While Tyson, after five years, passed on triumphantly to a lucrative
agency in the Dukeries, having won a reputation for tact and patience in
the impossible service of a mad master, which would carry him through
life. Melrose, being Melrose, found it hopeless to replace him
satisfactorily; and, as he continued to buy land greedily year after
year, the neglected condition of his immense estate became an
ever-increasing scandal to the county.
Meanwhile, for some years after the departure of Netta, Lady Tatham was
obliged for reason of health to spend the winters on the Riviera, and she
and her boy were only at Duddon for the summer months. Intercourse
between her and her cousin Edmund Melrose was never renewed, and her son
grew up in practical ignorance of the relationship. When, however, the
lad was nearing the end of his Eton school days Duddon became once more
the permanent home, summer and winter, of mother and son, and young Lord
Tatham, curly-haired, good-humoured, and good-hearted, became
thenceforward the favourite and princeling of the countryside. On the
east and north, the Duddon estates marched with Melrose's property.
Occasions of friction constantly arose, but the determination on each
side to have no more communication with the other than was absolutely
necessary generally composed any nascent dispute; so long at least as
Lady Tatham and a very diplomatic agent were in charge.
But at the age of twenty-four, Harry Tatham succeeded to the sole
management of his estates, and his mother soon realized that her son was
not likely to treat their miserly neighbour with the same patience as
herself.
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