 | CHAPTER IV. Cromwell |  |
4. CHAPTER IV.
Which steeps the sould forespent with foreign woes,
What time we turn, our weary wanderings o'er,
To the old homestead, thence to roam no more,
And stretch our limbs in calm luxurious rest,
On the dear bed our careless childhood pressed.”
Catullus. —Free Translation.
None know, but those who have for years been
wanderers from the paternal roof, whether of choice
or of necessity it matters not,—who have for years
been sojourners, not dwellers, on the broad desert
earth,—who, in the midst of friends almost as dear
as those, who girt as with a magic cestus the unforgotten
fireside of their childhood, have craved,
with an insatiate and yearning appetite, the well-known
aspect of the old home-places,—who have
languished for a father's blessing, a mother's wistful
eye, a sister's holy kiss,—who have felt, with
the patriotic Syrian, that “Abana and Pharpar,
rivers of Damascus,” are truly to the exile “better
than all the waters of Israel;”—none know, but
these, the deep calm happiness of being once again
the centre of that sweet domestic circle; of receiving
the fond welcome of every living thing—
ay, even to the household dog, or superannuated
horse, that yelps or whinnies in the fulness of his
recognition; of lying down to rest beneath the very
curtains, and on the very bed, which had so often
wooed them to repose before they knew the bitterness
of sin or sorrow.
Fully indeed, and far more sensibly than it is
tasted by the common pilgrim of life's journey, did
of Ardenne, as he leaned, gazing upon the familiar
landscape, from out the open casement of his chamber;—that
chamber, which had never for a moment
faded from his memory, with its oaken wainscoting
and faded tapestries,—its angular recesses, peopled
by his youthful fantasy with lurking shapes of
terror,—its pleasant seats in the deep bay windows,
—its brazen-handled cabinets of quaint device—its
bed with sculptured tester and dark hangings,—and,
more than all, its ebon desk, with the velvet-bound
and silver-studded Bible, whence his long-lost and
long-regretted mother had lessoned him so lovingly
while he was yet a boy.
The moonlight lay upon the velvet park and
tufted elms, as though it loved to sleep among
that peaceful scenery; and if, at intervals, it shone
reflected from the surface of some quiet water, it
lingered even there with a half-shadowed lustre,
not flashing out with the bright gleams of gorgeous
sunshine, but calmly harmonizing with the spirit
of the place and hour. So clear, however, was the
mellow light, that the graceful attitudes of the
slumbering deer might be distinguished on the
open lawns, while the pinion of the gliding owl
was seen to glance against the massy shadows of
the surrounding forest. Yet now, although he
gazed upon all that was most beautiful of natural
scenery,—all that was most endeared to him by
boyish recollections,—although he was surrounded
by the very objects that he had most earnestly desired
to see,—although he was at the very point which
he but yesterday would have esteemed the summit
of fruition—he was not happy. It is true, that he
had found in her on whom his mind had dwelt most
fondly and most frequently during his absence, the
very being he had loved so fervently of yore—bearing
in the ripening of her mind to excellent maturity,
and in the rounding of her sylph-like figure into
the exquisite proportions of young womanhood!
It is true that the father, whom he had honoured
and obeyed with that old-fashioned filial reverence,
which—ill betide the change—has long since passed
away, together with the diamond-hilted rapiers, and
the somewhat formal courtesy of our progenitors,
had welcomed him to his affections, a man yet in
the prime of intellectual vigour! It is true that
he had brought back to his native land a heart untainted
by the follies and the sins of foreign countries;
a mind well satisfied, not by the baseless
arguments of boyish prejudice, but by the strong
convictions of experience, that his own earth-fast
island was indeed the home best calculated for the
seekers of that sweet domestic quietude, that fireside,
church-going happiness—that calm enjoyment
of the duties, the labours, and the pleasures
of a country life, blent, as these ever are, with a
romantic taste for the green fields and slumbering
woodlands, the gentle river and the smooth hill-side—which
have at all times formed a feature so
distinctive in the English character! But it is no
less true that, even at the moment when his hand
might have been said to grasp all that his soul desired,
his spirit was disturbed, and his heart ill at
ease.
