Sir Harry: A Love Story

The Reverend David Grant, Vicar-elect of Royd, was a novelist as well as a priest. So when he paid his preliminary visit to Royd Castle, and sat himself down to write to his wife about it he did so with the idea of making his letter a piece of literature; or at least of making her see. For that was literature--making people see. He would take as much trouble over his letter as he would over a chapter of a novel; and when she had read it she would have a clear picture in her mind of the place she was coming to and the people she would meet there. She had not been able to come herself because she was close to her confinement. Poor girl! It was rather hard luck that she should have to miss all this excitement. They had been married thirteen years and had always looked forward to settling into the ideal country parsonage. But either he would have to settle in himself, or else wait a couple of months or so until the baby was born and Ethel was well enough to take a hand in the blissful arrangements. Longing to get to work at it as he was, with money saved from his royalties to be spent in making their home what they wanted it to be, he yet thought that he would prefer to wait until she was strong again. After thirteen years of married life, in circumstances not of the easiest, this couple still liked doings things together.

The time and the place invited to literary composition. The time was shortly after ten o'clock of a warm spring night, for the Castle retired early. The place was a room which David Grant had sometimes imagined for himself as the background for a scene in a novel, but never yet had the satisfaction of occupying. It was a great state Tudor bedroom, with carved and panelled walls, a stone fireplace with a fire of logs burning in it, Flemish tapestry above, a polished oak floor with old carpets in front of the hearth, by the heavy pillared canopied bed and in the deep embrasure of the window. There were heavy oak chairs and tables and presses. The washing arrangements, necessarily more modern, since in Tudor days they washed very little, were in a closet apart. The writing-table alone showed modernity, with everything on it in the way of apparatus that could please a person who loved writing for its own sake, and could appreciate its accessories. It stood in the windowed recess, which was as large as a fair-sized room, and contained another table for books, with a cushioned chair by its side, and still left space for moving about from one window to the other. Wax candles in heavy silver candle-sticks stood invitingly on the writing-table, and elsewhere about the room. There were six of these lit when David Grant came up, but it was so large that the effect was still one of rich dimness, warmed into life by the glowing fire on the hearth.

David Grant's soul was full of content as he came into the room and shut the heavy door behind him. If he couldn't write a letter in this atmosphere that would eventually read well in his biography, he wasn't worth his salt. He was not without occasional qualms as to whether he actually was worth his salt as a novelist, but none of them troubled him to-night. He was wakeful and alert; he had half a mind to sit down at that inviting silver-laden table and write a chapter of "A Love Apart." But no. Ethel, poor girl, must come first. He felt tender towards her; they were going to be so happy together at Royd. And, after all, this was a chapter in the story of their own lives, and more interesting to both of them than a chapter in the lives of fictitious characters.

He took off his coat and put on the flannel jacket in which he was accustomed to write. Then he went to the windows and drew back all the heavy curtains, and opened one of the casements. His facile emotions, always ready to be stirred by beauty, and to turn it immediately into words, were stirred for a moment into something that he could not have put into words as he stood there, though they came to him the moment afterwards as he recognized how it all fitted in with the impression encouraged in his mind by the old rich room in the old castle--the moonlight outside, silvering the fairy glades of the park into mysterious beauty, the silence and the sweet scents of the slumbering earth.

The grass of the park grew right up to the stones of the castle wall on this side. Just above him were some great beeches, which seemed to be climbing the hill that rose behind. Below there were more trees, and between them stretched a glade which led the eye to further undulations of moonlit grass, and the bare trunks and branches of the trees that bordered them. He had been rather disappointed, in coming first into his room, to find that it did not look out on to the gardens; but under the moon this romantic glimpse of silvered trees and fairy glades seemed to him more beautiful than any tamed or ordered garden.

Anything might happen out there, on such a night. Oberon and Titania suggested themselves to him; the least that could be expected to happen was that a herd of deer led by a many-antlered stag should wander across a moonlit glade, and give just that touch of life that was wanted to enhance the lovely scene.

What actually did happen was that his eye was caught by a moving figure in the shadow of the trees, and, before he had had time to wonder, or even to be startled by it, came out into the bright stretch of grass in front of his window, and stood looking up at him.

It was young Sir Harry, owner of Royd Castle and all the magic beauty connected with it that was making such an impression upon the clerico-novelist's susceptible mind, but though in that fortunate position not yet of an age to be out under the trees of his park at this time of night. At nine o'clock he had said good-night to his grandmother's guest downstairs. Grant had thought it full early for a boy of his age to be sent up to bed, as Lady Brent had actually sent him, though without insistence, and with no protest on his part. He was no more than sixteen, but a well-grown boy, in the evening garb of a man; and he had sat opposite to his grandmother at the head of the table and taken a bright part in the conversation, so that, with his title to give him still further dignity, he had seemed altogether beyond the stage of being sent early to bed.

