While Esther sleeps, and while Esther wakes, it is still wet weatherdown at the place in Lincolnshire. The rain is ever falling--drip,drip, drip--by day and night upon the broad flagged terrace-pavement, the Ghost's Walk. The weather is so very bad down inLincolnshire that the liveliest imagination can scarcely apprehendits ever being fine again. Not that there is any superabundant lifeof imagination on the spot, for Sir Leicester is not here (and,truly, even if he were, would not do much for it in thatparticular), but is in Paris with my Lady; and solitude, with duskywings, sits brooding upon Chesney Wold.
There may be some motions of fancy among the lower animals atChesney Wold. The horses in the stables--the long stables in abarren, red-brick court-yard, where there is a great bell in aturret, and a clock with a large face, which the pigeons who livenear it and who love to perch upon its shoulders seem to be alwaysconsulting--THEY may contemplate some mental pictures of fineweather on occasions, and may be better artists at them than thegrooms. The old roan, so famous for cross-country work, turning hislarge eyeball to the grated window near his rack, may remember thefresh leaves that glisten there at other times and the scents thatstream in, and may have a fine run with the hounds, while the humanhelper, clearing out the next stall, never stirs beyond hispitchfork and birch-broom. The grey, whose place is opposite thedoor and who with an impatient rattle of his halter pricks his earsand turns his head so wistfully when it is opened, and to whom theopener says, "'Woa grey, then, steady! Noabody wants you to-day!"may know it quite as well as the man. The whole seeminglymonotonous and uncompanionable half-dozen, stabled together, maypass the long wet hours when the door is shut in liveliercommunication than is held in the servants' hall or at the DedlockArms, or may even beguile the time by improving (perhaps corrupting)the pony in the loose-box in the corner.
So the mastiff, dozing in his kennel in the court-yard with hislarge head on his paws, may think of the hot sunshine when theshadows of the stable-buildings tire his patience out by changingand leave him at one time of the day no broader refuge than theshadow of his own house, where he sits on end, panting and growlingshort, and very much wanting something to worry besides himself andhis chain. So now, half-waking and all-winking, he may recall thehouse full of company, the coach-houses full of vehicles, thestables fall of horses, and the out-buildings full of attendantsupon horses, until he is undecided about the present and comes forthto see how it is. Then, with that impatient shake of himself, hemay growl in the spirit, "Rain, rain, rain! Nothing but rain--andno family here!" as he goes in again and lies down with a gloomyyawn.
So with the dogs in the kennel-buildings across the park, who havetheir resfless fits and whose doleful voices when the wind has beenvery obstinate have even made it known in the house itself--upstairs, downstairs, and in my Lady's chamber. They may hunt thewhole country-side, while the raindrops are pattering round theirinactivity. So the rabbits with their self-betraying tails,frisking in and out of holes at roots of trees, may be lively withideas of the breezy days when their ears are blown about or of thoseseasons of interest when there are sweet young plants to gnaw. Theturkey in the poultry-yard, always troubled with a class-grievance(probably Christmas), may be reminiscent of that summer morningwrongfully taken from him when he got into the lane among the felledtrees, where there was a barn and barley. The discontented goose,who stoops to pass under the old gateway, twenty feet high, maygabble out, if we only knew it, a waddling preference for weatherwhen the gateway casts its shadow on the ground.
Be this as it may, there is not much fancy otherwise stirring atChesney Wold. If there be a little at any odd moment, it goes,like a little noise in that old echoing place, a long way andusually leads off to ghosts and mystery.
It has rained so hard and rained so long down in Lincolnshire thatMrs. Rouncewell, the old housekeeper at Chesney Wold, has severaltimes taken off her spectacles and cleaned them to make certainthat the drops were not upon the glasses. Mrs. Rouncewell mighthave been sufficiently assured by hearing the rain, but that she israther deaf, which nothing will induce her to believe. She is afine old lady, handsome, stately, wonderfully neat, and has such aback and such a stomacher that if her stays should turn out whenshe dies to have been a broad old-fashioned family fire-grate,nobody who knows her would have cause to be surprised. Weatheraffects Mrs. Rouncewell little. The house is there in allweathers, and the house, as she expresses it, "is what she looksat." She sits in her room (in a side passage on the ground floor,with an arched window commanding a smooth quadrangle, adorned atregular intervals with smooth round trees and smooth round blocksof stone, as if the trees were going to play at bowls with thestones), and the whole house reposes on her mind. She can open iton occasion and be busy and fluttered, but it is shut up now andlies on the breadth of Mrs. Rouncewell's iron-bound bosom in amajestic sleep.
It is the next difficult thing to an impossibility to imagineChesney Wold without Mrs. Rouncewell, but she has only been herefifty years. Ask her how long, this rainy day, and she shallanswer "fifty year, three months, and a fortnight, by the blessingof heaven, if I live till Tuesday." Mr. Rouncewell died some timebefore the decease of the pretty fashion of pig-tails, and modestlyhid his own (if he took it with him) in a corner of the churchyardin the park near the mouldy porch. He was born in the market-town,and so was his young widow. Her progress in the family began inthe time of the last Sir Leicester and originated in the still-room.
