Delphi Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe (Illustrated) (232 page)

While Willoughton was musing what this could mean, the old man, looking upon the leaf, said, “Timothy Crabb, Sir, maintains this is a picture of the Priory-Chapel, he is sure, as it stood formerly. I should never have found it out myself, there is so little left of the chapel; but Tim makes it all out fine enough.”

“Does he tell you what that figure means?”

“Not as I remember, Sir; but the book tells that, I reckon.”

Willoughton turned over the leaves near the drawing; the language, the orthography and the characters were all so ancient, that he hesitated much. What he did make out, however, fixed his attention so deeply, that his friend lost the small remains of his patience, and declared he would set off without him. Willoughton then told his humble host, that, if he was willing to part with the manuscript, he was disposed to give him his own price for it.

“Why, Sir, I like to look at the pictures sometimes, and the gold is so bright it is a pleasure to see it; but the book for other matters is not of much value to me, though it may be to other people, seeing as I can’t make it out; and, for that matter, if I could, I do not know any good it would do; for, what Tim did read made me as foolish almost as old John, and afraid to go near the castle, for some time, after dark, though I was always counted a little more sensible than some. But I see no good in such things, not I.”

“You are a sensible fellow,” said Mr. Simpson, “and I wish my friend here had a little less curiosity, and a little more such wit as yours. And now, Harry, do leave the book and come away.”

“No, I shall first console myself for the mortification of your compliments. What shall I give you for the book, my friend?”

“Why, Sir, I don’t know, I am sure; I don’t know the value of such things. Tim Crabb said it might be worth its weight in gold for aught he knew; but I leave it, Sir, to your generosity.”

“It is well you do not leave it to mine,” said Mr. Simpson, “for I should make a low reckoning of it.”

The sum Willoughton offered accorded with his own estimation of so curious a relick, rather than with the expectation of his host, who heard it with exclamations of thankfulness; while Mr. Simpson expressed not merely surprise but reprehension, and the vulgar proverb of “Fools and their money— “ was nearly audible on his lips.

“What other books did you find in the same place?” asked Willoughton.

“Ah! bless you, Sir,” replied the ancient villager, “I wish I had a score of them.”

“Well you may, my friend, if they would fetch you such a price as this!” was the ready remark of Mr. Simpson.

“It is his honour’s own generosity, Sir, and I suppose he thinks the book worth the money, or he would not give it.”

“Come, Harry,” continued Simpson, “here has been folly enough for once; let us be gone.”

“You are sure you have no other book like this?” inquired Willoughton.

“There is another or two, that do still hold together, I think,” said the old man; “They have got no pictures; but then they have the same kind of letters, that cannot be understood.” — He went for them.

“You will tempt the man to steal the parish-register, and offer it to you as a curious relick,” said Mr. Simpson; “and indeed it will deserve your money better than this.”

The old man returned with a small quarto, printed in black letter and bound in real boards, which had been guarded at the corners with brass; the marks of clasps remained on it and those of a lozenge in the centre of each board.

“Though this is of later date, much later date, than the manuscript,” said Willoughton, “I see it is one of the earliest books that came from the press in England. It appears also by its contents, to have been intended to assist the purposes of the monks of that dark age.”

“A Boke of Sprites!” exclaimed Simpson, with a shout of exultation: “a boke of sprites, with the signs they may be known by, and divers rules to keep you from harm: the like was never known before!”

“Excellent! excellent!” said Willoughton; “and here is another black-letter volume. Well, friend, without looking further, what shall I give you for them?”

“This is past endurance!” said Mr. Simpson; “my patience is out!”

“O Sir! I will give you these into the bargain,” said the old man, smiling; an offer which Willoughton would not accept, who paid the old man what he thought they were worth. Mr. Simpson, then taking his friend by the arm, desired his host to direct them to the chaise.

“I must see the ruin by moonlight,” said Willoughton; “but I will not detain you many minutes.”

“No, no; you will see the towers of Warwick by moonlight; which will be much finer.”

