A Laodicean

Chapter 4

He descended the stone stairs to a lower story of the castle,

in which was a crypt-like hall covered by vaulting of

exceptional and massive ingenuity:

'I shall be very glad to unlock anything you may want to see.

So few people take any real interest in what is here that we

do not leave it open.'

Somerset expressed his thanks.

Miss De Stancy, a little to his surprise, had a touch of

rusticity in her manner, and that forced absence of reserve

which seclusion from society lends to young women more

frequently than not. She seemed glad to have something to do;

the arrival of Somerset was plainly an event sufficient to set

some little mark upon her day. Deception had been written on

the faces of those frowning walls in their implying the

insignificance of Somerset, when he found them tenanted only

by this little woman whose life was narrower than his own.

'We have not been here long,' continued Miss De Stancy, 'and

that's why everything is in such a dilapidated and confused

condition.'

Somerset entered the dark store-closet, thinking less of the

ancient pillar revealed by the light of the candle than what a

singular remark the latter was to come from a member of the

family which appeared to have been there five centuries. He

held the candle above his head, and walked round, and

presently Miss De Stancy came back.

'There is another vault below,' she said, with the severe face

of a young woman who speaks only because it is absolutely

necessary. 'Perhaps you are not aware of it? It was the

dungeon: if you wish to go down there too, the servant will

show you the way. It is not at all ornamental: rough, unhewn

arches and clumsy piers.'

Somerset thanked her, and would perhaps take advantage of her

kind offer when he had examined the spot where he was, if it

were not causing inconvenience.

'No; I am sure Paula will be glad to know that anybody thinks

it interesting to go down there--which is more than she does

herself.'

Some obvious inquiries were suggested by this, but Somerset

said, 'I have seen the pictures, and have been much struck by

them; partly,' he added, with some hesitation, 'because one or

two of them reminded me of a schoolfellow--I think his name

was John Ravensbury?'

'Yes,' she said, almost eagerly. 'He was my cousin!'

'So that we are not quite strangers?'

'But he is dead now. . . . He was unfortunate: he was mostly

spoken of as "that unlucky boy." . . . You know, I suppose,

Mr. Somerset, why the paintings are in such a decaying state!-

-it is owing to the peculiar treatment of the castle during

Mr. Wilkins's time. He was blind; so one can imagine he did

not appreciate such things as there are here.'

'The castle has been shut up, you mean?'

'O yes, for many years. But it will not be so again. We are

going to have the pictures cleaned, and the frames mended, and

the old pieces of furniture put in their proper places. It

will be very nice then. Did you see those in the east

closet?'

'I have only seen those in the gallery.'

'I will just show you the way to the others, if you would like

to see them?'

They ascended to the room designated the east closet. The

paintings here, mostly of smaller size, were in a better

condition, owing to the fact that they were hung on an inner

wall, and had hence been kept free from damp. Somerset

inquired the names and histories of one or two.

'I really don't quite know,' Miss De Stancy replied after some

thought. 'But Paula knows, I am sure. I don't study them

much--I don't see the use of it.' She swung her sunshade, so

that it fell open, and turned it up till it fell shut. 'I

have never been able to give much attention to ancestors,' she

added, with her eyes on the parasol.

'These ARE your ancestors?' he asked, for her position and

tone were matters which perplexed him. In spite of the family

likeness and other details he could scarcely believe this

frank and communicative country maiden to be the modern

representative of the De Stancys.

'O yes, they certainly are,' she said, laughing. 'People say

I am like them: I don't know if I am--well, yes, I know I am:

I can see that, of course, any day. But they have gone from

my family, and perhaps it is just as well that they should

have gone. . . . They are useless,' she added, with serene

conclusiveness.

'Ah! they have gone, have they?'

'Yes, castle and furniture went together: it was long ago--

long before I was born. It doesn't seem to me as if the place

ever belonged to a relative of mine.'

Somerset corrected his smiling manner to one of solicitude.

'But you live here, Miss De Stancy?'

'Yes--a great deal now; though sometimes I go home to sleep.'

'This is home to you, and not home?'

'I live here with Paula--my friend: I have not been here

long, neither has she. For the first six months after her

father's death she did not come here at all.'

They walked on, gazing at the walls, till the young man said:

'I fear I may be making some mistake: but I am sure you will

pardon my inquisitiveness this once. WHO is Paula?'

'Ah, you don't know! Of course you don't--local changes don't

get talked of far away. She is the owner of this castle and

estate. My father sold it when he was quite a young man,

years before I was born, and not long after his father's

death. It was purchased by a man named Wilkins, a rich man

who became blind soon after he had bought it, and never lived

here; so it was left uncared for.'

