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DURNMELLING.
In the autumn, Mr. Mortimer of Durnmelling resolved to give a
harvest-home to his tenants, and under the protection of the
occasion to invite also a good many of his neighbors and of the
townsfolk of Testbridge, whom he could not well ask to dinner:
there happened to be a political expediency for something of the
sort: America is not the only country in which ambition opens the
door to mean doings on the part of such as count themselves
gentlemen. Not a few on whom Lady Margaret had never called, and
whom she would never in any way acknowledge again, were invited;
nor did the knowledge of what it meant cause many of them to
decline the questionable honor--which fact carried in it the best
justification of which the meanness and insult were capable. Mrs.
Wardour accepted for herself and Letty; but in their case Lady
Margaret did call, and in person give the invitation. Godfrey
positively refused to accompany them. He would not be patronized,
he said; "--and by an inferior," he added to himself.
Mr. Mortimer was the illiterate son of a literary father who had
reaped both money and fame. The son spent the former, on the
strength of the latter married an earl's daughter, and thereupon
began to embody in his own behavior his ideas of how a nobleman
ought to carry himself; whence, from being only a small, he
became an objectionable man, and failed of being amusing by
making himself offensive. He had never manifested the least
approach to neighborliness with Godfrey, although their houses
were almost within a stone's throw of each other. Had Wardour
been an ordinary farmer, of whose presuming on the acquaintance
there could have been no danger, Mortimer would doubtless have
behaved differently; but as Wardour had some pretensions--namely,
old family, a small, though indeed very small, property of
his own, a university education, good horses, and the habits and
manners of a gentleman--the men scarcely even saluted when they
met. The Mortimer ladies, indeed, had more than once remarked--
but it was in solemn silence, each to herself only--how well the
man sat, and how easily he handled the hunter he always rode; but
not once until now had so much as a greeting passed between them
and Mrs. Wardour. It was not therefore wonderful that Godfrey
should not choose to accept their invitation. Finding, however,
that his mother was distressed at having to go to the gathering
without him, and far more exercised in her mind than was needful
as to what would be thought of his absence, and what excuse it
would be becoming to make, he resolved to go to London a day or
two before the event, and pay a long-promised visit to a clerical
friend.
The relative situation of the houses--I mean the stone-and-lime
houses--of Durnmelling and Thornwick, was curious; and that they
had at one time formed part of the same property might have
suggested itself to any beholder. Durnmelling was built by an
ancestor of Godfrey's, who, forsaking the old nest for the new,
had allowed Thornwick to sink into a mere farmhouse, in which
condition it had afterward become the sole shelter of the
withered fortunes of the Wardours. In the hands of Godfrey's
father, by a continuity of judicious cares, and a succession of
partial resurrections, it had been restored to something like its
original modest dignity. Durnmelling, too, had in part sunk into
ruin, and had been but partially recovered from it; still, it
swelled important beside its antecedent Thornwick. Nothing but a
deep ha-ha separated the two houses, of which the older and
smaller occupied the higher ground. Between it and the ha-ha was
nothing but grass--in front of the house fine enough and well
enough kept to be called lawn, had not Godfrey's pride refused
the word. On the lower, the Durnmelling side of the fence, were
trees, shrubbery, and out-houses--the chimney of one of which,
the laundry, gave great offense to Mrs. Wardour, when, as she
said, wind and wash came together. But, although they stood so
near, there was no lawful means of communication between the
houses except the road; and the mile that implied was seldom
indeed passed by any of the unneighborly neighbors.
The father of Lady Margaret would at one time have purchased
Thornwick at twice its value; but the present owner could not
have bought it at half its worth. He had of late been losing
money heavily--whence, in part, arose that anxiety of Lady
Margaret's not to keep Mr. Redmain fretting for his lunch.
The house of Durnmelling, new compared with that of Thornwick,
was yet, as I have indicated, old enough to have passed also
through vicissitudes, and a large portion of the original
structure had for many years been nothing better than a ruin.
Only a portion of one side of its huge square was occupied by the
family, and the rest of that side was not habitable. Lady
Margaret, of an ancient stock, had gathered from it only pride,
not reverence; therefore, while she valued the old, she neglected
it; and what money she and her husband at one time spent upon the
house, was devoted to addition and ornamentation, nowise to
preservation or restoration. They had enlarged both dining-room
and drawing-rooms to twice their former size, when half the
expense, with a few trees from a certain outlying oak-plantation
of their own, would have given them a room fit for a regal
assembly. For, constituting a portion of the same front in which
they lived, lay roofless, open to every wind that blew, its paved
floor now and then in winter covered with snow--an ancient hall,
whose massy south wall was pierced by three lovely windows,
narrow and lofty, with simple, gracious tracery in their pointed
heads. This hall connected the habitable portion of the house
with another part, less ruinous than itself, but containing only
a few rooms in occasional use for household purposes, or, upon
necessity, for quite inferior lodgment. It was a glorious ruin,
of nearly a hundred feet in length, and about half that in width,
the walls entire, and broad enough to walk round upon in safety.
