night--but how could I? It was only just then I knew--that I cared.
A little later Mr. Faversham asked me to marry him, and I refused,
because--because of this money. I couldn't take it--I begged him not
to. Never mind!" She threw her head back, gulping down tears. "He
thought me unreasonable. But--"
"He refused--and left you!" cried Tatham, drinking in the sweetness of
her pale beauty, as Orpheus might have watched the vanishing Eurydice.
"He had such great ambitions--as to what he'd do--with this money," she
said, lightly brushing her wet eyes, and trying to smile. "It wasn't the
mere fortune! Oh, I knew that!"
Tatham was silent. But he gently touched her hand with his own.
"You'll stand by him?--if he needs it?" she asked piteously.
He assured her. Then, suddenly, raising herself on tiptoe, she
kissed him on the cheek. The blood flew into his face, and bending
forward--timidly--he laid his lips on her soft brow. There was a
pledge in it--and a farewell. She drew herself away.
"The first--and the last," she said, smiling, and sighing. "Now we're
comrades. I await your news. Tell me if I can help--throw light? I know
the people--the neighbourhood, well. And when you see Mr. Faversham,
greet him from me. Tell him his friends here feel with him--and for him.
And as to what you say--ah, no!--I'm not going to believe--I can't
believe--that any one can have such--such vile thoughts! The truth
will soon come out!"
She held herself steadily.
"We must find the-murderer," Tatham repeated, and took up his cap.
* * * * *
Lydia was left alone in the little breakfast-room. Susy could be heard
moving about overhead; she would be down directly. Meanwhile the winter
sunshine came broadly in; the singing of the tea-kettle, the crackle of
the fire made domestic music. But Lydia's soul was far away. It stood
beside Faversham, exulting.
"Free!"--she said to herself, passionately--"free!" and then with the
hyperbole of love--"I talked and moralized--he _did it_!"
A splendid pride in him possessed her; so that for long she
scarcely realized the tragedy of the murder, or the horror of the
slanderous suspicion now starting through the dales. But yet, long
before the day was over, she was conquered by grief and fear--a very
miserable and restless Lydia. No word came from him; and she could not
write. These were men's affairs, and women must hold their peace. Yet,
in spirit, as the hours passed, she gave herself wholly to the man she
loved; she glorified him; she trampled on her own past doubts; she
protected him against a world in arms. The plant of love grew fast and
furiously--watered by pity--by indignation.
Meanwhile Susy treated her sister very kindly. She specially insisted on
ordering dinner, and writing various business letters; though Lydia would
have been thankful to do both. And when the evening came on, Mrs. Penfold
trembling with excitement and horror, chattered endlessly about the
murder, as each visitor to the cottage brought some fresh detail. Lydia
seldom answered her. She sat on the floor, with her face against her
mother's knee, while the soft, silly voice above her head rambled and
rambled on.
* * * * *
Tatham rode back to Pengarth. As he approached one of the lodge gates of
Duddon, a man came toward him on a bicycle. Boden, hot and dishevelled,
dismounted as he saw Tatham.
"I thought I should just meet you. Lady Tatham has had a telephone
message from the Chief Constable, Colonel Marvell. There is a man
missing--and a gun. Brand's younger son has not been seen for thirty-six
hours. He has been helping Andover's head keeper for part of the year, as
a watcher; and this man, Simpson, had let him have an old gun of his--a
muzzle-loader--some months ago. That gun can't be found."
Tatham sat thunderstruck, lights breaking on his face.
"Well--there was cause enough."
Boden's eyes shone.
"Cause? It smelled to heaven! Wild justice--if you like! I was in the
house yesterday afternoon," he added quietly, "just before the old man
died."
"You were?" cried Tatham, amazed. Yet he knew well that whenever Boden
came to recruit at Duddon, he spent half of his time among the fell-farms
and cottages. His mind was invincibly human, greedy of common life and
incident, whether in London or among the dales. He said little of his
experiences at Duddon; not a word, for instance, to Tatham or Victoria,
the night before, had revealed his own share in the old farmer's death
scene; but, casually, often, some story would drop out, some unsuspected
facts about their next-door neighbours, their very own people, which
would set Victoria and Tatham looking at each other, and wondering.
He turned now to walk beside Tatham's horse. His plain face with its
beautiful eyes, and lanky straying hair, spoke of a ruminating mind.
Tatham asked if there was any news from the railway.
"No trace so far, anywhere. All the main line stations have been closely
watched. But Marvell is of opinion that if young Brand had anything to do
with it he would certainly give the railway a wide berth. He is much more
likely to take to the fells. They tell the most extraordinary tales of
his knowledge of the mountains--especially in snow and wild weather. They
say that shepherds who have lost sheep constantly go to him for help!"
"--You know him?"
"I have talked to him sometimes. A queer sulky fellow with one or two
fixed ideas. He certainly hated Melrose. Whether he hated him enough to
murder him is another question. When I visited them, the mother told me
that Will had rushed out of the house the night before, because he could
not endure the sight of his father's sufferings. The jury I suppose will
have to know that. Well!--You were going on to Pengarth?"
Tatham assented. Boden paused, leaning on his bicycle.
"Take Threlfall on your way. I think Faversham would like to see you.
There are some strange things being said. Preposterous things! The hatred
is extraordinary."
The two men eyed each other gravely. Boden added:
"I have been telling your mother that I think I shall go over to
Threlfall for a bit, if Faversham will have me."
Tatham wondered again. Faversham, prosperous, had been, it seemed to him,
a special target for Boden's scorn, expressed with a fine range of
revolutionary epithet.
But calamity of any kind--for this queer saint--was apt to change all the
values of things.
They were just separating when Tatham, with sudden compunction, asked for
news of Mrs. Melrose, and Felicia.
"I had almost forgotten them!"
"Your mother did not tell me much. They were troubled about Mrs. Melrose,
I think, and Undershaw was coming. The poor little girl turned very
white--no tears--but she was clinging to your mother."
Tatham's face softened, but he said nothing. The road to Threlfall
presented itself, and he turned his horse toward it.
"And Miss Penfold?" said Boden, quietly. "You arrived before the
newspapers? Good. I think, before I return, I shall go and have a talk
with Miss Penfold."
And mounting his bicycle he rode off. Tatham looking after him, felt
uncomfortably certain that Boden knew pretty well all there was to know
about Lydia--Faversham--and himself. But he did not resent it.
Tatham found Threlfall a beleaguered place, police at the gates and in
the house; the chief constable and the Superintendent of police
established in the dining-room, as the only room tolerably free from the
all encumbering collections, and interviewing one person after another.
Tatham asked to see the chief constable. He made his way into the
gallery, which was guarded by police, for although the body of Melrose
had been removed to an upper room, the blood-stain on the Persian carpet,
the overturned chair and picture, the mud-marks on the wall remained
untouched, awaiting the coroner's jury, which was to meet in the house
that evening.
As Tatham approached the room which was now the headquarters of the
police, he met coming out of it a couple of men; one small and sinewy,
with the air of a disreputable athlete, the other a tall pasty-faced man
in a shabby frock coat, with furtive eyes. The first was Nash, Melrose's
legal factotum through many years; the other was one of the clerks in the
Pengarth office, who was popularly supposed to have made much money out
of the Threlfall estate, through a long series of small peculations never
discovered by his miserly master. They passed Tatham with downcast eyes
and an air of suppressed excitement which did not escape him. He found
the chief constable pacing up and down, talking in subdued tones, and
with a furrowed brow, to the Superintendent of police.
"Come in, come in," said Marvell heartily, at sight of the young man, who
was the chief landowner of the district, and likely within a couple of
years to be its lord lieutenant. "We want your help. Everything points to
young Brand, and there is much reason to think he is still in the
neighbourhood. What assistance can you give us?"
