The Mating of Lydia Part 31

She paused a moment.

"No"--the word came with soft decision--"no. And if I were to marry you without--without that feeling--you have a right to--I should be doing wrong--to you--and to myself. You see"--she looked down, the points of her white shoe drawing circles on the gra.s.s, as though to help out her faltering speech--"I--I'm not what I believe you think me. I've got all sorts of hard, independent notions in my mind. I want to paint--and study--and travel--I want to be free--"

"You should be free as air!" he interrupted pa.s.sionately.

"Ah, but no!--not if I married. I shouldn't want to be free in that way, if--"

"If you were in love? I understand. And you're not in love with me. Why should you be?" said poor Tatham, with a new and desperate humility. "Why on earth should you be? But I'd adore you--I'd give you anything in the world you wanted."

Sounds of talking and footsteps emerged from the dusk behind them; the high notes of Lady Barbara, and the answering ba.s.s of Delorme.

"Don't let them find us," said Lydia impetuously--"I've _so_ much to say."

Tatham turned, and led the way to the pillared darkness of a pergola to their left. One side of it was formed by a high yew hedge; on the other, its rose-twined arches looked out upon the northern stretches of the park, and on the garden front of Duddon. There it lay, the great house, faintly lit; and there in front stretched its demesne, symbol of its ancient rule and of its modern power. A natural excitement pa.s.sed through Lydia as they paused, and she caught its stately outline through the night. And then, the tameless something in her soul, which was her very self, rose up, rejoicing in its own strength, and yet--wistful, full of tenderness. Now!--let her play her stroke--her stroke in the new great game that was to be, in the new age, between men and women.

"Why shouldn't we just be friends?" she urged. "I know it sounds an old, stale thing to say. But it isn't. There's a new meaning in it now, because--because women are being made new. It used to be offering what we couldn't give. We could be lovers; we weren't good enough--we hadn't stuff enough--to be friends. But now--dear Lord Tatham--just try me--"

She held out to him two hands, which he took against his will. "I like you so much!--I know that I should love your mother. Now that we've had this out, why shouldn't we build up something quite fresh? I want a friend--so badly!"

"And I want something--so much more than a friend!" he said, pressing her hands fiercely.

"Ah, but give it up!" she pleaded. "If you can't, I mustn't come here any more, nor you to us. And why? It would be such a waste--of what our friends.h.i.+p might be. You could teach me so many things. I think I could teach you some."

He dropped her hands, mastering himself with difficulty.

"It's nonsense," he said shortly; "I know it's nonsense! But--if I promised not to say anything of this kind again for a year?"

She pondered. There were compunctions, remorses, in her. As Susan had warned her, was she playing with a man's heart and life?

But her trust in her own resources, the zest of spiritual adventure, and a sheer longing to comfort him prevailed.

"You'll promise that; and I'll promise--just to be as nice to you as ever I can!" She paused. They looked at each other; the trouble in his eyes questioning the smile in hers. "Now please!--my friend!"--she slid dexterously, though very softly, into the everyday tone--"will you advise me? Mr. Delorme has asked me to sit to him. Just a sketch in the garden--for a picture he's at work on. You would like me to accept?"

She stood before him, her eyes raised, with the frank gentleness of a child. Yet there was a condition implied in the question.

Tatham broke out--pa.s.sionately,

"Just tell me. There's--there's no one else?"

She suffered for him; she hastened to comfort him.

"No, no--indeed there's no one else. Though, mind, I'm free. And so are you. Shall I come to-morrow?" she asked again, with quiet insistence.

There was a gulp in Tatham's throat. Yet he rose--dismally--to her challenge.

"You would do what I like?" he asked, quivering.

"Indeed I would."

"I invited Delorme here--just to please you--and because I hoped he'd paint you."

"Then that's settled!" she said, with a little sigh of satisfaction.

"And what, please, am I to do--that _you'd_ like?" She looked up mischievously.

"Call me Lydia--forget that you ever wanted to marry me--and don't mind a rap what people say!"

He laughed, through his pain, and gravely took her hand.

"And now," said Lydia, "I think it's time to go home."

