X
While Faversham was driving back to Threlfall, his mind possessed by atumult of projects and images--which was a painful tumult, becausehis physical strength was not yet equal to coping with it--a scene waspassing in a bare cottage beside the Ulls-water road, whence in due timeone of those events was to arise which we call sudden or startling onlybecause we are ignorant of the slow [Greek: ananke ] which has producedthem.
An elderly man had just entered the cottage after his day's work. He wasevidently dead tired, and he had sunk down on a chair beside a tablewhich held tea things and some bread and butter. His wife could be heardmoving about in the lean-to scullery behind the living-room.
The man sat motionless, his hands hanging over his knees, his head bent.He seemed to be watching the motes dancing in a shaft of dusty sunlightthat had found its way into the darkened room. For the western sun wasblazing on the front, the blinds were down, and the little room was likean oven. The cottage was a new one and stood in a bare plot of garden,unshaded and unsheltered, on a stretch of road which crossed the openfell. It was a labourer's cottage, but the furniture of the living-roomwas superior in quality to that commonly found in the cottages of theneighbourhood. A piano was crowded into one corner, and a sideboard, toolarge for the room, occupied the wall opposite the fireplace.
The man sitting in the chair also was clearly not an ordinary labourer.His brown suit, though worn and frayed, had once been such a suit asMessrs. Carter, tailors, of Pengarth, were accustomed to sell to theirfarmer clients, and it was crossed by an old-fashioned chain and seal.The suit was heavily splashed with mud; so were the thick boots; and onthe drooped brow shone beads of sweat. John Brand was not much overfifty, but he was tired out in mind and body; and his soul was bitterwithin him.
A year before this date he had been still the nominal owner of a smallfreehold farm between Pengarth and Carlisle, bordering on the Threlfallproperty. But he was then within an ace of ruin, and irreparable calamityhad since overtaken him.
How it was that he had fallen into such a plight was still more or lessmysterious to a dull brain. Up to the age of forty-seven, he had beenemployed on his father's land, with little more than the wages of alabourer, possessing but small authority over the men working on thefarm, and no liberty but such as the will of a tyrannical master allowedhim. Then suddenly the father died, and Brand succeeded to the farm. Allhis long-checked manhood asserted itself. There was a brief period ofdrinking, betting, and high living. The old man had left a small sum ofready money in the bank, which to the son, who had always been denied thehandling of money, seemed riches. It was soon spent, and then unexpectedburdens and claims disclosed themselves. There was a debt to the bank,which there were no means of paying. And he discovered to his dismay thata spinster cousin of his mother's had lent money to his father within thepreceding five years, on the security of his stock and furniture. Wherethe borrowed money had gone no one knew, but the spinster cousin, alarmedperhaps by exaggerated accounts of the new man's drinking habits, pressedfor repayment.
Brand set his teeth, ceased to spend money, and did his best to earn it.But he was a stupid man, and the leading-strings in which his life hadbeen held up to middle age had enfeebled such natural powers as hepossessed. His knowledge was old-fashioned, his methods slovenly; and hiswife, as harmless as himself, but no cleverer, could do nothing to helphim. By dint, however, of living and working hard he got through two orthree years, and might just have escaped his fate--for his creditors, atthat stage, were all ready to give him time--had not ill-fortune thrownhim across the path of Edmund Melrose. The next farm to his belonged tothe Threlfall estate. Melrose's methods as a landlord had thrown out onetenant after another, till he could do nothing but put in a bailiff andwork it himself. The bailiff was incompetent, and a herd of cattle madetheir way one morning through a broken fence that no one had troubled tomend, and did serious damage to Brand's standing crops. Melrose was askedto compensate, and flatly declined. The fence was no doubt his; but heclaimed that it had been broken by one of Brand's men. Hence theaccident. The statement was false, and the evidence supporting itcorrupt. Moreover the whole business was only the last of a series ofunneighbourly acts on the part both of the bailiff and landowner, and asudden fury blazed up in Brand's slow mind. He took his claim to thecounty court and won his case; the judge allowing himself a sharpsentence or two on the management of the Threlfall property. Brand spentpart of his compensation money in entertaining a group of friends at aPengarth public. But that was the last of his triumph. Thenceforwardthings went mysteriously wrong with him. His creditors, first one, thenall, began to tighten their pressure on him; and presently the bankmanager--the Jove of Brand's little world--passed abruptly from civilityor indulgence, to a peremptory reminder that debts were meant to be paid.A fresh bill of sale on furniture and stock staved off disaster for atime. But a bad season brought it once more a long step nearer, and thebank, however urgently appealed to, showed itself adamant, not only as toany further advance, but as to any postponement of their own claim.Various desperate expedients only made matters worse, and after a fewmore wretched months during which his farm deteriorated, and his businesswent still further to wreck, owing largely to his own distress of mind,Brand threw up the sponge. He sold his small remaining interest in hisfarm, which did not even suffice to pay his debts, and went out of it abankrupt and broken man, prematurely aged. A neighbouring squire,indignant with what was commonly supposed to be the secret influencesat work in the affair, offered him the post of bailiff in a vacant farm;and he and his family migrated to the new-built cottage on the Ullswaterroad.
