Mother and daughter were left alone. Felicia rose feebly to go to her own room, which adjoined her mother"s. She was wearing a dressing-gown of embroidered silk--pale blue, and shimmering--which Victoria"s maid had wrapped her in, after the child"s travelling clothes, thread-bare and mud-stained, had been taken off. The girl"s tiny neck and wrists emerged from it, her little head, and her face from which weariness and distress had robbed all natural bloom. What she was wearing, or how she looked, she did not know and did not care. But her mother, in whom dress had been for years a pa.s.sion never to be indulged, was suddenly--though all her exhaustion--enchanted with her daughter"s appearance.
"Oh, Felicia, you look so nice!"
She took up the silk of the dressing-gown and pa.s.sed it through her fingers covetously; then her tired eyes ran over the room, the white bed standing ready, the dressing-table with its silver ornaments and flowers, the chintz-covered sofas and chairs.
"Why shouldn"t we be rich too?" she said angrily. "Your father is richer than the Tathams. It"s a wicked, wicked shame!"
Felicia put her hand to her head.
"Oh, do let me go to bed," she said in Italian.
Netta put her arm round her, supporting her. Presently they pa.s.sed a portrait on the wall, an enlarged photograph of a boy in cricketing dress.
Underneath it was written:
"_Harry. Eton Eleven. July 189---_."
Felicia for the first time showed a gleam of interest. She stopped to look at the picture.
"Who is it?"
"It must be her son, Lord Tatham."
The girl"s sunken eyes seemed to drink in the pleasant image of the English boy.
"Shall we see him?"
"Of course. To-morrow. Now come to bed!"
Felicia"s head was no sooner on the pillow than she plunged into sleep.
Netta, on the other hand, was for a long time sleepless. The luxury of the bed and the room was inexpressibly delightful and reviving to her.
Recollections of a small bare house in the Apuan Alps above Lucca, and of all that she and Felicia had endured there, ran through her mind, mingled with visions of Threlfall as she had known it of old, its choked pa.s.sages--the locked room from which she had stolen the Hermes--the great table in Edmund"s room with its litter of bric-a-brac--Edmund himself....
She trembled; alternately desperate, and full of fears. The thought that Melrose was only a few miles from her--that she was going to face and brave him after all these years--turned her cold with terror. And yet misery had made her reckless.
"He _shall_ provide for us!" She gathered up her weak soul into this supreme resolve. How wise she had been to follow the sudden impulse which had bade her appeal to the Tathams! Were they not her kinsfolk by marriage?
They knew what Edmund was! They were kind and powerful. They would protect her, and take up her cause. Edmund was now an old man. If he died, who else had a right to his money but she and Felicia? Oh! Lady Tatham would help them; she"d see them righted! Cradled in that hope, Netta Melrose at last fell asleep.
XIV
Tatham arrived at Duddon by the earliest possible train on the following morning.
On crossing the hall he perceived in the distance a very slight thin girl, dressed in black, coming out of his mother"s sitting-room. When she saw him she turned hurriedly to the stairs and ran up, only pausing once on the first landing to flash upon him a singularly white face, lit by singularly black eyes. Then she disappeared.
"Who is that lady?" he asked of Hurst in astonishment.
"Her ladyship expects you, my lord," replied Hurst evasively, throwing open the door of the morning-room. Victoria was disclosed; pacing up and down, her hands in the pockets of her tweed jacket. Tatham saw at once that something had happened.
She put her hands on his shoulders, kissed him, and delivered her news.
She did so with a peculiar and secret zest. To watch how he took the fresh experiences of life, and to be exultantly proud and sure of him the while, was all part of her adoration of him.
"Melrose"s wife and daughter! Great Scot! So they"re not dead?" Tatham stood amazed.
"He seems to have done his best to kill them. They"re starved--and dest.i.tute. But here they are."
"And why in the name of fortune do they come to us?"
"We are cousins, my dear--and I saw her twenty years ago. It isn"t a bad move. Indeed the foolish woman might have come before."
"But what on earth can we do for them?"
The young man sat down bewildered, while his mother told the story, piecing it together from the rambling though copious narrative, which she had gathered that morning from Netta in her bed, where she had been forced to remain, at least for breakfast.
