XII
Faversham sped home through the winding Cumbrian lanes, driven by the newchauffeur just imported from Manchester. The hedges were thick withmeadow-sweet and its scent, mingled with that of new-mown hay, hung inthe hot, still air. In front of him the Ullswater mountains showed dimlyblue. It was a country he was beginning to love. His heart rose to it.
Small wonder in that! For here, in this northern landscape, so strange tohim but three months ago, he had first stumbled on Success--and he hadfirst met Lydia.
Was there any chance for him? Through all his talks with the countryneighbours, or with Lady Tatham, he had been keenly on the watch foranything that might show him what Lydia's position in the Duddon Castlecircle actually was. That Tatham was in love with her was clear. Mrs.Penfold's chatter as to the daily homage paid by the castle to thecottage, through every channel--courtesies or gifts--that the Tathams'delicacy could invent, or the Penfolds' delicacy accept, had convincedhim on that point. And Faversham had seen for himself at Duddon thatTatham hung upon her every movement and always knew where she was and towhom she was talking; nor had the long conversation in the rose-walkescaped him.
Well, of course, in the case of any other girl in the world than Lydia,such things would be conclusive. Who was likely to refuse Tatham, plusthe Tatham estates? But unless he had mistaken her altogether--herdetachment, her unworldliness, her high spirit--Lydia Penfold was notthe girl to marry an estate. And if Tatham himself had touched herheart--"would she have allowed me the play with her that she has donethis last fortnight?" She would have been absorbed, preoccupied; and shehad been neither. He thought of her kind eyes, her frank, welcoming ways,her intense interest in his fortunes. Impossible--if she were in lovewith or on the point of an engagement to Harry Tatham.
She had forgiven him for his touch of jealous ill-temper! As they stoodtogether at the last in the Duddon garden, she had said, "I _must_ hearabout to-night! send me a word!" And he carried still, stamped upon hismind, the vision of her--half shy, half eager--looking up.
For the rest, the passion that was rapidly rising in the veins of a manfull of life and will, surprised the man himself, excited in him a newcomplacency and self-respect. For years he had said to himself that hecould only marry money. He remembered with a blush one or two rathersordid steps in that direction--happily futile. But Lydia was penniless;and he could make her rich. For his career was only beginning; and onwealth, the wealth which is power, he was more than ever determined.
A turn in the road brought Threlfall into view. The new agent sat withfolded arms, gazing at the distant outline, and steadily pulling himselftogether to meet the ordeal of the evening. It was by Melrose's own wishhe had drawn up a careful scheme of the alterations and improvementswhich seemed to him imperatively necessary in the financial interests ofthe estate; and he had added to it a statement--very cautious anddiplomatic--of the various public and private quarrels in which Melrosewas now concerned, with suggestions as to what could be done tostraighten them out. With regard to two or three of them litigation wasalready going on; had, indeed, been going on interminably. Faversham wascertain that with a little good-will and a very moderate amount of moneyhe could settle the majority of them in a week.
So far Melrose had been fairly amenable--had given a curt assent, forinstance, to the conditions on which Faversham had proposed to relet twoof the vacant farms, and to one or two other changes. But Favershamrealized that he possessed no true knowledge of the old man's mind andtemperament. Exultant though he often felt in his new office, and thepreposterously large salary attached to it, he reminded himselfconstantly that he trod on unsure ground. Once or twice he had beenconscious of a strange sense as of some couchant beast beside him readyto spring; also of some curious weakening and disintegration in Melrose,even since he had first known him. He seemed to be more incalculable,less to be depended on. His memory was often faulty, and his irritabilityhardly sane.
Faversham indeed was certain, from his own observation, that the mereexcitement of opening and exploring the huge collections he hadaccumulated, during these twenty years, in the locked rooms of the house,had imposed a sharp nervous strain on a man now past seventy, who for allthe latter part of his life had taken no exercise and smoked incessantly.
