III
It was a May evening, and Lydia Penfold, spinster, aged twenty-four, wassketching in St. John's Vale, that winding valley which, diverging fromthe Ambleside-Keswick road in an easterly direction, divides the northernslopes of the Helvellyn range from the splendid mass of Blencathra.
So beautiful was the evening, so ravishing under its sway were heaven andearth, that Lydia's work went but slowly. She was a professional artist,to whom guineas were just as welcome as to other people; and she had veryindustrious and methodical views of her business. But she was, beforeeverything, one of those persons who thrill under the appeal of beauty toa degree that often threatens or suspends practical energy. Save for theconscience in her, she could have lived from day to day just for themoments of delight, the changes in light and shade, in colour and form,that this beautiful world continually presents to senses as keen as hers.Lydia's conscience, however, was strong; though on this particularevening it did little or nothing to check the sheer sensuous dreamingthat had crept over her.
The hand that held her palette had dropped upon her knee, her eyes werelifted to the spectacle before her, and her lips, slightly parted,breathed in pleasure.
She looked on a pair of mountains of which one, torn and seamed from topto toe as though some vast Fafnir of the prime had wreaked his dragonrage upon it, fronted her sheer, rimmed with gold where some of itsthrusting edges still caught the sunset, but otherwise steeped in purpleshades already prophesying night; while the other, separated from thefirst by a gap, yet grouping with it, ran slanting away to the northwest,offering to the eyes only a series of lovely foreshortened planes, risingfrom the valley, one behind the other, sweeping upward and backward tothe central peak of Skiddaw, and ablaze with light from base to summit.
The evenings in the north are long. It was past seven on this May day;yet Lydia knew that the best of the show was still to come; she waitedfor the last act, and refused to think of supper. That golden fusion ofall the upper air; that "intermingling of Heaven's pomp," spread on thegreat slopes of Skiddaw--red and bronze and purple, shot through eachother, and glorified by excess of light; that sharpness of the larchgreen on the lower slopes; that richness of the river fields; thatshining pageantry of cloud, rising or sinking with the mountain line:pondering these things, absorbing them, she looked at her drawing fromtime to time in a smiling despair; the happy despair of the artist, whoamid the failure of to-day looks forward with passion to the effort ofto-morrow.
Youth and natural joy possessed her.
What scents from the river-bank, under the softly breathing wind whichhad sprung up with the sunset! The girl brought her eyes down, and saw abank of primroses, and beyond, in the little copse on the farther side ofthe stream, a gleam of blue, where the wild hyacinth spread among thebirches. While close to her, at her very feet, ran the stream, with itsslipping, murmuring water, its stones splashed with white, purple, andorange, its still reaches paved with evening gold.
"What a mercy I wrote that letter!" she said to herself, with a sigh ofcontent. She was thinking of a proposal that had come to her a few daysbefore this date, to take a post as drawing mistress in a Brightonschool. The salary was tempting; and, at the moment, money was more thanusually scarce in the family purse. Her mother's eyes had looked at herwistfully.
Yet she had refused; with a laughing bravado that had concealed someinward qualms.
Whereupon the gods had immediately and scandalously rewarded her. She hadsold four of her drawings at a Liverpool exhibition for twenty pounds;and there were lying beside her on the grass some agreeable pressnotices just arrived, most of which she already knew by heart.
Twenty pounds! That would pay the half year's rent. And there werethree other drawings in a London show that might very well sell too. Whynot--now the others had sold? Meanwhile she--thank the Lord!--had savedherself, as a fish from the hook. She was still free; free to draw, freeto dream. She had not bartered her mountains for a salary. Instead ofcrocodile walks, two and two, with a score of stupid schoolgirls, hereshe was, still roaming the fells, the same happy vagabond as before. Shehugged her liberty. And at the same time she promised herself that hermother should have a new shawl and a new cap for Whitsuntide.
Those at present in use came near in Lydia's opinion to being a familydisgrace.