It were perhaps the wisest, as it surely were the
happiest course, for mortals to obey the dictates
equally inculcated by the disciples of two schools,
which, seemingly the most at variance with each
other, are nevertheless in truth as similar in not a
few essentials, as it is possible for creeds to be in
other points so diverse as those entertained by the
followers of Epicurus and—with reverence be it
nay, both strenuously urging the necessity, and in
words almost identical, that we “take no heed for
the morrow.” Yet, in a mortal sense, obedience
to this injunction is perhaps impossible—impossible
at least to any man endowed with enough of
intellect and mental vigour to perceive the connexion
between present causes and eventual effects—to
foresee with prescient sagacity the crop which will
spring up to-morrow from the seed laid in the
ground to-day!—For who could sit at ease, appreciating
the full quality of each delicious viand,
pleasantly debating on the flavour of each fragrant
wine, knowing that the sword of Damocles was
swinging by a single hair—and that, too, yielding at
every instant to the weight—above his head? Had
it not been for this—had it been possible for Ardenne
to seal up his eyes and close his ears against
the evidence of what to-morrow must bring forth—
had he lacked the wisdom to discover the future
destinies of England, her vitals even now convulsed
by the first throes of the incipient earthquake—or
the patriotism to sympathize with the
afflictions which, as that wisdom taught him, must
ere another year befall his country—he might have
surrendered himself to momentary pleasure, careless
or ignorant of the approaching wo. And—so
rare of occurrence, and so brief when they do occur,
are the periods during human life even of
comparative happiness—perhaps, had he so done,
he had been able to look back in after days to
more of sunny hours than he could count among
the strange and mingled incidents of his eventful
life. But, constituted as he was, it was not in his
power to fix his gaze on the bright present aspect
of the things around him, without observing the
huge melancholy clouds which were rising up on
with their gloomy pall, and perhaps to overwhelm
in the wild tempest they must soon discharge, the
feeble shallop of his fortunes, together with the
stronger vessel of the constitution.
At an early period of his life a visiter of southern
lands—where he had wandered, not to mark
alone the sunny skies and desolated fields, the ruined
temples and the beautiful cascades, but to
muse on the condition of the nations once so powerful
and so degraded now; to ponder on their rise
and fall; to draw deep lessons of the future from
the contemplation of the past; he had learned to
cherish liberty the more from having witnessed, if
not himself endured, the wrongs, the misery, and
the oppression of unlimited authority. Summoned
of late by rumours rife throughout the world of
present disagreement and of coming strife between
the king and parliament of his own country, he had
returned to England at the instigation of his natural
sense of duties, which forbade him to expend his
energies of heart and hand in the service of a foreign
prince, when both might be required to aid the
better cause of liberty or loyalty; no less than at the
dictates of those natural affections which, sooner or
later, will point, as surely as the magnetic needle
to the north, toward the home of childhood. While
on the journey, all his thoughts had been of joy—
of that serene and moderate happiness which
makes the days flow onward like a broad and tranquil
river, fertilizing some fair plain, rich with the
hopes of thousands—beautiful, but with an indescribable
and unromantic beauty—presenting none
of those wild charms, those scenes at once sublime
and lovely to the eye, which mark the course
of far-famed torrents amid the savage glens of
moorland, moss, and mountain—but leaving on the
that will be fresh and vivid when the sterner memory
of its rivals shall have yielded to oblivion. His
spirit had looked forward to a long perspective of
sunshiny years—years not to be degraded by the
selfish sloth of luxury; not to be wasted in the
mere sports of the field, which, useful, ay, and ennobling
in their tendencies, when partaken but as
a relief to grave and solid duties, so surely brutalize
if they be exalted to a daily occupation; not to
be dreamed away in apathetic musings and would-be
philosophy; but to be dignified by high and
patriotic labours—by the cultivation of the sciences
and arts—by the promotion of public virtue and
domestic worth—to be enlivened by the gay communion
of the noble and the good—to be softened
by the sweet charities, the endearing ties, the holy
sympathies that clasp within their pale the members
of a happy family—and to be closed at length
by a calm death-bed amid weeping friends, and by
a grave beneath the elms of the ancestral church-yard,
still to be decked with flowers, and pointed
out to far posterity as the long home of one whose
life had been a course, to which death had but
brought the consummation, of unbending honour.
