THE TERRACE AT ALL SAINTS' COLLEGE.
Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne,
Die liebt ich einst alle in Liebeswonne.
--Heine.
Somewhere in the fairyland of Dorothea's imagination rises a visionary
city, with towers and gables straggling against the sky. The streets go
up hill and down hill, leading by cloisters and gateways and by walls,
behind which gardens are lying like lakes of green among the stones and
the ivy. A thrush is singing, and the shrill echoes of some boyish
melancholy voices come from a chapel hard by. It is a chapel with a pile
of fantastic columns standing in the quiet corner of a lane. All round
the side door are niches and winding galleries, branches wreathing,
placed there by faithful hands, crisp saints beatified in stony glory.
Are these, one is tempted to ask, as one looks at the generous old
piles, the stones that cry out now-a-days when men are silent? They
have, for the last century or two, uttered warnings and praises to many
a generation passing by: speaking to some of a bygone faith, to others
of a living one. They still tell of past love and hope, and of past and
present charity.
But in these times charity is a destroying angel; even the divine
attributes seem to have changed, and Faith, Hope, and Charity have gone
each their separate way.
To Dolly Vanborough, who had thought happiness was over for ever, it was
the first great song of her youth that these old stones sang to her on
her eighteenth birthday. She hears it still, though her youth is past.
It is the song of the wonder of life, of the divine in the human. As we
go on its echoes reach us repeated again and again, reverberating from
point to point; who that has heard them once will ever forget them? To
some they come with happiness and the delight of new undreamt-of
sympathy, to others with sorrow and the realisation of love.... Its
strains came with prayer and long fasting to the saints of old. This
song of Pentecost, I know no better name for it, echoes on from
generation to generation from one heart to another. Sometimes by chance
one has looked into a stranger's face and seen its light reflected.
Frank Raban saw its light in Dolly's face that day as she came out of
the chapel to where her brother had left her. Just for an instant it was
there while the psalm still sung in her heart. And yet the light in
Dolly's face dimmed a little when she saw, not the person she had
expected to see, but Mr. Raban waiting there.
'I came in Henley's place,' said he, hastily, guessing her thought. 'He
was sent for by the Vice-Chancellor, and begged me to come and tell you
this. He will join us directly.'
Mr. Raban had been waiting in the sunshiny street while Dolly
deliberately advanced down the worn steps of the chapel, crossed the
flagged court, and came out of the narrow iron wicket of which the
barred shadow fell upon her white fete-day dress. Miss Vanborough's face
was shaded by a broad hat with curling blue feathers; she wore a pink
rose in her girdle; it was no saintly costume; she was but a
common-place mortal maiden in sprigged muslin, and saints wear, as we
all know, red and blue, and green stained glass and damask and
goatskins; and yet Frank Raban thought there was something saint-like in
her bright face, which, for an instant, seemed reflecting all her heart.
'Henley lives on my staircase,' continued Raban. 'Those pink frills are
his. He makes himself comfortable, as you see.'
'I'm glad of that,' said Dolly, smiling. 'How nice it must be for you to
have him so near.'
'He always takes ladies to see his rooms,' Raban continued. 'He is a
great favourite with them, and gives tea-parties.'
'A great favourite!' said Dolly, warmly. 'Of course one likes people who
are kind and good and clever and true and nice.'
'Who are, in short, an addition sum, made up of equal portions of all
the cardinal virtues,' said Raban.
He was ashamed of himself, and yet he did not care to hear Henley's
praises from Dolly. It seemed to him dishonest to acquiesce.
Dolly stopped for half a second and looked at him.
Dorothea was a tall woman and their eyes were on a line, and their looks
met. My heroine was at no pains to disguise the meaning of her indignant
glances. 'How can you be so ungenerous?' she said, as plainly as if she
had spoken.
Frank answered her silence in words.
'No, I don't like him,' he said, 'and he don't like me; and I don't care
to pretend to better feelings than I really have. We are civil enough,
and pull very well together. I beg your pardon. I own he deserves to
succeed,' said the young man. 'There, Miss Vanborough, this is our
garden, where we refresh ourselves with cigars and beer after our
arduous studies.'
Dolly was still too much vexed to express her admiration.
They all began calling to them from under the tree. John Morgan, who was
of the party, was lying flat upon his broad back, beaming at the
universe, and fanning away the flies, Rhoda was sitting on the grass, in
a foam of white muslin and Algerian shawls. George Vanborough,
privileged for the day, was astride on a wooden table; a distant peacock
went strutting across the lawn; a little wind came blowing gently,
stirring all the shadows; a college bell began to tinkle a little, and
then left off.
