A Laodicean : A Story of To-day

by Thomas Hardy

  VI.

  The telegraph had almost the attributes of a human being at StancyCastle. When its bell rang people rushed to the old tapestried chamberallotted to it, and waited its pleasure with all the deference due tosuch a novel inhabitant of that ancestral pile. This happened on thefollowing afternoon about four o'clock, while Somerset was sketching inthe room adjoining that occupied by the instrument. Hearing its call, helooked in to learn if anybody were attending, and found Miss De Stancybending over it.

  She welcomed him without the least embarrassment. 'Another message,' shesaid.--'"Paula to Charlotte.--Have returned to Markton. Am starting forhome. Will be at the gate between four and five if possible."'

  Miss De Stancy blushed with pleasure when she raised her eyes from themachine. 'Is she not thoughtful to let me know beforehand?'

  Somerset said she certainly appeared to be, feeling at the same timethat he was not in possession of sufficient data to make the opinion ofgreat 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 hadno 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 elevatedposition a great way along the white road, stretching like a tape amidthe 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 hasbeen delayed.'

  'How would she be likely to come?'

  'She has doubtless hired a carriage at the inn: she said it would beuseless to send to meet her, as she couldn't name a time.... Where isshe now?'

  'Just where the boughs of those beeches overhang the road--there she isagain!'

  Miss De Stancy went away to give directions, and Somerset continued towatch. The vehicle, which was of no great pretension, soon crossed thebridge and stopped: there was a ring at the bell; and Miss De Stancyreappeared.

  '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, youknow.'

  Somerset felt an indescribable backwardness. 'I will go on with mysketching,' he said. 'Perhaps she will not be--'

  'O, but it would be quite natural, would it not? Our manners are easierhere, you know, than they are in town, and Miss Power has adaptedherself to them.'

  A compromise was effected by Somerset declaring that he would holdhimself in readiness to be discovered on the landing at any convenienttime.

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

  The man advanced with a card: Miss De Stancy took it up, and readthereon: 'Mr. William Dare.'

  'It is not Miss Power who has come, then?' she asked, with adisappointed face.

  'No, ma'am.'

  She looked again at the card. 'This is some man of business, Isuppose--does he want to see me?'

  'Yes, miss. Leastwise, he would be glad to see you if Miss Power is notat 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 aphotographic amateur, and it seems that he wrote some time ago to MissPower, who gave him permission to take views of the castle, and promisedto show him the best points. But I have heard nothing of it, andscarcely know whether I ought to take his word in her absence. Mrs.Goodman, Miss Power's relative, who usually attends to these things, isaway.'

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

  'Would you mind seeing him? If you think it quite in order, perhaps youwill instruct him where the best views are to be obtained?'

  Thereupon Somerset at once went down to Mr. Dare. His coming as a sortof counterfeit of Miss Power disposed Somerset to judge him with as muchseverity as justice would allow, and his manner for the moment was notof a kind calculated to dissipate antagonistic instincts. Mr. Dare wasstanding before the fireplace with his feet wide apart, and his handsin the pockets of his coat-tails, looking at a carving over themantelpiece. He turned quickly at the sound of Somerset's footsteps, andrevealed himself as a person quite out of the common.

  His age it was impossible to say. There was not a hair on his face whichcould serve to hang a guess upon. In repose he appeared a boy; but hisactions were so completely those of a man that the beholder's firstestimate of sixteen as his age was hastily corrected to six-and-twenty,and afterwards shifted hither and thither along intervening years asthe 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 inthe middle, hung as a fringe or valance above, in the fashion sometimesaffected by the other sex. He wore a heavy ring, of which the goldseemed fair, the diamond questionable, and the taste indifferent. Therewere 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, notwhy Mr. Dare should be present, but why Somerset should be presentlikewise; and the first tone that came from Dare's lips wound up hislistener's opinion that he did not like him.

  A latent power in the man, or boy, was revealed by the circumstance thatSomerset did not feel, as he would ordinarily have done, thatit was a matter of profound indifference to him whether thisgentleman-photographer were a likeable person or no.

  'I have called by appointment; or rather, I left a card stating thatto-day would suit me, and no objection was made.' Somerset recognizedthe voice; it was that of the invisible stranger who had talked with thelandlord about the De Stancys. Mr. Dare then proceeded to explain hisbusiness.