As to these secret influences, they were plain enough to many people.Melrose who had been present on the day when the case was tried had leftthe court-house in a fury, in company with a certain ill-famed solicitor,one Nash, who had worked up the defence, and had served the master ofThrelfall before in various litigations connected with his estates, suchas the respectable family lawyers in Carlisle and Pengarth would havenothing to do with. Nash told his intimates that night that Brand wouldrue his audacity, and the prophecy soon dismally fulfilled itself. Thelocal bank to which Brand owed money had been accustomed for years todeal with very large temporary balances--representing the rents of halfthe Threlfall estates. Nash was well known to the manager, as one ofthose backstairs informants, indispensable in a neighbourhood where everyfarmer wanted advances--now on his crops--now on his stock--and theleading bank could only escape losses by the maintenance of a surprisingamount of knowledge as to each man's circumstances and character. Nashwas observed on one or two occasions going in and out of the bank'sprivate room, at moments corresponding with some of the worst crises ofBrand's fortunes. And with regard to other creditors, no one could sayprecisely how they were worked on, but they certainly showed a surprisingreadiness to join in the harrying of a struggling and helpless man.
In any case Brand believed, and had good cause for believing, that he hadbeen ruined by Melrose in revenge for the county court action. His twosons believed it also.
The tired man sat brooding over these things in the little hot room. Hiswife came in, and stood at the door observing him, twisting her apron ina pair of wet hands.
"Yo'll have your tea?"
"Aye. Where are t' lads?"
"Johnnie's gotten his papers. He's gane oot to speak wi' theschoolmaster. He's thinkin' o' takkin' his passage for t' laast weekin t' year."
Brand made no reply. Johnnie, the elder son, was the apple of his eye.But an uncle had offered him half his passage to Quebec, and his parentscould not stand in the way.
"An' Will?"
"He's cleanin' hissel'."
As she spoke, wavering steps were heard on the stairs, and while shereturned to her kitchen the younger son, Will Brand, opened the door ofthe front room.
He was a lanky, loose-jointed youth of twenty, with a long hatchet face.His movements were strangely clumsy, and his eye wandered. The neighbourshad always regarded him as feeble-witte
d; and about a year before thistime an outburst of rough practical joking on the lad's part--suddenjumpings out from hedges to frighten school-children going home, or thesudden whoopings and howlings of a white-sheeted figure, for thestartling of lovers in the gloaming--had drawn the attention of theWhitebeck policeman to his "queerness." Only his parents knew of whatfits of rage he was capable.
He wore now, as he came into the living-room, an excited,quasi-triumphant look, which did not escape his father.
"What you been after, Will?"
"Helpin' Wilson."
Wilson was a neighbouring keeper, who in June and July, before the youngpheasants were returned to the woods, occasionally employed Will Brand asa watcher, especially at night.
Brand made no reply. His wife brought in the tea, and he and Will helpedthemselves greedily. Presently Will said abruptly:
"A've made that owd gun work all right."
