Set in Silver
partnership, only he must be on the spot, as another man is making an
offer "more advantageous--in some ways." Dick is wild to get in, and
regards this as the opportunity of a lifetime. Doesn't that prove the
type of mind he has? Actually yearning to be in business as a detective!
Well, he's had good practice lately, and I must say he has made the most
of it.
"This call couldn't have come at a worse time, but I must obey it," he
pronounced solemnly, while I peeped through my half-open door, in my
prettiest Ellaline dressing-gown--far too nice to waste on Dick.
Disgusted with life, as I was, I nearly laughed in his face, and _at_
his face; but dared not quite, for fear of enraging him again just when
he appeared to be in a comparatively lenient mood.
He had come to explain and apologize, and in his perky conceit really
seemed to fancy that I might be hurt at his desertion. So when he asked
if I would "bid him good-bye pleasantly, and remember to keep my
promise," I had a small inspiration. I would bid him good-bye
pleasantly, I bargained, provided he let me off keeping the promise
until he should come back; because, I said, it would be humiliating to
plead with Sir Lionel on the very day my _fiance_ turned his back upon
me in order to attend to mere business.
"You call this _mere_ business?" sputtered Dick; and I soothed him, but
persisted firmly, gently, until at last he agreed to grant the reprieve.
I think his own vanity, not my eloquence, obtained the concession,
because it pleased him to believe that I leaned upon him in this crisis.
And of course I had to promise over again, more earnestly than ever,
"not to back out, but to stick to my word."
I must still stick to it, of course (unless a wire or letter from you
meanwhile suggests some miraculous, agreeable, honourable alternative);
but sufficient for the day is the evil thereof--and the Dick thereof.
This day and several days to come are free from both; for my albatross
can't arrange the details of its partnership, sell out some investments
in order to pay the money down, and join us again before Chester. There
I shall certainly hear from you; and I have such infinite faith in your
dove-like serpentineness, that I let myself cling to the ragged edge of
hope. Meanwhile, I shall enjoy myself as much as I possibly can, so
that, at worst, I shall have more good days to remember when bad days
come. For the days will be very bad indeed if I have to bear Sir
Lionel's silent scorn, and still remain with him, awaiting release from
Ellaline.
I felt like a different human being after Dick had gone, and would have
written you at once, but he had delayed me so long that I had to finish
dressing at top speed, because we were to make an earlier start than
usual. There was Chepstow Castle to see (quite near, and a shame to have
missed it), as well as a hundred-and-fifty-mile run to Tenby.
Chepstow was splendidly picturesque and striking; but the country
through which we had to pass on the way to Tenby would not have been
particularly interesting if it weren't for the legends and history with
which it is as full as it is of ruined castles. It is largely coal
country now, and after the lovely, winding Wye, playing hide-and-seek
with its guardian hills, we might have found the road unattractive as we
ran through Newport, Cardiff, Neath, Swansea, and Carmarthen. But it
made all the difference in the world to know that Carmarthen was
Merlin's birthplace; that stories of Arthur's exploits and knightly
deeds leave golden landmarks everywhere; and that it seems quite an
ordinary, reasonable thing to the people to name railway engines after
Sir Lancelot. Isn't it charming of them? Yet what would Elaine, the Lily
Maid of Astolat, say to such a liberty, I wonder?
We arrived in Tenby too late for anything save an impression, last
evening; but it was one of those enchanting, mysterious impressions
which one can only have after dusk, when each old ivied wall is purple
with romance, and each lamp in a high window is a lovelight.
My first thought as we came in and found Tenby on fire with sunset, was
that the place looked like a foreign town set down in England; and so of
course it is, for it was founded by a band of Flemish people, who fled
from persecution. The huge old city walls and quaint gates put me in
mind of a glorified Boulogne, or a bit of old Dinan, under the castle.
And the way the town lies, with its beautiful harbour far below, its
gray rocks and broken walls by the sea, in golden sands, is like
Turner's ideas of historic French fortresses. The Benedictine monks,
too, who come across the gleaming stretch of water from Caldy Island in
a green-and-red steam yacht, add one more foreign note. And I'm
delighted to tell you that the hotel where we stayed is built upon the
city wall of which nobody seems to know the date--not even the
guide-books. The people we asked rather apologized for having to confess
that probably it was no earlier than the twelfth century; for the
twelfth century is considered crudely modern for Welsh things.
In front of my bedroom window an old lookout tower, darkly veined with
ivy, stood up from the vast foundation of the stone wall; and at night I
could gaze down, down, over what seemed in the moon-mist to be a mile of
depth, to an almost tropical garden laid out on the wall itself. When
the tide comes in and drowns the gold of the sands, the sea breaks
against the buttress of rock and stone, and the hotel seems all
surrounded with the wash and foam of waters, like a fortified castle of
long-ago.
We ought to have stopped more than one night and part of a next day, but
there is so much, so much to do; and, as I told you, Sir Lionel's
thoughts are already marching on toward home. There are all the beauty
spots of Wales before us; and the Lake Country, and the North by the
Roman Wall, before we turn south again for Graylees. I say "we"--but you
know what I mean.
