XIX
Tatham was returning alone from a run with the West Cumbrian hounds. The
December day was nearly done, and he saw the pageant of its going from a
point on the outskirts of his own park. The park, a great space of wild
land extending some miles to the north through a sparsely peopled county,
was bounded and intersected throughout its northerly section by various
high moorland roads. At a cross-road, leading to Duddon on the left, and
to a remote valley running up the eastern side of Blencathra on the
right, he reined up his horse to look for a moment at the sombre glow
which held the western heaven; amid which the fells of Thirlmere and
Derwentwater stood superbly ranged in threatening blacks and purples. To
the east and over the waste of Flitterdale, that great flat "moss" in
which the mountains die away, there was the prophecy of moonrise; a
pearly radiance in the air, a peculiar whiteness in the mists that had
gathered along the river, a silver message in the sky. But the wind was
rising, and the westerly clouds rushing up. The top of Blencathra was
already hidden; it might be a wild night.
Only one luminous point was to be seen, at first, in all the wide and
splendid landscape. It shone from Threlfall Tower, a dark and
indistinguishable mass amid its hanging woods.
"Old Melrose--counting out his money!"
But as the scornful fancy crossed his mind, a few other dim and scattered
lights began to prick the gloom of the fast-darkening valley. That
twinkle far away, in the direction of St. John's Vale, might it not be
the light of Green Cottage--of Lydia's lamp?
He sat his horse, motionless, consumed with longing and grief. Yet, hard
exercise in the open air, always seemed to bring him a kind of physical
comfort. "It _was_ a jolly _run_!" he thought, yet half ashamed. His
young blood was in love with life, through all heartache.
Suddenly, a whirring sound from the road on his right, and the flash of
moving lamps. He saw that a small motor was approaching, and his mare
began to fidget.
"Gently, old girl!"
The motor approached and slowed at the corner.
"Hallo Undershaw! is that you?"
The motor stopped and Undershaw jumped out, and turned off his engine.
Tatham's horse was pirouetting.
"All right," said Undershaw; "I'll walk by you a bit. Turn her up your
road."
The beautiful mare quieted down, and presently the two were in close
talk, while the motor left to itself blazed on the lonely moorland road.
Undershaw was describing a visit he had paid that morning to old Brand,
the bailiff, who was now quietly and uncomplainingly losing hold on life.
"He may go any time--perhaps to-night. The elder son's departure has
finished him. I told the lad that if he cared to stay till his father's
death, you would see that he got work meanwhile on the estate; but he was
wild to go--not a scrap of filial affection that I could make out!--and
the poor old fellow has scarcely spoken since he left the house. So there
he is, left with the feeble old wife, and the half-witted son, who grows
queerer and madder than ever. I needn't say the woman was very
grateful--"
"Don't!" said Tatham; "it's a beastly world."
They moved on in silence, till Undershaw resumed:
"Dixon came to the surgery this afternoon, and I understood from him that
he thinks Melrose is breaking up fast. He tries to live as usual; and his
temper is appalling. But Dixon sees a great change."
"Well, it'll scarcely be possible to say that his decease 'cast a gloom
over the countryside.' Will it?" laughed Tatham.
"What'll Faversham do? That's what I keep asking myself."
"Do? Why, go off with the shekels, and be damned to us! I understand that
just at present he's paying rather high for them, which is some
satisfaction. That creature Nash told one of our men the other day that
Melrose now treats him like dirt, and finds his chief amusement in
stopping anything he wants to do."
"Then he'd better look sharp after the will," said Undershaw, with a
smile. "Melrose is game for any number of tricks yet. But I don't judge
Faversham quite as you do. I believe he has all sorts of grand ideas in
his head about what he'll do when he comes in."
"I daresay! You need 'em when you begin with taking soiled money. Mrs.
Melrose got the quarterly payment of her allowance yesterday, from an
Italian bank--twenty-five pounds minus ten pounds, which seems to be
mortgaged in some way. Melrose's solicitors gracefully let her know
that the allowance was raised by twenty pounds! On fifteen pounds
therefore she and the girl are expected to exist for the quarter--_and_
support the old father. And yesterday just after my mother had shown me
the check, I saw Faversham in Pengarth, driving a Rolls-Royce car,
brand-new, with a dark fellow beside him whom I know quite well as a
Bond Street dealer. I conclude Faversham was taking him to see the
collections--_his_ collections!"
"It looks ugly I grant. But I believe he'll provide for the girl as soon
as he can."
"And I hope she'll refuse it!" cried Tatham. "And I believe she will.
She's a girl of spirit. She talks of going on the stage. My mother has
found out that she's got a voice, and she dances divinely. My mother's
actually got a teacher for her from London, whom we put up in the
village."
"A lovely little girl!" said Undershaw. "And she's getting over her
hardships. But the mother--" He shook his head.
"You think she's in a bad way?"
"Send her back to Italy as soon as you can. She's pining for her own
people. Life's been a bit too hard for her, and she never was but a poor
thing. Well, I must go."
Tatham stayed his horse. Undershaw, added as though by an afterthought:
"I was at Green Cottage this morning. Mrs. Penfold's rather knocked up
with nursing her sister. She chattered to me about Faversham. He used to
be a good deal there but they've broken with him too; apparently, because
of Mainstairs. Miss Lydia couldn't stand it. She was _so_ devoted to the
people."
The man on horseback made some inaudible reply, and they began to talk of
a couple of sworn inquiries about to be held on the Threlfall estate by
the officials of the Local Government Board, into the housing and
sanitation of three of the chief villages on Melrose's property. The
department had been induced to move by a committee of local gentlemen, in
which Tatham had taken a leading part. The whole affair had reduced
itself indeed so far to a correspondence duel between Tatham, as
representing a scandalized neighbourhood, and Faversham, as representing
Melrose.
Tatham's letters, in which a man, with no natural gift for the pen, had
developed a surprising amount of effective sarcasm, had all appeared in
the local press; with Faversham's ingenious and sophistical replies.
Tatham discussed them now with Undershaw in a tone of passionate
bitterness. The doctor said little. He had his own shrewd ideas on the
situation.
* * * * *
When Undershaw left him, Tatham rode on, up the forest lane, till again
the trees fell away, the wide valley with its boundary fells opened
before him, and again his eye sought through the windy dusk for the
far-gleaming light that spoke to him of Lydia. His mind was full of fresh
agitation, stirred by Undershaw's remark about her. The idea of a breach
between Lydia and Faversham was indeed most welcome, since it seemed to
restore Lydia to that pedestal from which it had been so hard and strange
to see her descend. It gave him back the right to worship her! And yet,
the notion did nothing--now--to revive any hope for himself. He kept the
distant light in view for long, his heart full of a tenderness which,
though he did not know it, had already parted with much of the bitterness
of unsatisfied passion. Unconsciously, the healing process was on its
way; the healing of the normal man, on whom a wound is no sooner
inflicted than all the reparative powers of life rush together for its
cure.
* * * *
But while Tatham, wrapped in thoughts of Lydia, was thus drawing
homeward, across the higher ground of the estate, down through the Duddon
woods, as they fell gently to the river, a little figure was hurrying,
with the step of a fugitive, and half-nervous, half-exultant looks
from side to side. The moon had risen. It was not dark in the woods, and
Felicia, amid the _boschi_ of the Apuan Alps, had never been frightened
of the night or of any ill befalling her. In Lucca itself she might be
insulted; on the hills, never. She had the independence, and--generally
speaking--the strength of the working girl. So that the enterprise on
which she was launched--the quest of her father--presented itself to her
as nothing particularly difficult. She had indeed to keep it from her
mother and Lady Tatham, and to find means of escaping them. That she
calmly took steps to do, not bothering her head much about it.
