VII
Melrose had gone to Carlisle. The Cumbria landscape lay in a mistysunshine, the woods and fields steaming after a night of soaking rain.All the shades of early summer were melting into each other; reaches ofthe river gave back a silvery sky, while under the trees the shadowsslept. The mountains were indistinct, drawn in pale blues and purples, ona background of lilac and pearl. And all the vales "were up," drinkingin the streams that poured from the heights.
Tatham and his mother were walking through the park together. He was inriding-dress, and his horse awaited him at the Keswick gate. Lady Tathambeside him was attired as usual in the plainest and oldest of clothes.Her new gowns, which she ordered from time to time mechanically, leavingthe whole designing of them to her dress-maker, served her at Duddon, inher own phrase, mainly "for my maid to show the housekeeper." They lay inscented drawers, daintily folded in tissue paper, and a maid no lessambitious than her fellows for a well-dressed mistress kept mournfulwatch over them. This carelessness of dress had grown upon VictoriaTatham with years. In her youth the indulgence of a taste for beautifuland artistic clothes had taken up a great deal of her time. Then suddenlyit had all become indifferent to her. Devotion to her boy, books, andnatural history absorbed a mind more and more impatient of ordinaryconventions.
"You are quite sure that Melrose will be out of the way?" she asked herson as they entered on the last stretch of their walk.
"Well, you saw the letter."
"No--give it me."
He handed it. She read it through attentively.
"Mr. Melrose asks me to say that he will not be here. He is going over tothe neighbourhood of Carlisle on business, and cannot be home till teno'clock at night."
"He has the decency not to 'regret,'" said Lady Tatham.
"No. It is awkward of course going at all"--Tatham's brow was a littlefurrowed--"but I somehow think I ought to go."
"Oh, go," said his mother. "If he does play a trick you will know howto meet it. It would be very like him to play some trick," she added,thoughtfully.
"Mother," said Tatham impetuously, "was Melrose ever in love with you?"
He coloured boyishly as he spoke. Lady Tatham looked up startled; a faintred appeared in her cheeks also.
"I believe he supposed himself to be. I knew him very well, and Imight--possibly--have accepted him--but that some information came to myknowledge. Then, later on, largely I think to punish me, he nearlysucceeded in entangling my younger sister--your Aunt Edith. I stood inhis way. He hates me, of course. I think he suffered. In those days hewas very different. But his pride and self-will were always a madness.And gradually they have devoured everything else." She paused. "I cannottell you anything more, Harry. There were other people concerned."
"Dearest, as if I should ask! He did my mother no injury?"
Under the shadow of the woods the young man threw his arm round hershoulders, looking down upon her with a proud tenderness.
"None. I escaped; and I won all along the line. I was neither to bepitied--nor he," she added slowly, "though I daresay he would put downhis later mode of life to me."
"As if any woman could ever have put up with him!"
Lady Tatham's expression showed a mind drawn back into the past.
"When I first saw him, he was a magnificent creature. For several years Iwas dazzled by him. Then when I--and others--broke with him, he turnedhis back on England and went to live abroad. And gradually he quarrelledwith everybody who had ever known him."
"But you never did care about him, mother?" cried Tatham, outraged by themere notion of any such thing.
"No--never." There was a deliberate emphasis on the words. The smile thatfollowed was slight but poignant. "I knew that still more plainly, when,six months after I ceased to see him, your father came along."
Tatham who had drawn her hand within his arm, laid his own upon it for amoment. He was in the happy position of a son in whom filial affectionrepresented no enforced piety, but the spontaneous instinct of hisnature. His mother had been so far his best friend; and though he rarelyspoke of his father his childish recollections of him, and the impressionleft by his mother's constant and deliberate talk of him, during theboyish years of her son, had entered deep into the bases of character. Itis on such feelings and traditions that all that is best in our stillfeudal English life is reared; Tatham had known them without stint; andin their absence he would have been merely the trivially prosperous youngman that he no doubt appeared to the Radical orators of theneighbourhood.
