Yours ever,
Yours ever,
Pen.
Pen.
Later, August 2nd, Night
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 reallyisa 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 agrand 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, ifyouapprove, she may at leastthinkof 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'vemadethe 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 madeallthe 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 thedotI 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 aFredericLethbridge?"
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 ourséanceended.
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.
L. P.
XV
AUDRIE BRENDON TO HER MOTHER
Osborne Hotel, Torquay,August 6th
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 youwassilly. 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 thereisnews. She waited to write, she says, so that her plans might be decided and she could tell them to me.
The military manœuvres 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 nighthadn'thappened. 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 thinkyouare 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?
I wandered into the Cathedral both mornings to hear the music; and something about the dim, moonlit look of the interior made me feelgood. You will say that's rather a change for me, perhaps, because you tell me reproachfully, sometimes, after I've thought about the people's hats and the backs of their blouses in church, that I have only a bowing acquaintance with religion. I don't know whether I mayn't be doing the most dreadful wrong every minute by pretending to be Ellaline; but it wasbegunfor a good purpose, as you know, and you yourself consented. And though I have twinges sometimes, I did feel good at Exeter. Oh, it did me heaps of good tofeelgood! You have to live up to your feelings, if you feel like that. And I prayed in the Cathedral. I prayed to be happy. Is that a wrong note for a prayer? I don't believe it is, if it rings true. Anyway, it makes me feel young and strong to pray, like Achilles, after he'd rolled on the earth. And I do feel so young and strong just now, dear! I have to sing in my bath, and when I look out of the window—also sometimes when I look in the glass, for it seems to me that I am growing brighter and prettier.
I love to be pretty, because it's such a beautiful world, and to be pretty is to be in the harmony of it. Though, perhaps—only perhaps, mind!—I'm glad I'm not a regular beauty. It would be such a responsibility in the matter of wearing one's clothes, and doing one's hair, and never getting tanned or chapped.
And I love to be thin, and alive—alive, with my soul in proportion to my body, like a hand in a glove, not like a seed in a big apple. But isn't this funny talk, in the midst of describing Exeter? It's because of the reaction from misery to ecstasy that I'm so bubbly. I can't stop; but luckily it didn't come on in Exeter, because the delightful, queer old streets aren't at all suitable to bubble in. It's impertinent to be excessively young there, especially in the beautiful cathedral close, where it is so calm and dignified, and the rooks, who are very, very old, do nothing but caw about their ancestors. I think some curates ought to turn into rooks when they die. They would be quite happy.
Our hotel, as I said, was fascinating, though Mrs. Norton fell once or twice, as there were steps up and down everywhere, and Dick bumped his forehead on a door. (I wasn't at all sorry for him.) Mrs. Senter said, if we'd stopped long she would have got "cottage walk," and as she already had motor-car face and bridge eye, she thought the combination would betrop fort. If she weren't Dick's aunt, and if she weren't so determined to flirt with Sir Lionel without his knowing what she's at, and if she didn't make little cutting speeches to me when he isn't listening, I think I should find her amusing.
The only things I didn't like at the hotel were the eggs; which looked so nice, quite brown, and dated the morning you had them, on their shells, but tasting mediæval. I wonder if eggs can be post-dated, like cheques? As for the other eatables, there was very little taste in them, mediæval or otherwise. I do think ice-cream, for instance, ought to taste like something, if it's only hair oil. And the head waiter had such mournful-looking hair!
I never got a talk alone with Sir Lionel in Exeter, because though he tried once or twice, with the air of having a painful duty to accomplish, I was afraid he was going to ask me about Dick, and I just felt I couldn't bear it, so avoided him, or instantly tacked myself on to Emily or someone. I think Emily approves of my running to her, whenever threatened by man's society, because she thinks the instinctive desire to be protected from anything male is pretty and maidenly. She certainly belongs to the Stone Age in some of her ideas; though her maxims are of a later period. Many of them she draws (and quarters) from the Scriptures; at least, she attributes them to the Scriptures, but I know some of them to be in Shakespeare. Lots of people seem to make that mistake!