Such, when the chalky cliffs loomed white and
lofty, such were the fond anticipations, the imaginations,
never perhaps to be realized, which poured
their gilded halo round his heart; and when he
felt his foot once more securely planted on the parent
soil, when all those gushing influences of mingled
ecstasy and tenderness swept in an overwhelming
torrent over his every sense, he deemed
that all his hopes were on the point of being gratified—that
he was indeed about to be the happiest
of men. The rumours of evil seemed to fade
away; the menaces of political discord, perchance
not unheard, at least unworthy to create solicitude;
the fears that would at times arise unbidden, clouding
with darker shades the bright hues of his mental
painting, were all forgotten; and when he arrived,
as he had done that evening, at the dear home
of his boyhood; when he perceived the mighty
pleasure that lightened forth from every feature of
his admiring father; when he found himself revelling
in the manifest affections of his destined
bride, and knew that she partook of the same rapture,
and in no less degree, he for a while abandoned
his whole soul to the tide of feeling; he suffered
himself to be carried away by his enjoyment
of the present, careless and fearless of the future;
he felt, perhaps for the first time of his life, during
those brief hours that elastic buoyancy of temper
which seems to tread the earth with winged steps,
about to soar aloft, insensible to aught that may
depress, reckless of all that may oppose—that rapt
intoxication of the spirit, which is succeeded so invariably
by the contrary extreme of listless, sad
despondency, that, in the northern parts of Britain,
it has given rise to a pervading superstition, to an
undoubting creed, that such is the forerunner and
the omen, not of a causeless gloom,. but of a coming
evil. However this may be, it nevertheless is
certain, that scarcely had he retired from that delicious
intercourse to the seclusion of his own apartment,
ere the exhilaration, which had almost surprised
himself while he indulged it, gave place,
first, to an uncertain sense of restlessness—then to
a consciousness of some impending evil, increasing
in distinctness moment after moment, till it assumed
at length the shape of an anxiety, if not a fear,
positive, well-defined, and, alas! but too well
grounded. Nothing, indeed, but the whirl of mingled
meditation, could have, even thus far, blinded Ardenne
to the difficulties and the dangers of his future
course. The boasted loyalty of his forefathers—their
fond devotion, stronger almost than
life, to the king, not as a person, but as a portion,
and that the most important, of the state—their
orthodox and sturdy zeal, condemning all as sectaries
and fanatics who differed in the least from the
established canons of the church—their prejudiced
affection for all that was antique, even for antique
error!—their holding up all those who would improve
or alter, with the most diffident and sparing
hand, as innovators on the good old times, as levellers
of rank and order, as iconoclasts of the holy
constitution, as traitors to their monarch, to their
country, to their God! All these, he could not
but remember, had been the principles impressed
upon his dawning intellect as the very elixir of political
wisdom—as the examples which must point
the steps of every Ardenne—as the dogmata for
the maintenance of which he must, if ever called
upon to do so, rejoicingly expend his fortune and
his blood! All these, he could not but foresee,
must still, according to all human calculation, be
the favourite maxims of his father, who—as he felt
in contradiction of those hopes, which, even in
spite of hope, he knew unfounded—would be too
like to deem the slightest deviation from the footsteps
of his idols as the worst apostacy!—the most
respectful opposition to the arbitrary will of the
misguided sovereign as flat rebellion!—the most
moderate interference in behalf of liberal views
and privileges of the people as a banding against
the legitimate aristocracy of the land with all that
was low, and sordid, and degraded!—too like, in
short, to deem the part which Edgar felt already to
espouse, a base abandonment of his natural position—a
shameful dereliction from the principles
and virtues of his race—a crime not to be atoned
for, even by exclusion from his heart and expulsion
from the home of his fathers! And had he been
able even heretofore and at a distance to close his
eyes against this fatal certainty, he must indeed
have been both blind and deaf of heart had he not
marked the words of blasting sarcasm, of fierce
and fiery hatred, which flashed forth as oft as any
casual mention intervened of those who had stood
forth to check the headlong declination of the English
Church toward dreaded popery, or the more
rapid increase of prerogative toward absolute and
autocratic sway. But they had not escaped him.
