"Are you actually at work? Great excitement everywhere about you!"
Tatham stood, with his straw hat tilted toward the back of his head, and his hands on his sides, observing his guest.
Faversham shrugged his shoulders.
"I feel horribly nervous!"
"Well you may!" laughed Tatham. "Never mind. We"ll all back you up, if you"ll let us."
"As far as I am concerned--the smallest contributions thankfully received. Who are these people here?"
Tatham introduced him.
Then to Lydia:
"Delorme is waiting for you." He carried her off.
By this time Mr. Andover, the old grizzled squire who had been Lydia"s partner at dinner the night before, had dropped in, and various other residents from the neighbourhood. They gathered eagerly round Faversham, in the deep shade of the yews.
And before long, the new man had produced an excellent first impression upon these country gentlemen who were now to be his neighbours. It was evident that he was anxious to remove grievances. His tone as to his employer was guarded, but not at all servile; and he made the impression of a man of ability accustomed to business, though modestly avowing his ignorance of rural affairs; independent, yet anxious to do his best with a great trust.
After half an hour"s discussion, Barton drew Victoria aside, and said to her excitedly that the new agent was "a capital fellow!"
"He"ll do the job, you"ll see! Melrose is breaking up--thank G.o.d! Every one who"s seen him lately says he"s not half the man he was. He"ll have to give this fellow a free hand. That estate has been a plague-spot!
But we"ll get it cleared up now."
Victoria wondered. Secretly, she doubted the power of any man to manage Melrose even _moriturus_.
Meanwhile it had not escaped her that the new agent and Lydia Penfold had arrived together. It had struck her also that their manner toward each other, as she went to meet them, had been the manner of persons just emerged from a somewhat intimate conversation. And she already perceived the nascent jealousy in Harry.
Well, no doubt the agent also was to be practised on by these newfangled arts. For no girl could have had the audacity to make the compact Lydia Penfold had made with Harry, if she were already in love with another man! No. Faversham, it was plain, would be the next added to her train. Victoria beheld the golden-haired creature as the modern Circe, surrounded by troops of ex-suitors--lovers transmogrified to Friends--docile at the heel of the sorceress. You took your chance, received your "No," and subsided cheerfully into the pen. Victoria vowed to herself that her Harry should do nothing of the kind!
She looked round her for the presumptuous maiden. There she was, under a fountain wall in the Italian garden, her white dress gleaming from the warm shadow in which the stone was steeped; Delorme, with an easel, in front. He was making a rapid charcoal sketch of her, and she was sitting daintily erect, talking and smiling at intervals. A little way off, a group of people, critical observers of the proceeding, lounged on the gra.s.s or in garden chairs; among them, Tatham. And as he sat watching the sitting, his hat drawn forward over his brow and eyes, although he chatted occasionally with Mrs. Manisty beside him, his mother was miserably certain that he was in truth alive to nothing but the white vision under the wall--the delicate three-quarter face, with its pointed chin, and the wisps of gold hair blowing about the temples.
And the owner of the face! Was she quite unmoved by a situation which might, Victoria felt, have strained the nerves even of the experienced?
A slight incident seemed to show that she was not unmoved. Lydia had shown a keen, girlish pleasure in the prospect of sitting to Delorme, the G.o.d, professionally, of her idolatry. Yet the sketch, for that afternoon, came to nothing. For after an hour"s sitting Delorme, as usual, became restless and excited, exclaimed at the difficulty of the subject, cursed the light, and finally, in a fit of disgust, wiped out everything he had done. Lydia rose from her seat, looking rather white, and threw a strange, appealing glance--the mother caught it--at her young host.
Tatham sprang up, released her instantly and peremptorily, though Delorme implored for another half-hour. Lydia, unheard by the artist, gave soft thanks to her deliverer, and, presently, there they were--she and Harry--strolling up and down the rose-alleys together, as though nothing, absolutely nothing, had happened.
And yet Harry had only asked her to marry him the night before, and she had only refused! Impossible to suppose that it was the mere plotting of the finished coquette. This lover required neither teasing nor kindling.
However, there it was. This little struggling artist had refused Harry; and she had refused Duddon.
For one could not be so absurd as to ignore _that_. Victoria, sitting in the shade beside Lady Barbara, who had gone to sleep, looked dreamily round on the rose-red pile of building, on the great engirdling woods, the hills, the silver reaches of river--interwoven now with the dark tree-ma.s.ses, now with glades of sunlit pasture. Duddon was one of the great possessions of England. And this slip of a girl, with her home-made blouses, and her joy in making twenty pounds out of her drawings, wherewith to pay the rent, had put it aside, apparently without a moment"s hesitation. Magnanimity--or stupidity?
The next moment Victoria was despising her own amazement. "One takes one"s own lofty feelings for granted--but never other people"s! She says she doesn"t love him--and that"s the reason. And I straightway don"t believe her. What sn.o.bs we all are! One"s astonishment betrays one"s standard. Gerald says, "What have the poor to do with fine feelings?" and I detest him for it. But I"m no better."