Supposing he were suddenly to fall ill and die--what would happen to thehouse and its collections, or to the immense fortune, the proportions ofwhich the new agent was now slowly beginning to appreciate? All sorts ofquestions with regard to the vanished wife and child were now risinginsistently in Faversham's mind. Were they really dead, and if so, howand where? Once or twice, since his acceptance of the agency, Melrose hadrepeated to him with emphasis: "I am alone in the world." Dixon and hiswife preserved an absolute silence on the subject, and loyalty to hisemployer forbade Faversham to question them or any other of Melrose'sdependents. It struck him, indeed, that Mrs. Dixon had shown a curiousagitation when, that morning, Faversham had conveyed to her Melrose'sinstructions to prepare a certain room on the first floor as the agent'sfuture bedroom.
"Aye, sir, aye--but it wor Mrs. Melrose's room," she had said, lookingdown, her lip twitching a little, her old hands fumbling with the stringsof her apron.
Faversham had asked uncomfortably whether there were not some other roomin a less conspicuous part of the house to which he might be transferred,the once dismantled drawing-room being now wanted to house the finethings that were constantly coming to light. Mrs. Dixon shook her head.All the available rooms were still full of what she called "stoof." Andthen she had abruptly left him.
The light was fast failing as he approached the house. By the shearingaway of trees and creeper, at least from all its central and easternparts, Threlfall had now lost much of its savage picturesqueness; theformal garden within the forecourt had been to some extent restored;and the front door had received a coat or two of paint. But the whole ofthe west wing was still practically untouched. There they still were--theshuttered and overgrown windows. Faversham looked at them expectantly.The exploration of the house roused in him now the same kind ofexcitement that drives on the excavators of Delphi or Ephesus, or thedivers for Spanish treasure. He and Melrose had already dug out so manyprecious things--things many of them which had long sunk below thesurface of the old man's memory--that heaven only knew what might turnup. The passion of adventure ran high; he longed to be at the businessagain and was sorry to think it must some day have an end.
That broken window, for instance, now widely open in the west wing, wasthe window of the room they had forced on the previous day. In general,Melrose possessed some rough record of the contents of the locked rooms,and their labelled keys; but in this case both record and label had beenlost. A small amount of violence, however, had sufficed to open thehalf-rotten door. Inside--thick darkness, save for one faint gleamthrough a dilapidated shutter. As Faversham advanced, groping into theroom, there was a sudden scurry of mice, and a sudden flapping ofsomething in a corner, which turned out to be a couple of bats. When hemade for the window, dense cobwebs brushed against his face, and half theshutter on which he laid his hand came away at his touch and lay infragments at his feet. The rain had come in for twenty years through abroken pane, and had completely rotted the wood. Strange noises in thechimney showed that owls had built there; and as the shutter fell ahideous nest of earwigs was disturbed, and ran hither and thither overthe floor.
And when Faversham turned to look at the contents of the room, he sawMelrose in his skullcap, poking about among a medley of black objects onthe floor and in a open cupboard, his withered cheeks ghastly in thesudden daylight.
"What are they?" asked Faversham, wondering.
"Silver," was the sharp reply. "Some of the finest things known."
And from the filthy cupboard Melrose's shaking hand had drawn out a ewerand basin, whence some ragged coverings fell away. It was almost entirelyblack; but the exquisite work of it--the spiral fluting of the ewer, itsshell-like cover, the winged dragon on the handle, and, round t
he ovalbasin, the rim of chasing dolphins, could still be seen.
"That came from the Wolfgang sale--I gave six hundred for it. It'sworth six thousand now--you can't find such a piece anywhere. Ah! byGeorge!"--with a stifled shout--"and that's the Demidoff tazza!"--asFaversham lifted up a thing lying in a half-open box that might have beenebony--a shallow cup on a stem, with a young vine-crowned Bacchus for ahandle. Melrose took it eagerly, put up his eyeglass, and, rubbing awaywith his handkerchief, searched for the mark. "There it is!--a Caduceusand 1620. And the signature--see!--'A.D. Viana.' There was a cup signedby Viana sold last week at Christie's--fetched a fabulous sum! Everysingle thing in this room is worth treble and quadruple what I gave forit. Talk of investments! There are no such investments as works of art.Buy 'em, I say--lock 'em up--and forget 'em for twenty years!"