"Aye?" Brand's tone was interrogative, but listless.
"I shot a kestrel an' a stoat wi' un this morning."
"Yo'did, eh?"
Will nodded, his mouth crammed with bread and butter, strange lights andflickering expressions playing over his starved, bony face.
"Wilson says I'm gettin' a varra fair shot."
"Aye? I've heard tha' practisin'." Brand turned a pair of dull eyes uponhis son.
"An' I wish tha' wudn't do't i' my garden!" said Mrs. Brand, with energy."I doan't howd wi' guns an' shootin' aboot, in a sma' garden, wi' t'washin' an' aw."
"It's feyther's garden, ain't it, as long as he pays t' rent!" said Will,bringing his hand down on the table with sudden passion. "Wha's to hinderme? Mebbe yo' think Melrose 'ull be aboot."
"Howd your tongue, Willie," said his mother, mildly. "We werena taakin'o' Melrose."
"Noa--because we're aye thinkin'!"
The lad's eyes blazed as he roughly pushed his cup for a fresh supply.His mother endeavoured to soothe him by changing the subject. But neitherhusband nor son encouraged her. A gloomy silence fell over the tea-table.Presently Brand moved, and with halting step went to the little horsehairsofa, and stretched himself full length upon it. Such an action on hispart was unheard of. Both wife and son stared at him without speaking.Then Mrs. Brand got up, fetched an old shawl, and put it over her husbandwho had closed his eyes. Will left the room, and sitting on a stooloutside the cottage door, with the old gun between his knees, he watchedthe sunset as it flushed the west, and ran along the fell-tops, tilllittle by little the summer night rose from the purple valley, or fellsoftly from the emerging stars, and day was done.
* * * * *
A fortnight later, Mr. Louis Delorme, the famous portrait painter,arrived at Duddon Castle. Various guests had been invited to meet him.Two guests--members of the Tatham family--had invited themselves, much toLady Tatham's annoyance. And certain neighbours were coming to dine;among them Mrs. Penfold and her daughters.
Dinner was laid in a white-pillared loggia, built by an "Italianate" LordTatham in the eighteenth century on the western side of the house,communicating with the dining-room behind it, and with the Italian gardenin front. It commanded the distant blue line of the Keswick and Ullswatermountains, and a foreground of wood and crag, while the Italian garden towhich the marble steps of the loggia descended, with its formal patternsof bright colour, blue, purple, and crimson, lay burning in the afterglowof sunset light, which, in a northern July, will let you read till teno'clock.
The guests gathered on the circle of smooth-shaven grass that in thecentre made a space around a fountain, with a gleaming water nymph. Abroad grass pathway led them to the house, so that guests emerging fromit arrived in rather spectacular fashion--well seen, against the iviedwalls of the castle, to the unfair advantage, as usual, of grace and goodlooks.
Before hostess or neighbours appeared, however, Mr. Delorme and a certainGerald Tatham, Lady Tatham's brother-in-law, had the green circle tothemselves. Gerald Tatham was one of the uninvited guests. He consideredhimself entitled to descend on Duddon twice a year, and generally left ithaving borrowed money of his nephew, in elaborate forgetfulness of asimilar transaction twelve months earlier still undischarged. He wasmarried, but his wife did not pay visits with him. Victoria greatlypreferred her--plain and silent as she was--to her husband; but realizingwhat a relief it must be to a woman to get such a man off her hands asoften as possible, she never pressed her to come to Duddon. MeanwhileGerald Tatham passed as an agreeable person, well versed in all thoseaffairs of his neighbours which they would gladly have kept tothemselves, and possessed of certain odd pockets of knowledge, sportingor financial, which helped him to earn the honest or doubtful pennies onwhich his existence depended.
