Peter's Mother. Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
should coolly propose to set off without bidding her good-bye."
"Couldn't we tell her in confidence about Peter?" said the canon, struck with a brilliant idea.
"Certainly not; she would fly to him at once, and leave Sir Timothy alone in his extremity."
"Couldn't we tell her in confidence about Sir Timothy?"
"I have allowed Sir Timothy to understand that neither you nor I will betray his secret."
"I'm no hand at keeping a secret," said the canon, unhappily.
"Nonsense, canon, nonsense," said Dr. Blundell, laying a friendly hand on his shoulder. "No man in your profession, or in mine, ought to be able to say that. Pull yourself together, hope for the best, and play your part."
CHAPTER III
John Crewys looked round the hall at Barracombe House with curious, interested eyes.
It was divided from the outer vestibule on the western side of the building by a massive partition of dark oak, and it retained the solid beams and panelled walls of Elizabethan days; but the oak had been barbarously painted, grained and varnished. Only the staircase was so heavily and richly carved, that it had defied the ingenuity of the comb engraver. It occupied the further end of the hall, opposite the entrance door, and was lighted dimly by a small heavily leaded, stained-glass window. The floor was likewise black, polished with age and the labour of generations. A deeply sunken nail-studded door led into a low-ceiled library, containing a finely carved frieze and cornice, and an oak mantelpiece, which John Crewys earnestly desired to examine more closely; the shield-of-arms above it bore the figures of 1603, but the hall itself was of an earlier date.
Parallel to it was the suite of lofty, modern, green-shuttered reception-rooms, which occupied the south front of the house, and into which an opening had been cut through the massive wall next the chimney.
The character of the hall was, however, completely destroyed by the decoration which had been bestowed upon it, and by the furniture and pictures which filled it.
John Crewys looked round with more indignation than admiration at the home of his ancestors.
In the great oriel window stood a round mahogany table, bearing a bouquet of wax flowers under a glass shade. Cases of stuffed birds ornamented every available recess; mahogany and horsehair chairs were set stiffly round the walls at even distances. A heap of folded moth-eaten rugs and wraps disfigured a side-table, and beneath it stood a row of clogs and goloshes.
Round the walls hung full-length portraits of an early Victorian date. The artist had spent a couple of months at Barracombe fifty years since, and had painted three generations of the Crewys family, who were then gathered together beneath its hospitable roof. His diligence had been more remarkable than his ability. At any other time John Crewys would have laughed outright at this collection of works of art.
But the air was charged with tragedy, and he could not laugh. His seriousness commended him favourably, had he known it, to the two old ladies, his cousins, Sir Timothy's half-sisters, who were seated beside the great log fire, and who regarded him with approving eyes. For their stranger cousin had that extreme gentleness and courtesy of manner and regard, which sometimes accompanies unusual strength, whether of character or of person.
It was a pity, old Lady Belstone whispered to her spinster sister, that John was not a Crewys, for he had a remarkably fine head, and had he been but a little taller and slimmer, would have been a credit to the family.
Certainly John was not a Crewys. He possessed neither grey eyes, nor a large nose, nor the height which should be attained by every man and woman bearing that name, according to the family record.
But though only of middle size, and rather square-shouldered, he was, nevertheless, a distinguished-looking man, with a finely shaped head and well-cut features. Clean shaven, as a great lawyer ought to be, with a firm and rather satirical mouth, a broad brow, and bright hazel eyes set well apart and twinkling with humour. No doubt John's appearance had been a factor in his successful career.
The sisters, themselves well advanced in the seventies, spoke of him and thought of him as a young man; a boy who had succeeded in life in spite of small means, and an extravagant mother, to whom he had been obliged to sacrifice his patrimony. But though he carried his forty-five years lightly, John Crewys had left his boyhood very far behind him. His crisp dark hair was frosted on the temples; he stooped a little after the fashion of the desk-worker; he wore pince-nez; his manner, though alert, was composed and dignified. The restlessness, the nervous energy of youth, had been replaced by the calm confidence of middle age—of tested strength, of ripe experience.
On his side, John Crewys felt very kindly towards the venerable ladies, who represented to him all the womankind of his own race.
Both sisters possessed the family characteristics which he lacked. They were tall and surprisingly upright, considering the weight of years which pressed upon their thin shoulders. They retained the manners—almost the speech—of the eighteenth century, to which the grandmother who was responsible for their upbringing had belonged; and, with the exception of a very short experience of matrimony in Lady Belstone's case, they had always resided exclusively at Barracombe.
Lady Belstone, besides her widowed dignity, had the advantage of her sister in appearance, mainly because she permitted art, in some degree, to repair the ravages of time. A stiff toupet of white curls crowned the withered brow, below a widow's cap; and, when she smiled, which was not very often, a double row of pearls was not unpleasantly displayed. Miss Crewys had never succumbed to the temptations of worldly vanity. She scrupulously parted her scanty grey locks above her polished forehead, and cared not how wide the parting grew. If she wore a velvet bow upon her scalp, it was, as she truly said, for decency, and not for ornament; and further, she allowed her wholesome, ruddy cheeks to fall in, as her ever-lengthening teeth fell out. The frequent explanations which ensued, regarding the seniority of the widow, were a source of constant satisfaction to Miss Crewys, and vexation to her sister.
"You might be a hundred years old, Georgina," she would angrily lament.
"I very soon shall be a hundred years old, Isabella, if I live as long as my grandmother did," Miss Crewys would triumphantly reply. "It is surprising to me that a woman who was never good-looking at the best of times, should cling to her youth as you do."
"It is more surprising to me that you should let yourself go to rack and ruin, and never stretch out a hand to help yourself."
"I am what God made me," said the pious Georgina, "whereas you do everything but paint your face, Isabella; and I have little doubt but what you will come to that by the time you are eighty."
But though they disputed hotly on occasion the sisters generally preserved a united front before the world, and only argued, since argue they must, in the most polite and affectionate terms.
The firelight shed its cheerful glow over the laden tea-table, and was reflected in the silver urn, and the crimson and gold and blue of the Crown Derby tea-set. But the old ladies, though casting longing eyes in the direction of the teapot, religiously abstained from offering to touch it.
"No, John," said Miss Crewys, in a tone of exemplary patience; "I have made it a rule never to take upon myself any of the duties of hospitality in my dear brother's house, ever since he married—odd as it may seem, when we remember how he used once to sit at this very table in his little bib and tucker, whilst Isabella poured out his milk, and I cut his bread and butter."
"We both make the rule, John," said Lady Belstone, mournfully, "or, of course, as the elder sister, I should naturally pour out the tea in our dear Lady Mary's absence."
"Of course, of course," said John Crewys.
"Forgive me, Isabella, but we have discussed this point before," said Miss Crewys. "Though I cannot