Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (369 page)

‘You knew my cousin, Jack Ravensbury?’ he said to Somerset, as they went on. ‘Poor Jack: he was a good fellow.’

‘He was a very good fellow.’

‘He would have been made a parson if he had lived — it was his great wish. I, as his senior, and a man of the world as I thought myself, used to chaff him about it when he was a boy, and tell him not to be a milksop, but to enter the army. But I think Jack was right — the parsons have the best of it, I see now.’

‘They would hardly admit that,’ said Somerset, laughing. ‘Nor can I.’

‘Nor I,’ said the captain’s sister. ‘See how lovely you all looked with your big guns and uniform when you entered Markton; and then see how stupid the parsons look by comparison, when they flock into Markton at a Visitation.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said De Stancy,

     ‘“Doubtless it is a brilliant masquerade;

       But when of the first sight you’ve had your fill,

       It palls — at least it does so upon me,

       This paradise of pleasure and ennui.”

When one is getting on for forty;

       “When we have made our love, and gamed our gaming,

          Dressed, voted, shone, and maybe, something more;

        With dandies dined, heard senators declaiming;

          Seen beauties brought to market by the score,”

and so on, there arises a strong desire for a quiet old-fashioned country life, in which incessant movement is not a necessary part of the programme.’

‘But you are not forty, Will?’ said Charlotte.

‘My dear, I was thirty-nine last January.’

‘Well, men about here are youths at that age. It was India used you up so, when you served in the line, was it not? I wish you had never gone there!’

‘So do I,’ said De Stancy drily. ‘But I ought to grow a youth again, like the rest, now I am in my native air.’

They came to a narrow brook, not wider than a man’s stride, and Miss De Stancy halted on the edge.

‘Why, Lottie, you used to jump it easily enough,’ said her brother. ‘But we won’t make her do it now.’ He took her in his arms, and lifted her over, giving her a gratuitous ride for some additional yards, and saying, ‘You are not a pound heavier, Lott, than you were at ten years old.... What do you think of the country here, Mr. Somerset? Are you going to stay long?’

‘I think very well of it,’ said Somerset. ‘But I leave to-morrow morning, which makes it necessary that I turn back in a minute or two from walking with you.’

‘That’s a disappointment. I had hoped you were going to finish out the autumn with shooting. There’s some, very fair, to be got here on reasonable terms, I’ve just heard.’

‘But you need not hire any!’ spoke up Charlotte. ‘Paula would let you shoot anything, I am sure. She has not been here long enough to preserve much game, and the poachers had it all in Mr. Wilkins’ time. But what there is you might kill with pleasure to her.’

‘No, thank you,’ said De Stancy grimly. ‘I prefer to remain a stranger to Miss Power — Miss Steam-Power, she ought to be called — and to all her possessions.’

Charlotte was subdued, and did not insist further; while Somerset, before he could feel himself able to decide on the mood in which the gallant captain’s joke at Paula’s expense should be taken, wondered whether it were a married man or a bachelor who uttered it.

He had not been able to keep the question of De Stancy’s domestic state out of his head from the first moment of seeing him. Assuming De Stancy to be a husband, he felt there might be some excuse for his remark; if unmarried, Somerset liked the satire still better; in such circumstances there was a relief in the thought that Captain De Stancy’s prejudices might be infinitely stronger than those of his sister or father.

‘Going to-morrow, did you say, Mr. Somerset?’ asked Miss De Stancy. ‘Then will you dine with us to-day? My father is anxious that you should do so before you go. I am sorry there will be only our own family present to meet you; but you can leave as early as you wish.’

Her brother seconded the invitation, and Somerset promised, though his leisure for that evening was short. He was in truth somewhat inclined to like De Stancy; for though the captain had said nothing of any value either on war, commerce, science, or art, he had seemed attractive to the younger man. Beyond the natural interest a soldier has for imaginative minds in the civil walks of life, De Stancy’s occasional manifestations of taedium vitae were too poetically shaped to be repellent. Gallantry combined in him with a sort of ascetic self-repression in a way that was curious. He was a dozen years older than Somerset: his life had been passed in grooves remote from those of Somerset’s own life; and the latter decided that he would like to meet the artillery officer again.