  Somerset found from his inquiries that the man had unquestionably beeninstructed by somebody to take the views he spoke of; and concluded thatDare's curiosity at the inn was, after all, naturally explained by hiserrand to this place. Blaming himself for a too hasty condemnation ofthe stranger, who though visually a little too assured was civil enoughverbally, Somerset proceeded with the young photographer to sundrycorners of the outer ward, and thence across the moat to the field,suggesting advantageous points of view. The office, being a shadow ofhis own pursuits, was not uncongenial to Somerset, and he forgot otherthings in attending to it.

  'Now in our country we should stand further back than this, and so get amore comprehensive coup d'oeil,' said Dare, as Somerset selected a goodsituation.

  '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 bentupon making famous. Yet I am but a dilettante, and do not follow thisart 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 uphis van and assistant to begin operations, Somerset returned to thecastle entrance. While under the archway a man with a professional lookdrove 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 asit was now drawing towards the end of the afternoon, he walked off inthe direction of his inn.

  There were two or three ways to that spot, but the pleasantest was bypassing through a rambling shrubbery, between whose bushes trickleda broad shallow brook, occasionally intercepted in its course by atransverse chain of old stones, evidently from the castle walls, whichformed a miniature waterfall. The walk lay along the river-brink. SoonSomerset saw before him a circular summer-house formed of short sticksnailed to ornamental patterns. Outside the structure, and immediatelyin the path, stood a
man with a book in his hand; and it was presentlyapparent that this gentleman was holding a conversation with someperson inside the pavilion, but the back of the building being towardsSomerset, the second individual could not be seen.

  The speaker at one moment glanced into the interior, and at anotherat the advancing form of the architect, whom, though distinctly enoughbeheld, the other scarcely appeared to heed in the absorbing interestof his own discourse. Somerset became aware that it was the Baptistminister, whose rhetoric he had heard in the chapel yonder.

  'Now,' continued the Baptist minister, 'will you express to me anyreason or objection whatever which induces you to withdraw from ourcommunion? It was that of your father, and of his father before him. Anydifficulty you may have met with I will honestly try to remove; forI need hardly say that in losing you we lose one of the most valuedmembers of the Baptist church in this district. I speak with all therespect due to your position, when I ask you to realize how irreparableis the injury you inflict upon the cause here by this lukewarmbackwardness.'

  '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 workof your aunt, who did it unknown to your parents when she had you inher power, out of pure obstinacy to a church with which she was not insympathy, taking you surreptitiously, and indefensibly, to the fontof the Establishment; so that the rite meant and could mean nothing atall.... But I fear that your new position has brought you into contactwith the Paedobaptists, that they have disturbed your old principles,and so induced you to believe in the validity of that trumperyceremony!'

  'It seems sufficient.'

  'I will demolish the basis of that seeming in three minutes, give me butthat time as a listener.'

  'I have no objection.'

  'Very well.... First, then, I will assume that those who have influencedyou in the matter have not been able to make any impression upon one sowell grounded as yourself in our distinctive doctrine, by the stale oldargument 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 itimpressed 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 longusage. He turned on till he came to the beginning of the New Testament,and then commenced his discourse. After explaining his position, the oldman ran very ably through the arguments, citing well-known writers onthe point in dispute when he required more finished sentences than hisown.

  The minister's earnestness and interest in his own case led himunconsciously to include Somerset in his audience as the young mandrew nearer; till, instead of fixing his eyes exclusively on the personwithin the summer-house, the preacher began to direct a good proportionof his discourse upon his new auditor, turning from one listener tothe other attentively, without seeming to feel Somerset's presence assuperfluous.

  'And now,' he said in conclusion, 'I put it to you, sir, as to her: doyou 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 riteadministered to you in your unconscious infancy? I put it to you both ashonest and responsible beings.' He turned again to the young man.

  It happened that Somerset had been over this ground long ago. Born, soto speak, a High-Church infant, in his youth he had been of a thoughtfulturn, till at one time an idea of his entering the Church had beenentertained by his parents. He had formed acquaintance with men ofalmost every variety of doctrinal practice in this country; and, asthe pleadings of each assailed him before he had arrived at an age ofsufficient mental stability to resist new impressions, however badlysubstantiated, he inclined to each denomination as it presented itself,was

  'Everything by starts, and nothing long,'

  till he had travelled through a great many beliefs and doctrines withoutfeeling himself much better than when he set out.

  A study of fonts and their origin had qualified him in this particularsubject. Fully conscious of the inexpediency of contests on minor ritualdifferences, he yet felt a sudden impulse towards a mild intellectualtournament with the eager old man--purely as an exercise of his wits inthe defence of a fair girl.

  'Sir, I accept your challenge to us,' said Somerset, advancing to theminister's side.