Читать книгу The Fate: A Tale of Stirring Times - G. P. R. James - Страница 6

On the borders of Lincolnshire stood an old building, which had preserved the name given to it more than two centuries before, though the purpose which had given significance and propriety to that name had passed away. It was a long, tall edifice of stone, somewhat like the body of a church, and, as if to give it more resemblance still to a religious edifice, another building had been added to the end of the first, a story higher, and having some resemblance to a tower. This additional part was built of brick; but moss and lichen had reduced both stone and brick to very nearly one color; for though, when viewed nearer, a variety of hues were to be discovered in the cryptogamous vegetation which covered the walls, at a distance the general tint was a brownish gray. The windows in the longer portion of the building were placed in pointed arches, somewhat rudely and carelessly decorated; those in the taller and newer portion were, on the contrary, generally square, with a stone label above them, though some had that flattened arch peculiarly characteristic of the worst Tudor architecture. The whole building was not very large, and it was clear, at first sight, that the long portion was devoted to barns, stables, cart-houses, &c., while the other was separated for human habitation. At the distance of some sixty or seventy yards from the house, a long triple row of old elms topped a high bank, affording nesting-place for innumerable rooks; and a little, clear stream, not unconscious of trout, ran babbling along, mixing its melody with the music of the birds. A stone wall, breast high, and in some decay, encircled the whole, with two large uncouth posts ornamented with fragments of urns, giving entrance, unimpeded by any gate between them, to any one who might wish to approach the front door of the dwelling-house. There probably had been a gate there once, for some iron work on the posts seemed to show that they had been intended to support something; but if so, the gate had long been gone--made into pikes in the civil war for aught I know.

The scene around this old house, when viewed from the top of the bank, was desolate enough. A wide, fenny piece of uninclosed land stretched out far toward the north and east, only interrupted at the distance of some three miles by an undulating rise of woodland. But, nevertheless, the coloring was often fine, especially on autumnal evenings, when the moor assumed a solemn, intense blue tint, and the pools and distant river gleamed like rubies in the rich light of the setting sun.

On the other side, behind the house, the country had a more cheerful look, with some well-cultivated fields sloping up, as the land rose to the west, and many a knoll and gentle wave, and scattered trees, with a thicker wood beyond, while sweeping away southward were hedgerows and a hamlet here and there, the tower of a village church, and the chimneys of a distant manor-house.

Such was the aspect of the building and the scene around it; and now let us say a word of its history and its name.

In former years, when Plantagenet was the royal name of England, when popes were powerful in the land, and it was sinful to eat beef on Friday, among the best fed and best taught people of the country were the abbots and priors of the various monasteries, who somehow, notwithstanding vigil, prayer, and fasting--nay, even occasionally vows of voluntary poverty--got fat, prosperous, and wealthy. Large domains had these good men, and productive fields, besides tithes and dues of various sorts, which were usually paid in kind. As the abbot, and the abbot's bailiff, and other officers made their little profit upon the sale of such commodities as they did not consume; and as, in a benevolent and Christian spirit, they took good heed to have plentiful stores laid up to aid the people in time of scarcity, it was requisite that they should be provided with barns and garners to preserve the fruits of the earth which they received. These barns were called granges, and very often had a small farm attached to them. The masonry of the edifice was generally solid, and the style of the architecture in some degree ecclesiastical. When the grange was built near the abbey, it usually stood by itself, without any dwelling-house attached; but when it was at a distance, on one of the abbey farms, as was frequently the case, a good mansion for grieve or farmer was often added by the care of the monks; and a farmer who had pretty daughters, or brewed good beer, generally contrived to get very comfortably accommodated.

The house I have been describing was still called The Grange, and such as I have stated had been its original destination. The long building had been the real grange or barn of a neighboring abbey; the taller building had been added afterward for the convenience of the abbot's bailiff. When the monasteries were suppressed by the arch plunderer Henry VIII., we all know how many and how great were those who shared in the pickings of the defunct fowl of Rome. The Grange and the farm attached to it fell to the lot of a nobleman in the neighborhood, together with much other valuable property. He bestowed it upon a younger son; and from that younger son it had descended in unbroken line to its present possessor. The fortunes of the house had varied considerably; some had proved gamblers, some had been soldiers, some had been profuse, some penurious, some had even made love matches, and now the farm, and the house, and the family were all in a state not very prosperous, not very disastrous, somewhere between decay and preservation. It was lucky, indeed, that the owner thereof had but one son; for, had he been blessed with as many babes as a curate, there might have been some danger of a dearth in the pantry. As it was, he could afford comforts--an occasional bottle even of claret. Punch was a frequent accessory to digestion, and good sound ale, which would have done honor to any Cambridge audit, was never wanting for a friend or a poor man.

The owner of that house, however, was a man of a peculiar disposition, which prevented him from enjoying as much as he might have done the favorable position in which fate had placed him. I do not mean to say that he was of a discontented mood, nor that he was precisely a melancholy man. He was whimsical, somewhat cynical, and certain it is he had always the art, though a good and kind man at heart, of discovering the bad or ridiculous side of every thing. He was a learned man withal, and could often fit an occasion with a quaint quotation, often twisted considerably from its just application, but always serving his own purpose very well. He had passed a long time at the University, and gained odd habits and some distinction. He had then suddenly married a very beautiful woman of good family and small fortune. For her sake he determined to exert himself, to strive with the crowd for honors and distinctions, to place her in the same position in which his ancestors and hers had stood. For this purpose he went to the bar, around which he had been indolently buzzing for some time previous. He was engaged in one cause: circumstances favored him; the senior counsel was taken ill; the weight, the responsibility fell upon the junior, but with them the opportunity. He made a brilliant speech, a powerful argument, carried the court and jury along with him, and saved his client from fine and imprisonment.

