Set in Silver Part 8

Mrs. Norton is _so_ funny, without knowing it. She asked her brother as gravely as possible at breakfast this morning: "Had you a harem in Bengal, dear?"

"Good heavens, no!" he answered, turning red. "What put such a ghastly idea into your head?"

"Oh, I only thought perhaps it was the thing, and you were obliged to, or be talked about," she explained, calmly.

He went on to tell her that it was not at all necessary to have harems, and she was quite surprised. You would think that she'd have taken pains to find out every detail of her brother's life in a country where he was one of the head men, wouldn't you? But she hardly feels that any country except her own is worth serious inquiries. She has the impression that "heathen" are all alike, and mostly naked, but not as embarra.s.sing to meet as if they were white.

Good-bye, dearest. I'm afraid I write very disconnected letters. But I feel "disconnected" myself, somehow, like a telephone that's been "cut off."

Your loving and well-dressed

Deceiver.

P. S. It's to-morrow, for I forgot to post this, there were so many things "doing." Please forgive me. The car's splendid, and I am to christen her. We're going to have a kind of ceremony like a launching, and I have to think of a name for her, and throw wine on her bonnet. Sir Lionel is longing to get off on the tour, he says; and as he's to leave town for Warwickshire to-morrow, turning me over temporarily to the tender mercies of the good--(his sister)--I almost hope that after all Mrs. Senter mayn't have time to "sweedle" him into taking her with us, as I _know_ she hopes to do.

We, by the way, are not to see his place until the burnt bit is mended.

We're to avoid Warwickshire in starting out, go away up North as far as the Roman Wall, visit Bamborough Castle, where he thinks friends of his, who own it, will actually invite us to lunch, or something (it seems like a dream), and then stop in Warwickshire at the end of the tour, when all the dilapidations have been made good. The Dragon naturally expects me, not only to finish the trip, but to take up my residence at Graylees until next spring, when his plan is that his ward shall be presented. Oh, mice and men, and dragons, how aft your plans gang agley!

Of course, mine depend altogether upon Ellaline. I hold myself ready for marching orders from her. But I must confess to you that, whether right or wrong, I don't look forward to the weeks of my duties as understudy with the same feelings I had when I was engaged to perform them.

Little did Sir Lionel guess what was in my mind this morning, when I asked if one could see most of England in a few weeks when motoring! But I may have to take my flight from the car, so to speak, unless Ellaline be detained for some reason. I'm expecting a letter from her any day now, and there may be definite news.

Good-bye, again, dearest.

VIII

AUDRIE BRENDON TO HER MOTHER

_Royal Hotel, Chichester_, _July 17th_

Brightest and Best: _La Donna e automobile._ _I_ am "la donna"; and the most inward Me-ness of my Me _e automobile_.

Some people--Mrs. Norton, for instance--might say: "What on earth does the silly thing mean?" But you always know what I mean. You and I were born knowing quite a lot of nice little things like that, weren't we?

Things we picked up during our various incarnations; things _new_ souls haven't had time to collect, poor dears.

My automobiliness is the reason I've only sent you snippy "how-do-you-do and good-bye" notes, interspersed with telegrams, for the last few days, just thanking you for wise advice, and saying "Glad-you're-well; so-am-I."

You will guess from my very handwriting that I'm feeling more at home in life than I did when I wrote you last. And I can't help being pleased that Ellaline's adored one won't be able to leave his manoeuvres, to make her his own, till a fortnight or so later than she expected. That is, I can't help being glad, as the doctor thinks you ought to stop at Champel-les-Bains till after the first week of September, and we _couldn't_ be together, even if I were back in Paris. You swear you didn't hypnotize him to say that? I would enjoy more peace of mind, while careering through England in Apollo, if I were certain.

Oh, that reminds me, I forgot to tell you what fun it was christening Apollo. I quite enjoyed it, and felt immensely important. Don't you think "Apollo" an appropriate name for such a magnificent car as I've described to you? The Sun G.o.d--Driver of the Chariot of the Sun? Sir Lionel likes it; but he says he isn't sure "The Cloud" wouldn't be a more appropriate name, because the car costs such a lot that "she" has a silver lining. I began by calling her "it," but he won't let me do that.

He doesn't much mind my being amateurish, but he hates me to be disrespectful.

I am so dazzled by the motor and enchanted with the sport of motoring--as well as seeing things even more lovely than I hoped for--that I'm not worrying over d.i.c.k Burden and his mysterious hints about himself as a detective. Besides, when he and his aunt came to tea (you'll remember I told you in a sc.r.a.p of a note that it was the day Sir Lionel went to Warwickshire, and how vexed Mrs. Senter was to find him gone), Mr. d.i.c.k made himself quite pleasant. He wasn't impertinent, or too admiring, or anything which a well-brought-up young Englishman ought not to be. Indeed, I thought by his manner that he wanted tacitly to apologize for his bad behaviour when we first met; so probably, when I fancied he looked wicked that night at Ennis's Rooms, it _was_ because he wanted to sneeze. You have taught me to give everybody, except young men, the benefit of the doubt; but I don't see why one shouldn't give it to young men, too. I think they're rather easier to forgive, somehow, than women. Is that why they're dangerous? But D. B. could never be dangerous to me, in the sense of falling in love.

