The Country House
CHAPTER I
A PARTY AT WORSTED SKEYNES
The year was 1891, the month October, the day Monday. In the dark outside
the railway-station at Worsted Skeynes Mr. Horace Pendyce's omnibus,
his brougham, his luggage-cart, monopolised space. The face of Mr. Horace
Pendyce's coachman monopolised the light of the solitary station
lantern. Rosy-gilled, with fat close-clipped grey whiskers and inscrutably
pursed lips, it presided high up in the easterly air like an emblem of the
feudal system. On the platform within, Mr. Horace Pendyce's first
footman and second groom in long livery coats with silver buttons, their
appearance slightly relieved by the rakish cock of their top-hats, awaited
the arrival of the 6.15.
The first footman took from his pocket a half-sheet of stamped and crested
notepaper covered with Mr. Horace Pendyce's small and precise
calligraphy. He read from it in a nasal, derisive voice:
“Hon. Geoff, and Mrs. Winlow, blue room and dress; maid, small drab.
Mr. George, white room. Mrs. Jaspar Bellew, gold. The Captain, red.
General Pendyce, pink room; valet, back attic. That's the lot.”
The groom, a red-cheeked youth, paid no attention.
“If this here Ambler of Mr. George's wins on Wednesday,”
he said, “it's as good as five pounds in my pocket. Who does
for Mr. George?”
“James, of course.”
The groom whistled.
“I'll try an' get his loadin' to-morrow. Are you
on, Tom?”
The footman answered:
“Here's another over the page. Green room, right wing—that
Foxleigh; he's no good. 'Take all you can and give nothing'
sort! But can't he shoot just! That's why they ask him!”
From behind a screen of dark trees the train ran in.
Down the platform came the first passengers—two cattlemen with long
sticks, slouching by in their frieze coats, diffusing an odour of beast
and black tobacco; then a couple, and single figures, keeping as far apart
as possible, the guests of Mr. Horace Pendyce. Slowly they came out one by
one into the loom of the carriages, and stood with their eyes fixed
carefully before them, as though afraid they might recognise each other. A
tall man in a fur coat, whose tall wife carried a small bag of silver and
shagreen, spoke to the coachman:
“How are you, Benson? Mr. George says Captain Pendyce told him he
wouldn't be down till the 9.30. I suppose we'd better——”
Like a breeze tuning through the frigid silence of a fog, a high, clear
voice was heard:
“Oh, thanks; I'll go up in the brougham.”
Followed by the first footman carrying her wraps, and muffled in a white
veil, through which the Hon. Geoffrey Winlow's leisurely gaze caught
the gleam of eyes, a lady stepped forward, and with a backward glance
vanished into the brougham. Her head appeared again behind the swathe of
gauze.
“There's plenty of room, George.”
George Pendyce walked quickly forward, and disappeared beside her. There
was a crunch of wheels; the brougham rolled away.
The Hon. Geoffrey Winlow raised his face again.
“Who was that, Benson?”
The coachman leaned over confidentially, holding his podgy white-gloved
hand outspread on a level with the Hon. Geoffrey's hat.
“Mrs. Jaspar Bellew, sir. Captain Bellew's lady, of the Firs.”
“But I thought they weren't—”
“No, sir; they're not, sir.”
“Ah!”
A calm rarefied voice was heard from the door of the omnibus:
“Now, Geoff!”
The Hon. Geoffrey Winlow followed his wife, Mr. Foxleigh, and General
Pendyce into the omnibus, and again Mrs. Winlow's voice was heard:
“Oh, do you mind my maid? Get in, Tookson!”
Mr. Horace Pendyce's mansion, white and long and low, standing well
within its acres, had come into the possession of his
great-great-great-grandfather through an alliance with the last of the
Worsteds. Originally a fine property let in smallish holdings to tenants
who, having no attention bestowed on them, did very well and paid
excellent rents, it was now farmed on model lines at a slight loss. At
stated intervals Mr. Pendyce imported a new kind of cow, or partridge, and
built a wing to the schools. His income was fortunately independent of
this estate. He was in complete accord with the Rector and the sanitary
authorities, and not infrequently complained that his tenants did not stay
on the land. His wife was a Totteridge, and his coverts admirable. He had
been, needless to say, an eldest son. It was his individual conviction
that individualism had ruined England, and he had set himself deliberately
to eradicate this vice from the character of his tenants. By substituting
for their individualism his own tastes, plans, and sentiments, one might
almost say his own individualism, and losing money thereby, he had gone
far to demonstrate his pet theory that the higher the individualism the
more sterile the life of the community. If, however, the matter was thus
put to him he grew both garrulous and angry, for he considered himself not
an individualist, but what he called a “Tory Communist.” In
connection with his agricultural interests he was naturally a Fair Trader;
a tax on corn, he knew, would make all the difference in the world to the
prosperity of England. As he often said: “A tax of three or four
shillings on corn, and I should be farming my estate at a profit.”
