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So great has been the throng in times past, that an iron fence had to be placed about the ivy-covered ruins of the ancient castle, to protect it from those who threatened to carry it away by the pocketful. This was done some years ago, I was told by the butler, after a torchlight procession of a thousand enthusiastic admirers had come down from Liverpool and trampled Mrs.
Deep purple scentless violets clustered in sheltered nooks, where granite, ivy-covered boulders rose grimly along the slopes and little ravines of the cliffs. Primroses, many of them milk white, starred the grass; and wild blue hyacinths grew tall and graceful in damp patches shaded by stunted trees.
The golden sunshine, alternating with purple shadows, was lying in broad tracts on meadow and moor, and lighting up the forest trees so that the delicate tints and foliage of bough and branch came out in photographic clearness; the river, where it caught the sun like a belt of silver, where it was under the shadow like a band of lapis-lazuli, ran like a vein of life through the scene, and its music could be heard here where they stood; close at hand the old gray ivy-covered ruins, with their stories and memories of bygone times, seemed to add to the vivid fervor of the moment by the force of contrast that past so drear and old, the present so full of passionate hope and love; while the shadows of things that had once been real trooped among the ruins and flitted in and out the desert places, chased by laughing girls and merry children, as life chases death, youth drives out age, and the summer rises from the grave of winter.
I can see the little cottage where we lived, my wife and child and I, with its ivy-covered porch and tiny balcony, and the garden which she so prided in behind. It seemed as if nothing could come and disturb our little paradise. I was not rich, but I had all I wanted, and some to spare.
The part comprising the vestibule and bell-tower was octagon in shape, and the turret was at least a hundred feet in air. Behind this were the ivy-covered walls of the body of the church. It was at that time when the earth grows still before drawing her night robes about her.
And taking Adrian's arm, he led the way, amid the summer throng of delicate scents and sounds, under the opulent old trees, over the gold-green velvet of the turf, on which leaves and branches were stencilled by the sun, as in an elaborate design for lace, towards a house that was rather famous in the neighbourhood I was on the point of saying for its beauty: but are things ever famous in English neighbourhoods for their mere beauty? for its quaintness, and in some measure too, perhaps, for its history: Craford Old Manor, a red-brick Tudor house, low, and, in the rectangular style of such houses, rambling; with a paved inner court, and countless tall chimneys, like minarets; with a secret chapel and a priests' "hiding-hole," for the Crafords were one of those old Catholic families whose boast it is that they "have never lost the Faith"; with a walled formal garden, and a terrace, and a sun-dial; with close-cropped bordures of box, and yews clipped to fantastic patterns: the house so placed withal, that, while its north front faced the park, its south front, ivy-covered, looked over a bright lawn and bright parterres of flowers, down upon the long green levels of Rowland Marshes, and away to the blue sea beyond, the blue sea, the white cliffs, the yellow sands.
Such, at least, one would imagine, might be the feeling of these forest-settlers, accustomed, as they had been, to stand under the dim arches of vast cathedrals, and to offer up their hereditary worship in the old ivy-covered churches of rural England, around which lay the bones of many generations of their forefathers.
Nothing can be more mournful than these ruins, enclosed within an ivy-covered wall; and nothing would indicate the use that is made of them, except the sentinel which stands day and night at the gate. Ancient elm-trees overshadow the vast courts; and on the old walls, as well as in every crevice, there grow and bloom enough flowers to rejoice a hundred prisoners.
Besides, she had made up her mind that he was to marry little Laura, who would be eighteen when Pen was six-and-twenty: and had finished his college career, and had made his grand tour, and was settled either in London, astonishing all the metropolis by his learning and eloquence at the bar, or better still in a sweet country parsonage surrounded with hollyhocks and roses, close to a delightful romantic ivy-covered church, from the pulpit of which Pen would utter the most beautiful sermons ever preached.
Here were snug little Gothic windows, and dark ivy-covered walls of venerable stone: repaired in places, at some past period, with quaint red bricks. I had hoped that I should enter the house by this side of it. But no. The boy after appearing to be at a loss what to do with me led the way to a door on the modern side of the building, and rang the bell.
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