A Laodicean : A Story of To-day. Thomas Hardy
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cottage awakened in Somerset a warmer emotion than curiosity, and he sat down with a heart as responsive to each speech uttered as if it had seriously concerned himself, while his host gave some words of information to his daughter on the trifling events that had marked the morning just passed; such as that the cow had got out of the paddock into Miss Power’s field, that the smith who had promised to come and look at the kitchen range had not arrived, that two wasps’ nests had been discovered in the garden bank, and that Nick Jones’s baby had fallen downstairs. Sir William had large cavernous arches to his eye-sockets, reminding the beholder of the vaults in the castle he once had owned. His hands were long and almost fleshless, each knuckle showing like a bamboo-joint from beneath his coat-sleeves, which were small at the elbow and large at the wrist. All the colour had gone from his beard and locks, except in the case of a few isolated hairs of the former, which retained dashes of their original shade at sudden points in their length, revealing that all had once been raven black.
But to study a man to his face for long is a species of ill-nature which requires a colder temperament, or at least an older heart, than the architect’s was at that time. Incurious unobservance is the true attitude of cordiality, and Somerset blamed himself for having fallen into an act of inspection even briefly. He would wait for his host’s conversation, which would doubtless be of the essence of historical romance.
‘The favourable Bank-returns have made the money-market much easier to-day, as I learn?’ said Sir William.
‘O, have they?’ said Somerset. ‘Yes, I suppose they have.’
‘And something is meant by this unusual quietness in Foreign stocks since the late remarkable fluctuations,’ insisted the old man. ‘Is the current of speculation quite arrested, or is it but a temporary lull?’
Somerset said he was afraid he could not give an opinion, and entered very lamely into the subject; but Sir William seemed to find sufficient interest in his own thoughts to do away with the necessity of acquiring fresh impressions from other people’s replies; for often after putting a question he looked on the floor, as if the subject were at an end. Lunch was now ready, and when they were in the dining-room Miss De Stancy, to introduce a topic of more general interest, asked Somerset if he had noticed the myrtle on the lawn?
Somerset had noticed it, and thought he had never seen such a full-blown one in the open air before. His eyes were, however, resting at the moment on the only objects at all out of the common that the dining-room contained. One was a singular glass case over the fireplace, within which were some large mediaeval door-keys, black with rust and age; and the others were two full-length oil portraits in the costume of the end of the last century – so out of all proportion to the size of the room they occupied that they almost reached to the floor.
‘Those originally belonged to the castle yonder,’ said Miss De Stancy, or Charlotte, as her father called her, noticing Somerset’s glance at the keys. ‘They used to unlock the principal entrance-doors, which were knocked to pieces in the civil wars. New doors were placed afterwards, but the old keys were never given up, and have been preserved by us ever since.’
‘They are quite useless – mere lumber – particularly to me,’ said Sir William.
‘And those huge paintings were a present from Paula,’ she continued. ‘They are portraits of my great-grandfather and mother. Paula would give all the old family pictures back to me if we had room for them; but they would fill the house to the ceilings.’
Sir William was impatient of the subject. ‘What is the utility of such accumulations?’ he asked. ‘Their originals are but clay now – mere forgotten dust, not worthy a moment’s inquiry or reflection at this distance of time. Nothing can retain the spirit, and why should we preserve the shadow of the form? – London has been very full this year, sir, I have been told?’
‘It has,’ said Somerset, and he asked if they had been up that season. It was plain that the matter with which Sir William De Stancy least cared to occupy himself before visitors was the history of his own family, in which he was followed with more simplicity by his daughter Charlotte.
‘No,’ said the baronet. ‘One might be led to think there is a fatality which prevents it. We make arrangements to go to town almost every year, to meet some old friend who combines the rare conditions of being in London with being mindful of me; but he has always died or gone elsewhere before the event has taken place… But with a disposition to be happy, it is neither this place nor the other that can render us the reverse. In short each man’s happiness depends upon himself, and his ability for doing with little.’ He turned more particularly to Somerset, and added with an impressive smile: ‘I hope you cultivate the art of doing with little?’
Somerset said that he certainly did cultivate that art, partly because he was obliged to.
‘Ah – you don’t mean to the extent that I mean. The world has not yet learned the riches of frugality, says, I think, Cicero, somewhere; and nobody can testify to the truth of that remark better than I. If a man knows how to spend less than his income, however small that may be, why – he has the philosopher’s stone.’ And Sir William looked in Somerset’s face with frugality written in every pore of his own, as much as to say, ‘And here you see one who has been a living instance of those principles from his youth up.’
Somerset soon found that whatever turn the conversation took, Sir William invariably reverted to this topic of frugality. When luncheon was over he asked his visitor to walk with him into the garden, and no sooner were they alone than he continued: ‘Well, Mr. Somerset, you are down here sketching architecture for professional purposes. Nothing can be better: you are a young man, and your art is one in which there are innumerable chances.’
‘I had begun to think they were rather few,’ said Somerset.
‘No, they are numerous enough: the difficulty is to find out where they lie. It is better to know where your luck lies than where your talent lies: that’s an old man’s opinion.’
‘I’ll remember it,’ said Somerset.
‘And now give me some account of your new clubs, new hotels, and new men… What I was going to add, on the subject of finding out where your luck lies, is that nobody is so unfortunate as not to have a lucky star in some direction or other. Perhaps yours is at the antipodes; if so, go there. All I say is, discover your lucky star.’
‘I am looking for it.’
‘You may be able to do two things; one well, the other but indifferently, and yet you may have more luck in the latter. Then stick to that one, and never mind what you can do best. Your star lies there.’
‘There I am not quite at one with you, Sir William.’
‘You should be. Not that I mean to say that luck lies in any one place long, or at any one person’s door. Fortune likes new faces, and your wisdom lies in bringing your acquisitions into safety while her favour lasts. To do that you must make friends in her time of smiles – make friends with people, wherever you find them. My daughter has unconsciously followed that maxim. She has struck up a warm friendship with our neighbour, Miss Power, at the castle. We are diametrically different from her in associations, traditions, ideas, religion – she comes of a violent dissenting family among other things – but I say to Charlotte what I say to you: win affection and regard wherever you can, and accommodate yourself to the times. I put nothing in the way of their intimacy, and wisely so, for by this so many pleasant hours are added to the sum total vouchsafed to humanity.’
It was quite late in the afternoon when Somerset took his leave. Miss De Stancy did not return to the castle that night, and he walked through the wood as he had come, feeling that he had been talking with a man of simple nature, who flattered his own understanding by devising Machiavellian theories after the event, to account for any spontaneous action of himself or his daughter, which might otherwise seem eccentric or irregular.
Before Somerset reached the inn he was overtaken by a slight shower, and on entering the house he walked into the general room, where there was a fire, and stood with one foot on the fender. The landlord was talking to some guest who sat behind a screen; and, probably because Somerset had been seen passing the window, and was known to be sketching