The Lovegrove Hermit Read Online Free PDF Page A

splendours. Mrs Thorpe persuaded George to accompany them although he had already taken the tour. I fancied he did not need much encouragement.
    I told Sophie to put on her bonnet as I intended to take a walk. There was no sign of Elinor or I would have askedher to come with us. I was just thinking we had escaped Rowland Webb’s attentions when he bellowed a greeting from the path behind us and ran to offer us his company.
    My heart sank. Rowland was in a cheerful mood and talked a great deal about nothing of consequence. I judged him to be harmless enough; amiable, good-humoured, thoroughly spoilt and not very clever. He had no intellectual interests except perhaps a liking for the theatre, which Sophie shared. His reading had been limited and he had never even managed to finish one of his mother’s novels. His world was bounded by horses, dogs, curricles and, I had no doubt, races, prizefights, gambling and other disreputable pursuits.
    Sophie was no bluestocking; she liked dancing, pretty clothes and silly romances as much as any other 17- year-old but she deserved better than Rowland. She was far too young to settle down with someone so shallow.
    We found ourselves near the hermitage.
    ‘Let’s go and explore,’ Rowland suggested. ‘Old Brother Caspar does a circuit of the park every morning so he won’t be back yet.’
    ‘Do you think we ought?’ I said. ‘It seems very like trespassing.’
    But Rowland, ducking his head, led the way through the cave, which did not extend very far, and indicated a door which he flung open. This was the hermit’s cell. It consisted of a small, rough-walled room built of undressed stone, a flagged floor and a small window framed in ivy. There was a tiny fireplace with a kettle and a couple of pans, a few items of crockery, a narrow bed covered in a grey blanket, a small crude table and stool and a shelf of books. Everything wasvery neatly arranged. At the end of the bed stood a trunk with a curved lid.
    ‘Not very interesting,’ said Rowland.
    ‘
I
think it’s interesting,’ said Sophie. ‘I never saw a hermit’s cell before.’
    I was looking at the books: Shakespeare, Byron, Cowper, Gray; several of Scott’s novels, a few volumes of history and a number of classical works in Greek and Latin. A small, calf-bound volume lay on the table and I picked it up:
Goldsmith’s
Poems
. A slip of paper indicated a page about two-thirds of the way through the book. I glanced at it and saw that it had writing on it, and marked a poem called ‘The Hermit’ which I had never come across before. There was a tiny engraving of a bearded hermit in a long robe, looking remarkably like the inhabitant of this very cell, about to conduct a nervous young traveller thorough a sinister wood.
    ‘I thought you might find this poem very appropriate,’ said the message on the paper. The writing was neat and firm and could have been masculine or feminine.
    ‘Look at this!’ cried Rowland, picking up a long, battered, brass-bound mahogany box. ‘I think I know what this is. Locked, dammit – and look, the nameplate’s been removed.’
    He showed me the box and there was a discoloured rectangle in the middle of the lid where a brass plate had once carried the initials or name of the owner. I too knew what the box contained. Harry had one very similar.
    ‘But what is it?’ asked Sophie. ‘Do tell!’
    ‘I think if you wished to inspect my quarters you might have had the courtesy to ask me first,’ said a deep, cultivated voice.
    The hermit stood in the doorway looking displeased.Rowland began to bluster.
    ‘Well, no harm done, old fellow. When we’ve got a hermit on the premises we can’t help but feel a bit curious….’
    ‘We’re very sorry to intrude,’ I said, ‘and we shan’t bother you again. It was a serious misjudgement on our part.’
    ‘Not at all. Now please leave me to my own devices. I ought not to be talking to you like this.’
    I was not merely embarrassed, I was