As she spoke, she withdrew from the window, and curled herself up on a

sofa, where a knitted coverlet lay, ready to draw over her feet. Mrs.

Penfold was a slight, pretty woman of fifty with invalidish Sybaritic

ways, and a character which was an odd mixture of humility and

conceit--diffidence and audacity. She was quite aware that she was not as

clever as her daughters. She could not write poetry like Susan, or paint

like Lydia. But then, in her own opinion, she had so many merits they

were without; merits which more than maintained her self-respect, and

enabled her to hold her ground with them. For instance: by the time she

was four and twenty, Lydia's age, she had received at least a dozen

proposals. Lydia's scalps, so far as her mother knew, were only

two--fellow-students at South Kensington, absurd people, not to be

counted. Then, pretty as Lydia was, her nose could not be compared for

delicacy with her mother's. "My nose was always famous"--Mrs. Penfold

would say complacently to her daughters--"it was that which first

attracted your dear father. 'It was,' he said--you know he always

expressed himself so remarkably--'such a sure sign of "race."' His own

people--oh! they were quite nice people--but quite middle-class." Again,

her hands and feet were smaller and more aristocratic than either Lydia's

or Susan's. She liked to remind herself constantly how everybody had

admired them and talked about them when she was a girl.

Drawing her work-box toward her, while she waited for Lydia's return,

Mrs. Penfold fell to knitting, while the inner chatter of the mind went

as fast as her needles--concerned chiefly with two matters of absorbing

interest: Lydia's twenty pounds, and a piece of news about Lydia,

recently learnt from the rector's wife.

As to the twenty pounds, it was the greatest blessing! Of course the

school salary would have been a certainty--and Lydia had hardly

considered it with proper seriousness. But there--all was well! The extra

twenty pounds would carry them on, and now that Lydia had begun to earn,

thought the maternal optimist, she would of course go on earning--at

higher and higher prices--and the family income of some three hundred a

year would obtain the increment it so desperately needed. And as Mrs.

Penfold looked upon a girls' school as something not far removed from a

nunnery, a place at any rate painfully devoid of the masculine element;

and as her whole mind was set--sometimes romantically, sometimes

financially--on the marriage of her daughters, she felt that both she and

Lydia had escaped what might have been an unfortunate necessity.

Yes, indeed!--what a _providential_ escape, if--

Mrs. Penfold let fall her knitting; her face sparkled. Why had Lydia

never communicated the fact, the thrilling fact that she had been meeting

at the rectory--more than once apparently--not merely _a_ young man, but

_the_ young man of the neighbourhood. And with results--favourable

results--quite evident to the Rector and the Rector's wife, if Lydia

herself chose to ignore and secrete them. It was really unkind....

The door opened. A white figure slipped into the room through its mingled

lights, and found a stool beside Mrs. Penfold.

"Dear--are you all right?"

Mrs. Penfold stroked the speaker's head.

"Well, I thought I was going to have a headache this morning,

darling--but I didn't--it went away. Lydia! the Rector and Mrs. Deacon

have been here. _Why_ didn't you tell me you have been meeting Lord

Tatham at the rectory?"

Lydia laughed.

"Didn't I? Well, he's quite decent."

"Mrs. Deacon says he admired you. She's sure he did!" Mrs. Penfold

stooped eagerly toward her daughter, trying to see her face in the

twilight.

"Mrs. Deacon's a goose! You know she is, mother,--you often say so. I met

him first, of course, at the Hunt Ball. And you saw him there too. You

saw me dancing with him."

"But that was only once," said Mrs. Penfold, candidly. "I didn't think

anything of that. When I was a girl, if a young man liked me at a dance,

we went on till we made everybody talk. Or else, there was nothing in

it."

"Well, there was nothing in it, dear--in this case. And I wouldn't advise

you to give me to Lord Tatham--just yet!"

Mrs. Penfold sighed.

"Of course one knows that that kind of young man has his marriage made

for him--just like royalty. But sometimes--they break out. There _are_

dukes that have married plain Misses--no better than you, Lydia--and

not American either. But--Lydia--you _did_ like him?"

"Who? Lord Tatham? Certainly."

"I expect most girls do! He's the great _parti_ about here."

"Mother, _really_!" cried Lydia. "He's just a pleasant youth--not at all

clever. And oh, how badly he plays bridge!"

"That doesn't matter. Mrs. Deacon says you got on with him, splendidly."

"I chaffed him a good deal. He really plays worse than I do--if you can

believe it."

"They like being chaffed"--said Mrs. Penfold pensively--"if a girl does

it well."

"I don't care, darling, whether they like it or not. It amuses me, and so

I do it."

"But you mustn't let them think they're being laughed at. If you do that,

Lydia, you'll be an old maid. Oh, Lydia!"--the speaker sighed like a

furnace--"I _do_ wish you saw more young men!"

"Well, I saw another one--much handsomer than Lord Tatham--this

afternoon," laughed Lydia.

Mrs. Penfold eagerly inquired. The story was told, and Mrs. Penfold, as

easily lured by a new subject as a child by a new doll, fell into many

speculations as to who the youth could have been, and where he was going.

Lydia soon ceased to listen. But when the coverlet slipped away she did

not fail to replace it tenderly over her mother's feet, and every now and

then her fingers gave a caressing touch to the delicate hand of which

Mrs. Penfold was so proud. It was not difficult to see that of the two

the girl was really the mother, in spirit; the maturer, protecting soul.

Presently she roused herself to ask:

"Where is Susan?"

"She went up to write directly after supper, and we mustn't disturb her.

She hopes to finish her tragedy to-night. She said she had an

inspiration."

"Inspiration or no, I shall hunt her to bed, if I don't hear her door

shut by twelve," said Lydia with sisterly determination.

"Do you think, darling, that Susy--will ever make a great deal of money

by her writings?" The tone was wistful.

"Well, no, mother, candidly, I don't. There's no money in tragedies--so

I'm told."

Mrs. Penfold sighed. But Lydia, changed the subject, entered upon a

discussion, so inventively artistic, of the new bonnet, and the new dress

in which her mother was to appear on Whitsunday, that when bedtime came

Mrs. Penfold had seldom passed a pleasanter evening.

After her mother had gone to bed, Lydia wandered into the moonlit garden,

and strolled about its paths, lost in the beauty of its dim flowers and

the sweetness of its scents. The spring was in her veins, and she felt

strangely shaken and restless. She tried to think of her painting, and

the prospect she had of getting into an artistic club, a club of young

landscapists, which exhibited every May, and was beginning to make a

mark. But her thoughts strayed perpetually.

So her mother imagined that Lord Tatham had only danced once with her at

the Hunt Ball? As a matter of fact, he had danced with her once, and

then, as dancing was by no means the youth's strong point, they had sat

out in a corner of the hotel garden, by the river, through four supper

dances. And if the fact had escaped the notice both of Mrs. Penfold and

Susy, greatly to Lydia's satisfaction, she was well aware that it had not

altogether escaped the notice of the neighbourhood, which kept an eager

watch on the doings of its local princeling in matters matrimonial.

And as to the various meetings at the rectory, Lydia could easily have

made much of them, if she had wished. She had come to see that they were

deliberately sought by Lord Tatham, and encouraged by Mrs. Deacon. And

because she had come to see it, she meant to refuse another invitation

from Mrs. Deacon, which was in her pocket--without consulting her mother.

Besides--said youthful pride--if Lord Tatham really wished to know them,

Lady Tatham must call. And Lady Tatham had not called.

Her mother was quite right. The marriage of young earls are, generally

speaking, "arranged," and there are hovering relations, and unwritten

laws in the background, which only the foolish forget. "And as I am not a

candidate for the place," thought Lydia, "I won't be misunderstood!"

She did not intend indeed to be troubled--for the present--with such

matters at all.

"Marrying is not in the bill!" She declaimed it to a lilac-bush, standing

with her hands behind her, and face uplifted. "I have no money, and no

position--therefore the vast majority of men won't want to marry me.

And as to scheming to make them want it--why!--good heavens!--when there

are such amusing things to do in the world!"

She paced the garden paths, thinking passionately, defiantly of her art,

yet indignant with herself for these vague yearnings and languors that

had to be so often met and put down.

"Men!--_men!_--what do they matter to me, except for talk--and fun!

Yet there one goes thinking about them--like any fool. It's sex of

course--and youth. I can no more escape them than anybody else. But I

Can be mistress of them. I will. That's where this generation differs.

We needn't drift--we see clear. Oh! those clouds--that blue!--those

stars! Dear world! Isn't beauty enough?"

She lifted her arms above her head in a wild aspiration. And all in a

moment it surprised her to feel her eyes wet with tears.

* * * * *

Meanwhile the young man who had rescued her press cuttings had fallen,

barely an hour after his parting from her, upon evil fortunes.

His bicycle had carried him swiftly down the valley toward the Whitebeck

bridge. Just above the bridge, a steep pitch of hill, one of those

specimens of primitive road-making that abound in Cumbria, descended

rapidly into a dark hollow, with a high wall on one side, overhung by

trees, and on the other a bank, broken three parts of tie way down by the

entrance of a side road. At the top of the hill, Faversham, to give the

youth his name, stopped to look at the wall, which was remarkable for

height and strength. The thick wood on his right hid any building there

might be on the farther side of the stream. But clearly this was the

Ogre's wall--ogreish indeed! A man might well keep a cupboard full of

Fatimas, alive or dead, on the other side of it, or a coiner's press, or

a banknote factory, or any other romantic and literary villainy.

Faversham found himself speculating with amusement on the old curmudgeon

behind the wall; always with the vision, drawn by recollection on the

leafy background, of a girl's charming face--clear pale skin, beautiful

eyes, more blue surely than gray--the whitest neck, with coils of brown

hair upon it--the mouth with its laughing freedom--yet reticent--no mere

silly sweetness!

Then putting on his brake, he began to coast down the hill, which opened

gently only to turn without notice into something scandalously

precipitous. The bicycle had been hired in Keswick, and had had a hard

season's use. The brake gave way at the worst moment of the hill, and

Faversham, unable to save himself, rushed to perdition. And by way of

doubling his misfortune, as in the course of his mad descent he reached

the side road on the left, there came the loud clatter of a cart, and a

young horse emerged almost at a gallop, with a man tugging vainly at its

rein.

Ten minutes later a group of men stood consulting by the side of the road

over Faversham's prostrate form. He was unconscious; his head and face

were covered with blood, and his left ankle was apparently broken. A

small open motor stood at the bottom of the hill, and an angry dispute

was going on between an old man in mire-stained working-clothes, and the

young doctor from Pengarth to whom the motor belonged.

