Set in Silver Part 23

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 Phoenicians.

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" st.u.r.dily 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 pa.s.sions," 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 pa.s.sed. "H'ash and green h'elm, miss," said he. It _was_ a 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 gra.s.ses 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 G.o.d! 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 the _really_ old 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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 gla.s.sy 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. d.i.c.k 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s, 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 s.p.a.ce.

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 b.u.t.ter 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.

With all the love of

Your Moorland Princess.

P. S. You ought to have seen Emily and Mrs. Senter fussing over Sir Lionel when he burnt his hands! He hates being fussed over, and was almost cross, until our eyes happened to meet, and then we both smiled.

That seemed to make him good-natured again. And he is wonderfully patient with his sister, really.

XVII

MRS. SENTER TO HER SISTER, MRS. BURDEN, AT GLEN LACHLAN, N. B.

_White Hart Hotel, Launceston, Cornwall_, _Aug. 10th_

My Dear Sis: It came off all right. My things usually do, don't they? With some women, it is only their lip-salve and face powder that come off. With me, it is plans. Luckily I inherited mamma's genius for high diplomacy, while you, alas, only came in for her rheumatism. And by the way, how _are_ your poor dear bones? Not devilled, I hope? Do forgive the cheap wit. I am obliged to save my best things for Sir Lionel. He appreciates them highly, which is one comfort; but it is rather a strain living up to him (though I do think it will pay in the end), and in intercourse with my family I must be allowed to rest my brain. When everything is settled, one way or the other, my features, also, shall have repose. To keep young, every woman ought to go into retirement for at least one month out of the twelve, a fortnight at a time, perhaps, and do nothing but eat and sleep, see n.o.body, talk to n.o.body, think of nothing, and especially not _smile_. If one followed that regime religiously, with or without prayer and fasting, one need never have crow's-feet.

Of course, with you it is different. You have now decided to live for d.i.c.k, and let your waist measure look after itself; but I have larger aims and fewer years than you, dearest. My conception of self-respecting widowhood is to be as young as possible, as attractive as possible, as rich as possible, and eventually to read my t.i.tle clear to (at least) a baronet, and have a castle in a good hunting county. There are difficulties in my upward way, yet I feel strongly I shall overcome them. Let my motto be, "The battle to the smart, and the situation to the pretty." Why shouldn't I triumph on both counts? The ward, to be sure, is pretty, and is in the situation; but she doesn't know her own advantages, and I'm not sure she would marry Sir Lionel if he asked her; which at present he apparently has no intention of doing, although he admires her more warmly than either d.i.c.k or I think advisable in a guardian.

Since I wrote you last, just before starting on this motor match-making venture of ours, there have been several new developments. I don't know whether you are any deeper in d.i.c.k's confidence, in this affair, than I am (though I fancy not), but I scent a mystery. d.i.c.k really _has_ detective talent, dear Sis, and if I were you, I shouldn't oppose his setting up as a sort of _art nouveau_ Sherlock Holmes. Whether he has found out about some schoolgirl peccadillo of Miss Lethbridge's, and is dangling it over her head, Damocles sword fashion, I can't tell, because _he_ won't tell; though he looks offensively wise when I tease him, and I have tried in vain, on my own account, to discover. But certain it is that he is either blackmailing her in a milk-and-water way, or hypnotizing her to obey his orders.

He hinted, you know, that he could get the girl to make Sir Lionel invite us to join the motoring party; but I supposed then that she had a weakness of the heart where my dear nephew was concerned. Now, my opinion is that she dislikes, yet fears him. Not very complimentary to d.i.c.k, but he doesn't seem to mind, and is enjoying himself immensely in his own deliciously, impertinently, perky way. Somehow or other he has induced her to be more or less engaged to him, a temporary arrangement, I understand, but pleasing to him and convenient to me. What d.i.c.k gets out of it, I don't know, and don't enquire; but _I_ get out of it the satisfaction of "shelving" the girl as a possible rival.

Sir Lionel, who (it's useless to spare your motherly vanity!) has no very warm appreciation of d.i.c.k's qualities, is disgusted with his ward for encouraging D.'s advances, and is inclined to turn to me for sympathy. In that branch I am a great success, and altogether am getting on like a house afire. What if I do have to pump up an intelligent interest in politics in general, and affairs in the Far East in particular? I am fortunately so const.i.tuted that fifteen minutes' study of the _Times_, washed down by early tea (taken strong), enables me to discourse brilliantly on the deepest subjects during the day; and, thank goodness, virtue is rewarded in the evening with a little bridge. If I am ever Lady Pendragon (sounds well, doesn't it?) it shall be all bridge and skittles, for me--and devil take politics, military science, history, the cla.s.sics, Herbert Spencer, Robert Browning, Shakespeare, and all other boring or out-of-date things and writers (if he hasn't already taken them) on which I am now obliged to keep up a sort of Maxim-fire of conversation.

