Wenderholme Part 30

Everybody's attention was drawn to little Jacob, who, becoming very red and excited, reiterated his a.s.sertion with considerable boldness and emphasis. When called upon for an explanation, he said that when he had been playing in the great barn, amongst the hay, he had got into a long low garret over the pigsties and the hen-houses, and that it was full of old oak--"quite full of it," he reiterated.

Mrs. Stanburne's face a.s.sumed an expression of thought and reflection, as if she were seeking inwardly for something imperfectly remembered.

"It strikes me," she said, "that when my husband's father modernized the house, he must have put part of the old things into other lumber-rooms than those at the top of the house itself. There are places amongst the out-buildings which have not been opened for many years, and I believe we should find something there."

The Duke became eager with antic.i.p.ation. "The merest fragments of the original furniture would be precious, Mrs. Stanburne. If we only had some specimens, as data, the rest might be reconstructed in the same taste. Let us go and look up whatever may remain. This little boy will be our guide."

Little Jacob, proud and excited, led the way to the great barn. It was fun to him to make the gentlemen follow him up the ladder, and over the hay, to a little narrow doorway that was about three feet above the hay-level. "That's the door," he said, and began to climb up the rough wall. He pushed it open by using all his force in frequent shoulder-thrusts, the rusty hinges gradually yielding. The adult explorers followed, and found themselves in total darkness.

"The old oak isn't here," said little Jacob; "it's a good bit further on."

The garret they were in served as a lumber-room for disused agricultural implements, and both the Duke and Mr. Prigley hurt their shins against those awkward obstacles. At last they came to a blank wall, and then to what seemed to be a sort of cupboard, so far as they could guess by touching.

Behind the cupboard was a small s.p.a.ce, into which little Jacob insinuated himself, and afterwards cheerfully sang out, "I'm all right; here's the place!"

The gentlemen pushed the cupboard back a foot or two, and found the doorway behind it by which their guide had pa.s.sed. They were in a long, low attic, very dimly lighted by a little hole in the wall at its remote extremity. It was full of obstacles, which the Duke's touch recognized at once as carved oak.

"We ought to have had lanterns," he said; "how tantalizing it is not to be able to see!"

"I would rather have a few slates taken off," John Stanburne answered; "that will make us a fine sky-light. I have a dread of fire."

Little Jacob was sent to fetch two or three men, who in half an hour had removed slates enough to throw full daylight on the scene--such daylight as had not penetrated there for many a long year. The old furniture of Wenderholme, gray, almost white, with age, filled the place from end to end in one continuous heap.

"But this is all white," said little Jacob, "and old oak ought to be brown, oughtn't it?"

"A little linseed-oil will restore the color," the Duke replied. Then he exclaimed, "By Jove! Colonel, we have found a treasure--we have indeed!

Let us get every thing out into the yard, and then we can examine the things in detail."

The whole of the afternoon was spent in getting the old oak out. The gentlemen worked with the laborers, the Duke himself as energetically as any one. His great anxiety was to prevent injury to the carvings, which were very picturesque and elaborate. When the things were all out of doors, and the garret finally cleared, it was astonishing what a display they made. There were six cabinets, of which four had their entablatures supported by ma.s.sive griffins or lions, and their panels inlaid with ebony and satin-wood, or carved with bas-reliefs, which, though certainly far from accurate in point of design, produced a very rich effect; whilst even the plainest of the cabinets were interesting for some curious specimen of turner's work or tracery. Then there were portions of three or four state beds, with ma.s.sive deeply panelled testers and huge columns, constructed with that disdain for mechanical necessity, and that emphatic preference of the picturesque, which marked the taste of the Elizabethan age. Thus, a single bed-post would in one place be scarcely thicker than a man's wrist, and in another thicker than his body; the weight of the whole being enormously out of proportion to its strength. There were a number of chairs of various patterns, but which agreed in uniting weight with fragility, and stateliness with discomfort. There were also innumerable fragments, difficult at first sight to cla.s.sify, but amongst which might be recognized the legs of tables (constructed on the same principle as the bed-posts), and pieces that had been detached from chairs, and cabinets, and beds. In addition to all these things, there were quant.i.ties of old wainscot, some of it carved, or inlaid with various woods.

