"Here, you had better dry the things in the bundle," said Lockwood, "for they are as wet as a sponge--but that is a very illogical figure; for though a sponge may be wetted, yet a sponge need not always be wet."
Chandos took the bundle and went with it into the neighbouring room, on which the little sunshine that autumn had left was shining. He opened it, displayed the few articles it contained--half-a-dozen shirts, a suit of fashionable, well-cut clothes, with some combs and brushes, a small inkstand, and a roller dressing-case, richly mounted with silver. They were all as wet as water could make them; and he proceeded to unfold the various articles of apparel, placing them one by one over the backs of the wooden chairs. His eye was resting steadily upon one of the shirts, when Lockwood came in, with a face grave even to sternness, and an open letter in his hand, apparently just received.
"You have deceived me," were the first words he uttered; and as he did so his eye rested unwinking on his young companion.
"How so, Lockwood?" asked Chandos, without the slightest emotion. "If any one tells you in that letter that you are not named in the will in the manner I stated, he is deceiving you, not I."
"Not about that--not about that at all," answered Lockwood, "that is all true enough; but--." He paused, and laid his finger upon a mark in the wet linen, adding, "Look there!"
"My dear Lockwood," said Chandos, laying his hand familiarly upon his arm, "I did not deceive you--you deceived yourself; but I did not intend long to leave you in any mistake. I only wished my own plans to be first arranged--I wished to give myself time to think, and be prepared to act, before I spoke of matters that concerned me only, and not you at all."
"It was hardly fair, Sir," answered Lockwood, not yet satisfied. "You left me to say things that might offend you; and though I am a humble man, yet we have what is called politeness of our own kind amongst us, as well as amongst others; and we do not like to say what may be offensive except upon necessary occasions."
"Could I have taken offence under such circumstances," replied Chandos, "I should have been a fool, deserving to suffer by his folly. But you must lay aside your anger, my good friend; first, because it is uncalled for; secondly, because I have enough to grieve me; and thirdly, because I am going to ask your hearty concurrence and assistance in plans which are now formed to meet very painful circumstances."
"Painful indeed!" said Lockwood, with much feeling.
"What has that letter told you?" asked his companion.
"All," replied the other; "everything. I now know why you have acted as you have. The steward was always a good friend of mine, and of my poor mother's; and he has told me all that happened. I do not wonder at what you have done; I shall not wonder at anything you may do."
"All, he cannot have told you," answered Chandos; "for no one knows all but myself and one other, who, I am sure, for his own sake, would not tell it; nor would I. However, what is necessary to be said I can tell you as we go up to the abbey. I would fain walk over the old place from one end to the other; and therefore we will set out as soon as you like. You shall hear my plans and purposes; you shall give me help, if you can and will; and, at all events, I am quite sure you will keep my secret."
"No fear of my not doing that. Sir," answered Lockwood, warmly; "and help you I will, as far as I can, if you will only tell me how. That is all that is wanted; for though I and mine have not been well treated, you have been treated worse, I think."
"Do not call me 'Sir,' Lockwood," replied his young companion, grasping his hand warmly; "call me Chandos; and say not a word against those who are gone, if you love me. There is something so sacred in death, that, though it may be a weakness not to scan the actions of the dead as we would do those of the living, yet it is a weakness I could not part with. There is something beyond--above reason in man's nature--something that distinguishes him more from the brute, raises him far higher above it. It is that feeling which is called by the Word of God,charity; (very different from that to which we men give the name;) and if we are forbidden to censure our living enemies, how much more our dead friends! In this matter there has been some mistake; the will is dated ten years ago, when all the circumstances were very different, when no unfortunate dissensions had arisen, when I was myself a mere stripling. So let that pass; and now let us go. As I walk along I will tell you my plans. Do not attempt to dissuade or advise me; for my resolution is taken, and all I require is help."
"I wish to Heaven you would have something more," rejoined Lockwood, earnestly.
"What is that?" inquired Chandos.
"Why, the five hundred pounds," answered the other. "I can make no use of it, indeed. I have no need of it. I am like a tree that has grown into a certain shape, and can take no other. I have enough, Sir, for all my wants and wishes. That is what few men can say, I know; but I can from my heart; and when I get the money I shall not know what to do with it. I shall only be put out of my way, and, perhaps, be tempted to play the fool."
"No, no," answered his guest, "I neither can nor will take that which was justly destined for you. Besides, I do not need it, I am not so destitute as you suppose. Something--a pittance indeed, but still something--was secured to me long ago, and it no one can take from me. But, come; as we walk along, we will talk more."
And they did talk as they walked along, earnestly, eagerly, and took more than one turn out of the way because their conversation was not done. At length, however, they directed their course in a straight line across the park, and in a few minutes Winslow Abbey stood before them. Many of my readers who know the part of the country in which I live must have seen it, some few perhaps wandered all over it; but for those who have not, I must describe it as it appeared before the eyes of Lockwood and his companion.
