The Mating of Lydia Part 1

The Mating of Lydia.

by Mrs. Humphry Ward.

BOOK I

I

"Aye, it's a bit dampish," said Dixon, as he brought a couple more logs to replenish a fire that seemed to have no heart for burning.

The absurd moderation of the statement irritated the person to whom it was addressed.

"What I'm thinkin'"--said Mrs. Dixon, impatiently, as she moved to the window--"is that they'll mappen not get here at all! The watter'll be over t' road by Grier's mill. And yo' know varra well, it may be runnin'

too fa.s.st to get t' horses through--an' they'd be three pussons inside, an' luggage at top."

"Aye, they may have to goa back to Pengarth--that's varra possible."

"An' all t' dinner spoilin', an' t' fires wastin'--for nowt." The speaker stood peering discontentedly into the gloom without: "But you'll not trouble yoursen, Tammas, I daursay."

"Well, I'm not G.o.damighty to mak' t' rain gie over," was the man's cheerful reply, as he took the bellows to the damp wood which lay feebly crackling and fizzing on the wide hearth. His exertions produced a spasmodic flame, which sent flickering tongues of light through the wide s.p.a.ces and shadows of the hall. Otherwise the deepening gloom of the October evening was lightened only by the rays of one feebly burning lamp standing apparently in a corridor or gallery just visible beyond a richly pillared archway which led from the hall to the interior of the house.

Through this archway could be seen the dim ascending lines of a great double staircase; while here and there a white carved doorway or cornice glimmered from the darkness.

A stately Georgian house, built in a rich cla.s.sical style, and dating from 1740: so a trained eye would have interpreted the architectural and decorative features faintly disclosed by lamp and fire. But the house and its contents--the house and its condition--were strangely at war.

Everywhere the seemly lines and lovely ornament due to its original builders were spoilt or obliterated by the sordid confusion to which some modern owner had brought it. It was not a house apparently, so far as its present use went, but a warehouse. There was properly speaking no furniture in it; only a mult.i.tude of packing-cases, boxes of all shapes and sizes, piled upon or leaning against each other. The hall was choked with them, so that only a gangway a couple of yards wide was left, connecting the entrance door with the gallery and staircase. And any one stepping into the gallery, which with its high arched roof ran the whole length of the old house, would have seen it also disfigured in the same way. The huge deal cases stood on bare boards; the splendid staircase was carpetless. Nothing indeed could have been more repellant than the general aspect, the squalid disarray of Threlfall Tower, as seen from the inside, on this dreary evening.

The fact impressed itself on Mrs. Dixon as she turned back from the window toward her husband.

She looked round her sulkily.

"Well, I've done my best, Tammas, and I daursay yo' have too. But it's not a place to bring a leddy to--an' that's the truth."

"Foaks mun please theirsels," said Dixon with the same studied mildness as before. Then, having at last made the logs burn, as he hoped, with some brightness, he proceeded to sweep up the wide stone hearth. "Is t'

rooms upstairs finished?"

"Aye--hours ago." His wife dropped with a weary gesture upon a chair near the fire. "Tammas, yo' know it's a queer thing awthegither! What are they coomin' here for at all?"

"Well, master's coom into t' property, an' I'm thinkin' it's n.o.bbut his dooty to coom an' see it. It's two year sen he came into 't; an' he's done nowt but tak' t' rents, an' turn off men, an' clutter up t' house wi' boxes, iver sense. It's time, I'm thinkin', as he did coom an' luke into things a bit."

Thomas rose from his knees, and stood warming himself at the fire, while he looked pensively round him. He was as tired as his wife, and quite as mistrustful of what might be before them; but he was not going to confess it. He was a lean and gaunt fellow, blue-eyed and broad-shouldered, of a c.u.mbria type commonly held to be of Scandinavian origin. His eye was a little wandering and absent, and the ragged gray whiskers which surrounded his countenance emphasized the slight incoherence of its expression. Quiet he was and looked. But his wife knew him for one of the most incurably obstinate of men; the inveterate critic moreover of everything and every one about him, beginning with herself. This trait of his led her unconsciously to throw most of her remarks to him into the form of questions, as offering less target to criticism than other forms of statement. As for instance:

"Tammas, did yo' hear me say what I'd gotten from Mr. Tyson?"

