V.

The next morning Somerset was again at the castle. He passed some

interval on the walls before encountering Miss De Stancy, whom at last

he observed going towards a pony-carriage that waited near the door.

A smile gained strength upon her face at his approach, and she was the

first to speak. ‘I am sorry Miss Power has not returned,’ she said, and

accounted for that lady’s absence by her distress at the event of two

evenings earlier.

‘But I have driven over to my father’s--Sir William De Stancy’s--house

this morning,’ she went on. ‘And on mentioning your name to him, I found

he knew it quite well. You will, will you not, forgive my ignorance in

having no better knowledge of the elder Mr. Somerset’s works than a dim

sense of his fame as a painter? But I was going to say that my father

would much like to include you in his personal acquaintance, and wishes

me to ask if you will give him the pleasure of lunching with him to-day.

My cousin John, whom you once knew, was a great favourite of his, and

used to speak of you sometimes. It will be so kind if you can come. My

father is an old man, out of society, and he would be glad to hear the

news of town.’

Somerset said he was glad to find himself among friends where he had

only expected strangers; and promised to come that day, if she would

tell him the way.

That she could easily do. The short way was across that glade he saw

there--then over the stile into the wood, following the path till it

came out upon the turnpike-road. He would then be almost close to the

house. The distance was about two miles and a half. But if he thought it

too far for a walk, she would drive on to the town, where she had been

going when he came, and instead of returning straight to her father’s

would come back and pick him up.

It was not at all necessary, he thought. He was a walker, and could find

the path.

At this moment a servant came to tell Miss De Stancy that the telegraph

was calling her.

‘Ah--it is lucky that I was not gone again!’ she exclaimed. ‘John seldom

reads it right if I am away.’

It now seemed quite in the ordinary course that, as a friend of her

father’s, he should accompany her to the instrument. So up they went

together, and immediately on reaching it she applied her ear to the

instrument, and began to gather the message. Somerset fancied himself

like a person overlooking another’s letter, and moved aside.

‘It is no secret,’ she said, smiling. ‘“Paula to Charlotte,” it begins.’

‘That’s very pretty.’

‘O--and it is about--you,’ murmured Miss De Stancy.

‘Me?’ The architect blushed a little.

She made no answer, and the machine went on with its story. There was

something curious in watching this utterance about himself, under his

very nose, in language unintelligible to him. He conjectured whether it

were inquiry, praise, or blame, with a sense that it might reasonably

be the latter, as the result of his surreptitious look into that blue

bedroom, possibly observed and reported by some servant of the house.

‘“Direct that every facility be given to Mr. Somerset to visit any

part of the castle he may wish to see. On my return I shall be glad to

welcome him as the acquaintance of your relatives. I have two of his

father’s pictures.”’

‘Dear me, the plot thickens,’ he said, as Miss De Stancy announced the

words. ‘How could she know about me?’

‘I sent a message to her this morning when I saw you crossing the park

on your way here--telling her that Mr. Somerset, son of the Academician,

was making sketches of the castle, and that my father knew something of

you. That’s her answer.’

‘Where are the pictures by my father that she has purchased?’

‘O, not here--at least, not unpacked.’

Miss de Stancy then left him to proceed on her journey to Markton (so

the nearest little town was called), informing him that she would be

at her father’s house to receive him at two o’clock. Just about one he

closed his sketch-book, and set out in the direction she had indicated.

At the entrance to the wood a man was at work pulling down a rotten gate

that bore on its battered lock the initials ‘W. De S.’ and erecting a

new one whose ironmongery exhibited the letters ‘P. P.’

The warmth of the summer noon did not inconveniently penetrate the dense

masses of foliage which now began to overhang the path, except in spots

where a ruthless timber-felling had taken place in previous years for

the purpose of sale. It was that particular half-hour of the day in

which the birds of the forest prefer walking to flying; and there being

no wind, the hopping of the smallest songster over the dead leaves

reached his ear from behind the undergrowth. The track had originally

been a well-kept winding drive, but a deep carpet of moss and leaves

overlaid it now, though the general outline still remained to show that

its curves had been set out with as much care as those of a lawn walk,

and the gradient made easy for carriages where the natural slopes were

great. Felled trunks occasionally lay across it, and alongside were the

hollow and fungous boles of trees sawn down in long past years.

After a walk of three-quarters of an hour he came to another gate, where

the letters ‘P. P.’ again supplanted the historical ‘W. De S.’ Climbing

over this, he found himself on a highway which presently dipped down

towards the town of Markton, a place he had never yet seen. It appeared

in the distance as a quiet little borough of a few thousand inhabitants;

and, without the town boundary on the side he was approaching, stood

half-a-dozen genteel and modern houses, of the detached kind usually

found in such suburbs. On inquiry, Sir William De Stancy’s residence was

indicated as one of these.