“My good friend here,” said Willoughton, “will order the chaise round to the gate where it set us down; and, by the time it arrives, I shall have seen what I wish to see.”

“Be it so,” said Mr. Simpson, with an air of resignation; “one is sure of you when a journey is to be begun; but never when one would end, or hasten it. I have not forgotten our midnight rambles about Stonehenge! Doubtless we were the first human beings, who had appeared there, at such an hour, for many centuries; and what astonished me afterwards, more than any thing I saw, was, that I myself should have been conjured there at such an unseasonable hour; I, whose brain never hatched any of those ‘high and unimaginable fantasies,’ as your poet Gray calls them, which distract the heads of some of his readers.”

“Ay! those shadows of the moon at full,” said Willoughton laughing, as they walked towards the ruin, his friend remonstrating with him on the imprudence of this passion for antiquities and on his credulity. “And can you really hold,” said he, “that these books were found in the manner related; and that any of them, especially the ‘Boke of Sprites,’ ever belonged to the library of the priory?”

“It does not seem probable,” replied Willoughton, “that the old man should have invented the story he has related of the discovery of them; but, be that as it may, the books themselves announce their own genuine antiquity. The manuscript is laboriously illuminated, and it is well known, that such works were chiefly performed by the inhabitants of monasteries. The Boke of Sprites even was likely to have served the purposes of the monks. We know that the libraries of monasteries contained a most heterogenous assemblage: Ovid, the Romance of Charlemagne, Guy of Warwick, and the Rimes of Robin Hood, have been found on the shelf with Homilies, and other books; which, although they might be tinged with the corruptions of the Papal school, ought not to have had such companions. You may recollect, that Warton, in the interesting sketches of ancient manners which he gives in his
History of English Poetry
, mentions this very fully; and that, among others, the library of Peterborough contained ‘Amys and Amdion,’ ‘Sir Tristram Merlin’s Prophecies,’ and the ‘Destruction of Troy:’ and books of this sort were not only copied, but often invented by the monks, sometimes for their amusement, sometimes for worse purposes.”

“One of the old books you have relates to their castle, I think,” said Mr. Simpson, looking up at the shadowy masses; which, shown thus faintly by the rising moon, seemed more majestic than before.

“Yes, and I perceive,” continued Willoughton, “that even you feel a curiosity to know what may have passed so many ages back, on the spot we now stand upon.”

“Why,” acknowledged Simpson, “when one looks up at the very walls now crumbling into ruin, that were once so magnificent, and that inclosed beings with passions as warm as our own — beings, who have so long since vanished from the earth, one cannot help wishing to know a little of their history and of the scenes they witnessed; but, for your legend, I fear to trust it.”

“It speaks of the times of Henry the Third,” said Willoughton, “those were lawless enough to permit many adventures; and, if the citizens of London were then robbed in the streets even at noonday, what could travellers in the forest of Arden expect? But this Manuscript seems to tell of princely feasts given in the castle, and of adventures passing in the presence of the Court.”

“Ay, if one could but believe them.”

“A great part of the castle,” pursued Willoughton, “which then existed, is now gone; and much that we look at, stands in its place; but that noble hall, and Cæsar’s tower and several other towers, such as those where the moonlight falls, beheld the very court of Henry the Third, ay, and Montfort, on whom he had bestowed Kenilworth, and who added ingratitude to treason, by holding the fortress against his benefactor and liege lord.”

They stood for some minutes in silence, looking up at the ruin and listening, as the breeze rushed by, to the shivering of the ivy, that overhung it, — all the shining leaves trembling in the moonlight. The pauses of solemn stillness, that followed these sighings of the air among the old branches, were very solemn, and the sound itself — so still, uncertain, and sudden, Willoughton could have fancied to have been the warning murmurs of one, who, in his mortal state, had lived within these walls, and now haunted the scene where it had once revelled, or, perhaps, suffered. It seemed like a voice imperfectly uttering forth some dark prophecy, and telling of the illusion of life and the certainty of death. To Willoughton’s recollection this spectacle of the remains of ages past, now glimmering under the soft shadows of moonlight, brought those touching lines of Beattie —

Hail, awful scenes, that calm the troubled breast,

And woo the weary to profound repose,

Can passion’s wildest uproar lull to rest,

And whisper comfort to the man of woes.

