"You"re really getting strong?"
Her kind eyes considered him. He had often marveled that one so young should be mistress of such a look--so softly frank and unafraid.
"A Hercules! Besides, the work"s so interesting, one"s no time to think of one"s game leg!"
"You"re getting to know the estate?"
"I"ve been motoring about it for a fortnight, that"s something for a beginning. And I"ve got plenty of things to tell you."
He plunged into them. It was evident that he was resuming topics familiar to them both. Their talk indeed showed them already intimate, sharers in a common enterprise, where she was often inspiration, and he executive and practical force. Ever since, indeed, she had said to him with that kindled, eager look--"Accept! Accept!"--he had been sharply aware of how best to approach, to attract her. She was, it seemed, no mere pa.s.sive girl. She was in her measure a thinker--a character. He perceived in her--deep down--enthusiasms and compa.s.sions, that seemed often as though they shook her beyond her strength. They made him uncomfortable; they were strange to his own mind; and yet they moved and influenced him.
During the short time, for instance, that she had lived in their midst, she had made friends everywhere--so he discovered--among these c.u.mbria folk. She never harangued about them; a few words, a few looks, burning from an inward fire--these expressed her: as when, twice, he had met her at dusk, with the aspect of a wounded spirit, coming out of hovels that he himself must now be ashamed of, since they were Melrose"s hovels.
"I"ve just come from Mainstairs," he said to her abruptly, as the house in front drew nearer.
The colour rushed into Lydia"s cheeks.
"Are you going to put that right?"
"I"m going to try. I"ve been talking to your old friend Dobbs. I saw his poor daughter, and I went into most of the cottages."
Somewhat to his dismay he saw the delicate face beside him quiver, and the eyes cloud. But the emotion was driven back.
"You"re too late--for Bessie!" she said--how sadly! The accent touched him.
"The girl is really dying? Was it diphtheria?"
"She has been dying for months--and in such _pain_."
"It is paralysis?"
"After diphtheria. Did they show you the graves in the churchyard?--they call it the Innocents" Corner. Thirty children died in that village last year and the year before."
There was silence a little.
"I wonder what I can do," said Faversham, at last, reflectively. "I have been working out a number of new proposals--and I submit them to Mr.
Melrose to-night."
She looked wistfully at the speaker.
"Good luck! But Mr. Melrose is hard to move."
Faversham a.s.sented.
"The hope lies in his being now an old man--and anxious to get rid of responsibilities. I shall try to show him that bad citizenship costs more money than good."
"I hope--oh! I _hope_--you"ll succeed!" she said fervently. Her emotion infected him. He smiled down upon her.
"That ought to make me succeed! But of course I have no experience. I am a townsman."
"You"ve always been a Londoner?"
"Practically, always. But I was tired of London before all this happened--dying to get out of it."
And he began a short account of himself, more intimate than any he had yet given her; to which Lydia listened with her open, friendly look, perhaps a little shyer than before. And so different, instinctively, is the way in which a man will tell his story to a woman, from that in which he tells it to a man, that the same half-ironic, half-bitter narrative which had repelled Tatham, attracted Lydia. Her sympathy rose at once to meet it. He was an orphan, and till now lonely and unsuccessful; tormented, too, by unsatisfied ideals and ambitions. Her imagination was pitiful and quick; she imagined she understood. She liked his frankness; it flattered and touched her. She liked his deep rich voice, and his dark face, with its lean strength, and almost southern colour. During his illness he had grown a small peaked beard, and it pleased her artistic sense, by giving him a look of Cardinal Richelieu--as that great man stood figured in an old French print she had picked up once in a box on the Paris quays. Moreover his friendship offered her so much fresh knowledge of the world and life. Here, again, was comradeship. She was lucky indeed. Harry Tatham--and now this clever, interesting man, entering on his task. It was a great responsibility. She would not fail either of her new friends! They knew--she had made--she would make it quite plain, that she was not setting her cap at either. Wider insights, fresh powers, honourable, legitimate powers, for her s.e.x--it was these she was after.
In all all this Lydia was perfectly sincere. But the Comic Spirit sitting aloft took note.
They paused a moment on the edge of the plateau on which the house stood--the ground breaking from it to the west. A group of cottages appeared amid the woods far away.
"If all estates were like this estate!" cried Lydia, pointing to them, "and all cottages like their cottages!"
Faversham flushed and stiffened.
"Oh! the Tathams are always perfection!"
Lydia"s eyebrows lifted.
"It is a crime?"
"No--but one hears too much of it."
"Not from them!" The tone was indignant.
"I daresay."
Suddenly, he threw her a look which startled her. She descended from her pony-cart at the steps of the castle, her breath fluttering a little.
What had happened?
"Her ladyship is in the garden," said the footman who received them. And he led the way through a door in the wall of the side court. They followed--in a constrained silence. Lydia felt puzzled, and rather angry.
Faversham recovered himself.
"I apologize! They have all the virtues."
His voice was lowered--for her ear; there was deference in his smile. But somehow Lydia was conscious of a note of stormy self-a.s.sertion in him, which was new to her; something strong and stubborn, which refused to take her lead as usual.
Lady Tatham advanced. The eyes of a group of people sitting in a circle under the shade of a spreading yew tree turned toward them.
Boden, who had given Faversham a perfunctory greeting, fell back into his chair again, and watched the new agent"s reception with coolly smiling eyes.
Tatham came hurrying up to greet them. No one but Lydia could have distinguished any change in the boyish voice and look. But it was there.
She felt it.
He turned from her to Faversham.
"Awfully glad to see you. Hope you"re quite fit again."
"Very nearly all right, thank you."