Melrose

“ 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. ”

“ Melrose continued, in a deliberately even voice, "concerns a fortune of rather more—than a million sterling—allowing little or nothing for the contents of this house. I inherited a great deal, and by the methods I have adopted—not the methods, my dear Faversham, I may say, that you have been recommending to me to-night. I have more than doubled it. I have given nothing away to worthless people, and no sloppy philanthropies have stood between me and the advantages to which my knowledge and my brains entitled me. ”

“ Melrose, sir, I fear, will find this place a bit lonesome, and out of the way."
"Well, it is not exactly Piccadilly," laughed Melrose. "But a woman that has her child is provided for. How can she be dull? I ask you"—he repeated in a louder and rather hectoring voice—"how can she possibly be dull?"
Tyson murmured something inaudible, adding to it—"And you, sir? Are you a sportsman?"
Melrose threw up his hands contemptuously. "The usual British question! What barbarians we are! It may no doubt seem to you extraordinary—but I really never want to kill anything—except sometimes, perhaps,—a dealer. ”

“ Melrose was by this time pale with rage. "A young man—sick—in my drawing-room!—and a young woman giving orders in my house!—you're a precious lot—you are!" He strode on toward the young woman, who, as he now saw, was in the dress of a nurse. She had descended the steps, and was vainly trying to quiet the dogs. ”

“ What pleasure the dear old fellow would have taken in this new opening—and in Melrose's marvellous possessions! By the way—Melrose had said nothing about the gems for a long time past, and Faversham was well content to leave them in his temporary keeping. But his superstitious feeling about them—and all men have some touch of superstition—was stronger than ever. It was as though he protested anew to some hovering shape, which took the aspect now of Mackworth, now of Fortuna—"Stand by me!—even as I hold by them." ”

“ Recollections of a small bare house in the Apuan Alps above Lucca, and of all that she and Felicia had endured there, ran through her mind, mingled with visions of Threlfall as she had known it of old, its choked passages—the locked room from which she had stolen the Hermes—the great table in Edmund's room with its litter of bric-à-brac—Edmund himself....
She trembled; alternately desperate, and full of fears. The thought that Melrose was only a few miles from her—that she was going to face and brave him after all these years—turned her cold with terror. And yet misery had made her reckless. ”

“ Mr. Melrose did not check them; he merely stood and waited with a smile on his face, wondering, as he looked at the wildly cheering mob, if any one of them would have been as meek under burdens as had been the gentle soul whose memory they were so vigorously honouring. ”

“ MELROSE ABBEY.
Viewed by day, Melrose is surely fair; fair enough to enchant mortal vision. It is the loveliest ruin in the land where reform has meant ruin, and where from Kelso to Elgin, shattered fanes of the faith proclaim how variable is the mind of man through the generations, and how hostile when it forsakes. ”

“ Mark, divided between sympathy and amusement, had watched her holding herself in, till the assertive voice of Mrs. Melrose created a diversion and dubious murmurs were drowned in a flood of propositions for the local housing of Belgians and the conversion of Wendover Court into a luxurious hospital for officers.
‘You, Lady Forsyth, with this heavenly place, ought to specialise on convalescents or nerve-cases’—Mrs. Melrose dearly loved making other people’s plans—‘If we all take a distinctive line, there’ll be no muddle or overlapping. ”

“ Faversham spent the rest of the morning in cogitations that may be easily imagined. He certainly attributed some share in the extraordinary proposal that had been made to him, to his possession of the gems, and to Melrose's desire to beguile them from him. But what then? Sufficient for the day! He would decide how to deal with that crisis when it should arrive.
Meanwhile, the amazing proposal itself was before him. If it were accepted, he should be at once a comparatively rich man, with an infinity of chances for the future; for Melrose's financial interest and influence were immense. ”

“ There was a little smile on his lips as he saw Melrose's face. "Perhaps you're beginning to see what I'm driving at," he said slowly.
"Yes," said Melrose. "I think I'm beginning to see." He scratched his jaw. "You think that it's adult psi-contact that drives the child's potential underground—that somehow adult contact acts like a damper, a sort of colossal candle-snuffer."
"That's what I think," said Lessing.
"How do you know those children didn't make you take off your monitor?"
Lessing blinked. "Why should they?"
"Maybe they enjoy the crash when the blocks fall down." ”

“ At this moment, in the month of May, 190—, Edmund Melrose had just passed his seventieth birthday. But the extraordinary energy and vivacity of his good looks had scarcely abated since the time when, twenty-three years before this date, Netta Smeath had first seen him in Florence; although his hair had whitened, and the bronzed skin of the face had developed a multitude of fine wrinkles that did but add to its character. ”

“ It came with unwonted verdure, freshness, and beauty, filling the hearts of the despondent with hope, and the hopeful with rejoicing. It was scarcely a month from the time the coach dashed out of the half-aroused town of Minneopoli in the chilly April morning, when a similar vehicle, one evening, toiled slowly up the long hill whose summit was crowned by picturesque Melrose. Among the passengers were Captain Marshall and his friend Fred Pinckney. The former had come to Melrose to claim the hand of his affianced, Eliza Heartwell, and to take her away as his wife. ”

“ 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 passed 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. ”