Tatham promised a band of searchers from the estate. The Duddon estate
itself included a great deal of mountain ground, some of the loneliest
and remotest in the district, where a man who knew the fells might very
well take hiding. Marvell brought out a map, and they pored over it.
The superintendent of police departed.
Then Marvell, with a glance at the door to see that it was safely shut,
said abruptly:
"You know, Faversham has done some unlucky things!"
Tatham eyed him interrogatively.
"It has come out that he was in the Brands' cottage about a week ago,
and that he left money with the family. He says he never saw the younger
son, and did not in fact know him by sight. He offered the elder one
some money in order to help him with his Canadian start. The lad refused,
not being willing, so his mother says--I have seen her myself this
morning--to accept anything from Melrose's agent. But she, not knowing
where to look for the expenses of her husband's illness, took five pounds
from Faversham, and never dared tell either of her sons."
"All perfectly straightforward and natural," said Tatham.
Marvell looked worried.
"Yes. But you see how the thing may be twisted by men like those
two--curs!--who have just been here. You saw them? They came, ostensibly,
to answer my questions as to whether they could point us to any one
with a particular grudge against Mr. Melrose."
"They could have named you a hundred!" interrupted Tatham.
"No doubt. But what their information in the end amounted to"--the chief
constable came to stand immediately in front of Tatham, lowering his
voice--"was that the only person with a really serious motive for
destroying Melrose, was"--he jerked his thumb in the direction of
Faversham's sitting-room--"our friend! They claim--both of them--to have
been spectators of the growing friction between the two men. Nash says
that Melrose had spoken to him once or twice of revoking, or altering
his will; and both of them declare that Faversham was quite aware of the
possibility. Of course these things were brought out apologetically--you
understand!--with a view of 'giving Mr. Faversham the opportunity
of meeting the reports in circulation,' and so on--'calming public
opinion'--and the rest of it. But I see how they will work it up! Then,
of course, that the man got access to the house through Faversham's
room--Faversham's window left open, and the light left burning--by his
own story--is unfortunate."
"But what absurdity," cried Tatham, indignantly, as he rose. "As if the
man to profit by the plot would have left that codicil on the table!"
Marvell shrugged his shoulders.
"That too might be twisted. Why not a supremely clever stroke? Well, of
course the thing is absurd--but disagreeable--considering the
circumstances. The moral is--find the man! Good-day, Lord Tatham. I
understand you will have fifty men out by this evening, assisting the
police in their search?"
"At least," said Tatham, and departed.
Outside, after a moment's hesitation, he inquired of the police in charge
whether Faversham was in his room. Being told that he was, he asked leave
to pass along the gallery. An officer took him in charge, and he stepped,
not without a shudder, past the blood-stained spot, where a cruel spirit
had paid its debt. The man who led him pointed out the picture, the
chair, the marks of the muddy soles on the wainscotting, and along the
gallery--reconstructing the murder, in low tones, as though the dead man
still lay there. A hideous oppression indeed hung over the house.
Melrose's ghost held it.
The police officer knocked at Faversham's door. "Would Mr. Faversham
receive Lord Tatham?"
Faversham, risen from his writing-table, looked at his visitor in a dull
astonishment.
"I have come to bring you a message," said Tatham advancing, neither man
offering to shake hands. "I saw Miss Penfold early this morning--before
she got the newspapers. She wished me to bring you her--her sympathy. She
was very much shocked." He spoke with a certain boyish embarrassment. But
his blue eyes looked very straight at Faversham.
Faversham changed colour a little, and thanked him. But his aspect was
that of a man worn out, incapable for the time of the normal responses of
feeling. He showed no sense of strangeness, with regard to Tatham's
visit, though for weeks they had not been on speaking terms. Absently
offering his visitor a chair, he talked a little--disjointedly--of
the events of the preceding evening, with frequent pauses for
recollection.
Tatham eyed him askance.
"I say! I suppose you had no sleep?"
Faversham smiled.
"Look here--hadn't you better come to us to-night?--get out of this
horrible place?" exclaimed Tatham, on a sudden but imperative impulse.
"To Duddon?" Faversham shook his head. "Thank you--impossible." Then he
looked up. "Undershaw told you what I told him?"
Tatham assented. There was an awkward pause--broken at last by Faversham.
"How did Miss Melrose get home?"
"Luckily I came across her at the foot of the Duddon hill, and I helped
her home. She's all right--though of course it's a ghastly shock for
them."
"I never knew she was here--till she had gone," exclaimed Faversham, with
sudden animation, "Otherwise--I should have helped her."
He stood erect, his pale look fixed threateningly on Tatham.
"I'm sure you would," said Tatham, heartily. "Well now, I must be off. I
have promised Marvell to put as many men as possible to work in with the
police. You have no idea at all as to the identity of the man who ran
past you?"
"None!" Faversham repeated the word, as though groping in his memory.
"None. I never saw Will Brand that I can recollect. But the description
of him seems to tally with the man who knocked me over."
"Well, we'll find him," said Tatham briskly. "Any message for Green
Cottage?"
"My best thanks. I am very grateful to them."
The words were formal. He sank heavily into his chair, as though wishing
to end the interview. Tatham departed.
* * * * *
The inquest opened in the evening. Faversham and the Dixons gave their
evidence. So did Undershaw and the police. The jury viewed the body, and
leave to bury was granted. Then the inquiry adjourned.
For some ten days afterward, the whole of the Lake district hung upon the
search for Brand. From the Scawfell and Buttermere group on its western
verge, to the Ullswater mountains on the east; from Skiddaw and
Blencathra on the north, southward through all the shoulders and edges,
the tarns and ghylls of the Helvellyn range; through the craggy fells of
Thirlmere, Watendlath, Easedale; over the high plateaus that run up to
the Pikes, and fall in precipice to Stickle Tarn; through the wild clefts
and corries of Bowfell, the Crinkles, Wetherlam and the Old Man; over the
desolate backs and ridges that stretch from Kirkstone to Kentmere and
Long Sleddale, the great man-hunt passed, enlisting ever fresh feet, and
fresh eyes in its service. Every shepherd on the high fells became a
detective, speeding news, or urging suggestions, by the old freemasonry
of their tribe; while every farmhouse in certain dales, within reach of
the scene of the murder, sent out its watchers by day and night, eagerly
contributing its men and its wits to the chase.
For in this chase there was a hidden motive which found no expression
in the local papers; of which men spoke to each other under their
breaths, when they spoke at all; but which none the less became in a
very short time, by the lightning spread of a few evil reports, through
the stubble of popular resentment, the animating passion at the heart of
it. The police and Faversham's few friends were searching for the
murderer of Melrose; the public in general were soon hunting Faversham's
accomplice. The discovery of Will Brand meant, in the one case, the
arrest of a poor crazy fellow who had avenged by murder his father's
persecution and ruin; in the other case, it meant the unmasking of an
educated and smooth-spoken villain, who, finding a vast fortune in
danger, had taken ingenious means to secure it. In this black suspicion
there spoke the accumulated hatred of years, stored up originally, in the
mind of a whole countryside, against a man who had flouted every law of
good citizenship, and strained every legal right of property to breaking
point; and discharging itself now, with pent-up force, upon the tyrant's
tool, conceived as the murderous plotter for his millions. To realize the
strength of the popular feeling, as it presently revealed itself, was to
look shuddering into things elemental.
