"Thou vacant house, moated about by peace."
STEPHEN PHILLIPS.
Mr. Stirling and his nephew were standing in the long picture gallery of
Hulver, looking at the portrait of Roger Manvers of Dunwich, who
inherited Hulver in Charles the Second's time.
"His grandmother, Anne de la Pole, that pinched-looking old woman in the
ruff, would never have left it to her daughter's son if she had had
anyone else to leave it to," said Mr. Stirling. "She built Hulver in the
shape of an E in honour of her kinswoman Queen Elizabeth. That prim
little picture below her portrait shows the house when it was new. It
must have looked very much the same then as it does now, except that the
hollies were all trimmed to fantastic shapes. Look at the birds and
domes and crowns."
"I like them better as they are now," said his nephew, a weak-looking
youth with projecting teeth, his spectacled eyes turning from the
picture to the renowned avenue of hollies, now stooping and splitting in
extreme old age.
"I have often wondered what homely Roger Manvers, the burgess of
Dunwich, must have felt when old Anne actually left him this place after
her only son was drowned. I can so well imagine him riding over here, a
careful, sturdy man, not unlike the present Roger Manvers, and having a
look at his inheritance, and debating with himself whether he would
leave Dunwich and settle here."
"And did he?"
"Yes. The sea decided that for him. A year later it swept away the town
of Dunwich as far as Maison Dieu. And it swept away Roger Manvers'
pleasant house, Montjoy. And he moved across the borders of Suffolk to
Lowshire with all he had been able to save from his old home, and
established himself here. I like the way he has hung those
wooden-looking pictures of his burgess forbears in their furred cloaks
and chains among the brocaded D'Urbans and De la Poles. Roger Manvers
tells me that it was old Roger who first took the property in hand, and
heightened the Kirby dam, and drained Mendlesham Marsh, and built the
Riff almshouses. The De la Poles had never troubled themselves about
such matters. And to think of that wretched creature the present owner
tearing the old place limb from limb, throwing it from him with both
hands! It makes me miserable. I vow I will never come here again."
The caretaker had unshuttered a few among the long line of windows, and
the airlessness, the ghostly outlines of the muffled furniture, the
dust which lay grey on everything, the faint smell of dry rot, all
struck at Mr. Stirling's sensitive spirit and oppressed him. He turned
impatiently to the windows.
If it is a misfortune to be stout, even if one is tall, and to be short,
even if one is slim, and to be fifty, even if one is of a cheerful
temperament, and to be bald, even if one has a well-shaped head, then
Mr. Stirling, who was short and stout, and bald as well, and fifty into
the bargain, was somewhat heavily handicapped as to his outer man. But
one immense compensation was his for an unattractive personality. He
never gave it a moment's thought, and consequently no one else did
either. His body was no more than a travelling-suit to him. It was
hardy, durable, he was comfortable in it, grateful to it, on good terms
with it, worked it hard, and used it to the uttermost. That it was not
more ornamental than a Gladstone bag did not trouble him.
"Put it all in a book," said his nephew absently, whose eyes were glued
to the pictures. "Put it in a book, Uncle Reggie."
Mr. Stirling had long since ceased to be annoyed by a remark which is
about as pleasant to a writer as a suggestion of embezzlement is to a
bank manager.
"Have you seen enough, Geoff? Shall we go?" he said.
"Wait a bit. Where's the Raeburn?"
"'Highland Mary'? Sold. A pork butcher in America bought her for a
fabulous sum. I believe Dick Manvers lost the whole of it on one race.
If there is coin in the next world, he will play ducks and drakes with
it upon the glassy sea."
"Sold! Good God!" said his nephew, staring horrorstruck at his uncle.
"How awful! Pictures ought not to belong to individuals. The nation
ought to have them." He seemed staggered. "Awful!" he said again. "What
a tragedy!"
"To my mind, _that_ is more tragic," said Mr. Stirling bluntly, pointing
to the window.
