He descended the stone stairs to a lower story of the castle, in which
was a crypt-like hall covered by vaulting of exceptional and massive
ingenuity:
‘Built ere the art was known,
By pointed aisle and shafted stalk
The arcades of an alleyed walk
To emulate in stone.’
It happened that the central pillar whereon the vaults rested, reputed
to exhibit some of the most hideous grotesques in England upon its
capital, was within a locked door. Somerset was tempted to ask a
servant for permission to open it, till he heard that the inner room
was temporarily used for plate, the key being kept by Miss De Stancy, at
which he said no more. But afterwards the active housemaid redescended
the stone steps; she entered the crypt with a bunch of keys in one hand,
and in the other a candle, followed by the young lady whom Somerset had
seen on the terrace.
‘I shall be very glad to unlock anything you may want to see. So few
people take any real interest in what is here that we do not leave it
open.’
Somerset expressed his thanks.
Miss De Stancy, a little to his surprise, had a touch of rusticity in
her manner, and that forced absence of reserve which seclusion from
society lends to young women more frequently than not. She seemed glad
to have something to do; the arrival of Somerset was plainly an event
sufficient to set some little mark upon her day. Deception had been
written on the faces of those frowning walls in their implying the
insignificance of Somerset, when he found them tenanted only by this
little woman whose life was narrower than his own.
‘We have not been here long,’ continued Miss De Stancy, ‘and that’s why
everything is in such a dilapidated and confused condition.’
Somerset entered the dark store-closet, thinking less of the ancient
pillar revealed by the light of the candle than what a singular remark
the latter was to come from a member of the family which appeared to
have been there five centuries. He held the candle above his head, and
walked round, and presently Miss De Stancy came back.
‘There is another vault below,’ she said, with the severe face of a
young woman who speaks only because it is absolutely necessary. ‘Perhaps
you are not aware of it? It was the dungeon: if you wish to go
down there too, the servant will show you the way. It is not at all
ornamental: rough, unhewn arches and clumsy piers.’
Somerset thanked her, and would perhaps take advantage of her kind
offer when he had examined the spot where he was, if it were not causing
inconvenience.
‘No; I am sure Paula will be glad to know that anybody thinks it
interesting to go down there--which is more than she does herself.’
Some obvious inquiries were suggested by this, but Somerset said, ‘I
have seen the pictures, and have been much struck by them; partly,’ he
added, with some hesitation, ‘because one or two of them reminded me of
a schoolfellow--I think his name was John Ravensbury?’
‘Yes,’ she said, almost eagerly. ‘He was my cousin!’
‘So that we are not quite strangers?’
‘But he is dead now.... He was unfortunate: he was mostly spoken of
as “that unlucky boy.”... You know, I suppose, Mr. Somerset, why the
paintings are in such a decaying state!--it is owing to the peculiar
treatment of the castle during Mr. Wilkins’s time. He was blind; so one
can imagine he did not appreciate such things as there are here.’
‘The castle has been shut up, you mean?’
‘O yes, for many years. But it will not be so again. We are going to
have the pictures cleaned, and the frames mended, and the old pieces of
furniture put in their proper places. It will be very nice then. Did you
see those in the east closet?’
‘I have only seen those in the gallery.’
‘I will just show you the way to the others, if you would like to see
them?’
They ascended to the room designated the east closet. The paintings
here, mostly of smaller size, were in a better condition, owing to the
fact that they were hung on an inner wall, and had hence been kept free
from damp. Somerset inquired the names and histories of one or two.
‘I really don’t quite know,’ Miss De Stancy replied after some thought.
‘But Paula knows, I am sure. I don’t study them much--I don’t see the
use of it.’ She swung her sunshade, so that it fell open, and turned it
up till it fell shut. ‘I have never been able to give much attention to
ancestors,’ she added, with her eyes on the parasol.
‘These ARE your ancestors?’ he asked, for her position and tone were
matters which perplexed him. In spite of the family likeness and other
details he could scarcely believe this frank and communicative country
maiden to be the modern representative of the De Stancys.
‘O yes, they certainly are,’ she said, laughing. ‘People say I am like
them: I don’t know if I am--well, yes, I know I am: I can see that, of
course, any day. But they have gone from my family, and perhaps it
is just as well that they should have gone.... They are useless,’ she
added, with serene conclusiveness.
‘Ah! they have gone, have they?’
‘Yes, castle and furniture went together: it was long ago--long before
I was born. It doesn’t seem to me as if the place ever belonged to a
relative of mine.’
Somerset corrected his smiling manner to one of solicitude.
‘But you live here, Miss De Stancy?’
‘Yes--a great deal now; though sometimes I go home to sleep.’
‘This is home to you, and not home?’
‘I live here with Paula--my friend: I have not been here long, neither
has she. For the first six months after her father’s death she did not
come here at all.’
