Part 66 (2/2)
Then recovering his composure, hand fast in hand, Faversham began to talk more calmly, drawing out for her as best he could, so that it need not be done again--and up to the very evening of the murder--the history of the nine months which had, so to speak, thrown his whole being into the melting-pot, and through the fusing and bruising of an extraordinary experience, had remade a man. She listened in a happy bewilderment. It struck her newly--astonis.h.i.+ngly. Her love for him had always included a tenderly maternal, pitying element. She had felt herself the maturer character. Sympathy for his task, flattered pleasure in her Egeria role, deepening into something warmer and intenser with every letter from him and every meeting, even when she disputed with and condemned him; love in spite of herself; love with which conscience, taste, aspiration, all quarrelled; but love nevertheless, the love which good women feel for the man that is both weaker and stronger than themselves--it was so she might have read her own past, if the high pa.s.sion of this ultimate moment had not blurred it.
But ”Life at her grindstone” had been busy with Faversham, and in the sifted and sharpened soul laid bare to her, the woman recognized her mate indeed. Face to face with cruelty and falsehood, in others, and with the potentialities of them in his own nature; dazzled by money and power; and at last, delivered from the tyranny of the as though by some fierce gaol-delivering angel, Faversham had found himself; and such a self as could never have been reasonably prophesied for the discontented idler who in the May meadows had first set eyes on Lydia Penfold.
He sketched for her his dream of what might be done with the treasures of the Tower.
Through all his ugly wrestle with Melrose, with its disappointments and humiliations, his excavator's joy in the rescue and the setting in order of Melrose's amazing possessions had steadily grown of late, the only pleasure of his day had come from handling, cleaning and cataloguing the lovely forgotten things of which the house was full. These surfaces of ivory and silver, of stucco or marble, of wood or canvas, pottery or porcelain, on which the human mind, in love with some fraction of the beauty interwoven with the world, had stamped an impress of itself, sometimes exquisite, sometimes whimsical, sometimes riotous--above all, _living_, life reaching to life, through the centuries: these, from a refuge or an amus.e.m.e.nt, had become an abiding delight, something, moreover, that seemed to point to a definite lifework--paid honourably by cash as well as pleasure.
What would she think, he asked her, of a great Museum for the north--a centre for students--none of your brick and iron monstrosities, rising amid slums, but a beautiful house showing its beautiful possessions to all who came; and set amid the streams and hills? And in one wing of it, perhaps, curator's rooms--where Lydia, the dear lover of nature and art, might reign and work--fitly housed?...
But his brow contracted before she could smile.
”Some time perhaps--some time--not now! Let's forget--for a little.
Lydia--come away with me--let's be alone. Oh, my dear!--let's be alone!”
She was in his arms again, calming the anguish that would recur--of those nights in the Tower after the murder, when it had seemed to him that not Brand, but himself, was the prey that a whole world was hunting, with Hate for the huntsman.
But presently, as they clung to each other in the firelight, he roused himself to say:
”Now, let me see your mother; and then I must go. There is much to do.
You will get a note from Lady Tatham to-night.”
She looked up startled. And then it came over her, that he had never really told her what he meant to do with Melrose's money. She had no precise idea. Their minds jumped together, and she saw the first laugh in his dark eyes.
”I shan't tell you! Beloved--be good and wait! But you guess already. We meet to-morrow--at Duddon.”
She asked no question. The thin mystery--for her thoughts did indeed drive through it--pleased her; especially because it seemed to please him.
Then Mrs. Penfold and Susy were brought down, and Mrs. Penfold sat amid explanations and embraces, more feather-headed and inconsequent even than usual, but happy, because Lydia caressed her, and this handsome though pale young man on the hearthrug kissed her hand and even, at command, her still pink cheek; and it seemed there was to be a marriage--only not the marriage there should have been--a subst.i.tution, clearly, of Threlfall for Duddon? Lydia would live at Threlfall; would be immensely rich; and there would be no more bloodhounds in the park.
But when Faversham was gone, and realities began to sink into the little lady's mind, as Lydia sitting at her feet, and holding her hand, tried to infuse them, dejection followed. No coronet!--and now, no fortune! She did not understand these high-stepping morals, and she went sadly to bed; though never had Lydia been so sweet to her, so ready to brush her hair by the fire as long as ever she chose, so full of daughterly promises.
Susy kissed her sister when they were alone, tenderly but absently.
”You're a rare case, Lydia--unique, I think. The Greeks would call you something--I forget! I should really like to understand the psychology of it. It might be useful.”
Lydia bantered her a little--rather sorely. But the emotions of her family would always be so much ”copy” to Susy; and the fact did not in the least prevent her being a warm-hearted, and, in her own way, admirable little person.
Finally, Lydia turned the tables on her, by throwing an arm round her neck, and inquiring whether Mr. Weston had not paid her a very long call the day before. Susy quietly admitted it, and added: ”But I told him not to call again. I'm afraid--I'm bored with him. There are no mysteries in his character--no lights and shades at all. He is too virtuous--monotonously so. It would be of no technical advantage to me whatever, to fall in love with him.”
That evening came a note from Lady Tatham:
”MY DEAR LYDIA:
”We expect you to-morrow at 11:30. Mr. Faversham has asked that we--and you--Cyril Boden, Doctor Undershaw, old Dixon, and Felicia (her poor mother is _very_ ill, and we hear news to-day of the sudden death of the old grandfather)--should meet him at that hour in Harry's library. And afterward, you will stay to lunch? My dear, you have in this house two warm friends who love you and long to see you. Each hour that pa.s.ses grows more thrilling than the last....
”I have been spending some time with old Mrs. Brand--and I told her I knew you would go to her to-morrow. They have given her her dead son--and she sits with his feet against her breast. She loved him best of all. One thinks of Rizpah gathering the bones.”
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