"TIME TURNS THE OLD DAYS TO DERISION."
If Leonard Tregonell was troubled and perplexed by the change in his
wife's character, there was one other person at Mount Royal,
Christabel's nearest and dearest friend, to whom that change was even a
greater mystification. Jessie Bridgeman, who had been with her in the
dark hours of her grief--who had seen her sunk in the apathy of
despair--who had comforted and watched her, and sympathized and wept
with her, looked on now in blank wonderment at a phase of character
which was altogether enigmatical. She had been with Mrs. Tregonell at
Zermatt, when de Cazalet had obtruded himself on their notice by his
officious attentions during a pilgrimage to the Riffel, and she had been
bewildered at Christabel's civility to a man of such obvious bad style.
He had stayed at the same hotel with them for three or four days, and
had given them as much of his society as he could without being
absolutely intrusive, taking advantage of having met Christabel five
seasons ago, at two or three _quasi_ literary assemblies; and at parting
Christabel had invited him to Mount Royal. "Mr. Tregonell will be at
home in the autumn," she said, "and if you should find yourself in
Cornwall"--he had talked of exploring the West of England--"I know he
would be glad to see you at Mount Royal."
When Jessie hinted at the unwisdom of an invitation to a man of whom
they knew so little, Christabel answered carelessly that "Leonard liked
to have his house full of lively people, and would no doubt be pleased
with the Baron de Cazalet."
"You used to leave him to choose his own visitors."
"I know; but I mean to take a more active part in the arrangement of
things in future. I am tired of being a cipher."
"Did you hear those people talking of the Baron at _table d'hôte_
yesterday?"
"I heard a little--I was not particularly attentive."
"Then perhaps you did not hear that he is a thorough Bohemian--that he
led a very wild life in South America, and was a notorious duellist."
"What can that matter to us, even if it is true?"
It seemed to Jessie that Christabel's whole nature underwent a change,
and that the transformation dated from her acquaintance with this man.
They were at the end of their tour at the time of this meeting, and they
came straight through to Paris, where Mrs. Tregonell abandoned herself
to frivolity--going to all the theatres--buying all the newest and
lightest music, spending long mornings with milliners and
dressmakers--squandering money upon fine clothes, which a year ago she
would have scorned to wear. Hitherto her taste had tended to simplicity
of attire--not without richness--for she was too much of an artist not
to value the artistic effects of costly fabrics, the beauty of warm
colouring. But she now pursued that Will o' the Wisp fashion from Worth
to Pingat, and bought any number of gowns, some of which, to Miss
Bridgeman's severe taste, seemed simply odious.
"Do you intend spending next season in May Fair, and do you expect to be
asked to a good many fancy balls?" asked Jessie, as Mrs. Tregonell's
maid exhibited the gowns in the spacious bedroom at the Bristol.
"Nonsense, Jessie. These are all dinner gowns. The infinite variety of
modern fashion is its chief merit. The style of to-day embraces three
centuries of the past, from Catherine de Médicis to Madame Récamier."
At one of the Boulevard theatres Mrs. Tregonell and Miss Bridgeman met
Mr. FitzJesse, who was also returning from a summer holiday. He was
Angus Hamleigh's friend, and had known Christabel during the happy days
of her first London season. It seemed hardly strange that she should be
glad to meet him, and that she should ask him to Mount Royal.
"And now I must have some women to meet these men," she said, when she
and Jessie were at home again, and the travelled infant had gone back to
his nursery, and had inquired why the hills he saw from his windows were
no longer white, and why the sea was so much bigger than the lakes he
had seen lately. "I mean to make the house as pleasant as possible for
Leonard when he comes home."
She and Jessie were alone in the oak panelled parlour--the room with the
alcove overlooking the hills and the sea. They were seated at a little
table in this recess--Christabel's desk open before her--Jessie
knitting.
"How gaily you speak. Have you----"
She was going to say, "Have you forgiven him for what was done at St.
Nectan's Kieve?" but she checked herself when the words were on her
lips. What if Leonard's crime was not forgiven, but forgotten? In that
long dreary winter they had never spoken of the manner of Angus
Hamleigh's death. Christabel's despair had been silent. Jessie had
comforted her with vague words which never touched upon the cruel
details of her grief. How if the mind had been affected by that long
interval of sorrow, and the memory of Leonard's deed blotted out?
