Tatham was returning alone from a run with the West c.u.mbrian hounds. The December day was nearly done, and he saw the pageant of its going from a point on the outskirts of his own park. The park, a great s.p.a.ce of wild land extending some miles to the north through a spa.r.s.ely peopled county, was bounded and intersected throughout its northerly section by various high moorland roads. At a cross-road, leading to Duddon on the left, and to a remote valley running up the eastern side of Blencathra on the right, he reined up his horse to look for a moment at the sombre glow which held the western heaven; amid which the fells of Thirlmere and Derwent.w.a.ter stood superbly ranged in threatening blacks and purples. To the east and over the waste of Flitterdale, that great flat "moss" in which the mountains die away, there was the prophecy of moonrise; a pearly radiance in the air, a peculiar whiteness in the mists that had gathered along the river, a silver message in the sky. But the wind was rising, and the westerly clouds rushing up. The top of Blencathra was already hidden; it might be a wild night.
Only one luminous point was to be seen, at first, in all the wide and splendid landscape. It shone from Threlfall Tower, a dark and indistinguishable ma.s.s amid its hanging woods.
"Old Melrose--counting out his money!"
But as the scornful fancy crossed his mind, a few other dim and scattered lights began to p.r.i.c.k the gloom of the fast-darkening valley. That twinkle far away, in the direction of St. John"s Vale, might it not be the light of Green Cottage--of Lydia"s lamp?
He sat his horse, motionless, consumed with longing and grief. Yet, hard exercise in the open air, always seemed to bring him a kind of physical comfort. "It _was_ a jolly _run_!" he thought, yet half ashamed. His young blood was in love with life, through all heartache.
Suddenly, a whirring sound from the road on his right, and the flash of moving lamps. He saw that a small motor was approaching, and his mare began to fidget.
"Gently, old girl!"
The motor approached and slowed at the corner.
"Hallo Undershaw! is that you?"
The motor stopped and Undershaw jumped out, and turned off his engine.
Tatham"s horse was pirouetting.
"All right," said Undershaw; "I"ll walk by you a bit. Turn her up your road."
The beautiful mare quieted down, and presently the two were in close talk, while the motor left to itself blazed on the lonely moorland road.
Undershaw was describing a visit he had paid that morning to old Brand, the bailiff, who was now quietly and uncomplainingly losing hold on life.
"He may go any time--perhaps to-night. The elder son"s departure has finished him. I told the lad that if he cared to stay till his father"s death, you would see that he got work meanwhile on the estate; but he was wild to go--not a sc.r.a.p of filial affection that I could make out!--and the poor old fellow has scarcely spoken since he left the house. So there he is, left with the feeble old wife, and the half-witted son, who grows queerer and madder than ever. I needn"t say the woman was very grateful--"
"Don"t!" said Tatham; "it"s a beastly world."
They moved on in silence, till Undershaw resumed:
"Dixon came to the surgery this afternoon, and I understood from him that he thinks Melrose is breaking up fast. He tries to live as usual; and his temper is appalling. But Dixon sees a great change."
"Well, it"ll scarcely be possible to say that his decease "cast a gloom over the countryside." Will it?" laughed Tatham.
"What"ll Faversham do? That"s what I keep asking myself."
"Do? Why, go off with the shekels, and be d.a.m.ned to us! I understand that just at present he"s paying rather high for them, which is some satisfaction. That creature Nash told one of our men the other day that Melrose now treats him like dirt, and finds his chief amus.e.m.e.nt in stopping anything he wants to do."
"Then he"d better look sharp after the will," said Undershaw, with a smile. "Melrose is game for any number of tricks yet. But I don"t judge Faversham quite as you do. I believe he has all sorts of grand ideas in his head about what he"ll do when he comes in."
"I daresay! You need "em when you begin with taking soiled money. Mrs.