As to the rest of the business, there was a station on the Keswick line
close to the gate of the park, and she had looked out a train which would
take her conveniently to Whitebeck, which was only half a mile from
Threlfall. From Duddon to Whitebeck took eight minutes in the train. She
would be at Whitebeck a little after five; allowing an hour for her
adventure at the Tower, and some little margin, she would catch a train
back between six and seven, which would allow of her slipping into Duddon
a little after seven, unnoticed, and in good time to dress for dinner.
Her Italian blood betrayed itself throughout, alike in the keen pleasure
she took in the various devices of her small plot; in the entire absence
of any hampering scruples as to the disobedience and deceit which it
involved; and in the practical intelligence with which she was ready to
carry it out. She had brooded over it for days; and this afternoon a
convenient opportunity had arisen. Her mother was in her room with a
headache; Lady Tatham had had to go to Carlisle on business.
As she hastened, almost running, through the park, she was planning, by
fits and starts, what she would say to her father. But still more was the
thinking of Tatham--asking herself questions about him, with little
thrills of excitement, and little throbbings of delicious fear.
Here she was, at the gate of the park. Just ten minutes to her train! She
hurried on. A few labourers were in the road coming home tired from their
work; a few cottage doors were ajar, showing the bright fire, and the
sprawling children within. Some of the men as they passed looked with
curiosity at the slim stranger; but she was well muffled up in her new
furs--Victoria's gift--and her large felt hat; they saw little more than
the tips of her small nose and chin.
The train came in just as she reached the station. She took her ticket
for Whitebeck, and as the train jogged along, she looked out of the
window at the valley in the dim moonrise, her mind working tumultuously.
Lady Tatham had told her much; Hesketh, Lady Tatham's maid, and the old
coachman who had been teaching her to ride, had told her more. She knew
that before she reached Whitebeck she would have passed the boundary
between the Duddon and Threlfall estates. She was now indeed on her
father's land, the land which in justice ought to be hers some day; which
in Italy would be hers by law, or part of it anyway, whatever pranks her
father might play. But here in England a man might rob his child of every
penny if he pleased. That was strange when England was such a great
country--such a splendid country. "I _love_ England!" she thought
passionately, as she leant back with folded arms and closed eyes.
And straightway on the dusk rose the image of Tatham--Tatham on
horseback, as she had seen him set out for the hunt that morning; and she
felt her eyes grow a little wet. Why? Oh! because he was so tall and
splendid--and he sat his horse like a king--and everybody loved him--and
she was living in his house--and so, whether he would or no, he must take
notice of her sometimes. One evening had he not let her mend his glove?
And another evening, when she was practising her dancing for Lady Tatham,
had he not come in to look? Ah, well, wait till she could sing and dance
properly, till--perhaps--he saw her on the stage! Her newly discovered
singing voice, which was the excitement of the moment for Lady Tatham and
Netta, was to Felicia like some fairy force within her, struggling to be
at large, which would some day carve out her fortunes, and bring her to
Tatham--on equal terms.
For her pride had flourished and fed upon her love. She no longer talked
of Tatham to her mother or any one else. But deep in her heart lay the
tenacious, pursuing instinct.
And besides--suppose--she made an impression on her father--on his cruel
old heart? Such things do happen. It's silly to say they don't. "I _am_
pretty--and now my clothes are all right--and my hands have come nearly
white. He'll see I'm not a girl to be ashamed of. And if my father did
give me a _dot_--why then I'd send my mother to _his_ mother! That's how
we'd do it in Italy. I'm as well-born as he--nearly--and if I had a
_dot_--"
The yellow-haired girl at any rate was quite out of the way. No one spoke
of her; no one mentioned her. That was all right.
And as to Threlfall and her father, if she was able to soften him at all
it would not be in the least necessary to drive that bad young man, Mr.
Faversham, to despair. Compromise--bargaining--settle most things. She
fell to imagining--with a Latin clearness and realism--how it might be
handled. Only it would have to be done before her father died. For if Mr.
Faversham once took all the money and all the land, there would be no
_dot_ for her, even if he were willing to give it her. For Lord Tatham
would never take a farthing from Mr. Faversham, not even through his
wife. "And so it would be no use to me," thought Felicia, quietly, but
regretfully.
Whitebeck station. Out she tripped, asked her way to Threlfall,
and hurried off into the dark, followed by the curious looks of the
station-master.
She was soon at the park gate, and passed through it with a beating
heart. She had heard of the bloodhounds; and the sound of a bark in the
distance--though it was only the collie at the farm--gave her a start of
terror.
The Whitebeck gate was but a short distance from the house, and as
she turned a corner, the Tower rose suddenly before her. She held her
breath; it looked so big, so darkly magnificent. She thought of all the
tales that had been told her, the rooms full of silver and gold--the
_arazzi_--the _stucchi_--the cabinets and sculpture. She had grown up in
an atmosphere of perpetual bric-a-brac; she had seen the big Florentine
shops; she could imagine what it was like.
There were lights in two of the windows; and the smoke from several
chimneys rose wind-beaten against the woods behind. The moon stood
immediately over the roof, and the shadow of the house stretched beyond
the forecourt almost to her feet.
She lingered a few minutes, fascinated, gazing at this huge place where
her father lived--her father whom she had never seen since she was a
baby. The moon lit up her tiny figure, and her small white face, as she
stood in the open, alone in the wintry silence.
Then, swiftly, and instead of going up to the front door, she turned to
the right along a narrow flagged path that skirted the forecourt and led
to the back of the house.
She knew exactly what to do. She had planned it all with Hesketh,
Hesketh, who was the daughter of a farmer on the Duddon estate, fifty
years old, a born gossip, and acquainted with every man, woman and
child in the neighbourhood. Did not Hesketh go to the same chapel with
Thomas Dixon and his wife? And had she not a romantic soul, far above
furbelows--a soul which had flung itself into the cause of the "heiress,"
to the point of keeping the child's secret, even from her ladyship?
Hesketh indeed had suffered sharply from qualms of conscience in this
respect. But Felicia had spared her as much as possible, by keeping the
precise moment of her escapade to herself.
She groped her way round, till she came to a side path leading to an
entrance. The path indeed was that by which Faversham had been originally
carried into the Tower, across the foot-bridge. Peering over a low wall
that bounded the path, she looked startled into an abyss of leafless
trees, with a bright gleam of moonlit water far below. In front of her
was a door and steps, and some rays of light penetrating through the
shuttered windows beside the door, showed that there was life within.
Felicia mounted the steps and knocked. No one came. At last she found a
bell and rang it--cautiously. Steps approached. The door was opened, and
a gray-haired woman stood on the threshold.
"Well, what's your business?" she said sharply. It was evident that she
was short-sighted, and did not clearly see the person outside.
"Please, I want to speak to Mr. Melrose."
The clear, low voice arrested the old woman.
"Eh?" she said testily. "And who may you be? You cawn't see Mr. Melrose,
anyways."
"I want to see him particularly. Are you Mrs. Dixon?"
"Aye--a'am Mrs. Dixon. But aa've no time to goa chatterin' at doors wi'
yoong women; soa if yo'll juist gie me yor business, I'll tell Muster
Faversham, when he's got time to see to 't."
"It's not Mr. Faversham I want to see--it's Mr. Melrose. Mrs. Dixon,
don't you remember me?"
Mrs. Dixon stepped back in puzzled annoyance, so as to let a light from
the passage shine upon the stranger's face. She stood motionless.