Christabel's new delight in frivolous things--her sudden fancy for
filling her house with lively people--might be the awakening of new
life and vigour in a mind that had trembled on the confines of madness.
Was it for her to recall bitter facts--to reopen the fountain of tears?
She gave one little sigh for the untimely dead--and then addressed
herself to the duty of pleasing Christabel, just as in days gone by her
every effort had been devoted to making the elder Mrs. Tregonell happy.
"I suppose you had better ask Mrs. Fairfax Torrington," she suggested.
"Yes, Leonard and she are great chums. We must have Mrs. Torrington. And
there are the St. Aubyns, nice lively girls and an inoffensive father
and mother. I believe Leonard rather likes them. And then it will be a
charity to have Dopsy and Mopsy."
"I thought you detested them."
"No, poor foolish things--I was once sorry for Dopsy." The tears rushed
to her eyes. She rose suddenly from her chair, and went to the window.
"Then she has not forgotten," thought Jessie.
So it was that the autumn party was planned. Mr. Faddie was doing duty
at the little church in the glen, and thus happened to be in the way of
an invitation. Mr. Montagu was asked as a person of general usefulness.
The St. Aubyn party brought horses, and men and maids, and contributed
much to the liveliness of the establishment, so far as noise means
gaiety. They were all assembled when Baron de Cazalet telegraphed from a
yacht off the Lizard to ask if he might come, and, receiving a
favourable reply, landed at Penzance, and posted over with his valet;
his horse and gun cases were brought from London by another servant.
Leonard had been home nearly a fortnight, and had begun to accept this
new mode of life without further wonder, and to fall into his old ways,
and find some degree of pleasure in his old occupations--hunting,
shooting.
The Vandeleur girls were draining the cup of pleasure to the dregs.
Dopsy forgot her failure and grief of last year. One cannot waste all
one's life in mourning for a lover who was never in love with one.
"I wore bugles for him all last winter, and if I had been able to buy a
new black gown I would have kept in mourning for six mouths," she told
her sister apologetically, as if ashamed of her good spirits, "but I
can't help enjoying myself in such a house as this. Is not Mrs.
Tregonell changed for the better?"
"Everything's changed for the better," assented Mopsy. "If we had only
horses and could hunt, like those stuck up St. Aubyn girls, life would
be perfect."
"They ride well, I suppose," said Dopsy, "but they are dreadfully
_arriérées_. They haven't an æsthetic idea. When I told them we had
thoughts of belonging to the Browning Society, that eldest one asked me
if it was like the Birkbeck, and if we should be able to buy a house
rent-free by monthly instalments. And the youngest said that sunflowers
were only fit for cottage gardens."
"And the narrow-minded mother declared she could see no beauty in single
dahlias," added Dopsy, with ineffable disgust.
The day was hopelessly wet, and the visitors at Mount Royal were
spending the morning in that somewhat straggling manner common to people
who are in somebody else's house--impressed with a feeling that it is
useless to settle oneself even to the interesting labour of art
needlework when one is not by one's own fireside. The sportsmen were all
out; but de Cazalet, the Rev. St. Bernard, and Mr. FitzJesse preferred
the shelter of a well-warmed Jacobean mansion to the wild sweep of the
wind across the moor, or the dash of the billows.
"I have had plenty of wild life on the shores of the Pacific," said de
Cazalet, luxuriating in a large sage green plush arm chair, one of the
anachronisms of the grave old library. "At home I revel in
civilization--I cannot have too much of warmth and comfort--velvetty
nests like this to lounge in, downy cushions to lean against, hot-house
flowers, and French cookery. Delicious to hear the rain beating against
the glass, and the wind howling in the chimney. Put another log on,
Faddie, like the best of fellows."
The Reverend St. Bernard, not much appreciating this familiarity,
daintily picked a log from the big brazen basket and dropped it in a
gingerly manner upon the hearth, carefully dusting his fingers
afterwards with a cambric handkerchief which sent forth odours of
Maréchale.
Mr. FitzJesse was sitting at a distant table, with a large despatch box
and a pile of open letters before him, writing at railway speed, in
order to be in time for the one o'clock post.
"He is making up his paper," said de Cazalet, lazily contemplating the
worker's bowed shoulders. "I wonder if he is saying anything about us."
"I am happy to say that he does not often discuss church matters," said
Mr. Faddie. "He shows his good sense by a careful avoidance of opinion
upon our difficulties and our differences."
