II
The day after the Melroses' arrival at the Tower was once more a day ofrain--not now the tempestuous storm rain which had lashed the millstream to fury, and blustered round the house as they stepped into it,but one of those steady, gray, and featureless downpours thatWestmoreland and Cumbria know so well. The nearer mountains which werewholly blotted out, and of the far Helvellyn range and the Derwentwaterhills not a trace emerged. All colour had gone from the grass and theautumn trees; a few sheep and a solitary pony in the fields near thehouse stood forlorn and patient under the deluge; heaven and earth met inone fusion of rain just beyond the neglected garden that filled the frontcourt; while on three sides of the house, and penetrating through everynook and corner of it, there rose, from depths far below, the roar of thestream which circled the sandstone rock whereon the Tower was built.
Mrs. Melrose came down late. She descended the stairs slowly, rubbing hercold hands together, and looking forlornly about her. She wore a dress ofsome straw-coloured stuff, too thin for the climate of a Cumbria autumn,and round her singularly small and fleshless neck, a wisp of blackvelvet. The top of the head was rather flat, and the heavy dark hair,projecting stiffly on either side of the face, emphasized at once thesharpness of the little bony chin, the general sallowness of complexion,and the remarkable size and blackness of the eyes. There was somethingsnakelike about the flat head, and the thin triangular face; an effectwhich certainly belied the little lady, for there was nothing maliciousor sinister in her personality.
She had not yet set eyes on her husband, who had risen early, and couldnow be heard giving directions to some one in the library to her right--acarpenter apparently, since there was hammering going on. She supposedshe must find out something about the kitchen and the servants. Anastasiahad brought up her breakfast that morning, with a flushed face, mutteringcomplaint against the woman downstairs. A terror struck through her. IfAnastasia should desert her--should give notice!
Timidly she pushed open the door of the big kitchen, and prepared toplay the mistress. Mrs. Dixon was standing at the kitchen table with apastry-board before her, making a meat pie. She greeted her new mistresscivilly, though guardedly, and went on with what she was doing.
"Are you going to cook for us?" asked Mrs. Melrose, helplessly.
"That's what I unnerstood fro' Muster Tyson, ma'am."
"Then I came to speak to you about dinner."
"Thank you, ma'am, but Muster Melrose gave me the orders a good whilesen. There was a cart goin' into Pengarth."
Pengarth was the nearest country town, some eight miles away.
Mrs. Melrose coloured.
"I must tell you what the baby requires," she said, drawing herself up.
Mrs. Dixon looked at the speaker impassively, over her spectacles.
Mrs. Melrose hurriedly named a patent food--some specialbiscuits--bananas.
"Yo' can have the milk yo' want fro' t' farm," said Mrs. Dixon slowly, inreply; "but there's nowt of aw them things i' t' house as I knows on."
"Then we must send for them."
Mrs. Dixon shook her head.
"There won't be anoother cart goin' in till t' day after to-morrow."
"I can't have the baby neglected!" exclaimed Mrs. Melrose, with suddenshrillness, looking angrily at the rugged face and figure before her.
"Mebbe yo'd go an talk to t' master?" suggested Mrs. Dixon, not without,as it seemed to Netta, a touch of slyness in eyes and voice. Of coursethey all knew by now that she was a cipher--that she was not to count.Edmund had been giving all the orders--in his miserly cheese-paring way.No comforts!--no conveniences!--not even bare necessaries, for herselfand the child. Yet she knew very well that her husband was a richman.
She turned and went in search of him, making her way with difficultythrough the piles of boxes. What could be in them all? Edmund must havebeen buying for years. Every now and then as she stooped to look at thelabels pasted upon them, she caught names well known to her. Orbatelli,Via dei Bardi 13, Firenze; Bianchi, Via Mazzini 12, Lucca; FratelliMasai, Via Manzoni, Pisa. And everywhere the recurrent word--_Antichita_.
How she hated the word!--how she hated the associations linked with it,and with the names on the boxes. They were bound up with a score ofhumbling memories, the memories of her shabby, struggling youth. Shethought of her father--the needy English artist, Robert Smeath, with justa streak, and no more than a streak, of talent, who had become rapidly"Italianate" in the Elizabethan sense--had dropped, that is, the Englishvirtues, without ever acquiring the Italian. He had married her mother, aFlorentine girl, the daughter of a small _impiegato_ living in one of thedismal new streets leading out of Florence on the east, and had thenpursued a shifting course between the two worlds, the English and theItalian, ordering his household and bringing up his children in Italianfashion, while he was earning his keep and theirs, not at all by theshowy pictures in his studio which no one would buy, but as jackal in_antichita_, to the richer English and American tourists. He kept agreedy eye on the artistic possessions still remaining in the hands ofimpoverished native owners; he knew the exact moment of debt anddifficulty in which to bring a foreign gold to bear; he was an adept inall the arts by which officials are bribed, and pictures are smuggled.And sometimes these accomplishments of his resulted in large accessionsof cash, so that all the family lived on the fat of the land, boughtgorgeous attire, and went to Livorno, or Viareggio, or the Adriaticcoast, for the summer. And sometimes there was no luck, and thereforeno money. Owners became unkindly patriotic and would not sell. Or somepromising buyer, after nibbling for months, went off finally unhooked.Then the apartment in the Via Giugno showed the stress of hard times. Thegirls wore their old clothes to rags; the mother did all the work of thehouse in a bedgown and slippers; and the door of the apartment was neveropened more than a few inches to any applicant, lest creditors should getin.