Winslow Abbey was one of the few buildings of Richard the Third's reign. It was not of the most florid style of even that time, and much less so than that of Richard's successor; but still there was wonderful lightness and grace in the architecture. Some parts of the building, indeed, were older and heavier than the rest, but rich and beautiful notwithstanding. These were principally to be found in the abbey church, which was quite in ruins, mantled with green ivy, and fringed with many a self-sown ash. Growing in the midst of the nave, and rising far above, where the roof had once been, was a group of dark pines, waving their tops in the wind like the plumes upon a hearse. Who had planted them no one knew; but the record might well have passed by, for their size bespoke the passing of a century at least. There, ruin had fully done his work, apparently without one effort from man's hand to stay his relentless rage; but such was not the case with the rest of the building. Old and somewhat decayed it certainly was; but traces were evident, over every part, of efforts made, not many years before, to prevent the progress of dilapidation. In the fine delicate mullions, in the groups of engaged columns, in the corbels and buttresses, in the mouldings of the arches, were seen portions of stone, which the hand of time had not yet blackened; and here and there, in the ornamental part, might be traced the labours of a ruder and less skilful chisel than that which had sculptured the original roses, and monsters, and cherubims' heads, scattered over the whole. The ivy, too, which, it would seem, had at one time grown so luxuriantly as to be detrimental, had been carefully removed in many places, and trimmed and reduced to more decorative proportions in others. Where the thin filaments of the plant had sucked out the mortar, with the true worldly wisdom which destroys what it rests on to support itself, fresh cement had been applied; and though some years had evidently passed since these repairs had been made, the edifice was still sound and weather tight.
Projecting in the centre was a large pile, which had probably been the Abbot's lodging, richly decorated with mitre, and key, and insignia of clerical authority; for the Abbot of Winslow had been a great man in his day, and had sat in Parliament amongst the peers of the realm. On either side were large irregular wings, with here and there a mass thrown forward nearly on the line of the great corps de logis, and more richly ornamented than the parts between; but all, as I have said, beautifully irregular, for one of the great excellencies of that style of building is the harmonious variety of the forms. From either angle of the façade ran back long rows of lower buildings, surrounding a court with cloisters, external and internal; and on both sides the deep beech woods came boldly forward, offering, in their brown and yellow tints, a fine contrast to the cold gray stone and the green ivy. All that appeared on the mere outside of the building, was of centuries long gone by, or, at least, appeared so to be. Even the terrace in front, raised by a step or two above the surrounding park.--though probably abbots and monks had passed away ere it was levelled--had been made to harmonize with the Abbey by a screen of light stone-work in the same style. But through the small-paned windows of the building, the notions of modern times peeped out in efforts for that comfort which we so much prize. Shutters of dark oak were seen closed along the front, except in one room, where three windows were open, and rich damask curtains of deep crimson flapped in the November wind.
Chandos halted on the terrace, and gazed round. How many sensations crowd on us when we first see again in manhood the places we have known and loved in youth! But whatever were those in the young man's bosom, they vented themselves in but one expression. "Pull it down!" he exclaimed, in a tone at once melancholy and indignant. "Pull it down!"
"Who, in the name of folly and wickedness, would ever think of such a thing?" cried Lockwood.
"It has been spoken about, nevertheless," answered Chandos; "and he, who had the bad taste to propose it, has now the full power to do it. But let us go in: the house seems well enough; but the park is in a sad neglected state."
"How can it be otherwise?" was Lockwood's answer, as he led the way across the terrace towards one of the doors near the eastern angle of the building. "There is but one keeper and one labourer left. They do all they can, poor people; but it would take twenty hands to keep this large place in order. But the house is better, as you say; and the reason of that is, that, when Sir Harry was here last, just about five years ago, though he only stayed one day, he saw with his own eyes that everything was going to ruin. He therefore ordered it to be put in proper repair. But the park he took no notice of; and it has gone to rack and ruin ever since."
As he spoke, he pushed back a small door, plated with iron, and studded with large nails, hardly wide enough for two persons to pass at a time and pointed at the top, to fit the low arch of the stone-work. A narrow passage, guiltless of paint or whitewash, led to what had been the abbot's kitchen, in times long gone. It formed now the sitting-room of the good keeper and his wife, who had been put in to take care of the house. In honour, however, of an expected guest, the cloth, which was already laid, although it wanted near an hour of one, was spread in the housekeeper's room adjoining.
The good dame, who with a little girl fifteen or sixteen years of age, her niece, was busied in hospitable cares, viz., in the spitting of the already plucked teal, made a courtesy to Chandos on being caught in the fact, which had nearly run the poor bird in her hands through the body in a sense and direction totally different from that which she intended. But Chandos soon relieved her from any little temporary embarrassment, by saying, that he would walk through the house with Lockwood, till dinner was ready.
