The Country House | Page 5

"A tax of three or four shillings on corn, and I should be farming my
estate at a profit."
Mr. Pendyce had other peculiarities, in which he was not too individual.
He was averse to any change in the existing order of things, made lists
of everything, and was never really so happy as when talking of himself
or his estate. He had a black spaniel dog called John, with a long nose
and longer ears, whom he had bred himself till the creature was not
happy out of his sight.
In appearance Mr. Pendyce was rather of the old school, upright and

active, with thin side-whiskers, to which, however, for some years past
he had added moustaches which drooped and were now grizzled. He
wore large cravats and square-tailed coats. He did not smoke.
At the head of his dining-table loaded with flowers and plate, he sat
between the Hon. Mrs. Winlow and Mrs. Jaspar Bellew, nor could he
have desired more striking and contrasted supporters. Equally tall,
full-figured, and comely, Nature had fixed between these two women a
gulf which Mr. Pendyce, a man of spare figure, tried in vain to fill. The
composure peculiar to the ashen type of the British aristocracy wintered
permanently on Mrs. Winlow's features like the smile of a frosty day.
Expressionless to a degree, they at once convinced the spectator that
she was a woman of the best breeding. Had an expression ever arisen
upon these features, it is impossible to say what might have been the
consequences. She had followed her nurse's adjuration: "Lor, Miss
Truda, never you make a face--You might grow so!" Never since that
day had Gertrude Winlow, an Honourable in her own right and in that
of her husband, made a face, not even, it is believed, when her son was
born. And then to find on the other side of Mr. Pendyce that puzzling
Mrs. Bellew with the green-grey eyes, at which the best people of her
own sex looked with instinctive disapproval! A woman in her position
should avoid anything conspicuous, and Nature had given her a
too-striking appearance. People said that when, the year before last, she
had separated from Captain Bellew, and left the Firs, it was simply
because they were tired of one another. They said, too, that it looked as
if she were encouraging the attentions of George, Mr. Pendyce's eldest
son.
Lady Maiden had remarked to Mrs. Winlow in the drawing-room
before dinner:
"What is it about that Mrs. Bellew? I never liked her. A woman situated
as she is ought to be more careful. I don't understand her being asked
here at all, with her husband still at the Firs, only just over the way.
Besides, she's very hard up. She doesn't even attempt to disguise it. I
call her almost an adventuress."
Mrs. Winlow had answered:

"But she's some sort of cousin to Mrs. Pendyce. The Pendyces are
related to everybody! It's so boring. One never knows---"
Lady Maiden replied:
"Did you know her when she was living down here? I dislike those
hard-riding women. She and her husband were perfectly reckless. One
heard of nothing else but what she had jumped and how she had
jumped it; and she bets and goes racing. If George Pendyce is not in
love with her, I'm very much mistaken. He's been seeing far too much
of her in town. She's one of those women that men are always hanging
about!"
At the head of his dinner-table, where before each guest was placed a
menu carefully written in his eldest daughter's handwriting, Horace
Pendyce supped his soup.
"This soup," he said to Mrs. Bellew, "reminds me of your dear old
father; he was extraordinarily fond of it. I had a great respect for your
father--a wonderful man! I always said he was the most determined
man I'd met since my own dear father, and he was the most obstinate
man in the three kingdoms!"
He frequently made use of the expression "in the three kingdoms,"
which sometimes preceded a statement that his grandmother was
descended from Richard III., while his grandfather came down from the
Cornish giants, one of whom, he would say with a disparaging smile,
had once thrown a cow over a wall.
"Your father was too much of an individualist, Mrs. Bellew. I have a lot
of experience of individualism in the management of my estate, and I
find that an individualist is never contented. My tenants have
everything they want, but it's impossible to satisfy them. There's a
fellow called Peacock, now, a most pig-headed, narrowminded chap. I
don't give in to him, of course. If he had his way, he'd go back to the
old days, farm the land in his own fashion. He wants to buy it