeded to sweep up the wide stone hearth. "Is t'

rooms upstairs finished?"

"Aye--hours ago." His wife dropped with a weary gesture upon a chair near

the fire. "Tammas, yo' know it's a queer thing awthegither! What are they

coomin' here for at all?"

"Well, master's coom into t' property, an' I'm thinkin' it's nobbut his

dooty to coom an' see it. It's two year sen he came into 't; an' he's

done nowt but tak' t' rents, an' turn off men, an' clutter up t' house

wi' boxes, iver sense. It's time, I'm thinkin', as he did coom an' luke

into things a bit."

Thomas rose from his knees, and stood warming himself at the fire, while

he looked pensively round him. He was as tired as his wife, and quite as

mistrustful of what might be before them; but he was not going to confess

it. He was a lean and gaunt fellow, blue-eyed and broad-shouldered, of a

Cumbria type commonly held to be of Scandinavian origin. His eye was a

little wandering and absent, and the ragged gray whiskers which

surrounded his countenance emphasized the slight incoherence of its

expression. Quiet he was and looked. But his wife knew him for one of

the most incurably obstinate of men; the inveterate critic moreover of

everything and every one about him, beginning with herself. This trait of

his led her unconsciously to throw most of her remarks to him into the

form of questions, as offering less target to criticism than other forms

of statement. As for instance:

"Tammas, did yo' hear me say what I'd gotten from Mr. Tyson?"

"Aye."

"That the mistress was an Eye-talian."

"Aye--by the mother--an' popish, besides."

Mrs. Dixon sighed.

"How far 'ull it be to t' chapel at Scargill Fell?"

"Nine mile. She'll not be for takkin' much notice of her Sunday dooties

I'm thinkin'."

"An' yo' unnerstan' she'll be juist a yoong thing? An't' baby only juist

walkin'."

Dixon nodded. Suddenly there was a sound in the corridor--a girl's laugh,

and a rush of feet. Thomas started slightly, and his wife observed him as

sharply as the dim light permitted.

"Thyrza!" she raised her voice peremptorily. "What are you doing there?"

Another laugh, and the girl from whom it came ran forward into the

lamp-light, threading her way through the packing-cases, and followed by

a small fox-terrier who was jumping round her.

"Doin'? There's nowt more to do as I know on. An' I'm most droppin'."

So saying the girl jumped lightly on one of the larger packing-cases and

sat there, her feet dangling.

Mrs. Dixon looked at her with disapproval, but held her tongue. Thyrza

was not strictly her underling, though she was helping in the housework.

She was the daughter of the small farmer who had been for years the

tenant of part of the old house, and had only just been evicted in

preparation for the return of the owner of the property with his foreign

wife. If Thyrza were too much scolded she would take her ways home, and,

as her parents spoilt her, she would not be coerced into returning. And

how another "day-girl" was to be found in that remote place, where,

beyond the farm, a small house belonging to the agent, and a couple of

cottages, the nearest house to the Tower was at least three miles away,

Mrs. Dixon did not know.

"My word! what a night!" said Thyrza with another laugh a little stifled

by the sweets she had just transferred from her pocket to her mouth.

"They'll be drowned oot afore they get here."

As she spoke, a wild gust flung itself over the house, as though trying

its strength against the doors and windows, and the rain swished against

the panes.

"Are t' fires upstairs burnin' reet?" asked Mrs. Dixon severely. She had

already told Thyrza half a dozen times that day that such a greed for

sweet things as she displayed would ruin her digestion and her teeth; and

it ruffled a dictatorial temper to be taken no more notice of than if she

were a duck quacking in the farmyard.

"Aye, they're burnin'," said Thyrza, with a shrug. Then she looked round

her with a toss of her decidedly graceful head. "But it's a creepy old

place howivver. I'd not live here if I was paid. What does Muster Melrose

want wi' coomin' here? He's got lots o' money, Mr. Tyson says. He'll

nivver stay. What was the use o' turnin' father out, an' makkin' a lot o'

trouble?"

"This house is not a farmin' house," said Dixon slowly, surveying

the girl, as she sat on the packing-case swinging her feet, her

straw-coloured hair and pink cotton dress making a spot of pleasant

colour in the darkness as the lamp-light fell on them. "It's a house for

t' gentry."

"Well, then, t' gentry might clean it up an' put decent furnishin's into

't," said Thyrza defiantly. "Not a bit o' paperin' doon anywhere--juist

two three rooms colour-washed, as yo' med do 'em at t' workhouse. An'

that big hole in t' dinin'-room ceilin', juist as 'twas--and such shabby

sticks o' things upstairs an' down as I nivver see! I'll have a good

sight better when _I_ get married, I know!"

Contempt ran sharply through the girl's tone.

As she ceased speaking a step was heard in the corridor. Thyrza leapt to

the ground, Mrs. Dixon picked up her brush and duster, and Dixon resumed

his tending of the fire.

A man in a dripping overcoat and leggings pushed his way rapidly through

the cases, looking round him with an air of worried authority.

"I don't call that much of a fire, Dixon."

"I've been at it, sir, for near an hour."

"You've got some damp wood. What about the drawing-room?"

He threw open a door on the right. The others followed him in.

The open door revealed a room of singular architectural charm; an oval

room panelled in dark oak, with a stucco ceiling, in free Italianate

design. But within its stately and harmonious walls a single oil lamp, of

the cheapest and commonest pattern, emitting a strong smell of paraffin,

threw its light upon furniture, quite new, that most seaside lodgings

would have disdained; viz., a cheap carpet of a sickly brown, leaving

edges of bare boards between itself and the wainscot; an ugly "suite"

covered with crimson rep, such as only a third-rate shop in a small

provincial town could have provided; with a couple of tables, and a

"chiffonier," of the kind that is hawked on barrows in an East End

street.

Mr. Tyson looked at the room uneasily. He had done his best with the

ridiculous sum provided; but of course it was all wrong.

He passed on silently through a door in the wainscoting of the

drawing-room. The others again followed, Thyrza's mouth twitching with

laughter.

Another large room, almost dark, with a few guttering candles on the

table. Mrs. Dixon went hastily to the fire and stirred it up. Then a

dining-table spread for supper was seen, and a few chairs. Everything

here was as cheap and nasty as in the drawing-room, including the china

and glass on the table.

Thyrza pointed to the ceiling.

"That's a pity howivver!" she said. "Yo' might ha' had it mended up a

bit, Mr. Tyson. Why t' rats will be coomin' through!"

She spoke with the pert assurance of a pretty girl who is only playing

the servant "to oblige." The agent looked irritably at the ugly gap in

the fine tracing overhead, and then at Thyrza.

"Mind your own business, please, Miss Thyrza!" And he walked quickly on

toward a farther door.

Thyrza flushed, and made a face at him as he turned his back. The Dixons

followed the agent into the next room, Mrs. Dixon throwing behind her an

injunction to Thyrza to run upstairs and give a last look to the

bedrooms.

"Why isn't there a light here?" said the agent impatiently. He struck one

from some matches in his pocket, and Mrs. Dixon hastily brought a candle

from a huge writing-table standing in the middle of the floor.

Except for that writing-table, and some fine eighteenth-century

bookcases, brass-latticed, which ran round the walls, fitting their every

line and moulding with delicate precision, the room was entirely empty.

Moreover, the bookcases did not hold a single book, and the writing-table

was bare. But for any person of taste, looking round him in the light of

the candle which Mrs. Dixon held, the room was furnished. All kinds of

human and civilized suggestion breathed from the table and the bookcases.

The contriving mind, with all its happy arts for the cheating and

adorning of life, was to be felt.

Mr. Tyson took it differently.

"Look here!"--he said peremptorily to Mrs. Dixon--"you mind what you're

doing with that table. It's worth a mint of money."

The Dixons looked at it curiously, but coldly. To them it was nothing but

a writing-table with drawers made out of a highly polished outlandish

wood, with little devices of gilt rails, and drawer-furnishings, and tiny

figures, and little bits of china "let in," which might easily catch a

duster, thought Mrs. Dixon, and "mak' trooble." That it had belonged to a

French dramatist under Louis Quinze, and then to a French Queen; that the

plaques were Sèvres, and the table as a whole beyond the purse of any but

a South African or American man of money, was of course nothing to her.

"It bets me," said Dixon, in the tone of one making conversation, "why

Muster Melrose didn't gie us orders to unpack soom more o' them cases.

Summat like thatten"--he pointed to the table--"wud ha' lukit fine i'

the drawin'-room."

Tyson made no reply. He was a young man of strong will and taciturn

habit; and he fully realized that if he once began discussing with Dixon

the various orders received from Mr. Edmund Melrose with regard to his

home-coming, during the preceding weeks, the position that he, Tyson,

intended to maintain with regard to that gentleman would not be made any

easier. If you happened by mischance to have accepted an appointment to

serve and represent a lunatic, and you discovered that you had done so,

there were only two things to do, either to hold on, or "to chuck it."

But George Tyson, whose father and grandfather had been small land agents

before him, of the silent, honest, tenacious Cumbria sort, belonged to

a stock which had never resigned anything, till at least the next step

was clear; and the young man had no intention whatever of "chucking it."

But to hold on certainly meant patience, and as few words as might be.

So he only stopped to give one more anxious look round the table to see

that no scratches had befallen it in the process of unpacking, gave

orders to Mrs. Dixon to light yet another fire in the room, which struck

exceedingly chill, and then left them for a final tour round the

ground-floor, heaping on coals everywhere with a generous hand. On this

point alone--the point of warmth--had Mr. Melrose's letters shown a

disposition to part with money, in ordinary domestic way. "The odiousness

of your English climate is only matched by the absurdity of your English

grates," he had written, urbanely, from Paris. "Get the house up to

sixty, if you can. And get a man over from Carlisle to put in a furnace.

I can see him the day after we arrive. My wife is Italian, and shivers

already at the thought of Cumbria."

Sixty indeed! In this dank rain from the northeast, and on this high

ground, not a passage in the house could be got above forty-six; and the

sitting-rooms were alternately stifling and vaultlike.

"Well, I didn't build the house!" thought the agent with a quiet

exasperation in his mind, the result of much correspondence; and having

completed his tour of inspection, which included the modest supper now

cooking according to Mr. Melrose's orders--Mrs. Melrose had had nothing

to do with it--in the vast and distant kitchen, the young man hung up his

wet overcoat, sat himself down by the hall fire, drew a newspaper from

his pocket, and deliberately applied himself to it, till the carriage

should arrive.

Meanwhile through the rain and wind outside, the expected owner of

Threlfall Tower and his wife and child were being driven through the

endless and intricate lanes which divided the main road between Keswick

and Pengarth from the Tower.

The carriage contained Mr. Melrose, Mrs. Melrose, their infant daughter

aged sixteen months, and her Italian nurse, Anastasia Doni.

