"But this is a perfect bower, my dear uncle! Depend on it, it was the bower-chamber of the Dames de Caxton—heaven rest them!"
"No," said my uncle, gravely; "I suspect it must have been the chaplain's room, for the chapel was to the right of you. An earlier chapel, indeed, formerly existed in the keep tower—for, indeed, it is scarcely a true keep without chapel, well, and hall. I can show you part of the roof of the first, and the two last are entire; the well is very curious, formed in the substance of the wall at one angle of the hall. In Charles the First's time, our ancestor lowered his only son down in a bucket, and kept him there six hours, while a Malignant mob was storming the tower. I need not say that our ancestor himself scorned to hide from such a rabble, for he was a grown man. The boy lived to be a sad spendthrift, and used the well for cooling his wine. He drank up a great many good acres."
"I should scratch him out of the pedigree, if I were you. But, pray, have you not discovered the proper chamber of that great Sir William, about whom my father is so shamefully sceptical?"
"To tell you a secret," answered the Captain, giving me a sly poke in the ribs, "I have put your father into it! There are the initial letters W. C. let into the cusp of the York rose, and the date, three years before the battle of Bosworth, over the chimneypiece."
I could not help joining my uncle's grim low laugh at this characteristic pleasantry; and after I had complimented him on so judicious a mode of proving his point, I asked him how he could possibly have contrived to fit up the ruin so well, especially as he had scarcely visited it since his purchase.
"Why," said he, "about twelve years ago, that poor fellow you now see as my servant, and who is gardener, bailiff, seneschal, butler, and anything else you can put him to, was sent out of the army on the invalid list. So I placed him here; and as he is a capital carpenter, and has had a very fair education, I told him what I wanted, and put by a small sum every year for repairs and furnishing. It is astonishing how little it cost me, for Bolt, poor fellow, (that is his name,) caught the right spirit of the thing, and most of the furniture, (which you see is ancient and suitable,) he picked up at different cottages and farmhouses in the neighbourhood. As it is, however, we have plenty more rooms here and there—only, of late," continued my uncle, slightly changing colour, "I had no money to spare. But come," he resumed, with an evident effort—"come and see my barrack: it is on the other side of the hall, and made out of what no doubt were the butteries."
We reached the yard, and found the fly-coach had just crawled to the door. My father's head was buried deep in the vehicle,—he was gathering up his packages, and sending out, oracle-like, various muttered objurgations and anathemas upon Mrs Primmins and her vacuum; which Mrs Primmins, standing by, and making a lap with her apron to receive the packages and anathemas simultaneously, bore with the mildness of an angel, lifting up her eyes to heaven and murmuring something about "poor old bones." Though, as for Mrs Primmins's bones, they had been myths these twenty years, and you might as soon have found a Plesiosaurus in the fat lands of Romney Marsh as a bone amidst those layers of flesh in which my poor father thought he had so carefully cottoned up his Cardan.
Leaving these parties to adjust matters between them, we stepped under the low doorway, and entered Rowland's room. Oh, certainly Bolt had caught the spirit of the thing!—certainly he had penetrated down even to the very pathos that lay within the deeps of Roland's character. Buffon says "the style is the man;" there, the room was the man. That nameless, inexpressible, soldier-like, methodical neatness which belonged to Roland—that was the first thing that struck one—that was the general character of the whole. Then, in details, there, in stout oak shelves, were the books on which my father loved to jest his more imaginative brother,—there they were, Froissart, Barante, Joinville, the Mort d'Arthur, Amadis of Gaul, Spenser's Fairy Queen, a noble copy of Strutt's Horda, Mallet's Northern Antiquities, Percy's Reliques, Pope's Homer, books on gunnery, archery, hawking, fortification—old chivalry and modern war together cheek by jowl.
Old chivalry and modern war!—look to that tilting helmet with the tall Caxton crest, and look to that trophy near it, a French cuirass—and that old banner (a knight's pennon) surmounting those crossed bayonets. And over the chimneypiece there—bright, clean, and, I warrant you, dusted daily—are Roland's own sword, his holsters, and pistols, yea, the saddle, pierced and lacerated, from which he had reeled when that leg——I gasped—I felt it all at a glance, and I stole softly to the spot, and, had Roland not been there, I could have kissed that sword as reverently as if it had been a Bayard's or a Sidney's.
My uncle was too modest to guess my emotion; he rather thought I had turned my face to conceal a smile at his vanity, and said, in a deprecating tone of apology—"It was all Bolt's doing, foolish fellow."