A flight of steps led them up to paved galleries and halls, many in number, confused in arrangement, and not altogether convenient, except for the purposes for which they were originally destined. Chandos seemed to need no guide, however, to the labyrinth; and it must be observed, that the only use of Lockwood, as his companion, seemed to be to exchange an occasional sentence with him, and to open the window-shutters of the different rooms, to admit the free air and light.
"Let us go this way, Lockwood," said his younger companion; "I wish to see the library first; and the best way will be through the glazed cloister, round the inner court."
"How well you remember it!" said Lockwood. "But I fear you will find the library in bad order; for the people left in the place do not know much about books."
Nevertheless, Chandos hurried on, and entered a long, broad, stone-paved passage, which had been ingeniously fitted up, so as to defend those who passed along from the wind and weather. This gallery, or cloister, ran along three of the internal sides of the building, only interrupted at one point by a large hall-door, through which carriages could pass from the terrace to the inner court; and, threading it quickly, Chandos and his companion reached a door at the opposite angle, which, however, was not to be opened easily. The key Lockwood had not got; but, pushing back a lesser door to the left, which was unlocked, they found their way through a small, elegantly fitted-up study to another door of the library, which did not prove so stubborn. In this little study, or reading-room, were six old oak chairs, curiously carved, and covered with rich crimson velvet; a sofa, evidently modern, but worked by a skilful, and, doubtless, expensive upholsterer, so as to harmonize with the other furniture; a writing-table, of old oak, with bronze inkstands, lamps, penholders, and some little ornaments of the same metal; and two small bookcases, with glazed doors, which covered and discovered the backs of a number of splendidly-bound books.
"This is all mine, Lockwood," said Chandos, gazing round with some pleasure. "It is left to me so distinctly, that there can be no cavil about it, or there would be a cavil, depend upon it. The words are:--'The library, with all the furniture, books, pictures, busts, and other articles of every kind whatsoever in the room so called; and also everything contained in the small writing-room adjoining, at the time of the testator's death.'"
"I'll make an inventory of them," said Lockwood, with a cheerful air. "The library, too? Why, that's a fortune in itself."
His younger companion mused for several moments, with his hand on the library-door. "That is true," he said; "I never thought of that. And yet it were a painful fortune, too, to turn to any account; for it would go hard with me, ere I sold the old books, over which I have pored so often. However, Lockwood, take you an inventory, as you say: and in the mean time, I will consider how I am to dispose of all these things. I shall never have a house big enough to put those bookcases in."
"You can't tell," answered Lockwood. "What you are going to try first, you will soon get tired of; and then you will take some other course, and may raise yourself to be a great man, yet. You have had a good education, been to Eton, and college, and all that; and so you can do anything you please."
Chandos shook his head sadly, and replied: "The road to high fortune, my good friend, is not so easily travelled now as once it was. So many are driving along it, that there is no room for one to pass the other."
"There's another reason besides that," answered Lockwood, "why we see so few mount high now-a-days. It's all like bread and butter at a school; there's but a certain portion of butter for the whole; and if the number of mouths be increased, it must be spread thinner. However, as I have said, you can do what you like; for you are young, determined enough for anything, and have a good education, so you may be a great man, if you like."
"You have had a good education too, Lockwood," replied the other.
"Ay, but not so good as yours," said his companion. "Mine has been picked up anyhow; and a man never makes much of that. Besides, you have always been accustomed to keep company with gentlefolks; and I am a boor. Education means something else than cramming a man's head with Greek and Latin, or mathematics either; and, moreover, I don't want to be a great man, if I could. To me it would be as disagreeable, as you will find being a little one."
"Well, well, we have settled that question," said Chandos; "and for the future God will provide."
He then walked up to one of the large bookcases, carved like the screen of an old church, took down a volume so covered with dust that the top looked as if it were bearing a crop of wool, opened it, and read a few lines mechanically. Lockwood stood near, with his arms folded on his broad chest, gazing at him with a thoughtful look, then, tapping him lightly on the arm, he said, "You have forgotten one thing: you will have to receive all these fine things some day soon; how will that square with all your fine plans?"
Chandos took a moment or two to reply; for it would seem, he had not indeed considered the subject. "I will tell you, Lockwood," he said; "I will give you an order to receive them in my name. I shall be near at hand, to do anything more that may be necessary."
"But what am I to do with them?" asked Lockwood, frightened at the idea of such folio volumes, and awful bookcases. "But I will tell you what I can do," he added, a moment afterwards. "There's the young parson over at Northferry, he's a good young man and kind, I have always heard, though I don't know him, and has a large house not yet half furnished. He'll give them place, I'm sure. We can talk of that afterwards. But it must be the good folks' dinner hour, by this time; and keepers have huge appetites."
"Well, let us go back," said Chandos, with a sigh. "But we can walk through the rooms. It will not take us longer."
"The base and the perpendicular are always in their sum more than the hypotenuse," replied Lockwood, drily. "But doubtless they are not so ravenous as to grudge a few minutes to look at places you have not seen for so long, and may never see again.--Odd's life, pull the place down! They must be mad!"
