"I have the honour to represent the borough of Bossiney in his Majesty's Parliament."
"Indeed, sir! You are in the House, are you? And I'll warrant you are an arrant Whig."
"I hope, Sir John, that will not prejudice you against me."
"Nay, Mr. Durnford, I have ceased to be a partisan. There was a time when I was a red-hot Jacobite, and looked to Harley and St. John to open the Queen's eyes to her duty as a daughter and a sister, and so, without violence or damage to the country, to bring in King James III. so soon as the throne should be vacant. But when I saw how easily Harley and St. John were beaten, and how quietly the country knuckled under to a middle-aged foreigner who could not speak a word of our language; and when that miserable flash in the pan of the year fifteen showed me how feeble a crew were the Jacobites of England and Scotland—faith, sir, the best man among them was Winifred Countess of Nithisdale—I began to think that I had better stay at home, and hunt my hounds and keep clear of politics. Neither party has ever benefited me; and I say with the gentleman in the play which the Winchester Mummers acted last Easter, 'A plague on both your houses!' So Whig or Tory is all as one to me, Mr. Durnford. And now will you crack a bottle of Burgundy, or will you drink a glass or two of Malaga, after your long ride?"
Sir John had talked himself into a good temper, and Herrick thought that he might drink himself into a still more gracious humour, so frankly accepted his offer of a bottle; whereupon the butler brought a massive silver tray with decanters of Burgundy and Malaga, and a dish of crisp biscuits, made after a particular recipe which had been in the family from the time of Queen Bess, who had lain at Chumleigh Manor in one of her innumerable peregrinations, whereby she had laid upon the family the burden of for ever preserving the antique furniture and cut velvet hangings of the room in which her royal person had reposed. Charles II. had been a more frequent visitor, putting up at Chumleigh on several occasions when his Court was quartered at Winchester for the hunting in the New Forest, and when he and his favourites had hunted with the Chumleigh foxhounds. Sir John prattled of those glorious days as he sipped his Malaga, which was a fine heady wine.
He sipped and prosed, describing those great days in which royalty had hunted with his father's foxhounds and drunk of his father's wines, and finally talked himself into such an expansive temper that he pressed Herrick to put up at Chumleigh Manor for the night, and leave Winchester by the coach which started at eight next morning. This offer Mr. Durnford thought it wise to accept, as it might afford the opportunity for getting better acquainted with the history of the Chumleigh family, and that Philip Chumleigh in whose fate he was so keenly interested.
It was dusk by this time. The Baronet had dined at three, and he was in for an evening's good-fellowship.
"Her ladyship will take it ill if we do not go to the drawing-room for a dish of tea," he said; "but we can come back to my study afterwards, and I'll show you my kinsman's letter, and as many memorials of the house of Chumleigh as you may care to look at. Our pedigree is more interesting than that of most county families, for the Chumleighs have married into several noble houses. We are an historical race, sir."
The drawing-room was on the other side of a large hall, paved with black and white marble, and with a lantern roof, after Inigo Jones. It was a spacious and handsome apartment, hung with old Italian pictures of manifest worthlessness, interspersed with portraits of the house of Chumleigh by Holbein, Vandyke, Lely, and Kneller. The present owner and his wife had been painted by this last artist, and their half-length portraits occupied places of honour on either side of the high chimney-piece, which was an elaborate structure in white and coloured marble, with the armorial bearings of the Chumleighs carved in high relief on the central panel.
Beside the fireplace sat a faded, little woman, who rose with a languid air when her husband presented the stranger, and sank almost to the carpet in a kind of swooning curtsy.