“Take my portmanteau in, boots,” said Trethick, sharply. “Do you breakfast here at the hotel, Mr Lee?”
“Sir,” said the clergyman, distantly, “I have not yet made my plans.”
“Oh! all right; no offence. I was going to say, let us breakfast together for company. I’m off to present my letters of introduction. Good-day; I dare say we shall meet again.”
“I hope not,” thought the Reverend Edward Lee, upon whom his travelling-companion seemed to act like a strong blast, bending him bodily and mentally as well, and he turned into the hotel, hearing, as he did so, the voice of one of the hangers-on exclaiming, in a sing-song tone, —
“Mr Penwynn’s, An Morlock, sir? Right up street, and out by the hill I’ll show you the way.”
“Thanks; no, my lad, I shall find it. Catch!” There was the ring of a small piece of silver falling upon the pavement, and the young clergyman sighed with relief to think his travelling-companion had gone.
Chapter Three
The Carnac Gazette
Rhoda Penwynn’s visitor was in the drawing-room at An Morlock, making the most use possible of her eyes while she was alone. She had seen who had called and left cards, and what book Rhoda was reading. She had also mentally taken the pattern of the new design of embroidery, and meant to work a piece exactly the same; and now she was filling up the time before Rhoda entered by gazing at herself in one of the large mirrors.
It was not a bad reflection – to wit, that of a refined, fair face, that must have been very pretty fifteen or twenty years before; but now there was an eager sharpness in the features, as if caused by expectancy never gratified; the fair white skin had a slight ivory – old ivory – tinge, and the pretty bloom that once hid beneath the down of her cheeks had coalesced and slightly tinted the lady’s nose. It was but slight, but it was unmistakable.
Miss Pavey was well and fairly, even fashionably, dressed, and generally she wore the aspect of what she was – a maiden lady who loved colour, and had, after sundry matrimonial disappointments, retired to a far-off west-country, sea-side place, where her moderate independency would be of so much more value than in a large town.
She sighed as she contemplated herself in the glass, and then held her handkerchief to her face and bent her eyes upon a book as she heard the rustle of a dress, and the door opened, when she rose to meet Rhoda with effusion, and an eager kiss.
“My dearest Rhoda, how well you do look!” she exclaimed. “What a becoming dress!”
“Do you think so, Miss Pavey,” said Rhoda, quietly. “Miss Pavey again! Why will you keep up this terrible distance? My dear Rhoda, is it never to be Martha?”
“Well then, Martha,” said Rhoda, smiling. “I did not expect to see you so early.”
“It is early for visitors, my dear; but I thought you would like to know the news. We have so little here in Carnac.”
“Really, I trouble very little about the news, Miss Martha,” said Rhoda, smiling. “But what is the matter?” she added, as her visitor once more held her handkerchief to her face.
“That dreadful toothache again,” sighed Miss Pavey. “I really am a martyr to these nervous pains.”
“Why not boldly go to Mr Rumsey and have it out?”
“Oh, no! oh, dear no!” cried Miss Pavey, with a look of horror, “I could not bear for a man to touch my mouth like that. Don’t mind me, dear, it will be better soon;” and it seemed to be, for it was a pleasant little fiction kept up by Miss Pavey – that toothache, to add truthfulness to the complete set she wore, and whose extraction she carefully attended to herself.
“Of course you don’t care for news, my dear,” continued the lady; “I used not when I was your age. But when one comes to be thirty-two one’s ideas change so. One becomes more human, and takes more interest in humanity at large than in one’s self. You are such a happy contented girl, too; nothing seems to trouble you.”
“But your news,” said Rhoda, to change the conversation, as Miss Pavey smoothed down her blue silk dress.
“To be sure, yes, my dear. I saw the coach come over from the station – what a shame it is that we don’t have a branch railway! – and what do you think?”
“Think?” said Rhoda, looking amused, “I really don’t know what to think.”
“Pylades and Orestes!”
“I don’t understand you.”
“They’ve come, my dear, – they’ve come?”
“Pylades and Orestes?”
“Well, of course, that’s only my nonsense; but, as I told you, I saw the coach come in, and two gentlemen got down, both young and handsome – one fair, the other dark; and one is evidently our new vicar, and the other must be his friend. I am so glad, my dear, for I have been exceedingly anxious about the kind of person we were to have for our new clergyman.”
“Indeed!” said Rhoda, looking amused. “Why, I thought you went now to the Wesleyan chapel?”
“What a dear satirical girl you are, Rhoda. You know I only went there on account of Mr Chynoweth, and because Mr Owen stared at me so dreadfully, and was so persistent in preaching about dress.”
“But surely that was only at the mining and fishing women, who have been growing dreadfully gay in their attire.”
“Oh dear, no, my dear! oh dear no!” said Miss Pavey, shaking her head. “I have the best of reasons for believing it was all directed at me. You remember his text the last Sunday I was at church?”
“I am sorry to say I do not.”
“Dear me, I wonder at that. It was so very pointed. It was – ‘Who is this that cometh with dyed garments from Bozrah?’ and he looked at me as he spoke. I think it was disgraceful.”
“But, my dear Martha, I think you are too sensitive.”
“Perhaps I am, my dear; perhaps I am. I have had my troubles; but that Mr Owen was dreadful. You know, my dear, he had – perhaps I ought not to say it, but I will – he evidently wanted to make an impression upon me, but I never could like him. He was so coarse, and abrupt, and short-sighted. He used to smoke pipes too. Mrs Mullion has told me, over and over again, that he would sit for hours of a night smoking pipes, and drinking gin and water, with that dreadfully wicked old man, Mr Paul. Really, my dear, I think some one ought to warn our new clergyman not to go and lodge at Mrs Mullion’s. You see there is hardly any choice for a gentleman, and for one who looks so refined to go and stay at Mrs Mullion’s would be dreadful.”
“Mrs Mullion is very good and amiable,” said Rhoda.
“Yes, my dear, she is; but Mr Paul is not a nice person; and then there is that Madge – dreadful girl!”
Rhoda’s heart gave a higher-pressure throb at this last name, and Miss Pavey ran on, as she could if she only obtained a good listener, —
“I do think that girl ought to be sent away from Carnac; I do, indeed. Really, my dear, if I had felt disposed to accept any advances on the part of Mr Tregenna, his conduct with that flighty creature would have set me against him.”
Rhoda’s heart beat faster still, and the colour went and came in her face as she listened. She blamed herself for hearkening to such petty gossip, but her visitor was determined to go on, and added confidence to confidence, for, as it may be gathered, Miss Martha Pavey’s peculiar idiosyncrasy was a belief that was terribly persecuted by the male sex, who eagerly sought her hand in marriage, though at the present time a gossip of Carnac had told another gossip that Miss Pavey was “setting her gashly old cap now at Methody Parson.”
“Don’t you think, my dear,” continued the visitor, “that your papa ought to interfere?”
“Interfere?