Deadham Hard | Page 4

of a snub, Mr. Verity jerked at the reins and clapped his heels
into the creature's sides, as smartly as fatigue and native civility
permitted, sending it forward at a jog-trot. Nevertheless his soliloquy--a
silent one now--continued, and that with notable consequences to
others besides himself.
For his thought still dallied with the subject of the monastic life, as
lived by those same pious Benedictines here in England long ago. Its
reasoned rejection of mundane agitations, its calm, its leisure, its
profound and ardent scholarship were vastly to his taste,--A man
touching middle-age might do worse, surely, than spend his days
between worship and learning, thus?--He saw, and approved, its social
office in offering sanctuary to the fugitive, alms to the poor, teaching to
the ignorant, consolation to the sick and safe passage heavenward to the
dying. Saw, not without sympathy, its more jovial moments--its good
fellowship, shrewd and witty conversation, well salted stories--whereat
a man laughs slyly in his sleeve--its good cheer, too, with feasts on
holy-days and high-days, rich and succulent.--And in this last
connection, as he reflected, much was to be said for the geographical
position of Marychurch; since if river mists and white dullness of sea
fog, drifting in from the Channel, were to hand, so, also, in their season,
were fresh run salmon, snipe, wood-cock, flocks of wild duck, of
plover and other savoury fowl.
For in this thankfulness of awakening from the hellish nightmare of the

Terror, Mr. Verity's facile imagination tended to run to another extreme.
With all the seriousness of which he was capable he canvassed the
notion of a definite retirement from the world. Public movements,
political and social experiments ceased to attract him. His appetite for
helping to make the wheels of history go round had been satisfied to
the point of nausea. All he desired was tranquillity and repose. He was
free of domestic obligations and close family ties. He proposed to
remain so--philosophy his mistress, science his hand-maid, literature
his pastime, books (remembering the bitter sorrows of the tumbril and
scaffold in Paris) in future, his closest friends.
But, unfortunately, though the great church in all its calm grave, beauty
still held the heart the fair landscape, the monastery, which might have
sheltered his renunciation, had been put to secular uses or fallen into
ruin long years ago. If he proposed to retire from the world, he must
himself provide suitable environment. Marychurch Abbey, at the end of
the eighteenth century, had very certainly nothing to offer him under
that head.
And then, with a swiftness of conception and decision possible only to
mercurial-minded persons, his thought darted back to Tandy's, that
unkempt, morally malodorous back-of-beyond and No Man's Land. Its
vacant whitewashed countenance and long-eared chimney-stacks had
welcomed him, if roughly and grudgingly, to England and to peace.
Was he not in some sort thereby in debt to Tandy's bound by gratitude
to the place? Should he not buy it--his private fortune being
considerable--and there plant his hermitage? Should he not renovate
and transform it, redeeming it from questionable uses, by transporting
thither, not himself only but his fine library, his famous herbarium, his
cabinets of crystals, of coins, and of shells? The idea captivated him.
He was weary of destruction, having seen it in full operation and
practised on the gigantic scale. Henceforth he would devote all the
energy he possessed to construction--on however modest and private a
one--to a building up, as personal protest against much lately witnessed
wanton and chaotic pulling-down.
In prosecution of which purpose, hopeful once more and elate, bobbing

merrily cork-like upon the surface of surrounding
circumstance--although lamentably deficient, for the moment, in
raiment befitting his position and his purse--Mr. Verity spent two days
at the Stag's Head, in Marychurch High Street. He made enquiries of all
and sundry regarding the coveted property; and learned, after much
busy investigation that the village, and indeed the whole Hundred of
Deadham, formed an outlying and somewhat neglected portion of his
acquaintance, Lord Bulparc's Hampshire estate.
Here was solid information to go upon. Greatly encouraged, he took the
coach to Southampton, and thence up to town; where he interviewed
first Lord Bulparc's lawyers and then that high-coloured, free-living
nobleman himself.
"Gad, sir," the latter assured him, "you're heartily welcome to the damn
little hole, as far as I'm concerned, if you have the bad taste to fancy it.
I suppose I ought to speak to my son Oxley about this just as a matter
of form. Not that I apprehend Oxley will raise any difficulties as to
entail--you need not fear that. We shall let you off easy enough--only
too happy to oblige you. But I warn you, Verity, you may drop money
buying the present tenant out. If half my agent tells me is true,