I have besides my town residence in Cecil Street--which is confined
to a suite of two apartments on the second-floor--a very pleasant
country-house belonging to a friend of mine in Devonshire; this latter
is my favourite seat, and the abode which I prefer to call my home. I
like it well when its encircling glens are loud with rooks, and their
great nests are being set up high in the rocking branches; I like it
when the butterflies, those courtly ushers of the summer, are doing
their noiseless mission in its southern garden, or on the shaven lawn
before its front; I like it when its balustraded roof looks down upon
a sea of golden corn and islands of green orchards flushed with fruit;
but most it pleases me when logs are roaring in its mighty chimneys,
and Christmas time is come. Six abreast the witches might ride up them,
let their broomsticks prance and curvet as they would. If you entered
the hall by the great doors while Robert Chetwood and myself were at
our game of billiards at its further end, you could not recognise our
features. The galleries are studies of perspective, and the bare,
shining staircases as broad as carriage ways. The library, set round
from the thick carpet to the sculptured ceiling with ancient books,
with brazen clasps, and old-world types, and worm-drilled bindings. The
chapel, with its blazoned saints on the dim windows, and the mighty
corridors with floors of oak and sides of tapestry, are pictures of the
past, and teach whole chapters of the book of history: Red Rose and
White Rose, Cavalier and Roundhead, Papist and Protestant, Orangeman
and Jacobite have each had their day in Old Tremadyn House. When the
great doors slam together, as they sometimes will, to the inexpressible
terror of the London butler, they awake a series of thunderclaps which
roll from basement to garret: many a warning have they given, in the
good old times, to Tremadyns hiding for their lives, and many an arras
has been raised and mirror slipped to right or left at that menacing
sound. To this day, Robert Chetwood often comes anew upon some hold
in which, those who ruled before him have skulked--sometimes in his
own reception-rooms, but more commonly in the great chambers where he
puts his guests. These chambers are colossal, with huge carved pillars
bearing up a firmament of needlework, and dressing-closets large
enough for dining-rooms. Every person of note who could or could not
by possibility of date or circumstance have slept therein have had the
credit of passing a night within Tremadyn House, from the Wandering
Jew, Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth, down to Charles the First, Peter
the Great, and the late Emperor Nicholas. There has been more than one
murder in the Red room, several suicides in the Blue, and one ghost
still haunts those spots in expiation. Tremadyns in lace cuffs and
wigs; in scarlet and ermine; in armour from top to toe, line both the
galleries--sold by the last Charles Surface of a dissolute race for
ten pounds ten shillings a head. One great Tremadyn dynasty has passed
away; Robert Chetwood, late banker in the City of London, not so long
ago banker’s clerk, now reigneth in their stead. The Tremadyns came in
at the time of the siege of Jericho, or thereabouts, and the Chetwoods
about ten years before the siege of Sebastopol; but there the advantage
ceases. There is no man kinder to the poor, no man more courteous to
all men, no man, whatever his quarterings, in all Devonshire with
a better heart than Robert Chetwood. Tremadyn House is open to the
county, as it ever was, and his old London friends are not forgotten; a
hale and hearty gentleman indeed he is, but he has had many troubles;
he is as happy as any man bereaved of children can be, and it was the
loss of them that made him buy the house and give up his old haunts and
busy way--
He saw the nursery windows wide open to the air,
But the faces of the children they were no longer there;
and that, wherever it may be, is too sad a sight to look upon.
But what a wife the old man had, to make up, as it seemed even to
me, for all! I say to me, for one of those lost children, a maiden
of seventeen, was my betrothed bride--the gentlest and most gracious
creature eyes ever looked upon; I think if I could write my thoughts
of her, I should move those to tears who never saw her face, when they
read “Gertrude died.” She gave herself to me: the old man never could
have given her. I say no more.
This is why Tremadyn House has become to me a home. It pleases Robert
Chetwood to have his friend’s son with him, above all, because he was
his daughter’s plighted husband, and my father’s friend is trebly dear
to me as Gertrude’s father. When the Christmas party has dispersed, and
the great house is quite emptied of its score of guests, I still remain
with the old couple over the new year. They call me son, as though I
were their son, and I call them my parents. If Heaven had willed it
so, dear Gertrude and myself could not have hoped for greater wedded
happiness, more love between us, than is between those two. “Perhaps,”
he says, with a smile I never saw a young man wear, “perhaps it is that
my old eyes are getting dim and untrustworthy, but Charlotte seems
to me the dearest and most pleasant-looking dame in all the world.”