"I say, Mr. Dixon, that you've got to take this man into Mr. Melrose's

house and look after him, till he is fit to be moved farther, or you'll

be guilty of his death, and I shall give evidence accordingly!" said the

doctor, with energy, as he raised himself from the injured man.

"Theer's noa place for him i' t' Tower, Mr. Undershaw, an' I'll take noa

sich liberty!"

"Then I will. Where's Mr. Melrose?"

"I' London--till to-morrow. Yo'll do nowt o' t' soart, doctor."

"We shall see. To carry him half a mile to the farm, when you might carry

him just across that bridge to the house, would be sheer murder. I won't

see it done. And if you do it, you'll be indicted for manslaughter. Now

then--why doesn't that hurdle come along?" The speaker looked impatiently

up the road; and, as he spoke, a couple of labourers appeared at the top

of the hill, carrying a hurdle between them.

Dixon threw looks of mingled wrath and perplexity at the doctor, and the

men.

"I tell yo', doctor, it conno' be done! Muster Melrose's orders mun be

obeyed. I have noa power to admit onybody to his house withoot his leave.

Yo' knaw yoursel'," he added in the doctor's ear, "what Muster Melrose

is."

Undershaw muttered something--expressing either wrath or scorn--behind

his moustache; then said aloud:

"Never you mind, Dixon; I shall take the responsibility. You let me

alone. Now, my boys, lend a hand with the hurdle, and give me some

coats."

Faversham's leg had been already placed in a rough splint and his head

bandaged. They lifted him, quite unconscious, upon the hurdle, and made

him as comfortable as they could. The doctor anxiously felt his pulse,

and directed the men to carry him, as carefully as possible, through a

narrow gate in the high wall opposite which was standing open, across the

private foot-bridge over the stream, and so to the Terrace whereon stood

Threlfall Tower. Impenetrably hidden as it was behind the wall and the

trees, the old house was yet, in truth, barely sixty yards away. Dixon

followed, lamenting and protesting, but in vain.

"Hold your tongue, man!" said Undershaw at last, losing his temper. "You

disgrace your master. It would be a public scandal to refuse to help a

man in this plight! If we get him alive through to-night, it will be a

mercy. I believe the cart's been over him somewhere!" he added, with a

frowning brow.

Dixon silenced, but by no means persuaded, followed the little

procession, till it reached a side door of the Tower, opening on the

terrace just beyond the bridge. The door was shut, and it was not till

the doctor had made several thunderous attacks upon it, beside sending

men round to the other doors of the house, that Mrs. Dixon at last

cautiously opened it.

Fresh remonstrance and refusal followed on the part both of husband and

wife. Fresh determination also on the part of the doctor, seconded by the

threatening looks and words of Faversham's bearers, stout Cumbria

labourers, to whom the storming of the Tower was clearly a business

they enjoyed. At last the old couple, bitterly protesting, gave way, and

the procession entered.

They found themselves in a long corridor, littered with a strange

multitude of objects, scarcely distinguishable in the dim light shed by

one unshuttered window through which some of the evening glow still

penetrated. Dixon and his wife whispered excitedly together; after which

Dixon led the way through the corridor into the entrance hall--which was

equally encumbered--and so to a door on the right.

"Yo' can bring him in there," he said sulkily to Undershaw. "There's

mebbe a bed upstairs we can bring doon."

He threw open the drawing-room--a dreary, disused room, with its carpets

rolled up in one corner, and its scanty furniture piled in another. The

candle held by Mrs. Dixon lit up the richly decorated ceiling.

"Can't you do anything better?" asked Undershaw, turning upon her

vehemently. "Don't you keep a spare bedroom in this place?"

"Noa, we doan't!" said Mrs. Dixon, with answering temper. "There isn't a

room upstairs but what's full o' Muster Melrose's things. Yo' mun do wi'

this, or naethin'."

Undershaw submitted, and Faversham's bearers gently laid him down,

spreading their coats on the bare floor to receive him, till a bed could

be found. Dixon and his wife, in a state of pitiable disturbance, went

off to look for one, while Undershaw called after them:

"And I warn you that to-morrow you'll have to find quarters for two

nurses!"

Thus, without any conscious action on his own part, and in the absence of

its formidable master, was Claude Faversham brought under the roof of

Threlfall Tower.

IV

On the evening of the following day, Mr. Edmund Melrose arrived in

Pengarth by train from London, hired a one-horse wagonette, and drove out

to the Tower.

His manners were at no time amiable, but the man who had the honour of

driving him on this occasion, and had driven him occasionally before, had

never yet seen him in quite so odious a temper. This was already evident

at the time of the start from Pengarth, and thenceforward the cautious

Cumbrian preserved an absolute and watchful silence, to the great

annoyance of Melrose, who would have welcomed any excuse for ill-humour.

But as nothing beyond the curtest monosyllables were to be got out of his

companion, and as the rich beauty of the May landscape was entirely lost

upon himself, Melrose was reduced at last in the course of his ten miles'

drive to scanning once more the copy of the _Times_ which he had brought

with him from the south. The news of various strikes and industrial

arbitrations which it contained had already enraged him; and enraged him

again as he looked through it. The proletariat, in his opinion, must be

put down and kept down; that his own class began to show a lamentable

want of power to do either was the only public matter that ever really

troubled him. So far as his life was affected by the outside world at

all, except as a place where auctions took place, and dealers' shops

abounded, it was through this consciousness of impending social disaster,

this terror as of a rapidly approaching darkness bearing the doom of the

modern world in its bosom, which intermittently oppressed him, as it has

oppressed and still overshadows innumerable better men of our day.

At this moment, in the month of May, 190--, Edmund Melrose had just

passed his seventieth birthday. But the extraordinary energy and vivacity

of his good looks had scarcely abated since the time when, twenty-three

years before this date, Netta Smeath had first seen him in Florence;

although his hair had whitened, and the bronzed skin of the face had

developed a multitude of fine wrinkles that did but add to its character.

His aspect, even on the threshold of old age, had still something of the

magnificence of an Italian captain of the Renaissance, something also of

the pouncing, peering air that belongs to the type. He seemed indeed to

be always on the point of seizing or appropriating some booty or other.

His wandering eyes, his long acquisitive fingers, his rapid movements

showed him still the hunter on the trail, to whom everything else was in

truth indifferent but the satisfaction of an instinct which had grown and

flourished on the ruins of a man.

As they drove along, through various portions of the Tower estates, the

eyes of the taciturn driver beside him took note of the dilapidated farm

buildings and the broken gates which a miserly landlord could not be

induced to repair, until an exasperated tenant actually gave notice.

Melrose meanwhile was absorbed in trying to recover a paragraph in the

_Times_ he had caught sight of on a first reading, and had then lost in

the excitement of studying the prices of a sale at Christie's, held the

day before, wherein his own ill luck had led to the bad temper from which

he was suffering. He tracked the passage at last. It ran as follows:

"The late Professor William Mackworth has left the majority of his costly

collections to the nation. To the British Museum will go the marbles and

bronzes, to the South Kensington, the china and the tapestries. Professor

Mackworth made no stipulations, and the authorities of both museums are

free to deal with his bequests as they think best."

Melrose folded the newspaper and put it back into his pocket with a short

sudden laugh, which startled the man beside him. "Stipulations! I should

rather think not! What museum in its senses would accept such piffling

stuff with any _stipulations_ attached? As it is, the greater part will

go into the lumber-rooms; they'll never show them! There's only one

collection that Mackworth ever had that was worth having. Not a word

about _that_. People don't give their best things to the country--not

they. Hypocrites! What on earth has he done with them? There are several

things _I want_."

And he fell into a long and greedy meditation, in which, as usual, his

fancy pursued a quarry and brought it down. He took no notice meanwhile

of the objects passed as they approached the Tower, although among them

were many that might well have roused the attention of a landlord; as,

for instance, the condition of the long drive leading up to the house,

with its deep ruts and grass-grown sides; a tree blown down, not

apparently by any very recent storm, and now lying half across the

roadway, so that the horse and carriage picked their way with difficulty

round its withered branches; one of the pillars of the fine gateway,

which gave access to the walled enclosure round the house, broken away;

and the enclosure within, which had been designed originally as a formal

garden in the Italian style, and was now a mere tangled wilderness of

weeds and coarse grass, backed by dense thickets of laurel and yew which

had grown up in a close jungle round the house, so that many of the lower

windows were impenetrably overgrown.

As they drew up at the gate, the Pengarth driver looked with furtive

curiosity at the house-front. Melrose, in the words of Lydia to young

Faversham, had "become a legend" to his neighbourhood, and many strange

things were believed about him. It was said that the house contained a

number of locked and shuttered rooms which were never entered; that

Melrose slept by day, and worked or prowled by night; that his only

servants were the two Dixons, no one else being able to endure his

company; that he and the house were protected by savage dogs, and that

his sole visitors were occasional strangers from the south, who arrived

with black bags, and often departed pursued with objurgations by Melrose,

and in terror of the dogs. It was said also that the Tower was full of

precious and marvellous things, including hordes of gold and silver; that

Melrose, who was detested in the countryside, lived in the constant dread

of burglary or murder; and finally--as a clue to the whole situation

which the popular mind insisted on supplying--that he had committed some

fearful crime, during his years in foreign parts, for which he could not

be brought to justice; but remorse and dread of discovery had affected

his brain, and turned him into a skulking outcast.

Possessed by these simple but interesting ideas, the Pengarth man sharply

noticed, first that the gate of the enclosure was padlocked, Melrose

himself supplying a key from his pocket; next that most of the windows of

the front were shuttered; and lastly--strange and unique fact, according

to his own recollections of the Tower--that two windows on the ground

floor were standing wide open, giving some view of the large room within,

so far as two partially drawn curtains allowed. As Melrose unlocked the

gate, the house door opened, and three huge dogs came bounding out, in

front of a gray-haired man, whom the driver of the wagonette knew to be

"owd Dixon," Melrose's butler and factotum. The driver was watching the

whole scene with an absorbed curiosity, when Melrose turned, threw him a

sudden look, paid him, and peremptorily bade him be off. He had therefore

no time to observe the perturbation of Dixon who was coming with slow

steps to meet his master; nor that a woman in white cap and apron had

appeared behind him on the steps.

* * * * *

Melrose on opening the gate found himself surrounded by his dogs, a fine

mastiff and two young collies. He was trying to drive them off, after a

gruff word to Dixon, when he was suddenly brought to a standstill by the

sight of the woman on the steps.