And the golden intervals got fewer, and the poverty more persistent, asthe years went on. Till at last, by the providence--or malice--of thegods, a rich and apparently prodigal Englishman, Edmund Melrose, hungryfor _antichita_ of all sorts, arrived on the scene. Smeath became rapidlythe bond-slave of Melrose, in the matter of works of art. The two madeendless expeditions together to small provincial towns, to remote villasin the Apuan or Pisan Alps, to _palazzi_ in Verona, or Lucca, or Siena.Melrose indeed had not been long in finding out that the little artistwas both a poor judge and a bad agent. Netta's cheek always flamed whenshe thought of her father's boastings and blunderings, and of the wayin which Edmund had come to treat him. And now the Smeath family werejust as poor as ever again. Her little sisters had scarcely a dress totheir backs; and she was certain her mother was both half-starved andover-worked. Edmund had not been at all kind to them since hermarriage--not at all!
How had he come to marry her? She was well aware that it was anextraordinary proceeding on his part. He was well born on both sides,and, by common report among the English residents in Florence, enormouslyrich, though his miserly habits had been very evident even in the firstdays of their acquaintance. He might no doubt have married anybody hepleased; if he would only have taken the trouble. But nothing wouldinduce him to take any trouble--socially. He resented the demands andstandards of his equals; turned his back entirely on normal Englishsociety at home and abroad; and preferred, it seemed, to live with hisinferiors, where his manners might be as casual, and his dress ascareless as he pleased. The queer evenings and the queer people in theirhorrid little flat had really amused him. Then he had been ill, and mamahad nursed him; and she, Netta, had taken him a pot of carnations whilehe was still laid up; and so on. She had been really pretty in thosedays; much prettier than she had ever been since the baby's birth. Shehad been attractive too, simply because she was young, healthy,talkative, and forthcoming; goaded always by the hope of marriage, andmoney, and escape from home. His wooing had been of the most despoticaland patronizing kind; not the kind that a proud girl would have put upwith. Still there had been wooing; a few pr
esents; a frugal cheque forthe trousseau; and a honeymoon fortnight at Sorrento.
Why had he done it?--just for a whim?--or to spite his English family,some member of which would occasionally turn up in Florence and try toput in claims upon him--claims which infuriated him? He was the mostwilful and incalculable of men; caring nothing, apparently, one day forposition and conventionality, and boasting extravagantly of his familyand ancestors the next.
"He was rather fond of me--for a little," she thought to herself wearily,as she stood at the hall window, looking out into the rain. At the pointwhich things had now reached she knew very well that she meant nothing atall to him. He would not beat her, or starve her, or even, perhaps,desert her. Such behaviour would disturb his existence as much as hers;and he did not mean to be disturbed. She might go her own way--she andthe child; he would give her food and lodging and clothes, of a sort, solong as she did not interfere with his tastes, or spend his money.
Then, suddenly, while she stood wrathfully pondering, a gust of angerrose--childish anger, such as she had shown the night before, when shehad tried to get out of the carriage. She turned, ran down the corridorto the door which she understood was the door of his study--and enteredwith a burst.
"Edmund!--I want to speak to you!"
Melrose, who was hanging, frowning and absorbed, over a carpenter who wasfreeing what seemed to be an old clock from the elaborate swathings ofpaper and straw in which it had been packed, looked up with annoyance.
"Can't you see, Netta, that I'm very busy?"
"I can't help it!--it's about baby."
With a muttered "D--n!" Melrose came toward her.
"What on earth do you want?"
Netta looked at him defiantly.
"I want to be told whenever the cart goes into Pengarth--there were lotsof things to get for baby. And I must have something here that I candrive myself. We can't be cut off from everything."
"Give your orders to Mrs. Dixon then about the cart," said Melroseangrily. "What has it to do with me? As for a carriage, I have no moneyto spend on any nonsense of the kind. We can do perfectly well withoutit."
"I only want a little pony-cart--you could get it second-hand for ten ortwelve pounds--and the farmer has got a pony."
She looked at him--sallow, and frowning.
Melrose pushed her into the passage and drew the door to, behind him, sothat the carpenter might not hear.
"Ten or twelve pounds! Do you expect I get money off the hedges? Can'tyou be content here like a reasonable woman, without getting me intodebt?"
Netta laughed and tossed her head.
"You shouldn't leave your business letters about!"
"What do you mean?"
"There was a cheque among your papers one day last week!--I saw it beforeyou could hide it away. It was for L3,000--a dividend from something--acoal mine, I think. And the week before you had another--"
Her husband's eyes shed lightnings.
"I'll not have you prying into my affairs!" he said violently. "All Ihave is wanted--and more."
"And nothing of course--to give _me_--your wife!--for any comforts orpleasures! That never enters into your head!"
