Description
The Sea Hawk
PART I. SIR OLIVER TRESSILIAN
CHAPTER I. THE HUCKSTER
Sir Oliver Tressilian sat at his ease in the lofty dining-room of the
handsome house of Penarrow, which he owed to the enterprise of his
father of lamented and lamentable memory and to the skill and invention
of an Italian engineer named Bagnolo who had come to England half a
century ago as one of the assistants of the famous Torrigiani.
This house of such a startlingly singular and Italianate grace for so
remote a corner of Cornwall deserves, together with the story of its
construction, a word in passing.
The Italian Bagnolo who combined with his salient artistic talents a
quarrelsome, volcanic humour had the mischance to kill a man in a brawl
in a Southwark tavern. As a result he fled the town, nor paused in his
headlong flight from the consequences of that murderous deed until he
had all but reached the very ends of England. Under what circumstances
he became acquainted with Tressilian the elder I do not know. But
certain it is that the meeting was a very timely one for both of them.
To the fugitive, Ralph Tressilian–who appears to have been inveterately
partial to the company of rascals of all denominations–afforded
shelter; and Bagnolo repaid the service by offering to rebuild the
decaying half-timbered house of Penarrow. Having taken the task in
hand he went about it with all the enthusiasm of your true artist, and
achieved for his protector a residence that was a marvel of grace
in that crude age and outlandish district. There arose under the
supervision of the gifted engineer, worthy associate of Messer
Torrigiani, a noble two-storied mansion of mellow red brick, flooded
with light and sunshine by the enormously tall mullioned windows that
rose almost fr
Product ID: 9781776774678
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