THE MATING OF LYDIA
by
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
1913
TO R. J. S.
BOOK I
I
"Aye, it's a bit dampish," said Dixon, as he brought a couple more logsto replenish a fire that seemed to have no heart for burning.
The absurd moderation of the statement irritated the person to whom itwas addressed.
"What I'm thinkin'"--said Mrs. Dixon, impatiently, as she moved to thewindow--"is that they'll mappen not get here at all! The watter'll beover t' road by Grier's mill. And yo' know varra well, it may be runnin'too fasst to get t' horses through--an' they'd be three pussons inside,an' luggage at top."
"Aye, they may have to goa back to Pengarth--that's varra possible."
"An' all t' dinner spoilin', an' t' fires wastin'--for nowt." The speakerstood peering discontentedly into the gloom without: "But you'll nottrouble yoursen, Tammas, I daursay."
"Well, I'm not Godamighty to mak' t' rain gie over," was the man'scheerful reply, as he took the bellows to the damp wood which lay feeblycrackling and fizzing on the wide hearth. His exertions produced aspasmodic flame, which sent flickering tongues of light through the widespaces and shadows of the hall. Otherwise the deepening gloom of theOctober evening was lightened only by the rays of one feebly burning lampstanding apparently in a corridor or gallery just visible beyond a richlypillared archway which led from the hall to the interior of the house.Through this archway could be seen the dim ascending lines of a greatdouble staircase; while here and there a white carved doorway or corniceglimmered from the darkness.
A stately Georgian house, built in a rich classical style, and datingfrom 1740: so a trained eye would have interpreted the architectural anddecorative features faintly disclosed by lamp and fire. But the house andits contents--the house and its condition--were strangely at war.Everywhere the seemly lines and lovely ornament due to its originalbuilders were spoilt or obliterated by the sordid confusion to which somemodern owner had brought it. It was not a house apparently, so far as itspresent use went, but a warehouse. There was properly speaking nofurniture in it; only a multitude of packing-cases, boxes of all shapesand sizes, piled upon or leaning against each other. The hall was chokedwith them, so that only a gangway a couple of yards wide was left,connecting the entrance door with the gallery and staircase. And any onestepping into the gallery, which with its high arched roof ran the wholelength of the old house, would have seen it also disfigured in the sameway. The huge deal cases stood on bare boards; the splendid staircase wascarpetless. Nothing indeed could have been more repellant than thegeneral aspect, the squalid disarray of Threlfall Tower, as seen from theinside, on this dreary evening.
The fact impressed itself on Mrs. Dixon as she turned back from thewindow toward her husband.
She looked round her sulkily.
"Well, I've done my best, Tammas, and I daursay yo' have too. But it'snot a place to bring a leddy to--an' that's the truth."
"Foaks mun please theirsels," said Dixon with the same studied mildnessas before. Then, having at last made the logs burn, as he hoped, withsome brightness, he proceeded to sweep up the wide stone hearth. "Is t'rooms upstairs finished?"
"Aye--hours ago." His wife dropped with a weary gesture upon a chair nearthe fire. "Tammas, yo' know it's a queer thing awthegither! What are theycoomin' here for at all?"
"Well, master's coom into t' property, an' I'm thinkin' it's nobbut hisdooty to coom an' see it. It's two year sen he came into 't; an' he'sdone nowt but tak' t' rents, an' turn off men, an' clutter up t' housewi' boxes, iver sense. It's time, I'm thinkin', as he did coom an' lukeinto things a bit."
Thomas rose from his knees, and stood warming himself at the fire, whilehe looked pensively round him. He was as tired as his wife, and quite asmistrustful of what might be before them; but he was not going to confessit. He was a lean and gaunt fellow, blue-eyed and broad-shouldered, of aCumbria type commonly held to be of Scandinavian origin. His eye was alittle wandering and absent, and the ragged gray whiskers whichsurrounded his countenance emphasized the slight incoherence of itsexpression. Quiet he was and looked. But his wife knew him for one ofthe most incurably obstinate of men; the inveterate critic moreover ofeverything and every one about him, beginning with herself. This trait ofhis led her unconsciously to throw most of her remarks to him into theform of questions, as offering less target to criticism than other formsof statement. As for instance:
"Tammas, did yo' hear me say what I'd gotten from Mr. Tyson?"
