money to buy a motor-car, and go tearing about the world at great
expense, to gratify two little black or blue holes in his face; and
then, instead of letting the holes thoroughly absorb his money's worth,
he will rush past some of the best things on earth rather than 'spoil a
run.'" But she doesn't take the intoxication of ozone into consideration
in this indictment.
Our road was of the best, and always interesting, with some fine distant
views, and here and there an avenue of trees like a vast Gothic aisle in
a cathedral. "We could see things so nicely if it weren't for the
mists!" sighed Emily, who, if her wish had been a broom, would have
ruthlessly swept away those lacy cobwebs clinging to the hill-sides.
"Why," replied Ellaline, "you could see a bride's face more clearly if
you took away her veil, but it's the prettiest thing about her." That
put my feelings in a nutshell. England would be no bride for me if she
threw away her veil; and nowhere did it become her more than in Dorset,
Somerset, and Devon, where it is threaded with gold and embroidered with
jewels toward the edge of sunset.
Of course, there's only the most fanciful dividing line between Somerset
and Devon, yet I imagine the two counties different in their attributes,
as well as in their graces. Surely in Somerset the Downs are on a
grander scale. Between two of them you are in a valley, and think that
you see mountains. In Devonshire you have wider horizons, save for the
lanes and hedges, which do their best to keep straying eyes fastened on
their own beauty.
I suppose men who never have left England take such beauty for granted,
but to me, after the flaunting luxuriance of the East, it is enchanting.
I notice everything. I want someone, who cares for it as I do, to admire
it with me. If it weren't for Dick Burden this England would be making
me twenty-one again.
You should see, to understand me, all the lovely things fighting
sportively for supremacy in these Devonshire hedges; the convolvulus
pretending to throttle the honeysuckle; the honeysuckle shaking creamy
fists in the faces of roses that push out, blushing in the starlight of
wild clematis, white and purple. Such gentle souls, these Devonshire
roses! Kind and innocent, like the sweet, sentimental "Evelinas" of
old-fashioned stories, yet full of health, and tingling with buds, as a
young girl with fancies.
Devonshire seems to express herself in flowers, as sterner counties do
in trees and rocks. Even the children one meets playing in the road are
flowers. They are to the pretty cottages what the sweetbriar is to the
hedges; and no background could be daintier for the little human
blossoms than those same thatched cottages with open, welcoming doors.
Ellaline, fascinated by glimpses through open doors--(old oak dressers
set with blue and white china; ancient clocks with peering moon-faces;
high-backed chairs; bright flowers in gilt vases on gate-legged tables,
all obscurely seen through rich brown shadows)--says she would like to
live in such a cottage with somebody she loved. Who will that somebody
be? I constantly wonder. I should think less of her if it could be Dick
Burden, or one of his type, yet Mrs. Senter hints that the girl likes
his society. _Can_ she?
We had a picnic luncheon on our way to Sidmouth, lingering rather long
(once you have stopped your motor, nothing matters. If you're happy, you
are as reluctant to go on as you are to stop when going). Then, as they
all wished to travel by moonlight, I suggested that dinner also should
be a picnic. We bought food and drink at Honiton, and the country being
exquisite between there and Sidmouth, we soon found a moss-carpeted,
tree-roofed dining-room, fit for an emperor. Nearby glimmered a sheet of
blue-bells, like a blue underground lake that had broken through and
flooded the meadow. Ellaline said she would like to wash her face in it,
as if in a fairy cosmetic, to make her "beautiful forever." I really
don't believe she knows that would be superfluous trouble! And a fairy
godmother has given her the gift of song. I wish you could hear her
sing, Pat. I have heard her only once; but if I hadn't been a fool
already, I'd have become one then, beyond recall.
So we sat there, on the still, blue brink of twilight, till the moon
rose red as a molten helmet, and cooled to a silver bowl as she sailed
higher, dripping light. But tell me this: Would I think of such similes
if I weren't like a man who has eaten hasheesh and filled his brain with
a fantastic tumult--a magical vision of romance, such as his heart never
knew in its youth, never can know except in visions, now that youth has
passed? There's joy as well as pain in the vision, though, I can tell
you, as there must be in any mirage. And it was in a mirage of moonlight
and mystery that we took up our journey again, after that second picnic,
swooping bird-like, from hill to valley, on our way to the Knoll Park
Hotel.