The last act of the great spectacle rushed on; and again the artist heldher breath enthralled. The gold on Skiddaw was passing into rose; andover the greenish blue of the lower sky, webs of crimson cirrhus spunthemselves. The stream ran fire; and far away the windows of a white farmblazed. Lydia seized a spare sketching-block lying on the grass, andbegan to note down a few "passages" in the sky before her.
Suddenly a gust came straying down the valley. It blew the press-cuttingswhich had dropped from her lap toward the stream. One of them fell in,the others, long flapping things, hung caught in a tuft of grass. Lydiasprang up, with an exclamation of annoyance, and went to the rescue.Dear, dear!--the longest and best notice, which spoke of her work as"agreeable and scholarly, showing, at tunes, more than a touch of hightalent"--was quietly floating away. She must get it back. Her mother hadnot yet read it--not yet purred over it. And it was most desirable sheshould read it, so as to get rid thereby of any lingering doubt about thehorrid school and its horrid proposal.
But alack! the slip of newspaper was already out of reach, speeded by atiny eddy toward a miniature rapid in the middle of the beck. Lydia,clinging with one hand to a stump of willow, caught up a stick lying onthe bank with the other, and, hanging over the stream, tried to head backthe truant. All that happened was that her foot slipping on a pebble wentflop into the shallow water, and part of her dress followed it.
It was not open to Lydia to swear, and she had no time for the usualfeminine exclamations before she heard a voice behind her.
"Allow me--can I be of any use?"
She turned in astonishment, extricating her wet foot, and clambered backon to the bank. A young man stood there, civilly deferential. His bicyclelay on the grass at the edge of the road, which was only a few stepsaway.
"I saw you slip in, and thought perhaps I might help. You were trying toreach something, weren't you?"
"It doesn't matter, thank you," said Lydia, whose cheeks had gone pink.
The young man looked at her, and became still more civil.
"What was it? That piece of paper? Oh, I'll get it in a moment."
And splashing from stone to stone in the river-bed, he had soon reached apoint where, with the aid of Lydia's stick, the bedraggled cutting wassoon fished out and returned to its owner. Lydia thanked him.
"But you've wet both your feet!" She looked at them, with concern. "Won'tit be very uncomfortable, bicycling?"
"I haven't far to go. Oh, by the way, I was just looking out for somebodyto ask--about this road--and I couldn't see a soul, till just as I cameout of the little wood there"--he pointed--"I saw you--slipping in."
They both laughed. Lydia returned to her camp stool, and began to put upher sketching things.
"What is it you want to know?"
"Is this the road for Whitebeck?"
"Yes, certainly. You come to a bridge and the village is on the otherside."
"Thank you. I don't know these parts. But what an awfully jolly valley!"He waved a hand toward it. "And what do you think I saw about a milehigher up?" He had picked up his bicycle from the grass, and stoodleaning easily upon it. She could not but observe that he was tall andslim and handsome. A tourist, no doubt; she could not place him as aninhabitant.
"I know!" she said smiling. "You saw the otter hounds. They passed me anhour ago. Have they caught him?"
"Who? the otter? Lord, no! He got right away from them--up a tributarystream."
"Good!" said Lydia, as she shut her painting-box.
The young man hesitated. He had clearly no right to linger any longer,but, as the girl before him seemed to him one of the most deliciouscreatures he had ever seen, he did linger.
"I
wonder if I might ask you another question? Can you tell me whetherthat fine old house over there is Duddon Castle?"
"Duddon Castle!" Lydia lifted her eyebrows. "Duddon Castle is seven milesaway. That place is called Threlfall Tower. Were you going to Duddon?"
"No. But"--he hesitated--"I know young Tatham a little. I should like tohave seen his house. But, that's a fine old place, isn't it?" He lookedwith curiosity at the pile of building rising beyond a silver streak ofriver, amid the fresh of the May woods.
"Well--yes--in some ways," said Lydia, dubiously. "Don't you know wholives there?"
"Not the least. I am a complete stranger here. I say, do let me do thatup for you?" And, letting his bicycle fall, the young man seized theeasel which had still to be taken to pieces and put into its case.