"Aye."
"That the mistress was an Eye-talian."
"Aye--by the mother--an' popish, besides."
Mrs. Dixon sighed.
"How far 'ull it be to t' chapel at Scargill Fell?"
"Nine mile. She'll not be for takkin' much notice of her Sunday dootiesI'm thinkin'."
"An' yo' unnerstan' she'll be juist a yoong thing? An't' baby only juistwalkin'."
Dixon nodded. Suddenly there was a sound in the corridor--a girl's laugh,and a rush of feet. Thomas started slightly, and his wife observed him assharply as the dim light permitted.
"Thyrza!" she raised her voice peremptorily. "What are you doing there?"
Another laugh, and the girl from whom it came ran forward into thelamp-light, threading her way through the packing-cases, and followed bya small fox-terrier who was jumping round her.
"Doin'? There's nowt more to do as I know on. An' I'm most droppin'."
So saying the girl jumped lightly on one of the larger packing-cases andsat there, her feet dangling.
Mrs. Dixon looked at her with disapproval, but held her tongue. Thyrzawas not strictly her underling, though she was helping in the housework.She was the daughter of the small farmer who had been for years thetenant of part of the old house, and had only just been evicted inpreparation for the return of the owner of the property with his foreignwife. If Thyrza were too much scolded she would take her ways home, and,as her parents spoilt her, she would not be coerced into returning. Andhow another "day-girl" was to be found in that remote place, where,beyond the farm, a small house belonging to the agent, and a couple ofcottages, the nearest house to the Tower was at least three miles away,Mrs. Dixon did not know.
"My word! what a night!" said Thyrza with another laugh a little stifledby the sweets she had just transferred from her pocket to her mouth."They'll be drowned oot afore they get here."
As she spoke, a wild gust flung itself over the house, as though tryingits strength against the doors and windows, and the rain swished againstthe panes.
"Are t' fires upstairs burnin' reet?" asked Mrs. Dixon severely. She hadalready told Thyrza half a dozen times that day that such a greed forsweet things as she displayed would ruin her digestion and her teeth; andit ruffled a dictatorial temper to be taken no more notice of than if shewere a duck quacking in the farmyard.
"Aye, they're burnin'," said Thyrza, with a shrug. Then she looked roundher with a toss of her decidedly graceful head. "But it's a creepy oldplace howivver. I'd not live here if I was paid. What does Muster Melrosewant wi' coomin' here? He's got lots o' money, Mr. Tyson says. He'llnivver stay. What was the use o' turnin' father out, an' makkin' a lot o'trouble?"
"This house is not a farmin' house," said Dixon slowly, surveyingthe girl, as she sat on the packing-case swinging her feet, herstraw-coloured hair and pink cotton dress making a spot of pleasantcolour in the darkness as the lamp-light fell on them. "It's a house fort' gentry."
"Well, then, t' gentry might clean it up an' put decent furnishin's into't," said Thyrza defiantly. "Not a bit o' paperin' doon anywhere--juisttwo three rooms colour-washed, as yo' med do 'em at t' workhouse. An'that big hole in t' dinin'-room ceilin', juist as 'twas--and such shabbys
ticks o' things upstairs an' down as I nivver see! I'll have a goodsight better when _I_ get married, I know!"
Contempt ran sharply through the girl's tone.
As she ceased speaking a step was heard in the corridor. Thyrza leapt tothe ground, Mrs. Dixon picked up her brush and duster, and Dixon resumedhis tending of the fire.
A man in a dripping overcoat and leggings pushed his way rapidly throughthe cases, looking round him with an air of worried authority.
"I don't call that much of a fire, Dixon."
"I've been at it, sir, for near an hour."
"You've got some damp wood. What about the drawing-room?"
He threw open a door on the right. The others followed him in.
