Part 14 (1/2)
”Yes.”
”Ah! I don't mind seeing you afore; and I should have known you if I had, for it is seldom indeed I have a fare to Fawley old Manor House. It must be, I take it, four or five years ago sin' I wor there with a gent, and he went away while I wor feeding the horse; did me out o' my back fare. What bisness had he to walk when he came in my fly? Shabby.”
”Mr. Darrell lives very retired, then? sees few persons?” ”S'pose so. I never seed him as I knows on; see'd two o' his hosses though,--rare good uns;” and the driver whipped on his own horse, took to whistling, and Lionel asked no more.
At length the chaise stopped at a carriage gate, receding from the road, and deeply shadowed by venerable trees,--no lodge. The driver, dismounting, opened the gate.
”Is this the place?”
The driver nodded a.s.sent, remounted, and drove on rapidly through what night by courtesy he called a park. The enclosure was indeed little beyond that of a good-sized paddock; its boundaries were visible on every side: but swelling uplands covered with ma.s.sy foliage sloped down to its wild, irregular turf soil,--soil poor for pasturage, but pleasant to the eye; with dell and dingle, bosks of fantastic pollards; dotted oaks of vast growth; here and there a weird hollow thorn-tree; patches of fern and gorse. Hoa.r.s.e and loud cawed the rooks; and deep, deep as from the innermost core of the lovely woodlands came the mellow note of the cuckoo. A few moments more a wind of the road brought the house in sight. At its rear lay a piece of water, scarcely large enough to be styled a lake; too winding in its s.h.a.ggy banks, its ends too concealed by tree and islet, to be called by the dull name of pond. Such as it was it arrested the eye before the gaze turned towards the house: it had an air of tranquillity so sequestered, so solemn. A lively man of the world would have been seized with spleen at the first glimpse of it; but he who had known some great grief, some anxious care, would have drunk the calm into his weary soul like an anodyne. The house,--small, low, ancient, about the date of Edward VI., before the statelier architecture of Elizabeth. Few houses in England so old, indeed, as Fawley Manor House. A vast weight of roof, with high gables; windows on the upper story projecting far over the lower part; a covered porch with a coat of half-obliterated arms deep panelled over the oak door. Nothing grand, yet all how venerable! But what is this? Close beside the old, quiet, una.s.suming Manor House rises the skeleton of a superb and costly pile,--a palace uncompleted, and the work evidently suspended,--perhaps long since, perhaps now forever. No busy workmen nor animated scaffolding. The perforated battlements roofed over with visible haste,--here with slate, there with tile; the Elizabethan mullion cas.e.m.e.nts unglazed; some roughly boarded across,--some with staring forlorn apertures, that showed floorless chambers, for winds to whistle through and rats to tenant. Weeds and long gra.s.s were growing over blocks of stone that lay at hand. A wallflower had forced itself into root on the sill of a giant oriel. The effect was startling. A fabric which he who conceived it must have founded for posterity,--so solid its masonry, so thick its walls,--and thus abruptly left to moulder; a palace constructed for the reception of crowding guests, the pomp of stately revels, abandoned to owl and bat. And the homely old house beside it, which that lordly hall was doubtless designed to replace, looking so safe and tranquil at the baffled presumption of its spectral neighbour.
The driver had rung the bell, and now turning back to the chaise met Lionel's inquiring eye, and said, ”Yes; Squire Darrell began to build that--many years ago--when I was a boy. I heerd say it was to be the show-house of the whole county. Been stopped these ten or a dozen years.”
”Why?--do you know?”
”No one knows. Squire was a laryer, I b'leve: perhaps he put it into Chancery. My wife's grandfather was put into Chancery jist as he was growing up, and never grew afterwards: never got out o' it; nout ever does. There's our churchwarden comes to me with a pet.i.tion to sign agin the Pope. Says I, 'That old Pope is always in trouble: what's he bin doin' now?' Says he, 'Spreading! He's a-got into Parlyment, and he's now got a colledge, and we pays for it. I does n't know how to stop him.'
Says I, 'Put the Pope into Chancery, along with wife's grandfather, and he'll never spread agin.'”
The driver had thus just disposed of the Papacy, when an elderly servant out of livery opened the door. Lionel sprang from the chaise, and paused in some confusion: for then, for the first time, there darted across him the idea that he had never written to announce his acceptance of Mr.
Darrell's invitation; that he ought to have done so; that he might not be expected. Meanwhile the servant surveyed him with some surprise. ”Mr.
Darrell?” hesitated Lionel, inquiringly.