She went out upon the terrace; and without exactly knowing

why, Somerset followed.

'Your friend--'

'Has only come here quite recently. She is away from home to-

day. . . . It was very sad,' murmured the young girl

thoughtfully. 'No sooner had Mr. Power bought it of the

representatives of Mr. Wilkins--almost immediately indeed--

than he died from a chill caught after a warm bath. On

account of that she did not take possession for several

months; and even now she has only had a few rooms prepared as

a temporary residence till she can think what to do. Poor

thing, it is sad to be left alone!'

Somerset heedfully remarked that he thought he recognized that

name Power, as one he had seen lately, somewhere or other.

'Perhaps you have been hearing of her father. Do you know

what he was?'

Somerset did not.

She looked across the distant country, where undulations of

dark-green foliage formed a prospect extending for miles. And

as she watched, and Somerset's eyes, led by hers, watched

also, a white streak of steam, thin as a cotton thread, could

be discerned ploughing that green expanse. 'Her father made

THAT,' Miss De Stancy said, directing her finger towards the

object.

'That what?'

'That railway. He was Mr. John Power, the great railway

contractor. And it was through making the railway that he

discovered this castle--the railway was diverted a little on

its account.'

'A clash between ancient and modern.'

'Yes, but he took an interest in the locality long before he

purchased the estate. And he built the people a chapel on a

bit of freehold he bought for them. He was a great

Nonconformist, a staunch Baptist up to the day of his death--a

much stauncher one,' she said significantly, 'than his

daughter is.'

'Ah, I begin to spot her!'

'You have heard about the baptism?'

'I know something of it.'

'Her conduct has given mortal offence to the scattered people

of the denomination that her father was at such pains to unite

into a body.'

Somerset could guess the remainder, and in thinking over the

circumstances did not state what he had seen. She added, as

if disappointed at his want of curiosity--

'She would not submit to the rite when it came to the point.

The water looked so cold and dark and fearful, she said, that

she could not do it to save her life.'

'Surely she should have known her mind before she had gone so

far?' Somerset's words had a condemnatory form, but perhaps

his actual feeling was that if Miss Power had known her own

mind, she would have not interested him half so much.

'Paula's own mind had nothing to do with it!' said Miss De

Stancy, warming up to staunch partizanship in a moment. 'It

was all undertaken by her from a mistaken sense of duty. It

was her father's dying wish that she should make public

profession of her--what do you call it--of the denomination

she belonged to, as soon as she felt herself fit to do it: so

when he was dead she tried and tried, and didn't get any more

fit; and at last she screwed herself up to the pitch, and

thought she must undergo the ceremony out of pure reverence

for his memory. It was very short-sighted of her father to

put her in such a position: because she is now very sad, as

she feels she can never try again after such a sermon as was

delivered against her.'

Somerset presumed that Miss Power need not have heard this

Knox or Bossuet of hers if she had chosen to go away?

'She did not hear it in the face of the congregation; but from

the vestry. She told me some of it when she reached home.

Would you believe it, the man who preached so bitterly is a

tenant of hers? I said, "Surely you will turn him out of his

house?"--But she answered, in her calm, deep, nice way, that

she supposed he had a perfect right to preach against her,

that she could not in justice molest him at all. I wouldn't

let him stay if the house were mine. But she has often before

allowed him to scold her from the pulpit in a smaller way--

once it was about an expensive dress she had worn--not

mentioning her by name, you know; but all the people are quite

aware that it is meant for her, because only one person of her

wealth or position belongs to the Baptist body in this

county.'

Somerset was looking at the homely affectionate face of the

little speaker. 'You are her good friend, I am sure,' he

remarked.

She looked into the distant air with tacit admission of the

impeachment. 'So would you be if you knew her,' she said; and

a blush slowly rose to her cheek, as if the person spoken of

had been a lover rather than a friend.

'But you are not a Baptist any more than I?' continued

Somerset.

'O no. And I never knew one till I knew Paula. I think they

are very nice; though I sometimes wish Paula was not one, but

the religion of reasonable persons.'

They walked on, and came opposite to where the telegraph

emerged from the trees, leapt over the parapet, and up through

the loophole into the interior.

'That looks strange in such a building,' said her companion.

'Miss Power had it put up to know the latest news from town.

It costs six pounds a mile. She can work it herself,

beautifully: and so can I, but not so well. It was a great

delight to learn. Miss Power was so interested at first that

she was sending messages from morning till night. And did you

hear the new clock?'

'Is it a new one?--Yes, I heard it.'