The open door revealed a room of singular architectural charm; an ovalroom panelled in dark oak, with a stucco ceiling, in free Italianatedesign. But within its stately and harmonious walls a single oil lamp, ofthe cheapest and commonest pattern, emitting a strong smell of paraffin,threw its light upon furniture, quite new, that most seaside lodgingswould have disdained; viz., a cheap carpet of a sickly brown, leavingedges of bare boards between itself and the wainscot; an ugly "suite"covered with crimson rep, such as only a third-rate shop in a smallprovincial town could have provided; with a couple of tables, and a"chiffonier," of the kind that is hawked on barrows in an East Endstreet.
Mr. Tyson looked at the room uneasily. He had done his best with theridiculous sum provided; but of course it was all wrong.
He passed on silently through a door in the wainscoting of thedrawing-room. The others again followed, Thyrza's mouth twitching withlaughter.
Another large room, almost dark, with a few guttering candles on thetable. Mrs. Dixon went hastily to the fire and stirred it up. Then adining-table spread for supper was seen, and a few chairs. Everythinghere was as cheap and nasty as in the drawing-room, including the chinaand glass on the table.
Thyrza pointed to the ceiling.
"That's a pity howivver!" she said. "Yo' might ha' had it mended up abit, Mr. Tyson. Why t' rats will be coomin' through!"
She spoke with the pert assurance of a pretty girl who is only playingthe servant "to oblige." The agent looked irritably at the ugly gap inthe fine tracing overhead, and then at Thyrza.
"Mind your own business, please, Miss Thyrza!" And he walked quickly ontoward a farther door.
Thyrza flushed, and made a face at him as he turned his back. The Dixonsfollowed the agent into the next room, Mrs. Dixon throwing behind her aninjunction to Thyrza to run upstairs and give a last look to thebedrooms.
"Why isn't there a light here?" said the agent impatiently. He struck onefrom some matches in his pocket, and Mrs. Dixon hastily brought a candlefrom a huge writing-table standing in the middle of the floor.
Except for that writing-table, and some fine eighteenth-centurybookcases, brass-latticed, which ran round the walls, fitting their everyline and moulding with delicate precision, the room was entirely empty.Moreover, the bookcases did not hold a single book, and the writing-tablewas bare. But for any person of taste, looking round him in the light ofthe candle which Mrs. Dixon held, the room was furnished. All kinds ofhuman and civilized suggestion breathed from the table and the bookcases.The contriving mind, with all its happy arts for the cheating andadorning of life, was to be felt.
Mr. Tyson took it differently.
"Look here!"--he said peremptorily to Mrs. Dixon--"you mind what you'redoing with that table. It's worth a mint of money."
The Dixons looked at it curiously, but coldly. To them it was nothing buta writing-table with drawers made out of a highly polished outlandishwood, with little devices of gilt rails, and drawer-furnishings, and tinyfigures, and little bits of china "let in," which might easily catch aduster, thought Mrs. Dixon, and "mak' trooble." That it had belonged to aFrench dramatist under Louis Quinze, and then to a French Queen; that theplaques were Sevres, and the table as a whole beyond the purse of any buta South African or American man of money, was of course nothing to her.
"It bets me," said Dixon, in the tone of one making conversation, "whyMuster Melrose didn't gie us orders to unpack soom more o' them cases.Summat like thatten"--he pointed to the table--"wud ha' lukit fine i'the drawin'-room."
Tyson made no reply. He was a young man of strong will and taciturnhabit; and he fully realized that if he once began discussing with Dixonthe various orders received from Mr. Edmund Melrose with regard to hishome-coming, during the preceding weeks, the position that he, Tyson,intended to maintain with regard to that gentleman would not be made anyeasier. If you happened by mischance to have accepted an appointment toserve and represent a lunatic, and you discovered that you had done so,there were only two things to do, either to hold on, or "to chuck it."But George Tyson, whose father and grandfather had been small land agentsbefore him, of the silent, honest, tenacious Cumbria sort, belonged toa stock which had never resigned anything, till at least the next stepwas clear; and the young man had no intention whatever of "chucking it."But to hold on certainly meant patience, and as few words as might be.