”Not at home, sir,” replied the man, as if Lionel's business was over, and he had only to re-enter his chaise. The boy was naturally rather bold than shy, and he said, with a certain a.s.sured air, ”My name is Haughton. I come here on Mr. Darrell's invitation.”
The servant's face changed in a moment; he bowed respectfully. ”I beg pardon, sir. I will look for my master; he is somewhere on the grounds.”
The servant then approached the fly, took out the knapsack, and, observing Lionel had his purse in his hand, said, ”Allow me to save you that trouble, sir. Driver, round to the stable-yard.” Stepping back into the house, the servant threw open a door to the left, on entrance, and advanced a chair. ”If you will wait here a moment, sir, I will seek for my master.”
CHAPTER II.
Guy Darrell--and Stilled Life.
The room in which Lionel now found himself was singularly quaint. An antiquarian or architect would have discovered at a glance that at some period it had formed part of the entrance-hall; and when, in Elizabeth's or James the First's day, the refinement in manners began to penetrate from baronial mansions to the homes of the gentry, and the entrance-hall ceased to be the common refectory of the owner and his dependants, this apartment had been screened off by perforated panels, which for the sake of warmth and comfort had been filled up into solid wainscot by a succeeding generation. Thus one side of the room was richly carved with geometrical designs and arabesque pilasters, while the other three sides were in small simple panels, with a deep fantastic frieze in plaster, depicting a deer-chase in relief and running be tween woodwork and ceiling. The ceiling itself was relieved by long pendants without any apparent meaning, and by the crest of the Darrells,--a heron, wreathed round with the family motto, ”Ardua pet.i.t Ardea.” It was a dining-room, as was shown by the character of the furniture. But there was no attempt on the part of the present owner, and there had clearly been none on the part of his predecessor, to suit the furniture to the room. The furniture, indeed, was of the heavy, graceless taste of George the First,--c.u.mbrous chairs in walnut-tree, with a worm-eaten mosaic of the heron on their homely backs, and a faded blue worsted on their seats; a marvellously ugly sideboard to match, and on it a couple of black s.h.a.green cases, the lids of which were flung open, and discovered the pistol-shaped handles of silver knives. The mantelpiece reached to the ceiling, in panelled compartments, with heraldic s.h.i.+elds, and supported by rude stone Caryatides. On the walls were several pictures,--family portraits, for the names were inscribed on the frames. They varied in date from the reign of Elizabeth to that of George I. A strong family likeness pervaded them all,--high features, dark hair, grave aspects,--save indeed one, a Sir Ralph Haughton Darrell, in a dress that spoke him of the holiday date of Charles II.,--all knots, lace, and ribbons; evidently the beau of the race; and he had blue eyes, a blonde peruke, a careless profligate smile, and looked altogether as devil-me-care, rakeh.e.l.ly, handsome, good-for-nought, as ever swore at a drawer, beat a watchman, charmed a lady, terrified a husband, and hummed a song as he pinked his man.
Lionel was still gazing upon the effigies of this airy cavalier when the door behind him opened very noiselessly, and a man of imposing presence stood on the threshold,--stood so still, and the carved mouldings of the doorway so shadowed, and as it were cased round his figure, that Lionel, on turning quickly, might have mistaken him for a portrait brought into bold relief from its frame by a sudden fall of light. We hear it, indeed, familiarly said that such a one is like an old picture. Never could it be more appositely said than of the face on which the young visitor gazed, much startled and somewhat awed. Not such as inferior limners had painted in the portraits there, though it had something in common with those family lineaments, but such as might have looked tranquil power out of the canvas of t.i.tian.
The man stepped forward, and the illusion pa.s.sed. ”I thank you,” he said, holding out his hand, ”for taking me at my word, and answering me thus in person.” He paused a moment, surveying Lionel's countenance with a keen but not unkindly eye, and added softly, ”Very like your father.”
At these words Lionel involuntarily pressed the hand which he had taken.
That hand did not return the pressure. It lay an instant in Lionel's warm clasp--not repelling, not responding--and was then very gently withdrawn.
”Did you come from London?”
”No, sir; I found your letter yesterday at Hampton Court. I had been staying some days in that neighbourhood. I came on this morning: I was afraid too unceremoniously; your kind welcome rea.s.sures me there.”
The words were well chosen and frankly said. Probably they pleased the host, for the expression of his countenance was, on the whole, propitious; but he merely inclined his head with a kind of lofty indifference, then, glancing at his watch, he rang the bell. The servant entered promptly. ”Let dinner be served within an hour.”
”Pray, sir,” said Lionel, ”do not change your hours on my account.”