“LIES NOTHING BURIED LONG AGO?”
Like most small country settlements, little fraternities of well-to-do
people who think themselves the beginning and end of the world,
Trelasco was slow to rise to any festivity in the way of party-giving.
So it was about two months after Colonel Disney’s return before
the friendly calls and interchange of small civilities culminated
in a dinner-party at Glenaveril. It seemed, indeed, only right and
natural that the great house of the district, great by reason of Lord
Lostwithiel’s non-residence, should be the first to open its doors in a
ceremonial manner to the colonel and his womankind. The invitation to
his sister might be taken as an especial compliment, arms outstretched
to receive one who was a stranger in the land.
“We want to know that nice, young sister of yours,” Mr. Crowther said
to Colonel Disney, in his patronizing way, as they all came out of
church the Sunday before the dinner-party. “A remarkably fine girl.”
The colonel did not thank him for this compliment, which was pronounced
in a loud voice, amidst the little knot of acquaintances taking leave
of each other on the dip of the hill, where there was a sign-post on a
patch of waste grass, and where road and lanes divided, one up the hill
to Tywardreath, another to Fowey, and a narrow-wooded lane leading down
to Glenaveril and the Angler’s Nest. Short as the distance was, there
were carriages waiting for the Crowthers, who never walked to church,
however fine the weather. Mrs. Crowther came to the morning service
resplendent in a brocade gown and a Parisian bonnet, on pain of being
condemned as dowdy by her husband, who liked to put the stamp of his
wealth upon every detail. His wife obeyed him with wifely meekness, but
the daughters were not so easily ruled. Both were keen-witted enough to
feel the vulgarity of Sunday morning splendour. So Belinda worshipped
in the exaggerated simplicity of an unstarched jaconet muslin, a yellow
Liberty sash, a flopping Gainsborough hat, and a necklace of Indian
beads, an attire which attracted every eye, and was a source of wonder
to the whole congregation, while Alicia’s neat grey cashmere frock,
and smart little toque to match, grey gloves, grey Prayer-book and
sunshade, challenged criticism as a study in monochrome.
Mr. Crowther would have lingered for farther conversation before
getting into the family landau, but Colonel Disney bade a rather abrupt
good morning to the whole group, and hurried his wife and sister down
the hill.
“I’m rather sorry we accepted the Glenaveril invitation,” he said to
Isola. “The man is such an unmitigated cad.”
“Mrs. Crowther is very kind and good,” replied his wife; “but I have
never cared much about going to Glenaveril. I don’t feel that I get on
particularly well with the girls. They are both too fine for me. But I
should be sorry to offend Mrs. Crowther.”
“Yes, she seems a kindly creature. It was thoughtful of her sending you
a ticket for the ball. A woman with daughters is seldom over-kind to
outsiders.”
“Oh, I believe Mrs. Crowther’s heart is big enough to be kind to a
whole parish.”
“Well, on her account, perhaps it was best to accept the invitation.”
“Don’t be so grand about it, Martin,” said Allegra. “You forget that
I am pining to see what a dinner-party in a very rich house is like.
I have seen nothing in London but literary and artistic dinners,
third-rate literary and third-rate artistic, I’m afraid--but they were
very nice, all the same. Glenaveril is a place that takes my breath
away; and I am curious to see what a dinner-party can be like there.”
“Then for your sake, Allegra, I’m glad we said yes. Only I couldn’t
stand that fellow patronizing you. Calling you a fine girl, forsooth!”
“Yes, it is an odious phrase, is it not? I’m afraid I shall have to
live through it, because, like Rosalind, ‘I am more than common tall.’”
She drew herself up to her full height, straight as a reed, but with
fully developed bust and shoulders which showed to advantage in her
pale tussore gown--silk that her brother had sent her from India. She
looked the incarnation of girlish innocence and girlish happiness--a
brow without a cloud, a step light as a fawn’s--a fearless, joyous
nature. Her more commonplace features and finer figure were in
curious contrast with Isola’s pensive beauty and too fragile form.
Disney glanced from one to the other as he walked along the rustic
lane between them; and, though he thought his wife the lovelier, he
regretted that she was not more like his sister.
* * * * *
A man who is very fond of home and who has no professional cares and
occupations is apt to degenerate into a molly-coddle. Martin Disney
gave an indication of this weakness on the day before the dinner at
Glenaveril.
“What are you two girls going to wear?” he asked. “At least, I don’t
think I need ask Isola that question. You’ll wear your wedding-gown, of
course, love?” he added, turning to his wife.