Of course, in the car I never talk to Sir Lionel, except a word flung over shoulders now and then, for Mrs. Senter sits by him. She asked to. Did I tell you that before? So the day we left Exeter things were just the same between us; not trustful and silently happy, as at the time of thering, but rather strained, and vaguely official.
It had rained a little in Exeter, but the sky and landscape were clean-washed and sparkling as we sailed over the pink road, past charming little Starcross, with its big swan-boat and baby swan-boat; past Dawlish of the crimson cliffs and deep, deep blue sea (if I were a Bluer—just as good a word as Brewer!—I would buy Dawlish as an advertisement for my blue. It seems made for that by Nature, and is so brilliant you'd never believe it was true, on a poster); down a toboggan slide of a hill into Teignmouth, another garden-town by the sea, and through one of England's many Newtons—Newton Abbot, this time—to Torquay.
As we hadn't left Exeter until after luncheon, it was evening when we arrived; but that, Sir Lionel said, was what he wanted, on account of the lights in and on and above the water, which he wanted us to see as we came to the town. He has been here before, long ago, as he has been at most of the places; but he says that he enjoys and appreciates everything more now than he did the first time.
It was like a dream!—a dream all the way from Newton Abbot, where sunset began to turn the silver streak of river in the valley red as wine. There was just one ugly interval: the long, dull street by which we entered Torquay, with its tearing trams and common shops; but out of it we came suddenly into a scene of enchantment. That really isn't too enthusiastic a description, for in front of us lay the harbour; the water violet, flecked with gold, the sky blazing still, coral-red to the zenith, where the moon drenched the fire with a silver flood. The hills were deeper violet than the sea, sparkling with lights that sprang out of the twilight; and on the smooth water a hundred little white boats danced over their own reflections.
We begged Sir Lionel not to let Young Nick light our lamps, for they are so fierce and powerful, they swallow up the beauty of the evening. But I do think, where there are lots of motors about, it would be nice ifpeoplehad to be lighted at night, and especially dogs.
Now, at last, I have come to the Thing—the thing that makes me happy, with a happiness all the more vivid because it can't last. But even if I fall to the depths of misery once more, I shan't be a coward, and moan to you. It must be horrid to get letter after letter, full of wails! I don't see how Mademoiselle Julie de Lespinasse could write the letters she did; and I can't much blame Monsieur de Guibert for dreading to read them, always in the same key, and on the same note: "I suffer, I suffer. I want to die."
Well, I've kept you waiting long enough, or have you, perhaps, read ahead? I should, in your place, though I hopeyouhaven't.
We came to the Osborne because Sir Lionel knew and liked it, though there's another hotel grander, and we usually go to the grandest (so odd, that feels, after our travels, yours and mine, when ourfirstthought was to search out the cheapest place in any town!), and the Osborne has a terraced garden, which runs down and down the cliffs, toward the sea, with a most alluring view.
Mrs. Senter had luggage come to meet her here, and she appeared at dinner in our private sitting-room looking quite startlingly handsome, in a black chiffon dress embroidered in pale gold, exactly the colour of her hair. The weather had turned rather cold, however, since the rain at Exeter, so, gorgeous as the moonlight was, she wanted to stop indoors after dinner, and proposed bridge, as usual.
That was the signal for me to slip away. I'd finished "Lorna Doone," which is the loveliest love story in the English language (except part of "Richard Feverel"), so I thought I would go into the garden. I felt moderately secure from Dick, because, even if he reallyisin love with me, he is as much in love with bridge, and besides, he's afraid of his aunt, for some reason or other. As for Sir Lionel, it didn't occur to me that he might evenwantto come.
I strolled about at first, not far from the hotel. Then I was tempted farther and farther down the cliff path, until I found a thatched summer-house, where I sat and thought what a splendid, ornamental world it would be to live in if one werequitehappy.
By this time the sky and sea were bathed in moonlight, the stone pines—so like Italian pines—black against a silver haze. In the dark water the path of the moon lay, very broad and long, all made of great flakes of thick, deep gold, as if the sea were paved with golden scales.