"Perhaps he doesn't think them worth discussing--of no more consequence
than the shades of difference between tweedledum and tweedledee," yawned
de Cazalet, whereupon Mr. Faddie gave him a look of contemptuous anger,
and left the room.
Mr. FitzJesse went away soon afterwards with his batch of letters for
the post-bag in the hall, and the Baron was left alone, in listless
contemplation of the fire. He had been in the drawing-room, but had
found that apartment uninteresting by reason of Mrs. Tregonell's
absence. He did not care to sit and watch the two Miss St. Aubyns
playing chess--nor to hear Mrs. Fairfax Torrington dribbling out stray
paragraphs from the "society journals" for the benefit of nobody in
particular--nor to listen to Mrs. St. Aubyn's disquisitions upon the
merits of Alderney cows, with which Jessie Bridgeman made believe to be
interested, while deep in the intricacies of a crewel-work daffodil. For
him the spacious pink and white panelled room without one particular
person was more desolate than the wild expanse of the Pampas, with its
low undulations, growing rougher towards the base of the mountains. He
had come to the library--an apartment chiefly used by the men--to bask
in the light of the fire, and to brood upon agreeable thoughts. The
meditations of a man who has a very high opinion of his own merits are
generally pleasant, and just now Oliver de Cazalet's ideas about himself
were unusually exalted, for had he not obviously made the conquest of
one of the most charming women he had ever met.
"A pity she has a husband," he thought. "It would have suited me
remarkably well to drop into such a luxurious nest as this. The boy is
not three years old--by the time he came of age--well--I should have
lived my life, I suppose, and could afford to subside into comfortable
obscurity," sighed de Cazalet, conscious of his forty years. "The
husband looks uncommonly tough; but even Hercules was mortal. One never
knows how or when a man of that stamp may go off the hooks."
These pleasing reflections were disturbed by the entrance of Mopsy, who,
after prowling all over the house in quest of masculine society, came
yawning into the library in search of anything readable in the way of a
newspaper--a readable paper with Mopsy meaning theatres, fashions, or
scandal.
She gave a little start at sight of de Cazalet, whose stalwart form and
florid good looks were by no means obnoxious to her taste. If he had not
been so evidently devoted to Mrs. Tregonell, Mopsy would have perchance
essayed his subjugation; but, remembering Dopsy's bitter experience of
last year, the sadder and wiser Miss Vandeleur had made up her mind not
to "go for" any marriageable man in too distinct a manner. She would
play that fluking game which she most affected at billiards--sending her
ball spinning all over the table with the hope that some successful
result must come of a vigorous stroke.
She fluttered about the room, then stopped in a Fra Angelico pose over a
table strewed with papers.
"Baron, have you seen the _Queen_?" she asked presently.
"Often. I had the honour of making my bow to her last April. She is one
of the dearest women I know, and she was good enough to feel interested
in my somewhat romantic career."
"How nice! But I mean the _Queen_ newspaper. I am dying to know if it
really _is_ coming in. Now it has been seen in Paris, I'm afraid it's
inevitable."
"May I ask what _it_ is?"
"Perhaps I oughtn't to mention it--crinoline. There is a talk about
something called a crinolette."
"And Crinolette, I suppose, is own sister to Crinoline?"
"I'm afraid so--don't you hate them? I do; I love the early Italian
style--clinging cashmeres, soft flowing draperies."
"And accentuated angles--well, yes. If one has to ride in a hansom or a
single brougham with a woman the hoop and powder style is rather a
burthen. But women are such lovely beings--they are adorable in any
costume. Madame Tallien with bare feet, and no petticoats to speak
of--Pompadour in patches and wide-spreading brocade--Margaret of Orleans
in a peaked head dress and puffed sleeves--Mary Stuart in a black velvet
coif, and a ruff--each and all adorable--on a pretty woman."
"On a pretty woman--yes. The pretty women set the fashions and the ugly
women have to wear them--that's the difficulty."
"Ah, me," sighed the Baron, "did any one ever see an ugly woman? There
are so many degrees of beauty that it takes a long time to get from
Venus to her opposite. A smile--a sparkle--a kindly look--a fresh
complexion--a neat bonnet--vivacious conversation--such trifles will
pass for beauty with a man who worships the sex. For him every flower
in the garden of womanhood, from the imperial rose to the lowly
buttercup, has its own peculiar charm."