Delorme and he got on excellently. Gerald respected the painter as aperson whose brush, in a strangely constituted world, was able to supplyhim with an income which even the sons of land or commerce might envy;and secretly despised him for a lack of grandfathers, for his crop ofblack curls, his southern complexion and his foreign birth. Delormethought Gerald an idler of no account, and perceived in him the suresigns of a decadence which was rapidly drawing the English aristocraticclass into the limbo of things that were. But Gerald was an insatiablehawker of gossip; and a fashionable painter, with an empire among youngand pretty women, must keep himself well stocked with that article.
So the two walked up and down together, talking pleasantly enough.Presently Delorme, sweeping a powerful hand before him, exclaimed onthe beauty of the castle and its surroundings.
"Yes--a pretty place," said Gerald, carelessly, "and, for once, moneyenough to keep it up."
"Your nephew is a lucky fellow. Why don't they marry him."
"No hurry! When it does come off my sister-in-law will do somethingabsurd."
"Something sentimental? I'll bet you she doesn't! Democracy is all verywell--except when it comes to marriage. Then even idealists like LadyTatham knock under."
"I wish you may be right. Anyway, she won't send him to New York!"
"No need! Blue blood--impoverished!--that's my forecast."
Gerald smiled--ungenially.
"Victoria would positively dislike an heiress. Jolly easy to take thatsort of line--on forty thousand a year! But as to birth, the family, inmy opinion, has a right to be considered."
Delorme hesitated a moment, then threw a provocative look at hiscompanion, the look of the alien to whom English assumptions aresometimes intolerable.
"Pretty mixed--your stocks--some of them--by now!"
"Not ours. You'd find, if you looked into it, that we've descended verystraight. There's been no carelessness."
Delorme threw up his hands.
"Good heavens! Carelessness, as you call it, is the only hope for afamily nowadays. A strong blood--that's what you want--a blood that willstand this modern life--and you'll never get that by mating in and in.Ah! here come the others."
They turned, and saw a stream of people coming round the corner of thehouse. The rector and Mrs. Deacon--the gold cross on the rector'swaistcoat shining in the diffused light. Lady Barbara Woolson, the otheruninvited guest, Victoria's first cousin; a young man in a dinner jacketand black tie walking with Lady Tatham; a Madonnalike woman in black,hand in hand with a tall schoolboy; and two elderly gentlemen.
But in front--some little way in front--there walked a pair for whom allthe rest appeared to be mere escort and attendance; so vivid, so chargedwith meaning they seemed, among the summer flowers, and under the summersky.
A slender girl in white, and a tall youth looking down upon her, treadingthe grass just slightly in advance of her, with a happy deference, asthough he led in the fairy queen. So delicate were her proportions, sobright her hair, and so compelling the charm that floated round her, thatDelorme, dropping his cigarette, hastily put up his eyeglasses, and fellinto his native tongue.
"Sapristi!--quelle petite fee avez-vous la?"
"My sister-in-law talked of some neighbours--"
"Mais elle entre en re
ine! My dear fellow, it looks dangerous."
Gerald pulled his moustaches, looking hard at the advancing pair.
"A pretty little minx--I must have it out with Victoria." But his tonewas doubtful. It was not easy to have things out with Victoria.
* * * * *
The dinner under the loggia went gaily. Not many courses; much fruit; ashimmer of tea-roses before the guests; and the scent of roses blowing infrom the garden outside.
Victoria had Delorme on her right, and Lydia sat next the great man.Tatham could only glance at her from afar. On his right, he had hiscousin, Lady Barbara, whom he cordially disliked. Her yearly visit,always fixed and announced by herself, was a time of trial both for himand his mother, but they endured it out of a sentimental and probablymistaken belief that the late Lord Tatham had--in her youth--borne her acousinly affection. Lady Barbara was a committee-woman, indefatigable,and indiscriminate. She lived and gloried in a chronic state of overwork,for which no one but herself saw the necessity. Her conversation about itonly confirmed the frivolous persons whom she tried to convert to "socialservice," in their frivolity. After a quarter of an hour's conversationwith her, Tatham was generally dumb, and as nearly rude as histemperament allowed. While, as to his own small efforts, his cottages,County Council, and the rest, no blandishments would have drawn from hima word about them; although, like many of us, Lady Barbara would gladlyhave purchased leave to talk about her own achievements by a strictlymoderate amount of listening to other people's.
