Chapter LXVI. Down in Lincolnshire

by Charles Dickens

　　There is a hush upon Chesney Wold in these altered days, as thereis upon a portion of the family history. The story goes that SirLeicester paid some who could have spoken out to hold their peace;but it is a lame story, feebly whispering and creeping about, andany brighter spark of life it shows soon dies away. It is knownfor certain that the handsome Lady Dedlock lies in the mausoleum inthe park, where the trees arch darkly overhead, and the owl isheard at night making the woods ring; but whence she was broughthome to be laid among the echoes of that solitary place, or how shedied, is all mystery. Some of her old friends, principally to befound among the peachy-cheeked charmers with the skeleton throats,did once occasionally say, as they toyed in a ghastly manner withlarge fans--like charmers reduced to flirting with grim death,after losing all their other beaux--did once occasionally say, whenthe world assembled together, that they wondered the ashes of theDedlocks, entombed in the mausoleum, never rose against theprofanation of her company. But the dead-and-gone Dedlocks take itvery calmly and have never been known to object.Up from among the fern in the hollow, and winding by the bridle-road among the trees, comes sometimes to this lonely spot the soundof horses' hoofs. Then may be seen Sir Leicester--invalided, bent,and almost blind, but of worthy presence yet--riding with astalwart man beside him, constant to his bridle-rein. When theycome to a certain spot before the mausoleum-door, Sir Leicester'saccustomed horse stops of his own accord, and Sir Leicester,pulling off his hat, is still for a few moments before they rideaway.War rages yet with the audacious Boythorn, though at uncertainintervals, and now hotly, and now coolly, flickering like anunsteady fire. The truth is said to be that when Sir Leicestercame down to Lincolnshire for good, Mr. Boythorn showed a manifestdesire to abandon his right of way and do whatever Sir Leicesterwould, which Sir Leicester, conceiving to be a condescension to hisillness or misfortune, took in such high dudgeon, and was somagnificently aggrieved by, that Mr. Boythorn found himself underthe necessity of committing a flagrant trespass to restore hisneighbour to himself. Similarly, Mr. Boythorn continues to posttremendous placards on the disputed thoroughfare and (with his birdupon his head) to hold forth vehemently against Sir Leicester inthe sanctuary of his own home; similarly, also, he defies him as ofold in the little church by testifying a bland unconsciousness ofhis existence. But it is whispered that when he is most ferocioustowards his old foe, he is really most considerate, and that SirLeicester, in the dignity of being implacable, little supposes howmuch he is humoured. As little does he think how near together heand his antagonist have suffered in the fortunes of two sisters,and his antagonist, who knows it now, is not the man to tell him.So the quarrel goes on to the satisfaction of both.In one of the lodges of the park--that lodge within sight of thehouse where, once upon a time, when the waters were out down inLincolnshire, my Lady used to see the keeper's child--the stalwartman, the trooper formerly, is housed. Some relics of his oldcalling hang upon the walls, and these it is the chosen recreationof a little lame man about the stable-yard to keep gleaming bright.A busy little man he always is, in the polishing at harness-housedoors, of stirrup-irons, bits, curb-chains, harness bosses,anything in the way of a stable-yard that will take a polish,leading a life of friction. A shaggy little damaged man, withal,not unlike an old dog of some mongrel breed, who has beenconsiderably knocked about. He answers to the name of Phil.A goodly sight it is to see the grand old housekeeper (harder ofhearing now) going to church on the arm of her son and to observe--which few do, for the house is scant of company in these times--therelations of both towards Sir Leicester, and his towards them.They have visitors in the high summer weather, when a grey cloakand umbrella, unknown to Chesney Wold at other periods, are seenamong the leaves; when two young ladies are occasionally foundgambolling in sequestered saw-pits and such nooks of the park; andwhen the smoke of two pipes wreathes away into the fragrant eveningair from the trooper's door. Then is a fife heard trolling withinthe lodge on the inspiring topic of the "British Grenadiers"; andas the evening closes in, a gruff inflexible voice is heard to say,while two men pace together up and down, "But I never own to itbefore the old girl. Discipline must be maintained."The greater part of the house is shut up, and it is a show-house nolonger; yet Sir Leicester holds his shrunken state in the longdrawing-room for all