Part 38

We stayed a long time in Princetown, and then started to go home by a different way. Out of a vast moorland tract we descended to Dartmoor Bridge, the prettiest oasis in the wild desert of moor which we had seen yet. But soon we were back in moorland again, with tors rising up to snatch at heaven with their dark claws. Each one seemed different from all the rest, just as people's faces are different in crowds. Some were like crests of waves, petrified as they were ready to break; but the weirdest of all were exactly like ruined forts of dwarfs. And presently the scenery changed again in a kaleidoscopic way. We came to lovely Houndsgate, with a great, deep wonder-valley far below us, only to return to a region of tors and bracken, and to plunge down the most tremendous hill of all--a hill which was like gliding down the glassy side of an ocean wave.

I had just exclaimed, "See, there's a motor ahead of us!" when an extraordinary thing happened. The car going before us, very fast, suddenly ran to the side of the steep road, stopped, some people jumped out, and at the same instant a great flame spouted straight up toward the sky.

Not one of us said one word, except Emily, who squeaked, and cried, "Oh, Lionel! we shall all be killed and burned up!"

Of course, Sir Lionel didn't answer. I would have given anything to be in Mrs. Senter's place, sitting beside him, so that I could see his face, and guess what he meant to do. But it was decided and done in a few seconds. He took Apollo on a little farther, and then stopped as near the burning motor as he dared, so that there might be no danger of our catching fire. Before we could have counted "one, two," he had sprung from the car and was running toward the fiery chariot, with Young Nick flying after him. Dick Burden got down, too, and sauntered in their wake, but he didn't go very fast.

It was so exciting and confusing that I scarcely understood at first what was happening, but Sir Lionel tore off his coat as he ran, and flung it round the woman from the other car. She had not been on fire when she jumped out, but the grass and bushes close by the road had already begun to blaze, and her dress had caught in the flame. She was tall and big, but Sir Lionel lifted her up as if she'd been a child, and, wrapped in his coat, laid her down at a little distance on the grass, where he rolled her over, and put out the fire. Then, when she was on her feet again, panting and sobbing a little, he and the other men began stamping out the flames playing among the low bushes, lest they spread along the moor. As for the car, Sir Lionel said afterward it was hopeless trying to save her, as there were gallons and gallons of petrol to burn (it was her brakes that had got on fire, and ignited the rest), and no sand or anything of that sort to throw on. But while we were staring at the strange scene, the flames died down, having drunk up all the petrol; and whether some part of the mechanism which held the red-hot brakes in place gave way suddenly, I don't know. All I do know is, that the car quivered, moved forward, began running down the tremendous hill, faster and faster, until, with a wild bound, she disappeared from our sight over a precipice.

By this time we were all out, except Emily, hurrying down the hill, to talk to the people who had lost their car; but would you believe it, they hardly cared for their loss, now they were out of danger? It was a bride and groom, with their chauffeur, and they were Americans, staying at the Imperial, in Torquay. The bridegroom was elderly but humorous, and told us he used to hate motors and kept tortoises for pets, because he liked everything that moved slowly, all his ancestors having come from Philadelphia. But the girl he loved wouldn't marry him unless he promised to take her to England on an automobile trip. Now he hoped she had had enough, and would let him go back to tortoises again.

He said he had never enjoyed anything so much as seeing the car's red-hot skeleton jump over the precipice, where it could not hurt anyone, but would just fall quietly to pieces on the rocks.

The bride was great fun, too, and as she comes from St. Louis, it is not likely she will cultivate tortoises. When we took them all three back to Torquay with us, squashed in anyhow, she talked about running over to Paris and buying a balloon or an aeroplane! We came by way of the Buckland Chase, as it is called--private property; and an elfin glen of beauty, for mile after mile, with the Dart singing below, and the Lover's Leap so close that it seemed painfully realistic--especially after the adventure of the car which leaped into space.

Sir Lionel got his coat burnt, and his hands a little, too; but he would drive, though Young Nick might have done so as well as not.

