In the guide-books it figured as Stanyon Castle; on the
tongues of the villagers, it was the Castle; the Polite
World spoke of it as Stanyon, as it spoke of Woburn, and of
Cheveley It was situated in Lincolnshire, not very many
miles from Grantham, rather nearer to Stamford: a locality
considered by those who were more interested in the chase
than in any particular grandeur of scenery to be admirable.
It had more claim to be called a Castle than many another
nobleman's seat. A mediaeval fortress, of which various not
very interesting records were to be found in the muniment
room, now used by Mr. Theodore Frant as an office, had
previously stood upon the site; and such portions of the
ancient building as had survived the passage of time had
been incorporated into the Tudor manor which had succeeded
the fortress. Later generations had enlarged and beautified
the structure much as their fancies dictated, any difficulty
of adding to the mansion being overcome by the designing of
another court. The Frant who survived friendship with Bluff
King Hal scandalized his generation by the lavish use of oak
for wainscoting; his grandson, having enjoyed the advantages
of travel, built a new wing, and embellished the old with
gildings and painted ceilings; a later Frant, succumbing to
the prevailing fashion, ran riot in the rococo style,
created the Fountain Court, and was prevented only by death
from attempting something of a still more grandiose
conception; his heir, one of Mr. Walpole's more fervid
adherents, reverted to the Gothick, and by the time an
unlucky fall at a regular stitcher, when out with the Old
Club, put a period to his career, nowhere in England could
have been found such massive doors of oak, such ponderous
iron latches, so many pointed, narrow windows, as at Stanyon.
The sixth Earl of St. Erth, possibly thinking that his
principal seat already sprawled over too much ground, more
probably prevented from adding a wing in the Palladian style
by the straitened times in which he had the ill-fortune to
live, contented himself with rebuilding the stables,
papering a great many of the rooms, and installing a
closed-stove in the enormous kitchen. This was declared by
an embittered valet to be the only sign of modern
civilization in the entire pile; but the head-cook,
mistrusting modernity, allowed it to be used merely for the
boiling of vegetables by one of his underlings, while he
himself continued to preside over his furnace, with its
antiquated ovens, its huge spits, and its iron cauldrons.
Unaccustomed guests, wandering distractedly down ill-lit
galleries, discovering stairs that led only to uncharted
domestic regions, and arriving, flustered and exhausted,
where they had been for long attended, had been known to
express astonishment that anyone should choose to live in
such a rabbit-warren when he owned two other and more
convenient country residences. Neither of these, it was
true, could boast of Great Halls, Minstrels' Galleries,
Armouries, Towers, or Moats: on the other hand, no draughts
whistled down their passages; no creeping chill arose from
damp walls; and their chimneys very rarely smoked.
Neither the sixth Earl nor his second wife perceived
anything amiss with Stanyon: the Earl because it was the
home of his childhood, his lady because she had been bred in
an even more inconvenient mansion in the bleak north, and
would, in any event, have unhesitatingly bartered comfort
for pomp, had she been offered a choice in the matter. The
Earl's first wife had hated Stanyon. But the Earl's first
wife, though admittedly a lady of birth and quite remarkable
beauty, had proved herself to have been quite unworthy of
the high position she was called upon to fill. Before her
son was out of leading-strings, she ran away with a
notorious rake. Her lord, cuckolded, betrayed, and turned
into a laughing-stock, expunged her name from the family
records, permitted no mention of her to be made within his
walls, and scarcely thought himself avenged when he learned
that she had died, three years after her flight, in
conditions of distress and hardship. His steward and his
housekeeper, both persons of sentiment, hoped that upon his
death-bed he would remember her, and speak of her with a
forgiving tongue, for it seemed to them incredible that so
gentle and lovely a lady should hold no place in his heart
or memory. They even indulged their fancies by supposing
that his overt dislike of his elder son was caused by the
secret pangs the sight of the fair boy, who was indeed the
image of his mother, caused him to feel. But if the Reverend
Felix Clowne, my lord's Chaplain, was to be believed, the
Earl's last coherent speech, forcibly phrased if feebly
uttered, was a complaint that the wine he had commanded his
valet to bring to his room was corked. He had earlier
bestowed his blessing upon Martin, his younger son; he had
had a kind word for Theodore, his nephew; he had taken
punctilious leave of his lady; he had sent proper messages
to his married daughter; but the names of his first wife and
of his heir had not passed his lips. Nor had his heir
arrived at Stanyon to attend his death-bed, although it was
certain that Mr. Theodore Frant had sent a letter express to
him in Flanders, warning him that his father's demise was
imminent. Captain Viscount Des-borough, as he then was
styled, was at Mons, with his regiment, and it was
conceivable that a high sense of his military duties had
prevented him from applying for furlough at a moment when
Napoleon was almost hourly expected to cross the frontier.
But the seventh Earl, surviving a minor, but rather bloody,
engagement at the village of Genappe, and a major engagement
at Waterloo, still showed no disposition to return to the
home of his ancestors. He sold out, but he remained on the
Continent, reposing the fullest confidence in his cousin's
ability to administer his estates. Not until twelve calendar
months had passed since his father's death did his cousin,
and the Dowager Countess, receive tidings from him that he
was in England, and about to take possession of his
inheritance. He wrote a very civil letter to his
mother-in-law, informing her of the proposed date of his
arrival at Stanyon, and enquiring in the politest way after
her health, and the healths of his half-brother and sister.
It was a very pretty letter, the Dowager allowed, but, she
added, in unhopeful accents, his mother had had just such
caressing ways, and had shown herself to be a Snake in the
Bosom.
"I should perhaps warn you, ma'am, that my cousin will not
relish animadversions upon the character of his mother,"
said Mr. Theodore Frant, a little tight-lipped. "In his
presence, such remarks should be spared."
"My dear Theo," responded the Dowager, "it would be odd
indeed if I were to be obliged to consult you on the
observances of civility!" He bowed, and, because she
cherished no ill-will towards him, she said graciously: "Or
anyone else, I am sure! In this house,
Desborough—or, as I must learn to call him, St. Erth— may be
sure of every attention called for by his consequence."
"Just so, ma'am," Mr. Frant said, bowing again.
"Providence has decreed that he should succeed to his dear
father's honours," pronounced the Dowager, thinking poorly
of Providence. "One might have supposed that military
service in the Peninsula—a very unhealthy locality, I
understand, setting aside the chances of Violent Death in an
engagement, which cannot be altogether precluded—might have
rendered the present occasion unnecessary. But it was not to
be! Had my advice been sought, I should have considered
myself bound to state that a military career, for one whom I
should have had no hesitation in declaring to be far from
robust, could be little short of Fatal! That, my dear Theo,
I must have said, for, whatever must be my maternal
feelings, if there be one thing upon which I pride
myself it is my observance of my duty as a Christian!
Happily, as it then seemed (though, according to the
workings of an inscrutable fate, it now appears to be a
circumstance of little moment), my advice was not
sought. Since Lady Penistone chose to interest herself
so particularly in her grandson, and my dear husband saw
nothing objectionable in the connection, it was not for me
to raise my voice. On her head, I said at the time, be the
outcome! No doubt her ladyship is a good enough sort of a
woman in her way: I do her the justice to acknowledge that
she did not, as one might have feared she would,
from the incurable levity of her behaviour, condone her
unhappy daughter's misconduct: but if she petted and
indulged Desbor-ough from any other motive than a malicious
desire to tease my poor husband I shall own myself
astonished! A spiritless boy, I always thought him, with too
much reserve to be pleasing. His career at Eton, you know,
was quite undistinguished: a very odd sort of a soldier he
must have been!"
"It is some years since you have seen my cousin, ma'am," Mr.
Frant interposed in a measured tone.
"I hope," said the Dowager, "I am not to be blamed for that!
If Lady Penistone chose to invite the boy to stay with her
during his school-vacations, and my lord to acquiesce in the
arrangement, I take heaven to witness that it was by no
expressed wish of mine that Desborough ceased to regard
Stanyon as his natural home! On every head my conscience is
easy: while he was a child I did my duty towards him; and I
am determined now that as no word of censure for his conduct
in absenting himself from a beloved parent's obsequies shall
be permitted to pass my lips, so also no mark of the respect
due to the Head of the Family shall be unobserved. I shall
receive him in the Hall."
