The Mating of Lydia

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

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, muffled 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 mass 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 gratitude, 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 hoards. 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, passionately, 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-assertion 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 constitutional 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 entitled 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…

…The room was oppressively hot! It was a raw December night, but the heating system of the Tower was now so perfect, and to Faversham's mind so excessive, that every corner of the large house was bathed in a temperature which seemed to keep Melrose alive, while it half suffocated every other inmate.

Suddenly the telephone bell on his writing-desk rang. His room was now connected with Melrose's room, at the other end of the house, as well as with Pengarth. He put his ear to the receiver.

"Yes?"

"I want to speak to you."

He rose unwillingly. But at least he could air the room, which he would not have ventured to do, if Melrose were coming to him as usual for the ten minutes' hectoring, which now served as conversation between them, before bedtime. Going to the window which gave access to the terrace outside, he unclosed the shutters, and threw open the glass doors. He perceived that it had begun to rain, and that the night was darkening. He stood drinking in the moist coolness of the air for a few seconds, and then leaving the window open, and forgetting to extinguish the electric light on his table he went out of the room.

He found Melrose in his chair, his aspect thunderous and excited.

"Was it by your plotting, sir, that that girl got in?" said the old man, as he entered.

Faversham stood amazed.

"What girl?"

Melrose angrily described Felicia's visit, adding that if Faversham knew nothing about it, it was his duty to know. Dixon deserved dismissal for his abominable conduct; "and you, sir, are paid a large salary, not only to manage—or mismanage—my affairs, but also to protect your employer from annoyance. I expect you to do it!"

Faversham took the charge quietly. His whole relation to Melrose had altered so rapidly for the worse during the preceding weeks that no injustice or unreason surprised him. And yet there was something strange—something monstrous—in the old man's venomous temper. After all his bribes, after all his tyranny, did he still feel something in Faversham escape him?—some deep-driven defiance, or hope, intangible? He seemed indeed to be always on the watch now for fresh occasions of attack that should test his own power, and Faversham's submission.

Presently, he abruptly left the subject of his daughter, and Faversham did not pursue it. What was the good of inquiring into the details of the girl's adventure? He guessed pretty accurately at what had happened; the scorn which had been poured on the suppliant; the careless indifference with which she had been dismissed—through the rain and the night. Yet another scandal for a greedy neighbourhood!—another story to reach the ears of the dwellers in a certain cottage, with the embellishments, no doubt, which the popular hatred of both himself and Melrose was certain to supply. He felt himself buried a little deeper under the stoning of his fellows. But at the same time he was conscious—as of a danger point—of a new and passionate exasperation in himself. His will must control it.

Melrose, however, proceeded to give it fresh cause. He took up a letter from Nash containing various complaints of Faversham, which had reached him that evening.

"You have been browbeating our witnesses, sir! Nash reports them as discouraged, and possibly no longer willing to come forward. What business had you to jeopardize my interests by posing as the superior person? The evidence had been good enough for Nash—and myself. It might have been good enough for you."

Faversham smiled, as he lit his cigarette.

"The two men you refer to—whom you asked me to see yesterday—were a couple of the feeblest liars I ever had to do with. Tatham's counsel would have turned them inside out in five minutes. You seem to forget the other side are employing counsel."

"I forgot nothing!" said Melrose hotly. "But I expect you to follow your instructions."

"The point is—am I advising you in this matter, or am I merely your agent? You seem to expect me to act in both capacities. And I confess I find it difficult."

Melrose fretted and fumed. He raised one point after another, criticising Faversham's action and advice in regard to the housing inquiries, as though he were determined to pick a quarrel. Faversham met him on the whole with wonderful composure, often yielding in appearance, but in reality getting the best of it throughout. Under the mask of the discussion, however, the temper of both men was rising fast. It was as though two deep-sea currents, converging far down, were struggling unseen toward the still calm surface, there to meet in storm and convulsion.

Again, Melrose changed the conversation. He was by now extraordinarily pale. All the flushed excitement in which Faversham had found him had disappeared. He was more spectral, more ghostly—and ghastly—than Faversham had ever seen him. His pincerlike fingers played with the jewel which Felicia had thrown down upon the table. He took it up, put on his eyeglass, peered at it, put it down again. Then he turned an intent and evil eye on Faversham.

"I have now something of a quite different nature to say to you. You have, I imagine, expected it. You will, perhaps, guess at it. And I cannot imagine for one moment that you will make any difficulty about it."

Faversham's pulse began to race.

He suspended his cigarette.

"What is it?"

"I am asked to send a selection of antique gems to the Loan Exhibition which is being got up by the 'Amis du Louvre' in Paris, after Christmas. I desire to send both the Arconati Bacchus and the Medusa—in fact all those now in the case committed to my keeping."

