Oh, the steward, the steward: I might have guessed as much.
Tales of the Crusaders.
The evening was already beginning to close, and Clarence was yet
wandering in the park, and retracing, with his heart’s eye, each knoll
and tree and tuft once so familiar to his wanderings.
At the time we shall again bring him personally before the reader, he
was leaning against an iron fence that, running along the left wing of
the house, separated the pleasure-grounds from the park, and gazing
with folded arms and wistful eyes upon the scene on which the dusk of
twilight was gradually gathering.
The house was built originally in the reign of Charles II.; it had since
received alteration and additions, and now presented to the eye a vast
pile of Grecian or rather Italian architecture, heterogeneously blended
with the massive window, the stiff coping, and the heavy roof which the
age immediately following the Revolution introduced. The extent of the
building and the grandeur of the circling demesnes were sufficient to
render the mansion imposing in effect; while, perhaps, the style of
the architecture was calculated to conjoin a stately comfort with
magnificence, and to atone in solidity for any deficiency in grace.
At a little distance from the house, and placed on a much more
commanding site, were some ancient and ivy-grown ruins, now scanty
indeed and fast mouldering into decay, but sufficient to show the
antiquarian the remains of what once had been a hold of no ordinary size
and power. These were the wrecks of the old mansion, which was recorded
by tradition to have been reduced to this state by accidental
fire, during the banishment of its loyal owner in the time of the
Protectorate. Upon his return the present house was erected.
As Clarence was thus stationed he perceived an elderly man approach
towards him. “This is fortunate,” said he to himself,--“the very person
I have been watching for. Well, years have passed lightly over old
Wardour: still the same precise garb, the same sturdy and slow step, the
same upright form.”
The person thus designated now drew near enough for parlance; and, in
a tone a little authoritative, though very respectful, inquired if
Clarence had any business to transact with him.
“I beg pardon,” said Clarence, slouching his hat over his face, “for
lingering so near the house at this hour: but I have seen it many years
ago, and indeed been a guest within its walls; and it is rather my
interest for an old friend, than my curiosity to examine a new one,
which you are to blame for my trespass.”
“Oh, sir,” answered Mr. Wardour, a short and rather stout man, of
about sixty-four, attired in a chocolate coat, gray breeches, and silk
stockings of the same dye, which, by the waning light, took a sombrer
and sadder hue, “oh, sir, pray make no apology. I am only sorry the hour
is so late that I cannot offer to show you the interior of the house:
perhaps, if you are staying in the neighbourhood, you would like to see
it to-morrow. You were here, I take it, sir, in my old lord’s time?
“I was!--upon a visit to his second son: we had been boys together.”
“What! Master Clinton?” cried the old man, with extreme, animation;
and then, suddenly changing his voice, added, in a subdued and saddened
tone, “Ah, poor young gentleman, I wonder where he is now?”
“Why, is he not in this country?” asked Clarence.
“Yes--no--that is, I can’t exactly say where he is; I wish I could: poor
Master Clinton! I loved him as my own son.”
“You surprise me,” said Clarence. “Is there anything in the fate of
Clinton L’Estrange that calls forth your pity? If so, you would gratify
a much better feeling than curiosity if you would inform me of it. The
fact is that I came here to seek him; for I have been absent from the
country many years, and on my return my first inquiry was for my old
friend and schoolfellow. None knew anything of him in London, and
I imagined therefore that he might have settled down into a country
gentleman. I was fully prepared to find him marshalling the fox-hounds
or beating the preserves; and you may consequently imagine my
mortification on learning at my inn that he had not been residing here
for many years; further I know not!”
“Ay, ay, sir,” said the old steward, who had listened very attentively
to Clarence’s detail, “had you pressed one of the village gossips a
little closer, you would doubtless have learned more. But ‘t is a story
I don’t much love telling, although formerly I could have talked of
Master Clinton by the hour together to any one who would have had the
patience to listen to me.”
“You have really created in me a very painful desire to learn more,”
said Clarence; “and, if I am not intruding on any family secrets, you
would oblige me greatly by whatever information you may think proper to
afford to an early and attached friend of the person in question.”
“Well, sir, well,” replied Mr. Wardour, who, without imputation on
his discretion, loved talking as well as any other old gentleman of
sixty-four, “if you will condescend to step up to my house, I shall feel
happy and proud to converse with a friend of my dear young master; and
you are heartily welcome to the information I can give you.”