After all we shan't get to Cornwall to-morrow! Sir Lionel says it would be a crime to leave this part of the world without going up the Dart (the "Rhine of England") in a boat, and seeing the beautiful old Butter Market at Dartmouth.

I shall send you postcards from there, if I have the chance, for it's very historic. It will be Cornwall the day after, but I shall have to wire my next address.

With all the love of

Your Moorland Princess.

P. S. You ought to have seen Emily and Mrs. Senter fussing over Sir Lionel when he burnt his hands! He hates being fussed over, and was almost cross, until our eyes happened to meet, and then we both smiled. That seemed to make him good-natured again. And he is wonderfully patient with his sister, really.

XVII

MRS. SENTER TO HER SISTER, MRS. BURDEN, AT GLEN LACHLAN, N. B.

White Hart Hotel, Launceston, Cornwall, Aug. 10th

My Dear Sis: It came off all right. My things usually do, don't they? With some women, it is only their lip-salve and face powder that come off. With me, it is plans. Luckily I inherited mamma's genius for high diplomacy, while you, alas, only came in for her rheumatism. And by the way, how are your poor dear bones? Not devilled, I hope? Do forgive the cheap wit. I am obliged to save my best things for Sir Lionel. He appreciates them highly, which is one comfort; but it is rather a strain living up to him (though I do think it will pay in the end), and in intercourse with my family I must be allowed to rest my brain. When everything is settled, one way or the other, my features, also, shall have repose. To keep young, every woman ought to go into retirement for at least one month out of the twelve, a fortnight at a time, perhaps, and do nothing but eat and sleep, see nobody, talk to nobody, think of nothing, and especially not smile. If one followed that regime religiously, with or without prayer and fasting, one need never have crow's-feet.

Of course, with you it is different. You have now decided to live for Dick, and let your waist measure look after itself; but I have larger aims and fewer years than you, dearest. My conception of self-respecting widowhood is to be as young as possible, as attractive as possible, as rich as possible, and eventually to read my title clear to (at least) a baronet, and have a castle in a good hunting county. There are difficulties in my upward way, yet I feel strongly I shall overcome them. Let my motto be, "The battle to the smart, and the situation to the pretty." Why shouldn't I triumph on both counts? The ward, to be sure, is pretty, and is in the situation; but she doesn't know her own advantages, and I'm not sure she would marry Sir Lionel if he asked her; which at present he apparently has no intention of doing, although he admires her more warmly than either Dick or I think advisable in a guardian.

Since I wrote you last, just before starting on this motor match-making venture of ours, there have been several new developments. I don't know whether you are any deeper in Dick's confidence, in this affair, than I am (though I fancy not), but I scent a mystery. Dick really has detective talent, dear Sis, and if I were you, I shouldn't oppose his setting up as a sort of art nouveau Sherlock Holmes. Whether he has found out about some schoolgirl peccadillo of Miss Lethbridge's, and is dangling it over her head, Damocles sword fashion, I can't tell, because he won't tell; though he looks offensively wise when I tease him, and I have tried in vain, on my own account, to discover. But certain it is that he is either blackmailing her in a milk-and-water way, or hypnotizing her to obey his orders.

He hinted, you know, that he could get the girl to make Sir Lionel invite us to join the motoring party; but I supposed then that she had a weakness of the heart where my dear nephew was concerned. Now, my opinion is that she dislikes, yet fears him. Not very complimentary to Dick, but he doesn't seem to mind, and is enjoying himself immensely in his own deliciously, impertinently, perky way. Somehow or other he has induced her to be more or less engaged to him, a temporary arrangement, I understand, but pleasing to him and convenient to me. What Dick gets out of it, I don't know, and don't enquire; but I get out of it the satisfaction of "shelving" the girl as a possible rival.