"D----n it!--whom have you got here?" he said, fiercely perceiving at the

same moment the open windows on the ground floor.

"Muster Melrose--it's noan o' my doin'," was Dixon's trembling reply, as

he pointed a shaky finger at the windows. "It was t' yoong doctor from

Pengarth--yo' ken him--"

A woman's voice interrupted.

"Please, sir, would you stop those dogs barking? They disturb the

patient."

Melrose looked at the speaker in stupefaction.

"What the deuce have you been doing with my house?"--he turned furiously

to Dixon--"who are these people?"

"Theer's a yoong man lyin' sick i' the drawin'-room," said Dixon

desperately. "They do say 'at he's in a varra parlish condition; an' they

tell me there's to be no barkin' nor noise whativer."

"Well, upon my word!" Melrose was by this time pale with rage. "A young

man--sick--in my drawing-room!--and a young woman giving orders in my

house!--you're a precious lot--you are!" He strode on toward the young

woman, who, as he now saw, was in the dress of a nurse. She had descended

the steps, and was vainly trying to quiet the dogs.

"I'll uphold yer!" muttered Dixon, following slowly after; "it's the

queerest do-ment that iver I knew!"

"Madam! I should like to know what your business is here. I never invited

you that I know of, and I am entirely at a loss to understand your

appearance in my house!"

The girl whom Melrose addressed with this fierce mock courtesy turned on

him a perplexed face.

"I know nothing about it, sir, except that I was summoned from Manchester

last night to an urgent case, and arrived early this morning. Can't you,

sir, quiet your dogs? Mr. Faversham is very ill."

"In _my_ house!" cried Melrose, furiously. "I won't have it. He shan't

remain here. I will have him removed."

The girl looked at him with amazement.

"That, sir, would be quite impossible. It would kill him to move him.

_Please_, Mr. Dixon, help me with the dogs."

She turned imploringly to Dixon, who obediently administered various

kicks and cuffs to the noisy trio which at last procured silence.

Her expression lightened, and with the professional alertness of one who

has no time to spend in gossiping, she turned and went quickly back into

the house.

Dixon approached his master.

"That's yan o' them," he said, gloomily. "T'other's inside."

"T'other who?--what? Tell me, you old fool, at once what the whole cursed

business is! Are you mad or am I?"

Dixon eyed him calmly. He had by this time summoned to his aid the

semi-mystical courage given him occasionally by his evangelical faith. If

it was the Lord's will that such a thing should happen, why it was the

Lord's will; and it was no use whatever for Mr. Melrose or any one else

to kick against the pricks. So with much teasing deliberation, and

constantly interrupted by his angry master, he told the story of the

accident on the evening before, of Doctor Undershaw's appearance on the

scene, and of the storming of the Tower.

"Well, of all the presuming rascals!" said Melrose with slow fury, under

his breath, when the tale was done. "But we'll be even with him! Send a

man from the farm, at once, to the cottage hospital at Whitebeck. They've

got an ambulance--I commission it. It's a hospital case. They shall see

to it. Be quick! March!--do you hear?--I intended to quit of them--bag

and baggage!"

Dixon did not move.

"Doctor said if we were to move un now, it 'ud be manslaughter," he said

stolidly, "an' he'd have us 'op."

"Oh, he would, would he!" roared Melrose, "I'll see to that. Go along,

and do what you're told. D----n it! am I not to be obeyed, sir?"

Wherewith he hurried toward the house. Dixon looked after him, shook his

head, and instead of going toward the farm, quietly retreated round the

farther corner of the house to the kitchen. He was the only person at the

Tower who had ever dared to cross Melrose. He attempted it but rarely;

but when he did, Melrose was each time freshly amazed to discover that,

in becoming his factotum, Dixon had not altogether ceased to be a man.

Melrose entered the house by the front door. As he walked into the hall,

making not the slightest effort to moderate the noise of his approach,

another woman--also in white cap and apron--ran toward him, with quick

noiseless steps from the corridor, her finger on her lip.

"Please, sir!--it is most important for the patient that the house should

be absolutely quiet."

"I tell you the house is mine!" said Melrose, positively stamping. "What

business have you--or the other one--to give orders in it? I'll turn you

all out!--you shall march, I tell you!"

The nurse--an older woman than the first who had spoken to him

outside--drew back with dignity.

"I am sorry if I offended you, sir. I was summoned from Carlisle this

morning as night nurse to an urgent case. I have been helping the other

nurse all day, for Mr. Faversham has wanted a great deal of attention. I

am now just going on duty, while the day nurse takes some rest."

"Show me where he is," said Melrose peremptorily. "I wish to see him."

The nurse hesitated. But if this was really the master of the house, it

was difficult to ignore him entirely. She looked at his feet.

"You'll come in quietly, sir? I am afraid--your boots--"

"Oh, go on! Order me about! What's wrong with my boots?" The pale grin

was meant for sarcasm.

"They're rather heavy, sir, for a sick-room. Would you--would you

mind--taking them off?"

"Upon my word, you're a cool one!"

But there was something in the quiet self-possession of the woman which

coerced, while it exasperated him. He perceived plainly that she took him

for a madman to be managed. Yet, after glaring at her for a moment, he

sat down fuming, and removed his boots. She smiled.

"That'll do nicely, sir. Now if you don't mind coming _very_ quietly--"

She glided to the door of the drawing-room, opened it noiselessly and

beckoned to Melrose. He went in, and, against his will, he went on

tiptoe, and holding his breath.

Inside, he looked round the darkened room in angry amazement. It had been

wholly transformed. The open windows had been cleaned and curtained; the

oak floor shone as though it had been recently washed; there was a table

on which were medicine bottles and glasses, with a chair or two; while in

the centre of the room, carefully screened from light, was a white bed.

Upon it, a motionless form.

"Poor young fellow!" whispered the nurse, standing beside Melrose, her

kind face softening. "He has been conscious a little to-day--the doctor

is hopeful. But he has been very badly hurt."

Melrose surveyed him--the interloper!--who represented to him at that

moment one of those unexpected checks and annoyances in life, which

selfish men with strong wills cannot and do not attempt to bear. His

privacy, his habits, his freedom--all at the mercy of this white-faced

boy, these two intolerable women, and the still more intolerable doctor,

on whom he intended to inflect a stinging lesson! No doubt the whole

thing had been done by the wretched pill-man with a view to his own fees.

It was a plant!--an infamous conspiracy.

He came closer. Not a boy, after all. A young man of thirty--perhaps

more. The brow and head were covered with bandages; the eyes were closed;

the bloodless mouth hung slightly open, with a look of pain. The

comeliness of the dark, slightly bearded face was not entirely disguised

by the dressings in which the head was swathed; and the chest and arms,

from which the bedclothes had been folded back, were finely, though

sparely, moulded. Melrose, whose life was spent among artistic objects

was not insensible to the young man's good looks, as they were visible

even under his bandages and in the dim light, and for the first time he

felt a slight stir of pity.

He left the room, beckoning to the night nurse.

"What's his name?"

"We took some cards from his pocket. I think, sir, the doctor put them

here for you to see."

The nurse went to the hall table and brought one.

"Claude Faversham, 5 Temple Buildings, E.C."

"Some young loafer, pretending to be a barrister," said Melrose

contemptuously. "What's he doing here--in May? This is not the tourist

season. What business had he to be here at all? I have no doubt whatever

that he was drunk, otherwise why should he have had an accident? Nobody

else ever had an accident on that hill. Why should he, eh? Why should he?

And how the deuce are we to get at his relations?"

The nurse could only reply that she had no ideas on the subject, and had

hardly spoken when the sound of wheels outside brought a look of relief

to her face.

"That's the ice," she said, rejoicingly. "We sent for it to Pengarth this

afternoon."

And she fled on light steps to the front door.

"Sent whom? _My_ man--_My_ cart!" growled Melrose, following her, to

verify the outrage with his own eyes. And there indeed at the steps stood

the light cart, the only vehicle which the master of the Tower possessed,

driven by his only outdoor servant, Joe Backhouse, who had succeeded

Dixon as gardener. It was full of packages, which the nurse was eagerly

taking out, comparing them with a list she held in her hand.

"And of course I'm to pay for them!" thought Melrose furiously. No doubt

his credit has been pledged up to the hilt already for this intruder,

this beggar at his gates by these impertinent women. He stood there

watching every packet and bundle with which the nurse was loading her

strong arms, feeling himself the while an utterly persecuted and injured

being, the sport of gods and men; when the sight of a motor turning the

corner of the grass-grown drive, diverted his thoughts.

The doctor--the arch-villain of the plot!

Melrose bethought himself a moment. Then he went along the corridor to

his library, half expecting to see some other invader ensconced in his

own chair. He rang the bell and Dixon hurriedly appeared.

"Show Doctor Undershaw in here."

And standing on the rug, every muscle in his tall and still vigorous

frame tightening in expectation of the foe, he looked frowning round the

chaos of his room. Pictures, with or without frames, and frames without

pictures; books in packing-cases with hinged sides, standing piled one

upon another, some closed and some with the sides open and showing the

books within; portfolios of engravings and drawings; inlaid or ivory

boxes, containing a medley of objects--miniatures, snuff-boxes, buttons,

combs, seals; vases and plates of blue and white Nankin; an Italian

stucco or two; a Renaissance bust in painted wood; fragments of stuff,

cabinets, chairs, and tables of various dates and styles--all were

gathered together in one vast and ugly confusion. It might have been a

_salone_ in one of the big curiosity shops of Rome or Venice, where the

wrecks and sports of centuries are heaped into the _piano nobile_ of

some great building, once a palazzo, now a chain of lumber rooms. For

here also, the large and stately library, with its nobly designed

bookcases--still empty of books--its classical panelling, and embossed

ceiling, made a setting of which the miscellaneous plunder within it was

not worthy. A man of taste would have conceived the beautiful room itself

as suffering from the disorderly uses to which it was put.

Only, in the centre, the great French table, the masterpiece of Riesener,

still stood respected and unencumbered. It held nothing but a Sèvres

inkstand and pair of candle-sticks that had once belonged to Madame

Elisabeth. Mrs. Dixon dusted it every morning, with a feather brush,

generally under the eyes of Melrose. He himself regarded it with a

fanatical veneration; and one of the chief pleasures of his life was to

beguile some passing dealer into making an offer for it, and then

contemptuously show him the door.

"Doctor Undershaw, Muster Melrose."