On his other side sat a very different person--the sweet-faced lady,whose boy of fourteen sitting opposite kept up with her through dinner ashy telegraphy of eye and smile. They were evidently alone in the world,and everything to each other. She was a widow--a Mrs. Edward Manisty,whose husband, a brilliant but selfish man of letters, had died some fouryears before this date. His wife had never found out that he was selfish;her love had haloed him; though she had plenty of character of her own.She herself was an American, a New Englander by birth, carrying with herstill the perfume of a quiet life begun among the hills of Vermont, andin sight of the Adirondacks; a life fundamentally Puritan and based onPuritan ideals; yet softened and expanded by the modern forces of art,travel, and books. Lucy Manisty had attracted her husband, when he, aweary cosmopolitan, had met her first in Rome, by just this touch ofsomething austerely sweet, like the scent of lavender or dewy grass; andshe had it still--mingled with a kind humour--in her middle years, whichwere so lonely but for her boy. She and Victoria Tatham had made friendson the warm soil of Italy, and through a third person, a rare andcharming woman, whose death had first made them really known to eachother.
"I never saw anything so attractive!" Mrs. Manisty was murmuring inTatham's ear.
He followed the direction of her eyes, and his fair skin reddened.
"She is very pretty, isn't she?"
"Very--like a Verrocchio angel--who has been to college! She is anartist?"
"She paints. She admires Delorme."
"That one can see. And he admires her!"
"We--my mother--wants him to paint her."
"He will--if he knows his own business."
"A Miss Penfold?" said Lady Barbara, putting up her eyeglass. "You sayshe paints. The modern girl must always _do_ something! _My_ girls havebeen brought up for _home_."
A remark that drove Tatham into a rash defence of the modern girl towhich he was quite unequal, and in which indeed he was half-hearted, forhis fundamental ideas were quite as old-fashioned as Lady Barbara's. ButLydia, for him, was of no date; only charm itself, one with all the magicand grace that had ever been in the world, or would be.
Suddenly he saw that she was looking at him--a bright, signalling look,only to tell him how hugely well she was getting on with Delorme. Hesmiled in return, but inwardly he was discontented. Always this gaycamaraderie--like a boy's. Not the slightest tremor in it. Not a touch ofconsciousness--or of sex. He could not indeed have put it so. All he knewwas that he was always thirstily seeking something she showed no signs ofgiving him.
But he himself was being rapidly swept off his feet. Since their meetingat Threlfall, which had been interrupted by Melrose's freakish return,there had been other meetings, as delightful as before, yet no moreconclusive or encouraging. He and Lydia had indeed grown intimate. He hadrevealed to her thoughts and feelings which he had unveiled for no oneelse--not even for Victoria--since he was a boy at school with boyishfriendships. And she had handled them with such delicacy, such sweetness;such frankness too, in return as to her own "ideas," those stubbornintractable ideas, which made him frown to think of. Yet all the time--heknew it--there had been no flirting on her part. Never had she given himthe smallest ground to think her in love with him. On the contrary, shehad maintained between them for all her gentleness, from beginning toend, that soft, intangible barrier which at once checked and challengedhim.
Passion ran high in him. And, moreover, he was beginning to be more thanvaguely jealous. He had seen for himself how much there was in commonbetween her and Faversham; during the last fortnight he had met Favershamat the cottage on several occasions; and there had been references toother visits from the new agent. He understood perfectly that Lydia wasbroadly, humanly interested in the man's task: the poet, the enthusiastin her was stirred by what he might do, if he would, for the humble folkshe loved. But still, there they were--meeting constantly. "And he cantalk to her about all the things I can't!"
His earlier optimism had quite passed by now; probably, thoughunconsciously, under the influence of Lydia's nascent friendshipwith Faversham. There had sprung up in him instead a constant agitationand disquiet that could no longer be controlled. No help--but ratherdanger--lay in waiting....
