Meanwhile the old collector would appear at odd moments with a lacquered

box, or a drawer from a cabinet, and Faversham would find a languid

amusement in turning over the contents, while Melrose strolled smoking up

and down the room, telling endless stories of "finds" and bargains. Of

the store, indeed, of precious or curious objects lying heaped together

in the confusion of Melrose's den, the only treasures of a portable kind

that Faversham found any difficulty in handling were his own gems.

Melrose would bring them sometimes, when the young man specially asked

for them, would keep a jealous eye on them the whole time they were in

their owner's hands, and hurry them back to their drawer in the Riesener

table as soon as Faversham could be induced to give them up.

One night the invalid made a show of slipping them back into the

breast-pocket from which they had been taken while he lay unconscious.

"I'm well enough now to look after them," he had said, smiling, to his

host. "Nurse and I will mount guard."

Whereupon Melrose protested so vehemently that the young man, in his

weakness, did not resist. Rather sulkily, he handed the case back to the

greedy hand held out for it.

Then Melrose smiled; if so pleasant a word may be applied to the queer

glitter that for a moment passed over the cavernous lines of his face.

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

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

"I mean a good offer--an offer you are not likely to get

elsewhere--simply because they happen to fit into my own collection."

"It is very kind of you. But I have a sentiment about them. I have had

many offers. But I don't intend to sell them."

Melrose was silent a moment, looking down on the patient, in whose pale

cheeks two spots of feverish red had appeared. Then he turned away.

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

"I thought he'd try and get them out of me," thought Faversham irritably,

when he was left alone. "But I shan't sell them--whatever he offers."

And vaguely there ran through his mind the phrases of a letter handed to

him by his old uncle's solicitor, together with the will: "Keep them for

my sake, my dear boy; enjoy them, as I have done. You will be tempted to

sell them; but don't, if you can help it. The money would be soon spent;

whereas the beauty of these things, the associations connected with them,

the thoughts they arouse--would give you pleasure for a lifetime. I have

loved you like a father, and I have left you all the little cash I

possess. Use that as you will. But that you should keep and treasure the

gems which have been so much to me, for my sake--and beauty's--would give

me pleasure in the shades--'quo dives Tullus et Ancus'--you know the

rest. You are ambitious, Claude. That's well. But keep you heart green."

What precisely the old fellow might have meant by those last words,

Faversham had often rather sorely wondered, though not without guesses at

the answer. But anyway he had loved his adopted father; he protested it;

and he would not sell the gems. They might represent his "luck"--such as

there was of it--who knew?

* * * * *

The question of removing his patient to a convalescent home at Keswick

was raised by Undershaw at the end of the third week from the accident.

He demanded to see Melrose one morning, and quietly communicated the fact

that he had advised Faversham to transfer himself to Keswick as soon as

possible. The one nurse now remaining would accompany him, and he,

Undershaw, would personally superintend the removal.

Melrose looked at him with angry surprise.

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

proceeding?"

"I understood," said Undershaw, smiling, "that you were anxious to have

your house to yourself again as soon as possible."

"I defended my house against your attack. But that's done with. And why

you should hurry this poor fellow now into new quarters, in his present

state, when he might stay quietly here till he is strong enough for a

railway journey, I cannot conceive!"

Undershaw, remembering the first encounter between them, could not

prevent his smile becoming a grin.

"I am delighted Mr. Faversham has made such a good impression on you,

sir. But I understand that he himself feels a delicacy in trespassing

upon you any longer. I know the house at Keswick to which I propose to

take him. It is excellently managed. We can get a hospital motor from

Carlisle, and of course I shall go with him."

"Do you suggest that he has had any lack of attention here from me or my

servants?" said Melrose, hotly.

"By no means. But--well, sir, I will be open with you. Mr. Faversham in

my opinion wants a change of scene. He has been in that room for three

weeks, and--he understands there is no other to which he can be moved.

It would be a great advantage, too, to be able to carry him into a

garden. In fact"--the little doctor spoke with the same cool frankness he

had used in his first interview with Melrose--"your house, Mr. Melrose,

is a museum; but it is not exactly the best place for an invalid who is

beginning to get about again."

Melrose frowned upon him.

"What does he want, eh? More space? Another room? How many rooms do you

suppose there are in this house, eh?" he asked in a voice half hectoring,

half scornful.

"Scores, I daresay," said Undershaw, quietly. "But when I inquired of

Dixon the other day whether it would be impossible to move Mr. Faversham

into another room he told me that every hole and corner in the house was

occupied by your collections, except two on the ground floor that you had

never furnished. We can't put Mr. Faversham into an unfurnished room.

That which he occupies at present is, if I may speak plainly, rather

barer of comforts than I like."

"What on earth do you mean?"

"Well, when an invalid's out of bed a pleasant and comfortable room is a

help to him--a few things to look at on the walls--a change of chairs--a

bookcase or two--and so on. Mr. Faversham's present room is--I mean

no offence--as bare as a hospital ward, and not so cheerful. Then as to

the garden"--Undershaw moved to a side window and pointed to the

overgrown and gloomy wilderness outside--"nurse and I have tried in vain

to find a spot to which we could carry him. I am afraid I must say that

an ordinary lodging-house, with a bit of sunny lawn on which he could lie

in his long chair, would suit him better, at his present stage, than this

fine old house."

"Luxury!" growled Melrose, "useless luxury and expense! that's what every

one's after nowadays. A man must be as _cossu_ as a pea in a pod! I'll go

and speak to him myself!"

And catching up round him the sort of Tennysonian cloak he habitually

wore, even in the house and on a summer day, Melrose moved imperiously

toward the door.

Undershaw stood in his way.

"Mr. Faversham is really not fit yet to discuss his own plans, except

with his doctor, Mr. Melrose. It would be both wise and kind of you to

leave the decision of the matter to myself."

Melrose stared at him.

"Come along here!" he said, roughly. Opening the door of the library, he

turned down the broad corridor to the right. Undershaw followed

unwillingly. He was due at a consultation at Keswick, and had no time to

waste with this old madman.

Melrose, still grumbling to himself, took a bunch of keys out of his

pocket, and fitted one to the last door in the passage. It opened with

difficulty. Undershaw saw dimly a large room, into which the light of a

rainy June day penetrated through a few chinks in the barred shutters.

Melrose went to the windows, and with a physical strength which amazed

his companion unshuttered and opened them all, helped by Undershaw. One

of them was a glass door leading down by steps to the garden outside.

Melrose dragged the heavy iron shutter which closed it open, and then,

panting, looked round at his companion.

"Will this do for you?"

"Wonderful!" said Undershaw heartily, staring in amazement at the lovely

tracery which incrusted the ceiling, at the carving of the doors, at the

stately mantelpiece, with its marble caryatides, and at the Chinese

wall-paper which covered the walls, its mandarins and pagodas, and its

branching trees. "I never saw such a place. But what is my patient to do

with an unfurnished room?"

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

contains?"

Undershaw shook his head.

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

"You are going back to Pengarth? You pass that shop, Barclay's--the

upholsterer's. Tell him to send me over four men here to-morrow, to do

what they're told. Stop also at the nurseryman's--Johnson's. No--I'll

write. Give me three days--and you'll see."

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

Undershaw felt considerable embarrassment. The owner of the Tower

appeared to him more of a lunatic than ever.

"Well, really, Mr. Melrose--I appreciate your kindness--as I am sure my

patient will. But--why should you put yourself out to this extent? It

would be much simpler for everybody concerned that I should find him

the quarters I propose."

"You put it to Mr. Faversham that I am quite prepared to move him into

other quarters--and quarters infinitely more comfortable than he can get

in any infernal 'home' you talk of--or I shall put it to him myself,"

said Melrose, in his most determined voice.

"Of course, if you persist in asking him to stay, I suppose he must

ultimately decide." Undershaw's tone betrayed his annoyance. "But I warn

you, I reserve my own right of advice. And moreover--supposing you do

furnish this room for him, allow me to point out that he will soon want

something else, and something more, even, than a better room. He will

want cheerful society."

"Well?" The word was challenging.

"You are most kind and indefatigable in coming to see him. But,

after all, a man at his point of convalescence, and inclined to be

depressed--the natural result of such an accident--wants change,

intellectual as well as physical, and society of his own age."

"What's to prevent his getting it?" asked Melrose, shortly. "When the

room is in order, he will use it exactly as he likes."

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

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

He turned to go.

"Will you give that order to Barclay?"

Undershaw laughed.

"If I do, I mustn't be taken as aiding and abetting you. But of

course--if you wish it."

"Ten o'clock to-morrow," said Melrose, accompanying him to the door. "Ten

o'clock, sharp." He stood, with raised forefinger, on the threshold of

the newly opened room, bowing a stiff farewell.

Undershaw escaped. But as he turned into the pillared hall, Nurse Aston

hurriedly emerged from Faversham's room. She reported some fresh trouble

in one of the wounds on the leg caused by the accident, which had never

yet properly healed. There was some pain, and a rise in temperature.

* * * * *

The unfavourable symptoms soon subsided. But as the fear of

blood-poisoning had been in Undershaw's mind from the beginning, they led

him to postpone, in any case, the arrangements that had been set on foot

for Faversham's departure. During three or four days afterward he saw

little or nothing of Melrose. But he and Nurse Aston were well aware that

unusual things were going on in the house. Owing to the great thickness

of the walls, the distance of Faversham's room from the scene of action,

and the vigilance of his nurse, who would allow no traffic whatever

through the front hall, the patient was protected from the noise of

workmen in the house, and practically knew nothing of the operations

going on. Melrose appeared every evening as usual, and gave no hint.

On the afternoon of the fourth day, Melrose met Undershaw in the hall, as

he entered the house.

"How is he?"

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

further drawbacks."

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

The invitation could not have been more _grand-seigneur_ish. Undershaw,

consumed with curiosity, accepted. Melrose led the way.

But no sooner had they passed a huge lacquer screen, newly placed in

position, and turned into the great corridor, than Undershaw exclaimed in

amazement. Melrose was striding along toward the south wing. Behind them,

screened off, lay regions no longer visible to any one coming from the

hall. In front, stretched a beautiful and stately gallery, terminating in

a pillared window, through which streamed a light to which both it and

the gallery had been strangers for nearly a score of years. A mass of

thick shrubbery outside, which had grown up close to the house, and had

been allowed for years to block this window, together with many others on

the ground floor, had been cut sheer away. The effect was startling, and

through the panes, freed from the dust and cobwebs of a generation, the

blue distant line of the Pennines could be distinctly seen far away to

the southeast. The floor of the gallery was spread with a fine matting of

a faint golden brown, on which at intervals lay a few old Persian or

Indian rugs. The white panelling of the walls was broken here and there

by a mirror, or a girandole, delicate work of the same date as the

Riesener table; while halfway down two Rose du Barri tapestries faced

each other, glowing in the June sun. It was all spacious--a little

empty--the whole conception singularly refined--the colour lovely.

