'... a queen
By virtue of her brow and breast;
Not needing to be crowned, I mean.'
BROWNING.
I
When Penelope Wantley became the mistress of Monk's Eype, she left the
villa as she had always known it, for her sense of beauty compelled her
to approve the few changes which had been made to the great bare rooms
during her father's long tenure of the place. As child and as girl she
had found there much that satisfied her craving for the romantic and the
exquisite in nature and in art; and long after she was a grown-up woman
the flagged terraces, each guarded by a moss-grown balustrade, broken at
one end by steep stone steps which led from one rampart to another,
commanding all the way down the blue-green and grey bars of moving water
below, served as background to the memoried delights of her childhood.
Penelope the woman had but to withdraw herself from what was about her
to see once more the child Penelope, watching with fascinated gaze the
stone and marble denizens of the gardens and the wood. In the summer
twilight, just before little Penelope went up to bed, the graceful
water-nymphs sometimes came down from their pedestals on the
bowling-green which lay beyond the western wing of the villa, and the
malicious, teasing faun, leaving the spot from which he gazed over the
changing seas, ranged at will through the little pine-wood edging the
open down. Even in the daylight the little girl sometimes thought she
caught glimpses of gentle green-capped fairies--a whole world of
strange, uncanny folk--who played 'touch' and blind-man's buff among the
hanging creepers and at the foot of each of the flower-laden bushes
which covered the slopes of this enchanted garden.
In these fancies the young friends who occasionally came over to see
her, riding their ponies or driving their governess-carts, from distant
country-houses, had never any share. More was told to a boy with whom at
one time little Penelope had been much thrown. David Winfrith, the son
of a neighbouring clergyman, who, when shunned for no actual fault of
his own, had seen himself and his only child received very kindly by
Lord and Lady Wantley, was older than Penelope by those three or four
years which in childhood count so much, and later count so little. He
had spent more than one holiday at Monk's Eype, sharing Penelope's
play-room, which, partly hollowed out of the cliff, was lifted a few
feet above the beach by rude stone pillars. There a large solid table,
filling up the whole space in front of the wide window, made a fine
'vantage-ground for the display of the boy's skill as toy-maker and
boat-builder.
Penelope, looking back, associated David Winfrith with her earliest
memories of Monk's Eype, and for her the villa, especially certain of
the great rooms of which the furnishings had been so little disturbed
for close on a hundred years, was instinct also with the thought and the
vanished figure of her father, who, when wearied and cast down by being
brought into contact with the misery he did so much to relieve, found in
his western home a great source of consolation and peace.
II
Lord Wantley, or rather his wife, had been among the first and most
ardent patrons of the group of painters who chose to be known as the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. More than one of these had spent happy days
at Monk's Eype, and it had been owing to the advice of the most famous
survivor of the early P.R.B. that Penelope had been allowed, and even
encouraged, to devote much of her early girlhood to the serious pursuit
of art. How far her parents had been right her mother sometimes doubted;
but there could be no doubt that the great artist had truly divined in
the beautiful girl a touch of exceptional power--some would have called
it by a rarer name. It was not his fault if such circumstances as youth,
rank, beauty, and ultimately great wealth, had asserted their claims,
and turned one who might have been a great woman artist into an amateur.
Therefore it was rather as a lover of beauty and as a woman, fully, if
rather disdainfully, conscious of her own feminine supremacy, that Mrs.
Robinson had been so far well content to leave the spacious rooms of her
own, as it had been her father's, favourite home, in much the same order
as when they had been arranged under the eye of her great-uncle Ludovic,
known in local story as the Popish Lord Wantley.
There was a side of her nature which made her feel peculiarly at ease
among the faded splendours of these Italian-looking rooms. Her tall
figure, slenderly stately in its proportions; the small, well-poised
head; clear-cut, delicate features; deep, troubled-looking blue eyes;
masses of red-brown hair, drawn high above the broad low forehead, in
the fashion worn when powdered locks lent charm to the plainest face--in
short, her whole presence and individuality made a satisfying harmony
with faded brocades, the ivory inlaid chairs and tables, and the massive
gilt dower-chests, which had no desecration to fear from their present
owner's beautiful hands.
