A Laodicean

Chapter 6

The telegraph had almost the attributes of a human being at

Stancy Castle. When its bell rang people rushed to the old

tapestried chamber allotted to it, and waited its pleasure

with all the deference due to such a novel inhabitant of that

ancestral pile. This happened on the following afternoon

about four o'clock, while Somerset was sketching in the room

adjoining that occupied by the instrument. Hearing its call,

he looked in to learn if anybody were attending, and found

Miss De Stancy bending over it.

She welcomed him without the least embarrassment. 'Another

message,' she said.--'"Paula to Charlotte.--Have returned to

Markton. Am starting for home. Will be at the gate between

four and five if possible."'

Miss De Stancy blushed with pleasure when she raised her eyes

from the machine. 'Is she not thoughtful to let me know

beforehand?'

Somerset said she certainly appeared to be, feeling at the

same time that he was not in possession of sufficient data to

make the opinion of great value.

'Now I must get everything ready, and order what she will

want, as Mrs. Goodman is away. What will she want? Dinner

would be best--she has had no lunch, I know; or tea perhaps,

and dinner at the usual time. Still, if she has had no lunch-

-Hark, what do I hear?'

She ran to an arrow-slit, and Somerset, who had also heard

something, looked out of an adjoining one. They could see

from their elevated position a great way along the white road,

stretching like a tape amid the green expanses on each side.

There had arisen a cloud of dust, accompanied by a noise of

wheels.

'It is she,' said Charlotte. 'O yes--it is past four--the

telegram has been delayed.'

'How would she be likely to come?'

'She has doubtless hired a carriage at the inn: she said it

would be useless to send to meet her, as she couldn't name a

time. . . . Where is she now?'

'Just where the boughs of those beeches overhang the road--

there she is again!'

Miss De Stancy went away to give directions, and Somerset

continued to watch. The vehicle, which was of no great

pretension, soon crossed the bridge and stopped: there was a

ring at the bell; and Miss De Stancy reappeared.

'Did you see her as she drove up--is she not interesting?'

'I could not see her.'

'Ah, no--of course you could not from this window because of

the trees. Mr. Somerset, will you come downstairs? You will

have to meet her, you know.'

Somerset felt an indescribable backwardness. 'I will go on

with my sketching,' he said. 'Perhaps she will not be--'

'O, but it would be quite natural, would it not? Our manners

are easier here, you know, than they are in town, and Miss

Power has adapted herself to them.'

A compromise was effected by Somerset declaring that he would

hold himself in readiness to be discovered on the landing at

any convenient time.

A servant entered. 'Miss Power?' said Miss De Stancy, before

he could speak.

The man advanced with a card: Miss De Stancy took it up, and

read thereon: 'Mr. William Dare.'

'It is not Miss Power who has come, then?' she asked, with a

disappointed face.

'No, ma'am.'

She looked again at the card. 'This is some man of business,

I suppose--does he want to see me?'

'Yes, miss. Leastwise, he would be glad to see you if Miss

Power is not at home.'

Miss De Stancy left the room, and soon returned, saying, 'Mr.

Somerset, can you give me your counsel in this matter? This

Mr. Dare says he is a photographic amateur, and it seems that

he wrote some time ago to Miss Power, who gave him permission

to take views of the castle, and promised to show him the best

points. But I have heard nothing of it, and scarcely know

whether I ought to take his word in her absence. Mrs.

Goodman, Miss Power's relative, who usually attends to these

things, is away.'

'I dare say it is all right,' said Somerset.

'Would you mind seeing him? If you think it quite in order,

perhaps you will instruct him where the best views are to be

obtained?'

Thereupon Somerset at once went down to Mr. Dare. His coming

as a sort of counterfeit of Miss Power disposed Somerset to

judge him with as much severity as justice would allow, and

his manner for the moment was not of a kind calculated to

dissipate antagonistic instincts. Mr. Dare was standing

before the fireplace with his feet wide apart, and his hands

in the pockets of his coat-tails, looking at a carving over

the mantelpiece. He turned quickly at the sound of Somerset's

footsteps, and revealed himself as a person quite out of the

common.

His age it was impossible to say. There was not a hair on his

face which could serve to hang a guess upon. In repose he

appeared a boy; but his actions were so completely those of a

man that the beholder's first estimate of sixteen as his age

was hastily corrected to six-and-twenty, and afterwards

shifted hither and thither along intervening years as the

tenor of his sentences sent him up or down. He had a broad

forehead, vertical as the face of a bastion, and his hair,

which was parted in the middle, hung as a fringe or valance

above, in the fashion sometimes affected by the other s*x. He

wore a heavy ring, of which the gold seemed fair, the diamond

questionable, and the taste indifferent. There were the

remains of a swagger in his body and limbs as he came forward,

regarding Somerset with a confident smile, as if the wonder

were, not why Mr. Dare should be present, but why Somerset

should be present likewise; and the first tone that came from

Dare's lips wound up his listener's opinion that he did not

like him.

A latent power in the man, or boy, was revealed by the

circumstance that Somerset did not feel, as he would

ordinarily have done, that it was a matter of profound

indifference to him whether this gentleman-photographer were a

likeable person or no.

'I have called by appointment; or rather, I left a card

stating that to-day would suit me, and no objection was made.'

Somerset recognized the voice; it was that of the invisible

stranger who had talked with the landlord about the De

Stancys. Mr. Dare then proceeded to explain his business.