Felicia stepped within.
"I am Miss Melrose," she said, with composure, "Felicia Melrose. You knew
me when I was a child. And I wish to see my father."
Mrs. Dixon's face seemed to have fallen into chaos under the shock. She
stood staring at the visitor, her mouth working.
"Muster Melrose's däater!" she said, at last. "T' baby--as was! Aye--yo'
feature him! An' yo're stayin' ower ta Duddon--wi' her ladyship. I know.
Dixon towd me. Bit yo' shouldna' coom here, Missie! Yo' canno' see your
feyther."
"Why not?" said Felicia imperiously. "I mean to see him. Here I am in the
house. Take me to him at once!"
And suddenly closing the entrance door behind her, she moved on toward an
inner passage dimly lit, of which she had caught sight.
Mrs. Dixon clung to her arm.
"Noa, noa! Coom in here, Missie--coom in _here_! Dixon!--where are yo'?
Dixon!"
She raised her voice. A chair was pushed back in the kitchen, on the
other side of the passage. An old man who, to judge from his aspect, had
been roused by his wife's call from a nap after his tea, appeared in a
doorway.
Mrs. Dixon drew Felicia toward him, and into the kitchen, as he retreated
thither. Then she shut and bolted the door.
"This is t' yoong lady!" she said in a breathless whisper to her husband.
"Muster-Melrose's däater! She's coom fra Duddon. An' she's fer seein' her
feyther."
Old Dixon had grown very pale. But otherwise he showed no surprise. He
looked frowning at Felicia.
"Yo' canno' do that, Miss Melrose. Yo'r feyther wunna see yo'. He's an
owd man noo, and we darena disturb him."
Felicia argued with the pair, first quietly, then with a heaving breast,
and some angry tears. Dixon soon dropped the struggle, so far as words
went. He left that to his wife. But he stood firmly against the door,
looking on.
"You shan't keep me here!" said Felicia at last with a stamp. "I'll call
some one! I'll make a noise!"
A queer, humorous look twinkled over Dixon's face. Then--suddenly--he
moved from the door. His expression had grown hesitating--soft.
"Varra well, then. Yo' shall goa--if you mun goa."
His wife protested. He turned upon her.
"She shall goa!" he repeated, striking the dresser beside him. "Her
feyther's an old man--an' sick. Mebbe he'll be meetin' his Mäaker face to
face, before the year's oot; yo' canno' tell. He's weakenin' fasst. An'
he's ben a hard mon to his awn flesh and blood. There'll be a reckonin'!
An' the Lord's sent him this yan chance o' repentance. I'll not stan' i'
the Lord's way--whativer. Coom along, Missie!"
And entirely regardless of his wife's entreaties, the old Methodist
resolutely opened the kitchen door, and beckoned to Felicia. He was lame
now and walked with a stick, his shoulders bent. But he neither paused,
nor spoke to her again. Murmuring to himself, he led her along the inner
passage, and opened the door into the great gallery.
A blaze of light and colour, a rush of heated air. Felicia was dazzled by
the splendour of the great show within--the tapestries, the pictures, the
gleaming reflections on lacquer and intarsia, on ebony or Sèvres. But the
atmosphere was stifling. Melrose now could only live in the temperature
of a hothouse.
Dixon threw open a door, and without a word beckoned to Felicia to enter.
He hesitated a moment, evidently as to whether he should announce her;
and then, stepping forward, he cleared his throat.
"Muster Melrose, theer's soom one as wants to speak to you!"
"What do you mean, you old fool!" said a deep, angry voice on the other
side of a great lacquer screen; "didn't I tell you I wasn't to be
disturbed?"
Felicia walked round the screen. Dixon, with an excited look at her,
retired through the door which he closed behind him.
"Father!" said Felicia, in a low, trembling voice.
An old man who was writing at a large inlaid table, in the midst of a
confusion of objects which the girl's eyes had no time to take in, turned
sharply at the sound.
The two stared at each other. Melrose slowly revolved on his chair, pen
in hand. Felicia stood, with eyes downcast, her cheeks burning, her hands
lightly clasped.
Melrose spoke first.
"H'm--so they've sent _you_ here?"
She looked up.
"No one sent me. I--I wished to see you--before we went away; because you
are my father--and I mightn't ever see you--if I didn't now. And I wanted
to ask you"--her voice quivered--"not to be angry any more with mother
and me. We never meant to vex you--by coming. But we were so poor--and
mother is ill. Yes, she _is_ ill!--she is--it's no shamming. Won't you
forgive us?--won't you give mother a little more money?--and won't
you"--she clasped her hands entreatingly--"won't you give me a _dot_? I
may want to be married--and you are so rich? And I wouldn't ever trouble
you again--I--"
She broke off, intimidated, paralyzed by the strange fixed look of the
old wizard before her--his flowing hair, his skullcap, his white and
sunken features. And yet mysteriously she recognized herself in him. She
realized through every fibre that he was indeed her father.
"You would have done better not to trouble me again!" said Melrose, with
slow emphasis. "Your mother seems to pay no attention whatever to what I
say. We shall see. So you want a _dot_? And, pray, what do you want a
_dot_ for? Who's going to marry you? Tatham?"
The tone was more mocking than fierce; but Felicia shrank under it.
"Oh, no, _no_! But I _might_ want to marry," she added piteously. "And in
Italy--one can't marry--without a _dot_!"
"Your mother should have thought of these things when she ran away."
Felicia was silent a moment. Then, without invitation, she seated herself
on the edge of a chair that stood near him.
"That was so long ago," she said timidly--yet confidingly. "And I was a
baby. Couldn't you--couldn't you forget it now?"
Melrose surveyed her.
"I suppose you like being at Duddon?" he asked her abruptly, without
answering her question.
She clasped her hands fervently.
"It's like heaven! They're so good to us."
"No doubt!"--the tone was sarcastic. "Well, let them provide for you. Who
gave you those clothes? Lady Tatham?"
She nodded. Her lip trembled. Her startled eyes looked at him piteously.
"You've been living at Lucca?"
"Near Lucca--on the mountains."
"H'm. Is that all true--about your grandfather?"
"That he's ill? Of course, it's true!" she said indignantly. "We don't
tell lies. He's had a stroke--he's dying. And we could hardly give him
any food he could eat. You see--"
She edged a little closer, and began a voluble, confidential account of
their life in the mountains. Her voice was thin and childish, but sweet;
and every now and then she gave a half-frightened, half-excited laugh.
Melrose watched her frowning; but he did not stop her. Her bright eyes
and brows, with their touches of velvet black, the quick movement of her
pink lips, the rose-leaf delicacy of her colour, seemed to hold him.
Among the pretty things with which the room was crowded she was the
prettiest; and he probably was conscious of it. Propped up against the
French bureau stood a Watteau drawing in red chalk--a _sanguine_--he had
bought in Paris on a recent visit. The eyes of the old connoisseur went
from the living face to the drawing, comparing them.
At last Felicia paused. Her smiles died away. She looked at him
wistfully.
"Mother's awfully sorry she--she offended you so. Won't you forgive her
now--and poor Babbo--about the little statue?"
She hardly dared breathe the last words, as she timidly dropped her eyes.
There were tears in her voice, and yet she was not very far from
hysterical laughter. The whole scene was so fantastic--ridiculous! The
room with its lumber; its confusion of glittering things; this old man
frowning at her--for no reason! For after all--what had she done? Even
the _contadini_--they were rough often--they couldn't read or write--but
they loved their grandchildren.
As he caught her reference to the bronze Hermes, Melrose's face changed.
He rose, stretching out a hand toward a bell on the table.
