DURNMELLING.
In the autumn, Mr. Mortimer of Durnmelling resolved to give a
harvest-home to his tenants, and under the protection of the occasion
to invite also a good many of his neighbors and of the townsfolk of
Testbridge, whom he could not well ask to dinner: there happened to be
a political expediency for something of the sort: America is not the
only country in which ambition opens the door to mean doings on the
part of such as count themselves gentlemen. Not a few on whom Lady
Margaret had never called, and whom she would never in any way
acknowledge again, were invited; nor did the knowledge of what it meant
cause many of them to decline the questionable honor--which fact
carried in it the best justification of which the meanness and insult
were capable. Mrs. Wardour accepted for herself and Letty; but in their
case Lady Margaret did call, and in person give the invitation. Godfrey
positively refused to accompany them. He would not be patronized, he
said; "--and by an inferior," he added to himself.
Mr. Mortimer was the illiterate son of a literary father who had reaped
both money and fame. The son spent the former, on the strength of the
latter married an earl's daughter, and thereupon began to embody in his
own behavior his ideas of how a nobleman ought to carry himself;
whence, from being only a small, he became an objectionable man, and
failed of being amusing by making himself offensive. He had never
manifested the least approach to neighborliness with Godfrey, although
their houses were almost within a stone's throw of each other. Had
Wardour been an ordinary farmer, of whose presuming on the acquaintance
there could have been no danger, Mortimer would doubtless have behaved
differently; but as Wardour had some pretensions--namely, old family, a
small, though indeed _very_ small, property of his own, a university
education, good horses, and the habits and manners of a gentleman--the
men scarcely even saluted when they met. The Mortimer ladies, indeed,
had more than once remarked--but it was in solemn silence, each to
herself only--how well the man sat, and how easily he handled the
hunter he always rode; but not once until now had so much as a greeting
passed between them and Mrs. Wardour. It was not therefore wonderful
that Godfrey should not choose to accept their invitation. Finding,
however, that his mother was distressed at having to go to the
gathering without him, and far more exercised in her mind than was
needful as to what would be thought of his absence, and what excuse it
would be becoming to make, he resolved to go to London a day or two
before the event, and pay a long-promised visit to a clerical friend.
The relative situation of the houses--I mean the stone-and-lime
houses--of Durnmelling and Thornwick, was curious; and that they had at
one time formed part of the same property might have suggested itself
to any beholder. Durnmelling was built by an ancestor of Godfrey's,
who, forsaking the old nest for the new, had allowed Thornwick to sink
into a mere farmhouse, in which condition it had afterward become the
sole shelter of the withered fortunes of the Wardours. In the hands of
Godfrey's father, by a continuity of judicious cares, and a succession
of partial resurrections, it had been restored to something like its
original modest dignity. Durnmelling, too, had in part sunk into ruin,
and had been but partially recovered from it; still, it swelled
important beside its antecedent Thornwick. Nothing but a deep ha-ha
separated the two houses, of which the older and smaller occupied the
higher ground. Between it and the ha-ha was nothing but grass--in front
of the house fine enough and well enough kept to be called lawn, had
not Godfrey's pride refused the word. On the lower, the Durnmelling
side of the fence, were trees, shrubbery, and out-houses--the chimney
of one of which, the laundry, gave great offense to Mrs. Wardour, when,
as she said, wind and wash came together. But, although they stood so
near, there was no lawful means of communication between the houses
except the road; and the mile that implied was seldom indeed passed by
any of the unneighborly neighbors.
The father of Lady Margaret would at one time have purchased Thornwick
at twice its value; but the present owner could not have bought it at
half its worth. He had of late been losing money heavily--whence, in
part, arose that anxiety of Lady Margaret's not to keep Mr. Redmain
fretting for his lunch.
The house of Durnmelling, new compared with that of Thornwick, was yet,
as I have indicated, old enough to have passed also through
vicissitudes, and a large portion of the original structure had for
many years been nothing better than a ruin. Only a portion of one side
of its huge square was occupied by the family, and the rest of that
side was not habitable. Lady Margaret, of an ancient stock, had
gathered from it only pride, not reverence; therefore, while she valued
the old, she neglected it; and what money she and her husband at one
time spent upon the house, was devoted to addition and ornamentation,
nowise to preservation or restoration. They had enlarged both
dining-room and drawing-rooms to twice their former size, when half the
expense, with a few trees from a certain outlying oak-plantation of
their own, would have given them a room fit for a regal assembly. For,
constituting a portion of the same front in which they lived, lay
roofless, open to every wind that blew, its paved floor now and then in
winter covered with snow--an ancient hall, whose massy south wall was
pierced by three lovely windows, narrow and lofty, with simple,
gracious tracery in their pointed heads. This hall connected the
habitable portion of the house with another part, less ruinous than
itself, but containing only a few rooms in occasional use for household
purposes, or, upon necessity, for quite inferior lodgment. It was a
glorious ruin, of nearly a hundred feet in length, and about half that
in width, the walls entire, and broad enough to walk round upon in
safety. Their top was accessible from a tower, which formed part of the
less ruinous portion, and contained the stair and some small rooms.