"I have no objection," said Faversham. But he had suddenly lost colour.

"I can only send them in my own name," said Melrose slowly.

"That difficulty is not insurmountable. I can lend them to you."

Melrose's composure gave way. He brought his hand heavily down on the table.

"I shall send them in—as my own property—in my own name!"

Faversham eyed him.

"But they are not—they will not be—your property."

"I offer you three thousand pounds for them!—four thousand—five thousand—if you want more you can have it. Drive the best bargain you can!" sneered Melrose, trying to smile.

"I refuse your offer—your very generous offer—with great regret—but I refuse!" Faversham had risen to his feet.

"And your reason?—for a behaviour so—so vilely ungrateful!"

"Simply, that the gems were left to me—by an uncle I loved—who was a second father to me—who asked me not to sell them. I have warned you not once, or twice, that I should never sell them."

"No! You expected both to get hold of my property—and to keep your own!"

"Insult me as you like," said Faversham, quietly. "I probably deserve it.
But you will not alter my determination."

He stood leaning on the back of a chair, looking down on Melrose. Some bondage had broken in his soul! A tide of some beneficent force seemed to be flooding its dry wastes.

Melrose paused. In the silence each measured the other. Then Melrose said in a voice which had grown husky:

"So—the first return you are asked to make, for all that has been lavished upon you, you meet with—this refusal. That throws a new light upon your character. I never proposed to leave my fortune to an adventurer! I proposed to leave it to a gentleman, capable of understanding an obligation. We have mistaken each other—and our arrangement—drops. Unless you consent to the very small request—the very advantageous proposal rather—which I have just made you—you will leave this room—as penniless—except for any savings you may have made out of your preposterous salary—as penniless—as you came into it!"

Faversham raised himself. He drew a long breath, as of a man delivered.

"Do what you like, Mr. Melrose. There was a time when it seemed as if our cooperation might have been of service to both. But some devil in you—and a greedy mind in me—the temptation of your money—oh, I confess it, frankly—have ruined our partnership—and indeed—much else! I resume my freedom—I leave your house to-morrow. And now, please—return me my gems!"

He peremptorily held out his hand. Melrose glared upon him. Then slowly the old man reopened the little drawer at his elbow, took thence the shagreen case, and pushed it toward Faversham.

Faversham replaced it in his breast pocket.

"Thank you. Now, Mr. Melrose, I should advise you to go to bed. Your health is not strong enough to stand these disputes. Shall I call Dixon? As soon as possible my accounts shall be in your hands."

"Leave the room, sir!" cried Melrose, choking with rage, and motioning toward the door.

On the threshold Faversham turned, and gave one last look at the dark figure of Melrose, and the medley of objects surrounding it; at Madame Elisabeth's Sèvres vases, on the upper shelf of the Riesener table; at the Louis Seize clock, on the panelled wall, which was at that moment striking eight.

As he closed the door behind him, he was aware of Dixon who had just entered the gallery from the servants' quarters. The old butler hurried toward him to ask if he should announce dinner. "Not for me," said Faversham; "you had better ask Mr. Melrose. To-morrow, Dixon, I shall be leaving this house—for good."

Dixon stared, his face working:

"I thowt—I heard yo'—" he said, and paused.

"You heard us disputing. Mr. Melrose and I have had a quarrel. Bring me something to my room, when you have looked after him. I will come and speak to you later."

Faversham walked down the gallery to his own door. He had to pass on the way a splendid Nattier portrait of Marie Leczinska which had arrived only that morning from Paris, and was standing on the floor, leaning sideways against a chair, as Melrose had placed it himself, so as to get a good light on it. The picture was large. Faversham picked his way round it. If his thoughts had not been so entirely preoccupied, he would probably have noticed a slight movement of something behind the portrait as he passed. But exultation held him; he walked on air.

He returned to his own room, where the window was still wide open. As he entered, he mechanically turned on the central light, not noticing that the reading lamp upon his table was not in its place. But he saw that some papers which had been on his desk when he left the room were now on the floor. He supposed the wind which was rising had dislodged them. Stooping to lift them up, he was surprised to see a large mud-stain on the topmost sheet. It looked like a footprint, as though some one had first knocked the papers off the table, and then trodden on them. He turned on a fresh switch. There was another mark on the floor just beyond the table—and another—nearer the door. They were certainly footprints! But who could have entered the room during his absence? And where was the invader? At the same time he perceived that his reading lamp had been overturned and was lying on the floor, broken.

Filled with a vague anxiety, he returned to the door he had just closed. As he laid his hand upon it, a shot rang through the house—a cry—the sound of a fierce voice—a fall.