"You must go!" he said, sharply. "You ought never to have come. You'll
get nothing by it. Tell your mother so. This is the second attack she has
made on me--through her tools. If she attempts another, she may take the
consequences!"
Felicia too stood up. A rush of anger and despair choked her.
"And you won't--you won't even say a kind word to me!" she said, panting.
"You won't kiss me?"
For answer, he seized her by the hands, and drew her toward the light.
There, for a few intolerable seconds he looked closely, with a kind of
savage curiosity, into her face, studying her features, her hair, her
light form. Then pushing her from him, he opened that same drawer in the
French cabinet that Undershaw had once seen him open, fumbled a little,
and took out something that glittered.
"Take that. But if you come here again it will be the worse for you, and
for your mother. When I say a thing I mean it. Now, go! Dixon shall take
you to the train."
Felicia glanced at the Renaissance jewel in her hand--delicate Venus in
gold and pearl, set in a hoop of diamonds. "I won't have it!" she said,
dashing it from her with a sob of passion. "And we won't take your money
either--not a farthing! We've got friends who'll help us. And I'll keep
my mother myself. You shan't give her anything--nor my grandfather. So
you needn't threaten us! You can't do us any harm!"
She looked him scornfully over from head to foot, a little fury, with
blazing eyes.
Melrose laughed.
"I thought you came to get a _dot_ out of me," he said, with lifted
brows, admiring her in spite of himself. "You seem to have a good spice
of the Melrose temper in you. I'm sorry I can't treat you as you seem to
wish. Your mother settled that. Well--that'll do--that'll do! We can't
bandy words any more. Dixon!"
He touched the hand-bell beside him.
Felicia hurried to the door, sobbing with excitement. As she reached it
Dixon entered. Melrose spoke a few peremptory words to him, and she found
herself walking through the gallery, Dixon's hand on her arm, while he
muttered and lamented beside her.
"'And the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart.' Aye, it's the Lord--it's the
Lord. Oh! Missie, Missie--I was a fool to let yo' in. Yo've been nowt but
a new stone o' stumblin'; an' the Lord knows there's offences enoof
already!"
Meanwhile, in the room from which his daughter had been driven, Melrose
had risen from his seat, and was moving hither and thither, every now and
then taking up some object in the crowded tables, pretending to look at
it, and putting it down again. He was pursued, tormented all the while by
swarming thoughts--visualizations. That child would outlive him--her
father--perhaps by a half century. The flesh and blood sprung from his
own life, would go on enjoying and adventuring, for fifty years, perhaps,
after he had been laid in his resented grave. And the mind which would
have had no existence had he not lived, would hold till death the
remembrance of what he had just said and done--a child's only remembrance
of her father.
He stood, looking back upon his life, and quite conscious of some fatal
element in the moment which had just gone by. It struck him as a kind of
moral tale. Some men would say that God had once more, and finally,
offered him "a place of repentance"--through this strange and tardy
apparition of his daughter. A ghostly smile flickered. The man of the
world knew best. "Let no man break with his own character." That was the
real text which applied. And he had followed it. Circumstance and his own
will had determined, twenty years earlier, that he had had enough of
women-kind. His dealings with them had been many and various! But at a
given moment he had put an end to them forever. And no false
sentimentalism should be allowed to tamper with the thing done.
At this point he found himself sinking into his chair; and must needs
confess himself somewhat shaken by what had happened. He was angry with
his physical weakness, and haunted in spite of himself by the hue and
fragrance of that youth he had just been watching--there--at the corner
of the table--beside the Watteau sketch. He sat staring at the
drawing....
Till the threatened vitality within again asserted itself; beat off the
besieging thoughts; and clutched fiercely at some new proof of its own
strength. The old man raised himself, and laid his hand on the telephone
which connected his room with that of Faversham.
How, in Dixon's custody, Felicia reached the station, and stumbled into
the train, and how, at the other end, she groped her way into the gates
of Duddon and began the long woodland ascent to the castle, Felicia never
afterward knew. But when she had gone a few steps along the winding drive
Where the intermittent and stormy moonlight was barely enough to guide
her, she felt her strength suddenly fail her. She could never climb the
long hill to the house--she could never fight the wind that was rising
in her face. She must sit down, till some one came--to help.
She sank down upon a couch of moss, at the foot of a great oak-tree which
was still thick with withered leaf. The mental agitation, and the sheer
physical fatigue of her mad attempt had utterly worn out her barely
recovered strength. "I shall faint," she thought, "and no one will know
where I am!" She tried to concentrate her will on the resolution not to
faint. Straightening her back and head against the tree, she clasped her
hands rigidly on her knee. From time to time a wave of passionate
recollection would rush through her; and her heart would beat so fast,
that again the terror of sinking into some unknown infinite would string
up her will to resistance. In this alternate yielding and recoil, this
physical and mental struggle, she passed minutes which seemed to her
interminable. At last resistance was all but overwhelmed.
"Come to me!--oh, do come to me!"
She seemed to be pouring her very life into the cry. But, probably, the
words were only spoken in the mind.
* * * * *
A little later she woke up in bewilderment. She was no longer on the
moss. She was being carried--carried firmly and speedily--in some one's
arms. She tried to open her eyes.
"Where am I?"
A voice said:
"That's better! Don't be afraid. You'd fainted I think. I can carry you
quite safely."
Infinite bliss rushed in upon the girl's fluttering sense. She was too
feeble, too weak, to struggle. Instead she let her head sink on Tatham's
shoulder. Her right hand clung to his coat.
The young man mounted the hill, marvelling at the lightness of the burden
he held; touched, embarrassed, yet sometimes inclined to laugh or scold.
What had she been about? He had come in from hunting to find her absence
just discovered, and the house roused. Victoria and Cyril Boden were
exploring other roads through the garden and park; he had run down the
long hill to the station lodge in case the theory started at once by
Victoria that she had escaped, unknown to any one, in order to force an
interview with her father should turn out to be the right one.
Presently a trembling voice said in the darkness, while some soft curls
of hair tickled his cheek:
"I've been to Threlfall. Will Lady Tatham be very angry?"
"Well, she was a bit worried," said Tatham, wondering if the occasion
ought not to be improved. "She guessed--you might have gone there.
There's bad weather coming--and she was anxious what might happen to you.
Ah! there's the rain!"
Two or three large drops descended on Felicia's cheek as it lay upturned
on his shoulder; a pattering began on the oak-leaves overhead; the
moonlight was blotted out, and when Felicia opened her eyes, it was on a
heavy darkness.
"Stupid!" cried Tatham. "Why didn't I think of bringing a mackintosh
cape?"
"Mayn't I walk?" asked Felicia, meekly. "I think I could."
"I expect you'd better not. You were pretty bad when I found you. It's no
trouble to me to carry you, and I know every inch of these roads."
And indeed by now he would have been very loath to quit his task. There
was something tormentingly attractive in this warm softness of the girl's
tiny form upon his breast. The thought darted across him--"If I had ever
held Lydia so!" It was a pang; but it passed; and what remained was a
tenderness of soul, evoked by Lydia, but passing out now beyond Lydia.
Poor little foolish thing! He supposed she had been trampled on, as his
mother had been. But his mother could defend herself. What chance had
this child against the old tyrant! An eager, protective sympathy--a
warm pity--arose in him; greatly quickened by this hand and arm that
clung to him.
The rain began to drive against them.
"Do you mind getting wet?" he said laughing, almost in her ear.
"Not a bit! I--I didn't mean to give any trouble."
The tone was penitent. Tatham, forgetting all thoughts of admonition,
reassured her.