'Glorious afternoon, isn't it?' says John Morgan, from the grass.
'It is like heaven,' says Dolly, looking up and round and about.
Rhoda's slim fingers clasp her pearl locket, which has come out again.
They were in the shade, the sun was shining hot and intense upon the old
garden. The roses, like bursting bubbles, were breaking in the heat
against the old baked bricks, upon rows of prim collegiate flowers:
lilies, and stocks, and marigolds. There was a multiplicity of sweet
scents in the air, of shadows falling on the lawns (they flow from the
old gates to the river); a tone is struck, an insect floats away along
the garden wall. With its silence and flowers, and tremulous shades and
sunshine, I know no sweeter spot than the old garden of All Saints'.
The gardener had placed seats and a bench under the old beech-tree for
pilgrims to rest upon, weary with their journeys from shrine to shrine.
Mrs. Palmer was leaning back in a low garden-chair; the sweep of her
flowing silks seemed to harmonise with her languid and somewhat
melancholy grace. Rhoda was helping to open her parasol (the parasol was
dove-coloured and lined with pink). There was a row of Morgans upon the
bench; Mrs. Morgan upright in the midst, nicely curled and trimmed with
satin bows and a white muslin daughter on either side.
It all happened in a moment: the sky burnt overhead, the sun shone upon
the river, upon the colleges, with their green gardens: the rays seemed
to strike fire where they met the water. The swans were sailing along
the stream in placid state, followed by their grey brood, skimming and
paddling in and out among the weeds and the green stems and leaves that
sway with the ripple of the waters; a flight of birds high overhead
crossed the vault of the heavens and disappeared in the distance.
Dorothea Vanborough was standing on the terrace at the end of the old
college garden, where everything was so still, so sweet, and so intense
that it seemed as if time was not, as if the clocks had stopped on their
travels, as if no change could ever be, nor hours nor seasons sweep
through the tranquil old place.
They were all laughing and talking; but Dolly, who was too lazy and too
happy to talk, wandered away from them a little bit, to the garden's
end, where she stood stooping over the low wall and watching the water
flow by; there was a man fishing on the opposite bank, and casting his
line again and again. In the distance a boat was drifting along the
stream, some insects passed out towards the meadows humming their summer
drone, a wasp sailed by. Dolly was half standing, half-sitting, against
the low terrace wall; with one hand she was holding up her white muslin
skirt, with the other she was grasping the ledge of the old bricks upon
which the lichen had been at work spreading their gold and grey. So the
girl waited, sunning herself; herself a part of the summer's day, and
gently blooming and rejoicing in its sweetness like any rose upon the
wall.
There are blissful moments when one's heart seems to beat in harmony
with the great harmony: when one is oneself light and warmth, and the
delight of light, and a voice in the comfortable chorus of contentment
and praise all round about. Such a minute had come to Dolly in her white
muslin dress, with the Cam flowing at her feet and the lights dazzling
her grey eyes.
Mrs. Morgan gave a loud sneeze under the tree, and the beautiful minute
broke and dispersed away.
'I wonder what it can be like to grow old,' Dolly wonders, looking up;
'to remember back for years and years, and to wear stiff curls and
satinette?' Dolly began to picture to herself a long procession of
future selves, each older and more curiously bedizened than the other.
Somehow they seemed to make a straight line between herself and Mrs.
Morgan under the tree. It was an uncomfortable fancy. Dolly tried to
forget it, and leant over the wall, and looked down into the cool depths
of the stream again. Was that fish rising? What was this? Her own face
again looking up from the depth. Then Dolly turned, hearing a step upon
the gravel, to see Robert Henley coming towards her. He was dressed in
his college cap and gown, and he advanced, floating balloon-like, along
the terrace. He looked a little strange, she thought, as he came up to
her.
'I couldn't get away before,' he said. 'I hope you have been well looked
after.'
'Yes, indeed. Come and sit down here, Robert. What a delicious old
garden this is! We are all so happy! Look at those dear little swans in
the river!'
'Do you like the cygnets?' said Robert, abruptly, as he looked her full
in the face, and sat down on the low wall beside her. 'Do you remember
Charles Martindale?' he asked; 'we met once at John Morgan's, who went
out to India? He is coming home next October.'
'Is he?' said Dolly. 'Look at that little grey cygnet scuttling away!'
'Dolly,' said Henley, quickly, 'they sent for me to offer me his place,
and I--I--have accepted it.'