Her voice came thickly already. Her chest began to heave.
"There now--crying again!" said Melrose, turning on his heel. "Can't yousometimes thank your stars you're not starving in Florence, and just putup with things a little?"
Netta restrained herself.
"So I would"--she said, choking--"if--"
"If what--"
For all answer, she turned and hurried away toward the hall. Melroselooked after her with what appeared like exasperation, then suddenlyrecaptured himself, smoothed his brow, and, returning to the study, gavehimself with unruffled zest and composure to the task of unpacking theBoule clock.
Netta repaired to the drawing-room, and threw herself on to theuncomfortable sofa, struggling with her tears. For about a fortnightafter her marriage she had imagined herself in love with Melrose; thenwhen the personal illusion was gone, the illusion of position and wealthpersisted. He might be queer, and behave queerly in Italy. But when theyreturned to England she would find herself the wife of a rich Englishgentleman, and the gingerbread would once more be gilt. Alack! a fewweeks in a poor London Lodging with no money to spend on the shops whichtempted her woman's cupidity at every step; Edmund's final refusal, firstlaughing, then stubborn, to present her to "my devilish relations"; thecomplete indifference shown to her wishes as to the furnishings of theTower; these various happenings had at last brought her to an unwelcomecommerce with the bare truth. She had married a selfish eccentric, whohad chosen her for a caprice and was now tired of her. She had not afarthing, nor any art or skill by which to earn one. Her family was aspenniless as herself. There was nothing for it but to submit. But hertemper and spirits had begun steadily to give way.
_Firenze!_ As she sat in her cheerless drawing-room, hating its uglyshabbiness, and penetrated with the damp chill of the house, there sweptthrough her a vision of the Piazza del Duomo, as she had last seen it ona hot September evening. A blaze of light--delicious all-prevailingwarmth--the moist bronzed faces of the men--the girls with the look ofphysical content that comes in hot countries with the evening--the sunflooding with its last gold, now the new marbles of the _facciata_,now the alabaster and bronze of the Baptistery, and now the movingcrowds--the flowers-baskets--the pigeons--
She lifted her eyes with a sobbing breath, and saw the graycloud-curtain--the neglected garden--the solitary pony in thefield--with the shafts of rain striking across it. Despair stirred inher--the physical nostalgia of the south. A happy heart might havesilenced the craving nerves; but hers was far from happy.
The door opened. A head was thrust in--the head of a fair-haired girl.There was a pause.
"What do you want?" said Mrs. Melrose, haughtily, determined to assertherself.
Thyrza came in slowly. She held a bunch of dripping Michaelmas daisies.
"Shall I get a glass for them? I thowt mebbe you'd like 'em in here."
Netta thanked her ungraciously. She remembered having seen the girl thenight before, and Anastasia had mentioned her as the daughter of the_Contadino_.
Thyrza put the flowers in water, Netta watching her in silence; thengoing into the hall, she returned with a pair of white lace curtains.
"Shall I put 'em up? It 'ud mebbe be more cheerful."
Netta looked at them languidly.
"Where do they come from?"
"Mr. Tyson brought 'em from Pengarth. He thowt you might like 'em for thedrawing-room."
Mrs. Melrose nodded, and Thyrza mounted a chair, and proceeded to put upthe curtains, turning an observant eye now and then on the thin-facedlady sitting on the sofa, her long fingers clasped round her knees, andher eyes--so large and staring as to be rather ugly than beautiful inThyrza's opinion--wandering absently round the room.
"It's a clashy day," Thyrza ventured at last.
"It's a dreadful day," said Mrs. Melrose sharply. "Does it always rainlike this?"
"Well, it _do_ rain," was Thyrza's cautious reply. "But there that'sbetter than snowin'--for t' shepherds."
Mrs. Melrose found the girl's voice pleasant, and could not deny that shewas pretty, in her rustic way.
"Has your father many sheep?"
"Aye, but they're all gone up to t' fells for t' winter. We had a grandtime here in September--at t' dippin'. Yo'd never ha' thowt there was somony folk about"--the girl went on, civilly, making talk.
"I never saw a single house, or a single light, on the drive from thestation last night," said Mrs. Melrose, in her fretful voice. "Where areall the people?"
"Well, there ain't many!" laughed Thyrza. "It's a lonesome place this is.But when it's a shearin', or a dippin', yo' unnerstand, farmin' folk'llcoom a long way to help yan anuther."
"Are they all farmers about here?"
"Mostly. Well, there's Duddon Castle!" Thyrza's voice, a little muffledby the tin-tacks in the mouth, came from some
where near the top of a tallwindow--"Oh--an' I forgot!--"
In a great hurry the speaker jumped down from her perch, and to Netta'sastonishment ran out of the room.
"What is she about?" thought Mrs. Melrose irritably. But the question washardly framed before Thyrza reappeared, holding out her hand, in whichlay some visiting-cards.
"I should ha' given them yo' before."
Mrs. Melrose took them with surprise, and read the name.
"Countess Tatham--who is she?"
"Why it's she that lives at Duddon Castle." Then the girl lookeduncertainly at her companion--"Mr. Tyson did tell me she was a relationof Mr. Melrose."
