The whole vast sweep of our surrounding prospect lay answering in a myriad fleeting shades the cloudy process of the tremendous sky. The English heaven is a fit antithesis to the complex English earth. We possess in America the infinite beauty of the blue; England possesses the splendour of combined and animated clouds. Over against us, from our station on the hills, we saw them piled and dissolved, compacted and shifted, blotting the azure with sullen rain spots, stretching, breeze-fretted, into dappled fields of grey, bursting into a storm of light or melting into a drizzle of silver. We made our way along the rounded summits of these well-grazed heights, mild, breezy inland downs, – and descended through long-drawn slopes of fields, green to cottage doors, to where a rural village beckoned us from its seat among the meadows. Close beside it, I admit, the railway shoots fiercely from its tunnel in the hills; and yet there broods upon this charming hamlet an old-time quietude and privacy, which seems to make it a violation of confidence to tell its name so far away. We struck through a narrow lane, a green lane, dim with its height of hedges; it led us to a superb old farm-house, now jostled by the multiplied lanes and roads which have curtailed its ancient appanage. It stands in stubborn picturesqueness, at the receipt of sad-eyed contemplation and the sufferance of ‘sketches’. I doubt whether out of Nuremberg – or Pompeii! – you may find so forcible an image of the domiciliary genius of the past. It is cruelly complete; its bended beams and joists, beneath the burden of its gables, seem to ache and groan with memories and regrets. The short, low windows, where lead and glass combine in equal proportions to hint to the wondering stranger of the mediaeval gloom within, still prefer their darksome office to the grace of modern day. Such an old house fills an American with an indefinable feeling of respect. So propped and patched and tinkered with clumsy tenderness, clustered so richly about its central English sturdiness, its oaken vertebrations, so humanised with ages of use and touches of beneficent affection, it seemed to offer to our grateful eyes a small, rude synthesis of the great English social order. Passing out upon the high-road, we came to the common browsing-patch, the ‘village green’ of the tales of our youth. Nothing was wanting; the shaggy, mouse-coloured donkey, nosing the turf with his mild and huge proboscis, the geese, the old woman – the old woman, in person, with her red cloak and her black bonnet, frilled about the face and double-frilled beside her decent, placid cheeks, – the towering ploughman with his white smock-frock, puckered on chest and back, his short corduroys, his mighty calves, his big, red, rural face. We greeted these things as children greet the loved pictures in a story-book, lost and mourned and found again. It was marvellous how well we knew them. Beside the road we saw a ploughboy straddle, whistling, on a stile. Gainsborough might have painted him. Beyond the stile, across the level velvet of a meadow, a footpath lay, like a thread of darker woof. We followed it from field to field and from stile to stile. It was the way to church. At the church we finally arrived, lost in its rook-haunted churchyard, hidden from the work-day world by the broad stillness of pastures, – a grey, grey tower, a huge black yew, a cluster of village graves, with crooked headstones, in grassy, low relief. The whole scene was deeply ecclesiastical. My companion was overcome.
‘You must bury me here,’ he cried. ‘It’s the first church I have seen in my life. How it makes a Sunday where it stands!’
The next day we saw a church of statelier proportions. We walked over to Worcester, through such a mist of local colour, that I felt like one of Smollett’s pedestrian heroes, faring tavernward for a night of adventures. As we neared the provincial city we saw the steepled mass of the cathedral, long and high, rise far into the cloud-freckled blue. And as we came nearer still, we stopped on the bridge and viewed the solid minster reflected in the yellow Severn. And going farther yet we entered the town, – where surely Miss Austen’s heroines, in chariots and curricles, must often have come a shopping for swan’s-down boas and high lace mittens; – we lounged about the gentle close and gased insatiably at that most soul-soothing sight, the waning, wasting afternoon light, the visible ether which feels the voices of the chimes, far aloft on the broad perpendicular field of the cathedral tower; saw it linger and nestle and abide, as it loves to do on all bold architectural spaces, converting them graciously into registers and witnesses of nature; tasted, too, as deeply of the peculiar stillness of this clerical precinct; saw a rosy English lad come forth and lock the door of the old foundation school, which marries its hoary basement to the soaring Gothic of the church, and carry his big responsible key into one of the quiet canonical houses; and then stood musing together on the effect on one’s mind of having in one’s boyhood haunted such cathedral shades as a King’s scholar, and yet kept ruddy with much cricket in misty meadows by the Severn. On the third morning we betook ourselves to Lockley Park, having learned that the greater part of it was open to visitors, and that, indeed, on application, the house was occasionally shown.