Melrose stood to arms.

A young man entered, his step quick and decided. He was squarely built,

with spectacled gray eyes, and a slight brown moustache on an otherwise

smooth face. He looked what he was--competent, sincere, and unafraid.

Melrose did not move from his position as the doctor approached, and

barely acknowledged his bow. Behind the sarcasm of his voice the inner

fury could be felt.

"I presume, sir, you have come to offer me your apologies?"

Undershaw looked up.

"I am very sorry, Mr. Melrose, to have inconvenienced you and your

household. But really after such an accident there was nothing else to be

done. I am certain you would have done the same yourself. When I first

saw him, the poor fellow was in a dreadful state. The only thing to do

was to carry him into the nearest shelter and look after him. It was--I

assure you--a case of life and death."

Melrose made an effort to control himself, but the situation was too much

for him.

He burst out, storming:

"I wonder, sir, that you have the audacity to present yourself to me at

all. Who or what authorized you, I should like to know, to take

possession of my house, and install this young man here? What have I to

do with him? He has no claim on me--not the hundredth part of a farthing!

My servant tells me he offered to help you carry him to the farm, which

is only a quarter of a mile distant. That of course would have been the

reasonable, the gentlemanly thing to do, but just in order to insult me,

to break into the privacy of a man who, you know, has always endeavoured

to protect himself and his life from vulgar tongues and eyes, you must

needs browbeat my servants, and break open my house. I tell you, sir,

this is a matter for the lawyers! It shan't end here. I've sent for an

ambulance, and I'll thank you to make arrangements at once to remove this

young man to some neighbouring hospital, where, I understand, he will

have every attention."

Melrose, even at seventy, was over six feet, and as he stood towering

above the little doctor, his fine gray hair flowing back from strong

aquiline features, inflamed with a passion of wrath, he made a

sufficiently magnificent appearance. Undershaw grew a little pale, but he

fronted his accuser quietly.

"If you wish him removed, Mr. Melrose, you must take the responsibility

yourself, I shall have nothing to do with it--nor will the nurses."

"What do you mean, sir? You get yourself and me into this d----d hobble,

and then you refuse to take the only decent way out of it! I request

you--I command you--as soon as the Whitebeck ambulance comes, to remove

your patient _at once_, and the two women who are looking after him."

Undershaw slipped his hands into his pockets. The coolness of the gesture

was not lost on Melrose.

"I regret that for a few days to come I cannot sanction anything of the

kind. My business, Mr. Melrose, as a doctor, is not to kill people, but,

if I can, to cure them."

"Don't talk such nonsense to me, sir! Every one knows that any serious

case can be safely removed in a proper ambulance. The whole thing is

monstrous! By G--d, sir, what law obliges me to give up my house to a man

I know nothing about, and a whole tribe of hangers-on, besides?"

And, fairly beside himself, Melrose struck a carved chest, standing

within reach, a blow which made the china and glass objects huddled upon

it ring again.

"Well," said Undershaw slowly, "there is such a thing as--a law of

humanity. But I imagine if you turn out that man against my advice, and

he dies on the road to hospital, that some other kind of law might have

something to say to it."

"You refuse!"

The shout made the little doctor, always mindful of his patient, look

behind him, to see that the door was closed.

"He cannot be moved for three or four days," was the firm reply. "The

chances are that he would collapse on the road. But as soon as ever the

thing is possible you shall be relieved of him. I can easily find

accommodation for him at Pengarth. At present he is suffering from very

severe concussion. I hope there is not actual brain lesion--but there may

be. And, if so, to move him now would be simply to destroy his chance of

recovery."

The two men confronted each other, the unreasonable fury of the one met

by the scientific conscience of the other. Melrose was dumfounded by the

mingled steadiness and audacity of the little doctor. His mad self-will,

his pride of class and wealth, surviving through all his eccentricities,

found it unbearable that Undershaw should show no real compunction

whatever for what he had done, nay, rather, a quiet conviction that, rage

as he might, the owner of Threlfall Tower would have to submit. It was

indeed the suggestion in the doctor's manner, of an unexplained

compulsion behind--ethical or humanitarian--not to be explained, but

simply to be taken for granted, which perhaps infuriated Melrose more

than anything else.

Nevertheless, as he still glared at his enemy, Melrose suddenly realized

that the man was right. He would have to submit. For many reasons, he

could not--at this moment in particular--excite any fresh hue and cry

which might bring the whole countryside on his back. Unless the doctor

were lying, and he could get another of the craft to certify it, he would

have to put up--for the very minimum of time--with the intolerable plague

of this invasion.

He turned away abruptly, took a turn up and down the only free space the

room contained, and returned.

"Perhaps you will kindly inform me, sir--since you have been good

enough to take this philanthropic business on yourself--or rather to

shovel it on to me"--each sarcastic word was flung like a javelin at

the doctor--"whether you know anything whatever of this youth you are

thrusting upon me? I don't imagine that he has dropped from the skies! If

you don't know, and haven't troubled yourself to find out, I shall set

the police on at once, track his friends, and hand him over!"

Undershaw was at once all civility and alacrity.

"I have already made some inquiries at Keswick, Mr. Melrose, where I was

this morning. He was staying, it appears, with some friends at the

Victoria Hotel--a Mr. and Mrs. Ransom, Americans. The hotel people

thought that he had been to meet them at Liverpool, had taken them

through the Lakes, and had then seen them off for the south. He himself

was on his way to Scotland to fish. He had sent his luggage to Pengarth

by rail, and chose to bicycle, himself, through the Vale of St. John,

because the weather was so fine. He intended to catch a night train on

the main line."

"Just as I supposed! Idle scapegrace!--with nothing in the world to do

but to get himself and other people into trouble!"

"You saw the card that I left for you on the hall table? But there is

something else that we found upon him in undressing him which I should

greatly prefer, if I might, to hand over to your care. You, I have no

doubt, understand such things. They seem to be valuable, and neither

the nurses nor I at all wish to have charge of them. There is a

ring"--Undershaw searched his pockets--"and this case."

He held out two small objects. Melrose--still breathing quick with

anger--took them unwillingly. With the instinctive gesture of the

collector, however, he put up his eyeglass to look at the ring. Undershaw

saw him start.

"Good heavens!"

The voice was that of another man. He looked frowning at Undershaw.

"Where did you get this?"

"He wore it on his left hand. It is sharp as you see, and rather large,

and the nurse was afraid, while he is still restless and sometimes

delirious, he might do himself some hurt with it."

Melrose opened the case--a small flat case of worn green leather some six

inches long; and looked at its contents in a speechless amazement. The

ring was a Greek gem of the best period--an Artemis with the towered

crown, cut in amethyst. The case contained six pieces,--two cameos, and

four engraved gems--amethyst, cornelian, sardonyx, and rock crystal;

which Melrose recognized at once as among the most precious things of

this kind in the world! He turned abruptly, walked to his writing-table,

took out the gems, weighed them in his hand, examined them with a

magnifying glass, or held them to the light, muttering to himself, and

apparently no longer conscious of the presence of Undershaw.

Recollections ran about his brain: "Mackworth showed me that Medusa

himself last year in London. He bought that Mars at the Castellani sale.

And that's the Muse which that stupid brute Vincent had my commission

for, and let slip through his fingers at the Arconati sale!"

Undershaw observed him, with an amusement carefully concealed. He had

suspected from the beginning that in these possessions of the poor

stricken youth means might be found for taming the formidable master of

the Tower. For himself he scorned "la curiosité," and its devotees, as

mere triflers and shell-gatherers on shores bathed by the great ocean of

science. But like all natural rulers of men he was quick to seize on any

weakness that suited his own ends; and he said to himself that Faversham

was safe.

"They are valuable?" he asked, as Melrose still sat absorbed.

"They are," was the curt reply.

"I am glad they have fallen into such good hands. They show I think"--the

speaker smiled amicably--"that we have not to do with any mere penniless

adventurer. His friends are probably at this moment extremely anxious

about him. I hope we may soon get some clue to them. Now"--the voice

sharpened to the practical note--"may I appeal to you, Mr. Melrose, to

make arrangements for the nurses as soon as is convenient to you. Their

wants are very simple--two beds--plain food--small amount of

attendance--and some means of communicating without too much delay with

myself, or the chemist. I promise they shall give as little trouble as

possible!"

Melrose rose slowly without replying. He took a bunch of keys from is

pocket, and opened one of the drawers in the Riesener table. As he did

so, the drawer, under a stream of sunset light from the window beyond it,

seemed to give out a many-coloured flash--a rapid Irislike effect, lost

in a moment. The impression made on Undershaw was that the drawer already

contained gems like those in the case--or jewels--or both.

Melrose seemed to have opened the drawer in a fit of abstraction during

which he had forgotten Undershaw's presence. But, if so, the act roused

him, and he looked round half angrily, half furtively at his visitor, as

he hastily relocked the drawer.

Then speaking with renewed arrogance, he said:

"Well, sir, I will see to these things. For to-night, I consent--for

to-night only, mind you--reserving entirely my liberty of action for

to-morrow."

Undershaw nodded, and they left the room together.

Dixon and Mrs. Dixon were both waiting in the passage outside, watching

for Melrose, and hanging on his aspect. To their amazement they were told

that a room was to be got ready for the nurses, a girl was to be fetched

to wait on them from the farm, and food was to be cooked.

The faces of both the old servants showed instant relief. Dixon went

off to the farm, and Mrs. Dixon flew to her kitchen. She was getting

old, and the thought of the extra work to be done oppressed her.

Nevertheless after these years of solitude, passed as it were in a

besieged camp--Threlfall and its inmates against the world--this new and

tardy contact with humanity, this momentary return to neighbourly, kindly

ways brought with it a strange sweetness. And when night fell, and a

subdued, scarcely perceptible murmur of life began to creep about the

passages of the old house, in general so dead and silent, Mrs. Dixon

might have been heard hoarsely crooning an old song to herself as she

went to and fro in the kitchen. All the evening she and Dixon were

restless, inventing work, when work was finished, running from yard to

house and house to yard, calling to each other without reason, and

looking at each other with bewildered eyes. They were like beetles under

a stone, when the stone is suddenly lifted.

Gradually the house sank to rest. Dixon creeping past the door of the

sick-room, on his stockinged feet, could hear the moaning, the hoarse

indeterminate sounds, now loud, now plaintive, made by the sufferer. The

day nurse came out with an anxious face, on her way to bed. Mr. Faversham

she said was very ill--what could be done if it did become necessary to

summon the doctor? Dixon assured her the gardener who was also the groom

was sleeping in the house, and the horse was in the stable. She had only

to wake Mrs. Dixon--he showed her where and how. In the dark corridor,

amid all its obstructive lumber, these two people who had never seen each

other before, man and woman, took anxious counsel for the help of an

unconscious third, a complete stranger to both of them.

