The Baronet Appears
As the candles burn blue and the air smells of brimstone at the approach
of the Evil One, so, in the quiet and healthy air of Golden Friars, a
depressing and agitating influence announced the coming of the
long-absent Baronet.
From abroad, no good whatever had been at any time heard of him, and a
great deal that was, in the ears of simple folk living in that
unsophisticated part of the world, vaguely awful.
Stories that travel so far, however, lose something of their authority,
as well as definiteness, on the way; there was always room for charity
to suggest a mistake or exaggeration; and if good men turned up their
hands and eyes after a new story, and ladies of experience, who knew
mankind, held their heads high and looked grim and mysterious at mention
of his name, nevertheless an interval of silence softened matters a
little, and the sulphureous perfume dissipated itself in time.
Now that Sir Bale Mardykes had arrived at the Hall, there were hurried
consultations held in many households. And though he was tried and
sentenced by drum-head over some austere hearths, as a rule the law of
gravitation prevailed, and the greater house drew the lesser about it,
and county people within the visiting radius paid their respects at the
Hall.
The Reverend Martin Bedel, the then vicar of Golden Friars, a stout
short man, with a mulberry-coloured face and small gray eyes, and
taciturn habits, called and entered the drawing-room at Mardykes Hall,
with his fat and garrulous wife on his arm.
The drawing-room has a great projecting Tudor window looking out on the
lake, with its magnificent background of furrowed and purple mountains.
Sir Bale was not there, and Mrs. Bedel examined the pictures, and
ornaments, and the books, making such remarks as she saw fit; and then
she looked out of the window, and admired the prospect. She wished to
stand well with the Baronet, and was in a mood to praise everything.
You may suppose she was curious to see him, having heard for years such
strange tales of his doings.
She expected the hero of a brilliant and wicked romance; and listened
for the step of the truant Lovelace who was to fulfil her idea of manly
beauty and fascination.
She sustained a slight shock when he did appear.
Sir Bale Mardykes was, as she might easily have remembered, a
middle-aged man--and he looked it. He was not even an imposing-looking
man for his time of life: he was of about the middle height, slightly
made, and dark featured. She had expected something of the gaiety and
animation of Versailles, and an evident cultivation of the art of
pleasing. What she did see was a remarkable gravity, not to say gloom,
of countenance--the only feature of which that struck her being a pair
of large dark-gray eyes, that were cold and earnest. His manners had the
ease of perfect confidence; and his talk and air were those of a person
who might have known how to please, if it were worth the trouble, but
who did not care twopence whether he pleased or not.
He made them each a bow, courtly enough, but there was no smile--not
even an affectation of cordiality. Sir Bale, however, was chatty, and
did not seem to care much what he said, or what people thought of him;
and there was a suspicion of sarcasm in what he said that the rustic
literality of good Mrs. Bedel did not always detect.
"I believe I have not a clergyman but _you_, sir, within any reasonable
distance?"
"Golden Friars _is_ the nearest," said Mrs. Bedel, answering, as was her
pleasure on all practicable occasions, for her husband. "And southwards,
the nearest is Wyllarden--and by a bird's flight that is thirteen miles
and a half, and by the road more than nineteen--twenty, I may say, by
the road. Ha, ha, ha! it is a long way to look for a clergyman."
"Twenty miles of road to carry you thirteen miles across, hey? The
road-makers lead you a pretty dance here; those gentlemen know how to
make money, and like to show people the scenery from a variety of
points. No one likes a straight road but the man who pays for it, or
who, when he travels, is brute enough to wish to get to his journey's
end."
"That is so true, Sir Bale; one never cares if one is not in a hurry.
That's what Martin thinks--don't we, Martin?--And then, you know, coming
home is the time you _are_ in a hurry--when you are thinking of your cup
of tea and the children; and _then_, you know, you have the fall of the
ground all in your favour."
"It's well to have anything in your favour in this place. And so there
are children?"
"A good many," said Mrs. Bedel, with a proud and mysterious smile, and a
nod; "you wouldn't guess how many."
"Not I; I only wonder you did not bring them all."
"That's very good-natured of you, Sir Bale, but all could not come at
_one_ bout; there are--tell him, Martin--ha, ha, ha! there are eleven."
"It must be very cheerful down at the vicarage," said Sir Bale
graciously; and turning to the vicar he added, "But how unequally
blessings are divided! You have eleven, and I not one--that I'm aware
of."
"And then, in that direction straight before you, you have the lake, and
then the fells; and five miles from the foot of the mountain at the
other side, before you reach Fottrell--and that is twenty-five miles by
the road----"
"Dear me! how far apart they are set! My gardener told me this morning
that asparagus grows very thinly in this part of the world. How thinly
clergymen grow also down here--in one sense," he added politely, for the
vicar was stout.
"We were looking out of the window--we amused ourselves that way before
you came--and your view is certainly the very best anywhere round this
side; your view of the lake and the fells--what mountains they are, Sir
Bale!"
"'Pon my soul, they are! I wish I could blow them asunder with a charge
of duck-shot, and I shouldn't be stifled by them long. But I suppose, as
we can't get rid of them, the next best thing is to admire them. We are
pretty well married to them, and there is no use in quarrelling."
"I know you don't think so, Sir Bale, ha, ha, ha! You wouldn't take a
good deal and spoil Mardykes Hall."
"You can't get a mouthful or air, or see the sun of a morning, for those
frightful mountains," he said with a peevish frown at them.
"Well, the lake at all events--that you _must_ admire, Sir Bale?"
"No ma'am, I don't admire the lake. I'd drain the lake if I could--I
hate the lake. There's nothing so gloomy as a lake pent up among barren
mountains. I can't conceive what possessed my people to build our house
down here, at the edge of a lake; unless it was the fish, and precious
fish it is--pike! I don't know how people digest it--_I_ can't. I'd as
soon think of eating a watchman's pike."
"I thought that having travelled so much abroad, you would have acquired
a great liking for that kind of scenery, Sir Bale; there is a great deal
of it on the Continent, ain't there?" said Mrs. Bedel. "And the
boating."
"Boating, my dear Mrs. Bedel, is the dullest of all things; don't you
think so? Because a boat looks very pretty from the shore, we fancy the
shore must look very pretty from a boat; and when we try it, we find we
have only got down into a pit and can see nothing rightly. For my part I
hate boating, and I hate the water; and I'd rather have my house, like
Haworth, at the edge of a moss, with good wholesome peat to look at, and
an open horizon--savage and stupid and bleak as all that is--than be
suffocated among impassable mountains, or upset in a black lake and
drowned like a kitten. O, there's luncheon in the next room; won't you
take some?"