XVII
On the morning following her vain interview with Melrose, Victoria,sorely conscious of defeat, conveyed the news of it to the depressed anddisprited Netta.
They were in Victoria's sitting-room. Netta sat, a lamentable figure, onthe edge of the sofa, twisting her disfigured hands, her black eyesglancing restlessly about her. Ever since she had read Faversham's letterto Tatham she had been an altered being. The threats as to her father,which it contained, seemed to have withered her afresh. All that smalland desperate flicker of hope in which she had arrived had died away, andher determination with it. Her consent to Victoria's interview withMelrose had been only obtained from her with difficulty. And now she wasall for retreat--precipitate retreat.
"It's no use. I was a fool to come. We must go back. I always toldFelicia it would be no use. We'd better not have come. I'll not have papatormented!"
While she was speaking a footman entered, bringing a telegram forVictoria. It was from Tatham in London.
"Have just seen lawyers. They are of opinion we could not fail inapplication for proper allowance and provision for both mother anddaughter. Hope you will persuade Mrs. Melrose to let us begin proceedingsat once. Very sorry for your telegram this morning, but only what Iexpected."
Victoria read the message to her guest, and then did her best to urgeboldness--an immediate stroke. But Netta shook her head despairingly. Shecould not and would not have her father harassed. Mr. Melrose would doanything--bribe anybody--to get his way. They would have the policecoming, and dragging her father to prison. It was not to be thought of.
Victoria tried gently to investigate what skeleton might be lying in theSmeath closet, whereof Mr. Melrose possessed such very usefulinformation. But Netta held her tongue. "Papa had been very unfortunate,and the Government would like to put him in prison if they could. Edmundhad been always so cruel to him." Beyond this Victoria could not get.
But the determination of the frail, faded woman was unshakable, althoughshe glanced nervously at her daughter from time to time, as if much morein dread of her opinion than of Victoria's.
Felicia, who had listened in silence to the conversation between hermother and Victoria, turned round from the window in which she wasstaring, as soon as Lady Tatham seemed to be finally worsted.
"Mother, you promised to stay here till Christmas!"
The voice was imperious. Felicia's manner to her mother indeed was oftenof an unfilial sharpness, and Victoria was already meditating some gentlediscipline on the point.
"Oh, no, Felicia!" said Netta, helplessly, "not till Christmas." Then,remembering herself, she turned toward her hostess: "It's so kind of you,I'm sure."
"Yes, till Christmas!" repeated Felicia. "You know grandpapa's no worse.You know," the girl flushed suddenly a bright crimson, "Lord Tatham senthim money--and he's quite comfortable. _I_ am not going home just yet! Iam not going back to Italy--till--I have seen my father!"
She faced round upon Victoria and her mother, her hands on her hips, herbreath fluttering.
"Felicia!" cried her mother, "you can't. I tell you--you can't! I shouldnever allow it!"
"Yes, you would, mother! What are you afraid of? He can't kill me. It'sridiculous. I must see my father. I will! He is getting old--he may die.I will see him before I leave England. I don't care whether he gives usthe money or not!"
Victoria's bright eyes showed her sympathy; though she did not interfere.But Netta shrank into herself.
"You are always such a wilful child, Felicia! You mustn't do anythingwithout my leave. You'll kill me if you do."
And ashen-pale, she got up and left the room. Victoria glanced atFelicia.
"Don't do anything against your mother's will," she said gently. "You aretoo young to decide these things for yourself. But, if you can, persuadeher to follow Lord Tatham's advice. He is most anxious to help you in thebest way. And he does not believe that Mr. Melrose could hurt yourgrandfather."
Felicia shook her curly head, frowning.
"One cannot persuade mother--one cannot. She is obstinate--oh, soobstinate! If it were me, I would do anything Lord Tatham askedme!--anything in the world."
She stood with her hands behind her back, her slight figure drawn up, herlook glowing.
Victoria bent over her embroidery, smiling a little, unseen, and, intruth, not ill pleased. Yet there was something disturbing in theseoccasional outbursts. For the little Southerner's own sake, one must takecare they led to nothing serious. For really--quite apart from any otherconsideration--Harry never took the smallest notice of her. And who couldknow better than his mother that his thoughts were still held, stilltormented by the vision of Lydia?
Felicia slipped out of a glass door that led to the columned verandaoutside. Victoria, mindful of the girl's delicate look, hurried after herwith a fur wrap. Felicia gratefully but absently kissed her hand, andVictoria left her to her own thoughts.