It was first made plain on the day of Melrose's funeral. In order to
avoid the concourse which might attend a burial in Whitebeck parish
church, lying near the main road, and accessible from many sides, it
was determined to bury him in the graveyard of the little mountain
chapel on the fell above the Penfolds' cottage. The hour was sunrise; and
all the preparations had been as secretly made as possible. But when the
dark December morning arrived, with sleet showers whitening all the
slopes of Helvellyn and the gashed breast of Blencathra, a dense crowd
thronged all the exits of the Tower, and lined the steep lanes leading to
the chapel. Faversham, Cyril Boden, and a Carlisle solicitor occupied the
only carriage which followed the hearse. Tatham and his mother met the
doleful procession at the chapel. Lady Tatham, very pale and queenly,
walked hand in hand with a slight girl in mourning. As the multitude
outside the churchyard caught sight of the pair, a thrill ran through its
ranks. Melrose's daughter, and rightful heiress--disinherited, and
supplanted--by the black-haired man standing bareheaded behind the
coffin. The crowd endured the mockery of the burial service in a sullen
silence. Not a head uncovered. Not a voice joined in the responses.
Felicia threw back her veil, and the onlookers pressed to the churchyard
railings to see the delicate face, with its strong likeness to her
father. She meanwhile saw only Tatham. Her eyes were fixed on him from
first to last.
But there were two other ladies in the churchyard. After the hurried
ceremony was over, one of them approached Faversham. He took her hand in
silence, looking down into the eyes--the soul--of Lydia. With what
angelic courage and cheer that look was charged, only its recipient knew.
"Come and see us," she said, softly.
He shook his head, with a look of pain. Then he pressed her hand and they
separated. As he appeared at the churchyard gate, about to enter the
carriage which was waiting, a grim low groan ran through the throng
which filled the lane. There was something in the sound to strike a
shiver through the strongest. Faversham grew perhaps a little paler, but
as he seated himself in the carriage he examined the scowling faces near
him with a quiet indifference, which scarcely altered when Tatham came
conspicuously to the carriage-door to bid him farewell.
The days that followed reminded some of the older dalesmen of the stories
told by their fathers of the great and famous hunt, a century ago, after
the sheep-slaying "dog of Ennerdale," who for five months held a whole
district at bay; appearing and disappearing phantom-like among the crags
and mists of the high fells, keeping shepherds and farming-folk in
perpetual excitement, watched for by night and day, hunted by hounds and
by men, yet never to be captured; frightening lovers from their trysts,
and the children from school; a presence and a terror prevading men's
minds, and suspending the ordinary operations of life. So in some sort
was it with the hunt for Will Brand. It was firmly believed that in the
course of it he was twice seen; once in the loneliness of Skiddaw Forest,
not far from the gamekeeper's hut, the only habitation in that moorland
waste; and once in a storm on the slopes of Great Dodd, when a shepherd,
"latin" his sheep, had suddenly perceived a wild-looking fellow, with a
gun between his knees, watching him from the shelter of a rock. So far
from making any effort to capture the man, the shepherd had fled in
terror; but both neighbours and police firmly believed that he had seen
the murderer. There were also various mysterious thefts of food reported
from mountain farms, indications hotly followed up but to no purpose.
Would the culprit, starved out, be forced in time to surrender; or would
he die of privation and exposure among the high fells, in the snowdrifts,
and leave the spring, when it came, to uncover his bones?
Toward the end of the month the snowstorms of its earlier days passed
into a chilly and continuous rain; there was still snow on the heights.
The steady downpour presently flooded the rivers, and sent the streams
racing in torrents down the hills.
Christmas was over. The new year was at hand. One afternoon, Boden,
oppressed in spirit, sallied forth from the Tower into the floods and
mists of St. John's Vale. He himself had taken no part in the great
pursuit. He believed now that the poor hunted creature would find his
lonely end among the wintry mountains, and rejoiced to think it might be
so. The adjourned inquest was to be resumed the following day, and no
doubt some verdict would be returned. It was improbable, in spite of the
malice at work, that any attempt would be made--legally--to incriminate
Faversham.
It was of Faversham that he was chiefly thinking. When he had first
proposed his companionship, the day after the murder, it had been quietly
accepted, with a softened look of surprise, and he and Undershaw had
since kept watch over a bewildered man, protecting him as far as they
could from the hostile world at his gates.
How he would emerge--what he meant to do with Melrose's vast heritage,
Boden had no idea. His life seemed to have shrunk into a dumb, trancelike
state. He rarely or never left the house; he could not be induced to
go either to Duddon or to the Cottage; nor would he receive visitors. He
had indeed seen his solicitors, but had said not a word to Boden on the
subject. It was rumoured that Nash was already endeavouring to persuade
a distant cousin of Melrose and Lady Tatham to dispute the will.
Meanwhile, through Boden, Lydia Penfold had been kept in touch with a man
who could not apparently bring himself to reopen their relation. Boden
saw her nearly every day; they had become fast friends. Victoria too was
as often at the cottage as the state of Netta Melrose allowed, and she
and Lydia, born to understand each other, had at last arrived thereat.
But Mrs. Melrose was dying; and her little daughter, a more romantic
figure than ever, in the public eye, was to find, it said, a second
mother in Lady Tatham.
The rain clouds were swirling through the dale, as Boden reached its
middle point, pushing his way against a cold westerly blast. The stream,
which in summer chatters so gently to the travellers beside it, was
rushing in a brown swift flood, and drowning the low meadows on its
western bank. He mounted a stone foot-bridge to look at it, when, of a
sudden, the curtain of cloud shrouding Blencathra was torn aside, and
its high ridge, razor-sharp, appeared spectrally white, a seat of the
storm-god, in a far heaven. The livid lines of just-fallen snow,
outlining the cliffs and ravines of the great mountain, stamped its
majesty, visionlike, on the senses. Below it, some scattered woods, inky
black, bent under the storm, and the crash and darkness of the lower air
threw into clear relief the pallid splendour of the mountain-top.
Boden stood enthralled, when a voice said at his elbow:
"Yo're oot on a clashy night, Muster Boden!"
He turned. Beside him stood the fugitive!--grinning weakly. Boden beheld
a tottering and ghastly figure. Distress--mortal fatigue--breathed from
the haggard emaciation of face and limbs. Round the shoulders was folded
a sack, from which the dregs of some red dipping mixture it had once
contained had dripped over the youth's chest and legs, his tattered
clothes and broken boots, in streams of what, to Boden's startled sense,
looked like blood. And under the slouched hat, a pair of sunken eyes
looked out, expressing the very uttermost of human despair.
"Brand!--where have you been?"
"Don't touch me, sir! I'll go--don't touch me! There ha' been hunnerds
after me--latin me on t' fells. They've not catcht me--an' they'd not ha'
catcht me noo--but I'm wore oot. I ha' been followin yo' this half-hour,
Muster Boden. I could ha' put yo' i' the river fasst enoof."
A ghastly chuckle in the darkness. Boden considered.
"Well, now--are you going to give yourself up? You see--I can do nothing
to force you! But if you take my advice, you'll go quietly with me, to
the police--you'll make a clean breast of it."
"Will they hang me, Muster Boden?"
"I don't think so," said Boden slowly. "What made you do it?"
"I'd planned it for months--I've follered owd Melrose many times--I've
been close oop to 'im--when he had noa noshun whativver. I might ha'
killt him--a doosen times over. He wor a devil--an' I paid him oot! I was
creepin' round t' hoose that night--and ov a suddent, there was a door
openin', an' a light. It seemed to be God sayin', 'Theer's a way, mon!
go in, and do't! So I went in. An' I saw Muster Faversham coom oot--an'
Dixon. An' I knew that he wor there--alone--the owd fox!--an' I
waited--an' oot he came. I shot 'un straight, Muster Boden! I shot 'un
straight!"
"You never told any one what you were going to do, Brand? Nobody helped
you?"
"Not a soul! I'm not yo'r blabbin' sort! But now I'm done--I'm clemmed!"
And he tottered against the bridge as he spoke. Baden caught him.
"Can you walk with my help? I have some brandy."
