Doctor Thorne - Anthony Trollope (historical books to read .txt) 📗

CHAPTER XV

Courcy

 

When Frank Gresham expressed to his father an opinion that Courcy

Castle was dull, the squire, as may be remembered, did not pretend to

differ from him. To men such as the squire, and such as the squire’s

son, Courcy Castle was dull. To what class of men it would not be

dull the author is not prepared to say; but it may be presumed that

the de Courcys found it to their liking, or they would have made it

other than it was.

 

The castle itself was a huge brick pile, built in the days of William

III, which, though they were grand for days of the construction of

the Constitution, were not very grand for architecture of a more

material description. It had, no doubt, a perfect right to be called

a castle, as it was entered by a castle-gate which led into a court,

the porter’s lodge for which was built as it were into the wall;

there were attached to it also two round, stumpy adjuncts, which

were, perhaps properly, called towers, though they did not do much in

the way of towering; and, moreover, along one side of the house, over

what would otherwise have been the cornice, there ran a castellated

parapet, through the assistance of which, the imagination no doubt

was intended to supply the muzzles of defiant artillery. But any

artillery which would have so presented its muzzle must have been

very small, and it may be doubted whether even a bowman could have

obtained shelter there.

 

The grounds about the castle were not very inviting, nor, as grounds,

very extensive; though, no doubt, the entire domain was such as

suited the importance of so puissant a nobleman as Earl de Courcy.

What, indeed, should have been the park was divided out into various

large paddocks. The surface was flat and unbroken; and though

there were magnificent elm-trees standing in straight lines, like

hedgerows, the timber had not that beautiful, wild, scattered look

which generally gives the great charm to English scenery.

 

The town of Courcy—for the place claimed to rank as a town—was

in many particulars like the castle. It was built of dingy-red

brick—almost more brown than red—and was solid, dull-looking, ugly

and comfortable. It consisted of four streets, which were formed by

two roads crossing each other, making at the point of junction a

centre for the town. Here stood the Red Lion; had it been called the

brown lion, the nomenclature would have been more strictly correct;

and here, in the old days of coaching, some life had been wont to

stir itself at those hours in the day and night when the Freetraders,

Tallyhoes, and Royal Mails changed their horses. But now there was a

railway station a mile and a half distant, and the moving life of the

town of Courcy was confined to the Red Lion omnibus, which seemed to

pass its entire time in going up and down between the town and the

station, quite unembarrassed by any great weight of passengers.

 

There were, so said the Courcyites when away from Courcy, excellent

shops in the place; but they were not the less accustomed, when

at home among themselves, to complain to each other of the vile

extortion with which they were treated by their neighbours. The

ironmonger, therefore, though he loudly asserted that he could beat

Bristol in the quality of his wares in one direction, and undersell

Gloucester in another, bought his tea and sugar on the sly in one

of those larger towns; and the grocer, on the other hand, equally

distrusted the pots and pans of home production. Trade, therefore, at

Courcy, had not thriven since the railway had opened: and, indeed,

had any patient inquirer stood at the cross through one entire day,

counting customers who entered the neighbouring shops, he might well

have wondered that any shops in Courcy could be kept open.

 

And how changed has been the bustle of that once noisy inn to the

present death-like silence of its green courtyard! There, a lame

ostler crawls about with his hands thrust into the capacious pockets

of his jacket, feeding on memory. That weary pair of omnibus jades,

and three sorry posters, are all that now grace those stables where

horses used to be stalled in close contiguity by the dozen; where

twenty grains apiece, abstracted from every feed of oats consumed

during the day, would have afforded a daily quart to the lucky

pilferer.

 

Come, my friend, and discourse with me. Let us know what are thy

ideas of the inestimable benefits which science has conferred on us

in these, our latter days. How dost thou, among others, appreciate

railways and the power of steam, telegraphs, telegrams, and our new

expresses? But indifferently, you say. “Time was I’ve zeed vifteen

pair o’ ‘osses go out of this ‘ere yard in vour-and-twenty hour;

and now there be’ant vifteen, no, not ten, in vour-and-twenty days!

There was the duik—not this ‘un; he be’ant no gude; but this ‘un’s

vather—why, when he’d come down the road, the cattle did be a-going,

vour days an eend. Here’d be the tooter and the young gen’lmen, and

the governess and the young leddies, and then the servants—they’d

be al’ays the grandest folk of all—and then the duik and the

doochess—Lord love ‘ee, zur; the money did fly in them days! But

now—” and the feeling of scorn and contempt which the lame ostler

was enabled by his native talent to throw into the word “now,” was

quite as eloquent against the power of steam as anything that has

been spoken at dinners, or written in pamphlets by the keenest

admirers of latter-day lights.

 

“Why, luke at this ‘ere town,” continued he of the sieve, “the grass

be a-growing in the very streets;—that can’t be no gude. Why, luke

‘ee here, zur; I do be a-standing at this ‘ere gateway, just this

way, hour arter hour, and my heyes is hopen mostly;—I zees who’s

a-coming and who’s a-going. Nobody’s a-coming and nobody’s a-going;

that can’t be no gude. Luke at that there homnibus; why, darn me—”

and now, in his eloquence at this peculiar point, my friend became

more loud and powerful than ever—“why, darn me, if maister harns

enough with that there bus to put hiron on them ‘osses’ feet,

I’ll—be—blowed!” And as he uttered this hypothetical denunciation

on himself he spoke very slowly, bringing out every word as it were

separately, and lowering himself at his knees at every sound, moving

at the same time his right hand up and down. When he had finished,

he fixed his eyes upon the ground, pointing downwards, as if there

was to be the site of his doom if the curse that he had called down

upon himself should ever come to pass; and then, waiting no further

converse, he hobbled away, melancholy, to his deserted stables.

 

Oh, my friend! my poor lame friend! it will avail nothing to tell

thee of Liverpool and Manchester; of the glories of Glasgow, with her

flourishing banks; of London, with its third millions of inhabitants;

of the great things which commerce is doing for this nation of thine!

What is commerce to thee, unless it be commerce in posting on that

worn-out, all but useless great western turnpike-road? There is

nothing left for thee but to be carted away as rubbish—for thee

and for many of us in these now prosperous days; oh, my melancholy,

care-ridden friend!

 

Courcy Castle was certainly a dull place to look at, and Frank, in

his former visits, had found that the appearance did not belie the

reality. He had been but little there when the earl had been at

Courcy; and as he had always felt from his childhood a peculiar

distaste to the governance of his aunt the countess, this perhaps may

have added to his feeling of dislike. Now, however, the castle was

to be fuller than he had ever before known it; the earl was to be at

home; there was some talk of the Duke of Omnium coming for a day or

two, though that seemed doubtful; there was some faint doubt of Lord

Porlock; Mr Moffat, intent on the coming election—and also, let us

hope, on his coming bliss—was to be one of the guests; and there was

also to be the great Miss Dunstable.

 

Frank, however, found that those grandees were not expected quite

immediately. “I might go back to Greshamsbury for three or four days

as she is not to be here,” he said naïvely to his aunt, expressing,

with tolerable perspicuity, his feeling, that he regarded his visit

to Courcy Castle quite as a matter of business. But the countess

would hear of no such arrangement. Now that she had got him, she

was not going to let him fall back into the perils of Miss Thorne’s

intrigues, or even of Miss Thorne’s propriety. “It is quite

essential,” she said, “that you should be here a few days before her,

so that she may see that you are at home.” Frank did not