CHAPTER III.
My uncle did not leave his room for three days; but he was much closeted
with a lawyer, and my father dropped some words which seemed to imply
that the deceased had incurred debts, and that the poor Captain was
making some charge on his small property. As Roland had said that he
had seen the remains of his son, I took it at first for granted that we
should attend a funeral; but no word of this was said. On the fourth
day Roland, in deep mourning, entered a hackney-coach with the lawyer,
and was absent about two hours. I did not doubt that he had thus
quietly fulfilled the last mournful offices. On his return, he shut
himself up again for the rest of the day, and would not see even my
father. But the next morning he made his appearance as usual, and I
even thought that he seemed more cheerful than I had yet known him,--
whether he played a part, or whether the worst was now over, and the
grave was less cruel than uncertainty. On the following day we all set
out for Cumberland.
In the interval, Uncle Jack had been almost constantly at the house,
and, to do him justice, he had seemed unaffectedly shocked at the
calamity that had befallen Roland. There was, indeed, no want of heart
in Uncle Jack, whenever you went straight at it; but it was hard to find
if you took a circuitous route towards it through the pockets. The
worthy speculator had indeed much business to transact with my father
before he left town. The Anti-Publisher Society had been set up, and it
was through the obstetric aid of that fraternity that the Great Book was
to be ushered into the world. The new journal, the "Literary Times,"
was also far advanced,--not yet out, but my father was fairly in for it.
There were preparations for its debut on a vast scale, and two or three
gentlemen in black--one of whom looked like a lawyer, and another like a
printer, and a third uncommonly like a Jew--called twice, with papers of
a very formidable aspect. All these preliminaries settled, the last
thing I heard Uncle Jack say, with a slap on my father's back, was,
"Fame and fortune both made now! You may go to sleep in safety, for
you leave me wide awake. Jack Tibbets never sleeps!"
I had thought it strange that, since my abrupt exodus from Trevanion's
house, no notice had been taken of any of us by himself or Lady Ellinor.
But on the very eve of our departure came a kind note from Trevanion to
me, dated from his favorite country seat (accompanied by a present of
some rare books to my father), in which he said, briefly, that there had
been illness in his family which had obliged him to leave town for a
change of air, but that Lady Ellinor expected to call on my mother the
next week. He had found amongst his books some curious works of the
Middle Ages, amongst others a complete set of Cardan, which he knew my
father would like to have, and so sent them. There was no allusion to
what had passed between us. In reply to this note, after due thanks on
my father's part, who seized upon the Cardan (Lyons edition, 1663, ten
volumes folio) as a silk-worm does upon a mulberry-leaf, I expressed our
joint regrets that there was no hope of our seeing Lady Ellinor, as we
were just leaving town. I should have added something on the loss my
uncle had sustained, but my father thought that since Roland shrank from
any mention of his son, even by his nearest kindred, it would be his
obvious wish not to parade his affliction beyond that circle.
And there had been illness in Trevanion's family! On whom had it
fallen? I could not rest satisfied with that general expression, and I
took my answer myself to Trevanion's house, instead of sending it by the
post. In reply to my inquiries, the porter said that all the family
were expected at the end of the week; that he had heard both Lady
Ellinor and Miss Trevanion had been rather poorly, but that they were
now better. I left my note with orders to forward it; and my wounds
bled afresh as I came away.
We had the whole coach to ourselves in our journey, and a silent journey
it was, till we arrived at a little town about eight miles from my
uncle's residence, to which we could only get through a cross-road. My
uncle insisted on preceding us that night; and though he had written
before we started, to announce our coming, he was fidgety lest the poor
tower should not make the best figure it could, so he went alone, and we
took our ease at our inn.
Betimes the next day we hired a fly-coach--for a chaise could never have
held us and my father's books--and jogged through a labyrinth of
villanous lanes which no Marshal Wade had ever reformed from their
primal chaos. But poor Mrs. Primmins and the canary-bird alone seemed
sensible of the jolts; the former, who sat opposite to us wedged amidst
a medley of packages, all marked "Care, to be kept top uppermost" (why I
know not, for they were but books, and whether they lay top or bottom it
could not materially affect their value),--the former, I say, contrived
to extend her arms over those disjecta membra, and griping a window-sill
with the right hand, and a window-sill with the left, kept her seat
rampant, like the split eagle of the Austrian Empire: in fact, it would
be well nowadays if the split eagle were as firm as Mrs. Primmins! As
for the canary, it never failed to respond, by an astonished chirp, to
every "Gracious me!" and "Lord save us!" which the delve into a rut, or
the bump out of it, sent forth from Mrs. Primmins's lips, with all the
emphatic dolor of the "Ai, ai!" in a Greek chorus.