With much labour, they had at last ranged the most important pieces onsome trestle tables and in the cupboards of the room. A number of smallerboxes and packages still remained to be looked through. Faversham, byMelrose's directions, had written to a London firm of dealers in antiquesilver, directing them to send down two of their best men to clean, mend,and catalogue. Proper glazed cupboards, baize-lined, were to be put upalong each side of the room; the room itself was to be repaired,whitened, and painted. Faversham already foresaw the gleaming splendourof the show, when all should be done, and these marvels of a most lovelyart--these silver nymphs and fauns, these dainty sea-horses and dolphins,these temples and shrines, now holding a Hercules, now a St. Sebastian,these arabesques, garlands, festoons, running in a riot of beauty overthe surface of cup and salver--had been restored to daylight and men'ssight, after the burial of a generation.
But the value of what the house contained! In these days of huge pricesand hungry buyers, it must be simply enormous.
Faversham often found himself speculating eagerly upon it, and alwayswith the query in the background "For _whom_ is it all piling up?"
As they left the silver room, Melrose had made the grim remark that thecontents of that room alone would make it prudent to let loose an extracouple of bloodhounds in the park at night. Dixon's frowning countenanceas he followed in their wake showed an answering anxiety. For he had nowbeen made guardian of the collections; and a raw nephew of his, chosenapparently for his honesty and his speechlessness, had been put on asmanservant, Mrs. Dixon had two housemaids under her, and a girl in thekitchen. It was sometimes evident to Faversham that the agitation ofthese changes which had come so suddenly upon them, had aged the two oldservants, just as it had tried their master.
Faversham on dismounting was told by Joseph, the new man, that Mr.Melrose would dine alone, but would be glad to see Mr. Faversham in thelibrary after dinner.
Faversham made a quick and sparing meal in his own room, and thenadjourning to his newly furnished office ran eagerly through the variouspapers and proposals which he had to lay before his employer.
As he did so, he was more conscious than ever before of the enormityof Melrose's whole career as a landowner. The fact was that the estatehad been for years a mere field for the display of its owner's worstqualities--caprice, miserliness, jealous or vindictive love of power.The finance of it mattered nothing to him. Had he been a poorer man hislanded property might have had a chance; he would have been forced torun it more or less on business lines. But his immense income came tohim apparently from quite other sources--mines, railways, foreigninvestments; and with all the human relations involved in landowning hewas totally unfit to deal.
Hence these endless quarrels with his tenants to whom he never allowed alease; these constant evictions; these litigations as to improvements,compensation, and heaven knows what. The land was naturally of excellentquality, and many a tenant came in with high hopes, only to find that thepromises on the strength of which he had taken his farm were neverfulfilled, and that if it came to lawyers, Melrose generally managed "tobest it." Hence, too, the rotten, insanitary cottages--maintained,Faversham could almost swear, for the mere sake of defying the localauthorities and teaching "those Socialist fools" a lesson. Hence theconstant charges of persecution for political reasons; and hence, too,this bad case of the Brands, which had roused such a strong and angrysympathy in the neighbourhood that Faversham felt the success of his ownregime must be endangered unless some means could be found, compatiblewith Melrose's arrogance, of helping the ruined family.
Well, there in those clear typewritten sheets, lay his suggestions fordealing with these various injustices and infamies. They were moderate.Expensive for the moment, they would be economical in the long run. Hehad given them his best brains and his hardest work. And he had taken thebest advice. But they meant, no doubt, a complete change in theadministration and _personnel_ of the estate.