Bidding them a temporary farewell, he went away to Markton by a shorter path than that pursued by the De Stancys, and after spending the remainder of the afternoon preparing for departure, he sallied forth just before the dinner-hour towards the suburban villa.

He had become yet more curious whether a Mrs. De Stancy existed; if there were one he would probably see her to-night. He had an irrepressible hope that there might be such a lady. On entering the drawing-room only the father, son, and daughter were assembled. Somerset fell into talk with Charlotte during the few minutes before dinner, and his thought found its way out.

‘There is no Mrs. De Stancy?’ he said in an undertone.

‘None,’ she said; ‘my brother is a bachelor.’

The dinner having been fixed at an early hour to suit Somerset, they had returned to the drawing-room at eight o’clock. About nine he was aiming to get away.

‘You are not off yet?’ said the captain.

‘There would have been no hurry,’ said Somerset, ‘had I not just remembered that I have left one thing undone which I want to attend to before my departure. I want to see the chief constable to-night.’

‘Cunningham Haze? — he is the very man I too want to see. But he went out of town this afternoon, and I hardly think you will see him to-night. His return has been delayed.’

‘Then the matter must wait.’

‘I have left word at his house asking him to call here if he gets home before half-past ten; but at any rate I shall see him to-morrow morning. Can I do anything for you, since you are leaving early?’

Somerset replied that the business was of no great importance, and briefly explained the suspected intrusion into his studio; that he had with him a photograph of the suspected young man. ‘If it is a mistake,’ added Somerset, ‘I should regret putting my draughtsman’s portrait into the hands of the police, since it might injure his character; indeed, it would be unfair to him. So I wish to keep the likeness in my own hands, and merely to show it to Mr. Haze. That’s why I prefer not to send it.’

‘My matter with Haze is that the barrack furniture does not correspond with the inventories. If you like, I’ll ask your question at the same time with pleasure.’

Thereupon Somerset gave Captain De Stancy an unfastened envelope containing the portrait, asking him to destroy it if the constable should declare it not to correspond with the face that met his eye at the window. Soon after, Somerset took his leave of the household.

He had not been absent ten minutes when other wheels were heard on the gravel without, and the servant announced Mr. Cunningham Haze, who had returned earlier than he had expected, and had called as requested.

They went into the dining-room to discuss their business. When the barrack matter had been arranged De Stancy said, ‘I have a little commission to execute for my friend Mr. Somerset. I am to ask you if this portrait of the person he suspects of unlawfully entering his room is like the man you saw there?’

The speaker was seated on one side of the dining-table and Mr. Haze on the other. As he spoke De Stancy pulled the envelope from his pocket, and half drew out the photograph, which he had not as yet looked at, to hand it over to the constable. In the act his eye fell upon the portrait, with its uncertain expression of age, assured look, and hair worn in a fringe like a girl’s.

Captain De Stancy’s face became strained, and he leant back in his chair, having previously had sufficient power over himself to close the envelope and return it to his pocket.

‘Good heavens, you are ill, Captain De Stancy?’ said the chief constable.

‘It was only momentary,’ said De Stancy; ‘better in a minute — a glass of water will put me right.’

Mr. Haze got him a glass of water from the sideboard.

‘These spasms occasionally overtake me,’ said De Stancy when he had drunk. ‘I am already better. What were we saying? O, this affair of Mr. Somerset’s. I find that this envelope is not the right one.’ He ostensibly searched his pocket again. ‘I must have mislaid it,’ he continued, rising. ‘I’ll be with you again in a moment.’

De Stancy went into the room adjoining, opened an album of portraits that lay on the table, and selected one of a young man quite unknown to him, whose age was somewhat akin to Dare’s, but who in no other attribute resembled him.

De Stancy placed this picture in the original envelope, and returned with it to the chief constable, saying he had found it at last.

‘Thank you, thank you,’ said Cunningham Haze, looking it over. ‘Ah — I perceive it is not what I expected to see. Mr. Somerset was mistaken.’

