under the hill, and so through the Ghost Copse to the road that leads to the station. At that time he always assured me that the walk was nothing, that it could be done in a quarter of an hour, and easily in twenty minutes. Now I know every stone on the road, and the walk is one of two miles and a quarter.
“Well, sir, one year ago, my beloved nephew, Horace, came down again. The pretty Oliphants: and the pretty Pensons were just ready to begin to pet him as ever; but the pet himself was in no mood for such attentions. He scarcely went near them, and when he had to go to London, he took the shortest cut that I could show him. Even this walk, which I can do in five-and-twenty minutes, he used to declare to be most weary and tedious; and he used to abuse the turns in the road for being so far off, and curse the poor monotonous palings for being so many—a fellow never seemed to have got past them—and vent the other wise and manly sentiments which a discontented young fellow lavishes upon inanimate objects when he is out of humour. The fact was, that he had become desperately smitten with the sister of a fellow War-Office-man, and being moreover in debt, he suddenly found his debts intolerable, as preventing his settlement in life. You may easily guess what he wanted out of uncle, but uncle means to make Mr. Horace wait a bit. Meantime, he used to declare that the walk to the station was one of an hour and three-quarters, and the ugliest walk in all England. Now that is quite untrue, as you can see Hadbury Hill all the way; and for the winter, you are under the interlacing trees, to say nothing of our river, the Burde, which when at all swollen by rains is a handsome stream, over which you cross in your way to the rail.”
With some of these localities you will become well acquainted before we conclude our narrative, and there is one other place in Lipthwaite to which it may be well to conduct you, that you may know it again when the time to revisit it arrives. This is the house of Mr. Berry himself. It stands upon some land once belonging to a client of his (such foundations to lawyers’ houses are not infrequent), land which lies on a gentle slope a little way out of Lipthwaite, at the hill end of the town. From the lawn in front of the house we look upon Hadbury Hill, and see all the fine effects which the sun, either by his presence or his absence, loves to call up on mountain scenery, and even on such modest likeness to mountain scenery as our bold hills present. The town is entirely shut out from our view by a belt of trees on the right, and they form part of a semi-circle which protects the side and rear of the house, and extends downwards until stopped, somewhat abruptly, by a little clear quick stream of water (Mr. Berry’s boundary), which ultimately finds its way into the Burde. To the left the view is open, the most prominent object being the dark thick woods by which the Abbey, Sir Frederick Charrington’s seat, is surrounded, and on the horizon are the Alster Hills, between which, in clear weather, the host can make out the sea, and his visitors say they can. The house itself, which is called Cromwell Lodge (in memory of a relative whose legacy enabled the owner to build it) is what the old gentleman himself describes as a “mild” specimen of modern Gothic.
“Fools,” says Mr. Berry, “according to the proverb, build houses, and wise men live in them; but perhaps it means that a man grows wise after he has had to live for any time in a house he has been fool enough to build. If he does not—with the aid of his architect, of his servants, and his wife—he is unteachable indeed. I shall not say what this little place cost me, or anything about the trouble I had in persuading my friend, Mr. Gurgoyle, that I had better not add a new wing, and throw out a music-room, or anything about the servants I have discharged for wrenching my registers, burning my bath-pipe, and nailing up my ventilators. Nor will I say anything about the meek but persevering murmurs of Mrs. Berry, who has never been so happy in her neat, new rooms, with their gilding and all the rest of it, as she was in the old house in Lipthwaite, where she had a deep dark cupboard at every turn, and—nay, let me do her woman’s heart better justice—where those whom it did not please God to spare us, used to race and riot till the fatal month—the cholera month—which opened upon us as the parents of three loving children, and went out with the day on which we laid the last baby in Lipthwaite churchyard. I have never complained to poor Marion that she is not happy in the pleasant home I have given her.
“My friend Gurgoyle,” resumed the old gentleman, after a pause, “was not profound in his art, but then I did not know enough of architecture to warrant my interference, and I did know enough of the world to be sure that if I interfered I should make matters worse, especially as regarded the expenditure. So he had his own way, and though the windows are not exactly the right thing, I can see out of them capitally; and though the porch is said to be very objectionable, I can sit there with much comfort in the evening; and as for the chimneys, if they had been more like what Mr. Pugin, or Mr. Slater would have approved, I dare say they would have smoked just as badly as they did until we made their ugliness uglier by our tin tubes and cowls. The house is well enough, and nobody finds fault with my comfortable dining-room on the left, or I may say, with anything that is set upon my bright old table, which I bought when I married. Nor does anybody, except poor Mrs. Berry, dislike my pretty drawing-room on the right, with its view of the Hill. There is my library beyond the dining-room, and I have some good books there, and a few rare ones—also, some coins, especially the Cæsars in gold, and a fair English series—but nothing very remarkable. There is a line collection at the Abbey, but Sir Frederick knows only that it is fine—his father and I used to wrangle about a coin as stubbornly as the deceased heathens for whom it was struck could have done, when making some of their Pagan bargains. Sir Charles Charrington was a singular old man, and very clever, though he did not know so much of coins as he imagined.”
And thus much for our pleasant town of Lipthwaite.
