STALLBRIDGE-LE-CARTHEW
Long before I was awake the shyster had disappeared, leaving his bill
unpaid. I did not need to inquire where he was gone, I knew too well, I
knew there was nothing left me but to follow; and about ten in the
morning, set forth in a gig for Stallbridge-le-Carthew.
The road, for the first quarter of the way, deserts the valley of the
river, and crosses the summit of a chalkdown, grazed over by flocks of
sheep and haunted by innumerable larks. It was a pleasant but a vacant
scene, arousing but not holding the attention; and my mind returned to
the violent passage of the night before. My thought of the man I was
pursuing had been greatly changed. I conceived of him, somewhere in
front of me, upon his dangerous errand, not to be turned aside, not to
be stopped, by either fear or reason. I had called him a ferret; I
conceived him now as a mad dog. Methought he would run, not walk;
methought, as he ran, that he would bark and froth at the lips;
methought, if the great wall of China were to rise across his path, he
would attack it with his nails.
Presently the road left the down, returned by a precipitous descent into
the valley of the Stall, and ran thenceforward among enclosed fields and
under the continuous shade of trees. I was told we had now entered on
the Carthew property. By and by, a battlemented wall appeared on the
left hand, and a little after I had my first glimpse of the mansion. It
stood in a hollow of a bosky park, crowded, to a degree that surprised
and even displeased me, with huge timber and dense shrubberies of
laurel and rhododendron. Even from this low station and the thronging
neighbourhood of the trees, the pile rose conspicuous like a cathedral.
Behind, as we continued to skirt the park wall, I began to make out a
straggling town of offices which became conjoined to the rear with those
of the home farm. On the left was an ornamental water sailed in by many
swans. On the right extended a flower garden, laid in the old manner,
and at this season of the year as brilliant as stained glass. The front
of the house presented a facade of more than sixty windows, surmounted
by a formal pediment and raised upon a terrace. A wide avenue, part in
gravel, part in turf, and bordered by triple alleys, ran to the great
double gateways. It was impossible to look without surprise on a place
that had been prepared through so many generations, had cost so many
tons of minted gold, and was maintained in order by so great a company
of emulous servants. And yet of these there was no sign but the
perfection of their work. The whole domain was drawn to the line and
weeded like the front plot of some suburban amateur; and I looked in
vain for any belated gardener, and listened in vain for any sounds of
labour. Some lowing of cattle and much calling of birds alone disturbed
the stillness, and even the little hamlet, which clustered at the gates,
appeared to hold its breath in awe of its great neighbour, like a troop
of children who should have strayed into a king's anteroom.
The "Carthew Arms," the small, but very comfortable inn, was a mere
appendage and outpost of the family whose name it bore. Engraved
portraits of bygone Carthews adorned the walls; Fielding Carthew,
Recorder of the City of London; Major-General John Carthew in uniform,
commanding some military operations; the Right Honourable Bailley
Carthew, Member of Parliament for Stallbridge, standing by a table and
brandishing a document; Singleton Carthew, Esquire, represented in the
foreground of a herd of cattle--doubtless at the desire of his tenantry,
who had made him a compliment of this work of art; and the Venerable
Archdeacon Carthew, D.D., LL.D., A.M., laying his hand on the head of a
little child in a manner highly frigid and ridiculous. So far as my
memory serves me, there were no other pictures in this exclusive
hostelry; and I was not surprised to learn that the landlord was an
ex-butler, the landlady an ex-lady's-maid, from the great house; and
that the bar-parlour was a sort of perquisite of former servants.
To an American, the sense of the domination of this family over so
considerable a tract of earth was even oppressive; and as I considered
their simple annals, gathered from the legends of the engravings,
surprise began to mingle with my disgust. "Mr. Recorder" doubtless
occupies an honourable post; but I thought that, in the course of so
many generations, one Carthew might have clambered higher. The soldier
had stuck at Major-General; the churchman bloomed unremarked in an
archdeaconry; and though the Right Honourable Bailley seemed to have
sneaked into the Privy Council, I have still to learn what he did when
he had got there. Such vast means, so long a start, and such a modest
standard of achievement, struck in me a strong sense of the dulness of
that race.
