The Mating of Lydia Part 18

"Several people have been to inquire for you to-day. I'll bring you the cards."

She fetched them from a table near and read the names. "Lord Tatham, and his mother, Lady Tatham. They've sent you flowers every day. These are Duddon roses." She held up a gla.s.s vase before him. "Mrs. Penfold and Miss Penfold."

He shook his head feebly.

"Don't know any of them."

Nurse Aston laughed at him.

"Oh, yes, you do. Lord Tatham was at college with you. He's coming to see you one day soon. And Miss Penfold saw you just before the accident. She was sketching in St. John's Vale, and you helped her fish something out of the water."

"By Jove!--so I did," he said, slowly. "Tatham?" He pondered. "Tell Lady Tatham I'm much obliged to her."

And he went to sleep again.

The next time he woke, he saw an unfamiliar figure sitting beside him.

His hold upon himself seemed to have grown much stronger. It was evening, and though the windows were still wide open a lamp had been lit.

"Are you Mr. Melrose?" he asked, amazed at the clearness of his own voice.

A gray-haired man moved his chair nearer.

"That's all right. You'll soon be well now. Do you feel much better?"

"I--I feel nearly well. How long have I been here?"

"About three weeks."

"I say--that's a nuisance! I'm very sorry to put you to inconvenience."

"Wasn't your fault. It was the doctor who brought you here." The tone of the words was round and masterful. "Are you comfortable? Have you all you want?"

"Everything. The nurses are A1. I say--has some one written to my uncle?"

"Undershaw wrote to a Mr. George Faversham last week. He was ill with rheumatic gout, couldn't come. Is that the uncle you mean?"

The young man nodded.

"He's the only relation I've got. The other one died. Hullo!"

He made a sudden movement. His hand slipped into his breast and found nothing. He raised himself in bed, with a frowning brow.

"I say!"--he looked urgently at Melrose. "Where are my gems?--and my ring?"

"Don't trouble yourself. They were brought to me. I have them locked up."

Faversham's expression relaxed. He let himself slide down upon his pillows.

"By George!--if I'd lost them."

Melrose studied him closely.

"They're all right. What do you know about gems?"

"Only what Uncle Mackworth taught me. We were great pals. He was my guardian. I lived with him in the holidays after my parents died. I knew all his gems. And now he's left them to me."

"Where are the rest?"

"I left the cabinet in charge of a man I know at the British Museum. He promised to lock it up in one of their strong rooms. But those six I always carry with me."

Melrose laughed.

"But those are just the six that should have been locked up. They are worth all the rest."

The young man slowly turned his head.

"Did you know my Uncle Mackworth?"

"Certainly. And I too knew all his gems. I could tell you the histories of those six, anyway, for generations. If it hadn't been for a fool of an agent of mine, your uncle would never have had the Arconati Bacchus."

Faversham was silent--evidently trying to feel his way through some induction of thought. But he gave it up as too much for him, and merely said--nervously--with the sudden flush of weakness:

"I'm afraid you've been put to great expense, sir. But it's all right. As soon as they'll let me sign a check, I'll pay my debts."

"Good gracious, don't trouble your head about that!" said Melrose rising.

"This house is at your disposal. Undershaw I daresay will tell you tales of me. Take 'em with a grain of salt. He'll tell you I'm mad, and I daresay I am. I'm a hermit anyway, and I like my own society. But you're welcome here, as long as you've any reason to stay. I should like you to know that I do not regard Mackworth's nephew as a stranger."

The studied amiability of these remarks struck Faversham as surprising, he hardly knew why. Suddenly, a phrase emerged in memory.

"Every one about here calls him the Ogre."

The girl by the river--was it? He could not remember. Why!--the Ogre was tame enough. But the conversation--the longest he had yet held--had exhausted him. He turned on his side, and shut his eyes.

