Chapter 16

"Do you remember that pretty cottage we passed in our ride round Silvermead, last Tuesday?" inquired my friend L----, some days ago, as we were mounting our horses for an equestrian lounge. "We were pressed for time that evening, or I should have liked to show you the interior of the little dwelling, and to have introduced you to its worthy humble owners, who are old friends of mine, and not the least respected on my list. What say you, shall we take the 'Peasant's Nest' in our round to-day?" The proposal met my willing acquiescence, and an hour's quiet amble through a richly wooded and beautifully diversified part of the country brought us to a short straight lane, half-embowered by luxuriant hedges on either side, and (except a half-worn cart-track) carpeted with the greenest and softest turf, which terminated in a gateway to a small meadow, and in a low green wicket in the centre of a sweet-brier hedge; behind which, and two intervening flower-knots on either side the neat gravel-walk, stood the little dwelling which had attracted my attention on a former day by its air of peculiar neatness and comfort, and even rustic elegance. Its thatched roof (a masterpiece of rural art) had just acquired the rich mellowness of tone which precedes the duller hue of decay, and when the last rays of a golden sunset touched it in flickering patches through the dark foliage of overhanging elms, it harmonised, and almost blended in brilliancy of colour, with the brightest blossoms of the buddlea, which, overtopping its fellow-trailers, seemed aspiring to meet and dally with the sunbeams, and almost to rival them with its topaz stars.

Moss-roses were budding round each of the wide low casements on either side the door, over which a slight arch of rustic trellis-work supported a mass of rich dark foliage, soon to be starred with the pale odorous flowers so typical of virgin purity; and far along the low-projecting eaves on one side of the cottage, ran the flexile stems and deep verdure of the beautiful luxuriant plant, till it reached and formed a bowery pent-house over a long open lattice, through the wire-work of which brown glazed pans were discernible, half-filled with rich creaming milk, and pats of neatly printed butter--yellow as the flower which gilds our summer meadows--ranged with dairy-woman's pride on the wet slab of whitest deal.

The master of the cottage--a respectable-looking old man--was so intently occupied in tying up some choice pheasant-eyed pinks in one of the flower-knots, that he had not heard the quiet pacing of our steeds down the green bowery lane, and was only roused from his floral labours by the salutation of my friend, as we dismounted before the low wicket-gate, and, hooking our bridles to its side-posts, prepared to enter the little territory. Starting from his flower-bed, the old man, at sight of us, respectfully uncovered his grey head, and came forward as quickly as was compatible with the state of limbs crippled by rheumatic gout, to admit and welcome his visitors with something beyond rustic courtesy.

"Ah, Hallings!" said my friend, cordially shaking hands with his humble acquaintance, whose countenance brightened with pleasure at the kind greeting--"here you are at your favourite work; no wonder your garden is celebrated for the most beautiful flowers in the neighbourhood, for you and Celia tend them, I verily believe, night and day; and as for those pinks--which are, I know, the pride of your heart--you may rest content, for they are the pride of the country. Remember, Mrs L---- has your promise of a few slips at the proper season."

"Be pleased to look, sir at these few plants I have made free to pot for Mrs L----," answered the venerable Hallings, with a glance of conscious pleasure, not unmingled with pride, as he directed my friend's attention to some perfect specimens of the choice flowers in question: "I will send them down to the lady to-morrow morning by my brother's cart, and Celia and I shall be proud to think madam will accept them, and set some store, may be, on our poor offering, for the remembrance of old times, and the sake of those who are gone. You may remember, sir, how our dear lady prized this particular sort?"

"Well do I remember it, and those old times you allude to, my good Hallings. Methinks at this moment I can see your worthy venerable master, and his faithful companion and friend, the dear sister of whom you speak;--he, with one of these, her choice flowers, in his button-hole when he came into the drawing-room dressed for dinner, and she often assisted to her seat during her slight attacks of gout by Mrs Hallings, her faithful Celia. I believe, Hallings, Mrs Eleanor used to send her brother a daily present, for his afternoon toilet, of one of these rare beauties--was it not so?" asked my friend, with a smile; the good-humoured archness of which soon, however, changed to a more serious expression, as he observed that the old man's voice faltered in his attempted reply, and that he hastily drew his sleeve across his eyes, to disperse the watery film which had gathered over them while Mr L---- was speaking.

"But come, Hallings," said the latter, quickly changing the subject that had struck painfully on a too sensitive chord in the old man's heart--"I am come not only to visit you and your flowers, but my old friend, Celia; and I have promised, in her name, a frothing glass of red cow's milk, fresh from the pail, to this gentleman, Mr Hervey, who complained of thirst in our way hither."

