"Where am I?"
A voice said:
"That"s better! Don"t be afraid. You"d fainted I think. I can carry you quite safely."
Infinite bliss rushed in upon the girl"s fluttering sense. She was too feeble, too weak, to struggle. Instead she let her head sink on Tatham"s shoulder. Her right hand clung to his coat.
The young man mounted the hill, marvelling at the lightness of the burden he held; touched, embarra.s.sed, yet sometimes inclined to laugh or scold.
What had she been about? He had come in from hunting to find her absence just discovered, and the house roused. Victoria and Cyril Boden were exploring other roads through the garden and park; he had run down the long hill to the station lodge in case the theory started at once by Victoria that she had escaped, unknown to any one, in order to force an interview with her father should turn out to be the right one.
Presently a trembling voice said in the darkness, while some soft curls of hair tickled his cheek:
"I"ve been to Threlfall. Will Lady Tatham be very angry?"
"Well, she was a bit worried," said Tatham, wondering if the occasion ought not to be improved. "She guessed--you might have gone there.
There"s bad weather coming--and she was anxious what might happen to you.
Ah! there"s the rain!"
Two or three large drops descended on Felicia"s cheek as it lay upturned on his shoulder; a pattering began on the oak-leaves overhead; the moonlight was blotted out, and when Felicia opened her eyes, it was on a heavy darkness.
"Stupid!" cried Tatham. "Why didn"t I think of bringing a mackintosh cape?"
"Mayn"t I walk?" asked Felicia, meekly. "I think I could."
"I expect you"d better not. You were pretty bad when I found you. It"s no trouble to me to carry you, and I know every inch of these roads."
And indeed by now he would have been very loath to quit his task. There was something tormentingly attractive in this warm softness of the girl"s tiny form upon his breast. The thought darted across him--"If I had ever held Lydia so!" It was a pang; but it pa.s.sed; and what remained was a tenderness of soul, evoked by Lydia, but pa.s.sing out now beyond Lydia.
Poor little foolish thing! He supposed she had been trampled on, as his mother had been. But his mother could defend herself. What chance had this child against the old tyrant! An eager, protective sympathy--a warm pity--arose in him; greatly quickened by this hand and arm that clung to him.
The rain began to drive against them.
"Do you mind getting wet?" he said laughing, almost in her ear.
"Not a bit! I--I didn"t mean to give any trouble."
The tone was penitent. Tatham, forgetting all thoughts of admonition, rea.s.sured her.
"You didn"t give any. Except--Your mother of course was very anxious about you."
"But I couldn"t tell her!" sighed the voice on his shoulder. "She"d have stopped it."
Tatham smiled unseen.
"I"m afraid your father wasn"t kind to you," he said, after a pause.
"It was horrible--horrible!" The little body he held shuddered closer to him. "Why does he hate us so? and I lost my temper too--I stamped at him.
But he looks so old--so old! I think he"ll die soon."
"That would be happiest," said Tatham, gravely.
"I told him we would never take any money from him again. I must earn it--I will! Your mother will lend me a little--for my training. I"ll pay it back."
"You poor child!" he murmured.
At that moment they emerged upon the last section of the broad avenue leading to the house. And the electric light in the pillared porch threw long rays toward them.
"Please put me down," said Felicia, with decision. "I can walk quite well."
He obeyed her. But her weakness was still such, that she could only walk with help. Guiding, supporting her, he half led, half carried her along.
As they reached the lighted porch, she looked up, her face sparkling with rain, a touch of mischief in her hollow-ringed eyes.
"How much will they scold?"
"Can"t say, I am sure! I think you"ll have to bear it."
"Never mind!" Her white cheeks dimpled. "It"s Duddon! I"d rather be scolded at Duddon, than petted anywhere else."
Tatham flushed suddenly. So did she. And as the door opened Felicia walked with composure past the stately butler.
"Is Lady Tatham in the library?"