Melrose stalked on, silently, pulling at his beard. He made no reply to

Undershaw's admiring comments; and the doctor wondered whether he was

already ashamed of the impulse which had made him do so strange a thing.

Presently, he threw open the door he had unlocked the week before,

Undershaw stepped into a room no less attractive than the gallery

outside. A carpet of old Persian, of a faded blue--a few cabinets spaced

along the walls--a few bookcases full of books old and new--a pillared

French clock on the mantelpiece--a comfortable modern sofa, and some

armchairs--branches of white rhododendron in a great enamelled vase--and

two oval portraits on the walls, a gentleman in red, and a gentleman in

blue, both pastels by Latour--in some such way one might have catalogued

the contents of the room. But no catalogue could have rendered its effect

on Undershaw, who was not without artistic leanings of a mild kind

himself--an effect as of an old debt paid, an injustice remedied, a

beautiful creation long abused and desecrated, restored to itself. The

room was at last what it had been meant to be; and after a hundred and

fifty years the thought of its dead architect had found fruition.

But this was not all. The garden door stood open, and outside, as he

walked up to it, Undershaw saw a stretch of smooth grass, with groups of

trees--the survivors of a ragged army--encircling it; a blaze of flowers;

and beyond the low parapet wall of lichened stone, from which also a

dense thicket of yew and laurel had been removed, the winding course of

the river, seventy feet below the Tower, showed blue under a clear sky. A

deck chair stood on the grass and a garden table beside it, holding an

ash-tray and cigarettes.

Undershaw, after a pause of wonder, warmly expressed his admiration.

Melrose received it ungraciously.

"Why, the things were all in the house. Clumsy brutes!--Barclay's men

would have broken the half of them, if I hadn't been here," he said,

morosely. "Now will you tell Mr. Faversham this room is at his disposal,

or shall I?"

* * * * *

Half an hour later Faversham, assisted by his nurse, had limped along the

corridor, and was sitting beside the glass door in an utter yet not

unpleasant bewilderment. What on earth had made the strange old fellow

take such an odd fancy to him? He had had singularly little "spoiling" in

his orphaned life so far, except occasionally from "Uncle Mackworth." The

experience was disturbing, yet certainly not disagreeable.

He must of course stay on for a while, now that such extraordinary pains

had been taken for his comfort. It would be nothing less than sheer

ingratitude were he not to do so. At the same time, his temperament was

cautious; he was no green youngster; and he could not but ask himself,

given Melrose's character and reputation, what ulterior motive there

might be behind a generosity so eccentric.

Meanwhile Melrose, in high spirits, and full of complaisance, now that

the hated Undershaw had departed, walked up and down as usual, talking

and smoking. It was evident that the whole process of unpacking his

treasures had put him in a glow of excitement. The sudden interruption of

habit had acted with stimulating power, his mind, like his home, had

shaken off some of its dust. He talked about the pictures and furniture

he had unearthed; the Latour pastels, the Gobelins in the gallery;

rambling through scenes and incidents of the past, in a vivacious,

egotistical monologue, which kept Faversham amused.

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

"Can you write yet?"

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

"Make your nurse write some notes for you. That man--Undershaw--says you

must have some society--invite some people."

Faversham laughed.

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

"There have been some people inquiring after you."

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

"And the women--who are they?"

Faversham explained.

"Miss Penfold seems to have recognized me from Undershaw's account. They

are your nearest neighbours, aren't they?" He looked smiling at his host.

"I don't know my neighbours!" said Melrose, emphatically. "But as for

that young ass, Tatham--ask him to come and see you."

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

Melrose chuckled.

"But he won't come, unless he knows I am safely out of the way. He and I

are not on terms, though his mother and I are cousins. I dare say

Undershaw's told you--he's thick with them. The young man has been

insolent to me on one or two occasions. I shall have to take him down.

He's one of your popularity-hunting fools. However you ask him by all

means if you want him. He'll come to see you. Ask him Thursday. I shall

be at Carlisle for the day. Tell him so."

He paused, his dark eyeballs, over which the whites had a trick of

showing disagreeably, fixing his visitor; then added:

"And ask the women too. I shan't bite 'em. I saw them from the window

the day they came to inquire. The mother looked perfectly scared. The

daughter's good looking."

Manner and tone produced a vague irritation in Faversham. But he merely

said that he would write to Mrs. Penfold.

Two notes were accordingly despatched that evening from the Tower; one to

Duddon Castle, the other to Green Cottage. Faversham had succeeded in

writing them himself; and in the exhilaration of what seemed to him a

much-quickened convalescence, he made arrangements the following morning

to part with his nurse within a few days. "Do as you like, in

moderation," said Undershaw, "no railway journey for a week or two."

VII

Melrose had gone to Carlisle. The Cumbria landscape lay in a misty

sunshine, the woods and fields steaming after a night of soaking rain.

All the shades of early summer were melting into each other; reaches of

the river gave back a silvery sky, while under the trees the shadows

slept. The mountains were indistinct, drawn in pale blues and purples, on

a background of lilac and pearl. And all the vales "were up," drinking

in the streams that poured from the heights.

Tatham and his mother were walking through the park together. He was in

riding-dress, and his horse awaited him at the Keswick gate. Lady Tatham

beside him was attired as usual in the plainest and oldest of clothes.

Her new gowns, which she ordered from time to time mechanically, leaving

the whole designing of them to her dress-maker, served her at Duddon, in

her own phrase, mainly "for my maid to show the housekeeper." They lay in

scented drawers, daintily folded in tissue paper, and a maid no less

ambitious than her fellows for a well-dressed mistress kept mournful

watch over them. This carelessness of dress had grown upon Victoria

Tatham with years. In her youth the indulgence of a taste for beautiful

and artistic clothes had taken up a great deal of her time. Then suddenly

it had all become indifferent to her. Devotion to her boy, books, and

natural history absorbed a mind more and more impatient of ordinary

conventions.

"You are quite sure that Melrose will be out of the way?" she asked her

son as they entered on the last stretch of their walk.

"Well, you saw the letter."

"No--give it me."

He handed it. She read it through attentively.

"Mr. Melrose asks me to say that he will not be here. He is going over to

the neighbourhood of Carlisle on business, and cannot be home till ten

o'clock at night."

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

"No. It is awkward of course going at all"--Tatham's brow was a little

furrowed--"but I somehow think I ought to go."

"Oh, go," said his mother. "If he does play a trick you will know how

to meet it. It would be very like him to play some trick," she added,

thoughtfully.

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

He coloured boyishly as he spoke. Lady Tatham looked up startled; a faint

red appeared in her cheeks also.

"I believe he supposed himself to be. I knew him very well, and I

might--possibly--have accepted him--but that some information came to my

knowledge. Then, later on, largely I think to punish me, he nearly

succeeded in entangling my younger sister--your Aunt Edith. I stood in

his way. He hates me, of course. I think he suffered. In those days he

was very different. But his pride and self-will were always a madness.

And gradually they have devoured everything else." She paused. "I cannot

tell you anything more, Harry. There were other people concerned."

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

Under the shadow of the woods the young man threw his arm round her

shoulders, looking down upon her with a proud tenderness.

"None. I escaped; and I won all along the line. I was neither to be

pitied--nor he," she added slowly, "though I daresay he would put down

his later mode of life to me."

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

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

"When I first saw him, he was a magnificent creature. For several years I

was dazzled by him. Then when I--and others--broke with him, he turned

his back on England and went to live abroad. And gradually he quarrelled

with everybody who had ever known him."

"But you never did care about him, mother?" cried Tatham, outraged by the

mere notion of any such thing.

"No--never." There was a deliberate emphasis on the words. The smile that

followed was slight but poignant. "I knew that still more plainly, when,

six months after I ceased to see him, your father came along."

Tatham who had drawn her hand within his arm, laid his own upon it for a

moment. He was in the happy position of a son in whom filial affection

represented no enforced piety, but the spontaneous instinct of his

nature. His mother had been so far his best friend; and though he rarely

spoke of his father his childish recollections of him, and the impression

left by his mother's constant and deliberate talk of him, during the

boyish years of her son, had entered deep into the bases of character. It

is on such feelings and traditions that all that is best in our still

feudal English life is reared; Tatham had known them without stint; and

in their absence he would have been merely the trivially prosperous young

man that he no doubt appeared to the Radical orators of the

neighbourhood.

The wood thinned. They emerged from it to see the Helvellyn range lying

purple under a southwest sky, and Tatham's gray mare waiting a hundred

yards away.

"You have no note?"

Tatham tapped his breast pocket.

"Rather!"

"All right--go along!" Lady Tatham came to a halt. "And Harry--don't call

too often! Is this the third visit this week?"

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

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

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

Tatham rode slowly along the Darra, the little river which skirted his

own land and made its way at last into that which flowed beneath the

Tower. He was going to Threlfall, but on his way he was to call at Green

Cottage and deliver a note from his mother.

He had seen a good deal of Lydia Penfold during the weeks since her first

appearance at Duddon. The two sisters had been induced to lunch there

once or twice; there had been a picnic in the Glendarra woods; and for

himself, in spite of his mother's attack, he thought he had been fairly

clever in contriving excuses for calls. On one occasion he had carried

with him--by his mother's suggestion--a portfolio containing a dozen

early proofs of the "Liber Studiorium," things about which he knew little

or nothing; but Lydia's eyes had sparkled when he produced them, which

was all he cared for. On the second, he had called to offer them a key

which would admit their pony-carriage to some of the private drives of

the park, wild enchanted ways which led up to the very eastern heart of

Blencathra. That was not quite so successful, because both Lydia and her

mother were out, and his call had been made chiefly on Susan, who had

been even queerer than usual. After taking the key, she had let it fall

absently into a waste-paper basket, while she talked to him about Ibsen;

and he had been forced to rescue it himself, lest Lydia should never know

of his visit. On all other occasions he had found Lydia, and she had been

charming--always charming--but as light and inaccessible as mountain

birds. He had been allowed to see the drawing she was now busy on--the

ravines of Blencathra, caught sideways through a haze of light, edge

beyond edge, distance behind distance; a brave attempt on the artist's

part at poetic breadth and selection. She had been much worried about the

"values," whatever they might be. "They're quite vilely wrong!" she had

said, impatiently. "And I don't know how to get them right." And all he

could do was to stand like an oaf and ask her to explain. Nor could he

ignore the fact--so new and strange to a princeling!--that her

perplexities were more interesting to her than his visit.

Yet of course Tatham had his own natural conceit of himself, like any

normal young man, in the first bloom of prosperous life. He was

accustomed to be smiled on; to find his pleasure consulted, and his

company welcome, whether as the young master of Duddon, or as a comrade

among his equals of either sex. The general result indeed of his happy

placing in the world had been to make him indifferent to things that most

men desire. No merit in that! As he truly said, he had so much of them!