It's an historic place, by the way, with an interesting past--once it
was a country house belonging to an eccentric gentleman--and at present
it is extremely ornamental among its lawns and Lebanon cedars.
As for Sidmouth the town, you have but to enter it to feel that you are
walking in a quaint old coloured lithograph--one of the
eighteenth-century sort, you know, that the artist invariably dedicated,
with extravagant humility, to a marquis, if he didn't know a duke!
There's no architecture whatever. As far as that is concerned, children
might have built the original village of Sidmouth as they sat playing on
the beach; but the queer cottages, with their low brows of
mouse-coloured thatch, protruding amid absurd battlements, have a
fantastic charm. They are most engaging, with their rustic-framed
bow-windows, like surprised-looking eyes in spectacles; their green
veranda-eyebrows, and their smiling, yellow-stucco faces, with low
foreheads. The house where Queen Victoria stopped as a little girl is a
great show place, of course, and is like a toy flung down against a
cushiony hillside, a battlemented doll's house, forgotten by the child
who let it fall, while big trees grew up and tried to hide it.
Two cliffs has Sidmouth, and an innocent esplanade, and--that is about
all, except the toy town itself. But it's a place to stay in. A happy
man would never tire of it, I think. An unhappy one might prefer
Brighton--or Monte Carlo. I am neither one nor the other. So I prefer a
motor-car. We are on the wing again to-morrow.
I must now go to our sitting-room, which looks over the sea, and play a
rubber of bridge with Mrs. Senter, Emily, and Burden. Ellaline doesn't
play.
Hope I haven't bored you with my Burden, and other complaints.
Yours ever,
Pen.
_Later, August 2nd, Night_
I have opened my letter again, to tell you what came of that rubber of
bridge.
I've lost--all the glamour. The reaction after the hasheesh has set in.
We didn't play long. Just that one rubber, and before we finished
Ellaline had taken her copy of "Lorna Doone" upstairs to her own room,
without interrupting our game for a good-night. She didn't think we saw
her go; but there were two of us who did. Burden was one of the two. I
don't need to tell you who the other fool was.
Mrs. Senter and I were partners, as we generally are, if there's any
bridge going in the evening. She's devoted to the game, and it's always
she who proposes it. I would generally prefer to fag up our route for
next day with guide-books and road-maps. But hosts, like beggars, can't
be "choosers."
Well, to-night Emily and Burden had all the cards, and Burden wanted a
second rubber, but his aunt doesn't like losing her money to her nephew,
even though we play for childishly low stakes. She said she "knew that
Mrs. Norton was tired," and Emily didn't deny the soft impeachment, as
she plays bridge in the same way she would do district visiting during
an epidemic of measles--because it is her duty.
Dick had the latest French imitation of Sherlock Holmes to read, and a
box of Egyptian cigarettes to smoke (mine), which he evidently thinks
too young for me. Emily had some embroidery, which I seem to remember
that she began when I was a boy, and kept religiously to do in hotels.
(But what is there that my good sister does, which she does not do
religiously?) Mrs. Senter had nothing to amuse or occupy her--except
your humble servant--consequently she suggested a stroll in the garden
before bedtime.
She was almost beautiful in the moonlight, quite ethereal-looking, and
her hair a nimbus for that small white face of hers; just as small, just
as white, and just as smooth as when those big eyes used to look up into
our eyes under an Indian moon. And she is always agreeable, always
witty, or at least "smart." Still, I must confess that I was ungallantly
absent-minded until something she said waked me up from a brown study.
"He really _is_ a nice boy," she was saying, "and after all, it's a
tribute to your distinguished qualities that he should be afraid to
speak to you."
I guessed at once that she must have been talking of her nephew.
"What is he afraid to say to me?" I enquired.
"Afraid to ask you for Miss Lethbridge," she explained.
I think just about that time an ugly black eyelid shut down over the
moon. Anyhow, the world darkened for me.
"Isn't it rather old-fashioned, in these rapid days, for a young man to
ask a guardian's permission to make love to his ward?" said I, savage as
a chained dog.
She laughed. "Oh, he hasn't waited for that to make love, I'm afraid,"
she returned. "But he's afraid she won't accept him without your
consent."