Faversham stepped into the garden, and, hanging over the low wall whichedged the sandstone cliff, he looked out over the gorge of the river,across the woods, into the ravines and gullies of the fells. Mountain andwood stood dark against a saffron sky. In the dim blue above it Venussailed. A light wind stirred the trees and the stream. Along the rivermeadows he could hear the cows munching and see their dusky forms movingthrough a thin mist. The air was amethyst and gold, and the beautifulearth shone through it, ennobled by the large indistinctness, the quietmassing of the evening tones.
His heart withdrew itself into some inner shrine where it might be withLydia. She represented to him some force, some help, to which he turned.
Please God, he would win her!--and through a piece of honourablework--the cleansing of an ugly corner of human life. A nobler ambitionthan he had ever yet been conscious of, entered in. He felt himself abetter man, with a purpose in the world.
Nor, at this critical moment, did he forget his uncle--the man who hadbeen a father to him in his orphaned boyhood. What pleasure the dear oldfellow would have taken in this new opening--and in Melrose's marvellouspossessions! By the way--Melrose had said nothing about the gems for along time past, and Faversham was well content to leave them in histemporary keeping. But his superstitious feeling about them--and all menhave some touch of superstition--was stronger than ever. It was as thoughhe protested anew to some hovering shape, which took the aspect now ofMackworth, now of Fortuna--"Stand by me!--even as I hold by them."
The chiming clock in the gallery--a marvel of French _horlogerie_, madefor the Regent Orleans--had just finished striking eleven. Melrose, whohad been speaking with energy through the soft, repeated notes, threwhimself back in his chair, and lit a cigarette. His white hair shoneagainst the panelled background of the room, and, beneath it, framed inbushy brows still black, a pair of menacing eyes fixed themselves onFaversham.
Faversham remained for a minute at the table, looking down upon it, hishand resting on the document from which he had been reading. Then he toopushed his chair slowly backward, and looked up.
"I understand then, Mr. Melrose, that these proposals of mine do not meetwith your approval?"
"I have told you what I approve."
"You have approved a few matters--of minor importance. But my chiefproposals"--he ran his finger lightly over the pages of his memorandum,enumerating the various headings--"these, if I have understood youcorrectly, are not to your mind, and you refuse to sanction them?"
The face before him was as iron.
"Let half these things wait, I tell you, and they will settle themselves.I pointed out to you when we made our bargain, that I would not have myestate run on any damned Socialist principles."
Faversham smiled; but he had grown very pale. "Your financial profit, Mr.Melrose, and the business management of your property have been my soleconcern."
"I am sure that you think so. But as to what is profit and what isbusiness, you must allow me to be the final judge."
Faversham thought a moment, then rose, and walked quietly up and down thelength of the room, his hands in his pockets. The old man watched him,his haughty look and regular features illuminated by the lamp beside him.In front of him was the famous French table,
crowded as usual with amultitude of miscellaneous _objets d'art_, conspicuous among them a pairof Tanagra figures, white visions of pure grace, amid the dusty confusionof their surroundings.
Suddenly Melrose flung his cigarette vehemently away.
"Faversham! Don't be a fool! I have something to say to you a deal moreimportant than this damned nonsense!" He struck his hand on the openmemorandum.
Faversham turned in astonishment.
"Sit down again!" said Melrose peremptorily, "and listen to me. I desireto put things as plainly and simply as possible. But I must have all yourattention."
Faversham sat down. Melrose was now standing, his hands on the back ofthe chair from which he had risen.
"I have just made my will," he said abruptly. "Tomorrow I hope to signit. It depends on you whether I sign it or not."
As the speaker paused, Faversham, leaning back and fronting him, grewvisibly rigid. An intense and startled expectancy dawned in his face; hislips parted.