"A relation? I don't know anything about her," said Netta decidedly. "Didshe come to call upon me?"
The girl nodded--"She come over--it was last Tuesday--from Duddon, wi'two lovely horses--my, they were beauties! She said she'd come again."
Netta asked questions. Lady Tatham, it seemed, was the great lady of theneighbourhood, and Duddon Castle was a splendid old place, that all thevisitors went to see. And there were her cards. Netta's thoughts began tohurry thither and thither, and possibilities began to rise. A relation ofEdmund's? She made Thyrza tell her all she knew about Duddon and theTathams. Visions of being received there, of meeting rich andaristocratic people, of taking her place at last in society, the placethat belonged to her as Edmund's wife, in spite of his queer miserlyways, ran again lightly through a mind that often harboured such dreamsbefore--in vain. Her brow cleared. She made Thyrza leave the curtains,and sit down to gossip with her. And Thyrza, though perfectly conscious,as the daughter of a hard-working race, that to sit gossiping at middaywas a sinful thing, was none the less willing to sin; and she chatteredon in a Westmoreland dialect that grew steadily broader as she feltherself more at ease, till Mrs. Melrose could scarcely follow her.
But she managed to seize on the facts that concerned her. Lady Tatham, itseemed, was a widow, with an only boy, a lad of seven, who was the heirto Duddon Castle, and its great estates. The Castle was ten miles fromthe Tower.
"How shall I ever get there?" thought Mrs. Melrose, despairingly.
As to other neighbours, they seemed to consist entirely of an oldbachelor doctor, about three miles away, and the clergyman of GimmersWick and his wife. _She_ was sure to come. But most people were "glad tosee the back on her." She had such a poor spirit, and was alwayscomplaining.
In the midst of this conversation, the door of the room, which was ajar,slowly opened. Thyrza looked round and saw in the aperture a tiny whitefigure. It was the Melrose baby, standing silent, wide-eyed, with itsfingers in its mouth, and Anastasia behind it. Anastasia, whose look wasstill thunderous, explained that she was unpacking and could not do withit. The child toddled in to its mother, and Thyrza exclaimed inadmiration:
"Oh, you _are_ a little beauty!"
And she caught up one of the brass curtain rings lying on the table, andtried to attract the baby with it. But the little thing took not thesmallest notice of the lure. She went straight to her mother, and,leaning against Netta's knee, she turned to stare at Thyrza with anintensity of expression, rare in a child so young. Thyrza, kneeling onthe floor, stared back--fascinated. She thought she had never seenanything so lovely. The child had her father's features, etherealized;and great eyes, like her mother, but far more subtly beautiful. Her skinwas pale, but of such a texture that Thyrza's roses-and-milk looked roughand common beside it. Every inch of the proud little head was coveredwith close short curls leaving the white neck free, and the hand liftedto her mouth was of a waxen delicacy.
Netta opened a picture-book that Anastasia had brought down with her.Felicia pushed it away. Netta opened it again. Then the child, snatchingit from her, sat down on the floor, and, before Netta could prevent her,tore one of the pages across with a quick, vindictive movement--hereyes sparkling.
"Naughty--! naughty!" said Netta in a scolding voice.
But Thyrza dropped her hand hastily into a gray calico pocket tied roundher waist, and again held out something.
"It is only a pear-drop," she said apologetically to Netta. "It won'thurt her."
Felicia snatched at it at once, and sucked it, still flushed withpassion. Her mother smiled faintly.
"You like sweets?" she said, childishly, to her companion; "give me one?"
Thyrza eagerly brought out a paper bag from her pocket and Netta put outa pair of thin fingers. She and her sisters had been great consumers ofsweet stuff in the small dark Florentine shops. The shared greedinesspromoted friendship; and by the time Mrs. Dixon put in a reproachful facewith a loud--"Thyrza, what _be_ you a doin'?"--Mrs. Melrose knew as muchof the Tower, the estate, the farm, and the persons connected with them,as Thyrza's chattering tongue could tell her in the time.
There was nothing, however, very consoling in the information. WhenThyrza departed, Mrs. Melrose was left to fret and sigh much as before.The place was odious; she could never endure it. But yet the possibleadvent of "Countess Tatham" cast a faint ray on the future.
A few days later Lady Tatham appeared. Melrose had been particularlyperverse and uncommunicative on the subject. "Like her audacity!"--soNetta had understood his muttered comment, when she took him the cards.He admitted that the lady and he were cousins--the children of firstcousins; and that he had once seen a good deal of her. He called her "anaudacious woman"; but Mrs. Melrose noticed that he did not forbid her thehouse; nay, rather that he listened with some attention to Thyrza'sreport that the lady had promised to call again.
On the afternoon of the call, the skies were clear of rain, though not ofcloud. The great gashed mountain to the north which Dixon calledSaddleback, while a little Cumbria "guide," produced by Tyson, called itBlencathra, showed sombrely in a gray light; and a November wind was busystripping what leaves still remained from the woods by the stream and inthe hollows of the mountain. Landscape and heavens were of an ironbracingness and bareness; and the beauty in them was not for eyes likeNetta's. She had wandered out forlornly on the dank paths descending tothe stream. Edmund as usual was interminably busy fitting up one of thelower rooms for some of his minor bric-a-brac--ironwork, small bronzes,watches, and clocks. Anastasia and the baby were out.
