THE DINGLE.
The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her, and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place,
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty, born of murmuring sound,
Shall pass into her face.—WORDSWORTH.
MISS SUSANNAH TOUCHANDGO had read the four great poets of Italy, and many
of the best writers of France. About the time of her father’s downfall,
accident threw into her way _Les Réveries du Promeneur Solitaire_; and
from the impression which these made on her, she carried with her into
retirement all the works of Rousseau. In the midst of that startling
light, which the conduct of old friends on a sudden reverse of fortune
throws on a young and inexperienced mind, the doctrines of the
philosopher of Geneva struck with double force upon her sympathies: she
imbibed the sweet poison, as somebody calls it, of his writings, even to
a love of truth; which, every wise man knows, ought to be left to those
who can get anything by it. The society of children, the beauties of
nature, the solitude of the mountains, became her consolation, and, by
degrees, her delight. The gay society from which she had been excluded,
remained on her memory only as a disagreeable dream. She imbibed her new
monitor’s ideas of simplicity of dress, assimilating her own with that of
the peasant-girls in the neighbourhood: the black hat, the blue gown, the
black stockings, the shoes, tied on the instep.
Pride was, perhaps, at the bottom of the change: she was willing to
impose in some measure on herself, by marking a contemptuous indifference
to the characteristics of the class of society from which she had fallen.
And with the food of pride sustained her soul
In solitude.
It is true that she somewhat modified the forms of her rustic dress: to
the black hat she added a black feather, to the blue gown she added a
tippet, and a waistband fastened in front with a silver buckle; she wore
her black stockings very smooth and tight on her ankles, and tied her
shoes in tasteful bows, with the nicest possible ribbon. In this
apparel, to which, in winter, she added a scarlet cloak, she made
dreadful havoc among the rustic mountaineers, many of whom proposed to
“keep company” with her in the Cambrian fashion, an honour which, to
their great surprise, she always declined. Among these, Harry
Ap-Heather, whose father rented an extensive sheepwalk, and had a
thousand she-lambs wandering in the mountains, was the most strenuous in
his suit, and the most pathetic in his lamentations for her cruelty.
Miss Susannah often wandered among the mountains alone, even to some
distance from the farmhouse. Sometimes she descended into the bottom of
the dingles, to the black rocky beds of the torrents, and dreamed away
hours at the feet of the cataracts. One spot in particular, from which
she had at first shrunk with terror, became by degrees her favourite
haunt. A path turning and returning at acute angles, led down a steep
wood-covered slope to the edge of a chasm, where a pool, or resting-place
of a torrent, lay far below. A cataract fell in a single sheet into the
pool; the pool boiled and bubbled at the base of the fall, but through
the greater part of its extent, lay calm, deep, and black, as if the
cataract had plunged through it to an unimaginable depth, without
disturbing its eternal repose. At the opposite extremity of the pool,
the rocks almost met at their summits, the trees of the opposite banks
intermingled their leaves, and another cataract plunged from the pool
into a chasm, on which the sunbeams never gleamed. High above, on both
sides, the steep woody slopes of the dingle soared into the sky; and from
a fissure in the rock, on which the little path terminated, a single
gnarled and twisted oak stretched itself over the pool, forming a fork
with its boughs at a short distance from the rock. Miss Susannah often
sat on the rock, with her feet resting on this tree; in time, she made
her seat on the tree itself, with her feet hanging over the abyss; and at
length, she accustomed herself to lie along upon its trunk, with her side
on the mossy bole of the fork, and an arm round one of the branches.
From this position a portion of the sky and the woods was reflected in
the pool, which, from its bank, was but a mass of darkness. The first
time she reclined in this manner, her heart beat audibly; in time she lay
down as calmly as on the mountain heather; the perception of the sublime
was probably heightened by an intermingled sense of danger; and perhaps
that indifference to life, which early disappointment forces upon
sensitive minds, was necessary to the first experiment. There was, in
the novelty and strangeness of the position, an excitement which never
wholly passed away, but which became gradually subordinate to the
influence, at once tranquillising and elevating, of the mingled eternity
of motion, sound, and solitude.
One sultry noon, she descended into this retreat with a mind more than
usually disturbed by reflections on the past. She lay in her favourite
position, sometimes gazing on the cataract; looking sometimes up the
steep sylvan acclivities, into the narrow space of the cloudless ether;
sometimes down into the abyss of the pool, and the deep bright-blue
reflections that opened another immensity below her. The distressing
recollections of the morning, the world and all its littlenesses, faded
from her thoughts like a dream; but her wounded and wearied spirit drank
in too deeply the tranquillising power of the place, and she dropped
asleep upon the tree like a ship-boy on the mast.
At this moment Mr. Chainmail emerged into daylight, on a projection of
the opposite rock, having struck down through the woods in search of
unsophisticated scenery. The scene he discovered filled him with
delight: he seated himself on the rock, and fell into one of his romantic
reveries; when suddenly the semblance of a black hat and feather caught
his eye among the foliage of the projecting oak. He started up, shifted
his position, and got a glimpse of a blue gown. It was his lady of the
lake, his enchantress of the ruined castle, divided from him by a barrier
which, at a few yards below, he could almost overleap, yet unapproachable
but by a circuit perhaps of many hours. He watched with intense anxiety.
To listen if she breathed was out of the question: the noses of a dean
and chapter would have been soundless in the roar of the torrent. From
her extreme stillness, she appeared to sleep: yet what creature, not
desperate, would go wilfully to sleep in such a place? Was she asleep,
then? Nay, was she alive? She was as motionless as death. Had she been
murdered, thrown from above, and caught in the tree? She lay too
regularly and too composedly for such a supposition. She was asleep,
then, and, in all probability, her waking would be fatal. He shifted his
position. Below the pool two beetle-browed rocks nearly overarched the
chasm, leaving just such a space at the summit as was within the
possibility of a leap; the torrent roared below in a fearful gulf. He
paused some time on the brink, measuring the practicability and the
danger, and casting every now and then an anxious glance to his sleeping
beauty. In one of these glances he saw a slight movement of the blue
gown, and, in a moment after, the black hat and feather dropped into the
pool. Reflection was lost for a moment, and, by a sudden impulse, he
bounded over the chasm.
He stood above the projecting oak; the unknown beauty lay like the nymph
of the scene; her long black hair, which the fall of her hat had
disengaged from its fastenings, drooping through the boughs: he saw that
the first thing to be done, was to prevent her throwing her feet off the
trunk, in the first movements of waking. He sat down on the rock, and
placed his feet on the stem, securing her ankles between his own: one of
her arms was round a branch of the fork, the other lay loosely on her
side. The hand of this arm he endeavoured to reach, by leaning forward
from his seat; he approximated, but could not touch it: after several
tantalising efforts, he gave up the point in despair. He did not attempt
to wake her, because he feared it might have bad consequences, and he
resigned himself to expect the moment of her natural waking, determined
not to stir from his post, if she should sleep till midnight.
In this period of forced inaction, he could contemplate at leisure the
features and form of his charmer. She was not one of the slender
beauties of romance; she was as plump as a partridge; her cheeks were two
roses, not absolutely damask, yet verging thereupon; her lips
twin-cherries, of equal size; her nose regular, and almost Grecian; her
forehead high, and delicately fair; her eyebrows symmetrically arched;
her eyelashes, long, black, and silky, fitly corresponding with the
beautiful tresses that hung among the leaves of the oak, like clusters of
wandering grapes. Her eyes were yet to be seen; but how could he doubt
that their opening would be the rising of the sun, when all that
surrounded their fringy portals was radiant as “the forehead of the
morning sky?”