Somerset found from his inquiries that the man had

unquestionably been instructed by somebody to take the views

he spoke of; and concluded that Dare's curiosity at the inn

was, after all, naturally explained by his errand to this

place. Blaming himself for a too hasty condemnation of the

stranger, who though visually a little too assured was civil

enough verbally, Somerset proceeded with the young

photographer to sundry corners of the outer ward, and thence

across the moat to the field, suggesting advantageous points

of view. The office, being a shadow of his own pursuits, was

not uncongenial to Somerset, and he forgot other things in

attending to it.

'Now in our country we should stand further back than this,

and so get a more comprehensive coup d'oeil,' said Dare, as

Somerset selected a good situation.

'You are not an Englishman, then,' said Somerset.

'I have lived mostly in India, Malta, Gibraltar, the Ionian

Islands, and Canada. I there invented a new photographic

process, which I am bent upon making famous. Yet I am but a

dilettante, and do not follow this art at the base dictation

of what men call necessity.'

'O indeed,' Somerset replied.

As soon as this business was disposed of, and Mr. Dare had

brought up his van and assistant to begin operations, Somerset

returned to the castle entrance. While under the archway a

man with a professional look drove up in a dog-cart and

inquired if Miss Power were at home to-day.

'She has not yet returned, Mr. Havill,' was the reply.

Somerset, who had hoped to hear an affirmative by this time,

thought that Miss Power was bent on disappointing him in the

flesh, notwithstanding the interest she expressed in him by

telegraph; and as it was now drawing towards the end of the

afternoon, he walked off in the direction of his inn.

There were two or three ways to that spot, but the pleasantest

was by passing through a rambling shrubbery, between whose

bushes trickled a broad shallow brook, occasionally

intercepted in its course by a transverse chain of old stones,

evidently from the castle walls, which formed a miniature

waterfall. The walk lay along the river-brink. Soon Somerset

saw before him a circular summer-house formed of short sticks

nailed to ornamental patterns. Outside the structure, and

immediately in the path, stood a man with a book in his hand;

and it was presently apparent that this gentleman was holding

a conversation with some person inside the pavilion, but the

back of the building being towards Somerset, the second

individual could not be seen.

The speaker at one moment glanced into the interior, and at

another at the advancing form of the architect, whom, though

distinctly enough beheld, the other scarcely appeared to heed

in the absorbing interest of his own discourse. Somerset

became aware that it was the Baptist minister, whose rhetoric

he had heard in the chapel yonder.

'Now,' continued the Baptist minister, 'will you express to me

any reason or objection whatever which induces you to withdraw

from our communion? It was that of your father, and of his

father before him. Any difficulty you may have met with I

will honestly try to remove; for I need hardly say that in

losing you we lose one of the most valued members of the

Baptist church in this district. I speak with all the respect

due to your position, when I ask you to realize how

irreparable is the injury you inflict upon the cause here by

this lukewarm backwardness.'

'I don't withdraw,' said a woman's low voice within.

'What do you do?'

'I decline to attend for the present.'

'And you can give no reason for this?'

There was no reply.

'Or for your refusal to proceed with the baptism?'

'I have been christened.'

'My dear young lady, it is well known that your christening

was the work of your aunt, who did it unknown to your parents

when she had you in her power, out of pure obstinacy to a

church with which she was not in sympathy, taking you

surreptitiously, and indefensibly, to the font of the

Establishment; so that the rite meant and could mean nothing

at all. . . . But I fear that your new position has brought

you into contact with the Paedobaptists, that they have

disturbed your old principles, and so induced you to believe

in the validity of that trumpery ceremony!'

'It seems sufficient.'

'I will demolish the basis of that seeming in three minutes,

give me but that time as a listener.'

'I have no objection.'

'Very well. . . . First, then, I will assume that those who

have influenced you in the matter have not been able to make

any impression upon one so well grounded as yourself in our

distinctive doctrine, by the stale old argument drawn from

circumcision?'

'You may assume it.'

'Good--that clears the ground. And we now come to the New

Testament.'

The minister began to turn over the leaves of his little

Bible, which it impressed Somerset to observe was bound with a

flap, like a pocket book, the black surface of the leather

being worn brown at the corners by long usage. He turned on

till he came to the beginning of the New Testament, and then

commenced his discourse. After explaining his position, the

old man ran very ably through the arguments, citing well-known

writers on the point in dispute when he required more finished

sentences than his own.

The minister's earnestness and interest in his own case led

him unconsciously to include Somerset in his audience as the

young man drew nearer; till, instead of fixing his eyes

exclusively on the person within the summer-house, the

preacher began to direct a good proportion of his discourse

upon his new auditor, turning from one listener to the other

attentively, without seeming to feel Somerset's presence as

superfluous.

'And now,' he said in conclusion, 'I put it to you, sir, as to

her: do you find any flaw in my argument? Is there, madam, a

single text which, honestly interpreted, affords the least

foothold for the Paedobaptists; in other words, for your

opinion on the efficacy of the rite administered to you in

your unconscious infancy? I put it to you both as honest and

responsible beings.' He turned again to the young man.

It happened that Somerset had been over this ground long ago.

Born, so to speak, a High-Church infant, in his youth he had

been of a thoughtful turn, till at one time an idea of his

entering the Church had been entertained by his parents. He

had formed acquaintance with men of almost every variety of

doctrinal practice in this country; and, as the pleadings of

each assailed him before he had arrived at an age of

sufficient mental stability to resist new impressions, however

badly substantiated, he inclined to each denomination as it

presented itself, was

A study of fonts and their origin had qualified him in this

particular subject. Fully conscious of the inexpediency of

contests on minor ritual differences, he yet felt a sudden

impulse towards a mild intellectual tournament with the eager

old man--purely as an exercise of his wits in the defence of a

fair girl.

'Sir, I accept your challenge to us,' said Somerset, advancing

to the minister's side.