"My will," Melrose continued, in a deliberately even voice, "concerns afortune of rather more--than a million sterling--allowing little ornothing for the contents of this house. I inherited a great deal, and bythe methods I have adopted--not the methods, my dear Faversham, I maysay, that you have been recommending to me to-night. I have more thandoubled it. I have given nothing away to worthless people, and no sloppyphilanthropies have stood between me and the advantages to which myknowledge and my brains entitled me. Hence these accumulations. Now, thequestion is, what is to be done with them? I am alone in the world. Ihave no interest whatever in building universities, or providing freelibraries, or subsidizing hospitals. I didn't make the world, and I havenever seen why I should spend my energies in trying to mend what theDemiurge has made a mess of. In my view the object of everybody should beto _live_, as acutely as possible--to get as many sensations, as manypleasant reactions as possible--out of the day. Some people get theirsensations--or say they do--out of fussing about the poor. Forty yearsago I got them out of politics--or racing--or high play. For years past,as you know, I have got them out of collecting works of art--and fightingthe other people in the world who want the same things that I do.Perfectly legitimate in my belief! I make no apology whatever for myexistence. Well, now then, I begin to be old--don't interrupt me--I don'tlike it, but I recognize the fact. I have various ailments. Doctors aremostly fools; but I admit that in my case they may be right; though Iintend to live a good while yet in spite of them. Still--there it is--whois to have this money--and these collections? Sooner than let anyrascally Chancellor of the Exchequer get at them, I would leave them toDixon. But I confess I think Dixon would be embarrassed to know what todo with them. I don't think I possess a single relation that I don'tdislike. So now we come to the point. With your leave--and by yourleave--I propose to leave the money and the collections--to you!" Theyoung man--flushed and staring--half rose in his chair.
"To _me_? What can you possibly mean, sir?"
"Precisely what I say. On conditions, of course. It depends on yourself.But you were brought into this house by a strange chance--you happen tosuit me--to interest me. 'Provvy' as Bentham would say, seems to point toyou. Here--in this drawer"--he brought his hand down strongly on thewriting table--"is a will which I wrote last night. It leaves the wholeof my property to you, subject to certain directions as to the works ofart--to a provision for old Dixon, and so on. You can't witness it, ofcourse, nor can Dixon; otherwise it might be signed to-night. But if wecome to an understanding to-night, I can sign it to-morrow morning andget a couple of men from the farm to witness it. I think I can promise tolive so long!"
There was silence. With an uncertain, swaying movement Melrose returnedto his chair. The physical weakness betrayed by the action was strangelybelied, however, by his imperious aspect, as of an embodied Will. Hiseyes never left Faversham, even while he rested heavily on the tablebefore him for support.
Suddenly, Faversham, who had been sitting pale and motionless, looked up.
"Mr. Melrose--have you no natural heirs?"
Melrose could not altogether disguise the shock of the question. He threwhimself back, however, with a smile.
"You have been listening I see to the stories that people tell."
Faversham bent forward and spoke earnestly: "I understand that your wifeand child left you twenty years ago. Are they still living?"
Melrose shrugged his shoulders. "Whether they are or not, really mattersnothing at all either to you or me: Mrs. Melrose left this house of herown free will. That ended the connection between us. In any case, youneed have no alarm. There is no entail--even were there a son, and therenever was a son. I do what I will with my own. There is no claim onme--there would be no claim on you."
"There must be--there would be--a moral claim!"
The colour rushed into Melrose's face. He drummed the table impatiently.
"We will not, if you please, argue the matter, which is for me a _chosejugee_. And no one who wishes to remain a friend of mine"--he spoke withemphasis--"will ever attempt to raise ghosts that are better left intheir graves. I repeat--my property is unencumbered--my power to dealwith it absolute. I propose to make you my heir--on conditions. The firstis"--he looked sombrely and straight at his companion--"that I should notbe harassed or distressed by any such references as those you have justmade."
Faversham made no sound. His chin was propped on his hand, and his eyespursued the intricacies of a silver cup studded with precious stoneswhich stood on the table beside him. He thought, "The next condition willbe--the gems."