His aunt certainly wishes to throw us together; I suppose on account of Ellaline's money. She doesn't like girls, I'm sure, but would always be ready, on principle, to give first aid to heiresses. It is something to be thankful for that she hasn't grafted herself on to our party, as I feared she might; and though they're both going to stop at some country house near Southsea, and they "hope we may meet," I dare say I shan't be bothered by them again while I'm in England. I don't intend to worry.

_La donna e automobile!_

I haven't properly described our start, or told you about the things I've seen _en route_, and I promised to tell you everything; so I'll go back to the beginning of the trip.

There was Apollo, throbbing with joy of life in front of the hotel door, at nine o'clock of a perfect English morning. There were statuesque, Ritzy footmen, gazing admiringly at the big golden-yellow car (that was one of the reasons I thought she should be named after the Sun G.o.d, she is so golden). There was Charu Chunder Bose, alias Young Nick, who would think it a sin against all his G.o.ds to dress as a chauffeur, and who continues to garb himself as a self-respecting Bengali--Young Nick, with his sleepy eyes, and his Buddha-when-young smile, about as appropriate on a motor-car as a baby crocodile. There was Sir Lionel waiting to tuck us in. There were we two females in neat gray motor dust-cloaks, on which the Dragon insisted; Mrs. Norton in a toque, which she wore as if it were a remote and dreaded contingency; your Audrie in a duck of an early Victorian bonnet, in which she liked herself better than in anything else she ever had on before. There, too, was our luggage, made to fit the car, and looking like the very last word of up-to-dateness--if you know what that look is.

Of course, it wasn't the first time I'd been out in the car, for I think I told you, the day Apollo was christened I had a spin; but it rained, and we went only through the Park. That was nothing. This morning we were bidding good-bye to London, and our pulses were beating high for the Tour. Young Nick drove on the christening day, but this time Sir Lionel took the driver's seat, with the brown idol beside him; and I saw instantly, by the very way he laid his hand on the steering-wheel, with a kind of caress--as a horse-lover pats a beloved mare's neck--that he and the golden car were in perfect sympathy.

We were starting early, because Sir Lionel had planned a good many things for us to see before dark; but early as it was, Piccadilly and Knightsbridge were seething with traffic. Motor-'buses like mad hippopotamuses; taxi-cabs like fierce young lions; huge carts like elephants; and other vehicles of all sorts to make up a confused medley of wild animals escaped from the Zoo. It looked appalling to mingle with, but our own private Dragon drove so skilfully, yet so carefully, that I never bit my heart once. Always the car seemed sentient, steering its way like a long, thin pike; then when the chance came, flashing ahead, dauntless and sure.

We went by a great domed palace--Harrod's Stores--and then over Putney Bridge, pa.s.sing Swinburne's house, whose outside is as deceiving as an oyster-sh.e.l.l that hides a pearl; through Epsom, Charles the Second's "Brighton" (which I've been reading about in a volume of Pepys Sir Lionel has given me), to Leatherhead, along the Dorking Road, slowing up for a glimpse of Juniper Hall, glowing red as a smouldering bonfire behind a dark latticed screen of splendid Lebanon cedars. I dare say it's a good deal changed since dear little f.a.n.n.y Burney's day, for the house looks quite modern; but then neither buildings nor the people who live in them show their age early in England.

Close under Box Hill we glided; and Sir Lionel pointed out a little path leading up on the left to George Meredith's cottage. Just a small house of gray stone it is (for I would get out and walk up part way to see it from far off, not to intrude or spy); and there that great genius shines out, a clear, white light for the world, like a beacon or a star.

Evidently Surrey air suits geniuses. Do you remember reading about Keats, that he wrote a lot of "Endymion" at Burford Bridge? It was only a little after ten o'clock when we pa.s.sed the quaint-looking hotel there, but already at least a dozen motors were drawn up before it. I wanted to go in and ask if they show the room Lord Nelson used; but we had too many things to see.

Of course, I am always wishing for you, but I began to wish the hardest just as we came into this green, brackeny, fairyland of Surrey. It's the kind of country you love best; although I must say it was never planned for motors. Winding through those green tunnels which are the Surrey lanes, I felt as if, in some quaint dream, I were motoring on a tight-rope, expecting another car to want to pa.s.s me on the same rope--which naturally it couldn't!

It would have been much worse, though, if Young Nick had been driving.

That little, smooth brown face of his looks as if its idol-simper hid no human emotions, and I believe if people and animals were perfectly flat, like paper dolls, so that they would do no harm to his car, he wouldn't mind how many he drove over. Luckily, however, they _aren't_ flat, and the only thing earthly he adores, after his master, is his motor; so he is nice and cautious for its sake. But the Dragon thinks of everyone, and says there's no pleasure for him in motoring if he leaves a trail of distress or even annoyance along the road as he pa.s.ses. He slows down at corners; he goes carefully round them; he almost walks Apollo in places where creatures of any kind may start out unexpectedly; and he blows our pleasant musical horn as if by instinct, never forgetting, as I'm sure I should do.