Chandos made no answer, but walked on, passing from room to room, along the wide front of the building. He gazed around him as he went with a slow pace, but only twice he stopped. Once it was to look at a picture; that of a lady in a riding habit. It was an early portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence, with great breadth and power, and some careless drawing and want of finish, in subsidiary parts. But the face was full of life. The liquid eyes, with the clear light streaming through the cornea, and illuminating the iris, seemed gazing into your heart. The lips spoke to you; but there was a sadness in the tones, which poured melancholy into the gazer.
"Ay, she had an unhappy life of it, poor thing," said Lockwood, at once interpreting the expression in the portrait, and the feelings in his companion's heart. "I, of course, had no reason to love her; but yet, I grieved for her from my soul."
Chandos turned abruptly round, laid his left hand upon Lockwood's shoulder, and seemed about to reply almost bitterly. But then he stopped suddenly, looked him full in the face, with the finger of his right hand extended to his companion's breast, and with a sad shake of the head, moved away. The next time he stopped, it was before a small work-table, which he gazed at for a minute or two, and then said, "If there is a sale, Lockwood, as I dare say there will be, I should like to have that. Purchase it for me; it cannot sell for much."
He then quickened his pace, and proceeded without a pause to the abbot's kitchen. There was apparent, however, as he went along, a quivering of the lip at times, and an occasional wide expansion of the nostril, which made Lockwood think that strong emotions were busy within him. Whatever they were, he threw off his gloom when he joined the good keeper and his wife at their meal; and though not gay, he chatted with the rest, and sometimes laughed; ate their good cheer with a hearty appetite, and drank more than one glass of old ale. The dinner was over, and they were sitting, about two o'clock, with that pause for digestion, the necessity for which all animals feel, when a grating sound, as of carriage wheels, was heard; and going to the window, the three men saw a post-chaise, dragged on slowly by two sorry jades, through the loose stuff of the long-neglected road.
"My goody! who can that be?" cried the keeper's wife, looking over her husband's shoulder.
"It is Roberts, the steward," said Chandos, with a grave face. "Do not let him be brought in here, Lockwood. I will see him afterwards; but it must be alone."
Lockwood nodded his head significantly, and went out with the keeper, who hurried to the principal entrance of Winslow Abbey, towards which the chaise directed its course.
"Don't say anything at present of the young gentleman being here," whispered Lockwood to the keeper, as the latter unbolted the great doors. An acquiescent nod was the reply, and the next moment Mr. Roberts approached the entrance.
I must pause, both upon the character and appearance of that person; for he was not an ordinary one. Richard Roberts was diminutive in person, though exceedingly well formed; most of his features were plain; and he was a good deal marked with the small-pox; but his eyes were fine, large, and expressive; and his brow was both broad and high. He had been educated as an attorney by his father, who was an attorney also; but the father and the son were different. The father was a keen, shrewd, money-making man, who had no scruples within the law. He had married the daughter of a country banker, and treated her very harshly from the hour the bank broke. He had been very civil before. She bore all patiently; for she had a very high sense of duty, which she transmitted to her son; but she died early; for she was too gentle and affectionate to endure unkindness long. The young man submitted to his father's pleasure, though the desk and the red tape were an abomination to him; and he went on studying deeply till he was out of his clerkship, when he entered into partnership with his father. The father, who was a thick-necked man, ate too much, and drank too much, at a hot corporation-dinner; and a thin alderman--for there are such things--remarked, that Roberts had eaten and drank enough that night to serve him his whole life. So it did, too; for, just as he was peeling his third orange after dinner, and somebody was getting up to make a speech, which nobody was likely to attend to, Mr. Roberts leaned amicably upon his next neighbour's breast; and that gentleman at first imagined--notwithstanding the improbability of the thing--that Roberts was drunk. When he was set up in his chair again, he moved not, except to fall slowly to the other side; and then it began to strike people, that a man might be dead instead of drunk, even at a corporation-dinner. So it proved; and the firm was changed from "Roberts and Son," to "Richard Roberts." To the surprise of everybody, however, the whole business of Mr. Roberts's office was wound up within three months, and the office closed. Every one knew, that the old man had been of a money-making turn; but still, they argued, that he could not have left enough for young Roberts to turn gentleman upon. This was true; and shortly after he accepted the situation of steward and law-agent to Sir Harry Winslow, rejecting all fees, and doing the whole business for a moderate fixed salary, which, with what his father had left him, was sufficient for his ambition. Thus he had gone on for five-and-twenty years. The tenants were always well pleased with him; for he forced no man to take a lease, when an agreement for one would do as well; but never refused a lease when it was required. Sir Harry was not always well pleased; for there was a rigidity about Mr. Roberts, and about his notions, which did not quite suit him; but Mr. Roberts, like an indispensable minister, was always ready to resign. He was now a man of more than fifty years of age, with very white hair, very black eyebrows, and a pale, thoughtful complexion; and, as he walked up from the chaise to the house, his step, though not exactly feeble, had none of the buoyancy of youth and strong health about it.