"Aye."

"That the mistress was an Eye-talian."

"Aye--by the mother--an' popish, besides."

Mrs. Dixon sighed.

"How far 'ull it be to t' chapel at Scargill Fell?"

"Nine mile. She'll not be for takkin' much notice of her Sunday dooties I'm thinkin'."

"An' yo' unnerstan' she'll be juist a yoong thing? An't' baby only juist walkin'."

Dixon nodded. Suddenly there was a sound in the corridor--a girl's laugh, and a rush of feet. Thomas started slightly, and his wife observed him as sharply as the dim light permitted.

"Thyrza!" she raised her voice peremptorily. "What are you doing there?"

Another laugh, and the girl from whom it came ran forward into the lamp-light, threading her way through the packing-cases, and followed by a small fox-terrier who was jumping round her.

"Doin'? There's nowt more to do as I know on. An' I'm most droppin'."

So saying the girl jumped lightly on one of the larger packing-cases and sat there, her feet dangling.

Mrs. Dixon looked at her with disapproval, but held her tongue. Thyrza was not strictly her underling, though she was helping in the housework.

She was the daughter of the small farmer who had been for years the tenant of part of the old house, and had only just been evicted in preparation for the return of the owner of the property with his foreign wife. If Thyrza were too much scolded she would take her ways home, and, as her parents spoilt her, she would not be coerced into returning. And how another "day-girl" was to be found in that remote place, where, beyond the farm, a small house belonging to the agent, and a couple of cottages, the nearest house to the Tower was at least three miles away, Mrs. Dixon did not know.

"My word! what a night!" said Thyrza with another laugh a little stifled by the sweets she had just transferred from her pocket to her mouth.

"They'll be drowned oot afore they get here."

As she spoke, a wild gust flung itself over the house, as though trying its strength against the doors and windows, and the rain swished against the panes.

"Are t' fires upstairs burnin' reet?" asked Mrs. Dixon severely. She had already told Thyrza half a dozen times that day that such a greed for sweet things as she displayed would ruin her digestion and her teeth; and it ruffled a dictatorial temper to be taken no more notice of than if she were a duck quacking in the farmyard.

"Aye, they're burnin'," said Thyrza, with a shrug. Then she looked round her with a toss of her decidedly graceful head. "But it's a creepy old place howivver. I'd not live here if I was paid. What does Muster Melrose want wi' coomin' here? He's got lots o' money, Mr. Tyson says. He'll nivver stay. What was the use o' turnin' father out, an' makkin' a lot o'

trouble?"

"This house is not a farmin' house," said Dixon slowly, surveying the girl, as she sat on the packing-case swinging her feet, her straw-coloured hair and pink cotton dress making a spot of pleasant colour in the darkness as the lamp-light fell on them. "It's a house for t' gentry."

"Well, then, t' gentry might clean it up an' put decent furnis.h.i.+n's into 't," said Thyrza defiantly. "Not a bit o' paperin' doon anywhere--juist two three rooms colour-washed, as yo' med do 'em at t' workhouse. An'

that big hole in t' dinin'-room ceilin', juist as 'twas--and such shabby sticks o' things upstairs an' down as I nivver see! I'll have a good sight better when _I_ get married, I know!"

Contempt ran sharply through the girl's tone.

As she ceased speaking a step was heard in the corridor. Thyrza leapt to the ground, Mrs. Dixon picked up her brush and duster, and Dixon resumed his tending of the fire.

A man in a dripping overcoat and leggings pushed his way rapidly through the cases, looking round him with an air of worried authority.

"I don't call that much of a fire, Dixon."

"I've been at it, sir, for near an hour."

"You've got some damp wood. What about the drawing-room?"

He threw open a door on the right. The others followed him in.