And his wife makes answer that her sight also is just as little to
be depended on. To each of them has come the silver hair, and the
reverence with it that alone makes it beautiful; and if their steps
are slower than in youth, it is not because their hearts are heavier;
they are indeed of those, so rare ones, who make us in love with life
down even to its close. They always seemed to me as having climbed the
hill together their whole lives long, and never was I more astonished
than upon this new year’s eve, when, Mrs. Chetwood being with us two
in after-dinner talk, as custom was when all her guests were gone, her
husband told this history. He had always talked quite openly to me,
A pair of friends, though I was young,
And Robert, seventy-two;
and then, at the end of another year of love and confidence, I could
not resist inquiring of them how long they two had been one.
“Well, on my word, George,” said the dear old lady, “you should be more
discreet than to ask such questions.”
But her husband answered readily:
“This thirty years. I’ve been a married man myself this half-a-century.”
“Why, you don’t mean to say----” said I.
“Yes, I do,” he interrupted. “Of course I do. Charlotte has been my
wife too long, I hope, to be jealous now of either Kate or Mary; but I
loved them each in turn almost as dearly as I love her. Charlotte,”
he added, turning towards her as she sat in the great arm-chair, “you
don’t mind George being told about my other two wives, do you?”
“I don’t mind your talking of Mary much,” she answered, “but get over
that young Kate’s story as quickly as you can, please.”
And I really thought I detected a blush come over her dear old face
while she was speaking.
“It is rather less than half a century ago,” he began, “since I first
set foot in this beautiful Devon county. I came down on a short holiday
from London, in the summer time, to fish, and I brought with me,
besides my rod and basket, a portmanteau full of clothes and about
twenty-five pounds in gold, which was the whole amount of my savings.
I was junior clerk in a house at that day, with one hundred and twenty
pounds a-year, and with as much chance of becoming a partner as you,
my dear briefless Charles, have of sitting on the woolsack. From the
top of Tremadyn House I could point you out the farm-house where I
lodged, and will some day take you to see it,--a mighty homestead, with
a huge portico of stone and flights of stone steps leading to the upper
chambers from without. On one side was the farm-yard, filled with swine
and poultry, with open stalls for cattle, and enormous barns, not so
well kept or neat, perhaps, as the present day requires, but a perfect
picture of plenty; on the other stood the cider-presses, and beyond,
the apple orchards, white with promise, red with fruit, made the air
faint with fragrance; half orchard was the garden, too, in fruit,
through which, beneath a rustic bridge, my trout stream wandered.
Charlotte, you know the place--have I not painted it?”
“You have, Robert,” she said. The tears were in her eyes, ready to
fall, I saw.
“There, then, I met Katie. The good man of the house was childless, and
she, his cousin, was well cared for as his child. It was no wonder,
George: the dark oak parlour seemed to need no light when she shone
in it. Like a sunbeam gliding over common places, whatever household
matters busied her she graced. Some sweet art seemed to lie in her,
superior to mere neatness, as high-heartedness excelleth pride. I put
on salmon flies to catch trout. I often fished without any hook at
all. I strove to image her fair face and form in the clear waters, by
the side of that hapless similitude of myself--the reflex of a forlorn
youth in his first love. I did my best at haymaking to please her. I
took eternal lessons in the art of making Devon cheese. I got at last
so far as to kiss her hand. I drew a little, and she sat to me for her
portrait. We sallied out a mushrooming and getting wild flowers, and
on our way sang pleasant songs together, and interchanged our little
stores of reading. On the eve before my long put-off departure we were
thus roaming: we had to cross a hundred stiles--the choicest blessings
of this country I used to think them--and once, instead of offering
my hand to help her over, I held out both my arms, and, upon my life,
George, the dear girl jumped right into them; and that was how I got to
kiss her cheek.”
“What shocking stories you are telling, Robert,” said Mrs. Chetwood,
and certainly she was then blushing up under her lace cap to her white
hair.