Mr. Pendyce had other peculiarities, in which he was not too individual.
He was averse to any change in the existing order of things, made lists of
everything, and was never really so happy as when talking of himself or
his estate. He had a black spaniel dog called John, with a long nose and
longer ears, whom he had bred himself till the creature was not happy out
of his sight.
In appearance Mr. Pendyce was rather of the old school, upright and
active, with thin side-whiskers, to which, however, for some years past he
had added moustaches which drooped and were now grizzled. He wore large
cravats and square-tailed coats. He did not smoke.
At the head of his dining-table loaded with flowers and plate, he sat
between the Hon. Mrs. Winlow and Mrs. Jaspar Bellew, nor could he have
desired more striking and contrasted supporters. Equally tall,
full-figured, and comely, Nature had fixed between these two women a gulf
which Mr. Pendyce, a man of spare figure, tried in vain to fill. The
composure peculiar to the ashen type of the British aristocracy wintered
permanently on Mrs. Winlow's features like the smile of a frosty
day. Expressionless to a degree, they at once convinced the spectator that
she was a woman of the best breeding. Had an expression ever arisen upon
these features, it is impossible to say what might have been the
consequences. She had followed her nurse's adjuration: “Lor,
Miss Truda, never you make a face— You might grow so!” Never
since that day had Gertrude Winlow, an Honourable in her own right and in
that of her husband, made a face, not even, it is believed, when her son
was born. And then to find on the other side of Mr. Pendyce that puzzling
Mrs. Bellew with the green-grey eyes, at which the best people of her own
sex looked with instinctive disapproval! A woman in her position should
avoid anything conspicuous, and Nature had given her a too-striking
appearance. People said that when, the year before last, she had separated
from Captain Bellew, and left the Firs, it was simply because they were
tired of one another. They said, too, that it looked as if she were
encouraging the attentions of George, Mr. Pendyce's eldest son.
Lady Malden had remarked to Mrs. Winlow in the drawing-room before dinner:
“What is it about that Mrs. Bellew? I never liked her. A woman
situated as she is ought to be more careful. I don't understand her
being asked here at all, with her husband still at the Firs, only just
over the way. Besides, she's very hard up. She doesn't even
attempt to disguise it. I call her almost an adventuress.”
Mrs. Winlow had answered:
“But she's some sort of cousin to Mrs. Pendyce. The Pendyces
are related to everybody! It's so boring. One never knows—”
Lady Malden replied:
“Did you know her when she was living down here? I dislike those
hard-riding women. She and her husband were perfectly reckless. One heard
of nothing else but what she had jumped and how she had jumped it; and she
bets and goes racing. If George Pendyce is not in love with her, I'm
very much mistaken. He's been seeing far too much of her in town.
She's one of those women that men are always hanging about!”
At the head of his dinner-table, where before each guest was placed a menu
carefully written in his eldest daughter's handwriting, Horace
Pendyce supped his soup.
“This soup,” he said to Mrs. Bellew, “reminds me of your
dear old father; he was extraordinarily fond of it. I had a great respect
for your father—a wonderful man! I always said he was the most
determined man I'd met since my own dear father, and he was the most
obstinate man in the three kingdoms!”
He frequently made use of the expression “in the three kingdoms,”
which sometimes preceded a statement that his grandmother was descended
from Richard III., while his grandfather came down from the Cornish
giants, one of whom, he would say with a disparaging smile, had once
thrown a cow over a wall.
“Your father was too much of an individualist, Mrs. Bellew. I have a
lot of experience of individualism in the management of my estate, and I
find that an individualist is never contented. My tenants have everything
they want, but it's impossible to satisfy them. There's a
fellow called Peacock, now, a most pig-headed, narrowminded chap. I don't
give in to him, of course. If he had his way, he'd go back to the
old days, farm the land in his own fashion. He wants to buy it from me.
Old vicious system of yeoman farming. Says his grandfather had it. He's
that sort of man. I hate individualism; it's ruining England. You
won't find better cottages, or better farm-buildings anywhere than
on my estate. I go in for centralisation. I dare say you know what I call
myself—a 'Tory Communist.' To my mind, that's the
party of the future. Now, your father's motto was: 'Every man
for himself!' On the land that would never do. Landlord and tenant
must work together. You'll come over to Newmarket with us on
Wednesday? George has a very fine horse running in the Rutlandshire a very
fine horse. He doesn't bet, I'm glad to say. If there's
one thing I hate more than another, it's gambling!”
