Why aren't you with me, dearest, seeing what I am seeing?
It's all very well for you to write that my letters make a panorama pass before your eyes, and I'm flattered, but I want you. Although I am enjoying life, I'm more excited than happy, and I don't sleep well. I dream horrid dreams about Mrs. Senter and Dick Burden, and about Ellaline, too, but I always laugh when I wake up.
Thank you so much for telling me that you think I'm behaving pretty well, considering. But I wonder what you'll say in your next, after my last?
Every day since then I've been meaning to write, if only a short note, but we've had early starts and late stops; and then, from not sleeping at night, I'm often so tired when the end of the day comes that I feel too stupid to try and earn your compliments.
It is morning, and I'm writing out of doors, sitting on a rock, close by the sea. But before I begin to describe Lulworth, I must tell you a little about the glorious things of which I've had flying glimpses since the letter dated Compton Arms. This is our first all-night stopping place since we left Stony Cross "for good," but I've picked up many a marvellous memory by the way.
People who haven't seen the New Forest haven't seen England.
I had no idea what it was like till we stayed there. I knew from guide-books that there were thousands of acres of woodland still, though much had been "deforested"; but I didn't know it hid many beautiful villages, and even towns. It's a heavenly place for motoring, but I'm not sure it wouldn't be even better to walk, because you could eke out the joy of it longer. I should like a walking honeymoon (a whole round moon) in the New Forest--if it were with just the right man.
Oh, I mustn't forget to say I'm glad I didn't see Rufus's Stone by daylight. Mrs. Senter and Dick went the morning after I wrote to you, but I wouldn't go again, because I didn't want to lose the enchanted picture in my mind. She laughed when I refused. I could have slapped her. But never mind.
When they came back they were disgusted, and said there was a ginger-beer woman and a man with the game of "Aunt Sally," and a crowd of cockney excursionists round them and the Stone. Talk of malfays!
Sir Lionel had made out an itinerary for the day, and we were to start for Lyndhurst, Beaulieu Abbey, Lymington, Brockenhurst, and Mark Ash, all of which we were to visit before evening, coming back by way of Lyndhurst again, and stopping there for tea. But before we got off, such a comic thing happened.
I didn't think to mention it in a letter, but one day we passed a motor-car that was having tire trouble by the side of the road. The chauffeur was rolling on a new tire, with a curious-looking machine, in which Young Nick was passionately interested, as he'd never seen one before. Sir Lionel explained that it was an American tool, not very long invented, and said to be good. He added, in an evil moment, that he wished he'd thought to buy one like it before leaving London, as probably the thing couldn't be got in the Provinces.
Well, just as we were about to spin away in great style from the Compton Arms, one of our tires sighed, and settled down for an unearned rest. But instead of looking black-browed and murderous, as he did when the same thing occurred before, Nick smiled gleefully. He jumped down, and without a word produced a machine exactly like the one his master admired a few days ago.
"Where did you get that?" asked Sir Lionel.
"Last night, sahib," returned Nick, imperturbably. (He can speak quite good English.)
"What! Since we had our trouble?"
"Yes, sahib." An odd expression now began to play among Nick's brown features, like a breeze over a field of growing wheat.
"How's that? There's no shop."
"The sahib says true. I found this thing."
"Where?" sharply.
"But a little way from here. In the road."
"You rascal," exclaimed Sir Lionel. "You stole it."
Young Nick made Buddha eyebrows and a Buddha gesture. "The sahib knows all. But if I did take it? Those men, they were going again to the big city. We away. They never miss this. They buy another. It is better we have it."
Trying to look very angry, though I knew he was dying to laugh, Sir Lionel reproached Nick for breaking a solemn promise. "You swore you'd never do such a thing in England if I brought you with me. Now you've begun again, the same old game. I shall have to send you back, that is all."
"Then I die, and that is all," replied Young Nick, calmly.
The end of the story is, that Sir Lionel found out the names of the men, who had spent the night at the Compton Arms, and had written their address in the visitors' book. He sent the tool to them, with an explanation which I should have loved to read. And it appears that, though Nick is honest personally, he is a thief for the car, and in Bengal took anything new and nice which other motors had and his hadn't.
Now, Mrs. Norton is afraid that, if Sir Lionel scolds him much, he will commit hari-kari on the threshold of the hotel, which would be embarrassing. And it does no good to tell her that hari-kari is a Japanese or Chinese trick. She says, if Nick would not do that he might do something worse.