Melrose got the quarterly payment of her allowance yesterday, from an Italian bank--twenty-five pounds minus ten pounds, which seems to be mortgaged in some way. Melrose"s solicitors gracefully let her know that the allowance was raised by twenty pounds! On fifteen pounds therefore she and the girl are expected to exist for the quarter--_and_ support the old father. And yesterday just after my mother had shown me the check, I saw Faversham in Pengarth, driving a Rolls-Royce car, brand-new, with a dark fellow beside him whom I know quite well as a Bond Street dealer. I conclude Faversham was taking him to see the collections--_his_ collections!"
"It looks ugly I grant. But I believe he"ll provide for the girl as soon as he can."
"And I hope she"ll refuse it!" cried Tatham. "And I believe she will.
She"s a girl of spirit. She talks of going on the stage. My mother has found out that she"s got a voice, and she dances divinely. My mother"s actually got a teacher for her from London, whom we put up in the village."
"A lovely little girl!" said Undershaw. "And she"s getting over her hardships. But the mother--" He shook his head.
"You think she"s in a bad way?"
"Send her back to Italy as soon as you can. She"s pining for her own people. Life"s been a bit too hard for her, and she never was but a poor thing. Well, I must go."
Tatham stayed his horse. Undershaw, added as though by an afterthought:
"I was at Green Cottage this morning. Mrs. Penfold"s rather knocked up with nursing her sister. She chattered to me about Faversham. He used to be a good deal there but they"ve broken with him too; apparently, because of Mainstairs. Miss Lydia couldn"t stand it. She was _so_ devoted to the people."
The man on horseback made some inaudible reply, and they began to talk of a couple of sworn inquiries about to be held on the Threlfall estate by the officials of the Local Government Board, into the housing and sanitation of three of the chief villages on Melrose"s property. The department had been induced to move by a committee of local gentlemen, in which Tatham had taken a leading part. The whole affair had reduced itself indeed so far to a correspondence duel between Tatham, as representing a scandalized neighbourhood, and Faversham, as representing Melrose.
Tatham"s letters, in which a man, with no natural gift for the pen, had developed a surprising amount of effective sarcasm, had all appeared in the local press; with Faversham"s ingenious and sophistical replies.
Tatham discussed them now with Undershaw in a tone of pa.s.sionate bitterness. The doctor said little. He had his own shrewd ideas on the situation.
When Undershaw left him, Tatham rode on, up the forest lane, till again the trees fell away, the wide valley with its boundary fells opened before him, and again his eye sought through the windy dusk for the far-gleaming light that spoke to him of Lydia. His mind was full of fresh agitation, stirred by Undershaw"s remark about her. The idea of a breach between Lydia and Faversham was indeed most welcome, since it seemed to restore Lydia to that pedestal from which it had been so hard and strange to see her descend. It gave him back the right to worship her! And yet, the notion did nothing--now--to revive any hope for himself. He kept the distant light in view for long, his heart full of a tenderness which, though he did not know it, had already parted with much of the bitterness of unsatisfied pa.s.sion. Unconsciously, the healing process was on its way; the healing of the normal man, on whom a wound is no sooner inflicted than all the reparative powers of life rush together for its cure.
But while Tatham, wrapped in thoughts of Lydia, was thus drawing homeward, across the higher ground of the estate, down through the Duddon woods, as they fell gently to the river, a little figure was hurrying, with the step of a fugitive, and half-nervous, half-exultant looks from side to side. The moon had risen. It was not dark in the woods, and Felicia, amid the _boschi_ of the Apuan Alps, had never been frightened of the night or of any ill befalling her. In Lucca itself she might be insulted; on the hills, never. She had the independence, and--generally speaking--the strength of the working girl. So that the enterprise on which she was launched--the quest of her father--presented itself to her as nothing particularly difficult. She had indeed to keep it from her mother and Lady Tatham, and to find means of escaping them. That she calmly took steps to do, not bothering her head much about it.
As to the rest of the business, there was a station on the Keswick line close to the gate of the park, and she had looked out a train which would take her conveniently to Whitebeck, which was only half a mile from Threlfall. From Duddon to Whitebeck took eight minutes in the train. She would be at Whitebeck a little after five; allowing an hour for her adventure at the Tower, and some little margin, she would catch a train back between six and seven, which would allow of her slipping into Duddon a little after seven, unnoticed, and in good time to dress for dinner.
