From Scarborough we had gone up to the Highlands, spending a fortnight
at Grantown, a week at Blair Atholl, returning south through Callander
and the Trossachs--one of the most glorious autumns I had ever spent.
Ours was now a peaceful, uneventful life, careless of the morrow, and
filled with perfect love and concord. I adored my young beautiful
wife, and I envied no man.
I had crushed down all feelings of misgivings that had hitherto so
often arisen within me, for I felt confident in Sylvia's affection.
She lived only for me, possessing me body and soul.
Not a pair in the whole of England loved each other with a truer or
more fervent passion. Our ideas were identical, and certainly I could
not have chosen a wife more fitted for me--even though she rested
beneath such a dark cloud of suspicion.
I suppose some who read this plain statement of fact will declare me
to have been a fool. But to such I would reply that in your hearts the
flame of real love has never yet burned. You may have experienced what
you have fondly believed to have been love--a faint flame that has
perhaps flickered for a time and, dying out, has long been forgotten.
Only if you have really loved a woman--loved her with that
all-consuming passion that arises within a man once in his whole
lifetime when he meets his affinity, can you understand why I made
Sylvia my wife.
I had the car brought up to meet us in Perth, and with it Sylvia and I
had explored all the remotest beauties of the Highlands. We ran up as
far north as Inverness, and around to Oban, delighting in all the
beauties of the heather-clad hills, the wild moors, the autumn-tinted
glades, and the broad unruffled lochs. Afterwards we went round the
Trossachs and motored back to London through Carlisle, the Lakes,
North Wales and the Valley of the Wye, the most charming of all
motor-runs in England.
Afterwards, Sylvia wanted to do some shopping, and we went over to
Paris for ten days. There, while at the Meurice, her father, who
chanced to be passing through Paris on his way from Brussels to Lyons,
came unexpectedly one evening and dined with us in our private salon.
Pennington was just as elegant and epicurean as ever. He delighted in
the dinner set before him, the hotel, of course, being noted for its
cooking.
That evening we were a merry trio. I had not seen my father-in-law
since the morning of our marriage, when I had called, and found him
confined to his bed. Therefore we had both a lot to relate to him
regarding our travels.
"I, too, have been moving about incessantly," he remarked, as he
poised his wine-glass in his hand, regarding the colour of its
contents. "I was in Petersburg three weeks ago. I'm interested in some
telegraph construction works there. We've just secured a big
Government contract to lay a new line across Siberia."
"I've written to you half-a-dozen times," remarked his daughter, "but
you never replied."
"I've never had your letters, child," he said. "Where did you address
them?"
"Two I sent to the Travellers' Club, here. Another I sent to the Hôtel
de France, in Petersburg."
"Ah! I was at the Europe," he laughed. "I find their cooking better.
Their sterlet is even better than the Hermitage at Moscow. Jules, the
chef, was at Cubat's, in the Nevski, for years."
Pennington always gauged a hotel by the excellence of its chef. He
told us of tiny obscure places in Italy which he knew, where the rooms
were carpetless and comfortless, but where the cooking could vie with
the Savoy or Carlton in London. He mentioned the Giaponne in Leghorn,
the Tazza d'Oro in Lucca, and the Vapore in Venice, of all three of
which I had had experience, and I fully corroborated what he said. He
was a man who ate his strawberries with a quarter of a liqueur-glass
of maraschino thrown over them, and a slight addition of pepper, and
he always mixed his salads himself.
"Perhaps you think me very whimsical," he laughed across the table,
"but really, good cooking makes so much difference to life."