I found that to come to the hamlet and not visit the Hall would be
regarded as a slight. To feed the swans, to see the peacocks and the
Raphaels--for these commonplace people actually possessed two
Raphaels,--to risk life and limb among a famous breed of cattle called
the Carthew Chillinghams, and to do homage to the sire (still living) of
Donibristle, a renowned winner of the Oaks: these, it seemed, were the
inevitable stations of the pilgrimage. I was not so foolish as to
resist, for I might have need, before I was done, of general goodwill;
and two pieces of news fell in which changed my resignation to alacrity.
It appeared, in the first place, that Mr. Norris was from home
"travelling"; in the second, that a visitor had been before me, and
already made the tour of the Carthew curiosities. I thought I knew who
this must be; I was anxious to learn what he had done and seen, and
fortune so far favoured me that the under-gardener singled out to be my
guide had already performed the same function for my predecessor.
"Yes, sir," he said, "an American gentleman right enough. At least, I
don't think he was quite a gentleman, but a very civil person."
The person, it seems, had been civil enough to be delighted with the
Carthew Chillinghams, to perform the whole pilgrimage with rising
admiration, and to have almost prostrated himself before the shrine of
Donibristle's sire.
"He told me, sir," continued the gratified under-gardener, "that he had
often read of the 'stately 'omes of England,' but ours was the first he
had the chance to see. When he came to the 'ead of the long alley, he
fetched his breath. 'This is indeed a lordly domain!' he cries. And it
was natural he should be interested in the place, for it seems Mr.
Carthew had been kind to him in the States. In fact, he seemed a
grateful kind of person, and wonderful taken up with flowers."
I heard this story with amazement. The phrases quoted told their own
tale; they were plainly from the shyster's mint. A few hours back I had
seen him a mere bedlamite and fit for a strait-waistcoat; he was
penniless in a strange country; it was highly probable he had gone
without breakfast; the absence of Norris must have been a crushing blow;
the man (by all reason) should have been despairing. And now I heard of
him, clothed and in his right mind, deliberate, insinuating, admiring
vistas, smelling flowers, and talking like a book. The strength of
character implied amazed and daunted me.
"This is curious," I said to the under-gardener; "I have had the
pleasure of some acquaintance with Mr. Carthew myself; and I believe
none of our western friends ever were in England. Who can this person
be? He couldn't--no, that's impossible, he could never have had the
impudence. His name was not Bellairs?"
"I didn't 'ear the name, sir. Do you know anything against him?" cried
my guide.
"Well," said I, "he is certainly not the person Carthew would like to
have here in his absence."
"Good gracious me!" exclaimed the gardener. "He was so pleasant-spoken
too; I thought he was some form of a schoolmaster. Perhaps, sir, you
wouldn't mind going right up to Mr. Denman? I recommended him to Mr.
Denman, when he had done the grounds. Mr. Denman is our butler, sir," he
added.
The proposal was welcome, particularly as affording me a graceful
retreat from the neighbourhood of the Carthew Chillinghams; and, giving
up our projected circuit, we took a short cut through the shrubbery and
across the bowling-green to the back quarters of the Hall.
The bowling-green was surrounded by a great hedge of yew, and entered by
an archway in the quick. As we were issuing from this passage, my
conductor arrested me.
"The Honourable Lady Ann Carthew," he said, in an august whisper. And
looking over his shoulder I was aware of an old lady with a stick,
hobbling somewhat briskly along the garden path. She must have been
extremely handsome in her youth; and even the limp with which she walked
could not deprive her of an unusual and almost menacing dignity of
bearing. Melancholy was impressed besides on every feature, and her
eyes, as she looked straight before her, seemed to contemplate
misfortune.
"She seems sad," said I, when she had hobbled past and we had resumed
our walk.
"She enjoy rather poor spirits, sir," responded the under-gardener. "Mr.
Carthew--the old gentleman, I mean--died less than a year ago; Lord
Tillibody, her ladyship's brother, two months after; and then there was
the sad business about the young gentleman. Killed in the 'unting-fleld,
sir; and her ladyship's favourite. The present Mr. Norris has never been
so equally."