Suddenly, on the other side of the yew hedge behind her--voices. Harry and Lydia Penfold, in eager and laughing discussion. And all at once a name reached her ears:
"Lydia"--p.r.o.nounced rather shyly, in Tatham"s voice.
"_Lydia!"_ No doubt by the bidding of the young lady.
"I did not know I was so old-fashioned," thought Lady Tatham indignantly.
Yet the tone in which the name was given was neither caressing nor tender. It simply meant, of course, that the young woman was breaking him in to her ideas; her absurd ideas, from which Harry must be protected.
They emerged from the shrubbery and came toward her. Lydia timidly approached Victoria. With Tatham she had not apparently been timid. But for his mother she was all deference.
"Isn"t there a flower-show here to-morrow? May Susan and I come and help?"
The speaker raised her eyes to Lady Tatham, and Victoria read in them something beautiful and appealing, that at once moved and angered her.
The girl seemed to offer her heart to Tatham"s mother.
"_I can"t marry your son!--but let me love you--be your friend!--the friend of both_."
Was that what it meant?
What could Victoria do? There was Harry hovering in the background, with that eager, pale look. She was helpless. Mechanically she said, "We shall be delighted--grateful. I will send for you."
Thenceforward, however, Lydia allowed Tatham no more private speech with her. She made herself agreeable to all Victoria"s guests in turn. Delorme fell head over ears in love with her, so judicious, yet so evidently sincere were the flatteries she turned upon him, and so docile her consent to another sitting. Sweet, grave Lucy Manisty watched her with fascination. The Manisty boy dragged her to the Long Pond, to show her the water-beasts there, as the best way of marking his approval. Colonel Barton forgot politics to chat with her; and the mocking speculation in Cyril Boden"s eyes gradually softened, as the girl"s charm and beauty penetrated, little by little, through all the company.
Faversham alone seemed to have no innings with her till he was about to take his departure. Then Victoria noticed that Lydia made a quick movement toward him, and they stood together a few minutes, talking--certainly not as strangers.
Gerald Tatham also noticed it. There were few things, within his powers, that he left unnoticed.
"Now _that_ would be suitable!" he said in Lady Barbara"s ear, nodding toward the pair. "You saw how they came in together. But of course it"s a blind. Any one with half an eye can see that she"s just fishing for Harry!"
XII
Faversham sped home through the winding c.u.mbrian lanes, driven by the new chauffeur just imported from Manchester. The hedges were thick with meadow-sweet and its scent, mingled with that of new-mown hay, hung in the hot, still air. In front of him the Ullswater mountains showed dimly blue. It was a country he was beginning to love. His heart rose to it.
Small wonder in that! For here, in this northern landscape, so strange to him but three months ago, he had first stumbled on Success--and he had first met Lydia.
Was there any chance for him? Through all his talks with the country neighbours, or with Lady Tatham, he had been keenly on the watch for anything that might show him what Lydia"s position in the Duddon Castle circle actually was. That Tatham was in love with her was clear. Mrs.
Penfold"s chatter as to the daily homage paid by the castle to the cottage, through every channel--courtesies or gifts--that the Tathams"
delicacy could invent, or the Penfolds" delicacy accept, had convinced him on that point. And Faversham had seen for himself at Duddon that Tatham hung upon her every movement and always knew where she was and to whom she was talking; nor had the long conversation in the rose-walk escaped him.
Well, of course, in the case of any other girl in the world than Lydia, such things would be conclusive. Who was likely to refuse Tatham, plus the Tatham estates? But unless he had mistaken her altogether--her detachment, her unworldliness, her high spirit--Lydia Penfold was not the girl to marry an estate. And if Tatham himself had touched her heart--"would she have allowed me the play with her that she has done this last fortnight?" She would have been absorbed, preoccupied; and she had been neither. He thought of her kind eyes, her frank, welcoming ways, her intense interest in his fortunes. Impossible--if she were in love with or on the point of an engagement to Harry Tatham.
She had forgiven him for his touch of jealous ill-temper! As they stood together at the last in the Duddon garden, she had said, "I _must_ hear about to-night! send me a word!" And he carried still, stamped upon his mind, the vision of her--half shy, half eager--looking up.
For the rest, the pa.s.sion that was rapidly rising in the veins of a man full of life and will, surprised the man himself, excited in him a new complacency and self-respect. For years he had said to himself that he could only marry money. He remembered with a blush one or two rather sordid steps in that direction--happily futile. But Lydia was penniless; and he could make her rich. For his career was only beginning; and on wealth, the wealth which is power, he was more than ever determined.
A turn in the road brought Threlfall into view. The new agent sat with folded arms, gazing at the distant outline, and steadily pulling himself together to meet the ordeal of the evening. It was by Melrose"s own wish he had drawn up a careful scheme of the alterations and improvements which seemed to him imperatively necessary in the financial interests of the estate; and he had added to it a statement--very cautious and diplomatic--of the various public and private quarrels in which Melrose was now concerned, with suggestions as to what could be done to straighten them out. With regard to two or three of them litigation was already going on; had, indeed, been going on interminably. Faversham was certain that with a little good-will and a very moderate amount of money he could settle the majority of them in a week.