So he only stopped to give one more anxious look round the table to seethat no scratches had befallen it in the process of unpacking, gaveorders to Mrs. Dixon to light yet another fire in the room, which struckexceedingly chill, and then left them for a final tour round theground-floor, heaping on coals everywhere with a generous hand. On thispoint alone--the point of warmth--had Mr. Melrose's letters shown adisposition to part with money, in ordinary domestic way. "The odiousnessof your English climate is only matched by the absurdity of your Englishgrates," he had written, urbanely, from Paris. "Get the house up tosixty, if you can. And get a man over from Carlisle to put in a furnace.I can see him the day after we arrive. My wife is Italian, and shiversalready at the thought of Cumbria."
Sixty indeed! In this dank rain from the northeast, and on this highground, not a passage in the house could be got above forty-six; and thesitting-rooms were alternately stifling and vaultlike.
"Well, I didn't build the house!" thought the agent with a quietexasperation in his mind, the result of much correspondence; and havingcompleted his tour of inspection, which included the modest supper nowcooking according to Mr. Melrose's orders--Mrs. Melrose had had nothingto do with it--in the vast and distant kitchen, the young man hung up hiswet overcoat, sat himself down by the hall fire, drew a newspaper fromhis pocket, and deliberately applied himself to it, till the carriageshould arrive.
Meanwhile through the rain and wind outside, the expected owner ofThrelfall Tower and his wife and child were being driven through theendless and intricate lanes which divided the main road between Keswickand Pengarth from the Tower.
The carriage contained Mr. Melrose, Mrs. Melrose, their infant daughteraged sixteen months, and her Italian nurse, Anastasia Doni.
There was still some gray light left, but the little lady who satdismally on her husband's right, occasionally peering through the window,could make nothing of the landscape, because of the driving scuds of rainwhich drenched the carriage windows, as though in their mad charges fromthe trailing clouds in front, they disputed every inch of the miry waywith the newcomers. From the wet ground itself there seemed to rise alivid storm-light, reflecting the last gleams of day, and showing thedreary road winding ahead, dim and snakelike through intermittent trees.
"Edmund!" said the lady suddenly, in a high thin voice, as though thewords burst from her--"If the water by that mill they talked about isreally over the road, I shall get out at once!"
"What?--into it?" The gentleman beside her laughed. "I don't remember, mydear, that swimming is one of your accomplishments. Do you propose tohang the baby round your neck?"
"Of course I should take her too! I won't run any risks at all with her!It would be simply wicked to take such a small child into danger." Butthere was a fretful desperation in the tone, as of one long accustomed toprotest in vain.
Mr. Melrose laughed once more--carelessly, as though it were not worthwhile to dispute th
e matter; and the carriage went on--battling, as itseemed, with the storm.
"I never saw such an _awful_ place in my life!" said the wife's voiceagain--with the same note of explosion--after an interval. "It'shorrible--just _horrible_! All the way from Pengarth we've hardly seen ahouse, or a light!--and we've been driving nearly an hour. You don'texpect me to _live_ here, Edmund!" The tone was hysterical.
"Don't be a fool, Netta! Doesn't it ever rain in your infernal country,eh? This is my property, my dear, worse luck! I regret it--but here weare. Threlfall has got to be my home--so I suppose it'll be yours too."
"You could let or sell it, Edmund!--you know you could--if you cared afarthing about making me happy."
"I have every reason to think it will suit me perfectly--and you too."
The tone of the man which, hitherto, though mocking had been in the mainindulgent, had suddenly, harshly, changed. The wife dropped into thecorner of the carriage among her furs and wraps, and said no more.
In another quarter of an hour the carriage turned a corner of the road,and came upon a tall building, of which the high irregular outline wasjust visible through the growing darkness. In front of it stood a groupof men with lanterns, and the carriage stopped beside them.
A noise of tongues arose, and Mr. Melrose let down the window.
"Is this where the road is flooded?" he asked of a stout man in a whitishcoat and cap who had come forward to speak to the coachman.
"Aye, sir--but you'll get through. In an hour's time, mebbe ye couldn'tdo it. The water fro' the mill-race is over t' road, but it's nobbut afoot deep as yet. Yo'll do it varra well--but yo'd best not lose time!"