It was so lovely it saddened me, but I didn't want to go indoors; and presently I heard footsteps on the path. I was afraid it was Dick, after all, as he is horribly clever about finding out where one has gone—so detectivey of him!—but in another second I smelt Sir Lionel's kind of cigarette smoke. It would make me think of him if it were a hundred years from now! Still, Dick borrows his cigarettes often, as he says they're too expensive to buy, so I wasn't safe. Indeed,which everit turned out to be, I wasn't safe, because one might be silly, and the other might scold.
But it was Sir Lionel, and he saw me, although I made myself little and stood in the shadow, not daring to sit down again, because the seat squeaked.
"Aren't you cold?" he asked.
I answered that I was quite warm.
Then he said that it was a nice night, and we talked about the weather, and all that idiotic sort of thing, which means empty brains or hearts too full.
By and by, when I was beginning to feel as though I should scream if it went on much longer, he stopped suddenly, in a conversation about fresh fish, and said: "Ellaline, I think I must speak of something that's been on my mind for some days."
He'd never called me "Ellaline" before, but only "you," and this gave me rather a start, to begin with, so I said nothing. And, as it turned out, that was probably the best thing I could have done. If I'd said anything, it would have been the wrong thing, and then, perhaps, we should have started off with a misunderstanding.
"I should hate to have you think me unsympathetic," he went on. "I'm not. But—do you want to marry Dick Burden, some day?"
If he'd put it differently I might have hesitated what to answer, for Iamafraid of Dick, there's no use denying it—of course, mostly on Ellaline's account, but a little on my own too, because I'm a coward, and don't want to be disgraced. As it was, Icouldn'thesitate, for the thought of marrying Dick Burden would have been insupportable if it hadn't been ridiculous. So you see, I forgot to dread what Dick might do if he heard, and just blurted out the truth.
"I'd sooner go into a convent," said I.
"You mean that?" Sir Lionel pinned me down.
"I do," I repeated. "Could you imagine a girl wanting to marry Dick Burden?"
"No,Icouldn't," said Sir Lionel. And then he laughed—such a nice, happy laugh, like a boy's, quite different from the way I have heard him laugh lately—though at first, in London, he seemed young and light-hearted. "But I'm no judge of the men—or boys—a girl might want to marry. Dick's good-looking, or near it."
"Yes," I admitted. "So is your little chauffeur. But I don't want to marry it."
"Are you flirting with Dick, then?" Sir Lionel asked, not sharply, but almost wistfully.
I couldn't stand that. I had to tell the truth, no matter for to-morrow!
"I'm not flirting with him, either," I said.
"What then?"
"Nothing."
"But he seems to think there is something—something to hope."
"Did he tell you so?"
"No. He sent me word."
"Oh! Words get mixed, when they're sent. HeknowsI'm not flirting with him."
"Does he know—forgive me—does he know that you don't love him—a little?"
"He knows I don't love him at all."
"Then I—can't understand," said Sir Lionel.
"Would you like me to love him?" I couldn't help asking.
"No," he began, and stopped. "I should like you to be happy, in your own way," he went on more slowly. "I've been at a loss, because a little while ago you said you didn't like Burden, and then you seemed to change your mind——"
"It was only seeming," I continued on my reckless course. "My mind toward him stands where it did."
"If that is so, what have you done to him, to give him hope?"
"Nothing I could help," I said.
"There's a strange misunderstanding somewhere, apparently," Sir Lionel reflected aloud.
"Oh, don't let there be one between us!" I begged, looking up at him suddenly.
He put his hand out as suddenly, and grabbed—literally grabbed—mine. I was so happy! Isn't it nice that men are so much stronger than women, and that we're meant to like them to be? It can make life so interesting.
As his fingers pressed mine, I let mine press his too, and felt we were friends. "By Jove, no, we won't," he said. And though it wasn't much to say, nothing could have pleased me better. The words and the tone seemed to match the close clasp of our hands.