The men had come to the wainscot at last, for it was reared against the walls of the garret behind the barricade of furniture. As they were removing it, there was a crashing of broken gla.s.s. A piece of this gla.s.s was brought to the light, and it was found to be stained with the arms of the Stanburnes (or, a bend cottised sa.), simple old bearings like those of most ancient unt.i.tled houses. On this other fragments were carefully collected, and they all bore the arms of Stanburne impaled with those of families with which the Colonel's ancestors had intermarried. Mr. Prigley, who was rather strong in heraldry, and knew the genealogy of his wife's family and all its alliances much better than did John Stanburne himself, recognized the martlets of Tempest, the red lion of Mallory, the green lion of Sherburne, the black lion of Stapleton, the chevron and cinquefoils of Falkingham, the golden lozenges of Plumpton, charged with red scallop-sh.e.l.ls, in fess on a field of azure. "This has been a great heraldic window, commemorating the alliances of the family!" cried Mr. Prigley, in ecstasy. "It must be restored, Colonel," said the Duke, "and brought down to the present time--down to you and Lady Helena."

Soon afterwards another discovery was due to the restless curiosity and boyish activity of little Jacob. He had found means to open one of the biggest of the cabinets, and had hauled out what seemed to him an old piece of carpet folded in many folds. He ran to inform the Duke of his discovery; but his Grace, eagerly unfolding the supposed piece of carpet, displayed a rich field of

"Arras green and blue, Showing a gaudy summer morn, Where with puffed cheek the belted hunter blew His wreathed bugle-horn."

Other pieces of tapestry followed, and the heaviest of the cabinets was found to be nearly full of them. They consisted almost exclusively of hunting scenes and pastorals, with landscapes and foliage, which, though seldom approaching correctness as a representation of nature, must have produced, nevertheless, a superbly decorative effect when hung in the halls of Wenderholme.

The Duke had said very little for nearly an hour, except in ordering the men to arrange the furniture in groups. When this had been accomplished to his satisfaction, he turned to the Colonel, and made him the following little speech:--

"Colonel Stanburne, I congratulate you upon a discovery which would be interesting to any intelligent person, but is so most especially to the representative of the Stanburnes. Here are specimens of the furniture used by your ancestors from the reign of Henry VII. to that of James I.

We have here ample data for the complete restoration of Wenderholme, even in the details of wainscot and tapestry and gla.s.s. The minutest fragments in these heaps are valuable beyond price. It is getting late now, but to-morrow I will go through every bit of it and ticket every thing, and when I leave I will send you workmen capable of doing every thing that ought to be done."

Here little Jacob whispered to Mr. Prigley, "It was I that found it out, wasn't it, Mr. Prigley?" to which piece of self-a.s.sertion his tutor replied by the repressive monosyllable "Hush!"

But his Grace had overheard both of them, and said, "Indeed we are very much obliged to you, my little boy--very much obliged indeed. I should like to make you a little present of some sort for the pleasure you have afforded me this afternoon. You are going to Eton, I hear. Have you got a watch?"

Little Jacob pulled out a silver watch, of the old-fashioned kind popularly known as turnips, from their near approach to the spherical conformation. The Duke smiled as he looked at it, and asked what time it was. Little Jacob's watch was two hours late. "But it ticks yet," he said.

The Duke said no more just then, but when little Jacob was dressed to go down to dessert, his Grace's valet, Thompson, knocked at the door, and brought a gold watch with a short chain, wherewith the young gentleman proudly adorned himself. One of the first things he did was to go to the Duke and thank him; and he did it so nicely that the n.o.bleman was pleased to say that when little Jacob went to Eton he might "show his watch to the fellows, and tell 'em who gave it him."

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

GOOD-BYE TO LITTLE JACOB.