Although unnoted, or at least unremarked, amid the
free and flowing conversation of that first evening,
and unable for the time to dash his most unusual
exuberance of animal spirits, they had sunk deep
into his heart;—and now they rose in long array
against him, ghastly and gloomy shapes, reproaching
him with his unnatural and foolish joy, and
pointing to an endless course of tribulation and of
sorrow. Nor was this all!—though this had been
enough to overshadow a temperament more sanguinely
inclined than that of Edgar Ardenne, determined
as he was to follow that which he himself
should deem the wise, the upright, and the honourable
way of action, though such should be avenged
by the prostration of all his fancy's idols—by the
ruin of his fortunes—by the blighting of his nearest
and dearest aspirations—and, more intolerable far
than all beside, by the forfeiture of that high opinion
which his merit had induced, and the frustration
of that just expectance which his promise had excited
in the bosoms of his friends and kinsmen.
the lone stillness of the night, as he reviewed with
a dispassionate, keen-sighted judgment the occurrences
of the past day—as he recurred to every
word that had fallen from the lips to which he
looked for love, and life, and every thing—to every
expression which had wreathed in smiles, or
clouded with disapprobation, the soul-fraught lineaments
of Sibyl—he could not bless himself with
the conviction, scarce even with the hope, that she
was not, although in a less stern degree, a holder
of the same ancestral prejudices—a worshipper
of the same creed, hallowed as it was by much
that naturally would call forth the sympathies of a
mind imbued with all the poetry of feudal recollections,
not as yet faded from the earth—by the
high chivalrous devotion—the noble and unselfish
confidence—the enthusiastic valour—the unsullied
memory and cloudless glory, of the days when
kings were loved as second only to the gods—when loyalty was regarded as a virtue among
men, in the same rank with piety toward Heaven.
Whither then—whither had fallen his exulting fancies—whither
had flown his visionary prospects
of a useful and a happy life, of an honoured and
regretted end—if the paths of happiness and honour
were destined to run diverse? If—his heart burning
with the pure and hallowed flame of liberty,
his head clearly appreciating the miserable and
abhorred aims of the rash man who wore the
crown of England, his whole soul glowing with
patriotic ardour—he must either prostitute his energies
to make what to him seemed the worse appear
the better cause—must either lift his voice
to justify and to defend time-honoured wrong and
new-devised oppression—must either edge the
weapon of the despot with all the powers of his
ranking himself among the vindicators of
the constitution to its early purity, among the assertors
of a legitimate and tempered freedom—as
far removed from the wild anarchy and license of
falsely styled republics, as from the forced obedience
and intolerant rule of arbitrary governors—
must be content to sacrifice all that his heart held
worthy its acceptance! if, in short, he must act a
part dishonest and unworthy, so to gain those ordinary
means of happiness, to which none so lowly
but they do aspire; or must surrender every hope,
nay, every possibility of earthly bliss, at the inflexible
commands of duty and of honour? These
were the dark reflections into which the mind of
Ardenne had relapsed, as he stood alone, gazing
from the lattice of his chamber into the bosom of
the night, profiting by, if not enjoying, the first
moments of calm solitude, the first opportunity for
quiet and heart-searching meditation, that had fallen
to his lot since he had been numbered once
again among the dwellers beneath the oaken
shades of his paternal Woodleigh. Nor, as the
hours of night passed, not unheralded by musical
chimes from the old belfry, and the moonlight
waned in the peaceful sky, did his wild thoughts
and sad forebodings give way to aught of weariness;
the more he pondered, and the less able did
he seem to find the slightest clew to guide his
footsteps through the gloomy labyrinth of the
future—the longer he sat gazing on the pallid
stars, and the less he felt disposed for slumber—
till at length, the spirit moving, as it were, too
rapidly, and the blood coursing through his veins
too fiercely to permit the body to remain inactive,
he arose, scarce conscious that he did so, and
paced the oaken floor, backward and forth, with
the coming of the early twilight dappled the
darkness of the eastern sky; a bird or two, of
those which had securely roosted under the ivy-curtained
eaves, awaking with a lively chirp, gave
notice of the dawn; and anon the calm and colourless
light of an autumnal morning crept into Ardenne's
chamber, dispelling from its every nook
the massy shadows which had nestled, like unholy
spirits, in those deep recesses, beneath the partial
influence of the moon. But all unnoted by its
occupant had those successive changes circled the
firmament; and when the sound of voices and of
footsteps, passing to and fro the corridors, announced
the return of those bright hours allotted to so
much of human toil and sorrow, he absolutely
started in surprise, and almost doubted whether it
could indeed be morning, that had stolen on his
waking dreams, and found him still a watcher.
