“’Twas on the evening of a winter’s day.”
When two or three additional hours had merged the same afternoon in
evening, some moving outlines might have been observed against the sky
on the summit of a wild lone hill in that district. They circumscribed
two men, having at present the aspect of silhouettes, sitting in a
dog-cart and pushing along in the teeth of the wind. Scarcely a
solitary house or man had been visible along the whole dreary distance
of open country they were traversing; and now that night had begun to
fall, the faint twilight, which still gave an idea of the landscape to
their observation, was enlivened by the quiet appearance of the planet
Jupiter, momentarily gleaming in intenser brilliancy in front of them,
and by Sirius shedding his rays in rivalry from his position over their
shoulders. The only lights apparent on earth were some spots of dull
red, glowing here and there upon the distant hills, which, as the
driver of the vehicle gratuitously remarked to the hirer, were
smouldering fires for the consumption of peat and gorse-roots, where
the common was being broken up for agricultural purposes. The wind
prevailed with but little abatement from its daytime boisterousness,
three or four small clouds, delicate and pale, creeping along under the
sky southward to the Channel.
Fourteen of the sixteen miles intervening between the railway terminus
and the end of their journey had been gone over, when they began to
pass along the brink of a valley some miles in extent, wherein the
wintry skeletons of a more luxuriant vegetation than had hitherto
surrounded them proclaimed an increased richness of soil, which showed
signs of far more careful enclosure and management than had any slopes
they had yet passed. A little farther, and an opening in the elms
stretching up from this fertile valley revealed a mansion.
“That’s Endelstow House, Lord Luxellian’s,” said the driver.
“Endelstow House, Lord Luxellian’s,” repeated the other mechanically.
He then turned himself sideways, and keenly scrutinized the almost
invisible house with an interest which the indistinct picture itself
seemed far from adequate to create. “Yes, that’s Lord Luxellian’s,” he
said yet again after a while, as he still looked in the same direction.
“What, be we going there?”
“No; Endelstow Vicarage, as I have told you.”
“I thought you m’t have altered your mind, sir, as ye have stared that
way at nothing so long.”
“Oh no; I am interested in the house, that’s all.”
“Most people be, as the saying is.”
“Not in the sense that I am.”
“Oh!...Well, his family is no better than my own, ’a b’lieve.”
“How is that?”
“Hedgers and ditchers by rights. But once in ancient times one of ’em,
when he was at work, changed clothes with King Charles the Second, and
saved the king’s life. King Charles came up to him like a common man,
and said off-hand, ‘Man in the smock-frock, my name is Charles the
Second, and that’s the truth on’t. Will you lend me your clothes?’ ‘I
don’t mind if I do,’ said Hedger Luxellian; and they changed there and
then. ‘Now mind ye,’ King Charles the Second said, like a common man,
as he rode away, ‘if ever I come to the crown, you come to court, knock
at the door, and say out bold, “Is King Charles the Second at home?”
Tell your name, and they shall let you in, and you shall be made a
lord.’ Now, that was very nice of Master Charley?”
“Very nice indeed.”
“Well, as the story is, the king came to the throne; and some years
after that, away went Hedger Luxellian, knocked at the king’s door, and
asked if King Charles the Second was in. ‘No, he isn’t,’ they said.
‘Then, is Charles the Third?’ said Hedger Luxellian. ‘Yes,’ said a
young feller standing by like a common man, only he had a crown on, ‘my
name is Charles the Third.’ And——”
“I really fancy that must be a mistake. I don’t recollect anything in
English history about Charles the Third,” said the other in a tone of
mild remonstrance.
“Oh, that’s right history enough, only ’twasn’t prented; he was rather
a queer-tempered man, if you remember.”
“Very well; go on.”
“And, by hook or by crook, Hedger Luxellian was made a lord, and
everything went on well till some time after, when he got into a most
terrible row with King Charles the Fourth.
“I can’t stand Charles the Fourth. Upon my word, that’s too much.”
“Why? There was a George the Fourth, wasn’t there?”
“Certainly.”
“Well, Charleses be as common as Georges. However I’ll say no more
about it....Ah, well! ’tis the funniest world ever I lived in—upon my
life ’tis. Ah, that such should be!”
