The Country House | Page 7

The only thing against him was his income, which was very
small. He had taken in Mrs. Brandwhite, to whom, however, he talked

but little, leaving her to General Pendyce, her neighbour on the other
side.
Had he been born a year before his brother, instead of a year after,
Charles Pendyce would naturally have owned Worsted Skeynes, and
Horace would have gone into the Army instead. As it was, having
almost imperceptibly become a Major-General, he had retired, taking
with him his pension. The third brother, had he chosen to be born,
would have gone into the Church, where a living awaited him; he had
elected otherwise, and the living had passed perforce to a collateral
branch. Between Horace and Charles, seen from behind, it was difficult
to distinguish. Both were spare, both erect, with the least inclination to
bottle shoulders, but Charles Pendyce brushed his hair, both before and
behind, away from a central parting, and about the back of his still
active knees there was a look of feebleness. Seen from the front they
could readily be differentiated, for the General's whiskers broadened
down his cheeks till they reached his moustaches, and there was in his
face and manner a sort of formal, though discontented, effacement, as
of an individualist who has all his life been part of a system, from
which he has issued at last, unconscious indeed of his loss, but with a
vague sense of injury. He had never married, feeling it to be
comparatively useless, owing to Horace having gained that year on him
at the start, and he lived with a valet close to his club in Pall Mall.
In Lady Maiden, whom he had taken in to dinner, Worsted Skeynes
entertained a good woman and a personality, whose teas to Working
Men in the London season were famous. No Working Man who had
attended them had ever gone away without a wholesome respect for his
hostess. She was indeed a woman who permitted no liberties to be
taken with her in any walk of life. The daughter of a Rural Dean, she
appeared at her best when seated, having rather short legs. Her face was
well-coloured, her mouth, firm and rather wide, her nose well-shaped,
her hair dark. She spoke in a decided voice, and did not mince her
words. It was to her that her husband, Sir James, owed his reactionary
principles on the subject of woman.
Round the corner at the end of the table the Hon. Geoffrey Winlow was

telling his hostess of the Balkan Provinces, from a tour in which he had
just returned. His face, of the Norman type, with regular, handsome
features, had a leisurely and capable expression. His manner was easy
and pleasant; only at times it became apparent that his ideas were in
perfect order, so that he would naturally not care to be corrected. His
father, Lord Montrossor, whose seat was at Coldingham six miles away,
would ultimately yield to him his place in the House of Lords.
And next him sat Mrs. Pendyce. A portrait of this lady hung over the
sideboard at the end of the room, and though it had been painted by a
fashionable painter, it had caught a gleam of that "something" still in
her face these twenty years later. She was not young, her dark hair was
going grey; but she was not old, for she had been married at nineteen
and was still only fifty-two. Her face was rather long and very pale, and
her eyebrows arched and dark and always slightly raised. Her eyes
were dark grey, sometimes almost black, for the pupils dilated when
she was moved; her lips were the least thing parted, and the expression
of those lips and eyes was of a rather touching gentleness, of a rather
touching expectancy. And yet all this was not the "something"; that was
rather the outward sign of an inborn sense that she had no need to ask
for things, of an instinctive faith that she already had them. By that
"something," and by her long, transparent hands, men could tell that
she had been a Totteridge. And her voice, which was rather slow, with
a little, not unpleasant, trick of speech, and her eyelids by second nature
just a trifle lowered, confirmed this impression. Over her bosom, which
hid the heart of a lady, rose and fell a piece of wonderful old lace.
Round the corner again Sir James Maiden and Bee Pendyce (the eldest
daughter) were talking of horses and hunting--Bee seldom from choice
spoke of anything else. Her face was pleasant and good, yet not quite
pretty, and this little fact seemed to have entered into her very nature,
making her shy and ever willing to do things for others.
Sir James