He had landed on an island of the still-vexed Bermoothes. The world lay
wrecked behind him: Raynham hung in mists, remote, a phantom to the vivid
reality of this white hand which had drawn him thither away thousands of
leagues in an eye-twinkle. Hark, how Ariel sang overhead! What
splendour in the heavens! What marvels of beauty about his enchanted
brows! And, O you wonder! Fair Flame! by whose light the glories of
being are now first seen....Radiant Miranda! Prince Ferdinand is at your
feet.
Or is it Adam, his rib taken from his side in sleep, and thus
transformed, to make him behold his Paradise, and lose it?...
The youth looked on her with as glowing an eye. It was the First Woman
to him.
And she--mankind was all Caliban to her, saving this one princely youth.
So to each other said their changing eyes in the moment they stood
together; he pale, and she blushing.
She was indeed sweetly fair, and would have been held fair among rival
damsels. On a magic shore, and to a youth educated by a System, strung
like an arrow drawn to the head, he, it might be guessed, could fly fast
and far with her. The soft rose in her cheeks, the clearness of her
eyes, bore witness to the body's virtue; and health and happy blood were
in her bearing. Had she stood before Sir Austin among rival damsels,
that Scientific Humanist, for the consummation of his System, would have
thrown her the handkerchief for his son. The wide summer-hat, nodding
over her forehead to her brows, seemed to flow with the flowing heavy
curls, and those fire-threaded mellow curls, only half-curls, waves of
hair call them, rippling at the ends, went like a sunny red-veined
torrent down her back almost to her waist: a glorious vision to the
youth, who embraced it as a flower of beauty, and read not a feature.
There were curious features of colour in her face for him to have read.
Her brows, thick and brownish against a soft skin showing the action of
the blood, met in the bend of a bow, extending to the temples long and
level: you saw that she was fashioned to peruse the sights of earth, and
by the pliability of her brows that the wonderful creature used her
faculty, and was not going to be a statue to the gazer. Under the dark
thick brows an arch of lashes shot out, giving a wealth of darkness to
the full frank blue eyes, a mystery of meaning--more than brain was ever
meant to fathom: richer, henceforth, than all mortal wisdom to Prince
Ferdinand. For when nature turns artist, and produces contrasts of
colour on a fair face, where is the Sage, or what the Oracle, shall match
the depth of its lightest look?
Prince Ferdinand was also fair. In his slim boating-attire his figure
looked heroic. His hair, rising from the parting to the right of his
forehead, in what his admiring Lady Blandish called his plume, fell away
slanting silkily to the temples across the nearly imperceptible upward
curve of his brows there--felt more than seen, so slight it was--and gave
to his profile a bold beauty, to which his bashful, breathless air was a
flattering charm. An arrow drawn to the head, capable of flying fast and
far with her! He leaned a little forward, drinking her in with all his
eyes, and young Love has a thousand. Then truly the System triumphed,
just ere it was to fall; and could Sir Austin have been content to draw
the arrow to the head, and let it fly, when it would fly, he might have
pointed to his son again, and said to the world, "Match him!" Such keen
bliss as the youth had in the sight of her, an innocent youth alone has
powers of soul in him to experience.
"O Women!" says The Pilgrim's Scrip, in one of its solitary outbursts,
"Women, who like, and will have for hero, a rake! how soon are you not to
learn that you have taken bankrupts to your bosoms, and that the
putrescent gold that attracted you is the slime of the Lake of Sin!"
If these two were Ferdinand and Miranda, Sir Austin was not Prospero, and
was not present, or their fates might have been different.
So they stood a moment, changing eyes, and then Miranda spoke, and they
came down to earth, feeling no less in heaven.
She spoke to thank him for his aid. She used quite common simple words;
and used them, no doubt, to express a common simple meaning: but to him
she was uttering magic, casting spells, and the effect they had on him
was manifested in the incoherence of his replies, which were too foolish
to be chronicled.
The couple were again mute. Suddenly Miranda, with an exclamation of
anguish, and innumerable lights and shadows playing over her lovely face,
clapped her hands, crying aloud, "My book! my book!" and ran to the bank.
Prince Ferdinand was at her side. "What have you lost?" he said.
"My book!" she answered, her delicious curls swinging across her
shoulders to the stream. Then turning to him, "Oh, no, no! let me
entreat you not to," she said; "I do not so very much mind losing it."
And in her eagerness to restrain him she unconsciously laid her gentle
hand upon his arm, and took the force of motion out of him.
"Indeed, I do not really care for the silly book," she continued,
withdrawing her hand quickly, and reddening. "Pray, do not!"
The young gentleman had kicked off his shoes. No sooner was the spell of
contact broken than he jumped in. The water was still troubled and
discoloured by his introductory adventure, and, though he ducked his head
with the spirit of a dabchick, the book was missing. A scrap of paper
floating from the bramble just above the water, and looking as if fire
had caught its edges and it had flown from one adverse element to the
other, was all he could lay hold of; and he returned to land
disconsolately, to hear Miranda's murmured mixing of thanks and pretty
expostulations.
"Let me try again," he said.