The wood thinned. They emerged from it to see the Helvellyn range lyingpurple under a southwest sky, and Tatham's gray mare waiting a hundredyards away.
"You have no note?"
Tatham tapped his breast pocket.
"Rather!"
"All right--go along!" Lady Tatham came to a halt. "And Harry--don't calltoo often! Is this the third visit this week?"
"Oh, but the others were such little ones!" he said eagerly.
"Don't try to go too quick." The tone was serious.
"Too quick! I make no way at all," he protested, his look clouding.
Tatham rode slowly along the Darra, the little river which skirted hisown land and made its way at last into that which flowed beneath theTower. He was going to Threlfall, but on his way he was to call at GreenCottage and deliver a note from his mother.
He had seen a good deal of Lydia Penfold during the weeks since her firstappearance at Duddon. The two sisters had been induced to lunch thereonce or twice; there had been a picnic in the Glendarra woods; and forhimself, in spite of his mother's attack, he thought he had been fairlyclever in contriving excuses for calls. On one occasion he had carriedwith him--by his mother's suggestion--a portfolio containing a dozenearly proofs of the "Liber Studiorium," things about which he knew littleor nothing; but Lydia's eyes had sparkled when he produced them, whichwas all he cared for. On the second, he had called to offer them a keywhich would admit their pony-carriage to some of the private drives ofthe park, wild enchanted ways which led up to the very eastern heart ofBlencathra. That was not quite so successful, because both Lydia and hermother were out, and his call had been made chiefly on Susan, who hadbeen even queerer than usual. After taking the key, she had let it fallabsently into a waste-paper basket, while she talked to him about Ibsen;and he had been forced to rescue it himself, lest Lydia should never knowof his visit. On all other occasions he had found Lydia, and she had beencharming--always charming--but as light and inaccessible as mountainbirds. He had been allowed to see the drawing she was now busy on--theravines of Blencathra, caught sideways through a haze of light, edgebeyond edge, distance behind distance; a brave attempt on the artist'spart at poetic breadth and selection. She had been much worried about the"values," whatever they might be. "They're quite vilely wrong!" she hadsaid, impatiently. "And I don't know how to get them right." And all hecould do was to stand like an oaf and ask her to explain. Nor could heignore the fact--so new and strange to a princeling!--that herperplexities were more interesting to her than his visit.
Yet of course Tatham had his own natural conceit of himself, like anynormal young man, in the first bloom of prosperous life. He wasaccustomed to be smiled on; to find his pleasure consulted, and hiscompany welcome, whether as the young master of Duddon, or as a comradeamong his equals of either sex. The general result indeed of his happyplacing in the world had been to make him indifferent to things that mostmen desire. No merit in that! As he truly said, he had so much of them!But he was proud of his health and strength--his shooting and the steadylowering of his golf handicap. He was proud also of certain practicalaptitudes he possessed, and would soon allow no one to interfere withhim--hardly to advise him--in the management of his estate. He likednothing better than to plan the rebuilding of a farm, or a set of newcottages. He was a fair architect, of a rough and ready sort, and adecent thatcher and bricklayer. All the older workmen on the estate hadtaught him something at one time or another; and of these varioushandicrafts he was
boyishly vain.
None of these qualifications, however, gave him the smallest confidencein himself, with regard to Lydia Penfold. Ever since he had first mether, he had realized in her the existence of standards just as free ashis own, only quite different. Other girls wished to be courted; or theycourted him. Miss Penfold gave no sign that she wished to be courted; andshe certainly had never courted anybody. Many pretty girls assertthemselves by a kind of calculated or rude audacity, as though to saythat gentleness and civility are not for the likes of them. Lydia wasalways gentle--kind, at least--even when she laughed at you. Unless shegot upon her "ideas." Then--like Susan--she could harangue a little, andgrow vehement--as she had at Duddon that day, talking of the newindependence of women. But neither her gentleness nor her vehemenceseemed to have any relation to what a man--or men--might desire of her.She lived for herself; not indeed in any selfish sense; for it was plainthat she was an affectionate daughter and sister; but simply the worldwas so interesting to her in other ways that she seemed to have no needof men and matrimony. And as to money, luxury, a great _train de vie_--hehad felt from the beginning that those things mattered nothing at all toher. It might be inexperience, it might be something loftier. But, at anyrate, if she were to be bribed, it must be with goods of another kind.