That Penelope could create as well as preserve beauty of
surroundings--the one power seems nowadays as rare as the other--was
seen in the room, half studio, half library, where, when at Monk's Eype,
she chose to spend much of her time.
Situated at the extreme western end of the villa, on which, indeed, it
still formed a strange excrescence, the room had been added to the main
building at a time when Penelope's parents had been inclined to believe
much more than they afterwards came to do in the power of eloquent
speech. The substantial brick walls of the hall, as it was still called
by some of the older servants, had witnessed curious gatherings, and
heard the voices of many a famous lay-preacher dealing with schemes
which, whether practical or nebulous, had all the same single
purpose--that of leaving the world better than it had been before.
Penelope Wantley, as a little girl, had once been taken, when in Paris,
to see a certain old lady, who had in her day played a considerable rôle
in the brilliant society of the forties. The room in which the English
visitors had been received made a deep impression on the child's
imagination. The walls were painted in that soft shade of blue which the
turquoise is said to assume when a heart is untrue to its wearer, and
which is of all tints that best suited to be a background, whether of
human beings or of paintings; and the old lady's furniture had been
hidden in what the little Penelope had likened to herself as white
dimity overalls. The windows looked out on a fine old garden, along
whose shady paths had once walked blind Châteaubriand, led by Madame
Récamier.
Many years later, when Mrs. Robinson was arranging and transforming the
one room at Monk's Eype which she felt at liberty to alter and to
arrange after her own fancy, she followed, perhaps unconsciously, the
scheme of colouring which had so much pleased her childish fancy. But
whereas in the French lady's salon there had been no books--indeed, no
sign that such a thing as literature existed in the world--books were
not lacking at Monk's Eype. Had Penelope followed her own natural
instinct, perhaps she would have kept even more closely than she had
done to the Frenchwoman's example; but, though she prided herself on
being one of the most unconventional of human beings, she was naturally
influenced by the atmosphere in which she had always moved and lived.
'By Penelope's books you may know, not Penelope, but Penelope's
friends,' her cousin, Lord Wantley, had once observed. He had been
tempted to substitute the word 'adorers' for 'friends,' but had checked
himself in time, recollecting that the man with whom he was speaking was
one to whom the warmer term was notoriously applicable.
As to what the books were--for there was no lack of variety--French
novels, much old and modern verse, mock-erudite volumes, and pamphlets
of the type that are written a hundredfold round whatever happens to be
the fad of the moment, warred here and there with a substantial
Blue-Book, or, stranger still, with some volume which contained deep and
painful probings into the gloomier problems of life. Such were the
contents of the book-shelves, which, by a curious conceit of the present
owner of Monk's Eype, framed the tall narrow door connecting her studio
with the rest of the building.
Lord Wantley would also have told you that his brilliant cousin never
read. That, however, would have been unjust and untrue. Mrs. Robinson,
however deeply absorbed in other things, always found time to glance
through the books certain of her friends were good enough to send her.
Sometimes, indeed, she felt considerable interest in what she had been
bidden to read, and almost always she showed an extraordinary, if
passing, insight into the author's meaning; but to tell the truth, and I
hope that in so doing I shall not prejudice my readers against my
heroine, she was one of those women, a greater number than is in these
days suspected, who regard literature much as the modern civilized man
of the world regards art. Such a man goes to those exhibitions which
have been specially mentioned to him as worthy of notice, but even to
the best of these it would never occur to him to go, save with a
pleasant companion, a second time; and in buying, it is always the
expert on whom he leans, not his own taste and judgment. In the same way
Penelope was always willing to read any volume which her world was
discussing at the moment, but she would have been a happier woman had
she been able sometimes to take up, not necessarily a classic, but at
any rate a book of yesterday rather than of to-day.
