|The artist in search of a pretty rural subject could not do better
than paint a village holiday--a holiday from which the men and women
are all but excluded, and the village school-children and the old
people are gathered together for a voyage through the leafy lanes to
the picturesque playground of a neighbouring wood. Such an enjoyable
spectacle as that presented on the day of the Omberley school-treat
deserved to be immortalized by art, if only for the sake of filling a
city parlour with a sense of eternal summer. It was a glorious August
morning that laughed out over Omberley on the day of the great picnic.
The young people were astir early, for it had been impossible to sleep
from the excitement they felt after the first glimmer of dawn. About
ten o’clock the streets were gay with troops of children, clean,
rosy-cheeked, and dressed in their Sunday clothes, who went singing
to the rendezvous at the schoolhouse. There they were received by Miss
Dora Greatheart, who inspected them all, and expressed her approbation
at finding them so neat and prim. In twos and threes the old people,
the men in tall hats and swallow-tailed coats for the most part, and
the women in their best black gowns and church bonnets, came slowly
along the road, gossiping and laughing and breathing hard with the
weakness of old age. Then came the musicians--old Gabriel Ware, the
sexton, with his fiddle, and two younger men, one of whom played the
concertina and the other the cornopean, each with a huge nosegay in
his breast and wearing the jauntiest air conceivable. There was
a happy buzz of excitement about the schoolhouse as the people
assembled; a joyous babble of the clear treble voices of little lads
and lasses, and the piping notes of garrulous patriarchs and ancient
dames; a strange picture, as pathetic as it was pretty, of bright
young faces and dancing little figures mingling among gray wrinkled
visages and frail stooping shapes.
“Well, Dora, we are to have a fine day,” said Edith, as she entered
the garden and shook hands with the schoolmistress.
“Splendid; only we shall be a little late in starting. We should have
been off at ten, and the waggons have not come yet. Why, here is old
Daddy coming!”
She had stepped out to the road to look for the waggons, and now she
went to welcome the new arrival whom she called Daddy. He was a very
old, very wiry little man, with a funny little face full of wrinkles,
a pair of little grey eyes, and a perfectly bald head. This was the
oldest inhabitant of Omberley; and though he was in his ninety-second
year, he was as brisk and hearty as many who were twenty years his
juniors.
“Well, Daddy, you have actually come!” said Dora, shaking hands with
him. “I am very glad. And how do you feel to-day? Pretty strong and
hearty?’
“Strong as Samson, mistress, and hearty as--hearty as anything,”
replied the old man, with a chuckle.
“Please, miss,” said a young woman who accompanied him, “mother sends
her duty, and will you kindly take care of him and see as he doesn’t
go a-thinking.”
Daddy’s only symptom of senility was an aptitude to fall into a state
of unconsciousness, and in these cases, which sometimes lasted for
hours together, he would sit down wherever he was, and consequently
ran considerable risks when he went out-of-doors alone. Though the old
fellow was quite unable to give any account of himself during these
lapses into oblivion, he always stoutly declared that he had been only
thinking.
“And please, miss, you’ll find his bacca-box and his pipe in his tail
pocket, and his hankercher, and the matches is in his vest pocket. He
do forget where he puts his things.”
Daddy laughed scornfully.
“I never forgets nothing, I don’t,” he said boastingly. “I can mind
o’ the great beech as was blown down on the green in the whirlywind
of ‘92; ay, I mind----”
A loud cheer from the school children interrupted the flow of Daddy’s
reminiscences. The greeting was intended for the vicar and the
patroness of the festival, Mrs. Haldane, who now drove up to the
school-house. She was already acquainted with Dora, but she had not
yet met either Edith or the oldest inhabitant. Mr. Santley introduced
both as the waggons came in sight, and at once the cheering was
renewed, and the children streamed out into the road. What a fine
sight those waggons were v--the long, curved, wheeled ships of the
inland farmer, painted yellow and red, and drawn by big horses, with
huge collars and bright iron chains! The semicircular canvas awning
had been removed, but the wooden arches which supported it were
wreathed with leaves and flowers, and festoons hung overhead between
arch and arch. The horses, too, were gaily decked out, each having a
nosegay between its ears, and its mane and tail tied up with ribbons.
