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At two o'clock the guests were nearly all gone. The Major was alive, and likely to live at least for some hours, and the Rufford people generally were glad that they had not put off the ball. Some of them who were staying in the house had already gone to bed, and Lady Penwether, with Miss Penge at her side, was making her last adieux in the drawing-room.
"But such a thing to do!" "Awful!" said Miss Penge. "She is the pluckiest girl I ever came across in my life," said Lord Rufford. He knew very well what they were at, and was already almost inclined to think that they might as well be allowed to have their way. Miss Penge was ladylike, quiet, and good, and was like a cool salad in a man's mouth after spiced meat.
Ever since the 'Penge mystery' trial many have termed him the hanging Judge. We have sat under him on many eventful occasions, and venture the opinion that no one who has had equal opportunity would come to any other conclusion than that he was painstaking and careful to a degree, and particularly in criminal cases formed one of the most conscientious Judges on the Bench. Hanging Judge!
It is after all a secondary matter that Kipling, not having been born and brought up in Bromstead and Penge, and the war in South Africa being yet in the womb of time, could quite honestly entertain the now remarkable delusion that England had her side-arms at that time kept anything but "awful."
The first steps taken were in the direction of the hero's personal comfort. He was flattered and petted, as his sister knew how to flatter and pet him; and Miss Penge in a quiet way assisted Lady Penwether in the operation. For a day or two he had not much to say for himself; but every word he did say was an oracle.
"There are objections to the joke theory, no doubt," said he, "but there are much stronger reasons against the other. We know that this woman has led a most quiet and respectable life at Penge and here for the last twenty years. She has hardly been away from her home for a day during that time.
As all the world knows she came from one of the oldest Commoner's families in the West of England, and is, moreover, a handsome young woman, only twenty-seven years of age. Lady Penwether thinks that she is the very woman to be mistress of Rufford, and I do not know that Miss Penge herself is averse to the idea.
Some years ago, however, when she resided at Penge, she let apartments in her house to three young medical students, whom she was obliged to get rid of on account of their noisy and irregular habits.
He was growing fat, and soon disliked the trouble of getting up early to go to a distant meet; and, before a year or two had passed away, it had become an understood thing that in country houses he was not one of the men who went down at night into the smoking-room in a short dressing-coat and a picturesque cap. Miss Penge had done all this.
But with Penge I associate my first realisations of the wonder and beauty of twilight and night, the effect of dark walls reflecting lamplight, and the mystery of blue haze-veiled hillsides of houses, the glare of shops by night, the glowing steam and streaming sparks of railway trains and railway signals lit up in the darkness.
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