ned a little to the Separationists, because
Macdonald, with whom I lived for two years at Horton Pen, was himself a
Separationist, in a cool Scotch sort of way. He was an Argyleshire man,
who had come out to the island as a lad in 1786, and had worked his way
up to the position of agent to the Rooksby estate at Horton Pen. He had
a little estate of his own, too, at the mouth of the River Minho, where
he grew rice very profitably. He had been the first man to plant it on
the island.

Horton Pen nestled down at the foot of the tall white scars that end the
Vale of St. Thomas and are not much unlike Dover Cliffs, hanging over
a sea of squares of the green cane, alternating with masses of pimento
foliage. Macdonald's wife was an immensely stout, raven-haired,
sloe-eyed, talkative body, the most motherly woman I have ever known--I
suppose because she was childless.

What was anomalous in my position had passed away with the next outward
mail. Veronica wrote to me; Ralph to his attorney and the Macdonalds.
But by that time Mrs. Mac. had darned my socks ten times.

The surrounding gentry, the large resident landowners, of whom there
remained a sprinkling in the Vale, were at first inclined to make much
of me. There was Mrs. Topnambo, a withered, very dried-up personage, who
affected pink trimmings; she gave the _ton_ to the countryside as far as
ton could be given to a society that rioted with hospitality. She
made efforts to draw me out of the Macdonald environment, to make me
differentiate myself, because I was the grandson of an earl. But the
Topnambos were the great Loyalists of the place, and the Macdonalds the
principal Separationists, and I stuck to the Macdonalds. I was searching
for romance, you see, and could find none in Mrs. Topnambo's white
figure, with its dryish, gray skin, and pink patches round the neck,
that lay forever in dark or darkened rooms, and talked querulously of
"Your uncle, the earl," whom I had never seen. I didn't get on with the
men any better. They were either very dried up and querulous, too, or
else very liquorish or boisterous in an incomprehensible way. Their
evenings seemed to be a constant succession of shouts of laughter,
merging into undignified staggers of white trousers through blue
nights--round the corners of ragged huts. I never understood the hidden
sources of their humour, and I had not money enough to mix well with
their lavishness. I was too proud to be indebted to them, too.