The bottom of the waggons were covered with trusses of straw, to make
comfortable seats for the old folk. The more daring of the lads were
already clambering up the wheels, and securing seats on the flakes
which went along the sides of the rustic ship like a sort of
outrigger.
Before allowing Daddy to be helped on board, Miss Greatheart beckoned
to her a little pale-faced girl who was obliged to use crutches.
“Nannie dear, I want you to look after Daddy as much as you can. When
you are tired of him you must come and tell me. Don’t let him go away
by himself, and wake him up if he sleeps too long.”
This was said in a whisper to the child, who smiled and nodded.
“Now, Daddy, here’s little Nannie Swales,” said Dora; “I want you to
take care of her. You’re the only person I can trust to look after her
properly. And she likes to talk to you and see you smoke.”
The little old man smiled and chuckled complacently.
“Put her aside of me, mistress, and I’ll see as no ill comes to her.”
What could have been more charmingly idyllic than those two great
waggons, crowded with little shining-eyed tots, merry lads and lasses,
withered old men and women, all happy and contented? The blue sky
laughed down on them; the green leaves and flowers embowered them;
and as a start was; made, one of the musicians struck up “For we’ll
a-hunting go” on the concertina, and a score of clear, fresh voices
joined in the jovial song.
Through the village, which turned out to wave hands to them as they
passed singing and cheering, away through gold-green stretches of
ripening harvest, past empty fields where the hay had all been cut and
carted, between level expanses of root crops lying green in the hot
sun, till at last the dark embankment of Barton Wood rises above the
distant sky. How cool and refreshing it is, after the glare of the
midday sun, to get into the green shadowland of these grand old
beeches and sycamores!
The road winds leisurely as if to seek out the coolest recesses of the
wood, and beneath the great bunches of heavy foliage, what quiet,
dim distances one sees between the trunks, strewn thick with withered
leaves, through which the moss and grass and a thousand moist plants
thrust their emerald way, and blue and pink and yellow flowers are
clustered in cushions of velvet colour! A few yards away from the
road the air seems brown and transparent. That must be the reason why
the leaves of the mountain ash are so darkly green, and the berries so
brilliantly crimson. If you pluck a bunch and take it out of the wood,
you will find it has become disenchanted; the colour is no longer the
same.
The road is not a highway, but leads to an old quarry of brown
sandstone. There has been no work done here for a few years, but
many generations of stonemasons have plied hammer and chisel in this
picturesque workshop. It is a tradition that the stone of Foxglove
Manor, old as it is, was got here. The old church was built from these
brown walls of stone; so was the Vicarage, and so were the windowsills
and facings of all the houses in Omberley. It is an unusually large
quarry, for a great deal of stone has been taken away during these
two hundred odd years. A great deal of half-shaped stone lies about in
large square and oblong blocks, both on the floor of the quarry, and
among the trees at its entrance. The trees must have sprung up since
many of these blocks were cut, otherwise it is not easy to see why
they should have been put where you now find them. On two sides the
walls of rock are high and precipitous, but on the others the grass
and ferns and beeches are carried into the quarry as on the swell of a
green wave. A stone shed and hut, roofed with red tiles, stand at the
foot of one of these slopes, and here the commissariat department has
established itself. A romantic, green, cosy, convenient spot for a
picnic and a dance!
The waggons were driven right into the quarry, and the horses were
hobbled and allowed to graze beneath the trees. The hour before
dinner was spent in wandering through the woods gathering flowers
and berries, in rolling about on the soft grass, or in smoking and
chatting among the blocks of sandstone. When the cornopean sounded
the signal for the feast, the youngsters came trooping in, dancing
and eager to begin, for the excitement had prevented most of them from
taking breakfast.
And what a luxurious feast it was The vicar, Mrs. Haldane, Edith, and
Miss Greatheart, went about the various groups seeing that every one
was well supplied with what they liked best. After the cold meats,
pies, and pastry, came a liberal distribution of fruit and milk to
the children, and a glass of wine to the old people; and at this
point Daddy was made the object of so much nudging and whispering and
signalling, that at last he got upon his feet and made a wonderful
little speech on behalf of the company, keeping his wine-glass in his
hand all the time, and every now and then holding it up between his
eye and the light with the shrewd air of a connoisseur. Then there
were three cheers for Mrs. Haldane, and three cheers for the vicar,
three for Dora and for Edith, and happily some young rascal, whose
milk had been too strong for him, proposed in a frightened scream
three cheers for. Daddy, which were very heartily given by all the
school children, though the seniors looked much shocked and surprised
at so daring a demonstration.