But if literature was in her room only used in a decorative sense, the
water-colours and drawings, the casts, and the bas-reliefs, which were
so hung as to form a low dado down the whole length of the studio, were
one and all of remarkable quality, and here you touched the quick
reality of Penelope's life. In these matters she needed no advice, for,
while as an artist she was truly humble, she only cared to measure
herself with the best.
There was something pathetic in this beautiful woman's desire to
discover hidden genius; only certain French painters with whom she
herself from time to time still studied could have told how generous and
how intelligent was the help she was ever ready to bestow on those of
her fellow art-students whose means were more slender than their talent.
It was to these, so rich and yet so poor, that her heart really warmed;
it was on them that she bestowed what time that she could spare from
herself.
And yet the room which was specially her own showed very few signs of
artistic occupation. True, on a plain table were set out paint-boxes,
palettes, sketch-books; but an unobservant visitor might have come and
gone without knowing that the woman he had come to see ever took up a
pencil or used a brush.
The broad low dado, composed of comparatively small water-colours,
drawings, and bas-reliefs, was twice broken, each time by a glazed
oil-painting, each time by the portrait of a woman.
To the left of the book-framed door, hung a painting of Penelope's
mother, Lady Wantley.
At every period of her life Lady Wantley had been one of those women
whom artists delight to paint, and the great artist whose work this was
had often had the privilege. But perhaps owing to certain peculiar
circumstances connected with this portrait, it was the one of them that
he himself preferred. The painting had been a commission from the sitter
herself; she had wished to give this portrait to her husband on his
sixtieth birthday, and together she and the painter, her friend, who had
once owed to her and to Lord Wantley much in the way of sympathy and
encouragement, had desired to suggest in the composition something which
would be symbolic of what had been an almost ideal wedded life.
Then, without warning, when the scheme had been scarcely sketched out,
had come Lord Wantley's death away from home, and the portrait, scarcely
begun, had been hastily put away, counted by the artist as among those
half-finished things destined to remain tragic in their incompleteness.
But some months later his old friend and patroness, clad in no widow's
weeds, but in the curious black-and-white flowing draperies, and close
Quakerish bonnet, which had become to her friends and acquaintances
almost a portion of her identity, had come to see him, and he learnt
that she wished her portrait should be finished.
'He always disliked the unfinished, the incomplete,' she had said rather
wistfully; and the artist had carried out her wish, finding little to
alter, though, perhaps, in the interval between the first and the
second sitting the colourless skin of the sitter had lost something of
its clearness, the heavy-lidded grey eyes had gained somewhat in
dimness, and the hair from dark brown had become grey.
The painter himself substituted, for the lilies which were to have
filled in part of the background, a sheaf of rosemary.
The other picture had a less intimate history; and the only two people
who ever ventured to criticise Penelope had both, not in any concert
with one another, suggested that another place might be found for the
kitcat portrait, by Romney, of Mrs. Robinson's famous namesake, than
that where it now hung in juxtaposition with that of Lady Wantley.
III
Beneath this last portrait, holding herself upright on the low white
couch, a girl, Cecily Wake, sat waiting. She looked round the room with
an affectionate appreciation of its special charm--a charm destined to
be less apparent when seen as a frame to its brilliant mistress, who had
the gift, so often the perquisite of beauty, of making places as well as
people seem out of perspective. Cecily herself, all unconsciously,
completed the low-toned picture by adding a delicious touch of fragrant
youth.
Only Mrs. Robinson in all good faith considered Cecily Wake pretty.
True, she had the abundant hair, the clear eyes, the white teeth, which
seemed to Mr. Gumberg so essential to feminine loveliness; but beautiful
she was not--indeed, none of her friends denied her those qualities
which the plain are always being told count so much more than beauty;
that is, abundant kindliness, a sterling honesty, and a certain fiery
loyalty which both touched and diverted those who knew her.