As to d.i.c.k's affairs, however, if the girl really is the heiress we thought her, I shall be only too glad to use my influence in every direction at once, to make the temporary arrangement a permanent one.

But the worst of it is, I'm not at all sure that she is any sort of an heiress.

Sir Lionel intimated to me the other night, when I was tactfully tickling him with hints, that she has little except what he may choose to give her. If that be true, I fear as Mrs. d.i.c.k her _dot_ will not be large; but it strikes me as very probable that he was only trying to put me off--or rather, to put d.i.c.k off, if d.i.c.k were fortune-hunting. I don't know whether to believe his version or not, therefore; but I did get at one fact which may help us to find out for ourselves. Dear Ellaline is a daughter of _Frederic_ Lethbridge. It was rather a shock to hear this, for I have a vague impression that there was once a scandal, quite a ripe, juicy scandal, about a Frederic Lethbridge. Can it have been this Frederic Lethbridge, and if so, had it anything to do with money matters?

I haven't mentioned my doubts to d.i.c.k, because he really is idiotically in love with the girl, and is capable of foolishness. I intend to let him go on as he is going for the present, as he can do himself no harm, and can do me a great deal of good, by keeping his darling out of my way and Sir Lionel's thoughts. But of course, he mustn't be allowed to marry her if she has nothing of her own. Sir Lionel is rich, but not rich enough to make his ward rich enough for d.i.c.k, and keep plenty for his wife--when he gets one--if she be anything like _me_.

Your dear hostess, who would by this time be my hostess if I weren't otherwise engaged, knows everything and everybody. Not only that, she has done both for a considerable term of years. You remember the joke about her being torn between the desire not to exceed the age of forty-five and yet to boast a friendship with Lord Beaconsfield? Well, she can have known Frederic Lethbridge, and all about him, without being a day over forty, as that is Sir Lionel's age, and Mrs. Lethbridge was a distant relative of his.

Tell Lady MacRae that. Say that the Frederic Lethbridge you are inquiring about married a Miss de Nesville, and that there is a daughter in existence, a girl of nineteen. If Lady Mac doesn't know anything, get her to ask her friends; but do hurry up for d.i.c.k's sake, there's a dear, otherwise I shan't be able to pull the strings as you would like me to; and already my sweet nerves are jangled, out of tune. Dear Lady Mac is so adorably frank, when she has something disagreeable to say, that you'll have no difficulty in ferreting out the truth--if it's anything nasty. For most reasons I hope it isn't, as a rich girl would be a valuable bird in the hand for d.i.c.k; and I am on the spot to see his affairs as well as my own through, whatever happens.

For my part, if Sir Lionel weren't up to such a fatiguingly high level of intelligence, I believe I could fall in love with him. He may be descended from King Arthur, but he looks more like Lancelot, and I fancy might make love rather nicely, once he let himself go. Although it's long since he did any soldiering, he shows that he _was_ a soldier, born, not made. He has improved, if anything, since we knew him in India, but I remember you used to be quite afraid of having to talk to him then, and preferred Colonel O'Hagan, whom you thought jolly and good-natured, though, somehow, I never got on with him very well. I always had the feeling he was trying to read me, and I do dislike that sort of thing in a man. It ruins human intercourse, and takes away all natural desire to flirt.

You ask me how I endure Emily Norton. Well, as I sit beside Sir Lionel in the car, I don't need to bother with her much in the daytime. She hates bridge, and thinks playing for money wrong in most circ.u.mstances, but considers it her duty to please her brother's guests; and as she never wins, anyhow, it needn't affect her conscience. I tell her that _I_ always give my winnings to charity, and didn't think it necessary to add that, to my idea, charity should not only begin at home, but end there, unless its resources were unlimited. The poor, dull thing has that kind of self-conscious religion that sends her soul trotting every other minute to look in the gla.s.s, and see that it hasn't smudged itself. So trying! Once she asked me what I did for _my_ soul? I longed to tell her I took cod-liver oil, or Somebody's Fruit Salt, but didn't dare, on account of Sir Lionel. And she has such a conceited way of saying, when speaking of the future: "If the Lord spares me till next year, I will do so and so." As if He were in immediate need of her, but might be induced to get on without her for a short time!

One would know, by the way she screws up her hair, that she could never have felt a temptation. But I shall not let myself be troubled much with her if I marry Sir Lionel. She can go back to her doctor and her curates, and be invited for Christmas to Graylees, which, by the way, I hope to inspect when we have finished this tour.

I am looking quite lovely in my motoring things, and enjoying myself very much, on the whole.