"You didn't give any. Except--Your mother of course was very anxious
about you."
"But I couldn't tell her!" sighed the voice on his shoulder. "She'd have
stopped it."
Tatham smiled unseen.
"I'm afraid your father wasn't kind to you," he said, after a pause.
"It was horrible--horrible!" The little body he held shuddered closer to
him. "Why does he hate us so? and I lost my temper too--I stamped at him.
But he looks so old--so old! I think he'll die soon."
"That would be happiest," said Tatham, gravely.
"I told him we would never take any money from him again. I must earn
it--I will! Your mother will lend me a little--for my training. I'll pay
it back."
"You poor child!" he murmured.
At that moment they emerged upon the last section of the broad avenue
leading to the house. And the electric light in the pillared porch threw
long rays toward them.
"Please put me down," said Felicia, with decision. "I can walk quite
well."
He obeyed her. But her weakness was still such, that she could only walk
with help. Guiding, supporting her, he half led, half carried her along.
As they reached the lighted porch, she looked up, her face sparkling with
rain, a touch of mischief in her hollow-ringed eyes.
"How much will they scold?"
"Can't say, I am sure! I think you'll have to bear it."
"Never mind!" Her white cheeks dimpled. "It's Duddon! I'd rather be
scolded at Duddon, than petted anywhere else."
Tatham flushed suddenly. So did she. And as the door opened Felicia
walked with composure past the stately butler.
"Is Lady Tatham in the library?"
Netta Melrose, full of fears, wept that evening over her daughter's rash
disobedience. Victoria administered what reproof she could; and Felicia
was reduced to a heated defence of herself, sitting up in bed, with a
pair of hot cheeks and tearful eyes. But when all the lights were out,
and she was alone, she thought no more of any such nips and pricks. The
night was joy around her, and as she sank to sleep; Tatham, in dream,
still held her, still carried her through the darkness and the rain.
XX
While Felicia was making her vain attempt upon her father's pity,
Faversham was sitting immersed in correspondence in his own room at the
farther end of the gallery. He heard nothing of the girl's arrival or
departure. Sound travelled but little through the thick walls of the
Tower, and the gallery, muffled with rich carpets, with hangings and
furniture, deadened both step and voice.
The agent was busy with some typewritten evidence that Melrose was
preparing wherewith to fight the Government officials now being sent down
from London to inquire into the state of some portion of the property.
The evidence had been collected by Nash, and Faversham read it with
disgust. He knew well that the great mass of it was perjured stuff,
bought at a high price. Yet both in public and private he would have to
back up all the lies and evasions that his master, and the pack of
obscure hangers-on who lived upon his pay, chose to put forward.
He set his teeth as he read. The iron of his servitude was cutting its
way into life, deeper and deeper. Could he go on bearing it? For weeks he
had lived with Melrose on terms of sheer humiliation--rated, or mocked
at, his advice spurned, the wretched Nash and his crew ostentatiously
preferred to him, even put over him. "No one shall ever say I haven't
earned my money," he would say to himself fiercely, as the intolerable
days went by. His only abiding hope and compensation lay in his intense
belief that Melrose was a dying man. All those feelings of natural
gratitude, with which six months before he had entered on his task,
were long since rooted up. He hated his tyrant, and he wished him dead.
But the more he dwelt for consolation on the prospect of Melrose's
disappearance, the more attractive became to him the vision of his own
coming reign. Some day he would be his own master, and the master of
these hoards. Some day he would emerge from the cloud of hatred and
suspicion in which he habitually walked; some day he would be able once
more to follow the instincts of an honest man; some day he would be able
again--perhaps--to look Lydia Penfold in the face! Endurance for a few
more months, on the best terms he could secure, lest the old madman
should even yet revoke his gifts; and then--a transformation scene--on
the details of which his thoughts dwelt perpetually, by way of relief
from the present. Tatham and the rest of his enemies, who were now
hunting and reviling him, would be made to understand that if he had
stooped, he had stooped with a purpose; and that the end _did_ in this
case justify the means.
A countryside cleansed, comforted, remade; a great estate ideally
managed; a great power to be greatly used; scope for experiment, for
public service, for self-realization--he greedily, passionately, foresaw
them all. Let him be patient. Nothing could interfere with his dream,
but some foolish refusal of the conditions on which alone it could come
true.
Often, when this mood of self-assertion was on him, he would go back in
thought to his boyish holidays in Oxford, and to his uncle. He saw the
kind old fellow in his shepherd plaid suit, black tie, and wide-awake,
taking his constitutional along the Woodstock road, or playing a mild
game of croquet in the professorial garden; or he recalled him among his
gems--those rare and beautiful things, bought with the savings of a
lifetime, loved, each of them, for its own sake, and bequeathed at death,
with the tender expression of a wish--no tyrannical condition!--to
the orphan boy whom he had fathered.
The thought of what would--what must be--Uncle Mackworth's judgment on
his present position, was perhaps the most tormenting element in
Faversham's consciousness. He faced it, however, with frankness. His
uncle would have condemned him--wholly. The notion of serving a bad man,
for money, would have been simply inconceivable to that straight and
innocent soul. Are there not still herbs to be eaten under hedgerows,
with the sauce of liberty and self-respect?
No doubt. But man is entitled to self-fulfilment; and men pursue vastly
different ways of obtaining it. The perplexities of practical ethics are
infinite; and mixed motives fit a mixed world.
At least he had not bartered away his uncle's treasure. The gems still
stood to him as the symbol of something he had lost, and might some day
recover. It was really time he got them out of Melrose's clutches...
...The room was oppressively hot! It was a raw December night, but the
heating system of the Tower was now so perfect, and to Faversham's mind
so excessive, that every corner of the large house was bathed in a
temperature which seemed to keep Melrose alive, while it half suffocated
every other inmate.
Suddenly the telephone bell on his writing-desk rang. His room was now
connected with Melrose's room, at the other end of the house, as well as
with Pengarth. He put his ear to the receiver.
"Yes?"
"I want to speak to you."
He rose unwillingly. But at least he could air the room, which he would
not have ventured to do, if Melrose were coming to him as usual for the
ten minutes' hectoring, which now served as conversation between them,
before bedtime. Going to the window which gave access to the terrace
outside, he unclosed the shutters, and threw open the glass doors. He
perceived that it had begun to rain, and that the night was darkening. He
stood drinking in the moist coolness of the air for a few seconds, and
then leaving the window open, and forgetting to extinguish the electric
light on his table he went out of the room.
He found Melrose in his chair, his aspect thunderous and excited.
"Was it by your plotting, sir, that that girl got in?" said the old man,
as he entered.
Faversham stood amazed.
"What girl?"
Melrose angrily described Felicia's visit, adding that if Faversham knew
nothing about it, it was his duty to know. Dixon deserved dismissal for
his abominable conduct; "and you, sir, are paid a large salary, not only
to manage--or mismanage--my affairs, but also to protect your employer
from annoyance. I expect you to do it!"
Faversham took the charge quietly. His whole relation to Melrose
had altered so rapidly for the worse during the preceding weeks that
no injustice or unreason surprised him. And yet there was something
strange--something monstrous--in the old man's venomous temper. After
all his bribes, after all his tyranny, did he still feel something
in Faversham escape him?--some deep-driven defiance, or hope,
intangible? He seemed indeed to be always on the watch now for fresh
occasions of attack that should test his own power, and Faversham's
submission.
