Trivia | Page 4

son.
In any case, Silvia Doria came like the Spring, like the sunlight, into
the lonely place. Even the old Lord felt himself curiously happy when
he heard her voice singing about the house; as for Henry and Francis, it
was heaven for them just to walk by her side down the garden alleys.
And Silvia Doria, though hitherto she had been but cold toward the
London gallants who had courted her, found, little by little, that her
heart was not untouched.
But, in spite of her father, and her own girlish love of gold and rank, it
was not for Henry that she cared, not for the old Lord, but for Francis,
the younger son. Did Francis know of this? They were secretly lovers,
the old scandal reported; and the scandal, it may be, had reached her
father's ears.
For one day a coach with foaming horses, and the wicked face of an old
man at its window, galloped up the avenue; and soon afterwards, when
the coach drove away, Silvia Doria was sitting by the old man's side,
sobbing bitterly.
And after she had gone, a long time, many of the old, last-century years,
went by without any change. And then Henry, the eldest son, was killed
in hunting; and the old Lord dying a few years later, the titles and the
great house and all the land and gold came to Francis, the younger son.
But after his father's death he was but seldom there; having, as it
seemed, no love for the place, and living for the most part abroad and
alone, for he never married.
And again, many years went by. The trees grew taller and darker about
the house; the yew hedges unclipt now, hung their branches over the
moss-grown paths; ivy almost smothered the statues; and the plaster
fell away in great patches from the discoloured garden temples.
But at last one day a chariot drove up to the gates; a footman pulled at
the crazy bell, telling the gate-keeper that his mistress wished to visit

the Park. So the gates creaked open, the chariot glittered up the avenue
to the deserted place; and a lady stepped out, went into the garden, and
walked among its moss-grown paths and statues. As the chariot drove
out again, "Tell your Lord," the lady said, smiling, to the lodge-keeper,
"that Silvia Doria came back."

Bligh House
To the West, in riding past the walls of Bligh, I remembered an
incident in the well-known siege of that house, during the Civil Wars:
How, among Waller's invading Roundhead troops, there happened to
be a young scholar, a poet and lover of the Muses, fighting for the
cause, as he thought, of ancient Freedom, who, one day, when the siege
was being more hotly urged, pressing forward and climbing a wall,
suddenly found himself in a quiet old garden by the house. And here,
for a time forgetting, as it would seem, the battle, and heedless of the
bullets that now and then flew past him like peevish wasps, the young
Officer stayed, gathering roses--old-fashioned damask roses, streaked
with red and white--which, for the sake of a Court Beauty, there
besieged with her father, he carried to the house; falling, however,
struck by a chance bullet, or shot perhaps by one of his own party. A
few of the young Officer's verses, written in the stilted fashion of the
time, and almost unreadable now, have been preserved. The lady's
portrait hangs in the white drawing room at Bligh; a simpering, faded
figure, with ringlets and drop-pearls, and a dress of amber-coloured
silk.

In Church
"For the Pen," said the Vicar; and in the sententious pause that followed,
I felt that I would offer any gifts of gold to avert or postpone the
solemn, inevitable, hackneyed, and yet, as it seemed to me, perfectly
appalling statement that "the Pen is mightier than the Sword."

Parsons
All the same I like Parsons; they think nobly of the Universe, and
believe in Souls and Eternal Happiness. And some of them, I am told,
believe in Angels--that there are Angels who guide our footsteps, and

flit to and fro unseen on errands in the air about us.

The Sound of a Voice
As the thoughtful Baronet talked, as his voice went on sounding in my
ears, all the light of desire, and of the sun, faded from the Earth; I saw
the vast landscape of the world dim, as in an eclipse; its populations
eating their bread with tears, its rich men sitting listless in their palaces,
and aged Kings crying "Vanity, Vanity, all is Vanity!" lugubriously
from their thrones.

What Happens
"Yes," said Sir Thomas, speaking of a modern novel, "it certainly does
seem strange; but the novelist was