They walked on, gazing at the walls, till the young man said: ‘I fear
I may be making some mistake: but I am sure you will pardon my
inquisitiveness this once. WHO is Paula?’
‘Ah, you don’t know! Of course you don’t--local changes don’t get talked
of far away. She is the owner of this castle and estate. My father sold
it when he was quite a young man, years before I was born, and not long
after his father’s death. It was purchased by a man named Wilkins, a
rich man who became blind soon after he had bought it, and never lived
here; so it was left uncared for.’
She went out upon the terrace; and without exactly knowing why, Somerset
followed.
‘Your friend--’
‘Has only come here quite recently. She is away from home to-day.... It
was very sad,’ murmured the young girl thoughtfully. ‘No sooner had
Mr. Power bought it of the representatives of Mr. Wilkins--almost
immediately indeed--than he died from a chill caught after a warm bath.
On account of that she did not take possession for several months; and
even now she has only had a few rooms prepared as a temporary residence
till she can think what to do. Poor thing, it is sad to be left alone!’
Somerset heedfully remarked that he thought he recognized that name
Power, as one he had seen lately, somewhere or other.
‘Perhaps you have been hearing of her father. Do you know what he was?’
Somerset did not.
She looked across the distant country, where undulations of dark-green
foliage formed a prospect extending for miles. And as she watched, and
Somerset’s eyes, led by hers, watched also, a white streak of steam,
thin as a cotton thread, could be discerned ploughing that green
expanse. ‘Her father made THAT,’ Miss De Stancy said, directing her
finger towards the object.
‘That what?’
‘That railway. He was Mr. John Power, the great railway contractor. And
it was through making the railway that he discovered this castle--the
railway was diverted a little on its account.’
‘A clash between ancient and modern.’
‘Yes, but he took an interest in the locality long before he purchased
the estate. And he built the people a chapel on a bit of freehold he
bought for them. He was a great Nonconformist, a staunch Baptist up to
the day of his death--a much stauncher one,’ she said significantly,
‘than his daughter is.’
‘Ah, I begin to spot her!’
‘You have heard about the baptism?’
‘I know something of it.’
‘Her conduct has given mortal offence to the scattered people of the
denomination that her father was at such pains to unite into a body.’
Somerset could guess the remainder, and in thinking over the
circumstances did not state what he had seen. She added, as if
disappointed at his want of curiosity--
‘She would not submit to the rite when it came to the point. The water
looked so cold and dark and fearful, she said, that she could not do it
to save her life.’
‘Surely she should have known her mind before she had gone so far?’
Somerset’s words had a condemnatory form, but perhaps his actual feeling
was that if Miss Power had known her own mind, she would have not
interested him half so much.
‘Paula’s own mind had nothing to do with it!’ said Miss De Stancy,
warming up to staunch partizanship in a moment. ‘It was all undertaken
by her from a mistaken sense of duty. It was her father’s dying wish
that she should make public profession of her--what do you call it--of
the denomination she belonged to, as soon as she felt herself fit to
do it: so when he was dead she tried and tried, and didn’t get any more
fit; and at last she screwed herself up to the pitch, and thought she
must undergo the ceremony out of pure reverence for his memory. It was
very short-sighted of her father to put her in such a position: because
she is now very sad, as she feels she can never try again after such a
sermon as was delivered against her.’
Somerset presumed that Miss Power need not have heard this Knox or
Bossuet of hers if she had chosen to go away?
‘She did not hear it in the face of the congregation; but from the
vestry. She told me some of it when she reached home. Would you believe
it, the man who preached so bitterly is a tenant of hers? I said,
“Surely you will turn him out of his house?”--But she answered, in her
calm, deep, nice way, that she supposed he had a perfect right to preach
against her, that she could not in justice molest him at all. I wouldn’t
let him stay if the house were mine. But she has often before allowed
him to scold her from the pulpit in a smaller way--once it was about an
expensive dress she had worn--not mentioning her by name, you know; but
all the people are quite aware that it is meant for her, because only
one person of her wealth or position belongs to the Baptist body in this
county.’
Somerset was looking at the homely affectionate face of the little
speaker. ‘You are her good friend, I am sure,’ he remarked.
She looked into the distant air with tacit admission of the impeachment.
‘So would you be if you knew her,’ she said; and a blush slowly rose
to her cheek, as if the person spoken of had been a lover rather than a
friend.
‘But you are not a Baptist any more than I?’ continued Somerset.
‘O no. And I never knew one till I knew Paula. I think they are very
nice; though I sometimes wish Paula was not one, but the religion of
reasonable persons.’
They walked on, and came opposite to where the telegraph emerged from
the trees, leapt over the parapet, and up through the loophole into the
interior.
‘That looks strange in such a building,’ said her companion.