Recovering from his momentary emotion, the master of the cottage threw open its latched door, and respectfully made way for us to enter the little carpeted parlour, where his well-assorted partner (my friend's friend, Celia) sat smoothing her apron, in expectation of the visitors, the sound of whose voices had reached her through the open casement.

The comely dame who rose up at our entrance, and dropt to each a curtsy that would not have dishonoured the patrician graces of her revered lady and prototype, the late Mrs Eleanor Devereux, was still comely for her years--"fat, fair, and sixty" and exhibiting, in her prim neatness of person, the antiquated but becoming fashion of her dress, and her profound respectfulness, untinctured by anything like cringing servility to those she considered her superiors, no unfavourable specimen of the housekeeper and waiting-woman of former days--of a class now almost extinct, as the times in which it flourished are accounted obsolete--when better feelings, and more Christian principles than those which loosely huddle up our modern mercenary compacts, based and cemented the mutual obligations of masters and servants, of the great and their dependants--when there was dignity in the humblest servitude, and meekness in the most absolute authority--self-respect on both sides, and the fear of God above all.

The cottage parlour contained the unusual luxury of a sofa, from which Mrs Hallings affected to brush, with her snowy apron, the dust that could scarce have been perceptible to "microscopic eye," as she courteously begged us to be seated; and her husband, as he shook up one of the end cushions to make the corner seat, into which L---- had thrown himself, more commodious, said, smiling, as he addressed himself to me,--"You may well wonder to see such a piece of furniture in a poor man's house, sir, but my poor master had it put for me into my own room at the Hall, when I had my first fit of the gout there, and we made shift to buy it, and a few others of the old things that were so natural to us, when all was sold;" and the old man's speech, that had begun cheerfully, ended in a deep sigh.

"Ah, Hallings! I wish with all my heart more had fallen to your share of the venerable relics that fell into far other hands at that revolting sale," observed L----, echoing the faithful servant's sigh; "but I love to look at those few familiar things you have saved from the unhallowed hands of indifference. Look, Hervey," he continued, turning to me, "at that beautiful shell-work basket on the bracket, yonder. It is the work of that dear and venerable friend whose loss, and that of her excellent brother, you have heard me lament so deeply and sincerely."

The object to which my attention was so directed, was a beautiful specimen of female ingenuity, an elegantly formed corbeille of flowers, imitated from nature, with art little less than magical, considering the nature of the materials employed in its construction. The elegant trifle, now the boast of a poor cottage, might have been conceited by a fanciful gazer to have been the work of sea-nymphs, for the pearl grotto of their queen; but a nearer inspection must have assigned it to mortal fingers, for the name of "Eleanor Devereux" was inlaid with minute gold-coloured shells in a dark medallion, that formed the centre of the basket.

"That was not bought at the sale, sir," said Mrs Hallings, drawing towards the precious relic I was inspecting, and regarding it herself with looks of almost devotional reverence. "Be pleased to read what is written there, sir," she added, in a voice not sufficiently steady to have articulated the sentence to which she pointed, written apparently with a trembling hand, in old Italian characters, on a slip of paper, laid within the glass cover of the basket. I looked as she directed, and read,

"The work of Eleanor Devereux. Her last gift to her old and faithful servant, Celia Hallings."

"This is indeed a precious relic," I remarked, in a low voice, and with not unmoistened eyes. Those of the good woman to whom I spoke were filled to overflowing; but with that modesty of feeling which is a sure test of its deep sincerity, she quietly drew back, and left the room, on "hospitable cares intent," in quest of the "brimming bowl," for which my friend had preferred our joint petition. During her absence, L---- continued to talk with his old acquaintance on the subject so deeply interesting to both the speakers, and not a little so even to myself, a stranger in the neighbourhood, and uninformed of more than the general character of the deceased person of whom they discoursed with such affectionate and melancholy sympathy. My friend had noticed in the looks and tone of Hallings, and even in his wife's, during the few moments she had remained with us, a troubled and sorrowful expression, far different from the placid cheerfulness with which they had been wont to receive him, since Time had mellowed their affliction for the loss of those they had served with life-long fidelity; and even from the tender seriousness of their manners, when reverting--as it was their delight to do--to the revered memories of the departed, and the fond ones of days that were gone.