But my father, with his broad hat over his brows, was in deep thought.
The scenes of his youth were rising before him, and his memory went,
smooth as a spirit's wing, over delve and bump. And my mother, who sat
next him, had her arm on his shoulder, and was watching his face
jealously. Did she think that in that thoughtful face there was regret
for the old love? Blanche, who had been very sad, and had wept much and
quietly since they put on her the mourning, and told her that she had no
brother (though she had no remembrance of the lost), began now to evince
infantine curiosity and eagerness to catch the first peep of her
father's beloved tower. And Blanche sat on my knee, and I shared her
impatience. At last there came in view a church-spire, a church, a
plain square building near it, the parsonage (my father's old home), a
long, straggling street of cottages and rude shops, with a better kind
of house here and there, and in the hinder ground a gray, deformed mass
of wall and ruin, placed on one of those eminences on which the Danes
loved to pitch camp or build fort, with one high, rude, Anglo-Norman
tower rising from the midst. Few trees were round it, and those either
poplars or firs, save, as we approached, one mighty oak,--integral and
unscathed. The road now wound behind the parsonage and up a steep
ascent. Such a road,--the whole parish ought to have been flogged for
it! If I had sent up a road like that, even on a map, to Dr. Herman, I
should not have sat down in comfort for a week to come!
The fly-coach came to a full stop.
"Let us get out," cried I, opening the door, and springing to the ground
to set the example.
Blanche followed, and my respected parents came next. But when Mrs.
Primmins was about to heave herself into movement,
"Papce!" said my father. "I think, Mrs. Primmins, you must remain in,
to keep the books steady."
"Lord love you!" cried Mrs. Primmins, aghast.
"The subtraction of such a mass, or moles,--supple and elastic as all
flesh is, and fitting into the hard corners of the inert matter,--such a
subtraction, Mrs. Primmins, would leave a vacuum which no natural
system, certainly no artificial organization, could sustain. There
would be a regular dance of atoms, Mrs. Primmins; my books would fly
here, there, on the floor, out of the window!
"'Corporis officium est quoniam omnia deorsum.'
"The business of a body like yours, Mrs. Primmins, is to press all things
down, to keep them tight, as you will know one of these days,--that is,
if you will do me the favor to read Lucretius, and master that material
philosophy of which I may say, without flattery, my dear Mrs. Primmins,
that you are a living illustration."
These, the first words my father had spoken since we set out from the
inn, seemed to assure my mother that she need have no apprehension as to
the character of his thoughts, for her brow cleared, and she said,
laughing,--
"Only look at poor Primmins, and then at that hill!"
"You may subtract Primmins, if you will be answerable for the remnant,
Kitty. Only I warn you that it is against all the laws of physics."
So saying, he sprang lightly forward, and, taking hold of my arm, paused
and looked round, and drew the loud free breath with which we draw
native air.
"And yet," said my father, after that grateful and affectionate
inspiration,--"and yet, it must be owned that a more ugly country one
cannot see out of Cambridgeshire." (1)
"Nay," said I, "it is bold and large, it has a beauty of its own. Those
immense, undulating, uncultivated, treeless tracts have surely their
charm of wildness and solitude. And how they suit the character of the
ruin! All is feudal there! I understand Roland better now."
"I hope to Heaven Cardan will come to no harm!" cried my father; "he is
very handsomely bound, and he fitted beautifully just into the fleshiest
part of that fidgety Primmins."
Blanche, meanwhile, had run far before us, and I followed fast. There
were still the remains of that deep trench (surrounding the ruins on
three sides, leaving a ragged hill-top at the fourth) which made the
favorite fortification of all the Teutonic tribes. A causeway, raised
on brick arches, now, however, supplied the place of the drawbridge, and
the outer gate was but a mass of picturesque ruin. Entering into the
courtyard or bailey, the old castle mound, from which justice had been
dispensed, was in full view, rising higher than the broken walls around
it, and partially over grown with brambles. And there stood,
comparatively whole, the Tower or Keep, and from its portals emerged the
veteran owner.
