"And they knew my master, sir," said Hallings, turning to me, and appealing to L---- to confirm the truth of his assertion--"They knew my master, and, poor small creatures as they were, must have loved him too in their way, as every living thing did; for they used to buzz all round him as he sat there, and often pitch upon him, even upon his hands or head, and never one was known to sting him, vengeful as they were if strangers made too free near their hives, or among the flower-beds my master used to call their pleasure-grounds."
"What has become of old Ralph and the tortoise, Hallings?" asked L----, as he stopt to take a melancholy survey of the altered scene. "The gold-fish, of course, have been long destroyed, for I see the little basin with its small fountain is quite choked up with dead leaves and rubbish."
"Mr Heneage Devereux took out the gold-fish, sir, the week after my master's death," replied the old butler; "but the tortoise had buried himself for the winter; and when he crawled out the spring afterwards, and took to his old haunt in the basin, one would have supposed he found out the change that had taken place, for the creature was quite restless; and I often found him out of the water, and making his way about the garden, as if in search of something; and for a long, long time, old Ralph and he--for Ralph is living, sir, and you will see him presently--he and the old raven were the only living creatures, beside the birds, that did not desert the poor old place--except myself indeed. I could never keep away from it a whole day together, and I used to come here to feed old Ralph too; for it was long before we could lure him to the cottage for his food, and now he is almost always here, and hides himself for the most part in the great bay-tree there in the corner, where part of the north gable is still standing."
As he spoke, we coasted leisurely along the hedge-side walk, as carefully (though almost unconsciously) avoiding to tread the beds it skirted, as if they were still filled with choice flowers, or fragrant and aromatic herbs, or matted hoops, or hand-glasses guarding the rarer or tenderer plants, bulbs, and auriculas, once (L---- observed) the pride of that small garden. The forms of those fair flower-knots were still discernible from their edgings of thrift, box, daisy, London pride, now grown, however, into perfect hedges, where still untrampled, or into ragged bushes, still indicating the once clipt line of geometrical exactness, as each bed radiated to a centre, where lay the little basin with its fairy fountain before alluded to. Some large stone flower-pots, green and discoloured with damp and weather-stains, were still standing round it in mockery of decoration. From two or three shot up a luxuriant growth of common weeds; in one, a beautiful foxglove, exulting as it were in plebeian pride and brilliancy over its aristocratical neighbour in an adjoining vase, a delicate and sickly Persian lilac, whose pensile sprays drooped languidly even under their scanty growth of yellow leaves and pale and stunted blossoms. Here and there, within the flower-knots, bloomed a tuft of double white narcissus, struggling through grass and matted vegetation. Some tall fris's, white lilies, and other hardy flowers, had also shot up into beauty or fair promise; but the elegant moss-rose drooped to the earth, as if in sorrow, and its half-blighted buds lay cankering on the moss-grown path. The scene, desolate as it was, would still have been one of beauty in decay, had the work of destruction been wrought by "Time's defacing fingers" only; but man's more desecrating touch was too perceptible there; and, independently of peculiar circumstances and associations, there is a wide difference between the pleasing melancholy which loves to meditate among ivied and moss-grown ruins, and that painful feeling with which we contemplate the newness of untimely desolation. It was a ghastly sight even to a stranger's eye, that of the gaping void left along one entire side of the little garden by the demolition of the old mansion; and the dreary effect of that blank exposure was not a little heightened by the contrasting incongruity of the prospect beyond, where the great gateway to what had been the principal entrance-court stood perfectly isolated and entire. The beautiful gate of iron open work closed between the massy side-pillars, on each of which the lion couchant of the Devereuxs still kept watch and ward as proudly as when that gate had unclosed in the last reign of the Tudors to admit a royal visitant and her courtly train.