Part 25 (2/2)
”Well,” repeated the Emigrant; ”I'm blest, but this is funny!”
THE LADY OF THE RED ADMIRALS
”_All day within the dreamy house The doors upon their hinges creak'd, The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse Behind the mouldering wainscot shrieked, Or from the crevice peer'd about, Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors, Old footsteps trod the upper floors, Old voices called her from without._”--MARIANA.
My eyes had been occupied with the grey chimneys below, among the Spanish chestnuts, at the very moment when I slipped on the northern face of Skirrid and twisted my ankle. This indeed explains the accident; and the accident explains why my interest in the house with the grey chimneys suddenly became a personal one. Five miles separated me from my inn in Aber town. But the white smoke of a goods train went crawling across the green and cultivated plain at my feet; and I knew, though I carried no map, that somewhere under the slope to my left must hide the country station of Llanfihangel. To reach it I must pa.s.s the house, and there, no doubt, would happen on someone to set me on the shortest way.
So I picked up my walking-stick and hobbled down the hillside, albeit with pain. Where the descent eased a little I found and followed a foot-track, which in time turned into a sunk road scored deep with old cart-ruts, and so brought me to a desolate farmstead, slowly dropping to ruin there in the perpetual shadow of the mountain. The slates that had fallen from the roof of byre and stable lay buried already under the growth of nettle and mallow and wild parsnip; and the yard-wall was down in a dozen places. I shuffled through one of these gaps, and almost at once found myself face to face with a park-fence of split oak--in yet worse repair, if that were possible. It stretched away right and left with promise of a n.o.ble circ.u.mference; but no hand had repaired it for at least twenty years. I counted no less than seven breaches through which a man of common size might step without squeezing; availed myself of the nearest; and having with difficulty dragged my disabled foot up the ha-ha slope beyond, took breath at the top and looked about me.
The edge of the ha-ha stood but fifty paces back from an avenue of the most magnificent Spanish chestnuts I have ever seen in my life. A few of them were withering from the top; and under these many dead boughs lay as they had fallen, in gra.s.s that obliterated almost all trace of the broad carriage-road. But nine out of ten stood hale and stout, and apparently good for centuries to come. Northward, the grey facade of the house glimmered and closed their green prospective, and towards it I now made my way.
But, I must own, this avenue daunted me, as a frame altogether too lordly for a mere limping pedestrian. And therefore I was relieved, as I drew near, to catch the sound of voices behind the shrubberies on my right hand. This determined me to take the house in flank, and I diverged and pushed my way between the laurels in search of the speakers.
”A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse! Lobelia, how many horses has your father in stable? Red, white, or grey?”
”One, Miss Wilhelmina; an' that's old Sentry-go, and father says _he'll_ have to go to the knacker's before another winter.”
”Then he shall carry me there on his back: with rings on my fingers and bells on my toes”--
She rode unto the knacker's yard, And tirled at the pin: Right glad were then the cat's-meat men To let that lady in!
--especially, Lobelia, when she alighted and sat upon the ground and began to tell them sad stories of the death of kings. But they cut off Sentry-go's head and nailed it over the gate. So he died, and she very imprudently married the master knacker, who had heard she was an heiress in her own right, and wanted to decorate his coat-of-arms with an escutcheon of pretence; and besides, his doctor had recommended a complete change ”--
”Law, miss, how you _do_ run on!”
The young lady who had given utterance to this amazing rigmarole stood at the top of a terrace flight (much cracked and broken) between two leaden statuettes (headless)--a willowy child in a large-brimmed hat, with a riding-switch in one hand and the other holding up an old tartan shawl, which she had pinned about her to imitate a horse-woman's habit.
As she paced to and fro between the leaden statuettes--
pedes vestis defluxit ad imos Et vera incessu patuit dea,
--and I noted almost at once that two or three b.u.t.terflies (”red admirals” they were) floated and circled about her in the sunlight.
A child of commoner make, and perhaps a year older, dressed in a buff print frock and pink sunbonnet, looked up at her from the foot of the steps. The faces of both were averted, and I stood there for at least a minute on the verge of the laurels, un.o.bserved, considering the picture they made, and the ruinous Jacobean house that formed its background.
Never was house more eloquent of desolation. Unpainted shutters, cracking in the heat, blocked one half of its windows. Weather-stains ran down the slates from the lantern on the main roof. The lantern over the stable had lost its vane, and the stable-clock its minute-hand.
The very nails had dropped out of the gable wall, and the wistaria and Gloire de Dijons they should have supported trailed down in tangles, like curtains. Gra.s.s choked the rain-pipes, and moss dappled the gravel walk. In the border at my feet someone had attempted a clearance of the weeds; and here lay his hoe, matted with bindweed and ring-streaked with the silvery tracks of snails.
”Very well, Lobelia. We will be sensible house-maid and cook, and talk of business. We came out, I believe, to cut a cabbage-leaf to make an apple-pie”--
At this point happening to turn her head she caught sight of me, and stopped with a slight, embarra.s.sed laugh. I raised my hat.
”I beg your pardon, sir, but no strangers are admitted here.”
”I beg your pardon”--I began; and with that, as I s.h.i.+fted my walking-stick, my foolish ankle gave way, and plump I sat in the very middle of the bindweed.
”You are ill?” She came quickly towards me, but halted a pace or two off. ”You look as if you were going to faint.”
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