Gliding over the perfect roads of the Forest, Apollo seemed actually to float. I never felt anything so delicious, and so like being a goddess reclining on a wind-blown cloud. No wonder motorists' faces, when you can see them, almost always look madly happy. So different from "hay motorists," as The Blot says. They generally look grumpy.
The little wild ponies were one of the Forest's surprises for me. We met lots of them, mostly miniature mothers giving their innocent-faced, rough babies an airing; delightful beastkins. And I almost liked Mrs. Senter for having a cousin who owns one of these ponies as a pet, a dwarf one, no bigger than a St. Bernard dog. It wears a collar with silver bells, follows her everywhere, thinks nothing of curling up on a drawing-room sofa, and once was found on its mistress's bed, asleep on a new Paris hat.
The enticing rose-bowered cottages we passed ought to have told me that we were back in Hampshire again, if the New Forest hadn't seemed to a poor little foreigner like a separate county all by itself. It would be no credit to a bride to clamour for love in such a cottage, and turn up her nose at palaces. She might be married at the beautiful church of Lyndhurst (a most immediate jewel of a church, with an exquisite altar-piece by Lord Leighton, a Flaxman, and a startlingly fine piece of sculpture by an artist named Cockerell), then, safely wedded, plunge with her bridegroom into the Forest, and be perfectly happy without ever coming out again. I wish I had had the "Forest Lovers" to re-read while we were there. I think Maurice Hewlett must have got part of his inspiration in those mysterious green "walks" which lead away into that land where fairy lore and historic legend go hand in hand.
Lyndhurst, which King George III. loved, is pretty, but we didn't stop to look at it, because we were coming back that way. After seeing the church which, though modern, I wouldn't have missed for a great deal, we spun on to Beaulieu Abbey, the home of a hero of motoring. There we saw a perfect house, rising among trees, and sharing with the sky a clear sheet of water as a mirror. Once this was a guest-house for the Abbey; now it's called the Palace House, and deserves its name. Its looking-glass is really only a long creek, which spills out of the Solent, but it seems like a lake; and you've only to walk along a meadow path to the refectory of the old abbey. From there you go through a mysterious door into the ruined cloisters, which used to belong to the Cistercians--the "White Monks." King John provided money for the building; which proves that it's an ill wind which blows no one any good, because the stingy, tyrannical old king wouldn't have given a penny to the abbots if they hadn't scourged him in a nightmare he had. I shan't soon forget the magnolia and the myrtle in the quadrangle, and if I were one of the long-vanished monks, I should haunt the place. There couldn't be a lovelier one.
From Beaulieu we went to Lymington, a quaint and ancient town, with a picturesque port. Everything there looked happy and sleepy, except the postillions on the Bournemouth coach, which was stopping at the hotel where we had an early lunch. They were wide awake and jolly, under their old-fashioned, broad-brimmed beaver hats.
After Lymington, we skimmed through the Forest, hardly knowing or caring whither, though we did manage to find Brockenhurst, and Mark Ash, which was almost the finest of all with its glorious trees. Our one wish was to avoid highways, and Sir Lionel was clever about that. The sweetest bit was a mere by-path, hardly to be called a road, though the surface was superb. Young Nick had to get down and open a gate, which led into what seemed a private place, and no one who hadn't been told to go that way would have thought of it. On the other side of the gate it was just another part of forest fairyland, whose inhabitants turned themselves into trees as we, in our motor-car, intruded on them. I never saw such extraordinary imitations of the evergreen family as they contrived on the spur of the moment. It was a glamorous wood, and throughout the whole forest I had more and more the feeling that England isn't so small as it's painted. There are such vast spaces not lived in at all, yet haunted with legend and history. One place we passed--hardly a place, it was so small--was called Tyrrel's Ford; and there Sir Walter Tyrrel is said to have stopped to have his horse's shoes reversed by a blacksmith, on his flight to the sea, after killing the Red King. Or no, now I remember, this was next day, between Ringwood and Christchurch!
When we were having tea at Lyndhurst on our way back, at a hotel like a country house in a great garden, we found out that it once had been the home of your forty-second cousin, the Duc de Stacpoole, who came to England with Louis Philippe. There's his beautiful tapestry, to this day, in the dining-room, and his gorgeous magnolia tree looking wistfully into the window, as if asking why he isn't there to admire its creamy flowers, big as fat snowballs.
