Chapter 19

High up in the old carved roof, meanwhile, the spiders of centuries
still hung their flaunting webs with a profusion that old Doctor
Grimshawe would have been ravished to see; but even this was to be
remedied, for one day, on looking in, Redclyffe found the great hall
dim with floating dust, and down through it came great floating masses
of cobweb, out of which the old Doctor would have undertaken to
regenerate the world; and he saw, dimly aloft, men on ladders sweeping
away these accumulations of years, and breaking up the haunts and
residences of hereditary spiders.

The stately old hall had been in process of cleaning and adapting to
the banquet purposes of the nineteenth century, which it was accustomed
to subserve, in so proud a way, in the sixteenth. It was, in the first
place, well swept and cleansed; the painted glass windows were cleansed
from dust, and several panes, which had been unfortunately broken and
filled with common glass, were filled in with colored panes, which the
Warden had picked up somewhere in his antiquarian researches. They were
not, to be sure, just what was wanted; a piece of a saint, from some
cathedral window, supplying what was lacking of the gorgeous purple of
a mediæval king; but the general effect was rich and good, whenever the
misty English atmosphere supplied sunshine bright enough to pervade it.
Tapestry, too, from antique looms, faded, but still gorgeous, was hung
upon the walls. Some suits of armor, that hung beneath the festal
gallery, were polished till the old battered helmets and pierced
breastplates sent a gleam like that with which they had flashed across
the battle-fields of old. [Endnote: 1.]

So now the great day of the Warden's dinner had arrived; and, as may be
supposed, there were fiery times in the venerable old kitchen. The
cook, according to ancient custom, concocted many antique dishes, such
as used to be set before kings and nobles; dainties that might have
called the dead out of their graves; combinations of ingredients that
had ceased to be put together for centuries; historic dishes, which had
long, long ceased to be in the list of revels. Then there was the
stalwart English cheer of the sirloin, and the round; there were the
vast plum-puddings, the juicy mutton, the venison; there was the game,
now just in season,--the half-tame wild fowl of English covers, the
half-domesticated wild deer of English parks, the heathcock from the
far-off hills of Scotland, and one little prairie hen, and some canvas-
back ducks--obtained, Heaven knows how, in compliment to Redclyffe--
from his native shores. O, the old jolly kitchen! how rich the flavored
smoke that went up its vast chimney! how inestimable the atmosphere of
steam that was diffused