‘SUCH A LORD IS LOVE.’
NOTHING could be more perfect than that serenity which ruled the
domestic life of Penwyn Manor. The judgment which Maurice Clissold had
formed of that life, as seen from the outside, was fully confirmed by
its inner every-day aspect. Mr. and Mrs. Penwyn had no company manners.
They did not pose themselves before a stranger as model husband and
wife, and settle their small differences at their leisure in the
sanctuary of the lady’s dressing-room or the gentleman’s study. They had
no differences, but lived in each other and for each other.
Yet, so impossible is perfect happiness to erring mortality, even here
there was a hitch. Affection the most devoted, peace that knew not so
much as a summer cloud across its fair horizon—these there were
truly—but not quite happiness. Madge Penwyn had discovered somehow, by
some subtle power of intuition given to anxious wives, that the husband
she loved so fondly was not altogether happy, that he had his hours of
lassitude and depression, when the world seemed to him, like Hamlet’s
world, ‘out of joint,’—his dark moments, when even she had no spell that
could exorcise his demon.
Vainly she sought a cause for these changeful moods. Was he tired of
her? Had he mistaken his own feelings when he chose her for his wife?
No, even when most perplexed by his fitful spirits, she could not doubt
his love. That revealed itself with truth’s simple force. She knew him
well enough to know that his love for her was the diviner half of his
nature.
Once, on the eve of an event which was to complete the sacred circle of
their home life, when her nature was most sensitive, and she clung to
him with a pathetic dependence, Madge ventured to speak of her husband’s
intervals of gloom.
‘I’m afraid there is something wanting even in your life, Churchill,’
she said, gently, fearful lest she should touch some old wound—‘that you
are not quite happy at Penwyn.’
‘Not happy! My dear love, if I am not happy here, and with you, there is
no such thing as happiness for me. Why should I not be happy? I have no
wish unfulfilled, except perhaps some dim half-formed aspiration to make
my name famous—an idea with which most young men begin life, and which I
can well afford to let stand over for future consideration, while I make
the most of the present here with you.’
‘But, Churchill, you know that I would not stand between you and
ambition. You must know how more than proud any success of yours would
make me.’
‘Yes, dearest, and by and by I will put up for Seacomb, and try to make
a little character in the House, for your sake,’ replied Mr. Penwyn,
with a yawn. ‘It’s a wonderful thing how ambitious a man feels while he
has his living to win, and only his own wits to help him. Then, indeed,
the distant blast of Fame’s trumpet is a sound that wakes him early in
the morning, and keeps him at his post in the night watches. But then
fame means income, position, the world’s esteem, all the good things of
life. The penniless struggler knows he must be Cæsar or nothing. Give
the same man a comfortable estate like Penwyn, and fame becomes a mere
addendum to his life, an ornament which vanity may desire, but which
hardly weighs against the delight of idle days and nights that know not
care. In short, darling, since I won fortune and you I have grown
somewhat forgetful of the dreams I cherished when I was a struggling
bachelor.’
‘Is it regret for those old dreams that makes you so gloomy sometimes,
Churchill?’
‘I do not regret them. I regret nothing. I am not gloomy,’ said
Churchill, eagerly. ‘Never question my happiness, Madge. Joy is a spirit
too subtle to endure a doubter’s analysis. God forbid that you and I
should be otherwise than utterly happy. Oh, my dear love, never doubt
me; let us live for each other, and let me at least be sure that I have
made your life all sunshine.’
‘It has never known a cloud since our betrothal, Churchill; except when
I have thought you depressed and despondent.’
‘Neither depressed nor despondent, Madge, only thoughtful. A man whose
early days have been for the most part given up to thinking must have
his hours of thoughtfulness now and then. And perhaps my life here has
smacked a little too much of the Lotus Land. I must begin to look about
me, and take more interest in the estate,—in short, follow in the
footsteps of my worthy grandfather, the old Squire; as soon as I can add
the respectable name of father to my qualifications for the post.’
That time came before the sickle had been put to the last patch of corn
upon the uplands above Penwyn Manor. The halting bell of Penwyn Church
rang out its shrill peal one August morning, and the little world within
earshot of the Manor knew that the Squire rejoiced in the coming of his
firstborn. There were almost as many bonfires in the district that
summer night, outflaring the mellow harvest moon, as at Penzance on the
eve of St. John the Evangelist. The firstborn was a son, whose advent
the newspapers, local and metropolitan, duly recorded,—‘At Penwyn Manor,
August 25th, the wife of Churchill Penwyn, Esq., of a son (Nugent
Churchill).’ The new-comer’s names had been settled beforehand.
‘The sweet thing,’ exclaimed Lady Cheshunt, when she read the
announcement in the reading-room of a German Kursaal. ‘I feel as if she
had made me a grandmother.’
And Lady Cheshunt wrote straight off to her silversmith, and ordered him
to make the handsomest thing in christening cups, and sent a six-page
letter to Mrs. Penwyn by the same post, requesting, in a manner that
amounted to a command, that she might be represented by proxy as sponsor
to the infant.
The child’s coming gave new brightness to the domestic horizon. Viola
was in raptures. This young nephew was the first baby that had ever
entered into the sum of her daily life. She seemed to regard him as a
phenomenon; very much as grave fellows of the Zoological Society
regarded the first hippopotamus born in Regent’s Park.
