Edward Bulwer-Lytton
What Will He Do with It? Volume 05
BOOK V
CHAPTER I
Envy will be a science when it learns the use of the microscope.
When leaves fall and flowers fade, great people are found in their country-seats. Look!that is Montfort Court,a place of regal magnificence, so far as extent of pile and amplitude of domain could satisfy the pride of ownership, or inspire the visitor with the respect due to wealth and power. An artist could have made nothing of it. The Sumptuous everywhere; the Picturesque nowhere. The house was built in the reign of George I., when first commenced that horror of the beautiful, as something in bad taste, which, agreeably to our natural love of progress, progressively advanced through the reigns of succeeding Georges. An enormous fafade, in dull brown brick; two wings and a centre, with double flights of steps to the hall-door from the carriagesweep. No trees allowed to grow too near the house; in front, a stately flat with stone balustrades. But wherever the eye turned, there was nothing to be seen but park, miles upon miles of park; not a cornfield in sight, not a roof-tree, not a spire, only those /lata silentia/,still widths of turf, and, somewhat thinly scattered and afar, those groves of giant trees. The whole prospect so vast and so monotonous that it never tempted you to take a walk. No close- neighbouring poetic thicket into which to plunge, uncertain whither you would emerge; no devious stream to follow. The very deer, fat and heavy, seemed bored by pastures it would take them a week to traverse. People of moderate wishes and modest fortunes never envied Montfort Court: they admired it; they were proud to say they had seen it. But never did they say
"Oh, that for me some home like this would smile!"
Not so, very, very great people!they rather coveted than admired. Those oak trees so large, yet so undecayed; that park, eighteen miles at least in circumference; that solid palace which, without inconvenience, could entertain and stow away a king and his whole court; in short, all that evidence of a princely territory and a weighty rent-roll made English dukes respectfully envious, and foreign potentates gratifyingly jealous.
But turn from the front. Open the gate in that stone balustrade. Come southward to the garden side of the house. Lady Montfort's flower- garden. Yes; not so dull!flowers, even autumnal flowers, enliven any sward. Still, on so large a scale, and so little relief; so little mystery about those broad gravel-walks; not a winding alley anywhere. Oh, for a vulgar summer-house; for some alcove, all honeysuckle and ivy! But the dahlias are splendid! Very true; only, dahlias, at the best, are such uninteresting prosy things. What poet ever wrote upon a dahlia! Surely Lady Montfort might have introduced a little more taste here, shown a little more fancy! Lady Montfort! I should like to see my lord's face if Lady Montfort took any such liberty. But there is Lady Montfort walking slowly along that broad, broad, broad gravel-walk; those splendid dahlias, on either side, in their set parterres. There she walks, in full evidence from all those sixty remorseless windows on the garden front, each window exactly like the other. There she walks, looking wistfully to the far end ('t is a long way off), where, happily, there is a wicket that carries a persevering pedestrian out of sight of the sixty windows into shady walks, towards the banks of that immense piece of water, two miles from the house. My lord has not returned from his moor in Scotland; my lady is alone. No company in the house: it is like saying, "No acquaintance in a city." But the retinue is full. Though she dined alone she might, had she pleased, have had almost as many servants to gaze upon her as there were windows now staring at her lonely walk with their glassy spectral eyes.
Just as Lady Montfort gains the wicket she is overtaken by a visitor, walking fast from the gravel sweep by the front door, where he has dismounted, where he has caught sight of her: any one so dismounting might have caught sight of her; could not help it. Gardens so fine were made on purpose for fine persons walking in them to be seen.
"Ah, Lady Montfort," said the visitor, stammering painfully, "I am so glad to find you at home."
"At home, George!" said the lady, extending her hand; "where else is it likely that I should be found? But how pale you are! What has happened?"
She seated herself on a bench, under a cedar-tree, just without the wicket; and George Morley, our old friend the Oxonian, seated himself by her side familiarly, but with a certain reverence. Lady Montfort was a few years older than himself, his cousin: he had known her from his childhood.
"What has happened!" he repeated; "nothing new. I have just come from visiting the good bishop."
"He does not hesitate to ordain you?" "No; but I shall never ask him to do so."
"My dear cousin, are you not over-scrupulous? You would be an ornament to the Church, sufficient in all else to justify your compulsory omission of one duty, which a curate could perform for you."