seem wet through, and the soft loppings
and prunings of the woodman’s axe can make no crash or crackle as they
fall. The deer, looking soaked, leave quagmires where they pass. The shot
of a rifle loses its sharpness in the moist air, and its smoke moves in a
tardy little cloud towards the green rise, coppice-topped, that makes a
background for the falling rain. The view from my Lady Dedlock’s own
windows is alternately a lead-coloured view and a view in Indian ink.
The vases on the stone terrace in the foreground catch the rain all day;
and the heavy drops fall—drip, drip, drip—upon the broad flagged
pavement, called from old time the Ghost’s Walk, all night. On Sundays
the little church in the park is mouldy; the oaken pulpit breaks out into a
cold sweat; and there is a general smell and taste as of the ancient
Dedlocks in their graves. My Lady Dedlock (who is childless), looking
out in the early twilight from her boudoir at a keeper’s lodge and seeing
the light of a fire upon the latticed panes, and smoke rising from the
chimney, and a child, chased by a woman, running out into the rain to
meet the shining figure of a wrapped-up man coming through the gate,
has been put quite out of temper. My Lady Dedlock says she has been
‟bored to death.”
Therefore my Lady Dedlock has come away from the place in
Lincolnshire and has left it to the rain, and the crows, and the rabbits,
and the deer, and the partridges and pheasants. The pictures of the
Dedlocks past and gone have seemed to vanish into the damp walls in
mere lowness of spirits, as the housekeeper has passed along the old
rooms shutting up the shutters. And when they will next come forth
again, the fashionable intelligence—which, like the fiend, is omniscient
of the past and present, but not the future—cannot yet undertake to say.
Sir Leicester Dedlock is only a baronet, but there is no mightier
baronet than he. His family is as old as the hills, and infinitely more
respectable. He has a general opinion that the world might get on
without hills but would be done up without Dedlocks. He would on thewhole admit nature to be a good idea (a little low, perhaps, when not
enclosed with a park-fence), but an idea dependent for its execution on
your great county families. He is a gentleman of strict conscience,
disdainful of all littleness and meanness and ready on the shortest
notice to die any death you may please to mention rather than give
occasion for the least impeachment of his integrity. He is an honourable,
obstinate, truthful, high-spirited, intensely prejudiced, perfectly
unreasonable man.
Sir Leicester is twenty years, full measure, older than my Lady. He
will never see sixty-five again, nor perhaps sixty-six, nor yet sixty-seven.
He has a twist of the gout now and then and walks a little stiffly. He is of
a worthy presence, with his light-grey hair and whiskers, his fine shirtfrill, his pure-white waistcoat, and his blue coat with bright buttons
always buttoned. He is ceremonious, stately, most polite on every
occasion to my Lady, and holds her personal attractions in the highest
estimation. His gallantry to my Lady, which has never changed since he
courted her, is the one little touch of romantic fancy in him.
Indeed, he married her for love. A whisper still goes about that she
had not even family; howbeit, Sir Leicester had so much family that
perhaps he had enough and could dispense with any more. But she had
beauty, pride, ambition, insolent resolve, and sense enough to portion
out a legion of fine ladies. Wealth and station, added to these, soon
floated her upward, and for years now my Lady Dedlock has been at the
centre of the fashionable intelligence and at the top of the fashionable
tree.
How Alexander wept when he had no more worlds to conquer,
everybody knows—or has some reason to know by this time, the matter
having been rather frequently mentioned. My Lady Dedlock, having
conquered her world, fell not into the melting, but rather into the
freezing, mood. An exhausted composure, a worn-out placidity, an
equanimity of fatigue not to be ruffled by interest or satisfaction, are the
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