History of Sir Richard Calmady A Romance , livre ebook

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416 pages

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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. ACQUAINTING THE READER WITH A FAIR DOMAIN AND THE MAKER THEREOF

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	23 octobre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819913238
Langue	English

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BOOK I
THE CLOWN
CHAPTER I
ACQUAINTING THE READER WITH A FAIR DOMAIN AND THEMAKER THEREOF
In that fortunate hour of English history, when thecruel sights and haunting insecurities of the Middle Ages hadpassed away, and while, as yet, the fanatic zeal of Puritanism hadnot cast its blighting shadow over all merry and pleasant things,it seemed good to one Denzil Calmady, esquire, to build himself astately red-brick and freestone house upon the southern verge ofthe great plateau of moorland which ranges northward to theconfines of Windsor Forest and eastward to the Surrey Hills. Andthis he did in no vainglorious spirit, with purpose of exaltinghimself above the county gentlemen, his neighbours, and showing howfar better lined his pockets were than theirs. Rather did he do itfrom an honest love of all that is ingenious and comely, and as thenatural outgrowth of an inquiring and philosophic mind. For DenzilCalmady, like so many another son of that happy age, was somethingmore than a mere wealthy country squire, breeder of beef and brewerof ale. He was a courtier and traveler; and, if tradition speakstruly, a poet who could praise his mistress's many charms, orwittily resent her caprices, in well-turned verse. He was a patronof art, having brought back ivories and bronzes from Italy,pictures and china from the Low Countries, and enamels from France.He was a student, and collected the many rare and handsomeleather-bound volumes telling of curious arts, obscurespeculations, half-fabulous histories, voyages, and adventures,which still constitute the almost unique value of the Brockhurstlibrary. He might claim to be a man of science, moreover – of thatdelectable old-world science which has no narrow-minded quarrelwith miracle or prodigy, wherein angel and demon mingle freely,lending a hand unchallenged to complicate the operations both ofnature and of grace – a science which, even yet, in perfect goodfaith, busied itself with the mysteries of the Rosy Cross, mixedstrange ingredients into a possible Elixir of Life, ran far afieldin search for the Philosopher's Stone, gathered herbs for theconfection of simples during auspicious phases of the moon, andbeheld in comet and meteor awful forewarnings of public calamity orof Divine Wrath.
From all of which it may be premised that when, likethe wise king, of old, in Jerusalem, Denzil Calmady "builded himhouses, made him gardens and orchards, and planted trees in them ofall kind of fruits"; when he "made him pools of water to watertherewith the wood that bringeth forth trees"; when he "gatheredsilver and gold and the treasure of provinces," and got himsingers, and players of musical instruments, and "the delights ofthe sons of men," – he did so that, having tried and sifted allthese things, he might, by the exercise of a ripe and untrammeledjudgment, decide what amongst them is illusory and but as a passingshow, and what – be it never so small a remnant – has in it thepromise of eternal subsistence, and therefore of vital worth; andthat, having so decided and thus gained an even mind, he mightprepare serenely to take leave of the life he had dared so largelyto live.
Commencing his labours at Brockhurst during theclosing years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, Denzil Calmadycompleted them in 1611 with a royal house-warming. For the space ofa week, during the autumn of that year, – the last autumn, as itunhappily proved, that graceful and scholarly prince was fated tosee, – Henry, Prince of Wales, condescended to be his guest. He wasentertained at Brockhurst – as contemporary records inform thecurious – with "much feastinge and many joyous masques and gallantpastimes," including "a great slayinge of deer and divers beastesand fowl in the woods and coverts thereunto adjacent." It is added,with unconscious irony, that his host, being a "true lover of allwild creatures, had caused a fine bear-pit to be digged beyond theouter garden wall to the west." And that, on the Sunday afternoonof the Prince's visit, there "was held a most mighty baitinge," towitness which "many noble gentlemen of the neighbourhood did visitBrockhurst and lay there two nights."
Later it is reported of Denzil Calmady, who was anexcellent churchman, – suspected even, notwithstanding his littleturn for philosophy, of a greater leaning towards the old Mass-Bookthan towards the modern Book of Common Prayer, – that he notablyassisted Laud, then Bishop of St. David's, in respect of certaindelicate diplomacies. Laud proved not ungrateful to his friend;who, in due time, was honoured with one of King James's newlyinstituted baronetcies, not to mention some few score seedlingScotchfirs, which, taking kindly to the light moorland soil,increased and multiplied exceedingly and sowed themselves broadcastover the face of the surrounding country.