But he was proud of his health and strength--his shooting and the steady

lowering of his golf handicap. He was proud also of certain practical

aptitudes he possessed, and would soon allow no one to interfere with

him--hardly to advise him--in the management of his estate. He liked

nothing better than to plan the rebuilding of a farm, or a set of new

cottages. He was a fair architect, of a rough and ready sort, and a

decent thatcher and bricklayer. All the older workmen on the estate had

taught him something at one time or another; and of these various

handicrafts he was boyishly vain.

None of these qualifications, however, gave him the smallest confidence

in himself, with regard to Lydia Penfold. Ever since he had first met

her, he had realized in her the existence of standards just as free as

his own, only quite different. Other girls wished to be courted; or they

courted him. Miss Penfold gave no sign that she wished to be courted; and

she certainly had never courted anybody. Many pretty girls assert

themselves by a kind of calculated or rude audacity, as though to say

that gentleness and civility are not for the likes of them. Lydia was

always gentle--kind, at least--even when she laughed at you. Unless she

got upon her "ideas." Then--like Susan--she could harangue a little, and

grow vehement--as she had at Duddon that day, talking of the new

independence of women. But neither her gentleness nor her vehemence

seemed to have any relation to what a man--or men--might desire of her.

She lived for herself; not indeed in any selfish sense; for it was plain

that she was an affectionate daughter and sister; but simply the world

was so interesting to her in other ways that she seemed to have no need

of men and matrimony. And as to money, luxury, a great _train de vie_--he

had felt from the beginning that those things mattered nothing at all to

her. It might be inexperience, it might be something loftier. But, at any

rate, if she were to be bribed, it must be with goods of another kind.

As to himself, he only knew that from his first sight of her at the Hunt

Ball, she had filled his thoughts. Her delicate, pale beauty, lit by

those vivacious eyes; so quiet, so feminine, yet with its suggestion of

something unconquerable, moving in a world apart--he could not define

it in any such words; but there it was, the attraction, the lure.

Something difficult; something delightful! A dear woman, a woman to be

loved; and yet a thorn hedge surrounding her--how else can one put the

eternal challenge, the eternal chase?

But as three parts of love is hope, and hope is really the mother of

invention, Tatham, though full of anxiety, was also, like General Trochu,

full of plans. He had that morning made his mother despatch an invitation

to one of the great painters of the day; a man who ruled the beauties of

the moment _en Sultan_; painted whom he would; when he would; and at what

price he would. But while those who were dying to be painted by him must

often wait for years, and put up with manners none too polite, there were

others who avenged them; women, a few, very few women, whom the great

man, strange to say, sighed to paint, and sighed in vain. Such women were

generally women of a certain age; none of your soft-cheeked beauties. And

Lady Tatham was one of them. The great artist had begged her to let

herself be painted by him. And Victoria had negligently replied that,

perhaps, at Duddon, some day, there might be time. Several reminders,

launched from the Chelsea studio, had not brought her to the point; but

now for her son's sake she had actually named a time; and a jubilant

telegram from London had clenched the bargain. The great man was to

arrive in a fortnight from now, for a week's visit; and Tatham had in his

pocket a note from Lady Tatham to Mrs. Penfold requesting the pleasure of

her company and that of her two daughters at dinner, to meet Mr. Louis

Delorme, the day after his arrival.

And all this, because, at a mention of the illustrious name, Lydia had

looked up with a flutter of enthusiasm. "You know him? How lucky for you!

He's _wonderful_! I? Oh, no. How should I? I saw him once in the

distance--he was giving away prizes. I didn't get one--alack! That's the

nearest I shall ever come to him."

Tatham chuckled happily as he thought of it.

"She shall sit next the old boy at dinner, and she shall talk to him just

as much as she jolly well pleases. And of course he'll take to her, and

offer to give her lessons--or paint her--or something. Then we can get

her over--lots of times!"

Still dallying with these simple plans, Tatham arrived at Green Cottage,

and tying up his horse went in to deliver his note.

He had no sooner entered the little drive than he saw Lydia under a

laburnum tree on the lawn. Hat in hand, the smiling youth approached her.

She was sewing, apparently mending house-linen, which she quietly put

down to greet him. There was a book before her; a book of poetry, he

thought. She slipped it among the folds of the linen.

He could not flatter himself that his appearance disturbed her composure

in the least. She was evidently glad to see him; she was gratefully sure

that they would all be delighted to dine with Lady Tatham on the day

named; she came with him to the gate, and admired his horse. But as to

any flutter of hand or eye; any consciousness in her, answering to the

eager feeling in him--he knew very well there was nothing of the kind.

Never mind! There was an inner voice in him that kept reassuring him all

the time; telling him to be patient; to go at it steadily. There was no

other fellow in the way, anyhow! He had a joyous sense of all the

opportunities to come, the summer days, the open country, the resources

of Duddon.

With his hand on his horse's neck, and loath to ride away, he told her

that he was on his way to the Tower to call on Faversham.

"Oh, but we're coming too, mother and I!" she said, in surprise. "Mr.

Faversham sent us a note. I don't believe he ought to have two sets of

visitors just yet."

Tatham too was surprised. "How on earth Faversham is able to entertain

anybody, I can't think! Undershaw told me last week he must get him away,

as soon as possible, into decent quarters. He doesn't get on very fast."

"He's been awfully ill!" said Lydia, with a soft concern in her voice,

which made the splendid young fellow beside her envious at once of the

invalid. "Well, good-bye! for the moment. We have ordered the pony in

half an hour."

"You'll see a queer place; the piggery that old fellow lives in! You

didn't know Faversham--I think you said--before that day of the

accident?" He looked down on her from the saddle.

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

that hill!"

"Any decent bike ought to have managed that hill all right," said Tatham

scornfully. "Scores of tourists go up and down it every day in the

summer."

Lydia bade him speak more respectfully of his native hills, lest they

bring him also to grief. Then she waved good-bye to him; received the

lingering bow and eager look, which betrayed the youth; thought of "young

Harry with his beaver on," as she watched the disappearing horseman, and

went back for a while to her needlework and cogitation.

That she was flattered and touched, that she liked him--the kind,

courteous boy--that was certain. Must she really assume anything

else on his part--take his advances seriously--check them--put up

restrictions--make herself disagreeable? Why? During her training in

London, Lydia had drunk of the modern spring like other girls. She had

been brought up in a small old-fashioned way, by her foolish little

mother, and by a father--a stupid, honourable, affectionate man--whom

she had loved with a half-tender, half-rebellious affection. There had

been no education to speak of, for either her or Susy. But the qualities

and gifts of remoter ancestors had appeared in them--to the bewilderment

of their parents. And when after her father's death Lydia, at nineteen,

had insisted on entering the Slade School, she had passed through some

years of rapid development. At bottom her temperament always remained, on

the whole, conservative and critical; the temperament of the humourist,

in whose heart the old loyalties still lie warm. But that remarkable

change in the whole position and outlook of women which has marked the

last half century naturally worked upon her as upon others. For such

persons as Lydia it has added dignity and joy to a woman's life, without

the fever and disorganization which attend its extremer forms. While

Susy, attending lectures at University College, became a Suffragist,

Lydia, absorbed in the pleasures and pains of her artistic training,

looked upon the suffrage as a mere dusty matter of political machinery.

But the ideas of her student years--those "ideas" which Tatham felt so

much in his way--were still dominant. Marriage was not necessary. Art and

knowledge could very well suffice. On the whole, in her own case, she

aspired to make them suffice.

But not in any cloistered world. Women who lived merely womanish lives,

without knowledge of and comradeship with men, seemed to her limited and

parochial creatures. She was impatient of her sex, and the narrowness

of her sex's sphere. She dreamed of a broadly human, practical,

disinterested relation between men and women, based on the actual work of

the world; its social, artistic, intellectual work; all that has made

civilization.

"We women are starved"--she thought, "because men will only marry

us--or make playthings of us. But the world is only just--these last

years--open to us, as it has been open to men for thousands of

generations. We want to taste and handle it for ourselves; as men do.

Why can't they take us by the hand--a few of us--teach us, confide in

us, open the treasure-house to us?--and let us alone! To be treated as

good fellows!--that's all we ask. Some of us would make such fratchy

wives--and such excellent friends! I vow I should make a good friend! Why

shouldn't Lord Tatham try?"

And letting her work fall upon the grass, she sat smiling and thinking,

her pale brown hair blown back by the wind. In her simple gray dress,

which showed the rippling beauty of every line, she was like one of these

innumerable angels or virtues, by artists illustrious or forgotten, which

throng the golden twilight of an Italian church; drawing back the

curtains of a Doge; hovering in quiet skies; or offering the Annunciation

lily, from one side of a great tomb, to the shrinking Madonna on the

other. These creations of Italy in her early prime are the most

spontaneous of the children of beauty. There are no great differences

among them; the common type is lovely; they spring like flowers from one

root, in which are the forces both of Greece and the Italy of Leonardo.

It was their harmony, their cheerfulness, their touch of something

universal, that were somehow reproduced in this English girl, and that

made the secret of her charm.

She went on thinking about Tatham.

Presently she had built a castle high in air; she had worked it out--how

she was to make Lord Tatham clearly understand, before he had any chance

of proposing (if that were really in the wind, and she were not a mere

lump of conceit), that marrying was not her line; but that, as a friend,

he might rely upon her. Anything--in particular--that she could do to

help him to a wife, short of offering herself, was at his service. She

would be eyes and ears for him; she would tell him things he did not in

the least suspect about the sex.

But as to marrying! She rose from her seat, stretching her arms toward

the sky and the blossoming trees, in that half-wild gesture which so

truly expressed her. Marrying Duddon! that vast house, and all those

possessions; those piles of money; those county relations, and that web

of inherited custom which would lay its ghostly compulsion on Tatham's

wife the very instant he had married her--it was not to be thought of for

a moment! She, the artist with art and the world before her; she, with

her soul in her own keeping, and all the beauty of sky and fell and

stream to be had for the asking, to make herself the bond slave of

Duddon--of that formidably beautiful, that fond, fastidious mother!--and

of all the ceremonial and paraphernalia that must come with Duddon! She

saw herself spending weeks on the mere ordering of her clothes, calling

endlessly on stupid people, opening bazaars, running hospitals,

entertaining house parties, with the _clef des champs_ gone forever--a

little drawing at odd times--and all the meaning of life drowned in its

trappings. No--no--_no!_--a thousand times, no! Not though her mother

implored her, and every creature in Cumbria and the universe thought her

stark staring mad. No!--for her own sake first; but, above all, for Lord

Tatham's sake.