With something like a smile at his own thoughtful
carelessness, he turned to change and alter his
discomposed attire; and as he dashed the pure cold
water over his throbbing temples, and bathed his
feverish hands, he perceived that its refreshing
coolness pervaded not his body only, but calmed
and soothed his mind; and when the merry bell
summoned its hearers to that most unrestrained
and sociable of meetings, the morning meal, he
descended the old staircase, gazing on its walls,
decked with time-honoured banners, and glittering
with starry groups of weapons—and on its landing-places
guarded by complete panoplies of steel,
standing erect with advanced arms and lowered
visors, as if still tenanted by the strong frames
that had supported them of yore amid the din of
battle, if not with a heart at ease, at least with a
countenance that bore no traces of the conflict still
as such rooms were termed in the quaint language
of the time, wherein meet preparations for a breakfast,
far more solid than are used in these degenerate
days, had been already made, he found his
destined bride alone, in a projecting oriel window,
seated on the broad-cushioned ottoman which circled
the recess, with a light frame before her, filled
with a gorgeous Indian silk, on which her art had
traced some fair embroideries, yet incomplete—
but, though the many-coloured skeins assorted
within reach, and the well-filled needle between
her taper-fingers, showed that she had commenced
her feminine and graceful occupation, the thoughtful
attitude of her head, languidly propped on her
left hand, while the right lay motionless on the
rich texture, belied her fancied industry. So
noiselessly had Edgar's step fallen on the soft
Turkey carpet that she had not perceived his entrance;
and so beautiful was the picture of still life
which she afforded to her lover's gaze, that he lingered
for a moment ere his voice should rouse her
into animation. A flood of morning lustre streamed
downward with a golden hue, caught from the
teinted panes, upon her glossy hair and pure complexion,
cireling her entire form with a halo of
rich light, not unlike that with which the painters
of the Romish school are wont to dignify their
female saints and martyrs. The outlines of her
beautiful shape were mellowed, as it were, and
shrouded partially by the hazy beams of sunshine
which fell in oblique lines between her person—
simply arrayed in a close bodice, accurately fitted
to her fine bust, and a full robe of white—and the
observer's eye. Her luxuriant tresses folded plainly
about the contour of her small and classic head,
without ornament or gem of any kind, and the exceeding
of her sweet features, giving, together with
the accidents of light and shade, a madona-like
and sainted aspect to her figure, which would
have enchained an artist with no less of fascination
than it exercised, from different reasons, over
the mind of Ardenne. As he approached, her
delicate ear detected him; she turned her head,
and springing to her feet,—“Dear Edgar,” she exclaimed,
her eye discovering with instinctive quickness
the trace of melancholy left upon his lineaments,
however faintly, by his nightly musings;
“Dear Edgar—you are ill at ease—nay, smile not
—'tis a ghastly smile, not of your own expression!
—you are ill at ease—have passed a sleepless
night—”
“Sweet Sibyl,” he replied, with a wan smile, and
gently pressing her extended hand, “you are indeed
a keen observer; too keen, believe me!—
How should I be but well and happy, surrounded
thus by all I love most tenderly?”
“How indeed, Edgar?” she answered, even
more sadly than before. “How indeed—if you
do love so tenderly?—But ill at ease you are, and
have been sleepless! All night long have I heard
your heavy strides upon the chamber floor, and
those not regular and measured as your wont, but
fitful and uncertain. So do not pass the happy
their first night beneath the roof that saw their
birth.”
“If I do love, Sibyl,—if!” he exclaimed, with
deep, almost reproachful energy; “but, in good
truth, I am a poor dissembler, and could scarcely
feign, were it to win even thy heart, Sibyl—and,
for it seems I must confess me, I am somewhat,
though slightly, ill at ease—”
“I knew—I knew it at a glance,” she interrupted
Good Dr. Masters, though somewhat past his
prime, still ministers, and skilfully, to his familiar
patients—an hour will have him here—” and she
moved hastily toward a silver hand-bell, which
stood, with books, and drawings, and a lady's lute,
upon a fairy-looking cabinet of tortoise-shell and
marquetry.
“Nay! nay!” he cried, gently arresting her,
“I meant not so!—Be not alarmed, dear Sibyl,—
mine is a robust frame, not oft or easily affected
by aught of feebleness or ailment. My mind hath
been of late somewhat overwrought—but a few
days, consumed in the enjoyment of home-happiness
and the delights of your society, shall speedily
restore me. Look not so grave—so sad—I do beseech
you.”