Lydia shot a wavering look at him. He ought certainly to have departed bynow, and she ought to be snubbing him. But the expression on his sunburntface as he knelt on the grass, unscrewing her easel, seemed so little tocall for snubbing that instead she gave him further information;interspersed with directions to him as to what to do and what not to dowith her gear.
"It belongs to a Mr. Melrose. Did you never hear of him?"
"Never. Why should I?"
"Not from the Tathams?"
"No. You see I only knew Tatham at college--in my last year. Hewas a good deal junior to me. And I have never stayed with them atDuddon--though they kindly asked me--years ago."
The girl beside him took not the smallest notice of his information. Shewas busy packing up brushes and paints, and her next remark showed himsubtly that she did not mean to treat him as an acquaintance of theTathams, whom she probably knew, but was determined to keep him to hisrole of stranger and tourist.
"You had better look at Threlfall as you pass. It has a splendidsituation."
"I will. But why ought I to have heard of the gentleman? I forget hisname."
"Mr. Melrose? Oh, well--he's a legend about here. We all talk about him."
"What's wrong with him? Is he a nuisance?--or a lunatic?"
"It depends what you have to do with him. About here he goes by the nameof the 'Ogre.'"
"How, does he eat people up?" asked the stranger, smiling.
The girl hesitated.
"Ask one of his tenants!" she said at last.
"Oh, he's a landlord, and a bad one?"
She nodded, a sudden sharpness in her gray eyes.
"But that's not the common reason for the name. It's because he shutshimself up--in a house full of treasures. He's a great collector."
"Of works of art? You--don't need to be mad to do that! It seems to beone of the things that pays best nowadays--with all these Americansabout. It's a way of investing your money. Doesn't he show them toanybody?"
"Nobody is allowed to go near him, or his house. He has built a high wallround his park, and dogs are let loose at night that tear you to pieces."
"Nice man! If it weren't for the dogs, I should brave him. In a smallway, I'm a collector myself."
He smiled, and Lydia understood that the personal reference was thrownout as a feeler, in case she might be willing to push the conversationfurther. But she did not respond, although as he spoke she happened tonotice that he wore a remarkable ring on his left hand, which seemedto illustrate his remark. An engraved gem?--Greek? Her eyes were quickfor such things.
However, she was seized with shyness, and as she had now finished thepacking of her brushes and paints, and the young man had elaboratelyfastened all the straps of the portable easel and its case, there wasnothing for him to do but to stoop unwillingly for his soft hat which waslying on the grass. Then an idea struck him.
"I say, what are you going to do with all these things?"
"Carry them home." She smiled. "I am not a cripple."
"Mightn't I--mightn't I carry them for you?"
"Thank you. My way lies in quite another direction. Good-night."
She held out a shapely hand. He took it, lifted his hat, and departed.
As soon as he was safely past a jutting corner of the road Lydia, insteadof going home, lazily sat down again on a rock to think about what hadhappened. She was perfectly aware that--considering the whole interviewhad only taken ten minutes--she had made an impression upon the youngman. And as young men of such distinguished appearance were not common inthe Whitebeck neighbourhood, the recollection of all those little signsin look and manner which had borne witness to the stranger's discreetadmiration of her was not at all disagreeable.
He was not a native--that she was sure of. She guessed him a Londoner."Awfully good clothes!--London clothes. About thirty, I should think? Iwonder what he does. He can't be rich, or he wouldn't be bicycling. Hedid up those straps as though he were used to them; but he can't be anartist, or he'd have said something. It was a face with lots of power init. Not very good-tempered, I should say? But there's something abouthim--yes, distinctly, _something_! I liked his thin cheeks, and his darkcurls. His head, too, was uncommonly well set on. I'm sure that there's agood deal to him, as the Americans say; he's not stuffed with sawdust. Ican imagine--just imagine--being in love with him."
She laughed to herself.
Then a sudden thought occurred to her, which reddened her cheeks. Supposewhen the young man came to think over it, he believed that she had letthe papers fall into the river--deliberately--on purpose--just to attracthis attention? At the very precise moment that he comes upon the scene,she slips into the water. Of course!--an arranged affair!
