Lucy had the greatest regard for economy and always wanted to save Roger from any unnecessary expenditure. She remembered that she had come to him without a dowry and that his future financially was very uncertain. So that she had not taken him at his word, "Spend what you like," at the Sloane Street shops when they were last up in town together. She had only brought two evening dresses with her to Glen Sporran, and one of them a plain black silk. After they had become familiar to the eye, Sibyl had offered to lend some of her gowns, but had done it in such a way that Lucy's pride was touched and she declined, with an unwonted sparkle in her eye and a turning of the rabbit on the stoat. Sibyl then, half amusedly, dropped this method of annoyance and openly praised Mrs. Brentham for her simplicity of life and regard for economy.
All this was rather amusing to the speculative and speculating Sir Willowby Patterne who arrived at Glen Sporran a fortnight later than Roger and Lucy. He must then have been about thirty. As you surmise from his name, he was descended from a famous mid-nineteenth century baronet. His grandfather (in diplomacy) married a Russian lady of the Court after the Napoleonic wars when Russians were in the fashion. But I think it wholly unfair to attribute to this alliance the curious vein of cruelty which ran through his descendants and which in Willowby's father was slaked by the contemporary British field sports. This father died from the envenomed bite of an impaled badger, and in Willowby's case there was a long minority; so that he started at twenty-one—already a subaltern in the Guards—with quite a respectable fortune to "blue." He had been a vicious, tipsy boy at Eton and did not improve as he grew older. One thing that developed with him into a mania was the love of killing. He had seen a little service in the Sudan, but disgusted his brother officers by his exultation over the more gory episodes in skirmishes (he generally kept out of battles), and by his interest in executions and floggings. Owing to family influence he was for a very brief time in the suite of a travelling Royalty; but an episode in the garden of a Lisbon hotel, when he with a friend was seen worrying a cat to death with two bull-terriers—and laughing frenziedly the while—put an end to that appointment. He had had some success on the turf and in steeplechase riding, and over shooting pigeons at Monte Carlo; had betrayed quite a number of trusting women—including his wife; but nevertheless was rather popular still in Society, especially the society of rich, idle women, seeking after sensation without scandal. What there was about him, save his faultless tailoring and evil reputation to attract women, a man like Brentham could not understand. His face was thin and he had those deep ugly lines around the mouth, that tightness of skin over the temples and jaw, the thin lips and thin hair, aquiline nose, and thin capable hands that go with cruelty and pitilessness. But that women did run after him, there was no denying; though at this time his wife was shudderingly seeking grounds for divorce, or at any rate separation, which would satisfy a male judge and jury.
Roger enjoyed the shooting with rifle and shot-gun, and his dislike of Willowby was a little tempered by the latter's unwilling admiration of his marksmanship. I forget whether in August-September you fish for salmon in Scotland with a rod and line, but if so you may be sure Captain Brentham, to whom field sports of all kinds came as second nature, displayed no less prowess in that direction. Moreover Willowby tried to be civil to his deputy host because he was very much drawn to big-game shooting in East Africa and thought Roger could put him up to the right place, right time of year, and right strings to pull.
But when the day's sport was done and they had bathed and changed and laid themselves out for a jolly evening, Roger began to be nervous and sensitive about Lucy: sometimes to wish she would not open her mouth; at others to yearn for her to show some brilliance in conversation. Her little naïvetés of speech and turns of phrase which seemed so amusing and even endearing in Africa, or to an admiring, bucolic audience at Aldermaston, or an indulgent sister-in-law at Farleigh Vicarage, here withered into imbecilities under the mocking glance or the bored incomprehension of Sibyl, and the cool, eyeglass stare of Willowby Patterne. Sibyl, also, was afflicted with deafness when Lucy ventured her inquiries at breakfast as to health or the state of the weather.
Out of fear of Queen Victoria, Sibyl thought to make friends at Court and attest at the same time the "smallness" and "quietness" of her house party by inviting for a week a lady of the Royal Household who was off duty and at all times not unwilling to eat well and sleep softly at some one else's expense. But she, also, was disconcerting (though no doubt a pyramid of flawless chastity). She wore a single eyeglass through which everything and everybody was scanned. At first she was disposed to be very much interested in Roger, until she gathered he might not be returning to Africa. She had friends who were casting in their lots with Cecil Rhodes's ventures. To her mental vision, Africa was about the size of an English county. A man in East Africa ought at any moment to run up against that perfectly delightful creature, Rhodes, ... "the dear Queen is getting so interested in him" ... "was there gold by the bye where Captain Brentham had been employed?" But when she learnt that Sibyl's cousin was probably not resuming his post there and that this very dull, oddly dressed woman was not Sibyl's secretary but Roger's wife, a former missionary in East Africa, she quietly gave them both up as much too much outside her own track through life ever to be of use or interest again.
