Set in Silver Part 32

Dozens of motors arrived while we were eating, gorgeous cars with resplendent chauffeurs, but there wasn't one to put the bonnet of "Apollo" (as someone has named ours) out of joint; and not one chauffeur as striking as our extraordinary Bengali in his native dress.

I forgot to mention that I bound Ellaline to secrecy before I began my tale, saying that I'd had the information in confidence. She has her faults, but I don't think she'd break her word. She is one of those tall, upstanding, head-in-the-air creatures who pride themselves on keeping a promise till it's mouldy.

My headache was better, after relieving my mind, and I enjoyed the run to Clifton and Bristol. We had to go through the queer old gray village of Cheddar, which was as cheesy looking as one would expect it to be; and I suppose the Market Cross we pa.s.sed must have been good, as Sir Lionel would stop and take a photograph. As we turned out of the place for Axbridge, I threw a glance over my shoulder, back at the exit of the queer valley, and a carved bronze screen seemed already to have been drawn across it.

It was a fine road; Axbridge a sort of toy village whose houses might have been made for good little girls to play with; and to avoid the traffic in the main road we went by way of Congresbury, where the Milford-Joneses live. I was glad we didn't meet them driving their old pony-chaise. I should have been ashamed to bow. There was a turn which led us into a charming road, winding high among woods, then coming out where the gorge of the Avon burst upon our view. It always pleases Sir Lionel if one is enthusiastic over scenery, so I was, though I really hated going over that awfully high suspension bridge, as I detest looking down from heights. So does Mrs. Norton; but I can't afford to be cla.s.sed with her, therefore I joined Ellaline in exclaiming that the bridge was glorious. I suppose it is fine, if one could only look without fear of being seasick.

We stopped all night in Clifton, in which Miss Lethbridge was interested, largely because of "Evelina," who stopped at the Hot Wells, in the "most romantic part of the story." I couldn't for my life remember who wrote "Evelina"--which was awkward; and it hasn't come back to me yet. I always mix the book up with "Clarissa Harlowe," and so does d.i.c.k, though, of course, he's read neither.

We went to see a lot of things in Bristol, but the best was a church called St. Mary Redcliffe. Mrs. Norton, though tired, pined to go when she heard it was famous; and it's as much as your life is worth to deny her a church if she wants one. The others, except d.i.c.k, said it was worth stopping for; also that they were glad they did; so somebody was pleased! And Sir L. and E. jabbered enough history in Bristol to last a schoolmaster a week. I was quite thankful to start again, and stop the flow of intelligence, because I hadn't found time to f.a.g up Bristol and Clifton beforehand, as I do some towns.

So we came to Bath, where we've been stopping for two days at one of the best hotels in England, and where I might enjoy a little well-earned civilization if it weren't that there are a thousand and one old houses and other "features" which Mademoiselle Ellaline pretends she yearns to visit. Of course, _I_ know that all she wants is a chance to monopolize Sir L.'s society, but _he_ doesn't know that; and my business is not only to fight unjust monopoly, but to establish a Senter-Pendragon Trust myself. Consequently there is no rest for the wicked, and w.i.l.l.y-nilly, I, too, gloat over relics of the past.

Luckily for me, as I have had to do more sight-seeing here than almost anywhere else, Bath is a fascinating place, and I believe it's becoming very fashionable again. Anyhow, all the great ones of earth seem to have lived here at one time or another. I wonder if it mightn't be nice for you to spend a season, taking the waters, or bathing, or whatever is the smartest thing to do? I've noticed it's only the very smartest thing that ever thoroughly agrees with you, and I sympathize. I have the sort of feeling that what is good for d.u.c.h.esses may be good for me; but if I bring off what I'm aiming at now, Lady Pendragon shall rise on the ladder of her husband's fame and her own charm to the plane of royalties.

By the way, in nosing about among the foundations of a church here, St.

Peter's--they found the wife (her body, I mean) of that King Edmund Thingummy I never could find out about. He seems always to be cropping up!

I was in hopes we'd only have to go back to the Roman days of Bath, as that saves trouble; but, oh no, down I must dip into Saxon lore, or I'm not in it with the industrious Miss Lethbridge! I think the wretched Saxons had a mint here, or something, and there were religious pageants of great splendour in which that everlasting St. Dunstan mixed himself up. I tell you these things, I may explain, not because I think you will be interested, but because I want to fix them in my mind, as we haven't finished "doing" Bath yet, and are to stop another day or two.