As to himself, he only knew that from his first sight of her at the HuntBall, she had filled his thoughts. Her delicate, pale beauty, lit bythose vivacious eyes; so quiet, so feminine, yet with its suggestion ofsomething unconquerable, moving in a world apart--he could not defineit in any such words; but there it was, the attraction, the lure.Something difficult; something delightful! A dear woman, a woman to beloved; and yet a thorn hedge surrounding her--how else can one put theeternal challenge, the eternal chase?
But as three parts of love is hope, and hope is really the mother ofinvention, Tatham, though full of anxiety, was also, like General Trochu,full of plans. He had that morning made his mother despatch an invitationto one of the great painters of the day; a man who ruled the beauties ofthe moment _en Sultan_; painted whom he would; when he would; and at whatprice he would. But while those who were dying to be painted by him mustoften wait for years, and put up with manners none too polite, there wereothers who avenged them; women, a few, very few women, whom the greatman, strange to say, sighed to paint, and sighed in vain. Such women weregenerally women of a certain age; none of your soft-cheeked beauties. AndLady Tatham was one of them. The great artist had begged her to letherself be painted by him. And Victoria had negligently replied that,perhaps, at Duddon, some day, there might be time. Several reminders,launched from the Chelsea studio, had not brought her to the point; butnow for her son's sake she had actually named a time; and a jubilanttelegram from London had clenched the bargain. The great man was toarrive in a fortnight from now, for a week's visit; and Tatham had in hispocket a note from Lady Tatham to Mrs. Penfold requesting the pleasure ofher company and that of her two daughters at dinner, to meet Mr. LouisDelorme, the day after his arrival.
And all this, because, at a mention of the illustrious name, Lydia hadlooked up with a flutter of enthusiasm. "You know him? How lucky for you!He's _wonderful_! I? Oh, no. How should I? I saw him once in thedistance--he was giving away prizes. I didn't get one--alack! That's thenearest I shall ever come to him."
Tatham chuckled happily as he thought of it.
"She shall sit next the old boy at dinner, and she shall talk to him justas much as she jolly well pleases. And of course he'll take to her, andoffer to give her lessons--or paint her--or something. Then we can gether over--lots of times!"
Still dallying with these simple plans, Tatham arrived at Green Cottage,and tying up his horse went in to deliver his note.
He had no sooner entered the little drive than he saw Lydia under alaburnum tree on the lawn. Hat in hand, the smiling youth approached her.She was sewing, apparently mending house-linen, which she quietly putdown to greet him. There was a book before her; a book of poetry, hethought. She slipped it among the folds of the linen.
He could not flatter himself that his appearance disturbed her composurein the least. She was evidently glad to see him; she was gratefully surethat they would all be delighted to dine with Lady Tatham on the daynamed; she came with him to the gate, and admired his horse. But as toany flutter of hand or eye; any consciousness in her, answering to theeager feeling in him--he knew very well there was nothing of the kind.Never mind! There was an inner voice in him that kept reassuring him allthe time; telling him to be patient; to go at it steadily. There was noother fellow in the way, anyhow! He had a joyous sense of all theopportunities to come, the summer days, the open country, the resourcesof Duddon.
With his hand on his horse's neck, and loath to ride away, he told herthat he was on his way to the Tower to call on Faversham.
"Oh, but we're coming too, mother and I!" she said, in surprise. "Mr.Faversham sent us a note. I don't believe he ought to have two sets ofvisitors just yet."