Would Anastasia stay? Already she looked ill; she complained of herchest. She had made up her mind to come with the Melroses for the sake ofher mother and sister in Rome, who were so miserably poor. Netta feltthat she--the mistress--had some security against losing her, in the merelength and cost of the journey. To go home now, before the end of herthree months, would swallow up all the nurse had earned; for Edmund wouldnever contribute a farthing. Poor Anastasia! And yet Netta felt angrilytoward her for wishing to desert them.
"For of course I shall take her home--in March. We shall all be goingthen," she said to herself with an emphasis, almost a passion, which yetwas full of misgiving.
Suddenly, just as she had returned by a steep path to the dilapidatedterrace on the north side of the house--a sound of horses' feet andwheels. Evidently a carriage--a caller. Netta's pulse fluttered. She raninto the house by a side door, and up to her room, where she smoothedher hair anxiously, and lightly powdered her face. There was no time tochange her dress, but she took out a feather boa which she kept for greatoccasions, and prepared to descend with dignity. Oh the stairs she metMrs. Dixon, who announced "Lady Tatham."
"Find Mr. Melrose, please."
"Oh, he's there, Ma'am, awready."
Netta entered the drawing-room to see her husband pacing up and-downbefore a strange lady, who sat in one of the crimson armchairs, entirelyat her ease.
"So this is your wife, Edmund," said Lady Tatham, as she rose.
"It is. You'll make mock of her no doubt--as you do of me."
"Nonsense! I never make mock of anybody," said a musical voice, richhowever through all its music in a rather formidable significance. Theowner of it turned toward Netta.
"I hope, Mrs. Melrose, that you will like Cumbria?"
Netta, accustomed to Edm
und's "queerness," and determined to hold herown, settled herself deliberately opposite her visitor, and was sooncomplaining in her shrill voice of the loneliness of the place and thedamp of the climate. Melrose never once looked at his wife. He waspaler than usual, with an eager combative aspect, quite new to Netta. Heseemed for once to be unsure of his ground--both to expect attack, evento provoke it--and to shrink from it. His eyes were fixed upon LadyTatham, and followed her every movement.
Attention was certainly that lady's due; and it failed her rarely. Shehad beauty--great beauty; and a personality that refused to beoverlooked. Her dress showed in equal measure contempt for mere fashion,and a close study of effect. The lines of her long cloak of dull bluecloth, with its garnishings of sable, matched her stately slendernesswell; and the close-fitting cap over the coiled hair conveyed the sameimpression of something perfectly contrived and wholly successful.Netta thought at first that she was "made up," so dazzling was thewhite and pink, and then doubted. The beauty of the face reminded one,perhaps, of the beauty of a boy--of some clear-eyed, long-chinnedathlete--masterfully simple--a careless conqueror.
How well she and Edmund seemed to know each other! That was the strange,strange thing in Netta's eyes. Presently she sat altogether silent whilethey talked. Melrose still walking up and down--casting quick glancesat his guest. Lady Tatham gave what seemed to be family news--how "John"had been sent to Teheran--and "George" was to be military secretary inDublin--and "Barbara" to the astonishment of everybody had consented tobe made a Woman of the Bedchamber--"poor Queen!"--how Reginald Pratt hadbeen handsomely turned out of the Middleswick seat, and was probablygoing to "rat" to an Opposition that promised more than theGovernment--that Cecilia's eldest girl--"a pretty little minx"--had beenalready presented, and was likely to prove as skilful a campaigner for ahusband as her mother before her--that "Gerald" had lost heavily atNewmarket, and was now a financial nuisance, borrowing from everybody inthe family--and so on, and so on.
Melrose received these various items of information half scornfully, halfgreedily; it might have been guessed that his interest in the teller wasa good deal keener than his interest in the things told. The conversationrevealed to Netta phases in her husband's existence wholly unknown toher. So Edmund had been in Rome--for two or three years--in the Embassy!That she had never known. He seemed also to have been an English memberof Parliament for a time. In any case he had lived, apparently for years,like other men of his kind--shooting, racing, visiting, travelling,fighting, elections. She could not fit the facts to which both alludedwith her own recollections of the misanthrope who had first madeacquaintance with her and her family in Florence three years before thisdate; and her bewilderment grew.
As for the others, they had soon, it seemed, completely forgotten thethin sallow-faced wife, who sat with her back to the window, restlesslytwisting her rings.
Presently Melrose stopped abruptly--in front of Lady Tatham.
"Where is Edith?" He bent forward peremptorily, his hand on the table,his eyes on the lady's face.
"At the Cape with her husband."
"Has she found him out yet?"
"There's nothing to find out. He's an excellent fellow."
"A stupid prig," said Melrose passionately. "Well, you did it!--You didit!"
"Yes, I did it." Lady Tatham rose quietly. She had paled, and after aminute's hesitation she held out her hand to Melrose. "Suppose, Edmund,we bury the hatchet. I should like to be friends with you and your wife,if you would allow it?"