"He seems to be afraid of several things," I growled. "Afraid to speak
to me--afraid to speak to her."
"He is young, and love has made him modest," Mrs. Senter excused her
favourite. "He knows he isn't a _grand parti_. But if they care for each
other?"
"I have seen no reason to believe that she cares for him," said I,
thinking myself (more or less) safe in the recollection of Ellaline's
words at Winchester. I told you about them, I think.
"Ah, well," said Mrs. Senter, "she cares enough, anyhow, to have entered
into a pact of some sort with the poor boy--a kind of understanding
that, if _you_ approve, she may at least _think_ of being engaged to him
in the future."
"You are sure she has done that?" I asked, staggered by this statement,
which I was far from expecting.
"Quite sure, unless love (in the form of Dick) is deaf as well as blind.
He certainly flatters himself that they are on these terms."
"Since when?" I persisted. (By the by, I wonder if the inquisitors ever
hit on the ingenious plan of making prisoners torture themselves?
Nothing hurts worse than self-torture.)
"Only since Lulworth Cove, or you would have heard of it before. You
know when we came back from our walk, and saw them sitting on the beach
together, I said what a pretty picture they made?"
Naturally, I remembered extremely well.
"That was when they had their great scene. Dick begged me, as an old
friend of yours, to say a word when I found the chance. And I confess,
I've _made_ the chance to-night. I do hope you won't think me
impertinent and interfering? I'm fond of Dick. He's about all I have to
be fond of in the world. And besides--just because I've never been happy
myself, I want others to be, while they're young, not to waste time."
I muttered something, I hardly know what, and she went on to talk to me
of her past, for the first time. Said she had married when little more
than a child, and had made the mistake of marrying a man she thought she
could manage to live happily with, instead of one she couldn't manage to
live happily without. That was all; but it had made _all_ the
difference--and if Miss Lethbridge had given her first love to Dick----
I nearly said, "Hang first love!" but I held my tongue, fortunately, for
of course she meant well, and was only doing her best for her nephew.
But how anyone could love that fellow passes my understanding! Why, it
seems to me the creature's parents could hardly have loved him, unless
he had had something of the monstrous hypnotism, as well as the
selfishness, of a young cuckoo in its stolen nest. Yet the same
hypnotism may influence birds outside the nest, I suppose. That's the
only way to account for an infatuation on the part of Ellaline.
"If you are angry, Dick and I must go away," Mrs. Senter went on. "But
he couldn't help falling in love, and to me they seem made for each
other."
I had to answer that of course I wasn't angry, but I thought any talk of
love premature, to say the least.
"You won't actually refuse your consent, then?" asked she.
"Much good my refusing would do, if the girl really cares!" said I. "I
shan't disinherit her, whatever she does."
Mrs. Senter laughed at that. "Why, even if you did," said she, "it
wouldn't matter greatly to them, because Dick has something of his own,
and she is an heiress, isn't she?"
Then--I don't know whether I was wrong or not--but I swear I made the
answer I did without any mean or selfish motives--if I can read my own
soul. If Burden were a fortune-hunter, I wanted to save her from him,
that's all. I told Mrs. Senter that Ellaline had very little money of
her own. "I shall look after her, of course," I said. "But the amount of
the _dot_ I may give will be determined by circumstances."
I don't know that I mayn't have put this in a tactless way. Anyhow, Mrs.
Senter looked rather odd--hurt, or distressed, or something queer--I
couldn't make quite out. She said, nevertheless, that Dick did not care
for Miss Lethbridge's money. He had fallen in love with her the first
time they met. Nothing else mattered, as they would have enough to live
on. But she had supposed the girl almost too rich for Dick. Wasn't
Ellaline a relation of the millionaire family of Lethbridges? She had
heard so.
I answered that the relationship was distant. That Ellaline's father had
once been a friend of mine, and that her mother had been my cousin,
though a French girl.
"Oh!" said Mrs. Senter, as if suddenly enlightened. "Is she--by any
chance--the daughter of a _Frederic_ Lethbridge?"