To be worshipped in the heroic manner--that is, to be the object of
hero-worship--is almost always pleasant, especially if the divinity is
conscious that he or she has indeed done something to deserve it.
Penelope Robinson had rescued her young kinswoman from a mode of living
which had been peculiarly trying and unsuitable to one of an active,
ardent mind; more, she had provided her with work--something to do which
Cecily had felt was worth the doing. As all this had not been achieved
without what Penelope considered a great deal of trouble on her part,
she did not feel herself wholly undeserving of the deep affection
lavished on her by the girl whom she chose to call cousin, though in
truth the relationship was a very distant one.
Mrs. Robinson had just now the more reason to be satisfied both with her
own conduct and with that of her young friend. When it had been settled
that Cecily should spend a portion of her holiday--for she was one of
those happy people who, even when grown up, have holidays--at Monk's
Eype, it had not occurred to Penelope to include in her invitation the
aunt from whom she had rescued her friend, and she had been surprised
when Cecily had refused in a short, rather childishly-worded note. 'Of
course, I should like to come to you, and it is very kind of you to ask
me, but I cannot leave my aunt. She has been so looking forward to my
holiday, and, after all, I shall enjoy being at Brighton, near my old
convent.' Such had been Cecily's answer to her dear Penelope's
invitation, and, though she had shed bitter tears over it, she had sent
off her letter without consulting the old lady, to whom she was
sacrificing so great a joy.
Happily for the world, there is a kind of unselfishness, which, as a
French theologian rather pungently put it, 'fait des petits,' and Mrs.
Robinson's answer had been responsive. 'Of course, I meant your aunt to
come, too,' she wrote, lying. 'I enclose a note for her. I shall be very
glad to see her here.' There she wrote the truth, for only exceptional
people object to meet those whom they have vanquished in fair fight.
This was why Cecily Wake, supremely content, was sitting, late in the
afternoon of a hot August day, in her cousin's pretty room.
The glass doors were wide open, and from the flagged terrace blew in the
warm, gentle sea-wind.
Cecily was still so young in body and in mind that she really preferred
work to play; nevertheless, playtime was very pleasant, especially now
that she was beginning to feel a little tired after the long journey
from town, and the more fatiguing experience of seeing to the unpacking
of her aunt's boxes, and of establishing her in bed.
The elder Miss Wake was one of those women who, perhaps not altogether
unfortunately for their friends, enjoy poor health, and make it the
excuse for seldom doing anything which either annoys or bores them.
Occasionally, however, to her own surprise and disgust, Poor Health the
servant became Ill Health the master, and to-day outraged nature had
insisted on having the last word. This was why the aunt, really tired,
and suffering from a real headache, was lying upstairs, thinking, not
ungratefully, that Cecily, in spite of many modern peculiarities and
headstrong theories of life, was certainly in time of illness as
comforting a presence as might have been that ideal niece the aunt would
fain have had her be.
Perhaps the great characteristic of youth is the power of ardently
looking forward to the enjoyment of an ideal pleasure. To retain even
the power of keen disappointment is to retain youth. Cecily Wake had
longed for this visit to Monk's Eype much as a different kind of girl
longs for her first ball, but, instead of feeling disappointed at being
received with the news that her hostess, after making all kinds of small
arrangements for her own and her aunt's comfort, had gone out riding,
she had felt relieved that the meeting between Miss Wake and Mrs.
Robinson had been put off till the former had regained her usual tart
serenity.
The girl enjoyed these moments of quiet in what was, to one who had had
few opportunities of living amid beautiful surroundings, the most
charming room she had ever seen. Most of all, she delighted in one
exquisite singularity which it owed to the fancy of Lady Wantley. Not
long after it had been built, and while it was still being used as a
lecture-hall, Lady Wantley had had an oblong opening effected in the
brickwork just above the plain stone mantelpiece.
This opening, filled with clear glass, was ever bringing into the room,
as no mere window could have done, a sense of nearness to the breezy
stretch of down, studded with gnarled, wind-twisted pine-trees, standing
out darkly against the irregular coast-line which stretched itself, with
many a fantastic turn, towards Plymouth.