Then gradually, day by day, he came to understand the externals, at any rate, of the situation. Undershaw gave him a guarded, though still graphic, account of how, as unconscious as the dead Cid strapped on his warhorse, he and his bodyguard had stormed the Tower. The jests of the nurse, as to the practical difficulties of living in such a house, enlightened him further. Melrose, it appeared, lived like a peasant, and spent like a peasant. They brought him tales of the locked rooms, of the pa.s.sages huddled and obstructed with bric-a-brac, of the standing feuds between Melrose and his tenants. None of the ordinary comforts of life existed in the Tower, except indeed a vast warming apparatus which kept it like an oven in winter; the only personal expenditure, beyond bare necessaries, that Melrose allowed himself. Yet it was commonly believed that he was enormously rich, and that he still spent enormously on his collections. Undershaw had attended a London stockbroker staying in one of the Keswick hotels, who had told him, for instance, that Melrose was well known to the "House" as one of the largest holders of Argentine stock in the world, and as having made also immense sums out of Canadian land and railways. "The sharpest old fox going," said the Londoner, himself, according to Undershaw, no feeble specimen of the money-making tribe. "_His_ death duties will be worth raking in!"

Occasional gossip of this, or a more damaging kind, enlivened convalescence. Undershaw and the nurses had no motives for reticence.

Melrose treated them uncivilly throughout; and Undershaw knew very well that he should never be forgiven the forcing of the house. And as he, the nurses, and the Dixons were firmly convinced that for every farthing of the accommodation supplied him Faversham would ultimately have to pay handsomely, there seemed to be no particular call for grat.i.tude, or for a forbearance based upon it.

Meanwhile Faversham himself did not find the character and intentions of his host so easy to understand. Although very weak, and with certain serious symptoms still persisting to worry the minds of doctor and nurse, he was now regularly dressed of an afternoon, and would sit in a large armchair--which had had to be hired from Keswick--by one of the windows looking out on the courtyard. Punctually at tea-time Melrose appeared.

And there was no denying that in general he proved himself an agreeable companion--a surprisingly agreeable companion. He would come slouching in, wearing the shabbiest clothes, and a black skullcap on his flowing gray hair; looking one moment like the traditional doctor of the Italian puppet-play, gaunt, long-fingered, long-featured, his thin, pallid face a study in gray amid its black surroundings; and the next, playing the man of family and cosmopolitan travel, that he actually was. Faversham indeed began before long to find a curious attraction in his society. There was flattery, moreover, in the fact that n.o.body else in living memory had Melrose ever been known to pay anything like the attention he was now daily devoting to his invalid guest. The few inmates and visitors of the Tower, permanent and temporary, became gradually aware of it. They were astonished, but none the less certain that Melrose had only modified his att.i.tude for some selfish reason of his own which would appear in due time.

The curious fact, however, emerged, after a while, that between the two men, so diverse in age, history, and circ.u.mstance, there was a surprising amount in common. Faversham, in spite of his look of youth, much impaired for the present by the results of his accident, was not so very young; he had just pa.s.sed his thirtieth birthday, and Melrose soon discovered that he had seen a good deal both of the natural and the human worlds. He was the son, it seemed, of an Indian Civil Servant, and had inherited from his parents, who were both dead, an income--so Melrose shrewdly gathered from various indications--just sufficient to keep him; whereby a will, ambitious rather than strong, had been able to have its way. He had dabbled in many things, journalism, law, politics; had travelled a good deal; and was now apparently tired of miscellaneous living, and looking out discontentedly for an opening in life--not of the common sort--that was somewhat long in presenting itself. He seemed to have a good many friends and acquaintances, but not any of overmastering importance to him; his intellectual powers were evidently considerable, but not working to any great advantage either for himself or society.

Altogether an attractive, handsome, restless fellow; persuaded that he was destined to high things, hungry for them, yet not seeing how to achieve them; hungry for money also--probably as the only possible means of achieving them--and determined, meanwhile, not to accept any second best he could help. It was so, at least--from the cynical point of view of an observer who never wasted time on any other--that Melrose read him.

Incidentally he discovered that Faversham was well acquainted with the general lines and procedure of modern financial speculation, was in fact better versed in the jargon and gossip of the Stock Exchange than Melrose himself; and had made use now and then of the large amount of information and the considerable number of useful acquaintances he possessed to speculate cautiously on his own account--without much result, but without disaster. Also it was very soon clear that, independently of his special reasons for knowing something about engraved gems and their value, he had been, through his Oxford uncle, much brought across collectors and collecting. He could, more or less, talk the language of the tribe, and indeed his mere possession of the famous gems had made him, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, a member of it.