The night nurse gave a dose of morphia according to directions, and sat

down on a low chair at the foot of the bed watching her patient.

About two o'clock in the morning, just as the darkness was beginning to

thin, she was startled by a sound outside. She half rose, and saw the

door open to admit a tall and gaunt figure, whom she recognized as the

master of the house.

She held up an anxious finger, but Melrose advanced in spite of it. His

old flowered dressing-gown and gray head came within the range of the

night-light, and the nurse saw his shadow projected, grotesque and

threatening, on the white traceries of the ceiling. But he made no sound,

and never looked at the nurse. He stood surveying young Faversham for

some time, as he lay hot and haggard with fever, yet sleeping under the

power of morphia. And at last, without a word, the nurse saw her

formidable visitor depart.

Melrose returned to his own quarters. The window of his room was open,

and outside the great mountains, in a dewy dawn, were beginning to show

purple through dim veils of silvery cloud. He stood still, looking out.

His mind was churning like a yeasty sea. Old facts came to the surface;

faces once familiar; the form and countenance of a brother drowned at

twenty in Sandford lasher on the Oxford Thames; friends of his early

manhood, riding beside him to hounds, or over the rolling green of the

Campagna. Old instincts long suppressed, yet earlier and more primitive

in him than those of the huckster and the curio-hunter, stirred uneasily.

It was true that he was getting old, and had been too long alone. He

thought with vindictive bitterness of Netta, who had robbed and deserted

him. And then, again, of his involuntary guest.

The strangest medley of ideas ran through his mind. Self-pity;

recollections connected with habits on which he had deliberately turned

his back some thirty years before--the normal pleasures, friendships,

occupations of English society; fanatical hatred and resentment--against

two women in particular, the first of whom had, in his opinion,

deliberately spoilt his life by a double cruelty, while the second--his

wife--whom he had plucked up out of poverty, and the dust-heap of her

disreputable relations, had ungratefully and wickedly rebelled against

and deserted him.

Also--creeping through all his thoughts, like a wandering breeze in the

dark, stole again and again the chilling consciousness of old age--and of

the end, waiting. He was fiercely tenacious of life, and his seventieth

birthday had rung a knell in his ears that still sounded. So defiant

was he of death, that he had never yet brought himself to make a will. He

would not admit to himself that he was mortal; or make arrangements that

seemed to admit the grim fact--weakly accepted--into the citadel of a

still warm life.

Yet the physical warnings of old age had not been absent. Some day he

would feel, perhaps suddenly--the thought of it sent through him a shiver

of impotent revolt against the human destiny--the clutch of the master

whom none escapes.

Vague feelings, and shapeless terrors!--only subterraneously connected

with the wounded man lying in his house.

And yet they were connected. The advent of the unconscious youth below

had acted on the ugly stagnation of the Threlfall life with a touch of

crystallizing force. Melrose felt it in his own way no less than the

Dixons. Something seemed to have ended; and the mere change suggested

that something might begin.

The sudden shock, indeed, of the new event, the mere interruption of

habit, were serious matters in the psychology of a man, with whom neither

brain nor nerves were normally attuned. Melrose moved restlessly about

his room for a great part of the night. He could not get the haggard

image of Faversham out of his mind; and he was actually, in the end,

tormented by the thought that, in spite of nurses and doctors, he might

die.

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

necessary.

And always, by whatever road, his thoughts came back--as it were

leaping--to the gems. Amethyst, sardonyx, crystal--they twinkled and

flashed through all the byways of the brain. So long as the house held

their owner, it held them also. Two of them he had coveted for years.

They must not--they should not--be lost to him again. By what ridiculous

chance had this lad got hold of them?

With the morning came a letter from a crony of Melrose's in London, an

old Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, with whom he had had not a few

dealings in the past.

"Have you heard that that queer fish Mackworth has left his whole cabinet

of gems to a young nephew--his sister's son, to whom they say he has been

much attached? Everything else goes to the British Museum and South

Kensington, and it is a queer business to have left the most precious

thing of all to a youth who in all probability has neither knowledge nor

taste, and may be trusted to turn them into cash as soon as possible. Do

you remember the amethyst Medusa? I could shout with joy when I think of

it! You will be wanting to run the nephew to earth. Make haste!--or

Germany or America will grab them."

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

Riesener table.

V

Duddon Castle in May was an agreeable place. Its park, lying on the

eastern slopes of the mountain mass which includes Skiddaw and

Blencathra, had none of the usual monotony of parks, but was a genuine

"chase," running up on the western side into the heather and rock of the

mountain where the deer were at home, while on the east and south its

splendid oaks stood thick in bracken beside sparkling becks, overlooking

dells and valleys of succulent grass where the sheep ranged at will. The

house consisted of an early Tudor keep, married to a Jacobean house of

rose-coloured brick, which Lady Tatham had since her widowhood succeeded

in freeing from the ugly stucco which had once disguised and defaced it.

It could not claim the classical charm, the learned elegance of Threlfall

Tower. Duddon was romantic--a medley of beautiful things, full of

history, colour, and time, fused by the trees and fern, the luxuriant

creepers and mosses, and of a mild and rainy climate into a lovely

irregular whole; with no outline to speak of, yet with nothing that one

could seriously wish away. The size was great, yet no one but an

auctioneer could have called it "superb"; it seemed indeed to take a

pleasure in concealing the whole extent of its clustered building; and by

the time you were aware of it, you had fallen in love with Duddon, and

nothing mattered.

But if without, in its broad external features, Duddon betrayed a

romantic freedom in the minds of those who had planned it, nothing could

have been more orderly or exquisite than its detail, when detail had to

be considered. The Italian garden round the house with its formal masses

of contrasting colour, its pleached alleys, and pergolas, its steps,

vases, and fountains, was as good in its way as the glorious wildness of

the Chase. One might have applied to it the Sophoclean thought--"How

clever is man who can make all these things!"--so diverse, and so

pleasant. And indoors, Duddon was oppressive by the very ingenuity of its

refinement, the rightness of every touch. No overcrowding; no

ostentation. Beautiful spaces, giving room and dignity to a few beautiful

objects; famous pictures, yet not too many; and, in general, things

rather suggestive than perfect; sketches--fragments--from the great arts

of the world; as it were, a lovely wreckage from a vast ocean set

tenderly in a perfect order, breathing at once the greatness and the

eternal defeat of men.

The interior beauty of Duddon was entirely due to Victoria, Lady Tatham,

mother of the young man who now owned the Tatham estates. She had created

it through many years; she had been terribly "advised," in the process,

by a number of clever folk, English and foreign; and the result

alternately pleased and tormented her. To be fastidious to such a point

is to grow more so. And Victoria Tatham was nothing if not fastidious.

She had money, taste, patience, yet ennui confronted her in many paths;

and except for the son she adored she was scarcely a happy woman. She was

personally generous and soft-hearted, but all "causes" found in her

rather a critic than a supporter. The follies of her own class were

particularly plain to her; her relations, with their great names, and

great "places," seemed to her often the most ridiculous persons in the

world--a world no longer made for them. But one must hasten to add that

she was no less aware of her own absurdities; so that the ironic mind in

her robbed her both of conceit for herself and enthusiasm for others.

Two or three days after the storming of Threlfall Tower, Lady Tatham came

in from a mountain ramble at tea-time, expecting her son, who had been

away on a short visit. She entered the drawing-room by a garden door,

laden with branches of hawthorn and wild cherry. In her linen dress and

shady hat she still looked youthful, and there were many who could not be

got to admit that she was any less beautiful than she had ever been.

These flatterers of course belonged to her own generation; young eyes

were not so kind.

Tea had been brought in, and she was busy with the arrangement of a

branch of wild cherry in a corner of the room where its pearl and silver

blossoms shone out against a background of dull purple, when the door was

hastily opened, and a curly-haired youth stood on the threshold who

smiled at sight of her.

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

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

For the young fellow had put his arms round her, kissing her heartily.

She disengaged herself and her hat, affecting to scold; but her eyes

betrayed her. She put up her hand and smoothed back the thick and

tumbling hair from his forehead.

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

"I stopped in Keswick to do various things--and then--I say, shan't we

have some tea? I've got lots to tell you. Well, in the first place,

mother, I'd better warn you, you may have some visitors directly!"

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

"Strangers?"

"Well, nearly--but I think you've seen them. You know that lady and her

daughters who came to White Cottage about two years ago?"

"A Mrs. Penfold?"

"Just so. I told you I met them--in April, when you were abroad--at the

Hunt Ball. But--well, really, I've met them several times since. The

Deacons know them." The slight consciousness in the voice did not escape

his mother. "You know you've never called on them. Mother, you are

disgraceful about calling! Well, I met them again this afternoon, just

the other side of Whitebeck. They were in a pony-carriage, and I was in

the motor. It's a jolly afternoon, and they didn't seem to have anything

particular to do, so I just asked them to come on here, and have tea, and

we'd show them the place."

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

"Well, I don't know," said her son dubiously. "You see--I think Miss

Penfold thought you ought to have called on them before they came here!

But Mrs. Penfold's a nice old thing--she _said_ they'd come."

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

"How many years?" laughed Tatham. "I remember somebody you took eight

years to call on, and when you got there you'd forgotten their names."

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

daughters?"

"How many Miss Penfolds? Well, there are two, and I danced with them

both. But"--the young man shook his head slowly--"I haven't got any use

for the elder one."

"Plain?"

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

sort."

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

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

some of her things."

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

Lady Tatham lifted her beautiful eyes upon her son. Harry Tatham fidgeted

with his cup and spoon.

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

"Harry," interrupted his mother, her look all vivacity, "did she paint

those two water-colours in your sitting-room?"

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

"I bought 'em out of the Edinburgh exhibition. Wasn't it 'cute of me? She

told me she had sent them there. So I just wrote to the secretary and

bought them."

There was silence a moment. Lady Tatham continued to look at her son. The

eyebrows on her brow, as they slowly arched themselves, expressed the

half-amused, half-startled inquiry she did not put into words. He flushed

scarlet, still smiling, and suddenly he laid his hand on hers.

"I say, mummie, don't tease me, and don't talk to me about it. There may

be nothing in it--nothing at all."

His mother's face deepened into gravity.