"So I have understood," said I persistently, and (I think) gracefully
pursuing my inquiries and fortifying my position as a family friend.
"Dear, dear, how sad! And has this change--poor Carthew's return, and
all--has this not mended matters?"
"Well, no, sir, not a sign of it," was the reply. "Worse, we think, than
ever."
"Dear, dear!" said I again.
"When Mr. Norris arrived she _did_ seem glad to see him," he pursued,
"and we were all pleased, I'm sure; for no one knows the young gentleman
but what likes him. Ah, sir, it didn't last long! That very night they
had a talk, and fell out or something; her ladyship took on most
painful: it was like old days, but worse. And the next morning Mr.
Norris was off again upon his travels. 'Denman,' he said to Mr. Denman,
'Denman, I'll never come back,' he said, and shook him by the 'and. I
wouldn't be saying all this to a stranger, sir," added my informant,
overcome with a sudden fear lest he had gone too far.
He had indeed told me much, and much that was unsuspected by himself. On
that stormy night of his return, Carthew had told his story; the old
lady had more upon her mind than mere bereavements; and among the mental
pictures on which she looked, as she walked staring down the path, was
one of Midway Island and the _Flying Scud_.
Mr. Denman heard my inquiries with discomposure, but informed me the
shyster was already gone.
"Gone?" cried I. "Then what can he have come for? One thing I can tell
you, it was not to see the house."
"I don't see it could have been anything else," replied the butler.
"You may depend upon it, it was," said I. "And whatever it was, he has
got it.--By the way, where is Mr. Carthew at present? I was sorry to
find he was from home."
"He is engaged in travelling, sir," replied the butler drily.
"Ah, bravo!" cried I. "I laid a trap for you there, Mr. Denman. Now I
need not ask you; I am sure you did not tell this prying stranger."
"To be sure not, sir," said the butler.
I went through the form of "shaking him by the 'and"--like Mr.
Norris--not, however, with genuine enthusiasm. For I had failed
ingloriously to get the address for myself; and I felt a sure conviction
that Bellairs had done better, or he had still been here and still
cultivating Mr. Denman.
I had escaped the grounds and the cattle; I could not escape the house.
A lady with silver hair, a slender silver voice, and a stream of
insignificant information not to be diverted, led me through the picture
gallery, the music-room, the great dining-room, the long drawing-room,
the Indian room, the theatre, and every corner (as I thought) of that
interminable mansion. There was but one place reserved, the garden-room,
whither Lady Ann had now retired. I paused a moment on the outside of
the door, and smiled to myself. The situation was indeed strange, and
these thin boards divided the secret of the _Flying Scud_.
All the while, as I went to and fro, I was considering the visit and
departure of Bellairs. That he had got the address, I was quite certain;
that he had not got it by direct questioning, I was convinced; some
ingenuity, some lucky accident, had served him. A similar chance, an
equal ingenuity, was required; or I was left helpless; the ferret must
run down his prey, the great oaks fall, the Raphaels be scattered, the
house let to some stockbroker suddenly made rich, and the name which now
filled the mouths of five or six parishes dwindle to a memory. Strange
that such great matters, so old a mansion, a family so ancient and so
dull, should come to depend for perpetuity upon the intelligence, the
discretion, and the cunning of a Latin-Quarter student! What Bellairs
had done, I must do likewise. Chance or ingenuity, ingenuity or
chance--so I continued to ring the changes as I walked down the avenue,
casting back occasional glances at the red brick facade and the
twinkling windows of the house. How was I to command chance? where was I
to find the ingenuity?
These reflections brought me to the door of the inn. And here, pursuant
to my policy of keeping well with all men, I immediately smoothed my
brow, and accepted (being the only guest in the house) an invitation to
dine with the family in the bar-parlour. I sat down accordingly with Mr.
Higgs, the ex-butler, Mrs. Higgs, the ex-lady's-maid, and Miss Agnes
Higgs, their frowsy-headed little girl, the least promising and (as the
event showed) the most useful of the lot. The talk ran endlessly on the
great house and the great family; the roast beef, the Yorkshire pudding,
the jam-roll, and the cheddar cheese came and went, and still the stream
flowed on; near four generations of Carthews were touched upon without
eliciting one point of interest; and we had killed Mr. Henry in "the
'unting-field," with a vast elaboration of painful circumstance, and
buried him in the midst of a whole sorrowing county, before I could so
much as manage to bring upon the stage my intimate friend, Mr. Norris.