“I thank you sincerely,” said Clarence; “but suffer me to propose, as an
amendment to your offer, that you accompany me for an hour or two to my
inn.”
“Nay, sir,” answered the old gentleman, in a piqued tone, “I trust you
will not disdain to honour me with your company. Thank Heaven, I can
afford to be hospitable now and then.”
Clarence, who seemed to have his own reasons for the amendment he had
proposed, still struggled against this offer, but was at last, from fear
of offending the honest steward, obliged to accede.
Striking across a path, which led through a corner of the plantation
to a space of ground containing a small garden, quaintly trimmed in the
Dutch taste, and a brick house of moderate dimensions, half overgrown
with ivy and jessamine, Clarence and his inviter paused at the door of
the said mansion, and the latter welcomed his guest to his abode.
“Pardon me,” said Clarence, as a damsel in waiting opened the door, “but
a very severe attack of rheumatism obliges me to keep on my hat: you
will, I hope, indulge me in my rudeness.”
“To be sure, to be sure, sir. I myself suffer terribly from rheumatism
in the winter; though you look young, sir, very young, to have an
old man’s complaint. Ah, the people of my day were more careful of
themselves, and that is the reason we are such stout fellows in our
age.”
And the worthy steward looked complacently down at legs which very
substantially filled their comely investments. “True, sir,” said
Clarence, laying his hand upon that of the steward, who was just about
to open the door of an apartment; “but suffer me at least to request you
not to introduce me to any of the ladies of your family. I could not,
were my very life at stake, think of affronting them by not doffing
my hat. I have the keenest sense of what is due to the sex, and I must
seriously entreat you, for the sake of my health during the whole of
the coming winter, to suffer our conversation not to take place in their
presence.”
“Sir, I honour your politeness,” said the prim little steward: “I,
myself, like every true Briton, reverence the ladies; we will therefore
retire to my study. Mary, girl,” turning to the attendant, “see that we
have a nice chop for supper in half an hour; and tell your mistress that
I have a gentleman of quality with me upon particular business, and must
not be disturbed.”
With these injunctions, the steward led the way to the farther end of
the house, and, having ushered his guest into a small parlour, adorned
with sundry law-books, a great map of the estate, a print of the
late owner of it, a rusty gun slung over the fireplace, two stuffed
pheasants, and a little mahogany buffet,--having, we say, led Clarence
to this sanctuary of retiring stewardship, he placed a seat for him and
said,--“Between you and me, sir, be it respectfully said, I am not
sorry that our little confabulation should pass alone. Ladies are very
delightful, very delightful, certainly: but they won’t let one tell a
story one’s own way; they are fidgety, you know, sir,--fidgety, nothing
more; ‘t is a trifle, but it is unpleasant. Besides, my wife was Master
Clinton’s foster-mother, and she can’t hear a word about him, without
running on into a long rigmarole of what he did as a baby, and so
forth. I like people to be chatty, sir, but not garrulous; I can’t bear
garrulity, at least in a female. But, suppose, sir, we defer our story
till after supper? A glass of wine or warm punch makes talk glide more
easily; besides, sir, I want something to comfort me when I talk about
Master Clinton. Poor gentleman, he was so comely, so handsome!”
“Did you think so?” said Clarence, turning towards the fire.
“Think so!” ejaculated the steward, almost angrily; and forthwith he
launched out into an encomium on the perfections, personal, moral, and
mental, of Master Clinton which lasted till the gentle Mary entered to
lay the cloth. This reminded the old steward of the glass of wine which
was so efficacious in making talk glide easily; and, going to the
buffet before mentioned, he drew forth two bottles, both of port.
Having carefully and warily decanted both, he changed the subject of his
praise; and, assuring Clarence that the wine he was about to taste
was at least as old as Master Clinton, having been purchased in joyous
celebration of the young gentleman’s birthday, he whiled away the
minutes with a glowing eulogy on its generous qualities, till Mary
entered with the supper.
Clarence, with an appetite sharpened, despite his romance, by a long
fast, did ample justice to the fare; and the old steward, warming into
familiarity with the virtues of the far-famed port, chatted and laughed
in a strain half simple and half shrewd.
The fire being stirred up to a free blaze, the hearth swept, and all
the tokens of supper, save and except the kingly bottle and its subject
glasses, being removed, the steward and his guest drew closer to each
other, and the former began his story.