What she recalled about Fred Lethbridge, I can't guess. She isn't old
enough to have known him, unless as a child or a very young girl. But
she certainly had some thought in connection with him which made her
silent and reflective. I hope I have done Ellaline no harm--in case the
girl really does care for Burden. I never had the intention of keeping
her parentage secret, though at the same time it would pain me to have
any gossip reach her. However, to do Mrs. Senter justice, I don't think
she is a gossip. She likes to say "smart" things, but so far as I have
heard, she is never smart at other people's expense. And since her
confidences to me concerning her past, I am sorry for the poor little
woman.
Not much more passed between us on the subject of Ellaline and Dick,
except that I refused to recommend the young man to the girl's good
graces. I had to tell Mrs. Senter that, not even for the pleasure of
pleasing her, could I consent to do what she asked. But I did finally
promise to let Ellaline know that personally I had no objection to the
alleged "understanding," if it were for her happiness. Nevertheless, I
would advise her that she must do nothing rash. Mrs. Senter not only
permitted, but actually suggested, this extra clause; and our _séance_
ended.
Some things are too strange not to be true; and I suppose this
infatuation of Ellaline's, if it exists, is one of them. And it must
exist. There can be no doubt of it, since Mrs. Senter has it from the
boy--who apparently has it from the girl.
What to make of it, however, that she told me only about ten days ago,
she didn't like him? Yet I am forgetting. We have it on good authority
that "'tis best to begin with a little aversion."
I ought to have known that a daughter of Ellaline de Nesville and
Frederic Lethbridge couldn't develop into the star-high being this girl
has seemed to me; and I must make the best of it that she's something
less in soul than, in my first burst of astonished admiration, I was
inclined to appraise her. After all, why feel bitter against people
because they have disappointing shortcomings, if not defects, instead of
the dazzling virtues that glittered in your imagination? Cream always
rises to the top, yet we don't think less of it because there's nothing
but milk underneath.
Yes, if I find out that she likes this hypnotic cuckoo I mustn't despise
her for it. But I must find out as soon as I can. Suspense is the one
unbearable pain. And you are at liberty to laugh at me as I hope I shall
soon be laughing at myself.
L. P.
XV
AUDRIE BRENDON TO HER MOTHER
_Osborne Hotel, Torquay_,
_August 6th_
Ma Petite Minerve-de-Mere: A hundred and six and a half thanks
for your counsels and consolations. I needed both, and not a bit the
less because I'm not unhappy now. I'm violently happy. It won't last,
but I love it--this happiness. I keep it sitting on my shoulder and
stroking its wings, so it mayn't remember when it's time to fly away.
That letter I wrote you _was_ silly. I was a regular cry-baby to write
it. But I'm so glad you answered quickly. I don't know how I should have
borne it if the man at the Poste Restante window had said: "Nothing for
you, miss." I might have responded with blows.
There was a letter from Ellaline, too. I'd sent her the "itinerary" as
far as I knew it, and Torquay was the last place on the list. I was
wondering if anything were the matter, but there isn't--though there
_is_ news. She waited to write, she says, so that her plans might be
decided and she could tell them to me.
The military manoeuvres go on; and the news has nothing directly to do
with the adored Honoré. But Ellaline has made a confidante--a Scotch
girl she has met. I don't mean she's told everything; far from that,
apparently. She has kept the fraudulent part, about me, secret, and only
confided the romantic part, about herself. What she says she has told
is, that she's run away from cruel persons who want to have all her
money, and to prevent her from having any happiness. That she's hiding
till the man she's engaged to can take her to Scotland and have a Scotch
marriage--at Gretna Green, if possible, because it would be romantic,
and her mother was married there. The Scotch girl, with northern
coldness of reason, has pointed out that Gretna Green is nowadays like
any other place, but Ellaline is not weaned from the idea. She appears
to have fascinated her new friend (as she did her old ones), in spite of
the northern coldness, and has received a pressing invitation to visit
at the girl's house in Scotland until Honoré can claim her.
There is a mother, as well as a girl, but only a stepmother, and
apparently a detail; for the girl has the money and the strength of
will. The two are stopping in a pension near Madame de Blanchemain's
house. The girl is a Miss McNamarra, with freckles and no figure, but
engaged to an officer, and consequently sympathetic. She has advised
Ellaline that, if she travels from France to Scotland with Honoré, on
the way to be married, he mayn't respect her as much as if she had
friends and chaperons, and a nice place to wait for him. Ellaline is too
French at heart not to feel that this advice is good--though she adds in
her letter that she, of course, trusts darling Honoré completely;--so
she has accepted the invitation.