"Good morning, Garbett. Good morning, Mr. Lockwood. You have got my letter, I hope?"
"Not till this morning, Mr. Roberts," answered Lockwood; "although I should have had it last night, if the postman would but take the diagonal line, instead of two sides of a parallelogram."
Roberts smiled gravely and entered the house, saying: "Mankind will choose devious ways, Lockwood; but, at all events, I hope you were satisfied with the information I conveyed. I thought it best to put your mind at ease at once."
"Oh! it was never uneasy," answered Lockwood. "I have always my hands and my head, Mr. Roberts, and I know how to make use of them. But I suppose you have come to seal the things up here."
"Not exactly," answered Roberts; "only a little business connected with my situation, which I trust to get over by to-morrow morning."
"Will your honour like any dinner?" asked Garbett, the keeper. "My old woman can get it ready for you in a minute."
"Not just yet," answered Roberts; "about four o'clock, perhaps; but I must get through some business first. Show me the way to the late Sir Harry's business-room, Garbett. It is so long since I was here, that I almost forget it."
The keeper did as he was desired; and Mr. Roberts, requiring pen and ink, and apparently wishing to be left alone, Lockwood and Garbett left him; and the former rejoined Chandos in the housekeeper's room. After time had been given for the gamekeeper to supply the steward with writing materials, and the voice of the former was heard in the adjoining kitchen, Chandos walked away straight to the room where Roberts was shut up, and remained there for nearly an hour. At the end of that time the door opened; and Chandos shook the steward by the hand, saying: "I shall see you on Saturday, Roberts, for the last time, perhaps, for months, or years; but I trust entirely to you, to take care that whatever rights I have are duly protected."
"That I will do, you may depend upon it, Sir," replied the steward; "and, perhaps,--But no matter; things must take their course according to law; for we have no power, unfortunately, over men's hearts."
Chandos turned away; and the steward remained gazing after him till he was lost in the turning of the inner cloister.
We have histories of almost everything that the earth contains, or ever has contained--of kings, and bloody battles; (almost inseparable from kings;) of republics, and domestic anarchy; (inseparable from republics;) of laws, rents, prices; (Tooke has despatched prices;) of churches, sects, religions; of society--that grand, strange, unaccountable compound of evil and good; where men's vices and virtues, ever at war, are made mutually to counteract each other, and bring about an equilibrium balanced on a hair; always vibrating, sometimes terribly deranged, but ever returning to its poise. But, thank Heaven! we have not absolutely histories of everything; and, amongst others, we have not a history of opinion. The world, however, is a strange place; the men and women in it, strange creatures; and the man who would sit down to write a true history of opinions, showing how baseless are those most fondly clung to, how absurd are those most reverently followed, how wicked are some of those esteemed most holy, would, in any country, and in any age, be pursued and persecuted till he were as dead as the carrion on which feeds the crow; nay, long after his miserable bones were as white as an egg-shell. I am even afraid of the very assertion; for the world is too vain, and too cowardly, to hear that any of its opinions are wrong; and we must swim with the stream, if we would swim at all. There is one thing, indeed, to be said, which justifies the world, although it is not the ground on which the world acts--that he who would upset the opinions established, were he ten times wiser than Solon, or Solomon either, would produce a thousand evils where he removed one. It is an old coat that will not bear mending; and the wearer is, perhaps, right to fly at every one who would peck it. Moreover, there isprimâ facie, very little cause to suppose that he who would overthrow the notions which have been entertained, with slight modifications, by thousands of human beings through thousands of years, is a bit more wise, enlightened, true, or virtuous, than the rest; and I will fairly confess, that I have never yet seen one of these moral knights-errant who did not replace error by error, folly by folly, contradiction by contradiction, the absurdities of others by absurdities of his own. Nay, more; amongst all who have started up to work a radical change in the opinions of mankind, I have never heard but of one, the universal adoption of whose views, in their entirety, would have made the whole race wiser, better, and happier. He was God as well as man. Men crucified him; and, lest the imperishable truth should condemn them, set to work to corrupt his words, and pervert his doctrines, within a century after he had passed from earth. Gnostics, monks, priests, saints, fathers, all added or took away; and then they closed the book, and sealed it with a brazen clasp.
Still there are some good men withal, but not wise, who, bold, and somewhat vain, set at nought the danger of combatting the world's opinion, judge for themselves, often not quite sanely, and have a pride in differing from others. Such is the case, in a great degree, with that old gentleman sitting at the breakfast-table, on the right-hand side, with the light streaming through the still green leaves of plants in a fine conservatory, pouring on his broad bald head and gray hair. I do not mean the man so like him, but somewhat younger, who is reading a newspaper at the end of the table, while he takes his coffee, colder than it might have been, if he had contented himself with doing one thing at one time. They are brothers; but very different in habits, thoughts, and views. The organ of reverence, if there be such an organ, is very large in the one, nearly wanting in the other; and yet there are some things that the elder brother does reverence, too--virtue, honour, gentleness, purity. Now, he would not, for the world, shock the ears of those two beautiful girls, his brother's daughters, with many of the notions which he himself entertains. He reverences conscientious conviction, even where he differs; and would not take away a hope, or undermine a principle, for the world.
