Penderel

“ Femm retreated a step, his eyes two pin-points in a crumpled sheet of paper. Penderel hadn’t seen a man look so frightened for years. What an oddity!—dense at first, and then flying into a panic. A man so thin, with so little flesh and so much shining bone ought to be braver than that; he was almost a skeleton, and skeletons, jangling and defiant, [31] are brave enough. It’s our flesh, Penderel told himself, the jellied-stuff that rots so easily, which quivers and creeps, goes goosey with fright; but our bones stand up and don’t give a damn. ”

“ Fortunately, he found no one there but William Penderel, his wife, and the brave cavalier, Colonel Carlis, who had been the last man to retreat from Worcester, and, having succeeded in making his escape, had been for some time concealed in Boscobel Wood, and had come to ask relief of William Penderel, his old acquaintance. Richard informed him and William Penderel that the king was in the wood, and they all three went to pay their devoir, and found his majesty sitting, like melancholy Jacques, on the root of a tree. ”

“ With a roar the huge animal lowered its head and charged blindly—charged, not at the man, but at the smell of him, a moving mountain of living clay, controlled by the senses only.
Penderel heard the beast snort at his shoulder as he swung round, and he tore uphill with the terror of death on him again. So, in the neolithic ages, had his own ancestors run from the brutes who were greater than they. So he and the Masai ran now, separated soon by the tangling scrub, but driven by the same sense of helpless fear. Scent of the mimosa blew again in Penderel's face. ”

“ It was as if the door had been opened into Siberia. The thought of the menacing night and the Wavertons waiting there behind him, the contrast between their situation and this senseless immobility suddenly angered him. He raised his voice: ‘The road here’s under water now. There are floods, landslides. All the mountain side’s coming down. We shall have to stay here. Don’t you understand?’
If the man did, he gave no sign, but stood there as if he were staring out of another world. Penderel had a sudden desire to pound the great senseless carcase. ”

“ Penderel drew himself up and tried to control his voice. ‘You can’t come here, I tell you——’ he began; but before he could say any more, something heavy, a chair or a small table, came flying through the air, smashing against his right arm and ribs, sending the poker clattering below, and knocking him sideways and [274] backwards against the banisters as it crashed into them itself. He fell down, helpless in a spinning world, dizzy and sick. His arm hurt dreadfully, seemed to be broken. Soon the creature would be trampling the life out of him. ”

“ Such things as the swamp on the plateau, the hippopotamus floating unthinkingly in the lake, the naked native with his arrow and bow, must go down before the tread of the white man. It was their destiny, and Penderel, grateful for the act of grace which had made him of the ruling race, felt in his pocket for the arrow-heads and the blue bead which would score again the difference between these people and himself. ”

“ Bentley House and Abbots Leigh are gone.
Finer figures do not appear in history than those of the devoted Jane Lane and the stalwart and loyal Penderel Brothers. "The simple rustic who serves his sovereign in time of need to the utmost extent of his ability, is as deserving of commendation as the victorious leader of thousands." So said King Charles the Second to Richard Penderel after the Restoration. It is pleasant to think that several descendants of the loyal family of Penderels are still in existence. ”

“ He lashed himself into a kind of anger as frightened men frequently do. ‘But to go running out there,’ and he pointed shakily at the door, still open to the night, ‘in the dark, with the floods there, the rocks tumbling down, everything cold and black and pitiless. And nowhere else to go, no escape!’ And he clashed together his bony hands.
Penderel stared at him. ‘A bad business, certainly, if one had to go. But one hasn’t, you know. Even if we have to go, you won’t have to. You can stay comfortably here.’ And as he said this, he looked Mr. Femm in the eyes. ”

“ Good old eating, thought Penderel, it’ll carry anything off. Not that he minded these little family quarrels of the Femms, he told himself; he rather enjoyed them. They were like a passage from a new kind of morality play; a short scene for the sneering bone and the screaming flesh.
Nobody spoke. It was one of those silences not easily broken; their strength is tested by a tap or two of words tried over in the mind, and then they are left alone. Margaret bent over her plate. Philip was idly watching Miss Femm, who was heaping red meat on the plate that Morgan held out to her. ”