His ancestors might have received us in more state, but certainly they
could not have given us a warmer greeting. In fact, in his own domain
Roland appeared another man. His stiffness, which was a little
repulsive to those who did not understand it, was all gone. He seemed
less proud, precisely because he and his pride, on that ground, were on
good terms with each other. How gallantly he extended,--not his arm, in
our modern Jack-and-Jill sort of fashion, but his right hand to my
mother; how carefully he led her over "brake, bush, and scaur," through
the low vaulted door, where a tall servant, who, it was easy to see, had
been a soldier,--in the precise livery, no doubt, warranted by the
heraldic colors (his stockings were red!),--stood upright as a sentry.
And coming into the hall, it looked absolutely cheerful,--it took us by
surprise. There was a great fireplace, and, though it was still summer,
a great fire! It did not seem a bit too much, for the walls were stone,
the lofty roof open to the rafters, while the windows were small and
narrow, and so high and so deep sunk that one seemed in a vault.
Nevertheless, I say the room looked sociable and cheerful,--thanks
principally to the fire, and partly to a very ingenious medley of old
tapestry at one end, and matting at the other, fastened to the lower
part of the walls, seconded by an arrangement of furniture which did
credit to my uncle's taste for the picturesque. After we had looked
about and admired to our heart's content, Roland took us, not up one of
those noble staircases you see in the later manorial residences, but a
little winding stone stair, into the rooms he had appropriated to his
guests. There was first a small chamber, which he called my father's
study,--in truth, it would have done for any philosopher or saint who
wished to shut out the world, and might have passed for the interior of
such a column as the Stylites inhabited; for you must have climbed a
ladder to have looked out of the window, and then the vision of no
short-sighted man could have got over the interval in the wall made by
the narrow casement, which, after all, gave no other prospect than a
Cumberland sky, with an occasional rook in it. But my father, I think I
have said before, did not much care for scenery, and he looked round
with great satisfaction upon the retreat assigned him.
"We can knock up shelves for your books in no time," said my uncle,
rubbing his hands.
"It would be a charity," quoth my father, "for they have been very long
in a recumbent position, and would like to stretch themselves, poor
things. My dear Roland, this room is made for books,--so round and so
deep! I shall sit here, like Truth in a well."
"And there is a room for you, sister, just out of it," said my uncle,
opening a little, low, prison-like door into a charming room, for its
window was low and it had an iron balcony; "and out of that is the
bedroom. For you, Pisistratus, my boy, I am afraid that it is soldier's
quarters, indeed, with which you will have to put up. But never mind;
in a day or two we shall make all worthy a general of your illustrious
name,--for he was a great general, Pisistratus the First, was he not,
brother?"
"All tyrants are," said my father; "the knack of soldiering is
indispensable to them."
"Oh! you may say what you please here," said Roland, in high good humor,
as he drew me downstairs, still apologizing for my quarters, and so
earnestly that I made up my mind that I was to be put into an oubliette.
Nor were my suspicions much dispelled on seeing that we had to leave the
keep, and pick our way into what seemed to me a mere heap of rubbish on
the dexter side of the court. But I was agreeably surprised to find,
amidst these wrecks, a room with a noble casement, commanding the whole
country, and placed immediately over a plot of ground cultivated as a
garden. The furniture was ample, though homely; the floors and walls
well matted; and, altogether, despite the inconvenience of having to
cross the courtyard to get to the rest of the house, and being wholly
without the modern luxury of a bell, I thought that I could not be
better lodged.
"But this is a perfect bower, my dear uncle! Depend on it, it was the
bower-chamber of the Dames de Caxton,--Heaven rest them!"
"No," said my uncle, gravely, "I suspect it must have been the
chaplain's room, for the chapel was to the right of you. An earlier
chapel, indeed, formerly existed in the keep tower; for, indeed, it is
scarcely a true keep without a chapel, well, and hall. I can show you
part of the roof of the first, and the two last are entire; the well is
very curious, formed in the substance of the wall at one angle of the
hall. In Charles the First's time our ancestor lowered his only son
down in a bucket, and kept him there six hours, while a malignant mob
was storming the tower. I need not say that our ancestor himself
scorned to hide from such a rabble, for he was a grown man. The boy
lived to be a sad spendthrift, and used the well for cooling his wine.