There was still some gray light left, but the little lady who sat

dismally on her husband's right, occasionally peering through the window,

could make nothing of the landscape, because of the driving scuds of rain

which drenched the carriage windows, as though in their mad charges from

the trailing clouds in front, they disputed every inch of the miry way

with the newcomers. From the wet ground itself there seemed to rise a

livid storm-light, reflecting the last gleams of day, and showing the

dreary road winding ahead, dim and snakelike through intermittent trees.

"Edmund!" said the lady suddenly, in a high thin voice, as though the

words burst from her--"If the water by that mill they talked about is

really over the road, I shall get out at once!"

"What?--into it?" The gentleman beside her laughed. "I don't remember, my

dear, that swimming is one of your accomplishments. Do you propose to

hang the baby round your neck?"

"Of course I should take her too! I won't run any risks at all with her!

It would be simply wicked to take such a small child into danger." But

there was a fretful desperation in the tone, as of one long accustomed to

protest in vain.

Mr. Melrose laughed once more--carelessly, as though it were not worth

while to dispute the matter; and the carriage went on--battling, as it

seemed, with the storm.

"I never saw such an _awful_ place in my life!" said the wife's voice

again--with the same note of explosion--after an interval. "It's

horrible--just _horrible_! All the way from Pengarth we've hardly seen a

house, or a light!--and we've been driving nearly an hour. You don't

expect me to _live_ here, Edmund!" The tone was hysterical.

"Don't be a fool, Netta! Doesn't it ever rain in your infernal country,

eh? This is my property, my dear, worse luck! I regret it--but here we

are. Threlfall has got to be my home--so I suppose it'll be yours too."

"You could let or sell it, Edmund!--you know you could--if you cared a

farthing about making me happy."

"I have every reason to think it will suit me perfectly--and you too."

The tone of the man which, hitherto, though mocking had been in the main

indulgent, had suddenly, harshly, changed. The wife dropped into the

corner of the carriage among her furs and wraps, and said no more.

In another quarter of an hour the carriage turned a corner of the road,

and came upon a tall building, of which the high irregular outline was

just visible through the growing darkness. In front of it stood a group

of men with lanterns, and the carriage stopped beside them.

A noise of tongues arose, and Mr. Melrose let down the window.

"Is this where the road is flooded?" he asked of a stout man in a whitish

coat and cap who had come forward to speak to the coachman.

"Aye, sir--but you'll get through. In an hour's time, mebbe ye couldn't

do it. The water fro' the mill-race is over t' road, but it's nobbut a

foot deep as yet. Yo'll do it varra well--but yo'd best not lose time!"

"Edmund!"--screamed the voice from inside--"Edmund!--let me out--let me

out at once--I shall stay here with baby for the night."

Mr. Melrose took no notice whatever.

"Can you send those men of yours alongside us--in case there is any

danger of the coachman losing the road?" he said, addressing the man.

"Aye, they'll keep along t' bank with the lanterns. Noa fear, missis, noa

fear!"

Another scream from inside. Mr. Melrose shut the window abruptly, and the

coachman whipped up his horses.

"Let me get out, Edmund!--I will _not_ go on!"

Melrose brought a hand of iron down on his wife's wrist.

"Be quiet, Netta! Of all the little idiots!--There now, the brat's

begun!"--for the poor babe, awakened, had set up a wail. "Damn it!"--he

turned fiercely to the nurse--"Keep it quiet, will you?"

On swayed the carriage, the water splashing against the wheels. Carried

by the two labourers who walked along a high bank beside the road, a

couple of lanterns threw their wavering light on the flooded highway,

the dripping, wind-lashed trees, the steaming horses. The yellow rays

showed the whirling eddies of autumnal leaves, and found fantastic

reflection in the turbid water through which the horses were struggling.

Presently--after half a mile or so--a roar on the right hand. Mrs.

Melrose screamed again, only to be once more savagely silenced by her

husband. It was the roar of the mill-race approaching the weir, over

which it was rushing in sheets of foam. The swollen river, a thunderous

whiteness beside the road, seemed every moment as if it must break

through the raised bank, and sweep carriage and horses into its own abyss

of fury. Mrs. Melrose was now too terrified to cry out. She sat

motionless and quivering, her baby on her lap, her white pointed face and

straining eyes touched every now and then by a ghostly gleam from the

lanterns. Beside her--whispering occasional words in Italian to her

mistress--sat the Italian nurse, pale too, but motionless, a woman from

the Campagna, of a Roman port and dignity, who would have scorned to give

the master whom she detested any excuse for dubbing her a weakling.

But the horses pulled bravely, the noise and the flood were left behind,

and a bit of ascending road brought the travellers on to dry land again.

The carriage stopped. The two labourers who had guided them approached

the window, which Melrose had let down.

"Yo'll do now!" they shouted with cheerful faces. "You've nobbut to do

but keep straight on, an' yo'll be at t' Tower in a coople o' miles."

"Thank you, my men, thank you. Here's a drink for you," said Melrose,

stretching out his hand.

The foremost labourer took the coin and held it to the lantern. He burst

into rough laughter.

"Saxpence! My word, Jim!--here's a gentleman wot's free wi' his muny.

Saxpence! Two men--and two lanterns--fur t' best part of a mile! We're

goin' cheap to-night, Jim. Gude meet to yer, sir, an' next time yo'

may droon for me!"

"Saxpence!" The lad behind also applied his lantern to the coin. "Gie it

me, Bob!" And raising it with a scornful gesture he flung it into the

river. Then standing still, with their hands on their hips, the light

from the lanterns on the ground breaking over their ruddy rain-washed

faces, they poured out a stream of jeers in broad Cumbrian, from which

the coachman, angrily urged on by Melrose, escaped as quickly as he

could.

"Insolent boors!" said Melrose as men and flood disappeared from view.

"What did we want with them after all? It was only a device for bleeding

us."

Mrs. Melrose awoke from her trance of terror with a quavering breath. She

did not understand what had passed, nor a word of what the labourers had

said; and in her belief over the peril escaped, and her utter fatigue,

she gave the child to Anastasia, lay back, and closed her eyes. A sudden

and blessed sleep fell upon her for a few minutes; from which she was

roused all too soon by grating wheels and strange voices.

"Here we are, Netta--look alive!" said Melrose. "Put something round the

child, Anastasia. We have to walk through this court. No getting up to

the door. Find some umbrellas!"

The two women and the child descended. From the open house-door figures

came hurrying down a flagged path, through an untidy kitchen garden, to

the gate in a low outer wall in front of which the carriage had drawn up.

Netta Melrose grasped the nurse's arm, and spoke in wailing Italian, as

she held an umbrella over the child.

"What a place, Anastasia!--what a place! It looks like a prison! I shall

die here--I know I shall!"

Her terrified gaze swept over the old red sandstone house rising dark and

grim against the storm, and over the tangled thickets of garden dank with

rain.

But the next moment she was seized by the strong hands of Mrs. Dixon and

Thyrza, who half led, half carried, her into the hall of the Tower, while

Dixon and young Tyson did the same for the nurse and baby.

* * * * *

"A very interesting old place, built by some man with a real fine taste!

As far as I can see, it will hold my collections very well."

The new owner of Threlfall Tower was standing in the drawing-room with

his back to the fire, alternately looking about him with an eager

curiosity, and rubbing his hands in what appeared to be satisfaction. The

agent surveyed him.

Edmund Melrose at that moment--some thirty years ago--was a tall and

remarkably handsome man of fifty, with fine aquiline features deeply

grooved and cut, a delicate nostril, and a domed forehead over which fell

thick locks of black hair. He looked what he was--a man of wealth and

family, spoilt by long years of wandering and irresponsible living,

during which an inherited eccentricity and impatience of restraint had

developed into traits and manners which seemed as natural to himself as

they were monstrous in the sight of others. He had so far treated the

agent with the scantest civility during their progress through the house;

and Tyson's northern blood had boiled more than once.

But the inspection of the house had apparently put its owner in a good

temper, and he seemed to be now more genially inclined. He lit a

cigarette and offered Tyson one. Upstairs the child could be heard

wailing. Its mother and nurse were no doubt ministering to it. Mrs.

Melrose, so far as Tyson had observed her arrival, had cast hasty and

shivering looks round the comfortlessness of the hall and drawing-room;

had demanded loudly that some of the cases encumbering the hall and

passages should be removed or unpacked at once, and had then bade Mrs.

Dixon take her and the child to their rooms, declaring that she was

nearly dead and would sup upstairs and go to bed. She seemed to Tyson to

be a rather pretty woman, very small and dark, with a peevish, excitable

manner; and it was evident that her husband paid her little or no

attention.

"I can't altogether admire your taste in carpets, Tyson," said Melrose,

presently, with a patronizing smile, his eyes fastening on the

monstrosity in front of him.

The young man flushed.

"Your cheque, sir, was not a big one, and I had to make it go a long way.

It was no good trying the expensive shops."

"Oh, well!--I daresay Mrs. Melrose can put up with it. And what about

that sofa?" The speaker tried it--"Hm--not exactly Sybaritic--but very

fair, very fair! Mrs. Melrose will get used to it."

"Mrs. Melrose, sir, I fear, will find this place a bit lonesome, and out

of the way."

"Well, it is not exactly Piccadilly," laughed Melrose. "But a woman that

has her child is provided for. How can she be dull? I ask you"--he

repeated in a louder and rather hectoring voice--"how can she possibly be

dull?"

Tyson murmured something inaudible, adding to it--"And you, sir? Are you

a sportsman?"

Melrose threw up his hands contemptuously. "The usual British question!

What barbarians we are! It may no doubt seem to you extraordinary--but I

really never want to kill anything--except sometimes, perhaps,--a dealer.

My amusements"--he pointed to two large cases at the end of the

room--"are pursued indoors."

"You will arrange your collections?"

"Perhaps, yes--perhaps, no. When I want something to do, I may begin

unpacking. But I shall be in no hurry. Any way it would take me months."

"Is it mostly furniture you have sent home, sir?"

"Oh, Lord, no! Clocks, watches, ironwork, china, stuffs,

brasses--something of everything. A few pictures--no great shakes--as

yet. But some day I may begin to buy them in earnest. Meanwhile,

Tyson--_economy_!"--he lifted a monitory finger. "All my income is

required--let me inform you at once--for what is my hobby--my passion--my

mania, if you like--the collecting of works of art. I have gradually

reduced my personal expenditures to a minimum, and it must be the same

with this estate. No useless outlay of any kind. Every sixpence will be

important to me."

"Some of the cottages are in a very bad state, Mr. Melrose."

"Paradises, I'll be bound, compared to some of the places I have been

living among, in Italy. Don't encourage people to complain; that's the

great point. Encourage them, my dear sir, to make the best of things--to

take life _cheerfully_."

Certain cottages on the estate presented themselves to the agent's mind.

He lifted his eyebrows imperceptibly, and let the subject drop, inquiring

instead whether his employer meant to reside at the Tower during the

whole or the greater part of the year.

