The Mating of Lydia Part 39

"Do you mean to say that Lord Tatham is not in love with you?" said Susan severely--"that he wouldn't marry you to-morrow if you'd let him?"

Lydia flushed, but her look was neither resentful nor repentant.

"Why should we put it in that way?" she said, ardently. "Isn't it possible to look at men in some other light than as possible husbands?

Haven't they got hearts and minds--don't they think and feel--just like us?"

"Oh, no, not like us," said Susan hastily--"never."

Lydia smiled.

"Well, enough like us, anyway. Do you ever think, Susy!" she seized her sister's wrist and looked her in the eyes--"that there are a million more women than men in this country? It is evident we can't all be married.

Well, then, I withdraw from the compet.i.tion! It's demoralizing to women; and it's worse for men. But I don't intend to confine myself to women friends."

"They bore you," said Susy sharply; "confess it at once!"

"How unkind of you!" Lydia's protest was almost tearful. "You know I have at least four"--she recalled their names--"who love me, and I them. But neither men nor women should live in a world apart. They complete each other."

"Yes--in marriage," said Susan.

"No!--in a thousand other ways--we hardly dream of yet. Not marriage only--but comradeship--help--in all the great--impersonal--delightful things!"

"You look like a prophetess," said Susan, appraising her sister's kindled beauty, with an artistic eye; "but I should like to know what Lady Tatham has to say!"

Lydia was silent, her lip quivering a little.

"And I warn you," Susan continued, greatly daring, "that Faversham won't let you do what you like with him!"

Lydia rose slowly, gathered up her golden veil into one big knot without speaking, and went on with her preparations for bed.

Susy too uncoiled her small figure and stood up.

"I've told mamma not to bother you," she said abruptly.

Lydia threw an arm round her tormentor.

"Dear Sue, I don't want to scold, but if you only knew how you spoil things!"

Susy's eyes twinkled. She let Lydia kiss her, and then walking very slowly to the door, so as not to have an appearance of being put to flight, she disappeared.

Lydia was left to think--and think--her eyes on the ground. Never had life run so warmly and richly; she was amply conscious of it. And what, pray, in spite of Susy's teasing, had love to say to it? Pa.s.sion was ruled out--she held the senses in leash, submissive. Harry Tatham, indeed, was now writing to her every day; and she to him, less often.

Faversham, too, was writing to her, coming to consult her; and all that a woman's sympathy, all that mind and spirit could do to help him in his heavy and solitary task she would do. Toward Tatham she felt with a tender sisterliness; anxious often; yet confident in herself, and in the issue. In Faversham's case, it was rather a keen, a romantic curiosity, to see how a man would quit himself in a great ordeal suddenly thrust upon him; and a girlish pride that he should turn to her for help.

His first note to her lay there--inside her sketch book. It had reached her the morning after his interview with Mr. Melrose.

"I didn't find Mr. Melrose in a yielding mood last night. I beg of you don't expect too much. Please, please be patient, and remember that if I can do as yet but little, I honestly believe n.o.body else could do anything. We must wait and watch--here a step, and there a step. But I think I may ask you to trust me; and, if you can, suggest to others to do the same. How much your sympathy helps me I cannot express."

Of course she would be patient. But she was triumphantly certain of him--and his power. What Susy said to her unwillingness to go south was partly true. She would have liked to stay and watch the progress of things on the Melrose estates; to be at hand if Mr. Faversham wanted her.

She thought of Mainstairs--that dying girl--the sickly children--the helpless old people. Indignant pity gripped her. That surely would be the first--the very first step; a mere question of weeks--or days. It was so simple, so obvious! Mr. Melrose would be _shamed_ into action! Mr.

Faversham could not fail there.

But she must go. She had her profession; and she must earn money.

