than ever, but they have taken a fancy to Ellaline Lethbridge, and I am
playing it for all it's worth. It comes in handy at the moment, and I
have no conscientious scruples against using millionaires for pawns.
They have an impossibly luxurious motorcar. Sir Lionel thinks it vulgar,
but they are pleased with it, as it's still a new toy. I have been
making a nice little plan for them, which concerns Ellaline. None of
them know it yet, but they will soon, and if it had been invented to
please Dick (which it wasn't entirely) it couldn't suit him better. You
may tell him that, if by any chance he's with you still when you get
this.
My mind is busy working the plan out, so that there may be no hitch, but
a few unoccupied corners of my brain are wondering what you have
discovered about Miss Lethbridge's prospects and antecedents; how, if
both are very undesirable, you intend to persuade Dick to let her drop.
If I were you I wouldn't waste arguments. Retain him a few days if you
can, though I fear the only way to do so is to have a fit. I believe
that can be arranged by eating soap and frothing at the mouth, which
produces a striking effect, and, though slightly disagreeable, isn't
dangerous. But seriously, if he refuses to hear reason, don't worry. I
am on the spot to snatch him at the last moment from the mouth of the
lionness, provided she opens it wide enough to swallow him.
Your ever useful and affectionate sister,
Gwen.
P. S. The Tyndals have got a cousin of George's with them, a budding
millionaire from Eton, who has fallen in love at sight with the
Lethbridge. But even Dick can't be jealous of childhood, and it may be
helpful.
Taking everything together, I am enjoying myself here, though I'm
impatient to get your letter. Cornwall agrees with Sir Lionel's
disposition, and he is being delightful to everyone. I think while he is
in the right mood I shall repeat to him what a sad failure my marriage
was, and how little I really care for gaiety; "Society my lover,
solitude my husband," sort of thing. He is the kind of man to like that,
and the sweet, soft air of Cornwall is conducive to credulity.
XIX
AUDRIE BRENDON TO HER MOTHER
_King Arthur's Castle, Tintagel_,
_August 12th_
Most Dear and Sovran Lady: I call you that because I've just
been reading Sir Thomas Malory's "Le Morte d'Arthur" (is that Old French
spelling?), and because the style of address seems suitable to King
Arthur's Castle--which isn't really his castle, you know, but an hotel.
I thought it was the castle, though, when I first saw it standing up
gray and massive on an imposing hill. I supposed it had been restored,
and was rather disappointed to find it an hotel--though it's very jolly
to live in, with all the latest feudal improvements and fittings, and
King Arthur's Round Table in the enormous entrance-hall.
Sir Lionel wouldn't let Mrs. Senter laugh at me for thinking it the real
castle, but said it was a natural mistake for a girl who had spent all
her life in a French school--and how should I know the difference? I
_was_ grateful to him, for though I love to have some people laugh at me
she isn't one of those people. She laughs in that sniffy way cats have.
The real castle I can see from my own feudal, castellated balcony. It is
beautifully ruined; but you can go into it, and I have been. Only I want
to tell you about other things first.
In my short note from Launceston, did I mention the old Norman house
which belongs to cousins of Sir Lionel's? He used to visit there, and
poke about in the castle, which was Godwin's and Harold's before the
Conquest. But the nicest cousins are dead and the rest are away, so we
could only see the outside of the house. However, we went to call at an
ancient stone cottage of the colour of petrified wallflowers, to see a
servant who took care of Sir Lionel when he was a child. A wonderful old
wisp of a thing, with the reputation of being a witch, which wins her
great respect; and she used quaint Cornish words that have come down
from generation to generation, ever since the early Celts, without
changing. When Sir Lionel sympathized with her about her husband's
death, she said it was a grief, but he'd been a sad invalid, and a "good
bit in the way of the oven" for several years.
[Illustration: _In Sir Lionel's county, Cornwall_]
On the way to Tintagel from Launceston we passed Slaughter Bridge, one
of the many places where legend says King Arthur fought his last battle.