The elder girl asked him if he would take any more coffee. "No, my Lily," he answered, (for he was poetical in speech and mind,) "not even from your hands, love;" and rising for a moment from the table, with his hands behind his broad burly back, he moved to the window, and looked into the conservatory.
"What makes you so grave, dear uncle?" asked the other girl, following; "I will know; for I am in all your secrets."
"All, my Rose?" he said, smiling at her, and taking one of the rich curls of her hair in his hand. "What heart ever lays bare all its secrets? One you do not know."
"Indeed!" she cried, sportively. "Then confess it this instant. You have no right to have any from me."
"Listen, then," he answered, pulling her to him with a look of fatherly affection, and whispering: "I am in love with Rose Tracy. Don't tell Lily, for I am in love with her too; and unfortunately, we are not in Turkey, where polygamy gives vast scope to the tender passions."
"What is he saying about me?" asked Emily Tracy, the elder of the nieces, who caught the sound of her own abbreviated name. "Do not believe a word he says, Rose; he is the most perfidious of men."
"I know he is," replied her sister; "he is just now sighing over the prohibition of polygamy, and wishing himself in Turkey."
"Not if you were not with me, Rose," cried her uncle, with a hearty laugh that shook the room. "Why should I not have a whole garden of roses--with some lilies--with some lilies too? Ha, ha, ha!"
"It is always the way with men who never marry at all," said Emily; "they all long for polygamy. Why do you not try what a single marriage is like, my dear uncle, before you think of multiplying it?"
"Because two panniers are more easily borne than one, my Lily," answered her uncle, laughing again.
The two girls united to scold him; and he replied with compliments, sometimes hyperbolical, sometimes bitter, and with much laughter, till his brother was roused from his deep studies, laid down the newspaper, drunk his coffee, and joined them at the window.
"Well, Walter," he said, "I see those amusing Frenchmen have given a verdict of guilty, with extenuating circumstances, against another woman who has poisoned her husband with arsenic. He was kind, tender, affectionate, the evidence shows; forgave her a great many offences; and treated her with anything but harshness, though she certainly was not the best of wives. She poisoned him slowly, quietly, deliberately, that she might marry a paramour, who had already corrupted her. Yet they find 'extenuating circumstances.'"
"To be sure," answered General Tracy. "Do you not see them, Arthur? You say, he forgave her a great number of offences, and consequently, did not do his duty to himself, or to her. But the truth is, these Frenchmen think murder better than execution; and, after massacring thousands of honest men, some forty or fifty years ago, will not now put one guilty man to death, though his crime is proved by irresistible evidence."
"It is all slop," replied Mr. Arthur Tracy. "The word is, perhaps, a little vulgar, but yet I repeat it, 'It is all slop.' I will write an essay upon slop, someday; for we have just as much of it in England, as they have in France; only we shelter murder under amonomania, and the French underextenuatingcircumstances. It is wonderful how slop is beginning to pervade all classes of society. It already affects even romance-writers and novelists. The people used to rejoice in blood and murder, so that an old circulating library was like a bear's den; nothing but gore and bones. But now one is sickened in every page, with maudling sentimentality, only fit for the second piece of a minor theatre. Love-sick dustmen, wronged and sentimental greengrocers; poetic and inspired costermongers; with a whole host of blind, lame, and deformed peasantry and paupers, transformed into angels and cherubs, by the assistance of a few clap-trap phrases, which have been already hackneyed for half a century on the stage. Slop, slop, Walter; it is all slop; and at the bottom of every kind of slop, is charlatanism."
"Humbug, you mean," said his elder brother. "Why do you use a French word, when you can get an English one, Arthur?"
"If the men really wished to defend the cause of the poor," continued Mr. Tracy, taking no notice of his brother's reproach, "why don't they paint them and their griefs as they really are? Did you ever see, Walter, in all your experience, such lackadaisical, poetical, white-aproned damsels amongst the lower classes, as we find in books now-a-days?"
"Oh yes," said General Tracy; "I'll find you as many as you like, on the condition that they be educated at a ladies' charity-school, where they stitch romance into their samplers, write verses in their copy-books, and learn to scrub the floors to etherial music.--But come, my Flowers," he added, turning to his nieces, "will you take a walk? and we will go and see some real cottages, and see some real peasants."
His proposal was willingly agreed to; and Mr. Tracy--who was of a speculative disposition--was speculating whether he should go with them, or not, when the butler entered and put his negative upon it, by saying: "Please, Sir, here is a young man come to ask about the head gardener's place."
"I will see him in a minute," said Mr. Tracy. "Show him into the library."
