"MY DEAR MISS PENFOLD:
"It was very kind of you to write to me, I am sure you meant no harm, and I do not pretend to judge another person"s conduct by what I might myself have thought wisest or best. But I think we all have to learn that the deepest feelings in life are very sensitive, and very incalculable things; and that the old traditions and conventions respecting them have probably much more to say for themselves than we like to admit--especially in our youth. Men and women in middle life may have true and intimate friendships without any thought of marriage. I doubt whether this is possible for young people, though I know it is the fashion nowadays to behave as though it were. And especially is it difficult--or impossible--where there has been any thought of love--on either side. For love is the great, unmanageable, explosive thing, which cannot be tamed down, at a word, into friendship--not in youth at any rate. The attempt to treat it as a negligible quant.i.ty can only bring suffering and misunderstanding.
"But I must not preach to you like this. I am sure you know--now--that what I say has truth in it. Thank you again for the feeling that dictated your letter. Harry is very well and very busy. We hoped to go to London before Christmas, but this most difficult and unhappy affair of Mrs.
Melrose and her daughter detains us. Whether we shall obtain justice for them in the end I do not know. At present the adverse influences are very strong--and the indignation of all decent people seems to make no difference. Mr. Faversham"s position is indeed difficult to understand.
"Please remember me kindly to your mother and sister. Next year I hope we shall be able to meet as usual. But for the present, as you and Harry have agreed, it is better not."
Victoria was extremely dissatisfied with this letter when she had done it. But she knew very well that Harry would have resented a single harsh word from her toward the misguided Lydia; and she did not know how better to convey the warning that burnt on her lips with regard to Faversham.
Lydia received Victoria"s letter on the day of her return to the cottage.
Her mother remained in London.
Susy welcomed her sister affectionately, but with the sidelong looks of the observer. Ever since the evening of Lady Tatham"s visit when Lydia had come back with white face and red eyes from her walk with Harry Tatham, and when the following night had been broken for Susy by the sound of her sister"s weeping in the room next to her, it had been recognized by the family that the Tatham affair had ended in disaster, and that Duddon was henceforth closed to them. Lydia told her mother enough to plunge that poor lady into even greater wonder than before at the hopeless divergence of young people to-day from the ways and customs of their grandmothers; and then begged piteously that nothing more might be said to her. Mrs. Penfold cried and kissed her; and for many days tears fell on the maternal knitting needles, as the fading vision of Lydia, in a countess" coronet, curtesying to her sovereign, floated mockingly through the maternal mind. To Susy Lydia was a little more explicit; but she showed herself so sunk in grief and self-abas.e.m.e.nt, that Susy had not the heart for either probing or sarcasm. It was not a broken heart, but a sore conscience--a warm, natural penitence, that she beheld. Lydia was not yet "splendid," and Susy could not make anything tragic out of her.
At least, on what appeared. And not even Susy"s impatience could penetrate beyond appearance. She longed to say, "Enough of the Tatham affair--now let us come to business. How do you stand with Claude Faversham?" A number of small indications pointed her subtly, irresistibly in that direction. But the strength of Lydia"s personality stood guard over her secret--if she had one.
All Susy could do was to give Lydia the gossip of the neighbourhood, which she did--copiously, including the "cutting" of Faversham at the County Club, by Colonel Barton and others. Lydia said nothing.
In the course of the evening, however, a letter arrived for Lydia, brought by messenger from Threlfall Tower. Lydia was alone in the sitting-room; Susy was writing upstairs. The letter ran:
"I hear you have returned to-day. May I come and see you to-morrow afternoon--late?"
To which Lydia replied in her firmest handwriting, "Come by all means. I shall be here between five and six to-morrow." After which she went about with head erect and shining eyes, like one who has secretly received and accepted a challenge. She was going to sift this matter for herself.
Since a hurried note reporting the latest news of the Mainstairs victims, which had reached her from Faversham on the morning of her departure for London, she had heard nothing from him; and during her weeks of nursing in a darkened room, she had sounded the dim and perilous ways of her own heart as best she could.
She spent the following day in sketching the Helvellyn range, still radiant under its first snow-cap; sitting warmly sheltered on a southern side of a wall, within sound of the same stream beside which she and Faversham had met for the first time in the spring, amid the splendid light and colour of the May sunset.
And now it was already winter. The fell-sides were red with withered fern; their round or craggy tops showed white against a steely sky; down the withered copses by the stream, the north wind swept; a golden oak showered its dead leaf upon her. Gray walls, purple fells, the brown and silver of the stream, all the mountain detail that she loved--she drew it pa.s.sionately into her soul. Nature and art--why had she been so faithless to them--she "the earth"s unwearied lover?" She was miserably, ironically conscious of her weakness; of the gap between her spring and her autumn.
On her return, she told Susy quietly of her expected visitor. Susy raised her eyebrows.
"I shall give him tea," said Susan, "just to save the proprieties with Sarah." Sarah was the house parlour-maid. "But _then_ you won"t need to give me hints."
Susy had departed. Lydia and Faversham sat opposite each other in the little drawing-room.
Lydia"s first impression on seeing him had been one of dismay. He looked much older; and a certain remoteness, a cold and nervous manner seemed to have taken the place of the responsive ease she remembered. It began to cost her an effort to remember the emotion of their last meeting in the Mainstairs lane.
