‘A MERRIER HOUR WAS NEVER WASTED THERE.’
AUGUST came—a real August—with cloudless blue skies, and scorching
noontides, and a brief storm now and then to clear the atmosphere. The
yellow corn-fields basked in the sun’s hot rays, scarce stirred to a
ripple by the light summer air. The broad Atlantic seemed placid as that
great jasper sea men picture in their dreams of heaven. The pine trees
stood up straight and dark and tall and solemn against a background of
azure sky. Ocean’s wide waste of waters brought no sense of coolness to
the parched wayfarer, for all that vast expanse glowed like burnished
gold beneath the splendour of the sun-god. The road across the purple
moor glared whitely between its fringe of plantations, and the
flower-gardens at Penwyn Manor made patches of vivid colour in the
distance. The birthday of the heir had come and gone, with many
bonfires, sky-rockets, much rejoicing of tenants and peasantry, eating
and drinking, bounties to the poor, speechifying, and general
exultation. At twelve months old Churchill Penwyn’s heir, if not quite
the paragon his parents and his aunt believed him, was fairly worth some
amount of rejoicing. He was a sturdy, broad-shouldered little fellow,
with chestnut locks cut straight across his wide, fair forehead, and
large blue eyes, dark, and sweet, and truthful, a loving,
generous-hearted little soul, winning the love of all creatures—from the
grave, thoughtful father who secretly worshipped him, to the kitten that
rolled itself into a ball of soft white fur in his baby lap.
The general rejoicings for tenants and cottagers, the public
celebration, as it were, of the infant’s first anniversary, being
happily over, with satisfaction to all—even to the Irish reapers, who
were regaled with supper and unlimited whisky punch in one of the big
barns—Mrs. Penwyn turned her attention to more refined assemblies. Lady
Cheshunt was at Penwyn, and had avowed herself actually charmed with the
gathering of the vulgar herd.
‘My dear, they are positively refreshing in their absolute _naïveté_,’
she exclaimed, when she talked over the day’s proceedings with Madge and
Viola in Mrs. Penwyn’s dressing-room. ‘To see the colours they wear, and
the unsophisticated width of their boots, and scantiness of their
petticoats, and the way they perspire, and get ever so red in the face
without seeming to mind it; and the primitive way they have of looking
really happy—it is positively like turning over a new leaf in the book
of life. And when one can see it all without any personal exertion,
sitting under a dear old tree and drinking iced claret cup—how admirably
your people make claret cup!—it is intensely refreshing.’
‘I hope you will often turn over new leaves, then, dear Lady Cheshunt,’
Madge answered, smiling.
‘And on Thursday you are going to give a dinner party, and show me the
genteel aborigines, the country people; benighted creatures who have no
end of quarterings on their family shields, and never wear a decently
cut gown, and drive horses that look as if they had been just taken from
the plough.’
‘I don’t know that our Cornish friends are quite so lost in the night of
ages as you suppose them,’ said Madge, laughing. ‘Brunel has brought
them within a day’s journey of civilization, you know. They may have
their gowns made in Bond Street without much trouble.’
‘Ah, my love, these are people who go to London once in three years, I
dare say. Why, to miss a single season in town is to fall behind one’s
age; one’s ideas get mouldy and moss-grown; one’s sleeves look as if
they had been made in the time of George the Third. To keep abreast with
the march of time one must be at one’s post always. One might as well be
the sleeping beauty at once, and lose a hundred years, as skip the
London season. I remember one year that I was out of health, and those
tiresome doctors sent me to spend my spring and summer in Germany. When
I came to London in the following March, I felt like Rip Van Winkle. I
hardly remembered the names of the Ministry, or the right use of
asparagus tongs. However, sweet child, I shall be amused to see your
county people.’
The county families assembled a day or two afterwards, and proved not
unintelligent, as Lady Cheshunt confessed afterwards, though their talk
was for the most part local, or of field sports. The ladies talked
chiefly of their neighbours. Not scandal by any means. That would have
been most dangerous; for they could hardly have spoken of any one who
was not related by cousinship or marriage with somebody present. But
they talked of births, and marriages, and deaths, past or to come; of
matrimonial engagements, of children, of all simple, social, domestic
subjects; all which Lady Cheshunt listened to wonderingly. The flavour
of it was to the last degree insipid to the metropolitan worldling. It
was like eating whitebait without cayenne or lemon—whitebait that tasted
only of frying-pan and batter. The young ladies talked about curates,
point lace, the penny readings of last winter, amateur concerts, new
music—ever so old in London—and the school children; or, grouped round
Viola, listened with awful interest to her descriptions of the season’s
dissipations—the balls, and flower shows, and races, and regattas she
had assisted at, the royal personages she had beheld, the various _on
dits_ current in London society about those royal personages, so fresh
and sparkling, and, if not true, at least possessing a richness of
detail that seemed like truth. Viola was eminently popular among the
younger branches of the county families. The sons played croquet and
billiards with her, the daughters copied the style of her dresses, and
chose their new books and music at her recommendation. Mrs. Penwyn was
popular with all—matrons and maidens, elderly squires and
undergraduates, rich and poor. She appealed to the noblest and widest
feelings of human nature, and not to love her would have been to be
indifferent to virtue and sweetness.
This first dinner after the return to Penwyn Manor was more or less of a
state banquet. The Manor House put forth all its forces. The great
silver-gilt cups, and salvers, and ponderous old wine-coolers, and
mighty venison dishes, a heavy load for a strong man, emerged from their
customary retirement in shady groves of green baize. The buffet was set
forth as at a royal feast; the long dinnertable resembled a dwarf forest
of stephanotis and tremulous dewy-looking fern. The closed venetians
excluded the glow of a crimson sunset, yet admitted evening’s refreshing
breeze. The many tapers twinkled with a tender subdued radiance. The
moon-like Silber lamps on the sideboard and mantel-piece gave a tone of
coolness to the room. The women in their gauzy dresses, with family
jewels glittering star-like upon white throats and fair round arms, or
flashing from coils of darkest hair, completed the pleasant picture.
Churchill Penwyn looked down the table with his quiet smile.
‘After all, conventional, commonplace, as this sort of thing may be, it
gives one an idea of power,’ he thought, in his half-cynical way, ‘and
is pleasant enough for the moment. Sardanapalus, with a nation of slaves
under his heel, could only have enjoyed the same kind of sensation on a
larger scale.’
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