Presently, he abruptly left the subject of his daughter, and Faversham
did not pursue it. What was the good of inquiring into the details of the
girl's adventure? He guessed pretty accurately at what had happened; the
scorn which had been poured on the suppliant; the careless indifference
with which she had been dismissed--through the rain and the night. Yet
another scandal for a greedy neighbourhood!--another story to reach the
ears of the dwellers in a certain cottage, with the embellishments, no
doubt, which the popular hatred of both himself and Melrose was certain
to supply. He felt himself buried a little deeper under the stoning of
his fellows. But at the same time he was conscious--as of a danger
point--of a new and passionate exasperation in himself. His will must
control it.
Melrose, however, proceeded to give it fresh cause. He took up a letter
from Nash containing various complaints of Faversham, which had reached
him that evening.
"You have been browbeating our witnesses, sir! Nash reports them as
discouraged, and possibly no longer willing to come forward. What
business had you to jeopardize my interests by posing as the superior
person? The evidence had been good enough for Nash--and myself. It might
have been good enough for you."
Faversham smiled, as he lit his cigarette.
"The two men you refer to--whom you asked me to see yesterday--were a
couple of the feeblest liars I ever had to do with. Tatham's counsel
would have turned them inside out in five minutes. You seem to forget the
other side are employing counsel."
"I forgot nothing!" said Melrose hotly. "But I expect you to follow your
instructions."
"The point is--am I advising you in this matter, or am I merely your
agent? You seem to expect me to act in both capacities. And I confess I
find it difficult."
Melrose fretted and fumed. He raised one point after another, criticising
Faversham's action and advice in regard to the housing inquiries, as
though he were determined to pick a quarrel. Faversham met him on the
whole with wonderful composure, often yielding in appearance, but in
reality getting the best of it throughout. Under the mask of the
discussion, however, the temper of both men was rising fast. It was as
though two deep-sea currents, converging far down, were struggling unseen
toward the still calm surface, there to meet in storm and convulsion.
Again, Melrose changed the conversation. He was by now extraordinarily
pale. All the flushed excitement in which Faversham had found him had
disappeared. He was more spectral, more ghostly--and ghastly--than
Faversham had ever seen him. His pincerlike fingers played with the jewel
which Felicia had thrown down upon the table. He took it up, put on his
eyeglass, peered at it, put it down again. Then he turned an intent and
evil eye on Faversham.
"I have now something of a quite different nature to say to you. You
have, I imagine, expected it. You will, perhaps, guess at it. And I
cannot imagine for one moment that you will make any difficulty about
it."
Faversham's pulse began to race.
He suspended his cigarette.
"What is it?"
"I am asked to send a selection of antique gems to the Loan Exhibition
which is being got up by the 'Amis du Louvre' in Paris, after Christmas.
I desire to send both the Arconati Bacchus and the Medusa--in fact all
those now in the case committed to my keeping."
"I have no objection," said Faversham. But he had suddenly lost colour.
"I can only send them in my own name," said Melrose slowly.
"That difficulty is not insurmountable. I can lend them to you."
Melrose's composure gave way. He brought his hand heavily down on the
table.
"I shall send them in--as my own property--in my own name!"
Faversham eyed him.
"But they are not--they will not be--your property."
"I offer you three thousand pounds for them!--four thousand--five
thousand--if you want more you can have it. Drive the best bargain you
can!" sneered Melrose, trying to smile.
"I refuse your offer--your very generous offer--with great regret--but I
refuse!" Faversham had risen to his feet.
"And your reason?--for a behaviour so--so vilely ungrateful!"
"Simply, that the gems were left to me--by an uncle I loved--who was a
second father to me--who asked me not to sell them. I have warned you not
once, or twice, that I should never sell them."
"No! You expected both to get hold of my property--and to keep your own!"
"Insult me as you like," said Faversham, quietly. "I probably deserve it.
But you will not alter my determination."
He stood leaning on the back of a chair, looking down on Melrose. Some
bondage had broken in his soul! A tide of some beneficent force seemed to
be flooding its dry wastes.
Melrose paused. In the silence each measured the other. Then Melrose said
in a voice which had grown husky:
"So--the first return you are asked to make, for all that has been
lavished upon you, you meet with--this refusal. That throws a new light
upon your character. I never proposed to leave my fortune to an
adventurer! I proposed to leave it to a gentleman, capable of
understanding an obligation. We have mistaken each other--and our
arrangement--drops. Unless you consent to the very small request--the
very advantageous proposal rather--which I have just made you--you will
leave this room--as penniless--except for any savings you may have made
out of your preposterous salary--as penniless--as you came into it!"
Faversham raised himself. He drew a long breath, as of a man delivered.
"Do what you like, Mr. Melrose. There was a time when it seemed as if
our cooperation might have been of service to both. But some devil in
you--and a greedy mind in me--the temptation of your money--oh, I
confess it, frankly--have ruined our partnership--and indeed--much
else! I resume my freedom--I leave your house to-morrow. And now,
please--return me my gems!"
He peremptorily held out his hand. Melrose glared upon him. Then slowly
the old man reopened the little drawer at his elbow, took thence the
shagreen case, and pushed it toward Faversham.
Faversham replaced it in his breast pocket.
"Thank you. Now, Mr. Melrose, I should advise you to go to bed. Your
health is not strong enough to stand these disputes. Shall I call Dixon?
As soon as possible my accounts shall be in your hands."
"Leave the room, sir!" cried Melrose, choking with rage, and motioning
toward the door.
On the threshold Faversham turned, and gave one last look at the dark
figure of Melrose, and the medley of objects surrounding it; at Madame
Elisabeth's Sèvres vases, on the upper shelf of the Riesener table; at
the Louis Seize clock, on the panelled wall, which was at that moment
striking eight.
As he closed the door behind him, he was aware of Dixon who had just
entered the gallery from the servants' quarters. The old butler hurried
toward him to ask if he should announce dinner. "Not for me," said
Faversham; "you had better ask Mr. Melrose. To-morrow, Dixon, I shall be
leaving this house--for good."
Dixon stared, his face working:
"I thowt--I heard yo'--" he said, and paused.
"You heard us disputing. Mr. Melrose and I have had a quarrel. Bring me
something to my room, when you have looked after him. I will come and
speak to you later."
Faversham walked down the gallery to his own door. He had to pass on the
way a splendid Nattier portrait of Marie Leczinska which had arrived only
that morning from Paris, and was standing on the floor, leaning sideways
against a chair, as Melrose had placed it himself, so as to get a good
light on it. The picture was large. Faversham picked his way round it. If
his thoughts had not been so entirely preoccupied, he would probably have
noticed a slight movement of something behind the portrait as he passed.
But exultation held him; he walked on air.
He returned to his own room, where the window was still wide open. As he
entered, he mechanically turned on the central light, not noticing that
the reading lamp upon his table was not in its place. But he saw that
some papers which had been on his desk when he left the room were now on
the floor. He supposed the wind which was rising had dislodged them.
Stooping to lift them up, he was surprised to see a large mud-stain on
the topmost sheet. It looked like a footprint, as though some one had
first knocked the papers off the table, and then trodden on them. He
turned on a fresh switch. There was another mark on the floor just beyond
the table--and another--nearer the door. They were certainly footprints!
But who could have entered the room during his absence? And where was the
invader? At the same time he perceived that his reading lamp had been
overturned and was lying on the floor, broken.
Filled with a vague anxiety, he returned to the door he had just closed.
As he laid his hand upon it, a shot rang through the house--a cry--the
sound of a fierce voice--a fall.
And the next minute the door he held was violently burst open in his
face, he himself was knocked backward over a chair, and a man carrying a
gun, whose face was muffled in some dark material, rushed across the
room, leapt through the window, and disappeared into the night.
