“Yes, now, no doubt. But I will tell you this, that as soon as all obstacles to the marriage were removed, and Gerrard on his way from the East, Percival left Germany and reached Lausanne, to be seized with a brain fever, which threatened his life, and from the effects of which it was long before he recovered. But answer me candidly one question, Do you think it is too late in life for him to marry yet?”
Poor Lady Gertrude asked this question in so pleading a tone of voice, that I found it very difficult to answer with the candour which was insisted on as the condition of my reply. At length I said, bravely—
“My dear Lady Gertrude, if a man hard upon sixty chooses to marry, it becomes all his true friends to make the best of it, and say that he has done a wise thing. But if asked beforehand whether it be not too late in life for such an experiment, a true friend must answer, ‘Yes.’”
“Yet there have been very happy marriages with great disparity of years,” said Lady Gertrude, musingly, “and Percival is very young for his age.”
“Excellent after-reflections, if he do marry. But is he not very happy as he is? I know not why, but you all seem to conspire against his being happy in his own way. One of you wants him to turn politician, another to turn Benedict. For my part, the older I grow, the more convinced I am of the truth of one maxim—whether for public life or for private—‘Leave well alone.’”
By this time we had arrived into the heart of a forest that realised one’s dreams of Ardennes; a young man would have looked round for a Rosalind, a moralising sage for a Jacques. Many a green vista was cut through the mass of summer foliage, and in full view before us stretched a large wild lake; its sides, here and there, clothed with dipping trees or clustered brushwood. On the opposite margin, to which, in a neck of the lake, a rustic bridge gave access, there was a long and picturesque building, in the style of those quaint constructions of white plaster and black oak beams and rafters, which are still seen in Cheshire, but with ruder reliefs of logwood pilasters and balconies; a charming, old-fashioned garden stretched before it, rich in the genuine English flowers of the Elizabethan day; and scattered round, on inviting spots, were lively-coloured tents and awnings. The heron rose alarmed from the reeds as we drew near the water; but the swans, as if greeting the arrival of familiar friends, sailed slowly towards us. Tracey had already arrived at the cottage, and we saw him dismounting at the door, and talking to an old couple who came out to meet and welcome him.
“I believe,” said Lady Gertrude, “that Percival’s secret reason for building that cottage was to place in it these two old servants from Tracey Court. They had known him there when he was a boy, and are so attached to him that they implored him to let them serve him wherever he resided. But they were too old and too opinionated to suit our moderate establishment, which does not admit of supernumeraries, so he suddenly found out that it would be very pleasant to have a forest lodge for the heats of summer, built that house, and placed them in it. The old woman, who was housekeeper at Tracey Court, is, however, as I hope you will acknowledge, a very good cook on these holiday occasions; and her husband, who was butler there, is so proud and so happy to wait on us, that——. But no doubt you understand how young it makes us old folks feel, to see those who remember us in our youth, and to whom we are still young.”
Our party now assembled in front of the forest lodge, and the grooms took back the ponies, with orders to return before nightfall. Tracey carried me over the lodge, while Henry Thornhill and the Painter busied themselves with a small sailing vessel which rode at anchor in a tiny bay.
This rustic habitation was one for which two lovers might have sighed. Its furniture very simple, but picturesquely arranged, with some of those genuine relics of the Elizabethan age, or perhaps rather that of James I., which are now rarely found, though their Dutch imitations are in every curiosity-shop. As in the house we had left there was everywhere impressive the sentiment of the classic taste, so here all expressed the sentiment of that day in our own history which we associate with the poets, who are our most beloved classics. It was difficult, when one looked round, to suppose that the house could have been built and furnished by a living contemporary; it seemed a place in which Milton might have lodged when he wrote the ‘Lycidas,’ or Izaak Walton and Cotton have sought shelter in the troubled days of the Civil War, with a sigh of poetic regret as they looked around, for the yet earlier age when Sidney escaped from courts to meditate the romance of ‘Arcadia.’
“I have long thought,” said Tracey, “that if we studied the secrets of our English climate a little more carefully than most of us do, we could find, within a very small range, varieties of climate which might allow us to dispense with many a long journey. For instance, do you not observe how much cooler and fresher the atmosphere is here than in the villa yonder, though it is but five miles distant? Here, not only the sun is broken by the forest-trees, but the ground is much more elevated than it is yonder. We get the bracing air of the northern hills, to which I have opened the woods, and here, in the hot relaxing days of summer, I often come for days or weeks together. The lodge is not large enough to admit more than two, or at most three other visitors, and therefore it is only very intimate friends whom I can invite. But I always look forward to a fortnight or so here, as a time to be marked with the whitest chalk, and begin to talk of it as soon as the earliest nightingale is heard. Again, on the other extremity of my property, by the sea-side, I have made my winter residence, my Tarentum, my Naples, my Nice. There the aspect is due south—cliffs, ranged in semicircle, form an artificial screen from the winds and frosts. The cottage I have built there is a sun-trap. At Christmas I breakfast in a bower of geraniums, and walk by hedgerows of fuchsia and myrtle. All this is part of my philosophical plan, on settling down for life—viz., to collect all the enjoyments this life can give me into the smallest possible compass. Before you go, you must see my winter retreat. I should like to prove to you how many climates, with a little heed, an Englishman may find within a limit of twenty miles. I had thought of giving Bellevue (my sea-side cottage) to the Thornhills, and delighted in the thought of becoming their guest in the winter, for aunt. Gertrude does not fancy the place as I do, and wherever I go cannot live quite alone, nor quite without that humanising effect of drawing-room scenery, which the play-writers call ‘petticoat interest.’ But when a man allows himself to be selfish, he deserves to be punished. Henry Thornhill disdains Bellevue and comfort, and insists on misery and bivouacs.”