Devonshire I found too hot for this time of the year, but the scenery is pretty. I had no idea what a jolly little river the Dart is; and Dartmouth is rather quaint. For those who are keen on old things, I suppose the b.u.t.ter Market would be interesting; but I can't really see why, because things happened in certain places hundreds of years ago, one should stand and stare at walls or windows, or fireplaces. The things _must_ have happened somewhere! Although Charles the Second, for instance, may have been great fun to know, and one would have enjoyed flirting with him, now that he's been dead and out of reach for ages, he's of no importance to me.

We left Torquay yesterday, and arrived here in the evening, after a hilly but nice run, and lunching at Plymouth. Of course, a lot of nonsense was talked about Sir Francis Drake. One almost forgets _what_ the old boy did, except to play bowls or something; but I have a way of seeming to know things, for which I deserve more credit than anyone (save you) would guess. When they were not jabbering about him at lunch, it was about the _Mayflower_, which apparently sailed from Plymouth for the purpose of supplying Americans with ancestors. I never met any Americans yet, except the kind who boast of having begun as s...o...b..acks, whose great-great-grand-parents didn't cross in the _Mayflower_. It must have been a huge ship, or else a lot of the ancestors went in the steerage, or were stewards or stowaways.

There was a ferry, getting from Devonshire into Cornwall, so of course we just missed a boat and had to wait half an hour. I was dying to go to sleep, but the others were as chirpy as possible, gabbling Cornish legends. When I say the "others," I mean Sir Lionel and Ellaline Lethbridge. I didn't know any legends, but I made up several on the spur of the moment, much more exciting than theirs, and that pleased Sir Lionel, as he is a Cornishman. Heavens, how I did take it out of myself admiring his native land when we'd got across that ferry! Said the scenery was quite different from that of Devonshire, at the first go off; and I'm not sure there _weren't_ differences. The road coming toward Launceston really was romantic; rock-walled part of the way, with a lot of pink and yellow lichen; and again, fine open s.p.a.ces with distant blue downs against a sky which looked, as I remarked to Sir Lionel, as if the G.o.ds had poured a libation of golden wine over it. Not bad, that, was it? I believe we pa.s.sed an Arthurian battle-field, which naturally interested him immensely, therefore _had_ to interest poor me!

He seems to think there actually _was_ an Arthur, and was quite pleased with me for saying that all the Cornish names of places rang with romance like fairy bells sounding from under the sea--perhaps from Atlantis. Anyhow, they're a relief after such Devonshire horrors as Meavy and Hoo Meavy, which are like the lisping of babies. Sir Lionel thought the "derivations" of such names an absorbing subject! But living in the East so long has made him quixotically patriotic.

Here and there we pa.s.sed a whole villageful of white-washed cottages, with purplish-brown moss covering their roofs--rather picturesque; and some of the slate-roofed, stone houses are nice in their way, too; I suppose distinctively Cornish. Not that I care! I'm glad Graylees Castle isn't in Cornwall, which is _much_ too far from town.

There were some mine-shafts about, to mar the scenery, toward the end of the journey, and the road surface was bad compared to what we've had. If the car weren't a very good one, we should have suffered from the b.u.mps.

Ellaline Lethbridge, by the way, said something about Cornwall which puzzled me. Suddenly she exclaimed: "Why, the atmosphere here is like Spain! Everything swims in a sea of coloured lights!" _I_ thought she'd spent all her life at school in France, and I mentioned the impression, upon which she replied, with an air of being taken aback: "I mean, from what I have _heard_ of Spain." Can she have had an escapade, I wonder?

But that is d.i.c.k's business, not mine--at present.

There's a castle in Launceston, which has kept us over to-day, as Sir Lionel has been in these parts before, and can't rest unless we see everything he admired in his youth. I wish he hadn't seen so much, there'd be less for us to do. I _hate_ pottering about, seeing sights in the rain, and it has been trying to rain all day. It's well enough to say that the rain rains alike on the just and the unjust, but that is not true, as some women's hair curls naturally. Ellaline's does, and mine doesn't--except the part I owe for at Truefitt's.

It's an old hotel that we're in, quite pleased to show its age; and I have made rather a beast of myself with some sort of Cornish pasty, which, it seems, is a local favourite, and spoils the peasants' teeth.

Cornish cream is good, and, I understand from Sir Lionel, was invented by the Phoenicians. I suppose they drowned their sorrows in it while working in the tin mines one always a.s.sociates with them.

We go to Tintagel to-morrow, and do some other Cornish things, I don't know what. But write to me at Bideford, as we shall be back in Devonshire in a few days on our way--I fancy--toward Wales. I long to hear what you or Lady Mac may have up your sleeves about the dear Ellaline's papa.