Then came the heaviest blow of his life. His wife died and left him with one infant. The law was thrown up; the object of ambition was gone; all his old habits returned, more wrinkled and stiff than ever. He retired to his small property at The Grange; and there he had lived ever since, cultivating his acres and his oddities. But let us venture within the old walls, and see the proprietor in his glory.

Mark the knocker as you pass, reader--that great truncheon of iron, I mean, suspended by a ring surrounded by a marvelously cut plate of steel, with a large boss at the lower part, just beneath the obtuse end of the hammer. The door, too, is worth a look, with oak enough in it to build a modern house. Then we come to a low passage, none of the widest, and diminished in space by two chairs with tall backs, each back having round rods or bars joining the two sides together, ornamented with round, movable pieces of wood, which may be rattled from side to side, and resemble exactly those upon the curious machine with which in popular schools we teach the infant mind to count, now that we have discarded nature's original numeration table furnished by our own ten fingers. Between the chairs, in order not to leave space for intruders to pass too readily, is a suit of complete armor, somewhat rusty, while on the other side are three cuirasses and three steel caps, with sundry pikes, swords, and gauntlets, arranged with some taste and garnished with much dust and many cobwebs.

Now, take care! There is a step--not up, but down; for the floor is made to accommodate the ground, not the ground leveled to accommodate the floor. Then this small door on the left hand, with sundry names and capital letters carved in it with a penknife, to prove the universality of idle habits in all ages and countries, leads into the room where we would be.

But, ere we enter, let us take a glance around.

Seated at a small table, near a fire, with one foot resting on the massive carved brass dog's head which ornaments the end of the andiron, at the imminent risk of burning the slipper, and with the other drawn up under his chair--which, by-the-way, was as tall and stiff-backed as a corporal of dragoons, and would have been a most uncomfortable seat had it not been well cushioned and partially covered with Genoa velvet--sat a gentleman of perhaps five-and-fifty years of age. He wore his own gray hair, though wigs were even then beginning to domineer over the crown, and the somewhat slovenly easiness of his whole apparel forbade the supposition that he would have ever consented to embarrass his cranium with a load of horsehair only fitted to stew the brains of the wearer into an unintellectual mass of jelly. He had upon his back a brocade dressing-gown, which might have been handsome at some former epoch--say twenty years before; but which, though not actually dirty, was faded, and though not actually ragged, was patched. He wore stockings of gray thread, and breeches of a chocolate color, and by some antipathy between the waistband thereof and the fawn-colored silk waistcoat above, a large portion of that part of his shirt which covered the pit of his stomach was exposed to view; but then that shirt was of the very finest and cleanest linen. Every man has somewhere a point of coxcombry about him, and fine linen was his weak spot. The ruffles and the cravat were of lawn, and white as snow.

On the table before him was a large candle, shedding its light upon an open book; and ever and anon, as he read, he raised one finger and rubbed a spot a little above the temple, which, by long labor of the same kind, he had contrived to render quite bald.

The room was by no means a large one, and the ceiling was of black oak, which rendered its appearance even smaller than the reality; but the greater part of three sides was covered with book-cases, and an immense number of curious and antiquated pieces of furniture encumbered the floor. The chairs were of all sizes and all descriptions then in use; the tables were as numerous and as various as the chairs. The latter, moreover, were loaded with large glass tankards, curious specimens of Delftware--some exceedingly coarse in material and coloring, but remarkable in device or ornament--richly-covered wooden-bound books, strange daggers, and fragments of goldsmith's work, with one or two pieces of China and enamel of great value, besides coins and small pictures inestimable in the eyes of an antiquary. The large center-table was tolerably clear, for supper-time was approaching, and on it he took his frugal evening meal, although he had a dining-room on the other side of the passage, furnished with the most remarkable simplicity, and paved with hard flag-stones. It was enough for him, however, to be disturbed once a day; and he visited what was called the eating hall no oftener.

This elderly gentleman, however, was not the only tenant of the room. On the other side, as far as he could get from the fire--for the evening, though in early spring, was by no means cold--sat the son of the master of the house, a young man of about one-and-twenty years of age. The father might have been pronounced a good-looking man, had he taken any care of his personal appearance; but the son had inherited his mother's beauty, with a more manly character; and although youth was still very evident, though the mustache was scant and downy, and the face fair and unwrinkled, there was a good deal of thoughtful decision about the eyes, and a world of resolute firmness about the mouth and chin.

He, too, was reading; and sometimes the book beneath his eyes excited a smile, sometimes engaged his attention deeply, but more frequently his mind seemed to wander from the page. He would fall into deep fits of thought; he would play with a knife which lay beside him; but, more often still, he raised his eyes, and fixed them anxiously, thoughtfully upon his father's face. It seemed as if there was something working in his mind to which he wished to give utterance, and it was not long before he spoke; but let us reserve what followed for another chapter. It affected too much the fate and the immediate course of the personages before us to be treated briefly at the end of a mere descriptive passage.