that, and reposes in his old place before myLady's picture. Closed in by night with broad screens, andillumined only in that part, the light of the drawing-room seemsgradually contracting and dwindling until it shall be no more. Alittle more, in truth, and it will be all extinguished for SirLeicester; and the damp door in the mausoleum which shuts so tight,and looks so obdurate, will have opened and received him.Volumnia, growing with the flight of time pinker as to the red inher face, and yellower as to the white, reads to Sir Leicester inthe long evenings and is driven to various artifices to conceal heryawns, of which the chief and most efficacious is the insertion ofthe pearl necklace between her rosy lips. Long-winded treatises onthe Buffy and Boodle question, showing how Buffy is immaculate andBoodle villainous, and how the country is lost by being all Boodleand no Buffy, or saved by being all Buffy and no Boodle (it must beone of the two, and cannot be anything else), are the staple of herreading. Sir Leicester is not particular what it is and does notappear to follow it very closely, further than that he always comesbroad awake the moment Volumnia ventures to leave off, andsonorously repeating her last words, begs with some displeasure toknow if she finds herself fatigued. However, Volumnia, in thecourse of her bird-like hopping about and pecking at papers, hasalighted on a memorandum concerning herself in the event of"anything happening" to her kinsman, which is handsome compensationfor an extensive course of reading and holds even the dragonBoredom at bay.The cousins generally are rather shy of Chesney Wold in itsdullness, but take to it a little in the shooting season, when gunsare heard in the plantations, and a few scattered beaters andkeepers wait at the old places of appointment for low-spirited twosand threes of cousins. The debilitated cousin, more debilitated bythe dreariness of the place, gets into a fearful state ofdepression, groaning under penitential sofa-pillows in his gunlesshours and protesting that such fernal old jail's--nough t'sew flerup--frever.The only great occasions for Volumnia in this changed aspect of theplace in Lincolnshire are those occasions, rare and widelyseparated, when something is to be done for the county or thecountry in the way of gracing a public ball. Then, indeed, doesthe tuckered sylph come out in fairy form and proceed with joyunder cousinly escort to the exhausted old assembly-room, fourteenheavy miles off, which, during three hundred and sixty-four daysand nights of every ordinary year, is a kind of antipodean lumber-room full of old chairs and tables upside down. Then, indeed, doesshe captivate all hearts by her condescension, by her girlishvivacity, and by her skipping about as in the days when the hideousold general with the mouth too full of teeth had not cut one ofthem at two guineas each. Then does she twirl and twine, apastoral nymph of good family, through the mazes of the dance.Then do the swains appear with tea, with lemonade, with sandwiches,with homage. Then is she kind and cruel, stately and unassuming,various, beautifully wilful. Then is there a singular kind ofparallel between her and the little glass chandeliers of anotherage embellishing that assembly-room, which, with their meagrestems, their spare little drops, their disappointing knobs where nodrops are, their bare little stalks from which knobs and drops haveboth departed, and their little feeble prismatic twinkling, allseem Volumnias.For the rest, Lincolnshire life to Volumnia is a vast blank ofovergrown house looking out upon trees, sighing, wringing theirhands, bowing their heads, and casting their tears upon the window-panes in monotonous depressions. A labyrinth of grandeur, less theproperty of an old family of human beings and their ghostlylikenesses than of an old family of echoings and thunderings whichstart out of their hundred graves at every sound and go resoundingthrough the building. A waste of unused passages and staircases inwhich to drop a comb upon a bedroom floor at night is to send astealthy footfall on an errand through the house. A place wherefew people care to go about alone, where a maid screams if an ashdrops from the fire, takes to crying at all times and seasons,becomes the victim of a low disorder of the spirits, and giveswarning and departs.Thus Chesney Wold. With so much of itself abandoned to darknessand vacancy; with so little change under the summer shining or thewintry lowering; so sombre and motionless always--no flag flyingnow by day, no rows of lights sparkling by night; with no family tocome and go, no visitors to be the souls of pale cold shapes ofrooms, no stir of life about it--passion and pride, even to thestranger's eye, have died away from the place in Lincolnshire andyielded it to dull repose.