In the deserted garden, near the sundial, Janey was standing, a small
nondescript figure in a mushroom hat, picking snap-dragons. The gardens
had been allowed to run wild for lack of funds to keep them in order,
and had become beautiful exceedingly in consequence. The rose-coloured
snap-dragons and amber lupins were struggling to hold their own in their
stone-edged beds against an invasion of willow weed. A convolvulus had
climbed to the sundial, wrapping it round and round, and had laid its
bold white trumpet flowers on the leaded disk itself. Janey had not
disturbed it. Perhaps she thought that no one but herself sought to see
the time there. The snap-dragons rose in a great blot of straggling rose
and white and wine-red round her feet. She was picking them slowly, as
one whose mind was not following her hand. At a little distance Harry
was lying at his full length on the flags beside the round stone-edged
fountain, blowing assiduously at a little boat which was refusing to
cross. In the midst of the water Cellini's world-famed water nymph
reined in her dolphins.
A yellow stone-crop had found a foothold on the pedestal of the group,
and flaunted its raw gold in the vivid sunshine amid the weather-bitten
grey stone, making a fantastic broken reflection where Harry's boat
rippled the water. And behind Janey's figure, and behind the reflection
of the fountain in the water, was the cool, sinister background of the
circular yew hedge, with the heather pink of the willow weed crowding up
against it.
The young man gasped.
"But it's--it's a picture," he said. And then, after a moment, he added,
"Everything except the woman. Of course she won't do."
Geoff's curiously innocent prominent eyes were fixed. His vacant face
was rapt. His uncle looked sympathetically at him. He knew what it was
to receive an idea "like Dian's kiss, unasked, unsought."
The caretaker, whose tea-time was already delayed, coughed discreetly in
the hall.
"Come, Geoff," said Mr. Stirling, remorsefully but determinedly, taking
his nephew's arm. "We can't remain here for ever."
"It's all right except the woman," said Geoff, not stirring. "Every
scrap. It hits you in the eye. Look how the lichen has got at the
dolphins. All splendour and desolation, and the yew hedge like a funeral
procession behind. Not a bit of sky above them: the only sky reflected
in the water." His voice had sunk to a whisper.
"When you are my age," said Mr. Stirling, "it is just the woman, not
some fanciful angel with a Grecian profile and abnormally long legs, but
that particular little brown-haired creature with her short face whom
you brush aside, who makes the tragedy of the picture. When I think of
what that small courageous personage endures day by day, what her daily
life must be--but what's the use of talking? Twenty can't hear a word
fifty is saying--isn't meant to. Wake up, Geoff. There is another lady
in the case. It is past the caretaker's tea-time. You _must_ learn to
consider the fair sex, my dear boy. We are keeping her from her tea.
Look, Miss Manvers has seen us. We'll join her in the gardens."
One of Mr. Stirling's pleasantest qualities was that he never remembered
he was a man of letters. Consequently it was not necessary for him to
show that he was still a boy at heart and that he could elaborately
forget that he was a distinguished novelist by joining in sailing
Harry's boat. Harry scrambled to his feet and shook hands with both men
at Janey's bidding, and then he looked wistfully at Geoff as a possible
playfellow and smiled at him, an ingratiating smile. But Geoff at
twenty, two years younger than Harry, Geoff the artist, the cultured
inquirer after famous Raeburns, the appraiser of broken reflections and
relative values, only gaped vacantly at him, hands in pockets, without
seeing him.
Harry puffed out an enormous sigh and looked back at his boat, and then
he clapped his hands suddenly and ran to meet Annette, who was coming
slowly towards them across the grass.
Mr. Stirling's eyes and Janey's followed him, and Mr. Stirling felt
rather than saw that Janey winced as she looked gravely at the
approaching figure.
Geoff's hat was at the back of his sugar-cone of a head. His mild face
was transfixed.
"Mrs. Le Geyt," he said, below his breath.