"And yet I should have thought you were awfully fastidious," said Mopsy,
trifling with the newspapers, "and that nothing short of absolute
perfection would please you."
"Absolute perfection is generally a bore. I have met famous beauties who
had no more attraction than if they had been famous statues."
"Yes; I know there is a cold kind of beauty--but there are women who are
as fascinating as they are lovely. Our hostess, for instance--don't you
think her utterly sweet?"
"She is very lovely. Do come and sit by the fire. It is such a creepy
morning. I'll hunt for any newspapers you like presently; but in the
meanwhile let us chat. I was getting horribly tired of my own thoughts
when you came in."
Mopsy simpered, and sat down in the easy chair opposite the Baron's. She
began to think that this delightful person admired her more than she had
hitherto supposed. His desire for her company looked promising. What
if, after all, she, who had striven so much less eagerly than poor Dopsy
strove last year, should be on the high road to a conquest. Here was the
handsomest man she had ever met, a man with title and money, courting
her society in a house full of people.
"Yes, she is altogether charming," said the Baron lazily, as if he were
talking merely for the sake of conversation. "Very sweet, as you say,
but not quite my style--there is a something--an intangible something
wanting. She has _chic_--she has _savoir-faire_; but she has not--no,
she has not that electrical wit which--which I have admired in others
less conventionally beautiful."
The Baron's half-veiled smile, a smile glancing from under lowered
eyelids, hinted that this vital spark which was wanting in Christabel
might be found in Mopsy.
The damsel blushed, and looked down, conscious of eyelashes artistically
treated.
"I don't think Mrs. Tregonell has been quite happy in her married life,"
said Mopsy. "My brother and Mr. Tregonell are very old friends, don't
you know; like brothers, in fact; and Mr. Tregonell tells Jack
everything. I know his cousin didn't want to marry him--she was engaged
to somebody else, don't you know, and that engagement was broken off,
but he had set his heart upon marrying her--and his mother had set her
heart upon the match--and between them they talked her into it. She
never really wanted to marry him--Leonard has owned that to Jack in his
savage moods. But I ought not to run on so--I am doing very wrong"--said
Mopsy, hastily.
"You may say anything you please to me. I am like the grave. I never
give up a secret," said the Baron, who had settled himself comfortably
in his chair, assured that Mopsy, once set going, would tell him all she
could tell.
"No, I don't believe--from what Jack says he says in his tempers--I
don't believe she ever liked him," pursued Mopsy. "And she was
desperately in love with the other one. But she gave him up at her
aunt's instigation, because of some early intrigue of his--which was
absurd, as she would have known, poor thing, if she had not been brought
up in this out-of-the-way corner of the world."
"The other one. Who was the other one?" asked the Baron.
"The man who was shot at St. Nectan's Kieve last year. You must have
heard the story."
"Yes; Mr. St. Aubyn told me about it. And this Mr. Hamleigh had been
engaged to Mrs. Tregonell? Odd that he should be staying in this house!"
"Wasn't it? One of those odd things that Leonard Tregonell is fond of
doing. He was always eccentric."
"And during this visit was there anything--the best of women are
mortal--was there anything in the way of a flirtation going on between
Mrs. Tregonell and her former sweetheart?"
"Not a shadow of impropriety," answered Mopsy heartily. "She behaved
perfectly. I knew the story from my brother, and couldn't help watching
them--there was nothing underhand--not the faintest indication of a
secret understanding between them."
"And Mr. Tregonell was not jealous?"
"I cannot say; but I am sure he had no cause."
"I suppose Mrs. Tregonell was deeply affected by Mr. Hamleigh's death?"
"I hardly know. She seemed wonderfully calm; but as we left almost
immediately after the accident I had not much opportunity of judging."
"A sad business. A lovely woman married to a man she does not care
for--and really if I were not a visitor under his roof I should be
tempted to say that in my opinion no woman in her senses could care for
Mr. Tregonell. But I suppose after all practical considerations had
something to do with the match. Tregonell is lord of half-a-dozen
manors--and the lady hadn't a sixpence. Was that it?"
"Not at all. Mrs. Tregonell has money in her own right. She was the only
child of an Indian judge, and her mother was co-heiress with the late
Mrs. Tregonell, who was a Miss Champernowne--I believe she has at least
fifteen hundred a year, upon which a single woman might live very
comfortably, don't you know," concluded Miss Vandeleur with a grand air.
