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.