The Affair at the Inn. Findlater Jane Helen

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СКАЧАТЬ he bowled off, and I comforted myself with the thought that mamma and I were at least on our way to pastures new, if they were only Dawlish or Torquay pastures; or perhaps something bracing in the shape of Dartmoor forests, if mamma listens to Mrs. MacGill.

      The owner of the motor appeared again at our dinner-table, a long affair set in the middle of the room, all the small tables being occupied by uninteresting nobodies who ate and drank as much, and took up as much room, as if they had been somebodies.

      It is needless to say that the young Britisher did not, like the busy bee, improve the shining hour – that sort of bee doesn't know honey when he sees it. He didn't even pass me the salt, which in a Christian country is not considered a compromising attention. I think that too many of Great Britain's young men must have been killed off in South Africa, and those remaining have risen to an altogether fictitious value. I suppose this Sir Somebody thinks my eyes are fixed on his coronet, if he has one rusting in his upper drawer awaiting its supreme moment of presentation. He is mistaken; I am thinking only of his motor. Heigh ho! If marriage as an institution could be retained, and all thought of marriage banished from the minds of the young of both sexes, how delightful society could be made for all parties! I can see that such a state of things would be quite impossible, but it presents many advantages.

      MRS. MACGILL

Exeter, Devonshire,Rougemont Castle Hotel,Sunday, May 16th, 19 —

      I have made out my journey from Tunbridge wells in safety, although there has been a breakdown upon the Scotch Express, which is a cause of thankfulness. There were two American women in the same carriage part of the time. The mother was, like myself, an invalid, and the daughter I suppose would be considered pretty. She was not exactly painted, but must have done something to her skin, I think, probably prejudicial like the advertisements; it was really waxen, and her hair decidedly dark – and such a veil! It reminded me of the expression about 'power on the head' in Corinthians – not that she seemed to require it, for she rang no less than eight times for the guard, each time about some different whimsey. The boy only grinned, yet he was quite rude to me when I asked him, only for the second time, where we changed carriages next. Cecilia spoke a good deal to the girl, who made her laugh constantly, in spite of her neuralgia, which was very inconsistent and provoking to me, as she had not uttered a word for hours after we left Tunbridge Wells. The mother seemed a very delicate, sensible person, suffering from exactly the same form of influenza as myself – indeed many of our symptoms are identical. They happened to be going to this hotel, too, so we met again in the afternoon. I had a bad night. Exeter is small, but the Cathedral chimes are very tiresome; they kept me awake as if on purpose; Cecilia slept, as neuralgic people seem often able to do.

      Somehow I do not fancy the idea of Dartmoor at all. It may brace Cecilia, but it will be too cold for me, I'm sure. I must send for my black velvet mantle – the one with the beads at the neck, as it will be the very thing for the moor. At present I have nothing quite suitable to wear. There is a great deal of skirt about Americans, I see. Even the mother rustled; all silk, yet the dresses on the top were plain enough. As I had nothing to read in the train, I bought a sixpenny copy of a book called The Forest Lovers, but could not get on with it at all, and what I did make out seemed scarcely proper, so I took up a novel which Mrs. Pomeroy (the American) lent me, by a man with a curious Scriptural name – something like Phillpotts. It was entirely about Dartmoor, and gave a most alarming account of the scenery and inhabitants. I'm sure I hope we shall be safe at Grey Tor Inn. Some of the wilder parts must be quite dangerous – storms – wild cattle roaming about, and Tors everywhere.

      MRS. MACGILL

Dartmoor, Devonshire,The Grey Tor Inn,Tuesday, May 18th, 19 —

      I wish I had brought winter flannels with me. It is all very well to call it the middle of May on Dartmoor, but it is as cold as the middle of winter in Aberdeen. There may be something odd about the red soil that accounts for flowers coming out in spite of it, for certainly there are primroses and violets on the banks, a good many, – very like flowers in a hat.

      We met Miss Pomeroy, the American girl, in the lobby of the hotel. She said that her mother was resting in the drawing-room. Like me, she seems to suffer from shivering fits. 'I can't imagine,' I said, 'why any doctor should have ordered me to such a place as this to recover from influenza, which is just another form of cold.' The windows look straight out on Grey Tor. It is, of course, as the guide-books say, 'a scene of great sublimity and grandeur,' but very dreary; it is not mountain, and not what we would call moor, either, in Scotland – just a crumpled country, with boulders here and there. Grey Tor is the highest point we can see – not very lonely, I am glad to say, for little black people are always walking up and down it, like flies on a confectioner's window, and there is a railing on the top.

      There is a young man here, who, I was surprised to find, is a nephew of the uncle of my poor brother-in-law, Colonel Forsyth, who died in a moment at Agra. Sir William Maxwell Mackenzie used to be often at the Forsyths, before his death. This young man's name is Archibald, and he drives a motor. I sat next him at dinner, and we had quite a pleasant little chat about my poor brother-in-law's sudden death and funeral. Miss Pomeroy ate everything on the table and talked a great deal. Cecilia said she wasn't able to come down to dinner, but, as usual, ate more than I could, upstairs. Like me, Mrs. Pomeroy finds the Devonshire cream very heavy. The daughter and Sir Archibald finished nearly the whole dish, although it was a large china basin.

      SIR ARCHIBALD MAXWELL MACKENZIE, Bart

Grey Tor Inn

      I must get away from these women at all costs. People may say what they like, but there's no question that nothing is more destructive to comfort than the society of ladies. A man cannot smoke, nor wear the clothes nor use the language that he wants to when they are present, – so what is the use of pretending, as some fellows do, that they add to the pleasantness of life? I certainly thought that by coming to these out-of-the-way parts in the motor, with no one but my servant, I should be free of the women; but no such luck! In the hotel at Exeter there was a batch of them, – some Americans, of course, particularly a girl, so deuced lively she could not be ignored. I dislike the whole girl-tribe with all my heart, and I dislike the kittenish ones most: they're a positive pest.

      This is a rum sort of country, – a sort of inferior Scotland, I should call it; but if you were to say that to the artist chaps and writing fellows you meet about here, they would murder you. There is a lot of rot talked about everything in this world, but there's more and worse rot talked about scenery than anything else. For instance, people will yarn away about 'the blue Mediterranean,' but it's not a bit bluer than any other sea, – the English Channel, for example; any sea will be blue if the sky is blue. I suppose it earns somebody's living to talk and write all this sort of stuff, and get idiots to believe it. Here they are always jawing away about 'giant monoliths' and wonderful colossal stone-formations on the moor, till you really think there's something rather fine to be seen. And what are the giant monoliths? Two or three ordinary sorts of stones set up on end on a mound! What rot!

      This is a goodish hotel, and the roads so far have been all right for the motor; we have come along fairly well; Johnson can drive a bit now, and understands the machine.

      The country was pretty decent for a while, before reaching this; plenty of trees, no good for timber, though, and there was a lot of that rotten holly – I'd have it all up if it grew on Kindarroch. And the gorse, too, was very bad. There was a fellow at Exeter – a sort of artist, I conclude, from the nonsense he talked – who said he was coming up here to see the gorse, – came every year, he said. To see the gorse! To see a lot of dirty weeds that every sensible man wants to root up and burn! O Lord!

      This morning it was rather fine, and I was having a smoke after breakfast in the hall, when that American girl – the one I saw at Exeter – came down the staircase, singing at the СКАЧАТЬ