Also--the admission caused her discomfort--the sooner she went, the sooner would it be possible for Lady Tatham to induce her son to migrate to the Scotch moor where, as a rule, she and he were always to be found settled by the first days of August. It was evident that she was anxious to be gone. Lydia confessed it, sorely, to herself. It seemed to her that she had been spending some weeks in trying hard to make friends with Lady Tatham; and she had not succeeded.

"Why won't she talk to me!" she thought; "and I daren't--to her. It would be so easy to understand each other!"

Three days later, Green Cottage was in the occupation of a Manchester solicitor, who was paying a rent for it, which put Mrs. Penfold in high spirits; especially when coupled with the astonishing fact that Lydia had sold all her three drawings which had been sent to a London exhibition--also, apparently, to a solicitor. Mrs. Penfold expressed her surprise to her daughter that the practice of the law should lead both to a love of scenery and the patronage of the arts; she had been brought up to think of it as a deadening profession.

Lydia had gone south; Mrs. Penfold and Susy were paying visits to relations; and Duddon was closed till the end of September. It was known that Mr. Melrose had gone off on one of his curio-hunting tours; and the new agent ruled. A whole countryside, or what was left of it in August, settled down to watch.

High on the moors of Ross-shire, Lady Tatham too watched. The lodge filled up with guests, and one charming girl succeeded another, by Victoria's careful contrivance. None of your painted and powdered campaigners with minds torn between the desire to "best" a rival, and the terror of their dressmakers' bills; but the freshest, sweetest, best-bred young women she could discover among the daughters of her friends. Tatham was delightful with them all, patiently played golf with them, taught them to fish, and tramped with them over the moors. And when they said good-bye, and the motor took them to the station, Victoria believed that he remembered them just about as much, or as little, as the "bag" of the last shoot.

Her own feeling was curiously mixed. There were many days when she would have liked to beat Lydia Penfold, and at all times her pride lay wounded, bitterly wounded, at the girl's soft hands. When Harry had first confided in her, she had been certain that no nice girl could long resist him, if only she, Harry's mother, gave opportunities and held the lists. It would not be necessary for her to take any active steps. Mere propinquity would do it. Then, when Tatham stumbled prematurely into his proposal, Victoria might have intervened to help, but for Lydia's handling of the situation.

She had refused the natural place offered her in Harry's life--the place of lover and wife. But she had claimed and was now holding a place only less intimate, only less important; and Victoria felt herself disarmed and powerless. To try and separate them was to deal a blow at her son of which she was incapable; and at the same time there was the gnawing anxiety lest their absurd "friendship" should stand in the way of her boy's marriage--should "queer the pitch" for the future.

Meanwhile, day by day, Tatham's letters travelled south to Lydia, and twice a week or thereabout, letters addressed in a clear and beautiful handwriting arrived by an evening post from the south. And gradually Victoria became aware of new forces and new growths in her son. "What does she write to you about?" she had said to him once, with her half-sarcastic smile. And after a little hesitation--silently, Tatham had handed over to her the letter of the afternoon. "I'd like you to see it,"

he had said simply. "She makes one think a lot."

And, indeed, it was a remarkable letter, full of poetry but also full of fun. The humours of Delorme's studio--a play she had seen in London--a book she had read--the characteristics of a Somersetshire village--the eager pen ran on without effort, without pretence. But it was the pen of youth, of feeling, of romance; and it revealed the delicate heart and mind of a woman. There was a liberal education in it; and Victoria watched the process at work, sometimes with jealousy, sometimes with emotion. After all, might it not be a mere stage--and a useful one. She reserved her judgment, waiting for the time when these two should meet again, face to face.

September was more than halfway through, when one morning Tatham tossed a letter to his mother across the breakfast table with the remark:

"I say, mother, the new broom doesn't seem to be sweeping very well!"

The letter was from Undershaw. Tatham--in whom the rural reformer was steadily developing--kept up a fairly regular correspondence with the active young doctor, on medical and sanitary matters, connected with his own estate and the county.