The change of manner was striking. Up to this moment Lady Tatham hadbeen, so to speak, the aggressor, venturing audaciously on ground whichshe knew to be hostile--from bravado?--or for some hidden reason? But shespoke now with seriousness--even with a touch of womanly kindness.
Melrose looked at her furiously.
"Lady Tatham, I advise you to leave us alone!"
She sighed, met his eyes a moment, gravely, then turned to Netta.
"Mrs. Melrose, your husband and I have an old quarrel. He wanted to marrymy sister. I prevented it. She is married now--and he is married. Whyshouldn't we make friends?"
"Quarrels are very foolish!" said Netta, sententiously, straightening hersmall shoulders. But she dared not look at Melrose.
"Well, tell him so," laughed Lady Tatham. "And come and see me at DuddonCastle."
"Thank you! I should like to!" cried Netta.
"My wife has no carriage, Lady Tatham."
"Oh, Edmund--we might hire something," said his wife imploringly.
"I do not permit it," he said resolutely. "Good-bye, Lady Tatham. You arelike all women--you think the cracked vase will hold water. It won't."
"What are you going to do here, Edmund?"
"I am a collector--and works of art amuse me."
"And I can do nothing--for you--or your wife?"
"Nothing. I am sorry if you feel us on your mind. Don't. I would havegone farther from you, if I could. But seven miles--are seven miles."
Lady Tatham coloured. She shook hands with Netta.
Melrose held the door open for her. She swept through the hall, andhurried into her carriage. She and Melrose touched hands ceremoniously,and the brougham with its fine roan horses was soon out of sight.
A miserable quarrel followed between the husband and wife. Netta,dissolved in hysterical weeping, protested that she was a prisoner and anexile, that Edmund had brought her from Italy to this dreary place tokill her, that she couldn't and wouldn't endure it, and that return toItaly she must and would, if she had to beg her way. It was cruel to shuther up in that awful house, to deny her the means of getting about, totreat people who wished to be kind to her as Edmund had treated LadyTatham. She was not a mere caterpillar to be trodden on. She would appealto the neighbours--she would go home to her parents, etcetera--etcetera.
Melrose at first tried to check her by sarcasm--a banter that stung whereit lit. But when she would not be checked, when she followed him into hisstudy, wailing and accusing, a whirlwind of rage developed in the man,and he denounced her with a violence and a brutality which presentlycowed her. She ran shivering upstairs to Anastasia and the baby, boltedher door, and never reappeared till, twenty-four hours later, she creptdown white and silent, to find a certain comfort in Thyrza's roughministrations. Melrose seemed to be, perhaps, a trifle ashamed of hisbehaviour; and they patched up a peace over the arrangements for theheating of the house on which for once he had the grace to consult her.
The winter deepened, and Christmas came. On the mountain-tops the snowlay deep, and when Netta--who on many days never left the house--afterwalking a while up and down the long corridor for the sake of exercise,would sink languidly on the seat below its large western window, shelooked out upon a confusion of hills near and far, drawn in hardwhite upon an inky sky. To the south the Helvellyn range stretched inbold-flung curves and bosses; in the far distance rose the sharper peaksof Derwentwater; while close at hand Blencathra with its ravines, and allthe harsh splendour of its white slopes and black precipices, alternatelyfascinated and repelled the little Southerner, starved morally andphysically for lack of sun.
Even for Cumbria it was a chill and sunless winter. No bracing frosts,and persistent northwesterly winds. Day after day the rain, which wassnow on the heights, poured down. Derwentwater and Bassenthwaite rosetill they mingled in one vast lake. The streams thundered from the fells;every road was a water-course.
Netta lost flesh and appetite. She was a discontented and ailing woman,and the Dixons could not but notice her fragile state. Mrs. Dixon thoughther "nobbut a silly sort of body," but would sometimes try to cook whatpleased her, or let Anastasia use the kitchen fire for "gnocchi" or"risotto" or other queer messes; which, however, when they appeared, weregenerally more relished by the master than the mistress.
Dixon, perceiving no signs of any desire on Netta's part to attend the"papish" chapel ten miles away, began to plot for her soul. His own lifewas in the little Methodist chapel to which he walked four miles everySunda
y, wet or fine. In the summer he had accompanied the minister andone or two class leaders in a drive through the hayfields, shouting tothe haymakers--"We're going to heaven!--won't you come with us!"--and hehad been known to spend five hours at a stretch on his knees wrestlingfor the salvation of a drunken friend, in the village of Threlkeld. ButNetta baffled him. Sometimes he would come home from chapel, radiant,and would take her a bunch of holly for the table by way of gettinginto conversation with her. "It was _fine_ to-day, Missis! There wasthree found peace. And the congregation was grand! There was fourattorneys--two of 'em from as far as Pengarth." And he would lend hertracts--and even offer, good man, to borrow a "shandrey" from aneighbour, and drive her himself to the chapel service. But Netta onlysmiled or yawned at him; and as for the tracts, she hid them under thefew sofa cushions the house possessed.