Within its broad enclosure many a declining spur of the great hills melted into parklike slopes and dells. A long avenue wound and circled from the outermost gate through an untrimmed woodland, whence you glanced at further slopes and glades and copses and bosky recesses, – at everything except the limits of the place. It was as free and wild and untended as the villa of an Italian prince; and I have never seen the stern English fact of property put on such an air of innocence. The weather had just become perfect; it was one of the dozen exquisite days of the English year, – days stamped with a refinement of purity unknown in more liberal climes. It was as if the mellow brightness, as tender as that of the primroses which starred the dark waysides like petals wind-scattered over beds of moss, had been meted out to us by the cubic foot, – tempered, refined, recorded! From this external region we passed into the heart of the park, through a second lodge-gate, with weather-worn gilding on its twisted bars, to the smooth slopes where the great trees stood singly and the tame deer browsed along the bed of a woodland stream. Hence, before us, we perceived the dark Elizabethan manor among its blooming parterres and terraces.
‘Here you can wander all day,’ I said to Searle, ‘like a proscribed and exiled prince, hovering about the dominion of the usurper.’
‘To think,’ he answered, ‘of people having enjoyed this all these years! I know what I am, – what might I have been? What does all this make of you?’
‘That it makes you happy,’ I said, ‘I should hesitate to believe. But it’s hard to suppose that such a place has not some beneficent action of its own.’
‘What a perfect scene and background it forms!’ Searle went on. ‘What legends, what histories it knows! My heart is breaking with unutterable visions. There’s Tennyson’s Talking Oak. What summer days one could spend here! How I could lounge my bit of life away on this shady stretch of turf! Haven’t I some maiden-cousin in yon moated grange who would give me kind leave?’ And then turning almost fiercely upon me: ‘Why did you bring me here? Why did you drag me into this torment of vain regrets?’
At this moment there passed near us a servant who had emerged from the gardens of the great house. I hailed him and inquired whether we should be likely to gain admittance. He answered that Mr Searle was away from home, and that he thought it probable the housekeeper would consent to do the honours of the mansion. I passed my arm into Searle’s. ‘Come,’ I said. ‘Drain the cup, bitter-sweet though it be. We shall go in.’ We passed another lodge-gate and entered the gardens. The house was an admirable specimen of complete Elizabethan, a multitudinous cluster of gables and porches, oriels and turrets, screens of ivy and pinnacles of slate. Two broad terraces commanded the great wooded horizon of the adjacent domain. Our summons was answered by the butler in person, solemn and tout de noir habillé. He repeated the statement that Mr Searle was away from home, and that he would present our petition to the housekeeper. We would be so good, however, as to give him our cards. This request, following so directly on the assertion that Mr Searle was absent, seemed to my companion not distinctly pertinent. ?
??Surely not for the housekeeper,’ he said.
The butler gave a deferential cough. ‘Miss Searle is at home.’
‘Yours alone will suffice,’ said Searle. I took out a card and pencil, and wrote beneath my name, New York. Standing with the pencil in my hand I felt a sudden impulse. Without in the least weighing proprieties or results, I yielded to it. I added above my name, Mr Clement Searle. What would come of it?