'The old one was quite worn out; so Paula has put it in the

cellar, and had this new one made, though it still strikes on

the old bell. It tells the seconds, but the old one, which my

very great grandfather erected in the eighteenth century, only

told the hours. Paula says that time, being so much more

valuable now, must of course be cut up into smaller pieces.'

'She does not appear to be much impressed by the spirit of

this ancient pile.'

Miss De Stancy shook her head too slightly to express absolute

negation.

'Do you wish to come through this door?' she asked. 'There is

a singular chimney-piece in the kitchen, which is considered a

unique example of its kind, though I myself don't know enough

about it to have an opinion on the subject.'

When they had looked at the corbelled chimney-piece they

returned to the hall, where his eye was caught anew by a large

map that he had conned for some time when alone, without being

able to divine the locality represented. It was called

'General Plan of the Town,' and showed streets and open spaces

corresponding with nothing he had seen in the county.

'Is that town here?' he asked.

'It is not anywhere but in Paula's brain; she has laid it out

from her own design. The site is supposed to be near our

railway station, just across there, where the land belongs to

her. She is going to grant cheap building leases, and develop

the manufacture of pottery.'

'Pottery--how very practical she must be!'

'O no! no!' replied Miss De Stancy, in tones showing how

supremely ignorant he must be of Miss Power's nature if he

characterized her in those terms. 'It is GREEK pottery she

means--Hellenic pottery she tells me to call it, only I

forget. There is beautiful clay at the place, her father told

her: he found it in making the railway tunnel. She has

visited the British Museum, continental museums, and Greece,

and Spain: and hopes to imitate the old fictile work in time,

especially the Greek of the best period, four hundred years

after Christ, or before Christ--I forget which it was Paula

said. . . . O no, she is not practical in the sense you mean,

at all.'

'A mixed young lady, rather.'

Miss De Stancy appeared unable to settle whether this new

definition of her dear friend should be accepted as kindly, or

disallowed as decidedly sarcastic. 'You would like her if you

knew her,' she insisted, in half tones of pique; after which

she walked on a few steps.

'I think very highly of her,' said Somerset.

'And I! And yet at one time I could never have believed that

I should have been her friend. One is prejudiced at first

against people who are reported to have such differences in

feeling, associations, and habit, as she seemed to have from

mine. But it has not stood in the least in the way of our

liking each other. I believe the difference makes us the more

united.'

'It says a great deal for the liberality of both,' answered

Somerset warmly. 'Heaven send us more of the same sort of

people! They are not too numerous at present.'

As this remark called for no reply from Miss De Stancy, she

took advantage of an opportunity to leave him alone, first

repeating her permission to him to wander where he would. He

walked about for some time, sketch-book in hand, but was

conscious that his interest did not lie much in the

architecture. In passing along the corridor of an upper floor

he observed an open door, through which was visible a room

containing one of the finest Renaissance cabinets he had ever

seen. It was impossible, on close examination, to do justice

to it in a hasty sketch; it would be necessary to measure

every line if he would bring away anything of utility to him

as a designer. Deciding to reserve this gem for another

opportunity he cast his eyes round the room and blushed a

little. Without knowing it he had intruded into the absent

Miss Paula's own particular set of chambers, including a

boudoir and sleeping apartment. On the tables of the sitting-

room were most of the popular papers and periodicals that he

knew, not only English, but from Paris, Italy, and America.

Satirical prints, though they did not unduly preponderate,

were not wanting. Besides these there were books from a

London circulating library, paper-covered light literature in

French and choice Italian, and the latest monthly reviews;

while between the two windows stood the telegraph apparatus

whose wire had been the means of bringing him hither.

These things, ensconced amid so much of the old and hoary,

were as if a stray hour from the nineteenth century had

wandered like a butterfly into the thirteenth, and lost itself

there.

The door between this ante-chamber and the sleeping-room stood

open. Without venturing to cross the threshold, for he felt

that he would be abusing hospitality to go so far, Somerset

looked in for a moment. It was a pretty place, and seemed to

have been hastily fitted up. In a corner, overhung by a blue

and white canopy of silk, was a little cot, hardly large

enough to impress the character of bedroom upon the old place.

Upon a counterpane lay a parasol and a silk neckerchief. On

the other side of the room was a tall mirror of startling

newness, draped like the bedstead, in blue and white. Thrown

at random upon the floor was a pair of satin slippers that

would have fitted Cinderella. A dressing-gown lay across a

settee; and opposite, upon a small easy-chair in the same blue

and white livery, were a Bible, the Baptist Magazine, Wardlaw

on Infant Baptism, Walford's County Families, and the Court

Journal. On and over the mantelpiece were nicknacks of

various descriptions, and photographic portraits of the

artistic, scientific, and literary celebrities of the day.