So that was a good entrance to Arthurian country, wasn't it? Our road
cut huge, rolling downs in two, and they surged up on either side, so it
was rather like the passage through the Red Sea. And under a sky that
hung over us like an illimitable bluebell, we saw our first Cornish
mountains, Rough Tor and Brown Willy. Names of that sort make you feel
at home with mountains at once, as if you'd known them all your life,
and might lead them about with a string. But they are only corruptions
of old Celtic names that nobody could possibly pronounce; and nearly
everything seems more or less Celtic in Cornwall, especially eyes. They
are beautiful gray-blue, with their black lashes as long on the lower as
on the upper lid, and look as if they had been "rubbed in with a dirty
finger." Now I see that Sir Lionel's eyes are Celtic. I didn't know
quite how to account for them at first. _He_ has a temper, I think, and
could be severe; but he says the Cornish people are so good-hearted that
if you ask them the way anywhere, they tell you the one they think you
would prefer to take, whether it's really right or not. But I'm glad he
is not so easy going as that.
It was exciting to wheel into a little road like a lane, marked
"Tintagel"! I felt my copy of "Le Morte d'Arthur" turning in my hand,
like a water-diviner's rod. We took the lane to avoid a tremendous hill,
because hills give Mrs. Norton the "creeps" in her feet and back hair,
and she never recovers until she has had tea. But it was a charming
lane, with views by and by of wide, purple moorland, sunset-red with new
heather; and the sky had turned from bluebell azure to green and rose,
in a wonderful, chameleon way, which it seems that the sky has in
Cornwall. I suppose it was a Celtic habit! All about us billowed a
profusion of wild beauty; and though for a long time there was nothing
alive in sight except a flock of bright pink sheep, my stage-managing
fancy called up knights of the round table, "pricking" o'er the downs on
their panoplied steeds to the rescue of fair, distressed damsels. And
the bright mirrors which the fleeting rain had dropped along the road
were the knights' polished shields, laid down to save the ladies from
wetting the points of their jewelled slippers.
Then came my first sight of the Cornish sea, deep hyacinth, with golden
sails scattered upon it, and Arthur's cliffs rising dark out of its
satin sheen. Beyond, in the background, gray houses and cottages grouped
together, the stone and slates worn shiny with age, like very old
marble, so that they reflected glints of colour from the rose and violet
sky.
By the time I was dressed for dinner it was sunset, and I went to sit on
the terrace and watch the splendid cloud pageant. I seemed to be the
only one of our party who had come down yet, though, to tell the whole,
_whole_ truth, I had had a sneaking idea Sir Lionel would perhaps be
strolling about with a cigarette, looking nice and slim, and young, and
soldierly in his dinner jacket. He is nicer to look at in that than in
almost anything else, I think, as most Englishmen are.
He wasn't there, however, so I had to admire his Cornish sunset without
him. And I had such fine thoughts about it, too!--at least they seemed
fine to me; and if I weren't quite a congenial friend of my own it would
have seemed a waste of good material to lavish them on myself alone.
I saw through the open door of the sunset, into Arthur's kingdom, where
he still rules, you know, and is lord of all. The whole west was a
Field-of-the-Cloth-of-Gold, and across the blaze of golden glory rode
dark shapes of cloud, purple and crimson, violet and black. They were
Arthur's knights tilting in tournament, while the Queen of Beauty and
her attendant ladies looked on. Now and then, as I watched, a knight
fell, and a horse tore away riderless, his gold-'broidered trappings
floating on the wind. When this happened, out of the illumined sea would
writhe a glittering dragon, or scaly heraldic beast, to prance or fly
along the horizon after the vanishing charger of the fallen knight.
Sometimes the rushing steed would swim to a fairy island or siren-rock
that floated silver-pale on the shining water, or jutted dark out of a
creamy line of breakers; and though I knew that the knights and ladies
and wondrous animals were but inhabitants of Sunset Kingdom, Limited,
and that the glimmering islands and jagged rocks would dissolve by and
by into cloud-wreaths, they all looked as real as the long tongue of
land beyond which North Devon crouched hiding. And the colour flamed so
fiercely in the sky that I was half afraid the sun must be on fire.
As I sat there watching the last of the knights ride away, three people
came out of the hotel and stood on the terrace. I just gave them one
glance, and went back to the sunset, but somehow I got the feeling that
they were looking at me, and talking about me.
Presently they began to walk up and down, and as they passed in front of
my seat, they turned an interested gaze upon me. All I had known about
them until then was that they were a trio: a man, a woman, and a boy,
with conventional backs; but as they turned, I recognized the man and
the woman.