However, it appeared that bed had not been the aim of his departure, after all. He stood looking up at the window, not far above the ground, with a smile upon his handsome young face, and asked his grandmother's guest not to give him away. "I come out sometimes like this, when everybody is asleep," he said. "There's no harm in it, but Granny would try to stop me if she knew--lock me in, perhaps." He laughed freely. "So please don't tell her," he said, and melted away into the shadows without waiting for a promise of secrecy.

Grant rather liked that in him. He had been much attracted by young Sir Harry, who had shown himself charmingly friendly to him in a frank and boyish way that had yet seemed to contain something of the dignity of a grand seigneur. There was something pleasing in the thought of this handsome boy, master of the old rich beautiful house, even if he was as yet only nominal master. It was not unpleasing either to think of him roaming about his lovely demesne under the moonlight which made it still more fair. Certainly there was nothing wrong in it. If he was up to some mischief, it would only be of a kind that the women who held him in check might call such. He was too young and too frank for the sort of nocturnal mischief that a man might take notice of. At his age a sense of adventure would be satisfied by being abroad in the night while he was thought to be asleep. David Grant smiled to himself as he shut the window. He would like to make friends with this charming boy. He was rather pleased to have this little secret in common with him.

Now he walked about the great room, composing the lines of his letter, as he was accustomed to walk about composing the lines of a chapter in one of his novels. Its main "idea" was to be the pleasure he and his wife and the children were to have in Royd Vicarage. But that must be led up to. He must begin at the beginning, "make her see" the place, and the people among whom they would lead their lives. The people especially; there was room here for the neat little touches of description upon which he prided himself. The Vicarage must come last, and he would end on a tender note, which would please the dear girl, and make her feel that she was part of it all, as indeed she was.

And now he was ready to begin, and sat down at the table, all on fire with his subject. He wrote on and on until late into the night. Sometimes he rose to put another log on to the fire, to enjoy the crackle it made, and to sense the grateful atmosphere of the old room. Once or twice he went to the window and looked out, never failing to be charmed by the beauty of the scene. At these times he thought of the boy, out there under the moon or in the dim shadows of the trees, and wondered what he was doing, and if he would come and call up at his window again as he returned from his wandering. He rather hoped that he might, and left the casement open the second time he went to the window. But by the time he had finished his letter no sound had broken the stillness, except now and then the soft hooting of owls, and with a last look at the moonlit glades he blew out the candles and climbed into the great bed, very well satisfied with himself and with life in general.

"Oh, the tiresome old dear, he's trying to be literary," said Mrs. Grant, as she embarked eagerly upon the voluminous pages. She turned them over until she came to the description of the Vicarage towards the end:

"Lady Brent said very kindly, 'I expect you would like to go over the house by yourself, Mr. Grant. Harry shall go with you and show you the cottage where the key is kept. The church, I believe, is open. We shall expect you back to tea at half-past four, and if you have not finished you can go back again afterwards.'

"This was just what I wanted--to moon about the house which is to be our happy home, dearest, alone, and to build castles in the air about it. So we started off, the boy and I. We went down the avenue----"

"H'm. H'm." Mrs. Grant skipped a page.

"It was the Vicarage of our dreams, a low stone house, facing south, embowered in massy trees, its walls covered with creepers, the sun glinting on its small-paned windows."

Mrs. Grant skipped a little more. She wanted to know the number of rooms, and if possible the size of the principal ones, what the kitchen and the back premises were like, whether the kitchen garden was large enough to supply the house, and if it could all be managed by one man, who would also look after the pony, and perhaps clean the boots and knives.

She gained a hint or two as she turned over the pages quickly, and then read them more carefully. "Well, he doesn't tell me much," she said, "but I expect it will be all right and I'm sure I shall love it. The drawing-room opening into the garden and the best bedroom with a view of the sea in the distance sound jolly, and I'm glad the old darling will have a nice room to write his nonsense in. If he is pleased with his surroundings he always does more work, and that means more money. Oh, I do hope his sales will go up and we shall have enough to live comfortably on there." She went on to the end of the letter, which gave her pleasure, as had been intended. "Dear old thing, he does lean on me," she said. "And well he may. Well, I shall bustle about and make things happy and comfortable for him directly I'm strong enough. Oh, my little love, why didn't you put off your arrival for a few months longer? But I shall adore you when you do come, and it will be lovely to bring you up in that beautiful place. Now let's see what these Brent people are like, if he's clever enough to give me any idea of them."