She sat on, meditating in some discomfort.
"It is no use deceiving ourselves," she thought. "We're not in the goodold Tennysonian days. There's precious little chivalry now! Men don'tidealize women as they used. They're grown far more suspicious--and_harder_. Perhaps because women have grown so critical of them! Anywaysomething's gone--what is it? Poetry? Illusion? And yet!--why is it thatmen still put us off our balance?--even now--that they matter so muchless, now that we live our own lives, and can do without them? Ishouldn't be sitting here, bothering my head, if it had been another girlwho had come to help."
Slowly she gathered up her things and took her way home, while theevening of blue and pearl fell around her, while the glow died on thefells, and Venus came out in a sky that was still too full of light tolet any lesser stars appear.
She crossed the stepping stones, and in a river field on the farther sideshe came across an old shepherd, carrying a wounded ewe across hisshoulders, and with his dog beside him. At sight of him she paused inastonishment. He was an old friend of hers, but he belonged to avillage--the village of Mainstairs--some three miles away in the lowlandtoward Pengarth. She had first come across him when sketching among somedistant fells where he had been a shepherd for more than forty years.
The old man's russet face, sharp-lined and strong, lit up as he saw herapproaching.
"Why I thowt I med coom across yer!" he said smiling. And he explainedthat he had been paying a visit to a married daughter under Naddle Fell,and had volunteered to carry an injured sheep down to a valley farm,whence it had strayed on his way home.
They stopped to talk while he rested a few minutes, under his burden,propped against a rock. Lydia asked him after a sick grand-daughter. Herquestion showed knowledge--no perfunctory kindness.
He shook his head sadly, and her grave, soft look, as she fell silent alittle, beside him, said more than words.
"Anything been done to your cottage?" she asked him presently.
"Noa--nowt."
"Nor to the other houses?"
"Naethin'."
Her brows frowned.
"Horrible!" she said under her breath. But they did not pursue thesubject. Instead the old man broke out in praise of the "won'erful 'cute"sheep dog beside him, and in the story of the accident which had slightlylamed the ewe he was carrying. Lydia's vivacious listening, her laugh,her comments, expressed--unconsciously--with just a touch of Cumbriadialect, showed them natural comrades. Some deeply human gift, somespontaneity i
n the girl, answered to the racy simplicity of the old man.
"Tell me once more"--she said, as she rose from her seat upon a fallentree, and prepared to go on her way--"those counting words you told melast week. I tried to tell them to my mother--but I couldn't rememberthem all. They made us laugh so."
"Aye, they're the owd words," said the shepherd complacently. "We doan'tuse 'em now. But my feyther minds how his feyther used allus to count by'em."
And he began the catalogue of those ancient numerals by which thenorthern dalesman of a hundred years ago were still accustomed to reckontheir sheep, words that go back to the very infancy of man.
"Yan--tyan--tethera--methera--pimp;sethera--lethera--hovera--dovera--dick."
Lydia's face dissolved in laughter--and when the old man delighting inher amusement went on to the compounds of ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen,and the rest:
"Yan-a-dick--tyan-a-dick--tethera-a-dick--methera-a-dick--bumfit."
At "bumfit" (fifteen) they both rocked with merriment, the old mancarried away by the infection of hers.
"Go on," said Lydia--the tears of laughter in her eyes--"up to twenty,and then hear me say them."
"Yan-a-bumfit--tyan-a-bumfit--tethera-a-bumfit--methera-a-bumfit--giggot"(twenty).
"Giggot" set them both off again--and then Lydia--stumbling, laughing,and often corrected, said her lesson.
By the time she was fairly perfect, and the old man had straightenedhimself again under his load--a veritable "good shepherd," glorified bythe evening light--they parted with a friendly nod, glad to have met andsure to meet again.
"I'll come and see Bessie soon," she said gently, as she moved on.
"Aye. Yo'll be varra welcome."