On L----'s gently hinting his fear that some recent cause had arisen to disturb the serenity of his worthy friends, the old man shook his head in mournful affirmation of the implied suspicion; and, after a moment's pause to subdue the tremor of his voice, answered,--"Oh, sir! I am ashamed you should see how my poor wife and I are overcome by the work which has been going on for this last fortnight, and to which almost the finishing-stroke has been put this very day. And I, old fool that I am! have hardly been able to keep away from the place, sir! though every stroke of the masons seemed like a blow upon my heart, and every stone that fell, like a drop of blood from it. And poor Celia! though she kept at home, could hear the sounds even here. Grief has sharp ears, sir."

"Ah, is it even so, my good friend?" said L----, affected even to tears. "I have been away from home almost this month, you know; I had not heard what was going on. So then the old Hall is no more? I have looked my last at its venerable walls. Would I had returned a few days earlier--in time to have seen but one fragment standing."

"That you may do yet, sir! that you may do yet," sobbed out the old servant, with a burst of now uncontrolled feeling; "_one_ fragment is still standing, half of the south gable, and a part of the north side wall,--just the corner of _one_ chamber, with the bit of flooring hanging to it. My master's own chamber, sir, and the chair in which he died stood in that very corner, on those crazy boards that will be down to-morrow."

"Then, Hallings, I must go this very evening--this very moment, to take my farewell look at all that remains--that last remaining portion so sacred to my feelings and to yours."

So saying, L---- started from his seat just as Celia entered, followed by her little handmaiden (an orphan relation of her husband's, the adopted child of the worthy couple), and placed on the shining round table a collation of dairy luxuries and fresh-gathered strawberries, hastily arranged with a degree of simple good taste, too nearly approaching elegance to have been acquired by one accustomed only to provide for poor men's tables.

Our kind hostess was in no present mood "_gaily_ to press and _smile_," but she did press us to partake of her rustic dainties, with such earnest yet modest importunity, that it would have been worse than churlish to have slighted her invitation, if even my parched and thirsty palate had not made the sight of the creaming milk-bowl, and a second of clear whey, irresistibly tempting. While I did ample justice to the merits of those refreshing fluids, and my friend partook more sparingly, he endeavoured to persuade Hallings from accompanying us, as the old man prepared to do, to a scene, the recollection of which affected him so painfully. But the remonstrance was fruitless.

"I have not taken _my own last_ look, sir," was the touching and unanswerable reply; "and that I was minded, please God, to take, when all the workmen had left the place, and I could stand and look my fill at the crumbling wall, without being distracted by their noises, or scoffed at belike for giving way to an old man's weakness. But my master's friend will make allowance for his old servant, and it will do me good to go with you, sir."

We both felt that he was right; that, as he expressed it, it _would do him good_ to take that "last look," accompanied by one who could so fully sympathise in all his feelings, and to whom he could pour out his full heart with the garrulous simplicity of age, and of a sorrow, heart-seated truly, but _not_ "too deep for tears." So he was allowed to secure our steeds in an adjoining cowshed, while we talked with Celia on the subject that day uppermost in her thoughts also; and having calculated with her that the nearly full moon would be up by our return, to light us on our homeward way, we left her standing on the threshold of the back door of her cottage, and followed her husband down the garden path which opened into a small orchard (a portion of his little property), and led through it to a narrow stile, over which we passed into some beautiful meadows, appertaining, as Hallings informed me, to the Devereux Hall estate, three of them only intervening between his own little territory and the old mansion-house, or rather the site where it had stood. "Ay," continued the old man, in a low under-tone, half communing with himself, and half addressing me,--"Ay, so it is--to think what changes I have lived to see! The Hall down in the dust before its time, and that hard man's house raised (as one may say) upon its ruins! Blessed be the kind master who provided for his old servants' age, and secured to _them_ the shelter of their humble roof-tree, before misfortune fell on his own grey hairs, and would have made him houseless at fourscore years and upward, had he lived a few weeks longer! But--but--God is merciful!----" The old man devoutly aspirated after the abrupt pause, accompanied with a sort of inward shudder, which preceded those pious words; and he spoke no more during the remainder of our walk.

A shade of peculiar solemnity passed over my friend's countenance, as Hallings concluded his brief soliloquy, and both of them became so profoundly silent, sympathetically affected as it seemed by the same shuddering recollections, that the infection partly extended itself to me, ignorant as I was of the particular circumstances of their painful retrospect, and the words died on my lips as I was about to inquire Hallings' meaning in alluding to the "hard man, whose house had been raised on the ruins of his master's." I could not for worlds have broken into the sacredness of their silent thoughts; so, without further interchange of words, we quietly pursued our pleasant path, till it brought us to a boundary of thick hazel copse, across a stile, and over a rustic bridge, which spanned a little trout-stream just glancing between the boughs of over-arching alders, to a green door in a high holly hedge. While Hallings stept before us to undo the temporary fastening with which the workmen had secured it for the night, my friend, aroused from his fit of abstraction, said, pointing to the hedge, "I remember the time when that verdant wall, now straggling into wild luxuriance, was as trimly kept as were those of Sayes Court, before the barbarous sport of Evelyn's imperial guest destroyed his labour of years. Neglect is making progress here, destructive as that royal havoc, though more gradual."