While the father of the family, after looking at one or two more paragraphs in the newspaper, walked into his library, to see the person who waited for him, his two daughters had gone to put on bonnets and shawls; and the old General sauntered out, through the conservatory, to the lawn before the house. Nothing could be more beautiful, or more tasteful, than the arrangements of the whole grounds. Large masses of hardy exotics were planted round, now, alas! no longer in flower; but a multitude of the finest and the rarest evergreens hid the ravages which the vanguard of winter had already made, and afforded shelter from the cutting winds to some few autumnal flowers, which yet lingered, as if unwilling to obey the summons to the grave. The old man gazed upon the gardens, and vacant parterres; upon the shrubberies of evergreen, and upon the leafless plants beside them; and a sad and solemn spirit came upon him as he looked. Poetry, the magic mirror in the mind, which reflects all external things with hues more intense than the realities, received and returned every sad image, that the decay of nature's children presents, in colours more profound and dark. He thought of the tomb, and of corruption, and of the vanity of all man's efforts upon earth, and upon the sleep that knows no waking, and the perishing of our very memory from among our kindred and our race. The warm life that still throbbed high in his old heart, revolted at the idea of cold extinction, he felt that it is a terrible doom that rests upon all the children of the dust; but threefold terrible, to the only being conscious of its inevitable coming, filled with the first of the waters of life, instinct with appreciation of all its excellence. He had been in battle, that old man, he had faced the cannon and the bayonet, had heard the eager balls whistle round his temples, screaming like vultures for his blood; he had seen thousands dying about him; but he had never felt what a dreary thing death is, as in the presence of those fading flowers.
At length the two girls joined him, and he put on a less thoughtful air; but Rose, the youngest and the gayest, had a shadow on her brow; he knew not from what. It was not altogether sad; but it was as if a cloud had passed for a moment between her eyes and the sun, rendering the deep blue more deep.
The day was fine and bright, but cold; and a shrewd wind moved the dry leaves about under the trees, making them whisper like ghosts as they rustled past. The old man breasted the breeze, however; and his clear rosy cheek seemed to glow only the more warmly in the spirit of resistance. So, too, his mind opposed itself to the blast of chill thoughts which had assailed him, and he laughed and jested with his nieces, as they went, on the very subjects which had oppressed him when alone.
"Look, Lily," he said, "how all the children of the spring are gathered into the grave of winter, already massed up to crumble down, and be succeeded by others doomed to pass away after a brief space like themselves! And thus we shall all tumble from our boughs and wither. There, that faded thing is me, full of holes and scars as a politician's conscience; and that Michaelmas-daisy is you, Lily, blossoming upon the arm of winter."
"You are lively, dear uncle," said Emily, laughing; "and Rose does not seem gay, though she was so merry just now. You must have said something very serious to her at the window, for she has been in a reverie ever since we left the breakfast-room."
"Faith, I was very serious," answered her uncle: "I offered her marriage; but she said it was against the laws of the realm and the common prayer-book, to marry your grandfather or your uncle. What is it, Summer-flower, that makes you hang your head?"
"Winter, I suppose, uncle," replied his younger niece. "But, if truth must be told, I am not warm. Lest us walk more quickly, till we get behind the grove, where there is shelter from this biting wind."
They did walk on more quickly; and Rose, either by an effort, or naturally, grew gayer. They passed through the grove, and out upon the fields, then through lanes again, deep, between banks, with withered shrubs above, when suddenly there came upon them a smell, pleasant in winter, of burning wood, mingled with turf.
"There are some of the yellow people near," said General Tracy. "Now, Rose, is the time, if you would have your fortune told."
"I should like it, of all things," cried the girl, gladly. "Dear uncle, let us find them out, and hear what a trifle of husbands and wives they will give us. You will come in for your share, depend upon it; and a sweet delusive vision of polygamy and 'famed Turkie' will be afforded you yet."
"Oh! I am quite ready," said her uncle. "But, what say you, Lily?"
"That I think it is always very foolish," answered Emily, "to have anything to do with such people. If you believe them, they make you uneasy, and play upon your credulity. If you do not believe them, why give half-a-crown for imposition?"
"Reasoned like Aristotle, dear Lily," exclaimed her uncle; "but there is one point in philosophy which you have not taken into consideration. Everybody has a certain portion of folly to expend, which, like a boy's new guinea, burns his pocket till it is all gone. Now I wish every one had as innocent a way of spending his foolishness: so Rose and I will have our fortunes told. You shall do as you like."
"I am as glad of having half-a-crown in my pocket," cried Rose, "as a housemaid when she first hears the cuckoo."