She stepped forward briskly, gained the high road, and presently saw infront of her a small white house, recently built, and already emboweredin a blossoming garden. Lilacs sent their fragrance to greet her;rhododendrons glowed through the twilight, and a wild-cherry laden withbloom reared its white miracle against the walls of the house.
Lydia stood at the gate devouring the tree with her eyes. The blossomhad already begun to drop. "Two days more"--she said to herself,sighing--"and it'll be gone--till next year. And it's been out such alittle, little while! I seem hardly to have looked at it. It's horriblehow short-lived all the beautiful things are."
"Lydia!" A voice called from an open window.
"Yes, mother."
"You're dreadfully late, Lydia! Susan and I have finished supper longago."
Lydia walked into the house, and put her head into the drawing-room.
"Sorry, mother! It was so lovely, I couldn't come in. And I met a dearold shepherd I know. Don't bother about me. I'll get some milk and cake."
She closed the door again, before her mother could protest.
"Girls will never think of their meals!" said Mrs. Penfold to herself inirritation. "And then all of a sudden they get nerves--or consumption--orsomething."
As she spoke, she withdrew from the window, and curled herself up on asofa, where a knitted coverlet lay, ready to draw over her feet. Mrs.Penfold was a slight, pretty woman of fifty with invalidish Sybariticways, and a character which was an odd mixture of humility andconceit--diffidence and audacity. She was quite aware that she was not asclever as her daughters. She could not write poetry like Susan, or paintlike Lydia. But then, in her own opinion, she had so many merits theywere without; merits which more than maintained her self-respect, andenabled her to hold her ground with them. For instance: by the time shewas four and twenty, Lydia's age, she had received at least a dozenproposals. Lydia's scalps, so far as her mother knew, were onlytwo--fellow-students at South Kensington, absurd people, not to becounted. Then, pretty as Lydia was, her nose could not be compared fordelicacy with her mother's. "My nose was always famous"--Mrs. Penfoldwould say complacently to her daughters--"it was that which firstattracted your dear father. 'It was,' he said--you know he alwaysexpressed himself so remarkably--'such a sure sign of "race."' His ownpeople--oh! they were quite nice people--but quite middle-class." Again,her hands and feet were smaller and more aristocratic than either Lydia'sor Susan's. She liked to remind herself constantly how everybody hadadmired them and talked about them when she was a girl.
Drawing her work-box toward her, while she waited for Lydia's return,Mrs. Penfold fell to knitting, while the inner chatter of the mind wentas fast as her needles--concerned chiefly with two matters of absorbinginterest: Lydia's twenty pounds, and a piece of news about Lydia,recently learnt from the rector's wife.
As to the twenty pounds, it was the greatest blessing! Of course theschool salary would have been a certainty--and Lydia had hardlyconsidered it with proper seriousness. But there--all was well! The extratwenty pounds would carry them on, and now that Lydia had begun to earn,thought the maternal optimist, she would of course go on earning--athigher and higher prices--and the family income of some three hundred ayear would obtain the increment it so desperately needed. And as Mrs.Penfold looked upon a girls' school as something not far removed from anunnery, a place at any rate painfully devoid of the masculine element;and as her whole mind was set--sometimes romantically, sometimesfinancially--on the marriage of her daughters, she felt that both she andLydia had escaped what might have been an unfortunate necessity.
Yes, indeed!--what a _providential_ escape, if--
Mrs. Penfold let fall her knitting; her face sparkled. Why had Lydianever communicated the fact, the thrilling fact that she had been meetingat the rectory--more than once apparently--not merely _a_ young man, but_the_ young man of the neighbourhood. And with results--favourableresults--quite evident to the Rector and the Rector's wife, if Lydiaherself chose to ignore and secrete them. It was really unkind....
The door opened. A white figure slipped into the room through its mingledlights, and found a stool beside Mrs. Penfold.
"Dear--are you all right?"
Mrs. Penfold stroked the speaker's head.
"Well, I thought I was going to have a headache this morning,darling--but I didn't--it went away. Lydia! the Rector and Mrs. Deaconhave been here. _Why_ didn't you tell me you have been meeting LordTatham at the rectory?"
