Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 733, January 12, 1878Various
History
Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 733, January 12, 1878
Various
Periodicals
Nothing is left for
us to add but an advice to our readers. It is, to take the earliest
opportunity to go and hear the JUBILEE SINGERS.
W. C.
HELENA, LADY HARROGATE.
CHAPTER II.--AT CARBERY CHASE.
The horseman, at whose approach the interesting inmate of _The
Traveller's Rest_ had so abruptly withdrawn from the place of
observation whence he was contemplating the Elizabethan front of
Carbery Court, had scarcely recognised in the lounger smoking his pipe
beneath the elm, the bronzed seafaring fellow whom he had frequently
of late encountered. But as the man moved off with hasty step and an
evident dislike to observation, the rider's eyes for a moment followed
him.
‘A queer customer that,’ he said carelessly to himself. ‘What is he, I
wonder? If I saw that ugly face of his near Ashdown Park or Newmarket
Heath, I'd lay a trifle that he was a racing tout; in London I would
class him as a dog-dealer or dog-stealer, or possibly a sham smuggler,
one of those gruff longshore-men who waylay you with their contraband
cabbage-leaf _Trabucos_; but being here, I think he has more the look
of a real one.’
Having said which, he rode on, in the quiet enjoyment of a cigar,
towards the material of which it is unlikely that the leaf of any
British vegetable had contributed; while no sound but the jingling of
the bridle-rein and the tramp of the horse's feet broke the silence.
Overhead there soared aloft a living canopy of verdure, formed by
the mighty trees, that seemed to throw, as it were, a succession of
triumphal arches over the smooth carriage-road, flecked with broad bars
of light and shadow. There were vistas here and there, opening out
from between the massive trees, on which an artist's eye might have
feasted, dells clothed with beech and birch trees, fairy glens through
which trickled some brooklet fresh from its cradle among the ridges of
Dartmoor, pools on which the water-lily floated, and around which the
deer bent down their antlered heads to drink. But Jasper Denzil had
little or no appreciation of the charms of a landscape, and as he rode
on, the only comment which escaped him was evoked by the sight of the
superb old house, its many windows glistening golden in the sloping
sun, as though to challenge admiration.
‘Tiresome old jail!’ he said, tossing away the stump of his cigar. ‘A
nice place to be mewed up in, with the London season at high-pressure,
is this! If it were mine to do as I liked with’---- But the only son
and heir of Sir Sykes Denzil did not definitely state the course that
he should pursue were he undisputed proprietor of Carbery Chase.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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