It was almost new, of streaked brick, having a central door, and a small

bay window on each side to light the two front parlours. A little

lawn spread its green surface in front, divided from the road by iron

railings, the low line of shrubs immediately within them being coated

with pallid dust from the highway. On the neat piers of the neat

entrance gate were chiselled the words ‘Myrtle Villa.’ Genuine roadside

respectability sat smiling on every brick of the eligible dwelling.

Perhaps that which impressed Somerset more than the mushroom modernism

of Sir William De Stancy’s house was the air of healthful cheerfulness

which pervaded it. He was shown in by a neat maidservant in black gown

and white apron, a canary singing a welcome from a cage in the shadow

of the window, the voices of crowing cocks coming over the chimneys from

somewhere behind, and the sun and air riddling the house everywhere.

A dwelling of those well-known and popular dimensions which allow the

proceedings in the kitchen to be distinctly heard in the parlours, it

was so planned that a raking view might be obtained through it from the

front door to the end of the back garden. The drawing-room furniture

was comfortable, in the walnut-and-green-rep style of some years ago.

Somerset had expected to find his friends living in an old house with

remnants of their own antique furniture, and he hardly knew whether he

ought to meet them with a smile or a gaze of condolence. His doubt

was terminated, however, by the cheerful and tripping entry of Miss De

Stancy, who had returned from her drive to Markton; and in a few more

moments Sir William came in from the garden.

He was an old man of tall and spare build, with a considerable stoop,

his glasses dangling against his waistcoat-buttons, and the front

corners of his coat-tails hanging lower than the hinderparts, so that

they swayed right and left as he walked. He nervously apologized to his

visitor for having kept him waiting.

‘I am so glad to see you,’ he said, with a mild benevolence of tone,

as he retained Somerset’s hand for a moment or two; ‘partly for your

father’s sake, whom I met more than once in my younger days, before he

became so well-known; and also because I learn that you were a friend of

my poor nephew John Ravensbury.’ He looked over his shoulder to see if

his daughter were within hearing, and, with the impulse of the solitary

to make a confidence, continued in a low tone: ‘She, poor girl, was

to have married John: his death was a sad blow to her and to all of

us.--Pray take a seat, Mr. Somerset.’

The reverses of fortune which had brought Sir William De Stancy to

this comfortable cottage awakened in Somerset a warmer emotion than

curiosity, and he sat down with a heart as responsive to each speech

uttered as if it had seriously concerned himself, while his host gave

some words of information to his daughter on the trifling events that

had marked the morning just passed; such as that the cow had got out of

the paddock into Miss Power’s field, that the smith who had promised

to come and look at the kitchen range had not arrived, that two wasps’

nests had been discovered in the garden bank, and that Nick Jones’s baby

had fallen downstairs. Sir William had large cavernous arches to his

eye-sockets, reminding the beholder of the vaults in the castle he

once had owned. His hands were long and almost fleshless, each knuckle

showing like a bamboo-joint from beneath his coat-sleeves, which were

small at the elbow and large at the wrist. All the colour had gone from

his beard and locks, except in the case of a few isolated hairs of the

former, which retained dashes of their original shade at sudden points

in their length, revealing that all had once been raven black.

But to study a man to his face for long is a species of ill-nature which

requires a colder temperament, or at least an older heart, than the

architect’s was at that time. Incurious unobservance is the true

attitude of cordiality, and Somerset blamed himself for having fallen

into an act of inspection even briefly. He would wait for his host’s

conversation, which would doubtless be of the essence of historical

romance.

‘The favourable Bank-returns have made the money-market much easier

to-day, as I learn?’ said Sir William.

‘O, have they?’ said Somerset. ‘Yes, I suppose they have.’

‘And something is meant by this unusual quietness in Foreign stocks

since the late remarkable fluctuations,’ insisted the old man. ‘Is the

current of speculation quite arrested, or is it but a temporary lull?’

Somerset said he was afraid he could not give an opinion, and entered

very lamely into the subject; but Sir William seemed to find sufficient

interest in his own thoughts to do away with the necessity of acquiring

fresh impressions from other people’s replies; for often after putting a

question he looked on the floor, as if the subject were at an end. Lunch

was now ready, and when they were in the dining-room Miss De Stancy,

to introduce a topic of more general interest, asked Somerset if he had

noticed the myrtle on the lawn?

