“Uncle Charles, a dhrop of the craythur a wee dhrop of the craythur?”
General Pendyce caressed his whisker.
“The least touch,” he said, “the least touch! I hear that our friend Sir Percival is going to stand again.”
Mr. Barter rose and placed his back before the fire.
“Outrageous!” he said. “He ought to be told at once that we can't have him.”
The Hon. Geoffrey Winlow answered from his chair:
“If he puts up, he'll get in; they can't afford to lose him.” And with a leisurely puff of smoke: “I must say, sir, I don't quite see what it has to do with his public life.”
Mr. Barter thrust forth his lower lip.
“An impenitent man,” he said.
“But a woman like that! What chance has a fellow if she once gets hold of him?”
“When I was stationed at Halifax,” began General Pendyce, “she was the belle of the place—”
Again Mr. Barter thrust out his lower lip.
“Don't let's talk of her—the jade!” Then suddenly to George: “Let's hear your opinion, George. Dreaming of your victories, eh?” And the tone of his voice was peculiar.
But George got up.
“I'm too sleepy,” he said; “good-night.” Curtly nodding, he left the room.
Outside the door stood a dark oak table covered with silver candlesticks; a single candle burned thereon, and made a thin gold path in the velvet blackness. George lighted his candle, and a second gold path leaped out in front; up this he began to ascend. He carried his candle at the level of his breast, and the light shone sideways and up over his white shirt-front and the comely, bulldog face above it. It shone, too, into his eyes, 'grey and slightly bloodshot, as though their surfaces concealed passions violently struggling for expression. At the turning platform of the stair he paused. In darkness above and in darkness below the country house was still; all the little life of its day, its petty sounds, movements, comings, goings, its very breathing, seemed to have fallen into sleep. The forces of its life had gathered into that pool of light where George stood listening. The beating of his heart was the only sound; in that small sound was all the pulse of this great slumbering space. He stood there long, motionless, listening to the beating of his heart, like a man fallen into a trance. Then floating up through the darkness came the echo of a laugh. George started. “The d——d parson!” he muttered, and turned up the stairs again; but now he moved like a man with a purpose, and held his candle high so that the light fell far out into the darkness. He went beyond his own room, and stood still again. The light of the candle showed the blood flushing his forehead, beating and pulsing in the veins at the side of his temples; showed, too, his lips quivering, his shaking hand. He stretched out that hand and touched the handle of a door, then stood again like a man of stone, listening for the laugh. He raised the candle, and it shone into every nook; his throat clicked, as though he found it hard to swallow....
It was at Barnard Scrolls, the next station to Worsted Skeynes, on the following afternoon, that a young man entered a first-class compartment of the 3.10 train to town. The young man wore a Newmarket coat, natty white gloves, and carried an eyeglass. His face was well coloured, his chestnut moustache well brushed, and his blue eyes with their loving expression seemed to say, “Look at me—come, look at me—can anyone be better fed?” His valise and hat-box, of the best leather, bore the inscription, “E. Maydew, 8th Lancers.”
There was a lady leaning back in a corner, wrapped to the chin in a fur garment, and the young man, encountering through his eyeglass her cool, ironical glance, dropped it and held out his hand.
“Ah, Mrs. Bellew, great pleasure t'see you again so soon. You goin' up to town? Jolly dance last night, wasn't it? Dear old sort, the Squire, and Mrs. Pendyce such an awf'ly nice woman.”
Mrs. Bellew took his hand, and leaned back again in her corner. She was rather paler than usual, but it became her, and Captain Maydew thought he had never seen so charming a creature.
“Got a week's leave, thank goodness. Most awf'ly slow time of year. Cubbin's pretty well over, an' we don't open till the first.”
He turned to the window. There in the sunlight the hedgerows ran golden and brown away from the clouds of trailing train smoke. Young Maydew shook his head at their beauty.
“The country's still very blind,” he said. “Awful pity you've given up your huntin'.”
Mrs. Bellew did not trouble to answer, and it was just that certainty over herself, the cool assurance of a woman who has known the world, her calm, almost negligent eyes, that fascinated this young man. He looked at her quite shyly.
'I suppose you will become my slave,' those eyes seemed to say, 'but I can't help you, really.'
“Did you back George's horse? I had an awf'ly good race. I was at school with George. Charmin' fellow, old George.”
In Mrs. Bellew's eyes something seemed to stir down in the depths, but young Maydew was looking at his glove. The handle of the carriage had left a mark that saddened him.
“You know him well, I suppose, old George?”
“Very well.”
“Some fellows, if they have a good thing, keep it so jolly dark. You fond of racin', Mrs. Bellew?”
“Passionately.”
“So am I.” And his eyes continued, 'It's ripping to like what you like,' for, hypnotised, they could not tear themselves away from that creamy face, with its full lips and the clear, faintly smiling eyes above the high collar of white fur.
At the terminus his services were refused, and rather crestfallen, with his hat raised, he watched her walk away. But soon, in his cab, his face regained its normal look, his eyes seemed saying to the little mirror, 'Look at me come, look at me—can anyone be better fed?'
CHAPTER VII
SABBATH AT WORSTED SKEYNES
In the white morning-room which served for her boudoir Mrs. Pendyce sat with an opened letter in her lap. It was her practice to sit there on Sunday mornings for an hour before she went to her room adjoining to put on her hat for church. It was her pleasure during that hour to do nothing but sit at the window, open if the weather permitted, and look over the home paddock and the squat spire of the village church rising among a group of elms. It is not known what she thought about at those times, unless of the countless Sunday mornings she had sat there with her hands in her lap waiting to be roused at 10.45 by the Squire's entrance and his “Now, my dear, you'll be late!” She had sat there till her hair, once dark-brown, was turning grey; she would sit there until it was white. One day she would sit there no longer, and, as likely as not, Mr. Pendyce, still well preserved, would enter and say, “Now, my dear, you'll be late!” having for the moment forgotten.
But this was all to be expected, nothing out of the common; the same thing was happening in hundreds of country houses throughout the “three kingdoms,” and women were sitting waiting for their hair to turn white, who, long before, at the altar of a fashionable church, had parted with their imaginations and all the changes and chances of this mortal life.
Round her chair “the dear dogs” lay—this was their practice too, and now and again the Skye (he was getting very old) would put out