The dogs, understanding from their mistresses' accents that some delightful project was in the air, began to bark loudly while they scampered through the scraggy rhododendrons and put up shrilling blackbirds with as much gusto as if they were partridges. The drive kept in the shadow of the pines for about two hundred yards, until where the trees began to grow smaller and sparser it emerged upon a spacious sward that between bare uplands went rolling down to the sea a mile away. To one looking back Clare Court now appeared under a strangely altered aspect as a gray pile rising starkly from a wide lawn and unmellowed by anything except the salt northwest wind; even the dowager and her daughters, who had lived in it all these years, could never repress an exclamation of wonder each time they emerged from the dim pinewood and beheld it thus. On the other side of the house there had been sunlight and a rich prospect of parkland losing itself in trees and a carefully cultivated seclusion. Here was nothing except a line of gray-green downs undulating against space, in a dip of which was the shimmer of fusing sky and sea. Except at midsummer the pines were tall enough to cut off the low westering sun from the house, and on this January day from where they were standing in pale sunlight the gray pile seemed frozen. The sense of desolation was increased by a walled-up door in the center of the house, above which angelic supporters sustained the full moon of Clare on a stone escutcheon. The first baronet had failed to establish his right to the three chevronels originally borne by that great family and had been granted arms that accorded better with the rococo taste of his period.
"I've always wanted to plant a hedge of those hydrangeas with black stalks in front of the pines," said the dowager, pensively, "but unless they come blue they wouldn't look nice, and perhaps they wouldn't be able to stand the wind on this side. But the effect would be lovely in summer. Blue sky! Blue sea! Blue hydrangeas! Dark pine-trees and vivid grass! It really would be a wonderful effect. Of course, it may be that Tony's wife will be quite interested in flowers. One never can tell. Come along, Clement." Clement was the pony, so-called because he was such a saint.
The drive now skirted the edge of the downs in a gradual descent to Clarehaven, a small cove formed by green headlands as if earth had thrust out a pair of fists to scoop up some of the sea for herself. The ruins of two round towers were visible on both headlands; on the slopes of the westernmost stood a little church surrounded by tumble-down tombstones that, even as the bodies of those whom they recorded had become part of the earth on which they lived, were themselves growing yearly less distinguishable from the outcrops of stone that no mortal had set upon these cliffs. Two cottages marked the end of the drive, which lost itself beyond them in a rocky beach that was strewn with fragments of ancient masonry. At sight of the chaise several children had bolted into the cottages like disturbed rabbits, and presently a couple of women tying on clean aprons came out to greet the countess and offer the hospitality of their homes. Their husbands, one of whom was called Bitterplum, the other less picturesquely Smith, were mermen of toil, fishers in summer and for the rest of the year agricultural laborers.
"It's very kind of you, Mrs. Smith, and of you, too, Mrs. Bitterplum," said the dowager, "but I can only stay a few minutes. What a beautiful day, isn't it? You must get ready to welcome his lordship, you know. He'll be bringing her ladyship to see you very shortly. Are Bitterplum and Smith quite well?"
"Oh ess, ess, ess," murmured the wives, wiping their mouths with their aprons. Then Mrs. Smith volunteered:
"Parson Beadon's to the church."
At this moment a black figure appeared from the little building, and after experiencing some difficulty in locking the church door behind him hurried down the path to meet the important visitors. Mr. Beadon, the rector of Clarehaven-cum-Cherringtons, was a tall, lean man, the ascetic cast of whose countenance had been tempered by matrimony as the indigestible loaf of his dogma had been leavened by expediency. Although Lord Clarehaven was patron of the living that included Great Cherrington, its church warden was a fierce squire who owned most of the land round; here Mr. Beadon was nearly evangelical, with nothing more vicious than a surpliced choir to mark the corruption of nineteen hundred years of Christianity. At Little Cherrington, where the dowager worshiped and where she had her stained-glass window of the fourth earl, he indulged in linen vestments as a dipsomaniac might indulge in herb beer; but at Clarehaven, with none except Mrs. Bitterplum and Mrs. Smith to mark his goings on, he used to have private orgies of hagiolatry, from one of which he was now returning.
After Mr. Beadon had greeted the dowager and the two girls he asked, anxiously, if Tony had arrived, and confided with the air of a very naughty boy that he had been holding a little celebration of St. Anthony with special intention for the happiness of the marriage. St. Anthony was not on the dowager's visiting-list, having no address in the Book of Common Prayer; but she could hardly be cross with the rector for observing his festival, inasmuch as he had the same name as her son. Mr. Beadon was a good man whose services at Little Cherrington were exactly what she wanted and who had, moreover, written an excellent history of Clarehaven and the Devonshire branch of the Clare family. At the same time, the bishop was also a good man, and she devoutly hoped that the Bohemianism of Mr. Beadon's services at Clarehaven would not take away what was left to his episcopal appetite from the claims of diabetes.
"One of Mrs. Bitterplum's children has been serving me," said Mr. Beadon. "Yes, it was an impressive little—Eucharist." He had brought his lips together for Mass, and Eucharist came out with such a cough that the dowager begged him not to take cold. Mrs. Bitterplum brought him out a cup of chocolate, a supply of which he kept in her cottage to assuage the pangs of hunger after his long walk and arduous ritual on an empty stomach. He swallowed the chocolate quickly, not to lose the pleasure of company back to Little Cherrington; but with all the heat and hurry of his late breakfast he could not stop talking.
"Mrs. Bitterplum is always kind enough—yes—curious old West Country name...."