On our way home the rabbits of the New Forest were having a party, and were annoyed with us for coming to it without invitations. They kept "crossing our path," as people in melodramas say, so that we had to go slowly, not to run over them, and sometimes they galloped ahead, just in front of us, exactly in the middle of the road, so that we couldn't pass them. Dick kept longing to "pot" at the poor little pets, but Sir Lionel said he had lived out of England long enough to find a good deal of pleasure in life without taking that of any other creature. That isn't a very dragonish sentiment, is it?
Next day we had a delicious run (there's no other adjective which quite expresses it) through Ringwood, which is a door of the Forest, to Christchurch, another Abbey--(no, it's a Priory; but to me that's a detail) which stands looking at its own beauty in a crystal mirror. It's Augustan, not Cistercian, like Beaulieu; and it's august, as well; very noble; finer to see than many a cathedral. You and I, in other lands, have industriously travelled many miles to visit churches without half as many "features" as Christchurch. One of its quaintest is a leper's window; and a few of the beauties are the north transept, with unique "hatchet" ornamentation; a choir with wonderful old oak carvings--and the tomb of the Countess of Salisbury, of whom you read aloud to me when I was small, in a book called "Some Heroines of History." She came last in the volume because she was only a countess, and not a queen, but I cried when she said she didn't mind being killed, only being touched by a horrid, common axe, and wanted them to cut off her head with a sword. There are lots of other beautiful things in the church, too, and a nice legend about an oak beam which grew long in the night, and building materials which came down from a hill of their own accord, because one of the builders was Christ himself. That's why they named it Christchurch, you see, instead of Twyneham, as it would otherwise have been.
We stopped only long enough, after we had seen the Priory, to pay our respects to a splendid old Norman house near by, and then dashed away toward Boscombe and Bournemouth, which reminded me a little of Baden-Baden, with its gardens and fountains and running waters; its charming trees and exciting-looking shops. Just because it's modern, we didn't pause, but swept on, through scenery which suddenly degenerated. However, as I heard Sir Lionel say to Mrs. Senter: "You can't go far in this country without finding beauty"; and presently she was her own lovely self again, fair as Nature intended her to be. I mean England, not Mrs. Senter, who is lovelier than Nature made her.
We ran through miles of dense pine forests, where rhododendrons grew wild; where gulls spread silver wings and trailed coral feet a few yards above our heads; and the tang of the sea mingled with pine-balsam in our nostrils.
Soon after dull, but historic Wareham we came quite into the heart of Thomas Hardy's country. Scarcely had we turned our backs on Wareham (which I wasn't sorry to do), when I cried out at something on a distant height--something which was like a background in a mediæval picture. It was Corfe Castle, of which I'd been thinking ever since Amesbury, because of the wicked Elfrida; but the glimpse was delusive, for the dark shape hid in a moment, and we didn't see it again for a long time--not until our curving road ran along underneath the castle's towering hill. Then it soared up with imposing effect, giving an impression of grisly strength which was heightened the nearer we approached. Distance lends no enchantment to Corfe, for the castle dominates the dour, gray town that huddles round it, and is never nobler than when you tap for admittance at its gates.
I tried to think, as we waited to go in, how young Edward felt--Edward the Martyr--when he stood at the gates, waiting to go in and visit his half-brother whom he loved, and his step-mother Elfrida, whom he hated. He never left the castle alive, poor boy! Afterward, in the ruins, I went to the window where Elfrida was supposed to have watched the young king's coming, before she ran down to the gates and directed the murder which was planned to give her own son the kingdom. It made the story seem almost too realistic, because, as you often tell me, my imagination carries me too fast and too far. There's nothing easier than to send it back ten or twelve centuries in the same number of minutes--and it's such a cheap way of travelling, too!
Corfe is in Dorset, you must know, a county as different from others as I am different from the real Ellaline Lethbridge, and the castle is at the very centre of the Isle of Purbeck, which makes it seem even more romantic than it would otherwise. I'm afraid it wasn't really even begun in the days of Elfrida, or "Ælfrith," who had only a hunting lodge there; but if people will point out her window, am I to blame if I try to make firm belief attract shy facts? Besides, facts are such dull dogs in the historical kennels until they've been taught a few tricks.