Somerset had noticed it, and thought he had never seen such a full-blown

one in the open air before. His eyes were, however, resting at the

moment on the only objects at all out of the common that the dining-room

contained. One was a singular glass case over the fireplace, within

which were some large mediaeval door-keys, black with rust and age; and

the others were two full-length oil portraits in the costume of the end

of the last century--so out of all proportion to the size of the room

they occupied that they almost reached to the floor.

‘Those originally belonged to the castle yonder,’ said Miss De Stancy,

or Charlotte, as her father called her, noticing Somerset’s glance at

the keys. ‘They used to unlock the principal entrance-doors, which were

knocked to pieces in the civil wars. New doors were placed afterwards,

but the old keys were never given up, and have been preserved by us ever

since.’

‘They are quite useless--mere lumber--particularly to me,’ said Sir

William.

‘And those huge paintings were a present from Paula,’ she continued.

‘They are portraits of my great-grandfather and mother. Paula would give

all the old family pictures back to me if we had room for them; but they

would fill the house to the ceilings.’

Sir William was impatient of the subject. ‘What is the utility of

such accumulations?’ he asked. ‘Their originals are but clay now--mere

forgotten dust, not worthy a moment’s inquiry or reflection at this

distance of time. Nothing can retain the spirit, and why should we

preserve the shadow of the form?--London has been very full this year,

sir, I have been told?’

‘It has,’ said Somerset, and he asked if they had been up that season.

It was plain that the matter with which Sir William De Stancy least

cared to occupy himself before visitors was the history of his own

family, in which he was followed with more simplicity by his daughter

Charlotte.

‘No,’ said the baronet. ‘One might be led to think there is a fatality

which prevents it. We make arrangements to go to town almost every year,

to meet some old friend who combines the rare conditions of being

in London with being mindful of me; but he has always died or gone

elsewhere before the event has taken place.... But with a disposition to

be happy, it is neither this place nor the other that can render us the

reverse. In short each man’s happiness depends upon himself, and his

ability for doing with little.’ He turned more particularly to Somerset,

and added with an impressive smile: ‘I hope you cultivate the art of

doing with little?’

Somerset said that he certainly did cultivate that art, partly because

he was obliged to.

‘Ah--you don’t mean to the extent that I mean. The world has not yet

learned the riches of frugality, says, I think, Cicero, somewhere; and

nobody can testify to the truth of that remark better than I. If a man

knows how to spend less than his income, however small that may

be, why--he has the philosopher’s stone.’ And Sir William looked in

Somerset’s face with frugality written in every pore of his own, as much

as to say, ‘And here you see one who has been a living instance of those

principles from his youth up.’

Somerset soon found that whatever turn the conversation took, Sir

William invariably reverted to this topic of frugality. When luncheon

was over he asked his visitor to walk with him into the garden, and no

sooner were they alone than he continued: ‘Well, Mr. Somerset, you are

down here sketching architecture for professional purposes. Nothing can

be better: you are a young man, and your art is one in which there are

innumerable chances.’

‘I had begun to think they were rather few,’ said Somerset.

‘No, they are numerous enough: the difficulty is to find out where they

lie. It is better to know where your luck lies than where your talent

lies: that’s an old man’s opinion.’

‘I’ll remember it,’ said Somerset.

‘And now give me some account of your new clubs, new hotels, and new

men.... What I was going to add, on the subject of finding out where

your luck lies, is that nobody is so unfortunate as not to have a lucky

star in some direction or other. Perhaps yours is at the antipodes; if

so, go there. All I say is, discover your lucky star.’

‘I am looking for it.’

‘You may be able to do two things; one well, the other but

indifferently, and yet you may have more luck in the latter. Then stick

to that one, and never mind what you can do best. Your star lies there.’

‘There I am not quite at one with you, Sir William.’

‘You should be. Not that I mean to say that luck lies in any one place

long, or at any one person’s door. Fortune likes new faces, and your

wisdom lies in bringing your acquisitions into safety while her favour

lasts. To do that you must make friends in her time of smiles--make

friends with people, wherever you find them. My daughter has

unconsciously followed that maxim. She has struck up a warm friendship

with our neighbour, Miss Power, at the castle. We are diametrically

different from her in associations, traditions, ideas, religion--she

comes of a violent dissenting family among other things--but I say to

Charlotte what I say to you: win affection and regard wherever you can,

and accommodate yourself to the times. I put nothing in the way of their

intimacy, and wisely so, for by this so many pleasant hours are added to

the sum total vouchsafed to humanity.’