And taking from his pocket the tiny flask that a man with a weak heart is
apt to carry, he put it into a shaking hand. Brand drank it greedily.
They stumbled on together, down the narrow road, through the
streaming rain. It was a mile to the Whitebeck police station. Brand
gave a gasping, incoherent account of his doings during his ten days
of hiding--the various barns and outhouses he had sheltered in--the
food he had been able to steal--the narrow escapes he had run. And every
now and then, the frenzy of his hatred for the murdered man would break
in, and he would throw out hints of the various mad schemes he had
entertained at different times for the destruction of his enemy.
But presently he ceased to talk. It was evident that his weakness was
great; he clung heavily to Boden's arm.
They reached a point where a road branched to the left. A roar of furious
water greeted their ears.
"That's t' beck unner Wanthwaite Bridge," said Brand feebly. "Wait a bit,
sir."
He sank down on a stone by the roadside. Through the trees on the left
the foaming river glimmered in the departing light. Boden bent over him,
encouraging him with the promise of shelter and food, murmuring also of
God, the help of the sinner. Suddenly the lad leapt up.
"Aye! that'll end it!--an' a good job!"
He began to run up the left-hand road. Boden pursued him, struggled with
him, but in vain. Brand threw him off, reached the bridge, mounted the
parapet, and from there flung himself headlong into the spate rushing
furiously below.
At the same moment a dog-cart driven by two young farmers appeared on the
main road of the valley. Boden's shouts reached them, and they came to
his aid. But Brand had disappeared. The river swept him down like a
withered branch; and it was many hours before the body was recovered,
half a mile from the spot where he sank.
XXII
Boden was just coming to the end of his evidence. The adjourned
inquest on Melrose, held in the large parlour of the old Whitebeck
inn, was densely crowded, and the tension of a charged moment might be
felt. Men sat gaping, their eyes wandering from the jury to the witness
or the gray-haired coroner; to young Lord Tatham sitting beside the tall
dark man who had been Mr. Melrose's agent, and was now the inheritor of
his goods; to the alert and clean-shaven face of Undershaw, listening
with the concentration of the scientific habit to the voice from the
witness-box. And through the strained attention of the room there ran the
stimulus of that gruesome new fact--the presence overhead of yet another
dead man, dragged only some twenty-four hours earlier from the swollen
waters of the river.
The murderer had been found--a comparatively simple proceeding. But, in
the finding him, the ulcer of a hideous suspicion, spread by popular
madness, and inflamed by popular hatred, had also been probed and
cleansed. As Boden's evidence progressed, building up the story of
Brand's sleuth-hound pursuit of his victim, and silently verified from
point to point by the local knowledge of the audience, the change in the
collective mind of this typical gathering of shepherds, farmers, and
small tradesmen might have been compared to the sudden coming of soft
weather into the iron tension, the black silence, of a great frost. Gales
of compunction blew; of self-interest also; and the common judgment
veered with them.
After the inevitable verdict had been recorded, a fresh jury was
empanelled, and there was a stamping of sturdy Cumbrian feet up the inn
stairs to view the pitiful remains of another human being, botched by
Nature in the flesh, no less lamentably than Melrose in the spirit. The
legal inquiry into Brand's flight and death was short and mostly formal;
but the actual evidence--as compared with current gossip--of his luckless
mother, now left sonless and husbandless, and as to the relations of the
family with Faversham, hastened the melting process in the public mind.
It showed a man in bondage indeed to a tyrant; but doing what he could to
lighten the hand of the tyrant on others; privately and ineffectively
generous; remorseful for the sins of another; and painfully aware of his
mixed responsibility.
Yet naturally there were counter currents. Andover, the old Cumbrian
squire, whose personal friction with Faversham had been sharpest, left
the inn with a much puzzled mind, but not prepared as yet to surrender
his main opinion of a young man, who after all had feathered his nest so
uncommonly well. "They may say what they d--n please," said the furious
and disappointed Nash, as he departed in company with his shabby
accomplice, the sallow-faced clerk, "but he's walked off with the dibs,
an' I suppose he thinks he'll jolly well keep 'em. The 'cutest young
scoundrel I ever came across!" which, considering the range of the
speaker's experience, was testimony indeed.
Regret, on the one hand, for a monstrous and exposed surmise; on the
other, instinctive resentment of the man's huge, unearned luck under the
will that Melrose would have revoked had he lived a few more hours, as
contrasted with the plight of Felicia Melrose; between these poles men's
minds went wavering. Colonel Barton stood at the door of the inn before
Faversham emerged for a few undecided moments, and finally walked away,
like Andover, with the irritable reflection that the grounds on which he
had originally cut the young man still largely stood; and he was not
going to kow-tow to mere money. He would go and have tea with Lady
Tatham; she was a sensible woman. Harry's behaviour seemed to him
sentimental.
Faversham, Boden, and Harry Tatham left the inn together and were joined
by Undershaw outside. They walked silently through the irregular village
street where groups stood at the cottage doors to see them pass. As they
emerged upon the high road the three others perceived that they were
alone. Faversham had disappeared.
"Where is he?" said Tatham, standing amazed and looking back. They had
gained the crest of a hill whence, beyond the roofs of Whitebeck in the
hollow, a section of the main road could be dimly seen, running west a
white streak piercing the wintry dusk. Along the white streak moved
something black--the figure of a man. Boden pointed to it.
"Where's he going?" The question fell involuntarily from Undershaw.
Boden did not reply. But as Undershaw spoke there flashed out a distant
light on the rising ground beyond the streak of road. Above it, huddled
shapes of mountains, dying fast into the darkness. They all knew it for a
light in Green Cottage; the same that Tatham had watched from the Duddon
moorland on the evening of the murder. They turned and walked on silently
toward the lower gate of Duddon.
"What's he going to do about the money?" said Undershaw abruptly.
Boden turned upon him, almost with rage.
"For heaven's sake, give him time!--it's positively indecent to rush a
man who's gone through what that man's gone through!"
Faversham pursued his way toward the swelling upland which looks south
over St. John's Vale, and north toward Skiddaw. He went, led by a
passionate impulse, sternly restrained till this moment. Led also by the
vision of her face as it had been lifted to him beside the grave of
Melrose. Since then he had never seen her. But that Boden had written to
her that morning, early, after the recovery of Brand's body, he knew.
The moon shone suddenly behind him, across the waste of Flitterdale, and
the lower meadows of St. John's Vale. It struck upon the low white house
amid its trees.
"Is Miss Penfold at home?"
The maid recognized him at once, and in her agitation almost lost her
head. As she led him in, a little figure in a white cap with streamers
fluttered across the hall.
"_Oh_, Mr. Faversham!" said a soft, breathless voice.
But Mrs. Penfold did not stop to speak to him. Gathering up her
voluminous black skirts, and her shawls that were falling off her
shoulders, she hurried upstairs. There followed a thin girl with dark
hair piled above dark eyes.
"Lydia is in the drawing-room," said Susy, with dramatic depth of voice;
and the two disappeared.
When he entered, Lydia was standing by the fire. The light of some
blazing wood, and of one small lamp, filled the pretty room with colour
and soft shadows. Among them, the slender form in its black dress, the
fair head thrown back, the outstretched hands were of a loveliness that
arrested him--almost unmanned him.
She came forward.
"You've been so long coming!"
The intonation of the words expressed the yearning of many days and
nights. They were not a reproach; rather, an exquisite revelation.
He took her hands, and slowly, irresistibly he drew her; and she came
to him. He bowed his face upon hers, and the world stood still! Through
the emotion of that supreme moment, with its mingled cup of joy and
remembered bitterness there ran for him a touch of triumph natural to
his temperament. She had asked no promise from him; reminded him of no
condition; made no reservation. There she was upon his breast. The male
pride in him was appeased. Self-respect seemed once more possible.
