Meanwhile she was quite aware of the slight sounds from the hall which heralded the approaching visitors. The footman threw the door open; and she rose.
There came in, with hurrying steps, a little lady in widow"s dress, her widow"s veil thrown back from her soft brown hair and childish face.
Behind her, a tall girl in white, wearing a shady hat.
The little lady held out a hand--eager but tremulous.
"I _hope_, Lady Tatham, we are not intruding? We know it isn"t correct--indeed we are quite aware of it--that we should call upon you first. But then we know your son--he is such a charming young man!--and he asked us to come. I don"t think Lydia wanted to come--she always wants to do things properly. No, indeed, she didn"t want to come. It"s all my doing. I persuaded her."
"That was very kind of you," said Lady Tatham as she shook hands first with the mother, and then with the silent daughter. "Oh, I"m a dreadful neighbour. I confess it in sackcloth and ashes. I ought to have called upon you long ago. I don"t know what to say. I"m incorrigible! Please will you sit down, and will you have some tea? My son will be here directly."
But instead of sitting down Mrs. Penfold ran to the window, exclaiming on the beauty of the view, the garden, the trees, and the bold profile of the old keep, thrown forward among the flowers. There was nothing the least distinguished in her ecstasy. But it flowed and bubbled with perfect sincerity; and Lady Tatham did not dislike it at all.
"A lady"--she thought--"quite a lady, though rather a goose. The daughter is uncomfortable."
And she glanced at the slightly flushed face of Lydia, who followed in their wake, every now and then replying, as politeness demanded, to some appeal from her mother. It was indeed clear that the visit had been none of her doing.
Grace?--personality?--Lady Tatham divined them, from the way the girl moved, from the look in her gray-blue eyes, from the carriage of her head. She was certainly pretty, with that proud virginal beauty which often bears itself on the defensive, in our modern world where a certain superfluity of women has not tended to chivalry. But how little prettiness matters, beside the other thing!--the indefinable, irresistible something--which gives the sceptre and the crown! All the time she was listening to Mrs. Penfold"s chatter, and the daughter"s occasional words, Victoria Tatham was on the watch for this something; and not without jealousy and a critical mind. She had been taken by surprise; and she resented it.
Harry was very long in coming back!--in order she supposed to give her time to make acquaintance.
But at last she had them at the tea-table, and Mrs. Penfold"s adjectives were a little quenched. Each side considered the other. Lady Tatham"s dress, her old hat, and country shoes attracted Lydia, no less than the boyish, open-air look, which still survived through all the signs of a complex life and a cosmopolitan experience. Mrs. Penfold, on her part, thought the old hat, and the square-toed shoes "unsuitable." In her young days great ladies "dressed" in the afternoons.
"Do you like your cottage?" Lady Tatham inquired.
Mrs. Penfold replied that nothing could be more to their taste--except for the motors and the dust.
"Ah! that"s my fault," said a voice behind her. "All motorists are brutes. I say, it was jolly of you to come!"
So saying, Tatham found a place between his mother and Mrs. Penfold, looking across at Lydia. Youth, happiness, manly strength came in with him. He had no features to speak of--round cheeks, a mouth generally slightly open, and given to smiling, a clear brow, a red and white complexion, a babyish chin, thick fair hair, and a countenance neither reserved nor foolishly indiscreet. Tatham"s physical eminence--and it was undisputed--lay not in his plain, good-tempered face, but in the young perfection of his athlete"s form. Among spectacles, his mother, at least, asked nothing better than to see him on horseback or swinging a golf-club.
"How did you come?--through the Glendarra woods?" he asked of Lydia. The delight in his eyes as he turned them upon her was already evident to his mother.
Lydia a.s.sented.
"Then you saw the rhododendrons? Jolly, aren"t they?"
Lydia replied with ardour. There is a place in the Glendarra woods, where the oaks and firs fall away to let a great sheet of rhododendrons sweep up from the lowland into a mountain boundary of gray crag and tumbling fern. Rose-pink, white and crimson, the waves of colour roll among the rocks, till c.u.mbria might seem Kashmir. Lydia"s looks sparkled, as she spoke of it. The artist in her had feasted.
"Won"t you come and paint it?" said Tatham bending forward eagerly.
"You"d make a glorious thing of it. Mother could send a motor for you so easily. Couldn"t you, mother?"
"Delighted," said Lady Tatham, rather perfunctorily. "They are just in their glory--they ought to be painted."
