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PART I.
In one of those sweet glens, half pastoral half sylvan, which may be found in hundreds channelling the steep sides of the moorland hills, and sending down the tribute of their pure limestone springs to the broad rapid rivers which fertilize no less than they adorn the lovely vales of Western Yorkshire, there may be seen to this day the ruins of an old dwelling-house, situate on a spot so picturesque, so wild, and yet so soft in its romantic features, that they would well repay the traveller for a brief halt, who, but too often, hurries onward in search of more remote yet certainly not greater beauties. The gorge, within the mouth of which the venerable pile is seated, opens into the broader valley from the north-eastern side, enjoying the full light and warmth of the southern sunshine; and, although very narrow at its origin, where its small crystal rivulet springs up from the lonely well-head, fringed by a few low shrubs of birch and alder, expands here, at its mouth, into a pretty amphitheatre or basin of a few acres circuit. A wild and feathery coppice of oak, and birch, and hazel, with here and there a mountain ash, showing its bright red berries through the rich foliage, clothes all the lower part of the surrounding slopes; while, far above, the seamed and shattered faces of the gray, slaty limestone rise up like artificial walls, their summits crowned with the fair purple heather, and every nook and cranny in their sides crowded with odorous wild flowers. Within the circuit of these natural limits, sheltering it from every wind of heaven, except the gentle south, the turf lies smooth and even as if it were a cultured lawn; while a few rare exotic shrubs, now all run out of shape, and bare, and straggling, indicate even yet the time when it was a fair shrubbery, tended by gentle hands, and visited by young and lovely beings, now cold in their untimely sepulchres. The streamlet, which comes gushing down the glen with its clear, copious flow, boiling and murmuring about the large gray boulders which everywhere obstruct its channels, making a thousand mimic cataracts, and wakening ever a wild, mirthful music, sweeps here quite close to the foot of the eastern cliff, the feathery branches of the oakwood dipping their foliage in its eddies, and then, just as it issues forth into the open champaine, wheels round in a half circle, completely fanning the little amphitheatre above, except at one point hard beneath the opposite hill face, where a small winding horse track, engrossing the whole space between the streamlet and the limestone rock, gives access to the lone demesne. A small green hillock, sloping down gently to the southward, fills the embracing arms of the bright brook, around the northern base of which is scattered a little grove of the most magnificent and noblest sycamores that I have ever seen; but on the other side, which yet retains its pristine character of a smooth open lawn, there are no obstacles to the view over the wide valley, except three old gnarled thorn bushes, uncommon from their size and the dense luxuriance of their matted greenery. It was upon the summit of this little knoll that the old homestead stood, whose massive ruins of red freestone, all overgrown with briers, and tall rank grass and dock leaves, deface the spot which they adorned of old; and, when it was erect in all its fair proportions, the scene which it overlooked, and its own natural attractions, rendered it one of the loveliest residences in all the north of England—the wide, rich, gentle valley, all meadow land or pasture, without one brown ploughed field to mar its velvet green; the tall, thick hawthorn hedges, with their long lines of hedgerow timber, oak, ash and elm, waving above the smooth enclosures; the broad, clear, tranquil river flashing out like a silver mirror through the green foliage; the scattered farm-houses, each nestled as it were among its sheltering orchards; the village spire shooting up from the clump of giant elms which over-shadow the old grave-yard; the steep, long slope on the other side of the vale, or strath, as it would be called in Scotland, all mapped out to the eye, with its green fences and wide hanging woods; and, far beyond, the rounded summits of the huge moorland hills, ridge above ridge, purple, and grand, and massive, but less and less distinct as they recede from the eye, and melt away at last into the far blue distance—such was the picture which its windows overlooked of old, and which still laughs as gaily in the sunshine around its mouldering walls and lonely hearth-stone.
But if it is fair now, and lovely, what was it as it showed in the good old days of King Charles, before the iron hand of civil war had pressed so heavily on England? The grove of sycamores stood there, as they stand now, in the prime and luxuriance of their sylvan manhood; for they are waxing now aged and somewhat gray and stag-horned; and the thorn bushes sheltered, as they do now, whole choirs of thrushes and blackbirds, but all the turf beneath the scattered trees and on the sunny slope was shorn, and rolled, and watered, that it was smooth and even, and far softer than the most costly carpet that ever wooed the step of Persian beauty. The Hall was a square building, not very large, of the old Elizabethan style, with two irregular additions, wings, as they might be called, of the same architecture, though of a later period, and its deep-embayed oriel windows, with their fantastic mullions of carved freestone, its tall quaint chimneys, and its low porch, with overhanging canopy and clustered columns, rendered it an object singularly picturesque and striking. The little green within the gorge of the upper glen, which is so wildly beautiful in its present situation, left as it is to the unaided hand of nature, was then a perfect paradise; for an exquisite taste had superintended its conversion into a sort of untrained garden; an eye well used to note effects had marked its natural capabilities, and, adding artificial beauties, had never trenched upon the character of the spot by anything incongruous or startling. Rare plants, rich-flowering shrubs, and scented herbs were indeed scattered with a lavish hand about its precincts, but were so scattered that they seemed the genuine productions of the soil; the Spanish cistus had been taught to carpet the wild crags in conjunction with the native thyme and heather; the arbutus and laurestinus had been brought from afar to vie with the mountain ash and holly; the clematis and the sweet scented vine blended their tendrils with the rich English honeysuckle and the luxuriant ivy; rare lotuses might be seen floating with their azure colored cups and broad green leaves upon the glassy basins, into which the mountain streamlet had been taught to expand, among the white wild water lilies and the bright yellow clusters of the marsh marigold; roses of every hue and scent, from the dark crimson of Damascus to the pale blush of soft Provence, grew side by side with the wild wood-brier and the eglantine, and many a rustic seat, of mossy stone or roots and unbarked branches, invited the loitering visiter in every shadowy angle.