Hand in hand, they sat down together by the fire. He gave her an account
of the double inquest, and the result.
"When we came out," he added, calmly, "there were not quite so many ready
to lynch me as before."
Her hand trembled in his. The horror of his experience, the anguished
sympathy of hers, spoke in the slight movement, and the pressure that
answered it. Some day, but not yet, it would be possible to put it into
words.
"And I might do nothing!" she breathed.
"Nothing!" He smiled upon her, but his tone brought a shudder--the
shudder of the traveller who looks back upon the inch which has held him
from the abyss. But for Cyril Boden's adventure of the night before,
would she ever have seen him again?
"I was a long time with my solicitors this morning," he said abruptly.
"Yes?" She turned her face to his; but his morbid sense could detect in
it no sign of any special interest.
"The will was opened on the day of the funeral. It was a great surprise.
I had reason to suppose that it contained a distinct provision
invalidating all bequests to me should I propose to hand over any of the
property, or money derived from the property, to Felicia Melrose, or
her mother. But it contained nothing of the kind. The first draft of the
will was sent to his solicitors at the end of July. They put it into
form, and it was signed the day after he communicated his intentions to
me. There is no doubt whatever that he meant to insert such a clause. He
spoke of it to me and to others. I thought it was done But as a matter of
fact he never either drafted it himself, or gave final instructions for
it. His Carlisle man--Hanson--thought it was because of his horror of
death. He had put off making his will as long as possible--got it
done--and then could not bring himself to touch it again! To send for it
back--to finger and fuss with it--seemed to bring death nearer and he did
not mean to die."
He paused, shading his eyes with his hand. The visualising sense,
stimulated by the nerve strain of the preceding weeks, beheld with
ghastly clearness the face of Melrose in death, with the blood-stain on
the lips.
"And so," he resumed, "there was no short way out. By merely writing to
Miss Melrose, to offer her a fortune, it was not possible to void the
will."
He paused. The intensity of his look held her motionless.
"You remember--how I refused--when you asked me--to take any steps toward
voiding it?"
Her lips made a dumb movement of assent.
"But--at last--I took them. In the final interview I had with Melrose, he
threatened me with the cancelling of his will, unless I consented--Tatham
has told you--to sell him my uncle's gems. I refused. And so far as words
could, he there and then stripped me of his property. It is by the mere
accident of his murder at that precise moment that it has come to me. Now
then--what is to be done?"
Her hand slipped further into his. For a few minutes he seemed to be
absorbed in the silent reconstruction of past trains of thought, emerging
with a cry--though it was under his breath:
"If I took his money now--against his will--I should feel his yoke--his
hateful yoke--again, on my neck! I should be his slave still."
"You shall not take it!" she said with passion.
He smiled at her suddenly.
"It is nothing to Lydia, to be poor?"
"And free--and happy--and alive!--no, nothing!"
At that he could only draw her to him again. She herself must needs bring
him back to the point.
"You have decided?"
"I could of course refuse the succession. That would throw the whole
property into Chancery; the personalty would go to the mother and
daughter, the real estate to whatever legal heirs could be discovered.
There are same distant cousins of Lady Tatham, I believe. However--that
did not attract me at all."
He rose from his seat beside her, and stood looking down upon her.
"You'll realize?--you'll understand?--that it seems to me just--and
desirable--that I should have some voice in the distribution of this
money, this and land, rather than leave it all to the action of a court.
Everything--as things are--is legally mine. The personalty is immense;
there are about thirty thousand acres of land, here and elsewhere; and
the collections can't be worth much less than half a million. I decline
to own them; but I intend to settle what becomes of them! Nash and others
say they will dispute the will. They won't. There is no case. As to the
personalty and the land--well, well, you'll see! As to the collections--I
mean to make them, if I can, of some use to the community. And in that
effort"--he spoke slowly--"I want you to help me!"
Their eyes met; hers full of tears. She tried to speak, and could not. He
came to kneel down by her and took her in his arms.
"Did you think I had sold myself to the devil last time I was here?"
"I was so harsh!--forgive ..." she said brokenly.
"No. You called things by their right names."
There was silence till he murmured:
"Isn't it strange? I had quite given up prayer--till these last weeks. To
pray for any definite physical or material thing would seem to me now--as
it always has done--absurd. But to reach out--to the Power beyond our
weakness!"
He paused a moment and resumed:
"Boden did that for me. He came to me--at the worst. He never preached to
me. He has his black times--like the rest of us. But something upholds
him--and--oh! so strangely--I don't think he knew--through him--I too
laid hold. But for that--I might have put an end to myself--more than
once--these last weeks."
She clung to him--whispering:
"Neither of us--can ever suffer--again--without the other--to help."
They kissed once more, love and youth welling up in them, and drowning
out of sight, for the moment at least, the shapes and images of pain.
Then recovering his composure, hand fast in hand, Faversham began to talk
more calmly, drawing out for her as best he could, so that it need not be
done again--and up to the very evening of the murder--the history of the
nine months which had, so to speak, thrown his whole being into the
melting-pot, and through the fusing and bruising of an extraordinary
experience, had remade a man. She listened in a happy bewilderment. It
struck her newly--astonishingly. Her love for him had always included a
tenderly maternal, pitying element. She had felt herself the maturer
character. Sympathy for his task, flattered pleasure in her Egeria rôle,
deepening into something warmer and intenser with every letter from him
and every meeting, even when she disputed with and condemned him; love in
spite of herself; love with which conscience, taste, aspiration, all
quarrelled; but love nevertheless, the love which good women feel for the
man that is both weaker and stronger than themselves--it was so she might
have read her own past, if the high passion of this ultimate moment had
not blurred it.
But "Life at her grindstone" had been busy with Faversham, and in the
sifted and sharpened soul laid bare to her, the woman recognized her
mate indeed. Face to face with cruelty and falsehood, in others, and with
the potentialities of them in his own nature; dazzled by money and power;
and at last, delivered from the tyranny of the as though by some fierce
gaol-delivering angel, Faversham had found himself; and such a self as
could never have been reasonably prophesied for the discontented idler
who in the May meadows had first set eyes on Lydia Penfold.
He sketched for her his dream of what might be done with the treasures of
the Tower.
Through all his ugly wrestle with Melrose, with its disappointments and
humiliations, his excavator's joy in the rescue and the setting in order
of Melrose's amazing possessions had steadily grown of late, the only
pleasure of his day had come from handling, cleaning and cataloguing the
lovely forgotten things of which the house was full. These surfaces of
ivory and silver, of stucco or marble, of wood or canvas, pottery or
porcelain, on which the human mind, in love with some fraction of the
beauty interwoven with the world, had stamped an impress of itself,
sometimes exquisite, sometimes whimsical, sometimes riotous--above all,
_living_, life reaching to life, through the centuries: these, from a
refuge or an amusement, had become an abiding delight, something,
moreover, that seemed to point to a definite lifework--paid honourably by
cash as well as pleasure.
What would she think, he asked her, of a great Museum for the north--a
centre for students--none of your brick and iron monstrosities, rising
amid slums, but a beautiful house showing its beautiful possessions to
all who came; and set amid the streams and hills? And in one wing of it,
perhaps, curator's rooms--where Lydia, the dear lover of nature and art,
might reign and work--fitly housed?...
But his brow contracted before she could smile.
"Some time perhaps--some time--not now! Let's forget--for a little.
Lydia--come away with me--let's be alone. Oh, my dear!--let's be alone!"
She was in his arms again, calming the anguish that would recur--of those
nights in the Tower after the murder, when it had seemed to him that not
Brand, but himself, was the prey that a whole world was hunting, with
Hate for the huntsman.