It was a sunny day, and although November was well in, there was almostan Italian warmth in this southern loggia where roses were stillblooming. Felicia walked up and down, her gaze wandering over themountain landscape to the south--the spreading flanks and slopes ofthe high fells, scarlet with withered fern, and capped with new-fallensnow. Through the distant landscape she perceived the line of the streamwhich ran under Flitterdale Common with its high cliff-banks, and hangingwoods, now dressed in the last richness of autumn. That distant wall oftrees--behind it, she knew, was Threlfall Tower. Her father--her unkind,miserly father, who hated both her and her mother--lived there.
How far was it? A long way! But she would get there somehow.
"It is my right to see my father!" she said to herself passionately;adding with a laugh which swept away heroics, "After all, he might take afancy to me in these clothes!"
And she looked down complacently on the pretty tailor-made skirt andthe new shoes that showed beneath Victoria's fur cloak. In less thana fortnight her own ambition and the devotion of Victoria's maid,Hesketh, only too delighted to dress somebody so eager to be dressed, forwhom the mere operations of the toilette possessed a kind of religiousjoy, on whom, moreover, "clothes" in the proper and civilized sense ofthe word, sat so amazingly well--had turned the forlorn little drudgeinto a figure more than creditable to the pains lavished upon her.Felicia aimed high. The thought and trouble which the young lady hadspent, since her arrival, on her hair, her hands, and the minor points ofEnglish manners, not to mention the padding and plumping of her smallperson--which in spite of all her efforts, however, remained of a mostsylphlike slimness--by a generous diet of cream and butter, only she andHesketh knew. Victoria guessed, and felt a new and most womanish pleasurein the details of her transformation. She realized, poignantly, howpleasant it would have been to dress and spoil a daughter.
All the more, as Felicia, after a first eager grasping at pretty things,as a child holds out covetous hands for toys and sweets, had shown suddenscruples, an unexpected and pretty recoil.
"Don't give me so many things!" she had said, almost with a stamp, thesudden, astonishing tears in her great eyes; when, after the first week,the new clothes began to shower upon her. "I can't help wanting them! Iadore them! But I won't be a beggar--no! You will think we only came herefor this--to get things out of you. We didn't--we _didn't_.'"
"My dear, won't you give me the pleasure?" Victoria had said,shamefacedly, putting out a hand to stroke the girl's hair. WhereuponFelicia had thrown herself impulsively on her knees, with her arms roundthe speaker, and there had been a mingled moment of laughter and emotionwhich had left Victoria very much astonished at herself, and givenHesketh a free hand. Victoria's solitary pursuits, the awkward or statelyreserve of her ordinary manner, were deplorably interfered with, indeed,by the advent of this lovely, neglected child, who on her side had fallenpassionately in love with Victoria at first sight and seemed to be nowrarely happy out of her company.
After which digression we may return for a moment to Felicia on theloggia, admiring her new shoes.
From that passing ecstasy, she emerged resolved.
"We will stay here till Christmas--and--"
But on the rest of her purpose she shut her small lips firmly. Beforeshe turned indoors, however, she gave some attention to the course of awhite road in the middle distance, on which she had travelled with LordTatham the day he had taken her to Green Cottage. The cottage where theyellow-haired girl lived lay beyond that nearer hill. Ah! but nobodyspoke of that yellow-haired girl now. Nobody sent flowers or books.Nobody so much as mentioned her name. It was strange--but singularlypleasing. Felicia raised herself triumphantly on tiptoe, as though shewould peer over the hill into the cottage; and so see for herself how theSignorina Penfold took this sudden and complete neglect.
Tatham returned from London the following day, bringing Cyril Boden--whowas again on the sick list--with him.
He arrived full of plans for the discomfiture of Melrose, only to bebrought up irrevocably against the stubborn resolve which Netta, wrappedin an irritable and tearful melancholy, opposed to them all. She wouldnot hear of the legal proceedings he urged upon her; and it was only onan assurance that nothing could or would be done without her consent,coupled with a good report of her father, that she at last consented tostay at Duddon till the New Year, so that further ways of helping hermight be discussed.
Felicia, when the thing was settled, danced about Victoria's room, kissedher mother and ran off at once, with Victoria's permission, to ask theold coachman who ruled the Duddon stables to give her riding-lessons.Victoria noticed that she carefully avoided consulting Tatham in any wayabout her lessons. Indeed the earlier, half-childish, half-audaciousefforts she had made to attract his attention entirely ceased about thistime.