Our venerable conductor having unfastened the door while L---- was speaking, we passed into a square enclosure, or rather area; for though still bounded on three sides by the noble evergreen hedge, it was open on the fourth to a dreary site of demolished walls and heaps of rubbish, in place of what had been the ancient mansion of the Devereuxs. The small garden (for such it was, though now a trampled field of desolation) had been called more especially Mr Devereux's garden. The glass-door of his library, and its large bay-window, as well as that of his bed-chamber above, had opened into it, and in this small secluded but sunny and cheerful spot it was that the old man had loved best to spend his solitary and contemplative hours.

Under the hedge on the side we had entered, had stood a range of bee-hives, the ruins of which were still remaining, though little more than heaps of mildewing thatch, and long deserted by the industrious colonies, to watch whose labours had been among the innocent pleasures of Mr Devereux; and Hallings pointed out some fragments of green trellis-work, in the angle of the holly wall, which had formed part of the old man's favourite arbour, where he would sit for hours with his book, or enjoying the ceaseless humming of the bees, as they gathered in their luscious harvest from the herbs and flowers he had collected in that quarter of the garden for their delight and sustenance.

"And they knew my master, sir," said Hallings, turning to me, and appealing to L---- to confirm the truth of his assertion--"They knew my master, and, poor small creatures as they were, must have loved him too in their way, as every living thing did; for they used to buzz all round him as he sat there, and often pitch upon him, even upon his hands or head, and never one was known to sting him, vengeful as they were if strangers made too free near their hives, or among the flower-beds my master used to call their pleasure-grounds."

"What has become of old Ralph and the tortoise, Hallings?" asked L----, as he stopt to take a melancholy survey of the altered scene. "The gold-fish, of course, have been long destroyed, for I see the little basin with its small fountain is quite choked up with dead leaves and rubbish."

"Mr Heneage Devereux took out the gold-fish, sir, the week after my master's death," replied the old butler; "but the tortoise had buried himself for the winter; and when he crawled out the spring afterwards, and took to his old haunt in the basin, one would have supposed he found out the change that had taken place, for the creature was quite restless; and I often found him out of the water, and making his way about the garden, as if in search of something; and for a long, long time, old Ralph and he--for Ralph is living, sir, and you will see him presently--he and the old raven were the only living creatures, beside the birds, that did not desert the poor old place--except myself indeed. I could never keep away from it a whole day together, and I used to come here to feed old Ralph too; for it was long before we could lure him to the cottage for his food, and now he is almost always here, and hides himself for the most part in the great bay-tree there in the corner, where part of the north gable is still standing."

As he spoke, we coasted leisurely along the hedge-side walk, as carefully (though almost unconsciously) avoiding to tread the beds it skirted, as if they were still filled with choice flowers, or fragrant and aromatic herbs, or matted hoops, or hand-glasses guarding the rarer or tenderer plants, bulbs, and auriculas, once (L---- observed) the pride of that small garden. The forms of those fair flower-knots were still discernible from their edgings of thrift, box, daisy, London pride, now grown, however, into perfect hedges, where still untrampled, or into ragged bushes, still indicating the once clipt line of geometrical exactness, as each bed radiated to a centre, where lay the little basin with its fairy fountain before alluded to. Some large stone flower-pots, green and discoloured with damp and weather-stains, were still standing round it in mockery of decoration. From two or three shot up a luxuriant growth of common weeds; in one, a beautiful foxglove, exulting as it were in plebeian pride and brilliancy over its aristocratical neighbour in an adjoining vase, a delicate and sickly Persian lilac, whose pensile sprays drooped languidly even under their scanty growth of yellow leaves and pale and stunted blossoms. Here and there, within the flower-knots, bloomed a tuft of double white narcissus, struggling through grass and matted vegetation. Some tall fris's, white lilies, and other hardy flowers, had also shot up into beauty or fair promise; but the elegant moss-rose drooped to the earth, as if in sorrow, and its half-blighted buds lay cankering on the moss-grown path. The scene, desolate as it was, would still have been one of beauty in decay, had the work of destruction been wrought by "Time's defacing fingers" only; but man's more desecrating touch was too perceptible there; and, independently of peculiar circumstances and associations, there is a wide difference between the pleasing melancholy which loves to meditate among ivied and moss-grown ruins, and that painful feeling with which we contemplate the newness of untimely desolation. It was a ghastly sight even to a stranger's eye, that of the gaping void left along one entire side of the little garden by the demolition of the old mansion; and the dreary effect of that blank exposure was not a little heightened by the contrasting incongruity of the prospect beyond, where the great gateway to what had been the principal entrance-court stood perfectly isolated and entire. The beautiful gate of iron open work closed between the massy side-pillars, on each of which the lion couchant of the Devereuxs still kept watch and ward as proudly as when that gate had unclosed in the last reign of the Tudors to admit a royal visitant and her courtly train.