Melrose smiled. "I shall always spend the winter

here--arranging--cataloguing--writing." Again the cigarette, held in very

long, thin fingers, described a wide semicircle in the dim light, as

though to indicate the largeness of the speaker's thoughts. "But in March

or April, I take flight from here--I return to the chase. To use a

hunting metaphor, in the summer I kill--and store. In the winter I

consume--ruminate--chew the cud. Do you follow my metaphor?"

"Not precisely," said Tyson, looking at him with a quiet antagonism. "I

suppose you mean you buy things and send them home?"

Melrose nodded. "Every dealer in Europe knows me by now--and expects

me. They put aside their best things for me. And I prefer to hunt in

summer--even in the hot countries. Heat has no terror, for me; and

there are fewer of your damned English and American tourists about."

"I see." Tyson hesitated a moment, then said: "And I suppose, sir, Mrs.

Melrose goes with you?"

"Not at all! You cannot go dragging babies about Europe any more than is

absolutely necessary. Mrs. Melrose will make her home here, and will no

doubt become very much attached to this charming old house. By the way,

what neighbours are there?"

"Practically none, sir."

"But there is a church--and I suppose a parson?"

"Not resident. The clergyman from Gimmers Wick comes over alternate

Sundays."

"H'm. Then I don't see why I was asked to contribute to church repairs.

What's the good of keeping the place up at all?"

"The people here, sir, set great store both by their church and their

services. They have been hoping, now that you and Mrs. Melrose have come

to live here, that you might perhaps be willing to pay some suitable man

to take the full duty."

Melrose laughed aloud.

"I? Good Heavens! I pay a parson to read me the English Church services!

Well, I don't wish to inflict my religious opinions upon any one, Tyson;

but I may as well tell you that they don't run at all in the direction of

parsons. And Mrs. Melrose--why I told you she was a Catholic--a Roman

Catholic. What does she want with a church? But a parson's wife might

have been useful. By the way, I thought I saw a nice-looking girl when we

arrived, who has since disappeared."

"That was Thyrza Smart, sir--the daughter of Smart, the farmer."

"Excellent! Mrs. Melrose shall make friends with her."

"And of course, sir, both Pengarth and Keswick are within a drive."

"Oh, that's no good," said Melrose, easily. "We shall have no carriage."

The agent stared. "No carriage? I am afraid in that case you will find it

very difficult getting about. There are no flys anywhere near that you

can hire."

"What do we want with them?" Melrose lit another cigarette. "I may have a

horse--possibly. And of course there's the light cart I told you to get.

We can't trust these things"--he pointed to the packages in the

room--"to irresponsible people."

"The cart, sir, has been constantly at work. But--it won't exactly suit

Mrs. Melrose." Tyson smiled discreetly.

"Oh! leave that to me--leave that to me!" said Melrose with an answering

good humour. "Stable and carriage expenses are the deuce. There never was

a coachman yet that didn't rob his employer. Well, thank you; I'm glad to

have had this talk with you, and now, I go to bed. Beastly cold, I must

say, this climate of yours!"

And with a very evident shiver the speaker buttoned the heavy fur coat he

had never yet taken off more closely round him.

"What about that man from Carlisle--and the furnace?" he inquired

sharply.

"He comes to-morrow, sir. I could not get him here earlier. I fear it

will be an expensive job."

"No matter. With my work, I cannot risk incessant attacks of rheumatism.

The thing must be done, and done well. Good-night to you, Tyson."

Mr. Melrose waved a dismissing hand. "We shall resume our discussion

to-morrow."

The agent departed. Melrose, left solitary, remained standing a while

before the fire, examining attentively the architecture and decorations

of the room, so far as the miserable light revealed them. Italian, no

doubt, the stucco work of the ceiling, with its embossed nymphs and

cupids, its classical medallions. Not of the finest kind or period, but

very charming--quite decorative. The house had been built on the site of

an ancient border fortess, toward the middle of the eighteenth century,

by the chief of a great family, from whose latest representative, his

mother's first cousin, Edmund Melrose had now inherited it. Nothing could

be more curious than its subsequent history. For it was no sooner

finished, in a pure Georgian style, and lavishly incrusted in all its

principal rooms with graceful decoration, than the man who built it died.

His descendants, who had plenty of houses in more southern and populous

regions, turned their backs upon the Tower, refused to live in it, and,

failing to find a tenant of the gentry class, let part of it to the

farmer, and put in a gardener as caretaker. Yet a certain small sum had

always been allowed for keeping it in repair, and it was only within the

last few years that dilapidation had made head.

Melrose took up the lamp, and carried it once more through the

ground-floor of the Tower. Save for the dying fires, and the sputtering

lamp, everything was dark and still in the spacious house. The storm was

dying down in fitful gusts that seemed at intervals to invade the shadowy

spaces of the corridor, driving before them the wisps of straw and paper

that had been left here and there by the unpacking of the great

writing-table. There could be no ghosts in the house, for nothing but a

fraction of it had ever sheltered life; yet from its architectural

beauty there breathed a kind of dumb, human protest against the

disorderly ill-treatment to which it had been subjected.

In spite of his excitement and pre-occupation, Melrose felt it, and

presently he turned abruptly, and went upstairs, still carrying the lamp;

through the broad upper passage answering to the corridor below, where

doors in deep recesses, each with its classical architrave, and its

carved lintels, opened from either side. The farthest door on the right

he had been shown as that of his wife's room; he opened one nearer, and

let himself into his dressing-room, where Anastasia had taken care to

light the fire, which no north country-woman would have thought of

lighting for a mere man.

Putting the lamp down in the dressing-room, he pushed open his wife's

door, and looked in. She was apparently asleep, and the child beside her.

The room struck cold, and, by a candle in a basin, he saw that it was

littered from end to end with the contents of two or three trunks that

were standing open. The furniture was no less scanty and poor than in the

sitting-rooms, and the high panelled walls closing in upon the bed gave a

dungeonlike aspect to the room.

A momentary pity for his wife, brought to this harsh Cumbrian spot, from

the flowers and sun, the Bacchic laughter and colour of a Tuscan vintage,

shot through Melrose. But his will silenced it. "She will get used to

it," he said to himself again, with dry determination. Then he turned on

his heel. The untidiness of his wife's room, her lack of method and

charm, and the memory of her peevishness on the journey disgusted him.

There was a bed in his dressing-room; and he was soon soundly asleep

there.

But his wife was not asleep, and she had been well aware of his presence

on her threshold. While he stood there, she had held her breath,

"willing" him to go away again; possessed by a silent passion of rage and

repulsion. When he closed the door behind him, she lay wide awake,

trembling at all the night sounds in the house, lost in a thousand

terrors and wild regrets.

Suddenly, with a crash the casement window at the farther end of the room

burst open under an onset of wind, Netta only just stifled the scream on

her lips. She sat up, her teeth chattering. It was _awful_; but she must

get up and shut it. Shivering, she crept out of bed, threw a shawl round

her, and made one flight across the floor, possessed with a mad alarm

lest the candle, which was flickering in the draught, should go out, and

leave her in darkness.

But now that the window was open she saw, as she approached, that the

night was not dark. There was a strong moonlight outside, and when she

reached the window she drew in her breath. For there, close upon her, as

it seemed, like one of her own Apennines risen and stalking through the

night, towered a great mountain, cloud-wreathed, and gashed with vast

ravines. The moon was shining on it between two chasing clouds, and the

light and shade of the great spectacle, its illumined slopes, and

impenetrable abysses, were at once magnificent and terrible.

Netta shut the window with groping, desperate hands, and rushed back to

bed. Never had she felt so desolate, so cut off from all that once made

her poor little life worth living. Yet, though she cried for a few

minutes in sheer self-pity, it was not long before she too was asleep.

II

The day after the Melroses' arrival at the Tower was once more a day of

rain--not now the tempestuous storm rain which had lashed the mill

stream to fury, and blustered round the house as they stepped into it,

but one of those steady, gray, and featureless downpours that

Westmoreland and Cumbria know so well. The nearer mountains which were

wholly blotted out, and of the far Helvellyn range and the Derwentwater

hills not a trace emerged. All colour had gone from the grass and the

autumn trees; a few sheep and a solitary pony in the fields near the

house stood forlorn and patient under the deluge; heaven and earth met in

one fusion of rain just beyond the neglected garden that filled the front

court; while on three sides of the house, and penetrating through every

nook and corner of it, there rose, from depths far below, the roar of the

stream which circled the sandstone rock whereon the Tower was built.

Mrs. Melrose came down late. She descended the stairs slowly, rubbing her

cold hands together, and looking forlornly about her. She wore a dress of

some straw-coloured stuff, too thin for the climate of a Cumbria autumn,

and round her singularly small and fleshless neck, a wisp of black

velvet. The top of the head was rather flat, and the heavy dark hair,

projecting stiffly on either side of the face, emphasized at once the

sharpness of the little bony chin, the general sallowness of complexion,

and the remarkable size and blackness of the eyes. There was something

snakelike about the flat head, and the thin triangular face; an effect

which certainly belied the little lady, for there was nothing malicious

or sinister in her personality.

She had not yet set eyes on her husband, who had risen early, and could

now be heard giving directions to some one in the library to her right--a

carpenter apparently, since there was hammering going on. She supposed

she must find out something about the kitchen and the servants. Anastasia

had brought up her breakfast that morning, with a flushed face, muttering

complaint against the woman downstairs. A terror struck through her. If

Anastasia should desert her--should give notice!

Timidly she pushed open the door of the big kitchen, and prepared to

play the mistress. Mrs. Dixon was standing at the kitchen table with a

pastry-board before her, making a meat pie. She greeted her new mistress

civilly, though guardedly, and went on with what she was doing.

"Are you going to cook for us?" asked Mrs. Melrose, helplessly.

"That's what I unnerstood fro' Muster Tyson, ma'am."

"Then I came to speak to you about dinner."

"Thank you, ma'am, but Muster Melrose gave me the orders a good while

sen. There was a cart goin' into Pengarth."

Pengarth was the nearest country town, some eight miles away.

Mrs. Melrose coloured.

"I must tell you what the baby requires," she said, drawing herself up.

Mrs. Dixon looked at the speaker impassively, over her spectacles.

Mrs. Melrose hurriedly named a patent food--some special

biscuits--bananas.

"Yo' can have the milk yo' want fro' t' farm," said Mrs. Dixon slowly, in

reply; "but there's nowt of aw them things i' t' house as I knows on."

"Then we must send for them."

Mrs. Dixon shook her head.

"There won't be anoother cart goin' in till t' day after to-morrow."

"I can't have the baby neglected!" exclaimed Mrs. Melrose, with sudden

shrillness, looking angrily at the rugged face and figure before her.

"Mebbe yo'd go an talk to t' master?" suggested Mrs. Dixon, not without,

as it seemed to Netta, a touch of slyness in eyes and voice. Of course

they all knew by now that she was a cipher--that she was not to count.