It was quite late in the afternoon when Somerset took his leave. Miss

De Stancy did not return to the castle that night, and he walked through

the wood as he had come, feeling that he had been talking with a man

of simple nature, who flattered his own understanding by devising

Machiavellian theories after the event, to account for any spontaneous

action of himself or his daughter, which might otherwise seem eccentric

or irregular.

Before Somerset reached the inn he was overtaken by a slight shower, and

on entering the house he walked into the general room, where there was a

fire, and stood with one foot on the fender. The landlord was talking to

some guest who sat behind a screen; and, probably because Somerset

had been seen passing the window, and was known to be sketching at the

castle, the conversation turned on Sir William De Stancy.

‘I have often noticed,’ observed the landlord, ‘that volks who have come

to grief, and quite failed, have the rules how to succeed in life more

at their vingers’ ends than volks who have succeeded. I assure you that

Sir William, so full as he is of wise maxims, never acted upon a wise

maxim in his life, until he had lost everything, and it didn’t matter

whether he was wise or no. You know what he was in his young days, of

course?’

‘No, I don’t,’ said the invisible stranger.

‘O, I thought everybody knew poor Sir William’s history. He was the

star, as I may zay, of good company forty years ago. I remember him in

the height of his jinks, as I used to zee him when I was a very little

boy, and think how great and wonderful he was. I can seem to zee now

the exact style of his clothes; white hat, white trousers, white silk

handkerchief; and his jonnick face, as white as his clothes with keeping

late hours. There was nothing black about him but his hair and his

eyes--he wore no beard at that time--and they were black as slooes. The

like of his coming on the race-course was never seen there afore nor

since. He drove his ikkipage hisself; and it was always hauled by four

beautiful white horses, and two outriders rode in harness bridles. There

was a groom behind him, and another at the rubbing-post, all in livery

as glorious as New Jerusalem. What a ‘stablishment he kept up at that

time! I can mind him, sir, with thirty race-horses in training at

once, seventeen coach-horses, twelve hunters at his box t’other side of

London, four chargers at Budmouth, and ever so many hacks.’

‘And he lost all by his racing speculations?’ the stranger observed;

and Somerset fancied that the voice had in it something more than the

languid carelessness of a casual sojourner.

‘Partly by that, partly in other ways. He spent a mint o’ money in

a wild project of founding a watering-place; and sunk thousands in a

useless silver mine; so ‘twas no wonder that the castle named after him

vell into other hands.... The way it was done was curious. Mr. Wilkins,

who was the first owner after it went from Sir William, actually sat

down as a guest at his table, and got up as the owner. He took off, at

a round sum, everything saleable, furniture, plate, pictures, even the

milk and butter in the dairy. That’s how the pictures and furniture

come to be in the castle still; wormeaten rubbish zome o’ it, and hardly

worth moving.’

‘And off went the baronet to Myrtle Villa?’

‘O no! he went away for many years. ‘Tis quite lately, since his

illness, that he came to that little place, in zight of the stone walls

that were the pride of his forefathers.’

‘From what I hear, he has not the manner of a broken-hearted man?’

‘Not at all. Since that illness he has been happy, as you see him: no

pride, quite calm and mild; at new moon quite childish. ‘Tis that makes

him able to live there; before he was so ill he couldn’t bear a zight of

the place, but since then he is happy nowhere else, and never leaves

the parish further than to drive once a week to Markton. His head won’t

stand society nowadays, and he lives quite lonely as you zee, only

zeeing his daughter, or his son whenever he comes home, which is not

often. They say that if his brain hadn’t softened a little he would ha’

died--‘twas that saved his life.’

‘What’s this I hear about his daughter? Is she really hired companion to

the new owner?’

‘Now that’s a curious thing again, these two girls being so fond of one

another; one of ‘em a dissenter, and all that, and t’other a De Stancy.

O no, not hired exactly, but she mostly lives with Miss Power, and goes

about with her, and I dare say Miss Power makes it wo’th her while.

One can’t move a step without the other following; though judging by

ordinary volks you’d think ‘twould be a cat-and-dog friendship rather.’

‘But ‘tis not?’

‘’Tis not; they be more like lovers than maid and maid. Miss Power is

looked up to by little De Stancy as if she were a god-a’mighty, and Miss

Power lets her love her to her heart’s content. But whether Miss Power

loves back again I can’t zay, for she’s as deep as the North Star.’

The landlord here left the stranger to go to some other part of the

house, and Somerset drew near to the glass partition to gain a glimpse

of a man whose interest in the neighbourhood seemed to have arisen so

simultaneously with his own. But the inner room was empty: the man had

apparently departed by another door.