Chapter Thirteen.
The Young Countess Makes a Statement.
The harvest had been garnered and on the glorious “first” the young Countess returned from the Continent, just in time to receive her annual house-party.
The instant she arrived Sibberton always put on an air of gaiety which it never wore during her absence. Full of verve and go, she lived only for excitement and pleasure, and always declared the Hall as dull as a convent if it were not full of those clever, well-known people who constituted her own particular set. Therefore she seldom brightened the place with her presence unless she brought in her train a dozen or so merry men and women of the distinctly up-to-date type, some of whom were fashionable enough to have scandal attached to their names.
Has it ever occurred to you that feminine beauty in the higher circle of society is unfortunately, but very surely, deteriorating? It is remarkable how the type has of late years changed. When our grandmothers were celebrated and toasted in old port as beauties, quite a different ideal reigned. The toast was then something petite, womanly, of a pink complexion, of a delicious plumpness and animated by a lively and natural emotionalism. But with the introduction of athletic, open-air exercise, motors and mannish achievements, we have developed an entirely different type.
The modern athletic girl is generally ugly. She begins early, and continues till after her marriage to cycle, shoot, ride and play golf and tennis, all of which ruin her figure and consequently her health. She shoots up tall, flat-chested, colourless and lacking in reasonable proportions, with one hip larger than the other if she rides regularly to hounds. She becomes wried and atrophied by rough wear and unseemly habits, and the womanly delicacy shrinks and withers from the form of health and beauty.
Glance over any social function in town or country, any meet of hounds, or any shooting-party where ladies are included, and you will not fail to recognise how women, by overtaxing their physique, are fading and gradually becoming asexual.
The Countess of Stanchester’s house-parties were always merry ones, and generally included an Ambassador or two, a Cabinet Minister, a few good shots, and a number of ladies of various ages. The gigantic place was liberty hall, and both the young Earl and his wife carried out to the letter the traditions of the noble house for boundless hospitality. There was no better shooting in all the Midlands than that furnished by the Earl of Stanchester’s huge estate, extending as it did for nearly thirty miles in one direction; and the bags were always very huge ones.
Twenty-eight guests arrived on the same day that the young Countess returned home, and dinner that night was served as it always was on the first night of the shooting-season, upon the historic service of gold plate presented by Queen Elizabeth to the first Earl of Stanchester. I was invited to dine, and after music in the blue drawing-room retired with the men to the cosy panelled smoking-room with the grotesque carvings over the mantelshelf.
Many were the anecdotes and low the laughter, until at about midnight I rose and went back to my study, intending to get through some correspondence before retiring.