Edmund had been giving all the orders--in his miserly cheese-paring way.

No comforts!--no conveniences!--not even bare necessaries, for herself

and the child. Yet she knew very well that her husband was a rich

man.

She turned and went in search of him, making her way with difficulty

through the piles of boxes. What could be in them all? Edmund must have

been buying for years. Every now and then as she stooped to look at the

labels pasted upon them, she caught names well known to her. Orbatelli,

Via dei Bardi 13, Firenze; Bianchi, Via Mazzini 12, Lucca; Fratelli

Masai, Via Manzoni, Pisa. And everywhere the recurrent word--_Antichità_.

How she hated the word!--how she hated the associations linked with it,

and with the names on the boxes. They were bound up with a score of

humbling memories, the memories of her shabby, struggling youth. She

thought of her father--the needy English artist, Robert Smeath, with just

a streak, and no more than a streak, of talent, who had become rapidly

"Italianate" in the Elizabethan sense--had dropped, that is, the English

virtues, without ever acquiring the Italian. He had married her mother, a

Florentine girl, the daughter of a small _impiegato_ living in one of the

dismal new streets leading out of Florence on the east, and had then

pursued a shifting course between the two worlds, the English and the

Italian, ordering his household and bringing up his children in Italian

fashion, while he was earning his keep and theirs, not at all by the

showy pictures in his studio which no one would buy, but as jackal in

_antichità_, to the richer English and American tourists. He kept a

greedy eye on the artistic possessions still remaining in the hands of

impoverished native owners; he knew the exact moment of debt and

difficulty in which to bring a foreign gold to bear; he was an adept in

all the arts by which officials are bribed, and pictures are smuggled.

And sometimes these accomplishments of his resulted in large accessions

of cash, so that all the family lived on the fat of the land, bought

gorgeous attire, and went to Livorno, or Viareggio, or the Adriatic

coast, for the summer. And sometimes there was no luck, and therefore

no money. Owners became unkindly patriotic and would not sell. Or some

promising buyer, after nibbling for months, went off finally unhooked.

Then the apartment in the Via Giugno showed the stress of hard times. The

girls wore their old clothes to rags; the mother did all the work of the

house in a bedgown and slippers; and the door of the apartment was never

opened more than a few inches to any applicant, lest creditors should get

in.

And the golden intervals got fewer, and the poverty more persistent, as

the years went on. Till at last, by the providence--or malice--of the

gods, a rich and apparently prodigal Englishman, Edmund Melrose, hungry

for _antichità_ of all sorts, arrived on the scene. Smeath became rapidly

the bond-slave of Melrose, in the matter of works of art. The two made

endless expeditions together to small provincial towns, to remote villas

in the Apuan or Pisan Alps, to _palazzi_ in Verona, or Lucca, or Siena.

Melrose indeed had not been long in finding out that the little artist

was both a poor judge and a bad agent. Netta's cheek always flamed when

she thought of her father's boastings and blunderings, and of the way

in which Edmund had come to treat him. And now the Smeath family were

just as poor as ever again. Her little sisters had scarcely a dress to

their backs; and she was certain her mother was both half-starved and

over-worked. Edmund had not been at all kind to them since her

marriage--not at all!

How had he come to marry her? She was well aware that it was an

extraordinary proceeding on his part. He was well born on both sides,

and, by common report among the English residents in Florence, enormously

rich, though his miserly habits had been very evident even in the first

days of their acquaintance. He might no doubt have married anybody he

pleased; if he would only have taken the trouble. But nothing would

induce him to take any trouble--socially. He resented the demands and

standards of his equals; turned his back entirely on normal English

society at home and abroad; and preferred, it seemed, to live with his

inferiors, where his manners might be as casual, and his dress as

careless as he pleased. The queer evenings and the queer people in their

horrid little flat had really amused him. Then he had been ill, and mama

had nursed him; and she, Netta, had taken him a pot of carnations while

he was still laid up; and so on. She had been really pretty in those

days; much prettier than she had ever been since the baby's birth. She

had been attractive too, simply because she was young, healthy,

talkative, and forthcoming; goaded always by the hope of marriage, and

money, and escape from home. His wooing had been of the most despotical

and patronizing kind; not the kind that a proud girl would have put up

with. Still there had been wooing; a few presents; a frugal cheque for

the trousseau; and a honeymoon fortnight at Sorrento.

Why had he done it?--just for a whim?--or to spite his English family,

some member of which would occasionally turn up in Florence and try to

put in claims upon him--claims which infuriated him? He was the most

wilful and incalculable of men; caring nothing, apparently, one day for

position and conventionality, and boasting extravagantly of his family

and ancestors the next.

"He was rather fond of me--for a little," she thought to herself wearily,

as she stood at the hall window, looking out into the rain. At the point

which things had now reached she knew very well that she meant nothing at

all to him. He would not beat her, or starve her, or even, perhaps,

desert her. Such behaviour would disturb his existence as much as hers;

and he did not mean to be disturbed. She might go her own way--she and

the child; he would give her food and lodging and clothes, of a sort, so

long as she did not interfere with his tastes, or spend his money.

Then, suddenly, while she stood wrathfully pondering, a gust of anger

rose--childish anger, such as she had shown the night before, when she

had tried to get out of the carriage. She turned, ran down the corridor

to the door which she understood was the door of his study--and entered

with a burst.

"Edmund!--I want to speak to you!"

Melrose, who was hanging, frowning and absorbed, over a carpenter who was

freeing what seemed to be an old clock from the elaborate swathings of

paper and straw in which it had been packed, looked up with annoyance.

"Can't you see, Netta, that I'm very busy?"

"I can't help it!--it's about baby."

With a muttered "D--n!" Melrose came toward her.

"What on earth do you want?"

Netta looked at him defiantly.

"I want to be told whenever the cart goes into Pengarth--there were lots

of things to get for baby. And I must have something here that I can

drive myself. We can't be cut off from everything."

"Give your orders to Mrs. Dixon then about the cart," said Melrose

angrily. "What has it to do with me? As for a carriage, I have no money

to spend on any nonsense of the kind. We can do perfectly well without

it."

"I only want a little pony-cart--you could get it second-hand for ten or

twelve pounds--and the farmer has got a pony."

She looked at him--sallow, and frowning.

Melrose pushed her into the passage and drew the door to, behind him, so

that the carpenter might not hear.

"Ten or twelve pounds! Do you expect I get money off the hedges? Can't

you be content here like a reasonable woman, without getting me into

debt?"

Netta laughed and tossed her head.

"You shouldn't leave your business letters about!"

"What do you mean?"

"There was a cheque among your papers one day last week!--I saw it before

you could hide it away. It was for £3,000--a dividend from something--a

coal mine, I think. And the week before you had another--"

Her husband's eyes shed lightnings.

"I'll not have you prying into my affairs!" he said violently. "All I

have is wanted--and more."

"And nothing of course--to give _me_--your wife!--for any comforts or

pleasures! That never enters into your head!"

Her voice came thickly already. Her chest began to heave.

"There now--crying again!" said Melrose, turning on his heel. "Can't you

sometimes thank your stars you're not starving in Florence, and just put

up with things a little?"

Netta restrained herself.

"So I would"--she said, choking--"if--"

"If what--"

For all answer, she turned and hurried away toward the hall. Melrose

looked after her with what appeared like exasperation, then suddenly

recaptured himself, smoothed his brow, and, returning to the study, gave

himself with unruffled zest and composure to the task of unpacking the

Boule clock.

Netta repaired to the drawing-room, and threw herself on to the

uncomfortable sofa, struggling with her tears. For about a fortnight

after her marriage she had imagined herself in love with Melrose; then

when the personal illusion was gone, the illusion of position and wealth

persisted. He might be queer, and behave queerly in Italy. But when they

returned to England she would find herself the wife of a rich English

gentleman, and the gingerbread would once more be gilt. Alack! a few

weeks in a poor London Lodging with no money to spend on the shops which

tempted her woman's cupidity at every step; Edmund's final refusal, first

laughing, then stubborn, to present her to "my devilish relations"; the

complete indifference shown to her wishes as to the furnishings of the

Tower; these various happenings had at last brought her to an unwelcome

commerce with the bare truth. She had married a selfish eccentric, who

had chosen her for a caprice and was now tired of her. She had not a

farthing, nor any art or skill by which to earn one. Her family was as

penniless as herself. There was nothing for it but to submit. But her

temper and spirits had begun steadily to give way.

_Firenze!_ As she sat in her cheerless drawing-room, hating its ugly

shabbiness, and penetrated with the damp chill of the house, there swept

through her a vision of the Piazza del Duomo, as she had last seen it on

a hot September evening. A blaze of light--delicious all-prevailing

warmth--the moist bronzed faces of the men--the girls with the look of

physical content that comes in hot countries with the evening--the sun

flooding with its last gold, now the new marbles of the _facciata_,

now the alabaster and bronze of the Baptistery, and now the moving

crowds--the flowers-baskets--the pigeons--

She lifted her eyes with a sobbing breath, and saw the gray

cloud-curtain--the neglected garden--the solitary pony in the

field--with the shafts of rain striking across it. Despair stirred in

her--the physical nostalgia of the south. A happy heart might have

silenced the craving nerves; but hers was far from happy.

The door opened. A head was thrust in--the head of a fair-haired girl.

There was a pause.

"What do you want?" said Mrs. Melrose, haughtily, determined to assert

herself.

Thyrza came in slowly. She held a bunch of dripping Michaelmas daisies.

"Shall I get a glass for them? I thowt mebbe you'd like 'em in here."

Netta thanked her ungraciously. She remembered having seen the girl the

night before, and Anastasia had mentioned her as the daughter of the

_Contadino_.

Thyrza put the flowers in water, Netta watching her in silence; then

going into the hall, she returned with a pair of white lace curtains.

"Shall I put 'em up? It 'ud mebbe be more cheerful."

Netta looked at them languidly.

"Where do they come from?"

"Mr. Tyson brought 'em from Pengarth. He thowt you might like 'em for the

drawing-room."

Mrs. Melrose nodded, and Thyrza mounted a chair, and proceeded to put up

the curtains, turning an observant eye now and then on the thin-faced

lady sitting on the sofa, her long fingers clasped round her knees, and

her eyes--so large and staring as to be rather ugly than beautiful in

Thyrza's opinion--wandering absently round the room.

"It's a clashy day," Thyrza ventured at last.

"It's a dreadful day," said Mrs. Melrose sharply. "Does it always rain

like this?"

"Well, it _do_ rain," was Thyrza's cautious reply. "But there that's

better than snowin'--for t' shepherds."

Mrs. Melrose found the girl's voice pleasant, and could not deny that she

was pretty, in her rustic way.

"Has your father many sheep?"