"The second," Melrose resumed, after a somewhat long pause, and with asarcastic intonation, "is that you should resist the very naturaltemptation of exhibiting me to the world as a penitent and reformedcharacter. In that document you have just read you suggest to me--first,that I should retire from three lawsuits in which, whatever other peoplemay think, I conceive that I have a perfectly good case; second"--heticked the items off on the long tapering finger of his left hand--"thatI should rebuild a score or two of cottages it would not pay me torebuild--in which I force no one to live--and which I shall pull downwhen it pleases me, just to teach a parcel of busybodies to mind theirown business; third--that I should surrender, hands down, to a lot oftrumpery complaints and grievances got up partly to spite a landlord,partly to get money out of him; and fourthly--with regard to the right ofway--that I should let that young prig Tatham, a lad just out of thenursery, dictate to me, bring the whole country about my ears, andbrowbeat me out of my rights. Now--I warn you--I shall do none of thesethings!"
The speaker paused a moment, and then turned impetuously on hiscompanion.
"Have you any reason so far to complain of my conduct toward you?"
"Complain? You have been only too amazingly, incredibly generous."
Melrose's hand made a disdainful movement.
"I did what suited me. And I told you, to begin with, it would _not_ suitme to run my estate as though it were a University Settlement. Handle megently--that's all. You've had your way about some of the farms--you'llget it no doubt with regard to others. But don't go about playing thereformer--on this dramatic scale!--at my expense. I don't believe in thismodern wish-wash; and I don't intend to don the white sheet."
He rose, and lighting another cigarette, he dropped a log on the fire,and stood with his back to it, quietly smoking. But his eyes were allfierce life under the dome of his forehead, and his hand shook a little.
Faversham sat absolutely still. Rushing through his veins was the senseof something incredible and intoxicating. The word "million" rang in hisears. He was conscious of the years behind him--their poverty, theirthwarted ambitions, their impotent discontent. And suddenly the yearsbefore him lit up; all was possible; all was changed. Yet as he sat therehis pulses hurrying, words coming to his lips which dropped away again,he became conscious of two or three extremely sharp visualizations.
A room in one of the Mainstairs cottages, containing a bed, and on it aparalyzed girl, p
aralyzed after diphtheria--the useless hands--thevacant, miserable look--other beds in the same room filling it up--theroof so low that it seemed to be crushing down on the girl--holes in thethatch rudely mended.
Again--a corner in the Mainstairs churchyard, filled with small, crowdedgraves, barely grass-grown; the "Innocents' Corner."
And again, a wretched one-roomed cottage in the same row of hovels,kitchen, bedroom, and living-room in one, mud-floored, the outer dooropening into it, the bed at the back, and an old husband and wife,crippled with rheumatism, sitting opposite each other on a day of pouringrain, shivering in the damp and the draughts.
Then, driving these out--the face of Colonel Barton with its blunt,stupid kindliness, and that whole group at Duddon, welcoming the new man,believing in him, ready to help him, with the instinctive trust of honestfolk.
And last, but flashing through all the rest, Lydia's eyes--the light inthem--and the tones of her voice--"You'll do it!--you'll do it!--you'llset it all right!"
He perfectly realized at that moment--before the brain had begun torefine on the situation--what was asked of him. He was to be Melrose'stool and accomplice in all that Melrose's tyrannical caprice chose to dowith the lives of human beings; he was to forfeit the respect of goodmen; he was to make an enemy of Harry Tatham; and he was to hurt--andpossibly alienate--Lydia.
And the price of it was a million.
He rose rather heavily to his feet, and gathered up his papers--a slimand comely figure amid the queer medley of the room.
"I must have some time to think about what you have said to me, Mr.Melrose. You've taken my breath away--you won't be surprised at that."
Melrose smiled grimly.
"Not at all. That's natural! Very well then--we meet to-morrow morning.Before eleven o'clock the will must be either signed--or cancelled. Andfor the present--please!--silence!"
They exchanged good-nights. Melrose looked oddly after the young man, asthe door closed.
"He took it well. I suppose he's been sitting up nights over thatprecious memorandum. He was to be the popular hero, and I the 'shockingexample.' Well, he'll get over it. I think--I have--both him--and theMedusa. And what does the will matter to me? Any one may have the gear,when I can't have it. But I'll not be dictated to--_this_ side of theStyx!"