"No doubt," said the Baron. "And the fortune was settled on herself, I
conclude?"
"Every shilling. Mr. Tregonell's mother insisted upon that. No doubt she
felt it her duty to protect her niece's interest. Mr. Tregonell has
complained to Jack of his wife being so independent. It lessens his hold
upon her, don't you see."
"Naturally. She is not under any obligation to him for her milliner's
bills."
"No. And her bills must be awfully heavy this year. I never saw such a
change in any one. Last autumn she dressed so simply. A tailor-gown in
the morning--black velvet or satin in the evening. And now there is no
end to the variety of her gowns. It makes one feel awfully shabby."
"Such artistic toilets as yours can never be shabby," said the Baron.
"In looking at a picture by Greuze one does not think how much a yard
the pale indefinite drapery cost, one only sees the grace and beauty of
the draping."
"True; taste will go a long way," assented Mopsy, who had been trying
for the last ten years to make taste--that is to say a careful study of
the west-end shop-windows--do duty for cash.
"Then you find Mrs. Tregonell changed since your last visit?" inquired
de Cazalet, bent upon learning all he could.
"Remarkably. She is so much livelier--she seems so much more anxious to
please. It is a change altogether for the better. She seems
gayer--brighter--happier."
"Yes," thought the Baron, "she is in love. Only one magician works such
wonders, and he is the oldest of the gods--the motive power of the
universe."
The gong sounded, and they went off to lunch. At the foot of the stairs
they met Christabel bringing down her boy. She was not so devoted to him
as she had been last year, but there were occasions--like this wet
morning, for instance--when she gave herself up to his society.
"Leo is going to eat his dinner with us," she said, smiling at the
Baron, "if you will not think him a nuisance."
"On the contrary, I shall be charmed to improve his acquaintance. I hope
he will let me sit next him."
"Thant," lisped Leo decisively. "Don't like oo."
"Oh, Leo, how rude."
"Don't reprove him," said the Baron. "It is a comfort to be reminded
that for the first three or four years of our lives we all tell the
truth. But I mean you to like me, Leo, all the same."
"I hate 'oo," said Leo, frankly--he always expressed himself in strong
Saxon English--"but 'oo love my mamma."
This, in a shrill childish treble, was awkward for the rest of the
party. Mrs. Fairfax Torrington gave an arch glance at Mr. FitzJesse.
Dopsy reddened, and exploded in a little spluttering laugh behind her
napkin. Christabel looked divinely unconscious, smiling down at her boy,
whose chair had been placed at the corner of the table close to his
mother.
"It is a poet's privilege to worship the beautiful, Leo," said the
Baron, with a self-satisfied smirk. "The old troubadour's right of
allegiance to the loveliest--as old as chivalry."
"And as disreputable," said FitzJesse. "If I had been one of the knights
of old, and had found a troubadour sneaking about my premises, that
troubadour's head should have been through his guitar before he knew
where he was--or he should have discovered that my idea of a common
chord was a halter. But in our present age of ultra-refinement the
social troubadour is a gentleman, and the worship of beauty one of the
higher forms of culture."
The Baron looked at the journalist suspiciously. Bold as he was of
speech and bearing, he never ventured to cross swords with Mr.
FitzJesse. He was too much afraid of seeing an article upon his Jersey
antecedents or his married life in leaded type in the _Sling_.
Happily, Mr. Tregonell was not at luncheon upon this particular
occasion. He had gone out shooting with Jack Vandeleur and little Monty.
It was supposed to be a great year for woodcock, and the Squire and his
friends had been after the birds in every direction, except St. Nectan's
Kieve. He had refused to go there, although it was a tradition that the
place was a favourite resort of the birds.
"Why don't you shoot, Mrs. Tregonell?" asked Mrs. Torrington; "it is
just the one thing that makes life worth living in a country like this,
where there is no great scope for hunting."
"I should like roaming about the hills, but I could never bring myself
to hit a bird," answered Christabel. "I am too fond of the feathered
race. I don't know why or what it is, but there is something in a bird
which appeals intensely to one's pity. I have been more sorry than I can
say for a dying sparrow; and I can never teach myself to remember that
birds are such wretchedly cruel and unprincipled creatures in their
dealings with one another that they really deserve very little
compassion from man."
"Except that man has the responsibility of knowing better," said Mr.