“ Mine’s this. If you approach life in the old noble-silly fashion, then it’ll simply cheat you and bump you badly. If you don’t, if you crawl into it with no grand illusions, then you’ll come to terms with it, of course, and live easily, but you’ll be nothing but a pig, and it’s not worth having at all on those terms.’
‘That’s not unlike mine, you know,’ said Philip. ‘Only I feel I could patch up your trouble, that a compromise is possible.’
‘And that’s what I felt about yours,’ cried Penderel. ”

“ Penderel thought he would give them another and louder rap. ‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller. That’s why poetry is so good, he told himself, his hand on the knocker; at such times odd bits of it come shooting up in the mind like rockets. Rattatta-tat-tat. Should he give them another and conclusive tat-tat, rounding off the phrase? No, that always sounded so complete that there was no urgency in it. That was loud enough anyhow, loud enough—as people said in their hellishly grim fashion—to waken the dead. ”

“ One crashing bullet and there wasn’t even anything left to remember what had come and gone, to cry in the mind’s dark hollow; life could then cheat [39] as it liked, for it did not matter; you had won the last poor trick.
Having conjured the malady into a phrase or two, Penderel felt better, came out of his reverie and looked about for entertainment. He found it in the person of Mr. Femm, who was bearing down upon him, carrying a small tray. There was a bottle on the tray, and Penderel felt like breaking into applause. Flourish of trumpets: enter Bottle. ”

“ They kissed. Then [220] her hand was passed over his cheek, and his arms tightened about her and they kissed again. It was all done very quietly and comfortably, without any of the blind fumbling and straining of a new passion, yet it had not only meaning but intensity. This intensity, however, like a slant of sunlight, had passed through a mellowing atmosphere of large friendliness.
Now, her hands pressing against him, she gently pushed herself away. Penderel drew a long breath. He wasn’t bewildered, he wasn’t ecstatic; he was suddenly and solidly happy. He felt enormously rich. ”

“ It isn’t cheek, and you know it’s not. Besides, he’s tremendously clever, you can see that, and full of push and go. Hurry up and say you will, he’s coming back.’
‘Well, I’ll see,’ he muttered, receiving her quick glance of gratitude. ‘I’ll have a talk to him.’ He could see that door opening behind him in her very eyes.
‘The world’s great age begins anew.’ Penderel’s voice rang through that dim place. His sudden high spirits seemed to light it up. ‘Gladys, Sir William, I’ve changed my socks and trousers—in the dark too, mind you—and now I’m a new man. ”

“ It was science and the determination of man against Nature, as always, and, also as always, it was man who had won out. Penderel flung himself down in the coarse cool grass and beat the earth softly with his palm. He had warred with this veiled Africa so long and so consistently that she had become a vital and a gallant enemy to him, and he rejoiced in each overthrow with a prick of compunction. ”

“ They were woodmen and farm servants, living at different places in the neighborhood, and having charge, some of them, of the houses above described. One of the Penderels was at the White Ladies'. He let the fugitives in, tired, exhausted, and hungry as they were, with the fatigue of marching nearly all the night. They sent immediately for Richard Penderel, who lived in a farm house nearby, and for another brother, who was at Boscobel. They took the king into an inner room, and immediately commenced the work of effectually disguising him. ”

“ He puffed away again.
‘You see what I mean?’ said Penderel. ‘Of course, you may not think there is any one great snag or catch. If so, you simply say so?
‘I wish I could,’ Philip replied. ‘I can’t, though, because there is a catch, an enormous fly in the ointment. And to me, it’s this. It seems to me that life demands so much care to be lived at all decently that it’s hardly worth living. I’m talking about life as we see it, civilisation as it’s called, and not the life, say, of a Fiji Islander or a Zulu. ”