Their top was accessible from a tower, which formed part of the
less ruinous portion, and contained the stair and some small
rooms.
Once, the hall was fair with portraits and armor and arms, with
fire and lights, and state and merriment; now the sculptured
chimney lay open to the weather, and the sweeping winds had made
its smooth hearthstone clean as if fire had never been there. Its
floor was covered with large flags, a little broken: these, in
prospect of the coming entertainment, a few workmen were
leveling, patching, replacing. For the tables were to be set
here, and here there was to be dancing after the meal.
It was Miss Yolland's idea, and to her was committed the
responsibility of its preparation and adornment for the occasion,
in which Hesper gave her active assistance. With colored
blankets, with carpets, with a few pieces of old tapestry, and a
quantity of old curtains, mostly of chintz, excellent in hues and
design, all cunningly arranged for as much of harmony as could be
had, they contrived to clothe the walls to the height of six or
eight feet, and so gave the weather-beaten skeleton an air of
hospitable preparation and respectful reception.
The day and the hour arrived. It was a hot autumnal afternoon.
Borne in all sorts of vehicles, from a carriage and pair to a
taxed cart, the guests kept coming. As they came, they mostly
scattered about the place. Some loitered on the lawn by the
flower-beds and the fountain; some visited the stables and the
home-farm, with its cow-houses and dairy and piggeries; some the
neglected greenhouses, and some the equally neglected old-
fashioned alleys, with their clipped yews and their moss-grown
statues. No one belonging to the house was anywhere visible to
receive them, until the great bell at length summoned them to the
plentiful meal spread in the ruined hall. "The hospitality of
some people has no roof to it," Godfrey said, when he heard of
the preparations. "Ten people will give you a dinner, for one who
will offer you a bed and a breakfast:"
Then at last their host made his appearance, and took the head of
the table: the ladies, he said, were to have the honor of joining
the company afterward. They were at the time--but this he did not
say--giving another stratum of society a less ponderous, but yet
tolerably substantial, refreshment in the dining-room.
By the time the eating and drinking were nearly over, the shades
of evening had gathered; but even then some few of the farmers,
capable only of drinking, grumbled at having their potations
interrupted for the dancers. These were presently joined by the
company from the house, and the great hall was crowded.
Much to her chagrin, Mrs. Wardour had a severe headache,
occasioned by her working half the night at her dress, and was
compelled to remain at home. But she allowed Letty to go without
her, which she would not have done had she not been so anxious to
have news of what she could not lift her head to see: she sent
her with an old servant--herself one of the invited guests--to
gather and report. The dancing had begun before they reached the
hall.
Tom Helmer had arrived among the first, and had joined the
tenants in their feast, faring well, and making friends, such as
he knew how to make, with everybody in his vicinity. When the
tables were removed, and the rest of the company began to come
in, he went about searching anxiously for Letty's sweet face, but
it did not appear; and, when she did arrive, she stole in without
his seeing her, and stood mingled with the crowd about the door.
It was a pleasant sight that met her eyes. The wide space was
gayly illuminated with colored lamps, disposed on every shelf,
and in every crevice of the walls, some of them gleaming like
glow-worms out of mere holes; while candles in sconces, and lamps
on the window-sills and wherever they could stand, gave a light
the more pleasing that it was not brilliant. Overhead, the night-
sky was spangled with clear pulsing stars, afloat in a limpid
blue, vast even to awfulness in the eyes of such--were any such
there?--as say to themselves that to those worlds also were they
born. Outside, it was dark, save where the light streamed from
the great windows far into the night. The moon was not yet up;
she would rise in good time to see the scattering guests to their
homes.
Tom's heart had been sinking, for he could see Letty nowhere. Now
at last, he had been saying to himself all the day, had come his
chance! and his chance seemed but to mock him. More than any girl
he had ever seen, had Letty moved him--perhaps because she was
more unlike his mother. He knew nothing, it is true, or next to
nothing, of her nature; but that was of little consequence to one
who knew nothing, and never troubled himself to know anything, of
his own. Was he doomed never to come near his idol?--Ah, there
she was! Yes; it was she--all but lost in a humble group near the
door! His foolish heart--not foolish in that--gave a great bound,
as if it would leap to her where she stood. She was dressed in
white muslin, from which her white throat rose warm and soft. Her
head was bent forward, and a gentle dissolved smile was over all
her face, as with loveliest eyes she watched eagerly the motions
of the dance, and her ears drank in the music of the yeomanry
band. He seized the first opportunity of getting nearer to her.