At the name the ex-butler grew diplomatic, and the ex-lady's-maid
tender. He was the only person of the whole featureless series who
seemed to have accomplished anything worth mention; and his
achievements, poor dog, seemed to have been confined to going to the
devil and leaving some regrets. He had been the image of the Right
Honourable Bailley, one of the lights of that dim house, and a career
of distinction had been predicted of him in consequence, almost from the
cradle. But before he was out of long clothes the cloven foot began to
show; he proved to be no Carthew, developed a taste for low pleasures
and bad company, went birdnesting with a stable-boy before he was
eleven, and when he was near twenty, and might have been expected to
display at least some rudiments of the family gravity, rambled the
country over with a knapsack, making sketches and keeping company in
wayside inns. He had no pride about him, I was told; he would sit down
with any man; and it was somewhat woundingly implied that I was indebted
to this peculiarity for my own acquaintance with the hero. Unhappily,
Mr. Norris was not only eccentric, he was fast. His debts were still
remembered at the University; still more, it appeared, the highly
humorous circumstances attending his expulsion. "He was always fond of
his jest," commented Mrs. Higgs.
"That he were," observed her lord.
But it was after he went into the diplomatic service that the real
trouble began.
"It seems, sir, that he went the pace extraordinary," said the
ex-butler, with a solemn gusto.
"His debts were somethink awful," said the lady's-maid. "And as nice a
young gentleman all the time as you would wish to see!"
"When word came to Mr. Carthew's ears the turn-up was 'orrible,"
continued Mr. Higgs. "I remember it as if it was yesterday. The bell was
rung after her la'ship was gone, which I answered it myself, supposing
it were the coffee. There was Mr. Carthew on his feet. ''Iggs,' he says,
pointing with his stick, for he had a turn of the gout, 'order the
dog-cart instantly for this son of mine which has disgraced hisself.'
Mr. Norris say nothink: he sit there with his 'ead down, making belief
to be looking at a walnut. You might have bowled me over with a straw,"
said Mr. Higgs.
"Had he done anything very bad?" I asked.
"Not he, Mr. Dodsley!" cried the lady--it was so she had conceived my
name. "He never did anythink to call really wrong in his poor life. The
'ole affair was a disgrace. It was all rank favouritising."
"Mrs. 'Iggs! Mrs. 'Iggs!" cried the butler warningly.
"Well, what do I care?" retorted the lady, shaking her ringlets. "You
know it was, yourself, Mr. 'Iggs, and so did every member of the staff."
While I was getting these facts and opinions, I by no means neglected
the child. She was not attractive; but fortunately she had reached the
corrupt age of seven, when half-a-crown appears about as large as a
saucer and is fully as rare as the dodo. For a shilling down, sixpence
in her money-box, and an American gold dollar which I happened to find
in my pocket, I bought the creature soul and body. She declared her
intention to accompany me to the ends of the earth; and had to be
chidden by her sire for drawing comparisons between myself and her Uncle
William, highly damaging to the latter.
Dinner was scarce done, the cloth was not yet removed, when Miss Agnes
must needs climb into my lap with her stamp album, a relic of the
generosity of Uncle William. There are few things I despise more than
old stamps, unless perhaps it be crests; for cattle (from the Carthew
Chillinghams down to the old gate-keeper's milk-cow in the lane)
contempt is far from being my first sentiment. But it seemed I was
doomed to pass that day in viewing curiosities, and, smothering a yawn,
I devoted myself once more to tread the well-known round. I fancy Uncle
William must have begun the collection himself and tired of it, for the
book (to my surprise) was quite respectably filled. There were the
varying shades of the English penny, Russians with the coloured heart,
old undecipherable Thurn-und-Taxis, obsolete triangular Cape of Good
Hopes, Swan Rivers with the Swan, and Guianas with the sailing ship.