"Would you be willing to trust me?" I asked.
"Of course. But in what way do you mean?"
"About Dick Burden. Hedoesn'tthink I'm flirting, and he doesn't think I care for him. Yet I want you to trust me, and not say anything to him or to his aunt. Let Dick and me fight it out between us."
He laughed again. "With all my heart, if you want to fight. But I won't have you annoyed. If he annoys you he must go. I will get rid of him."
"Dick can't annoy me if he doesn't make trouble for me with you, Sir Lionel," I said. (And that was the truth.) "Only, if you'll just trust me to manage him?"
"You're very young to undertake the management of a man."
"Dick isn't a man. He's a boy."
"And you—are a child."
"I may seem a child to you," I said, "but I'm not. I'll be so happy, and I'll thank you so much, if you'll just let things go on as they are for a little while. You'll be glad afterward if you do."
And he will, when I've gone and Ellaline has come. He will be glad he didn't give himself too much trouble on my account. But I'm not going to think now of what his opinion of me may bethen. At present he has a very good, kind opinion. Even though I am a child in his eyes, I am a dear child; and though it can't last, it does make me happy to be dear to him, in any way at all—this terrible Dragon of Ellaline's.
But that isn't the end of our conversation. The real end was an anti-climax, perhaps, but I liked it. For that matter, the tail of a comet's an anti-climax.
It was only that, when we'd talked on, and he'd promised to trust me, and leave the reins in my hands, while he attended solely to the steering of his motor-car, I said: "Now we must go in. Mrs. Senter will be wanting to finish her rubber." (I forgot to tell you that he explained she'd had a telegram, and had been obliged to hurry and write a letter, to catch the last post. That had stopped a game in the middle.)
"Oh, hang it all, I suppose she will!" he grumbled, more to himself than to me, because, if he'd paused to think, he would have been too polite to express himself so about a guest, whatever his feelings were. But that's why I was pleased. He spoke impulsively, without thinking. Wasn't it a triumph, that he would rather have stayed there in the garden, even with a "child," than hurry back to that radiant white-and-gold (and black) vision?
Now you know why I am so pleased with life.
All that happened last night, and to-day we have had "excursions," but no "alarums." We (every one, not just he and I) have been to Kent's Cavern, where prehistoric tigers' teeth grinned at us from the walls, and have taken a walk to Babbicombe Bay, where we had tea. I think it was the loveliest path I ever saw, that cliff way, with the gray rocks, and the blue sea into which the sky had emptied itself, like a cup with a silver rim. And the wild flowers—the little, dainty, pink-tipped daisies, which I couldn't bear to crush—and the larks that sprang out of the grass! There are things that make you feel so athomein England, dear. I think it is like no other country for that.
To-morrow we are to motor to Princetown, on Dartmoor—Eden Phillpotts land—and are coming back to Torquay at night. If I have time I'll write you a special Dartmoor letter, for I have an idea that I shall find the moor wonderfully impressive. But we mayn't get back till late; and the day after we are to start early in the morning for Sir Lionel's county, Cornwall. Afterward we shall come back into another part of Devonshire, and see Bideford and Exmoor. That's why I've been able to forget some of my worries in "Westward Ho!" and "Lorna Doone" lately. But Sir Lionel can't wait longer for Cornwall, and, so day-after-to-morrow night my eyes shall look upon—only think of it—"dark Tintagel by the Cornish sea." That is, we shall see it, Apollo permitting, for motors and men gang aft aglee.
This isn't apropos of Apollo's usual behaviour, but of the stories we've been told concerning Dartmoor roads. They say—well, there's nothing to worry about with Sir Lionel at the helm; but I shouldn't wonder if to-morrow will be an adventure.
There, now, I'm sorry I said that. You may be anxious; but I can't scratch it out, and it's nearly at the bottom ofsucha big sheet. So I'll wire to-morrow night, when we get back, and you'll have the telegram before you have this letter.
Your how-to-be-happy-though-undeserving,
But ever loving,
But ever loving,
Audrie.
