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."