THE CLOWN

CHAPTER I

ACQUAINTING THE READER WITH A FAIR DOMAIN AND THE MAKER THEREOF

In that fortunate hour of English history, when the cruel sights and
haunting insecurities of the Middle Ages had passed away, and while, as
yet, the fanatic zeal of Puritanism had not cast its blighting shadow
over all merry and pleasant things, it seemed good to one Denzil
Calmady, esquire, to build himself a stately red-brick and freestone
house upon the southern verge of the great plateau of moorland which
ranges northward to the confines of Windsor Forest and eastward to the
Surrey Hills. And this he did in no vainglorious spirit, with purpose
of exalting himself above the county gentlemen, his neighbours, and
showing how far better lined his pockets were than theirs. Rather did
he do it from an honest love of all that is ingenious and comely, and
as the natural outgrowth of an inquiring and philosophic mind. For
Denzil Calmady, like so many another son of that happy age, was
something more than a mere wealthy country squire, breeder of beef and
brewer of ale. He was a courtier and traveler; and, if tradition speaks
truly, a poet who could praise his mistress's many charms, or wittily
resent her caprices, in well-turned verse. He was a patron of art,
having brought back ivories and bronzes from Italy, pictures and china
from the Low Countries, and enamels from France. He was a student, and
collected the many rare and handsome leather-bound volumes telling of
curious arts, obscure speculations, half-fabulous histories, voyages,
and adventures, which still constitute the almost unique value of the
Brockhurst library. He might claim to be a man of science, moreover--of
that delectable old-world science which has no narrow-minded quarrel
with miracle or prodigy, wherein angel and demon mingle freely, lending
a hand unchallenged to complicate the operations both of nature and of
grace--a science which, even yet, in perfect good faith, busied itself
with the mysteries of the Rosy Cross, mixed strange ingredients into a
possible Elixir of Life, ran far afield in search for the Philosopher's
Stone, gathered herbs for the confection of simples during auspicious
phases of the moon, and beheld in comet and meteor awful forewarnings
of public calamity or of Divine Wrath.

From all of which it may be premised that when, like the wise king, of
old, in Jerusalem, Denzil Calmady "builded him houses, made him gardens
and orchards, and