Sir Lionel, who (it's useless to spare your motherly vanity!) has no very warm appreciation of Dick's qualities, is disgusted with his ward for encouraging D.'s advances, and is inclined to turn to me for sympathy. In that branch I am a great success, and altogether am getting on like a house afire. What if I do have to pump up an intelligent interest in politics in general, and affairs in the Far East in particular? I am fortunately so constituted that fifteen minutes' study of the Times, washed down by early tea (taken strong), enables me to discourse brilliantly on the deepest subjects during the day; and, thank goodness, virtue is rewarded in the evening with a little bridge. If I am ever Lady Pendragon (sounds well, doesn't it?) it shall be all bridge and skittles, for me--and devil take politics, military science, history, the classics, Herbert Spencer, Robert Browning, Shakespeare, and all other boring or out-of-date things and writers (if he hasn't already taken them) on which I am now obliged to keep up a sort of Maxim-fire of conversation.

As to Dick's affairs, however, if the girl really is the heiress we thought her, I shall be only too glad to use my influence in every direction at once, to make the temporary arrangement a permanent one. But the worst of it is, I'm not at all sure that she is any sort of an heiress.

Sir Lionel intimated to me the other night, when I was tactfully tickling him with hints, that she has little except what he may choose to give her. If that be true, I fear as Mrs. Dick her dot will not be large; but it strikes me as very probable that he was only trying to put me off--or rather, to put Dick off, if Dick were fortune-hunting. I don't know whether to believe his version or not, therefore; but I did get at one fact which may help us to find out for ourselves. Dear Ellaline is a daughter of Frederic Lethbridge. It was rather a shock to hear this, for I have a vague impression that there was once a scandal, quite a ripe, juicy scandal, about a Frederic Lethbridge. Can it have been this Frederic Lethbridge, and if so, had it anything to do with money matters?

I haven't mentioned my doubts to Dick, because he really is idiotically in love with the girl, and is capable of foolishness. I intend to let him go on as he is going for the present, as he can do himself no harm, and can do me a great deal of good, by keeping his darling out of my way and Sir Lionel's thoughts. But of course, he mustn't be allowed to marry her if she has nothing of her own. Sir Lionel is rich, but not rich enough to make his ward rich enough for Dick, and keep plenty for his wife--when he gets one--if she be anything like me.

Your dear hostess, who would by this time be my hostess if I weren't otherwise engaged, knows everything and everybody. Not only that, she has done both for a considerable term of years. You remember the joke about her being torn between the desire not to exceed the age of forty-five and yet to boast a friendship with Lord Beaconsfield? Well, she can have known Frederic Lethbridge, and all about him, without being a day over forty, as that is Sir Lionel's age, and Mrs. Lethbridge was a distant relative of his.

Tell Lady MacRae that. Say that the Frederic Lethbridge you are inquiring about married a Miss de Nesville, and that there is a daughter in existence, a girl of nineteen. If Lady Mac doesn't know anything, get her to ask her friends; but do hurry up for Dick's sake, there's a dear, otherwise I shan't be able to pull the strings as you would like me to; and already my sweet nerves are jangled, out of tune. Dear Lady Mac is so adorably frank, when she has something disagreeable to say, that you'll have no difficulty in ferreting out the truth--if it's anything nasty. For most reasons I hope it isn't, as a rich girl would be a valuable bird in the hand for Dick; and I am on the spot to see his affairs as well as my own through, whatever happens.

For my part, if Sir Lionel weren't up to such a fatiguingly high level of intelligence, I believe I could fall in love with him. He may be descended from King Arthur, but he looks more like Lancelot, and I fancy might make love rather nicely, once he let himself go. Although it's long since he did any soldiering, he shows that he was a soldier, born, not made. He has improved, if anything, since we knew him in India, but I remember you used to be quite afraid of having to talk to him then, and preferred Colonel O'Hagan, whom you thought jolly and good-natured, though, somehow, I never got on with him very well. I always had the feeling he was trying to read me, and I do dislike that sort of thing in a man. It ruins human intercourse, and takes away all natural desire to flirt.