Tatham too was surprised. "How on earth Faversham is able to entertainanybody, I can't think! Undershaw told me last week he must get him away,as soon as possible, into decent quarters. He doesn't get on very fast."
"He's been awfully ill!" said Lydia, with a soft concern in her voice,which made the splendid young fellow beside her envious at once of theinvalid. "Well, good-bye! for the moment. We have ordered the pony inhalf an hour."
"You'll see a queer place; the piggery that old fellow lives in! Youdidn't know Faversham--I think you said--before that day of theaccident?" He looked down on her from the saddle.
"Not the least. I feel a horrid pang sometimes that I didn't warn him ofthat hill!"
"Any decent bike ought to have managed that hill all right," said Tathamscornfully. "Scores of tourists go up and down it every day in thesummer."
Lydia bade him speak more respectfully of his native hills, lest theybring him also to grief. Then she waved good-bye to him; received thelingering bow and eager look, which betrayed the youth; thought of "youngHarry with his beaver on," as she watched the disappearing horseman, andwent back for a while to her needlework and cogitation.
That she was flattered and touched, that she liked him--the kind,courteous boy--that was certain. Must she really assume anythingelse on his part--take his advances seriously--check them--put uprestrictions--make herself disagreeable? Why? During her training inLondon, Lydia had drunk of the modern spring like other girls. She hadbeen brought up in a small old-fashioned way, by her foolish littlemother, and by a father--a stupid, honourable, affectionate man--whomshe had loved with a half-tender, half-rebellious affection. There hadbeen no education to speak of, for either her or Susy. But the qualitiesand gifts of remoter ancestors had appeared in them--to the bewildermentof their parents. And when after her father's death Lydia, at nineteen,had insisted on entering the Slade School, she had passed through someyears of rapid development. At bottom her temperament always remained, onthe whole, conservative and critical; the temperament of the humourist,in whose heart the old loyalties still lie warm. But that remarkablechange in the whole position and outlook of women which has marked thelast half century naturally worked upon her as upon others. For suchpersons as Lydia it has added dignity and joy to a woman's life, withoutthe fever and disorganization which attend its extremer forms. WhileSusy, attending lectures at University College, became a Suffragist,Lydia, absorbed in the pleasures and pains of her artistic training,looked upon the suffrage as a mere dusty matter of political machinery.
But the ideas of her student years--those "ideas" which Tatham felt somuch in his way--were still dominant. Marriage was not necessary. Art andknowledge could very well suffice. On the whole, in her own case, sheaspired to make them suffice.
But not in any cloistered world. Women who lived merely womanish lives,without knowledge of and comradeship with men, seemed to her limited andparochial creatures. She was impatient of her sex, and the narrownessof her sex's sphere. She dreamed of a broadly human, practical,disintereste
d relation between men and women, based on the actual work ofthe world; its social, artistic, intellectual work; all that has madecivilization.
"We women are starved"--she thought, "because men will only marryus--or make playthings of us. But the world is only just--these lastyears--open to us, as it has been open to men for thousands ofgenerations. We want to taste and handle it for ourselves; as men do.Why can't they take us by the hand--a few of us--teach us, confide inus, open the treasure-house to us?--and let us alone! To be treated asgood fellows!--that's all we ask. Some of us would make such fratchywives--and such excellent friends! I vow I should make a good friend! Whyshouldn't Lord Tatham try?"
And letting her work fall upon the grass, she sat smiling and thinking,her pale brown hair blown back by the wind. In her simple gray dress,which showed the rippling beauty of every line, she was like one of theseinnumerable angels or virtues, by artists illustrious or forgotten, whichthrong the golden twilight of an Italian church; drawing back thecurtains of a Doge; hovering in quiet skies; or offering the Annunciationlily, from one side of a great tomb, to the shrinking Madonna on theother. These creations of Italy in her early prime are the mostspontaneous of the children of beauty. There are no great differencesamong them; the common type is lovely; they spring like flowers from oneroot, in which are the forces both of Greece and the Italy of Leonardo.It was their harmony, their cheerfulness, their touch of somethinguniversal, that were somehow reproduced in this English girl, and thatmade the secret of her charm.