The dusk had thickened into darkness while they thus conversed, and the
outline and surface of the mansion gradually disappeared. The windows,
which had before been as black blots on a lighter expanse of wall,
became illuminated, and were transfigured to squares of light on the
general dark body of the night landscape as it absorbed the outlines of
the edifice into its gloomy monochrome.
Not another word was spoken for some time, and they climbed a hill,
then another hill piled on the summit of the first. An additional mile
of plateau followed, from which could be discerned two light-houses on
the coast they were nearing, reposing on the horizon with a calm lustre
of benignity. Another oasis was reached; a little dell lay like a nest
at their feet, towards which the driver pulled the horse at a sharp
angle, and descended a steep slope which dived under the trees like a
rabbit’s burrow. They sank lower and lower.
“Endelstow Vicarage is inside here,” continued the man with the reins.
“This part about here is West Endelstow; Lord Luxellian’s is East
Endelstow, and has a church to itself. Pa’son Swancourt is the pa’son
of both, and bobs backward and forward. Ah, well! ’tis a funny world.
’A b’lieve there was once a quarry where this house stands. The man who
built it in past time scraped all the glebe for earth to put round the
vicarage, and laid out a little paradise of flowers and trees in the
soil he had got together in this way, whilst the fields he scraped have
been good for nothing ever since.”
“How long has the present incumbent been here?”
“Maybe about a year, or a year and half: ’tisn’t two years; for they
don’t scandalize him yet; and, as a rule, a parish begins to scandalize
the pa’son at the end of two years among ’em familiar. But he’s a very
nice party. Ay, Pa’son Swancourt knows me pretty well from often
driving over; and I know Pa’son Swancourt.”
They emerged from the bower, swept round in a curve, and the chimneys
and gables of the vicarage became darkly visible. Not a light showed
anywhere. They alighted; the man felt his way into the porch, and rang
the bell.
At the end of three or four minutes, spent in patient waiting without
hearing any sounds of a response, the stranger advanced and repeated
the call in a more decided manner. He then fancied he heard footsteps
in the hall, and sundry movements of the door-knob, but nobody
appeared.
“Perhaps they beant at home,” sighed the driver. “And I promised myself
a bit of supper in Pa’son Swancourt’s kitchen. Sich lovely mate-pize
and figged keakes, and cider, and drops o’ cordial that they do keep
here!”
“All right, naibours! Be ye rich men or be ye poor men, that ye must
needs come to the world’s end at this time o’ night?” exclaimed a voice
at this instant; and, turning their heads, they saw a rickety
individual shambling round from the back door with a horn lantern
dangling from his hand.
“Time o’ night, ’a b’lieve! and the clock only gone seven of ’em. Show
a light, and let us in, William Worm.”
“Oh, that you, Robert Lickpan?”
“Nobody else, William Worm.”
“And is the visiting man a-come?”
“Yes,” said the stranger. “Is Mr. Swancourt at home?”
“That ’a is, sir. And would ye mind coming round by the back way? The
front door is got stuck wi’ the wet, as he will do sometimes; and the
Turk can’t open en. I know I am only a poor wambling man that “ill
never pay the Lord for my making, sir; but I can show the way in, sir.”
The new arrival followed his guide through a little door in a wall, and
then promenaded a scullery and a kitchen, along which he passed with
eyes rigidly fixed in advance, an inbred horror of prying forbidding
him to gaze around apartments that formed the back side of the
household tapestry. Entering the hall, he was about to be shown to his
room, when from the inner lobby of the front entrance, whither she had
gone to learn the cause of the delay, sailed forth the form of Elfride.
Her start of amazement at the sight of the visitor coming forth from
under the stairs proved that she had not been expecting this surprising
flank movement, which had been originated entirely by the ingenuity of
William Worm.
She appeared in the prettiest of all feminine guises, that is to say,
in demi-toilette, with plenty of loose curly hair tumbling down about
her shoulders. An expression of uneasiness pervaded her countenance;
and altogether she scarcely appeared woman enough for the situation.
The visitor removed his hat, and the first words were spoken; Elfride
prelusively looking with a deal of interest, not unmixed with surprise,
at the person towards whom she was to do the duties of hospitality.