FitzJesse. "That infernal cruelty of the animal creation is one of the
problems that must perplex the gentle optimist who sums up his religion
in a phrase of Pope's, and avows that whatever is, is right. Who,
looking at the meek meditative countenance of a Jersey cow, those large
stag-like eyes--Juno's eyes--would believe that Mrs. Cow is capable of
trampling a sick sister to death--nay, would look upon the operation as
a matter of course--a thing to be done for the good of society."
"Is there not a little moral trampling done by stag-eyed creatures of a
higher grade?" asked Mrs. Torrington. "Let a woman once fall down in the
mud, and there are plenty of her own sex ready to grind her into the
mire. Cows have a coarser, more practical way of treating their fallen
sisters, but the principle is the same, don't you know."
"I have always found man the more malignant animal," said FitzJesse. "At
her worst a woman generally has a motive for the evil she does--some
wrong to avenge--some petty slight to retaliate. A man stabs for the
mere pleasure of stabbing. With him slander is one of the fine arts.
Depend upon it your Crabtree is a more malevolent creature than Mrs.
Candour--and the Candours would not kill reputations if the Crabtrees
did not admire and applaud the slaughter. For my own part I believe that
if there were no men in the world, women would be almost kind to each
other."
The Baron did not enter into this discussion. He had no taste for any
subject out of his own line, which was art and beauty. With character
or morals he had nothing to do. He did not even pretend to listen to the
discourse of the others, but amused himself with petting Leo, who
sturdily repulsed his endearments. When he spoke it was to reply to
Christabel's last remark.
"If you are fonder of roaming on the hills than of shooting, Mrs.
Tregonell, why should we not organize a rambling party? It is not too
late for a picnic. Let us hold ourselves ready for the first bright
day--perhaps, after this deluge, we shall have fine weather
to-morrow--and organize a pilgrimage to Tintagel, with all the freedom
of pedestrians, who can choose their own company, and are not obliged to
sit opposite the person they least care about in the imprisonment of a
barouche or a wagonette. Walking picnics are the only picnics worth
having. You are a good walker, I know, Mrs. Tregonell; and you, Mrs.
Torrington, you can walk I have no doubt."
The widow smiled and nodded. "Oh, yes, I am good for half-a-dozen miles,
or so," she said, wondering whether she possessed a pair of boots in
which she could walk, most of her boots being made rather with a view to
exhibition on a fender-stool or on the step of a carriage than to
locomotion. "But I think as I am not quite so young as I was twenty
years ago, I had better follow you in the pony-carriage."
"Pony-carriage, me no pony-carriages," exclaimed de Cazalet. "Ours is to
be a walking picnic and nothing else. If you like to meet us as we come
home you can do so--but none but pedestrians shall drink our champagne
or eat our salad--that salad which I shall have the honour to make for
you with my own hands, Mrs. Tregonell."
Jessie Bridgeman looked at Christabel to see if any painful memory--any
thought of that other picnic at Tintagel when Angus Hamleigh was still a
stranger, and the world seemed made for gladness and laughter, would
disturb her smiling serenity. But there was no trace of mournful
recollection in that bright beaming face which was turned in all
graciousness towards the Baron, who sat caressing Leo's curls, while the
boy wriggled his plump shoulders half out of his black velvet frock in
palpable disgust at the caress.
"Oh! it will be too lovely--too utterly ouftish," exclaimed Dopsy, who
had lately acquired this last flower of speech--a word which might be
made to mean almost anything, from the motive power which impels a
billiard cue to the money that pays the player's losses at pool--a word
which is a substantive or adjective according to the speaker's pleasure.
"I suppose we shall be allowed to join you," said Mopsy, "we are
splendid walkers."
"Of course--entry open to all weights and ages, with Mrs. Tregonell's
permission."
"Let it be your picnic, Baron, since it is your idea," said Christabel;
"my housekeeper shall take your orders about the luncheon, and we will
all consider ourselves your guests."
"I shall expire if I am left out in the cold," said Mrs. Torrington.
"You really must allow age the privilege of a pony-carriage. That
delightful cob of Mrs. Tregonell's understands me perfectly."
"Well, on second thoughts, you shall have the carriage," said de
Cazalet, graciously. "The provisions can't walk. It shall be your
privilege to bring them. We will have no servants. Mr. Faddie, Mr.
FitzJesse, and I will do all the fetching and carrying, cork-drawing and
salad-making."