She went on thinking about Tatham.
Presently she had built a castle high in air; she had worked it out--howshe was to make Lord Tatham clearly understand, before he had any chanceof proposing (if that were really in the wind, and she were not a merelump of conceit), that marrying was not her line; but that, as a friend,he might rely upon her. Anything--in particular--that she could do tohelp him to a wife, short of offering herself, was at his service. Shewould be eyes and ears for him; she would tell him things he did not inthe least suspect about the sex.
But as to marrying! She rose from her seat, stretching her arms towardthe sky and the blossoming trees, in that half-wild gesture which sotruly expressed her. Marrying Duddon! that vast house, and all thosepossessions; those piles of money; those county relations, and that webof inherited custom which would lay its ghostly compulsion on Tatham'swife the very instant he had married her--it was not to be thought of fora moment! She, the artist with art and the world before her; she, withher soul in her own keeping, and all the beauty of sky and fell andstream to be had for the asking, to make herself the bond slave ofDuddon--of that formidably beautiful, that fond, fastidious mother!--andof all the ceremonial and paraphernalia that must come with Duddon! Shesaw herself spending weeks on the mere ordering of her clothes, callingendlessly on stupid people, opening bazaars, running hospitals,entertaining house parties, with the _clef des champs_ gone forever--alittle drawing at odd times--and all the meaning of life drowned in itstrappings. No--no--_no!_--a thousand times, no! Not though her motherimplored her, and every creature in Cumbria and the universe thought herstark staring mad. No!--for her own sake first; but, above all, for LordTatham's sake.
Whereat she repentantly reminded herself that after all, if she despisedthe world and the flesh, there was no need to give herself airs; forcertainly Harry Tatham was giving proof--stronger proof indeed, of doingthe same; if it were really his intention to offer his handsome person,and his no less handsome possessions to a girl as insignificant asherself. Custom had not staled _him_. And there was his mother too; who,instead of nipping the silly business in the bud, and carrying thefoolish young man to London, was actually aiding and abetting--sendinggracious invitations to dinner, of the most unnecessary description.
What indeed could be more detached, more romantic--apparently--thanthe attitude of both Tatham and his mother toward their own immenseadvantages?
Yes. But they were born to them; they had had time to get used to them."It would take me half a lifetime to find out what they mean, and anotherhalf to discover what to do with them."
"And, if one takes the place, ought one not to earn the wages? LadyTatham sits loose to all her social duties, scorns frocks, won't call,cuts bazaars, has never been known to take the chair at a meeting. But Ishould call that shirking. Either refuse the game; or play it! And of allthe games in the world, surely, surely the Lady Bountiful game is thedullest! I _won't_ be bored with it!"
She went toward the house, her smiling eyes on the grass. "But, ofcourse, if I could not get on without the young man, I should put up withany conditions. But I can get on without him perfectly! I don't want tomarry him. But I do--I _do_ want to be friends!"
"Lydia! Mother says you'll be late if you don't get ready," said a voicefrom the porch.
"Why, I am ready! I have only to put on my hat."
"Mother thought you'd change."
"Then mother was quite wrong. My best cotton frock is good enough for anyyoung man!" laughed Lydia.
