A pair of blue eyes
something. I’ve been feeling it through the envelope, and can’t think
what it is.”
“What does Luxellian write for, I wonder?” Mr. Swancourt had said
simultaneously with her words. He handed Stephen his letter, and took
his own, putting on his countenance a higher class of look than was
customary, as became a poor gentleman who was going to read a letter
from a peer.
Stephen read his missive with a countenance quite the reverse of the
vicar’s.
“PERCY PLACE, Thursday Evening.
‘DEAR SMITH,—Old H. is in a towering rage with you for being so long
about the church sketches. Swears you are more trouble than you are
worth. He says I am to write and say you are to stay no longer on any
consideration—that he would have done it all in three hours very
easily. I told him that you were not like an experienced hand, which he
seemed to forget, but it did not make much difference. However, between
you and me privately, if I were you I would not alarm myself for a day
or so, if I were not inclined to return. I would make out the week and
finish my spree. He will blow up just as much if you appear here on
Saturday as if you keep away till Monday morning.—Yours very truly,
“SIMPKINS JENKINS.
“Dear me—very awkward!” said Stephen, rather _en l’air_, and confused
with the kind of confusion that assails an understrapper when he has
been enlarged by accident to the dimensions of a superior, and is
somewhat rudely pared down to his original size.
“What is awkward?” said Miss Swancourt.
Smith by this time recovered his equanimity, and with it the
professional dignity of an experienced architect.
“Important business demands my immediate presence in London, I regret
to say,” he replied.
“What! Must you go at once?” said Mr. Swancourt, looking over the edge
of his letter. “Important business? A young fellow like you to have
important business!”
“The truth is,” said Stephen blushing, and rather ashamed of having
pretended even so slightly to a consequence which did not belong to
him,—“the truth is, Mr. Hewby has sent to say I am to come home; and I
must obey him.”
“I see; I see. It is politic to do so, you mean. Now I can see more
than you think. You are to be his partner. I booked you for that
directly I read his letter to me the other day, and the way he spoke of
you. He thinks a great deal of you, Mr. Smith, or he wouldn’t be so
anxious for your return.”
Unpleasant to Stephen such remarks as these could not sound; to have
the expectancy of partnership with one of the largest-practising
architects in London thrust upon him was cheering, however untenable he
felt the idea to be. He saw that, whatever Mr. Hewby might think, Mr.
Swancourt certainly thought much of him to entertain such an idea on
such slender ground as to be absolutely no ground at all. And then,
unaccountably, his speaking face exhibited a cloud of sadness, which a
reflection on the remoteness of any such contingency could hardly have
sufficed to cause.
Elfride was struck with that look of his; even Mr. Swancourt noticed
it.
“Well,” he said cheerfully, “never mind that now. You must come again
on your own account; not on business. Come to see me as a visitor, you
know—say, in your holidays—all you town men have holidays like
schoolboys. When are they?”
“In August, I believe.”
“Very well; come in August; and then you need not hurry away so. I am
glad to get somebody decent to talk to, or at, in this outlandish
ultima Thule. But, by the bye, I have something to say—you won’t go
to-day?”
“No; I need not,” said Stephen hesitatingly. “I am not obliged to get
back before Monday morning.”
“Very well, then, that brings me to what I am going to propose. This is
a letter from Lord Luxellian. I think you heard me speak of him as the
resident landowner in this district, and patron of this living?”
“I—know of him.”
“He is in London now. It seems that he has run up on business for a day
or two, and taken Lady Luxellian with him. He has written to ask me to
go to his house, and search for a paper among his private memoranda,
which he forgot to take with him.”
“What did he send in the letter?” inquired Elfride.
“The key of a private desk in which the papers are. He doesn’t like to
trust such a matter to any body else. I have done such things for him
before. And what I propose is, that we make an afternoon of it—all
three of us. Go for a drive to Targan Bay, come home by way of
Endelstow House; and whilst I am looking over the documents you can
ramble about the rooms where you like. I have the run of the house at
any time, you know. The building, though nothing but a mass of gables
outside, has a splendid hall, staircase, and gallery within; and there
are a few good pictures.”
“Yes, there are,” said Stephen.
“Have you seen the place, then?
“I saw it as I came by,” he said hastily.
“Oh yes; but I was alluding to the interior. And the church—St.
Eval’s—is much older than our St. Agnes’ here. I do duty in that and
this alternately, you know. The fact is, I ought to have some help;
riding across that park for two miles on a wet morning is not at all
the thing. If my constitution were not well seasoned, as thank God it
is,”—here Mr. Swancourt looked down his front, as if his constitution
were visible there,—“I should be coughing and barking all the year
round. And when the family goes away, there are only about three
servants to preach to when I get there. Well, that shall be the
arrangement, then. Elfride, you will like to go?”
Elfride assented; and the little breakfast-party separated. Stephen
rose to go and take a few final measurements at the church, the vicar
following him to the door with a mysterious expression of inquiry on
his face.
“You’ll put up with our not having family prayer this morning, I hope?”
he whispered.
“Yes; quite so,” said Stephen.