"Thank you so much!"--Lydia"s tone was a little hurried--"but I have so many subjects on hand just now."
"Oh, but nothing half so beautiful as that, Lydia!" cried her mother, "or so uncommon. And they"ll be over directly. If Lady Tatham would _really_ send the motor for you--"
Lydia murmured renewed thanks. Tatham, observing her, retreated, with a laugh and a flush.
"I say, we mustn"t bother you to paint what _we_ like. That would be too bad."
Lydia smiled upon him.
"I"m so busy with a big view of the river and Threlfall."
"Threlfall? Oh, do you know--mother! do you know what"s been happening at Threlfall. Undershaw told me. The most marvellous thing!" He turned to Mrs. Penfold. "You"ve heard the stories they tell about here of old Melrose?"
Lydia laughed softly.
"Mother collects them!"
Mrs. Penfold confessed that, being a timid person, she went in fear, sometimes of Mr. Melrose, sometimes of his bloodhounds. She did not like pa.s.sing the gate of Threlfall, and the high wall round the estate made her shudder. Of course the person that put up that wall _must_ be mad.
"A queer sort of madman!" said Tatham, with a shrug. "They say he gets richer every year in spite of the state of the property. And meanwhile no human being, except himself or the Dixons, has ever slept in that house, or taken bite or sup in it for at least twenty years. And as for his behaviour to everybody round about--well, I can tell you all about that whenever you want to know! However, now they"ve stormed him--they"ve smoked him out like a wasp"s nest. My goodness--he did buzz! Undershaw found a man badly hurt, lying on the road by the bridge--bicycle accident--run over too, I believe--and carried him into the Tower, w.i.l.l.y-nilly!" The speaker chuckled. "Melrose was away. Old Dixon said they should only come in over his body--but was removed. Undershaw got four labourers to help him, and, by George, they carried the man in! They found the drawing-room downstairs empty, no furniture in it, or next to none--turned it into a bedroom in no time. Undershaw telegraphed for a couple of nurses--and when Melrose came home next day--_tableau_! There was a jolly row! Undershaw enjoyed it. I"d have given anything in the world to be there. And Melrose"ll have to stick it out they say for weeks and weeks--the fellow"s so badly hurt--and--"
Lydia interrupted him.
"What did Doctor Undershaw say of him to-day?"
She bent forward across the tea-table, speaking earnestly.
Tatham looked at her in surprise.
"The report is better. Had you heard about it?"
"I must have seen him just before the accident--"
"Lydia! I never understood," said Mrs. Penfold rather bewildered.
Lydia explained that she too had seen Doctor Undershaw that morning, on his way to the Tower, in Whitebeck village, and he had told her the story. She was particularly interested, because of the little meeting by the river, which she described in a few words. Twenty minutes or so after her conversation with the stranger the accident must have happened.
Mrs. Penfold meanwhile was thinking, "Why didn"t Lydia tell me all this on the drive?" Then she remembered one of Lydia"s characteristics--a kind of pa.s.sionate reticence about things that moved her. Had the fate then of the young man--whom she could only have seen for a few minutes--touched her so much?
Lady Tatham had listened attentively to Lydia"s story--the inner mind of her all the time closely and critically observant of the story-teller, her beauty, the manner and quality of it, her movements, her voice. Her voice particularly. When the girl"s little speech came to an end, Victoria still had the charm of it in her ears.
"Does any one know the man"s name?" she inquired.
"I forgot to ask Undershaw," said Tatham.
Lydia supplied the information. The name of the young man was Claude Faversham. He seemed to have no relations whatever who could come and nurse him.
"Claude Faversham!" Tatham turned upon her with astonishment. "I say! I know a Claude Faversham. I was a term with him at Oxford--at least if it"s the same man. Tall?--dark?--good-looking?"
Lydia thought the adjectives fitted.
"He had the most beautiful ring!" she added. "I noticed it when he was tying up my easel."
"A ring!" cried Tatham, wrinkling up his forehead. "By George, that is odd! I remember Faversham"s ring perfectly. An uncle gave it him--an old Professor at Oxford, who used to collect things. My tutor sent me to a lecture once, when I was in for schools. Mackworth--that was the old boy"s name--was lecturing, and Faversham came down to help him show his cases. Faversham"s own ring was supposed to be something special, and Mackworth talked no end about it. Goodness!--so that"s the man. Of course I must go and see him!--ask after him anyway."