The run we had to-day, coming through Cardigan to Aberystwith, has begun
to show me what Wales can do in the way of beauty when she really puts
her soul to it; but Sir Lionel says it is nothing to what we shall see
to-morrow. What joy that I have still a to-morrow--and a day after
to-morrow--empty of Dick! Do you suppose a condemned person finds his
last sip of life the sweetest in the cup? I can imagine it might be so.
You'll be glad to get this, I'm sure, dearest, so I'll send it at once,
with loads and loads of love from,
Your Criminal Child.
P. S. I forgot to tell you that Aberystwith isn't nearly as beautiful as
Tenby, but it has a castle towering over the sea, built by no one less
than Gilbert Strongbow the Cruel, who grabbed all Cardiganshire for
himself, and dotted castles about everywhere--or else stole other
people's, which saved trouble. I know you like to picture me wherever I
am, so I must tell you at least that about Aberystwith, though
describing places seems irrelevant in my present mood. I am keyed to the
"top notch," and don't feel able to do anything leisurely. I do not
expect to sleep to-night, and shall get up as soon as it's light, and
dart down to the beach to look for amber, or carnelian, or onyx, which
they say can be found here. I asked a chambermaid of the hotel, after we
arrived this evening, what all the mysterious, stooping people were
doing on the sands, and she said searching for amber, to bring them
luck. I hope I may come across a bit--even a tiny bit. I am needing a
luck-bringer.
There was another mystery which puzzled me here: droves of pretty girls,
between twelve and twenty, flitting past the windows, on "the front,"
every few minutes; sometimes two by two, sometimes four or five
together. I thought I had never seen so many young girls. There were
enough for the girl population of a large city, yet here they were all
crowded together in this small watering-place. But the chambermaid has
swept away the mystery. It's a college, and the girls "live out" in
different houses. At the other end of the town is another college for
young men. That sounds entertaining, doesn't it?
XXXI
AUDRIE BRENDON TO HER MOTHER
_Pen-y-gwrd-Hotel_,
_August 30th_
Dear Rose-Without-a-Thorn: I didn't find the amber, but Sir
Lionel found a fat little, round lump, and gave it to me; and that seems
almost more lucky than finding it myself; because it may mean that
something good is to come to me from him.
He was on the Aberystwith beach when I got there, though it was only
half-past six. He hadn't said a word the night before, but he made up
his mind then to find some amber--for me. You see, he knew the
superstition about luck, and how everybody goes hunting for it.
I picked up a pretty piece of carnelian, and gave it to him in exchange,
asking him "to keep it to remember me by."
"I don't want to remember you," he answered. And when, perhaps, I looked
hurt, he went on: "Because I want to keep you in my life. I want you
very much, if----"
But just then Mrs. Senter came behind us, and left that "if" like a key
sticking in a door which couldn't be opened without one more turn. I
should have liked to know what was behind the door; but I daresay there
was nothing much, really.
She, too, had come to look for amber and other things. I don't know
about the other things, but she didn't find the amber.
At eleven o'clock, after seeing something of the place, we slipped away
toward Machynlleth, along a hilly road, which grew lovelier with each of
its many twists among low mountains. Now, said Sir Lionel, we were about
to see the heart of Wales; and I should soon have realized that without
his telling, for as we slowed down to pass through little villages we
heard the children talking Welsh--a soft, pleasant language, which I can
only try to describe by saying that it sounded like whispering out loud.
But that is a very Irish description!
The scenery was so gentle in its beauty that my wild, excited mood was
lulled by its soft influence. The colour of landscape and sky kept the
delicate tints of spring, though we are in full, rich summer; and there
was none of the tropical verdure we saw near Tenby; no crimson fountains
of fuchsias, no billows of blood-red roses, and fierce southern flowers.
Pale honey-suckle draped the gray or whitewashed stone cottages. Rocks
and crannies of walls were daintily fringed with ferns, or cushioned
with the velvet of moss, and crusted with tarnished golden lichen. A
modern-timbered house, rising pertly here and there, looked out of place
among dwellings whose early owners quarried each stone from among their
own mountains.
As we left the fairy glades of those wooded hills for rugged mountains
scantily clad with ragged grass, slate-quarries tried their ugly best to
blotch and spoil the scene, but owing to some strange charm of
atmosphere, like a gauze veil on the stage, they could not quite
succeed. By and by the gauze veil turned to rain, but rain suited the
wild landscape--far better, by the way, than it suited Mrs. Senter,
whose nightly hair-wavers are but a reed to lean upon in wet weather.
She made some excuse to come behind with Emily and me, and before the
car started again I summoned courage to ask if I might take her place,
saying I loved to feel the rain.
So there I was with Sir Lionel once more; and I wondered if he thought
of that night when we rushed through the storm from Tintagel to
Clovelly? Soon this also bade fair to be a storm, for the rain began to
tumble out of the sky, rather than fall, as if an army of people stood
throwing down water by the bucketful. I revelled in it, and in the
sombre scenery, where sharp rocks stood out like bones through the
tattered green coats of soldier-mountains. All the world was gray or