"No, indeed!" she replied, and used the awful threat: "I will run away if
you do," which effectually restrained him.
Her eye fell on the fire-stained scrap of paper, and brightened, as she
cried, "There, there! you have what I want. It is that. I do not care
for the book. No, please! You are not to look at it. Give it me."
Before her playfully imperative injunction was fairly spoken, Richard had
glanced at the document and discovered a Griffin between two
Wheatsheaves: his crest in silver: and below--O wonderment immense! his
own handwriting!
He handed it to her. She took it, and put it in her bosom.
Who would have thought, that, where all else perished, Odes, Idyls,
Lines, Stanzas, this one Sonnet to the stars should be miraculously
reserved for such a starry fate--passing beatitude!
As they walked silently across the meadow, Richard strove to remember the
hour and the mood of mind in which he had composed the notable
production. The stars were invoked, as seeing and foreseeing all, to
tell him where then his love reclined, and so forth; Hesper was
complacent enough to do so, and described her in a couplet
"Through sunset's amber see me shining fair,
As her blue eyes shine through her golden hair."
And surely no words could be more prophetic. Here were two blue eyes and
golden hair; and by some strange chance, that appeared like the working
of a divine finger, she had become the possessor of the prophecy, she
that was to fulfil it! The youth was too charged with emotion to speak.
Doubtless the damsel had less to think of, or had some trifling burden on
her conscience, for she seemed to grow embarrassed. At last she drew up
her chin to look at her companion under the nodding brim of her hat (and
the action gave her a charmingly freakish air), crying, "But where are
you going to? You are wet through. Let me thank you again; and, pray,
leave me, and go home and change instantly."
"Wet?" replied the magnetic muser, with a voice of tender interest; "not
more than one foot, I hope. I will leave you while you dry your
stockings in the sun."
At this she could not withhold a shy laugh.
"Not I, but you. You would try to get that silly book for me, and you
are dripping wet. Are you not very uncomfortable?"
In all sincerity he assured her that he was not.
"And you really do not feel that you are wet?"
He really did not: and it was a fact that he spoke truth.
She pursed her dewberry mouth in the most comical way, and her blue eyes
lightened laughter out of the half-closed lids.
"I cannot help it," she said, her mouth opening, and sounding harmonious
bells of laughter in his ears. "Pardon me, won't you?"
His face took the same soft smiling curves in admiration of her.
"Not to feel that you have been in the water, the very moment after!" she
musically interjected, seeing she was excused.
"It's true," he said; and his own gravity then touched him to join a duet
with her, which made them no longer feel strangers, and did the work of a
month of intimacy. Better than sentiment, laughter opens the breast to
love; opens the whole breast to his full quiver, instead of a corner here
and there for a solitary arrow. Hail the occasion propitious, O British
young! and laugh and treat love as an honest God, and dabble not with the
sentimental rouge. These two laughed, and the souls of each cried out to
other, "It is I it is I."
They laughed and forgot the cause of their laughter, and the sun dried
his light river clothing, and they strolled toward the blackbird's copse,
and stood near a stile in sight of the foam of the weir and the many-
coloured rings of eddies streaming forth from it.
Richard's boat, meanwhile, had contrived to shoot the weir, and was
swinging, bottom upward, broadside with the current down the rapid
backwater.
"Will you let it go?" said the damsel, eying it curiously.
"It can't be stopped," he replied, and could have added: "What do I care
for it now!"
His old life was whirled away with it, dead, drowned. His new life was
with her, alive, divine.
She flapped low the brim of her hat. "You must really not come any
farther," she softly said.
"And will you go, and not tell me who you are?" he asked, growing bold as
the fears of losing her came across him. "And will you not tell me
before you go"--his face burned--"how you came by that--that paper?"
She chose to select the easier question for answer: "You ought to know
me; we have been introduced." Sweet was her winning off-hand affability.
"Then who, in heaven's name, are you? Tell me! I never could have
forgotten you."
"You have, I think," she said.
"Impossible that we could ever have met, and I forget you!"
She looked up at him.
"Do you remember Belthorpe?"
"Belthorpe! Belthorpe!" quoth Richard, as if he had to touch his brain
to recollect there was such a place. "Do you mean old Blaize's farm?"
"Then I am old Blaize's niece." She tripped him a soft curtsey.
The magnetized youth gazed at her. By what magic was it that this divine
sweet creature could be allied with that old churl!
"Then what--what is your name?" said his mouth, while his eyes added, "O
wonderful creature! How came you to enrich the earth?"
"Have you forgot the Desboroughs of Dorset, too?" she peered at him from
a side-bend of the flapping brim.
"The Desboroughs of Dorset?" A light broke in on him. "And have you
grown to this? That little girl I saw there!"
He drew close to her to read the nearest features of the vision. She
could no more laugh off the piercing fervour of his eyes. Her volubility
fluttered under his deeply wistful look, and now neither voice was high,
and they were mutually constrained.
"You see," she murmured, "we are old acquaintances."
Richard, with his eyes still intently fixed on her, returned, "You are
very beautiful!"
The words slipped out. Perfect simplicity is unconsciously audacious.
