The Argosy — page 175: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

160 Divided. clambered with that profusion it so often lavishes on decay and old age; peeping in at the mullioned windows, tenderly decking the fissured stones with sheeny green in sunshine, and rustling with strange, ghostly shiverings when the wind swept over the sea. ‘The most modern part of the house—and that itself had seen many more winters than the oldest veteran in the country — was the Beacon Tower, which had been erected by one of Raoul’s ancestors in com- memoration of his son and heir’s safe return from war; and it was Raoul’s pride, as it had been that of his forefathers, always to keep the beacon burning through the night, and sometimes even in the daytime also, when fog or storm-cloud concealed the treacherous, low reef, where evil spirits were said to wait and watch to lure souls into their deadly toils. But, if the view seawards required a special delight in the wild and stern to recommend it to the eye, the outlook from the other side of the Chateau, looking inland, had all the charm of con- trast. First came the old-fashioned garden with its clipped yew hedges and green alleys, and its long terrace, at each end of which stood quaint old statues—a Ceres carrying a sheaf of corn which was abruptly broken off at the head, and a Mercury poised with one toe on a chipped globe, on which Raoul had clumsily engraved his initials, when a destructive small boy, side by side with the large and crooked signature of one Gesril de Kériadec who had died fighting for the Chouanerie. The garden wandered away in a maze of fruit trees and roses that looked as if they grew there unmolested by the pruning hands of gardeners, until garden melted into orchard, and orchard into shady woods with soft, mossy walks, and dazzling glimpses of emerald glades, of cool, deep dells, lined with delicate waving ferns, and sloping banks fragrant with the scent of many flowers. Beyond the woodlands came the open country, with its small farm- steads and cultivated fields and meadows, rather bare and bleak in winter, but in summer having a golden beauty of its own ; although, from a farmer’s point of view, they were not particularly lucrative ; as Raoul knew by experience. On the whole, then, most people with any appreciation of beauty and colour would have revelled in the scenery of Camper, both in its stern and in its gentle aspect ; and that Denise was able to persuade herself that it was absolutely insupportable is only a proof of the convincing powers of prejudice, which will persuade us not only to call black white but to de/zeve that we think it so. Nevertheless, little as she cared for Camper, Denise could not help being impressed by the calm loveliness of the scene as she and her husband drove home that summer evening. In the late, mellow twilight, the sea stretched away fair and still and peaceful, just break- ing into little silver ripples against the low brown rocks and shining CONNIE KSq(eo)