Now to my own affairs, which, after Dick's future and your neuralgia, I flatter myself are dear to you.
You've often remarked that I'm nothing if not dramatic, and perhaps when I tell you what I did yesterday you will think I've proved it for the hundredth--or is it the thousandth?--time.
We left Wells (which depressed me as all cathedral towns do, because everybody, and even every building, seems so unco guid) to run through the Cheddar ravine, which, I fancy, though I don't know and care less, is among the Mendip Hills. I woke up with a headache, not having slept on account of a million church clocks and bells which were deadly busy all night, and I felt I should be no better until I'd had it out with the enemy.
Sir Lionel, as you know, can be a pleasant companion when he chooses, and he's so good-looking in his soldier way that I can't help admiring him when I'm not hating him, but it is a strain on the nerves, headache or no headache, sitting next a man and trying every minute to make him like you better than he does the woman he wants to be with, who is sitting behind him. It means that you must be amusing and witty and interested in everything he says. But how can you be witty when the only thing you want to say is "devil and damn," of which he would violently disapprove from a lady's lips (or pen)? And how can you be interested in all he says when he discourses about mouldy old saints, and legends, and history, and things over and done with long ago, like that? What do I care if St. Dunstan--of whom I heard too much at Glastonbury--saved King Edmund, hunting in the Mendips, from falling over Cheddar Cliff, horse and man? Why, I don't even know who Edmund was, or when he happened. Celtic relics, found in caves, are less than nothing to me, and Roman coins are a mere aggravation when one is bothered how to get current coin of the realm. Botany bores me, too, though I have been studying it, together with many other dull things which, unfortunately for me, Sir Lionel likes.
Well, we went up the Mendip Hills by way of an obscure little village called Priddy, which seemed important to Sir L. because they found some lead pigs in a mine there marked Imp. Vespasianus, and a few old Roman dice, and brooches like safety-pins. It would be much more to the point if he would take an interest in what _I_ wear, rather than concentrating his attention on the way b. c. Roman miners or soldiers contrived to fasten their rags together. It would console one for invariably losing one's pins and hatpins when one wants them most, if one could think future generations would grow emotional over them. Yet, on the whole, I should prefer it done by a certain man in my own generation.
The moment we got away from Priddy, where a lot of starfish roads come together, my spirits rose. The country began to look theatrical, which was a pleasant change after Wells, and all my native dramaticness began to surge in me. I felt on my mettle; and when Sir Lionel talked about visiting the Cheddar Caverns I said to myself: "My name isn't Gwen Senter if I don't get hold of the girl in a cave, and tell her a thing or two." It can't be easy to escape from people in caves, I thought; and so it proved. But I haven't come to that, yet.
I really enjoyed the Cheddar Ravine. It is the sort of scenery that appeals to me. Hills rose, wild and rocky, shutting in our road, and brigands would have been appropriate, as in some mountain pass of Spain. There were sheer gray cliffs like castles and burnt-out churches, and watch-towers.
Said Sir Lionel: "Here we come, straight from one of the finest cathedrals made by man, to see what Nature can do in the way of ecclesiastical architecture; façades here as fine as any west front, and vaguely rich with decoration." I purred, of course, agreeing, and pointing out graceful spires, empty niches for saints, tombs for cardinals, and statues of kings and bishops with crowned and mitred heads, babbling on thus with hurried intelligence, lest Ellaline should jump in ahead.
It's the kind of place--this weird alley of colourful rock--where you feel things must happen, and I determined they _should_ happen; a hidden place you are surprised at being able to enter, as if the door had been shut by enchantment a few million years, and then forcibly opened for modern motorists. I used this idea on Sir Lionel, in a form too elaborate to waste on a sister, and made a distinct hit. But Ellaline got in a little deadly work at the first cave. She began talking fairy talk with Sir Lionel, and that not being my style, I had to let her have her head.
Fancy _my_ pretending to be a child who, having lost itself, suddenly sees a hole in a rock, crawls in for shelter from beasts of the forest, and finds that by accident it has stumbled on the entrance to fairyland! But Miss Lethbridge had quite a fairy game with Sir Lionel, who, she played, was his ancestor King Arthur, carried to this strange place by the four queens who rowed his body across the lake. "You can be one of the queens, if you like," she graciously said to me. "And dear Mrs. Norton another?" I suggested. That turned the budding drama into farce, as I meant it should.
It was a weird cave, and would have served excellently for my purpose; but when I heard there was another to follow--as servants say of the next course for dinner--I thought it would be an anti-climax to use this one. Besides, there were a good many people in it. There were tricky illuminations to show off the best formations, one of which was King Solomon's Temple, King S. sitting with folded arms at the entrance, his knees up as if he had a pain; but being only a pink stalagmite, he couldn't be expected to behave.
Having done justice to Gough's Cavern, we returned to the car, and skimmed along the splendid, rock-walled road to the next cave, which, it appears, is a deadly rival of the first. One advertises visits of Martel, the explorer; the other boasts the approval of royalty. I'm sure they would love to have a notice up: "By appointment to the King," as if they were tailors. But what could a king do with a cave nowadays? At one time, it might have been handy to hide in, but those days and those kings are changed. I believe, by the way, Britons did hide in one or two of the Cheddar Caverns, when the Saxons were uncomfortably interested in their whereabouts, and there are bones, but I'm glad to say we didn't see them. I hate to be reminded of what I'm built on, and can't bear to look in the glass after seeing a skull, with or without cross-bones.
In this second cave, when Mrs. Norton was putting an appropriate prehistoric question I'd coached her up to ask her brother, I linked a friendly arm in Ellaline's, and bore her off under convoy.
"What a sweet, illuminated stalactite curtain!" said I, rapturously. "Doesn't it look like translucent coral, and wouldn't you like to have a dress exactly that colour?"
Thus I managed to keep her with me, and fall behind the others, glaring at Dick so meaningly as to frighten him away when he showed signs of lingering.
My scene thus effectively set, and the two leading characters on the stage together, I lost no time in beginning to recite my lines. It was in a dark sort of rock-parlour, with some kind of an illuminated witches' kitchen or devil's cauldron to look at, and give us an excuse to pause--all very effective.
"Miss Lethbridge," I said, "I have rather a disagreeable duty to perform."
"When people tell you they have a duty to perform, it goes without saying that it's disagreeable," she replied, with a flippancy on which I consider I have the patent.
"Have I a black on my nose, or is my dress undone at the back?"
"There is a black," said I, "but it's not on your nose."
"On my character, perhaps?" she insinuated.
"Not exactly," said I. "But it will be on my conscience if I don't get it off. You see, you ought to know. If you don't know, you're handicapped, and it isn't fair that a girl like you should be handicapped. I've been trying for days to screw up my courage to speak. In this queer place, I feel suddenly as if I could. Shall we talk here, while we have the chance?"
"You talk, please," said she. "I will do the rest." (Pert thing.) However, I took her at her word, and did what I had to do, with neatness and dispatch, as an executioner should. But the odd part was, that when I had chopped off her head with the axe you sharpened for me and posted from Scotland, registered and expressed, she hardly seemed to know it was off. She did look a little pale, though that might have been the effect of the strange light, but she thanked me pleasantly for telling her the truth, and said she quite appreciated my motive.
"I was prompted entirely by my interest in you, and because of my nephew's friendship," I said.
"Oh, yes," said she, in a voice like cream. "What else _could_ it be?"
"It could be nothing else," I replied emphatically. "I'm sure I hated distressing you, but it was that good might come. I do hope it hasn't upset you too much?"