Mrs. Bellew gave him a sidelong glance, and a little ironical smile peeped
out on her full red lips. But Mr. Pendyce had been called away to his
soup. When he was ready to resume the conversation she was talking to his
son, and the Squire, frowning, turned to the Hon. Mrs. Winlow. Her
attention was automatic, complete, monosyllabic; she did not appear to
fatigue herself by an over-sympathetic comprehension, nor was she
subservient. Mr. Pendyce found her a competent listener.
“The country is changing,” he said, “changing every day.
Country houses are not what they were. A great responsibility rests on us
landlords. If we go, the whole thing goes.”
What, indeed, could be more delightful than this country-house life of Mr.
Pendyce; its perfect cleanliness, its busy leisure, its combination of
fresh air and scented warmth, its complete intellectual repose, its
essential and professional aloofness from suffering of any kind, and its
soup—emblematically and above all, its soup—made from the rich
remains of pampered beasts?
Mr. Pendyce thought this life the one right life; those who lived it the
only right people. He considered it a duty to live this life, with its
simple, healthy, yet luxurious curriculum, surrounded by creatures bred
for his own devouring, surrounded, as it were, by a sea of soup! And that
people should go on existing by the million in the towns, preying on each
other, and getting continually out of work, with all those other
depressing concomitants of an awkward state, distressed him. While
suburban life, that living in little rows of slate-roofed houses so
lamentably similar that no man of individual taste could bear to see them,
he much disliked. Yet, in spite of his strong prejudice in favour of
country-house life, he was not a rich man, his income barely exceeding ten
thousand a year.
The first shooting-party of the season, devoted to spinneys and the
outlying coverts, had been, as usual, made to synchronise with the last
Newmarket Meeting, for Newmarket was within an uncomfortable distance of
Worsted Skeynes; and though Mr. Pendyce had a horror of gaming, he liked
to figure there and pass for a man interested in sport for sport's
sake, and he was really rather proud of the fact that his son had picked
up so good a horse as the Ambler promised to be for so little money, and
was racing him for pure sport.
The guests had been carefully chosen. On Mrs. Winlow's right was
Thomas Brandwhite (of Brown and Brandwhite), who had a position in the
financial world which could not well be ignored, two places in the
country, and a yacht. His long, lined face, with very heavy moustaches,
wore habitually a peevish look. He had retired from his firm, and now only
sat on the Boards of several companies. Next to him was Mrs. Hussell
Barter, with that touching look to be seen on the faces of many English
ladies, that look of women who are always doing their duty, their rather
painful duty; whose eyes, above cheeks creased and withered, once
rose-leaf hued, now over-coloured by strong weather, are starry and
anxious; whose speech is simple, sympathetic, direct, a little shy, a
little hopeless, yet always hopeful; who are ever surrounded by children,
invalids, old people, all looking to them for support; who have never
known the luxury of breaking down—of these was Mrs. Hussell Barter,
the wife of the Reverend Hussell Barter, who would shoot to-morrow, but
would not attend the race-meeting on the Wednesday. On her other hand was
Gilbert Foxleigh, a lean-flanked man with a long, narrow head, strong
white teeth, and hollow, thirsting eyes. He came of a county family of
Foxleighs, and was one of six brothers, invaluable to the owners of
coverts or young, half-broken horses in days when, as a Foxleigh would put
it, “hardly a Johnny of the lot could shoot or ride for nuts.”
There was no species of beast, bird, or fish, that he could not and did
not destroy with equal skill and enjoyment. The only thing against him was
his income, which was very small. He had taken in Mrs. Brandwhite, to
whom, however, he talked but little, leaving her to General Pendyce, her
neighbour on the other side.
Had he been born a year before his brother, instead of a year after,
Charles Pendyce would naturally have owned Worsted Skeynes, and Horace
would have gone into the Army instead. As it was, having almost
imperceptibly become a Major-General, he had retired, taking with him his
pension. The third brother, had he chosen to be born, would have gone into
the Church, where a living awaited him; he had elected otherwise, and the
living had passed perforce to a collateral branch. Between Horace and
Charles, seen from behind, it was difficult to distinguish. Both were
spare, both erect, with the least inclination to bottle shoulders, but
Charles Pendyce brushed his hair, both before and behind, away from a
central parting, and about the back of his still active knees there was a
look of feebleness. Seen from the front they could readily be
differentiated, for the General's whiskers broadened down his cheeks
till they reached his moustaches, and there was in his face and manner a
sort of formal, though discontented, effacement, as of an individualist
who has all his life been part of a system, from which he has issued at
last, unconscious indeed of his loss, but with a vague sense of injury. He
had never married, feeling it to be comparatively useless, owing to Horace
having gained that year on him at the start, and he lived with a valet
close to his club in Pall Mall.
