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It fetched me wide awake with a start, and I was up and weaponed instantly having taken the precaution to lay my sword in easy reach before blowing out the candle. Groping my way cautiously to the secret door, I crouched and listened. All was silent save for the intermittent clamor of the wassailers in the room beneath. After waiting a full minute I opened the door and looked without.
This person, naturally of a sour, unsocial disposition, and somewhat tired, besides, with his journey from Cumnor to Warwickshire, in order to bring the news of the Countess's escape, had early extricated himself from the crowd of wassailers, and betaken himself to his chamber, where he lay asleep, when Varney, completely equipped for travelling, and with a dark lantern in his hand, entered his apartment.
A scornful laugh ran through the hall. "And as we English are hospitable folk, and give any man, who asks, meat and board for one night, so one day's welcome, methinks, will be all that the Count of the Normans will need at our English hands." Flushed with the joyous insolence of wine, the wassailers roared applause. "Wherefore, this drink-hael to William of Rouen!
Just before the dessert a superb trout that had been drawn out of the sparkling Lot was brought in, and it had been mercifully spared the disgrace of being sprinkled with chopped garlic. While we were dining the wassailers in the great kitchen and general room downstairs became more and more uproarious. It is a measure that has no local colour unless it is accompanied by violent stamping.
On a table within the ample porch was an immense bowl of birchwood, mounted in silver, and filled with potent drink, and two huge horns, of size suiting the mighty wassailers of the age. The two men seemed to care nought for the stern air of the cold night true that they were wrapped in furs reft from the Polar bear.
But Raby lost all patience, and said, "There, I give this for the lady, and she'll pay me NEXT CHRISTMAS." The wassailers departed, and the Squire went to say a kind word to his humbler guests. Miss Carden took that opportunity to ask Mr. Coventry if he had noticed the picture with its face to the wall. He said he had. "Do you know who it is?" "No idea." "Did you read the inscription?" "No.
In the mean-while all the shore rang with the trump of bullfrogs, the sturdy spirits of ancient wine-bibbers and wassailers, still unrepentant, trying to sing a catch in their Stygian lake if the Walden nymphs will pardon the comparison, for though there are almost no weeds, there are frogs there who would fain keep up the hilarious rules of their old festal tables, though their voices have waxed hoarse and solemnly grave, mocking at mirth, and the wine has lost its flavor, and become only liquor to distend their paunches, and sweet intoxication never comes to drown the memory of the past, but mere saturation and waterloggedness and distention.
On a table within the ample porch was an immense bowl of birchwood, mounted in silver, and filled with potent drink, and two huge horns, of size suiting the mighty wassailers of the age. The two men seemed to care nought for the stern air of the cold night true that they were wrapped in furs reft from the Polar bear.
A little while she strove, as the road winded round the verge of the lake, to keep sight of those stately towers which called her husband lord, and which still, in some places, sparkled with lights, where wassailers were yet revelling.
It was the midnight following the morning when this conversation took place, that Coningsby, alone, and having just quitted a rather boisterous party of wassailers who had been celebrating at Buckhurst's rooms the triumph of 'Eton Statesmen, if not of Conservative principles, stopped in the precincts of that Royal College that reminded him of his schooldays, to cool his brow in the summer air, that even at that hour was soft, and to calm his mind in the contemplation of the still, the sacred, and the beauteous scene that surrounded him.
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