“ Melrose made an effort to control himself, but the situation was too much for him.
He burst out, storming:
"I wonder, sir, that you have the audacity to present yourself to me at all. Who or what authorized you, I should like to know, to take possession of my house, and install this young man here? What have I to do with him? He has no claim on me—not the hundredth part of a farthing! My servant tells me he offered to help you carry him to the farm, which is only a quarter of a mile distant. ”

“ Melrose nodded. "Every dealer in Europe knows me by now—and expects me. They put aside their best things for me. And I prefer to hunt in summer—even in the hot countries. Heat has no terror, for me; and there are fewer of your damned English and American tourists about."
"I see." Tyson hesitated a moment, then said: "And I suppose, sir, Mrs.
Melrose goes with you?"
"Not at all! You cannot go dragging babies about Europe any more than is absolutely necessary. Mrs. Melrose will make her home here, and will no doubt become very much attached to this charming old house. ”

“ Melrose resumed, "I want a secretary—I want a companion—I want some one who will help me to arrange the immense, the priceless collections there are stacked in this house—unknown to anybody—hardly known, in the lapse of years, even to myself. I desire to unravel my own web, so to speak—to spin off my own silk—to examine and analyze what I have accumulated. There are rooms here—containing masterpieces—unique treasures—that have never been opened for years—whose contents I have myself forgotten. That's why people call me a madman. ”

“ Your wife and child have had to be content day after day with a handful of bread and a salata gathered from the roadside; while every franc they could earn was spent upon a sick man. Mrs. Melrose is a shadow. I suspect incurable illness. Your little daughter arrived fainting and emaciated at my house. But with a few days' rest and proper food she has revived. She is young. She has not suffered irreparably. One sees what a lovely little creature she might be—and how full of vivacity and charm. Mr. Melrose—you would be proud of her! ”

“ The woman looked pleased with his praise, and speedily put upon a table substantial food, which we attacked with the zest that comes of hard riding. Yet from the first I studied the room and the woman with curiosity and interest.
The note of Mother Melrose's manner and air was self-reliance. She walked like a grenadier, and her look said very plainly that she feared few things. She must have been at least sixty, and perhaps was never beautiful. ”

“ It became more and more embarrassing when visitors came to Melrose.
The old lady always found out when anyone was expected, and the more people were coming the noisier and more excited she became.
One dreadful Sunday there were guests for luncheon—two of Edgar’s important clients, and little Ena’s godfather—a rich old bachelor cousin—and two unmarried ladies, friends of Mrs. Lambe’s maiden days. She was always very faithful to her friends. ”

“ Melrose, like all her tribe in fact, she was too much absorbed in her own affairs to give more than a passing thought to any one else's; but she was delighted at the meeting with Susy, as her wandering kind always were when they ran across fellow-wanderers, unless the meeting happened to interfere with choicer pleasures. Not to be alone was the urgent thing; and Ursula, who had been forty-eight hours alone in London, at once exacted from her friend a promise that they should spend the rest of the day together. ”

“ Melrose's letters shown a disposition to part with money, in ordinary domestic way. "The odiousness of your English climate is only matched by the absurdity of your English grates," he had written, urbanely, from Paris. "Get the house up to sixty, if you can. And get a man over from Carlisle to put in a furnace. I can see him the day after we arrive. My wife is Italian, and shivers already at the thought of Cumbria." ”

“ Netta, accustomed to Edmund's "queerness," and determined to hold her own, settled herself deliberately opposite her visitor, and was soon complaining in her shrill voice of the loneliness of the place and the damp of the climate. Melrose never once looked at his wife. He was paler than usual, with an eager combative aspect, quite new to Netta. He seemed for once to be unsure of his ground—both to expect attack, even to provoke it—and to shrink from it. His eyes were fixed upon Lady Tatham, and followed her every movement. ”

“ We got about half way up, when there came into our faces one of those sudden, passionate puffs of mist and rain which Scotch clouds seem to have the faculty of getting up at a minute's notice. Whish! came the wind in our faces, like the rustling of a whole army of spirits down the staircase; whereat we all tumbled back promiscuously on to each other, and concluded we would not go up. In fact we had done the thing, and so we went home; and I dreamed of arches, and corbels, and gargoyles all night. And so, farewell to Melrose Abbey. ”

“ Once or twice, since his acceptance of the agency, Melrose had repeated to him with emphasis: "I am alone in the world." Dixon and his wife preserved an absolute silence on the subject, and loyalty to his employer forbade Faversham to question them or any other of Melrose's dependents. It struck him, indeed, that Mrs. Dixon had shown a curious agitation when, that morning, Faversham had conveyed to her Melrose's instructions to prepare a certain room on the first floor as the agent's future bedroom. ”

“ Melrose, my native home, in the State of —, is a quiet little town, with little social life and less gayety. My mother, too, is a widow, who has lived in great seclusion ever since my father's death, which occurred when I was a little child. I have been her only companion in all these years of bereavement and sorrow, and it has never been her desire that I should indulge in any of the pleasures and gayeties that young people are fond of. From these causes my life has assumed a sombre tone that may seem, and indeed is, unnatural in the young. ”

“ Of the store, indeed, of precious or curious objects lying heaped together in the confusion of Melrose's den, the only treasures of a portable kind that Faversham found any difficulty in handling were his own gems. Melrose would bring them sometimes, when the young man specially asked for them, would keep a jealous eye on them the whole time they were in their owner's hands, and hurry them back to their drawer in the Riesener table as soon as Faversham could be induced to give them up. ”