Once, the hall was fair with portraits and armor and arms, with fire
and lights, and state and merriment; now the sculptured chimney lay
open to the weather, and the sweeping winds had made its smooth
hearthstone clean as if fire had never been there. Its floor was
covered with large flags, a little broken: these, in prospect of the
coming entertainment, a few workmen were leveling, patching, replacing.
For the tables were to be set here, and here there was to be dancing
after the meal.
It was Miss Yolland's idea, and to her was committed the responsibility
of its preparation and adornment for the occasion, in which Hesper gave
her active assistance. With colored blankets, with carpets, with a few
pieces of old tapestry, and a quantity of old curtains, mostly of
chintz, excellent in hues and design, all cunningly arranged for as
much of harmony as could be had, they contrived to clothe the walls to
the height of six or eight feet, and so gave the weather-beaten
skeleton an air of hospitable preparation and respectful reception.
The day and the hour arrived. It was a hot autumnal afternoon. Borne in
all sorts of vehicles, from a carriage and pair to a taxed cart, the
guests kept coming. As they came, they mostly scattered about the
place. Some loitered on the lawn by the flower-beds and the fountain;
some visited the stables and the home-farm, with its cow-houses and
dairy and piggeries; some the neglected greenhouses, and some the
equally neglected old-fashioned alleys, with their clipped yews and
their moss-grown statues. No one belonging to the house was anywhere
visible to receive them, until the great bell at length summoned them
to the plentiful meal spread in the ruined hall. "The hospitality of
some people has no roof to it," Godfrey said, when he heard of the
preparations. "Ten people will give you a dinner, for one who will
offer you a bed and a breakfast:"
Then at last their host made his appearance, and took the head of the
table: the ladies, he said, were to have the honor of joining the
company afterward. They were at the time--but this he did not
say--giving another stratum of society a less ponderous, but yet
tolerably substantial, refreshment in the dining-room.
By the time the eating and drinking were nearly over, the shades of
evening had gathered; but even then some few of the farmers, capable
only of drinking, grumbled at having their potations interrupted for
the dancers. These were presently joined by the company from the house,
and the great hall was crowded.
Much to her chagrin, Mrs. Wardour had a severe headache, occasioned by
her working half the night at her dress, and was compelled to remain at
home. But she allowed Letty to go without her, which she would not have
done had she not been so anxious to have news of what she could not
lift her head to see: she sent her with an old servant--herself one of
the invited guests--to gather and report. The dancing had begun before
they reached the hall.
Tom Helmer had arrived among the first, and had joined the tenants in
their feast, faring well, and making friends, such as he knew how to
make, with everybody in his vicinity. When the tables were removed, and
the rest of the company began to come in, he went about searching
anxiously for Letty's sweet face, but it did not appear; and, when she
did arrive, she stole in without his seeing her, and stood mingled with
the crowd about the door.
It was a pleasant sight that met her eyes. The wide space was gayly
illuminated with colored lamps, disposed on every shelf, and in every
crevice of the walls, some of them gleaming like glow-worms out of mere
holes; while candles in sconces, and lamps on the window-sills and
wherever they could stand, gave a light the more pleasing that it was
not brilliant. Overhead, the night-sky was spangled with clear pulsing
stars, afloat in a limpid blue, vast even to awfulness in the eyes of
such--were any such there?--as say to themselves that to those worlds
also were they born. Outside, it was dark, save where the light
streamed from the great windows far into the night. The moon was not
yet up; she would rise in good time to see the scattering guests to
their homes.
Tom's heart had been sinking, for he could see Letty nowhere. Now at
last, he had been saying to himself all the day, had come his chance!
and his chance seemed but to mock him. More than any girl he had ever
seen, had Letty moved him--perhaps because she was more unlike his
mother. He knew nothing, it is true, or next to nothing, of her nature;
but that was of little consequence to one who knew nothing, and never
troubled himself to know anything, of his own. Was he doomed never to
come near his idol?--Ah, there she was! Yes; it was she--all but lost
in a humble group near the door! His foolish heart--not foolish in
that--gave a great bound, as if it would leap to her where she stood.
