719 Margaret Denzil's History. CHAPTER XXI. MY NEW HOME. E were away from England eight months after our marriage that is to say, from the autumn of one year to the spring of the next; and all this time was spent in scenes which kept me in a swiftly changing rhapsody of surprise. Now at last I saw the world: strange seas, strange skies, strange cities, and what was still more unknown to me, men and women; for of them I had little experience till now, nor had I ever troubled my fancy more with what I sometimes heard of as society" than with what I read of as the South Sea Islands. This lack of curiosity I attribute to my breeding in the forest, where I had never any sympathy except such as an imaginative self contenting child may find in trees and clouds and clods, and the moss on the trees, and the tiny busy things that creep in the clods, and the thousand sounds of nature which, when you have learnt them, make up a language that fills the mind with a pagan learning and a pagan faith more subtle than any gained from books-that satisfies the mind more, and keeps it more like a wholesome breezy field, and less like a hot and noisy factory. Well, seas, skies, and cities were beautiful to my eyes and easy to read; but as for those others, the men and women, they were more difficult. I saw that the veils of convention they wore were comely and charming, but somehow I did not like the charm. Character which appeared to be dressed à la mode three times a day made me more timid than ambitious; indeed, I often felt the s me sort of resentful proud shamefacedness that an innocent pretty savage in her half-nakedness might feel, paraded as a lionne in some London drawing-room. Nowhere was I considered leonine, of course; but all the same I was very much stared at. Especially in our excursions on the Mediterranean, which my husband enjoyed so heartily, I was often cruelly conscious of that kind of admiration which gentlemen swear to by Jove. Moreover, people everywhere ehowed a certain tendency to distinguish between my husband and myself, and to separate us. This, of course, was because of his blunter manners, his no-conversation, his homely modes of speech, his je ne sais quoi of being “nobody;" and—who knows ?perhaps there was something in the fact that while his wife-was yet in her teens, he had attained the age of forty. More than once this condition of things set my mind in such a mood that it was as if the leaf resolutely folded itself back into the bud again. More than once, in other moods, I had to conceal a quick little pang of pleasure at seeing how troubled and puzzled my husband looked when a knot of young gallants, beautifully whiskered, assembled to talk opera about my deck chair, or when one of them would do me some trifling service obviously needed, but which he never saw must be welcome till it was accomplished : accomplished, toc, very often, with an ostentation meant to point a husband's indifference or stupidity. Ah, but it was messieurs the gallants who were stupid. What did they know? If they detected any flutterings of satisfaction on my face, I hope they were not deceived : it was only because of that little pang of delight at his troubled countenance, which had its most grateful response far deeper in my heart than could be reached by any ceremonial kindness of handing a chair or a shawl. Why should it not be my duty to hand chairs and wraps for him? But it did not please me that he should be vexed without reason, or made to feel ashamed when there was no shame. It did not please me that he should take the subtle small distinctions that were made between us with less resentment than I did—as though they were natural, or a price to be paid for one who was the very creature of his kindness. They offended me—they could not have been delightful to him; and yet , wherever amusement and gay company were accessible (it was winter then, you know), there he took me most faithfully. “You came to see the world, my dear,” said he, “and it is nothing but right you should do so. You are not to be a hermit or a nurse yet awhile; and if I don't show much pleasure in this sort of thing, I feel it all the same." But I was not to be deceived by such disingenuous generosity; while for my own part, what he called the "world" propounded too many puzzles of act and motive to be enjoyed without fear. My happiest days were spent in travel on the road; the most welcome mornings were those when I woke in some rustic villa; and as soon as I thought I could do so without seeming ungrateful or sentimental, I asked to be taken home. And by this time I had found for that request the sweetest excuse that can be. Another reason : I had not yet seen the home that was to be mine. Of course I was intensely curious about it, but I resolutely disciplined my curiosity-- asking no questions that the gift might come with all its due surprises ; and my husband said nothing about it either, for the same reason. Well, I was gratified at last ! There it was a most cozy, comely house in a great old walled garden that sloped down to the river near Twickenham. Without, it was simply a large, handsome cottage of no particular pretensions, but within, I can't say how charming it was: so bright, so rich, so homelike all the while, I had seen nothing like it. How should I, with my experiences confined to boarding-schools and hotels ? And yet I felt rather as if I had returned to an old half-forgotten home than come to a new one. Every room seemed to embrace me when I entered it; and I was so grateful and foolish that I would have embraced every room, had that been possible. Whether the house was new or old was not very clear from appearances, for the builder had modelled it very much upon the plan of the edifice which stood there more than two hundred years before, and I thanked him for it; for thus the house was kept in harmony with the ancient garden. Especially at the river front of the house : where it rested on a terrace, whose slope to the garden was broken by a flight of shallow broad stone steps, widening, and edged with a low parapet; and along each parapet crept evergreen vines in long straight lines—a stream of verdure flowing to the lawn. The garden itself was strikingly antique-quaintly antique, solemnly old. Though it had been kept with exceeding care, the care was strictly conservative. Change had never entered the gates after its first gardeners had done with it ; and all the sweepings, and clippings, and trimmings that had gone on there since only added to it the neatness we see in an ancient faded gentleman. It was still an Italian garden, with fountained nooks grown hoary in seclusion, with avenues of limes too close to rustle—though I fancied a rustling was to be heard there on many a still evening, when the ghosts of grand ladies in silken sacs, and whispering swains in silk and satin and buckram too, walked down them once more, witty and wicked and gossipping. The sward seemed to repose on a dozen old grey swards, so soft it was : you said, “ It is like tapestry," and not, “ It is like a carpet.” There was a grotto. Once there had been a labyrinth, but that had gone. dial remained, but it was rather too quaint: a black boy with a turban on, who, kneeling, presented the dial to the sun, on a stone cushion that looked at a little distance like a wash-hand basin. A mere view of this charming old place from a window was not enough. He who gave it me longed for his dinner; I longed to go and take possession of my territory at once; and it promised so much in the way of discovery that I seized an opportunity of making the expedition alone. And a delightful dreamy ramble I had over the lawns and in and about the alleys, for it was a soft April evening, and a shower had fallen ; and that well over, the sun came out to shine, and birds set up their throats to sing, for one half hour more. Where the house was hidden VOL. IX.