As for Roman talk, there is no end of it among us; it mingles with our meals, which would otherwise be delicious; and in my dreams, instead of being lulled by the music of a beautiful weir under my window, I find myself mumbling: "Yes, Sir Lionel, Ptolemy should have said the place was outside, not in, the Belgic border." (Sounds like something new in embroidery, doesn't it?) "Strange, indeed, that they only discovered the Roman Baths so late as the middle of the eighteenth century! And then, only think of finding the biggest and best of all, more than a hundred years later!"

I a.s.sure you, I have kept my end up with my two too-well-informed companions, and I was even able to tell Sir Lionel a legend he didn't know: about Bladud, a son of the British King Lud Hudibras, creating Bath by black magic, secreting a miraculous stone in the spring, which heated the water and cured the sick. Then Bladud grew so conceited about his own powers that he tried to fly, and if he had succeeded there would have been no need for the Wright brothers to bother; but when he got as far as London from Bath the wing-strings broke and he fell, plop! on a particularly hard temple of Apollo. After him reigned his son, no less a person than King Lear. I got this out of a queer little old book I bought the first day we came, but I a.s.sumed the air of having known it since childhood. There's another legend, it seems, about Bladud and a swine, but it's less esoteric than this, and Sir Lionel likes mine better.

I do wish we hadn't to spend so much time poking about in the Roman Baths, for though there are good enough sights to see there, for those who love that sort of thing, one does get such cold feet, and there are such a lot of steps up and down, one's dress is soon dusty round the bottom, and that's a bore when one has no maid.

If I could choose, I'd prefer the Pump Room, and would rather talk of Beau Nash and the old a.s.sembly Rooms than of Minerva and her temple--or indeed of Pepys, or Miss Austen and f.a.n.n.y Burney. By the way, "Evelina"

was hers. I've found that out, without committing myself. I wish I could buy the book for sixpence. I think I'll try, when n.o.body is looking; and it ought to be easy, for we simply haunt a bookshop in Gay Street, belonging to a Mr. Meehan, who is a celebrity here. He has written a book in which Sir Lionel is much interested, called "Famous Houses of Bath," and as it seems he knows more about the place as it was in old days and as it is now than any other living person, he has been going round with us, showing us those "features" I mentioned. He appears to have architecture of all kinds at his finger tips, and not only points out here and there what "Wood the elder and Wood the younger" did, under patronage of Ralph Allen, but knows which architect's work was good, which bad, which indifferent; and that really is beyond me! I suppose one can't have a soul for Paris fashions and English architecture too? I prefer to be a judge of the former, thanks! It's of much more use in life.

I should think there can hardly be a street, court, or even alley of Old Bath into which we haven't been led by our clever cicerone, to see a "bit" which oughtn't on any account to be missed. Here, the remains of the Roman wall, crowded in among mere, middle-aged things; there the place where Queen Elizabeth stayed, or Queen Anne; where "Catherine Morland" lodged, or "General Tilney"; where "Miss Elliot" and "Captain Wentworth" met; where John Hales was born, and Terry, the actor; where Sir Sidney Smith and De Quincey went to school; the house whence Elizabeth Linley eloped with Sheridan; the place where the "King of Bath," poor old Nash, died poor and neglected; and so on, ad infinitum, all the way to Prior Park, where Pope stayed with Ralph Allen, rancorously reviling the town and its sulphur-laden air. So now you can imagine that my "walking and standing" muscles are becoming abnormally developed, to the detriment of the sitting-down ones, which I fear may be atrophied or something before we return to motor life.

Sir Lionel has remarked that Bath is a "microcosm of England," and I hastened to say "Yes, it is." Do you happen to know what a microcosm means? d.i.c.k says it's a conglomeration of microbes, but he is always wrong about abstract things unconnected with Sherlock Holmes.

By this time you will be as tired of Bath as if you had pottered about in it as much as I have, and won't care whether it had two great periods--Roman and eighteenth century--or twenty, inextricably entangled with the South Pole and Kamchatka. _More_ tired than I, even, for I have got a certain amount of satisfaction to the eye from the agreeable, cla.s.sic-looking terraces and crescents, and the pure white stone buildings that glitter on the hillsides overlooking the Avon. That is the sort of background which is becoming to me, and as I had all my luggage meet me in Bath, I have been able to dress for it; whereas Miss Lethbridge has done most of her exploring in blue serge.

