Deadham Hard | Page 5

of you by fair means or foul."
To which process of blood-sucking Mr. Verity was, in fact, rather scandalously subjected before Tandy's Castle passed into his possession. But pass into his possession it finally did, whereupon he fell joyously to the work of reconstructive redemption.
First of all he ordered the entrance of the underground passage, leading to the river foreshore, to be securely walled up; and, with a fine disregard of possible unhealthy consequences in the shape of choke-damp, the doorways of certain ill-reputed vaults and cellars to be filled with solid masonry. Neither harborage of contraband, cruel laughter of man, or yell of tortured beast, should again defile the under-world of Tandy's!--Next he had the roof of the main building raised, and given a less mean and meagre angle. He added a wing on the left containing pleasant bed-chambers upstairs, and good offices below; and, as crowning act of redemption, caused three large ground-floor rooms, backed by a wide corridor, to be built on the right in which to house his library and collections. This lateral extension of the house, constructed according to his own plans, was, like its designer, somewhat eccentric in character. The three rooms were semicircular, all window on the southern garden front, veritable sun-traps, with a low sloped roofing of grey-green slate to them, set fan-wise.
Such was the house at Deadham Hard when Mr. Verity's labours were completed. And such did it remain until a good eighty years later, when it was visited by a youthful namesake and great-great nephew, under circumstances not altogether unworthy of record.

CHAPTER II
ENTER A YOUNG SCHOLAR AND GENTLEMAN OF A HAPPY DISPOSITION AND GOOD PROSPECTS
The four-twenty down train rumbled into Marychurch station, and Tom Verity stepped out of a rather frousty first-class carriage on to the platform. There hot still September sunshine, tempered by a freshness off the sea, met him. The effect was pleasurable, adding delicate zest to the enjoyment of living which already possessed him. Coming from inland, the near neighbourhood of the sea, the sea with its eternal invitation, stirred his blood.
For was not he about to accept the said invitation in its fullest and most practical expression? Witness the fact that, earlier in the day, he had deposited his heavy baggage at that house of many partings, many meetings, Radley's Hotel, Southampton; and journeyed on to Marychurch with a solitary, eminently virgin, cowhide portmanteau, upon the yellow-brown surface of which the words--"Thomas Clarkson Verity, passenger Bombay, first cabin R.M.S. _Penang_"--were inscribed in the whitest of lettering. His name stood high in the list of successful candidates at the last Indian Civil Service examination. Now he reaped the reward of past endeavour. For with that deposition of heavy baggage at Radley's the last farewell to years of tutelage seemed to him to be spoken. Nursery discipline, the restraints and prohibitions--in their respective degrees--of preparatory school, of Harchester, of Oxford; and, above all and through all, the control and admonitions of his father, the Archdeacon, fell away from him into the limbo of things done with, outworn and outpaced.
This moved him as pathetic, yet as satisfactory also, since it set him free to fix his mind, without lurking suspicion of indecorum, upon the large promise of the future. He could give rein to his eagerness, to his high sense of expectation, while remaining innocent of impiety towards persons and places holding, until now, first claim on his obedience and affection. All this fell in admirably with his natural bent. Self-reliant, agreeably egotistical, convinced of the excellence of his social and mental equipment, Tom was saved from excess of conceit by a lively desire to please, an even more lively sense of humour, and an intelligence to which at this period nothing came amiss in the way of new impressions or experiences.
And, from henceforth, he was his own master, his thoughts, actions, purposes, belonging to himself and to himself alone. Really the position was a little intoxicating! Realizing it, as he sat in the somewhat stuffy first-class carriage, on that brief hour's journey from Southampton to Marychurch, he had laughed out loud, hunching up his shoulders saucily, in a sudden outburst of irrepressible and boyish glee.
But as the line, clearing the purlieus of the great seaport, turns south-westward running through the noble oak and beech woods of Arnewood Forest, crossing its bleak moorlands--silver pink, at the present season, with fading heather--and cutting through its plantations of larch and Scotch fir, Tom Verity's mood sobered. He watched the country reeling away to right and left past the carriage windows, and felt its peculiarly English and sylvan charm. Yet he saw it all through a dazzle, as of mirage, in which floated phantom landscapes strangely different in sentiment and in suggestion.--Some extravagantly luxuriant, as setting to crowded painted cities, some desert, amazingly