The Sea-Hawk | Page 5

an Italian engineer named Bagnolo who had come to
England half a century ago as one of the assistants of the famous
Torrigiani.
This house of such a startlingly singular and Italianate grace for so
remote a corner of Cornwall deserves, together with the story of its
construction, a word in passing.
The Italian Bagnolo who combined with his salient artistic talents a
quarrelsome, volcanic humour had the mischance to kill a man in a
brawl in a Southwark tavern. As a result he fled the town, nor paused in
his headlong flight from the consequences of that murderous deed until
he had all but reached the very ends of England. Under what
circumstances he became acquainted with Tressilian the elder I do not
know. But certain it is that the meeting was a very timely one for both

of them. To the fugitive, Ralph Tressilian--who appears to have been
inveterately partial to the company of rascals of all denominations--
afforded shelter; and Bagnolo repaid the service by offering to rebuild
the decaying half-timbered house of Penarrow. Having taken the task in
hand he went about it with all the enthusiasm of your true artist, and
achieved for his protector a residence that was a marvel of grace in that
crude age and outlandish district. There arose under the supervision of
the gifted engineer, worthy associate of Messer Torrigiani, a noble
two-storied mansion of mellow red brick, flooded with light and
sunshine by the enormously tall mullioned windows that rose almost
from base to summit of each pilastered facade. The main doorway was
set in a projecting wing and was overhung by a massive balcony, the
whole surmounted by a pillared pediment of extraordinary grace, now
partly clad in a green mantle of creepers. Above the burnt red tiles of
the roof soared massive twisted chimneys in lofty majesty.
But the glory of Penarrow--that is, of the new Penarrow begotten of the
fertile brain of Bagnolo--was the garden fashioned out of the tangled
wilderness about the old house that had crowned the heights above
Penarrow point. To the labours of Bagnolo, Time and Nature had added
their own. Bagnolo had cut those handsome esplanades, had built those
noble balustrades bordering the three terraces with their fine connecting
flights of steps; himself he had planned the fountain, and with his own
hands had carved the granite faun presiding over it and the dozen other
statues of nymphs and sylvan gods in a marble that gleamed in white
brilliance amid the dusky green. But Time and Nature had smoothed
the lawns to a velvet surface, had thickened the handsome boxwood
hedges, and thrust up those black spear-like poplars that completed the
very Italianate appearance of that Cornish demesne.
Sir Oliver took his ease in his dining-room considering all this as it was
displayed before him in the mellowing September sunshine, and found
it all very good to see, and life very good to live. Now no man has ever
been known so to find life without some immediate cause, other than
that of his environment, for his optimism. Sir Oliver had several causes.
The first of these--although it was one which he may have been far
from suspecting--was his equipment of youth, wealth, and good

digestion; the second was that he had achieved honour and renown both
upon the Spanish Main and in the late harrying of the Invincible
Armada--or, more aptly perhaps might it be said, in the harrying of the
late Invincible Armada--and that he had received in that the twenty-
fifth year of his life the honour of knighthood from the Virgin Queen;
the third and last contributor to his pleasant mood--and I have reserved
it for the end as I account this to be the proper place for the most
important factor--was Dan Cupid who for once seemed compounded
entirely of benignity and who had so contrived matters that Sir Oliver's
wooing Of Mistress Rosamund Godolphin ran an entirely smooth and
happy course.
So, then, Sir Oliver sat at his ease in his tall, carved chair, his doublet
untrussed, his long legs stretched before him, a pensive smile about the
firm lips that as yet were darkened by no more than a small black line
of moustachios. (Lord Henry's portrait of him was drawn at a much
later period.) It was noon, and our gentleman had just dined, as the
platters, the broken meats and the half-empty flagon on the board
beside him testified. He pulled thoughtfully at a long pipe--for he had
acquired this newly imported habit of tobacco-drinking--and dreamed
of his mistress, and was properly and gallantly grateful that fortune had
used him so handsomely as to enable him to toss a title and some
measure of renown into his Rosamund's lap.
By nature Sir Oliver was a