He drank up a great many good acres."
"I should scratch him out of the pedigree, if I were you. But pray,
have you not discovered the proper chamber of that great Sir William
about whom my father is so shamefully sceptical?"
"To tell you a secret," answered the Captain, giving me a sly poke in
the ribs, "I have put your father into it! There are the initial
letters W. C. let into the cusp of the York rose, and the date, three
years before the battle of Bosworth, over the chimney-piece."
I could not help joining my uncle's grim, low laugh at this
characteristic pleasantry; and after I had complimented him on so
judicious a mode of proving his point, I asked him how he could possibly
have contrived to fit up the ruin so well, especially as he had scarcely
visited it since his purchase.
"Why," said he, "some years ago that poor fellow you now see as my
servant, and who is gardener, bailiff, seneschal, butler, and anything
else you can put him to, was sent out of the army on the invalid list.
So I placed him here; and as he is a capital carpenter, and has had a
very fair education, I told him what I wanted, and put by a small sum
every year for repairs and furnishing. It is astonishing how little it
cost me; for Bolt, poor fellow (that is his name), caught the right
spirit of the thing, and most of the furniture (which you see is ancient
and suitable) he picked up at different cottages and farm-houses in the
neighborhood. As it is, however, we have plenty more rooms here and
there,--only, of late," continued my uncle, slightly changing color, "I
had no money to spare. But come," he resumed with an evident effort,
"come and see my barrack; it is on the other side of the hall, and made
out of what no doubt were the butteries."
We reached the yard, and found the fly-coach had just crawled to the
door. My father's head was buried deep in the vehicle; he was gathering
up his packages and sending out, oracle-like, various muttered
objurgations and anathemas upon Mrs. Primmins and her vacuum, which Mrs.
Primmins, standing by and making a lap with her apron to receive the
packages and anathemas simultaneously, bore with the mildness of an
angel, lifting up her eyes to heaven and murmuring something about "poor
old bones,"--though as for Mrs. Primmins's bones, they had been myths
these twenty years, and you might as soon have found a Plesiosaurus in
the fat lands of Romney Marsh as a bone amidst those layers of flesh in
which my poor father thought he had so carefully cottoned up his Cardan.
Leaving these parties to adjust matters between them, we stepped under
the low doorway and entered Roland's room. Oh! certainly Bolt had
caught the spirit of the thing; certainly he had penetrated down to the
pathos that lay within the deeps of Roland's character. Buffon says,
"The style is the man;" there, the room was the man. That nameless,
inexpressible, soldier--like, methodical neatness which belonged to
Roland,--that was the first thing that struck one; that was the general
character of the whole. Then, in details, there, on stout oak shelves,
were the books on which my father loved to jest his more imaginative
brother; there they were,--Froissart, Barante, Joinville, the Mort
d'Arthur, Amadis of Gaul, Spenser's Faerie Queene, a noble copy of
Strutt's Horda, Mallet's Northern Antiquities, Percy's Reliques, Pope's
Homer, books on gunnery, archery, hawking, fortification; old chivalry
and modern war together, cheek-by-jowl.
Old chivalry and modern war! Look to that tilting helmet with the tall
Caxton crest, and look to that trophy near it,--a French cuirass--and
that old banner (a knight's pennon) surmounting those crossed bayonets.
And over the chimneypiece there--bright, clean, and, I warrant you,
dusted daily--are Roland's own sword, his holsters and pistols, yea, the
saddle, pierced and lacerated, from which he had reeled when that leg--
I gasped, I felt it all at a glance, and I stole softly to the spot,
and, had Roland not been there, I could have kissed that sword as
reverently as if it had been a Bayard's or a Sidney's.
My uncle was too modest to guess my emotion; he rather thought I had
turned my face to conceal a smile at his vanity, and said, in a
deprecating tone of apology: "It was all Bolt's doing, foolish fellow!"
(1) This certainly cannot be said of Cumberland generally, one of the
most beautiful counties in Great Britain. But the immediate district to
which Mr. Caxton's exclamation refers, if not ugly, is at least savage,
bare, and rude.
