V

Duddon Castle in May was an agreeable place.  Its park, lying on the eastern slopes of the mountain mass which includes Skiddaw and Blencathra, had none of the usual monotony of parks, but was a genuine “chase,” running up on the western side into the heather and rock of the mountain where the deer were at home, while on the east and south its splendid oaks stood thick in bracken beside sparkling becks, overlooking dells and valleys of succulent grass where the sheep ranged at will.  The house consisted of an early Tudor keep, married to a Jacobean house of rose-coloured brick, which Lady Tatham had since her widowhood succeeded in freeing from the ugly stucco which had once disguised and defaced it.  It could not claim the classical charm, the learned elegance of Threlfall Tower.  Duddon was romantic—­a medley of beautiful things, full of history, colour, and time, fused by the trees and fern, the luxuriant creepers and mosses, and of a mild and rainy climate into a lovely irregular whole; with no outline to speak of, yet with nothing that one could seriously wish away.  The size was great, yet no one but an auctioneer could have called it “superb”; it seemed indeed to take a pleasure in concealing the whole extent of its clustered building; and by the time you were aware of it, you had fallen in love with Duddon, and nothing mattered.

But if without, in its broad external features, Duddon betrayed a romantic freedom in the minds of those who had planned it, nothing could have been more orderly or exquisite than its detail, when detail had to be considered.  The Italian garden round the house with its formal masses of contrasting colour, its pleached alleys, and pergolas, its steps, vases, and fountains, was as good in its way as the glorious wildness of the Chase.  One might have applied to it the Sophoclean thought—­“How clever is man who can make all these things!”—­so diverse, and so pleasant.  And indoors, Duddon was oppressive by the very ingenuity of its refinement, the rightness of every touch.  No overcrowding; no ostentation.  Beautiful spaces, giving room and dignity to a few beautiful objects; famous pictures, yet not too many; and, in general, things rather suggestive than perfect; sketches—­fragments—­from the great arts of the world; as it were, a lovely wreckage from a vast ocean set tenderly in a perfect order, breathing at once the greatness and the eternal defeat of men.

The interior beauty of Duddon was entirely due to Victoria, Lady Tatham, mother of the young man who now owned the Tatham estates.  She had created it through many years; she had been terribly “advised,” in the process, by a number of clever folk, English and foreign; and the result alternately pleased and tormented her.  To be fastidious to such a point is to grow more so.  And Victoria Tatham was nothing if not fastidious.  She had money, taste, patience, yet ennui confronted her in many paths; and except