V


Duddon Castle in May was an agreeable place. Its park, lying on the
eastern slopes of the mountain mass which includes Skiddaw and
Blencathra, had none of the usual monotony of parks, but was a genuine
"chase," running up on the western side into the heather and rock of the
mountain where the deer were at home, while on the east and south its
splendid oaks stood thick in bracken beside sparkling becks, overlooking
dells and valleys of succulent grass where the sheep ranged at will. The
house consisted of an early Tudor keep, married to a Jacobean house of
rose-coloured brick, which Lady Tatham had since her widowhood succeeded
in freeing from the ugly stucco which had once disguised and defaced it.
It could not claim the classical charm, the learned elegance of Threlfall
Tower. Duddon was romantic--a medley of beautiful things, full of
history, colour, and time, fused by the trees and fern, the luxuriant
creepers and mosses, and of a mild and rainy climate into a lovely
irregular whole; with no outline to speak of, yet with nothing that one
could seriously wish away. The size was great, yet no one but an
auctioneer could have called it "superb"; it seemed indeed to take a
pleasure in concealing the whole extent of its clustered building; and by
the time you were aware of it, you had fallen in love with Duddon, and
nothing mattered.

But if without, in its broad external features, Duddon betrayed a
romantic freedom in the minds of those who had planned it, nothing could
have been more orderly or exquisite than its detail, when detail had to
be considered. The Italian garden round the house with its formal masses
of contrasting colour, its pleached alleys, and pergolas, its steps,