Lydia laughed.
"Didn't I? Well, he's quite decent."
"Mrs. Deacon says he admired you. She's sure he did!" Mrs. Penfoldstooped eagerly toward her daughter, trying to see her face in thetwilight.
"Mrs. Deacon's a goose! You know she is, mother,--you often say so. I methim first, of course, at the Hunt Ball. And you saw him there too. Yousaw me dancing with him."
"But that was only once," said Mrs. Penfold, candidly. "I didn't thinkanything of that. When I was a girl, if a young man liked me at a dance,we went on till we made everybody talk. Or else, there was nothing init."
"Well, there was nothing in it, dear--in this case. And I wouldn't adviseyou to give me to Lord Tatham--just yet!"
Mrs. Penfold sighed.
"Of course one knows that that kind of young man has his marriage madefor him--just like royalty. But sometimes--they break out. There _are_dukes that have married plain Misses--no better than you, Lydia--andnot American either. But--Lydia--you _did_ like him?"
"Who? Lord Tatham? Certainly."
"I expect most girls do! He's the great _parti_ about here."
"Mother, _really_!" cried Lydia. "He's just a pleasant youth--not at allclever. And oh, how badly he plays bridge!"
"That doesn't matter. Mrs. Deacon says you got on with him, splendidly."
"I chaffed him a good deal. He really plays worse than I do--if you canbelieve it."
"They like being chaffed"--said Mrs. Penfold pensively--"if a girl doesit well."
"I don't care, darling, whether they like it or not. It amuses me, and soI do it."
"But you mustn't let them think they're being laughed at. If you do that,Lydia, you'll be an old maid. Oh, Lydia!"--the speaker sighed like afurnace--"I _do_ wish you saw more young men!"
"Well, I saw another one--much handsomer than Lord
Tatham--thisafternoon," laughed Lydia.
Mrs. Penfold eagerly inquired. The story was told, and Mrs. Penfold, aseasily lured by a new subject as a child by a new doll, fell into manyspeculations as to who the youth could have been, and where he was going.Lydia soon ceased to listen. But when the coverlet slipped away she didnot fail to replace it tenderly over her mother's feet, and every now andthen her fingers gave a caressing touch to the delicate hand of whichMrs. Penfold was so proud. It was not difficult to see that of the twothe girl was really the mother, in spirit; the maturer, protecting soul.
Presently she roused herself to ask:
"Where is Susan?"
"She went up to write directly after supper, and we mustn't disturb her.She hopes to finish her tragedy to-night. She said she had aninspiration."
"Inspiration or no, I shall hunt her to bed, if I don't hear her doorshut by twelve," said Lydia with sisterly determination.
"Do you think, darling, that Susy--will ever make a great deal of moneyby her writings?" The tone was wistful.
"Well, no, mother, candidly, I don't. There's no money in tragedies--soI'm told."
Mrs. Penfold sighed. But Lydia, changed the subject, entered upon adiscussion, so inventively artistic, of the new bonnet, and the new dressin which her mother was to appear on Whitsunday, that when bedtime cameMrs. Penfold had seldom passed a pleasanter evening.
After her mother had gone to bed, Lydia wandered into the moonlit garden,and strolled about its paths, lost in the beauty of its dim flowers andthe sweetness of its scents. The spring was in her veins, and she feltstrangely shaken and restless. She tried to think of her painting, andthe prospect she had of getting into an artistic club, a club of younglandscapists, which exhibited every May, and was beginning to make amark. But her thoughts strayed perpetually.
So her mother imagined that Lord Tatham had only danced once with her atthe Hunt Ball? As a matter of fact, he had danced with her once, andthen, as dancing was by no means the youth's strong point, they had satout in a corner of the hotel garden, by the river, through four supperdances. And if the fact had escaped the notice both of Mrs. Penfold andSusy, greatly to Lydia's satisfaction, she was well aware that it had notaltogether escaped the notice of the neighbourhood, which kept an eagerwatch on the doings of its local princeling in matters matrimonial.