Whereat she repentantly reminded herself that after all, if she despised

the world and the flesh, there was no need to give herself airs; for

certainly Harry Tatham was giving proof--stronger proof indeed, of doing

the same; if it were really his intention to offer his handsome person,

and his no less handsome possessions to a girl as insignificant as

herself. Custom had not staled _him_. And there was his mother too; who,

instead of nipping the silly business in the bud, and carrying the

foolish young man to London, was actually aiding and abetting--sending

gracious invitations to dinner, of the most unnecessary description.

What indeed could be more detached, more romantic--apparently--than

the attitude of both Tatham and his mother toward their own immense

advantages?

Yes. But they were born to them; they had had time to get used to them.

"It would take me half a lifetime to find out what they mean, and another

half to discover what to do with them."

"And, if one takes the place, ought one not to earn the wages? Lady

Tatham sits loose to all her social duties, scorns frocks, won't call,

cuts bazaars, has never been known to take the chair at a meeting. But I

should call that shirking. Either refuse the game; or play it! And of all

the games in the world, surely, surely the Lady Bountiful game is the

dullest! I _won't_ be bored with it!"

She went toward the house, her smiling eyes on the grass. "But, of

course, if I could not get on without the young man, I should put up with

any conditions. But I can get on without him perfectly! I don't want to

marry him. But I do--I _do_ want to be friends!"

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

from the porch.

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

"Mother thought you'd change."

"Then mother was quite wrong. My best cotton frock is good enough for any

young man!" laughed Lydia.

Susan descended the garden steps. She was a much thinner and dimmer

version of her sister. One seemed to see her pale cheeks, her dark eyes

and hair, her small mouth, through mist, like a Whistler portrait. She

moved very quietly, and her voice was low, and a little dragging. The

young vicar of a neighbouring hamlet in the fells, who admired her

greatly, thought of her as playing "melancholy"--in the contemplative

Miltonic sense--to Lydia's "mirth." She was a mystery to him; a mystery

he would have liked to unravel. But she was also a mystery to her family.

She shut herself up a good deal with her books; she had written two

tragedies in blank verse; and she held feminist views, vague yet fierce.

She was apparently indifferent to men, much more so than Lydia, who

frankly preferred their society to that of her own sex; but Lydia noticed

that if the vicar, Mr. Franklin, did not call for a week Susan would

ingeniously invent some device or other for peremptorily inducing him to

do so. It was understood in the family, that while Lydia enjoyed life,

Susan only endured it. All the same she was a good deal spoilt. She

breakfasted in bed, which Mrs. Penfold never thought of doing; Lydia

mended her stockings, and renewed her strings and buttons; while Mrs.

Penfold spent twice the time and money on Susan's wardrobe that she did

on Lydia's. There was no reason whatever for any of these indulgences;

but when three women live together, one of them has only to sit still, to

make the others her slaves. Mrs. Penfold found her reward in the belief

that Susan was a genius and would some day astonish the world; Lydia had

no such illusion; and yet it would have given her a shock to see Susan

mending her own stockings.

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

her severely.

"I suppose you have got a headache?"

"A little."

"That's because you will go and write poetry directly after lunch. Why it

would even give _me_ a headache!"

"I had an idea," said Susan plaintively.

"What does that matter? Ideas'll keep. You have just to make a note of

them--put salt on their tails--and then go and take a walk. Indigestion,

my dear--which is the plain English for your headache--is very bad for

ideas. What have you been doing to your collar?"

And Lydia took hold of her sister, straightening her collar, pinning up

her hair, and generally putting her to rights. When the operation was

over, she gave a little pat to Susan's cheek and kissed her.

"You can come with us to Threlfall, that would take your headache away;

and I don't mind the back seat."

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

myself. I want to think."

Lydia received the intimation respectfully, merely recommending her

sister to keep out of the sun; and was hurrying into the house to fetch

her hat when Susan detained her.

"Was that Lord Tatham who came just now?"

"It was." Lydia faced her sister, holding up the note from Lady Tatham.

"We are all to dine with them next week."

"He has been here nearly every other day for a fortnight," said Susan,

with feminine exaggeration. "It is becoming so marked that everybody

talks."

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

we can hardly padlock the gate."

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

"My dear, I like him so!" cried Lydia, her hands behind her, and tossing

her fair head. "Marrying!--I hate the word."

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

unfair--to him."

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

"I'm _not_ encouraging him, Susy--not in the way you mean. But why should

I drive him away, or be rude to him? I want to put things on a proper

footing--so that he'll understand."

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

"Well, then, we shall get it over," said Lydia, reluctantly. "And you

don't imagine that such a golden youth will trouble about such a trifle

for long. Think of all the other things he has to amuse him. Why, if I

broke my heart, you know I should still want to paint," she added,

flippantly.

"I'd give a good deal to see you break your heart!" said the tragedienne,

her dark eyes kindling--"you'd be just splendid!"

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

Susan held her.

"You're really going to the Tower?"

"I am. It's mean of me. When you hate a man, you oughtn't to go to his

house. But I can't help it. I'm so curious."

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

Lydia flushed suddenly from brow to chin.

"Goose! let me go."

Susan let her go, and then stood a while, absorbed, looking at the

mysterious Tower. Her power of visualization was uncannily strong; it

amounted almost to second sight. She seemed to be in the Tower--in one of

its locked and shuttered rooms; to be looking at a young man stretched

on a sofa--a wizardlike figure in a black cloak standing near--and in the

doorway, Lydia entering, bringing the light on her fair hair....

VIII

Tatham had to open the gate of Threlfall Park for himself. The lodge

beside it, of the same date and architecture as the house, had long

ceased to be inhabited. The gate was a substantial iron affair, and

carried a placard, peremptorily directing the person entering to close it

behind him. And on either side of it, the great wall stretched away with

which, some ten years before this date, Melrose, at incredible cost, had

surrounded the greater part of his property, in consequence of a quarrel

with the local hunt, and to prevent its members from riding over his

land.

Tatham, having carefully shut the gate, rode slowly through the park,

casting a curious and hostile eye over the signs of parsimonious neglect

which it presented. Sheep and cattle were feeding in part of it; part of

it was standing for hay; and everywhere the fences were ruinous, and the

roads grass-grown. It was, Tatham knew, let out to various small farmers,

who used it as they pleased. As to the woods which studded it, "the man

must be a simple fool who could let them get into such a state!" Tatham

prided himself hugely on the admirable forestry with which the large

tracts of woodland in his own property were managed. But then he paid a

proper salary to a trained forester, a man of education. Melrose's woods,

with their choked and ruined timber, were but another proof that a miser

is, scientifically, only a species of idiot.

Only once before in his life had he been within the park--on one of the

hunts of his boyhood, the famous occasion when the fox, started on the

other side of the river, had made straight for Threlfall, and, the gate

closing the private foot-bridge having been, by a most unusual chance,

left open, had slipped thereby into the park, with the hounds in full cry

after him. The hunt had momentarily paused, and then breaking loose from

all control had dashed through the yard of the Home Farm in joyous

pursuit, while the enraged Melrose, who with Dixon and another man had

rushed out with sticks to try and head them back, had to confine himself

and his followers to manning the enclosure round the house--impotent

spectators of the splendid run through the park--which had long remained

famous in Cumbrian annals. Tatham was then a lad of fourteen, mounted on

one of the best of ponies, and he well remembered the mad gallop which

had carried him past the Tower, and the tall figure of its furious

master. The glee, the malicious triumph of the moment ran through his

pulses again as he thought of it.

A short-lived triumph indeed, as far as the hunt was concerned; for the

building of the ten-foot wall had followed, and Melrose's final breach

with the gentry of his county. Never since had Tatham set foot in the

Ogre's demesne; and he examined every feature of it with the most lively

interest. The dilapidated buildings of the Home Farm reminded him of a

lawsuit brought by a former tenant against his landlord, in which a story

of mean and rapacious dealing on the part of Melrose, toward a decent

though unfortunate man, had excited the disgust of the whole countryside.

Melrose had never since been able to find a tenant for the farm, and the

bailiff he had put in was a drunken creature whose mismanagement of it

was notorious. Such doings by a man so inhumanly shrewd as Melrose in

many of his affairs could only be accounted for by the combination in him

of miserly dislike of spending, with a violent self-will. Instances,

however, had been known when to get his own way, or gain a sinister

advantage over an opponent, Melrose had been willing to spend

extravagantly.

After passing the farm, Tatham pressed on eagerly, expecting the first

sight of the house. The dense growth of shrub and creeper, which had been

allowed to grow up around it, the home according to the popular legend of

uncanny multitudes of owls and bats, tickled imagination; and Tatham had

often brought a field-glass to bear upon the house from one of the

neighbouring hills. But as he turned the last corner of the drive he drew

up his horse in amazement.

The jungle was gone--! and the simple yet stately architecture of the

house stood revealed in the summer sunshine. In the west wing, indeed,

the windows were still shuttered, and many of them overgrown with ivy;

but the dingy thickets of laurel and yew were everywhere shorn away; and

to the east all the windows stood free and open. Moreover, two men were

at work in the front garden, clearing the flagged paths, traced in the

eighteenth century, from encumbrance, and laying down turf in a green

circle round one of the small classical fountains that stood on either

side of the approach.

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

the surprised Tatham.

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

such changes?

One of the gardeners, seeing him as he approached the gate, came running

up to hold his horse. Tatham, who knew everybody and prided himself on

it, recognized him as the son of an old Duddon keeper.

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

"Aye! It's took us days, your lordship. But we're about through wi' this

side, howivver." He pointed to the east wing.

"One can see now what a jolly old place it is," said Tatham, pausing in

the gateway to survey the scene.

Backhouse grinned responsively.

"I do believe, my lord, Muster Melrose hissel' is pleased. He stood a

lang while lookin' at it this morning, afore he started oot."

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

toward the house.

Dixon had already opened the door. Slave and factotum of Melrose as he

was, he shared the common liking of the neighbourhood for young Lord

Tatham. Two of his brothers were farmers on the Duddon estate; and one

of them owed his recovery from a dangerous and obscure illness to the

fact that, at the critical moment, Tatham had brought over a specialist

from Leeds to see him, paying all expenses. These things--and others

besides--were reflected in the rather tremulous smile with which Dixon

received the visitor.

"Mr. Faversham expects me?"

"Aye, aye, my lord." The old man quickly led the way through the front

hall, more quickly than Tatham's curiosity liked. He had time to notice,

however, the domed and decorated ceiling, the classical mantelpiece, with

its medallions and its pillars of Sienese marble, a couple of bold

Renaissance cabinets on either side, and a central table, resting on

carved sphinxes, such as one might find in the _sala_ of a Venetian

palace.

But as they turned into the corridor or gallery Tatham's exclamation

brought Dixon to a halt. He faced round upon the young man, revealing a

face that worked with hardly repressed excitement, and explained that the

furnishing and arrangement had been only completed that day. It had taken

them eight days, and Barclay's men were only just gone.