"Aye, but they're all gone up to t' fells for t' winter. We had a grand

time here in September--at t' dippin'. Yo'd never ha' thowt there was so

mony folk about"--the girl went on, civilly, making talk.

"I never saw a single house, or a single light, on the drive from the

station last night," said Mrs. Melrose, in her fretful voice. "Where are

all the people?"

"Well, there ain't many!" laughed Thyrza. "It's a lonesome place this is.

But when it's a shearin', or a dippin', yo' unnerstand, farmin' folk'll

coom a long way to help yan anuther."

"Are they all farmers about here?"

"Mostly. Well, there's Duddon Castle!" Thyrza's voice, a little muffled

by the tin-tacks in the mouth, came from somewhere near the top of a tall

window--"Oh--an' I forgot!--"

In a great hurry the speaker jumped down from her perch, and to Netta's

astonishment ran out of the room.

"What is she about?" thought Mrs. Melrose irritably. But the question was

hardly framed before Thyrza reappeared, holding out her hand, in which

lay some visiting-cards.

"I should ha' given them yo' before."

Mrs. Melrose took them with surprise, and read the name.

"Countess Tatham--who is she?"

"Why it's she that lives at Duddon Castle." Then the girl looked

uncertainly at her companion--"Mr. Tyson did tell me she was a relation

of Mr. Melrose."

"A relation? I don't know anything about her," said Netta decidedly. "Did

she come to call upon me?"

The girl nodded--"She come over--it was last Tuesday--from Duddon, wi'

two lovely horses--my, they were beauties! She said she'd come again."

Netta asked questions. Lady Tatham, it seemed, was the great lady of the

neighbourhood, and Duddon Castle was a splendid old place, that all the

visitors went to see. And there were her cards. Netta's thoughts began to

hurry thither and thither, and possibilities began to rise. A relation of

Edmund's? She made Thyrza tell her all she knew about Duddon and the

Tathams. Visions of being received there, of meeting rich and

aristocratic people, of taking her place at last in society, the place

that belonged to her as Edmund's wife, in spite of his queer miserly

ways, ran again lightly through a mind that often harboured such dreams

before--in vain. Her brow cleared. She made Thyrza leave the curtains,

and sit down to gossip with her. And Thyrza, though perfectly conscious,

as the daughter of a hard-working race, that to sit gossiping at midday

was a sinful thing, was none the less willing to sin; and she chattered

on in a Westmoreland dialect that grew steadily broader as she felt

herself more at ease, till Mrs. Melrose could scarcely follow her.

But she managed to seize on the facts that concerned her. Lady Tatham, it

seemed, was a widow, with an only boy, a lad of seven, who was the heir

to Duddon Castle, and its great estates. The Castle was ten miles from

the Tower.

"How shall I ever get there?" thought Mrs. Melrose, despairingly.

As to other neighbours, they seemed to consist entirely of an old

bachelor doctor, about three miles away, and the clergyman of Gimmers

Wick and his wife. _She_ was sure to come. But most people were "glad to

see the back on her." She had such a poor spirit, and was always

complaining.

In the midst of this conversation, the door of the room, which was ajar,

slowly opened. Thyrza looked round and saw in the aperture a tiny white

figure. It was the Melrose baby, standing silent, wide-eyed, with its

fingers in its mouth, and Anastasia behind it. Anastasia, whose look was

still thunderous, explained that she was unpacking and could not do with

it. The child toddled in to its mother, and Thyrza exclaimed in

admiration:

"Oh, you _are_ a little beauty!"

And she caught up one of the brass curtain rings lying on the table, and

tried to attract the baby with it. But the little thing took not the

smallest notice of the lure. She went straight to her mother, and,

leaning against Netta's knee, she turned to stare at Thyrza with an

intensity of expression, rare in a child so young. Thyrza, kneeling on

the floor, stared back--fascinated. She thought she had never seen

anything so lovely. The child had her father's features, etherealized;

and great eyes, like her mother, but far more subtly beautiful. Her skin

was pale, but of such a texture that Thyrza's roses-and-milk looked rough

and common beside it. Every inch of the proud little head was covered

with close short curls leaving the white neck free, and the hand lifted

to her mouth was of a waxen delicacy.

Netta opened a picture-book that Anastasia had brought down with her.

Felicia pushed it away. Netta opened it again. Then the child, snatching

it from her, sat down on the floor, and, before Netta could prevent her,

tore one of the pages across with a quick, vindictive movement--her

eyes sparkling.

"Naughty--! naughty!" said Netta in a scolding voice.

But Thyrza dropped her hand hastily into a gray calico pocket tied round

her waist, and again held out something.

"It is only a pear-drop," she said apologetically to Netta. "It won't

hurt her."

Felicia snatched at it at once, and sucked it, still flushed with

passion. Her mother smiled faintly.

"You like sweets?" she said, childishly, to her companion; "give me one?"

Thyrza eagerly brought out a paper bag from her pocket and Netta put out

a pair of thin fingers. She and her sisters had been great consumers of

sweet stuff in the small dark Florentine shops. The shared greediness

promoted friendship; and by the time Mrs. Dixon put in a reproachful face

with a loud--"Thyrza, what _be_ you a doin'?"--Mrs. Melrose knew as much

of the Tower, the estate, the farm, and the persons connected with them,

as Thyrza's chattering tongue could tell her in the time.

There was nothing, however, very consoling in the information. When

Thyrza departed, Mrs. Melrose was left to fret and sigh much as before.

The place was odious; she could never endure it. But yet the possible

advent of "Countess Tatham" cast a faint ray on the future.

A few days later Lady Tatham appeared. Melrose had been particularly

perverse and uncommunicative on the subject. "Like her audacity!"--so

Netta had understood his muttered comment, when she took him the cards.

He admitted that the lady and he were cousins--the children of first

cousins; and that he had once seen a good deal of her. He called her "an

audacious woman"; but Mrs. Melrose noticed that he did not forbid her the

house; nay, rather that he listened with some attention to Thyrza's

report that the lady had promised to call again.

On the afternoon of the call, the skies were clear of rain, though not of

cloud. The great gashed mountain to the north which Dixon called

Saddleback, while a little Cumbria "guide," produced by Tyson, called it

Blencathra, showed sombrely in a gray light; and a November wind was busy

stripping what leaves still remained from the woods by the stream and in

the hollows of the mountain. Landscape and heavens were of an iron

bracingness and bareness; and the beauty in them was not for eyes like

Netta's. She had wandered out forlornly on the dank paths descending to

the stream. Edmund as usual was interminably busy fitting up one of the

lower rooms for some of his minor bric-à-brac--ironwork, small bronzes,

watches, and clocks. Anastasia and the baby were out.

Would Anastasia stay? Already she looked ill; she complained of her

chest. She had made up her mind to come with the Melroses for the sake of

her mother and sister in Rome, who were so miserably poor. Netta felt

that she--the mistress--had some security against losing her, in the mere

length and cost of the journey. To go home now, before the end of her

three months, would swallow up all the nurse had earned; for Edmund would

never contribute a farthing. Poor Anastasia! And yet Netta felt angrily

toward her for wishing to desert them.

"For of course I shall take her home--in March. We shall all be going

then," she said to herself with an emphasis, almost a passion, which yet

was full of misgiving.

Suddenly, just as she had returned by a steep path to the dilapidated

terrace on the north side of the house--a sound of horses' feet and

wheels. Evidently a carriage--a caller. Netta's pulse fluttered. She ran

into the house by a side door, and up to her room, where she smoothed

her hair anxiously, and lightly powdered her face. There was no time to

change her dress, but she took out a feather boa which she kept for great

occasions, and prepared to descend with dignity. Oh the stairs she met

Mrs. Dixon, who announced "Lady Tatham."

"Find Mr. Melrose, please."

"Oh, he's there, Ma'am, awready."

Netta entered the drawing-room to see her husband pacing up and-down

before a strange lady, who sat in one of the crimson armchairs, entirely

at her ease.

"So this is your wife, Edmund," said Lady Tatham, as she rose.

"It is. You'll make mock of her no doubt--as you do of me."

"Nonsense! I never make mock of anybody," said a musical voice, rich

however through all its music in a rather formidable significance. The

owner of it turned toward Netta.

"I hope, Mrs. Melrose, that you will like Cumbria?"

Netta, accustomed to Edmund's "queerness," and determined to hold her

own, settled herself deliberately opposite her visitor, and was soon

complaining in her shrill voice of the loneliness of the place and the

damp of the climate. Melrose never once looked at his wife. He was

paler than usual, with an eager combative aspect, quite new to Netta. He

seemed for once to be unsure of his ground--both to expect attack, even

to provoke it--and to shrink from it. His eyes were fixed upon Lady

Tatham, and followed her every movement.

Attention was certainly that lady's due; and it failed her rarely. She

had beauty--great beauty; and a personality that refused to be

overlooked. Her dress showed in equal measure contempt for mere fashion,

and a close study of effect. The lines of her long cloak of dull blue

cloth, with its garnishings of sable, matched her stately slenderness

well; and the close-fitting cap over the coiled hair conveyed the same

impression of something perfectly contrived and wholly successful.

Netta thought at first that she was "made up," so dazzling was the

white and pink, and then doubted. The beauty of the face reminded one,

perhaps, of the beauty of a boy--of some clear-eyed, long-chinned

athlete--masterfully simple--a careless conqueror.

How well she and Edmund seemed to know each other! That was the strange,

strange thing in Netta's eyes. Presently she sat altogether silent while

they talked. Melrose still walking up and down--casting quick glances

at his guest. Lady Tatham gave what seemed to be family news--how "John"

had been sent to Teheran--and "George" was to be military secretary in

Dublin--and "Barbara" to the astonishment of everybody had consented to

be made a Woman of the Bedchamber--"poor Queen!"--how Reginald Pratt had

been handsomely turned out of the Middleswick seat, and was probably

going to "rat" to an Opposition that promised more than the

Government--that Cecilia's eldest girl--"a pretty little minx"--had been

already presented, and was likely to prove as skilful a campaigner for a

husband as her mother before her--that "Gerald" had lost heavily at

Newmarket, and was now a financial nuisance, borrowing from everybody in

the family--and so on, and so on.

Melrose received these various items of information half scornfully, half

greedily; it might have been guessed that his interest in the teller was

a good deal keener than his interest in the things told. The conversation

revealed to Netta phases in her husband's existence wholly unknown to

her. So Edmund had been in Rome--for two or three years--in the Embassy!

That she had never known. He seemed also to have been an English member

of Parliament for a time. In any case he had lived, apparently for years,

like other men of his kind--shooting, racing, visiting, travelling,

fighting, elections. She could not fit the facts to which both alluded

with her own recollections of the misanthrope who had first made

acquaintance with her and her family in Florence three years before this

date; and her bewilderment grew.

As for the others, they had soon, it seemed, completely forgotten the

thin sallow-faced wife, who sat with her back to the window, restlessly

twisting her rings.