* * * * *
Faversham ran into the gallery. The first thing he saw was the Nattier
portrait lying on its face beside a chair overturned. Beyond it, a dark
object on the floor. At the same moment, he perceived Dixon standing
horror-struck, at the farther end of the gallery, with the handle of the
door leading to the servants' quarters still in his grasp. Then the old
man too ran.
The two men were brought up by the same obstacle. The body of Edmund
Melrose lay between them.
Melrose had fallen on his face. As Faversham and Dixon lifted him, they
saw that he was still breathing, though _in extremis_. He had been shot
through the breast, and a pool of blood lay beneath him, blotting out the
faded blues and yellow greens of a Persian carpet.
At the command of her husband, Mrs. Dixon, who had hurried after him, ran
for brandy, crying also for help. Faversham snatched a cushion, put it
under the dying man's head, and loosened his clothing. Melrose's eyelids
fluttered once or twice, then sank. With a low groan, a gush of blood
from the mouth, he passed away while Dixon prayed.
"May the Lord have mercy--mercy!"
The old man rocked to and fro beside the corpse in an anguish. Mrs. Dixon
coming with the brandy in her hand was stopped by a gesture from
Faversham.
"No use!" He touched Dixon on the shoulder. "Dixon--this is murder! You
must go at once for Doctor Undershaw and the police. Take the motor. Mrs.
Dixon and I will stay here. But first--tell me--after I spoke to you
here--did you go in to Mr. Melrose?"
"I knocked, sir. But he shouted to me--angry like--to go away--till he
rang. I went back to t' kitchen, and I had nobbut closed yon door behind
me--when I heard t' firin'. I brast it open again--an' saw a man--wi'
summat roun' his head--fleein' doon t' gallery. My God!--my God!--"
"The man who did it was in the gallery while you and I were speaking to
each other," said Faversham, calmly, as he rose; "and he got in through
my window, while I was with Mr. Melrose." He described briefly the
passage of the murderer through his own room. "Tell the police to have
the main line stations watched without a moment's delay. The man's game
would be to get to one or other of them across country. There'll be no
marks on him--he fired from a distance--but his boots are muddy. About
five foot ten I should think--a weedy kind of fellow. Go and wake Tonson,
and be back as quick as you possibly can. And listen!--on your way to the
stables call the gardener. Send him for the farm men, and tell them to
search the garden, and the woods by the river. They'll find me there. Or
stay--one of them can come here, and remain with Mrs. Dixon, while I'm
gone. Let them bring lanterns--quick!"
In less than fifteen minutes the motor, with Dixon and the new chauffeur,
Tonson, had left the Tower, and was rushing at forty miles an hour along
the Pengarth road.
Meanwhile, Faversham and the farm-labourers were searching the garden,
the hanging woods, and the river banks. Footprints were found all along
the terrace, and it was plain that the murderer had climbed the low
enclosing wall. But beyond, and all in the darkness, nothing could be
traced.
Faversham returned to the house, and began to examine the gallery. The
hiding-place of Melrose's assailant was soon discovered. Behind the
Nattier portrait, and the carved and gilt chair which Melrose had himself
moved from its place in the morning, there were muddy marks on the floor
and the wainscotting, which showed that a man had been crouching there.
The picture, a large and imposing canvas--Marie Leczinska, sitting on
a blue sofa, in a gala dress of rose-pink velvet with trimming of black
fur--had been more than sufficient to conceal him. Then--had he knocked
to attract Melrose's attention, having ascertained from Dixon's short
colloquy at the library door, after Faversham had left the room, that the
master of the Tower was still within?--or had Melrose suddenly come out
into the gallery, perhaps to give some order to Dixon?
Faversham thought the latter more probable. As Melrose appeared, the
murderer had risen hastily from his hiding-place, upsetting the picture
and the chair. Melrose had received a charge of duck shot full in the
breast, with fatal effect. The range was so short that the shot had
scattered but little. A few pellets, however, could be traced in the
wooden frames of the tapestries; and one had broken a majolica dish
standing on a cabinet.
A man of the people then--using probably some old muzzle-loader, begged
or borrowed? Faversham's thought ran to the young fellow who had
denounced Melrose with such fervour at Mainstairs the day of Lydia
Penfold's visit to the stricken village. But, good heavens!--there were a
score of men on Melrose's estate, with at least as good reason--or
better--for shooting, as that man. Take the Brands! But old Brand was
gone to his rest, the elder son had sailed for Canada, and the younger
seemed to be a harmless, half-witted chap, of no account.
Yet, clearly the motive had been revenge, not burglary. There were plenty
of costly trifles on the tables and cabinets of the gallery. Not one of
them had been touched.
Faversham moved to and fro in the silence, while Mrs. Dixon sat moaning
to herself beside the dead man, whose face she had covered. The lavish
electric light in the gallery, which had been Melrose's latest whim,
shone upon its splendid contents; on the nymphs and cupids, the wreaths
and temples of the Boucher tapestries, on the gleaming surfaces of the
china, the dull gold of the _ormolu_. The show represented the desires,
the huntings, the bargains of a lifetime; and in its midst lay Melrose,
tripped at last, silenced at last, the stain of his life-blood spreading
round him.
Faversham looked down upon him, shuddering. Then perceiving that the door
into the library stood ajar, he entered the room. There stood the chair
on which he had leant, when the chains of his slavery fell from him.
There--on the table--was the jewel--the little Venus with fluttering
enamel drapery, standing tiptoe within her hoop of diamonds, which he had
seen Melrose take up and handle during their dispute. Why was it there?
Faversham had no idea.
And there on the writing-desk lay a large sheet of paper with a single
line written upon it in Melrose's big and sprawling handwriting. That was
new. It had not been there, when Faversham last stood beside the table.
The pen was thrown down upon it, and a cigar lay in the ashtray, as
though the writer had been disturbed either by a sudden sound, or by the
irruption of some thought which had led him into the gallery to call
Dixon.
Faversham stooped to look at it:
"I hereby revoke all the provisions of the will executed by me on ..."
No more. The paper was worthless. The will would stand. Faversham stood
motionless, the silence booming in his ears.
"A fool would put that in his pocket," he said to himself,
contemptuously. Then conscious of a new swarm of ideas assailing him,
of new dangers, and a new wariness, he returned to the gallery, pacing
it till the police appeared. They came in force, within the hour,
accompanied by Undershaw.
* * * * *
The old chiming clock set in the garden-front of Duddon had not long
struck ten. Cyril Boden had just gone to bed. Victoria sat with her feet
on the fender in Tatham's study still discussing with him Felicia's
astonishing performance of the afternoon. She found him eagerly
interested in it, to a degree which surprised her; and they passed from
it only to go zealously together into various plans for the future of
mother and daughter--plans as intelligent as they were generous. The buzz
of a motor coming up the drive surprised them. There were no visitors in
the house, and none expected. Victoria rose in amazement as Undershaw
walked into the room.
"A horrible thing has happened. I felt that you must know before
anybody--with those two poor things in your house. Dixon has told me that
Miss Melrose saw her father this afternoon. I have come to bring you the
sequel."
He told his story. Mother and son turned pale looks upon each other.
Within a couple of hours of the moment when he had turned his daughter
from his doors! Seldom indeed do the strokes of the gods fall so fitly.
There was an awful satisfaction in the grim story to some of the deepest
instincts of the soul.
"Some poor devil he has ruined, I suppose!" said Tatham, his grave young
face lifted to the tragic height of the event. "Any clue?"