Her Italian blood betrayed itself throughout, alike in the keen pleasure she took in the various devices of her small plot; in the entire absence of any hampering scruples as to the disobedience and deceit which it involved; and in the practical intelligence with which she was ready to carry it out. She had brooded over it for days; and this afternoon a convenient opportunity had arisen. Her mother was in her room with a headache; Lady Tatham had had to go to Carlisle on business.
As she hastened, almost running, through the park, she was planning, by fits and starts, what she would say to her father. But still more was the thinking of Tatham--asking herself questions about him, with little thrills of excitement, and little throbbings of delicious fear.
Here she was, at the gate of the park. Just ten minutes to her train! She hurried on. A few labourers were in the road coming home tired from their work; a few cottage doors were ajar, showing the bright fire, and the sprawling children within. Some of the men as they pa.s.sed looked with curiosity at the slim stranger; but she was well m.u.f.fled up in her new furs--Victoria"s gift--and her large felt hat; they saw little more than the tips of her small nose and chin.
The train came in just as she reached the station. She took her ticket for Whitebeck, and as the train jogged along, she looked out of the window at the valley in the dim moonrise, her mind working tumultuously.
Lady Tatham had told her much; Hesketh, Lady Tatham"s maid, and the old coachman who had been teaching her to ride, had told her more. She knew that before she reached Whitebeck she would have pa.s.sed the boundary between the Duddon and Threlfall estates. She was now indeed on her father"s land, the land which in justice ought to be hers some day; which in Italy would be hers by law, or part of it anyway, whatever pranks her father might play. But here in England a man might rob his child of every penny if he pleased. That was strange when England was such a great country--such a splendid country. "I _love_ England!" she thought pa.s.sionately, as she leant back with folded arms and closed eyes.
And straightway on the dusk rose the image of Tatham--Tatham on horseback, as she had seen him set out for the hunt that morning; and she felt her eyes grow a little wet. Why? Oh! because he was so tall and splendid--and he sat his horse like a king--and everybody loved him--and she was living in his house--and so, whether he would or no, he must take notice of her sometimes. One evening had he not let her mend his glove?
And another evening, when she was practising her dancing for Lady Tatham, had he not come in to look? Ah, well, wait till she could sing and dance properly, till--perhaps--he saw her on the stage! Her newly discovered singing voice, which was the excitement of the moment for Lady Tatham and Netta, was to Felicia like some fairy force within her, struggling to be at large, which would some day carve out her fortunes, and bring her to Tatham--on equal terms.
For her pride had flourished and fed upon her love. She no longer talked of Tatham to her mother or any one else. But deep in her heart lay the tenacious, pursuing instinct.
And besides--suppose--she made an impression on her father--on his cruel old heart? Such things do happen. It"s silly to say they don"t. "I _am_ pretty--and now my clothes are all right--and my hands have come nearly white. He"ll see I"m not a girl to be ashamed of. And if my father did give me a _dot_--why then I"d send my mother to _his_ mother! That"s how we"d do it in Italy. I"m as well-born as he--nearly--and if I had a _dot_--"
The yellow-haired girl at any rate was quite out of the way. No one spoke of her; no one mentioned her. That was all right.
And as to Threlfall and her father, if she was able to soften him at all it would not be in the least necessary to drive that bad young man, Mr.
Faversham, to despair. Compromise--bargaining--settle most things. She fell to imagining--with a Latin clearness and realism--how it might be handled. Only it would have to be done before her father died. For if Mr.
Faversham once took all the money and all the land, there would be no _dot_ for her, even if he were willing to give it her. For Lord Tatham would never take a farthing from Mr. Faversham, not even through his wife. "And so it would be no use to me," thought Felicia, quietly, but regretfully.
Whitebeck station. Out she tripped, asked her way to Threlfall, and hurried off into the dark, followed by the curious looks of the station-master.
She was soon at the park gate, and pa.s.sed through it with a beating heart. She had heard of the bloodhounds; and the sound of a bark in the distance--though it was only the collie at the farm--gave her a start of terror.