Willoughton stood so wrapt, that he heard not his friend’s inquiry, whether he meant to pass a night at Kenilworth, as a sequel to a former one at Stonehenge; nor was he immediately aware of the nearer approach of his aged conductor, who said, in a tone somewhat tremulous, “You are now on the very spot, Sir, where Mortimer’s tower stood; it was the main entrance to the castle, when there was a lake, and it opened from the tilt-yard, that ran along the end of the water into the lower court: you see, Sir, it was quite on the opposite side of the castle from Lord Leicester’s great gate.”

Willoughton surveyed the place, but not a vestige of the building remained. “Here then,” said he, “the unhappy Edward the Second was, for a while, imprisoned, before he was removed to Corfe and Berkeley Castles, his last abodes.”

“If you please, Sir,” said the man, “the chaise is at the gate; and, if you will take my advice, you will not stay here long, for I cannot say I like it myself; I shall begin to think I see that strange figure again, and I had rather not.”

“Well, let us go,” said Mr. Simpson, “or I shall begin to fancy something of the same sort, too. What did you say, it had a mask on its face?”

“Yes, Sir, and a drawn sword in its hand; but I don’t like the place, Sir, let us go.”

“Ay, ay,” said Mr. Simpson, “let us go; we — we — we shall not get to Warwick to-night.”

A laugh from his friend, which he too well understood, both vexed and ashamed him. “I did not think it possible,” said he, “that I could have yielded to the contagion of this folly thus; remember, however, it is not Elizabeth in her ruff and farthingale, that I fear, nor any thing else distinctly.”

Willoughton laughed again triumphantly. “Better and better; your feelings are true to my arguments, in spite of your own. I desire no farther proof of the effects of time and circumstances — of solitude and obscurity on the imagination.”

As they passed by Cæsar’s tower, and inquired where the line of the castle-ditch had been traced, he observed, that probably the chief entrance had at first been over a drawbridge to that tower, though now no sign of it could be distinguished.

When the travellers were once more seated in the chaise, Mr. Simpson betook himself to sleep; while, on their journey of four miles through the checkered moonlight of woody lanes to Warwick, Willoughton did not lament the silence of his friend, which left him to the quiet musings of his own mind, and to the peace of nature, reposing under this soft and beautiful shade. The air was so still that scarcely a leaf trembled of the lofty boughs that overshadowed the road; and when the postilion stopped to make some alteration of the harness, the breathing of the horses alone, was heard through all this scene of night.

There is a peace of the spirits, which has surely somewhat holy in it. Such is the calmness which the view of a midsummer-dawn communicates, or that of moonlight on woods and green plains; and such Willoughton experienced during this short ride, till he drew near Warwick, when the beautiful towers of Saint Mary’s appeared on the right, and the more lofty and distant ones of the castle on the left of the perspective; and these awakened the stronger interest of expectation.

Having reached the inn, and Mr. Simpson, late as it was, having ordered a good supper, they walked out to take a view of the castle. Finding that, at this hour, they could not gain admittance by the porter’s gate, they went to the bridge over the Avon, on the outside of the town, and thence had a fine retrospect of the castle, with all its towers crowning the high, woody bank of that peaceful and classic stream. One vast, round tower of most warlike air, looking down upon the precipice, delighted Willoughton more than any other. A part of the edifice, repaired and adorned in the time of James the First, containing the state rooms, which run in a long line upon the steep, was not in harmony with this tower, and gave very different ideas of the character and manners of the respective ages to which they belonged. The moonlight touched this tower with a fine solemnity, and fell on the tops of the dark cedars and other trees, that clothe the precipice, as it glanced to Shakspeare’s stream below, where it rested in all its silver radiance, as if pleased to claim it for its home.