I can"t help it."
It was all sincere. There was neither sn.o.bbishness nor affectation in the little widow, even when she prattled most embarra.s.singly about her own affairs, or stood frankly wondering at the Tatham wealth. But no one could deny it was untutored. Lady Tatham thought of all the Honourable Johns, and Geralds, and Barbaras on the Tatham side--Harry"s uncles and cousins--and the various magnificent people, ranging up to royalty, on her own; and envisaged the moment when Mrs. Penfold should look them all in the face, with her pretty, foolish eyes, and her chatter about Lydia"s earnings and Lydia"s blouses. And not all the inward laughter which the notion provoked in one to whom life was largely comedy, in the Meredithian sense, could blind her to the fact that the shock would be severe.
Had she really injured the prospects of her boy by the way--the romantic, idealist way--in which she had brought him up. Her Harry!--with whom she had read poetry, and talked of heroes, into whose ears she had poured Ruskin and Carlyle from his youth up; who was the friend and comrade of all the country folk, because of a certain irrepressible interest in his kind, a certain selflessness that were his cradle gifts; who shared in his boyish way, her own amused contempt for shams and shows--had she, after all, been training him for a mistake in the most serious step of life?
For, like it or despise it, English society was there, and he must fill his place in it. And things are seemly and unseemly, fitting and unfitting--as well as good and bad. This inexperienced girl, with her prettiness, and her art, and her small world--was it fair to her? Is there not something in the unconscious training of birth and position, when, _bon gre, mal gre_, there is a big part in the world"s social business to be played?
And meanwhile, with a fraction of her mind, she went on talking "Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff." She did the honours of half their possessions. Then it suddenly seemed to her that the time was long, and she led the way back once more to the drawing-room, in a rather formidable silence, of which even her cheerful companion became aware.
But as they entered the room, the door at the farther end opened again, and Tatham and Lydia emerged.
Good heavens!--had he been proposing already? But a glance dispelled the notion. Lydia was laughing as they came in, and a little flushed, as though with argument. It seemed to his mother that Harry"s look, on the other hand, was overcast. Had the girl been trampling on him?
Impossible! In any case, there was no denying the quiet ease, the complete self-possession, with which the "inexperienced" one moved through Harry"s domain, and took leave of Harry"s mother. Your modern girl?--of the intellectual sort--quite unmoved by gewgaws! Minx!
Harry saw the two ladies into their pony-carriage. When he returned to his mother, it was with an absent brow. He went to the window and stood softly whistling, with his hands in his pockets. Lady Tatham waited a little, then went up to him, and took him by the arms--her eyes smiling into his, without a word.
He disengaged himself, almost roughly.
"I wish I knew something about art!" he said discontentedly. "And why should anybody want to be independent all their lives--economically independent?"
He slowly repeated the words, evidently from another mouth, in a land of wonder.
"That"s the young woman of to-day, Harry."
"Isn"t it better to be happy?" he broke out, and then was silent.
"Harry!--you didn"t propose to her?"
He laughed out.
"Propose to her! As if I dare! I haven"t even made friends with her yet--though I thought I had. She talks of things I don"t understand."
"Not philosophy and stuff?"
"Lord, no!" he said, shrugging his shoulders. "It"s much worse. It"s as though she despised--" He paused again.
"Courting?" said his mother at last, her head against his shoulder.
"Well, anything of that sort, in comparison with art--and making a career--and earning money--and things of that kind. Oh, I daresay I"m a stupid a.s.s!--"
Lady Tatham laughed softly.
"You can buy all her pictures, Harry."
"I don"t believe she"d like it a bit, if she knew!" he said, gloomily.
The young man"s chagrin and bewilderment were evident. His mother could only guess at the causes.
"How long have you known her, Harry?"
"Just two months."
Lady Tatham took him again by the shoulders, and looked into his face.
"Why didn"t you tell me before? Do you want her?" she asked slowly.
"Yes--but I shall never get her," was the half desperate reply.
"Pooh!" she said, releasing him, after she had kissed him. "We shall see."
And straightway, with a wave of the hand as it were, she dismissed all thought of the Honourable Johns and Geralds. Mrs. Penfold and her chatter sank out of sight and hearing. She was her son"s champion--against the world.
VI
It was the tenth day since the evening when Claude Faversham had been carried unconscious into Threlfall Tower, and the first one which anything like clearness of mind had returned to him. Before that there had been pa.s.sing gleams and perceptions, soon lost again in the delusions of fever, or narcotic sleep. A big room--strange faces--pain--a doctor coming and going--intervals of misery following intervals of nothingness--helplessness--intolerable oppression--horrible struggles with food--horrible fear of being touched--gradually, little by little, these ideas had emerged in consciousness.
Then had followed the first moments of relief--incredibly sweet--but fugitive, soon swallowed up in returning discomfort; yet lengthening, deepening, pa.s.sing by degrees into a new and tremulous sense of security of a point gained and pa.s.sed. And at last on this tenth morning--a still and cloudy morning of early June, he found himself suddenly fully awake, and as it seemed to him once more in possession of himself. A dull, dumb anguish lay behind him, already half effaced; and the words of a psalm familiar at school and college ran idly through his mind: "My soul hath escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowler."
"Where am I?" Not in a hospital. Hospital ceilings are not adorned with wreaths and festoons in raised stucco, or with medallion groups of winged children playing with torches, or bows and arrows.
"I have a gem like that one," he thought, sleepily.
"A genius with a torch."
Then for a long time he was only vaguely conscious of more light than usual in the room--of an open window somewhere--of rustling leaves outside--and of a chaffinch singing....
Another couple of days pa.s.sed, and he began to question the kind woman whom he had come to regard as a sort of strong, protective force between him and anguish, without any desire to give it a name, or realize an individual. But now he saw that he had been nursed by hands as refined as they were skilful, and he dimly perceived that he owed his life mainly to the wholly impersonal yet absorbed devotion of two women--gentle, firm-faced, women--who had fought death for him and won. Just a professional service for a professional fee; yet his debt was measureless. These are the things, he feebly understood, that women do for men; and what had been mere hearsay to his strong manhood had become experience.
Actually a ray of sunshine had been allowed to penetrate the shaded room.
He watched it enchanted. Flowers were on the table near him. There was a delicious sense of warmth and summer scents.
"Where am I?" He turned his bandaged head stiffly toward the nurse beside him.
"In Threlfall Tower--the house of Mr. Edmund Melrose," she said, bending over him.
The nurse saw him smile.
"That"s queer. What happened?"
His companion gave him a short account of the accident and of Undershaw"s handling of it. Then she refused to let her patient talk any more, and left him with instructions not to tire his head with trying to remember.
He lay disconnectedly dreaming. A stream of clear water, running shallow over greenish pebbles and among stones, large and small--and some white things floating on it. The recollection teased him, and a slight headache warned him to put it aside. He tried to go to sleep.
Suddenly, there floated into view a face vaguely seen, a girl"s figure, in a blue dress, against a background of mountain. Who was it?--where had he come across her?
A few days later, when, for the first time, he was sitting up raised on pillows, and had been allowed to lift a shaking hand to help the nurse"s hand as it guided a cup of soup to his lips, she said to him in her low, pleasant voice: