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 deathbed, 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. CaptainViscount 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
Desborough 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.