Netta Melrose, full of fears, wept that evening over her daughter"s rash disobedience. Victoria administered what reproof she could; and Felicia was reduced to a heated defence of herself, sitting up in bed, with a pair of hot cheeks and tearful eyes. But when all the lights were out, and she was alone, she thought no more of any such nips and p.r.i.c.ks. The night was joy around her, and as she sank to sleep; Tatham, in dream, still held her, still carried her through the darkness and the rain.
XX
While Felicia was making her vain attempt upon her father"s pity, Faversham was sitting immersed in correspondence in his own room at the farther end of the gallery. He heard nothing of the girl"s arrival or departure. Sound travelled but little through the thick walls of the Tower, and the gallery, m.u.f.fled with rich carpets, with hangings and furniture, deadened both step and voice.
The agent was busy with some typewritten evidence that Melrose was preparing wherewith to fight the Government officials now being sent down from London to inquire into the state of some portion of the property.
The evidence had been collected by Nash, and Faversham read it with disgust. He knew well that the great ma.s.s of it was perjured stuff, bought at a high price. Yet both in public and private he would have to back up all the lies and evasions that his master, and the pack of obscure hangers-on who lived upon his pay, chose to put forward.
He set his teeth as he read. The iron of his servitude was cutting its way into life, deeper and deeper. Could he go on bearing it? For weeks he had lived with Melrose on terms of sheer humiliation--rated, or mocked at, his advice spurned, the wretched Nash and his crew ostentatiously preferred to him, even put over him. "No one shall ever say I haven"t earned my money," he would say to himself fiercely, as the intolerable days went by. His only abiding hope and compensation lay in his intense belief that Melrose was a dying man. All those feelings of natural grat.i.tude, with which six months before he had entered on his task, were long since rooted up. He hated his tyrant, and he wished him dead.
But the more he dwelt for consolation on the prospect of Melrose"s disappearance, the more attractive became to him the vision of his own coming reign. Some day he would be his own master, and the master of these h.o.a.rds. Some day he would emerge from the cloud of hatred and suspicion in which he habitually walked; some day he would be able once more to follow the instincts of an honest man; some day he would be able again--perhaps--to look Lydia Penfold in the face! Endurance for a few more months, on the best terms he could secure, lest the old madman should even yet revoke his gifts; and then--a transformation scene--on the details of which his thoughts dwelt perpetually, by way of relief from the present. Tatham and the rest of his enemies, who were now hunting and reviling him, would be made to understand that if he had stooped, he had stooped with a purpose; and that the end _did_ in this case justify the means.
A countryside cleansed, comforted, remade; a great estate ideally managed; a great power to be greatly used; scope for experiment, for public service, for self-realization--he greedily, pa.s.sionately, foresaw them all. Let him be patient. Nothing could interfere with his dream, but some foolish refusal of the conditions on which alone it could come true.
Often, when this mood of self-a.s.sertion was on him, he would go back in thought to his boyish holidays in Oxford, and to his uncle. He saw the kind old fellow in his shepherd plaid suit, black tie, and wide-awake, taking his const.i.tutional along the Woodstock road, or playing a mild game of croquet in the professorial garden; or he recalled him among his gems--those rare and beautiful things, bought with the savings of a lifetime, loved, each of them, for its own sake, and bequeathed at death, with the tender expression of a wish--no tyrannical condition!--to the orphan boy whom he had fathered.
The thought of what would--what must be--Uncle Mackworth"s judgment on his present position, was perhaps the most tormenting element in Faversham"s consciousness. He faced it, however, with frankness. His uncle would have condemned him--wholly. The notion of serving a bad man, for money, would have been simply inconceivable to that straight and innocent soul. Are there not still herbs to be eaten under hedgerows, with the sauce of liberty and self-respect?
No doubt. But man is ent.i.tled to self-fulfilment; and men pursue vastly different ways of obtaining it. The perplexities of practical ethics are infinite; and mixed motives fit a mixed world.
At least he had not bartered away his uncle"s treasure. The gems still stood to him as the symbol of something he had lost, and might some day recover. It was really time he got them out of Melrose"s clutches...