Her overpowering beauty struck his heart, and, like an instrument that is
touched and answers to the touch, he spoke.
Miss Desborough made an effort to trifle with this terrible directness;
but his eyes would not be gainsaid, and checked her lips. She turned
away from them, her bosom a little rebellious. Praise so passionately
spoken, and by one who has been a damsel's first dream, dreamed of
nightly many long nights, and clothed in the virgin silver of her
thoughts in bud, praise from him is coin the heart cannot reject, if it
would. She quickened her steps.
"I have offended you!" said a mortally wounded voice across her shoulder.
That he should think so were too dreadful.
"Oh no, no! you would never offend me." She gave him her whole sweet
face.
"Then why--why do you leave me?"
"Because," she hesitated, "I must go."
"No. You must not go. Why must you go? Do not go."
"Indeed I must," she said, pulling at the obnoxious broad brim of her
hat; and, interpreting a pause he made for his assent to her rational
resolve, shyly looking at him, she held her hand out, and said, "Good-
bye," as if it were a natural thing to say.
The hand was pure white--white and fragrant as the frosted blossom of a
Maynight. It was the hand whose shadow, cast before, he had last night
bent his head reverentially above, and kissed--resigning himself
thereupon over to execution for payment of the penalty of such daring--by
such bliss well rewarded.
He took the hand, and held it, gazing between her eyes.
"Good-bye," she said again, as frankly as she could, and at the same time
slightly compressing her fingers on his in token of adieu. It was a
signal for his to close firmly upon hers.
"You will not go?"
"Pray, let me," she pleaded, her sweet brows suing in wrinkles.
"You will not go?" Mechanically he drew the white hand nearer his
thumping heart.
"I must," she faltered piteously.
"You will not go?"
"Oh yes! yes!"
"Tell me. Do you wish to go?"
The question was a subtle one. A moment or two she did not answer, and
then forswore herself, and said, Yes.
"Do you--you wish to go?" He looked with quivering eyelids under hers.
A fainter Yes responded.
"You wish--wish to leave me?" His breath went with the words.
"Indeed I must."
Her hand became a closer prisoner.
All at once an alarming delicious shudder went through her frame. From
him to her it coursed, and back from her to him. Forward and back love's
electric messenger rushed from heart to heart, knocking at each, till it
surged tumultuously against the bars of its prison, crying out for its
mate. They stood trembling in unison, a lovely couple under these fair
heavens of the morning.
When he could get his voice it said, "Will you go?"
But she had none to reply with, and could only mutely bend upward her
gentle wrist.
"Then, farewell!" he said, and, dropping his lips to the soft fair hand,
kissed it, and hung his head, swinging away from her, ready for death.
Strange, that now she was released she should linger by him. Strange,
that his audacity, instead of the executioner, brought blushes and timid
tenderness to his side, and the sweet words, "You are not angry with me?"
"With you, O Beloved!" cried his soul. "And you forgive me, fair
charity!"
"I think it was rude of me to go without thanking you again," she said,
and again proffered her hand.
The sweet heaven-bird shivered out his song above him. The gracious
glory of heaven fell upon his soul. He touched her hand, not moving his
eyes from her, nor speaking, and she, with a soft word of farewell,
passed across the stile, and up the pathway through the dewy shades of
the copse, and out of the arch of the light, away from his eyes.
And away with her went the wild enchantment. He looked on barren air.
But it was no more the world of yesterday. The marvellous splendours had
sown seeds in him, ready to spring up and bloom at her gaze; and in his
bosom now the vivid conjuration of her tones, her face, her shape, makes
them leap and illumine him like fitful summer lightnings ghosts of the
vanished sun.
There was nothing to tell him that he had been making love and declaring
it with extraordinary rapidity; nor did he know it. Soft flushed cheeks!
sweet mouth! strange sweet brows! eyes of softest fire! how could his
ripe eyes behold you, and not plead to keep you? Nay, how could he let
you go? And he seriously asked himself that question.
To-morrow this place will have a memory--the river and the meadow, and
the white falling weir: his heart will build a temple here; and the
skylark will be its high-priest, and the old blackbird its glossy-gowned
chorister, and there will be a sacred repast of dewberries. To-day the
grass is grass: his heart is chased by phantoms and finds rest nowhere.
Only when the most tender freshness of his flower comes across him does
he taste a moment's calm; and no sooner does it come than it gives place
to keen pangs of fear that she may not be his for ever.
Erelong he learns that her name is Lucy. Erelong he meets Ralph, and
discovers that in a day he has distanced him by a sphere. He and Ralph
and the curate of Lobourne join in their walks, and raise classical
discussions on ladies' hair, fingering a thousand delicious locks, from
those of Cleopatra to the Borgia's. "Fair! fair! all of them fair!"
sighs the melancholy curate, "as are those women formed for our
perdition! I think we have in this country what will match the Italian
or the Greek." His mind flutters to Mrs. Doria, Richard blushes before
the vision of Lucy, and Ralph, whose heroine's hair is a dark luxuriance,
dissents, and claims a noble share in the slaughter of men for dark-
haired Wonders. They have no mutual confidences, but they are singularly
kind to each other, these three children of instinct.