There was no spot in all the north of England whereon the winter frowned so lightly as on those sheltered precincts—there was no spot whereon spring smiled so early, and with so bright an aspect—wherein the summer so long lingered, pouring her gorgeous flowers, rich with her spicy breath, into the very lap of autumn. It was, indeed, a sweet spot, and as happy as it was sweet and beautiful, before the curse of civil war was poured upon the groaning land, with its dread train of foul and fiendish ministers; and yet it was not war, nor any of its direct consequences, that turned that happy home into a ruin and a desolation. It was not war—except the struggles of the human heart—the conflict of the fierce and turbulent passions—the strife of principles, of motives, of desires, within the secret soul, maybe called war, as, indeed, they might, and that with no figurative tongue, for they are surely the hottest, the most devastating, the most fatal of all that bear that ominous and cruel appellation.
Such was the aspect then of Ingleborough Hall, at the period when it was perhaps the most beautiful; and when, as is but too often the case, its beauties were on the very point of being brought to a close forever. The family which owned the manor, for the possessions attached to the old homestead were large, and the authority attached to them extended over a large part of Upper Wharfdale, was one of those old English races which, though not noble in the literal sense of the word, are yet so ancient, and so indissolubly connected with the soil, that they may justly be comprised among the aristocracy of the land. The name was Saxon, and it was generally believed—and probably with truth—that the date of the name, and of its connection with that estate, was at the least coeval with the conquest. To what circumstances it was owing that the Hawkwoods, for such was the time-honored appellation of the race, had retained possession of their fair demesne when all the land was allotted out to feudal barons and fat priests, can never now be ascertained; nor does it indeed signify; yet that it was to some honorable cause, some service rendered, or some high exploit, may be fairly presumed from the fact that the mitred potentate of Bolton Abbey, who levied his tythes far and near throughout those fertile valleys, had no claims on the fruits of Ingleborough. During the ages that had passed since the advent of the Norman William, the Hawkwoods had never lacked male representatives to sustain the dignity of their race; and gallantly had they sustained it; for in full many a lay and legend, aye! and in grave, cold history itself, the name of Hawkwood might be found side by side with the more sonorous appellations of the Norman feudatories, the Ardens, and Maulevers, and Vavasours, which fill the chronicles of border warfare. At the period of which we write, however, the family had no male scion—the last male heir, Ralph Hawkwood, had died some years before, full of years and of domestic honors—a zealous sportsman, a loyal subject, a kind landlord, a good friend—his lot had fallen in quiet times and pleasant places, and he lived happily, and died in the arms of his family, at peace with all men. His wife, a calm and placid dame, who had, in her young days, been the beauty of the shire, survived him, and spent her whole time, as she devoted her whole mind and spirit, in educating the two daughters, joint heiresses of the old manor-houses, who were left by their father’s death, two bright-eyed fair-haired prattlers, dependent for protection on the strong love but frail support of their widowed mother.
Years passed away, and with their flight the two fair children were matured into two sweet and lovely women; yet the same fleeting suns which brought to them complete and perfect youth were fraught to others with decay, and all the carking cares, and querulous ailments of old age. The mother, who had watched with keen solicitude over their budding infancy, over the promise of their lovely childhood, lived indeed, but lived not to see or understand the full accomplishment of that bright promise. Even before the elder girl had reached the dawn of womanhood, palsy had shaken the enfeebled limbs, and its accustomed follower—mental debility—had, in no small degree, impaired the intellect of her surviving parent; but long before her sister had reached her own maturity, the limbs were helplessly immovable, the mind was wholly clouded and estranged. It was not now the wandering and uncertain darkness that flits across the veiled horizon of the mind alternately with vivid gleams, flashes of memory and intellect, brighter perhaps than ever visited the spirit until its partial aberrations had jarred its vital principle—it was that deep and utter torpor, blanker than sleep and duller, for no dreams seem to mingle with its day-long lethargy—that absolute paralysis of all the faculties of soul and body, which is so beautifully painted by the great Roman satirist, as the
“omnii
Membrorum damno major dementia, quæ nec
Homina servorum, nec vultum agnoscit amici