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So Granger returned his eyes to the portrait which he had taken from the dead man's hand, and, gazing upon it, tried his best to fill in the blanks in his little knowledge of the woman he had loved. He constructed for himself a picture of an ivied manor-house, terraced and with an old-world garden lying round about it, where her childhood had been spent and where she had grown to girlhood.
We saw two ivied towers, insulated from all other ruins; and an old refectory, open to the sky, and a vaulted crypt, supported by pillars; and we saw, too, the foundation and scanty remains of a chapel, which had been long buried out of sight of man, and only dug up within present memory, about forty years ago.
It was not a castle nor a great property, but it was quite perfect; and for a long while he felt like a bridegroom on a succession of honeymoons. He often laid his hand against the rough ivied walls in a lingering caress. After a time, he returned the hospitalities of his friends, and his invitations, given with the exclusiveness of his great distinction, were never refused.
It was winter that is, about the second week in November and great gusts were rattling at the windows, and wailing and thundering among our tall trees and ivied chimneys a very dark night, and a very cheerful fire blazing, a pleasant mixture of good round coal and spluttering dry wood, in a genuine old fireplace, in a sombre old room.
Burke was certain that Milton composed Il Penseroso in the long, resounding aisle of a mouldering cloister, or ivied abbey. He beheld its solemn gloom in the verse. The fine nerves of the mind are braced, and the strings of the harp are tuned, by different kinds of temperature.
"The wren builds in an ivied thorn Or old and ruined wall, The mossy nest so covered in You scarce can see at all. "The martins build their nests of clay In rows beneath the eaves; The silvery lichens, moss, and hair The chaffinch interweaves. "The cuckoo makes no nest at all, But through the wood she strays. Until she finds one snug and warm, And there her eggs she lays.
They had now approached the table, on which were heads in chalk, hands almost as expressive as ordinary faces, ivied church-towers, thatched cottages, old thunder-stricken trees, Oriental and antique costume, and all such picturesque vagaries of an artist's idle moments. Turning them over, with seeming carelessness, a crayon sketch of two figures was disclosed.
She clinched her small hands as she uttered the last words, and walked to the window of the dressing-room, which looked straight toward that ivied archway under which any one must come who came from Mount Stanning to the Court.
Her brain reeled, her heart stopped beating. She uttered no cry of surprise, no exclamation of terror, but staggered backward and clung for support to the ivied buttress of the archway. With her slender figure crouched into the angle formed by the buttress and the wall which it supported, she stood staring at the new-comer.
Carnaby, spying him there, came rushing from the house, and was soon pouring out a tale of something that had happened somewhere, and throwing stones as he talked, at the birds circling about the ivied tower of the little church. The field was full of buttercups up to the very churchyard walls. "I must get away by myself for a bit," Lavendar thought. "That boy's chatter will drive me mad."
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