In a day or two we are off again--Wales sooner or later, I believe, though I ask no questions, as I don't care to draw attention to my own future plans. We were asked for a fortnight, and I am not troubling my memory to count by how many days we have overstayed--not our welcome, I hope--but our invitation. You will wonder perhaps why I "overstay,"

since I frankly admit that I'm "fed up" with too much scenery and too much information. Yet no, you are far too clever to wonder, dear Sis.

You will see for yourself that I must go on, like "the brook," until Sir Lionel asks me to go on--as Lady Pendragon. Or else until I have to abandon hope. But I won't think of that. And I am being so nice to Mrs.

Norton (whenever necessary) that I think she has forgiven me the colour of my hair, and will advise her brother to invite me to make a little visit at Graylees Castle, where it is understood the tour eventually comes to an end. When this end may arrive the G.o.d of automobiles knows.

A chauffeur proposes; the motor-car disposes. And the Woman-in-the-Car never reposes--when there's another woman and a man in the case.

Your-enduring-to-the-end,

Gwen.

P. S.--That was an inspiration of mine about the Cheddar Cavern, wasn't it? I have another now, and will make a note of it. N.B.--Get Sir L. to take me to see the ruins of Tintern Abbey by moonlight (if any) and while there induce him to propose, or think he has done so. I have a white dress which would just suit.

XXVII

AUDRIE BRENDON TO HER MOTHER

_Tintern Abbey_, _August 27th_

Dearest Saint: We're not exactly living in Tintern Abbey; that would be too good to be true, and would also annoy the rooks which cry and cry always in the ruins, as if they were ghosts of the dead Cistercian monks, clothed not in white, but in decent black, ever mourning their lost glory. But we are in a perfect duck of a hotel, covered with Virginia creeper, and as close by as can be. We arrived this afternoon, and have had an hour or two of delightful dawdling in the Abbey. Soon we are to have an early dinner, which we shall bolt if necessary, so that we may go in again by moonlight, before the moon escapes. I have dressed quickly, because I wanted to begin a letter to you. I shan't have time to finish it, but I'll do that when we've come back from the heavenly ruins, with moonlight in my pores and romance in my soul. I ought to write a better letter in such a mood, oughtn't I?

And I do try to write nice letters to my Angel, because she says such dear, kind things about them, and also because I love her better every day.

We've seen quant.i.ties of beautiful things and places since I wrote you last, darling. To think them over is like drawing a long gold chain, strewn at intervals with different precious stones, through the fingers, slowly, jewel by jewel. The gold chain is our road and the beautiful beads are the places, of course. I can say "draw them slowly through the fingers," because we don't scorch. We are out to see the "fair face of England," not to scurry over it like distracted flies.

I don't remember many "jewels" on the way to Gloucester from Bath through Cold Aston and Stroud; but if I were properly up in history, no doubt I should have noted more than I did; yet Gloucester itself was a diamond of the first water. I feared to be disappointed in the Cathedral, so soon after exquisite Wells and the Abbey at Bath, which I loved. But as soon as I got inside it was quite otherwise, especially as I had Sir Lionel to show me things, and he knew Gloucester of old. To me, the interior was almost as interesting as Winchester itself (which, so far, has outranked all), for the transition from one period to another is so clearly and strangely marked, and it's the actual birthplace of Perpendicular architecture. The Cloisters must be among the loveliest in the world; and there's a great, jewelled window which leaves a gorgeous scintillating circle in my mind's eye, just as the sun does on your body's eye, when you have looked in the face of its glory.

Oh, and the extraordinary stone veil, with its gilded ornamentation! I shan't forget that, but shall think of it when I am old. There is an effect as of tall rows of ripe wheat bending toward one another, gleaming as wheat does when the breeze blows and the sun shines.

We heard the choir singing, an unseen choir of boys and men; and the voices were like shafts of crystal, rising, rising, rising, up as far as heaven, for all I know.

Don't you feel that the voice of a boy is purer, more impersonal and s.e.xless, somehow, than the clearest soprano of a woman, therefore exactly fulfilling our idea of an angel singing?