You would never guess who they were, so I'll tell you. Do you remember
the people for whom you talked Italian at Venice four years and a half
ago, the day we arrived, and there was a strike, and no porters to carry
anybody's luggage? Well, here they were at Tintagel! I was perfectly
certain of this in an instant, and I realized why they were so
interested in me. They thought they had seen me before, but perhaps were
not sure.
Anyway, they walked on, and only the boy looked back. He was dressed in
Eton clothes, and was exactly like all other boys, except that he had
mischievous eyes and a bored mouth--almost as dangerous a combination in
a boy, I should think, as a box of matches and a barrel of gunpowder.
I thought that he was probably their son, and that, as he had nothing
better to do, he was wondering about me. I would have given a lot to
know what they were saying, and whether Venice was in their minds or
not, but I could do nothing except hope they might not place me
mentally. I wouldn't get up and go in, because that would have been too
cowardly; and besides, if they were staying in the hotel, I should
certainly run up against them afterward.
I had just decided to face it out, and had put on a forbidding
expression, when along came Sir Lionel, so I had to take off the
expression and fold it away for future emergencies. He was smoking one
of those cigarettes which go so well with sunsets, and he had seen the
King Arthur sky-tournament from the other side of the house. He said he
had not supposed I should be down so soon, but was hoping that I hadn't
missed the show, wherever I was. He threw away his cigarette--which is
one of his old-fashioned tricks if he sees a woman, never even waiting
to know if she minds--and asked if he might sit on the seat by me. That
was old-fashioned, too, wasn't it? The Dick Burdens of the world plump
themselves down by girls without worrying to get permission. They think
female things will be too flattered for words, by a condescending male
desire to be near them.
I told you how nice Sir Lionel looks in evening clothes, didn't I?
You've no idea what a perfect shape his head is; and a large lake of
white shirt under a little black silk bow is particularly becoming to a
clean-shaven man with a very tanned skin--though I don't know why. One
would think it might have the opposite effect. And Sir Lionel does tie
his necktie so nicely, with a kind of careless precision which comes
right of itself, like everything he does. (You will think all this is
silly, and it is; but I keep noticing things about him, and liking them,
so I tell you, because I may have prejudiced you against him at first,
as Ellaline prejudiced me.)
We were beginning to have a good talk about Cornwall, and quaint Cornish
ways and superstitions, when out of the house came Mrs. Senter. The
Venice people had just passed again, and were near the hotel door as she
appeared.
"Why, Sallie and George!" she exclaimed.
And "Why, Gwen!" the Venice lady answered.
They shook hands, the boy and all, and though Sir Lionel didn't pay much
attention to what was going on, I couldn't keep up our conversation.
"Suppose they tell Mrs. Senter they met me in Venice!" I said to myself.
"What _shall_ I do?"
Out of one corner of my eye I saw that they did speak of me, and she
threw a quick, eager glance in my direction. A minute or two later they
all strolled on together, until they had come in front of our seat.
There Mrs. Senter paused, and said, "Sir Lionel, these are my friends,
Mr. and Mrs. Tyndal, of whom I think I must have spoken to you, and this
is their cousin, Mr. Tom Tyndal. They are touring in their motor, and
arrived here this afternoon, a little before us. Quite a coincidence,
isn't it?" And then, as if on second thoughts, she added me to the
introduction.
"Quite a coincidence," indeed! It never rains, but it pours
coincidences, on any head that is developing a criminal record.
The Tyndals paid Sir Lionel compliments, and seemed to be delighted to
meet him, evidently regarding him as a great celebrity, which, I
suppose, he really is. Then, when they had made him sufficiently
uncomfortable (compliments are to him what a sudden plague of locusts
would be to most men), they turned to me.
"Surely we have met before, Miss Lethbridge?" remarked Mrs. Tyndal. And
you ought to have seen how Mrs. Senter's features sharpened, as she
waited for me to stammer or blush.
As far as the blush was concerned, she had her money's worth; and I only
didn't stammer because I was obliged to stop and think before replying.
I almost worshipped Sir Lionel when he answered for me, in a quick,
positive way he has, which there seems no gainsaying. I suppose men who
live in the East cultivate that, as it keeps natives from arguing and
answering back.
"Impossible," said he, "unless it was at Versailles, where my ward has
been at school since she was a very small child, with no holidays except
at St. Cloud."
"Mightn't it have been at Paris?" obligingly suggested Mrs. Senter,
determined I shouldn't be let off, if conviction of any sort were
possible.