“To tell you the truth,” he continued in the same undertone, “we don’t
make a regular thing of it; but when we have strangers visiting us, I
am strongly of opinion that it is the proper thing to do, and I always
do it. I am very strict on that point. But you, Smith, there is
something in your face which makes me feel quite at home; no nonsense
about you, in short. Ah, it reminds me of a splendid story I used to
hear when I was a helter-skelter young fellow—such a story! But”—here
the vicar shook his head self-forbiddingly, and grimly laughed.
“Was it a good story?” said young Smith, smiling too.
“Oh yes; but ’tis too bad—too bad! Couldn’t tell it to you for the
world!”
Stephen went across the lawn, hearing the vicar chuckling privately at
the recollection as he withdrew.
They started at three o’clock. The gray morning had resolved itself
into an afternoon bright with a pale pervasive sunlight, without the
sun itself being visible. Lightly they trotted along—the wheels nearly
silent, the horse’s hoofs clapping, almost ringing, upon the hard,
white, turnpike road as it followed the level ridge in a perfectly
straight line, seeming to be absorbed ultimately by the white of the
sky.
Targan Bay—which had the merit of being easily got at—was duly visited.
They then swept round by innumerable lanes, in which not twenty
consecutive yards were either straight or level, to the domain of Lord
Luxellian. A woman with a double chin and thick neck, like Queen Anne
by Dahl, threw open the lodge gate, a little boy standing behind her.
“I’ll give him something, poor little fellow,” said Elfride, pulling
out her purse and hastily opening it. From the interior of her purse a
host of bits of paper, like a flock of white birds, floated into the
air, and were blown about in all directions.
“Well, to be sure!” said Stephen with a slight laugh.
“What the dickens is all that?” said Mr. Swancourt. “Not halves of
bank-notes, Elfride?”
Elfride looked annoyed and guilty. “They are only something of mine,
papa,” she faltered, whilst Stephen leapt out, and, assisted by the
lodge-keeper’s little boy, crept about round the wheels and horse’s
hoofs till the papers were all gathered together again. He handed them
back to her, and remounted.
“I suppose you are wondering what those scraps were?” she said, as they
bowled along up the sycamore avenue. “And so I may as well tell you.
They are notes for a romance I am writing.”
She could not help colouring at the confession, much as she tried to
avoid it.
“A story, do you mean?” said Stephen, Mr. Swancourt half listening, and
catching a word of the conversation now and then.
“Yes; THE COURT OF KELLYON CASTLE; a romance of the fifteenth century.
Such writing is out of date now, I know; but I like doing it.”
“A romance carried in a purse! If a highwayman were to rob you, he
would be taken in.”
“Yes; that’s my way of carrying manuscript. The real reason is, that I
mostly write bits of it on scraps of paper when I am on horseback; and
I put them there for convenience.”
“What are you going to do with your romance when you have written it?”
said Stephen.
“I don’t know,” she replied, and turned her head to look at the
prospect.
For by this time they had reached the precincts of Endelstow House.
Driving through an ancient gate-way of dun-coloured stone, spanned by
the high-shouldered Tudor arch, they found themselves in a spacious
court, closed by a facade on each of its three sides. The substantial
portions of the existing building dated from the reign of Henry VIII.;
but the picturesque and sheltered spot had been the site of an erection
of a much earlier date. A licence to crenellate mansum infra manerium
suum was granted by Edward II. to “Hugo Luxellen chivaler;” but though
the faint outline of the ditch and mound was visible at points, no sign
of the original building remained.
The windows on all sides were long and many-mullioned; the roof lines
broken up by dormer lights of the same pattern. The apex stones of
these dormers, together with those of the gables, were surmounted by
grotesque figures in rampant, passant, and couchant variety. Tall
octagonal and twisted chimneys thrust themselves high up into the sky,
surpassed in height, however, by some poplars and sycamores at the
back, which showed their gently rocking summits over ridge and parapet.
In the corners of the court polygonal bays, whose surfaces were
entirely occupied by buttresses and windows, broke into the squareness
of the enclosure; and a far-projecting oriel, springing from a
fantastic series of mouldings, overhung the archway of the chief
entrance to the house.
As Mr. Swancourt had remarked, he had the freedom of the mansion in the
absence of its owner. Upon a statement of his errand they were all
admitted to the library, and left entirely to themselves. Mr. Swancourt
was soon up to his eyes in the examination of a heap of papers he had
taken from the cabinet described by his correspondent. Stephen and
Elfride had nothing to do but to wander about till her father was
ready.
Elfride entered the gallery, and Stephen followed her without seeming
to do so. It was a long sombre apartment, enriched with fittings a
century or so later in style than the walls of the mansion. Pilasters
of Renaissance workmanship supported a cornice from which sprang a
curved ceiling, panelled in the awkward twists and curls of the period.
The old Gothic quarries still remained in the upper portion of the
large window at the end, though they had made way for a more modern
form of glazing elsewhere.
Stephen was at one end of the gallery looking towards Elfride, who
stood in the midst, beginning to feel somewhat depressed by the society
of Luxellian shades of cadaverous complexion fixed by Holbein, Kneller,
and Lely, and seeming to gaze at and through her in a moralizing mood.
The silence, which cast almost a spell upon them, was broken by the