When all the guests were gone, when Gerald and Delorme had smoked their last interminable cigars, and Delorme had made his last mocking comments on the "old masters" who adorned the smoking-room, Tatham saw him safely to bed, and returned to his sitting-room on the ground floor. The French window was open, and he pa.s.sed out into the garden. Soon, in his struggle with himself, he had left the garden and the park behind, and was climbing the slope of the fells. The play of the soft summer winds under the stars, the scents of bracken and heather and rushes, the distant throbbing sounds that rose from the woods as the wind travelled through them--and soon, the short mountain turf beneath his feet, and around and below him, the great shapes of the hills, mysteriously still, and yet, as it seemed to him, mysteriously alive--these things spoke to him and, little by little, calmed his blood.

It was the first anguish of a happy man. When, presently, he lay safe hidden in a hollow of the lonely fell, face downward among the moonlit rocks, some young and furious tears fell upon the sod. That quiet strength of will in so soft a creature--a will opposed to his will--had brought him up against the unyieldingness of the world. The joyous certainties of life were shaken to their base; and yet he could not, he did not, cease to hope.

XI

Victoria was sitting to Delorme in a corner of the Italian garden. He wished to paint her _en plein air_, and he was restlessly walking to and fro, about her, choosing a point of view. Victoria was vaguely pleased by the picturesqueness of his lion head set close on a pair of powerful shoulders, no less than by the vivacity of his dark face and southern gesture. He wore a linen jacket with bulging pockets, and a black skullcap, which gave him a masterful, pontifical air. To Victoria's thinking, indeed, he "pontified" at all times, a great deal more than was necessary.

However she sat resigned. She did not like Delorme, and her preference was all for another school of art. She had moreover a critical respect for her own features, and she did not want at all to see them rendered by what seemed to her the splas.h.i.+ng violence of Delorme's brushwork. But Harry had asked it of her, and here she was.

Her thoughts, moreover, were full of Harry's affairs, so that the conversation between her and the painter was more or less pretence on her part.

Delorme, meanwhile, was divided between the pa.s.sion of a new subject and the wrath excited in him by a newspaper article which had reached him at breakfast.

"A little more to the left, please, Lady Tatham. Admirable! One moment!"

The scrabble of charcoal on paper.

Delorme stepped back. Victoria sat languidly pa.s.sive.

"Did you read that article on me in _The Weekly_? The man's a fool!--knows nothing, and writes like G.o.d Almighty. A little more full face. That's it! I suppose all professions are full of these jealous beasts. Ours is cluttered up with them--men who never sell a picture, and make up by living on the compliments of their own little snarling set. But, upon my word, it makes one rather sick. Ah, that's good! You moved a trifle--that's better--just a moment!"

"I'm glad you let me sit," said Victoria absently. "I _stood_ to Whistler once. It nearly killed me."

"Ah, Jimmy!" said Delorme. "Jimmy was a Tartar!"

He went off at score into recollections of Whistler, drawing hard all the time.

Victoria did not listen. She was thinking of those sounds of footsteps she had heard under her window at dawn, and pa.s.sing her room. This morning Harry looked as usual, except for something in the eyes, which none but she would notice. What had he been doing all those hours? There was nothing erratic or abnormal about Harry. Sound sleep from the moment he put his head on his pillow to the moment at eight o'clock when his servant with great difficulty woke him, was the rule with him.

What could have happened the night before--while he and Lydia Penfold were alone together? Victoria had seen them come back into the general company, had indeed been restlessly on the watch for their return. It had seemed to her--though how be sure in that mingled light?--both at the moment of their reappearance and afterward, that Harry was somewhat unusually pale and quiet, while the girl's look had struck her as singular--_exaltee_--the eyes s.h.i.+ning--yet the manner composed and sweet as usual. She already divined the theorist in Lydia, the speculator with life and conduct. "But not with my Harry!" thought the mother, fiercely.

But how could she prevent it? What could she do? What can any mother do when the wave of energy--spiritual and physical--has risen or is rising to its height in the young creature, and the only question is how and where it shall break; in crash and tempest, or in a summer sea?