-XO. 54. 35. The sun by tall memorial elms," all but a gable or so, there you were fairly shut in with the eighteenth century. At any moment Mr. Pope might appear, attendant on some one of the brocaded dames whom he knew too well and respected too little. But instead of the fine roinantic personages of that time, what should I behold approaching me by-and-by but a little odd figure in the black of our own day-a wizen, wigged little figure, bowing very much, and smiling very much, with a face like a winter russeting long forgotten in a cupboard. He appeared so suddenly from behind a clump of evergreens, when I thought myself quite alone, that I was startled out of all composure; but the small, small gentleman did his best to reassure me, bowing at every other step. “I beg your pardon, ma'am," said he, in the cracked voice that was expected of him, “ but I'm only an old fellow-a neighbour of yourswho hates the world and loves a little quiet meditation; and so I prevailed upon your housekeeper you are Mrs. Denzil, I presune, whom we have been expecting so long?" I bowed of course—but not graciously. “Yes? I prevailed upon your housekeeper, then, to give me leave to stroll in your nice old garden occasionally, till you came home. And, I assure you," with another simper which might have meant anything, “ I have had many profitable and pleasant reflections here." I told him I was very glad to hear it. Permit me to restore the wicket key your housekeeper was good enough to lend me. Good evening! I wish you joy of your delightful residence." He handed me the key with another bow, and shuffled off, smiling still. “ Thanks for the key that locks you out,” said I to myself, shivering "I don't like you. You shall not come creeping here any more like a great old black beetle." And in truth, the apparition of this inystical person, and his too impressive manners, put an end to the pleasures of my ramble. The interview was over in three or four minutes, but in that interval time and place had changed. The sun had set, the slatey gloom of an April evening had fallen everywhere ; and not till I was seated with my happy husband in the light of half-a-dozen candles, and we found ourselves so charmingly " at home," did I forgive that malappropriate little man. After a few days of rest in this pretty place (the selection of which for me argued such instinctive penetration that I respected my husband ever so much more now), I began to make acquaintances. All round I about I had pleasant homely people for neighbours-families of the hereditary merchant class—not very rich families, but full of sons and daughters and decorous bonhomie. First, the parson called on me, and was so agreeable as never to say a word about the charities or pieties of the parish during the half hour he sat and chatted, with his long black course. legs bent at acute angles on the littlest chair in the room. And I suppose I pleased him; though my part of the conversation was hampered by a naughty troublesome nursery rhyme which repeated itself in my mind the whole time. The legend is well known—it is about a Miss Muffet who sat on a tuffet (probably a settee), and about a great spider who sat down beside her, and frightened Miss Muffet away. However, I was not much frightened, and it was due to this interview, I suppose, that before the end of a week two or three of the nicest mothers a came to call on me, with their daughters; and I liked the mothers best ; and they liked me; and soon I found myself as welcome as the daughters themselves in the half-dozen houses which made up the friendliest and bext community of the place. By some rare concurrence of circumstance, taste, and feeling, it was, indeed, like one great family ; and I was assured that no stranger had been admitted within its comfortable bounds for a long time past, save myself and “oh, such a nice, funny old gentleman,"—a doctor retired from his profession, who had come to settle in the village six months before our arrival. I found presently that to this gentleman belonged the quaint figure that had surprised me when I went to take possession of my garden; and he always surprised me: the impression he made upon my mind at first remained in full force after more meetings than one. Mr. Calamy was not often met, indeed. He was rarely seen at our neighbourly evening assemblies, but was chiefly known to the afternoon tea-tables of the ladies, where he enjoyed a certain popularity, first for his charities, and next for lis eccentric manners and opinions; which added something piquant and original to the humdrum society on whose outskirts he preferred to dwell. He was a physician who railed against physic, and an old bachelor who disliked not the other sex, but his own. It was whispered everywhere, in a mysterious way, that he was very clever, though nobody could vouch for any particular instances of successful practice; and now it was too late to ask advice of him, for he would give On the very first occasion of my meeting the doctor in company, I I heard him ridicule the pretensions he had resigned. “Let me alone," said he, in his high cracked voice, to some poor lady who had ventured to hint at her chronic headaches and his well-known skill. “Don't tempt me to risk another murder. I have no wish to add to the ill-gained guineas which would burn my pocket out if I did not give some of them now and then to your Dorcas work. Prescribe! there isn't a drug in Polson's shop that I know any more about than Polson's shop-boy does. We are nothing but a pack of experimentalists, I tell you. Half the disease in the world is caused by experiments on the other half; and when all's done, we are as much in the dark as ever!" “ Then you'll positively have nothing to do with us,” said the disappointed woman. “ Not one of you !” he answered. "Nobody here shall persuade me to be the death of her--unless," he added in a lower voice, and turning none. |