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 at the castle, the conversation turned on Sir William De Stancy.
‘I have often noticed,’ observed the landlord, ‘that volks who have come to grief, and quite failed, have the rules how to succeed in life more at their vingers’ ends than volks who have succeeded. I assure you that Sir William, so full as he is of wise maxims, never acted upon a wise maxim in his life, until he had lost everything, and it didn’t matter whether he was wise or no. You know what he was in his young days, of course?’
‘No, I don’t,’ said the invisible stranger.
‘O, I thought everybody knew poor Sir William’s history. He was the star, as I may zay, of good company forty years ago. I remember him in the height of his jinks, as I used to zee him when I was a very little boy, and think how great and wonderful he was. I can seem to zee now the exact style of his clothes; white hat, white trousers, white silk handkerchief; and his jonnick face, as white as his clothes with keeping late hours. There was nothing black about him but his hair and his eyes – he wore no beard at that time – and they were black as slooes. The like of his coming on the race-course was never seen there afore nor since. He drove his ikkipage hisself; and it was always hauled by four beautiful white horses, and two outriders rode in harness bridles. There was a groom behind him, and another at the rubbing-post, all in livery as glorious as New Jerusalem. What a ‘stablishment he kept up at that time! I can mind him, sir, with thirty race-horses in training at once, seventeen coach-horses, twelve hunters at his box t’other side of London, four chargers at Budmouth, and ever so many hacks.’
‘And he lost all by his racing speculations?’ the stranger observed; and Somerset fancied that the voice had in it something more than the languid carelessness of a casual sojourner.
‘Partly by that, partly in other ways. He spent a mint o’ money in a wild project of founding a watering-place; and sunk thousands in a useless silver mine; so ‘twas no wonder that the castle named after him vell into other hands… The way it was done was curious. Mr. Wilkins, who was the first owner after it went from Sir William, actually sat down as a guest at his table, and got up as the owner. He took off, at a round sum, everything saleable, furniture, plate, pictures, even the milk and butter in the dairy. That’s how the pictures and furniture come to be in the castle still; wormeaten rubbish zome o’ it, and hardly worth moving.’
‘And off went the baronet to Myrtle Villa?’
‘O no! he went away for many years. ‘Tis quite lately, since his illness, that he came to that little place, in zight of the stone walls that were the pride of his forefathers.’
‘From what I hear, he has not the manner of a broken-hearted man?’
‘Not at all. Since that illness he has been happy, as you see him: no pride, quite calm and mild; at new moon quite childish. ‘Tis that makes him able to live there; before he was so ill he couldn’t bear a zight of the place, but since then he is happy nowhere else, and never leaves the parish further than to drive once a week to Markton. His head won’t stand society nowadays, and he lives quite lonely as you zee, only zeeing his daughter, or his son whenever he comes home, which is not often. They say that if his brain hadn’t softened a little he would ha’ died – ‘twas that saved his life.’
‘What’s this I hear about his daughter? Is she really hired companion to the new owner?’
‘Now that’s a curious thing again, these two girls being so fond of one another; one of ‘em a dissenter, and all that, and t’other a De Stancy. O no, not hired exactly, but she mostly lives with Miss Power, and goes about with
