THE OLD WOOD LODGE.
And it was late in August, a sultry day, oppressive and thundery, when
this little family of travellers made their first entry into the Old
Wood Lodge.
It stood upon the verge of a wood, and the side of a hill, looking down
into what was not so much a valley as a low amphitheatre, watered by a
maze of rivers, and centred in a famous and wonderful old town. The
trees behind the little house had burning spots of autumn colour here
and there among the masses of green--colour which scarcely bore its due
weight and distinction in the tremulous pale atmosphere which waited for
the storm; and the leaves cowered and shivered together, and one
terrified bird flew wildly in among them, seeking refuge. Under the
shadow of three trees stood the low house of two stories, half stone and
half timber, with one quaint projecting window in the roof, and a
luxuriant little garden round it. But it was impossible to pause, as
the new proprietors intended to have done, to note all the external
features of their little inheritance. They hurried in, eager to be under
shelter before the thunder; and as Mrs Atheling, somewhat timid of it,
hurried over the threshold, the first big drops fell heavily among the
late roses which covered the front of the house. They were all awed by
the coming storm; and they were not acquainted any of them with the
louder crash and fiercer blaze of a thunderstorm in the country. They
came hastily into Miss Bridget’s little parlour, scarcely seeing what
like it was, as the ominous still darkness gathered in the sky, and sat
down, very silently, in corners, all except Mr Atheling, whose duty it
was to be courageous, and who was neither so timid as his wife, nor so
sensitive as his daughters. Then came the storm in earnest--wild
lightning rending the black sky in sheets and streams of flames--fearful
cannonades of thunder, nature’s grand forces besieging some rebellious
city in the skies. Then gleams of light shone wild and ghastly in all
the pallid rivers, and lighted up with an eerie illumination the spires
and pinnacles of the picturesque old town; and the succeeding darkness
pressed down like a positive weight upon the Old Wood Lodge and its new
inmates, who scarcely perceived yet the old furniture of the old
sitting-room, or the trim old maid of Miss Bridget Atheling curtsying
at the door.
“A strange welcome!” said Papa, hastily retreating from the window,
where he had just been met and half blinded by a sudden flash; and Mamma
gathered her babies under her wings, and called to the girls to come
closer to her, in that one safe corner which was neither near the
window, the fireplace, nor the door.
Yes, it was a strange welcome--and the mind of Agnes, imaginative and
rapid, threw an eager glance into the future out of that corner of
safety and darkness. A thunderstorm, a convulsion of nature! was there
any fitness in this beginning? They were as innocent a household as ever
came into a countryside; but who could tell what should happen to them
there?
Some one else seemed to share the natural thought. “I wonder, mamma, if
this is all for us,” whispered Marian, half frightened, half jesting.
“Are we to make a great revolution in Winterbourne? It looks like it, to
see this storm.”
But Mrs Atheling, who thought it profane to show any levity during a
thunderstorm, checked her pretty daughter with a peremptory “Hush,
child!” and drew her babies closer into her arms. Mrs Atheling’s
thoughts had no leisure to stray to Winterbourne; save for Charlie--and
it was not to be supposed that this same thunder threatened
Bellevue--all her anxieties were here.
But as the din out of doors calmed down, and even as the girls became
accustomed to it, and were able to share in Papa’s calculations as to
the gradual retreat of the thunder as it rolled farther and farther
away, they began to find out and notice the room within which they had
crowded. It had only one window, and was somewhat dark, the small panes
being over-hung and half obscured by a wild forest of clematis, and
sundry stray branches, still bristling with buds, of that pale monthly
rose with evergreen leaves, which covered half the front of the house.
The fireplace had a rather fantastic grate of clear steel, with bright
brass ornaments, so clear and so resplendent as it only could be made by
the labour of years, and was filled, instead of a fire, with soft green
moss, daintily ornamented with the yellow everlasting flowers. Hannah
did not know that these were _immortelles_, and consecrated to the
memory of the dead. It was only her rural and old-maidenly fashion of
decoration, for the same little rustling posies, dry and unfading, were
in the little flower-glasses on the high mantel-shelf, before the little
old dark-complexioned mirror, with little black-and-white transparencies
set in the slender gilding of its frame, which reflected nothing but a
slope of the roof, and one dark portrait hanging as high up as itself
upon the opposite wall. It put the room oddly out of proportion, this
mirror, attracting the eye to its high strip of light, and deluding the
unwary to many a stumble; and Agnes already sat fixedly looking at it,
and at the dark and wrinkled portrait reflected from the other wall.
Before the fireplace, where there was no fire, stood a large
old-fashioned easy-chair, with no one in it. Are you very sure there is
no one in it?--for Papa himself has a certain awe of that
strangely-placed seat, which seems to have stood before that same
fireplace for many a year. In the twilight, Agnes, if you were
alone--you, who of all the family are most inclined to a little
visionary superstition, you would find it very hard to keep from
trembling, or to persuade yourself that Miss Bridget was not there,
where she had spent half a lifetime, sitting in that heavy old
easy-chair.
The carpet was a faded but rich and soft old Turkey carpet, the
furniture was slender and spider-legged, made of old bright mahogany, as
black and as polished as ebony. There was an old cabinet in one corner,
with brass rings and ornaments; and in another an old musical
instrument, of which the girls were not learned enough to know the
precise species, though it belonged to the genus piano. The one small
square table in the middle of the room was covered with a table-cover,
richly embroidered, but the silk was faded, and the bits of gold were
black and dull; and there were other little tables, round and square,
with spiral legs and a tripod of feet, one holding a china jar, one a
big book, and one a case of stuffed birds. On the whole, the room had
somewhat the look of a rather refined and very prim old lady. The things
in it were all of a delicate kind and antique fashion. It was not in the
slightest degree like these fair and fresh young girls, but on the whole
it was a place of which people like those, with a wholesome love of
ancestry, had very good occasion to be proud.
And at the door stood Hannah, in a black gown and great white apron,
smoothing down the same with her hands, and bobbing a kindly curtsy.
Hannah’s eyes were running over with delight and anxiety to get at Bell
and Beau. She passed over all the rest of the family to yearn over the
little ones. “Eh, bless us!” cried Hannah, as, the thunder over, Mrs
Atheling began to bestir herself--“children in the house!” It was
something almost too ecstatic for her elderly imagination. She
volunteered to carry them both up-stairs with the most eager attention.
“I ain’t so much used to childer,” said Hannah, “but, bless ye, ma’am, I
love ’um all the same;” and with an instinctive knowledge of this love,
Beau condescended to grasp Hannah’s spotless white apron, and Bell to
mount into her arms. Then the whole family procession went up-stairs to
look at the bedrooms--the voices of the girls and the sweet chorus of
the babies making the strangest echoes in the lonely house. Hannah
acknowledged afterwards, that, half with grief for Miss Bridget, and
half for joy of this new life beginning, it would have been a great
relief to her to sit down upon the attic stairs and have “a good cry.”