Yet in spite of this sombre artistic effect, the morning was not one which tended to lower the spirits. It was even cheering. For it did not rain, nor was rain likely to fall for many days to come.
Elfride had turned from the table towards the fire and was idly elevating a hand-screen before her face, when she heard the click of a little gate outside.
"Ah, here"s the postman!" she said, as a shuffling, active man came through an opening in the shrubbery and across the lawn. She vanished, and met him in the porch, afterwards coming in with her hands behind her back.
"How many are there? Three for papa, one for Mr. Smith, none for Miss Swancourt. And, papa, look here, one of yours is from--whom do you think?--Lord Luxellian. And it has something HARD in it--a lump of 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 cla.s.s 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 a.s.sails 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 doc.u.ments 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 ma.s.s 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 const.i.tution were not well seasoned, as thank G.o.d it is,"--here Mr. Swancourt looked down his front, as if his const.i.tution 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 a.s.sented; 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 d.i.c.kens 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, a.s.sisted 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 sc.r.a.ps 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.