"None--except that, as I have told you, Faversham himself saw the
murderer, except his face, and Dixon saw his back. A slight man in
corduroys--that's all Dixon can say. Faversham and the Dixons were alone
in the house, except for a couple of maids. Perhaps"--he hesitated--"I
had better tell you some other facts that Faversham told me--and the
Superintendent of Police. They will of course come out at the inquest.
He and Melrose had had a violent quarrel immediately before the murder.
Melrose threatened to revoke his will, and Faversham left him,
understanding that all dispositions in his favour would be cancelled. He
came out of the room, spoke to Dixon in the gallery and walked to
his own sitting-room. Melrose apparently sat down at once to write a
codicil revoking the will. He was disturbed, came out into the gallery,
and was shot dead. The few lines he wrote are of course of no validity.
The will holds, and Faversham is the heir--to everything. You see"--he
paused again--"some awkward suggestions might be made."
"But," cried Tatham, "you say Dixon saw the man? And the muddy
footmarks--in the house--and on the terrace!"
* * * * *
"Don't mistake me, for heaven's sake," said Undershaw, quickly. "It is
impossible that Faversham should have fired the shot! But in the present
state of public opinion you will easily imagine what else may be said.
There is a whole tribe of Melrose's hangers-on who hate Faversham like
poison; who have been plotting to pull him down, and will be furious to
find him after all in secure possession of the estate and the money. I
feel tolerably certain they will put up some charge or other."
"What--of procuring the thing?"
Undershaw nodded.
Tatham considered a moment. Then he rang, and when Hurst appeared, all
white and disorganized under the stress of the news just communicated to
him by Undershaw's chauffeur, he ordered his horse for eight o'clock in
the morning. Victoria looked at him puzzled; then it seemed she
understood.
But every other thought was soon swallowed up in the remembrance of the
widow and daughter.
"Not to-night--not to-night," pleaded Undershaw who had seen Netta
Melrose professionally, only that morning. "I dread the mere shock for
Mrs. Melrose. Let them have their sleep! I will be over early to-morrow."
XXI
By the first dawn of the new day Tatham was in the saddle. Just as he was
starting from the house, there arrived a messenger, and a letter was
put into his hand. It was from Undershaw, who, on leaving Duddon the
night before, had motored back to the Tower, and taken Faversham in
charge. The act bore testimony to the little doctor's buffeted but still
surviving regard for this man, whom he had pulled from the jaws of death.
He reported in his morning letter that he had passed some of the night in
conversation with Faversham, and wished immediately to pass on certain
facts learnt from it, first of all to Tatham, and then to any friend of
Faversham's they might concern.
He told, accordingly, the full story of the gems, leading up to the
quarrel between the two men, as Faversham had told it to him.
"Faversham," he wrote, "left the old man, convinced that all was at an
end as to the will and the inheritance. And now he is as much the heir as
ever! I find him bewildered; for his _mind_, in that tragic half-hour,
had absolutely renounced. What he will do, no one can say. As to the
murderer, we have discussed all possible clues--with little light. But
the morning will doubtless bring some new facts. That Faversham has not
the smallest fraction of responsibility for the murder is clear to any
sane man who talks with him. But that there will be a buzz of slanderous
tongues as soon as ever the story is public property, I am convinced. So
I send you these fresh particulars as quickly as possible--for your
guidance."
Tatham thrust the letter into his pocket, and rode away through the
December dawn. His mother would soon be in the thick of her own task with
the two unconscious ones at Duddon. _His_ duty lay--with Lydia! The
"friend" was all alive in him, reaching out to her in a manly and
generous emotion.
The winter sunrise was a thing of beauty. It chimed with the intensity of
feeling in the young man's breast. The sky was a light saffron over the
eastern fells, and the mountains rose into it indistinguishably blue, the
light mists wrapped about their feet. Among the mists, plane behind
plane, the hedgerow trees, still faintly afire with their last leaf,
stood patterned on the azure of the fells. And as he rode on, the first
rays of the light mounting a gap in the Helvellyn range struck upon the
valleys below. The shadows ran blue along the frosty grass; here and
there the withered leaf began to blaze; the streams rejoiced. Under their
sycamores and yews, the white-walled farms sent up their morning smoke;
the cocks were crowing; and as he mounted the upland on which the cottage
stood, from a height in front of him, a tiny church--one of the smallest
and loneliest in the fells--sent forth a summoning bell. The sound, with
all its weight of association, sank and echoed through the morning
stillness; the fells repeated it, a voice of worship toward God, of
appeal toward man.
In Tatham, fashioned to the appeal by all the accidents of blood and
nurture, the sound made for a deepened spirit and a steadied mood. He
pressed on toward the little house and garden that now began to show
through the trees.
Lydia had not long come downstairs when she heard the horse at the gate.
The cottage breakfast was nominally at half-past eight. But Mrs. Penfold
never appeared, and Susy was always professionally late, it being
understood that inspiration--when it alights--is a midnight visitant, and
must be wooed at suitable hours.
Lydia was generally down to the minute, and read prayers to their two
maids. Mrs. Penfold made a great point of family prayers, but rarely or
never attended them. Susy did not like to be read to by anybody. Lydia
therefore had the little function to herself. She chose her favourite
psalms, and prayers from the most various sources. The maids liked it
because they loved Lydia; and Lydia, having once begun, would not
willingly have given it up.
But the ceremony was over; and she had just opened the casement to see
who their visitor might be, when Tatham rode up to the porch.
"May I speak to you for ten minutes?"
His aspect warned her of things unusual. He tied up his horse, and she
took him into their little sitting-room, and closed the door.
"You haven't seen a newspaper?"
She assured him their post would not arrive from Keswick for another
hour, and stood expectant.
"I wanted to tell you before any one else, because there are things to
explain. We're friends--Lydia?"
He approached her eagerly. His colour had leapt; but his eyes reassured.
"Always," she said simply, and she put her hand in his.
Then he told her. He saw her waver, and sink, ghost-like, on a chair. It
was clear enough that the news had for her no ordinary significance. His
heart knew pain--the reflex of a past anguish; only to be lost at once in
the desire to soothe and shield her.
"Mr. Faversham was there?" she asked him, trembling.
"He did not see the shot fired. The murderer rushing from the gallery
brushed past him as he was coming out of his room, and escaped."
"There had been a quarrel?"
He gave her in outline the contents of Undershaw's letter.
"He still inherits?" Her eyes, shone as he came to the climax of the
story--Faversham's refusal of the gems--Melrose's threat. The trembling
of her delicate mouth urged him for more--and yet more--light.
"Everything--land, money, collections--under the will made in August. You
see"--he added, sorely against his will, yet compelled, by the need of
protecting her from shock--"the opportuneness of the murder. Their
relations had been very bad for some time."
"Opportuneness?" She just breathed it. He put out his hand again, and
took hers.
"You know--Faversham has enemies?"
She nodded.
"I've been one myself," he said frankly. "I believe you knew it. But this
thing's brought me up sharp. One may think as one likes of Faversham's
conduct--but you knew--and I know--that he's not the man to pay another
man to commit murder!"
"And that's what they'll say?" The colour had rushed back into her
cheeks.
"That's what some fool _might_ say, because of the grudge against him.
Well, now, we've got to find the murderer!" He rose, speaking in his most
cheerful and practical voice, "I'm going on to see what the police have
been doing. The inquest will probably begin to-morrow. But I wanted to
prevent your being startled by this horrible news. Trust me to let you
know--and to help--all I can."
Then for a moment, he seemed to lose his self-possession. He stood before
her awkwardly conscious--a moral trespasser--who might have been passing
bounds. But it was her turn to be frank. She came and put both her hands
on his arm--looking up--drawing her breath with difficulty.