Upon all these I looked with the eyes of a fish and the spirit of a
sheep; I think, indeed, I was at times asleep; and it was probably in
one of these moments that I capsized the album, and there fell from the
end of it, on the floor, a considerable number of what I believe to be
called "exchanges."
Here, against all probability, my chance had come to me; for as I
gallantly picked them up, I was struck with the disproportionate amount
of five-sous French stamps. Some one, I reasoned, must write very
regularly from France to the neighbourhood of Stallbridge-le-Carthew.
Could it be Norris? On one stamp I made out an initial C; upon a second
I got as far as CH; beyond which point the postmark used was in every
instance undecipherable. CH, when you consider that about a quarter of
the towns in France begin with "chateau," was an insufficient clue; and
I promptly annexed the plainest of the collection in order to consult
the post-office.
The wretched infant took me in the fact.
"Naughty man, to 'teal my 'tamp!" she cried; and when I would have
brazened it off with a denial, recovered and displayed the stolen
article.
My position was now highly false; and I believe it was in mere pity that
Mrs. Higgs came to my rescue with a welcome proposition. If the
gentleman was really interested in stamps, she said, probably supposing
me a monomaniac on the point, he should see Mr. Denman's album. Mr.
Denman had been collecting forty years, and his collection was said to
be worth a mint of money. "Agnes," she went, on, "if you were a kind
little girl, you would run over to the 'All, tell Mr. Denman there's a
connaisseer in the 'ouse, and ask him if one of the young gentleman
might bring the album down."
"I should like to see his exchanges too," I cried, rising to the
occasion. "I may have some of mine in my pocket-book, and we might
trade."
Half an hour later Mr. Denman arrived himself with a most unconscionable
volume under his arm.
"Ah, sir," he cried, "when I 'eard you was a collector I dropped all.
It's a saying of mine, Mr. Dodsley, that collecting stamps makes all
collectors kin. It's a bond, sir; it creates a bond."
Upon the truth of this I cannot say; but there is no doubt that the
attempt to pass yourself off for a collector falsely creates a
precarious situation.
"Ah, here's the second issue!" I would say, after consulting the legend
at the side. "The pink--no, I mean the mauve--yes, that's the beauty of
this lot. Though of course, as you say," I would hasten to add, "this
yellow on the thin paper is more rare."
Indeed I must certainly have been detected, had I not plied Mr. Denman
in self-defence with his favourite liquor--a port so excellent that it
could never have ripened in the cellar of the Carthew Arms, but must
have been transported, under cloud of night, from the neighbouring
vaults of the great house. At each threat of exposure, and in particular
whenever I was directly challenged for an opinion, I made haste to fill
the butler's glass, and by the time we had got to the exchanges, he was
in a condition in which no stamp-collector need be seriously feared. God
forbid I should hint that he was drunk; he seemed incapable of the
necessary liveliness; but the man's eyes were set, and so long as he was
suffered to talk without interruption, he seemed careless of my heeding
him.
In Mr. Denman's exchanges, as in those of little Agnes, the same
peculiarity was to be remarked,--an undue preponderance of that
despicably common stamp, the French twenty-five centimes. And here
joining them in stealthy review, I found the C and the CH; then
something of an A just following; and then a terminal Y. Here was almost
the whole name spelt out to me; it seemed familiar too; and yet for some
time I could not bridge the imperfection. Then I came upon another
stamp, in which an L was legible before the Y, and in a moment the word
leaped up complete. Chailly, that was the name: Chailly-en-Biere, the
post town of Barbizon--ah, there was the very place for any man to hide
himself--there was the very place for Mr. Norris, who had rambled over
England making sketches--the very place for Goddedaal, who had left a
palette-knife on board the _Flying Scud_. Singular, indeed, that while I
was drifting over England with the shyster, the man we were in quest of
awaited me at my own ultimate destination.
Whether Mr. Denman had shown his album to Bellairs, whether, indeed,
Bellairs could have caught (as I did) this hint from an obliterated
postmark, I shall never know, and it mattered not. We were equal now; my
task at Stallbridge-le-Carthew was accomplished; my interest in
postage-stamps died shamelessly away; the astonished Denman was bowed
out; and, ordering the horse to be put in, I plunged into the study of
the time-table.