Deadham Hard | Page 6

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 vacant and
desolate; but, in either case, poetic, alluring, exciting, as scenes far
removed in climate, faith and civilization from those heretofore
familiar can hardly fail to be. India, and all which India stands for in
English history, challenged his imagination, challenged his ambition,
since in virtue of his nationality, young and inexperienced though he
was, he went to her as a natural ruler, the son of a conquering race. And
this last thought begot in him not only exultation but an unwonted
seriousness. While, as he thus meditated, from out the dazzle as of
mirage, a single figure grew into force and distinctness of outline, a
figure which from his childhood had appealed to him with an attraction
at once sinister and heroic--that, namely, of a certain soldier and
ex-Indian official, his kinsman, to pay a politic tribute of respect to
whom was the object of his present excursion.
In Catholic countries the World gives its children to the Church. In
Protestant countries the process is not infrequently reversed, the Church
giving its children to the World, and that with an alacrity which argues
remarkable faith and courage--of a sort! Archdeacon Verity had
carefully planned this visit for his son, although it obliged the young
man to leave home two days earlier than he need otherwise have done.
It was illuminating to note how the father brought all the resources of a
fine presence, an important manner and full-toned archidiaconal voice
to bear upon proving the expediency of the young man visiting this
particular relation, over whose career and reputation he had so often, in
the past, pursed up his lips and shaken his head for the moral benefit of
the domestic circle.
For the Archdeacon, in common with the majority of the Verity family,
was animated by that ineradicable distrust of anything approaching
genius which distinguishes the English country, or rather county, mind.
And that Sir Charles Verity had failed to conform to the family
tradition of solid, unemotional, highly respectable, and usually very
wealthy, mediocrity was beyond question. He had struck out a line for

himself; and, as the event disclosed, an illustrious one. This the
Archdeacon, being a good Conservative, disapproved. It worried him
sadly, making him actually, if unconsciously, exceedingly jealous. And
precisely on that account, by an ingenious inversion of reasoning, he
felt he owed it to abstract justice--in other words to his much
disgruntled self--to make all possible use of this offending, this
renegade personage, when opportunity of so doing occurred. Now,
learning on credible authority that Sir Charles's name was still one to
conjure with in India, it clearly became his duty to bid his son seek out
and secure whatever modicum of advantage--in the matter of advice
and introductions--might be derivable from so irritating a source.
All of which, while jumping with his own desires, caused Tom much
sly mirth. For might it not be counted among the satisfactory results of
his deposition of heavy baggage at Radley's that, for the first time in his
life, he was at liberty to regard even his father, Thomas Pontifex Verity,
Archdeacon of Harchester and Rector of Canton Magna, in a true
perspective? And he laughed again, though this time softly, indulgently,
able in the plenitude of youthful superiority to extend a kindly
tolerance towards the foibles and ingenuous hypocrisies of poor
middle-age.
But here the train, emerging from the broken hilly country on the
outskirts of the forest, roared along the embankment which carries the
line across the rich converging valleys of the Wilner and the Arne. Tom
ceased to think either of possible advantage accruing to his own
fortunes, or these defects of the family humour which had combined to
dictate his present excursion, his attention being absorbed by the beauty
of the immediate outlook. For on the left Marychurch came into view.
The great, grey, long-backed abbey stands on a heart-shaped peninsula
of slightly rising ground. Its western tower, land-mark for the valleys
and seamark for vessels making the Haven, overtops the avenue of
age-old elms which shade the graveyard. Close about the church, the
red brick and rough-cast houses of the little market-town--set in a wide
margin of salt-marsh and meadow intersected