Anyhow, Corfe is Norman, at worst, and not only did King John keep much treasure there, but one supposes there's some hidden still. If I could only have found it, I'd be buying a castle for you and me to live in. Sir Lionel thinks that I, as his ward, will live in his castle; and he was telling me at Corfe about the Norman tower at Graylees. But, alas, I knew better. Oh, I didn't mean that "alas"! Consider it erased; and the other silly things I wrote you the other night, please. They're all so useless.
There were loads of interesting prisoners in Corfe Castle, at one time or another, knights from France, and fair ladies, the fairest of all, the beautiful "Damsel of Brittany," who had claims to the English crown. And kings have visited there; and in Cromwell's day a lady and her daughters successfully defended it in a great siege. It was such a splendid and brave defence that it seems sad, even to this day, to think how the castle fell after all, a year later, and to see the great stones and masses of masonry lying, far below the height, exactly where they rolled when Parliament ordered the conquered towers to be blown up by gunpowder. The Bankes family, who still own Corfe, must be proud of that Lady Bankes, their ancestress, who held the castle. And isn't it nice, the Bankes still have the old keys, where they live, at Kingston Lacy?
You like Thomas Hardy's "Hand of Ethelberta" next to "Far from the Madding Crowd." Well, Coomb Castle in that book is really Corfe Castle. I told you we were in Hardy country. After Wareham, and not very far away, at Wool, is an old, old manor-house of the Turbervilles, turned into a farmhouse now. You don't need to be reminded of what Hardy made of that, I know.
We lunched at an interesting old inn, like all the rest of the ancient houses of Corfe, slate-roofed, grim and gray. Then we coasted down the steep hill to the plain again, making for Swanage. It was dusty, but we weren't sorry, because, just when we were travelling rather fast, on a perfectly clear road, a policeman popped out like a Jack-in-the-Box, apparently from nowhere. You could tell by his face he was a "trappist," as Dick calls the motor-spies, and though Sir Lionel wasn't really going beyond the legal limit, he glared at our number as if he meant mischief. But that number-plate had thoughtfully masked itself in dust, so with all the will in the world he could work us no harm after our backs were turned. Once in a while it does seem as if Nature sympathized with the poor, maligned motorist whom nobody loves, and is willing to throw her protection over him. It would be like tempting Providence to polish off dust or mud, in such circumstances, wouldn't it?
My face was a different matter, though, and I longed to polish it. Before we got to Swanage, it felt--even under chiffon--just as an iced cake must feel. Only the cake, fortunately for its contour, never needs to smile.
We were going to Swanage because of the caves--Tilly Whim Caves. Did you ever hear of them, Parisienne mamma? Small blame to you, if not, because one can't know everything; but they are worth seeing; and the Swanage harbour is a little dream. The town is good, too. Old-world, and very, very respectable-looking, as if it were full of long-established lawyers and clergymen, yet not dull, like Wareham, which was important in Saxon days, long before Swanage was born or thought of. It's "Knollsea" in the "Hand of Ethelberta." Do you remember? And Alfred the Great had a victory close by--so close, that in a storm the Danish ships blew into what is the town now, as if they had been butterflies with their wings wet.
We climbed up, up above the village, in the motor-car, on the steepest, twistingest road I've seen yet in England, though Sir Lionel says I'll think nothing of it when we get into Devonshire; up, up to a high place where they've built a restaurant. Near by we left the motor (and Emily, who never walks for pleasure), and ho, for the caves! It was a scramble among dark cliffs of Purbeck limestone. The caves are delightfully weird, and of course there are smuggling stories about them. A strange wind blew through their labyrinths, ceaselessly, like the breathings of a hidden giant, betrayed by sleep. It was heavenly cool in that dim twilight that never knew sun, but oh, it was hot coming out into the afternoon glare, and climbing the steep path to where the motor waited! I think Mrs. Senter was sorry she hadn't stopped with Emily. She got a horrid headache, and felt so ill that Sir Lionel asked if she would care to stop all night at Swanage, and she said she would.
Fortunately, it turned out that there were good hotels, and Sir Lionel took rooms at the one we liked the best--old-fashioned in an agreeable way. Mrs. Senter went to bed, but the rest of us strolled out after dinner; and Mrs. Norton began talking to Dick about his mother, which threw Sir Lionel and me together.
