"Bless me! I suppose, sir, you have been a great traveller?" Mrs. Glen said; and they talked all the way over, and she thought him "just delightful." French! No, not a bit like French—nor English either. The English, they are always condescending, and ready to explain your own countryside to you. I would say of a good race, but brought up abroad.
Lewis by this time had also found out the advantages of that word abroad. It saved all necessity for explanation. The Continent was taken in by it from one coast to the other, and even America and the East.
He went on his way to Stormont very cheerfully after his talk with Mrs. Glen. And the road was beautiful. It wound up the slope of a fine wooded bank behind the cliff, with tall trees mounting upward, the roots of one showing bold and picturesque through the feathering tops of the others, in broken, irregular lines. When he had got about half-way up he saw the house, of which one turret only surmounted the cliff. It was not large, but its small windows and the rough, half-ruined battlements showed that, at some time or other, it might have been defended—which interested Lewis beyond measure. The lower story had been modernized, and twinkled with plate glass windows receiving the full sunshine; but the building altogether was like something which had grown out of the soil, not a mere house made with hands.
Stormont led his visitor all over the place. He took him upon the bit of battlement that remained, and showed him that it commanded the cliff in reality, though this did not appear from below; and he took him into the chapel, a curious little detached piece of sixteenth century architecture, which nobody knew much about, desecrated to common uses which made Lewis shiver, though he said, quite simply, that he was "not religious."
"Don't say that before my mother," Stormont said. "I am sure you are no heathen, for you were at church like myself; but she would think you so."
"Oh, that is nothing," said Lewis, "one goes to church for company. I know nobody. It all amused me very much, and I made friends with you, and with the good pastor and his family—what do you call him, minister?"
"This is worse and worse. You must be careful not to say that you went to church to be amused," Stormont said, with a big laugh. "I don't myself find it amusing at all."
"We use the word in different senses. You must excuse me if I do so in English—which is mixed up with other idioms in what you would call my mind, if I have got one," Lewis said. "I should call it, perhaps, interested. All is interesting to me here."
"This ramshackle old place, among other things, I hope," its master said, with a little conscious pride.
"I have not the least idea what ramshackle means. The old place, oh yes, more than anything. I begin to understand how it must feel to be like this, planted here for ever and ever—in sæcula sæculorum. It is very curious. It will become a part of you—or rather, you are a part of it; not one man, but a race. For me, that have only money, the contrast is very great."