"Edmund!"--screamed the voice from inside--"Edmund!--let me out--let meout at once--I shall stay here with baby for the night."
Mr. Melrose took no notice whatever.
"Can you send those men of yours alongside us--in case there is anydanger of the coachman losing the road?" he said, addressing the man.
"Aye, they'll keep along t' bank with the lanterns. Noa fear, missis, noafear!"
Another scream from inside. Mr. Melrose shut the window abruptly, and thecoachman whipped up his horses.
"Let me get out, Edmund!--I will _not_ go on!"
Melrose brought a hand of iron down on his wife's wrist.
"Be quiet, Netta! Of all the little idiots!--There now, the brat'sbegun!"--for the poor babe, awakened, had set up a wail. "Damn it!"--heturned fiercely to the nurse--"Keep it quiet, will you?"
On swayed the carriage, the water splashing against the wheels. Carriedby the two labourers who walked along a high bank beside the road, acouple of lanterns threw their wavering light on the flooded highway,the dripping, wind-lashed trees, the steaming horses. The yellow raysshowed the whirling eddies of autumnal leaves, and found fantasticreflection in the turbid water through which the horses were struggling.Presently--after half a mile or so--a roar on the right hand. Mrs.Melrose screamed again, only to be once more savagely silenced by herhusband. It was the roar of the mill-race approaching the weir, overwhich it was rushing in sheets of foam. The swollen river, a thunderouswhiteness beside the road, seemed every moment as if it must breakthrough the raised bank, and sweep carriage and horses into its own abyssof fury. Mrs. Melrose was now too terrified to cry out. She satmotionless and quivering, her baby on her lap, her white pointed face andstraining eyes touched every now and then by a ghostly gleam from thelanterns. Beside her--whispering occasional words in Italian to hermistress--sat the Italian nurse, pale too, but motionless, a woman fromthe Campagna, of a Roman port and dignity, who would have scorned to givethe master whom she detested any excuse for dubbing her a weakling.
But the horses pulled bravely, the noise and the flood were left behind,and a bit of ascending road brought the travellers on to dry land again.
The carriage stopped. The two labourers who had guided them approachedthe window, which Melrose had let down.
"Yo'll do now!" they shouted with cheerful faces. "You've nobbut to dobut keep straight on, an' yo'll be at t' Tower in a coople o' miles."
"Thank you, my men, thank you. Here's a drink for you," said Melrose,stretching out his hand.
The foremost labourer took the coin and held it to the lantern. He burstinto rough laughter.
"Saxpence! My word, Jim!--here's a gentleman wot's free wi' his muny.Saxpence! Two men--and two lanterns--fur t' best part of a mile! We'regoin' cheap to-night, Jim. Gude meet to yer, sir, an' next time yo'may droon for me!"
"Saxpence!" The lad behind also applied his lantern to the coin. "Gie itme, Bob!" And raising it with a scornful gesture he flung it into theriver. Then standing still, with their hands on their hips, the lightfrom the lanterns on the ground breaking over their ruddy rain-washedfaces, they poured out a stream of jeers in broad Cumbrian, from whichthe coachman, angrily urged on by Melrose, escaped as quickly as hecould.
"Insolent boors!" said Melrose as men and flood disappeared from view."What did we want with them after all? It was only a device for bleedingus."
Mrs. Melrose awoke from her trance of terror with a quavering breath. Shedid not understand what had passed, nor a word of what the labourers hadsaid; and in her belief over the peril escaped, and her utter fatigue,she gave the child to Anastasia, lay back, and closed her eyes. A suddenand blessed sleep fell upon her for a few minutes; from which she wasroused all too soon by grating wheels and strange voices.
"Here we are, Netta--look alive!" said Melrose. "Put something round thechild, Anastasia. We have to walk through this court. No getting up tothe door. Find some umbrellas!"
The two women and the child descended. From the open house-door figurescame hurrying down a flagged path, through an untidy kitchen garden, tothe gate in a low outer wall in front of which the carriage had drawn up.
Netta Melrose grasped the nurse's arm, and spoke in wailing Italian, asshe held an umbrella over the child.