And he, as soon as it was evident that Mrs. Melrose would not takehis advice, and that legal proceedings must be renounced, felt anatural slackening of interest in his mother's guests. He was perfectlykind and polite to them but Netta's cowardice disgusted him; and it was apersonal disappointment to be thus balked of that public campaign againstMelrose's enormities which would have satisfied the just and long-baffledfeelings of a whole county; and--incidentally--would surely have unmaskeda greedy and unscrupulous adventurer.
Meanwhile the whole story of Mrs. Melrose and her daughter had spreadrapidly through the neighbourhood. The local papers, now teeming withattacks on Melrose, and the management of the Melrose property, hadfastened with avidity on the news of their arrival. "Mrs. Edmund Melroseand her daughter, after an absence of twenty years have arrived inCumbria. They are now staying at Duddon Castle with Countess Tatham. Mr.Claude Faversham is at Threlfall Tower." These few sentences served assymbols of a dramatic situation which was being discussed in every houseof the district, in the farms and cottages no less eagerly than by theAndovers and the Bartons. The heiress of Threlfall was not dead! Aftertwenty years she and her mother had returned to claim their rights fromthe Ogre; and Duddon Castle, the headquarters of all that was powerfuland respected in the county, had taken up their cause. Meanwhile thelittle heiress had been, it seemed, supplanted. Claude Faversham was inpossession at Threlfall, and was being treated as the heir. Mr. Melrosehad flatly refused even to see his wife and daughter whom he had left inpoverty and starvation for twenty years.
Upon these facts the twin spirit of romance and hatred swoopedvulturelike. Any story of inheritance, especially when charm and youthare mixed up with it, kindles the popular mind. It was soon known thatMiss Melrose was pretty, and small; though, said report, worn to askeleton by paternal ill-usage. Romance likes its heroines small. Thecountryside adopted the unconscious Felicia, and promptly married her toHarry Tatham. What could be more appropriate? Duddon could afford to riska dowry; and what maiden in distress could wish for a better Perseus thanthe splendid young man who was the general favourite of theneighbourhood?
As to the hatred of Melrose which gave zest to the tale of his daughter,it was becoming a fury. The whole Mainstairs village had now beenejected, by the help of a large body of police requisitioned fromCarlisle for the purpose. Of the able-bodied, some had migrated to theneighbouring towns, some were camped on Duddon land, in some wood andiron huts hastily run up for their accommodation. And thus a villagewhich might be traced in Doomsday Book had been wiped out. For the sickTatham had offered a vacant farmhouse as a hospital; and Victoria, Mrs.Andover, and other ladies had furnished and equipped it. Some twentycases of enteric and diphtheria, were housed there, a few of them doomedbeyond hope. Melrose had been peremptorily asked for a subscription tothe fund raised, and had replied in his own handwriting that owing to theheavy expenses he had been put to by the behaviour of his Mainstairstenants, as reported to him by his agent, Mr. Faversham, he mustrespectfully decline. The letter was published in the two local paperswith appropriate comments, and a week later an indignation meeting toprotest against the state of the Threlfall property, and to petition theLocal Government Board to hold an inquiry on the spot, was held inCarlisle, with Tatham in the chair. And everywhere the public indignationwhich could not get at Melrose, who now, except for railway journeys,never showed himself outside the wall of his park, was beginning to fallupon the "adventurer" who was his tool and accomplice, and had become thesupplanter of his young and helpless daughter. Men who four months beforehad been eager to welcome Faversham to his new office now passed him inthe street without recognition. At the County Club to which he had beeneasily elected, Colonel Barton proposing him, he was conspicuously cut byBarton himself, Squire Andover and many others following suit. "Animpostor, and a cad!" said Barton fiercely to Undershaw. "He took mein--and I can't forgive him. He is doing all Melrose's dirty work forhim, better than Melrose could do it himself. His letters, for instance,to our Council Committee about the allotments we are trying to get out ofthe old villain have been devilish clever, and devilish impudent! Melrosecouldn't have written them. And now this business of the girl!--and thefortune!--sickening!"
"He is a queer chap," said Undershaw thoughtfully. "I've been as mad withhim as anybody--but somehow--don't know. Suppose we wait a bit. Melrose'slife is a bad one."
But Barton refused to wait, and went off storming.The facts, he vowed, were more than enough.
The weeks passed on. Duddon knew no longer what Green Cottage wasdoing. Victoria, at any rate, was ignorant, and forbore to ask--byword of mouth; though her thoughts were one long interrogation on thesubject of Lydia, both as to the present and the past. Was she still incorrespondence with Faversham, as Victoria now understood from Tatham shehad been all the summer? Was she still defending him? Perhaps engaged tohim? For a fair-minded and sensible woman, Victoria fell into strangebogs of prejudice and injustice in the course of these ponderings.