She was dressed in white muslin, from which her white throat rose warm
and soft. Her head was bent forward, and a gentle dissolved smile was
over all her face, as with loveliest eyes she watched eagerly the
motions of the dance, and her ears drank in the music of the yeomanry
band. He seized the first opportunity of getting nearer to her. He had
scarcely spoken to her before, but that did not trouble Tom. Even in a
more ceremonious assembly, that would never have abashed him; and here
there was little form, and much freedom. He had, besides, confidence in
his own carriage and manners--which, indeed, were those of a
gentleman--and knew himself not likely to repel by his approach.
Mr. Mortimer had opened the dancing by leading out the wife of his
principal tenant, a handsome matron, whose behavior and expression were
such as to give a safe, home-like feeling to the shy and doubtful of
the company. But Tom knew better than injure his chance by
precipitation: he would wait until the dancing was more general, and
the impulse to movement stronger, and then offer himself. He stood
therefore near Letty for some little time, talking to everybody, and
making himself agreeable, as was his wont, all round; then at last, as
if he had just caught sight of her, walked up to her where she stood
flushed and eager, and asked her to favor him with her hand in the next
dance.
By this time Letty had got familiar with his presence, had recalled her
former meeting with him, had heard his name spoken by not a few who
evidently liked him, and was quite pleased when he asked her to dance
with him.
In the dance, nothing but commonplaces passed between them; but Tom had
a certain pleasant way of his own in saying the commonest, emptiest
things--an off-hand, glancing, skimming, swallow-like way of brushing
and leaving a thing, as if he "could an' if he would," which made it
seem for the moment as if he had said something: were his companion
capable of discovering the illusion, there was no time; Tom was
instantly away, carrying him or her with him to something else. But
there was better than this--there was poetry, more than one element of
it, in Tom. In the presence of a girl that pleased him, there would
rise in him a poetic atmosphere, full of a rainbow kind of glamour,
which, first possessing himself, passed out from him and called up a
similar atmosphere, a similar glamour, about many of the girls he
talked to. This he could no more help than the grass can help smelling
sweet after the rain.
Tom was a finely projected, well-built, unfinished, barely furnished
house, with its great central room empty, where the devil, coming and
going at his pleasure, had not yet begun to make any great racket.
There might be endless embryonic evil in him, but Letty was aware of no
repellent atmosphere about him, and did not shrink from his advances.
He pleased her, and why should she not be pleased with him? Was it a
fault to be easily pleased? The truer and sweeter any human self, the
readier is it to be pleased with another self--save, indeed, something
in it grate on the moral sense: that jars through the whole harmonious
hypostasy. To Tom, therefore, Letty responded with smiles and pleasant
words, even grateful to such a fine youth for taking notice of her
small self.
The sun had set in a bank of cloud, which, as if he had been a lump of
leaven to it, immediately began to swell and rise, and now hung dark
and thick over the still, warm night. Even the farmers were unobservant
of the change: their crops were all in, they had eaten and drunk
heartily, and were merry, looking on or sharing in the multiform
movement, their eyes filled with light and color.
Suddenly came a torrent-sound in the air, heard of few and heeded by
none, and straight into the hall rushed upon the gay company a deluge
of rain, mingled with large, half-melted hail-stones. In a moment or
two scarce a light was left burning, except those in the holes and
recesses of the walls. The merrymakers scattered like flies--into the
house, into the tower, into the sheds and stables in the court behind,
under the trees in front--anywhere out of the hall, where shelter was
none from the perpendicular, abandoned down-pour.
At that moment, Letty was dancing with Tom, and her hand happened to be
in his. He clasped it tight, and, as quickly as the crowd and the
confusion of shelter-seeking would permit, led her to the door of the
tower already mentioned. But many had run in the same direction, and
already its lower story and stair were crowded with refugees--the elder
bemoaning the sudden change, and folding tight around them what poor
wraps they were fortunate enough to have retained; the younger merrier
than ever, notwithstanding the cold gusts that now poked their
spirit-arms higher and thither through the openings of the half-ruinous
building: to them even the destruction of their finery was but added
cause of laughter. But a few minutes before, its freshness had been a
keen pleasure to them, brightening their consciousness with a rare
feeling of perfection; now crushed and rumpled, soiled and wet and
torn, it was still fuel to the fire of gayety. But Tom did not stay
among them. He knew the place well; having a turn for scrambling, he
had been all over it many a time. On through the crowd, he led Letty up
the stair to the first floor. Even here were a few couples talking and
laughing in the dark. With a warning, by no means unnecessary, to mind
where they stepped, for the floors were bad, he passed on to the next
stair.
"Let us stop here, Mr. Helmer," said Letty. "There is plenty of room
here."
"I want to show you something," answered Tom. "You need not be
frightened. I know every nook of the place."
"I am not frightened," said Letty, and made no further objection.
At the top of that stair they entered a straight passage, in the middle
of which was a faint glimmer of light from an oval aperture in the side
of it. Thither Tom led Letty, and told her to look through. She did so.