And the next minute the door he held was violently burst open in his face, he himself was knocked backward over a chair, and a man carrying a gun, whose face was muffled in some dark material, rushed across the room, leapt through the window, and disappeared into the night.

* * * * *

Faversham ran into the gallery. The first thing he saw was the Nattier portrait lying on its face beside a chair overturned. Beyond it, a dark object on the floor. At the same moment, he perceived Dixon standing horror-struck, at the farther end of the gallery, with the handle of the door leading to the servants' quarters still in his grasp. Then the old man too ran.

The two men were brought up by the same obstacle. The body of Edmund
Melrose lay between them.

Melrose had fallen on his face. As Faversham and Dixon lifted him, they saw that he was still breathing, though in extremis. He had been shot through the breast, and a pool of blood lay beneath him, blotting out the faded blues and yellow greens of a Persian carpet.

At the command of her husband, Mrs. Dixon, who had hurried after him, ran for brandy, crying also for help. Faversham snatched a cushion, put it under the dying man's head, and loosened his clothing. Melrose's eyelids fluttered once or twice, then sank. With a low groan, a gush of blood from the mouth, he passed away while Dixon prayed.

"May the Lord have mercy—mercy!"

The old man rocked to and fro beside the corpse in an anguish. Mrs. Dixon coming with the brandy in her hand was stopped by a gesture from Faversham.

"No use!" He touched Dixon on the shoulder. "Dixon—this is murder! You must go at once for Doctor Undershaw and the police. Take the motor. Mrs. Dixon and I will stay here. But first—tell me—after I spoke to you here—did you go in to Mr. Melrose?"

"I knocked, sir. But he shouted to me—angry like—to go away—till he rang. I went back to t' kitchen, and I had nobbut closed yon door behind me—when I heard t' firin'. I brast it open again—an' saw a man—wi' summat roun' his head—fleein' doon t' gallery. My God!—my God!—"

"The man who did it was in the gallery while you and I were speaking to each other," said Faversham, calmly, as he rose; "and he got in through my window, while I was with Mr. Melrose." He described briefly the passage of the murderer through his own room. "Tell the police to have the main line stations watched without a moment's delay. The man's game would be to get to one or other of them across country. There'll be no marks on him—he fired from a distance—but his boots are muddy. About five foot ten I should think—a weedy kind of fellow. Go and wake Tonson, and be back as quick as you possibly can. And listen!—on your way to the stables call the gardener. Send him for the farm men, and tell them to search the garden, and the woods by the river. They'll find me there. Or stay—one of them can come here, and remain with Mrs. Dixon, while I'm gone. Let them bring lanterns—quick!"

In less than fifteen minutes the motor, with Dixon and the new chauffeur, Tonson, had left the Tower, and was rushing at forty miles an hour along the Pengarth road.

Meanwhile, Faversham and the farm-labourers were searching the garden, the hanging woods, and the river banks. Footprints were found all along the terrace, and it was plain that the murderer had climbed the low enclosing wall. But beyond, and all in the darkness, nothing could be traced.

Faversham returned to the house, and began to examine the gallery. The hiding-place of Melrose's assailant was soon discovered. Behind the Nattier portrait, and the carved and gilt chair which Melrose had himself moved from its place in the morning, there were muddy marks on the floor and the wainscotting, which showed that a man had been crouching there. The picture, a large and imposing canvas—Marie Leczinska, sitting on a blue sofa, in a gala dress of rose-pink velvet with trimming of black fur—had been more than sufficient to conceal him. Then—had he knocked to attract Melrose's attention, having ascertained from Dixon's short colloquy at the library door, after Faversham had left the room, that the master of the Tower was still within?—or had Melrose suddenly come out into the gallery, perhaps to give some order to Dixon?

Faversham thought the latter more probable. As Melrose appeared, the murderer had risen hastily from his hiding-place, upsetting the picture and the chair. Melrose had received a charge of duck shot full in the breast, with fatal effect. The range was so short that the shot had scattered but little. A few pellets, however, could be traced in the wooden frames of the tapestries; and one had broken a majolica dish standing on a cabinet.

A man of the people then—using probably some old muzzle-loader, begged or borrowed? Faversham's thought ran to the young fellow who had denounced Melrose with such fervour at Mainstairs the day of Lydia Penfold's visit to the stricken village. But, good heavens!—there were a score of men on Melrose's estate, with at least as good reason—or better—for shooting, as that man. Take the Brands! But old Brand was gone to his rest, the elder son had sailed for Canada, and the younger seemed to be a harmless, half-witted chap, of no account.

Yet, clearly the motive had been revenge, not burglary. There were plenty of costly trifles on the tables and cabinets of the gallery. Not one of them had been touched.