But when they were alone together, he drew a long breath, and leaning forward over the table before them, his face propped on his hand, he looked at her earnestly.
"I wonder what you have been hearing about me?"
Lydia made a brave effort, and told him. She repeated to him the gist of what Susan had reported the night before, putting it lightly--apologetically--as though statements so extravagant had only to be made to be disproved. His mind meanwhile was divided between strained attention, and irrepressible delight in the spectacle of Lydia enthroned in her mother"s chair, of the pale golden hair rippling back from the broad forehead, and the clear eyes beneath the thin dark arch of the brows, so delicately traced on the white skin; of all the play of gesture and expression that made up her beauty. Existence for him during these weeks of her absence had largely meant expectation of this moment.
He had discounted all that she would probably say to him; his replies were ready.
And she no sooner paused than he began an eager and considered defence of himself. A defence which, as he explained, he had intended to make weeks before. He had called the very day after their hurried departure for London; and having missed them, had then decided to wait till they could talk face to face. _Le papier est bete!_ "I had too much to say!"
Well, when he had said it, to what did it amount? He claimed the right to tell the whole story; and began therefore by tracing the steps by which he had become necessary to Melrose; by describing his astonishment when the offer of the agency was made to him; and the sudden rush of plans and hopes for the future. Then, by a swift and effective digression he sketched the character of Melrose, as he had come to know it; the ferocity of the old man"s will; his mad obstinacy, in which there was always a touch of fantastic imagination; and those alternations of solitude and excitement, with the inevitable, accompanying defiance of all laws of health, physical and moral, which for years had made up his life.
"Let us remember that he is undoubtedly a sick man. He will tell me nothing of what his doctors say to him. But I put two and two together. I don"t believe he can possibly live long. A year or two at most; perhaps much less. When I accepted the agency, I confess I thought his physical weakness would oblige him to put the whole management of the estate into my hands. It has not been so. The mind, the will are iron, whatever the physical weakness may be. He conceives himself as a rock in the Socialist torrent, bound to oppose reforms, and concessions, and innovations, just because they are asked of him by a revolutionary society. He reckons that his life will last out his resistance--his successful resistance--and that he will go down with the flag flying. So that he takes an insane pleasure in disappointing and thwarting the public opinion about him. For it _is_ insane--remember that! The moral state, the moral judgments, are all abnormal; the will and the brain are, so far as his main pursuits are concerned, still superb."
He paused. Her gaze--half-shrinking--was fixed on the face so near to her; on the profound and resolute changes which had pa.s.sed over the features which when she first saw them had still the flexibility of youth. The very curls and black hair lying piled above the forehead in which there were already two distinct transverse lines, seemed to have grown harsher and stronger.
"This, of course, is what I discovered as soon as I had taken the agency.
I did not know my man when I accepted. I began to know him, as soon as we really came to business. I found him opposed to all reform--incapable even of decent humanity. Very well! Was I to throw up?"
His eyes pierced into hers. Lydia could only murmur: "Go on."
"Suppose I had thrown up!--what would have happened? The estate would have sunk, more and more lamentably, into the power of a certain low attorney who has been Melrose"s instrument in all his worst doings for years--and of a pair of corrupt clerks in the local office. Who would have gained? Not a soul! On the contrary, much would have been lost.
Heaven knows I have been able to do little enough. But I have done something!--I have done _something_!--that is what people forget."
He looked at her pa.s.sionately; a distress rising in his eyes, which he could not hide. Was it her silence--the absence of any cheering, approving sound from her?
She lifted her hand, and let it drop.
"Mainstairs!" she said. It was just breathed--a cry of pain.
"Yes--Mainstairs! I know--let us tackle Mainstairs. Mainstairs is a horror--a tragedy. If I had been allowed, I should have set the whole thing right a couple of months ago; I should have re-housed some of the people, closed some of the cottages, repaired others. Mr. Melrose stopped everything. There again--what good could I do by throwing up? I had plenty of humdrum work elsewhere that was not being interfered with--work that will tell in the long run. I left Mainstairs to Melrose; the responsibility was his, not mine. I went on with what I was doing. He and the police--thank heaven!--cleared the place."
"And in the clearing, Mr. Melrose, they say, never lifted a finger to help--did not even give money," said Lydia in the same low, restrained voice, as she looked away from her guest into the fire. "And one sits thinking--of all the _dead_--that might have been saved!"
His frowning distress was evident.
"Do I not feel it as much as any one?" he said, with emotion. "I was helpless!"
There was silence. Then Lydia turned sharply toward him.
"Mr. Faversham! Is it true that Mr. Melrose has made you his heir?"
His face changed.
"Yes--it is true."
"And he has refused to make any provision for his wife and daughter?"
"He has. And more than that"--he looked at her with a defiant candour--"he has tried to bind me in his will to do nothing for them."
"And you have allowed it?"
"I shall soon get round that," he said, scornfully. "There are a thousand ways. Such restrictions are not worth the paper they are written on."
"And meanwhile they are living on charity? And Mr. Melrose, as you say, may last some years. I saw Mrs. Melrose pa.s.s this morning in a carriage.
She looked like a dying woman."