"What a place, Anastasia!--what a place! It looks like a prison! I shalldie here--I know I shall!"
Her terrified gaze swept over the old red sandstone house rising dark andgrim against the storm, and over the tangled thickets of garden dank withrain.
But the next moment she was seized by the strong hands of Mrs. Dixon andThyrza, who half led, half carried, her into the hall of the Tower, whileDixon and young Tyson did the same for the nurse and baby.
* * * * *
"A very interesting old place, built by some man with a real fine taste!As far as I can see, it will hold my collections very well."
The new owner of Threlfall Tower was standing in the drawing-room withhis back to the fire, alternately looking about him with an eagercuriosity, and rubbing his hands in what appeared to be satisfaction. Theagent surveyed him.
Edmund Melrose at that moment--some thirty years ago--was a tall andremarkably handsome man of fifty, with fine aquiline features deeplygrooved and cut, a delicate nostril, and a domed forehead over which fellthick locks of black hair. He looked what he was--a man of wealth andfamily, spoilt by long years of wandering and irresponsible living,during which an inherited eccentricity and impatience of restraint haddeveloped into traits and manners which seemed as natural to himself asthey were monstrous in the sight of others. He had so far treated theagent with the scantest civility during their progress through the house;and Tyson's northern blood had boiled more than once.
But the inspection of the house had apparently put its owner in a goodtemper, and he seemed to be now more genially inclined. He lit acigarette and offered Tyson one. Upstairs the child could be heardwailing. Its mother and nurse were no doubt ministering to it. Mrs.Melrose, so far as Tyson had observed her arrival, had cast hasty andshivering looks round the comfortlessness of the hall and drawing-room;had demanded loudly that some of the cases encumbering the hall andpassages should be removed or unpacked at once, and had then bade Mrs.Dixon take her and the child to their rooms, declaring that she wasnearly dead and would sup upstairs and go to bed. She seeme
d to Tyson tobe a rather pretty woman, very small and dark, with a peevish, excitablemanner; and it was evident that her husband paid her little or noattention.
"I can't altogether admire your taste in carpets, Tyson," said Melrose,presently, with a patronizing smile, his eyes fastening on themonstrosity in front of him.
The young man flushed.
"Your cheque, sir, was not a big one, and I had to make it go a long way.It was no good trying the expensive shops."
"Oh, well!--I daresay Mrs. Melrose can put up with it. And what aboutthat sofa?" The speaker tried it--"Hm--not exactly Sybaritic--but veryfair, very fair! Mrs. Melrose will get used to it."
"Mrs. Melrose, sir, I fear, will find this place a bit lonesome, and outof the way."
"Well, it is not exactly Piccadilly," laughed Melrose. "But a woman thathas her child is provided for. How can she be dull? I ask you"--herepeated in a louder and rather hectoring voice--"how can she possibly bedull?"
Tyson murmured something inaudible, adding to it--"And you, sir? Are youa sportsman?"
Melrose threw up his hands contemptuously. "The usual British question!What barbarians we are! It may no doubt seem to you extraordinary--but Ireally never want to kill anything--except sometimes, perhaps,--a dealer.My amusements"--he pointed to two large cases at the end of theroom--"are pursued indoors."
"You will arrange your collections?"
"Perhaps, yes--perhaps, no. When I want something to do, I may beginunpacking. But I shall be in no hurry. Any way it would take me months."
"Is it mostly furniture you have sent home, sir?"
"Oh, Lord, no! Clocks, watches, ironwork, china, stuffs,brasses--something of everything. A few pictures--no great shakes--asyet. But some day I may begin to buy them in earnest. Meanwhile,Tyson--_economy_!"--he lifted a monitory finger. "All my income isrequired--let me inform you at once--for what is my hobby--my passion--mymania, if you like--the collecting of works of art. I have graduallyreduced my personal expenditures to a minimum, and it must be the samewith this estate. No useless outlay of any kind. Every sixpence will beimportant to me."
"Some of the cottages are in a very bad state, Mr. Melrose."
