As he spoke, we coasted leisurely along the hedge-side walk, as carefully (though almost unconsciously) avoiding to tread the beds it skirted, as if they were still filled with choice flowers, or fragrant and aromatic herbs, or matted hoops, or hand-glasses guarding the rarer or tenderer plants, bulbs, and auriculas, once (L—— observed) the pride of that small garden. The forms of those fair flower-knots were still discernible from their edgings of thrift, box, daisy, London pride, now grown, however, into perfect hedges, where still untrampled, or into ragged bushes, still indicating the once clipt line of geometrical exactness, as each bed radiated to a centre, where lay the little basin with its fairy fountain before alluded to. Some large stone flower-pots, green and discoloured with damp and weather-stains, were still standing round it in mockery of decoration. From two or three shot up a luxuriant growth of common weeds; in one, a beautiful foxglove, exulting as it were in plebeian pride and brilliancy over its aristocratical neighbour in an adjoining vase, a delicate and sickly Persian lilac, whose pensile sprays drooped languidly even under their scanty growth of yellow leaves and pale and stunted blossoms. Here and there, within the flower-knots, bloomed a tuft of double white narcissus, struggling through grass and matted vegetation. Some tall fris’s, white lilies, and other hardy flowers, had also shot up into beauty or fair promise; but the elegant moss-rose drooped to the earth, as if in sorrow, and its half-blighted buds lay cankering on the moss-grown path. The scene, desolate as it was, would still have been one of beauty in decay, had the work of destruction been wrought by “Time’s defacing fingers” only; but man’s more desecrating touch was too perceptible there; and, independently of peculiar circumstances and associations, there is a wide difference between the pleasing melancholy which loves to meditate among ivied and moss-grown ruins, and that painful feeling with which we contemplate the newness of untimely desolation. It was a ghastly sight even to a stranger’s eye, that of the gaping void left along one entire side of the little garden by the demolition of the old mansion; and the dreary effect of that blank exposure was not a little heightened by the contrasting incongruity of the prospect beyond, where the great gateway to what had been the principal entrance-court stood perfectly isolated and entire. The beautiful gate of iron open work closed between the massy side-pillars, on each of which the lion couchant of the Devereuxs still kept watch and ward as proudly as when that gate had unclosed in the last reign of the Tudors to admit a royal visitant and her courtly train.
On either side, the ballustraded wall was wholly removed, so that the eye ranged on, unimpeded but by the solitary gateway, down a triple avenue of magnificent elms, in whose tall tops the dark people, who from generation to generation had built there unmolested, were fast assembling for the night; the mingled sounds of their hoarse cawing, and the rustling of innumerable wings, adding in no slight degree to the impressive sadness of that scene and hour.
We were now standing on the lime and brick-strewn site of what (L—— informed me) had been the Library. All around us, the vaults and cellarage below were laid open to view through the bare rafters, from whence the flooring and pavement had been removed; but the boards were not yet torn up from that one small spot—so small in its unwalled exposure, which had been so recently an apartment of noble dimensions, furnished with the collected wisdom of successive ages! At one end it was of those few square yards of flooring, that a part of the gable, including a stack of chimneys, was still standing. We stood on the hearthstone of what had been the Library fireplace; and high above us, in the naked wall, yawned a corresponding aperture, belonging to the upper chamber, which had been Mr Devereux’s bedroom, the flooring of which had been rent away with the side and partition walls, all but a small portion which hung slanting from a few rafters still adhering to the remaining corner of the end gable. The eyes of my companions seemed drawn by sympathetic impulse towards that forlorn remnant; and, calling to mind the words of Hallings, I was at no loss to account for the deep and sorrowful interest with which they dwelt upon it. After a long pause, a look of intelligence passed between them; and the old man, first breaking silence, said, with a deep sigh,—“That is the very place, sir! The very spot where I stood by the easy-chair in which my dear master breathed his last, his head supported on my shoulder.”
“And it was there you found him, was it not, Hallings, when”——
“Yes, sir! yes! there, in that very spot, from whence, as you see, he could just reach the mantel-shelf, where stood”—But here the old servant stopt abruptly, glancing towards me a look of troubled consciousness; and L——, hastening to relieve his embarrassment, said, “Fear nothing, good Hallings, from my friend Hervey here! He is one from whom I have no secrets—who would feel as you and I do on the subject of your thoughts, if he were acquainted with it. But neither you nor I must now dwell on it longer. You have said it, Hallings—‘God is merciful!’ To Him we commit the issue. And now, a long farewell to Devereux Hall!”
So saying, my friend cast round him one long leisurely survey of the desolated spot, turning again, and lingering yet a moment on what had been the threshold of the glass door into the Library. The short twilight was already brightening into silvery moonlight, edging the dark glossy leaves of the old bay-tree by the ruined gable, towards which its tall spiral top (just agitated by a passing breeze) swayed with slow and melancholy motion, while a shivering sound ran through the crisped foliage and long rustling branches, like whisperings and lamentations of good genii departing from the scene of their long-delegated guardianship. As he gazed with these “thick-coming fancies” on the fine old evergreens, so magnificent in sombre beauty, I was startled by the sudden disturbance of its lower boughs, and by a sound proceeding from them more hoarse and deep, if not more ominous, than the low unearthly murmurs I had been listening to with such excited feelings. My exclamation roused Hallings from the abstraction he had fallen into while taking his farewell look at all that remained of the venerable mansion, and, turning towards the object at which I pointed, he said, with a sad smile, “It is my old fellow-servant, sir! the only one besides me that haunts the place now; but it is time he should leave it too, for even that tree, my master’s favourite tree, that he planted when a child with his own hands, will be cut down to-morrow.” So saying, he gave a low whistle, and calling, “Ralph! Ralph!” the well-known signal was acknowledged by an answering croak, and a huge raven, hopping to the ground from his dark covert in the interior of the bay-tree, came towards Hallings with sedate and solemn gait, and, first eyeing the old man’s countenance with a look of almost human intelligence, perched upon his extended wrist, and suffered himself to be borne on it as we retraced our steps toward the cottage, discoursing (I could have fancied) by sidelong glances at his kind supporter, of the departed glories of their master’s house, and their last look at its untimely ruins.
CHAPTER II.
Our ride home—our pleasant moonlight ride! was performed almost in silence. My friend’s thoughts were busy with sad and tender recollections, and mine with the scene from whence we came, and the persons and circumstances I had heard so tenderly spoken of, and mysteriously alluded to. “I must hear more before I sleep,” was my inward soliloquy, as we reined up our steeds at the lodge gate; and forthwith I obtained a promise from L—— that he would gratify my curiosity before we retired for the night. My fair hostess was able and willing to contribute her share of information on a subject not less interesting to her than to her husband; and from their mutual reminiscences I made out a little history of the last Devereux, uneventful, indeed, for the most part, and not perfectly explanatory in its latter details, but such a one as may be listened to without impatience by the indulgent hearer, who has accompanied me unwearied in my pilgrimage to the cottage of Matthew Hallings, and to the desolated site where so lately stood the venerable fabric of Devereux Hall.