“No, Martin, I am going to wear my grey silk.”
“Grey! A dowager’s colour, a soured spinster’s colour--a Quaker’s no
colour. I detest grey.”
“Oh, but this is a very pretty gown--the palest shade of pearl
colour--and I wear pink roses with it. It was made in Paris. I feel
sure you will like me in it, Martin,” Isola said hurriedly, as if even
this small matter fluttered her nerves.
“Not as well as I like you in your wedding-gown. That was made in
Paris, and it fitted you like a glove. I never saw such a pretty
gown--so simple, yet so elegant.”
“I have been married much too long to dress as a bride.”
“You shall not seem as a bride--except to me. For my eyes only shall
you shine in bridal loveliness. Bride or no bride, what can be prettier
for a young woman than a white satin gown with a long train? You can
wear some touch of colour to show you have not got yourself up as a
bride. What do you say, Allegra? Give us your opinion. Of course you
are an authority upon dress.”
“Oh, the white satin, by all means. Isola looks ethereal in white. She
ought hardly ever to wear anything else.”
“You hear, Isa. Two to one against you.”
“I’m sorry I can’t be governed by your opinions in this instance. You
forget that I last wore my gown at a ball. I danced a good deal--the
floor was dirty--the gown was spoilt. I shall never wear it again. I
hope that will satisfy you, Martin.”
She spoke with a touch of temper, her cheeks flushed crimson, and
her eyes filled with sudden tears as she looked deprecatingly at her
husband. Martin Disney felt himself a brute.
“My dearest, I didn’t mean to tease you,” he said; “wear anything you
like. You are sure to be the prettiest woman in the room. I am sorry
the gown was spoilt; but it can’t be helped. I’ll buy you another white
satin gown the first time you and I are in Plymouth together. And,
pray, Miss Allegra, what bravery will you sport?”
“I have only a white lace frock that has seen some service,” replied
his sister, meekly. “I dare say I shall look like somebody’s poor
relation at such a place as Glenaveril.”
“Oh, it’s not to be a grand party, by any means. Mrs. Crowther told me
she had asked the Baynhams and the Vicarage people to meet us, just in
a friendly way.”
The party was decidedly small, for on arriving with reasonable
punctuality the Disneys found only one guest on the scene, in the
person of Mr. Colfox, the curate, who was sitting by one of the little
tables, showing a new puzzle of two pieces of interlinked iron to the
two Misses Crowther. These young ladies were so interested in the trick
of disentanglement that they scarcely noticed the entrance of their
mother’s guests, and only rose and came over to greet the party three
minutes later, as an afterthought.
Mr. and Mrs. Crowther, however, were both upon the alert to receive
their friends, the lady frankly cordial, the gentleman swelling with
pompous friendliness, as if his manly breast were trying to emerge from
the moderate restriction of a very open waistcoat. He protested that
he was charmed to welcome Colonel Disney to Glenaveril, and he glanced
round the splendid walls as who should say, “It is no light thing to
invite people to such a house as this.”
Vansittart Crowther was a man of short, squat figure, who tried to make
up for the want of inches by extreme uprightness, and had cultivated
this carriage until he seemed incapable of bending. He had a bald
head, disguised by one dappled streak of grey and sandy hair, which
was plastered into a curl on each side of his brow--curls faintly
suggestive of a cat’s ears. He had blunt features, a sensual lip, and
dull, fishy eyes, large and protuberant, with an expression in perfect
harmony with the heavy, sensual mouth.
Mr. and Mrs. Baynham were the next arrivals; the lady wearing the
family amethysts and the well-known black velvet, under whose weighty
splendour she arrived short of breath; the gentleman expansive of shirt
front, and genial of aspect, jovial at the prospect of a good dinner
and choice wines, and not hypercritical as to the company in which he
ate the feast. He shook hands with his host and hostess, and then
went over to the Misses Crowther, who had not thought it necessary to
suspend their absorbing occupation in order to welcome the village
doctor’s wife--a fact which Mrs. Baynham observed and inwardly resented.
Mr. Colfox deserted the young ladies, still puzzling over the two
bits of iron, and went across the room to greet the Disneys. He was
an intelligent young man, steeped to the lips in the opinions and the
prejudices of university life--Oxford life, that is to say. He ranked
as a literary man in Trelasco, on the strength of having had an article
almost published in Blackwood. “The editor had accepted my paper,” he
told people modestly; “but on further consideration he found it was a
little too long, and so, in point of fact, he sent it back to me in the
most courteous manner. He couldn’t have acted more kindly--but I was
disappointed. It would have been such an opening, you see.”