Before many minutes the housekeeper attended us – a fresh rosy little old woman in a dowdy clean cap and a scanty calico gown; an exquisite specimen of refined and venerable servility. She had the accent of the country, but the manners of the house. Under her guidance we passed through a dozen apartments, duly stocked with old pictures, old tapestry, old carvings, old armour, with all the constituent properties of an English manor. The pictures were especially valuable. The two Vandykes, the trio of rosy Rubenses, the sole and sombre Rembrandt, glowed with conscious authenticity. A Claude, a Murillo, a Greuze, and a Gainsborough hung gracious in their chosen places. Searle strolled about silent, pale, and grave, with bloodshot eyes and lips compressed. He uttered no comment and asked no question. Missing him, at last, from my side, I retraced my steps and found him in a room we had just left, on a tarnished silken divan, with his face buried in his hands. Before him, ranged on an antique buffet, was a magnificent collection of old Italian majolica; huge platters radiant with their steady colours, jugs and vases nobly bellied and embossed. There came to me, as I looked, a sudden vision of the young English gentleman, who, eighty years ago, had travelled by slow stages to Italy and been waited on at his inn by persuasive toymen. ‘What is it, Searle?’ I asked. ‘Are you unwell?’
He uncovered his haggard face and showed a burning blush. Then smiling in hot irony: ‘A memory of the past! I was thinking of a china vase that used to stand on the parlour mantel-shelf while I was a boy, with the portrait of General Jackson painted on one side and a bunch of flowers on the other. How long do you suppose that majolica has been in the family?’
‘A long time probably. It was brought hither in the last century, into old, old England, out of old, old Italy, by some old young buck of this excellent house with a taste for chinoiseries. Here it has stood for a hundred years, keeping its clear, firm hues in this aristocratic twilight.’
Searle sprang to his feet. ‘I say,’ he cried, ‘in heaven’s name take me away! I can’t stand this. Before I know it I shall do something I shall be ashamed of. I shall steal one of their d–d majolicas. I shall proclaim my identity and assert my rights! I shall go blubbering to Miss Searle and ask her in pity’s name to keep me here for a month!’
If poor Searle could ever have been said to look ‘dangerous’, he looked so now. I began to regret my officious presentation of his name, and prepared without delay to lead him out of the house. We overtook the housekeeper in the last room of the suite, a small, unused boudoir, over the chimney-piece of which hung a noble portrait of a young man in a powdered wig and a brocaded waistcoat. I was immediately struck with his resemblance to my companion.
‘This is Mr Clement Searle, Mr Searle’s great-uncle, by Sir Joshua Reynolds,’ quoth the housekeeper. ‘He died young, poor gentleman. He perished at sea, going to America.’
‘He’s the young buck,’ I said, ‘who brought the majolica out of Italy.’
‘Indeed, sir, I believe he did,’ said the housekeeper, staring.
‘He’s the image of you, Searle,’ I murmured.
‘He’s wonderfully like the gentleman, saving his presence,’ said the housekeeper.
My friend stood gazing. ‘Clement Searle – at sea – going to America –’ he muttered. Then harshly, to the housekeeper, ‘Why the deuce did he go to America?’
‘Why, indeed, sir? You may well ask. I believe he had kinsfolk there. It was for them to come to him.’
Searle broke into a laugh. ‘It was for them to have come to him! Well, well,’ he said, fixing his eyes on the little old woman, ‘they have come to him at last!’
She blushed like a wrinkled rose-leaf. ‘Indeed, sir,’ she said, ‘I verily believe that you are one of us!’
‘My name is the name of that lovely youth,’ Searle went on. ‘Kinsman, I salute you! Attend!’ And he grasped me by the arm. ‘I have an idea! He perished at sea. His spirit came ashore and wandered forlorn till it got lodgement again in my poor body. In my poor body it has lived, homesick, these forty years, shaking its rickety cage, urging me, stupid, to carry it back to the scenes of its youth. And I never knew what was the matter with me! Let me exhale my spirit here!’