Tatham frankly expressed his surprise and admiration. The whole gallery

and both of its terminal windows had now been cleared. The famous series

of rose-coloured tapestries, of which Undershaw had seen the first

specimens, had been hung at intervals throughout its length; and from the

stores of the house had been brought out more carpets, more cabinets,

mirrors, pictures, fine eighteenth-century chairs, settees, occasional

tables, and what not. Hastily as it had been done, the brilliance of the

effect was great. There was not, there could not be, the beauty that

comes from old use and habit--from the ordered life of generations moving

among and gradually adapting to itself a number of lovely things. Tatham

brought up amid the surroundings of Duddon was scornfully conscious of

the bric-à-brac element in the show, as he stood contemplating Melrose's

latest performance. Nevertheless a fine taste had presided both at the

original selection of the things shown, and at the arrangement of them in

the stately gallery, which both harmonized and displayed them.

"There's not a thing yo' see, my lord, that hasna been here--i' this

house--for years and years!" said Dixon, pointing a shaky finger at

the cabinets on either side. "There's soom o' them has been i' their

packing-cases ever sin' I can remember, an' the carpets rolled up aw

deep in dust. And there's not a thing been unpacked now i' the house

itsel', for fear o' t' dust, an' Mr. Faversham. The men carried it aw oot

o' that door"--he pointed to the far western end of the gallery--"an'

iverything was doon out o' doors, all t' carpets beaten an' aw, where Mr.

Faversham couldna hear a sound. An' yesterday Muster Melrose and Muster

Faversham--we browt him in his wheeled chair yo' unnerstan'--fixed up a

lot o' things together. We havna nailed doon th' matting yet, for fear

o't' noise. But Muster Faversham says noo he won't mind it."

"Is Mr. Faversham staying on some time?"

"I canno' say, my lord, I'm sure," was the cautious reply. "But they do

say 'at he's not to tak' a journey for a while yet."

Tatham's curiosity was hot within him, but his very dislike of Melrose

restrained him from indulging it. He followed Dixon through the gallery

in silence.

There was no one in the new sitting-room. But outside on some newly laid

grass, Tatham perceived the invalid on a deck chair, with a table holding

books and cigarettes beside him.

Dixon had departed. Faversham offered cigarettes.

"Thank you," said Tatham, "I have my own."

And he produced his case with a smile, handing it to Faversham.

"A drink?"

Tatham declined again. As he sat there smoking, his hat on the back of

his head, and his ruddy, good-humoured face beaming on his companion, it

did not occur to Faversham that Tatham was thereby refusing the "salt" of

an enemy.

"They'll bring some tea when Mrs. and Miss Penfold come," said Faversham.

Tatham nodded, then grinned irrepressibly.

"I say! I told Miss Penfold she'd find you in 'piggery.'"

Faversham's dark face showed a certain discomposure. Physical delicacy

had given a peculiar distinction to the gaunt black and white of his

eyes, hair, and complexion, and to the thinness of his long frame, so

that Tatham, who would have said before seeing him that he remembered

him perfectly, found himself looking at him from time to time in

surprise. As to his surroundings, Faversham appeared not only willing but

anxious to explain.

"It's a queer business," he said frankly. "I can assure I you I never

asked for anything, never wished for anything of the sort. Everything was

arranged for me to go to Keswick--to a home there--when--this happened."

"When old Melrose broke out!" Tatham threw back his head and gurgled with

laughter. "I suppose you know that nobody but yourself has ever had bite

or sup in this house for twenty years, unless it were some of the

dealers, who--they say--come occasionally. What have you done to him?

You've cast a spell on him!"

Faversham replied again that he had done nothing, and was as much puzzled

as anybody.

"My mother was afraid you would be anything but comfortable," said

Tatham. "She knows this gentleman of old. But she didn't know your powers

of soothing the savage breast! However, you have only to say the word,

and we shall be delighted to take you in for as long as you like."

"Oh, I must stay here now," said Faversham decidedly. "One couldn't be

ungrateful for what has been done. But my best thanks to Lady Tatham all

the same. I hope I may get over to see her some day."

"You must, of course. Dixon tells me there is a carriage coming--perhaps

a motor; why not!"

A flush rose in Faversham's pale cheek.

"Mr. Melrose talked of hiring one yesterday," he said, unwillingly. "How

far are you?"

They fell into talk about Duddon and the neighbourhood, avoiding any

further discussion of Melrose. Then Faversham described his accident, and

spoke warmly of Undershaw, an occupation in which Tatham heartily joined.

"I owe my life to him," said Faversham; adding with sudden sharpness, "I

suppose I must count it an advantage!"

"That would be the common way of looking at it!" laughed Tatham. "What

are you doing just now?"

"Nothing in particular. I am one of the large tribe of briefless

barristers. I suppose I've never given enough of my mind to it. The fact

is I don't like the law--never have. I've tried other things--fatal, of

course!--but they haven't come off, or at least only very moderately.

But, as you may suppose--I'm not exactly penniless. I have a few

resources--just enough to live on--without a wife."

Tatham felt a little awkward. Faversham's tone was already that of a man

to some extent disappointed and embittered.

"You had always so much more brains than the rest of us," he said

cordially. "You'll be all right."

"It's not brains that matter nowadays--it's money. What do you get by

brains? A civil service appointment--and a pension of seven hundred a

year. What's the good of slaving for that?"

Faversham turned to his companion with a smile, in which however there

was no good-humour. It made Tatham disagreeably conscious of his own

wealth.

"Well, of course, there are the prizes--"

"A few. So few that they don't count. A man may grind for years, and get

passed over or forgotten--just by a shave--at the end. I've seen that

happen often. Or you get on swimmingly for a while, and everybody

supposes you're going to romp in; and then something crops up you never

thought of. Some boss takes a dislike to you--or you make a mistake, and

cut your own throat. And there you are--pulled!"

Tatham was silent a moment, his blunt features expressing some

bewilderment. Then he said--awkwardly:

"So you don't really know what you're going to take up?"

Faversham lit another cigarette.

"Oh, well, I have some friends--and some ideas. If I once get a foothold,

a beginning--I daresay I could make money like other people. Every idiot

one meets seems to be doing it."

"Do you want to go into politics--or something of that kind?"

"I want to remain my own master, and do the things I want to do--and not

the things I must do," laughed Faversham. "That seems to me the dividing

line in life--whether you are under another man's orders or your own. And

broadly speaking it's the line between poverty and money. But you don't

know much about it, old fellow!" He looked round with a laugh.

Tatham screwed up his blue eyes, not finding reply very easy, and not

certain that he liked the "old fellow," though their college familiarity

justified it. He changed the subject, and they fell into some gossip

about Oxford acquaintances and recollections, which kept the conversation

going.

But at the end of it the two men were each secretly conscious that

the other jarred upon him; and in spite of the tacit appeal made by

Faversham's physical weakness and evident depression to Tatham's

boundless good-nature, there had arisen between them at the end an

incipient antagonism which a touch might develop. Faversham appeared to

the younger man as querulous, discontented, and rather sordidly

ambitious; while the smiling optimism of a youth on whom Fortune had

showered every conceivable gift--money, position, and influence--without

the smallest effort on his own part, rang false or foolish in the ears of

his companion. Tatham, cut off from the county, agricultural, or sporting

subjects in which he was most at home, fumbled a good deal in his efforts

to adjust himself; while Faversham found it no use to talk of travel,

art, or music to one who, in spite of an artistic and literary mother and

wonderful possessions, had himself neither literary nor artistic faculty,

and in the prevailing manner of the English country gentleman, had always

found the pleasures of England so many and superior that there was no

need whatever to cross the Channel in pursuit of others. Both were soon

bored; and Tatham would have hurried his departure, but for the hope

of Lydia. With that to fortify him, however, he sat on.

And at last she came. Mrs. Penfold, it will easily be imagined, entered

upon the scene, in a state of bewildered ravishment.

"She had never expected--she could not have believed--it was like a

fairy-tale--a _real_ fairy-tale--wasn't the house _too_ beautiful--Mr.

Melrose's _taste_!--and such _things_!" In the wake of this soft,

gesticulating whirlwind, followed Lydia, waiting patiently with her

bright and humorous look till her mother should give her the chance of a

word. Her gray dress, and white hat, her little white scarf, a trifle

old-fashioned, and the pansies at her belt seemed to Tatham's eager eyes

the very perfection of dress. He watched her keenly as she came in; the

kind look at Faversham; then the start--was it, of pity?--for his altered

aspect, the friendly greeting for himself; and all so sweet, so detached,

so composed. His heart sank, he could not have told why.

"I ought to have warned you of that hill!" she said, standing beside

Faversham, and looking down upon him.

"You couldn't know I was such a duffer!" laughed Faversham. "It wasn't

me--it was the bike. At least, they tell me so. As for me, everything,

from the moment I left you till I woke up here six weeks ago, is wiped

out. Did you finish your sketch? Were the press notices good?"

She smiled. "Did you see what they were?"

"Certainly. I saw your name in one as I picked it out."

"I still sleep with it under my pillow--when I feel low," said Lydia. "It

said the nicest things. And I sold my pictures."

"Magnificent!" said Faversham. "But of course you sold them."

"Oh, no, Mr. Faversham, not 'of course'!" cried Mrs. Penfold, turning

round upon him. "You can't think how Lydia was envied! Hardly anybody

sold. There were friends of hers exhibiting--and it was dreadful. The

secretary said they had hardly ever had such a bad year--something to do

with a bank breaking--or the influenza--or something. But Lydia, lucky

girl, sold hers within the first week. And we don't know at all who

bought them. The secretary said he was not to tell. There are many

buyers, he told us, who won't give their names--for fear of being

bothered afterward. As if Lydia would ever bother any one!"

The guilty Tatham sat with his cane between his knees twirling it, his

eyes on the ground. No one noticed him.

"And the sketch you were making that day?" said Faversham.

"As you liked it, I brought it to show you," said Lydia shyly. And she

produced a thin parcel she had been carrying under her arm.

Faversham praised the drawing warmly. It reminded him, he said, of some

work he had seen in March, at one of the Bond Street galleries; a one-man

show by a French water-colourist. He named him. Lydia flushed a little.

"Next to Mr. Delorme"--she glanced gratefully at Tatham--"he is the man

of all the world I admire most! I am afraid I can't help imitating him."

"But you don't!" cried Faversham. "You are quite independent. I didn't

mean that for a moment."

Lydia's eyes surveyed him with a look of amusement, which seemed to say

that she was not at all duped by his compliment. He proceeded to justify

it.

"I'll tell you who do imitate him--"

And forthwith he began to show a remarkable knowledge of certain advanced

groups among the younger artists and their work. Lydia's face kindled.

She listened; she agreed; she interrupted; she gave her view; it was

evident that the conversation both surprised and delighted her.