After her flight, Melrose"s fugitive wife had settled down with her child in Florence, under the wing of her own family. But they were a shiftless, importunate crew, and, in the course of years, every one of them came more or less visibly to grief. Her sisters married men of the same dubious world as themselves, and were always in difficulties. Netta"s eldest brother got into trouble with the bank where he was employed, and another brother, as a deserter from the army, had to make his escape to South America. The father, Robert Smeath, had found it more and more difficult to earn anything on which to keep his belongings, and as a picture dealer seemed to have fallen into bad odour with the Italian authorities, for reasons of which Netta could give no account.
"And how much do you think Mr. Melrose allowed his wife and child?" asked Victoria, her eyes sparkling. "_Eighty pounds a year_!--on which in the end the whole family seem to have lived. Finally, the mother died, and Mr. Smeath got into some sc.r.a.pe or other--I naturally avoided the particulars--which involved pledging half Mrs. Melrose"s allowance for five years. And on the rest--forty pounds--she and her daughter, and her old father have been trying to live for the last two. You never heard such a story! They found a small half-ruined villa in the mountains north of Pisa, and there they somehow existed. They couldn"t afford nursing or doctoring for the old father; they were half starved; the mother and daughter have both actually worked in the vineyards; and, of course, they had no servant. You should see the poor woman"s hands! Then she began to write to her husband. No reply--for eighteen months, no reply--till just lately, an intimation from the Florentine bank, that if any more similar letters were addressed to Mr. Melrose the allowance would be stopped."
"Old fiend!" cried Tatham, "now we"ll get at him!"
Victoria went on to describe how, at last, an English family who had taken one of the old villas on the Luccan Alps for the summer had come across the forlorn trio. They were scandalized by the story, and they had impressed on Mrs. Melrose that she and her daughter had a legal right to suitable maintenance from her husband. Urged by them--and starvation--Netta had at last plucked up courage. The old father was left in the charge of a _contadino_ family, a small loan was raised for them to which the English visitors contributed, and the mother and daughter started for home.
"But without us, or some one else to help her," said Victoria, "she would never--never!--get through the business. Her terror of Melrose is a perfect disease. She shakes if you mention his name. That was what made her think of me--and that visit I paid her. Poor thing! she was rather pretty then. But it was plain enough what their relations were. Well, now, Harry, it"s for you to say. But my blood"s up! I suggest we see this thing through!"
The door slowly opened as she spoke, and two small figures came in silently, closing it behind them. There they stood, a story in themselves; Netta, with the bearing and the dress of a shabby little housekeeper; the girl ghastly thin, her shoulder-blades cutting her flimsy dress, blue shadows in all the hollows of the face, but with extraordinary pride of bearing, and extraordinary possibilities of beauty in the modelling of her delicate features, and splendid melancholy eyes.
Tatham could not help staring at her. She was indeed the disinherited princess.
Then he walked up to them, and shook hands with boyish heartiness.
"I say, you do look pumped out! But don"t you worry too much. My mother and I"ll see what can be done. We"ll set the lawyers on, if there"s nothing else. It"s a beastly shame, anyway! But now, you take it easy.
We"ll look after you. Sit down, won"t you? Mother"s chairs are the most comfortable in the house!"
He installed them; and then at once took the serious, business air, which still gave his mother a pleasure which was half amus.e.m.e.nt. Felicia, sitting in a corner behind her mother"s sofa, could not take her eyes from him. The tall, fair English youth, six foot two, and splendidly developed, the pink of health, modesty, and kindly courtesy, was different from all other beings that had ever swum into her view. She watched him close and furtively--his features, his dress, his gestures; comparing the living man in her mind with the photograph upstairs, and so absorbed in her study of him that she scarcely heard a word of the triangular discussion going on between her mother, Tatham, and Victoria.
The whole time she was drinking in impressions, as of a G.o.d-like creature, all beneficence.
After an hour"s cross-examination of the poor, shrinking Netta, Tatham"s blood too was up; he was eager for the fray. To attack Melrose was a joy; made none the less keen by the reflection that to help these two helpless ones was a duty. Lydia"s approval, Lydia"s sympathy were certain; he kindled the more.
"All right!" he said, rising. "Now I think we are agreed on the first step. Faversham is our man. I must see Faversham at once, and set him to work! If I find him, I will report the result to you, Mrs. Melrose--so far--by luncheon time."
He departed, to ring up the Threlfall office in Pengarth and inquire whether Faversham could be seen there. Victoria left the room with him.
"Have you forgotten these rumours of which Undershaw wrote you?"
"What, as to Faversham? No, I have not forgotten them. But I shan"t take any notice of them. He can"t accept anything for himself till these two have got their due! What right has he to Melrose"s property at all?"