Madge saw no more clouds on her husband’s brow after that gentle
remonstrance of hers. Indeed, he took pains to demonstrate his perfect
contentment. His naturally energetic character re-asserted itself. He
threw himself heart and soul into that one ambition of the old Squire,
the improvement and aggrandizement of the Penwyn estate. He made a fine
road across those lonely hills, and planted the land on both sides of it
with Scotch and Norwegian firs, wherever there was ground available for
plantation. The young groves arose, as if by magic, giving a new charm
to the face of the landscape, and a new source of revenue to the lord of
the soil. Mr. Penwyn also interested himself in the mining property, and
finding his agent an easy-going, incapable sort of person, took the
collection of the royalty into his own hands, much to the improvement of
his income. People shrugged their shoulders, and said that the new
Squire was just such another as ‘Old Nick,’ meaning the late Nicholas
Penwyn. But careful as he was of his own interests, Churchill did not
prove himself an illiberal landlord or a bad paymaster. Those
plantations and new roads of his gave employment enough to use up all
the available labour of the district, and impart new prosperity to the
neighbourhood. When he suggested an improvement to a tenant he was
always ready to assist in carrying it out. He renewed leases to good
tenants upon the easiest terms, but was merciless in the expulsion of
bad tenants. He was just one of those landlords who do most to improve
the condition of an estate and the people on it, and in Ireland would
inevitably have met with a violent death. The Celts of Western England
took matters more quietly, abused him a good deal, owned that he was the
right sort of man for the improvement of the soil, and submitted to fate
which had given them King Stork, rather than King Log, for their ruler.
When the election came on, Mr. Penwyn put himself into nomination for
Seacomb, and came in with flying colours. All the trading classes voted
for him, out of self-interest. He had spent more money in the town than
any one of his name had ever expended there. Madge’s popularity secured
the lower classes. Her schools were the admiration of the district, and
she was raising up a model village between Old Penwyn and the Manor
House. ‘Madge’s Folly,’ Mr. Penwyn called the pretty cluster of cottages
on the slope of the hill, but he allowed his wife to draw upon his
balance to any extent she pleased, and never grumbled at the builder’s
bills, or troubled her by suggesting that the money she was laying out
was likely to produce something less than two per cent.
So Churchill Penwyn wrote himself down M.P., and might be fairly
supposed to have conquered all good things which fortune could bestow
upon a deserving member of Burke’s Landed Gentry. He had a fair young
wife, who won love and honour from all who knew her. His infant heir was
esteemed a model of all that is most excellent in babyhood. His
sister-in-law believed in him as the most wonderful and admirable of
husbands and men. His estate prospered, his plantations grew and
flourished. The vast Atlantic itself was as a lake beneath his windows,
and seemed to call him lord. No cloud, were it but the bigness of a
man’s hand, obscured the brightness of his sky.
Mr. and Mrs. Penwyn spent their second season in town with greater
distinction than their first. More people were anxious to know them—more
exalted invitation cards showered in upon them, and Churchill, who had
been a successful man even in the days of his poverty, felt that he had
then only tasted the skimmed milk of success, and that this which was
offered to his lips to-day was the cream. There was a subtle difference
in the manner of his reception by the same world now-a-days. If he had
been only a country gentleman, with the ability to take a furnished
house in Belgravia, the difference might have been slight enough; or,
indeed, the advantage might have been on the side of the portionless
barrister, with his way to make in life, and his chances of success
before him. But Churchill’s maiden speech had been a success. He had
developed a special capacity for committees, had shown slow-going county
members how to get through their work in about one-fifth of the time
they had been in the habit of giving to it, had proved himself a master
of railway and mining economics—in a word, without noise, or bluster, or
assumption, had infused something of Transatlantic go-a-headishness into
all the business to which he put his hand. Men in high places marked him
as a young man worth cultivating, and thus, before the session was over,
Churchill Penwyn had tasted the firstfruits of parliamentary success.
Perhaps if ever a man went in danger of being spoiled by a wife
Churchill Penwyn was that man. Madge simply worshipped him. To hear him
praised, to see him honoured, was to her of all praise and honour the
highest. She shaped all the circumstances of her life to suit his
interest and his convenience; chose her acquaintance at his bidding,
would have given up the greatest party of the season to sit by his side
in the dingy Eton Square study, copying paragraphs out of a blue-book
for his use and advantage. Churchill, on his side, was careful not to
impose upon devotion so unselfish, and was never prouder than in
assisting at his wife’s small social triumphs. He chose the colours of
her dresses, and took as much interest in her toilet as in the state of
the mining market. He never seemed so happy as in those rare evenings
which he contrived to spend alone with Madge, or in hearing some
favourite opera with her, and going quietly home afterwards to a snug
little _tête-à-tête_ supper, while Viola was dancing to her heart’s
content under the wing of some good-natured chaperon, like Lady
Cheshunt.
That friendly dowager was enraptured with her _protégée’s_ domestic
life.
‘My sweet love, you renew one’s belief in Arcadia,’ she exclaimed to
Madge, after her enthusiastic fashion. ‘I positively must buy you a
crook and a lamb or two to lead about with blue ribbons. You are the
simplest of darlings. To see how you worship that husband of yours puts
me in mind of Baucis and what’s-his-name, and all that kind of thing.
And to think that I should have taken such trouble to warn you against
this very man! But then who could imagine that young Penwyn would have
been so good-natured as to die?’
‘When are you coming to see me at the Manor, Lady Cheshunt?’ asked
Madge, laughing at her friend’s raptures. ‘You can form no fair idea of
my domestic happiness in London. You must see me at home in my Arcadia,
with my crook and flock.’
‘You dear child! I shall certainly come in August.’
‘I’m so glad. You must be sure to come before the twenty-fifth. That’s
Nugent’s birthday, you know, and I mean to give a pastoral _fête_ in
honour of the occasion, and you will see all my cottagers and their
children, and the rough miners, and discover what a curious kingdom we
reign over in the West.’
‘My dearest love, I detest poor people, and tenants, and cottagers—but I
shall come to see _you_.’
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