While they had been speaking they had walked on through the lane to a wider spot, where, under a yellow bank, with blackberries still hanging above, like dark eyes amongst the withered leaves, rose up the smoke of the forbidden pot. Two or three of the tents of Kedar were seen under shelter of the high ground, dingy and begrimed with manifold seasons of exposure, and apparently not large enough to hold one of the bipeds which usually nestle in them in multitudes. The reason given for an ostrich not sitting on its eggs (which is very doubtful, by-the-by) might well be given for a gipsey not living in his tent,i. e. because his legs are too long; but, not to discuss the matter too philosophically, there were the tents, but no gipseys in them. Nor were there many out of them in their immediate neighbourhood; for only one was to be seen, and that a woman. Not the slightest touch of Meg Merrilies, not the slightest touch of Lena, was apparent in the worthy dame. She was a woman perhaps of six or seven and twenty years of age, as yellow as a crow's foot, but with a good warm glow shining through the golden russet. Her eyes were black as sloes, and shining like polished jet. The features were all good, though not as new as they once had been; very like the features of figures found painted in Egyptian tombs, if ever you saw them, reader--straight, yet not Grecian, and more resembling those of the bust of the sybil than any others of classical lands and times. She was still plump, and in good case, without having reached the full amplitude (is that a pleonasm?) which it is probable she would attain, and still farther removed from that state of desiccation at which she would certainly arrive if she lived long enough. Her head was covered with the peculiar straw bonnet, in the peculiar shape which has given a name to a part of ladies' head gear; from her shoulders hung the red cloak, and crossed upon her abundant bosom was a handkerchief of crimson and yellow. She was not at all poetical or romantical, but a very handsome woman notwithstanding. She was evidently a priestess of Vesta, without vows, left to keep the sacred fire in, while the rest of the sisterhood and brotherhood were absent upon different errands; and as soon as she perceived a well-dressed party approaching, she abandoned the flame, and came forward with her head bent coaxingly, and her black eyes gleaming forth from beneath the raven hair. The rapid look she gave to each, seemed enough to afford her every clue to character she might want; and with vast volubility she cried, in a musical but whining tone, "Cross my hand, dear ladies and gentleman; cross my hand, pretty ladies--cross it with silver, or cross it with gold, 'tis all the same; you have nice fortunes, I can see by the corner of the eye. I shall have to tell you wonderful things, when I look in your palms, I know, pretty ladies. And that old gentleman will have half a dozen wives yet, for all his hair is so white, and children like a covey of partridges."
Rose laughed gaily, drew out her purse, and tendered her fair hand. The gipsey woman, after having got her fee, took the rosy tip of the long, taper middle finger, and gazed as seriously into the palm as if she believed there was truth in her art. Perhaps she did, for imposture is often like a charge of gun-powder, and acts as strongly towards the breech as towards the muzzle. But when she had examined the few soft lines for a minute, she shook her head gravely, saying, "You will live long and happily, pretty lady, though there's a sad cross about the beginning of the line of life; but the line goes through, and then it's all clear; and, let me see--yes--you shall marry a gardener."
With a start, Rose drew away her hand, and her face became crimson; while her sister and her uncle laughed aloud, with a little spice of good-humoured malice.
"Come," cried the old General, "there's a fine fate for you, Flower! Now are you satisfied? It is true, depend upon it; it is true. These Egyptians were always masters of mighty secrets; witness their rods turned into serpents, though it was but to feast Aaron's rod. But this brown lady of Egypt shall tell my fortune, too; for she looks
'A palaceFor crowned truth to dwell in--.'
Here, my sorceress, look at my palm, and see what you can make of that! It has been crossed by many a piece of gold and silver in its day, as well as your own."
The woman resumed her examination; and studied the broad furrowed hand attentively. At length she said, looking up in the old man's face, "You shall live as you have lived, but not die as you have lived. You shall not fall by fire or steel."
"Nor lead?" asked the soldier.
"No," she answered, "nor by accident of any kind; but by slow decay, like a sick bird in a cage, or a sick horse in a stall; and you shall see death coming for long days before he comes."
"That's not pleasant," said General Tracy. "But what will become of my half dozen of wives?"
"They will all die with you," answered the woman with a grin, which showed her white teeth to the back; "for no other wife will you have than you now have."
"Hard fate!" cried Walter Tracy, lifting up his hands and eyes, and laughing--"six wives all in one day, and their husband, to boot! But I understand how it is. They must be all Hindoos, and will burn themselves at my funeral, poor things! Now, Emily, it is your turn."
"Not I," replied the young lady, gravely; "I have not the slightest inclination."
"Ah, pretty lady," cried the gipsey, "do cross my hand, and I will tell your beautiful fortune in a minute."
"No, indeed, my good woman," replied Emily Tracy. "I am quite contented to wait till God shows it to me. If I believed you could tell, I should think it wrong to ask you; and as I do not believe you can, it would be only foolish."
The gipsey woman looked at her fiercely, and exclaimed, with an angry and menacing voice, "You do not believe? I will make you believe. I don't need to look in your hand. Your proud heart will be humbled--you will marry a felon."
"Come, come, this is somewhat too much," said General Tracy; "no insolence, my good woman, or I may have occasion to punish it. Those who are foolish enough to ask you questions, you may answer as you will; but you have no right to say such things to those who make no inquiries of you."
"It is true, and so you will find," answered the woman, returning sullenly to her pot; and without taking any further notice of her, the party walked on.