Audrie.
XVI
AUDRIE BRENDON TO HER MOTHER
Still Torquay, Ten Thirty,August 7th
Still Torquay, Ten Thirty,
August 7th
Dearest: I thought the moor would be impressive. It is overwhelming. Oh, this Devonshire of my father's people is far from being all a land of cream and roses!
Dartmoor has given me so many emotions that I am tired, but I must tell you about it and them. When I shut my eyes, I see tors, like ruined watch-towers, against the sky. And I see Princetown, grim and terrible.
No country can look its best on a map, no matter what colour be chosen to express it; but I did like Dartmoor's rich brown, which set it apart from the green parts of Devonshire. It took some time, though, even in a motor, to come to the brown; for our road was fairy-like as far as Holne, Charles Kingsley's birthplace. We got out there, of course, and looked at his memorial window in the charming village church. At Holne Bridge I thought of the beautiful way to the Grande Chartreuse; so you can imagine it was far from sterile, although we were on the fringe of the moor. And ah, what a lovely green fringe the brown moor wears! It is all trimmed round the edge with woods, and glens, where the baby River Dart goes laughing by. And there's a most romantic Lover's Leap, of course. Strange how so many lovers, though of different countries, have all that same wild desire to jump off something! If I were a lover I should much rather die a flat, neat death.
We saw this Lover's Leap only at a distance when going toward the moor, but coming back—however, I will tell you about it afterward, when I come to Buckland Chase, on the way home.
It was at Holne that the big hills, of which we'd been warned, began; but Apollo merely sniffs at gradients that make smaller, meaner motors grunt with rage. We had a car behind us (which had started ahead), but it was rather an ominous sign to see no "pneu" tracks in the white dust of the road as we travelled. Other days, we have always had them to follow; and it makes a motor feel at home to know that his brethren have come and gone that way. This must have seemed to Apollo like isolation; and as if to emphasize the sensation which we all shared, suddenly we began tosmellthe moor.
I can't describe to you exactly what that smell was like, but weknewit was the moor. The air became alive and life-giving. It tingled with a cold breath of the north, and one thought of granite with the sun on it, and broom in blossom, and coarse grass such as mountain-sheep love, though one saw none of those things yet. The scenery was still gentle and friendly, and the baby Dart was singing at the top of its voice. Really, it was almost a tune. I felt, as I listened, that it would be easy to set it to music. The moss-covered stones round which purled the clear water looked like the whole notes and half notes, all ready to be pushed into place, so that the tune might "arrange itself." And the amber brown of the stream was mottled with gold under the surface, as if a sack full of sovereigns had been emptied into the river.
The first tor on our horizon was Sharp Tor, which the Dart evidently feared. The poor little river disappeared at sight of it, hurrying away from its frown, and as the stream vanished all the dainty charm of the landscape fled, too. We saw the moor towering toward us, stern and barren, with that great watch-tower of Nature's pinning it to the sky.
Moorland ponies raced to and fro, mad with the joy of some game they were playing, and they were not afraid of us. I should think the live things of the moor were afraid of nothing that could come to them out of the world beyond, for that pungent air breathes "courage," and the gray granite, breaking through the poor coat of grass, dares the eyes that look at it not to be brave.
Near the moorland ponies—on Holne Moor—we came to the strangest reservoir you could dream of. It was vast, and blue as a block fallen out of the sky; and once, Sir Lionel said, it had been a lake, though now it gives water to the prison town. An old road used to run through it; and to this day you can see the bridge under water. The story is that strange forms cross that bridge at night. I'm sure it's true, for anything could happen on the moor, and of course it swarms with pixies. You believe that, don't you? Well, anyway, you would if you saw the moor.
