CHAPTER IX. "AND dreams of that which cannot die, Dreams that the soul of youth engage LONGFELLOW. THE winter set in unusually early, and with unusual severity. The storm, which had nearly proved so disastrous to Mr. Dudley, ushered in a succession of storms, less violent than their predecessor, but sufficiently wild and wintry. Then came an ominous calm, a dead stillness. The bright mornings, the lurid sunsets, faded away, and merged into days of unbroken gloom. A mountainshower or a stormy wind occasionally rent the hazy pall in which nature lay entombed; these changes in the atmosphere were hailed with rapture by the lonely inhabitants of Emrys Castle. But the winter months passed not unhappily away. Mr. Dudley had energy enough to carry out the plan he had laid down for the disposition of his time. The morning was devoted to study; the afternoon, when practicable, to out-door exercise; the evening found him once more, to make use of his own expression, "pen in hand." There was an interregnum between the afternoon walk and the evening work, to which Florence and her nurse looked forward, as to the happiest portion of the day. When the last faint rays of light faded into the dark hour, Mary, knitting in hand, ensconced herself, by special invitation, in the chimney-corner; while Florence, drawing a stool to her father's feet, with many a winning smile, preferred a pretty petition : "You have song of war for knight; Goblin grim the maids to scare." Mr. Dudley never refused to accept the challenge. Endowed with a powerful memory, a graceful fancy, he culled both flower and fruit from the bright page of romance, from the dark records of "history's tattered volume," to feed the imagination of his youthful petitioner. He drew from the "pure well of English undefiled," old father Chaucer, of joyous memory; from the glorious creations of Shakspeare; from the bright fancies of Spenser; from the living pages of the Ariosto of the North; and wove many a golden web from "Aught else great bards beside In sage and solemn tunes have sung, Where more is meant than meets the ear." In after years, amid the vapid talk and fashionable jargon of "polite society," how often did Florence Dudley's thoughts fly back to those witching hours! She felt, with secret bitterness, that the sparkling fancy, the flowery eloquence, lavished upon the woman and child, would have established her father's reputation as a professed wit or envied man of letters, in the highest circles of the beau monde, or the most refined coteries of the literati. Mr. Dudley shone in private; his "learned sock" was seldom on in public. He entertained a morbid dread of being "trotted out." To the dark hour and its legends succeeded tea-the only luxury in which the little family indulged. Oaten bread, and the humble fare of the mountaineer, superseded the well-appointed table at the Wilderness. A game of chess and a book closed our heroine's evening. Mr. Dudley read aloud exceedingly well—a rare but most precious gift. Thanks to the judicious kindness of Dr. Leicester, the library supplied stores for many a winter. The "Tales of a Grandfather," Miss Edgeworth's works, and selections from the poems of Wordsworth and Mrs. Hemans, furnished ample food for Florence's literary cravings during the first winter at the castle; but as years rolled on, "the appetite grew with that it fed on." She turned from Shakspeare, Milton, and the golden stores of English literature, to glean, under her father's careful guidance, the rich field of foreign classics. He led her faltering steps through the mazy labyrinth of German metaphysics, till she echoed Goethe's dying cry, "More light!" He taught her to revere the soaring genius of Dante, to sympathize with the tender strain of Petrarch, the gay verse of Ariosto; and when, dazzled with excess of light, she closed the magic page, he fixed her aching vision upon the soft sentimentality of Lamartine, or, better far, the racy humour of Molière. In the ordinary acceptation of the term, Florence was not accomplished-far from it. She could not play upon any instrument; but she warbled many a ballad in tones "Most musical, most melancholy." She could neither draw nor paint, but she had an instinctive love of art, and an excellent eye for a picture. Lastly, she did not dance à la Mercœur-her movements were too elastic for the graceful, gliding step of the polite world; but the twinkling feet "Like little mice crept in and out, As if they fear'd the light; Mr. Dudley may be excused if he preferred the bounding step (which defied both dignity and elegance) with which his little daughter threaded the mazes of the halfforgotten measure, once so familiar, to a more courtly style. Florence sang as she danced : Such as she "With a step and a bound, : With a frisk from the ground, was, she was dearer to her father's eyes than the light of the summer heaven; fairer, although far from peerless, than a being created "Of every creature's best." We are anticipating the course of events, but we have lingered long on the opening scenes of our story, and must hasten over a few years in almost as few sentences. Summer succeeded to winter, and winter to summer, with few changes in the daily life of the inhabitants of the castle, save those wrought by the change of the seasons. In the summer months, Mr. Dudley and his daughter, the former on foot, the latter mounted on a pony, made innumerable excursions through the length and breadth of the Principality. In some of these expeditions they were joined by Dr. Leicester; he never failed to pay an annual visit to the castle. A considerable intimacy sprang up between Florence Dudley and Lucy Jones, greatly to the advantage of the latter, and by no means to the detriment of the former. Mr. Dudley, who was tainted with the hereditary pride of his race, might have put a veto upon this friendship, had not every feeling of gratitude forbade it. He refused to avail himself of Lord Wentworth's introductions to the gentlemen, who occasionally resided upon estates, contiguous to Emrys castle. Moreover, he watched over Florence with jealous care whenever a stranger visited the ruins. "Never refuse a traveller admittance," was a standing order to Mary. "Never leave the house when you see a stranger," was a command uttered to Florence, in a peremptory tone to which the little lady was scarcely accustomed. Florence obeyed without a murmur, but whenever a gay party filled the ruins, making the old walls re-echo with their joyous laughter, she watched them, with swimming eyes, from her turret-window, in the Maiden's Tower. Once, and once only, she encountered a tourist lounging about the ruins, and then, frightened at her involuntary infraction of her father's commands, she beat a precipitate retreat. Mary wholly disapproved of these stringent rules; she sympathized with her nursling's innocent desire to join the young and the gay; and on one occasion ventured to expostulate with her master. "You cannot put grey heads on green shoulders," she soliloquized. "It makes my heart ache to see the pretty creature moped up in this old rat-hole." "Dear sir," she began, with a persuasive smile, "will you allow Miss Florence to go round the ruins with the next party who comes to visit them?" The phrase was unfortunate; an angry flush suffused Mr. Dudley's brow. He drew himself up with an air of unwonted hauteur. "You would see Miss Dudley, my daughter, assume the office of guide to the first idle tourists who require her services? Would you recommend her to accept a gratuity?" Mary interupted him. "I have never taken one farthing from the folks who come to the castle, and do you think I would see my precious Miss Florence demean herself "her voice faltered; Mary's pride well-nigh rivalled her master's. Mr. Dudley held out his hand. |