He had scarcely spoken to her before, but that did not trouble
Tom. Even in a more ceremonious assembly, that would never have
abashed him; and here there was little form, and much freedom. He
had, besides, confidence in his own carriage and manners--which,
indeed, were those of a gentleman--and knew himself not likely to
repel by his approach.
Mr. Mortimer had opened the dancing by leading out the wife of
his principal tenant, a handsome matron, whose behavior and
expression were such as to give a safe, home-like feeling to the
shy and doubtful of the company. But Tom knew better than injure
his chance by precipitation: he would wait until the dancing was
more general, and the impulse to movement stronger, and then
offer himself. He stood therefore near Letty for some little
time, talking to everybody, and making himself agreeable, as was
his wont, all round; then at last, as if he had just caught sight
of her, walked up to her where she stood flushed and eager, and
asked her to favor him with her hand in the next dance.
By this time Letty had got familiar with his presence, had
recalled her former meeting with him, had heard his name spoken
by not a few who evidently liked him, and was quite pleased when
he asked her to dance with him.
In the dance, nothing but commonplaces passed between them; but
Tom had a certain pleasant way of his own in saying the
commonest, emptiest things--an off-hand, glancing, skimming,
swallow-like way of brushing and leaving a thing, as if he "could
an' if he would," which made it seem for the moment as if he had
said something: were his companion capable of discovering the
illusion, there was no time; Tom was instantly away, carrying him
or her with him to something else. But there was better than
this--there was poetry, more than one element of it, in Tom. In
the presence of a girl that pleased him, there would rise in him
a poetic atmosphere, full of a rainbow kind of glamour, which,
first possessing himself, passed out from him and called up a
similar atmosphere, a similar glamour, about many of the girls he
talked to. This he could no more help than the grass can help
smelling sweet after the rain.
Tom was a finely projected, well-built, unfinished, barely
furnished house, with its great central room empty, where the
devil, coming and going at his pleasure, had not yet begun to
make any great racket. There might be endless embryonic evil in
him, but Letty was aware of no repellent atmosphere about him,
and did not shrink from his advances. He pleased her, and why
should she not be pleased with him? Was it a fault to be easily
pleased? The truer and sweeter any human self, the readier is it
to be pleased with another self--save, indeed, something in it
grate on the moral sense: that jars through the whole harmonious
hypostasy. To Tom, therefore, Letty responded with smiles and
pleasant words, even grateful to such a fine youth for taking
notice of her small self.
The sun had set in a bank of cloud, which, as if he had been a
lump of leaven to it, immediately began to swell and rise, and
now hung dark and thick over the still, warm night. Even the
farmers were unobservant of the change: their crops were all in,
they had eaten and drunk heartily, and were merry, looking on or
sharing in the multiform movement, their eyes filled with light
and color.
Suddenly came a torrent-sound in the air, heard of few and heeded
by none, and straight into the hall rushed upon the gay company a
deluge of rain, mingled with large, half-melted hail-stones. In a
moment or two scarce a light was left burning, except those in
the holes and recesses of the walls. The merrymakers scattered
like flies--into the house, into the tower, into the sheds and
stables in the court behind, under the trees in front--anywhere
out of the hall, where shelter was none from the perpendicular,
abandoned down-pour.
At that moment, Letty was dancing with Tom, and her hand happened
to be in his. He clasped it tight, and, as quickly as the crowd
and the confusion of shelter-seeking would permit, led her to the
door of the tower already mentioned. But many had run in the same
direction, and already its lower story and stair were crowded
with refugees--the elder bemoaning the sudden change, and folding
tight around them what poor wraps they were fortunate enough to
have retained; the younger merrier than ever, notwithstanding the
cold gusts that now poked their spirit-arms higher and thither
through the openings of the half-ruinous building: to them even
the destruction of their finery was but added cause of laughter.
But a few minutes before, its freshness had been a keen pleasure
to them, brightening their consciousness with a rare feeling of
perfection; now crushed and rumpled, soiled and wet and torn, it
was still fuel to the fire of gayety. But Tom did not stay among
them. He knew the place well; having a turn for scrambling, he
had been all over it many a time. On through the crowd, he led
Letty up the stair to the first floor. Even here were a few
couples talking and laughing in the dark. With a warning, by no
means unnecessary, to mind where they stepped, for the floors
were bad, he passed on to the next stair.
"Let us stop here, Mr. Helmer," said Letty. "There is plenty of
room here."
"I want to show you something," answered Tom. "You need not be
frightened. I know every nook of the place."
"I am not frightened," said Letty, and made no further objection.
At the top of that stair they entered a straight passage, in the
middle of which was a faint glimmer of light from an oval
aperture in the side of it. Thither Tom led Letty, and told her
to look through. She did so.