But presently, as they clung to each other in the firelight, he roused
himself to say:
"Now, let me see your mother; and then I must go. There is much to do.
You will get a note from Lady Tatham to-night."
She looked up startled. And then it came over her, that he had never
really told her what he meant to do with Melrose's money. She had no
precise idea. Their minds jumped together, and she saw the first laugh in
his dark eyes.
"I shan't tell you! Beloved--be good and wait! But you guess already. We
meet to-morrow--at Duddon."
She asked no question. The thin mystery--for her thoughts did indeed
drive through it--pleased her; especially because it seemed to please
him.
Then Mrs. Penfold and Susy were brought down, and Mrs. Penfold sat amid
explanations and embraces, more feather-headed and inconsequent even than
usual, but happy, because Lydia caressed her, and this handsome though
pale young man on the hearthrug kissed her hand and even, at command, her
still pink cheek; and it seemed there was to be a marriage--only not the
marriage there should have been--a substitution, clearly, of Threlfall
for Duddon? Lydia would live at Threlfall; would be immensely rich; and
there would be no more bloodhounds in the park.
But when Faversham was gone, and realities began to sink into the little
lady's mind, as Lydia sitting at her feet, and holding her hand, tried to
infuse them, dejection followed. No coronet!--and now, no fortune! She
did not understand these high-stepping morals, and she went sadly to bed;
though never had Lydia been so sweet to her, so ready to brush her hair
by the fire as long as ever she chose, so full of daughterly promises.
Susy kissed her sister when they were alone, tenderly but absently.
"You're a rare case, Lydia--unique, I think. The Greeks would call you
something--I forget! I should really like to understand the psychology of
it. It might be useful."
Lydia bantered her a little--rather sorely. But the emotions of her
family would always be so much "copy" to Susy; and the fact did not in
the least prevent her being a warm-hearted, and, in her own way,
admirable little person.
Finally, Lydia turned the tables on her, by throwing an arm round her
neck, and inquiring whether Mr. Weston had not paid her a very long
call the day before. Susy quietly admitted it, and added: "But I told
him not to call again. I'm afraid--I'm bored with him. There are no
mysteries in his character--no lights and shades at all. He is too
virtuous--monotonously so. It would be of no technical advantage to me
whatever, to fall in love with him."
That evening came a note from Lady Tatham:
"MY DEAR LYDIA:
"We expect you to-morrow at 11:30. Mr. Faversham has asked that we--and
you--Cyril Boden, Doctor Undershaw, old Dixon, and Felicia (her poor
mother is _very_ ill, and we hear news to-day of the sudden death of the
old grandfather)--should meet him at that hour in Harry's library. And
afterward, you will stay to lunch? My dear, you have in this house two
warm friends who love you and long to see you. Each hour that passes
grows more thrilling than the last....
"I have been spending some time with old Mrs. Brand--and I told her I
knew you would go to her to-morrow. They have given her her dead son--and
she sits with his feet against her breast. She loved him best of all. One
thinks of Rizpah gathering the bones."
* * * * *
Next morning Tatham was in his library before eleven, making a pretence
of attending to some County Council business, but in truth restless with
expectation, and thinking of nothing but the events immediately ahead.
What was going to happen?
Faversham no doubt was going to propose some division of the Melrose
inheritance with Felicia, and some adequate provision for the mother.
Only a few weeks before this date Tatham had been in a mood to loathe the
notion that Felicia should owe a fortune, small or great, to the charity
of a greedy intruder. To-day he awaited Faversham's visit as a friend,
prepared to welcome his proposals in the spirit of a friend, to put, that
is, the best and not the worst interpretation upon them. After all, the
fortune was legally his; and if Melrose had died intestate, Felicia and
her mother would only have shared with some remote heirs with far less
claim than Faversham.
He owed this change of temper--he knew--simply to the story which
Undershaw had brought him of the last scene between Faversham and
Melrose. That final though tardy revolt had fired the young man's
feelings and drowned his wraths. In his secret mind, he left Brand's shot
uncondemned; and the knowledge that before that final _coup_ was given,
the man whom Melrose had alternately bribed and bullied had at last found
strength to turn upon him in defiance, flinging his money in his face,
had given infinite satisfaction to Harry's own hatred of a tyrant.
Faversham, even more than Brand, had avenged them all. The generous,
pugnacious youth was ready to take Faversham to his heart.
And yet, not without uneasiness, some dread of reaction in himself,
if--by chance--they were all mistaken in their man! Neither Boden, nor
Undershaw, nor he had any definite idea of the conclusions to which
Faversham had come. He had not had a word to say to them on that head;
although, during these ghastly weeks, when they had acted as buffers
between him and an enraged populace, relations of intimacy had clearly
grown up between him and Boden, and both Undershaw and Tatham had been
increasingly conscious of liking, even respect, for a much-abused man.
Oh, it was--it would be--all right! Lydia would see to it!
Lydia! What a letter that was the post had brought him--what a letter,
and what a woman! He sighed, thinking with a rueful though satiric spirit
of all those protestations of hers in the summer, as to independence,
a maiden life, and the rest. And now she confessed that, from the
beginning, it had been Faversham. Why? What had she seen in him? The
young man's vanity no less than his love had been sore smitten. But the
pain was passing. And she was, and would always be, a dear woman, to whom
he was devoted.
He had pushed aside his letters, and was pacing his library. Presently he
turned and went into a small inner room, his own particular den, where he
kept his college photographs, some stuffed and now decaying beasts,
victims of his earliest sport, and many boxes of superb toy soldiers, the
passion of his childhood. There on the wall, screened from vulgar eyes,
hung five water-colour drawings. He went to look at them--sentimentally.
Had the buying of anything in the world ever given him so much pleasure?
As he stood there, he was suddenly aware of a voice--girl's voice
overhead, singing. He turned and saw that the window was open to the mild
December air. No doubt the window on the story above was open too. It
was Felicia--and the sound ceased as suddenly as it had risen. Just a
phrase, a stormy phrase, from an Italian folk-song which he had heard
her sing to his mother. He caught the usual words--"_morte"_--"_amore."_
They were the staple of all her songs; to tell the truth he was often
bored by them. But the harsh, penetrating note--as though it were a note
of anger--in the sudden sound, arrested him; and when it became silent,
he still thought of it. It was a strange, big voice for so small a
creature.
He was glad to hear that she could sing again. Nobody imagined that she
could regret her father; but certainly the murder had sharply affected
her nerves and imagination. She had got hold of the local paper before
they could keep it from her; and for nights afterward, according to his
mother she had not been able to sleep. He himself had tried of late to
distract her. He had asked her to ride with him; he had brought her books
and flowers. To no avail. She was very short and shy with him; only
happy, apparently, with his mother, to whom her devotion was
extraordinary. To her own mother, so Lady Tatham reported, she was as
good--as gentle even--as her temperament allowed. But there was a deep
discrepancy between them.
As to Mrs. Melrose, whose life, according to the doctor, was only a
matter of weeks, possibly months, Victoria believed that the shock of her
old father's death had affected her much more acutely than the murder of
her husband. She fretted perpetually that she had left her father to
strangers, and that she could not help to lay him in his grave. Felicia
too had cried a little, but had soon consoled herself with the sensible
reflection--so it seemed to Tatham--that at least her poor old Babbo was
now out of his troubles.
His thoughts strayed on to the coming hour and Felicia's future. It
amused the young man's mere love of "eventful living" to imagine her
surprise, if what he shrewdly supposed was going to happen, did happen.
But no one could say--little incalculable thing!--how she would take it.
The handle of the door was turned, and some one entered. He looked round,
and saw Felicia. Her black dress emphasized the fairylike delicacy of her
face and hands; and something in her look--some sign of smothered misery
or revolt--touched Tatham sharply. He hurried to her, biding her good
morning, for she had not appeared at breakfast.
