Having said thus much, I shall add no more; for, in submitting the work to you, though I know I shall have an acute judge, yet I shall have a kind one; and trusting that you will, at all events, derive some amusement from these pages, I will only further beg you to believe me,
My dear Sir,
Your most faithful servant,
G. P. R. JAMES.
The Oaks, near Walmer, Kent,
1st December, 1843.
ARABELLA STUART.
[CHAPTER I.]
There was a small, old-fashioned, red brick house, situated just upon the verge of Cambridgeshire, not in the least peculiar in its aspect, and yet deserving a description. The reader shall know why, before we have done. As you came along the road from London you descended a gentle hill, not very long, and yet long enough to form, with an opposite rise, one of those sweet, calm valleys which are peculiarly characteristic of the greater part of this country. When you were at the top of the hill, in looking down over some hedge-rows and green fields, the first thing your eye lighted upon in the bottom of the dale was a quick-running stream, which seemed to have a peculiar art of catching the sunshine wherever it was to be found. Its course, though almost as rapid as if it had come down from a mountain,--having had, it is true, a pretty sharp descent about a mile to the westward,--was nevertheless, at this spot, directed through soft green meadows, and between flat and even banks. The water was of some depth also, not less in general than from five to six feet, though not in most places above four or five yards in width. Where it crossed the road, however, there being no bridge, and the highway somewhat raised, it spread itself out into a good broad shallow stream, which, in the deepest part, only washed your horse's feet a little above the pastern.
Having carried it thus far, reader, we will leave it, without pursuing its course on towards the sea, which it reached somehow, and somewhere, by ways and through channels with which we have nothing to do.
The eye of the traveller, however, on the London road, in tracing this stream farther up, came upon a clump of tall old trees disencumbered of all brushwood, spreading wide at the top, but ungarnished by boughs or green leaves below, and affording habitation to a multitude of busy rooks, whose inharmonious voices--when joined together in full chorus, and heard from a distance--formed a peculiar kind of melody, connecting itself with many memories in the hearts of almost every one, and rousing soft and pensive imaginations from its intimate connexion with those country scenes, and calm pleasures, amongst which must lie all man's sweetest associations. From the top of the hill on which we have placed ourselves, a number of chimney tops, somewhat quaint and fantastic in their forms, appeared to be actually rising from the very heart of the rookery; but if you stopped to let your horse drink at the stream in the bottom of the valley, and looked up its course to the left, you perceived that the house to which those chimneys belonged, lay at the distance of more than two hundred yards from the trees, and had a large garden with a long terrace, and a low wall between it and them.