In her drives and walks at this time, Victoria generally avoided theneighbourhood of the cottage. But one afternoon at the very end ofOctober, she overtook--walking--a slight, muffled figure in the Whitebeckroad, and recognized Susy Penfold. A constrained greeting passed betweenthem, and Lady Tatham learnt that Lydia was away--had been away, indeed,since the day following her last interview with Harry. The very nextmorning she and her mother had been summoned to London by the graveillness of Mrs. Penfold's elder sister. And there they were still; thoughLydia was expected home shortly.
Victoria walked on, with relieved feelings, she scarcely knew why. At anyrate there had been no personal contact between Faversham and a charmingthough foolish girl, during these weeks of popular indignation.
By what shabby arts had the mean and grasping fellow now installed atThrelfall ever succeeded in obtaining a hold over a being so refined, sofastidious and--to all appearances--so high-minded, as Lydia Penfold?To refuse Harry and decline on Claude Faversham! Victoria acknowledgedindeed a certain pseudo-Byronic charm in the man. She could not forgetthe handsome head as she had seen it last at the door of Melrose'slibrary; or the melodramatic black and white of the face, of the small,peaked beard, the dark brows, pale lantern cheeks, and heavy-lidded eyes.All the picturesque adventurers of the world betray som
ething, shethought, of a common stamp.
At last one evening, when Tatham was away on county business, and Feliciahad gone to bed, Victoria suddenly unburdened herself to Cyril Boden, asthey sat one on either side of a November fire, while a southwesterlygale from the high fells blustered and raged outside.
Boden was the confessor of a good many people. Not that he was by anymeans an orthodox Christian; his ascetic ways had very little to do withany accepted form of doctrine. But there was in him the natural priestlypower, which the priest by ordination may have or miss. It was becausemen and women realized in himself the presence of a travailing,questioning, suffering soul, together with an iron self-repression, thatthose who suffered and questioned came to him, and threw themselves uponhim; often getting more buffeting than balm for their pains; but alwaysconscious of some mysterious attractions in him, as of one who, like SirBoris, had seen the Grail, but might never tell of the vision.
Victoria was truly attached to him. He had been with her during the daysof her husband's sudden illness and death; he had advised her with regardto the passing difficulties of Tatham's school and college days andpointed a way for her through many perplexities of her own. Duddon was asmuch of a home to him, as he probably possessed in the world. When he hadworn himself out with some one or other of the many causes he pursued inSouth London, working with a sombre passion which had in it very littleof the mystical joy or hope which sustain others in similar efforts; whenhe had scarcely a coat to his back, or a shoe to his feet; when hisdoctor began to talk of tuberculin tests and the high Alps; then he wouldwire to Duddon, and come and vegetate under Victoria's wing, for just asmany weeks as were necessary to send him back to London restored to acertain physical standard. To watch Harry Tatham's wholesome, kindly,prosperous life, untroubled by any of the nightmares that weighed uponhis own, was an unfailing pleasure to a weary man. He loved both Harryand his mother. Nevertheless, as soon as he arrived, both felt him thegadfly in the house. His mind was nothing if not critical. Andundoubtedly the sight of easy wealth was an irritation to him. Hestruggled against it; but sometimes it would out.
As he sat this evening crouched over the fire, his hands spread tothe blaze, he looked more frail than usual; a fact which perhaps,half-consciously, affected Victoria and drew out her confidence. Hisdress suit, primevally old, would scarcely, she reflected, hold togetheranother winter. But how it was to be replaced had already cost her andHarry much thought. There was nobody more personally, fanatically proudthan Boden toward his well-to-do friends. His clothes indeed were amatter of tender anxiety in the Duddon household, and Tatham's valetand Victoria's maids did him many small services, some of which he repaidwith a smile and a word--priceless to the recipient; and some he wasnever aware of. When his visits to Duddon first began, the contents ofhis Gladstone bag used to provide merriment in the servants' hall, andlegend said that a young footman had once dared to be insolent to him.Had any one ventured the same conduct now he would have been sent toCoventry by every servant in the house.
It was to this austere, incalculable, yet always attractive listener,that Victoria told the story of Harry and Lydia, of the Favershamadventure, and the Melrose inheritance. If she wanted advice, a littlemoral guidance for herself--and indeed she did want it--she did not getany; but of comment there was plenty.
