Bergan was too much touched to answer. He walked quickly to the front of the deserted mansion, cut the vines from the door, and put the key in the lock. At first, it opposed a stubborn resistance to his efforts; then, suddenly, the bolt yielded, the door turned slowly on its long-unused hinges, and he stood, with a beating heart, in his ancestral hall.
V.
WASTE PLACES.
He was met by a swift gust of wind, so chill and vault-like, and hurrying past him with so woful a sigh, that it seemed like the rush of innumerable imprisoned ghosts, eagerly seizing upon the opportunity for escape. Involuntarily letting go the door, it fell to behind him with a clangor that reverberated loudly, for a moment, through the house, and then suddenly ceased, as if smothered in some remote corner by a lurking hand. The silence which followed was dreary and oppressive,—all the more, because Bergan, coming so suddenly from the outward sunshine, was altogether bedimmed by such density of gloom as brooded within, most of the windows being either darkened by blinds, or closed with heavy opaque shutters. For a single instant, he felt a thrill of unreasoning horror. The impenetrable gloom, the oppressive stillness, the damp, dead air (which might have come straight from the open mouth of a tomb), gave him a chill impression that he had committed sacrilege.
Quickly recovering himself, however, he again flung wide open the door, and fastened it back. By the light thus admitted, he easily found his way to a window at the other end of the hall, which he also opened. There was an immediate inward rush, not only of the sunny daylight, but of the sweet, warm air of the autumn afternoon, with its inevitable suggestions of tranquil sea, and tender sky, and slow-waving forest; quickly penetrating, he felt sure, to the uppermost corner of the long-deserted dwelling, and scattering everywhere some healthful, purifying, enlivening influence.
He could now see that he stood in a wide and lofty entrance-hall, decorated with a profusion of carved woodwork; panels, cornices, and casements, being ornamented with garlands of oaken roses, or quaint heads of animals, stiff as petrifactions, and almost ebon-black with time and rubbing. The furniture consisted of a small table, a cumbrous cabinet, and ponderous, high-backed chairs, of the Elizabethan age, or perhaps earlier, brought from England, as heir-looms, by the first emigrant Bergan. There was also a tall, spectral clock, which, to Bergan's intense astonishment, suddenly began to fill the hall with a loud, monotonous tick, as if the march of time, long ago arrested in the deserted mansion, was now duly resumed:—doubtless the rusty wheels had been jarred into spasmodic motion by the violent closing of the door. By way of decoration, there were a few dingy pictures, in dark, carved frames; and in two of the oaken panels hung complete suits of armor,—helmets, cuirasses, gorgets, greaves, and gauntlets,—memorials, not only of long-buried Bergans, but of long-vanished days.
Hesitating, for a moment, between two half-open doors, Bergan finally chose to enter the main parlor, a room full of a dusky, old-time grandeur. A piano stood between the windows, over the keys of which he ran his fingers, but found that its music had been imprisoned so long as to have grown hoarse and melancholy. So, doubtless, had that of the harp, which showed skeleton-like through its torn baize cover, and was flanked by a pile of music-books, the leaves of which were yellow with age. Odd, unwieldy chairs, covered with faded silk damask and a rich coat of dust, kept solemn state in the dim corners; ottomans and footstools, elaborately embroidered by forgotten fingers with birds, flowers, and other once cheerful devices, stood under the windows, or were scattered around the floor. On the walls, in frames of tarnished magnificence, hung two or three pictures in worsted, the designs of which, like the hands that had wrought them, were now faded beyond recognition. Just in proportion as these things had once helped to brighten the room, they helped to make it more sombre now. Like the images of vanished joys, they were all the gloomier because once so glad. Looking upon them, Bergan was painfully impressed with the latent identity of gayety and grief. Only give them time enough, and they merge into the same dull neutral tint!
Bergan next glanced into a second parlor, a dusky ante-room, and a dining-room, but leaving these places undisturbed in their dim and dusty sanctity, as not of pressing interest, he made his way to the library, on the other side of the hall. It was a large and lofty room, set round with ancient book-cases, above and between which hung rows of portraits, in frames of oak and gilt. These represented the early forefathers and later worthies of the Bergan lineage,—some in knightly armor, with mailed hands clasping a gleaming sword-hilt; some in the rich array of the Tudor or the Stuart court, with laced and plumed hats under their arms; some in the red coats and top-boots of English squires, with a favorite horse or hound looking out from one corner of the picture; some in the huge horsehair wigs and ermined robes of the judge's bench; and others in the cocked hats and knee-breeches of the Revolution, or in the modern black coat and pantaloons, seated in arm-chairs, with their backs to a crimson curtain. There were also dames to match, with towers of lace and curls upon their heads, ruffs, farthingales, and all manner of obsolete finery.
Most of the faces had the austerity of aspect common to old portraits, as if time had delighted to bring into clearer view the hard, stern traits of character which the painter had dared but faintly to delineate, and had even then done his best to cover up with pleasant coloring, and a final coat of lustrous varnish. Nowhere was this effect more striking than in the portrait of Sir Harry Bergan, earliest emigrant of the name, and father of the American line. The younger son of a noble English house, he had early fallen under the displeasure of a stern father, by reason of careless and spendthrift habits; and had finally been banished, in disgrace, to a small continental town, upon an allowance barely sufficient to keep body and soul together. Under this severe discipline,—smarting, too, with a rankling sense of injustice in the treatment that he had received,—his character underwent a complete transformation. His carelessness and extravagance, as well as the generosity and frankness of which they had been the rank, ill-trained outgrowth, fell from him like worn-out garments; he became bitter, morose, and dogged.
At this crisis, the sudden death of his mother placed him in possession of her own large fortune and family estate. Life once more opened before him; but no gentle affection called him back to the paternal neighborhood. On the contrary, he emigrated to Georgia, just then luminous with the career and the fame of General Oglethorpe; with the ambitious design of founding a Bergan lineage in the new world, which should equal, if not surpass, that of the old one. He bought a vast tract of land, and vigorously commenced the work of bringing it under cultivation; he distinguished himself both as soldier and citizen in the Spanish war and the colonial trials, and was knighted for his services; finally, he imported men and materials, and built Bergan Hall as nearly as was possible in the style of his early English home, and called it by the same name. The bricks, the tiles, the elaborate oak carvings, the door and window-frames, the furniture and decorations, the copies of ancestral portraits, were all brought from England, and put in their places by English artisans.