Think of Gloucester having been laid out on the same plan as the praetorian camp at Rome! They've proved it by a sketch map of Viollet le Duc's; and under the city of the Saxons, and mediaeval Gloucester, lies Gloucestra--"Fair City"--of the Romans. You can dig bits of its walls and temples up almost anywhere if you go deep enough, people say. It must have been an exciting place to live in when Rome ruled Britain, because the fierce tribes from Southern Wales, just across the Severn, were always spoiling for a fight. But now one can't imagine being excited to any evil pa.s.sion in this shrine of the great "Abbey of the Severn Lands." The one pa.s.sion I dared feel was admiration; admiration everywhere, all the way through from the tomb of Osric the Woden who founded the abbey, to the New Inn (which is very old, and perfectly beautiful); in the ancient streets, at the abbot's gateway, all round the Cathedral, inside and out, pausing at the tombs (especially that of poor murdered King Edward II., who was killed at Berkeley Castle only a few miles away), and so on and on, even into the modern town which is inextricably tangled with the old.

There are quant.i.ties of interesting and lovely places, according to Sir Lionel, where one ought to go from Gloucester, especially with a motor, which makes seeing things easier than not seeing them; there's Cheltenham, with a run which gives glorious views over the Severn Valley; and Stonebench, where you can best see the foaming Severn Bore; and Tewkesbury, which you'll be interested to know is the Nortonbury of an old book you love--"John Halifax, Gentleman"; and Malvern; and there's even Stratford-on-Avon, not too far away for a day's run. But Sir Lionel has news that the workmen will be out of Graylees Castle before long, and he says we must leave some of the best things for another time; Oxford and Cambridge, for instance; and Graylees is so near Warwick and Kenilworth and Stratford-on-Avon that it will be best to save them for separate short trips after we have "settled down at home."

How little he guesses that there'll be no settling down for me--that already I have been with him longer than I expected! Whenever he speaks of "getting home," and what "we" will do after that, it gives me a horrid, choky feeling; and I'm afraid he thinks me unresponsive on the subject of the beautiful old place which he apparently longs to have me see, because my throat is always too shut up, when it is mentioned, to talk about it. I can't do much more than say "Yes" and "No," in the absolutely necessary places, and generally show symptoms of cold in the head, if there's a hanky handy.

Of course, I am dying to see you, dearest. You know that, without my telling, and you are everything to me--my whole world. Yet it hurts me dreadfully to know that, when Sir Lionel Pendragon is at home, instead of carrying out the nice plans he makes each day for "us" in the future, he will be despising me heartily, and thinking me the very worst girl, without exception, who ever lived. I believe he now dislikes b.l.o.o.d.y Queen Mary more than any other woman who ever spoiled the earth with her offensive presence; but probably she will go up one when he gets to know about me.

I don't doubt that he'll be angry with the real Ellaline as well, but not absolutely disgusted with her, as he will be with me. Besides, whatever he feels, it won't matter to her very much, except where money is concerned, because she will be married before he knows the truth. She won't have to live in his house, or even in the same country with him, for her home will be in France with her soldier-husband. Unfortunately, I'm afraid his opinion of her may matter in a mercenary way, for I have heard the whole story--I believe the _true_ story--of Ellaline's mother and father, as connected with Sir Lionel's past.

Mrs. Senter told it, and enjoyed telling it, because she thought it would depress and take the spirit out of me. She hoped, I'm sure, that it would make me shrink from Sir Lionel's society in shame and mortification; also she very likely fancied that I might consider myself an unfit bride for her nephew, whose attentions to me are extremely convenient for her; but she would prefer not to have them end in matrimony.

If I were Ellaline Lethbridge, with the feelings of Audrie Brendon, I should have taken the recital precisely as she expected; though really I don't think Ellaline herself, as she is, would have minded desperately, except about the money. But being Audrie Brendon, and not Ellaline, I could have shouted for joy at almost every word that woman said, if it hadn't been in a cave where shouting would have made awful echoes.

You know, dear, how I have been puzzling over Sir Lionel the n.o.ble, as he appears to me, and Sir Lionel the Dragon, as painted by Ellaline, and how I've vainly tried to match the pieces together. Well, thanks to Mrs.

