FERDINAND AND MIRANDA
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 the 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, eyeing 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 for 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.