“Be informal – do what you like, dress as you like, sit where you like, eat what you like, drink tea or coffee, but – ” Each glance of his eyes, each sentence of his sparing, semi-genial talk, seemed to repeat that “but”.
At the foot of the breakfast-table sat Mrs. Pendyce behind a silver urn which emitted a gentle steam. Her hands worked without ceasing amongst cups, and while they worked her lips worked too in spasmodic utterances that never had any reference to herself. Pushed a little to her left and entirely neglected, lay a piece of dry toast on a small white plate. Twice she took it up, buttered a bit of it, and put it down again. Once she rested, and her eyes, which fell on Mrs. Bellow, seemed to say: “How very charming you look, my dear!” Then, taking up the sugar-tongs, she began again.
On the long sideboard covered with a white cloth reposed a number of edibles only to be found amongst that portion of the community which breeds creatures for its own devouring. At one end of this row of viands was a large game pie with a triangular gap in the pastry; at the other, on two oval dishes, lay four cold partridges in various stages of decomposition. Behind them a silver basket of openwork design was occupied by three bunches of black, one bunch of white grapes, and a silver grape-cutter, which performed no function (it was so blunt), but had once belonged to a Totteridge and wore their crest.
No servants were in the room, but the side-door was now and again opened, and something brought in, and this suggested that behind the door persons were collected, only waiting to be called upon. It was, in fact, as though Mr. Pendyce had said: “A butler and two footmen at least could hand you things, but this is a simple country house.”
At times a male guest rose, napkin in hand, and said to a lady: “Can I get you anything from the sideboard?” Being refused, he went and filled his own plate. Three dogs – two fox-terriers and a decrepit Skye circled round uneasily, smelling at the visitors’ napkins. And there went up a hum of talk in which sentences like these could be distinguished: “Rippin’ stand that, by the wood. D’you remember your rockettin’ woodcock last year, Jerry?” “And the dear old Squire never touched a feather! Did you, Squire?” “Dick – Dick! Bad dog! – come and do your tricks. Trust-trust! Paid for! Isn’t he rather a darling?”
On Mr. Pendyce’s foot, or by the side of his chair, whence he could see what was being eaten, sat the spaniel John, and now and then Mr. Pendyce, taking a small portion of something between his finger and thumb, would say:
“John! – Make a good breakfast, Sir James; I always say a half-breakfasted man is no good!”
And Mrs. Pendyce, her eyebrows lifted, would look anxiously up and down the table, murmuring: “Another cup, dear; let me see – are you sugar?”
When all had finished a silence fell, as if each sought to get away from what he had been eating, as if each felt he had been engaged in an unworthy practice; then Mr. Pendyce, finishing his last grape, wiped his mouth.
“You’ve a quarter of an hour, gentlemen; we start at ten-fifteen.”
Mrs. Pendyce, left seated with a vague, ironical smile, ate one mouthful of her buttered toast, now very old and leathery, gave the rest to “the dear dogs,” and called:
“George! You want a new shooting tie, dear boy; that green one’s quite faded. I’ve been meaning to get some silks down for ages. Have you had any news of your horse this morning?”
“Yes, Blacksmith says he’s fit as a fiddle.”
“I do so hope he’ll win that race for you. Your Uncle Hubert once lost four thousand pounds over the Rutlandshire. I remember perfectly; my father had to pay it. I’m so glad you don’t bet, dear boy!”
“My dear mother, I do bet.”
“Oh, George, I hope not much! For goodness’ sake, don’t tell your father; he’s like all the Pendyces, can’t bear a risk.”
“My dear mother, I’m not likely to; but, as a matter of fact, there is no risk. I stand to win a lot of money to nothing.”
“But, George, is that right?”
“Of course it’s all right.”
“Oh, well, I don’t understand.” Mrs. Pendyce dropped her eyes, a flush came into her white cheeks; she looked up again and said quickly: “George, I should like just a little bet on your horse – a real bet, say about a sovereign.”
George Pendyce’s creed permitted the show of no emotion. He smiled.
“All right, mother, I’ll put it on for you. It’ll be about eight to one.”
“Does that mean that if he wins I shall get eight?”
George nodded.
Mrs. Pendyce looked abstractedly at his tie.
“I think it might be two sovereigns; one seems very little to lose, because I do so want him to win. Isn’t Helen Bellew perfectly charming this morning! It’s delightful to see a woman look her best in the morning.”
George turned, to hide the colour in his cheeks.
“She looks fresh enough, certainly.”
Mrs. Pendyce glanced up at him; there was a touch of quizzicality in one of her lifted eyebrows.
“I mustn’t keep you, dear; you’ll be late for the shooting.”
Mr. Pendyce, a sportsman of the old school, who still kept pointers, which, in the teeth of modern fashion, he was unable to employ, set his face against the use of two guns.
“Any man,” he would say, “who cares to shoot at Worsted Skeynes must do with one gun, as my dear old father had to do before me. He’ll get a good day’s sport – no barndoor birds” (for he encouraged his pheasants to remain lean, that they might fly the better), “but don’t let him expect one of these battues – sheer butchery, I call them.”
He was excessively fond of birds – it was, in fact, his hobby, and he had collected under glass cases a prodigious number of specimens of those species which are in danger of becoming extinct, having really, in some Pendycean sort of way, a feeling that by this practice he was doing them a good turn, championing them, as it were, to a world that would soon be unable to look upon them in the flesh. He wished, too, that his collection should become an integral part of the estate, and be passed on to his son, and his son’s son after him.
“Look at this Dartford Warbler,” he would say; “beautiful little creature – getting rarer every day. I had the greatest difficulty in procuring this specimen. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you what I had to pay for him!”
Some of his unique birds he had shot himself, having in his youth made expeditions to foreign countries solely with this object, but the great majority he had been compelled to purchase. In his library were row upon row of books carefully arranged and bearing on this fascinating subject; and his collection of rare, almost extinct, birds’ eggs was one of the finest in the “three kingdoms.” One egg especially he would point to with pride as the last obtainable of that particular breed. “This was procured,” he would say, “by my dear old gillie Angus out of the bird’s very nest. There was just the single egg. The species,” he added, tenderly handling the delicate, porcelain-like oval in his brown hand covered with very fine, blackish hairs, “is now extinct.” He was, in fact, a true bird-lover, strongly condemning cockneys, or rough, ignorant persons who, with no collections of their own, wantonly destroyed kingfishers, or scarce birds of any sort, out of pure stupidity. “I would have them flogged,” he would say, for he believed that no such bird should be killed except on commission, and for choice – barring such extreme cases as that Dartford Warbler – in some foreign country or remoter part of the British Isles. It was indeed illustrative of Mr. Pendyce’s character and whole point of view that whenever a rare, winged stranger appeared on his own estate it was talked of as an event, and preserved alive with the greatest care, in the hope that it might breed and be handed down with the property; but if it were personally known to belong to Mr. Fuller or Lord Quarryman, whose estates abutted on Worsted Skeynes,