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<h2>CHAPTER XXIII</h2> <div class="block"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> <div>"Thou vacant house, moated about by peace."</div> <div class="right">Stephen Phillips.</div> </div></div> </div> Mr. Stirling and his nephew were standing in the long picture gallery of Hulver, looking at the portrait of Roger Manvers of Dunwich, who inherited Hulver in Charles the Second's time. "His grandmother, Anne de la Pole, that pinched-looking old woman in the ruff, would never have left it to her daughter's son if she had had anyone else to leave it to," said Mr. Stirling. "She built Hulver in the shape of an E in honour of her kinswoman Queen Elizabeth. That prim little picture below her portrait shows the house when it was new. It must have looked very much the same then as it does now, except that the hollies were all trimmed to fantastic shapes. Look at the birds and domes and crowns." "I like them better as they are now," said his nephew, a weak-looking youth with projecting teeth, his spectacled eyes turning from the picture to the renowned avenue of hollies, now stooping and splitting in extreme old age. "I have often wondered what homely Roger[Pg 187] Manvers, the burgess of Dunwich, must have felt when old Anne actually left him this place after her only son was drowned. I can so well imagine him riding over here, a careful, sturdy man, not unlike the present Roger Manvers, and having a look at his inheritance, and debating with himself whether he would leave Dunwich and settle here." "And did he?" "Yes. The sea decided that for him. A year later it swept away the town of Dunwich as far as Maison Dieu. And it swept away Roger Manvers' pleasant house, Montjoy. And he moved across the borders of Suffolk to Lowshire with all he had been able to save from his old home, and established himself here. I like the way he has hung those wooden-looking pictures of his burgess forbears in their furred cloaks and chains among the brocaded D'Urbans and De la Poles. Roger Manvers tells me that it was old Roger who first took the property in hand, and heightened the Kirby dam, and drained Mendlesham Marsh, and built the Riff almshouses. The De la Poles had never troubled themselves about such matters. And to think of that wretched creature the present owner tearing the old place limb from limb, throwing it from him with both hands! It makes me miserable. I vow I will never come here again." The caretaker had unshuttered a few among the long line of windows, and the airlessness,[Pg 188] the ghostly outlines of the muffled furniture, the dust which lay grey on everything, the faint smell of dry rot, all struck at Mr. Stirling's sensitive spirit and oppressed him. He turned impatiently to the windows. If it is a misfortune to be stout, even if one is tall, and to be short, even if one is slim, and to be fifty, even if one is of a cheerful temperament, and to be bald, even if one has a well-shaped head, then Mr. Stirling, who was short and stout, and bald as well, and fifty into the bargain, was somewhat heavily handicapped as to his outer man. But one immense compensation was his for an unattractive personality. He never gave it a moment's thought, and consequently no one else did either. His body was no more than a travelling-suit to him. It was hardy, durable, he was comfortable in it, grateful to it, on good terms with it, worked it hard, and used it to the uttermost. That it was not more ornamental than a Gladstone bag did not trouble him. "Put it all in a book," said his nephew absently, whose eyes were glued to the pictures. "Put it in a book, Uncle Reggie." Mr. Stirling had long since ceased to be annoyed by a remark which is about as pleasant to a writer as a suggestion of embezzlement is to a bank manager. "Have you seen enough, Geoff? Shall we go?" he said. "Wait a bit. Where's the Raeburn?" [Pg 189] "'Highland Mary'? Sold. A pork butcher in America bought her for a fabulous sum. I believe Dick Manvers lost the whole of it on one race. If there is coin in the next world, he will play ducks and drakes with it upon the glassy sea." "Sold! Good God!" said his nephew, staring horrorstruck at his uncle. "How awful! Pictures ought not to belong to individuals. The nation ought to have them." He seemed staggered. "Awful!" he said again. "What a tragedy!" "To my mind, that is more tragic," said Mr. Stirling bluntly, pointing to the window. In the deserted garden, near the sundial, Janey was standing, a small nondescript figure in a mushroom hat, picking snap-dragons. The gardens had been allowed to run wild for lack of funds to keep them in order, and had become beautiful exceedingly in consequence. The rose-coloured snap-dragons and amber lupins were struggling to hold their own in their stone-edged beds against an invasion of willow weed. A convolvulus had climbed to the sundial, wrapping it round and round, and had laid its bold white trumpet flowers on the leaded disk itself. Janey had not disturbed it. Perhaps she thought that no one but herself sought to see the time there. The snap-dragons rose in a great blot of straggling rose and white and wine-red round her feet. She was picking them slowly, as one whose mind was not following her hand. At a little distance[Pg 190] Harry was lying at his full length on the flags beside the round stone-edged fountain, blowing assiduously at a little boat which was refusing to cross. In the midst of the water Cellini's world-famed water nymph reined in her dolphins. A yellow stone-crop had found a foothold on the pedestal of the group, and flaunted its raw gold in the vivid sunshine amid the weather-bitten grey stone, making a fantastic broken reflection where Harry's boat rippled the water. And behind Janey's figure, and behind the reflection of the fountain in the water, was the cool, sinister background of the circular yew hedge, with the heather pink of the willow weed crowding up against it. The young man gasped. "But it's—it's a picture," he said. And then, after a moment, he added, "Everything except the woman. Of course she won't do." Geoff's curiously innocent prominent eyes were fixed. His vacant face was rapt. His uncle looked sympathetically at him. He knew what it was to receive an idea "like Dian's kiss, unasked, unsought." The caretaker, whose tea-time was already delayed, coughed discreetly in the hall. "Come, Geoff," said Mr. Stirling, remorsefully but determinedly, taking his nephew's arm. "We can't remain here for ever." "It's all right except the woman," said Geoff, not stirring. "Every scrap. It hits you in[Pg 191] the eye. Look how the lichen has got at the dolphins. All splendour and desolation, and the yew hedge like a funeral procession behind. Not a bit of sky above them: the only sky reflected in the water." His voice had sunk to a whisper. "When you are my age," said Mr. Stirling, "it is just the woman, not some fanciful angel with a Grecian profile and abnormally long legs, but that particular little brown-haired creature with her short face whom you brush aside, who makes the tragedy of the picture. When I think of what that small courageous personage endures day by day, what her daily life must be—but what's the use of talking? Twenty can't hear a word fifty is saying—isn't meant to. Wake up, Geoff. There is another lady in the case. It is past the caretaker's tea-time. You must learn to consider the fair sex, my dear boy. We are keeping her from her tea. Look, Miss Manvers has seen us. We'll join her in the gardens." One of Mr. Stirling's pleasantest qualities was that he never remembered he was a man of letters. Consequently it was not necessary for him to show that he was still a boy at heart and that he could elaborately forget that he was a distinguished novelist by joining in sailing Harry's boat. Harry scrambled to his feet and shook hands with both men at Janey's bidding, and then he looked wistfully at Geoff as a possible playfellow and smiled at[Pg 192] him, an ingratiating smile. But Geoff at twenty, two years younger than Harry, Geoff the artist, the cultured inquirer after famous Raeburns, the appraiser of broken reflections and relative values, only gaped vacantly at him, hands in pockets, without seeing him. Harry puffed out an enormous sigh and looked back at his boat, and then he clapped his hands suddenly and ran to meet Annette, who was coming slowly towards them across the grass. Mr. Stirling's eyes and Janey's followed him, and Mr. Stirling felt rather than saw that Janey winced as she looked gravely at the approaching figure. Geoff's hat was at the back of his sugar-cone of a head. His mild face was transfixed. "Mrs. Le Geyt," he said, below his breath. <hr /> [Pg 193] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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