In Lady Malden, whom he had taken in to dinner, Worsted Skeynes
entertained a good woman and a personality, whose teas to Working Men in
the London season were famous. No Working Man who had attended them had
ever gone away without a wholesome respect for his hostess. She was indeed
a woman who permitted no liberties to be taken with her in any walk of
life. The daughter of a Rural Dean, she appeared at her best when seated,
having rather short legs. Her face was well-coloured, her mouth, firm and
rather wide, her nose well-shaped, her hair dark. She spoke in a decided
voice, and did not mince her words. It was to her that her husband, Sir
James, owed his reactionary principles on the subject of woman.
Round the corner at the end of the table the Hon. Geoffrey Winlow was
telling his hostess of the Balkan Provinces, from a tour in which he had
just returned. His face, of the Norman type, with regular, handsome
features, had a leisurely and capable expression. His manner was easy and
pleasant; only at times it became apparent that his ideas were in perfect
order, so that he would naturally not care to be corrected. His father,
Lord Montrossor, whose seat was at Coldingham six miles away, would
ultimately yield to him his place in the House of Lords.
And next him sat Mrs. Pendyce. A portrait of this lady hung over the
sideboard at the end of the room, and though it had been painted by a
fashionable painter, it had caught a gleam of that “something”
still in her face these twenty years later. She was not young, her dark
hair was going grey; but she was not old, for she had been married at
nineteen and was still only fifty-two. Her face was rather long and very
pale, and her eyebrows arched and dark and always slightly raised. Her
eyes were dark grey, sometimes almost black, for the pupils dilated when
she was moved; her lips were the least thing parted, and the expression of
those lips and eyes was of a rather touching gentleness, of a rather
touching expectancy. And yet all this was not the “something”;
that was rather the outward sign of an inborn sense that she had no need
to ask for things, of an instinctive faith that she already had them. By
that “something,” and by her long, transparent hands, men
could tell that she had been a Totteridge. And her voice, which was rather
slow, with a little, not unpleasant, trick of speech, and her eyelids by
second nature just a trifle lowered, confirmed this impression. Over her
bosom, which hid the heart of a lady, rose and fell a piece of wonderful
old lace.
Round the corner again Sir James Malden and Bee Pendyce (the eldest
daughter) were talking of horses and hunting— Bee seldom from choice
spoke of anything else. Her face was pleasant and good, yet not quite
pretty, and this little fact seemed to have entered into her very nature,
making her shy and ever willing to do things for others.
Sir James had small grey whiskers and a carved, keen visage. He came of an
old Kentish family which had migrated to Cambridgeshire; his coverts were
exceptionally fine; he was also a Justice of the Peace, a Colonel of
Yeomanry, a keen Churchman, and much feared by poachers. He held the
reactionary views already mentioned, being a little afraid of Lady Malden.
Beyond Miss Pendyce sat the Reverend Hussell Barter, who would shoot
to-morrow, but would not attend the race-meeting on Wednesday.
The Rector of Worsted Skeynes was not tall, and his head had been rendered
somewhat bald by thought. His broad face, of very straight build from the
top of the forehead to the base of the chin, was well-coloured,
clean-shaven, and of a shape that may be seen in portraits of the Georgian
era. His cheeks were full and folded, his lower lip had a habit of
protruding, and his eyebrows jutted out above his full, light eyes. His
manner was authoritative, and he articulated his words in a voice to which
long service in the pulpit had imparted remarkable carrying-power—in
fact, when engaged in private conversation, it was with difficulty that he
was not overheard. Perhaps even in confidential matters he was not
unwilling that what he said should bear fruit. In some ways, indeed, he
was typical. Uncertainty, hesitation, toleration—except of such
opinions as he held—he did not like. Imagination he distrusted. He
found his duty in life very clear, and other people's perhaps
clearer, and he did not encourage his parishioners to think for
themselves. The habit seemed to him a dangerous one. He was outspoken in
his opinions, and when he had occasion to find fault, spoke of the
offender as “a man of no character,” “a fellow like
that,” with such a ring of conviction that his audience could not
but be convinced of the immorality of that person. He had a bluff jolly
way of speaking, and was popular in his parish—a good cricketer, a
still better fisherman, a fair shot, though, as he said, he could not
really afford time for shooting. While disclaiming interference in secular
matters, he watched the tendencies of his flock from a sound point of
view, and especially encouraged them to support the existing order of
things—the British Empire and the English Church. His cure was
hereditary, and he fortunately possessed some private means, for he had a
large family. His partner at dinner was Norah, the younger of the two
Pendyce girls, who had a round, open face, and a more decided manner than
her sister Bee.