Another guest for a brief time was the Rev. Stacy Bream. Mr. Bream even in those distant days was not—and did not behave like—the conventional clergyman. He was the incumbent of some Chapel Royal or Chaplaincy somewhere, wholly in the Royal gift and generally bestowed on some one who had been for a brief period a bear-leader or College tutor to a princeling going through a make-believe course of study at Oxford or Cambridge. Mr. Bream, in order to take a line of his own, plunged boldly into the world, even the half-world, for his congregation and his confidants. He confessed and absolved the leading ladies of the stage when they reached that period of ripe middle age in which husbands began to be unfaithful and lovers shy and the lady herself felt just the slightest dread of a hereafter. He came forward to marry, when re-marriage was legal but not savoury—sooner than that the poor dears should live in sin. He dealt—I dare say very kindly and considerately—with scabrous cases of moral downfall that no one else would touch. He was a well-known first-nighter and his evening dress so nearly unclerical that you might have been pardoned for not spotting him at once, in the crush room, for a parson, and he would have been the first to pardon you. He always went where Society did in order to be able at once to render first aid where morals had met with an accident. He left town consequently in time for the grouse, occasionally handled a gun—quite skilfully—and was very fond of games of chance in the evening if the stakes were not too high.
Bridge had not then reached Great Britain. Where they would have played Bridge ten years ago they played Baccarat, or Unlimited Loo, or Nap, or Poker. Lucy only knew "Pope Joan" and had a horror of losing money over cards and no capacity for mastering any card game, not even Snip Snap Snorum. The Rev. Stacy Bream—who as much as any cleric might, stood in lieu of a Spiritual director to Lady Silchester—called Lucy once or twice "My dear che-ild" and then found her so uninteresting and inexplicable that he ceased to study her any more.
So Lucy at last, in dread of snubs if she entered the battledore and shuttlecock conversation or of revealing her utter ignorance of the ways of smart society, fell silent at meal-times and after meals. When the others played cards or roulette on a miniature green table, she would read a book in a corner or steal away up to bed before the maids had done her room for the night. And gradually she developed the red, moist nose that comes to a woman who cries in secret, and there were wrought other changes in good looks and figure attend ant on her condition. And then one day, early in September, Roger, returning to his dressing-room for a cigarette-case and to ascertain if Lucy was ready to start on an excursion, found her on her bedroom sofa in a crisis of weeping. Sibyl had summed up her makeshift costume—for a day's yachting—in one short phrase.... This on top of having completely overlooked her existence at yesterday's picnic lunch, and left her cupless and tealess at the late tea which followed their return. "R—Ro—ger, oh dear Roger, let me go home! I'm only in every one's way here. I never felt so stupid in my life before. I can't think what's the matter with me—it's the feeling they all despise me—and—and—pity you for having made a fool of yourself. Let me go home to mother—and Maud!..."
Roger consented at once. He felt full of remorse and pity, promised soon to join her in the south, escorted her as far as Carlisle, and arranged that kind Maud should meet her at Euston and take her home to Aldermaston. The others were too utterly uninterested in her to listen much to his explanation with its discreet allusion. She was a bore and a wet blanket out of the way, and they could now settle down to enjoy themselves. Sibyl, to keep up the fiction of being in mourning, wore black and absented herself from most of the pleasure outings; going about instead alone with Roger, to show him the ins and outs of the estate and enable him to formulate plans for its profitable development.
Early in October, Captain Brentham saw young Lord Tarrington (heir to the Earldom of Pitchingham and précis-writer to Lord Wiltshire). He was told that Lord W. had given careful attention to his case. His Lordship thoroughly appreciated his painstaking work for a year or more as Acting Consul-General, but thought that under the circumstances it was better he should not return to the scene of his former labours on the mainland. H.L., however, though Captain Brentham had scarcely been more than an officer selected for special service in Africa, would be pleased to consider him favourably for the consular posts of Bergen or of Baranquilla.