All Mr. Colfox’s friends agreed that with such an opening the high road
to literary fame and fortune would have been made smooth for his feet.
They respected him even for this disappointment. To have been accepted
by Blackwood made him almost a colleague of George Eliot.
He was a tall and rather lean young man, who wore an eye-glass, and
seemed to live upon books. It was irritating to Vansittart Crowther,
who prided himself on his cellar and his cook, to note how little
impression food and drink made upon Francis Colfox.
“He takes my Château Yquem as if it were Devonshire cider,” said the
aggrieved parvenu, “and he hardly seems to know that this is the only
house where he ever sees clear turtle. The man’s people must have lived
in a very poor way.”
In spite of this contemptuous opinion, Mr. Crowther was always polite
to Francis Colfox, and had even thought of him as a _pis-aller_ for
one of his daughters. There is hardly anything in this life which a
self-made man respects so much as race, and Francis Colfox belonged to
an old county family, had a cousin who was an earl, and another cousin
who was talked of as a probable bishop. He was, therefore, allowed to
make himself very much at home at Glenaveril, and to speak his mind in
a somewhat audacious way to the whole family.
Captain Pentreath, an army man of uncertain age, a bachelor, and one
of a territorial family of many brothers, came next; and then appeared
the vicar and his wife and one daughter, who made up the party. The
vicar was deaf, but amiable, and beamed benevolently upon a world about
whose spoken opinions he knew so little that he might naturally have
taken it for a much better world than it is. The vicar’s wife spent her
existence in interpreting and explaining people’s speech to the vicar,
and had no time to spare for opinions of her own. The daughter was
characterized by a gentle nullity, tempered by a somewhat enthusiastic
and evangelical piety. The chief desire of her life was to keep the
Church as it had been in the days of her childhood, nearly thirty years
before.
It was the first time the Disneys had dined together at Glenaveril, so
it seemed only proper that Mr. Crowther should give his arm to Isola,
which he did with an air of conferring an honour. The colonel had been
ordered to take the vicar’s wife, and the doctor was given to Allegra;
Captain Pentreath took Miss Trequite, the vicar’s daughter; Mr. Colfox
followed with Mrs. Baynham, and the daughters of the house went
modestly to the dining-room after the vicar and Mrs. Crowther.
The dinner-table was as pretty as roses and Venetian glass could
make it. There was no pompous display of ponderous plate, as there
might have been thirty years ago on a parvenu’s board. Everybody
is enlightened nowadays. The great “culture” movement has been as
widespread among the middle class as compulsory education among the
proletariat, and everybody has “a taste.” Scarcely were they seated,
when Mr. Crowther informed Mrs. Disney that he hated a display of
silver, but at the same time took care to let her know that the
Venetian glass she admired was rather more valuable than that precious
metal. “And if it’s broken, there’s nothing left you for your outlay,”
he said; “but it’s a fancy of my wife and girls. Those decanters are
better than anything Salviati ever made for Royalty.”
The table was oval, lighted by one large lamp, under an umbrella-shaped
amber shade, a lamp which diffused a faint golden glow through the
dusky room; and through this dreamy dimness the footmen moved like
ghosts, while the table and the faces of the diners shone and sparkled
in the brilliant light. It was as picturesque a dining-room and table
as one need care to see; and if the Gainsboroughs and Reynoldses, which
here and there relieved the sombre russet of the Cordovan leather
hangings, were not the portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Crowther’s ancestors,
they were not the less lovely or interesting as works of art.
Isola sat by her host’s side, with a silent and somewhat embarrassed
air, which her husband noted as he watched her from the other side of
the table.
All the decorations were low, so that no pyramid of fruit or flowers
intervened to prevent a man watching the face opposite to him. Disney
saw that while Allegra, in her place between Mr. Baynham and Alicia
Crowther, was full of talk and animation, Isola sat with downcast eyes,
and replied with a troubled look to her host’s remarks. There was
something in that gentleman’s manner which was particularly obnoxious
to the colonel--a protecting air, a fatherly familiarity, which brought
the bald, shining forehead almost in contact with Isola’s shoulder, as
the man bent to whisper and to titter in the very ear of his neighbour.