'Accepted it?' said his cousin, forgetting the cygnets, and looking up a
little frightened. 'Will you have to go to India and leave everybody?'
Her face changed a little, and Robert's brightened, though he tried to
look as usual.
'Not everybody,' he said. 'Not if----' He took the soft hand in his that
was lying on the wall beside him. 'Dolly! will you come too?' he said.
'Me?' cried the unabashed Dolly. 'Oh, Robert, how could I?'
'You could come if I married you,' said Robert, in his quiet voice and
most restrained manner. 'Dearest Dorothea, don't you think you can learn
to love me? It will be nearly five months before I start.'
It was all so utterly incomprehensible that the girl did not quite
realise her cousin's words. Robert was looking very strange and unlike
himself; Dolly could hardly believe that it was not some effect of the
dazzle of light in her own eyes. He was paler than usual; he seemed
somehow stirred from his habitual ways and self. She thought it was not
even his voice that she heard speaking. 'Is this being in love?' she was
saying to herself. A little bewildered flush came into her cheeks. She
still saw the sky, and the garden, and the figures under the tree; then
for a minute everything vanished, as tangible things vanish before the
invisible,--just as spoken words are hushed and lose their meaning when
the silent voices cry out.
It was but for a moment. There she stood again, staring at Robert with
her innocent, grey-eyed glance.
Henley was a big, black-and-white melancholy young man, with a blue
shaved chin. To-day his face was pale, his mouth was quivering, his hair
was all on end. Could this be Robert who was so deliberate; who always
knew his own mind; who looked at his watch so often in church while
music was going on? Even now, from habit, he was turning it about in his
pocket. This little trick made Dolly feel more than anything else that
it was all true--that her cousin loved her--incredible though it might
appear--and yet even still she doubted.
'_Me_, Robert?' repeated Dorothea, in her clear, childish tones, looking
up with her frank yet timid eyes. 'Are you _sure_?'
'I have been sure ever since I first saw you,' said Henley, smiling down
at her, 'at Kensington, three years ago. Do you remember the snowball,
Dolly?'
Then Dolly's eyes fell, and she stood with a tender, puzzled face,
listening to her first tale of love. She suddenly pulled away her hand,
shy and blushing.
The swans had hardly passed beyond the garden-terrace; the fisherman had
only thrown his line once again; Dolly's mamma had time to shift her
parasol; that was all. Henley waited, with his handsome head a little
bent. He was regaining his composure; he knew too much of his cousin's
uncompromising ways to be made afraid by her silence. He stood pulling
at his watch, and looking at her--at the straight white figure amid
dazzling blue and green; at the line of the sweet face still turned away
from him.
'I thought you would have understood me better?' he said, reproachfully.
Still Dolly could not speak. For a moment her heart had beat with an
innocent triumph, and then came a doubt. Did she love him--could she
love him? Had he then cared for her all this time, when she herself had
been so cold and so indifferent, and thinking so little of him? Only
yesterday she had told Rhoda she would never marry. Was it yesterday?
No, it was to-day, an hour ago.... What had she done to deserve so much
from him?--what had she done to be so overprized and loved? At the
thought quick upspringing into her two grey eyes came the tears,
sparkling like the diamonds in Rhoda's cross.
'I never thought you thought,' Dolly began. 'Oh, Robert! you have been
in earnest all this time, and I only--only playing.'
'Don't be unhappy,' said her cousin. 'It was very natural; I should not
have wished it otherwise. I did not want to speak to you till I had
something worth your acceptance.'
'All this long time!' repeated Dolly.
Did the explanations of true love ever yet run smooth? 'Dolly!' cried
Mrs. Palmer, from under the tree.
'Hulloa, Robert!' shouted George, coming across the grass towards them.
'Oh, Robert!' said Dorothea, earnestly, unexpectedly, with a sudden
resolution to be true--true to him and to herself, 'thank you a thousand
times for what you have told me: only it mustn't be--I don't care enough
for you, dear Robert! You deserve----'
Henley said not a word. He stood with a half-incredulous smile; his eyes
were still fixed on Dolly's sweet face; he did not answer George, who
again called out something as he came up. As for Dolly, she turned to
her brother and sprang to meet him, and took his arm as if for
protection, and then she walked quickly away without another look, and
Henley remained standing where she had been. Instead of the white-muslin
maiden, the cygnets may have seen a black-silk young man, who looked at
his watch, and then walked away too; while the fisherman quietly baited
his line and went on with his sport.