Her brother George, the eldest son, sat on her right. George was of middle
height, with a red-brown, clean-shaved face and solid jaw. His eyes were
grey; he had firm lips, and darkish, carefully brushed hair, a little thin
on the top, but with that peculiar gloss seen on the hair of some men
about town. His clothes were unostentatiously perfect. Such men may be
seen in Piccadilly at any hour of the day or night. He had been intended
for the Guards, but had failed to pass the necessary examination, through
no fault of his own, owing to a constitutional inability to spell. Had he
been his younger brother Gerald, he would probably have fulfilled the
Pendyce tradition, and passed into the Army as a matter of course. And had
Gerald (now Captain Pendyce) been George the elder son, he might possibly
have failed. George lived at his club in town on an allowance of six
hundred a year, and sat a great deal in a bay-window reading Ruff's
“Guide to the Turf.”
He raised his eyes from the menu and looked stealthily round. Helen Bellew
was talking to his father, her white shoulder turned a little away. George
was proud of his composure, but there was a strange longing in his face.
She gave, indeed, just excuse for people to consider her too good-looking
for the position in which she was placed. Her figure was tall and supple
and full, and now that she no longer hunted was getting fuller. Her hair,
looped back in loose bands across a broad low brow, had a peculiar soft
lustre.
There was a touch of sensuality about her lips. The face was too broad
across the brow and cheekbones, but the eyes were magnificent—ice-grey,
sometimes almost green, always luminous, and set in with dark lashes.
There was something pathetic in George's gaze, as of a man forced to
look against his will.
It had been going on all that past summer, and still he did not know where
he stood. Sometimes she seemed fond of him, sometimes treated him as
though he had no chance. That which he had begun as a game was now deadly
earnest. And this in itself was tragic. That comfortable ease of spirit
which is the breath of life was taken away; he could think of nothing but
her. Was she one of those women who feed on men's admiration, and
give them no return? Was she only waiting to make her conquest more
secure? These riddles he asked of her face a hundred times, lying awake in
the dark. To George Pendyce, a man of the world, unaccustomed to
privation, whose simple creed was “Live and enjoy,” there was
something terrible about a longing which never left him for a moment,
which he could not help any more than he could help eating, the end of
which he could not see. He had known her when she lived at the Firs, he
had known her in the hunting-field, but his passion was only of last
summer's date. It had sprung suddenly out of a flirtation started at
a dance.
A man about town does not psychologise himself; he accepts his condition
with touching simplicity. He is hungry; he must be fed. He is thirsty; he
must drink. Why he is hungry, when he became hungry, these inquiries are
beside the mark. No ethical aspect of the matter troubled him; the
attainment of a married woman, not living with her husband, did not
impinge upon his creed. What would come after, though full of unpleasant
possibilities, he left to the future. His real disquiet, far nearer, far
more primitive and simple, was the feeling of drifting helplessly in a
current so strong that he could not keep his feet.
“Ah yes; a bad case. Dreadful thing for the Sweetenhams! That young
fellow's been obliged to give up the Army. Can't think what
old Sweetenham was about. He must have known his son was hit. I should say
Bethany himself was the only one in the dark. There's no doubt Lady
Rose was to blame!” Mr. Pendyce was speaking.
Mrs. Bellew smiled.
“My sympathies are all with Lady Rose. What do you say, George?”
George frowned.
“I always thought,” he said, “that Bethany was an ass.”
“George,” said Mr. Pendyce, “is immoral. All young men
are immoral. I notice it more and more. You've given up your
hunting, I hear.”
Mrs. Bellew sighed.
“One can't hunt on next to nothing!”
“Ah, you live in London. London spoils everybody. People don't
take the interest in hunting and farming they used to. I can't get
George here at all. Not that I'm a believer in apron-strings. Young
men will be young men!”
Thus summing up the laws of Nature, the Squire resumed his knife and fork.
But neither Mrs. Bellew nor George followed his example; the one sat with
her eyes fixed on her plate and a faint smile playing on her lips, the
other sat without a smile, and his eyes, in which there was such a deep
resentful longing, looked from his father to Mrs. Bellew, and from Mrs.
Bellew to his mother. And as though down that vista of faces and fruits
and flowers a secret current had been set flowing, Mrs. Pendyce nodded
gently to her son.