The housekeeper essayed a timorous smile. The scene was embarrassing. My confusion was not allayed when I suddenly perceived in the doorway the figure of a lady. ‘Miss Searle!’ whispered the housekeeper. My first impression of Miss Searle was that she was neither young nor beautiful. She stood with a timid air on the threshold, pale, trying to smile, and twirling my card in her fingers. I immediately bowed. Searle, I think, gazed marvelling.
‘If I am not mistaken,’ said the lady, ‘one of you gentlemen is Mr Clement Searle.’
‘My friend is Mr Clement Searle,’ I replied. ‘Allow me to add that I alone am responsible for your having received his name.’
‘I should have been sorry not to receive it,’ said Miss Searle, beginning to blush. ‘Your being from America has led me to – to interrupt you.’
‘The interruption, madam, has been on our part. And with just that excuse, – that we are from America.’
Miss Searle, while I spoke, had fixed her eyes on my friend, as he stood silent beneath Sir Joshua’s portrait. The housekeeper, amazed and mystified, took a liberty. ‘Heaven preserve us, Miss! It’s your great-uncle’s picture come to life.’
‘I’m not mistaken, then,’ said Miss Searle. ‘We are distantly related.’ She had the aspect of an extremely modest woman. She was evidently embarrassed at having to proceed unassisted in her overture. Searle eyed her with gentle wonder from head to foot. I fancied I read his thoughts. This, then, was Miss Searle, his maiden-cousin, prospective heiress of these manorial acres and treasures. She was a person of about thirty-three years of age, taller than most women, with health and strength in the rounded amplitude of her shape. She had a small blue eye, a massive chignon of yellow hair, and a mouth at once broad and comely. She was dressed in a lustreless black satin gown, with a short train. Around her neck she wore a blue silk handkerchief, and over this handkerchief, in many convolutions, a string of amber beads. Her appearance was singular; she was large, yet not imposing; girlish, yet mature. Her glance and accent, in addressing us, were simple, too simple. Searle, I think, had been fancying some proud cold beauty of five-and-twenty; he was relieved at finding the lady timid and plain. His person was suddenly illumined with an old disused gallantry.
‘We are distant cousins, I believe. I am happy to claim a relationship which you are so good as to remember. I had not in the least counted on your doing so.’
‘Perhaps I have done wrong,’ and Miss Searle blushed anew and smiled. ‘But I have always known of there being people of our blood in America, and I have often wondered and asked about them; without learning much, however. To-day, when this card was brought me and I knew of a Clement Searle wandering about the house like a stranger, I felt as if I ought to do something. I hardly knew what! My brother is in London. I have done what I think he would have done. Welcome, as a cousin.’ And with a gesture at once frank and shy, she put out her hand.
‘I’m welcome indeed,’ said Searle, taking it, ‘if he would have done it half as graciously.’
‘You’ve seen the show,’ Miss Searle went on. ‘Perhaps now you’ll have some lunch.’ We followed her into a small breakfast-room, where a deep bay-window opened on the mossy flags of the great terrace. Here, for some moments, she remained silent and shy, in the manner of a person resting from a great effort. Searle, too, was formal and reticent, so that I had to busy myself with providing small-talk. It was of course easy to desca
nt on the beauties of park and mansion. Meanwhile I observed our hostess. She had small beauty and scanty grace; her dress was out of taste and out of season; yet she pleased me well. There was about her a sturdy sweetness, a homely flavour of the sequestered châtelaine of feudal days. To be so simple amid this massive luxury, so mellow and yet so fresh, so modest and yet so placid, told of just the spacious leisure in which I had fancied human life to be steeped in many a park-circled home. Miss Searle was to the Belle au Bois Dormant what a fact is to a fairy-tale, an interpretation to a myth. We, on our side, were to our hostess objects of no light scrutiny. The best possible English breeding still marvels visibly at the native American. Miss Searle’s wonderment was guileless enough to have been more overt and yet inoffensive; there was no taint of offence indeed in her utterance of the unvarying amenity that she had met an American family on the Lake of Como whom she would have almost taken to be English.