Delorme had now turned away from Lydia to his hostess, and Lydia wastalking to Squire Andover on her other side, a jolly old boy, with agracious, absent look, who inclined his head to her paternally. Tathamknew very well that there was no one in the county who was more rigidlytied to caste or rank. But he was kind always to the outsider--kindtherefore to Lydia. Good heavens!--as if there was any one at the tablefit to tie her shoe-string!
His pulses raced. The heat, the golden evening, the flowers, all thelavish colour and scents of nature, seemed to be driving him towardspeech--toward some expression of himself, which must be risked, even ifit lead him to disaster.
* * * * *
The dinner which appeared to Tatham interminable, and was really soshort, by Victoria's orders, that Squire Andover felt resentfully he hadhad nothing to eat, at last broke up. The gentlemen lingered smoking onthe loggia. The ladies dispersed through the garden, and Delorme--after alook round the male company--quietly went with them. So did the gentlemanin the dinner jacket and black tie. Tatham, impatiently doing his duty ashost, could only follow the fugitives with his eyes, their pale silksand muslins, among the flowers and under the trees.
But his guests, over their cigars, were busy with some local news, and,catching Faversham's name, Tatham presently recalled his thoughtssufficiently to listen to what was being said. The topic, naturally, wasFaversham's appointment. Every landowner there was full of it. He hadbeen seen in Brampton on market day driving in a very decent motor; andsince his accession he had succeeded in letting two or three of thederelict farms, on a promise of repairs and improvements which had beenat last wrung out of Melrose. It was rumoured also that the mostastonishing things were happening in the house and the gardens.
"Who on earth is the man, and where does he come from?" asked a short,high-shouldered man with a blunt, pugnacious face. He was an ex-officer,a J.P., and one of the most active Conservative wire-pullers of theneighbourhood. He and Victoria Tatham were the best of friends. Theydiffered on almost all subjects. He was a mass of prejudices, large andsmall, and Victoria laughed at him. But when she wanted to help anyparticularly lame dog over any particularly high stile, she always wentto Colonel Barton. A cockney doctor attached to the Workhouse h
ad oncedescribed him to her as--'eart of gold, 'edd of feathers'--and the labelhad stuck.
"A Londoner, picked up badly hurt on the road, by Undershaw, Iunderstand, and carried into the lion's den," said Andover, in answer toBarton. "And now they say he is obtaining the most extraordinaryinfluence over the old boy."
"And the house--turned into a perfect palace!" said the rector, throwingup his hands.
The others, except Tatham, crowded eagerly round, while the rectordescribed a visit he had paid to Faversham, within a few days of theagent's appointment, on behalf of a farmer's widow, a parishioner, undernotice to quit.
"Hadn't been in the house for twenty years. The place is absolutelytransformed! It used to be a pigsty. Now Faversham's rooms are fitfor a prince. Nothing short of one of your rooms here"--he addressedTatham, with a laughing gesture toward the house--"comparable to hissitting-room. Priceless things in it! And close by, an excellent office,with room for two clerks--one already at work--piles of blue-books,pamphlets, heavens knows what! And they are fitting up a telephonebetween Threlfall and some new rooms that he has taken for estatebusiness in Pengarth."
"A _telephone_--at Threlfall!" murmured Andover.
"And Undershaw tells me that Melrose has taken the most extraordinaryfancy for the young man. Everything is done for him. He may have anythinghe likes. And, rumour says--an enormous salary!"
"Sounds like an adventurer," grumbled Barton, "probably is."
Tatham broke in. "No, you're wrong there, Colonel. I knew Faversham atcollege. He's a very decent fellow--and awfully clever."
Yet, somehow, his praise stuck in his throat.
"Well, of course," said Andover with a shrug, "if he _is_ a decentfellow, as Tatham says, he won't stay long. Do you imagine Melrose isgoing to change his spots?--not he!"
"Somebody must really go and talk to this chap," said Barton gloomily. "Ibelieve Melrose will lose us the next election up here. You really can'texpect people to vote for Tories, if Tories are that sort."