IV
The tall book-framed door suddenly opened, and Mrs. Robinson walked
swiftly in. As she came down the room, a smile of real pleasure and
welcome lighting up her face, Cecily was almost startled by the look of
vigorous grace and vitality with which the whole figure was instinct,
and which was accentuated rather than lessened by the short skirt, the
dun-coloured coat, and soft hat, which fashion, for once wedded to
sense, has decreed should be the modern riding-dress.
Almost involuntarily the girl exclaimed: 'How well you look!'
'Do I?' Penelope sat down close to Cecily; then she leant across and
lightly kissed the young girl's round cheek. 'I ought to look well after
a long ride with David Winfrith. You know, he has just been made
Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in the new Government.'
'Oh, is he here, too?' Cecily spoke disappointedly. She had hoped,
rather foolishly, that Penelope would be alone at Monk's Eype.
'No, he's not staying here. His own home is close by. We must go over
there some time and see his old father; you would like him, Cecily,
better than you do the son.' She hesitated, then continued in the
curiously modulated voice which was one of her peculiarities: 'We had
such a ride--such a discussion--such a quarrel--such a reconciliation!
Oh yes, I feel much better than I did yesterday.'
'Was it about the Settlement?' Cecily fixed her thoughtful, honest eyes
on her friend's face.
'Our discussion? No, no! My dear child, you must forget all about the
Settlement while you are here. I want to tell you about the people you
are going to meet. First, there's my mother, who, in theory, will spend
a good deal of time with your aunt, though in practice I shall be
surprised if they often speak to one another, for they are too utterly
unlike even to differ. Then there's my cousin, Lord Wantley. I'm afraid
you won't like him very much, for he makes fun of me--and of the
Settlement, too. But it isn't fair to tell you that! I want you to make
friends with him. You must spare him some of the pity you are so ready
to lavish on poor people who are unhappy or unlucky--Ludovic has been
rather unlucky, and he has a perfect genius for making himself unhappy.'
'Lord Wantley is Catholic, is he not?' Cecily spoke with some
hesitation. She knew her aunt had told her something concerning
Penelope's cousin, but she could not remember what it was which had been
told her.
Penelope looked up from the task of unbuttoning her gloves. 'No, he's
nothing of the kind,' she said decidedly, 'but perhaps he ought to be.
Who knows--Miss Wake may perhaps convert him,' she smiled rather
satirically. Cecily looked troubled; she was beginning to realize that
her holiday would be very different from what she had hoped and expected
it to be. 'Seriously, I want you to interest him in the Settlement. We
cannot expect David Winfrith to go on doing as much for us as he has
been doing. Besides'--she hesitated, and a shadow crossed the radiant
face--'I am thinking of making certain arrangements which will greatly
alter his position in the whole affair.'
'But what would the Settlement do without Mr. Winfrith?' There was utter
dismay in the tone.
'Well, we needn't discuss all that now. I only mean that Lord Wantley is
what people used to call a man of parts, and I have never been able to
see why he should not do more for me--I mean, of course, in this one
matter of the Settlement--than he has done as yet. He has led a very
selfish life.' Penelope spoke with much vigour. 'He has never done
anything for anybody, not even for himself, and what energy he has had
to spare has always been expended in the wrong direction. The only time
I have ever known him show any zeal was just after my father's death,
when he presented the chapel of the monastery at Beacon Abbas, near
here, with a window in memory of his father.' A whimsical smile flitted
across her face. 'I rather admired his pluck, but of course if my mother
had been another kind of woman it would have meant that we should have
broken with him. For my father, as all the world knew, had a great
prejudice against Roman Catholics, and Ludovic could not have done a
thing which would have annoyed him more.'
Cecily made no comment. Instead, she observed, diffidently, 'I will
certainly try and interest him in the Settlement. I have brought down
the new report.'