The present representative of the Dedlocks is an excellent master.
He supposes all his dependents to be utterly bereft of individualcharacters, intentions, or opinions, and is persuaded that he wasborn to supersede the necessity of their having any. If he were tomake a discovery to the contrary, he would be simply stunned--wouldnever recover himself, most likely, except to gasp and die. But heis an excellent master still, holding it a part of his state to beso. He has a great liking for Mrs. Rouncewell; he says she is amost respectable, creditable woman. He always shakes hands withher when he comes down to Chesney Wold and when he goes away; andif he were very ill, or if he were knocked down by accident, or runover, or placed in any situation expressive of a Dedlock at adisadvantage, he would say if he could speak, "Leave me, and sendMrs. Rouncewell here!" feeling his dignity, at such a pass, saferwith her than with anybody else.
Mrs. Rouncewell has known trouble. She has had two sons, of whomthe younger ran wild, and went for a soldier, and never came back.
Even to this hour, Mrs. Rouncewell's calm hands lose theircomposure when she speaks of him, and unfolding themselves from herstomacher, hover about her in an agitated manner as she says what alikely lad, what a fine lad, what a gay, good-humoured, clever ladhe was! Her second son would have been provided for at ChesneyWold and would have been made steward in due season, but he took,when he was a schoolboy, to constructing steam-engines out ofsaucepans and setting birds to draw their own water with the leastpossible amount of labour, so assisting them with artfulcontrivance of hydraulic pressure that a thirsty canary had only,in a literal sense, to put his shoulder to the wheel and the jobwas done. This propensity gave Mrs. Rouncewell great uneasiness.
She felt it with a mother's anguish to be a move in the Wat Tylerdirection, well knowing that Sir Leicester had that generalimpression of an aptitude for any art to which smoke and a tallchimney might be considered essential. But the doomed young rebel(otherwise a mild youth, and very persevering), showing no sign ofgrace as he got older but, on the contrary, constructing a model ofa power-loom, she was fain, with many tears, to mention hisbackslidings to the baronet. "Mrs. Rouncewell," said SirLeicester, "I can never consent to argue, as you know, with any oneon any subject. You had better get rid of your boy; you had betterget him into some Works. The iron country farther north is, Isuppose, the congenial direction for a boy with these tendencies."Farther north he went, and farther north he grew up; and if SirLeicester Dedlock ever saw him when he came to Chesney Wold tovisit his mother, or ever thought of him afterwards, it is certainthat he only regarded him as one of a body of some odd thousandconspirators, swarthy and grim, who were in the habit of turningout by torchlight two or three nights in the week for unlawfulpurposes.
Nevertheless, Mrs. Rouncewell's son has, in the course of natureand art, grown up, and established himself, and married, and calledunto him Mrs. Rouncewell's grandson, who, being out of hisapprenticeship, and home from a journey in far countries, whitherhe was sent to enlarge his knowledge and complete his preparationsfor the venture of this life, stands leaning against the chimney-piece this very day in Mrs. Rouncewell's room at Chesney Wold.
"And, again and again, I am glad to see you, Watt! And, onceagain, I am glad to see you, Watt!" says Mrs. Rouncewell. "You area fine young fellow. You are like your poor uncle George. Ah!"Mrs. Rouncewell's hands unquiet, as usual, on this reference.
"They say I am like my father, grandmother.""Like him, also, my dear--but most like your poor uncle George!
And your dear father." Mrs. Rouncewell folds her hands again. "Heis well?""Thriving, grandmother, in every way.""I am thankful!" Mrs. Rouncewell is fond of her son but has aplaintive feeling towards him, much as if he were a very honourablesoldier who had gone over to the enemy.
"He is quite happy?" says she.
"Quite.""I am thankful! So he has brought you up to follow in his ways andhas sent you into foreign countries and the like? Well, he knowsbest. There may be a world beyond Chesney Wold that I don'tunderstand. Though I am not young, either. And I have seen aquantity of good company too!""Grandmother," says the young man, changing the subject, "what avery pretty girl that was I found with you just now. You calledher Rosa?""Yes, child. She is daughter of a widow in the village. Maids areso hard to teach, now-a-days, that I have put her about me young.
She's an apt scholar and will do well. She shows the housealready, very pretty. She lives with me at my table here.""I hope I have not driven her away?""She supposes we have family affairs to speak about, I dare say.
She is very modest. It is a fine quality in a young woman. Andscarcer," says Mrs. Rouncewell, expanding her stomacher to itsutmost limits, "than it formerly was!"The young man inclines his head in acknowledgment of the preceptsof experience. Mrs. Rouncewell listens.
"Wheels!" says she. They have long been audible to the youngerears of her companion. "What wheels on such a day as this, forgracious sake?"After a short interval, a tap at the door. "Come in!" A dark-eyed, dark-haired, shy, village beauty comes in--so fresh in herrosy and yet delicate bloom that the drops of rain which havebeaten on her hair look like the dew upon a flower fresh gathered.
"What company is this, Rosa?" says Mrs. Rouncewell.
"It's two young men in a gig, ma'am, who want to see the house--yes, and if you please, I ............