And, save for the vigorous upgrowth of those samefir trees, and for the fact that bears and bear-pit had long givenplace to race-horses and to a great square of stable buildings inthe hollow lying back from the main road across the park,Brockhurst was substantially the same in the year of grace 1842,when this truthful history actually opens, as it had been when SirDenzil's workmen set the last tier of bricks of the last twistedchimney-stack in its place. The grand, simple masses of the house –Gothic in its main lines, but with much of Renaissance work in itsdetails – still lent themselves to the same broad effects of lightand shadow, as it crowned the southern and western sloping hillsideamid its red-walled gardens and pepper-pot summer-houses, itsgleaming ponds and watercourses, its hawthorn dotted paddocks; itsancient avenues of elm, of lime, and oak. The same panelings andtapestries clothed the walls of its spacious rooms and passages;the same quaint treasures adorned its fine Italian cabinets; thesame air of large and generous comfort pervaded it. As the child oftrue lovers is said to bear through life, in a certain glad beautyof person and of nature, witness to the glad hour of itsconception, so Brockhurst, on through the accumulating years, stillbore witness to the fortunate historic hour in which it wasplanned.
Yet, since in all things material and mortal thereis always a little spot of darkness, a germ of canker, at least theecho of a cry of fear – lest life being too sweet, man should growproud to the point of forgetting he is, after all, but a pawn uponthe board, but the sport and plaything of destiny and the vastpurposes of God – all was not quite well with Brockhurst. At agiven moment of time, the diabolic element had of necessityobtruded itself. And, in the chronicles of this delightfuldwelling-place, even as in those of Eden itself, the angels areproven not to have had things altogether their own graciousway.
The pierced stone parapet, which runs round threesides of the house, and constitutes, architecturally, one of itsmost noteworthy features, is broken in the centre of the northfront by a tall, stepped and sharply pointed gable, flanked oneither hand by slender, four-sided pinnacles. From the niche in thesaid gable, arrayed in sugar-loaf hat, full doublet and trunk hose,his head a trifle bent so that the tip of his pointed beard restson the pleatings of his marble ruff, a carpenter's rule in hisright hand, Sir Denzil Calmady gazes meditatively down. Delicate,coral-like tendrils of the Virginian creeper, which covers thehouse walls, and strays over the bay windows of the Long Gallerybelow, twine themselves yearly about his ankles and his square-toedshoes. The swallows yearly attempt to fix their gray, mud nestsagainst the flutings of the scallop-shell canopy sheltering hisbowed head; and are yearly ejected by cautious gardeners armed withimposing array of ladders and conscious of no little inwardreluctance to face the dangers of so aerial a height.
And here, it may not be unfitting to make furthermention of that same little spot of darkness, germ of canker, echoof the cry of fear, that had come to mar the fair records ofBrockhurst For very certain it was that among the varying scenes,moving merry or majestic, upon which Sir Denzil had looked downduring the two and a quarter centuries of his sojourn in the loftyniche of the northern gable, there was one his eyes had never yetrested upon – one matter, and that a very vital one, to which hadhe applied his carpenter's rule the measure of it must have provedpersistently and grievously short.
Along the straight walks, across the smooth lawns,and beside the brilliant flower-borders of the formal gardens, hehad seen generations of babies toddle and stagger, with gurglingsof delight, as they clutched at glancing bird or butterfly far outof reach. He had seen healthy, clean-limbed, boisterous lads anddainty, little maidens laugh and play, quarrel, kiss, and befriends again. He had seen ardent lovers – in glowing Junetwilights, while the nightingales shouted from the laurels, or fromthe coppices in the park below – driven to the most desperatestraits, to visions of cold poison, of horse-pistols, of immediateenlistment, or the consoling arms of Betty the housemaid, by thecoquetries of some young lady captivating in powder and patches, orarrayed in the high-waisted, agreeably-revealing costume which ourgrandmothers judged it not improper to wear in their youth. He hadseen husband and wife, too, wandering hand in hand at first,tenderly hopeful and elate. And then, sometimes, as the yearslengthened, – they growing somewhat sated with the ease of theirhigh estate, – he had seen them hand in hand no longer, waxing coldand indifferent, debating even, at moments, reproachfully whetherthey might not have invested the capital of their affections tobetter advantage elsewhere.
All this and much more Sir Denzil had seen, anddoubtless measured, for all that he appears so immovably calm andapart. But that which he had never yet seen was a man of his nameand race, full of years and honours, come slowly forth from thestately