Strong as rocks were its fortified outer walls; and in many parts its interior walls were three feet thick. This was the case with the old "Debtors' Prison," lying at the older wing's extreme end, and forming the angle connecting it with the new wing, which dated only from the time of Queen Elizabeth. In this debtors' prison Master Rumbold, as we have seen, now stored his malt. The wall separating Maudlin Sweetapple's little sleeping chamber from the more spacious one occupied by Ruth, was of at least equal strength and solidity with the walls of this storing room; but while in the one case the surface showed the bare hewn stone, polished only by the hand of time, panellings carved in many a quaint device, and reaching half-way to the flat oak-timbered ceiling, lined the "Lady's Bower," as time beyond all count, Ruth's room had been called.
Ruth's bower.
Here she held sway undisputed; spending in it hours of her lonely days when her father was absent from home, as of late she noted he so frequently had been. So she sat strumming on the broken and half-stringless virginal, or spelling out the crabbed type of several worm-eaten books, chiefly poems—long winded, wordy things enough. Still she cared for them in a fashion; and one volume, whose title-page set forth that its contents were from the pen of one William Shakespeare, a play-actor, took her mightily. Line after line she would tell you of many of the long speeches and odd sayings it contained; though she kept her studies to herself, for Maudlin had not very much of a turn for book-learning, and Master Rumbold always said, if it had not been for the Bible, and that godly person Mr. Foxe's Book of Martyrs, child of his should not have been taught to read at all. Then as to writing, he was near never speaking one word more to Madam Lee after one fine day when he made the frightful discovery that she had been teaching the little girl so successfully to make pot-hooks and hangers, that long before Lawrence was out of the alphabet Ruth had been writing on her own responsibility, and in unmistakeable fair round hand: "Fear God. Honour the King." Wroth indeed was Master Rumbold over the "fine surprise" thus prepared for him by instructress and pupil. The knowledge, however, could not be unlearned; and such a penwoman as Ruth remained till the day of her death you might go a hundred miles and not find.
And so with her wheel and her tapestry-frame for her father's company, and her graver accomplishments for the solitude of the Lady's Bower, Ruth contrived to live as happily as any princess. Solitude is, however, no term to connect with the spot where the birds sang their sweet music the livelong day amid the beechen branches which swept the panes of the old painted oriel window, and the wind sighed gently in the long summer evenings through the ivy trails and creepers which Ruth trained about its carved stone-cornices, or in his rougher moods snarled and blustered, like the tyrant he can be, round the ancient house. But in Ruth's eyes the broad look-out from that window always wore a beauty, and with all her fifteen years' experience she had not been able to determine whether that expanse of lowly undulating meadow-land and winding waters looked loveliest in its spring and summer garb of green, tented over with cloudless blue, or in autumn's grays and russets, or clad in its pure white winter snow robe; nor even whether golden sunlight, or the moon's silvery sheen, as to-night she stood gazing on it, pleased her best.
Rumbold's chamber.
Master Rumbold himself slept on the ground-storey, in a room immediately beneath his stored malt-sacks. This chamber, tradition said, contained in its stone flooring a trap-door opening upon a ladder which conducted into the fearsome dungeons underground, where prisoners used to be thrust, bidding hope and the blessed air and daylight farewell for ever. The subject was, however, one rarely touched upon in the maltster's presence by those who best knew his humours; for he would either smile in bitter contempt, or—and indeed that more generally happened—frown angrily; and, let his mood be the one or the other, always turned the conversation at last with some half-uttered remark that so might it, or might it not be, and that he had simply occupied the room ever since he had been master of the place, because it commanded a watch on both wings of the house. The quaintly timbered walls of the new wing contained the malting-house; while its gabled roof stretching up stiff as cat's ears, afforded sleeping accommodation for the domestic servants and the few workpeople living on the premises.
The malting house.
The handsome guest-chamber, or keeping-room as it was called, was not reserved merely for high days and holidays, for Richard Rumbold had no liking for such vain settings apart of time; but was used as the general sitting-room, and extended from end to end of the ground-storey. Its three windows fronted the great square smooth-shaven grass-plot, which by tradition and courtesy was called "the pleasaunce." In the middle stood one solemn big yew-tree, clipped, beehive-shape, and surmounted by a leafy monstrosity which Maudlin said was meant for a peacock. Never a flower, however, save the poor little buttercups and daisies, whose heads were chopped off in a twinkling, if they did venture to peer forth, ever starred that dreary pleasaunce, for the maltster said he had other uses for his money than to be wasting it on gaudy nonsenses like flowers.
But returning now to the old wing, let us peep in for a moment on old Adam Lockit, the gatehouse keeper, in his sanctum deep hidden in the recesses of the vaulted archway piercing the tower, and giving on its outer side upon the drawbridge, which was still let down at dawn, and drawn up at sunset, by the massive old iron chains working through the wall.
Barnaby Diggles.