When the chief constable had left the house, Captain De Stancy shut the door and drew out the original photograph. As he looked at the transcript of Dare’s features he was moved by a painful agitation, till recalling himself to the present, he carefully put the portrait into the fire.

During the following days Captain De Stancy’s manner on the roads, in the streets, and at barracks, was that of Crusoe after seeing the print of a man’s foot on the sand.

CHAPTER V.

Anybody who had closely considered Dare at this time would have discovered that, shortly after the arrival of the Royal Horse Artillery at Markton Barracks, he gave up his room at the inn at Sleeping-Green and took permanent lodgings over a broker’s shop in the town above-mentioned. The peculiarity of the rooms was that they commanded a view lengthwise of the barrack lane along which any soldier, in the natural course of things, would pass either to enter the town, to call at Myrtle Villa, or to go to Stancy Castle.

Dare seemed to act as if there were plenty of time for his business. Some few days had slipped by when, perceiving Captain De Stancy walk past his window and into the town, Dare took his hat and cane, and followed in the same direction. When he was about fifty yards short of Myrtle Villa on the other side of the town he saw De Stancy enter its gate.

Dare mounted a stile beside the highway and patiently waited. In about twenty minutes De Stancy came out again and turned back in the direction of the town, till Dare was revealed to him on his left hand. When De Stancy recognized the youth he was visibly agitated, though apparently not surprised. Standing still a moment he dropped his glance upon the ground, and then came forward to Dare, who having alighted from the stile stood before the captain with a smile.

‘My dear lad!’ said De Stancy, much moved by recollections. He held Dare’s hand for a moment in both his own, and turned askance.

‘You are not astonished,’ said Dare, still retaining his smile, as if to his mind there were something comic in the situation.

‘I knew you were somewhere near. Where do you come from?’

‘From going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it, as Satan said to his Maker. — Southampton last, in common speech.’

‘Have you come here to see me?’

‘Entirely. I divined that your next quarters would be Markton, the previous batteries that were at your station having come on here. I have wanted to see you badly.’

‘You have?’

‘I am rather out of cash. I have been knocking about a good deal since you last heard from me.’

‘I will do what I can again.’

‘Thanks, captain.’

‘But, Willy, I am afraid it will not be much at present. You know I am as poor as a mouse.’

‘But such as it is, could you write a cheque for it now?’

‘I will send it to you from the barracks.’

‘I have a better plan. By getting over this stile we could go round at the back of the villas to Sleeping-Green Church. There is always a pen-and-ink in the vestry, and we can have a nice talk on the way. It would be unwise for me to appear at the barracks just now.’

‘That’s true.’

De Stancy sighed, and they were about to walk across the fields together. ‘No,’ said Dare, suddenly stopping: my plans make it imperative that we should not run the risk of being seen in each other’s company for long. Walk on, and I will follow. You can stroll into the churchyard, and move about as if you were ruminating on the epitaphs. There are some with excellent morals. I’ll enter by the other gate, and we can meet easily in the vestry-room.’

De Stancy looked gloomy, and was on the point of acquiescing when he turned back and said, ‘Why should your photograph be shown to the chief constable?’

‘By whom?’

‘Somerset the architect. He suspects your having broken into his office or something of the sort.’ De Stancy briefly related what Somerset had explained to him at the dinner-table.

‘It was merely diamond cut diamond between us, on an architectural matter,’ murmured Dare. ‘Ho! and he suspects; and that’s his remedy!’

‘I hope this is nothing serious?’ asked De Stancy gravely.

‘I peeped at his drawing — that’s all. But since he chooses to make that use of my photograph, which I gave him in friendship, I’ll make use of his in a way he little dreams of. Well now, let’s on.’

A quarter of an hour later they met in the vestry of the church at Sleeping-Green.

‘I have only just transferred my account to the bank here,’ said De Stancy, as he took out his cheque-book, ‘and it will be more convenient to me at present to draw but a small sum. I will make up the balance afterwards.’

When he had written it Dare glanced over the paper and said ruefully, ‘It is small, dad. Well, there is all the more reason why I should broach my scheme, with a view to making such documents larger in the future.’