He thrust all his other letters aside—those uninteresting letters which besiege the man who is supposed to have money to spend, from tradesmen who want to work for him, charities who want to do good for him, stock-jobbers who want to speculate for him—the whole race of spiders that harassed the well-feathered fly. He tore open the letter from Discombe Manor, and his eye ran eagerly over the following lines:—
"DEAR SIR,
"People tell me that you are kind and amiable, and I am emboldened by this assurance to ask you a favour. Etiquette forbids me to call upon you, and as I rarely visit anybody, it might be long before we should meet casually in the houses of other people; but you can, if you like, gratify a solitary woman by letting her make your acquaintance in her own house; and perhaps when my son comes home on leave, the acquaintance, so begun, may ripen into friendship. I dare say people have told you that you are like him, and you will hardly wonder at my wishing to see more of a face that reminds me of my nearest and dearest.
"I am generally at home in the afternoon.
"Very truly yours,
"E. WORNOCK."
"E. Wornock!" he repeated, studying the signature. "Why no Christian name? And what is the name which that initial represents? Eliza, perhaps—and she sinks it, thinking it common and housemaidish—forgetting how Ben Jonson, by that housemaidish name, does designate the most glorious of queens. Possibly Ellen—a milk-and-waterish name, with less of dignity than Eliza; or Emily, my mother's name—graceful but colourless. I have never thought it good enough for so fine a character as my mother. She should have been Katherine or Margaret, Gertrude or Barbara, names that have a fulness of sound which implies fulness of meaning. I will call at Discombe Manor this afternoon. Delay would be churlish—and I want to see what Geoffrey Wornock's home is like."
The afternoon was warm and sunny, and Allan made a leisurely circuit of the chase and park of Discombe on his way to Mrs. Wornock's house.
The beauty of the Manor consisted as much in the perfection of detail as in the grandeur of the mansion or the extent of gardens and park. The mansion was not strikingly architectural nor even strikingly picturesque. It was a sober red brick house, with a high, tiled roof, and level rows of windows—those of the upper story were the original lattices of 1664, the date of the house; but on the lower floors mullions and lattices had given place to long French windows, of a uniform unpicturesque flatness, opening on a broad gravel walk, beyond which the smooth shaven grass sloped gently to the edge of a moat, for Mrs. Wornock's house was one of those moated manor-houses of which there are so few left in the south of England. The gardens surrounding that grave-looking Carolian house had attained the ideal of horticultural beauty under many generations of garden-lovers, the ideal of old-fashioned beauty, be it understood; the beauty of clipped hedges and sunk lawns, walls of ilex and of yew, solemn avenues of obelisk-shaped conifers, labyrinths, arches, temples and arcades of roses, tennis-lawns and bowling-greens, broad borders of old-fashioned perennials, clumps and masses of vivid colour, placed with art that seemed accidental wherever vivid colour was wanted to relieve the verdant monotony.
If the gardens were perfect, the house, farm, and cottages were even more attractive in their arcadian grace, the grace of a day that is dead. Quaint roofs and massive chimney-stacks, lattices, porches, sun-dials, gardens brimming over with flowers, trim pathways, shining panes, everywhere a spotless cleanliness, a wealth of foliage, an air of prosperous fatness, bee-hives, poultry, cattle, all the signs and tokens of dependents for whom much is done, and whose dwellings flourish at somebody else's expense.
Allan noted the cottages which bore the Wornock "W" above the date of the building—he noted them, but lost count of their number—keepers' lodges in the woodland which skirted the park—gardeners' or dairy-men's cottages at every park gate; farmhouse and bailiff's house; cottages for coachmen and helpers. At every available angle where gable, roof, and quaint old chimney-stack could make a picturesque feature in the landscape, a cottage had been placed, and the number of these ideal dwellings suggested territorial importance in a manner more obvious than any effect made by the mere extent of acreage, a thing that is talked about but not seen. Discombe Chase, the Discombe lodges, and the village and school-houses of Discombe were obvious facts which impressed the stranger.