Tea came out, and, at Faversham's invitation, Lydia presided. The talk

between her and Faversham flowed on, in spite of the girl's pretty

efforts to make it general, to bring Tatham into it. He himself defeated

her. He wanted to listen; so did Mrs. Penfold, who sat in open-mouthed

wonder at Lydia's cleverness; while Tatham was presently conscious of a

strong discomfort, a jealous discomfort, which spoilt for him this

nearness to Lydia, and the thrill stirred in him by her movements and

tones, her soft laugh, her white neck, her eyes....

Here, between these two people, Faversham and Lydia, who had only seen

each other for some ten minutes in their lives before, there seemed to

have arisen, at once, an understanding, a freemasonry, such as he himself

had never reached in all his meetings with Lydia Penfold.

How had it come about? They talked of people, struggling people, to whom

art was life, though also livelihood; of men and women, for whom nothing

else counted, beside the fascination and the torment of their work; Lydia

speaking from within, as a humble yet devout member of the band;

Faversham, as the keen spectator and amateur--not an artist, but the

frequenter of artists.

And all the time Lydia's face wore a happy animation which redoubled its

charm. Faversham was clearly making a good impression upon her, was

indeed set on doing so, helped always by the look of delicacy, the traces

of suffering, which appealed to her pity. Tatham moved restlessly in his

chair, and presently he got up, and proposed to Mrs. Penfold that they

should examine the improvements in the garden.

* * * * *

When they returned, Lydia and Faversham were still talking and still

absorbed.

"Lydia, my dear," cried her mother, "I am afraid we shall be tiring Mr.

Faversham! Now you must let Lord Tatham show you the garden--that's been

made in a _week_! It's like that part in 'Monte Cristo,' where he orders

an avenue at breakfast-time, that's to be ready by dinner--don't you

remember? It's _thrilling_!"

Lydia rose obediently, and Mrs. Penfold slipped into her seat. Lydia,

strolling with Tatham along the rampart wall which crowned the sandstone

cliff, was now and then uncomfortably aware as they passed the tea-table

of the soft shower of questions that her mother was raining upon

Faversham.

"You really think, Mr. Faversham"--the tone was anxiously lowered--"the

daughter is dead?--the daughter _and_ the mother?"

"I know nothing!"

"She would be the heiress?"

"If she were alive? Morally, I suppose, not legally, unless her father

pleased."

"Oh! Mr. Faversham!--but you would never suggest--"

Lydia came to the rescue:

"Mother, really we ought to ask for the pony-carriage."

Faversham protested, but Lydia was firm, and the hand-bell beside him was

rung. Mrs. Penfold flushed. She quite understood that Lydia thought it

unseemly to be putting a guest through a string of questions about the

private affairs of his host; but the inveterate gossip in her whimpered.

"You see when one has watched a place for months--and people tell

you such tales--and you come and find it so different--and so--so

fascinating--"

She paused, her plaintive look, under her wistful eyebrows, appealing to

Faversham to come to her aid, to justify her curiosity.

Suddenly, a sound of wheels from the front.

Lydia offered her hand to Faversham.

"I'm afraid we've tired you!"

"_Tired!_ When will you come to see me again?"

"Will it be permitted?" She laid a finger on her lip, as she glanced

smiling at the house.

He begged them to repeat their visit. Tatham looked on in silence. The

figure of Lydia, delicately bright against the dark background of the

Tower, absorbed him, and this time there was something painful and

strained in his perception of it. In his first meeting with her that

day he had been all hopefulness--content to wait and woo. Now, as he saw

her with Faversham, as he perceived the nascent comradeship between them,

and the reason for it, he felt a first vague suffering.

A step approached through the sitting-room of which the door was open to

the terrace.

The two ladies escorted by Tatham moved toward the house expecting Dixon

with the announcement of their carriage.

A tall figure stood in the doorway. There was a checked exclamation

from Tatham, and Faversham perceived to his amazement that it was not

Dixon--but--Melrose!

* * * * *

Melrose surveyed the group. Removing his old hat he bowed gravely to the

ladies. His flowing hair, and largely cut classical features gave him an

Apollonian aspect as he towered above the startled group, looking down on

them with an expression half triumphant, half sarcastic. Tatham was the

first to recover himself. He approached Melrose with a coolness like his

own.

"You are back early, sir? I apologize for my intrusion, which will not be

prolonged. I came, as you see, to inquire after my old friend, Mr.

Faversham."

"So I understand. Well--what's wrong with him? Isn't he doing well--eh?

Faversham, will you introduce me to your friends?"

Mrs. Penfold, so much shaken by the sudden appearance of the Ogre that

words failed her, bowed profoundly; Lydia slightly. She was indignant for

Tatham. Mr. Melrose, having announced his absence for the day, ought not

to have returned upon them by surprise, and his manner convinced her that

it had been done on purpose.

"They gave you tea?" said Melrose to Mrs. Penfold, with gruff civility,

as he descended the steps. "Oh, we keep open house nowadays. You're

going?" This was in answer to Tatham's bow which he slightly

acknowledged. "Good-day, good-day! You'll find your horse. Sorry you're

so hurried."

Followed by the old man's insolent eyes, Tatham shook hands with

Faversham and the Penfolds; then without reentering the house, he took a

short cut across the garden and disappeared.

"Hm!" said Melrose, looking after him, "I can't say he resembles his

mother. His father was a plain fellow."

No one answered him. Mrs. Penfold nervously pressed for her carriage,

throwing herself on the help of Dixon, who was removing the tea things.

Melrose meanwhile seated himself, and with a magnificent gesture invited

the ladies to do the same. Mrs. Penfold obeyed; Lydia remained standing

behind her mother's chair. The situation reminded her of a covey of

partridges when a hawk is hovering.

Mrs. Penfold at once began to make conversation, saying the most

dishevelled things for sheer fright. Melrose threw her a monosyllable now

and then, reserving all his attention for the young girl, whose beauty he

instantly perceived. His piercing eyes travelled from Faversham to Lydia

repeatedly, and the invalid rather angrily divined the conjectures which

might be passing in their owner's brain.

* * * * *

"How are you?" asked Melrose abruptly, when he returned from accompanying

the Penfolds to the front door.

Faversham replied with some coldness. He was disgusted that Melrose

should have spoilt the final success of his little _festa_ by the breach

of a promise he had himself volunteered.

But Melrose appeared to be in an unusually good temper, and he took no

notice. He had had considerable success that morning, it appeared, at an

auction of some fine things at a house near Carlisle; having not only

secured what he wanted himself, but having punished two or three of his

most prominent rivals, by bidding high for some inferior thing, exciting

their competition, and then at the critical moment dropping it on the

nose, as he explained it, of one of his opponents. "Wilson of York came

to me nearly in tears, and implored me to take some beastly pot or other

that I had made him buy at a ridiculous price. I told him he might keep

it, as a reminder that I always paid those out who bid against me. Then

I found I could get an earlier train home; and I confess I was curious to

see how young Tatham would look, on my premises. He did not expect that I

should catch him here." The Ogre chuckled.

"You told me, if you remember," said Faversham, not without emphasis,

"that I was to say to him you would not be at home."

"I know. But sometimes there are impulses--of different kinds--that I

can't resist. Of different kinds--" repeated Melrose, his glittering,

absent look fixed on Faversham.

There was silence a little. Then Melrose said slowly, as he rose from his

chair: "I have--a rather important proposition to make to you. That

fellow Undershaw would attack me if I began upon it now. Moreover, it

will want a fresh mind. Will it suit you if I come to see you at eleven

o'clock to-morrow?"

IX

On the following morning, Faversham, for the first time, dressed without

assistance, and walked independently--save for his stick--into his

sitting-room. The July day was rather chill and rainy and he decided to

await Melrose indoors.

As to the "important proposal" his mind was full of conjectures. What he

thought most probable was that Melrose intended, according to various

fresh hints and indications, to make him another and a more serious offer

for his gems--no doubt a big offer. They were worth at least three

thousand pounds, and Melrose of course knew their value to a hair.

"Well, I shall not sell them," thought Faversham, his hands behind his

head, his eyes following the misty course of the river, and the rain

showers scudding over the fells. "I shall not sell them."

His mind clung obstinately to this resolve. His ambitions with regard to

money went, in fact, so far beyond anything that three thousand pounds

could satisfy, that the inducement to sell at such a price--which he knew

to be the market price--and wound thereby the deepest and sincerest of

his affections, was not really great. The little capital on which he

lived was nearly double the sum, and could be made to yield a fair income

by small and judicious speculation. He did not see that he should be much

better off for the addition to it of three thousand pounds; and on the

other hand, were the gems sold, he should have lost much that he keenly

valued--the prestige of ownership; the access which it gave him to

circles, learned or wealthy, which had been else closed to him; the

distinction attaching thereby to his otherwise obscure name in catalogues

and monographs, English or foreign. So long as he possessed the

"Mackworth gems" he was, in the eyes of the world of connoisseurs, at any

rate, a personage. Without them he was a personage nowhere. Every month,

every week, almost, he was beginning to receive requests to be allowed

to see and study them, or appeals to lend them for exhibition. In the

four months since his uncle's death, both the Louvre and the Berlin

Museum had approached him, offering to exhibit them, and hinting that the

loan might lead, should he so desire it, to a very profitable sale. If he

did anything of the kind, he was pledged of course to give the British

Museum the first chance. But he was not going to do it--he was not even

going to lend them--yet a while. To possess them, and the _kudos_ that

went with them; _not_ to sell them, for sentimental reasons, and even at

a money loss, made a poor man proud, and ministered in strange ways to

his self-respect, which went often rather hungry; gave him, in short, a

standing with himself, and with the world. All the more, that the poor

man's mind was in fact, set passionately on the conquest of wealth--real

and substantial wealth--to which the paltry sum of three thousand pounds

bore no sort of relation.

No, he would not sell them. But he braced himself to a tussle with

Melrose, for he seemed to have gathered from a number of small

indications that the fierce old collector had set his heart upon them.

And no doubt this business of the newly furnished rooms, and all the

luxuries that had been given or promised, made it more difficult--had

been intended, perhaps, to make it more difficult? Well, he could but say

his No and depart, expressing his gratitude--and insisting on the payment

of his score!

But--depart where? The energies of renewed health were pulsing through

him, and yet he had seldom felt more stranded, or, except in connection

with the gems, more insignificant, either to himself or others; in

spite of this palace which had been oddly renovated for his convenience.

His uncle's death had left him singularly forlorn, deprived of the only

home he had ever possessed, and the only person who felt for him a close

and spontaneous affection. For his other uncle--his only remaining

relation--was a crusty and selfish widower, with whom he had been on

little more than formal terms. The rheumatic gout pleaded in the letter

to Undershaw had been, he was certain, a mere excuse.