And as to the various meetings at the rectory, Lydia could easily havemade much of them, if she had wished. She had come to see that they weredeliberately sought by Lord Tatham, and encouraged by Mrs. Deacon. Andbecause she had come to see it, she meant to refuse another invitationfrom Mrs. Deacon, which was in her pocket--without consulting her mother.Besides--said youthful pride--if Lord Tatham really wished to know them,Lady Tatham must call. And Lady Tatham had not called.
Her mother was quite right. The marriage of young earls are, generallyspeaking, "arranged," and there are hovering relations, and unwrittenlaws in the background, which only the foolish forget. "And as I am not acandidate for the place," thought Lydia, "I won't be misunderstood!"
She did not intend indeed to be troubled--for the present--with suchmatters at all.
"Marrying is not in the bill!" She declaimed it to a lilac-bush, standingwith her hands behind her, and face uplifted. "I have no money, and noposition--therefore the vast majority of men won't want to marry me.And as to scheming to make them want it--why!--good heavens!--when thereare such amusing things to do in the world!"
She paced the garden paths, thinking passionately, defiantly of her art,yet indignant with herself for these vague yearnings and languors thathad to be so often met and put down.
"Men!--_men!_--what do they matter to me, except for talk--and fun!Yet there one goes thinking about them--like any fool. It's sex ofcourse--and youth. I can no more escape them than anybody else. But ICan be mistress of them. I will. That's where this generation differs.We needn't drift--we see clear. Oh! those clouds--that blue!--thosestars! Dear world! Isn't beauty enough?"
She lifted her arms above her head in a wild aspiration. And all in amoment it surprised her to feel her eyes wet with tears.
* * * * *
Meanwhile the young man who had rescued her press cuttings had fallen,barely an hour after his parting from her, upon evil fortunes.
His bicycle had carried him swiftly down the valley toward the Whitebeckbridge. Just above the bridge, a steep pitch of hill, one of thosespecimens of primitive road-making that abound in Cumbria, descendedrapidly into a dark hollow, with a high wall on one side, overhung bytrees, and on the other a bank, broken three parts of tie way down by theentrance of a side road. At the top of the hill, Faversham, to give theyouth his name, stopped to look at the wall, which was remarkable forheight and strength. The thick wood on his right hid any building theremight be on the farther side of the stream. But clearly this was theOgre's wall--ogreish indeed! A man might well keep a cupboard full ofFatimas, alive or dead, on the other side of it, or a coiner's press, ora banknote factory, or any other romantic and literary villainy.Faversham found himself speculating with amusement on the old curmudgeonbehind the wall; always with the vision, drawn by recollection on theleafy background, of a girl's charming face--clear pale skin, beautifuleyes, more blue surely than gray--the whitest neck, with coils of brownhair upon it--the mouth with its laughing freedom--yet reticent--no meresilly sweetness!
Then putting on his brake, he began to coast down the hill, which openedgently only to turn without notice into something scandalouslyprecipitous. The bicycle had been hired in Keswick, and had had a hardseason's use. The brake gave way at the worst moment of the hill, andFaversham, unable to save himself, rushed to perdition. And by way ofdoubling his misfortune, as in the course of his mad descent he reachedthe side road on the left, there came the loud clatter of a cart, and ayoung horse emerged almost at a gallop, with a man tugging vainly at itsrein.
Ten minutes later a group of men stood consulting by the side of the roadover Faversham's prostrate form. He was unconscious; his head and facewere covered with blood, and his left ankle was apparently broken. Asmall open motor stood at the bottom of the hill, and an angry disputewas going on between an old man in mire-stained working-clothes, and theyoung doctor from Pengarth to whom the motor belonged.
"I say, Mr. Dixon, that you've got to take this man into Mr. Melrose'shouse and look after him, till he is fit to be moved farther, or you'llbe guilty of his death, and I shall give evidence accordingly!" said thedoctor, with energy, as he raised himself from the injured man.