A dressing-room lay beyond; but, becoming conscious that his

study of ancient architecture would hardly bear stretching

further in that direction, Mr. Somerset retreated to the

outside, obliviously passing by the gem of Renaissance that

had led him in.

'She affects blue,' he was thinking. 'Then she is fair.'

On looking up, some time later, at the new clock that told the

seconds, he found that the hours at his disposal for work had

flown without his having transferred a single feature of the

building or furniture to his sketch-book. Before leaving he

sent in for permission to come again, and then walked across

the fields to the inn at Sleeping-Green, reflecting less upon

Miss De Stancy (so little force of presence had she possessed)

than upon the modern flower in a mediaeval flower-pot whom

Miss De Stancy's information had brought before him, and upon

the incongruities that were daily shaping themselves in the

world under the great modern fluctuations of classes and

creeds.

Somerset was still full of the subject when he arrived at the

end of his walk, and he fancied that some loungers at the bar

of the inn were discussing the heroine of the chapel-scene

just at the moment of his entry. On this account, when the

landlord came to clear away the dinner, Somerset was led to

inquire of him, by way of opening a conversation, if there

were many Baptists in the neighbourhood.

The landlord (who was a serious man on the surface, though he

occasionally smiled beneath) replied that there were a great

many--far more than the average in country parishes. 'Even

here, in my house, now,' he added, 'when volks get a drop of

drink into 'em, and their feelings rise to a zong, some man

will strike up a hymn by preference. But I find no fault with

that; for though 'tis hardly human nature to be so calculating

in yer cups, a feller may as well sing to gain something as

sing to waste.'

'How do you account for there being so many?'

'Well, you zee, sir, some says one thing, and some another; I

think they does it to save the expense of a Christian burial

for ther children. Now there's a poor family out in Long

Lane--the husband used to smite for Jimmy More the blacksmith

till 'a hurt his arm--they'd have no less than eleven children

if they'd not been lucky t'other way, and buried five when

they were three or four months old. Now every one of them

children was given to the sexton in a little box that any

journeyman could nail together in a quarter of an hour, and he

buried 'em at night for a shilling a head; whereas 'twould

have cost a couple of pounds each if they'd been christened at

church. . . . Of course there's the new lady at the castle,

she's a chapel member, and that may make a little difference;

but she's not been here long enough to show whether 'twill be

worth while to join 'em for the profit o't or whether 'twill

not. No doubt if it turns out that she's of a sort to relieve

volks in trouble, more will join her set than belongs to it

already. "Any port in a storm," of course, as the saying is.'

'As for yourself, you are a Churchman at present, I presume?'

'Yes; not but I was a Methodist once--ay, for a length of

time. 'Twas owing to my taking a house next door to a chapel;

so that what with hearing the organ bizz like a bee through

the wall, and what with finding it saved umbrellas on wet

Zundays, I went over to that faith for two years--though I

believe I dropped money by it--I wouldn't be the man to say so

if I hadn't. Howsomever, when I moved into this house I

turned back again to my old religion. Faith, I don't zee much

difference: be you one, or be you t'other, you've got to get

your living.'

'The De Stancys, of course, have not much influence here now,

for that, or any other thing?'

'O no, no; not any at all. They be very low upon ground, and

always will be now, I suppose. It was thoughted worthy of

being recorded in history--you've read it, sir, no doubt?'

'Not a word.'

'O, then, you shall. I've got the history zomewhere. 'Twas

gay manners that did it. The only bit of luck they have had

of late years is Miss Power's taking to little Miss De Stancy,

and making her her company-keeper. I hope 'twill continue.'

That the two daughters of these antipodean families should be

such intimate friends was a situation which pleased Somerset

as much as it did the landlord. It was an engaging instance

of that human progress on which he had expended many charming

dreams in the years when poetry, theology, and the

reorganization of society had seemed matters of more

importance to him than a profession which should help him to a

big house and income, a fair Deiopeia, and a lovely progeny.

When he was alone he poured out a glass of wine, and silently

drank the healths of the two generous-minded young women who,

in this lonely district, had found sweet communion a necessity

of life, and by pure and instinctive good sense had broken

down a barrier which men thrice their age and repute would

probably have felt it imperative to maintain. But perhaps

this was premature: the omnipotent Miss Power's character--

practical or ideal, politic or impulsive--he as yet knew

nothing of; and giving over reasoning from insufficient data

he lapsed into mere conjecture.