"And I wanted to see you before they all come. How is your mother?"
"Just the same." She allowed him but the slightest touch of her small
fingers before she turned abruptly to the row of water-colours. "Who
painted those?"
"Miss Penfold. Don't you know what a charming artist she is?"
"They are not at all well done!" said Felicia. "Amateurs have no business
to paint."
"She is not an amateur!" cried Tatham. "She--"
Then again he noticed that she was hollowed-eyed, and her lip
was twitching. Poor little girl!--in her black dress--soon to be
motherless--and with this critical moment in front of her!
He came nearer to her in the shy, courteous way that made a dissonance so
attractive with his great height and strength.
"Dear Felicia! I may, mayn't I? We're cousins. Don't be nervous--or
afraid. I think it's all coming right."
She looked at him angrily.
"I'm not nervous--not the least bit! I don't care what happens."
And holding her curly head absurdly high, she went back into the library,
which Victoria, Undershaw, and Cyril Boden had just entered. Tatham
regretted that he had not made more time to talk with her; to prepare her
mind for alternatives. It might have been wiser. But Faversham's summons
had been sudden; and his own expectations were so vague!
However, there was no time now. Lydia arrived, and she and Tatham
withdrew into the inner room for a few minutes, deep in consultation.
Felicia watched them with furious eyes. And when they came out again, a
soft flush on Lydia's cheeks, it was all that Felicia could do to prevent
herself from rushing upstairs again, leaving them to have their horrid
meeting to themselves.
But flight was barred. Faversham entered, accompanied by the senior
solicitor to the Threlfall estate and by old Dixon, shaking with
nervousness, in a black Sunday suit. Chairs had been provided. They took
their seats. Tatham cleared his own table.
"No need!" said the solicitor, a gentleman with a broad, benevolent face
slightly girdled by whiskers. "It's very short!"
And smiling, he took out of his pocket a document consisting apparently
of two sheets of square letter paper, and amid the sudden silence, he
began to read.
The first and longer sheet was done. Felicia, sitting on the edge of a
stiff chair, her small feet dangling, was staring at the lawyer. Victoria
was looking at her son bewildered. Boden wore an odd sort of smile.
Undershaw, impassive, was playing with his watch-chain. Lydia radiant and
erect, in a dress of gray-blue tweed, a veil of the same tint falling
back from the harmonious fairness of her face, had her eyes on Felicia.
There was a melting kindness in the eyes--as though the maternity deep in
the girl's nature spoke.
A deed of gift, _inter vivos_, conveying the whole personality and real
estate, recently bequeathed to Claude Faversham by Edmund Melrose,
consisting of so-and-so, and so-and-so,--a long catalogue of shares and
land which had taken some time to read--to Felicia Melrose, daughter of
the late Edmund Melrose, subject only to an annuity to her mother,
Antonetta Melrose, of £2,000 a year, to a pension for Thomas Dixon and
his wife, and various other pensions and small annuities; Henry, Earl
Tatham, and Victoria, Countess Tatham, appointed trustees, and to act as
guardians, till the said Felicia Melrose should attain the age of
twenty-four; no mention of any other person at all; the whole vast
property, precisely as it had passed from Melrose to Faversham, just
taken up and dropped in the lap of this little creature with the dangling
feet without reservation, or deduction--now that it was done, and not
merely guessed at, it showed plain for what in truth it was--one of those
acts wherein the energies of the human spirit, working behind the
material veil, swing for a moment into view, arresting and stunning the
spectator.
"But the collections!" said Tatham, remembering them almost with relief,
speaking in his mother's ear; "what about the collections?"
"We come now to the second part of the deed of gift," said the silvery
voice of the lawyer. And again the astounded circle set itself to listen.
"The collections of works of art now contained in Threlfall Tower, I
also convey in full property and immediate possession to the said Felicia
Melrose, but on the following conditions:
"Threlfall Tower, or such portions of it as may be necessary, to be
maintained permanently as a museum in which to house the said collection:
a proper museum staff to be appointed; a sum of money, to be agreed upon
between Claude Faversham and Felicia Melrose, to be set aside for the
maintenance of the building, the expenses of installation, and the
endowment of the staff; and a set of rooms in the west wing to be
appropriated to the private residence of a curator, who is to be
appointed, after the first curatorship, by--"
Certain public officials were named, and a few other stipulations made.
Then with a couple of legal phrases and a witnessed signature, the second
sheet came to an end.
There was a silence that could be heard. In the midst of it Faversham
rose. He was agitated and a little incoherent.
"The rest of what has to be said is not a formal matter. If Miss
Melrose, or her guardians, choose to make me the first Curator of the
Threlfall Tower Museum, I am willing to accept that office at their
hands, and--after, perhaps, a year--I should like to occupy the rooms
I have mentioned in the west wing--with the lady who has now promised to
be my wife. I know perhaps better than any one else what the house
contains; and I could spend, if not my life, at any rate a term of years,
in making the Tower a palace of art, a centre of design, of training, of
suggestion--a House Beautiful, indeed, for the whole north of England.
And my promised wife says she will help me."
He looked at Lydia. She put her hand in his. The sight of most people in
the room had grown dim.
But Felicia had jumped up.
"I don't want it all! I won't have it all!" she said in a passionate
excitement. "My father hated me. I told him I would never take his money.
Why didn't you tell me--why didn't you warn me?" She turned to Tatham,
her little body shaking, and her face threatening tears.
"Why should Mr. Faversham do such a thing? Don't let him!--don't let him!
And I ought--I ought--to have been told!"
Faversham and Lydia approached her. But suddenly; putting her hands to
her face, she ran to the French window of the library, opened it, and
rushed into the garden.
Tatham and his mother looked at each other aghast.
"Run after her!" said Victoria in his ear. "Take this shawl!" She handed
him a wrap she had brought in upon her arm.
"Yes--it's December," said Boden, smiling, to Lady Tatham; "but
perhaps"--the accent was ironical--"when she comes back the seasons
will have changed!"
The session broke up in excited conversation, of which Faversham was the
centre.
"This is final?" said Undershaw, eying him keenly. "You intend to stand
by it?"
"'Fierce work it were to do again!'" said Faversham, in a quotation
recognized by Undershaw, who generally went to bed with a scientific book
on one side of him, and a volume of modern poets on the other. Faversham
was now radiant. He stood with his arm round Lydia. Victoria had her
hand.
* * * * *
Meanwhile in the Italian garden and through the yew hedges, Daphne fled,
and Apollo pursued. At last he caught her, and she sank upon a garden
seat. He put the shawl round her, and stood with his hands in his pockets
surveying her.
"What was the matter, Felicia?" he asked her, gently.
"It is ridiculous!" she said, sobbing. "Why wasn't I asked? I don't want
a guardian! I won't have you for a guardian!" And she beat her foot
angrily on the paved path.
Tatham laughed.
"You'll have to go back and behave nicely, Felicia. Haven't you any
thanks for Faversham?"
"I never asked him to do it! How can I look after all that! It'll kill
me. I want to sing! I want to go on the stage!"
He sat down beside her. Her dark head covered with its silky curls, her
very black eyes and arched brows in her small pink face, the pointed
chin, and tiny mouth, made a very winning figure of her, as she sat
there, under a garden vase, and an overhanging yew. And that, although
the shawl was huddled round her shoulders, and the eyes were red with
tears.
"You will be able to do anything you like, Felicia. You will be terribly
rich."
She gazed at him, the storm in her breast subsiding a little.
"How rich?" she asked him, pouting.
He tried to give her some idea. She sighed. "It's dreadful! What shall I
do with it all!"
