The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 | Page 8

knocked once, twice, three times, and there is no admittance. It is a severe process, too; for, though the original gate, which may have been an iron portcullis for aught I know, has given place to rough boards, the latter are not particularly tender of my knuckles, and, though romance is romance, pain is a fact. So I fold my airy wings for the present, and look about me for a big stone to pound with. It is of no use. The old castle is deaf and dumb. It neither hears nor answers. I creep along the edge of a steep bank, pry round a corner of the building, gaze up at the high Gothic windows, but see nothing like a practicable approach, and turn back, discouraged. We take counsel together, I and my party, and at length condescend to the belief that our best hope of obtaining an entrance lies in a modern farm-house, at the foot of the eminence on which the fortress stands. The farm-house is beyond the hail of our voices, but our coachman, who is stationed there with his post-chaise, a witness of our embarrassment, makes an encouraging sign. That the farm-house bears some relation to the manor-house is suggested also by the fact that its garden boasts a yew-tree cut into the form of a peacock, and the book of heraldry says that the crest of the noble Earls of Rutland, who occupied the hall for centuries, includes, among its other belongings, "a peacock, in pride, proper."
At last, just as our impatience had reached the verge of indignation, a little figure emerged from the shadow of the farm-house, and sauntered towards us. She was a pretty child, a true daughter of the Saxon race, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and sunny-complexioned. She was the pink of neatness, too, and it was evident that the time we had spent in waiting had been passed by her at her toilet, for the folds were still fresh in her snowy apron, and her golden hair glistened smoothly within the bars of a net,--that unfailing net, sure emblem of British female nationality. Her dainty little hat was trimmed with white ribbons, which streamed behind her in the breeze, and, altogether, she was as complete a picture as one would wish to see of youth, health, and self-complacency.
The nonchalance with which she approached us was a thing I have never seen equalled. The independence of American children is proverbial; but democratic institutions never produced anything more saucily self-reliant than this little Briton. Without looking at us, or deigning any apology for the great gate,--which, it seems, is a mere barricade, not made to be opened,--she unlocked a side-postern, a rude door, consisting of two or three rough boards, and made a motion for us to enter. As we trod the time-worn pavement of the outer court, and gained an open quadrangle round which various apartments were grouped, imagination once more took possession of me, and I found myself peopling the place with its original inmates.
"Oh, how old and story-like!" I exclaimed to my companions. "Can you not imagine knights on horseback prancing over these stones, and alighting at the great hall-door beyond?"
"Horses never came up here!" was the interruption which my suggestion met from our practical little guide. "Horses couldn't climb those stairs," she added, somewhat scornfully; and I then observed that I had unconsciously ascended a rough, angular stairway, passable only to foot-passengers.
Knights on foot, then, my fancy at once substituted; and as the child, now commencing her duties as show-woman, pointed out the servants' offices, it was no difficult matter to picture the baron's retainers lazily grouped around the stone walls of the low cells, for such the apartments were, polishing their master's armor, or bousing over jugs of ale, while handsome pages loitered about the court-yard, waiting the summons of their lord, or the sound of their lady's silver whistle. Fancy was an indispensable attendant in making the circuit of the apartments, which surrounded at least three sides of this outer quadrangle. Without her aid, they were simply remarkable for their similarity, their vacancy, their unfitness for any modern purpose save that of sheep-pens or lumber-rooms. Destitute of windows, so that the sun and air found admittance only through the doorway, without fireplaces, boarded floors, or plastered walls, they presented simply so many square feet of space walled in by stone and mortar. But Fancy had the power to enliven, furnish, people them. She suggested that their very number was an indication of sociability, excitement, noise, and mirth. Here, as in all feudal dwellings, the vast disproportion between the space allotted to the dependents and that reserved for the lord of the manor pointed to the time when each castle was a walled city, each baronial hall the home