"Paradises, I'll be bound, compared to some of the places I have beenliving among, in Italy. Don't encourage people to complain; that's thegreat point. Encourage them, my dear sir, to make the best of things--totake life _cheerfully_."
Certain cottages on the estate presented themselves to the agent's mind.He lifted his eyebrows imperceptibly, and let the subject drop, inquiringinstead whether his employer meant to reside at the Tower during thewhole or the greater part of the year.
Melrose smiled. "I shall always spend the winterhere--arranging--cataloguing--writing." Again the cigarette, held in verylong, thin fingers, described a wide semicircle in the dim light, asthough to indicate the largeness of the speaker's thoughts. "But in Marchor April, I take flight from here--I return to the chase. To use ahunting metaphor, in the summer I kill--and store. In the winter Iconsume--ruminate--chew the cud. Do you follow my metaphor?"
"Not precisely," said Tyson, looking at him with a quiet antagonism. "Isuppose you mean you buy things and send them home?"
Melrose nodded. "Every dealer in Europe knows me by now--and expectsme. They put aside their best things for me. And I prefer to hunt insummer--even in the hot countries. Heat has no terror, for me; andthere are fewer of your damned English and American tourists about."
"I see." Tyson hesitated a moment, then said: "And I suppose, sir, Mrs.Melrose goes with you?"
"Not at all! You cannot go dragging babies about Europe any more than isabsolutely necessary. Mrs. Melrose will make her home here, and will nodoubt become very much attached to this charming old house. By the way,what neighbours are there?"
"Practically none, sir."
"But there is a church--and I suppose a parson?"
"Not resident. The clergyman from Gimmers Wick comes over alternateSundays."
"H'm. Then I don't see why I was asked to contribute to church repairs.What's the good of keeping the place up at all?"
"The people here, sir, set great store both by their church and theirservices. They have been hoping, now that you and Mrs. Melrose have cometo live here, that you might perhaps be willing to pay some suitable manto take the full duty."
Melrose laughed aloud.
"I? Good Heavens! I pay a parson to read me the English Church services!Well, I don't wish to inflict my religious opinions upon any one, Tyson;but I may as well tell you that they don't run at all in the direction ofparsons. And Mrs. Melrose--why I told you she was a Catholic--a RomanCatholic. What does she want with a church? But a parson's wife mighthave been useful. By the way, I thought I saw a nice-looking girl when wearrived, who has since disappeared."
"That was Thyrza Smart, sir--the daughter of Smart, the farmer."
"Excellent! Mrs. Melrose shall make friends with her."
"And of course, sir, both Pengarth and Keswick are within a drive."
"Oh, that's no good," said Melrose, easily. "We shall have no carriage."
The agent stared. "No carriage? I am afraid in that case you will find itvery difficult getting about. There are no flys anywhere near that youcan hire."
"What do we want with them?" Melrose lit another cigarette. "I may have ahorse--possibly. And of course there's the light cart I told you to get.We can't trust these things"--he pointed to the packages in theroom--"to irresponsible people."
"The cart, sir, has been constantly at work. But--it won't exactly suitMrs. Melrose." Tyson smiled discreetly.
"Oh! leave that to me--leave that to me!" said Melrose with an answeringgood humour. "Stable and carriage expenses are the deuce. There never wasa coachman yet that didn't rob his employer. Well, thank you; I'm glad tohave had this talk with you, and now, I go to bed. Beastly cold, I mustsay, this climate of yours!"
And with a very evident shiver the speaker buttoned the heavy fur coat hehad never yet taken off more closely round him.
"What about that man from Carlisle--and the furnace?" he inquiredsharply.
"He comes to-morrow, sir. I could not get him here earlier. I fear itwill be an expensive job."
"No matter. With my work, I cannot risk incessant attacks of rheumatism.The thing must be done, and done well. Good-night to you, Tyson."
Mr. Melrose waved a dismissing hand. "We shall resume our discussionto-morrow."