“ Charles was advised to rub his hands on the back of the chimney, and begrime his face; and having put on a coarse shirt, and Richard Penderel's green suit and leather doublet, he left the house just in time to escape a troop of horse, who came half an hour afterwards to search for him. Richard Penderel, who undertook to be the guide, carried the king into the obscurest part of an adjacent wood belonging to Boscobel, called Spring Coppice, about half a mile from White Ladies. The rain poured in torrents, and no tree was sufficient to shelter the king from it ”

“ She heard Penderel’s voice again. Something about a snag, the great snag. Had he got round it now, leaped over it, gone on his way? But what was it? About being taken in or being piggy, was that it? She could remember thinking it all rather young and silly, and that’s all she could remember, she was so sleepy, just sorry and very sleepy.
[303] The window showed Philip no red flares and rising ball of fire, no sudden triumph of day. It was a chill misty dawn, a landscape in smoke and steel. It held out no large promises of sunlight and the blue ”

“ William Penderel, his next brother, succeeded his father in the occupation of Boscobel House, and also received a pension of 100l. per annum. He died in 1706, aged over eighty-four. Each of the five brothers left posterity.
Richard Penderel di Boscobello (1679–1732) , only son of Edmund Penderel, the son of Humphrey of Whiteladies, and great-nephew of Richard, had Queen Catherine of Braganza for godmother, and served part of his novitiate in the Society of Jesus at the English College in Rome. He was released from his vows, and became a secret agent of the exiled Stuarts. ”

“ Richard Penderel, when he borrowed the blanket of his sister-in-law, the good-wife Yates, considerately begged her to provide a comfortable breakfast and bring it to him, at a place which he appointed in the wood. She presently made ready a mess of milk, and brought it, with bread, butter, and eggs, to the cold, wet, and half-famished king. Charles was, at first, a little startled at her appearance, but, perceiving she came on a kindly errand, he frankly appealed to her feminine compassion in these words:
"Good woman, can you be faithful to a distressed cavalier?"
"Yes, sir," she replied ”

“ I must sit down somewhere where there isn’t any rain. My head screams with it.’ And Mrs. Waverton marched in, followed by the two men.
The first thing that Penderel noticed was that the house had electric light. Somehow he hadn’t expected that: it was impossible to imagine the giant troll fingering the switches or going round the accumulators. But the lights weren’t behaving properly though; they were jumping and flickering, and they made the whole place jumpy, queerly uncertain. ”

“ The Masai never bury their dead. They lay them in open spaces for the seeking hyenas, and so the most cowardly of brutes becomes the sepulchre for one of the bravest of the races of men. No Masai slays a hyena; but to Penderel it was ever the foulest beast that moved, and he took his rifle now and disappeared among the rock-shadows with the thirst for killing on him. ”

“ But now, perhaps because she was in such an odd jumble of a company, perhaps because she was simply taking shelter here, she was more than willing to ask and answer and listen.
[97] ‘We’ll do it this way,’ Penderel suggested. He pointed to Waverton. ‘I’ll ask you a question, then you’ll ask Mrs. Waverton, and so on round the table. That’s a pleasant neighbourly way of doing it. But everyone must speak up so that we can all hear.’
Nobody objected to the arrangement. ‘Ask away, then,’ said Philip. ‘But don’t be too hard on me. ”

“ Upon each of the brothers a pension, payable to them and their heirs ‘for ever,’ was settled by letters patent under the great seal, the amount of Richard's pension being 100l. per annum. When at court Richard Penderel, who had been presented by the king with a ring which is still possessed by the family, resided in the house of Henry Arundell in the Great Turnstile, Lincoln's Inn Fields (it was demolished in 1883) . ”

“ Femm, in his thin, bitter voice. ‘It was high time they did.’
Sir William looked puzzled. ‘Don’t seem [95] to know it, and don’t like the sound of it. How d’you play it? Hope it isn’t one of those games that make you use paper and pencil, like so many kids at school. If it is, you can count me out. I hate ’em.’
‘So do I,’ cried Gladys. ‘Is it one of them?’
‘It’s the simplest game in the world,’ Penderel explained. ‘Indeed you can hardly call it a game. We just go on talking but we stop lying. We simply ask one another questions, and these questions must be answered truthfully. ”