Then as her eyes still searched him, he saw them change--first to
soft--then wild. Her colour flamed. She moved farther from him, and tried
to put on a businesslike air.
"I want to ask a question."
"Ask it."
"Am I--am I as rich as any girl you would be likely to marry?"
"What an odd question! Do you think I want money?"
"I know you don't!" she said, with a wail. "That's what's so horrid! Why
can't you all leave me alone?"
Then recovering herself fiercely, she began again:
"In my country--in Italy--when two people are about equally rich--a man
and a girl--their relations go and talk to each other. They say, 'Will it
suit you?'--the man has so much--the girl has so much--they like each
other--and--wouldn't it do very well!"
She sprang up. Tatham had flushed. He looked at her in speechless
amazement. She stood opposite him, making herself as tall as she could,
her hands behind her.
"Lord Tatham--my mother is ill--my father is dead. You're not my guardian
yet--and I don't think I'll ever let you be! So there's nobody but me to
do it. I'm sorry--I know it's not quite right, quite--quite English.
Well, any way! Lord Tatham, you say I have a _dot_! So that's all right.
There's my hand. Will you marry me?"
She held it out. All her excitement had gone, and her colour. She was
very pale, and quite calm.
"My dear Felicia!" cried Tatham, in agitation, taking the hand, "what a
position to put your guardian in! You are a great heiress. I can't run
off with you like this--before you've had any other chances--before
you've seen anybody else."
"If you don't, I won't take a farthing! What good would it be to me!"
She came closer, and put her little hands on his shoulders as he sat--the
centre of one of those sudden tumults of sense and spirit that sweep a
strong man from his feet.
"Oh, won't you take care of me? I love you so!"
It was a cry of Nature. Tatham gave a great gulp, put out his arms, and
caught her. There she was on the bench beside him, laughing and sobbing,
gathered against his heart.
The cheerful December day shone upon them: a robin sang in the yew tree
overhead....
Meanwhile the library was still full. Nobody had yet left it; and
instinctively everybody was watching the French window.
Two figures appeared there, Felicia in front. She came in, her eyes cast
down, a bright spot on either cheek. And while every one in the room held
their breath she crossed the floor and paused in front of Faversham.
"Mr. Faversham, I ask your pardon, that I was so rude. I--" A sob rose
in her throat, and she stopped a moment to control it. "Till the other
day--I was just a poor girl--who never had a _lira_ to spend. All that we
ate--my mother and I--we had to work for. And now--you have made me rich.
It's--it's very wonderful. I only wish"--the sob rose again--"just that
last time--my father had been kind to me. I thank you with all my heart.
But I can't take it all, you know--I _can't!_"
She looked at him appealing--almost threatening. Faversham smiled at her.
"That doesn't lie with you! One of your trustees has already signed the
deed--here comes the other." He pointed to Tatham.
"But he isn't my trustee!" insisted Felicia, the tears brimming over;
"he's--"
Tatham came up to her, and gravely took her hand.
Felicia looked at him, then at Victoria, then at the circle of amazed
faces. With a low cry of "Mother" she turned and fled from the room,
drawing Lady Tatham with her.
A little while later, Lydia, the lawyers and Faversham having departed,
found herself alone a moment in the library. In the tumult of happy
excitement which possessed her, she could not sit still. Without any
clear notion of where she was going, she wandered through the open door
into the farther room. There, with a start, and a flush, she recognized
her own drawings--five of them--in a row. So here, all the time, was her
unknown friend; and she had never guessed!
At a sound in the room behind, she turned, hoping it was Lady Tatham who
had come back to her. But she saw that it was Tatham himself. He came
into the little room, and stood silently beside her, as though wanting
her to speak first. With deep emotion she held out her hand, and wished
him joy; her gesture, her eyes, all tenderness.
"She is so lovely--so touching! She will win everybody's heart!"
He looked down upon her oddly, like some one oppressed by feelings and
thoughts beyond his own unravelling.
"She has been very unhappy," he said simply. "I think I can take care of
her."
Lydia looked at him anxiously. A sudden slight darkening seemed to
come into the day; and for one terrified moment she seemed to see
Tatham--dear, generous youth!--as the truly tragic figure in their
high mingled comedy.
Not Melrose--but Tatham! Then, swiftly, the cloud passed, and she laughed
at herself.
"Take care of her! You will be the happiest people in the world--save
two!"
He let her talk to him, the inner agitation whatever it was,
disappearing. She soothed, she steadied him. Now, at last, they were to
be true friends--comrades in the tasks and difficulties of life. Without
words, her heart promised it--to him and Felicia.
As they left the room, she pointed, smiling, to the drawings.
"So you were the elderly solicitor, with a taste for art, I used to see
in my dreams!"
His eyes lit up boyishly.
"I had to keep them here, for fear you'd find out. Now, we'll hang them
properly."
It was Victoria who broke the news to Netta Melrose. She, a little wasted
ghost among her pillows, received it calmly; yet with a certain
bitterness mingled in the calm. What did the money matter to her? And
what had she to do with this English world, and this young lord Felicia
was to marry? Far within, she hungered, on the threshold of death, as she
had hungered twenty years before, for the Italian sun, and the old
Italian streets, with the deep eaves and the sculptured doorways, and the
smells of leather and macaroni. Her father had loved them, and she had
loved her father; all the more passionately the more the world disowned
him. She sat in spirit beside his crushed and miserable old age, finding
her only comfort in the memory of how his feeble hands had clung to her,
how she had worked and starved for him.
Yet, when Felicia came to her, she cried and blessed her. And Felicia,
softened by happiness, knelt down beside her, and begged and prayed her
to get well. To please them all, Netta made her nurse do her hair, and
put on a white jacket which Victoria had embroidered for her. And when
Tatham came in to see her, she would have timidly kissed his hand had he
not been so quick to see and prevent her.
Meanwhile Victoria, still conscious of the clinging of Felicia's arms
about her, was comparing--secretly and inevitably--the daughter-in-law
that might have been, with the daughter-in-law that was to be. Now
that Fate's throw was irrevocably made, she found herself appreciating
Lydia as she had never done while the chances were still open. Lydia
had refused her Harry; Felicia had captured him. Perhaps she resented
both actions; and would always--secretly--resent them. But yet, in
Lydia--Lydia with her early maturity, her sweet poise and strength of
nature, she foresaw the companion; in Felicia, the child and darling of
her old age. And looking round on this crooked world, she acknowledged,
now as always, that she had got more than she deserved, more--much
more--than her share.
A conviction that Cyril Boden did his best to sharpen in her. With the
invincible optimism of his kind, he scoffed at the misgivings which she
confided to him, and to him only, on the score of Felicia's lack of
training, her touchy and passionate temper, and the little unscrupulous
ways that offended a fastidious observer.
"What does it matter?" he said to her--"she is in love--head over ears.
You and he can make of her what you like. She will beat him if he looks
at anybody else; but she will have ten children, and never have a thought
or an interest that isn't his. And as to the money--"
"Yes--the money!" said Victoria, dejectedly. "What on earth will they do
with it all? Harry is so rich already."
"Do with it!" Boden turned upon her. "Grow a few ideas in your landlord
garden! Turn the ground of it--enrich it--change it--try experiments!
How long will this England leave the land to you landowners, unless you
bring some mind to it--aye, and the best of your _souls_! you--the
nation's servants! Here is a great tract left desolate by one man's
wickedness. Restore the waste places--build--people--teach! Heavens,
what a chance!" His eyes kindled. "And when Faversham and Lydia come
back--yoke them in too. Curator!--stuff! If he won't own that estate,
make him govern it, and play the man. Disinterested power!--with such a
wife--and such a friend! Could a man ask better of the gods! Now is your
moment. Rural England turns to you, its natural leaders, to shape it
afresh. Shirk--refuse--at your peril!"