"No, I don't think it was at Paris," murmured Mrs. Tyndal, reflectively,
eyeing me in the sunset light, which was turning to pure amethyst. "Now,
where _could_ it have been? I seem to associate your face with--with
Italy."
Oh, my goodness! She _was_ getting "warm" in our game of "hide the
handkerchief."
"She has never been to Italy," said Sir Lionel, beginning to look rather
cross, as if Mrs. Tyndal were taking liberties with his belongings--of
which, you see, he thinks me one.
"Not even--Venice?" she persisted. "Oh, yes, _that_ is it! Now I know
where I seem to have seen you--at Venice. You remember, don't you,
George?"
By this time sparks had lighted up in Sir Lionel's eyes, as if he were a
Turk, and one of the ladies of his harem were unjustly suspected.
"It is impossible for Mr. Tyndal to remember what didn't happen," he
said, dropping a lump of ice into his voice. "You saw someone who looked
like her in Venice, perhaps, but not my ward."
I was almost sorry for the poor Tyndals, who meant no harm, though they
had the air of being so frightfully rich and prosperous that it seemed
ridiculous to pity them.
"Of course, it could only have been a resemblance," said Mr. Tyndal,
with that snubby glare at Mrs. Tyndal which husbands and wives keep for
each other.
"It must have been," she responded, taking up her cue; for naturally
they didn't want to begin their acquaintance with a distinguished person
by offending him.
These signs of docility caused Sir Lionel to relent and come down off
his high horse. Whenever he has been at all haughty or impatient with
his sister (whose denseness would sometimes try a saint) he is sorry in
a minute, and tries to be extra nice. It was the same now in the case of
the poor Tyndals, whose Etonian cousin had all the time been gazing up
at him with awed adoration, as of a hero on a pedestal; and suddenly a
quaint thought struck me. I remembered about the Bengalese Sir Lionel
was supposed to have executed for some offence or other, and I could see
him being sorry immediately afterward, tearing around trying to stick
their heads on again, and saying pleasant words.
Well, he stuck the Tyndals' heads on very kindly, so that they almost
forgot they'd ever been slashed off; and when Mrs. Norton came out,
which she did in a few minutes, looking as if she'd washed the dust off
her face with kitchen soap, we all strolled up and down together, till
it was time for dinner.
Mrs. Tyndal walked with me, but not a word did she say about Venice.
That subject was to be tabooed, but I'm far from sure she was convinced
of her mistake, and she couldn't overcome her intense interest in my
features. However, she seems good-natured, as if even to please Mrs.
Senter she wouldn't care to do me a bad turn. Only, I don't think people
do things from motives as a rule, do you? They just suddenly find they
want to do them, and presto, the things are done! That's why the world's
so exciting.
We chatted non-committally of cabbages and kings and automobiles; and I
recalled tracing pneu-tracks like illusive lights and shadows before us
on the damp road, as we spun into Tintagel. No doubt they were the pneus
of the Tyndals.
Their table was next ours in the dining room, so close that motor-chat
was tossed back and forth, and it appeared that Mr. Tyndal was as proud
of his car as a cat of its mouse. Mrs. Tyndal's mice are her jewels, and
she has droves of them, which she displayed at dinner. Afterward she did
lace-work, which made her rings gleam beautifully, and she said she
didn't particularly like doing it, but it was something to "kill time."
How awful! But I suppose frightfully rich people are like that. They
sometimes get fatty degeneration of the soul.
Well, nothing more happened that evening, except that the Tyndal boy and
I made great friends--quite a nice boy, pining for some mischief that
idle hands might do; and his cousins said that, as we were going to stop
several days at Tintagel, "making it a centre," they would stop, too.
Sir Lionel didn't appear overjoyed at the decision, but Mrs. Senter
seemed glad. She and her sister, Mrs. Burden, have known the Tyndals for
years, and are by way of being friends, yet she works off her little
firework epigrams against them when their backs are turned, as she does
on everybody. According to her, their principal charm for society in
London is their cook; and she says the art treasures in their house are
all illegitimate; near-Gobelin, not-quite-Raphaels, and so on. She makes
Sir Lionel smile; but I wonder if she'd adopt this cheap method if he'd
ever mentioned to her (as he has to me) that of all meannesses he
despises disloyalty?