In about an hour the racing and games were to begin, and meanwhile
Mrs. Haldane, the vicar, and the two young ladies were to have lunch
together. It is not necessary to enter into any detail of the various
sports which took place, or to linger over the dancing and merrymaking
that followed. When the fun was at its height, and Daddy was capering
gaily to the jigging of the small orchestra, Edith, who felt only half
interested, slipped quietly away into the wood. She was not surprised
or aggrieved that Mr. Santley paid so much attention to the lady of
the Manor, but she felt hurt that he seemed so completely to forget
and overlook herself. She wished now to be a little alone in Arden,
for Edith loved the woods, and in every glade she could imagine in her
fanciful moments that Jaques, or Rosalind, or Touchstone had just gone
by, so closely had she associated the dramatic idyl with every piece
of English forest-land.
She followed at haphazard a foot-track that went through the trees
until she reached a brook, which she found she could cross by means
of three slippery-looking stepping-stones, against which the water
bickered and gurgled as it raced along. All the steep banks were
knee-deep in beautiful ferns close by the waters edge, and higher up
the slope grew luxurious tufts of wild flowers. The sound of-the water
was very pleasant to hear, and when she had nimbly jumped across it,
instead of following the path, she went up the side of the stream to
where a mountain ash leaned its dense clusters of blood-bright berries
right across. At the foot of the tree was a large boulder, and, after
a glance round her, she sat down and drew off her shoes and
stockings. The weather was warm, and the clear, sun-flecked water was
irresistibly inviting. There she sat for some time, dreamily paddling
with her little white feet, like a pretty dryad whose tree grew in too
dry a soil.
She had finished playing with the cool stream, and was letting her
feet dry in the patches of sunlight that pierced through the branches
above her, when she heard a sound of voices. She hastily tried to draw
on her stockings, but her skin was still too moist; and so, gathering
her feet under her skirt, she concealed herself as much as possible
from the observation of the intruders. As they approached she
recognized the voices with a start, and crouched down behind the
boulder more closely than before.
“We can go no further this way,” said Mrs. Haldane.
“Oh yes, we can. I will assist you over the stones,” the vicar
rejoined.
“They look very treacherous and slippery, and the water makes one
nervous, running so fast.”
“Look, it is quite safe!” said the vicar; and Edith, peeping from the
side of the boulder, saw him step quickly across the brook. “It is a
pity you should miss the old Roman camp, when you are so near it.”
“If you will come back and assist me from this side, I will try them,”
said Mrs. Haldane..
The vicar returned across the brook, and Edith saw the lady gather her
dress and prepare to step on to the first stone.
“Now, you must be ready to reach me your hand in case I need it.”
“Oh, you will find it quite easy when you try. Don’t stop, but go
right across without hesitation.”
Mrs. Haldane jumped fairly enough on to the first boulder, but,
instead of allowing the forward impetus to carry her on, she tried to
stop and steady herself on the narrow footing among the rushing water.
She lost at once her balance and her courage, and turning to him with
outstretched arms, she cried out, “Quick! quick! I shall fall!”
She threw herself back to the side as she spoke, and he caught her in
his arms. Her arms were about his neck, her face close to his; he
felt her breath upon his cheek. It was only for an instant, and as
she tried to recover herself, their eyes met with a flash of
self-consciousness. In the passionate excitement of that supreme
moment he strained her to his breast, and pressed his lips to her in a
long, violent kiss.
Edith sprang to her feet as though she had been stung; but instantly
she recollected herself, and sank down into her hiding-place.
Mrs. Haldane tore herself from the arms that encircled her, and
fronted the vicar with a flushed, angry face.
“Are you mad, Mr. Santley?” she asked indignantly. “Allow me to pass
at once.”
He stood aside trembling, white, and speechless; and she swept by him
and hurried back through the wood.
The vicar looked after her, but stood as if rooted to the spot; while
Edith, heedless of the hard stones and her naked feet, ran down wildly
to the stepping-stones.
He turned as she approached, and there, with the water whirling
between them, she confronted him like his outraged conscience.