The only trouble is, she wants more money at once. She must let golden
louis run through her fingers like water, for I sent her nearly all Sir
Lionel handed me before we started on the trip. I shall have to ask him
for more, and I'll hate doing that, because, though I shall be gone out
of his life so soon, I'm too vain and self-conscious (it must be that!)
to like making a bad impression on his mind while we're together.
I shan't hate it as much, however, as I should, supposing that something
which happened last night _hadn't_ happened. I'm coming to that part
presently. It's the thing that's made me happy--the thing that won't
last long.
We left adorable little Sidmouth days ago--I almost forget how many,
coming as far as Exeter along a lovely road. But then, everything is
lovely in Devonshire. It is almost more beautiful than the New Forest,
only so different that, thank goodness, it isn't necessary to compare
the two kinds of scenery.
Perhaps Devonshire, stripped of its bold, red rocks, drained of its
brilliant blue sea, and despoiled of its dark moors, might be too sugary
sweet with its flower-draped cottages, and lanes like green-walled
conservatories; but it is so well balanced, with its intimate
sweetnesses, and its noble outlines. I think _you_ are rather like
Devonshire, you're so perfect, and you are the most well-balanced person
I was ever introduced to--except Dad. I'm proud that his ancestors were
Devonshire men. And oh, the junket and Devonshire cream are even better
than he used to tell me! I haven't tasted the cider yet, because I can't
bear to miss the cream at any meal; and the chambermaid at Sidmouth
warned me that they "didn't mix."
Bits of Devonshire are like Italy, I find. Not only is the earth deep
red in the meadows, where the farmers have torn open its green coat, and
many of the roads a pale rose-pink--dust and all--but lots of houses and
cottages are pink, a real Italian pink, so that whole villages blush as
you look them in the face. Sometimes, too, there's a blue or a green, or
a golden-ochre house; here and there a high, broken wall of rose or
faded yellow, with torrential geraniums boiling over the top. And the
effect of this riot of colour, in contrast with the silver gray of the
velvety thatch, or lichen-jewelled slate roofs, under great, cool trees,
is even more beautiful than Italy. If all England is a park, Devonshire
is a queen's garden.
From Sidmouth we went to Budleigh Salterton (why either, but especially
both?), quaintly pretty, and rather Holland-like with its miniature
bridges and canal. Then to Exmouth, with its flowering "front," its tiny
"Maison Carrée" (which would remind one more of Nîmes if it had no bay
windows), and its exquisite view across silver river, and purple hills
that ripple away into faint lilac shadows in the distance. Then we
struck inland, to Exeter, and at Exeter we stopped two days, in the very
oldest and queerest but nicest hotel imaginable.
I wasn't so very happy there, because the Thing I'm going to tell you
about in good time hadn't happened yet. But I'm not sure that I wasn't
more in tune with Exeter than if I had been as happy as I am now. The
scenery here suits my joyous mood; and the grave tranquillity of the
beautiful old cathedral town calmed my spirit when I needed calm.
I've given up expecting to love any other cathedral as I loved
Winchester. Chichester I've half forgotten already--except some of the
tombs. Salisbury was far more beautiful, far more impressive in its
proportions than Winchester, yet to me not so impressive in other ways;
and Exeter Cathedral struck me at first sight as curiously low, almost
squat. But as soon as I lived down the first surprise of that effect I
began to love it. The stone of which the Cathedral is built may be cold
and gray; but time and carvings have made it solemn, not depressing. I
stood a long time looking up at the west front, not saying a word; but
something in me was singing a Te Deum. And how you would love the
windows! You used always to say, when we were in Italy and France, that
it was beautiful windows which made you love a cathedral or church, as
beautiful eyes make one love a face.
This Cathedral has unforgettable eyes, and a tremendously long history,
beginning as far back as nine hundred and something, when Athelstan came
to Exeter and drove out the poor British who thought it was theirs. He
built towns, founded a monastery in honour of Saint Mary and Saint
Peter, not having time, I suppose, to do one for each. And afterward the
monastery decided that it would be a cathedral instead. But two hundred
and more years earlier, that disagreeable St. Boniface, who disliked the
Celts so much, went to a Saxon school in Exeter! I wonder what going to
school was like when all the world was young?