Presently Melrose stopped abruptly--in front of Lady Tatham.

"Where is Edith?" He bent forward peremptorily, his hand on the table,

his eyes on the lady's face.

"At the Cape with her husband."

"Has she found him out yet?"

"There's nothing to find out. He's an excellent fellow."

"A stupid prig," said Melrose passionately. "Well, you did it!--You did

it!"

"Yes, I did it." Lady Tatham rose quietly. She had paled, and after a

minute's hesitation she held out her hand to Melrose. "Suppose, Edmund,

we bury the hatchet. I should like to be friends with you and your wife,

if you would allow it?"

The change of manner was striking. Up to this moment Lady Tatham had

been, so to speak, the aggressor, venturing audaciously on ground which

she knew to be hostile--from bravado?--or for some hidden reason? But she

spoke now with seriousness--even with a touch of womanly kindness.

Melrose looked at her furiously.

"Lady Tatham, I advise you to leave us alone!"

She sighed, met his eyes a moment, gravely, then turned to Netta.

"Mrs. Melrose, your husband and I have an old quarrel. He wanted to marry

my sister. I prevented it. She is married now--and he is married. Why

shouldn't we make friends?"

"Quarrels are very foolish!" said Netta, sententiously, straightening her

small shoulders. But she dared not look at Melrose.

"Well, tell him so," laughed Lady Tatham. "And come and see me at Duddon

Castle."

"Thank you! I should like to!" cried Netta.

"My wife has no carriage, Lady Tatham."

"Oh, Edmund--we might hire something," said his wife imploringly.

"I do not permit it," he said resolutely. "Good-bye, Lady Tatham. You are

like all women--you think the cracked vase will hold water. It won't."

"What are you going to do here, Edmund?"

"I am a collector--and works of art amuse me."

"And I can do nothing--for you--or your wife?"

"Nothing. I am sorry if you feel us on your mind. Don't. I would have

gone farther from you, if I could. But seven miles--are seven miles."

Lady Tatham coloured. She shook hands with Netta.

Melrose held the door open for her. She swept through the hall, and

hurried into her carriage. She and Melrose touched hands ceremoniously,

and the brougham with its fine roan horses was soon out of sight.

A miserable quarrel followed between the husband and wife. Netta,

dissolved in hysterical weeping, protested that she was a prisoner and an

exile, that Edmund had brought her from Italy to this dreary place to

kill her, that she couldn't and wouldn't endure it, and that return to

Italy she must and would, if she had to beg her way. It was cruel to shut

her up in that awful house, to deny her the means of getting about, to

treat people who wished to be kind to her as Edmund had treated Lady

Tatham. She was not a mere caterpillar to be trodden on. She would appeal

to the neighbours--she would go home to her parents, etcetera--etcetera.

Melrose at first tried to check her by sarcasm--a banter that stung where

it lit. But when she would not be checked, when she followed him into his

study, wailing and accusing, a whirlwind of rage developed in the man,

and he denounced her with a violence and a brutality which presently

cowed her. She ran shivering upstairs to Anastasia and the baby, bolted

her door, and never reappeared till, twenty-four hours later, she crept

down white and silent, to find a certain comfort in Thyrza's rough

ministrations. Melrose seemed to be, perhaps, a trifle ashamed of his

behaviour; and they patched up a peace over the arrangements for the

heating of the house on which for once he had the grace to consult her.

The winter deepened, and Christmas came. On the mountain-tops the snow

lay deep, and when Netta--who on many days never left the house--after

walking a while up and down the long corridor for the sake of exercise,

would sink languidly on the seat below its large western window, she

looked out upon a confusion of hills near and far, drawn in hard

white upon an inky sky. To the south the Helvellyn range stretched in

bold-flung curves and bosses; in the far distance rose the sharper peaks

of Derwentwater; while close at hand Blencathra with its ravines, and all

the harsh splendour of its white slopes and black precipices, alternately

fascinated and repelled the little Southerner, starved morally and

physically for lack of sun.

Even for Cumbria it was a chill and sunless winter. No bracing frosts,

and persistent northwesterly winds. Day after day the rain, which was

snow on the heights, poured down. Derwentwater and Bassenthwaite rose

till they mingled in one vast lake. The streams thundered from the fells;

every road was a water-course.

Netta lost flesh and appetite. She was a discontented and ailing woman,

and the Dixons could not but notice her fragile state. Mrs. Dixon thought

her "nobbut a silly sort of body," but would sometimes try to cook what

pleased her, or let Anastasia use the kitchen fire for "gnocchi" or

"risotto" or other queer messes; which, however, when they appeared, were

generally more relished by the master than the mistress.

Dixon, perceiving no signs of any desire on Netta's part to attend the

"papish" chapel ten miles away, began to plot for her soul. His own life

was in the little Methodist chapel to which he walked four miles every

Sunday, wet or fine. In the summer he had accompanied the minister and

one or two class leaders in a drive through the hayfields, shouting to

the haymakers--"We're going to heaven!--won't you come with us!"--and he

had been known to spend five hours at a stretch on his knees wrestling

for the salvation of a drunken friend, in the village of Threlkeld. But

Netta baffled him. Sometimes he would come home from chapel, radiant,

and would take her a bunch of holly for the table by way of getting

into conversation with her. "It was _fine_ to-day, Missis! There was

three found peace. And the congregation was grand! There was four

attorneys--two of 'em from as far as Pengarth." And he would lend her

tracts--and even offer, good man, to borrow a "shandrey" from a

neighbour, and drive her himself to the chapel service. But Netta only

smiled or yawned at him; and as for the tracts, she hid them under the

few sofa cushions the house possessed.

Mr. Tyson, the agent, came to the house as seldom as he could, that he

might not quarrel with his employer before it was to his own interest to

do so. Netta discovered that he pitied her; and once or twice, drawing on

the arts of flirtation, with which the Florentine woman is always well

acquainted, she complained to him of her loneliness and her husband's

unkindness. But his north-country caution protected him from any

sentimentalizing, however innocent. And before the end of the winter

Netta detested him. Meanwhile she and Anastasia lived for one hope only.

From many indications it was plain that Melrose was going south in March.

The women were determined not to stay behind him. But, instinctively,

they never raised the subject, so as not to risk a struggle prematurely.

Meanwhile Melrose passed a winter wholly satisfactory to himself. The

partial unpacking of his collections was an endless source of amusement

and pleasure. But his curious egotism showed itself very plainly in the

business. He made no attempt at artistic arrangement, though there was

some classification. As fast as one room was filled--the vacant

packing-cases turned on their sides, serving to exhibit what they had

once contained--he would begin upon another. And woe to Mrs. Dixon or

Thyrza if they attempted any cleaning in one of his rooms! The

collections were for himself only, and for the few dealers or experts to

whom he chose to show them. And the more hugger-mugger they were, the

less he should be pestered to let people in to see them. Occasionally he

would rush up to London to attend what he called a "high puff sale"--or

to an auction in one of the northern towns, and as he always bought

largely, purchases kept arriving, and the house at the end of the winter

was in a scarcely less encumbered and disorderly condition than it had

been at the beginning. The few experts from the Continent or America,

whom he did admit, were never allowed a word of criticism of the

collections. If they ventured to differ from Melrose as to the

genuineness or the age of a bronze or a marble, an explosion of temper

and a speedy dismissal awaited them.

One great stroke of luck befel him in February which for a time put him

in high good-humour. He bought at York--very cheaply--a small bronze

Hermes, which some fifteenth-century documents in his own possession,

purchased from a Florentine family the year before, enabled him to

identify with great probability as the work of one of the rarest and most

famous of the Renaissance sculptors. He told no one outside the house,

lest he should be plagued to exhibit it, but he could not help boasting

of it to Netta and Anastasia.

"That's what comes of having _an eye_! It's worth a thousand guineas of

it's worth a penny. And those stupid idiots let me have it for twenty-two

pounds!"

"A thousand guineas!" Gradually the little bronze became to Netta the

symbol of all that money could have bought for her--and all she was

denied; Italy, freedom, the small pleasures she understood, and the

salvation of her family, now in the direst poverty. There were moments

when she could have flung it passionately out of the window into the

stream a hundred feet below. But she was to find another use for it.

March arrived. And one day Anastasia came to tell her mistress that she

had received orders to pack Mr. Melrose's portmanteaus for departure.

Netta brooded all day, sitting silent and pale in the window-seat, with

some embroidery which she never touched on her knee. Outside, not a sign

of spring! A bitter north wind was blowing which had blanched all colour

from the hills, and there was ice on the edges of the streams. Thyrza was

away in Carlisle, helping an aunt. There was no one in the house but Mrs.

Dixon, and a deaf old woman from one of the labourer's cottages; attached

to the farm, who had come in to help her. The poor babe had a cold, and

could be heard fretfully crying and coughing in her nursery.

And before Netta's inward eye there stretched the interminable days and

weeks ahead, no less than the interminable weeks and months she had

already lived through, in this discomfort of body, and this loneliness of

spirit.

After supper she walked resolutely into her husband's littered study and

demanded that she and Anastasia and the baby should go with him to the

Continent. He, she understood, would stop in Paris. She and the child

would push on to Florence, where she could stay the summer with her

people, at no greater cost than at the Tower. The change was necessary

both for her and Felicia, and go she would.

Melrose flatly and violently refused. What did she want better than the

Tower? She had as much service, and as much luxury as her antecedents

entitled her to; and he neither could nor would provide her with anything

more. He was heavily in debt, and had no money to spend on railway

tickets. And he entirely disapproved of her relations, especially of her

father, who might any day find himself "run in" by the Italian

authorities for illicit smuggling of pictures out of the country. He

declined to allow his child to become familiar with such a circle.

Netta listened to him with tight lips, her pale face strangely flushed.

When she saw that her appeal was quite fruitless she went away, and she

and Anastasia sat up whispering together far into the night.

Early next morning Melrose departed, leaving a letter for his wife, in

which he informed her that he had left money with Mr. Tyson for the

household expenses, and for the few shillings he supposed she would want

as pocket money. He advised her to be out a great deal, and assured her

that the Cumbria summer, when it came, was delightful. And he signed

himself "your affectionate husband, Edmund Melrose."

Mrs. Dixon went into Pengarth for shopping on the fly which conveyed

Melrose to the station, and was to come out by carrier. After their

departure there was no one left in the house but the deaf old woman.

Netta and her maid preceeded to carry out a plan they had been long

maturing. Anastasia had a few pounds left of her Christmas wages; enough

to carry them to London; and for the rest, they had imagined an excellent

device.

The bronze Hermes had been left by Melrose in a cupboard in a locked room

on the first floor. When Mrs. Dixon came back that night, she discovered

that Mrs. Melrose, with her child and maid had quitted the house. They

had apparently harnessed the cart and horse themselves, and had driven

into Pengarth, taking a labourer with them to bring the cart home. They

had carried all their personal belongings away with them; and, after a

while, Mrs. Dixon, poking about, discovered that the door of one of the

locked rooms had been forced.