The agent departed. Melrose, left solitary, remained standing a whilebefore the fire, examining attentively the architecture and decorationsof the room, so far as the miserable light revealed them. Italian, nodoubt, the stucco work of the ceiling, with its embossed nymphs andcupids, its classical medallions. Not of the finest kind or period, butvery charming--quite decorative. The house had been built on the site ofan ancient border fortess, toward the middle of the eighteenth century,by the chief of a great family, from whose latest representative, hismother's first cousin, Edmund Melrose had now inherited it. Nothing couldbe more curious than its subsequent history. For it was no soonerfinished, in a pure Georgian style, and lavishly incrusted in all itsprincipal rooms with graceful decoration, than the man who built it died.His descendants, who had plenty of houses in more southern and populousregions, turned their backs upon the Tower, refused to live in it, and,failing to find a tenant of the gentry class, let part of it to thefarmer, and put in a gardener as caretaker. Yet a certain small sum hadalways been allowed for keeping it in repair, and it was only within thelast few years that dilapidation had made head.
Melrose took up the lamp, and carried it once more through theground-floor of the Tower. Save for the dying fires, and the sputteringlamp, everything was dark and still in the spacious house. The storm wasdying down in fitful gusts that seemed at intervals to invade the shadowyspaces of the corridor, driving before them the wisps of straw and paperthat had been left here and there by the unpacking of the greatwriting-table. There could be no ghosts in the house, for nothing but afraction of it had
ever sheltered life; yet from its architecturalbeauty there breathed a kind of dumb, human protest against thedisorderly ill-treatment to which it had been subjected.
In spite of his excitement and pre-occupation, Melrose felt it, andpresently he turned abruptly, and went upstairs, still carrying the lamp;through the broad upper passage answering to the corridor below, wheredoors in deep recesses, each with its classical architrave, and itscarved lintels, opened from either side. The farthest door on the righthe had been shown as that of his wife's room; he opened one nearer, andlet himself into his dressing-room, where Anastasia had taken care tolight the fire, which no north country-woman would have thought oflighting for a mere man.
Putting the lamp down in the dressing-room, he pushed open his wife'sdoor, and looked in. She was apparently asleep, and the child beside her.The room struck cold, and, by a candle in a basin, he saw that it waslittered from end to end with the contents of two or three trunks thatwere standing open. The furniture was no less scanty and poor than in thesitting-rooms, and the high panelled walls closing in upon the bed gave adungeonlike aspect to the room.
A momentary pity for his wife, brought to this harsh Cumbrian spot, fromthe flowers and sun, the Bacchic laughter and colour of a Tuscan vintage,shot through Melrose. But his will silenced it. "She will get used toit," he said to himself again, with dry determination. Then he turned onhis heel. The untidiness of his wife's room, her lack of method andcharm, and the memory of her peevishness on the journey disgusted him.There was a bed in his dressing-room; and he was soon soundly asleepthere.
But his wife was not asleep, and she had been well aware of his presenceon her threshold. While he stood there, she had held her breath,"willing" him to go away again; possessed by a silent passion of rage andrepulsion. When he closed the door behind him, she lay wide awake,trembling at all the night sounds in the house, lost in a thousandterrors and wild regrets.
Suddenly, with a crash the casement window at the farther end of the roomburst open under an onset of wind, Netta only just stifled the scream onher lips. She sat up, her teeth chattering. It was _awful_; but she mustget up and shut it. Shivering, she crept out of bed, threw a shawl roundher, and made one flight across the floor, possessed with a mad alarmlest the candle, which was flickering in the draught, should go out, andleave her in darkness.
But now that the window was open she saw, as she approached, that thenight was not dark. There was a strong moonlight outside, and when shereached the window she drew in her breath. For there, close upon her, asit seemed, like one of her own Apennines risen and stalking through thenight, towered a great mountain, cloud-wreathed, and gashed with vastravines. The moon was shining on it between two chasing clouds, and thelight and shade of the great spectacle, its illumined slopes, andimpenetrable abysses, were at once magnificent and terrible.
Netta shut the window with groping, desperate hands, and rushed back tobed. Never had she felt so desolate, so cut off from all that once madeher poor little life worth living. Yet, though she cried for a fewminutes in sheer self-pity, it was not long before she too was asleep.
The Mating of Lydia Page 1