"Theer's noa place for him i' t' Tower, Mr. Undershaw, an' I'll take noasich liberty!"
"Then I will. Where's Mr. Melrose?"
"I' London--till to-morrow. Yo'll do nowt o' t' soart, doctor."
"We shall see. To carry him half a mile to the farm, when you might carryhim just across that bridge to the house, would be sheer murder. I won'tsee it done. And if you do it, you'll be indicted for manslaughter. Nowthen--why doesn't that hurdle come along?" The speaker looked impatientlyup the road; and, as he spoke, a couple of labourers appeared at the topof the hill, carrying a hurdle between them.
Dixon threw looks of mingled wrath and perplexity at the doctor, and themen.
"I tell yo', doctor, it conno' be done! Muster Melrose's orders mun beobeyed. I have noa power to admit onybody to his house withoot his leave.Yo' knaw yoursel'," he added in the doctor's ear, "what Muster Melroseis."
Undershaw muttered something--expressing either wrath or scorn--behindhis moustache; then said aloud:
"Never you mind, Dixon; I shall take the responsibility. You let mealone. Now, my boys, lend a hand with the hurdle, and give me somecoats."
Faversham's leg had been already placed in a rough splint and his headbandaged. They lifted him, quite unconscious, upon the hurdle, and madehim as comfortable as they could. The doctor anxiously felt his pulse,and directed the men to carry him, as carefully as possible, through anarrow gate in the high wall opposite which was standing open, across t
heprivate foot-bridge over the stream, and so to the Terrace whereon stoodThrelfall Tower. Impenetrably hidden as it was behind the wall and thetrees, the old house was yet, in truth, barely sixty yards away. Dixonfollowed, lamenting and protesting, but in vain.
"Hold your tongue, man!" said Undershaw at last, losing his temper. "Youdisgrace your master. It would be a public scandal to refuse to help aman in this plight! If we get him alive through to-night, it will be amercy. I believe the cart's been over him somewhere!" he added, with afrowning brow.
Dixon silenced, but by no means persuaded, followed the littleprocession, till it reached a side door of the Tower, opening on theterrace just beyond the bridge. The door was shut, and it was not tillthe doctor had made several thunderous attacks upon it, beside sendingmen round to the other doors of the house, that Mrs. Dixon at lastcautiously opened it.
Fresh remonstrance and refusal followed on the part both of husband andwife. Fresh determination also on the part of the doctor, seconded by thethreatening looks and words of Faversham's bearers, stout Cumbrialabourers, to whom the storming of the Tower was clearly a businessthey enjoyed. At last the old couple, bitterly protesting, gave way, andthe procession entered.
They found themselves in a long corridor, littered with a strangemultitude of objects, scarcely distinguishable in the dim light shed byone unshuttered window through which some of the evening glow stillpenetrated. Dixon and his wife whispered excitedly together; after whichDixon led the way through the corridor into the entrance hall--which wasequally encumbered--and so to a door on the right.
"Yo' can bring him in there," he said sulkily to Undershaw. "There'smebbe a bed upstairs we can bring doon."
He threw open the drawing-room--a dreary, disused room, with its carpetsrolled up in one corner, and its scanty furniture piled in another. Thecandle held by Mrs. Dixon lit up the richly decorated ceiling.
"Can't you do anything better?" asked Undershaw, turning upon hervehemently. "Don't you keep a spare bedroom in this place?"
"Noa, we doan't!" said Mrs. Dixon, with answering temper. "There isn't aroom upstairs but what's full o' Muster Melrose's things. Yo' mun do wi'this, or naethin'."
Undershaw submitted, and Faversham's bearers gently laid him down,spreading their coats on the bare floor to receive him, till a bed couldbe found. Dixon and his wife, in a state of pitiable disturbance, wentoff to look for one, while Undershaw called after them:
"And I warn you that to-morrow you'll have to find quarters for twonurses!"
Thus, without any conscious action on his own part, and in the absence ofits formidable master, was Claude Faversham brought under the roof ofThrelfall Tower.
The Mating of Lydia Page 3