for want of a valet, a shining, delicate, hooked nose, narrow-lidded
blue eyes, and a face with the colour and texture of a white-heart
cherry. He used to spend his days in a hooded chair. My mother managed
everything, leading an out-of-door life which gave her face the colour
of a wrinkled pippin. It was the face of a Roman mother, tight-lipped,
brown-eyed, and fierce. You may understand the kind of woman she
was from the hands she employed on the farm. They were smugglers and
night-malefactors to a man--and she liked that. The decent, slow-witted,
gently devious type of rustic could not live under her. The neighbours
round declared that the Lady Mary Kemp's farm was a hotbed of disorder.
I expect it was, too; three of our men were hung up at Canterbury on one
day--for horse-stealing and arson.... Anyhow, that was my mother. As
for me, I was under her, and, since I had my aspirations, I had a rather
bitter childhood. And I had others to contrast myself with. First
there was Rooksby: a pleasant, well-spoken, amiable young squire of the
immediate neighbourhood; young Sir Ralph, a man popular with all sorts,
and in love with my sister Veronica from early days. Veronica was very
beautiful, and very gentle, and very kind; tall, slim, with sloping
white shoulders and long white arms, hair the colour of amber, and
startled blue eyes--a good mate for Rooksby. Rooksby had foreign
relations, too. The uncle from whom he inherited the Priory had married
a Riego, a Castilian, during the Peninsular war. He had been a prisoner
at the time--he had died in Spain, I think. When Ralph made the grand
tour, he had made the acquaintance of his Spanish relations; he used to
talk about them, the Riegos, and Veronica used to talk of what he said
of them until they came to stand for Romance, the romance of the
outer world, to me. One day, a little before Ralph and Veronica became
engaged, these Spaniards descended out of the blue. It was Romance
suddenly dangled right before my eyes. It was Romance; you have no idea
what it meant to me to talk to Carlos Riego.