Faversham wandered out once more into the summer night. A little pathalong the cliff took him down to the riverside, and he paced beside thedimly shining water, overhung by the black shadow of the woods. When hereturned to the Tower, just as the light was altering, and the chill ofdawn beginning, a long process of tumultuous reflection had linked themood of the preceding evening to the mood of this new day, and of thedays that were to follow. He had determined on his answer to Melrose; andhe was exultantly sure of his power to deal with the future. The scruplesand terrors of the evening were gone. His intelligence rose to his task.
This old man, already ill, liable at any moment to the accidents of age,and still madly absorbed, to the full extent of his powers and his time,in the pursuits of connoisseurship--what could he really do in the way ofeffective supervision of his agent? A little tact, a little prudentmaneuvering; some money here, possibly out of his, Faversham's, ownpocket; judicious temporizing there; white lying when necessary--acertain element of intrigue in Faversham rose to the business withalacrity. In the pride of his young brain and his recovered strength hedid not regard it as possible that he should fail in it. After all, thelaw was now squeezing Melrose; and might be gently and invisiblyassisted. If, as to the will itself, his lips were sealed, it would bepossible to give some hint to Lydia, for friendship to interpret; toplead with her for patience, in view of the powers, the beneficentpowers, that must be his--aye and hers--the darling!--some day.
The thought of them was intoxicating! A man to whom wealth had alwaysappeared as the only gate of opportunity, was now to be rich beyond theutmost dream of his ambition. The world lay at his feet. He would use itwell; he would do all things honourably. Ease, travel, a politicalcareer, wide influence, the possession of beautiful things--in a veryshort time they would all be in his grasp; for Melrose was near his end.Some difficulty first, but not too much; the struggle that leads to theprize!
As he softly let himself in at the side door of the Tower, and mounted tohis new room, his whole nature was like a fiercely sped arrow, aflightfor its goal. Of what obstacles might lie between him and his goal he hadceased to take account. Compunctions had disappeared.
Only--once--as he stood dreamily looking round the strange bedroom towhich his personal possessions had been transferred, an image crossed hismind which was disagreeable. It was that of Nash, the shady solicitor inPengarth, Melrose's factotum in many disreputable affairs, and his agentin the ruin of the Brands. A little reptile if ever there was one!Faversham had come across the creature a good deal since his appointmentas agent; and was well aware that he had excited Nash's jealousy anddislike. A man to be guarded against no doubt; but what could he do?Faversham contemptuously dismissed the thought of him.
A charming old room!--though the height and the dark tone of the oakpanelling sucked all the light from his pair of candles. That would bealtered as soon as the electric installation, for which Melrose had justsigned the contract, was complete. In the centre of the wall oppositethe window, through which a chill dawn was just beginning to penetrate,stood a fine _armoire_ of carved Norman work. Faversham went to look atit, and vaguely opened one of its drawers.
There was something at the back of the drawer, a picture, apparently anold photograph, lying face downward. He drew it out, and looked at it.
He beheld a young and rather pretty woman, with a curiously flat head,staring black eyes, and sharp chin. She had a child on her knee of abouta year old, an elf with delicately proud features, and a frowning,passionate look.
Who were they? The photograph was stained with age and damp; deep, too,in dust. From the woman's dress it must be a good many years old.
The answer suggested itself at once. He was now inhabiting Mrs. Melrose'sroom, which, according to Mrs. Dixon, had been closed for years, from thedate of her flight. The photograph must have been hers; the child washers--and Melrose's! The likeness indeed cried out.
He replaced the photograph, his mind absorbed in the excitement of itsdiscovery. Where were they now--the forlorn pair? He had no doubtwhatever that they were alive--at the old man's mercy, somewhere.
He let in the dawn, and stood long in thought beside the open window. Butin the end, he satisfied himself. He would find a way of meeting all justclaims, when the time arrived. Why not?
BOOK III