You ask me how I endure Emily Norton. Well, as I sit beside Sir Lionel in the car, I don't need to bother with her much in the daytime. She hates bridge, and thinks playing for money wrong in most circumstances, but considers it her duty to please her brother's guests; and as she never wins, anyhow, it needn't affect her conscience. I tell her that I always give my winnings to charity, and didn't think it necessary to add that, to my idea, charity should not only begin at home, but end there, unless its resources were unlimited. The poor, dull thing has that kind of self-conscious religion that sends her soul trotting every other minute to look in the glass, and see that it hasn't smudged itself. So trying! Once she asked me what I did for my soul? I longed to tell her I took cod-liver oil, or Somebody's Fruit Salt, but didn't dare, on account of Sir Lionel. And she has such a conceited way of saying, when speaking of the future: "If the Lord spares me till next year, I will do so and so." As if He were in immediate need of her, but might be induced to get on without her for a short time!
One would know, by the way she screws up her hair, that she could never have felt a temptation. But I shall not let myself be troubled much with her if I marry Sir Lionel. She can go back to her doctor and her curates, and be invited for Christmas to Graylees, which, by the way, I hope to inspect when we have finished this tour.
I am looking quite lovely in my motoring things, and enjoying myself very much, on the whole.
Devonshire I found too hot for this time of the year, but the scenery is pretty. I had no idea what a jolly little river the Dart is; and Dartmouth is rather quaint. For those who are keen on old things, I suppose the Butter Market would be interesting; but I can't really see why, because things happened in certain places hundreds of years ago, one should stand and stare at walls or windows, or fireplaces. The things must have happened somewhere! Although Charles the Second, for instance, may have been great fun to know, and one would have enjoyed flirting with him, now that he's been dead and out of reach for ages, he's of no importance to me.
We left Torquay yesterday, and arrived here in the evening, after a hilly but nice run, and lunching at Plymouth. Of course, a lot of nonsense was talked about Sir Francis Drake. One almost forgets what the old boy did, except to play bowls or something; but I have a way of seeming to know things, for which I deserve more credit than anyone (save you) would guess. When they were not jabbering about him at lunch, it was about the Mayflower, which apparently sailed from Plymouth for the purpose of supplying Americans with ancestors. I never met any Americans yet, except the kind who boast of having begun as shoeblacks, whose great-great-grand-parents didn't cross in the Mayflower. It must have been a huge ship, or else a lot of the ancestors went in the steerage, or were stewards or stowaways.
There was a ferry, getting from Devonshire into Cornwall, so of course we just missed a boat and had to wait half an hour. I was dying to go to sleep, but the others were as chirpy as possible, gabbling Cornish legends. When I say the "others," I mean Sir Lionel and Ellaline Lethbridge. I didn't know any legends, but I made up several on the spur of the moment, much more exciting than theirs, and that pleased Sir Lionel, as he is a Cornishman. Heavens, how I did take it out of myself admiring his native land when we'd got across that ferry! Said the scenery was quite different from that of Devonshire, at the first go off; and I'm not sure there weren't differences. The road coming toward Launceston really was romantic; rock-walled part of the way, with a lot of pink and yellow lichen; and again, fine open spaces with distant blue downs against a sky which looked, as I remarked to Sir Lionel, as if the gods had poured a libation of golden wine over it. Not bad, that, was it? I believe we passed an Arthurian battle-field, which naturally interested him immensely, therefore had to interest poor me! He seems to think there actually was an Arthur, and was quite pleased with me for saying that all the Cornish names of places rang with romance like fairy bells sounding from under the sea—perhaps from Atlantis. Anyhow, they're a relief after such Devonshire horrors as Meavy and Hoo Meavy, which are like the lisping of babies. Sir Lionel thought the "derivations" of such names an absorbing subject! But living in the East so long has made him quixotically patriotic.
Here and there we passed a whole villageful of white-washed cottages, with purplish-brown moss covering their roofs—rather picturesque; and some of the slate-roofed, stone houses are nice in their way, too; I suppose distinctively Cornish. Not that I care! I'm glad Graylees Castle isn't in Cornwall, which is much too far from town.
There were some mine-shafts about, to mar the scenery, toward the end of the journey, and the road surface was bad compared to what we've had. If the car weren't a very good one, we should have suffered from the bumps. Ellaline Lethbridge, by the way, said something about Cornwall which puzzled me. Suddenly she exclaimed: "Why, the atmosphere here is like Spain! Everything swims in a sea of coloured lights!" I thought she'd spent all her life at school in France, and I mentioned the impression, upon which she replied, with an air of being taken aback: "I mean, from what I have heard of Spain." Can she have had an escapade, I wonder? But that is Dick's business, not mine—at present.
There's a castle in Launceston, which has kept us over to-day, as Sir Lionel has been in these parts before, and can't rest unless we see everything he admired in his youth. I wish he hadn't seen so much, there'd be less for us to do. I hate pottering about, seeing sights in the rain, and it has been trying to rain all day. It's well enough to say that the rain rains alike on the just and the unjust, but that is not true, as some women's hair curls naturally. Ellaline's does, and mine doesn't—except the part I owe for at Truefitt's.
It's an old hotel that we're in, quite pleased to show its age; and I have made rather a beast of myself with some sort of Cornish pasty, which, it seems, is a local favourite, and spoils the peasants' teeth. Cornish cream is good, and, I understand from Sir Lionel, was invented by the Phœnicians. I suppose they drowned their sorrows in it while working in the tin mines one always associates with them.