On either side, the ballustraded wall was wholly removed, so that the eye ranged on, unimpeded but by the solitary gateway, down a triple avenue of magnificent elms, in whose tall tops the dark people, who from generation to generation had built there unmolested, were fast assembling for the night; the mingled sounds of their hoarse cawing, and the rustling of innumerable wings, adding in no slight degree to the impressive sadness of that scene and hour.

We were now standing on the lime and brick-strewn site of what (L---- informed me) had been the Library. All around us, the vaults and cellarage below were laid open to view through the bare rafters, from whence the flooring and pavement had been removed; but the boards were not yet torn up from that one small spot--so small in its unwalled exposure, which had been so recently an apartment of noble dimensions, furnished with the collected wisdom of successive ages! At one end it was of those few square yards of flooring, that a part of the gable, including a stack of chimneys, was still standing. We stood on the hearthstone of what had been the Library fireplace; and high above us, in the naked wall, yawned a corresponding aperture, belonging to the upper chamber, which had been Mr Devereux's bedroom, the flooring of which had been rent away with the side and partition walls, all but a small portion which hung slanting from a few rafters still adhering to the remaining corner of the end gable. The eyes of my companions seemed drawn by sympathetic impulse towards that forlorn remnant; and, calling to mind the words of Hallings, I was at no loss to account for the deep and sorrowful interest with which they dwelt upon it. After a long pause, a look of intelligence passed between them; and the old man, first breaking silence, said, with a deep sigh,--"That is the very place, sir! The very spot where I stood by the easy-chair in which my dear master breathed his last, his head supported on my shoulder."

"And it was there you found him, was it not, Hallings, when"----

"Yes, sir! yes! there, in that very spot, from whence, as you see, he could just reach the mantel-shelf, where stood"--But here the old servant stopt abruptly, glancing towards me a look of troubled consciousness; and L----, hastening to relieve his embarrassment, said, "Fear nothing, good Hallings, from my friend Hervey here! He is one from whom I have no secrets--who would feel as you and I do on the subject of your thoughts, if he were acquainted with it. But neither you nor I must now dwell on it longer. You have said it, Hallings--'God is merciful!' To Him we commit the issue. And now, a long farewell to Devereux Hall!"

So saying, my friend cast round him one long leisurely survey of the desolated spot, turning again, and lingering yet a moment on what had been the threshold of the glass door into the Library. The short twilight was already brightening into silvery moonlight, edging the dark glossy leaves of the old bay-tree by the ruined gable, towards which its tall spiral top (just agitated by a passing breeze) swayed with slow and melancholy motion, while a shivering sound ran through the crisped foliage and long rustling branches, like whisperings and lamentations of good genii departing from the scene of their long-delegated guardianship. As he gazed with these "thick-coming fancies" on the fine old evergreens, so magnificent in sombre beauty, I was startled by the sudden disturbance of its lower boughs, and by a sound proceeding from them more hoarse and deep, if not more ominous, than the low unearthly murmurs I had been listening to with such excited feelings. My exclamation roused Hallings from the abstraction he had fallen into while taking his farewell look at all that remained of the venerable mansion, and, turning towards the object at which I pointed, he said, with a sad smile, "It is my old fellow-servant, sir! the only one besides me that haunts the place now; but it is time he should leave it too, for even _that_ tree, my master's favourite tree, that he planted when a child with his own hands, will be cut down to-morrow." So saying, he gave a low whistle, and calling, "Ralph! Ralph!" the well-known signal was acknowledged by an answering croak, and a huge raven, hopping to the ground from his dark covert in the interior of the bay-tree, came towards Hallings with sedate and solemn gait, and, first eyeing the old man's countenance with a look of almost human intelligence, perched upon his extended wrist, and suffered himself to be borne on it as we retraced our steps toward the cottage, discoursing (I could have fancied) by sidelong glances at his kind supporter, of the departed glories of their master's house, and their last look at its untimely ruins.