The next tor was nameless for us, but it was even finer than Sharp Tor. After seeing Stonehenge I felt so certain it must be Druidical that it was disappointing to hear it wasn't—that all such theories about the tors had "exploded." Afterward there were lots of tors; and there were tin mines, too, not far from our wild, desolate road—tin mines that have always been worked, they say, since the days of the Phœnicians. I should have been more interested in thinking about them, however, if we hadn't just then begun gliding down a hill which, from the top, looked as if it might go straight through to China. My toes felt as if they'd been done up in curl-papers for years. But there was a savage joy in the creepiness of it, and Apollo "chunk-chunked" sturdily down, in a nice, dependable way, toward a lonely village, which I felt sure was entirely populated by Eden Phillpotts people. He, and the other authors who write about the moor, invariably make their leading characters have "primitive passions," so I thought perhaps the faces of the moor folk would be wilder and stranger, and have more meaning than other civilized faces. But all those I saw looked just like everybody else, and I was so disappointed! They even dropped their "h's"; and once, when we stopped a moment at a place where Sir Lionel wasn't sure of the way, I asked a boy on a rough pony the names of some trees we had passed. "H'ash and green h'elm, miss," said he. Itwasa blow!
Toward eleven, the sun had drunk up the cold mist, and the moor basked in heat. We were in an empty world, save for a cottage now and then, and a Cyclopean wall of stones loosely piled one upon another. Yet this was the main road from Ashburton to Princetown! Apollo glided along a desolate white way between creamy and silver grasses artistically intermingled, and burning, golden gorse, which caught the sun. The splendid, dignified loneliness of the moor was like the retreat chosen by a hermit god! There may be only twenty square miles of moor, but it feels like a hundred.
Hexworthy and the Forest Inn, which we came to in a valley, were curiously Swiss, all but the ancient cross which made me think of Eden Phillpotts's "American Prisoner." How can I say an "ancient" cross, though, when thereallyold things on the moor began not only before Christ, but before history—the stone circles, the cairns and the cromlechs, the kistvaen and the barrows! The hut circles, where a forgotten people used to live, are strewn in thousands over the moor, and cooking utensils are sometimes dug up, even now; so you see, everything isn't discovered yet. The people hadn't any metal to work with, poor creatures, until the Bronze Age, and they clothed themselves in skins, which I suppose their dressmakers and tailors made when the sheep and cows that wore them first had been cut up and eaten. I wonder if girls were pretty in those days, or men handsome, and if anyone cared? But I suppose knowing the difference between ugliness and beauty is as old as Adam and Eve. If Eve hadn't been pretty, Adam wouldn't have looked at her, but would have waited in the hope of something better.
The first sight of Princetown only intensified the loneliness of the moor, somehow, partly because it loomed so gray and grim, partly, perhaps, because we knew it to be a prison town. The dark buildings looked as much a natural growth of the moor as those ruined temples on the horizon, which were tors. It was almost impossible to believe that Plymouth was only fifteen miles away. And the sombreness and gloom of the melancholy place increased instead of diminished as we drew nearer to it, after leaving behind us the pleasant oasis of Tor Bridge and its little hotel that anglers and walkers love.
The prison settlement was stuck like a black vice-spot in the midst of wide purity. Gloom hung over it in a pall, and stole the warmth from the sunshine. What a town to name after a Prince Regent! and what a town to have lunch in! Yet it was a singularly good lunch.
We ate it in a hotel built of gray stone, with gray stone colonnades, which looked like an annex to the prison. There was meat pie, which one expected to find smoking hot, and it gave quite a shock to find it not only cold, but iced. There was a big, cool dining-room, all mysterious, creeping shadows, and queer echoes when one dared to speak. And unless one did speak the silence sent a chill through one's body, but it was an interesting chill. Certainly the hotel was the strangest I ever saw; and the hotel dog was like no other animal on land or sea. He appeared to be a mixture of brindled bull and Irish terrier, with long side-whiskers on a bull-dog face. He was a nightmare, but he loved Devonshire cream and junket, and ate them as if he were a lamb.