‘Miss Power had it put up to know the latest news from town. It costs
six pounds a mile. She can work it herself, beautifully: and so can
I, but not so well. It was a great delight to learn. Miss Power was
so interested at first that she was sending messages from morning till
night. And did you hear the new clock?’
‘Is it a new one?--Yes, I heard it.’
‘The old one was quite worn out; so Paula has put it in the cellar, and
had this new one made, though it still strikes on the old bell. It tells
the seconds, but the old one, which my very great grandfather erected in
the eighteenth century, only told the hours. Paula says that time,
being so much more valuable now, must of course be cut up into smaller
pieces.’
‘She does not appear to be much impressed by the spirit of this ancient
pile.’
Miss De Stancy shook her head too slightly to express absolute negation.
‘Do you wish to come through this door?’ she asked. ‘There is a singular
chimney-piece in the kitchen, which is considered a unique example of
its kind, though I myself don’t know enough about it to have an opinion
on the subject.’
When they had looked at the corbelled chimney-piece they returned to the
hall, where his eye was caught anew by a large map that he had conned
for some time when alone, without being able to divine the locality
represented. It was called ‘General Plan of the Town,’ and showed
streets and open spaces corresponding with nothing he had seen in the
county.
‘Is that town here?’ he asked.
‘It is not anywhere but in Paula’s brain; she has laid it out from her
own design. The site is supposed to be near our railway station, just
across there, where the land belongs to her. She is going to grant cheap
building leases, and develop the manufacture of pottery.’
‘Pottery--how very practical she must be!’
‘O no! no!’ replied Miss De Stancy, in tones showing how supremely
ignorant he must be of Miss Power’s nature if he characterized her in
those terms. ‘It is GREEK pottery she means--Hellenic pottery she tells
me to call it, only I forget. There is beautiful clay at the place,
her father told her: he found it in making the railway tunnel. She has
visited the British Museum, continental museums, and Greece, and Spain:
and hopes to imitate the old fictile work in time, especially the Greek
of the best period, four hundred years after Christ, or before Christ--I
forget which it was Paula said.... O no, she is not practical in the
sense you mean, at all.’
‘A mixed young lady, rather.’
Miss De Stancy appeared unable to settle whether this new definition of
her dear friend should be accepted as kindly, or disallowed as decidedly
sarcastic. ‘You would like her if you knew her,’ she insisted, in half
tones of pique; after which she walked on a few steps.
‘I think very highly of her,’ said Somerset.
‘And I! And yet at one time I could never have believed that I should
have been her friend. One is prejudiced at first against people who are
reported to have such differences in feeling, associations, and habit,
as she seemed to have from mine. But it has not stood in the least in
the way of our liking each other. I believe the difference makes us the
more united.’
‘It says a great deal for the liberality of both,’ answered Somerset
warmly. ‘Heaven send us more of the same sort of people! They are not
too numerous at present.’
As this remark called for no reply from Miss De Stancy, she took
advantage of an opportunity to leave him alone, first repeating her
permission to him to wander where he would. He walked about for some
time, sketch-book in hand, but was conscious that his interest did not
lie much in the architecture. In passing along the corridor of an
upper floor he observed an open door, through which was visible a room
containing one of the finest Renaissance cabinets he had ever seen. It
was impossible, on close examination, to do justice to it in a hasty
sketch; it would be necessary to measure every line if he would bring
away anything of utility to him as a designer. Deciding to reserve this
gem for another opportunity he cast his eyes round the room and blushed
a little. Without knowing it he had intruded into the absent Miss
Paula’s own particular set of chambers, including a boudoir and sleeping
apartment. On the tables of the sitting-room were most of the popular
papers and periodicals that he knew, not only English, but from Paris,
Italy, and America. Satirical prints, though they did not unduly
preponderate, were not wanting. Besides these there were books from a
London circulating library, paper-covered light literature in French and
choice Italian, and the latest monthly reviews; while between the two
windows stood the telegraph apparatus whose wire had been the means of
bringing him hither.
These things, ensconced amid so much of the old and hoary, were as if
a stray hour from the nineteenth century had wandered like a butterfly
into the thirteenth, and lost itself there.
The door between this ante-chamber and the sleeping-room stood open.
Without venturing to cross the threshold, for he felt that he would be
abusing hospitality to go so far, Somerset looked in for a moment. It
was a pretty place, and seemed to have been hastily fitted up. In a
corner, overhung by a blue and white canopy of silk, was a little cot,
hardly large enough to impress the character of bedroom upon the old
place. Upon a counterpane lay a parasol and a silk neckerchief. On the
other side of the room was a tall mirror of startling newness, draped
like the bedstead, in blue and white. Thrown at random upon the floor
was a pair of satin slippers that would have fitted Cinderella. A
dressing-gown lay across a settee; and opposite, upon a small easy-chair
in the same blue and white livery, were a Bible, the Baptist Magazine,
Wardlaw on Infant Baptism, Walford’s County Families, and the Court
Journal. On and over the mantelpiece were nicknacks of various
descriptions, and photographic portraits of the artistic, scientific,
and literary celebrities of the day.