She also noticed, in one of the open drawers of Mrs. Melrose's bedroom, a

photograph, evidently forgotten, lying face downward. Examining it, she

saw that it was a picture of Netta, with the baby, taken apparently in

Italy during the preceding summer. The Cumbrian woman, shrewdly observant

like all her race, was struck by the tragic differences between the woman

of the picture and the little blighted creature who had just made a

flitting from the Tower.

She showed the photograph to her husband, returned it to the drawer, and

thought no more about it.

News was of course sent to Mr. Melrose in Paris, and within three days he

had come rushing back to the Tower, beside himself with rage and grief,

not at all, as George Tyson soon assured himself, for the loss of his

wife and child, but entirely for the theft of the priceless Florentine

bronze, a loss which he had suspected on the first receipt of the news of

the forced door, and verified at once on his arrival.

He stood positively aghast at Netta's perfidy and wickedness, and he

wrote at once to the apartment in the Via Giugno, to denounce her in the

most emphatic terms. As she had chosen to steal one of his most precious

possessions, which she had of course converted into money, she had no

further claim on him whatever, and he broke off all relations with her.

Eighty pounds a year would be paid by his lawyers to a Florentine lawyer,

whom he named, for his daughter's maintenance, so long as Netta left him

unmolested. But he desired to hear and see no more of persons who

reminded him of the most tragical event of his history as a collector, as

well as of the utter failure of his married life. Henceforth they were

strangers to each other, and she might arrange her future as she

pleased.

The letter was answered by Mrs. Robert Smeath in the third person, and

all communications ceased. As a matter of fact the Smeath family were

infinitely relieved by Melrose's letter, which showed that he did not

intend to take any police steps to recover the bronze or its value.

Profiting by the paternal traditions, Netta had managed the sale of the

Hermes in London, where, owing to Melrose's miserly hiding of it, it was

quite unknown, with considerable skill. It had realized a small fortune,

and she had returned, weary, ill, but triumphant, to the apartment in the

Via Giugno.

Twelve months later, Melrose had practically forgotten that he had ever

known her. He returned for the winter, to Threlfall, and entered upon a

course of life which gradually made him the talk and wonder of the

countryside. The rooms occupied by Netta and her child were left just as

he had found them when he returned after her flight. He had turned the

key on them then, and nobody had since entered them. Tyson wondered

whether it was sentiment, or temper; and gave it for the latter.

The years passed away. Melrose's hair turned from black to gray; Thyrza

married a tradesman in Carlisle and presented him with a large family;

the Dixons, as cook and manservant, gradually fitted themselves more and

more closely to the queer conditions of life in the Tower, and grew old

in the service of a master whose eccentricities became to them, in

process of time, things to be endured without comment, like disagreeable

facts of climate. In Dixon, his Methodist books, his Bible, and his

weekly chapel maintained those forces of his character which were--and

always continued to be--independent of Melrose; and Melrose knew his own

interests well enough not to interfere with an obstinate man's religion.

While Tyson, after five years, passed on triumphantly to a lucrative

agency in the Dukeries, having won a reputation for tact and patience in

the impossible service of a mad master, which would carry him through

life. Melrose, being Melrose, found it hopeless to replace him

satisfactorily; and, as he continued to buy land greedily year after

year, the neglected condition of his immense estate became an

ever-increasing scandal to the county.

Meanwhile, for some years after the departure of Netta, Lady Tatham was

obliged for reason of health to spend the winters on the Riviera, and she

and her boy were only at Duddon for the summer months. Intercourse

between her and her cousin Edmund Melrose was never renewed, and her son

grew up in practical ignorance of the relationship. When, however, the

lad was nearing the end of his Eton school days Duddon became once more

the permanent home, summer and winter, of mother and son, and young Lord

Tatham, curly-haired, good-humoured, and good-hearted, became

thenceforward the favourite and princeling of the countryside. On the

east and north, the Duddon estates marched with Melrose's property.

Occasions of friction constantly arose, but the determination on each

side to have no more communication with the other than was absolutely

necessary generally composed any nascent dispute; so long at least as

Lady Tatham and a very diplomatic agent were in charge.

But at the age of twenty-four, Harry Tatham succeeded to the sole

management of his estates, and his mother soon realized that her son was

not likely to treat their miserly neighbour with the same patience as

herself.

And with the changes in human life, went changes even more subtle and

enduring in the Cumbria county itself. Those were times of crisis for

English agriculture. Wheat-lands went back to pasture; and a surplus

population, that has found its way for generations to the factory towns,

began now to turn toward the great Canadian spaces beyond the western

sea. Only the mountains still rose changeless and eternal, at least to

human sense; "ambitious for the hallowing" of moon and sun; keeping their

old secrets, and their perpetual youth.

And after twenty years Threlfall Tower became the scene of another drama,

whereof what has been told so far is but the prologue.

III

It was a May evening, and Lydia Penfold, spinster, aged twenty-four, was

sketching in St. John's Vale, that winding valley which, diverging from

the Ambleside-Keswick road in an easterly direction, divides the northern

slopes of the Helvellyn range from the splendid mass of Blencathra.

So beautiful was the evening, so ravishing under its sway were heaven and

earth, that Lydia's work went but slowly. She was a professional artist,

to whom guineas were just as welcome as to other people; and she had very

industrious and methodical views of her business. But she was, before

everything, one of those persons who thrill under the appeal of beauty to

a degree that often threatens or suspends practical energy. Save for the

conscience in her, she could have lived from day to day just for the

moments of delight, the changes in light and shade, in colour and form,

that this beautiful world continually presents to senses as keen as hers.

Lydia's conscience, however, was strong; though on this particular

evening it did little or nothing to check the sheer sensuous dreaming

that had crept over her.

The hand that held her palette had dropped upon her knee, her eyes were

lifted to the spectacle before her, and her lips, slightly parted,

breathed in pleasure.

She looked on a pair of mountains of which one, torn and seamed from top

to toe as though some vast Fafnir of the prime had wreaked his dragon

rage upon it, fronted her sheer, rimmed with gold where some of its

thrusting edges still caught the sunset, but otherwise steeped in purple

shades already prophesying night; while the other, separated from the

first by a gap, yet grouping with it, ran slanting away to the northwest,

offering to the eyes only a series of lovely foreshortened planes, rising

from the valley, one behind the other, sweeping upward and backward to

the central peak of Skiddaw, and ablaze with light from base to summit.

The evenings in the north are long. It was past seven on this May day;

yet Lydia knew that the best of the show was still to come; she waited

for the last act, and refused to think of supper. That golden fusion of

all the upper air; that "intermingling of Heaven's pomp," spread on the

great slopes of Skiddaw--red and bronze and purple, shot through each

other, and glorified by excess of light; that sharpness of the larch

green on the lower slopes; that richness of the river fields; that

shining pageantry of cloud, rising or sinking with the mountain line:

pondering these things, absorbing them, she looked at her drawing from

time to time in a smiling despair; the happy despair of the artist, who

amid the failure of to-day looks forward with passion to the effort of

to-morrow.

Youth and natural joy possessed her.

What scents from the river-bank, under the softly breathing wind which

had sprung up with the sunset! The girl brought her eyes down, and saw a

bank of primroses, and beyond, in the little copse on the farther side of

the stream, a gleam of blue, where the wild hyacinth spread among the

birches. While close to her, at her very feet, ran the stream, with its

slipping, murmuring water, its stones splashed with white, purple, and

orange, its still reaches paved with evening gold.

"What a mercy I wrote that letter!" she said to herself, with a sigh of

content. She was thinking of a proposal that had come to her a few days

before this date, to take a post as drawing mistress in a Brighton

school. The salary was tempting; and, at the moment, money was more than

usually scarce in the family purse. Her mother's eyes had looked at her

wistfully.

Yet she had refused; with a laughing bravado that had concealed some

inward qualms.

Whereupon the gods had immediately and scandalously rewarded her. She had

sold four of her drawings at a Liverpool exhibition for twenty pounds;

and there were lying beside her on the grass some agreeable press

notices just arrived, most of which she already knew by heart.

Twenty pounds! That would pay the half year's rent. And there were

three other drawings in a London show that might very well sell too. Why

not--now the others had sold? Meanwhile she--thank the Lord!--had saved

herself, as a fish from the hook. She was still free; free to draw, free

to dream. She had not bartered her mountains for a salary. Instead of

crocodile walks, two and two, with a score of stupid schoolgirls, here

she was, still roaming the fells, the same happy vagabond as before. She

hugged her liberty. And at the same time she promised herself that her

mother should have a new shawl and a new cap for Whitsuntide.

Those at present in use came near in Lydia's opinion to being a family

disgrace.

The last act of the great spectacle rushed on; and again the artist held

her breath enthralled. The gold on Skiddaw was passing into rose; and

over the greenish blue of the lower sky, webs of crimson cirrhus spun

themselves. The stream ran fire; and far away the windows of a white farm

blazed. Lydia seized a spare sketching-block lying on the grass, and

began to note down a few "passages" in the sky before her.

Suddenly a gust came straying down the valley. It blew the press-cuttings

which had dropped from her lap toward the stream. One of them fell in,

the others, long flapping things, hung caught in a tuft of grass. Lydia

sprang up, with an exclamation of annoyance, and went to the rescue.

Dear, dear!--the longest and best notice, which spoke of her work as

"agreeable and scholarly, showing, at tunes, more than a touch of high

talent"--was quietly floating away. She must get it back. Her mother had

not yet read it--not yet purred over it. And it was most desirable she

should read it, so as to get rid thereby of any lingering doubt about the

horrid school and its horrid proposal.

But alack! the slip of newspaper was already out of reach, speeded by a

tiny eddy toward a miniature rapid in the middle of the beck. Lydia,

clinging with one hand to a stump of willow, caught up a stick lying on

the bank with the other, and, hanging over the stream, tried to head back

the truant. All that happened was that her foot slipping on a pebble went

flop into the shallow water, and part of her dress followed it.

It was not open to Lydia to swear, and she had no time for the usual

feminine exclamations before she heard a voice behind her.

"Allow me--can I be of any use?"

She turned in astonishment, extricating her wet foot, and clambered back

on to the bank. A young man stood there, civilly deferential. His bicycle

lay on the grass at the edge of the road, which was only a few steps

away.

"I saw you slip in, and thought perhaps I might help. You were trying to

reach something, weren't you?"

"It doesn't matter, thank you," said Lydia, whose cheeks had gone pink.

The young man looked at her, and became still more civil.

"What was it? That piece of paper? Oh, I'll get it in a moment."

And splashing from stone to stone in the river-bed, he had soon reached a

point where, with the aid of Lydia's stick, the bedraggled cutting was

soon fished out and returned to its owner. Lydia thanked him.

"But you've wet both your feet!" She looked at them, with concern. "Won't

it be very uncomfortable, bicycling?"