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

you."

"I know. But you're not like other mothers," said the youth impatiently.

"You want me to be happy and please myself. At least if you'd wanted the

usual thing, you should have brought me up differently!" He smiled upon

her again, patting her hand.

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

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

Lady Tatham hesitated.

"One talks in the air," she said, frowning a little. "I can't promise

you, Harry, exactly how I should behave, if--"

"If what?"

"If you put me to the _test_."

"Oh, yes, you can," he said, affectionately. Then he got up restlessly

from the table. "But don't let's talk about it. Somehow I can't stand

it--yet. I just wanted you to know that I liked them--and I'd be glad if

you'd be civil to them--that's all. Hullo--here they are!" For as he

moved across the room he caught sight, through a side window commanding

the park, of a pony-carriage just driving into the wide gravel space

before the house.

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

in this time."

"Oh! I was overtaken by Undershaw, and he kept me talking. He told me the

most extraordinary thing! You've no idea what's been happening at the

Tower. That old brute Melrose! But I say--!" He made a dash across the

room.

"What's the matter?"

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

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

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

surprising."

Lady Tatham sat on at the tea-table, her chin in her hands. It was quite

true that she had brought up her son with unconventional ideas; that she

had unconventional ideas herself on family and marriage. All the same,

her mind at this moment was in a most conventional state of shock. She

knew it, perceiving quite clearly the irony of the situation. Who were

the Penfolds? A little artist girl?--earning her living--with humble,

perhaps hardly presentable relations--to mate with her glorious, golden

Harry?--Harry whom half the ambitious mothers of England courted and

flattered?

The thought of defeating the mothers of England was however so pleasant

to her sense of humour that she hurriedly abandoned this line of

reflection. What had she been about? to be so blind to Harry's

proceedings? She had been lately absorbed, with that intensity she could

still, at fifty, throw into the most diverse things, in a piece of new

embroidery, reproducing a gorgeous Italian design; and in a religious

novel of Fogazzaro's. Also she had been watching birds, for hours, with a

spy-glass in the park. She said to herself that she had better have been

watching her son.

Meanwhile she was quite aware of the slight sounds from the hall which

heralded the approaching visitors. The footman threw the door open; and

she rose.

There came in, with hurrying steps, a little lady in widow's dress, her

widow's veil thrown back from her soft brown hair and childish face.

Behind her, a tall girl in white, wearing a shady hat.

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

"I _hope_, Lady Tatham, we are not intruding? We know it isn't

correct--indeed we are quite aware of it--that we should call upon you

first. But then we know your son--he is such a charming young man!--and

he asked us to come. I don't think Lydia wanted to come--she always wants

to do things properly. No, indeed, she didn't want to come. It's all my

doing. I persuaded her."

"That was very kind of you," said Lady Tatham as she shook hands first

with the mother, and then with the silent daughter. "Oh, I'm a dreadful

neighbour. I confess it in sackcloth and ashes. I ought to have called

upon you long ago. I don't know what to say. I'm incorrigible! Please

will you sit down, and will you have some tea? My son will be here

directly."

But instead of sitting down Mrs. Penfold ran to the window, exclaiming on

the beauty of the view, the garden, the trees, and the bold profile of

the old keep, thrown forward among the flowers. There was nothing the

least distinguished in her ecstasy. But it flowed and bubbled with

perfect sincerity; and Lady Tatham did not dislike it at all.

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

is uncomfortable."

And she glanced at the slightly flushed face of Lydia, who followed in

their wake, every now and then replying, as politeness demanded, to some

appeal from her mother. It was indeed clear that the visit had been none

of her doing.

Grace?--personality?--Lady Tatham divined them, from the way the girl

moved, from the look in her gray-blue eyes, from the carriage of her

head. She was certainly pretty, with that proud virginal beauty which

often bears itself on the defensive, in our modern world where a certain

superfluity of women has not tended to chivalry. But how little

prettiness matters, beside the other thing!--the indefinable,

irresistible something--which gives the sceptre and the crown! All the

time she was listening to Mrs. Penfold's chatter, and the daughter's

occasional words, Victoria Tatham was on the watch for this something;

and not without jealousy and a critical mind. She had been taken by

surprise; and she resented it.

Harry was very long in coming back!--in order she supposed to give her

time to make acquaintance.

But at last she had them at the tea-table, and Mrs. Penfold's adjectives

were a little quenched. Each side considered the other. Lady Tatham's

dress, her old hat, and country shoes attracted Lydia, no less than the

boyish, open-air look, which still survived through all the signs of a

complex life and a cosmopolitan experience. Mrs. Penfold, on her part,

thought the old hat, and the square-toed shoes "unsuitable." In her young

days great ladies "dressed" in the afternoons.

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

Mrs. Penfold replied that nothing could be more to their taste--except

for the motors and the dust.

"Ah! that's my fault," said a voice behind her. "All motorists are

brutes. I say, it was jolly of you to come!"

So saying, Tatham found a place between his mother and Mrs. Penfold,

looking across at Lydia. Youth, happiness, manly strength came in with

him. He had no features to speak of--round cheeks, a mouth generally

slightly open, and given to smiling, a clear brow, a red and white

complexion, a babyish chin, thick fair hair, and a countenance neither

reserved nor foolishly indiscreet. Tatham's physical eminence--and it was

undisputed--lay not in his plain, good-tempered face, but in the young

perfection of his athlete's form. Among spectacles, his mother, at least,

asked nothing better than to see him on horseback or swinging a

golf-club.

"How did you come?--through the Glendarra woods?" he asked of Lydia. The

delight in his eyes as he turned them upon her was already evident to his

mother.

Lydia assented.

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

Lydia replied with ardour. There is a place in the Glendarra woods, where

the oaks and firs fall away to let a great sheet of rhododendrons sweep

up from the lowland into a mountain boundary of gray crag and tumbling

fern. Rose-pink, white and crimson, the waves of colour roll among the

rocks, till Cumbria might seem Kashmir. Lydia's looks sparkled, as she

spoke of it. The artist in her had feasted.

"Won't you come and paint it?" said Tatham bending forward eagerly.

"You'd make a glorious thing of it. Mother could send a motor for you so

easily. Couldn't you, mother?"

"Delighted," said Lady Tatham, rather perfunctorily. "They are just in

their glory--they ought to be painted."

"Thank you so much!"--Lydia's tone was a little hurried--"but I have so

many subjects on hand just now."

"Oh, but nothing half so beautiful as that, Lydia!" cried her mother, "or

so uncommon. And they'll be over directly. If Lady Tatham would _really_

send the motor for you--"

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

laugh and a flush.

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

bad."

Lydia smiled upon him.

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

"Threlfall? Oh, do you know--mother! do you know what's been happening at

Threlfall. Undershaw told me. The most marvellous thing!" He turned to

Mrs. Penfold. "You've heard the stories they tell about here of old

Melrose?"

Lydia laughed softly.

"Mother collects them!"

Mrs. Penfold confessed that, being a timid person, she went in fear,

sometimes of Mr. Melrose, sometimes of his bloodhounds. She did not like

passing the gate of Threlfall, and the high wall round the estate made

her shudder. Of course the person that put up that wall _must_ be mad.

"A queer sort of madman!" said Tatham, with a shrug. "They say he gets

richer every year in spite of the state of the property. And meanwhile no

human being, except himself or the Dixons, has ever slept in that house,

or taken bite or sup in it for at least twenty years. And as for his

behaviour to everybody round about--well, I can tell you all about that

whenever you want to know! However, now they've stormed him--they've

smoked him out like a wasp's nest. My goodness--he did buzz! Undershaw

found a man badly hurt, lying on the road by the bridge--bicycle

accident--run over too, I believe--and carried him into the Tower,

willy-nilly!" The speaker chuckled. "Melrose was away. Old Dixon said

they should only come in over his body--but was removed. Undershaw got

four labourers to help him, and, by George, they carried the man in! They

found the drawing-room downstairs empty, no furniture in it, or next to

none--turned it into a bedroom in no time. Undershaw telegraphed for a

couple of nurses--and when Melrose came home next day--_tableau_! There

was a jolly row! Undershaw enjoyed it. I'd have given anything in the

world to be there. And Melrose'll have to stick it out they say for weeks

and weeks--the fellow's so badly hurt--and--"

Lydia interrupted him.

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

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

Tatham looked at her in surprise.

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

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

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

Lydia explained that she too had seen Doctor Undershaw that morning, on

his way to the Tower, in Whitebeck village, and he had told her the

story. She was particularly interested, because of the little meeting by

the river, which she described in a few words. Twenty minutes or so after

her conversation with the stranger the accident must have happened.

Mrs. Penfold meanwhile was thinking, "Why didn't Lydia tell me all this

on the drive?" Then she remembered one of Lydia's characteristics--a kind

of passionate reticence about things that moved her. Had the fate then of

the young man--whom she could only have seen for a few minutes--touched

her so much?

Lady Tatham had listened attentively to Lydia's story--the inner mind of

her all the time closely and critically observant of the story-teller,

her beauty, the manner and quality of it, her movements, her voice. Her

voice particularly. When the girl's little speech came to an end,

Victoria still had the charm of it in her ears.

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

"I forgot to ask Undershaw," said Tatham.

Lydia supplied the information. The name of the young man was Claude

Faversham. He seemed to have no relations whatever who could come and

nurse him.

"Claude Faversham!" Tatham turned upon her with astonishment. "I say! I

know a Claude Faversham. I was a term with him at Oxford--at least if

it's the same man. Tall?--dark?--good-looking?"

Lydia thought the adjectives fitted.

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

tying up my easel."

"A ring!" cried Tatham, wrinkling up his forehead. "By George, that is

odd! I remember Faversham's ring perfectly. An uncle gave it him--an old

Professor at Oxford, who used to collect things. My tutor sent me to a

lecture once, when I was in for schools. Mackworth--that was the old

boy's name--was lecturing, and Faversham came down to help him show his

cases. Faversham's own ring was supposed to be something special, and

Mackworth talked no end about it. Goodness!--so that's the man. Of course

I must go and see him!--ask after him anyway."

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

slightly.

"Go to Threlfall, Harry?"

"Well, not to call on Melrose, mother! I should have to make sure he was

out of the way. But I feel as if I ought to do something about Faversham.

The fact is he did me a great kindness my first term at Oxford--he got me

into a little club I wanted to belong to."

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

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

Lydia.

"Not at all. Faversham was awfully useful. I must see what can be done.

He can't stay on at that place."