We stayed a long time in Princetown, and then started to go home by a different way. Out of a vast moorland tract we descended to Dartmoor Bridge, the prettiest oasis in the wild desert of moor which we had seen yet. But soon we were back in moorland again, with tors rising up to snatch at heaven with their dark claws. Each one seemed different from all the rest, just as people's faces are different in crowds. Some were like crests of waves, petrified as they were ready to break; but the weirdest of all were exactly like ruined forts of dwarfs. And presently the scenery changed again in a kaleidoscopic way. We came to lovely Houndsgate, with a great, deep wonder-valley far below us, only to return to a region of tors and bracken, and to plunge down the most tremendous hill of all—a hill which was like gliding down the glassy side of an ocean wave.
I had just exclaimed, "See, there's a motor ahead of us!" when an extraordinary thing happened. The car going before us, very fast, suddenly ran to the side of the steep road, stopped, some people jumped out, and at the same instant a great flame spouted straight up toward the sky.
Not one of us said one word, except Emily, who squeaked, and cried, "Oh, Lionel! we shall all be killed and burned up!"
Of course, Sir Lionel didn't answer. I would have given anything to be in Mrs. Senter's place, sitting beside him, so that I could see his face, and guess what he meant to do. But it was decided and done in a few seconds. He took Apollo on a little farther, and then stopped as near the burning motor as he dared, so that there might be no danger of our catching fire. Before we could have counted "one, two," he had sprung from the car and was running toward the fiery chariot, with Young Nick flying after him. Dick Burden got down, too, and sauntered in their wake, but he didn't go very fast.
It was so exciting and confusing that I scarcely understood at first what was happening, but Sir Lionel tore off his coat as he ran, and flung it round the woman from the other car. She had not been on fire when she jumped out, but the grass and bushes close by the road had already begun to blaze, and her dress had caught in the flame. She was tall and big, but Sir Lionel lifted her up as if she'd been a child, and, wrapped in his coat, laid her down at a little distance on the grass, where he rolled her over, and put out the fire. Then, when she was on her feet again, panting and sobbing a little, he and the other men began stamping out the flames playing among the low bushes, lest they spread along the moor. As for the car, Sir Lionel said afterward it was hopeless trying to save her, as there were gallons and gallons of petrol to burn (it was her brakes that had got on fire, and ignited the rest), and no sand or anything of that sort to throw on. But while we were staring at the strange scene, the flames died down, having drunk up all the petrol; and whether some part of the mechanism which held the red-hot brakes in place gave way suddenly, I don't know. All I do know is, that the car quivered, moved forward, began running down the tremendous hill, faster and faster, until, with a wild bound, she disappeared from our sight over a precipice.
By this time we were all out, except Emily, hurrying down the hill, to talk to the people who had lost their car; but would you believe it, they hardly cared for their loss, now they were out of danger? It was a bride and groom, with their chauffeur, and they were Americans, staying at the Imperial, in Torquay. The bridegroom was elderly but humorous, and told us he used to hate motors and kept tortoises for pets, because he liked everything that moved slowly, all his ancestors having come from Philadelphia. But the girl he loved wouldn't marry him unless he promised to take her to England on an automobile trip. Now he hoped she had had enough, and would let him go back to tortoises again.
He said he had never enjoyed anything so much as seeing the car's red-hot skeleton jump over the precipice, where it could not hurt anyone, but would just fall quietly to pieces on the rocks.
The bride was great fun, too, and as she comes from St. Louis, it is not likely she will cultivate tortoises. When we took them all three back to Torquay with us, squashed in anyhow, she talked about running over to Paris and buying a balloon or an aeroplane! We came by way of the Buckland Chase, as it is called—private property; and an elfin glen of beauty, for mile after mile, with the Dart singing below, and the Lover's Leap so close that it seemed painfully realistic—especially after the adventure of the car which leaped into space.
Sir Lionel got his coat burnt, and his hands a little, too; but he would drive, though Young Nick might have done so as well as not.
After all we shan't get to Cornwall to-morrow! Sir Lionel says it would be a crime to leave this part of the world without going up the Dart (the "Rhine of England") in a boat, and seeing the beautiful old Butter Market at Dartmouth.
I shall send you postcards from there, if I have the chance, for it's very historic. It will be Cornwall the day after, but I shall have to wire my next address.