Beneath lay the great gulf, wide and deep, of the hall they had
just left. This was the little window, high in its gable, through
which, in far-away times, the lord or lady of the mansion could
oversee at will whatever went on below.
The rain had ceased as suddenly as it came on, and already lights
were moving about in the darkness of the abyss--one, and another,
and another, was searching for something lost in the hurry of the
scattering. It was a waste and dismal show. Neither of them had
read Dante; but Letty may have thought of the hall of Belshazzar,
the night after the hand-haunted revel, when the Medes had had
their will; for she had but lately read the story. A strange fear
came upon her, and she drew back with a shudder.
"Are you cold?" said Tom. "Of course you must be, with nothing
but that thin muslin! Shall I run down and get you a shawl?"
"Oh, no! do not leave me, please. It's not that," answered Letty.
"I don't mind the wind a bit; it's rather pleasant. It's only
that the look of the place makes me miserable, I think. It looks
as if no one had danced there for a hundred years."
"Neither any one has, I suppose, till to-night," said Tom. "What
a fine place it would be if only it had a roof to it! I can't
think how any one can live beside it and leave it like that!"
But Tom lived a good deal closer to a worse ruin, and never spent
a thought on it.
Letty shivered again.
"I'm quite ashamed of myself," she said, trying to speak
cheerfully. "I can't think why I should feel like this--just as
if something dreadful were watching me! I'll go home, Mr.
Helmer.".
"It will be much the safest thing to do: I fear you have indeed
caught cold," replied Tom, rejoiced at the chance of accompanying
her. "I shall be delighted to see you safe."
"There is not the least occasion for that, thank you," answered
Letty. "I have an old servant of my aunt's with me--somewhere
about the place. The storm is quite over now: I will go and find
her."
Tom made no objection, but helped her down the dark stair,
hoping, however, the servant might not be found.
As they went, Letty seemed to herself to be walking in some old
dream of change and desertion. The tower was empty as a monument,
not a trace of the crowd left, which a few minutes before had
thronged it. The wind had risen in earnest now, and was rushing
about, like a cold wild ghost, through every cranny of the
desolate place. Had Letty, when she reached the bottom of the
stairs, found herself on the rocks of the seashore, with the
waves dashing up against them, she would only have said to
herself, "I knew I was in a dream!" But the wind having blown
away the hail-cloud, the stars were again shining down into the
hall. One or two forlorn-looking searchers were still there; the
rest had scattered like the gnats. A few were already at home;
some were harnessing their horses to go, nor would wait for the
man in the moon to light his lantern; some were already trudging
on foot through the dark. Hesper and Miss Yolland were talking to
two or three friends in the drawing-room; Lady Margaret was in
her boudoir, and Mr. Mortimer smoking a cigar in his study.
Nowhere could Letty find Susan. She was in the farmer's kitchen
behind. Tom suspected as much, but was far from hinting the
possibility. Letty found her cloak, which she had left in the
hall, soaked with rain, and thought it prudent to go home at
once, nor prosecute her search for Susan further. She accepted,
therefore, Tom's renewed offer of his company.
They were just leaving the hall, when a thought came to Letty:
the moon suddenly appearing above the horizon had put it in her
head.
"Oh," she cried, "I know quite a short way home!" and, without
waiting any response from her companion, she turned, and led him
in an opposite direction, round, namely, by the back of the
court, into a field. There she made for a huge oak, which gloomed
in the moonlight by the sunk fence parting the grounds. In the
slow strength of its growth, by the rounding of its bole, and the
spreading of its roots, it had so rent and crumbled the wall as
to make through it a little ravine, leading to the top of the ha-
ha. When they reached it, before even Tom saw it, Letty turned
from him, and was up in a moment. At the top she turned to bid
him good night, but there he was, close behind her, insisting on
seeing her safe to the house.
"Is this the way you always come?" asked Tom.
"I never was on Durnmelling land before," answered Letty.
"How did you find the short-cut, then?" he asked. "It certainly
does not look as if it were much used."
"Of course not," replied Letty. "There is no communication
between Durnmelling and Thornwick now. It was all ours once,
though, Cousin Godfrey says. Did you notice how the great oak
sends its biggest arm over our field?"
"Yes."
"Well, I often sit there under it, when I want to learn my
lesson, and can't rest in the house; and that's how I know of the
crack in the ha-ha."
She said it in absolute innocence, but Tom laid it up in his
mind.
"Are you at lessons still?" he said. "Have you a governess?"
"No," she answered, in a tone of amusement. "But Cousin Godfrey
teaches me many things."
This made Tom thoughtful; and little more had been said, when
they reached the gate of the yard behind the house, and she would
not let him go a step farther.
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