Beneath lay the great gulf, wide and deep, of the hall they had just
left. This was the little window, high in its gable, through which, in
far-away times, the lord or lady of the mansion could oversee at will
whatever went on below.
The rain had ceased as suddenly as it came on, and already lights were
moving about in the darkness of the abyss--one, and another, and
another, was searching for something lost in the hurry of the
scattering. It was a waste and dismal show. Neither of them had read
Dante; but Letty may have thought of the hall of Belshazzar, the night
after the hand-haunted revel, when the Medes had had their will; for
she had but lately read the story. A strange fear came upon her, and
she drew back with a shudder.
"Are you cold?" said Tom. "Of course you must be, with nothing but that
thin muslin! Shall I run down and get you a shawl?"
"Oh, no! do not leave me, please. It's not that," answered Letty. "I
don't mind the wind a bit; it's rather pleasant. It's only that the
look of the place makes me miserable, I think. It looks as if no one
had danced there for a hundred years."
"Neither any one has, I suppose, till to-night," said Tom. "What a fine
place it would be if only it had a roof to it! I can't think how any
one can live beside it and leave it like that!"
But Tom lived a good deal closer to a worse ruin, and never spent a
thought on it.
Letty shivered again.
"I'm quite ashamed of myself," she said, trying to speak cheerfully. "I
can't think why I should feel like this--just as if something dreadful
were watching me! I'll go home, Mr. Helmer.".
"It will be much the safest thing to do: I fear you have indeed caught
cold," replied Tom, rejoiced at the chance of accompanying her. "I
shall be delighted to see you safe."
"There is not the least occasion for that, thank you," answered Letty.
"I have an old servant of my aunt's with me--somewhere about the place.
The storm is quite over now: I will go and find her."
Tom made no objection, but helped her down the dark stair, hoping,
however, the servant might not be found.
As they went, Letty seemed to herself to be walking in some old dream
of change and desertion. The tower was empty as a monument, not a trace
of the crowd left, which a few minutes before had thronged it. The wind
had risen in earnest now, and was rushing about, like a cold wild
ghost, through every cranny of the desolate place. Had Letty, when she
reached the bottom of the stairs, found herself on the rocks of the
seashore, with the waves dashing up against them, she would only have
said to herself, "I knew I was in a dream!" But the wind having blown
away the hail-cloud, the stars were again shining down into the hall.
One or two forlorn-looking searchers were still there; the rest had
scattered like the gnats. A few were already at home; some were
harnessing their horses to go, nor would wait for the man in the moon
to light his lantern; some were already trudging on foot through the
dark. Hesper and Miss Yolland were talking to two or three friends in
the drawing-room; Lady Margaret was in her boudoir, and Mr. Mortimer
smoking a cigar in his study.
Nowhere could Letty find Susan. She was in the farmer's kitchen behind.
Tom suspected as much, but was far from hinting the possibility. Letty
found her cloak, which she had left in the hall, soaked with rain, and
thought it prudent to go home at once, nor prosecute her search for
Susan further. She accepted, therefore, Tom's renewed offer of his
company.
They were just leaving the hall, when a thought came to Letty: the moon
suddenly appearing above the horizon had put it in her head.
"Oh," she cried, "I know quite a short way home!" and, without waiting
any response from her companion, she turned, and led him in an opposite
direction, round, namely, by the back of the court, into a field. There
she made for a huge oak, which gloomed in the moonlight by the sunk
fence parting the grounds. In the slow strength of its growth, by the
rounding of its bole, and the spreading of its roots, it had so rent
and crumbled the wall as to make through it a little ravine, leading to
the top of the ha-ha. When they reached it, before even Tom saw it,
Letty turned from him, and was up in a moment. At the top she turned to
bid him good night, but there he was, close behind her, insisting on
seeing her safe to the house.
"Is this the way you always come?" asked Tom.
"I never was on Durnmelling land before," answered Letty.
"How did you find the short-cut, then?" he asked. "It certainly does
not look as if it were much used."
"Of course not," replied Letty. "There is no communication between
Durnmelling and Thornwick now. It was all ours once, though, Cousin
Godfrey says. Did you notice how the great oak sends its biggest arm
over our field?"
"Yes."
"Well, I often sit there under it, when I want to learn my lesson, and
can't rest in the house; and that's how I know of the crack in the
ha-ha."
She said it in absolute innocence, but Tom laid it up in his mind.
"Are you at lessons still?" he said. "Have you a governess?"
"No," she answered, in a tone of amusement. "But Cousin Godfrey teaches
me many things."
This made Tom thoughtful; and little more had been said, when they
reached the gate of the yard behind the house, and she would not let
him go a step farther.