Faversham moved to and fro in the silence, while Mrs. Dixon sat moaning to herself beside the dead man, whose face she had covered. The lavish electric light in the gallery, which had been Melrose's latest whim, shone upon its splendid contents; on the nymphs and cupids, the wreaths and temples of the Boucher tapestries, on the gleaming surfaces of the china, the dull gold of the ormolu. The show represented the desires, the huntings, the bargains of a lifetime; and in its midst lay Melrose, tripped at last, silenced at last, the stain of his life-blood spreading round him.

Faversham looked down upon him, shuddering. Then perceiving that the door into the library stood ajar, he entered the room. There stood the chair on which he had leant, when the chains of his slavery fell from him. There—on the table—was the jewel—the little Venus with fluttering enamel drapery, standing tiptoe within her hoop of diamonds, which he had seen Melrose take up and handle during their dispute. Why was it there? Faversham had no idea.

And there on the writing-desk lay a large sheet of paper with a single line written upon it in Melrose's big and sprawling handwriting. That was new. It had not been there, when Faversham last stood beside the table. The pen was thrown down upon it, and a cigar lay in the ashtray, as though the writer had been disturbed either by a sudden sound, or by the irruption of some thought which had led him into the gallery to call Dixon.

Faversham stooped to look at it:

"I hereby revoke all the provisions of the will executed by me on …"

No more. The paper was worthless. The will would stand. Faversham stood motionless, the silence booming in his ears.

"A fool would put that in his pocket," he said to himself, contemptuously. Then conscious of a new swarm of ideas assailing him, of new dangers, and a new wariness, he returned to the gallery, pacing it till the police appeared. They came in force, within the hour, accompanied by Undershaw.

* * * * *

The old chiming clock set in the garden-front of Duddon had not long struck ten. Cyril Boden had just gone to bed. Victoria sat with her feet on the fender in Tatham's study still discussing with him Felicia's astonishing performance of the afternoon. She found him eagerly interested in it, to a degree which surprised her; and they passed from it only to go zealously together into various plans for the future of mother and daughter—plans as intelligent as they were generous. The buzz of a motor coming up the drive surprised them. There were no visitors in the house, and none expected. Victoria rose in amazement as Undershaw walked into the room.

"A horrible thing has happened. I felt that you must know before anybody—with those two poor things in your house. Dixon has told me that Miss Melrose saw her father this afternoon. I have come to bring you the sequel."

He told his story. Mother and son turned pale looks upon each other. Within a couple of hours of the moment when he had turned his daughter from his doors! Seldom indeed do the strokes of the gods fall so fitly. There was an awful satisfaction in the grim story to some of the deepest instincts of the soul.

"Some poor devil he has ruined, I suppose!" said Tatham, his grave young face lifted to the tragic height of the event. "Any clue?"

"None—except that, as I have told you, Faversham himself saw the murderer, except his face, and Dixon saw his back. A slight man in corduroys—that's all Dixon can say. Faversham and the Dixons were alone in the house, except for a couple of maids. Perhaps"—he hesitated—"I had better tell you some other facts that Faversham told me—and the Superintendent of Police. They will of course come out at the inquest. He and Melrose had had a violent quarrel immediately before the murder. Melrose threatened to revoke his will, and Faversham left him, understanding that all dispositions in his favour would be cancelled. He came out of the room, spoke to Dixon in the gallery and walked to his own sitting-room. Melrose apparently sat down at once to write a codicil revoking the will. He was disturbed, came out into the gallery, and was shot dead. The few lines he wrote are of course of no validity. The will holds, and Faversham is the heir—to everything. You see"—he paused again—"some awkward suggestions might be made."

"But," cried Tatham, "you say Dixon saw the man? And the muddy footmarks—in the house—and on the terrace!"

* * * * *

"Don't mistake me, for heaven's sake," said Undershaw, quickly. "It is impossible that Faversham should have fired the shot! But in the present state of public opinion you will easily imagine what else may be said. There is a whole tribe of Melrose's hangers-on who hate Faversham like poison; who have been plotting to pull him down, and will be furious to find him after all in secure possession of the estate and the money. I feel tolerably certain they will put up some charge or other."

"What—of procuring the thing?"

Undershaw nodded.

Tatham considered a moment. Then he rang, and when Hurst appeared, all white and disorganized under the stress of the news just communicated to him by Undershaw's chauffeur, he ordered his horse for eight o'clock in the morning. Victoria looked at him puzzled; then it seemed she understood.

But every other thought was soon swallowed up in the remembrance of the widow and daughter.

"Not to-night—not to-night," pleaded Undershaw who had seen Netta
Melrose professionally, only that morning. "I dread the mere shock for
Mrs. Melrose. Let them have their sleep! I will be over early to-morrow."