A delightful dimple came and went on Mrs. Robinson's curved cheek. 'I
think your spoken remarks,' she said seriously, 'will impress Ludovic
more than the new report; in fact, he would probably only pretend to
read it. Most people only pretend to read reports.'
She got up, and walked to the plain deal table where lay a half-finished
sketch of the flagged terrace and the pierced stone parapet; then she
opened the drawer where she kept various odds and ends connected with
her work.
'Tell me,' she said a little hurriedly, her face bent over the open
drawer as if seeking for something she had mislaid--'tell me, Cecily,
have you had any weddings at the Settlement? In my time there was much
marrying and giving in marriage.'
'So there is now.' Cecily was eager to prove that the Settlement was not
deteriorating. Even to her loyal heart there was something strange and
unsatisfactory in Mrs. Robinson's apparent lack of interest in the work
to which she devoted so considerable a share of her large income each
year. But often she would tell herself that it was natural that her
friend should shrink from mentioning, more than was necessary, the place
which had been so intimately bound up with the tragedy of her husband's
early and heroic death.
Cecily had never seen Melancthon Robinson, but she had of late been
constantly thrown in company with those over whom even his vanished
personality exercised an extraordinary influence. The fact that Penelope
had been his chosen coadjutor, that she was now, in spite of any
appearance to the contrary, his ever-mourning widow, was never absent
from the girl's mind. When the two young women were together this belief
added a touch of reverence to the affection with which Cecily regarded
her brilliant friend. And now she blushed with pleasure even to hear
this passing careless word of interest in the place and in the human
beings round whom she was now weaving so much innocent and practical
romance.
In her eagerness Cecily also got up, and stood on the other side of the
table, over whose open drawer Penelope was still bending. 'Perhaps you
remember the Tobutts--the man who got crushed by a barrel? Well, his
daughter, who is in my cooking class, is engaged to a very nice drayman.
She is such a good girl, and I----'
Penelope suddenly raised her head. She had at last found what she had
been seeking.
Cecily stopped speaking somewhat abruptly. She felt a little mortified,
a little injured, as we are all apt to do when we feel that we have been
talking to space, for Mrs. Robinson's face was filled with the spirit of
withdrawal. It often was so when anything reminded her of that fragment
of her past life to which she looked back with a sense of almost angry
amazement. And yet she had surely heard what her companion had been
saying--
'A good girl?' she repeated absently! then, hurrying over the words as
if anxious they should get themselves said and heard: 'I wish you to
give to her, or to some other girl you really like, and whose young man
you think well of, this wedding ring. Please don't say it comes from me.
And, Cecily, one thing more--you need not tell me to whom you have given
it.'
Poor Cecily! perhaps she was slow-witted, but no thought of the true
significance of the little incident crossed her mind. Mrs. Robinson was
famed among the workers of the Settlement for her odd, intelligent
little acts of kindness, accordingly a pretty romance somewhat in this
wise thistle-downed itself on the girl's brain: Characters--Penelope and
Poor Lady. Poor Lady--stress of poverty--having to part with cherished
possessions, has good luck to meet Mrs. Robinson who buys from her,
among other things--of course at a fancy price--her wedding-ring.
Remembering that gold wedding-rings are prized heirlooms in the
neighbourhood of the Settlement----
'It would greatly add to the value of the gift,' Cecily said shyly, 'if
I might say it came from you.'
'No, no, no!' Mrs. Robinson spoke with sharp decision; her blue eyes
narrowed and darkened in displeasure. 'My dear child, you don't
understand. Come!'--she made an effort to speak lightly, even
caressingly--'do not let us say anything more about it.' Then, looking
rather coldly into the other's startled eyes, she added: 'I have never
before known you wanting in _la politesse du coeur_. Haven't you heard
the expression before? No? Well, it was a famous Frenchman's definition
of tact.'
She laid her left hand on the girl's arm, and, as they moved together
towards the door, Cecily became aware that the hand lying on her arm was
ringless.