We sat on the pier, where the moon turned bright pink as she dipped down into a bank of clouds like a rose-garden growing out of the sea. And even when it was dark, the sea kept its colour, the deep blue of sapphires, where, at a distance, little white yachts and sailboats looked like a company of crescent moons floating in an azure sky. I felt in the sweetest mood, kind toward all the world, and particularly to Sir Lionel. I couldn't bear to remember that I'd ever had bad thoughts, and doubts, so I was half sub-consciously nicer to him than I ever was before. Dick kept glaring at me, from his seat beside Mrs. Norton, and drawing his eyebrows together when he thought Sir Lionel wasn't looking. Going home, he got a chance for a few words, when Emily was speaking to her brother about Mrs. Senter's headache. He said that there was something he must say to me, alone, and he wanted me to come out into the garden behind the hotel, to talk to him when the others had gone to bed, but of course I refused. Then he said, would I manage to give him a few minutes next day, and intimated, gently, that I'd be sorry if I didn't. I told him that "I'd see"; which is always a safe answer; but I haven't "managed" yet.
When I got back to my room at the hotel I noticed that some of my things weren't in the places where I'd left them; and the writing portfolio in a dressing-case which Sir Lionel thinks is mine, but is really Ellaline's (one of the Bond Street purchases), had my papers changed about in it. The servants in the house seemed so respectable and nice, I can't think that one of them would have pried. And yet--well, the truth is, I'm afraid of being catty, but I can't help putting Mrs. Senter's headache and my disturbed papers together in my mind. Two and two when put together, make four, you know. And her room in the Swanage hotel was next to mine. She might have been sure that we'd all go out after dinner on such a perfect night. But why should she bother? Unless Dick has told her something, after all? I suppose I shall never know whether it was she or someone else who meddled. I looked through all the papers and other things, but could find nothing "compromising," as the adventuresses say. However, I can't quite remember what I had. Some letter may have been taken. I have been a tiny bit worried since, for you know Ellaline would never forgive me if anything should go wrong now. And I've been thinking that, though Sir Lionel is no dragon, there may be something about Honoré du Guesclin which he wouldn't approve. Ellaline may even have her own reasons for thinking he wouldn't approve, dragon or no dragon. Very likely she didn't tell me everything--she was so anxious to have her own way.
But to go back to the journey here. Almost each mile we travelled gave us some thought of Hardy, and acquainted me with the character of Dorset, which is just what I expected from his books: giant trees; tall, secretive hedges; high brick walls, mellow with age and curtained with ivy; stone cottages, solid and prosperous and old, with queer little bay-windows, diamond-paned; Purbeck granite bursting through the grass of meadows, and making a grave background for brilliant flowers; heaths that Hardy wrote about in the "Return of the Native"--heaths, heaths, and rolling downs.
We took the way from Swanage to West Lulworth, and had an adventure on a hill. Sir Lionel is very strict with his little Buddha about examining everything that could possibly go wrong with the motor, and just before we started, I heard him ask Young Nick if he had looked at the brakes after our descent from Tilly Whim. "Oh, yes, sahib," said the brown image. "Oh, no!" said the brakes themselves, on a big hill, as far from the madding crowd as "Gabriel" and "Bathsheba" ever lived. We'd got lost, and that was the way the car punished us. First of all, the motor refused to work. That made Apollo feel faint, so that he began to run backward down the hill instead of going up; and when Sir Lionel put on the brakes, they wouldn't act.
It was the first time anything really bad had happened, and my heart gave a jump, but somehow I wasn't frightened. With Sir Lionel driving, it seemed as if no harm could come; and it didn't, for he steered to the side of the road, and brought the car up short against a great hummock of grass. All the same, we nearly tipped over, and Sir Lionel told us to jump. I shouldn't have stirred if he hadn't spoken. I should have awaited orders; but the others were moving before we stopped, and Mrs. Senter fell down and bumped her knee. That made her hair come partly undone, and, to my horror, a bunch of the dearest little curls, which I always thought lived there, were loosened. There was a great wind blowing, and in a second more the curls would have been on the horizon, if I hadn't seized them just as they were about to take flight. If they'd gone, they must have passed almost in front of Sir Lionel's nose, on their way. Wouldn't that have been dreadful? I should think she could never have looked him in the face again, for her hair's her greatest beauty, and she's continually saying things about its being all her own, and having more than she knows what to do with.
But luckily his back was turned when I caught the curls, and stuffed them hastily into her hand before she was on her feet, nobody seeing except Dick. I suppose a nephew doesn't count! But do you know, dear, if they'd been my curls, I believe she'd have loved Sir Lionel to see them. I don't like her a bit, but all the more I couldn't be mean. I reserve all my cattyness toward her for my letters to you, when I let myself go, and stretch my little nails in my velvet paw.