“I am Mr. Smith,” said the stranger in a musical voice.
“I am Miss Swancourt,” said Elfride.
Her constraint was over. The great contrast between the reality she
beheld before her, and the dark, taciturn, sharp, elderly man of
business who had lurked in her imagination—a man with clothes smelling
of city smoke, skin sallow from want of sun, and talk flavoured with
epigram—was such a relief to her that Elfride smiled, almost laughed,
in the new-comer’s face.
Stephen Smith, who has hitherto been hidden from us by the darkness,
was at this time of his life but a youth in appearance, and barely a
man in years. Judging from his look, London was the last place in the
world that one would have imagined to be the scene of his activities:
such a face surely could not be nourished amid smoke and mud and fog
and dust; such an open countenance could never even have seen anything
of “the weariness, the fever, and the fret’ of Babylon the Second.
His complexion was as fine as Elfride’s own; the pink of his cheeks as
delicate. His mouth as perfect as Cupid’s bow in form, and as
cherry-red in colour as hers. Bright curly hair; bright sparkling
blue-gray eyes; a boy’s blush and manner; neither whisker nor
moustache, unless a little light-brown fur on his upper lip deserved
the latter title: this composed the London professional man, the
prospect of whose advent had so troubled Elfride.
Elfride hastened to say she was sorry to tell him that Mr. Swancourt
was not able to receive him that evening, and gave the reason why. Mr.
Smith replied, in a voice boyish by nature and manly by art, that he
was very sorry to hear this news; but that as far as his reception was
concerned, it did not matter in the least.
Stephen was shown up to his room. In his absence Elfride stealthily
glided into her father’s.
“He’s come, papa. Such a young man for a business man!”
“Oh, indeed!”
“His face is—well—PRETTY; just like mine.”
“H’m! what next?”
“Nothing; that’s all I know of him yet. It is rather nice, is it not?”
“Well, we shall see that when we know him better. Go down and give the
poor fellow something to eat and drink, for Heaven’s sake. And when he
has done eating, say I should like to have a few words with him, if he
doesn’t mind coming up here.”
The young lady glided downstairs again, and whilst she awaits young
Smith’s entry, the letters referring to his visit had better be given.
1.—MR. SWANCOURT TO MR. HEWBY.
“ENDELSTOW VICARAGE, Feb. 18, 18—.
“SIR,—We are thinking of restoring the tower and aisle of the church in
this parish; and Lord Luxellian, the patron of the living, has
mentioned your name as that of a trustworthy architect whom it would be
desirable to ask to superintend the work.
“I am exceedingly ignorant of the necessary preliminary steps.
Probably, however, the first is that (should you be, as Lord Luxellian
says you are, disposed to assist us) yourself or some member of your
staff come and see the building, and report thereupon for the
satisfaction of parishioners and others.
“The spot is a very remote one: we have no railway within fourteen
miles; and the nearest place for putting up at—called a town, though
merely a large village—is Castle Boterel, two miles further on; so that
it would be most convenient for you to stay at the vicarage—which I am
glad to place at your disposal—instead of pushing on to the hotel at
Castle Boterel, and coming back again in the morning.
“Any day of the next week that you like to name for the visit will find
us quite ready to receive you.—Yours very truly,
CHRISTOPHER SWANCOURT. 2.—MR. HEWBY TO MR. SWANCOURT.
‘PERCY PLACE, CHARING CROSS, Feb. 20, 18—.
“DEAR SIR,—Agreeably to your request of the 18th instant, I have
arranged to survey and make drawings of the aisle and tower of your
parish church, and of the dilapidations which have been suffered to
accrue thereto, with a view to its restoration.
“My assistant, Mr. Stephen Smith, will leave London by the early train
to-morrow morning for the purpose. Many thanks for your proposal to
accommodate him. He will take advantage of your offer, and will
probably reach your house at some hour of the evening. You may put
every confidence in him, and may rely upon his discernment in the
matter of church architecture.
“Trusting that the plans for the restoration, which I shall prepare
from the details of his survey, will prove satisfactory to yourself and
Lord Luxellian, I am, dear sir, yours faithfully,
WALTER HEWBY.”