Lesbia Newman (1889)/Chapter 27
CHAPTER XXVII.
Approaching the Reality.
The summer was slipping away, and, in spite of wars and rumours of wars, London was emptying fast—we know that London gets empty at the end of the summer, just as the bed of the Atlantic does in dry weather. Mr Bristley’s exchange of duty was up; and indeed Lesbia was not sorry at the prospect of getting away from town, where her health had slightly suffered from the close atmosphere, to which she was unaccustomed, and where fewer opportunities than she had looked for had offered for exerting her reforming influence over other young girls. Certainly her intimacy with Lady Friga Hawknorbuzzard had given her the entrée to refined society, and she had made the most of it. Her perseverance in dressing more rationally than those with whom she associated had begun to crack the wall of prevailing fashion among them, not only in the matter of costume itself, but, as a natural consequence, in the many habits with which fashion in dress is associated. Not a few women who at first made fun of her, had begun to envy her vigorous independence of character, and even to think of casting off some of their own fetters. Among the many un-young-ladylike things she did, her bicycling was, on the whole, that which attracted most attention when the sex of the rider was noticed, as, astride of a nickled fifty-two, she careered along the wood pavement of the principal thoroughfares, cool and collected as any of the habitual London riders. Her uncle was secretly as glad as her female relatives to see her come in safe and sound, but he took care to encourage her in showing herself off where the traffic was thick, as setting an example to other girls which tended to knock the bottom out of weakervesselism.
But, these little successes apart, she found, as he did, that the tone of society was adverse to them at present. Innovation was uphill work, it fell flat, met with but narrow sympathy and response. No wonder; for had it been otherwise, the grave political situation could hardly have come about—the common-sense of the nation would have prevented it. It was no time, then, for pioneers to make their mark; it was, rather, the jubilee of parasites, snobs, and swindlers, whom the apathy of the outside public allowed to have their own way, obstructing enlightened reformers, and fostering hollowness and pretentiousness everywhere.
The sitting of Parliament had been protracted into September on account of the crisis, the recess was to be for a few days only, and an autumn session to follow. The Premier, with his family, had decided to remain in town, that he might be within reach at this anxious time. So our heroine was about to return home deprived of her new bosom friend, when a diversion occurred. Among the acquaintances they had made at Lady Humnoddie’s receptions in Belgravia, was that of a Mr and Mrs Whyte, who owned a comfortable villa situated almost on the sands of the ocean at Bude, in the north of Cornwall. These people took a great fancy to the original young girl, and they invited her to go back with them to Bude for a month or six weeks. Lesbia, who was always glad of a chance to get to the seaside in bathing season, accepted gladly, and it was arranged that they should start for Cornwall the day before the others went home to Dulham, In less than a week she was enjoying the salubrious air and the wide reaches of sand over which the Atlantic ebbs and flows at Bude, where to the west and the south-west there is no opposite shore short of America. She had taken her bicycle with her, but, as she found the roads in that part mostly narrow and hilly, much of her exercise while at Bude was taken on foot, either over the broad sands when the tide was out, or along the downs of the cliff stretching southwards. Mr Whyte was a good walker, and always ready to accompany her, and they conversed mostly on topics of local interest, for both were glad to forget London life, with its depressing influences of the troublous times.
Still these were not to be altogether shut out. Black care sits behind the horseman, and even one of Lesbia’s strong character could not help feeling that at this period there was something or other hovering in the atmosphere of England which was not canny. Undefined and baseless apprehensions about their own private concerns were taking possession of people’s minds, which became morbidly imaginative and irritable; with herself it took the form of an excessive anxiety about her mother’s health, which made her write almost daily, although every letter she received from Dulham might have re-assured her on the subject. She astonished Mrs Whyte one day, with whom she was sauntering over the sands at low water, in a very abstracted mood, by suddenly halting, facing round to the ocean, and saying aloud to herself those words of Macbeth in the dagger scene,—
It is the bloody business which informs
Thus to mine eyes.’
‘What, my dear?’ asked Mrs Whyte, looking at her with a puzzled expression.
‘Nothing, nothing, Mrs Whyte, only a habit I have of quoting the poets to myself when I’m absent-minded. What a curious crow that is, there, flying away from us to the cliff; it has red beak and legs!’
‘Yes, that’s a Cornish chough—you know that fine old glee, ‘The chough and crow to rest are gone.’ I’m sorry to say there are very few of them left; loafing louts, with guns in their hands, are extirpating all our rare British birds. I heard some popping about last Sunday.’
The next day they all made an excursion southwards to see the old ruin of Dundayel or Tintagel Castle, on a jutting rock about twenty miles from Bude, along the cliff; a day or two afterwards they went to Hartland Point, the interesting headland which forms the north-west corner of Devon and divides the Bristol Channel from the ocean on that side. Short outings for the day like these were made by the Whytes in their pony-carriage, Lesbia accompanying it on her machine when the roads were fair; but Mr Whyte soon proposed a little tour inland, which was agreed to readily, and as the railway, which had been extended to Stratton, a country town at a short distance, would come into requisition, Lesbia decided wisely to leave her bicycle behind.
They accomplished a pleasant tour to all the well-known places of interest on the north Devon coast, and finished by turning inland to the Dartmoor hills, where Lesbia greatly liked the wild, desolate moors and tors, with their gigantic masses and druidical circles and cromlechs, varied here and there by wooded glens with brown mountain burns purling in their depths, from which they had many a basket of fresh caught trout for breakfast. Although the weather sometimes recalled Carrington’s lines to Devon,—
A breeze, a shower, for ever on thy plains,’
yet they had many glorious days, and, in spite of her love of the sea-side, Lesbia was almost sorry when the excursion came to an end, and they reached Bude again, the second week in October.
The time was now about up during which she thought it well to accept the Whytes’ hospitality; but as the 13th of October, her sixteenth birthday, was at hand, Mrs Whyte made her promise to stay over that day. Meanwhile, the excitement of seeing new places had decidedly done her good, it had shaken her out of those unusual fits of abstraction and melancholy, and she did not feel that nervous anxiety to get home to her mother which she had expected to do as the time came near.
Although Mr Whyte had not talked politics much to Lesbia since they left London, he was a keen newspaper reader when there was anything stirring. He took in the Daily Twaddler from a news-agent at the Stratton railway station, and if there was one thing which annoyed him more than another, it was when the paper did not come punctually. This vexation he happened to have on the afternoon of Saturday the 11th of October, and Lesbia at once offered to run into the country town on her machine to see about the delayed paper. But as this would have stood in the way of a little promenade they were to take to where the great swell of the spring tide was rolling in upon the rocks, Mr Whyte said No, he could very well wait till the next or even Monday morning—‘although,’ he added ‘it is provoking to have one’s news stopped just when it’s uncertain what may happen any day with this mad and wicked war against half the world.’
Sunday the 12th came, a calm day as to the weather, but a gloomy and fearsome one in the political atmosphere; for a report had reached Bude late on Saturday night, that the allied forces of the enemy were threatening a descent upon Ireland; and Sunday morning’s gossip swelled the rumour to the dimensions of an actual landing and the repulse of a British corps of observation near Bantry Bay, the scene of Hoche’s attempt in December 1796. The rumour was contradicted and re-affirmed and contradicted again; and thus, amid random conjectures and forebodings, the evening of Sunday the 12th passed unquietly away.