The colonel got through a little duty talk with Mrs. Trequite, whose
attention was frequently distracted by the necessity of explaining
Mrs. Crowther’s polite murmurs to the vicar on the other side of the
table; and this duty done he gave himself up to watching Isola and her
host. Why did she blush so when the man talked to her? Was it the bold
admiration of those fishy eyes which annoyed her, or the man’s manner
altogether; or was it anything that he said? Disney strained his ears
to hear their conversation, if that could be called conversation which
was for the most part monologue.
The man was talking of the Hunt Ball of last winter. Disney heard such
snatches of speech as “the prettiest woman in the room,” “everybody
said so,” “Lostwithiel was evidently _épris_.”
Mr. Crowther had a penchant for scraps of French, which decorated his
speech as truffles adorn a boned turkey.
“Isn’t it odd that he should be such a rover?” he asked, in a less
confidential tone than before.
Isola looked up at him, as if hardly understanding the question.
“I mean Lostwithiel. With such a nice place as he has here, it seems a
pity to be broiling himself in Peru. I never could understand the taste
for orchids; and in his case--well, I hardly believe in it. He is the
last man to emulate a Hooker or a Lawrence. Orchid-hunting must be an
excuse for keeping away from England, I take it. Don’t you think so,
now, Mrs. Disney?”
“I really don’t know.”
“You don’t know why he should want to keep away? No, no more does
anybody else. Only we all wonder, don’t you know. He talked to me of
settling down in the county--looking after the estate a little. He
even hinted that he might, in due course, cast about for a nice young
wife--with a little money. And then all of a sudden off he sails in
that rakish yacht of his, and roves from port to port like the Flying
Dutchman in the Opera, till at last we hear of him on the coast of
Peru. Curious, ain’t it, Mrs. Disney?”
“Why curious?” asked Isola, coldly. “Was not Lord Lostwithiel always
fond of yachting?”
“No doubt; but when a man talks of settling down in his native
place--and then doesn’t do it--there must be a reason, mustn’t there?”
“I don’t know. People act as often from caprice as from reason.”
“Ah, that is a lady’s idea. No man who is worthy the name ever acts
from caprice,” said Mr. Crowther, with his insinuating air, as if some
hidden meaning were in the words, and then looking across the table and
seeing the colonel’s watchful face, he altered both tone and manner as
he added, “Of course you know Lostwithiel, Colonel Disney?”
“I saw a good deal of Lord Lostwithiel when he was a small boy,”
answered the colonel, coldly. “His father was one of my early friends.
But that is a long time ago.”
“How old is he, do you say?”
“Debrett will answer that question better than I can. I have never
reckoned the years that have gone by since I saw him in an Eton collar.”
The men did not sit long over their wine. The doctor and his host
talked agriculture, Mr. Crowther discussing all farming operations
upon a large scale as became a man of territorial magnitude. The vicar
prosed about an approaching lecture at the schoolroom, and utterly
failed in hearing anything that was said in reply to his observations.
Colonel Disney smoked a cigarette in silence, and with a moody brow.
Later, in the drawing-room, while the Crowther girls were playing a
clamorous duet, by the last fashionable Sclavonic composer, Vansittart
Crowther directed his conversation almost wholly to Mrs. Disney, as
if she were the only person worthy of his attention. He was full
of suggestions for future gaieties in which the Disneys were to
share--picnics, boating parties.
“You must help us to wake up the neighbourhood, colonel,” he said,
addressing Disney, with easy friendliness.
“We are not very likely to be of much assistance to you in that line,”
Disney answered coldly. “We are quiet stay-at-home people, my wife and
I, and take our pleasures on a very small scale.”
Colonel Disney’s carriage was announced at this moment. He gave his
wife a look which plainly indicated his wish to depart, and she rose
quickly from the low, deep chair in which she had been sitting, in
some manner a captive, while Mr. Crowther lolled across the broad,
plush-cushioned arm to talk to her. Allegra was engrossed in a talk
about William Morris’s last poem with Mr. Colfox, who was delighted
to converse with any one fresh from the far-away world of art and
literature--delighted altogether with Allegra, whose whole being
presented a piquant contrast to the Miss Crowthers. But the colonel’s
sister saw the movement towards departure, and hastened to her
brother’s side. Briefest adieux followed, and the first of the guests
being gone, left behind them a feeling of uneasiness in those whose
carriages had been ordered half an hour later. One premature departure
will cast a blight upon your small dull party; whereas from a scene of
real mirth the nine Muses and three Graces might all slip away unmissed
and unobserved.