I was sorry for Young Nick! He was miserably sheepish, and vowed that he really had examined the brakes. Sir Lionel just looked at him, and raised his eyebrows; that was all, because he wouldn't scold the poor little wretch before us.
It was as much as the three men could do to get Apollo down on his four tires again, for, though he seemed as lightly balanced as an eccentric dancer trying to touch one eyelid to the floor, he was partly embedded in the bank by the roadside. Then we all sat gracefully about, while Sir Lionel and the chauffeur worked--Young Nick under the car, looking sometimes like a contortionist tying himself into lover's knots, sometimes like a miniature Michelangelo lying on his back to paint a fresco. I hope, though, that Michael never had half the trouble finding his paints and brushes that Nick had to get at his tommies and jemmies, and dozens of strange little instruments. He lay with his mouth bristling with giant pins, and had the air of a conscientious dentist filling a difficult tooth.
It was a long time before the brakes were properly tightened up and the four cylinders breathing freely again; but it would have been ungracious to be bored in such a glorious wild place, in such glorious weather. There was a kind of Walt Whitman feeling in the air that made me want to sing; and finally I could resist no longer. I burst out with those verses of his which you set to music for me. At least, I sang a few bars; and you ought to have seen Sir Lionel wheel round and look at me when he heard my voice. I never said anything to him about knowing how to sing, so he was surprised.
"Why, you have quite a pretty voice, Ellaline!" said Mrs. Norton.
"'Quite a pretty voice!' I should say she had!" remarked Sir Lionel. He didn't say any more. But I never had a compliment I liked better; and I didn't mind a bit when Mrs. Senter remarked that anyone would fancy I was a professional.
I was almost sorry to go on at last, though Emily was worrying lest we should get no lunch. But we saw beautiful things as we spun toward Lulworth, rushing so swiftly along an empty road that the hedges roared past us like dark cataracts. It was thrilling, and showed what Apollo could do when he chose. If there had been a soul on the road, of course we wouldn't have done such deeds; though I must say, from what I've seen, if you creep along so as not to kick up a dust and annoy people, they aren't at all grateful, but only scorn instead of hating you, and think you can't go faster, or you would. Still, you have the consciousness of innocence. One thing we saw was a delightful Tudor house, called Creech Grange; and the ancestor of the man who owns it built Bond Street. I'm sure I don't know why, but I'm glad he did. We took the valley way on purpose to see the Grange, instead of going over Ring Hill and other windy heights, but it was worth the sacrifice.
Lulworth Castle, which we passed, is rather like Graylees, Sir Lionel said; so now I wish more than ever that I could see Graylees, for Lulworth is fine and feudal. But I shall have burst like a bubble before the time comes for Graylees.
There! I have brought you with us to Lulworth Cove, at last--the adorable little place where, at this moment, as I told you at the beginning of my letter, I'm sitting on the beach among red and green fishing boats.
You wouldn't dream of Lulworth's existence until it suddenly breaks on you, and you see the blue bay lying asleep in the arms of giant rocks, which appear to have had a violent convulsion without disturbing the baby sheet of water. I suppose they were angry with the world for finding out their secret; for it has found out, and loves to come to Lulworth Cove. However, the place contrives to look as unknown as ever, as if only some lazy gulls and a few fishermen mending lobster-pots had ever heard a hint of it. There's a narrow street; a few pretty old cottages; a comfortable hotel where we had crabs, divine though devilled, and omelette au rhum floating in flames of the blue I should like my eyes to be when angry; there's a post-office, and--nothing else that I can think of, except circling hills, a golden sweep of beach, and sea of ethereal azure creaming against contorted rocks. That's all; but it's a little Paradise, and----
Night, of the same day.
Just there I was interrupted. Dick Burden came, and I had to listen to him, unless I wanted a scene. I couldn't appeal to any nice brown fisherman to please feed him to the lobsters, so I sat still and let him talk. He said that he was awfully in love with me. A charming fashion he's taken to show it, hasn't he? As I remarked to him.
He replied in the old, old way, about all being fair, etc., etc. I asked him which it was, love or war, and he said it was both. He knew I wasn't in love (I should think not, indeed!), but he wanted me to promise to be engaged to him from now on.
"I won't," said I--short and sudden, like that.