Mr. Tyson, the agent, came to the house as seldom as he could, that hemight not quarrel with his employer before it was to his own interest todo so. Netta discovered that he pitied her; and once or twice, drawing onthe arts of flirtation, with which the Florentine woman is always wellacquainted, she complained to him of her loneliness and her husband'sunkindness. But his north-country caution protected him from anysentimentalizing, however innocent. And before the end of the winterNetta detested him. Meanwhile she and Anastasia lived for one hope only.From many indications it was plain that Melrose was going south in March.The women were determined not to stay behind him. But, instinctively,they never raised the subject, so as not to risk a struggle prematurely.
Meanwhile Melrose passed a winter wholly satisfactory to himself. Thepartial unpacking of his collections was an endless source of amusementand pleasure. But his curious egotism showed itself very plainly in thebusiness. He made no attempt at artistic arrangement, though there wassome classification. As fast as one room was filled--the vacantpacking-cases turned on their sides, serving to exhibit what they hadonce contained--he would begin upon another. And woe to Mrs. Dixon orThyrza if they attempted any cleaning in one of his rooms! Thecollections were for himself only, and for the few dealers or experts towhom he chose to show them. And the more hugger-mugger they were, theless he should be pestered to let people in to see them. Occasionally hewould rush up to London to attend what he called a "high puff sale"--orto an auction in one of the northern towns, and as he always boughtlargely, purchases kept arriving, and the house at the end of the winterwas in a scarcely less encumbered and disorderly condition than it hadbeen at the beginning. The few experts from the Continent or America,whom he did admit, were never allowed a word of criticism of thecollections. If they ventured to differ from Melrose as to thegenuineness or the age of a bronze or a marble, an explosion of temperand a speedy dismissal awaited them.
One great stroke of luck befel him in February which for a time put himin high good-humour. He bought at York--very cheaply--a small bronzeHermes, which some fifteenth-century documents in his own possession,purchased from a Florentine family the year before, enabled him toidentify with great probability as the work of one of the rarest and mostfamous of the Renaissance sculptors. He told no one outside the house,lest he should be plagued to exhibit it, but he could not help boastingof it to Netta and Anastasia.
"That's what comes of having _an eye_! It's worth a thousand guineas ofit's worth a penny. And those stupid idiots let me have it for twenty-twopounds!"
"A thousand guineas!" Gradually the little bronze became to Netta thesymbol of all that money could have bought for her--and all she wasdenied; Italy, freedom, the small pleasures she understood, and thesalvation of her family, now in the direst poverty. There were momentswhen she could have flung it passionately out of the window into thestream a hundred feet below. But she was to find another use for it.
March arrived. And one day Anastasia came to tell her mistress that shehad received orders to pack Mr. Melrose's portmanteaus for departure.
Netta brooded all day, sitting silent and pale in the window-seat, withsome embroidery which she never touched on her knee. Outside, not a signof spring! A bitter north wind was blowing which had blanched all colourfrom the hills, and there was ice on the edges of the streams. Thyrza wasaway in Carlisle, helping an aunt. There was no one in the house but Mrs.Dixon, and a deaf old woman from one of the labourer's cottages; attachedto the farm, who had come in to help her. The poor babe had a cold, andcould be heard fretfully crying and coughing in her nursery.
And before Netta's inward eye there stretched the interminable days andweeks ahead, no less than the interminable weeks and months she hadalready lived through, in this discomfort of body, and this loneliness ofspirit.
After supper she walked resolutely into her husband's littered study anddemanded that she and Anastasia and the baby should go with him to theContinent. He, she understood, would stop in Paris. She and the childwould push on to Florence, where she could stay the summer with herpeople, at no greater cost than at the Tower. The change was necessaryboth for her and Felicia, and go she would.
Melrose flatly and violently refused. What did she want better than theTower? She had as much service, and as much luxury as her antecedentsentitled her to; and he neither could nor would provide her with anythingmore. He was heavily in debt, and had no money to spend on railwaytickets. And he entirely disapproved of her relations, especially of herfather, who might any day find himself "run in" by the Italianauthorities for illicit smuggling of pictures out of the country. Hedeclined to allow his child to become familiar with such a circle.
Netta listened to him with tight lips, her pale face strangely flushed.When she saw that her appeal was quite fruitless she went away, and sheand Anastasia sat up whispering together far into the night.
Early next morning Melrose departed, leaving a letter for his wife, inwhich he informed her that he had left money with Mr. Tyson for thehousehold expenses, and for the few shillings he supposed she would wantas pocket money. He advised her to be out a great deal, and assured herthat the Cumbria summer, when it came, was delightful. And he signedhimself "your affectionate husband, Edmund Melrose."
Mrs. Dixon went into Pengarth for shopping on the fly which conveyedMelrose to the station, and was to come out by carrier. After theirdeparture there was no one left in the house but the deaf old woman.Netta and her maid preceeded to carry out a plan they had been longmaturing. Anastasia had a few pounds left of her Christmas wages; enoughto carry them to London; and for the rest, they had imagined an excellentdevice.