The Tyndal boy went up to bed before the rest of us, and when Sir Lionel
and Mrs. Norton had been forced to play bridge with Mrs. Senter and Mr.
Tyndal, I slipped away, too.
We'd lived in the hotel such a short time, and it's so big, that I
counted on recognizing my room by the boots which I put outside the door
when I went down to sunset and dinner. Of course, I'd forgotten my
number, as I always do. I wouldn't consider myself a normal girl if I
didn't.
There were the boots, not taken away yet--looking abject, as boots do in
such situations--but I was pleased to see that they compared favourably
in size with the gray alligator-skin and patent leather eccentricities
of Mrs. Senter, reposing on an adjacent doormat. With this frivolous
reflection in my mind, it didn't occur to me, as I turned the handle of
the door marked by my brown footgear, that the room now appeared farther
to the left, along the passage, than I had the impression of its being.
I opened the door, which was not locked, walked in, felt about for the
electric light, switched it on, and had sauntered over to a table in the
centre of the room before I noticed anything strange. Then, to my
startled vision appeared unfamiliar brushes and combs on a chest of
drawers; beautiful, but manly looking silver-backed ones; and along the
wall was a row of flat tweed legs, on stretchers.
For an instant I stood still, bewildered, as if I'd walked into a dream,
beguiled by a false clue of boots; and during my few seconds of
temporary aberration my dazed eyes fell upon a book which lay on the
table. It was Sir Lionel's "Morte d'Arthur" (second volume; he's lent me
the first), and in it for a marker was a _glove of mine_. I'd lost it at
Torquay, after we had our dear, good talk, and he knew I was looking for
it, all about the sitting room we had at the hotel there, yet he never
said a word.
Oh, dear little French mother, you can't think what an odd feeling it
gave me to see he had kept my glove, and had put it in his book! Yes, I
believe you _can_ think, too, because probably you've felt just like
that yourself when you were a girl, only you never thought it
_convenable_ to describe your symptoms for your daughter's benefit. I
know it was perfectly schoolgirlish of me, and I ought to have outgrown
such sentimentality with my teens; but if you could see Sir Lionel, and
understand the sort of man he is, you wouldn't think me so outrageous.
That he--he, of all men--should care to keep anything which would remind
him of an insignificant child like me! I'm afraid there came a prickly
feeling in my eyelids, and I had the most idiotic desire to kiss the
book, which I knew would have a nice smell of his cigarettes, because my
borrowed volume has. Of course, I wouldn't have done it for anything,
though, so don't think I'm worse than I am. And really, really, I don't
believe I'm exactly in love. I hope I'm not so foolish. It's just a kind
of infatuated fascination of a moth--not for a candle, but for a great,
brilliant motor lamp. I've seen them at night dashing themselves against
the glass of our Bleriots once or twice when we've been out late, and I
know how hopelessly they smash their soft, silly wings. I should have
been like them if I'd kissed the book; but instead, after that one look
which told me the glove really was _my_ glove, I bounced out of the
room, snatching my boots up as I dashed across the threshold.
Bump! as I did so I almost telescoped with Sir Lionel who had retrieved
his boots, probably from my doormat. And at the same moment came a
boyish yelp from somewhere, followed by the smart slap of a door
shutting. I wished it had been a smart slap of my hand on the Tyndal
boy's ear, for of course the boot-changing was that little fiend's work,
I guessed in a second.
So did Sir Lionel, and we both laughed--at ourselves, at each other, and
everything. It seems that the Youthful Horror had changed every pair of
boots along the corridor, and made the most weird combinations. I don't
suppose Sir Lionel thought about the glove in the book, anyway at the
time, and luckily there was nothing tell-tale in my room, in case he
strayed in, except your photograph in the silver frame you gave me on my
last birthday. And of course he could make nothing of that.
He had got out of playing bridge, because when Mrs. Tyndal saw he wasn't
keen, she offered to take a hand, and he said he did want to write to a
man in Bengal, his best friend.
We talked to each other only a few minutes, after the boot-puzzle had
been put right; but would you believe it, up came Mrs. Senter, while Sir
Lionel and I were bidding each other good night in front of my door? She
looked as stiff and wicked as a frozen snake for an instant; then she
smiled too sweetly, and said she'd come for her Spanish lace mantilla.
But I almost know she had fancied that Sir Lionel might have made an
excuse to get a word with me, and had flown up to find out for herself.