Well--something must be done; some fresh path opened up. He had in

Fact left London in a kind of secret exasperation with himself and

circumstance, making an excuse out of meeting the Ransoms--mere

acquaintances--at Liverpool; and determined, after the short tour to

which they had invited him, to plunge himself for a week or two in the

depths of a Highland glen where he might fish and think.

The Ransoms, machine manufacturers from St. Louis, had made matters

worse. Such wealth!--such careless, vulgar, easily gotten wealth!--heaped

up by means that seemed to the outsider so facile, and were, in truth,

for all but a small minority, so difficult. A commonplace man and a

frivolous woman; yet possessed, through their mere money, of a power over

life and its experiences, such as he, Faversham, might strive for all his

days and never come near. It might be said of course--Herbert Ransom

would probably say it--that all men are worth the wages they get; with an

obvious deduction in his own case. But when or where had he ever _got his

chance_--a real chance? Visions of the rich men among his acquaintance,

sleek, half-breed financiers, idle, conceited youths of the "classes,"

pushed on by family interest; pig-headed manufacturers, inheritors of

fortunes they could never have made; the fatteners on colonial land and

railway speculation--his whole mind rose in angry revolt against the

notion that he could not have done, personally, as well as any of them,

had there only been the initial shove, the favourable moment.

* * * * *

He envied those who had beaten him in the race, he frankly admitted it;

but he must also allow himself the luxury of despising them.

* * * * *

Melrose was late.

Faversham rose and hobbled to the window, his hands on his sides,

frowning--a gaunt figure in the rainy light. With the return of physical

strength there had come a passionate renewal of desire--desire for

happiness and success. The figure of Lydia Penfold hovered perpetually

in his mind. Marriage!--his whole being, moral and physical, cried out

for it. But how was he ever to marry?--how could he ever give such a

woman as that the setting and the scope she could reasonably claim?

"A bad day!" said a harsh voice behind him, "but all the better for

business."

Faversham turned to greet his host, the mental and physical nerves

tightening.

"Good morning. Well, here I am"--his laugh showed his nervousness--"at

your disposal."

He settled himself in his chair. Melrose took a cigarette from the table,

and offered one to his guest. He lit and smoked in silence for a few

moments, then began to speak with deliberation:

"I gather from our conversations, Faversham, during the last few weeks

that you have at the present moment no immediate or pressing occupation?"

Quick colour leapt in Faversham's lean cheek.

"That is true. It happens to be true--for various reasons. But if you

mean to imply by that, that I am necessarily--or willingly--an idler, you

are mistaken."

"I did not mean to imply anything of the kind. I merely wished, so to

speak, to clear the way for what I have to propose."

Faversham nodded. Melrose continued:

"For clearly it would be an impertinence on my part were I to

attempt--suddenly--to lift a man out of a fixed groove and career, and

suggest to him another. I should expect to be sent to the devil--and

serve me right. But in your case--correct me if I am wrong--you seem

not yet to have discovered the groove that suits you. Now I am here to

propose to you a groove--and a career."

Faversham looked at him with astonishment. The gems, which had been so

urgently present to his mind, receded from it. Melrose in his skullcap,

sitting sideways in his chair, his cigarette held aloft, presented a

profile which might have been that of some Venetian Doge, old, withered

and crafty, engaged, say, in negotiation with a Genoese envoy.

"When you were first brought here," Melrose continued--"your presence,

as Undershaw has no doubt told you--of course he has told you, small

blame to him--was extremely distasteful to me. I am a recluse. I like no

women--and d----d few men. I can do without them, that's all; their

intimate company, anyway: and my pursuits bring me all the amusement I

require. Such at any rate was my frame of mind up to a few weeks ago. I

don't apologize for it in the least. Every man has a right to his own

idiosyncrasies. But I confess that your society during the last few

weeks--I am in no mood for mere compliment--has had a considerable

effect upon me. It has revealed to me that I am no longer so young as

I was, or so capable--apparently--of entertaining myself. At any rate

your company--I put it quite frankly--instead of being a nuisance--has

been a godsend. It has turned out that we have many of the same tastes;

and your inheritance of the treasures collected by my old friend

Mackworth"--("Ah!" thought Faversham, "now we come to it!")--"has made

from the first, I think, a link between us. Have I your assent?"

"Certainly."

Melrose paused a moment, and then resumed. The impression he made was

that of one rehearsing, point by point, a prepared speech.

"At the same time, I have become more aware than usual of the worries and

annoyances connected with the management of my estates. We live, sir, in

a world of robbers"--Melrose suddenly rounded on his companion, his

withered face aflame--"a world of robbers, and of rapine! Not a single

Tom, Dick, and Harry in these parts that doesn't think himself my equal

and more. Not a single tenant on my estate that doesn't try at every

point to take advantage of his landlord! Not a single tramp or poacher

that doesn't covet my goods--that wouldn't murder me if he could, and

sleep like a baby afterward. I tell you, sir, we shall see a _jacquerie_

in England, before we are through with these ideas that are now about

us like the plague; that every child imbibes from our abominable

press!--that our fools of clergy--our bishops even--are not ashamed to

preach. There is precious little sense of property, and not a single

rag of loyalty or respect left in this country! But when you think of the

creatures that rule us--and the fanatics who preach to us--and the fools

who bring up our children, what else can you expect! The whole state is

rotten! The men in our great towns are ripe for any revolutionary

villainy. We shall come to blood, Faversham!"--he struck his hand

violently on the arm of his chair--"and then a dictator--the inevitable

round. Well, I have done my part. I have fought the battle of property in

this country--the battle of every squire in Cumbria, if the dolts did but

know their own interests. Instead they have done nothing but thwart and

bully me for twenty years. And young Tatham with his County Council

nonsense, and his popularity hunting, is one of the very worst of them!

Well, now I've done!--personally. I daresay they'll crow--they'll say I'm

beat. Anyway, I've done. There'll have to be fighting, but some one else

must see to it. I intend to put my affairs into fresh hands. It is my

purpose to appoint a new agent--and to give him complete control of my

property!"

Melrose stopped abruptly. His hard eyes in their deep, round orbits

were fixed on Faversham. The young man was mainly conscious of a

half-hysterical inclination to laugh, which he strangled as he best

could. Was he to be offered the post?

"And, moreover," Melrose resumed, "I want a secretary--I want a

companion--I want some one who will help me to arrange the immense, the

priceless collections there are stacked in this house--unknown to

anybody--hardly known, in the lapse of years, even to myself. I desire to

unravel my own web, so to speak--to spin off my own silk--to examine and

analyze what I have accumulated. There are rooms here--containing

_masterpieces_--unique treasures--that have never been opened for

years--whose contents I have myself forgotten. That's why people call me

a madman. Why? What did I want with a big establishment eating up my

income?--with a lot of prying idiots from outside--museum bores,

bothering me for loans--common tourists, offering impertinent tips to my

housekeeper, or picking and stealing, perhaps, when her back was turned!

I bought the things, and _shut them up_. They were safe, anyway. But now

that process has gone on for a quarter of a century. You come along. A

chance--a freak--a caprice, if you like, makes me arrange these rooms for

you. That gives me new ideas--"

He turned and looked with sharp, slow scrutiny round the walls:

"The fact is I have been so far engaged in hoarding--heaping together.

The things in this house--my extraordinary collections--have been the

nuts--and I, the squirrel. But now the nuts are bursting out of the hole,

and the squirrel wants to see what he's got. That brings me to my point!"

He turned emphatically toward Faversham, leaning hard on a marqueterie

table that stood between them:

"I offer you, sir, the post, the double post, of agent to my property,

and of private secretary, or assistant to myself. I offer you a salary of

three thousand a year--three thousand pounds, a year--if you will

undertake the management of my estates, and be my lieutenant in the

arrangement of my collections. I wish--as I have said--to unpack this

house; and I should like to leave my property in order before I die.

Which reminds me, I should of course be perfectly ready to make proper

provision, by contract, or otherwise, so that in the event of any sudden

termination of our agreement--my death for instance--you should be

adequately protected. Well, there, in outline, is my proposal!"

During this extraordinary speech Faversham's countenance had reflected

with tolerable clearness the various impressions made by it--incredulous

or amused astonishment--bewilderment--deepening gravity--coming round

again to astonishment. He raised himself in his chair.

"You wish to make me your agent--the agent for these immense estates?"

"I do. I had an excellent agent once--twenty years ago. But old Dovedale

stole him from me--bribed him by higher pay. Since then I have had

nothing but clerks--rent-collectors--rascally makeshifts, all of them."

"But I know nothing about land--I have had no experience!"

"A misfortune--but in some ways to the good. I don't want any cocksure

fellow, with brand-new ideas lording it over me. I should advise you of

course."

"But--at the same time--I should not be content with a mere clerk's

place, Mr. Melrose," said Paversham, a momentary flash in his dark eye.

"I am one of those men who are better as principals than as subordinates.

Otherwise I should be in harness by now."

Melrose eyed him askance for a moment--then said: "I understand. I should

be willing to steer my course accordingly--to give you a reasonable

freedom. There are two old clerks in the estate-office, who know

everything that is to be known about the property, and there are my

solicitors both in Carlisle and Pengarth. For the rest, you are a lawyer,

and there are some litigations pending. Your legal knowledge would be of

considerable service. If you are the clever fellow I take you for, a

month or two's hard work, the usual technical books, some expert

advice--and I have little doubt you would make as good an agent as any of

them. Mind, I am _not_ prepared to spend unlimited money--nor to run my

estates as a Socialist concern. But I gather you are as good a

Conservative as myself."

Faversham was silent a moment, observing the man before him. The whole

thing was too astounding. At last he said: "You are not prepared, sir,

you say, to spend unlimited money. But the sum you offer me is unheard

of."

"For an agent, yes--for a secretary, yes--for a combination of the two,

under the peculiar circumstances, the market offers no precedents. You

and I make a market--and a price."

"You would expect me to live in this house?"

"I gather these rooms are not disagreeable to you?"

"Disagreeable! They are too sumptuous. If _I_ did this thing, sir, I

should want to do it in a businesslike way."

"You want an office? Take your choice." Melrose's gesture indicated the

rest of the house. "There are rooms enough. But you will want some place,

I imagine, where you can be at home, receive friends--like the young lady

and her mother yesterday--and so on."

His smile made him more Ogreish than before.

He resumed:

"And by the way, if you accepted my proposal, I should naturally expect

that for a time you would devote yourself wholly to the organization of

the collections, inside the house, and to the work of the estate, outside

it. But you are of an age when a man hopes to marry. I should of course

take that into account. In a year or two--"

"Oh, I have no immediate ideas of that kind," said Faversham, hastily.