Susan descended the garden steps. She was a much thinner and dimmerversion of her sister. One seemed to see her pale cheeks, her dark eyesand hair, her small mouth, through mist, like a Whistler portrait. Shemoved very quietly, and her voice was low, and a little dragging. Theyoung vicar of a neighbouring hamlet in the fells, who admired hergreatly, thought of her as playing "melancholy"--in the contemplativeMiltonic sense--to Lydia's "mirth." She was a mystery to him; a mysteryhe would have liked to unravel. But she was also a mystery to her family.She shut herself up a good deal with her books; she had written twotragedies in blank verse; and she held feminist views, vague yet fierce.She was apparently indifferent to men, much more so than Lydia, whofrankly preferred their society to that of her own sex; but Lydia noticedthat if the vicar, Mr. Franklin, did not call for a week Susan wouldingeniously invent some device or other for peremptorily inducing him todo so. It was understood in the family, that while Lydia enjoyed life,Susan only endured it. All the same she was a good deal spoilt. Shebreakfasted in bed, which Mrs. Penfold never thought of doing; Lydiamended her stockings, and renewed her strings and buttons; while Mrs.Penfold spent twice the time and money on Susan's wardrobe that she didon Lydia's. There was no reason whatever for any of these indulgences;but when three women live together, one of them has only to sit still, tomake the others her slaves. Mrs. Penfold found her reward in the beliefthat Susan was a genius and would some day astonish the world; Lydia hadno such illusion; and yet it would have given her a shock to see Susanmending her own stockings.
Susan approached her now languidly, her hand to her brow. Lydia looked ather severely.
"I suppose you have got a headache?"
"A little."
"That's because you will go and write poetry directly after lunch. Why itwould even give _me_ a headache!"
"I had an idea," said Susan plaintively.
"What does that matter? Ideas'll keep. You have just to make a note ofthem--put salt on their tails--and then go and take a walk. Indigestion,my dear--which is the plain English for your headache--is very bad forideas. What have you been doing to your collar?"
And Lydia took hold of her sister, straightening her collar, pinning upher hair, and generally putting her to rights. When the operation wasover, she gave a little pat to Susan's cheek and kissed her.
"You can come with us to Threlfall, that would take your headache away;and I don't mind the back seat."
"I wasn't asked," said Susan with dignity. "I shall go for a walk bymyself. I want to think."
Lydia received the intimation respectfully, merely recommending hersister to keep out of the sun; and was hurrying into the house to fetchher hat when Susan detained her.
"Was that Lord Tatham who came just now?"
"It was." Lydia faced her sister, holding up the note from Lady Tatham."We are all to dine with them next week."
"He has been here nearly every other day for a fortnight," said Susan,with feminine exaggeration. "It is becoming so marked that everybodytal
ks."
"Well, I can't help it," said Lydia defiantly. "We are not a convent; andwe can hardly padlock the gate."
"You should discourage him--if you don't mean to marry him."
"My dear, I like him so!" cried Lydia, her hands behind her, and tossingher fair head. "Marrying!--I hate the word."
"He cares--and you don't," said Susan slowly, "that makes it veryunfair--to him."
Lydia frowned for a moment, but only for a moment.
"I'm _not_ encouraging him, Susy--not in the way you mean. But why shouldI drive him away, or be rude to him? I want to put things on a properfooting--so that he'll understand."
"He's going to propose to you," said Susan bluntly.
"Well, then, we shall get it over," said Lydia, reluctantly. "And youdon't imagine that such a golden youth will trouble about such a triflefor long. Think of all the other things he has to amuse him. Why, if Ibroke my heart, you know I should still want to paint," she added,flippantly.
"I'd give a good deal to see you break your heart!" said the tragedienne,her dark eyes kindling--"you'd be just splendid!"
"Thanks, awfully! There's the pony."
Susan held her.
"You're really going to the Tower?"
"I am. It's mean of me. When you hate a man, you oughtn't to go to hishouse. But I can't help it. I'm so curious."
"Yes, but not about Mr. Melrose," said Susan slowly.
Lydia flushed suddenly from brow to chin.
"Goose! let me go."
Susan let her go, and then stood a while, absorbed, looking at themysterious Tower. Her power of visualization was uncannily strong; itamounted almost to second sight. She seemed to be in the Tower--in one ofits locked and shuttered rooms; to be looking at a young man stretchedon a sofa--a wizardlike figure in a black cloak standing near--and in thedoorway, Lydia entering, bringing the light on her fair hair....
The Mating of Lydia Page 7