The Strand Magazine 1906. (nem teljes évfolyam) [antikvár]

The Strand Magazine. Vol. xxxi. JANUARY, 1906. No. 18c. SIR NIGEL, By A. CONAN DOYLE. CHAPTER IV. HOW THE SUMMONER CAME TO THE MANOR-HOUSE OF TI7.F0RD. Y the date of this chronicle the ascetic sternness of the old Norman castles had been humanized and refined so that the new dwellings of the nobility, if less imposing in appearance, were very much more comfortable as places of residence. A gentler race had built their houses rather for peace than for war. He who compares the savage bareness of Pevensey with the piled grandeur of Bodiam or Windsor cannot fail to understand the change in manners which they represent. The earlier castles had a set purpose, for they were built that the invaders might hold down the country ; but when the Conquest was once firmly established a castle had lost its meaning, save as a refuge from justice or as a centre for civil strife. On the marches of Wales and of Scotland the castle might continue to be a bulwark to the kingdom, and there they still grew and flourished ; but in all other places they were rather a menace to the King's Majesty, and as such were discouraged and destroyed. By the reign of the third Edward the greater part of the old fighting castles had been converted into dwelling-houses or had been ruined in the Civil Wars, and left where their grim, grey bones are still littered upon the brows of our hills. The new buildings were either great country houses, capable of defence but mainly residential, or they were manor-houses with no military significance at all. Such was the Tilford manor-house, where the last survivors of the. old and magnificent house of Loring still struggled hard to keep a footing and to hold off the monks and the lawyers from the few acres which were left to them. The mansion was a two-storied one, framed in heavy beams of wood, the interstices filled with rude blocks of stone. An outside staircase led up to several sleeping-rooms above. Vul. xxxl.—1 Below there were only two apartments, the smaller of which was the bower of the aged Lady Ermyntrude. The other was the hall, a very large room, which served as the living-room of the family and. as the common -dining-room of themselves and of their little group of servants and retainers. The dwellings of these servants, the kitchens, the offices, and the stables were all represented by a row of pent-houses and sheds behind the mp.in building. Here lived Charles the page, Peter the old falconer. Red Swire, who had followed Nigel's grandfather to the Scottish wars, Weathercote the broken minstrel,' John the- cook, and other survivors of more prosperous. days, who still clung to the old house as the barnacles to some wrecked and stranded vessel. One evening, about a week after the breaking of the yellow horse, Nigel and his grandmother sat on either side of the large, empty fireplace in this spacious apartment. The supper had been removed and so had the trestle tables upon which it had been served, so that to modern eyes the room would have seemed bare and empty. The stone floor was strewed with a thick layer of green rushes, which was swept out every Saturday, and carried with it all the dirt and debris of the week. Several dogs were now crouched among these rushes, gnawing and cracking the bones which had been thrown from the table. A long wooden buffet, loaded with plates and dishes, filled-one end of the room ; but there was little other furniture save some benches against the walls, two dorseret chairs, one small table littered with chessmen, and a great iron coffer. In one corner was a high wicker-work stand, and on it two stately falcons were perched, silent and motionless save for an occasional twinkle of their fierce yellow eyes. But if the actual fittings of the room would have appeared scanty to one who had lived in a more luxurious age, he would have been surprised on looking up to see the multitude of objects which were suspended above his Copyright, 1906, by A. Conaii Doyle, in the United Stales of America.