There was a pause. At the end of it Faversham turned on his companion. A

streak of feverish colour, a sparkling vivacity in the eyes, showed the

effect produced by the conversation. But he had kept his head throughout

the whole interview, and a certain unexpected strength in his personality

had revealed itself to Melrose:

"You will hardly expect me, sir, to give an immediate answer to these

proposals?"

"Take your time--take your time--in moderation," said Melrose, drumming

on the table before him.

"And there are of course a few things that I on my side should wish to

know."

A series of inquiries followed: as to the term of the proposed

engagement; the degree of freedom that would be granted him; the date at

which his duties would begin, supposing he undertook them--("To-morrow,

if it pleases you!" said Melrose, jovially)--passing on to the general

circumstances of the estates, and the nature of the pending litigations.

The questions were put with considerable tact, but were none the less

shrewd. Melrose's strange character with its mixture of sagacity, folly,

and violence, had never been more acutely probed--though quite

indirectly.

At the end of them his companion rose.

"You have a talent for cross-examination," he said with a rather sour

smile. "I leave you. We have talked enough."

"Let me at least express before you go the gratitude I feel for proposals

so flattering--so generous," said Faversham, not without emotion; "and

for all the kindness I have received here, a kindness that no man could

ever forget."

Melrose looked at him oddly, seemed about to speak--then muttered

something hardly intelligible, ceased abruptly, and departed.

* * * * *

The master of the Tower went slowly to his library through the splendid

gallery, where Mrs. Dixon and the new housemaid were timidly dusting. But

he took no notice of them. He went into his own room, locked his door,

and having lit his own fire, he settled down to smoke and ruminate. He

was exhausted, and his seventy years asserted themselves. The radical

alteration in his habits and outlook which the preceding six weeks had

produced, the excitement of unpacking the treasures now displayed in the

gallery, the constant thinkings and plannings connected with Faversham

and the future, and, lastly, the interview just concluded, had tried

his strength. Certain symptoms--symptoms of old age--annoyed him though

he would not admit it. No doubt some change was wanted. He must smoke

less--travel less--give himself more variety and more amusement. Well, if

Faversham consented, he should at least have bought for himself a

companionship that was agreeable to him, and relief from a number of

routine occupations which he detested.

Suddenly--a child's voice--a child's shrill voice, ringing through the

gallery--followed by scufflings and hushings, on the part of an older

person--then a wail--and silence. Melrose had risen to his feet with an

exclamation. Some peculiar quality in the voice--some passionate,

thrilling quality--had produced for the moment an extraordinary illusion.

He recovered himself in a moment. It was of course the child of the

upholstress who had been working in the house for a week or so. He

remembered to have noticed the little girl. But the sound had inevitably

suggested thoughts he had no wish to entertain. He had a letter in his

pocket at that moment which he did not mean to answer--the first he had

received for many years. If he once allowed a correspondence to grow

up--with that individual--on the subject of money, there would be no end

to it; it would spread and spread, till his freedom was once more

endangered. He did not intend that persons, who had been once banished

from his life, should reenter it--on any pretext. Netta had behaved to

him like a thief and a criminal, and with the mother went the child. They

were nothing to him, and never should be anything. If she was in trouble,

let her go to her own people.

He took out the letter, and dropped it into the midst of the burning logs

before him. Then he turned to a heap of sale catalogues lying near him,

and after going through them, he rose, and as though drawn to it by a

magnetic power, he went to the Riesener table, and unlocked the drawer

which held the gems.

Bringing them back to the fireside he watched the play of the flames on

their shining surfaces, delighting greedily in their beauty; in the long

history attaching to each one of them, every detail of which he knew; in

the sense of their uniqueness. Nothing like them of their kind, anywhere;

and there they were in his hand, after these years of fruitless coveting.

He had often made Mackworth offers for them; and Mackworth had laughed at

him.

Well, he had bid high enough this time, not for the gems themselves, but

for the chance of some day persuading their owner to entertain the notion

of selling them. It pleased him to guess at what had been probably

Faversham's secret expectation that morning of a proposal for them; and

to think that he had baffled it.

He might, of course, have made some quite preposterous offer which would

have forced the young man's hand. But that might have meant, probably

would have meant, the prompt departure of the enriched Faversham. But he

wanted both Faversham and the gems; as much as possible--that is, for his

money. The thought of returning to his former solitariness was rapidly

becoming intolerable to him. Meanwhile the adorable things were still

under his roof; and with a mad pleasure he relocked the drawer.

* * * * *

Faversham spent the rest of the morning in cogitations that may be easily

imagined. He certainly attributed some share in the extraordinary

proposal that had been made to him, to his possession of the gems, and to

Melrose's desire to beguile them from him. But what then? Sufficient for

the day! He would decide how to deal with that crisis when it should

arrive.

Meanwhile, the amazing proposal itself was before him. If it were

accepted, he should be at once a comparatively rich man, with an infinity

of chances for the future; for Melrose's financial interest and influence

were immense. If not free to marry immediately, he would certainly be

free--as Melrose himself had hinted--to prepare for marriage. But could

he do the work?--could he get on with the old man?--could he endure the

life?

After luncheon Dixon, with the subdued agitation of manner which showed

the advent of yet another change in the household, came in to announce

that a motor had come from Carlisle, that Mr. Melrose did not propose to

use it himself, and hoped that Mr. Faversham would take a drive.

It was the invalid's first excursion into the outer world.

He sat breathing in great draughts of the scented summer air, feeling his

life and strength come back into him.

The rain had passed, and the fells rose clear and high above the moist

hay meadows and the fresh-leaved trees.

As they emerged upon the Keswick road he tapped the chauffeur on the

shoulder. "Do you know Green Cottage?"

"Mrs. Penfold's, sir? Certainly."

"How far is it?"

"I should say about two miles."

"Go there, please."

The two miles passed for Faversham in a double excitement he had some

difficulty in concealing; the physical excitement of change and movement,

of this reentry upon a new world, which was the old; and the mental

excitement of his own position.

At the cottage door, he dismounted slowly. The maid-servant said she

thought Mrs. Penfold was in the garden. Would the gentleman please come

in?

Faversham, leaning on his stick, made his way through the tiny hall of

the cottage, and the drawing-room door was thrown open for him. A young

lady was sitting at the farther end, who rose with a slight cry of

astonishment. It was Lydia.

Through her reception of him Faversham soon learnt what are the

privileges of the wounded, and how glad are all good women of excuses to

be kind. Lydia placed him in the best chair, in front of the best view,

ordered tea, and hovered round him with an eager benevolence. Her mother,

she said, would be in directly. Faversham, on his side, could only

secretly hope that Mrs. Penfold's walk might be prolonged.

They were not interrupted. Lydia, with concern, conjectured that Mrs.

Penfold and Susan had gone to visit a couple of maiden ladies, living

half a mile off along the road. But she showed not the smallest

awkwardness in entertaining her guest. The rain of the morning had left

the air chilly, and a wood fire burnt on the hearth. Its pleasant flame

gave an added touch of intimity to the little drawing-room, with its wild

flowers, its books, its water-colours, and its modest furnishings. After

the long struggle of his illness, and the excitement of the morning,

Faversham was both soothed and charmed. His whole nature relaxed;

happiness flowed in. Presently, on an impulse he could not resist, he

told her of the offer which had been made to him.

Lydia's embroidery dropped on her lap.

"Mr. Melrose's agent!" she repeated, in wonder. "He has offered you

that?"

"He has--on most generous terms. Shall I take it?"

She flushed a little, for the ardent deference in his eyes was not easy

to ignore. But she examined his news seriously--kindling over it.

"His _agent_--agent for his miserable, neglected property! Heavens, what

a chance!"

She looked at him, her soul in her face. Something warned him to be

cautious.

"You think it so neglected?"

"I know it: but ask Lord Tatham! He's chairman of some committee or

other--he'll tell you."

"But perhaps I shall have to fight Tatham? Suppose that turns out to be

my chief business?"

"Oh, no, you can't--you can't! He's too splendid--in all those things."

"He is of course the model youth," said Faversham dryly.

"Ah, but you can't hate him either!" cried Lydia, divining at once the

shade of depreciation. "He is the kindest, dearest fellow! I agree--it's

provoking not to be able to sniff at him--_such_ a Prince Charming--with

all the world at his feet. But one can't--one really can't!"

Jealousy sprang up sharply in Faversham, though a wider experience of the

sex might have suggested to him that women do not generally shower public

praise on the men they love. Lydia, however, quickly left the subject,

and returned to his own affairs. Nothing, he confessed, could have been

friendlier or sincerer than her interest in them. They plunged into the

subject of the estate; and Faversham stood amazed at her knowledge of the

dales-folk, their lives and their grievances. At the end, he drew a long

breath.

"By George!--can I do it?"

"Oh, yes, yes, _yes_!" said Lydia eagerly, driving her needle into the

sofa cushion. "You'll reform him!"

Faversham laughed.

"He's a tough customer. He has already warned me I am not to manage his

estates like a Socialist."

"No--but like a human being!" cried Lydia, indignantly--"that's all we

want. Come and talk to Lord Tatham!"

"Parley with my employer's opponent!"

"Under a flag of truce," laughed Lydia, "and this shall be the neutral

ground. You shall meet here--and mamma and I will hold the lists."

"You think--under those circumstances--we should get through much

business?" His dark eyes, full of gaiety, searched hers. She flushed a

little.

"Ah, well, you should have the chance anyway."

Faversham rose unwillingly to go. Lydia bent forward, listening.

"At last--here comes my mother."

For outside in the little hall there was suddenly much chatter and

swishing of skirts. Some one came laughing to the drawing-room and threw

it open. Mrs. Penfold, flushed and excited, stood in the doorway.

"My dear, did you _ever_ know such kind people!"

Her arms were laden with flowers, and with parcels of different sorts.

Susy came behind, carrying two great pots of Japanese lilies.

"You said you'd like to see those old drawings of Keswick--by I forget

whom. Lady Tatham has sent you the whole set--they had them--you may

keep them as long as you like. And Lord Tatham has sent flowers. Just

look at those roses!" Mrs. Penfold put down the basket heaped with them

at Lydia's feet, while Susy--demurely--did the same with the lilies.

"And there is a fascinating parcel of books for Susy--_all_ the new

reviews! ... _Oh_! Mr. Faversham--I declare--why, I never saw you!"

Voluble excuses and apologies followed. Meanwhile Lydia, with a bright

colour, stood bewildered, the flowers all about her, and the drawings in

her hands. Faversham escaped as soon as he could. As he approached Lydia

to say good-bye, she looked up, put the drawings aside, and hurriedly

came with him to the door.

"_Accept_!" she said. "Be sure you accept!"

He had a last vision of her standing in the dark hall, and of her soft,

encouraging look. As he drove away, two facts stood out in consciousness:

first, that he was falling fast and deep in love; next, that--by the look

of things--he had a rival, with whom, in the opinion of all practical

people, it would be mere folly for him to think of competing.