A dressing-room lay beyond; but, becoming conscious that his study
of ancient architecture would hardly bear stretching further in that
direction, Mr. Somerset retreated to the outside, obliviously passing by
the gem of Renaissance that had led him in.
‘She affects blue,’ he was thinking. ‘Then she is fair.’
On looking up, some time later, at the new clock that told the seconds,
he found that the hours at his disposal for work had flown without his
having transferred a single feature of the building or furniture to his
sketch-book. Before leaving he sent in for permission to come again, and
then walked across the fields to the inn at Sleeping-Green, reflecting
less upon Miss De Stancy (so little force of presence had she possessed)
than upon the modern flower in a mediaeval flower-pot whom Miss De
Stancy’s information had brought before him, and upon the incongruities
that were daily shaping themselves in the world under the great modern
fluctuations of classes and creeds.
Somerset was still full of the subject when he arrived at the end of
his walk, and he fancied that some loungers at the bar of the inn were
discussing the heroine of the chapel-scene just at the moment of his
entry. On this account, when the landlord came to clear away the dinner,
Somerset was led to inquire of him, by way of opening a conversation, if
there were many Baptists in the neighbourhood.
The landlord (who was a serious man on the surface, though he
occasionally smiled beneath) replied that there were a great many--far
more than the average in country parishes. ‘Even here, in my house,
now,’ he added, ‘when volks get a drop of drink into ‘em, and their
feelings rise to a zong, some man will strike up a hymn by preference.
But I find no fault with that; for though ‘tis hardly human nature to be
so calculating in yer cups, a feller may as well sing to gain something
as sing to waste.’
‘How do you account for there being so many?’
‘Well, you zee, sir, some says one thing, and some another; I think they
does it to save the expense of a Christian burial for ther children. Now
there’s a poor family out in Long Lane--the husband used to smite for
Jimmy More the blacksmith till ‘a hurt his arm--they’d have no less than
eleven children if they’d not been lucky t’other way, and buried five
when they were three or four months old. Now every one of them children
was given to the sexton in a little box that any journeyman could nail
together in a quarter of an hour, and he buried ‘em at night for a
shilling a head; whereas ‘twould have cost a couple of pounds each if
they’d been christened at church.... Of course there’s the new lady
at the castle, she’s a chapel member, and that may make a little
difference; but she’s not been here long enough to show whether ‘twill
be worth while to join ‘em for the profit o’t or whether ‘twill not. No
doubt if it turns out that she’s of a sort to relieve volks in trouble,
more will join her set than belongs to it already. “Any port in a
storm,” of course, as the saying is.’
‘As for yourself, you are a Churchman at present, I presume?’
‘Yes; not but I was a Methodist once--ay, for a length of time. ‘Twas
owing to my taking a house next door to a chapel; so that what with
hearing the organ bizz like a bee through the wall, and what with
finding it saved umbrellas on wet Zundays, I went over to that faith for
two years--though I believe I dropped money by it--I wouldn’t be the man
to say so if I hadn’t. Howsomever, when I moved into this house I turned
back again to my old religion. Faith, I don’t zee much difference: be
you one, or be you t’other, you’ve got to get your living.’
‘The De Stancys, of course, have not much influence here now, for that,
or any other thing?’
‘O no, no; not any at all. They be very low upon ground, and always
will be now, I suppose. It was thoughted worthy of being recorded in
history--you’ve read it, sir, no doubt?’
‘Not a word.’
‘O, then, you shall. I’ve got the history zomewhere. ‘Twas gay manners
that did it. The only bit of luck they have had of late years is
Miss Power’s taking to little Miss De Stancy, and making her her
company-keeper. I hope ‘twill continue.’
That the two daughters of these antipodean families should be such
intimate friends was a situation which pleased Somerset as much as it
did the landlord. It was an engaging instance of that human progress
on which he had expended many charming dreams in the years when poetry,
theology, and the reorganization of society had seemed matters of more
importance to him than a profession which should help him to a big house
and income, a fair Deiopeia, and a lovely progeny. When he was alone he
poured out a glass of wine, and silently drank the healths of the two
generous-minded young women who, in this lonely district, had found
sweet communion a necessity of life, and by pure and instinctive good
sense had broken down a barrier which men thrice their age and repute
would probably have felt it imperative to maintain. But perhaps this was
premature: the omnipotent Miss Power’s character--practical or ideal,
politic or impulsive--he as yet knew nothing of; and giving over
reasoning from insufficient data he lapsed into mere conjecture.