When Frank Gresham expressed to his father an opinion that Courcy Castle was dull, the squire, as may be remembered, did not pretend to differ from him. To men such as the squire, and such as the squire’s son, Courcy Castle was dull. To what class of men it would not be dull the author is not prepared to say; but it may be presumed that the De Courcys found it to their liking, or they would have made it other than it was.
The castle itself was a huge brick pile, built in the days of William III, which, though they were grand for days of the construction of the Constitution, were not very grand for architecture of a more material description. It had, no doubt, a perfect right to be called a castle, as it was entered by a castle-gate which led into a court the porter’s lodge for which was built as it were into the wall; there were attached to it also two round, stumpy adjuncts, which were, perhaps properly, called towers, though they did not do much in the way of towering; and, moreover, along one side of the house, over what would otherwise have been the cornice, there ran a castellated parapet, through the assistance of which, the imagination no doubt was intended to supply the muzzles of defiant artillery. But any artillery which would have so presented its muzzle must have been very small, and it may be doubted whether even a bowman could have obtained shelter there.
The grounds about the castle were not very inviting, nor, as grounds, very extensive; though, no doubt, the entire domain was such as suited the importance of so puissant a nobleman as Earl de Courcy. What, indeed, should have been the park was divided out into various large paddocks. The surface was flat and unbroken; and though there were magnificent elm-trees standing in straight lines, like hedgerows, the timber had not that beautiful, wild, scattered look which generally gives the great charm to English scenery.
The town of Courcy — for the place claimed to rank as a town — was in many particulars like the castle. It was built of dingy-red brick — almost more brown than red — and was solid, dull-looking, ugly and comfortable. It consisted of four streets, which were formed by two roads crossing each other, making at the point of junction a centre for the town. Here stood the Red Lion; had it been called the brown lion, the nomenclature would have been more strictly correct; and here, in the old days of coaching, some life had been wont to stir itself at those house in the day and night when the Freetraders, Tallyhoes, and Royal Mails changed their horses. But now there was a railway station a mile and a half distant, and the moving life of the town of Courcy was confined to the Red Lion omnibus, which seemed to pass its entire time in going up and down between the town and the station, quite unembarrassed by any great weight of passengers.
There were, so said the Courcyites when away from Courcy, excellent shops in the place; but they were not the less accustomed, when at home among themselves, to complain to each other of the vile extortion with which they were treated by their neighbours. The ironmonger, therefore, though he loudly asserted that he could beat Bristol in the quality of his wares in one direction, and undersell Gloucester in another, bought his tea and sugar on the sly in one of those larger towns; and the grocer, on the other hand equally distrusted the pots and pans of home production. Trade, therefore, at Courcy, had not thriven since the railway opened: and, indeed, had any patient inquirer stood at the cross through one entire day, counting customers who entered the neighbouring shops, he might well have wondered that any shops in Courcy could be kept open.
And how changed has been the bustle of that once noisy inn to the present death-like silence of its green courtyard! There, a lame ostler crawls about with the hands thrust into the capacious pockets of his jacket, feeding on memory. That weary pair of omnibus jades, and three sorry posters are all that now grace those stables where horses used to be stalled in close contiguity by the dozen; where twenty grains apiece, abstracted from every feed of oats consumed during the day, would have afforded a daily quart to the lucky pilferer.
Come, my friend, and discourse with me. Let us know what are thy ideas of the inestimable benefits which science has conferred on us in these, our latter days. How dost thou, among others, appreciate railways and the power of steam, telegraphs, telegrams, and our new expresses? But indifferently, you say. ‘Time was I’ve zeed vifteen pair o’ ‘osses go out of this ’ere yard in vour-and-twenty hour; and now there be’ant vifteen, no, not ten, in vour-and-twenty days! There was the duik-not this ’un; he be’ant no gude; but this ’un’s vather-why, when he’d come down the road, the cattle did be a-going, vour days an eend. Here’d be the tooter and the young gen’lmen, and the governess and the young leddies, and then the servants-they’d be al’ays the grandest folk of all — and then the duik and doochess — Lord love ‘ee, zur; the money did fly in them days! But now —’ and the feeling of scorn and contempt which the lame ostler was enabled by his native talent to throw into the word ‘now’, was quite as eloquent against the power of steam as anything that has been spoken at dinners, or written in pamphlets by the keenest admirers of latter-day lights.
‘Why, luke at this ’ere town,’ continued he of the sieve, ‘the grass be a-growing in the very streets;— that can’t be no gude. Why, luke ‘ee here, zur; I do be a-standing at this ’ere gateway, just this way, hour arter hour, and my heyes is hopen mostly;— I zees who’s a-coming and who’s a-going. Nobody’s a-coming and nobody’s a-going; that can’t be no gude. Luke at that there homnibus; why, darn me —’ and now, in his eloquence at this peculiar point, my friend became more loud and powerful than ever —‘why, darn me, if maister harns enough with that there bus to put hiron on them osses’ feet, I’ll-be-blowed!’ And as he uttered this hypothetical denunciation on himself he spoke very slowly, bringing out every word as it were separately, and lowering himself at his knees at every sound, moving at the same time his right hand up and down. When he had finished, he fixed his eyes upon the ground, pointing downwards, as if there was to be the site of his doom if the curse that he had called down upon himself should ever come to pass; and then, waiting no further converse, he hobbled away, melancholy, to his deserted stables.
Oh, my friend! my poor lame friend! it will avail nothing to tell thee of Liverpool and Manchester; of the glories of Glasgow, with her flourishing banks; of London, with its third millions of inhabitants; of the great things which commerce is doing for this nation of thine! What is commerce to thee, unless it be commerce in posting on that worn-out, all but useless great western turnpike-road? There is nothing left for thee but to be carted away as rubbish — for thee and for many of us in these now prosperous days; oh, my melancholy, care-ridden friend!
Courcy Castle was certainly a dull place to look at, and Frank, in his former visits, had found that the appearance did not belie the reality. He had been but little there when the earl had been at Courcy; and as he had always felt from his childhood a peculiar taste to the governance of his aunt the countess, this perhaps may have added to his feeling of dislike. Now, however, the castle was to be fuller than he had ever before known it; the earl was to be at home; there was some talk of the Duke of Omnium coming for a day or two, though that seemed doubtful; there was some faint doubt of Lord Porlock; Mr Moffat, intent on the coming election — and also, let us hope, on his coming bliss — was to be one of the guests; and there was also to be the great Miss Dunstable.
Frank, however, found that those grandees were not expected quite immediately. ‘I might go back to Greshamsbury for three or four days as she is not to be here,’ he said naively to his aunt, expressing, with tolerable perspicuity, his feeling, that he regarded his visit to Courcy Castle quite as a matter of business. But the countess would hear of no such arrangement. Now that she had got him, she was not going to let him fall back into the perils of Miss Thorne’s intrigues, or even of Miss Thorne’s propriety. ‘It is quite essential,’ she said, ‘that you should be here a few days before her, so that she may see that you are at home.’ Frank did not understand the reasoning; but he felt himself unable to rebel, and he therefore, remained there, comforting himself, as best he might, with the eloquence of the Honourable George, and the sporting humours of the Honourable John.
Mr Moffat was the earliest arrival of any importance. Frank had not hitherto made the acquaintance of his future brother-inlaw, and there was, therefore, some little interest in the first interview. Mr Moffat was shown into the drawing-room before the ladies had gone up to dress, and it so happened that Frank was there also. As no one else was in the room but his sister and two of his cousins, he had expected to see the lovers rush into each other’s arms. But Mr............