"Matters are going rather oddly in this neighbourhood. I must say I can't make Faversham out. You remember what an excellent beginning he seemed to make a couple of months ago. Colonel Barton told me that he had every hope of him; he was evidently most anxious to purge some at least of Mr.

Melrose's misdeeds; seemed businesslike, conciliatory, etc. Well, I a.s.sure you, he has done almost nothing! It is not really a question of giving him time. There were certain scandalous things, years old, that he ought to have put right _at once_--on the nail--or thrown up his post.

The Mainstairs cottages for instance. We are in for another diphtheria epidemic there. The conditions are simply horrible. Melrose, as before, will do nothing, and defies anybody else to do anything; says he has given the tenants notice that he intends to pull the cottages down, and the people stay in them at their own peril. The local authority can do nothing; the people say they have nowhere to go, and cling like limpets to the rock. Melrose could put those sixteen cottages in order for a couple of thousand pounds, which would be about as much to him as half-a-crown to me. It is all insane pride and obstinacy--he won't be dictated to--and the rest. I shall be a land-nationalizer if I hear much more of Melrose.

"Meanwhile, Faversham will soon come in for his master's hideous unpopularity, if he can't manage him better. He is looking white and hara.s.sed, and seems to avoid persons like myself who might attack him.

But I gather that he has been trying to come round Melrose by attempting some reforms behind his back, and probably with his own money. Something, for instance, was begun at Mainstairs, while Melrose was away in Holland, after the fresh diphtheria cases broke out. There was an attempt made to get at the pollutions infecting the water supply, and repairs were begun on the worst cottage.

"But in the middle Melrose came home, and was, I believe, immediately informed of what was going on by that low scoundrel Nash who used to be his factotum, and has shown great jealousy of Faversham since his appointment. What happened exactly I can't say, but from something old Dixon said to me the other day--I have been attending him for rheumatism--I imagine there was a big row between the two men. Why Faversham didn't throw up there and then, I can't understand. However there he is still, immersed they tell me in the business of the estate, but incessantly watched and hampered by Melrose himself, an extraordinary development in so short a time; and able, apparently, even if he is willing, which I a.s.sume--to do little or nothing to meet the worst complaints of the tenants. They are beginning to turn against him furiously.

"Last week the sight of Mainstairs and the horrible suffering there got on my nerves. I sat down and wrote to Melrose peremptorily demanding a proper supply of ant.i.toxin at once, at his expense. A post-card from him arrived, refusing, and bidding me apply to a Socialist government. That night, however, on arriving at my surgery, I found a splendid supply of ant.i.toxin, labelled 'for Mainstairs,' without another word. I have reason to think Faversham had been in Carlisle himself that day to get it; he must have cleared out the place.

"Next day I saw him in the village. He specially haunts a cottage where there is a poor girl of eighteen, paralyzed after an attack of diphtheria last year, and not, I think, long for this world. The new epidemic has now attacked her younger sister, a pretty child of eight. I doubt whether we shall save her. Miss Penfold has always been very kind in coming to visit them. She will be dreadfully sorry.

"Faversham, I believe, has tried to move the whole family. But where are they to go? The grandfather is a shepherd on a farm near--too old for a new place. There isn't a vacant cottage in the whole neighbourhood--as you know; and scores that ought to be built.

"As to the right-of-way business, Melrose's fences are all up again, his rascally lawyers, Nash at the head, are as busy as bees trumping up his case; and I can only suppose that he has been forcing Faversham to write the unscrupulous letters about it that have been appearing in some of the papers.

"What makes it all rather gruesome is that there are the most persistent rumours that the young man has been adopted by Melrose, and will probably be his heir. I can't give you any proofs, but I am certain that all the people about the Tower believe it. If so, he will no doubt be well paid for his soul! But sell it he must, or go. I have no doubt he thought he could manage Melrose. Poor devil!

"The whole thing makes me very sick--I liked him so much while he was my patient. And I expect you and Lady Tatham will be pretty disappointed too."