This momentous decision being faithfully adhered to, a
chilly afternoon in spring saw five persons assembled in
what had once been the Great Hall of the Castle. The
artistic energies of several generations had largely
obliterated most of its original features, but the
hammer-beams in its lofty roof remained, and a vast
fireplace, made to accommodate the better part of several
tree-trunks. The carved screens, having been discovered to
have become worm-eaten, had been removed in a previous age,
the apartment being thrown open to the vestibule, or
entrance-hall, situated at right-angles to it. From this
smaller apartment the Grand Staircase, erected in the latter
half of the seventeenth century on a scale designed to allow
some dozen persons to walk up it abreast, rose in one
imposing flight to a broad half-landing, whence it branched
to right and left, thus attaining the main gallery of the
Castle. Several massive doors strengthened by applied
iron-straps, besides the great front-door opposite to the
staircase, opened on to the vestibule, a circumstance which
added nothing to the comfort of the Hall, in itself a
passage to a series of saloons beyond it. The heat thrown
out by the logs burning in the fireplace was considerable,
but was unavailing to prevent the draughts sweeping through
the room. These seemed to come from all quarters, even the
heavy curtains which had been drawn across the windows
composing almost the entire long wall opposite the fireplace
being continually stirred by them. It was dusk, and candles
had been lit in the sconces as well as in the several
candelabra which stood on the various tables. The little
tongues of flame flickered continually, causing the wax to
melt unevenly, and making it impossible for one of the
persons assembled in the Hall to set the stitches in her
embroidery with any degree of accuracy. Having twice changed
her seat to no purpose, she folded the work, and replaced it
in a tapestry-bag, drawing forth, in its stead, a prosaic
piece of knitting, with which she proceeded to occupy
herself, in the manner of one prepared to make the best,
without comment, of adverse conditions.
The furnishing of the Hall might have been taken as an
example of the heterogeneous nature of the whole Castle, few
of the pieces which it contained having been chosen with any
nicety of judgement. A fine refectory table, pushed under
the windows, and several carved oak chairs with wooden
seats, were the only objects which bore any particular
relation to their surroundings, the rest of the furniture
consisting of pieces representative of every age and style,
and including a modern and very ugly side-table, with a
marble top, supported by brazen gryphons' heads. Two suits
of armour of the surcoatless period guarded the entrance,
and several shields, pikes, halberds, and gisarmes were
arranged upon the wall above the high plaster mantel-piece.
These were flanked by a full-length portrait of the late
Earl, leaning negligently with one leg crossed over the
other, against the shoulder of his horse; and a fine
Battle-piece, of which the most noticeable features were the
arresting figure of the commanding officer in the
foreground, and the smoke issuing in woolly balls from the
mouths of innumerable cannons.
Only one of the five persons gathered round the fireplace in
expectation of the Earl's arrival seemed to be conscious of
the discomfort of her situation, and she made no complaint,
merely shifting her chair so that the leaping flames should
not scorch her face, and pinning her shawl securely across
her shoulders to protect them from the cold blast from the
vestibule. The Dowager Countess, regally enthroned in a
wing-chair, with her feet upon a stool, was indifferent to
draughts; neither her son, Martin, moodily standing before
the fire, and kicking at a smouldering log, nor Mr. Theodore
Frant, engaged in snuffing a candle in the branch set in the
centre of the refectory table, was aware of any unusual
chilliness; and the Chaplain, seated at her ladyship's left
hand, had long since become inured to the Spartan conditions
prevailing at Stanyon, and had pronounced the gathering to
be very snugly placed. This tribute earned him a gracious
smile from the Dowager, who said that it had frequently been
remarked that few fires gave out so fierce a heat as this
one. She then desired Miss Morville, in a voice of mingled
civility and condescension, to be so good as to run up to
the Crimson Saloon, and to fetch from it a little
hand-screen. Miss Morville at once laid aside her knitting,
and departed on her errand; and, as though her absence
released him from constraint, Martin looked up from his
scowling scrutiny of the fire, and exclaimed: "This is a
curst business! I wish it were well over! Why must we kick
our heels here, waiting on his pleasure? The lord
knows we don't want him! I have a very good mind to ride
over to eat my mutton with Barny!"