So saying, L—— started from his seat just as Celia entered, followed by her little handmaiden (an orphan relation of her husband’s, the adopted child of the worthy couple), and placed on the shining round table a collation of dairy luxuries and fresh-gathered strawberries, hastily arranged with a degree of simple good taste, too nearly approaching elegance to have been acquired by one accustomed only to provide for poor men’s tables.
Our kind hostess was in no present mood “gaily to press and smile,” but she did press us to partake of her rustic dainties, with such earnest yet modest importunity, that it would have been worse than churlish to have slighted her invitation, if even my parched and thirsty palate had not made the sight of the creaming milk-bowl, and a second of clear whey, irresistibly tempting. While I did ample justice to the merits of those refreshing fluids, and my friend partook more sparingly, he endeavoured to persuade Hallings from accompanying us, as the old man prepared to do, to a scene, the recollection of which affected him so painfully. But the remonstrance was fruitless.
“I have not taken my own last look, sir,” was the touching and unanswerable reply; “and that I was minded, please God, to take, when all the workmen had left the place, and I could stand and look my fill at the crumbling wall, without being distracted by their noises, or scoffed at belike for giving way to an old man’s weakness. But my master’s friend will make allowance for his old servant, and it will do me good to go with you, sir.”
We both felt that he was right; that, as he expressed it, it would do him good to take that “last look,” accompanied by one who could so fully sympathise in all his feelings, and to whom he could pour out his full heart with the garrulous simplicity of age, and of a sorrow, heart-seated truly, but not “too deep for tears.” So he was allowed to secure our steeds in an adjoining cowshed, while we talked with Celia on the subject that day uppermost in her thoughts also; and having calculated with her that the nearly full moon would be up by our return, to light us on our homeward way, we left her standing on the threshold of the back door of her cottage, and followed her husband down the garden path which opened into a small orchard (a portion of his little property), and led through it to a narrow stile, over which we passed into some beautiful meadows, appertaining, as Hallings informed me, to the Devereux Hall estate, three of them only intervening between his own little territory and the old mansion-house, or rather the site where it had stood. “Ay,” continued the old man, in a low under-tone, half communing with himself, and half addressing me,—“Ay, so it is—to think what changes I have lived to see! The Hall down in the dust before its time, and that hard man’s house raised (as one may say) upon its ruins! Blessed be the kind master who provided for his old servants’ age, and secured to them the shelter of their humble roof-tree, before misfortune fell on his own grey hairs, and would have made him houseless at fourscore years and upward, had he lived a few weeks longer! But—but—God is merciful!——” The old man devoutly aspirated after the abrupt pause, accompanied with a sort of inward shudder, which preceded those pious words; and he spoke no more during the remainder of our walk.
A shade of peculiar solemnity passed over my friend’s countenance, as Hallings concluded his brief soliloquy, and both of them became so profoundly silent, sympathetically affected as it seemed by the same shuddering recollections, that the infection partly extended itself to me, ignorant as I was of the particular circumstances of their painful retrospect, and the words died on my lips as I was about to inquire Hallings’ meaning in alluding to the “hard man, whose house had been raised on the ruins of his master’s.” I could not for worlds have broken into the sacredness of their silent thoughts; so, without further interchange of words, we quietly pursued our pleasant path, till it brought us to a boundary of thick hazel copse, across a stile, and over a rustic bridge, which spanned a little trout-stream just glancing between the boughs of over-arching alders, to a green door in a high holly hedge. While Hallings stept before us to undo the temporary fastening with which the workmen had secured it for the night, my friend, aroused from his fit of abstraction, said, pointing to the hedge, “I remember the time when that verdant wall, now straggling into wild luxuriance, was as trimly kept as were those of Sayes Court, before the barbarous sport of Evelyn’s imperial guest destroyed his labour of years. Neglect is making progress here, destructive as that royal havoc, though more gradual.”
Our venerable conductor having unfastened the door while L—— was speaking, we passed into a square enclosure, or rather area; for though still bounded on three sides by the noble evergreen hedge, it was open on the fourth to a dreary site of demolished walls and heaps of rubbish, in place of what had been the ancient mansion of the Devereuxs. The small garden (for such it was, though now a trampled field of desolation) had been called more especially Mr Devereux’s garden. The glass-door of his library, and its large bay-window, as well as that of his bed-chamber above, had opened into it, and in this small secluded but sunny and cheerful spot it was that the old man had loved best to spend his solitary and contemplative hours.
Under the hedge on the side we had entered, had stood a range of bee-hives, the ruins of which were still remaining, though little more than heaps of mildewing thatch, and long deserted by the industrious colonies, to watch whose labours had been among the innocent pleasures of Mr Devereux; and Hallings pointed out some fragments of green trellis-work, in the angle of the holly wall, which had formed part of the old man’s favourite arbour, where he would sit for hours with his book, or enjoying the ceaseless humming of the bees, as they gathered in their luscious harvest from the herbs and flowers he had collected in that quarter of the garden for their delight and sustenance.
“And they knew my master, sir,” said Hallings, turning to me, and appealing to L—— to confirm the truth of his assertion—“They knew my master, and, poor small creatures as they were, must have loved him too in their way, as every living thing did; for they used to buzz all round him as he sat there, and often pitch upon him, even upon his hands or head, and never one was known to sting him, vengeful as they were if strangers made too free near their hives, or among the flower-beds my master used to call their pleasure-grounds.”
“What has become of old Ralph and the tortoise, Hallings?” asked L——, as he stopt to take a melancholy survey of the altered scene. “The gold-fish, of course, have been long destroyed, for I see the little basin with its small fountain is quite choked up with dead leaves and rubbish.”
“Mr Heneage Devereux took out the gold-fish, sir, the week after my master’s death,” replied the old butler; “but the tortoise had buried himself for the winter; and when he crawled out the spring afterwards, and took to his old haunt in the basin, one would have supposed he found out the change that had taken place, for the creature was quite restless; and I often found him out of the water, and making his way about the garden, as if in search of something; and for a long, long time, old Ralph and he—for Ralph is living, sir, and you will see him presently—he and the old raven were the only living creatures, beside the birds, that did not desert the poor old place—except myself indeed. I could never keep away from it a whole day together, and I used to come here to feed old Ralph too; for it was long before we could lure him to the cottage for his food, and now he is almost always here, and hides himself for the most part in the great bay-tree there in the corner, where part of the north gable is still standing.”