Little Jacob was in luck's way, for the day he left Wenderholme Cottage the Colonel tipped him with a five-pound note. He had a private interview, too, with Miss Edith, and there was quite a little scene between the infantine lovers.

"Are you really going away to-day, Charley?" she said, using the name she had given him.

"Yes; Mr. Prigley says he must go back on account of Shayton Church. It will be Sunday to-morrow, you know."

"And when will you come back to us again?"

"I don't know. Perhaps never."

"Perhaps never!" exclaimed Miss Edith; "and aren't you very sorry?"

"Yes, very sorry. I have been very happy here."

"Well, then, you must come again. I wish you would. I like you very much. You are a nice boy," and the frank young lady made him a small present--a little gold pin with a turquoise in it. "Keep that; you must never lose it, you know--it is a keepsake."

When little Jacob left with Mr. Prigley, Mrs. Stanburne was very kind to him, and said he must come again some time. This cheered Edith's heart considerably, but still there was a certain moisture in her eyes as she bade farewell to her boy-friend.

And in the same way I, who write this, feel a sadness coming over me which is not to be resisted. Children _never_ live long. When they are not carried away in little coffins, and laid for ever in the silent grave, they become transformed so rapidly that we lose them in another way. The athletic young soldier or Oxonian, the graceful heroine of the ball-room, may make proud the parental heart, but can they quite console it for the eternal loss of the little beings who plagued and enlivened the early years of marriage? A father may sometimes feel a legitimate and reasonable melancholy as he contemplates the most promising of little daughters, full of vivacity and health. How long will the dear child remain to him? She will be altered in six months; in six years she will be succeeded by a totally different creature--a creature new in flesh and blood and bone, thinking other thoughts and speaking another language. There is a sadness even in that change which is increase and progression; for the glory of noon-day has destroyed the sweet delicacy of the dewy Aurora, and the wealth of summer has obliterated the freshness of the spring.

In saying good-bye to little Jacob and his friend Miss Edith, now, I am like some father who, under the fierce sun of India, sends his children away from him, that they may live. He expects to meet them again, yet these children he will never meet. In their place he will see men and women in the vigor of ripened adolescence. And when he quits the deck before the ship sails, and the little arms cling round him for the last time, and for the last time he hears the lisping voices, the dear imperfect words, a great grief comes like ice upon his heart, and he feels a void, and a loss, and a vain longing, only less painful than what we feel at the grave's brink, when the earth clatters down on the coffin, and the clergyman reads his farewell.

PART II.

CHAPTER I.

AFTER LONG YEARS.

If the reader has ever been absent for many years from some neighborhood where he has once lived--where many faces were familiar to him, and the histories that belonged to the faces--where he once knew the complex relations of the inhabitants towards each other, and was at least in some measure cognizant of the causes which were silently modelling their existence in the future, as masons build houses in which some of us will have to live--if, after knowing the life of a neighborhood so intimately as this, he has left that place for long years, and come back to it again to visit it, that he may renew the old sensations, and revive his half-forgotten ancient self, he has learned a lesson about human life which no other experience can teach. The inhabitants who have never gone away for long, the parson who preaches every Sunday in the church, the attorney who goes to his office every day after breakfast, the shop-keepers who daily see the faces of their customers across the counter, perceive changes, but not change. To them every vicissitude has the air of a particular accident, and it always seems that it might have been avoided. But the great universal change has that in its aspect which tells you that it cannot be avoided; and he who has once seen it face to face knows that all things are moving and flowing, and that the world travels fast in a sense other than the astronomical.

I have endeavored to enlist the reader's interest in a set of persons who lived at Shayton and Sootythorn at the time of the establishment of the militia. The first training of Colonel Stanburne's regiment took place in the month of May, 1853--to be precise, it met for the first time on the 23d of that month; and the 15th of the month following will long be remembered in the neighborhood on account of the great fire at Wenderholme Hall, which, as the reader is already aware, took place under circ.u.mstances of the most exceptional publicity. It is probable that on no occasion, from the times of the Tudors to our own, were so many people collected in the park and garden of Wenderholme as on that memorable night.