“Oh, Edgar,” she interrupted him again, “tell
me, if you do love me, tell me all! long years have
we been parted—parted, as I have hoped—as, from
your kind and fervent letters, I have well believed
—in body, not in soul! and is it now—oh, is it to
be thus? Are we to be but more divided when
we are more together? Have we but met to be
more widely and more coldly severed! Oh! if
you love me, let me know your griefs! Who before
me should know?—or who, as I, would share
them?”
“All—all,” he answered, in the hollow voice of
one who struggles vainly with his feelings, forcing
a smile as faint as a December's sunbeam,—“you
shall share all—grief—happiness—life—death—
eternity!—All, all, sweet Sibyl, if that indeed you
be so minded! From you I have had—I will
have no secrets—but now, I do assure you, I am
not in grief—how should I? Something of gloomy
thought may have come over me—something of
will float at times across the brains of all who
think—as I do—deeply. But no, Sibyl, no; I
am not unhappy! Not for the proudest station
upon earth would I exchange this fond proximity to
thee—not for the universal blast of the world's approbation
would I barter that bright tear—shed for
me, Sibyl—or that yet brighter smile that chases
it. Cheer up, my own own love; we will talk
more of this anon—for lo! there comes my father!”
And as he spoke, attired in hunter's garb of
green, booted to the mid-thigh, with bugle-horn
and wood-knife usurping the place of rapier and
of poniard, and with two gallant stag-hounds at his
heel, the noble veteran entered.
“Alert—alert!” he cried, with a gay smile;
“you of young blood! Methought I was myself
full early stirring, but here are ye, in rising as in
all else, beforehand with me. What ho! ye loitering
knaves—hurry our breakfast! 'Tis a rare
morning, Edgar—a soft mild wind, a heavy dew
last eventide, and the clouds gently rising. Old
Stavely tells me he has harboured a right hart of
grease—a stag of ten!—and I have sent out riders
these four hours agone to rouse the country. The
Outrams will be here anon—you mind the Outrams,
boy, your college mates of yore, and now
right noble gallants—and Atherstone, of Ashstead
Hall—and old Lord Middleton, with his brave sons!
Friends all—true friends, thought some of them, I
doubt, forgotten! But, 'fore George, we will make
a day of it!”
Thus the old man ran on, overlooking in his
light-hearted cheerfulness the evident abstraction
of his listeners, although they rallied up enough of
animation to maintain some sort of conversation
during their hasty meal, which scarce was ended,
he cried, as a fair cavalcade swept past the windows,
their plumes waving in the light west wind,
spurs jingling, and steeds curvetting—“see! they
be here, even now; and lo! the pack!” As—with
their attendant huntsmen and half a score of prickers,
splendidly mounted on blood horses, in forest
jerkins sumptuously laced, round caps, and huge
French horns encircling their shoulders—restrained
by many an echoing shout and many a clanging
lash, some twenty couple of tall northern blood
hounds came trotting slowly up the lawn, in all
that accuracy of condition and perfection of detail
which has, in every period of her history, been so
distinctive of the field-sports of England!
“Fly, Sibyl—fly, my fairy,” cried the impatient
veteran. “Do on your riding gear right speedily.
Ariel is champing on his bits even now to summon
you! Edgar and I meanwhile will look to our
guests in the great hall. Dally not, girl, I pray
you—the sun is shrouded even now, and the scent
will lie most bravely. I would not, to be Prince
of Wales, lose such a morning! What ho! my
jovial roisters,” he continued in a louder tone,
striding into the huge vaulted hall through one
door, as his fair niece vanished at the other.—
“What ho! my jovial roisters,” addressing the
laughing group who waited his arrival. “Here
have ye an old friend, whom some of ye perchance
have not as yet forgotten.” And with a prouder
air and more exulting smile, he introduced his gallant
son, unseen for many a year, to his admiring
friends. A short half hour flitted pleasantly away
in heartfelt greetings and gay converse of light
moment, but lively, joyous, and sincere. Then
every high-plumed hat was doffed, and every
voice was lowered, as Sibyl Ardenne, with her attendant
the hall! “To horse! to horse!” and the
ladies were assisted to their velvet selles by favoured
cavaliers, and the gallants vaulted to their
saddles, and threw their chargers on their haunches
by dint of curb and spur, and drew their forms to
the most graceful attitude, as with courtly merriment
and sylvan music they swept away through
shadowy avenues and over shaven lawns, to the
wilder coppices and more secluded glades of chase
and forest.
| CHAPTER IV. Cromwell | |