“Well, my dear, nobody was there except Kate and myself, and I think I
must know what happened, at least as well as you do: so,” he continued,
“after one more visit to the farm-house, Kate and I were married; she
gave up all her healthy ways and country pleasures to come and live
with me in the busy town; studious of others’ happiness, careful for
others’ pain; at all times forgetful of herself: active and diligent,
she had ever leisure for a pleasant word and a kind action; and for
beauty, no maid nor wife in the world was fit, I believe, to compare
with her; to you, George, who knew and loved our dearest Gertrude, I
need not describe her mother. She was not long with me, but it soon
seemed as if it must have cost my life to have parted with her; yet the
girlish glory faded, and the sparkling spirit fled, and the day has
been forgiven, though forgotten never, which took my darling Katie from
my side.”
The old man paused a little here. Mrs. Chetwood kissed him softly upon
the cheek.
“My second wife,” he resumed, “was not so young, and certainly had not
the outward graces of my first. She was beautiful, too, in the flower
as Kate was in the bud; her face had not the vivacity, nor her eyes
the dancing light of Katie’s, but there sat such a serenity upon her
features, as we sometimes see upon a lovely landscape when the sun is
near its setting; a look which no man ever tires of; and Mary bore me
children, and then, much as I had loved the sapling, it seemed to me
that the full-fruited tree was dearer yet. She was no country girl from
the Devon dales, but a town lady, bred. I had a great house by that
time, with all things fitting about me, and my sphere was hers. The
pearls suited her pleasant brow, and crowned her still raven tresses
as becomingly as the single rose in her hair had adorned simple Kate.
I think, if I may say so without ingratitude for my present great
happiness, and with the leave of my dear Charlotte, that the happiest
hours of my life were spent during those days, when our two children’s
voices rang cheerily over the house, and some little scheme of pleasure
for them was my everyday desire and Mary’s. Even at the terrible time
when boy and girl were being taken from us at once, never did their
patient mother seem more dear to me; from when the hush of sickness
stole upon us at first, to the day when that white procession left our
doors, what a healing spirit was she! When we thought that the thickly
folded veil of sorrow had fallen over us for ever, how tenderly she put
it aside!
“It must needs have happened that my speech has here been melancholy,
but indeed I should not speak of Mary so. She was the blythest,
cheerfullest, most comfortable middle-aged wife that man ever had;
behind our very darkest trouble a smile was always lying ready to
struggle through it, and what a light it shed! One of your resigned
immoveable females, who accept every blessing as a temptation, and
submit, with precisely the same feelings to what they call every
chastening, would have killed me in a week. George, my Mary acted at
all times according to her nature, and that nature was as beautiful and
blessed as ever fell to the lot of womankind. You might well think that
Kate and Mary were two prizes great enough for one man to draw out of
the marriage lottery, and yet I drew another. When I lost my beloved
Mary, my third wife took her place in my inmost heart.
“Kiss me, Charlotte,” said the old man, tenderly, and again she kissed
him on the cheek. “And now,” continued he, “let us fill our glasses,
for the New Year is coming on apace; and please to drink to the memory
of my two wives, and to the health of her who is still left to me.
The two first toasts must necessarily be somewhat painful to my dear
Charlotte, and we will, therefore, receive them in silence, but the
third we must drink with all the honours.”
So after those, he stood up, glass in hand; and said to her,
“Kate, Mary, Charlotte,--bride, matron, and dame in one, to whom I
have been wedded this half-century,--for I have had no other wife,
George,--God bless you, dear old heart! We have had a merry Christmas,
as we have ever had, and I trust it may be permitted to us to have,
still together, one more happy New Year. Hip! hip! hip! Hurrah!” and
the echoes of our three times three seemed cheerily to roam all night
about Tremadyn House.
Now ready, Price Five Shillings and Sixpence, cloth
boards,
THE TWELFTH VOLUME
OF
HOUSEHOLD WORDS,
Containing from No. 280 to No. 303 (both inclusive), and the extra
Christmas Number.
_The Right of Translating Articles from_ HOUSEHOLD WORDS _is reserved
by the Authors_.
Published at the Office, No. 16, Wellington Street North, Strand.
Printed by Bradbury & Evans, Whitefriars, London.