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_ BOOK II CHAPTER I
Primitive character of the country in certain districts of Great
Britain.--Connection between the features of surrounding scenery and
the mental and moral inclinations of man, after the fashion of all
sound ethnological historians.--A charioteer, to whom an experience
of British laws suggests an ingenious mode of arresting the progress
of Roman Papacy, carries Lionel Haughton and his fortunes to a place
which allows of description and invites repose.
In safety, but with naught else rare enough, in a railway train, to
deserve commemoration, Lionel reached the station to which he was bound.
He there inquired the distance to Fawley Manor House; it was five miles.
He ordered a fly, and was soon wheeled briskly along a rough parish
road, through a country strongly contrasting the gay river scenery he
had so lately quitted,--quite as English, but rather the England of a
former race than that which spreads round our own generation like one
vast suburb of garden-ground and villas. Here, nor village nor spire,
nor porter's lodge came in sight. Rare even were the cornfields; wide
spaces of unenclosed common opened, solitary and primitive, on the road,
bordered by large woods, chiefly of beech, closing the horizon with
ridges of undulating green. In such an England, Knights Templars might
have wended their way to scattered monasteries, or fugitive partisans in
the bloody Wars of the Roses have found shelter under leafy coverts.
The scene had its romance, its beauty--half savage, half gentle--leading
perforce the mind of any cultivated and imaginative gazer far back from
the present day, waking up long-forgotten passages from old poets. The
stillness of such wastes of sward, such deeps of woodland, induced the
nurture of revery, gravely soft and lulling. There, Ambition might give
rest to the wheel of Ixion, Avarice to the sieve of the Danaids; there,
disappointed Love might muse on the brevity of all human passions, and
count over the tortured hearts that have found peace in holy meditation,
or are now stilled under grassy knolls. See where, at the crossing of
three roads upon the waste, the landscape suddenly unfolds, an upland
in the distance, and on the upland a building, the first sign of social
man. What is the building? only a silenced windmill, the sails dark and
sharp against the dull leaden sky.
Lionel touched the driver,--"Are we yet on Mr. Darrell's property?" Of
the extent of that property he had involuntarily conceived a vast idea.
"Lord, sir, no; we be two miles from Squire Darrell's. He han't much
property to speak of hereabouts. But he bought a good bit o' land, too,
some years ago, ten or twelve mile t' other side o' the county. First
time you are going to Fawley, sir?"
"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 assent, 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 massy 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. Hoarse 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 shaggy 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,
unassuming 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
casements 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 grass 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 petition 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 assured 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." _
Read next: Book 2: Chapter 2
Read previous: Book 1: Chapter 19
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