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

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

"I should jolly well think he is!" said Tatham; "the most grasping

and tyrannical old villain! He's got a business on now of the most

abominable kind. I have been hearing the whole story this week. A man

who dared to county court him for some perfectly just claim. And Melrose

in revenge has simply ruined him. Then there's a right of way dispute

going on--scandalous!--nothing to do with me!--but I'm helping other

people to fight him. And his _cottages_!--you never saw such pigsties!

He's defied every sort of inspector. I believe everybody's afraid of him.

And you can't get a yard of land out of him for any public purpose

whatever. Well, now that I'm on the County Council, I mean to _go for

him!"_

The young man sprang up, apparently to fetch cigarettes, really that

he might once more obtain a full view of Lydia, who had moved from the

tea-table to a more distant seat.

Mrs. Penfold waved the silver box aside. "I never learnt"--she said,

adding with soft, upturned eyes--confidingly--"sometimes I wish I did.

Oh, Lydia will!"

And Lydia, following Lady Tatham's lead, quietly lit up. Tatham who

cherished some rather strict and old-fashioned notions about women, very

imperfectly revealed even to his mother, was momentarily displeased; then

lost himself in the pleasure of watching a white hand and arm--for the

day was hot and sleeves short--in new positions.

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

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

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

"My second cousin."

"Worse luck! But that's nothing, unless one chooses it shall be. I

believe, mother, you know a heap of things about Melrose you've never

told me!"

Lady Tatham smiled faintly, but did not reply. Whereat Mrs. Penfold whose

curiosity was insatiable, within lady-like bounds, tried to ask questions

of her hostess. A wife? Surely there had been a wife?

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

"She ran away?"

"Not in the usual sense. There was no one, I understand, to run with.

But she could not stand Threlfall--nor--I suppose--her husband. So one

day--when he had gone to Italy, and she was left behind--she just--"

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

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

"Sensible woman! And where are they now?"

Lady Tatham shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh, they can't be alive, surely," said Lydia. "Mr. Melrose told Doctor

Undershaw that he had no relations in the world, and didn't wish to be

troubled with any."

Contempt sat on Tatham's ruddy countenance.

"Well, as far as we're concerned, he may take it easy. His family

affections don't matter to anybody! But the way he behaves as a landowner

does really matter to all of us. He brings disgrace on the whole show."

He rose, straightening his young shoulders as he spoke. Lydia noted the

modest involuntary consciousness of power and responsibility which for a

moment dignified the boyish countenance; and as her eyes met his Tatham

was startled by the passionate approval expressed in the girl's look.

She asked if there was no agent on the Melrose estates to temper the

tyrannies of their master.

Tatham came to her side--explaining--looking down upon her with an

eagerness which had but a superficial connection with the thing said.

"You see no decent man would ever stay with him. He'd never do the things

Melrose does. He'd cut his hand off first. And if he didn't, the old

villain would kick him out in no time. But that's enough about him, isn't

it? I get him on the brain! Won't you come and see the pictures?"

* * * * *

The quartet inspecting the house had passed through the principal rooms,

and had returned to the drawing-room. There Tatham said something to

Lydia, and they moved away together. His mother looked after them. Tatham

was leading the way toward the door in the farther wall which led to his

own sitting-room. Their young faces were turned toward each other. The

girl's shyness seemed to have broken up. She was now talking fast, with

smiles. Ah, no doubt they would have plenty to say to each other, as soon

as they were together.

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

herself.

"That is a sketch," she said mechanically, "by Burne-Jones, for one of

the Pygmalion and Galatea series. We have one or two others on the same

subject."

Mrs. Penfold clasped her small hands in rapture.

"Oh! but _how_ interesting! Do you know I was once Galatea? When I was a

girl I used to act a great deal. Well, not act exactly--for I didn't have

to speak. I never could remember my lines. But I had two great parts.

There was Hermione, in 'The Winter's Tale'; and Galatea. I made hundreds

of pounds for hospitals--hundreds. It's not vain now, is it, to say one

was pretty in one's youth?"

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

"Ah, no, that's wrong! I'd liked to have been beautiful once, if I'm old

and ugly now," cried Mrs. Penfold with fervour. "Of course"--she looked

shyly at the sketch--"I had beautiful draperies on. My Galatea was not

like that."

"Draperies?" Lady Tatham laughed. "Pygmalion had only just made

her--there had been no time to dress her."

"_We_ dressed her," said Mrs. Penfold decidedly, "from top to toe. Some

day I must show you the drawings of it--it's not like that at all. The

girls think I'm silly to talk of it--oh! they don't say it--they're very

good to me. But I can see they do. Only--they've so many things to be

proud of. Susy's so clever--she knows Greek and all that kind of thing.

And Lydia's drawing is so wonderful. Do you know she has made twenty

pounds out of her sketches this week!"

"Capital!" said Lady Tatham smiling.

"Ah, it means a great deal to us! You see"--Mrs. Penfold looked round

her--"when you're very rich, and have everything you want, you can't

understand--at least I don't think you can--how it feels to have twenty

pounds you don't expect. Lydia just danced about the room. And I'm to

have a new best dress--she insists on it. Well, you see"--the little pink

and white face of the speaker broke into smiles--"that's all so

_amusing_. It puts one in good spirits. It's just as though one were

rich, and made a thousand pounds. I daresay"--she looked, awestruck, at

the Burne-Jones sketch--"that's worth our whole income. But we're very

happy. We never fret. Lydia and Susy both help in the housework. And I

make their blouses."

"How clever of you! That's a Fra Angelico"--said Lady Tatham pointing,

and not knowing what to do with these confidences--"an Annunciation."

Mrs. Penfold thought it quite lovely. Lydia, when she was studying

in London, had copied one like it in the National Gallery. And her

poor father had liked it so. As they wandered on through the pictures,

indeed, Lady Tatham soon came to know a great deal about Lydia's "poor

father"--that he had been a naval officer, a Captain Penfold, who had

had to retire early on half-pay because of ill-health, and had died

just as the girls had grown up. "He felt it so--he was so proud of

them--but he always said, 'If one of us is to go, why, it had better be

me, Rosina--because you have such spirits--you're so cheerful.' And I am.

I can't help it."

It was all sincere. There was neither snobbishness nor affectation in the

little widow, even when she prattled most embarrassingly about her own

affairs, or stood frankly wondering at the Tatham wealth. But no one

could deny it was untutored. Lady Tatham thought of all the Honourable

Johns, and Geralds, and Barbaras on the Tatham side--Harry's uncles and

cousins--and the various magnificent people, ranging up to royalty, on

her own; and envisaged the moment when Mrs. Penfold should look them all

in the face, with her pretty, foolish eyes, and her chatter about Lydia's

earnings and Lydia's blouses. And not all the inward laughter which the

notion provoked in one to whom life was largely comedy, in the

Meredithian sense, could blind her to the fact that the shock would be

severe.

Had she really injured the prospects of her boy by the way--the romantic,

idealist way--in which she had brought him up. Her Harry!--with whom she

had read poetry, and talked of heroes, into whose ears she had poured

Ruskin and Carlyle from his youth up; who was the friend and comrade of

all the country folk, because of a certain irrepressible interest in his

kind, a certain selflessness that were his cradle gifts; who shared in

his boyish way, her own amused contempt for shams and shows--had she,

after all, been training him for a mistake in the most serious step of

life?

For, like it or despise it, English society was there, and he must fill

his place in it. And things are seemly and unseemly, fitting and

unfitting--as well as good and bad. This inexperienced girl, with her

prettiness, and her art, and her small world--was it fair to her? Is

there not something in the unconscious training of birth and position,

when, _bon gré, mal gré_, there is a big part in the world's social

business to be played?

And meanwhile, with a fraction of her mind, she went on talking

"Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff." She did the honours of half their

possessions. Then it suddenly seemed to her that the time was long, and

she led the way back once more to the drawing-room, in a rather

formidable silence, of which even her cheerful companion became aware.

But as they entered the room, the door at the farther end opened again,

and Tatham and Lydia emerged.

Good heavens!--had he been proposing already? But a glance dispelled

the notion. Lydia was laughing as they came in, and a little flushed,

as though with argument. It seemed to his mother that Harry's look, on

the other hand, was overcast. Had the girl been trampling on him?

Impossible! In any case, there was no denying the quiet ease, the

complete self-possession, with which the "inexperienced" one moved

through Harry's domain, and took leave of Harry's mother. Your modern

girl?--of the intellectual sort--quite unmoved by gewgaws! Minx!

Harry saw the two ladies into their pony-carriage. When he returned to

his mother, it was with an absent brow. He went to the window and stood

softly whistling, with his hands in his pockets. Lady Tatham waited a

little, then went up to him, and took him by the arms--her eyes smiling

into his, without a word.

He disengaged himself, almost roughly.

"I wish I knew something about art!" he said discontentedly. "And why

should anybody want to be independent all their lives--economically

independent?"

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

wonder.

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

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

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

He laughed out.

"Propose to her! As if I dare! I haven't even made friends with her

yet--though I thought I had. She talks of things I don't understand."

"Not philosophy and stuff?"

"Lord, no!" he said, shrugging his shoulders. "It's much worse. It's as

though she despised--" He paused again.

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

"Well, anything of that sort, in comparison with art--and making a

career--and earning money--and things of that kind. Oh, I daresay I'm a

stupid ass!--"

Lady Tatham laughed softly.

"You can buy all her pictures, Harry."

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

The young man's chagrin and bewilderment were evident. His mother could

only guess at the causes.

"How long have you known her, Harry?"

"Just two months."

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

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

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

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

see."

And straightway, with a wave of the hand as it were, she dismissed all

thought of the Honourable Johns and Geralds. Mrs. Penfold and her chatter

sank out of sight and hearing. She was her son's champion--against the

world.

VI

It was the tenth day since the evening when Claude Faversham had been

carried unconscious into Threlfall Tower, and the first one which

anything like clearness of mind had returned to him. Before that there

had been passing gleams and perceptions, soon lost again in the delusions

of fever, or narcotic sleep. A big room--strange faces--pain--a doctor

coming and going--intervals of misery following intervals of

nothingness--helplessness--intolerable oppression--horrible struggles

with food--horrible fear of being touched--gradually, little by little,

these ideas had emerged in consciousness.

Then had followed the first moments of relief--incredibly sweet--but

fugitive, soon swallowed up in returning discomfort; yet lengthening,

deepening, passing by degrees into a new and tremulous sense of security

of a point gained and passed. And at last on this tenth morning--a still

and cloudy morning of early June, he found himself suddenly fully awake,

and as it seemed to him once more in possession of himself. A dull, dumb

anguish lay behind him, already half effaced; and the words of a psalm

familiar at school and college ran idly through his mind: "My soul hath

escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowler."