"You'll jolly well have to," said he. Then he proceeded to warn me that if I didn't, my friend Miss Ellaline Lethbridge must look out for herself, because I would no longer be in a position to guard her interests.
I mentioned that he was a perfect beast, and he said it might be true, but I was a deceiver, and it was not good taste for the pot to call the kettle black.
"I'd rather go into the kind of convent where one's not allowed to speak a word all one's life, except 'Memento mori,' than marry you," said I, politely.
But it seemed that he wasn't thinking so much about being married, as just being engaged. As to marrying, we were both very young, and he would wait for me till we could afford to marry, which mightn't be for some time yet, he explained. What he was keen on beginning at once, was being engaged.
"Why?" I asked, savagely.
"Because I don't want anyone else to think he has a chance. That's the plain truth," said Dick, in the most brazen way.
That staggered me; for he was glaring straight into my eyes in such a meaning way I couldn't help understanding who was in his mind. So utterly ridiculous! As if the person he meant would ever think of me! And Dick used to say himself that Sir Lionel Pendragon took no interest in girls, or any women except Mrs. Senter. I'd have liked to remind him of this, only I wouldn't let him see that I read his thoughts.
"I believe you must be mad," said I.
"I shouldn't wonder," said he. "Anyhow, I'm mad enough to go straight to Sir Lionel with the whole story the minute he comes back from his walk with his sister and my aunt, unless you do what I want."
"That won't be very nice for Mrs. Senter," I temporized, "if she's enjoying this trip she was so anxious to take; for if Sir Lionel knows about Ellaline the tour will probably break up, and he'll rush over to France."
"On the contrary, it will be nice for her," Dick returned, "because many a heart is caught in the rebound."
I said that this argument was too intricate for me, but it wasn't really. I knew quite well what he meant, though of course he is absolutely mistaken, as far as Sir Lionel's feelings toward me are concerned. But I had to think quickly, and I thought maybe he was right about his aunt. She would be a woman who would make any use of an emergency. And once she had compromised poor Sir Lionel, it would be too late, for I have an idea he'd be exaggeratedly honourable.
You may smile at my saying she'd compromise him. But you know what I mean. I'm not sure I do--but anyhow, I couldn't bear to have her do it, especially if it could be prevented by me. I sat still a minute, reflecting, and then asked Dick what he meant by "being engaged."
He replied that he meant the usual thing; and I replied to this that nothing could tempt me. He saw I wouldn't go back from my word, so he promised, if I would be engaged, that he'd not try even to hold my hand until I should be willing. All he would ask was, that he might tell his aunt we had a "kind of a, sort of an understanding," which might develop into an engagement, and let her tell Sir Lionel. Nothing more than that; and why should I mind, when in any case there could never have been a question of my marrying Sir L.?
I said I did mind horribly, but not on that account, and I should never marry anyone. I was almost ready to cry, I felt so wretched. I don't think I was ever as miserable in my life, dear; though, when I come to argue it out with myself, I've pretended so much to please Ellaline, it oughtn't to matter, pretending a little more.
Just then all three of the others came along, and seeing us on the beach, joined us. Dick put on a familiar air with me, as if he had rights, and I saw Sir Lionel glance from me to him, and draw his eyebrows together.
I came indoors then, to my room, and didn't go out again till dinner time. I was half afraid Mrs. Senter might already have got in her deadly work, but if she had, Sir Lionel didn't say anything to me. Only it was a horrid dinner, in spite of nice, seaside things to eat. Nobody spoke much, and I felt so choked I could hardly swallow.
Oh, I am homesick for you, dear. I hurried upstairs, as soon as dinner was over, saying I had letters to write. To-morrow, early, we start for Sidmouth, in Devonshire, going by way of Weymouth and Dorchester. As I write, looking from my window, across which I haven't drawn the curtains, I can see Sir Lionel and Mrs. Senter strolling out of the hotel, toward the beach. There's a lovely blue dusk, which the sunset struck into a million glorious sparks, and then let fade again into a dull glow, like ashes of roses. They look a romantic couple walking together. I wonder if they are talking about each other, to each other, or--about Dick and me? I feel as if I should have to scream--"Sir Lionel, don't believe it. It isn't true!" But of course, I can't. I think I shall go to bed, and then I won't be tempted to look out of the window.
Always your own loving
Audrie.
Please write at once, and address Poste Restante, Torquay.