As we twisted and turned through the Surrey lanes, between Dorking and Shere, little children in red cloaks and tams appeared from behind hedges, looking like blowing poppies as they ran. And blue-eyed, gold-brown haired girls in cottage doorways, under hanging bowers of roses, were as decorative as Old Chelsea china girls. The red tiles of their roofs, as I turned back for one more glimpse, would already be half hidden in waves of green, but would just show up like beds of scarlet geraniums buried in leaves.

Shere was almost too beautiful to be real, with its rows of Elizabethan cottages whose windows twinkled at us with their diamond-shaped, diamond-bright panes, sparkling under their low, thatch-eyebrows, from between black oak beams. The Tudor chimneys were as graceful as the smoke wreaths that lazily spiraled above them, and the whole effect was--was--well, inexpressibly Birket Foster. I used to think he idealized; but then, I'd never seen anything of England but London, and didn't know how all English trees, cottages, and even clouds, are trained to group themselves to suit artists of different schools.

I kept wishing that you'd made me study architecture and botany, instead of languages and music. In justice to oneself, one ought, when travelling in England, to have at least a bowing acquaintance with every sort of architecture, and all families of flowers, to say nothing of trees, so that one might exclaim, as sn.o.bs do of royalties and celebrities: "Oh, _she_ was the great granddaughter of So-and-So." "He married Lady This-and-That." Also, I find I need much more knowledge of literature than I have. This country is divided off into a kind of glorious chessboard, each square being sacred to some immortal author, playwright, or poet. The artists press them close, without overcrowding; and history lies underneath--history for every square inch.

"Twelve coffin deep," I quoted Kipling to myself, as my mind panted along Roman roads, and the Pilgrim's Way.

"Why, was there a cemetery there?" asked Mrs. Norton, looking mildly interested.

She, by the way, doesn't much care for ruins. She says they're so untidy.

You and I travelled till our money threatened to give out in the n.o.ble cause of sight-seeing, but I never realized history quite so potently even in Italy as I do in England. Yet that's not strange, when you think how tiny England is, compared with other countries, and how things have gone on happening there every minute since the Phoenicians found it a snug little island. Its chapters of history have to be packed like sardines, beginning down, down, far deeper than Kipling's "twelve coffins."

One Surrey village telleth another, just to slip through in a motor-car, though none could ever be tiresome in the telling; but if one stopped to hear the real story of each one, how different they would all be! There would be grand chapters of fighting, and mysterious chapters of smuggling--oh, but long ones about smuggling, since most of the manors and half the old cottages have "smugglers' rooms," where the lace and spirits used to be hidden, in their secret journey from Portsmouth to London. It's difficult to believe in these thrilling chapters now, in the rich, placid county, where the only mystery floats in the veil of blue mist that twists like a gauze scarf around the tree trunks in the woods, and the only black spots are the dark downs in the distance, with the sky pale gold behind them.

You would love motoring, not only for what you do see, but for what you nearly see, and long to see, but can't--just as Dad used to say "Thank G.o.d for all the blessings I've never had!" Why, every road you don't go down looks fantastically alluring, just twice as alluring as the one you are in. You grudge missing anything, and fear, greedily, that there may be better villages with more history beyond the line of your route. It's no consolation when Mrs. Norton says, "Well, you can't see everything!"

You _want_ to see everything. And you wish you had eyes all the way round your head. It would be inconvenient for hair and hats, but you could manage somehow.

We had to go through Petworth, a most feudal-looking old place, reeking of history since the Confessor, and mentioned in the Domesday Book (I do so respect towns or houses mentioned in the Domesday Book!), and if it had been the right day we could have seen Lord Leconsfield's collection of pictures, some of the best in England; but it was the wrong day, so we sailed on out of Surrey into Suss.e.x, and arrived at Bignor.

All I knew about Bignor was that I must expect something amazing there.

Sir Lionel asked me not to read about it in the books of which we have a travelling library in the car--one at least for each county we shall visit. He said he "wanted Bignor to be a surprise" for me; and it is odd the way one finds oneself obeying that man! Not that one's afraid of him, but--well, I don't know why exactly, but one just does it. We didn't stop in the village, though there was the quaintest grocery shop there you can imagine, perfectly mediaeval; and in the churchyard yew trees grand enough to make bows for half the archers of England--if there were any in these days. We went on to quite a modern-looking farmhouse, and Sir Lionel said, "I am going to ask Mrs. Tupper if she will give us a little lunch. If she says 'yes,' it's sure to be good."

"I don't know any Tuppers, Lionel," objected Mrs. Norton. "Who are they?"

"Relatives of Martin Tupper, if that name recalls anything to your mind," said he.

Mrs. Norton had a vague idea that she had been more or less brought up on extracts from Martin Tupper, and seemed to a.s.sociate him with Sundays, when, as a child, she hadn't been allowed to play. But that didn't explain how Lionel happened to know connections of his in a Suss.e.x farmhouse. Besides, he couldn't possibly have seen them for more than fifteen years.