"I haven't far to go. Oh, by the way, I was just looking out for somebody

to ask--about this road--and I couldn't see a soul, till just as I came

out of the little wood there"--he pointed--"I saw you--slipping in."

They both laughed. Lydia returned to her camp stool, and began to put up

her sketching things.

"What is it you want to know?"

"Is this the road for Whitebeck?"

"Yes, certainly. You come to a bridge and the village is on the other

side."

"Thank you. I don't know these parts. But what an awfully jolly valley!"

He waved a hand toward it. "And what do you think I saw about a mile

higher up?" He had picked up his bicycle from the grass, and stood

leaning easily upon it. She could not but observe that he was tall and

slim and handsome. A tourist, no doubt; she could not place him as an

inhabitant.

"I know!" she said smiling. "You saw the otter hounds. They passed me an

hour ago. Have they caught him?"

"Who? the otter? Lord, no! He got right away from them--up a tributary

stream."

"Good!" said Lydia, as she shut her painting-box.

The young man hesitated. He had clearly no right to linger any longer,

but, as the girl before him seemed to him one of the most delicious

creatures he had ever seen, he did linger.

"I wonder if I might ask you another question? Can you tell me whether

that fine old house over there is Duddon Castle?"

"Duddon Castle!" Lydia lifted her eyebrows. "Duddon Castle is seven miles

away. That place is called Threlfall Tower. Were you going to Duddon?"

"No. But"--he hesitated--"I know young Tatham a little. I should like to

have seen his house. But, that's a fine old place, isn't it?" He looked

with curiosity at the pile of building rising beyond a silver streak of

river, amid the fresh of the May woods.

"Well--yes--in some ways," said Lydia, dubiously. "Don't you know who

lives there?"

"Not the least. I am a complete stranger here. I say, do let me do that

up for you?" And, letting his bicycle fall, the young man seized the

easel which had still to be taken to pieces and put into its case.

Lydia shot a wavering look at him. He ought certainly to have departed by

now, and she ought to be snubbing him. But the expression on his sunburnt

face as he knelt on the grass, unscrewing her easel, seemed so little to

call for snubbing that instead she gave him further information;

interspersed with directions to him as to what to do and what not to do

with her gear.

"It belongs to a Mr. Melrose. Did you never hear of him?"

"Never. Why should I?"

"Not from the Tathams?"

"No. You see I only knew Tatham at college--in my last year. He

was a good deal junior to me. And I have never stayed with them at

Duddon--though they kindly asked me--years ago."

The girl beside him took not the smallest notice of his information. She

was busy packing up brushes and paints, and her next remark showed him

subtly that she did not mean to treat him as an acquaintance of the

Tathams, whom she probably knew, but was determined to keep him to his

rôle of stranger and tourist.

"You had better look at Threlfall as you pass. It has a splendid

situation."

"I will. But why ought I to have heard of the gentleman? I forget his

name."

"Mr. Melrose? Oh, well--he's a legend about here. We all talk about him."

"What's wrong with him? Is he a nuisance?--or a lunatic?"

"It depends what you have to do with him. About here he goes by the name

of the 'Ogre.'"

"How, does he eat people up?" asked the stranger, smiling.

The girl hesitated.

"Ask one of his tenants!" she said at last.

"Oh, he's a landlord, and a bad one?"

She nodded, a sudden sharpness in her gray eyes.

"But that's not the common reason for the name. It's because he shuts

himself up--in a house full of treasures. He's a great collector."

"Of works of art? You--don't need to be mad to do that! It seems to be

one of the things that pays best nowadays--with all these Americans

about. It's a way of investing your money. Doesn't he show them to

anybody?"

"Nobody is allowed to go near him, or his house. He has built a high wall

round his park, and dogs are let loose at night that tear you to pieces."

"Nice man! If it weren't for the dogs, I should brave him. In a small

way, I'm a collector myself."

He smiled, and Lydia understood that the personal reference was thrown

out as a feeler, in case she might be willing to push the conversation

further. But she did not respond, although as he spoke she happened to

notice that he wore a remarkable ring on his left hand, which seemed

to illustrate his remark. An engraved gem?--Greek? Her eyes were quick

for such things.

However, she was seized with shyness, and as she had now finished the

packing of her brushes and paints, and the young man had elaborately

fastened all the straps of the portable easel and its case, there was

nothing for him to do but to stoop unwillingly for his soft hat which was

lying on the grass. Then an idea struck him.

"I say, what are you going to do with all these things?"

"Carry them home." She smiled. "I am not a cripple."

"Mightn't I--mightn't I carry them for you?"

"Thank you. My way lies in quite another direction. Good-night."

She held out a shapely hand. He took it, lifted his hat, and departed.

As soon as he was safely past a jutting corner of the road Lydia, instead

of going home, lazily sat down again on a rock to think about what had

happened. She was perfectly aware that--considering the whole interview

had only taken ten minutes--she had made an impression upon the young

man. And as young men of such distinguished appearance were not common in

the Whitebeck neighbourhood, the recollection of all those little signs

in look and manner which had borne witness to the stranger's discreet

admiration of her was not at all disagreeable.

He was not a native--that she was sure of. She guessed him a Londoner.

"Awfully good clothes!--London clothes. About thirty, I should think? I

wonder what he does. He can't be rich, or he wouldn't be bicycling. He

did up those straps as though he were used to them; but he can't be an

artist, or he'd have said something. It was a face with lots of power in

it. Not very good-tempered, I should say? But there's something about

him--yes, distinctly, _something_! I liked his thin cheeks, and his dark

curls. His head, too, was uncommonly well set on. I'm sure that there's a

good deal to him, as the Americans say; he's not stuffed with sawdust. I

can imagine--just imagine--being in love with him."

She laughed to herself.

Then a sudden thought occurred to her, which reddened her cheeks. Suppose

when the young man came to think over it, he believed that she had let

the papers fall into the river--deliberately--on purpose--just to attract

his attention? At the very precise moment that he comes upon the scene,

she slips into the water. Of course!--an arranged affair!

She sat on, meditating in some discomfort.

"It is no use deceiving ourselves," she thought. "We're not in the good

old Tennysonian days. There's precious little chivalry now! Men don't

idealize women as they used. They're grown far more suspicious--and

_harder_. Perhaps because women have grown so critical of them! Anyway

something's gone--what is it? Poetry? Illusion? And yet!--why is it that

men still put us off our balance?--even now--that they matter so much

less, now that we live our own lives, and can do without them? I

shouldn't be sitting here, bothering my head, if it had been another girl

who had come to help."

Slowly she gathered up her things and took her way home, while the

evening of blue and pearl fell around her, while the glow died on the

fells, and Venus came out in a sky that was still too full of light to

let any lesser stars appear.

She crossed the stepping stones, and in a river field on the farther side

she came across an old shepherd, carrying a wounded ewe across his

shoulders, and with his dog beside him. At sight of him she paused in

astonishment. He was an old friend of hers, but he belonged to a

village--the village of Mainstairs--some three miles away in the lowland

toward Pengarth. She had first come across him when sketching among some

distant fells where he had been a shepherd for more than forty years.

The old man's russet face, sharp-lined and strong, lit up as he saw her

approaching.

"Why I thowt I med coom across yer!" he said smiling. And he explained

that he had been paying a visit to a married daughter under Naddle Fell,

and had volunteered to carry an injured sheep down to a valley farm,

whence it had strayed on his way home.

They stopped to talk while he rested a few minutes, under his burden,

propped against a rock. Lydia asked him after a sick grand-daughter. Her

question showed knowledge--no perfunctory kindness.

He shook his head sadly, and her grave, soft look, as she fell silent a

little, beside him, said more than words.

"Anything been done to your cottage?" she asked him presently.

"Noa--nowt."

"Nor to the other houses?"

"Naethin'."

Her brows frowned.

"Horrible!" she said under her breath. But they did not pursue the

subject. Instead the old man broke out in praise of the "won'erful 'cute"

sheep dog beside him, and in the story of the accident which had slightly

lamed the ewe he was carrying. Lydia's vivacious listening, her laugh,

her comments, expressed--unconsciously--with just a touch of Cumbria

dialect, showed them natural comrades. Some deeply human gift, some

spontaneity in the girl, answered to the racy simplicity of the old man.

"Tell me once more"--she said, as she rose from her seat upon a fallen

tree, and prepared to go on her way--"those counting words you told me

last week. I tried to tell them to my mother--but I couldn't remember

them all. They made us laugh so."

"Aye, they're the owd words," said the shepherd complacently. "We doan't

use 'em now. But my feyther minds how his feyther used allus to count by

'em."

And he began the catalogue of those ancient numerals by which the

northern dalesman of a hundred years ago were still accustomed to reckon

their sheep, words that go back to the very infancy of man.

"Yan--tyan--tethera--methera--pimp;

sethera--lethera--hovera--dovera--dick."

Lydia's face dissolved in laughter--and when the old man delighting in

her amusement went on to the compounds of ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen,

and the rest:

"Yan-a-dick--tyan-a-dick--tethera-a-dick--methera-a-dick--bumfit."

At "bumfit" (fifteen) they both rocked with merriment, the old man

carried away by the infection of hers.

"Go on," said Lydia--the tears of laughter in her eyes--"up to twenty,

and then hear me say them."

"Yan-a-bumfit--tyan-a-bumfit--tethera-a-bumfit--methera-a-bumfit--giggot"

(twenty).

"Giggot" set them both off again--and then Lydia--stumbling, laughing,

and often corrected, said her lesson.

By the time she was fairly perfect, and the old man had straightened

himself again under his load--a veritable "good shepherd," glorified by

the evening light--they parted with a friendly nod, glad to have met and

sure to meet again.

"I'll come and see Bessie soon," she said gently, as she moved on.

"Aye. Yo'll be varra welcome."

She stepped forward briskly, gained the high road, and presently saw in

front of her a small white house, recently built, and already embowered

in a blossoming garden. Lilacs sent their fragrance to greet her;

rhododendrons glowed through the twilight, and a wild-cherry laden with

bloom reared its white miracle against the walls of the house.

Lydia stood at the gate devouring the tree with her eyes. The blossom

had already begun to drop. "Two days more"--she said to herself,

sighing--"and it'll be gone--till next year. And it's been out such a

little, little while! I seem hardly to have looked at it. It's horrible

how short-lived all the beautiful things are."

"Lydia!" A voice called from an open window.

"Yes, mother."

"You're dreadfully late, Lydia! Susan and I have finished supper long

ago."

Lydia walked into the house, and put her head into the drawing-room.

"Sorry, mother! It was so lovely, I couldn't come in. And I met a dear

old shepherd I know. Don't bother about me. I'll get some milk and cake."

She closed the door again, before her mother could protest.

"Girls will never think of their meals!" said Mrs. Penfold to herself in

irritation. "And then all of a sudden they get nerves--or consumption--or

something."