"That's the girl I saw here last time," mused Boden, nursing hisknee--"lovely creature--with some mind in her face. So she's refusedHarry--and Duddon?"
"Which no doubt will commend her to you!" said Victoria, not without acertain bristling of her feathers.
"It does," said Boden quietly. "Upon my word, it was a fine thing to do."
"Just because we happen to be rich?" Victoria's eyelids fluttered alittle.
"No! but because it throws a little light on what we choose to call thesoul. It brings one back to a faint belief in the existence of the thing.Here is one of the great fortunes, and one of the splendid houses of theworld, and a little painting girl who makes a few pounds by her drawingssays 'No, thank you!' when they are laid at her feet--because--of alittle trifle called love which she can't bring to the bargain. I confessthat bucks one up. 'The day-star doth his beams restore.'"
He took up the tongs, and began absently to rebuild the fire. Victoriawaited on his remarks with heightened colour.
"Of course I'm sorry for Harry," he said, after a moment, with his queersmile. "I saw there was something wrong when I arrived. But it'ssalutary--very salutary! Hasn't he had everything in the world he wantedfrom his cradle? And isn't it as certain as anything can be that he'llfind some other charming girl, who'll faint with joy, when he asks her,and give you all the grandchildren you want? And meanwhile we have thisbit of the heroic--this defiance of a miry world, cropping up--to help usout of our mud-holes. I'm awfully sorry for Harry--but I take off my hatto the girl."
Victoria's expression became sarcastic.
"Who will ultimately marry," she said, "according to _my_ interpretationof the business, a first-class adventurer--possessed of a million ofmoney--stolen from its proper owners."
"I don't believe it. I've seen her! But, upon my word, what a queerparable it all is! Shall I tell you how it shapes itself to me?" Helooked, tongs in hand, at Victoria, his greenish eyes all alive. "I seeyou all--you, Harry, Faversham, and Melrose, Miss Lydia--grouped round acentral point. The point is wealth. You are all in different relations towealth. You and Harry are indifferent to wealth, because you have alwayshad it. It has come to you without toiling and spinning--can you imaginebeing without it?--but it has not spoilt you. You sit loose to it;because you have never _struggled_ for it. But I doubt whether theRecording Angel, when it comes to reckoning up, will give you very highmarks for your indifference! Dear friend!"--he put out a sudden handand touched Victoria's--"bear with me! There's one thing you'll hear, ifany one does, at the last day--'I was a stranger and ye took me in.'" Hiseyes shone upon her.
After which, he resumed in his former tone: "Then take Melrose. He too isdetermined by his relation to wealth. Wealth has just ruined him--burnthim up--made out of him so much refuse for the nether fires. Favershamagain! Wealth, the crucial, deciding factor! The testing with him isstill going on. He seems, from your account, to be coming out badly. Andlastly, the girl--who, like you, is indifferent to wealth, but fordifferent reasons; who probably hates and shrinks from it; like a wildbird that fears the cage. You, my dear lady--you and Harry--have got soused to wealth, its trammels no longer gall you. You carry the weight ofit, as the horse of the Middle Ages carried his trappings; it's secondnature. And you can enjoy, you can move, you can feel, in spite of it.You have risked your soul, without knowing it; but you have kept yoursoul! This girl, I take it, is afraid to risk her soul. She is not inlove with Harry--worse luck for Harry!--she is in love--remember I havetalked to her a little!--with something she calls beauty, with liberty,with an unfettered course for the spirit, with all the lovely,intangible, priceless _best_, which the world holds for its true lovers.Wealth grasping at that best has a way of killing it--as the child killsthe butterfly. _That's_ what she's afraid of. As to Faversham"--he got upfrom his seat, and with his thumbs in his waistcoat began to pace theroom--"Faversham no doubt is in a bad way. He's on the road to damnation.Melrose of course is damned and done with. But Faversham? I reservejudgment. If he's in love with that girl, and she with him--I can't makeout, however, that you have much reason to think it--but suppose he is,she'll have the handling of him. Shan't we back her?"
He turned with vivacity to his hostess.
Victoria laughed indignantly.
"You may if you like. The odds are too doubtful for me."
"That's because you're Harry's mother!" he said with his sly, but mostwinning, smile. "Well--there's the parable--writ large. _Mammon!_--howyou get it--how you use it--whether you dominate it--or it dominatesyou. Whether it is the greater curse, or the greater blessing to men--itwas the question in Christ's day--it's the question now. But it has neverbeen put with such intensity, a
s to this generation! As to yourparticular version of the parable--I wait to see! The tale's not throughyet."