The bronze Hermes had been left by Melrose in a cupboard in a locked roomon the first floor. When Mrs. Dixon came back that night, she discoveredthat Mrs. Melrose, with her child and maid had quitted the house. Theyhad apparently harnessed the cart and horse themselves, and had driveninto Pengarth, taking a labourer with them to bring the cart home. Theyhad carried all their personal belongings away with them; and, after awhile, Mrs. Dixon, poking about, discovered that the door of one of thelocked rooms had been forced.
She also noticed, in one of the open drawers of Mrs. Melrose's bedroom, aphotograph, evidently forgotten, lying face downward. Examining it, shesaw that it was a picture of Netta, with the baby, taken apparently inItaly during the preceding summer. The Cumbrian woman, shrewdly observantlike all her race, was struck by the tragic differences between the womanof the picture and the little blighted creature who had just made aflitting from the Tower.
She showed the photograph to her husband, returned it to the drawer, andthought no more about it.
News was of course sent to Mr. Melrose in Paris, and within three days hehad come rushing back to the Tower, beside himself with rage and grief,not at all, as George Tyson soon assured himself, for the loss of hiswife and child, but entirely for the theft of the priceless Florentinebronze, a loss which he had suspected on the first receipt of the news ofthe forced door, and verified at once on his arrival.
He stood positively aghast at Netta's perfidy and wickedness, and hewrote at once to the apartment in the Via Giugno, to denounce her in themost emphatic ter
ms. As she had chosen to steal one of his most preciouspossessions, which she had of course converted into money, she had nofurther claim on him whatever, and he broke off all relations with her.Eighty pounds a year would be paid by his lawyers to a Florentine lawyer,whom he named, for his daughter's maintenance, so long as Netta left himunmolested. But he desired to hear and see no more of persons whoreminded him of the most tragical event of his history as a collector, aswell as of the utter failure of his married life. Henceforth they werestrangers to each other, and she might arrange her future as shepleased.
The letter was answered by Mrs. Robert Smeath in the third person, andall communications ceased. As a matter of fact the Smeath family wereinfinitely relieved by Melrose's letter, which showed that he did notintend to take any police steps to recover the bronze or its value.Profiting by the paternal traditions, Netta had managed the sale of theHermes in London, where, owing to Melrose's miserly hiding of it, it wasquite unknown, with considerable skill. It had realized a small fortune,and she had returned, weary, ill, but triumphant, to the apartment in theVia Giugno.
Twelve months later, Melrose had practically forgotten that he had everknown her. He returned for the winter, to Threlfall, and entered upon acourse of life which gradually made him the talk and wonder of thecountryside. The rooms occupied by Netta and her child were left just ashe had found them when he returned after her flight. He had turned thekey on them then, and nobody had since entered them. Tyson wonderedwhether it was sentiment, or temper; and gave it for the latter.
The years passed away. Melrose's hair turned from black to gray; Thyrzamarried a tradesman in Carlisle and presented him with a large family;the Dixons, as cook and manservant, gradually fitted themselves more andmore closely to the queer conditions of life in the Tower, and grew oldin the service of a master whose eccentricities became to them, inprocess of time, things to be endured without comment, like disagreeablefacts of climate. In Dixon, his Methodist books, his Bible, and hisweekly chapel maintained those forces of his character which were--andalways continued to be--independent of Melrose; and Melrose knew his owninterests well enough not to interfere with an obstinate man's religion.While Tyson, after five years, passed on triumphantly to a lucrativeagency in the Dukeries, having won a reputation for tact and patience inthe impossible service of a mad master, which would carry him throughlife. Melrose, being Melrose, found it hopeless to replace himsatisfactorily; and, as he continued to buy land greedily year afteryear, the neglected condition of his immense estate became anever-increasing scandal to the county.
Meanwhile, for some years after the departure of Netta, Lady Tatham wasobliged for reason of health to spend the winters on the Riviera, and sheand her boy were only at Duddon for the summer months. Intercoursebetween her and her cousin Edmund Melrose was never renewed, and her songrew up in practical ignorance of the relationship. When, however, thelad was nearing the end of his Eton school days Duddon became once morethe permanent home, summer and winter, of mother and son, and young LordTatham, curly-haired, good-humoured, and good-hearted, becamethenceforward the favourite and princeling of the countryside. On theeast and north, the Duddon estates marched with Melrose's property.Occasions of friction constantly arose, but the determination on eachside to have no more communication with the other than was absolutelynecessary generally composed any nascent dispute; so long at least asLady Tatham and a very diplomatic agent were in charge.
But at the age of twenty-four, Harry Tatham succeeded to the solemanagement of his estates, and his mother soon realized that her son wasnot likely to treat their miserly neighbour with the same patience asherself.
And with the changes in human life, went changes even more subtle andenduring in the Cumbria county itself. Those were times of crisis forEnglish agriculture. Wheat-lands went back to pasture; and a surpluspopulation, that has found its way for generations to the factory towns,began now to turn toward the great Canadian spaces beyond the westernsea. Only the mountains still rose changeless and eternal, at least tohuman sense; "ambitious for the hallowing" of moon and sun; keeping theirold secrets, and their perpetual youth.
And after twenty years Threlfall Tower became the scene of another drama,whereof what has been told so far is but the prologue.