"I have told you, Mr. Trelyon," she said with some dignity, "that we shall pay you back every farthing of the price of them."
He began to whistle in an impertinent manner. He clearly placed no great faith in the financial prospects of that sewing club.
They had some light luncheon in the remote little inn, and Mrs. Rosewarne was pleased to see her ordinarily demure and preoccupied daughter in such high and careless spirits. It was not a splendid banquet. The chamber was not a gorgeous one, for the absence of ornament and the enormous thickness of the walls told of the house being shut up in the winter months and abandoned to the fury of the western gales, when the wild sea came hurling up the face of these steep cliffs and blowing over the land. But they paid little attention to any lack of luxury. There was a beautiful blue sea shining in the distance. The sunlight was falling hotly on the green sward of the rocks outside, but all the same a fresh, cool breeze came blowing in at the open window. They let the time pass easily, with pleasant talk and laughter.
Then they drove leisurely back in the afternoon. They passed along the moorland ways, through rude little villages built of stone and by the outskirts of level and cheerless farms, until they got into the beautiful woods and avenues lying around Penzance. When they came in sight of the broad bay they found that the world had changed its colors since the morning. The sea was of a cold purplish gray, but all around it, on the eastern horizon, there was a band of pale pink in the sky. On the west again, behind Penzance, the warm hues of the sunset were shining behind the black stems of the trees. The broad thoroughfare was mostly in shadow, and the sea was so still that one could hear the footsteps and the voices of the people walking up and down the Parade.
"I suppose I must go now," said the young gentleman when he had seen them safely seated in the small parlor overlooking the bay. But he did not seem anxious to go.
"But why?" Wenna said, rather timidly. "You have no engagement, Mr. Trelyon. Would you care to stay and have dinner with us—such a dinner as we can give you?"
"Well, to tell you the truth, I should like it very much," he said.
Mrs. Rosewarne, a little surprised, and yet glad to see Wenna enjoying herself, regarded the whole affair with a gentle resignation. Wenna had the gas lit and the blinds let down: then, as the evening was rather cool, she had soon a bright fire burning in the grate. She helped to lay the table. She produced such wines as they had. She made sundry visits to the kitchen, and at length the banquet was ready.
What ailed the young man? He seemed beside himself with careless and audacious mirth, and he made Mrs. Rosewarne laugh as she had not laughed for years. It was in vain that Wenna assumed airs to rebuke his rudeness. Nothing was sacred from his impertinence—not even the offended majesty of her face. And at last she gave in too, and could only revenge herself by saying things of him which, the more severe they were, the more he seemed to enjoy. But after dinner she went to the small piano, while her mother took a big easy-chair near the fire, and he sat by the table, looking over some books. There was no more reckless laughter then.
In ancient times—that is to say, in the half-forgotten days of our youth—a species of song existed which exists no more. It was not as the mournful ballads of these days, which seem to record the gloomy utterances of a strange young woman who has wandered into the magic scene in Der Freischütz, and who mixes up the moanings of her passion with descriptions of the sights, and sounds she there finds around her. It was of quite another stamp. It dealt with a phraseology of sentiment peculiar to itself—a "patter," as it were, which came to be universally recognized in drawing-rooms. It spoke of maidens plighting their troth, of Phyllis enchanting her lover with her varied moods, of marble halls in which true love still remained the same. It apostrophized the shells of ocean; it tenderly described the three great crises of a particular heroine's life by mentioning her head-dress; it told of how the lover of Pretty Jane would have her meet him in the evening. Well, all the world was content to accept this conventional phraseology, and behind the paraphernalia of "enchanted moon-beams" and "fondest glances" and "adoring sighs" perceived and loved the sentiment that could find no simpler utterance. Some of us, hearing the half-forgotten songs again, suddenly forget the odd language, and the old pathos springs up again, as fresh as in the days when our first love had just come home from her boarding-school; while others, who have no old-standing acquaintance with these memorable songs, have somehow got attracted to them by the mere quaintness of their speech and the simplicity of their airs. Master Harry Trelyon was no great critic of music. When Wenna Rosewarne sang that night "She wore a wreath of roses," he fancied he had never listened to anything so pathetic. When she sang "Meet me by moonlight alone," he was delighted with the spirit and half-humorous, half-tender grace of the composition. As she sang "When other lips and other hearts," it seemed to him that there were no songs like the old-fashioned songs, and that the people who wrote those ballads were more frank and simple and touching in their speech than writers now-a-days. Somehow, he began to think of the drawing-rooms of a former generation, and of the pictures of herself his grandmother had drawn for him many a time. Had she a high waist to that white silk dress in which she ran away to Gretna? and did she have ostrich feathers on her head? Anyhow, he entirely believed what she had told him of the men of that generation. They were capable of doing daring things for the sake of a sweetheart. Of course his grandfather had done boldly and well in whirling the girl off to the Scottish borders, for who could tell what might have befallen her among ill-natured relatives and persecuted suitors?