Senter's revelations, the puzzle no longer exists. Of course, long ago, I made up my mind that there was a mistake somewhere, and that it wasn't on my side; still, I couldn't understand certain things. Now, there _isn't one detail_ which I can't understand very well; and that's why I'm so ready to believe Mrs. Senter's story to be true. Most disagreeable things are; and this is certainly as disagreeable for poor little Ellaline as it was meant to be disagreeable for me.

Mrs. Senter excused herself for telling me horrid tales about my people by saying that my ignorance gave me the air of being ungrateful to Sir Lionel, and unappreciative of all he had done for me. That he, being a man, was likely to blame me for extravagance and indifference to benefits received, although aware, when he actually reflected on the subject, that I sinned through ignorance. She thought (said she) that it would be only fair to tell me the whole truth, as I could then change my line of conduct accordingly; but she hoped I wouldn't give her away to Sir Lionel or d.i.c.k, as she was speaking for my sake.

When I had promised, she informed me that "my mother," Ellaline de Nesville, a distant cousin of Lionel Pendragon's, was engaged to him when they were both very young. There was a lawsuit going on at the time about some tin mines in Cornwall, from which most of his money came, for the property was claimed by a man from another branch of the family, who suddenly appeared waving a marriage certificate or a will, or something melodramatic. Well, the lawsuit was decided for the other man, just about the time that Sir Lionel (who wasn't Sir Lionel then) got shot in the arm and seemed likely to be a cripple for life. Both blows coming together were too much for Mademoiselle de Nesville, who was fascinating and pretty, but apparently a frightful little cat as well as flirt, so she promptly bolted with an intimate friend of her fiance, a Mr.

Frederic Lethbridge, rich and "well connected." They ran off and were married in Scotland, as Ellaline the second expects to be. (Odd how even profane history repeats itself!) And this though Mr. Lethbridge knew his friend was desperately in love with the girl.

What happened immediately after I don't know, except that Mrs. Senter says Sir Lionel was horribly cut up, and lost his interest in life. But anyhow, sooner or later, the lawsuit, which had gone to a higher court, was, after all, decided in his favour. The other man turned out to be a fraud, and retired into oblivion with his wills and marriage certificates. Meanwhile, Ellaline Number One awoke to the fact that her husband wasn't as rich as he was painted, or as nice as she had fancied.

Some of his people were millionaires, but he had run through a good deal of his fortune because he was mad about gambling. At first, when the bride supposed that there was heaps of money, she enjoyed gambling, too, and they were always at Longchamps, or Chantilly, or the English race-courses, or at Aix or Monte Carlo. By and by, though, when she found that they were being ruined, she tried to pull her husband up--but it was too late; or else he was the sort of person who can't be stopped when he's begun running down hill.

Probably she regretted her cousin by that time, as he was rich again, and likely to be richer, as well as very distinguished. And when a few years later (while our Ellaline was a baby) Frederic Lethbridge forged a millionaire uncle's name, and had to go to prison, she must have regretted Sir Lionel still more, for she was a little creature who loved pleasure, and hardly knew how to bear trouble.

Mrs. Senter said that Mr. Lethbridge had been sure the uncle would shield him rather than have a scandal in the family, and so it was a great surprise to him to be treated like an ordinary criminal. When he was sentenced to several years in prison, after a sensational trial, he contrived to hang himself, and was found stone-dead in his cell. His widow had to go and live with some dull, disagreeable relations in the country, who thought it their duty to take her and the baby for a consideration, and there she died of disappointment and galloping consumption, leaving a letter for her jilted cousin Lionel, in Bengal, which begged him to act as guardian for her child. All the money she had at her death was a few thousand pounds, of which she had never been able to touch anything but the income, about two hundred pounds a year; and that sum, Mrs. Senter gave me to understand, const.i.tuted my sole right to consider myself an heiress.

Despite the shameful way in which she had behaved to him, Sir Lionel accepted the charge, eventually took his cousin's little girl away from the disagreeable relatives, and put her at Madame de Maluet's, where Mother Ellaline was educated and particularly desired her daughter to be educated. Not only did he pay for her keep at one of the most expensive schools in France (Madame's is that, and she prides herself on the fact), but gave her an allowance "far too large for a schoolgirl" in the opinion of Mrs. Senter's unknown (to me) informant.