The talk flowed on. But Tatham had ceased to listen. For some little timethere had been no voices or steps in the garden outside. They had meltedinto the wood beyond. But now they had returned. He perceived a whitefigure against a distant background of clipped yew.
Rising joyously he threw down his cigarette.
"Shall we join the ladies?"
"I say, you've had a dose of Delorme."
For he had found her still with the painter, who as soon as Tathamappeared had subsided languidly into allowing Lady Barbara to talk tohim.
"Oh! but so amusing!" cried Lydia, her face twinkling. "We've picked allthe Academy to pieces and danced on their bones."
"Has he asked you to sit to him?"
Lydia hesitated, and in the soft light he saw her flush.
"He said something. Of course it would be a great, great honour!"
"An honour to him," said Tatham hotly.
"I'm afraid you don't know how to respect great men!" she said laughing,as they drew out of the shadow of the Italian garden with its clippedyews and cypresses, and reached a broad terrace whence the undulations ofthe park stretched westward and upward into the purple fissures andclefts of the mountains. Trees, fells, grass were steeped in a wan, goldlight, a mingling of sunset and moonrise. The sky was clear; thegradations of colour on the hills ethereally distinct. From a clump oftrees came a soft hooting of owls; and close behind them a tall hedge ofroses red and white made a bower for Lydia's light form, and filled thenight with perfume.
"What do great men matter?" said Tatham incoherently as they paused;"what does anything matter--but--_Lydia!_"
It was a cry of pain. A hand groped for hers. Lydia startled, looked upto see the face of Tatham looking down upon her through the warmdusk--transfigured.
"You'll let me speak, won't you? I daresay it's much too soon--I daresayyou can't think of it--yet. But I love you. I love you so dearly! I can'tkeep it to myself. I have--ever since I first saw you. You won't be angrywith me for speaking? You won't think I took you by surprise? I don'twant to hurry you--I only want you to know--"
Emotion choked him. Lydia, after a murmur he couldn't catch, hid her facein her hands.
He waited; and already there crept through him the dull sense ofdisaster. The impulse to speak had been irresistible, and now--he wishedhe had not spoken.
At last she looked up.
"Oh, you have been so good to me--so sweet to me," and before he knewwhat she was doing, she had lifted one of his hands in her two slenderones and touched it with her lips.
Outraged--enchanted--bewildered--he tried to catch her in his arms. Butshe slipped away from him and with her hands behind her, she looked athim, smiling through tears, her fair hair blown back from her temples,her delicate face alive with feeling.
"I can't say yes--it wouldn't be honest if I did--it wouldn't be fairto you. But, oh, dear, I'm so sorry--so dreadfully sorry--if it's myfault--if I've misled you. I thought I'd tried hard to show what I reallyfelt--that I wanted to be friends--but not--not this. Dear Lord Tatham, Ido like and admire you so much--but--"
"You don't want to marry me!" he said bitterly, turning away.
She paused a moment.
"No"--the word came with soft decision--"no. And if I were to marry youwithout--without that feeling--you have a right to--I should be doingwrong--to you--and to myself. You see"--she looked down, the points ofher white shoe drawing circles on the grass, as though to help out herfaltering speech--"I--I'm not what I believe you think me. I've got allsorts of hard, independent notions in my mind. I want to paint--andstudy--and travel--I want to be free--"
"You should be free as air!" he interrupted passionately.
"Ah, but no!--not if I married. I shouldn't want to be free in that way,if--"
"If you were in love? I understand. And you're not in love with me. Whyshould you be?" said poor Tatham, with a new and desperate humility. "Whyon earth should you be? But I'd adore you--I'd give you anything in theworld you wanted."
Sounds of talking and footsteps emerged from the dusk behind them; thehigh notes of Lady Barbara, and the answering bass of Delorme.
"Don't let them find us," said Lydia impetuously--"I've _so_ much tosay."