"Where am I?" Not in a hospital. Hospital ceilings are not adorned with

wreaths and festoons in raised stucco, or with medallion groups of winged

children playing with torches, or bows and arrows.

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

"A genius with a torch."

Then for a long time he was only vaguely conscious of more light than

usual in the room--of an open window somewhere--of rustling leaves

outside--and of a chaffinch singing....

Another couple of days passed, and he began to question the kind woman

whom he had come to regard as a sort of strong, protective force between

him and anguish, without any desire to give it a name, or realize an

individual. But now he saw that he had been nursed by hands as refined as

they were skilful, and he dimly perceived that he owed his life mainly to

the wholly impersonal yet absorbed devotion of two women--gentle,

firm-faced, women--who had fought death for him and won. Just a

professional service for a professional fee; yet his debt was

measureless. These are the things, he feebly understood, that women do

for men; and what had been mere hearsay to his strong manhood had become

experience.

Actually a ray of sunshine had been allowed to penetrate the shaded room.

He watched it enchanted. Flowers were on the table near him. There was a

delicious sense of warmth and summer scents.

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

him.

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

over him.

The nurse saw him smile.

"That's queer. What happened?"

His companion gave him a short account of the accident and of Undershaw's

handling of it. Then she refused to let her patient talk any more, and

left him with instructions not to tire his head with trying to remember.

He lay disconnectedly dreaming. A stream of clear water, running shallow

over greenish pebbles and among stones, large and small--and some white

things floating on it. The recollection teased him, and a slight headache

warned him to put it aside. He tried to go to sleep.

Suddenly, there floated into view a face vaguely seen, a girl's figure,

in a blue dress, against a background of mountain. Who was it?--where had

he come across her?

A few days later, when, for the first time, he was sitting up raised on

pillows, and had been allowed to lift a shaking hand to help the nurse's

hand as it guided a cup of soup to his lips, she said to him in her low,

pleasant voice:

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

cards."

She fetched them from a table near and read the names. "Lord Tatham, and

his mother, Lady Tatham. They've sent you flowers every day. These are

Duddon roses." She held up a glass vase before him. "Mrs. Penfold and

Miss Penfold."

He shook his head feebly.

"Don't know any of them."

Nurse Aston laughed at him.

"Oh, yes, you do. Lord Tatham was at college with you. He's coming to see

you one day soon. And Miss Penfold saw you just before the accident. She

was sketching in St. John's Vale, and you helped her fish something

out of the water."

"By Jove!--so I did," he said, slowly. "Tatham?" He pondered. "Tell Lady

Tatham I'm much obliged to her."

And he went to sleep again.

The next time he woke, he saw an unfamiliar figure sitting beside him.

His hold upon himself seemed to have grown much stronger. It was evening,

and though the windows were still wide open a lamp had been lit.

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

voice.

A gray-haired man moved his chair nearer.

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

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

"About three weeks."

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

"Wasn't your fault. It was the doctor who brought you here." The tone of

the words was round and masterful. "Are you comfortable? Have you all you

want?"

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

"Undershaw wrote to a Mr. George Faversham last week. He was ill with

rheumatic gout, couldn't come. Is that the uncle you mean?"

The young man nodded.

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

He made a sudden movement. His hand slipped into his breast and found

nothing. He raised himself in bed, with a frowning brow.

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

ring?"

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

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

pillows.

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

Melrose studied him closely.

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

"Only what Uncle Mackworth taught me. We were great pals. He was my

guardian. I lived with him in the holidays after my parents died. I knew

all his gems. And now he's left them to me."

"Where are the rest?"

"I left the cabinet in charge of a man I know at the British Museum. He

promised to lock it up in one of their strong rooms. But those six I

always carry with me."

Melrose laughed.

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

worth all the rest."

The young man slowly turned his head.

"Did you know my Uncle Mackworth?"

"Certainly. And I too knew all his gems. I could tell you the histories

of those six, anyway, for generations. If it hadn't been for a fool of an

agent of mine, your uncle would never have had the Arconati Bacchus."

Faversham was silent--evidently trying to feel his way through some

induction of thought. But he gave it up as too much for him, and merely

said--nervously--with the sudden flush of weakness:

"I'm afraid you've been put to great expense, sir. But it's all right. As

soon as they'll let me sign a check, I'll pay my debts."

"Good gracious, don't trouble your head about that!" said Melrose rising.

"This house is at your disposal. Undershaw I daresay will tell you tales

of me. Take 'em with a grain of salt. He'll tell you I'm mad, and I

daresay I am. I'm a hermit anyway, and I like my own society. But you're

welcome here, as long as you've any reason to stay. I should like you to

know that I do not regard Mackworth's nephew as a stranger."

The studied amiability of these remarks struck Faversham as surprising,

he hardly knew why. Suddenly, a phrase emerged in memory.

"Every one about here calls him the Ogre."

The girl by the river--was it? He could not remember. Why!--the Ogre was

tame enough. But the conversation--the longest he had yet held--had

exhausted him. He turned on his side, and shut his eyes.

* * * * *

Then gradually, day by day, he came to understand the externals, at any

rate, of the situation. Undershaw gave him a guarded, though still

graphic, account of how, as unconscious as the dead Cid strapped on his

warhorse, he and his bodyguard had stormed the Tower. The jests of the

nurse, as to the practical difficulties of living in such a house,

enlightened him further. Melrose, it appeared, lived like a peasant, and

spent like a peasant. They brought him tales of the locked rooms, of the

passages huddled and obstructed with bric-à-brac, of the standing feuds

between Melrose and his tenants. None of the ordinary comforts of life

existed in the Tower, except indeed a vast warming apparatus which kept

it like an oven in winter; the only personal expenditure, beyond bare

necessaries, that Melrose allowed himself. Yet it was commonly believed

that he was enormously rich, and that he still spent enormously on his

collections. Undershaw had attended a London stockbroker staying in one

of the Keswick hotels, who had told him, for instance, that Melrose was

well known to the "House" as one of the largest holders of Argentine

stock in the world, and as having made also immense sums out of Canadian

land and railways. "The sharpest old fox going," said the Londoner,

himself, according to Undershaw, no feeble specimen of the money-making

tribe. "_His_ death duties will be worth raking in!"

Occasional gossip of this, or a more damaging kind, enlivened

convalescence. Undershaw and the nurses had no motives for reticence.

Melrose treated them uncivilly throughout; and Undershaw knew very well

that he should never be forgiven the forcing of the house. And as he, the

nurses, and the Dixons were firmly convinced that for every farthing of

the accommodation supplied him Faversham would ultimately have to pay

handsomely, there seemed to be no particular call for gratitude, or for

a forbearance based upon it.

Meanwhile Faversham himself did not find the character and intentions of

his host so easy to understand. Although very weak, and with certain

serious symptoms still persisting to worry the minds of doctor and nurse,

he was now regularly dressed of an afternoon, and would sit in a large

armchair--which had had to be hired from Keswick--by one of the windows

looking out on the courtyard. Punctually at tea-time Melrose appeared.

And there was no denying that in general he proved himself an agreeable

companion--a surprisingly agreeable companion. He would come slouching

in, wearing the shabbiest clothes, and a black skullcap on his flowing

gray hair; looking one moment like the traditional doctor of the Italian

puppet-play, gaunt, long-fingered, long-featured, his thin, pallid face a

study in gray amid its black surroundings; and the next, playing the man

of family and cosmopolitan travel, that he actually was. Faversham indeed

began before long to find a curious attraction in his society. There was

flattery, moreover, in the fact that nobody else in living memory had

Melrose ever been known to pay anything like the attention he was now

daily devoting to his invalid guest. The few inmates and visitors of the

Tower, permanent and temporary, became gradually aware of it. They were

astonished, but none the less certain that Melrose had only modified his

attitude for some selfish reason of his own which would appear in due

time.

The curious fact, however, emerged, after a while, that between the two

men, so diverse in age, history, and circumstance, there was a surprising

amount in common. Faversham, in spite of his look of youth, much impaired

for the present by the results of his accident, was not so very young; he

had just passed his thirtieth birthday, and Melrose soon discovered that

he had seen a good deal both of the natural and the human worlds. He was

the son, it seemed, of an Indian Civil Servant, and had inherited from

his parents, who were both dead, an income--so Melrose shrewdly gathered

from various indications--just sufficient to keep him; whereby a will,

ambitious rather than strong, had been able to have its way. He had

dabbled in many things, journalism, law, politics; had travelled a good

deal; and was now apparently tired of miscellaneous living, and looking

out discontentedly for an opening in life--not of the common sort--that

was somewhat long in presenting itself. He seemed to have a good many

friends and acquaintances, but not any of overmastering importance to

him; his intellectual powers were evidently considerable, but not working

to any great advantage either for himself or society.

Altogether an attractive, handsome, restless fellow; persuaded that he

was destined to high things, hungry for them, yet not seeing how to

achieve them; hungry for money also--probably as the only possible means

of achieving them--and determined, meanwhile, not to accept any second

best he could help. It was so, at least--from the cynical point of view

of an observer who never wasted time on any other--that Melrose read him.

Incidentally he discovered that Faversham was well acquainted with the

general lines and procedure of modern financial speculation, was in fact

better versed in the jargon and gossip of the Stock Exchange than Melrose

himself; and had made use now and then of the large amount of information

and the considerable number of useful acquaintances he possessed to

speculate cautiously on his own account--without much result, but without

disaster. Also it was very soon clear that, independently of his special

reasons for knowing something about engraved gems and their value, he had

been, through his Oxford uncle, much brought across collectors and

collecting. He could, more or less, talk the language of the tribe, and

indeed his mere possession of the famous gems had made him, willy-nilly,

a member of it.

So that, for the first time in twenty years, Melrose found himself

provided with a listener, and a spectator who neither wanted to buy from

him nor sell to him. When a couple of vases and a statuette, captured in

Paris from some remains of the Spitzer sale, arrived at the Tower, it was

to Faversham's room that Melrose first conveyed them; and it was from

Faversham's mouth that he also, for the first time, accepted any remarks

on his purchases that were not wholly rapturous. Faversham, with the

arrogance of the amateur, thought the vases superb, and the statuette

dear at the price. Melrose allowed it to be said; and next morning the

statuette started on a return journey to Paris, and the Tower knew it no

more.