Part 39

‘We are getting into the inhabited part, I think,’ said Havill.

Dare, however, had gone on, and knowing the tortuous passages from his few days’ experience in measuring them with Somerset, he came to the butler’s pantry. Dare knocked, and nobody answering he entered, took down a key which hung behind the door, and rejoined Havill. ‘It is all right,’ he said. ‘The cat’s away; and the mice are at play in consequence.’

Proceeding up a stone staircase he unlocked the door of a room in the dark, struck a light inside, and returning to the door called in a whisper to Havill, who had remained behind. ‘This is Mr. Somerset’s studio,’ he said.

‘How did you get permission?’ inquired Havill, not knowing that Dare had seen no one.

‘Anyhow,’ said Dare carelessly. ‘We can examine the plans at leisure; for if the placid Mrs. Goodman, who is the only one at home, sees the light, she will only think it is Somerset still at work.’

Dare uncovered the drawings, and young Somerset’s brain-work for the last six weeks lay under their eyes. To Dare, who was too cursory to trouble himself by entering into such details, it had very little meaning; but the design shone into Havill’s head like a light into a dark place. It was original; and it was fascinating. Its originality lay partly in the circumstance that Somerset had not attempted to adapt an old building to the wants of the new civilization. He had placed his new erection beside it as a slightly attached structure, harmonizing with the old; heightening and beautifying, rather than subduing it. His work formed a palace, with a ruinous castle annexed as a curiosity. To Havill the conception had more charm than it could have to the most appreciative outsider; for when a mediocre and jealous mind that has been cudgelling itself over a problem capable of many solutions, lights on the solution of a rival, all possibilities in that kind seem to merge in the one beheld.

Dare was struck by the arrested expression of the architect’s face. ‘Is it rather good?’ he asked.

‘Yes, rather,’ said Havill, subduing himself.

‘More than rather?’

‘Yes, the clever devil!’ exclaimed Havill, unable to depreciate longer.

‘How?’

‘The riddle that has worried me three weeks he has solved in a way which is simplicity itself. He has got it, and I am undone!’

‘Nonsense, don’t give way. Let’s make a tracing.’

‘The ground-plan will be sufficient,’ said Havill, his courage reviving. ‘The idea is so simple, that if once seen it is not easily forgotten.’

A rough tracing of Somerset’s design was quickly made, and blowing out the candle with a wave of his hand, the younger gentleman locked the door, and they went downstairs again.

‘I should never have thought of it,’ said Havill, as they walked homeward.

‘One man has need of another every ten years: Ogni dieci anni un uomo ha bisogno dell’ altro, as they say in Italy. You’ll help me for this turn if I have need of you?’

‘I shall never have the power.’

‘O yes, you will. A man who can contrive to get admitted to a competition by writing a letter abusing another man, has any amount of power. The stroke was a good one.’

Havill was silent till he said, ‘I think these gusts mean that we are to have a storm of rain.’

Dare looked up. The sky was overcast, the trees shivered, and a drop or two began to strike into the walkers’ coats from the east. They were not far from the inn at Sleeping-Green, where Dare had lodgings, occupying the rooms which had been used by Somerset till he gave them up for more commodious chambers at Markton; and they decided to turn in there till the rain should be over.

Having possessed himself of Somerset’s brains Havill was inclined to be jovial, and ordered the best in wines that the house afforded. Before starting from home they had drunk as much as was good for them; so that their potations here soon began to have a marked effect upon their tongues. The rain beat upon the windows with a dull dogged pertinacity which seemed to signify boundless reserves of the same and long continuance. The wind rose, the sign creaked, and the candles waved. The weather had, in truth, broken up for the season, and this was the first night of the change.

‘Well, here we are,’ said Havill, as he poured out another glass of the brandied liquor called old port at Sleeping-Green; ‘and it seems that here we are to remain for the present.’

‘I am at home anywhere!’ cried the lad, whose brow was hot and eye wild.

Havill, who had not drunk enough to affect his reasoning, held up his glass to the light and said, ‘I never can quite make out what you are, or what your age is. Are you sixteen, one-and-twenty, or twenty-seven? And are you an Englishman, Frenchman, Indian, American, or what? You seem not to have taken your degrees in these parts.’

‘That’s a secret, my friend,’ said Dare. ‘I am a citizen of the world. I owe no country patriotism, and no king or queen obedience. A man whose country has no boundary is your only true gentleman.’

‘Well, where were you born--somewhere, I suppose?’

‘It would be a fact worth the telling. The secret of my birth lies here.’ And Dare slapped his breast with his right hand.