Tatham turned, and led the way to the pillared darkness of a pergola totheir left. One side of it was formed by a high yew hedge; on the other,its rose-twined arches looked out upon the northern stretches of thepark, and on the garden front of Duddon. There it lay, the great house,faintly lit; and there in front stretched its demesne, symbol of itsancient rule and of its modern power. A natural excitement passed throughLydia as they paused, and she caught its stately outline through thenight. And then, the tameless something in her soul, which was her veryself, rose up, rejoicing in its own strength, and yet--wistful, full oftenderness. Now!--let her play her stroke--her stroke in the new greatgame that was to be, in the new age, between men and women.
"Why shouldn't we just be friends?" she urged. "I know it sounds an old,stale thing to say. But it isn't. There's a new meaning in it now,because--because women are being made new. It used to be offering whatwe couldn't give. We could be lovers; we weren't good enough--we hadn'tstuff enough--to be friends. But now--dear Lord Tatham--just try me--"She held out to him two hands, which he took against his will. "I likeyou so much!--I know that I should love your mother. Now that we've hadthis out, why shouldn't we build up something quite fresh? I want afriend--so badly!"
"And I want something--so much more than a friend!" he said, pressing herhands fiercely.
"Ah, but give it up!" she pleaded. "If you can't, I mustn't come here anymore, nor you to us. And why? It would be such a waste--of what ourfriendship might be. You could teach me so many things. I think I couldteach you some."
He dropped her hands, mastering himself with difficulty.
"It's nonsense," he said shortly; "I know it's nonsense! But--if Ipromised not to say anything of this kind again for a year?"
She pondered. There were compunctio
ns, remorses, in her. As Susan hadwarned her, was she playing with a man's heart and life?
But her trust in her own resources, the zest of spiritual adventure, anda sheer longing to comfort him prevailed.
"You'll promise that; and I'll promise--just to be as nice to you as everI can!" She paused. They looked at each other; the trouble in his eyesquestioning the smile in hers. "Now please!--my friend!"--she sliddexterously, though very softly, into the everyday tone--"will you adviseme? Mr. Delorme has asked me to sit to him. Just a sketch in thegarden--for a picture he's at work on. You would like me to accept?"
She stood before him, her eyes raised, with the frank gentleness of achild. Yet there was a condition implied in the question.
Tatham broke out--passionately,
"Just tell me. There's--there's no one else?"
She suffered for him; she hastened to comfort him.
"No, no--indeed there's no one else. Though, mind, I'm free. And so areyou. Shall I come to-morrow?" she asked again, with quiet insistence.
There was a gulp in Tatham's throat. Yet he rose--dismally--to herchallenge.
"You would do what I like?" he asked, quivering.
"Indeed I would."
"I invited Delorme here--just to please you--and because I hoped he'dpaint you."
"Then that's settled!" she said, with a little sigh of satisfaction.
"And what, please, am I to do--that _you'd_ like?" She looked upmischievously.
"Call me Lydia--forget that you ever wanted to marry me--and don't mind arap what people say!"
He laughed, through his pain, and gravely took her hand.
"And now," said Lydia, "I think it's time to go home."
* * * * *
When all the guests were gone, when Gerald and Delorme had smoked theirlast interminable cigars, and Delorme had made his last mocking commentson the "old masters" who adorned the smoking-room, Tatham saw him safelyto bed, and returned to his sitting-room on the ground floor. The Frenchwindow was open, and he passed out into the garden. Soon, in his strugglewith himself, he had left the garden and the park behind, and wasclimbing the slope of the fells. The play of the soft summer winds underthe stars, the scents of bracken and heather and rushes, the distantthrobbing sounds that rose from the woods as the wind travelled throughthem--and soon, the short mountain turf beneath his feet, and around andbelow him, the great shapes of the hills, mysteriously still, and yet, asit seemed to him, mysteriously alive--these things spoke to him and,little by little, calmed his blood.
It was the first anguish of a happy man. When, presently, he lay safehidden in a hollow of the lonely fell, face downward among the moonlitrocks, some young and furious tears fell upon the sod. That quietstrength of will in so soft a creature--a will opposed to his will--hadbrought him up against the unyieldingness of the world. The joyouscertainties of life were shaken to their base; and yet he could not, hedid not, cease to hope.
The Mating of Lydia Page 10