CHAPTER FOUR
Onwards to Guildford, once more pretending to nod off, too fretful to accept the usual invitation from sailors travelling with him to 'caulk or yarn,' passing up the chance, for a rare once, to brag about
In London, at last, he'd hired a horse at the final post-house, strapped his cylindrical leather
Up Charing Cross, 'til it became the Tottenham Court Road; then onwards 'til Tottenham Court crossed the New Road and became known as the Hampstead Road, with the dense street traffic and press of houses, stores, and such gradually thinning. Further onwards, and the breweries, metal-working manufacturies, and craft shops predominated, then those began to thin out, replaced by market gardeners' small farms, estates of the middling nature, and roadside establishments, with fields and forests and pastures behind them.
Hampstead, like Islington in the early days, had developed over the years as the seat of weekend 'country' get-away cottages, manses, and villas… though, Hampstead catered to a much richer, and select, part-time population than Islington's artisan-tradesman clientele. He could espy, here and there, stone or brick gate-pillars announcing the presence of a grand-ish house up a gravelled and tree-lined lane, set well back, and landscaped into well-ordered semblances of 'bucolic' or gloomily 'romantic,' in that fallen-castle, overgrown-bower, mossy-old- but-still-inhabited style that had grown so Gothically popular, of late, and
It was
His fearful errand was so completely off-putting that Capt. Alan Lewrie, never a stranger to the charms of young, nubile, and fetching farm girls, barely gave them a passing glance, and rarely lifted his hat in salute to a shy smile of approbation, in fact; and must here be noted, if only as a clue to his present state of mind.
Here an 'humble' cottage, there an 'humble' cottage; a Bide-A-We to the left, a Rook's Nook to the right, or so the signboards said to announce the existence of a destination up those lanes leading off the Hampstead Road. Lark's Nest, a Belle Reve, a rather imposing new two-storey Palladian mansion set back in at least ten acres of woodsy parkland named Villa Pauvre… which proved to Lewrie that the rich could
At last, Lewrie topped a long, gradual rise, atop which stood a pair of granite, lion-topped pillars flanked by a long-established and nigh-impenetrable hedge to either side. Here, he drew rein and gawped at the house, which lay about two cables off on the right-hand side of the road, up another gradual rise so that the house sat atop the crown of a slightly taller hill that sloped gently down on all four sides… and the signboard read 'Spyglass Bungalow'!
Very apt, for atop the villa was a squat, blocky tower of stone, open to all four prime compass points, very much like the bell towers seen in a Venetian
For the house was light, airy, and its stuccoed exterior painted the palest cream, set off with white stone, its roof made of those sorts of overlapping red-clay tiles more often seen in the Mediterranean, or Spanish possessions. There was a massy, circular flower bed before the house, encircled by a well-gravelled carriage drive, which led under a wide and
He clucked his tongue, shook the reins, and heeled his mount to motion, once more, up that welcoming gravelled drive, between the bare-limbed trees that would in summer shade the wide lane with fresh green leaves. There were dozens of abandoned nests in those limbs that told him that a springtime arrival would be greeted by the singing of hundreds of birds.
Set downhill on all sides round the house (Indian bungalow) was an inner wall of about six feet height, topped with round-cut stone… atop which Lewrie could espy the glint of broken glass!
Inside the inner wall (fortification?) lay a lawn, unbroken by any trees or shrubs where an interloper might shelter. Lewrie knew a fort's killing-ground when he saw one, and began to hunt for a hidden ditch or moat, a masking
'Ha ha, go it, girl! Heels down, that's the way!' came a voice from behind the house, and, down the cobbled stableyard from behind the house came the clatter of hooves, the shrill 'Yoicks!' and imitations of a foxhorn's 'tara-tara!,' as a pair of ponies appeared, both loping (but no faster!) no matter the urgings of their riders… a small lad and a girl child, the boy appearing no more than ten, and the girl not yet a gangly teen. They whooped their way out of the stableyard, onto the gravelled drive, under the
Behind them, afoot, came a brace of adults; a rather handsome woman in a dark riding