"Well done, Phineas--to walk round the garden without once resting! now
I call that grand, after an individual has been ill a month. However,
you must calm your superabundant energies, and be quiet."
I was not unwilling, for I still felt very weak. But sickness did not
now take that heavy, overpowering grip of me, mind and body, that it
once used to do. It never did when John was by. He gave me strength,
mentally and physically. He was life and health to me, with his brave
cheerfulness--his way of turning all minor troubles into pleasantries,
till they seemed to break and vanish away, sparkling, like the foam on
the top of the wave. Yet, all the while one knew well that he could
meet any great evil as gallantly as a good ship meets a heavy
sea--breasting it, plunging through it, or riding over it, as only a
good ship can.
When I recovered--just a month after the bread-riot, and that month was
a great triumph to John's kind care--I felt that if I always had him
beside me I should never be ill any more; I said as much, in a laughing
sort of way.
"Very well; I shall keep you to that bargain. Now, sit down; listen to
the newspaper, and improve your mind as to what the world is doing. It
ought to be doing something, with the new century it began this year.
Did it not seem very odd at first to have to write '1800'?"
"John, what a capital hand you write now!"
"Do I! That's somebody's credit. Do you remember my first lesson on
the top of the Mythe?"
"I wonder what has become of those two gentlemen?"
"Oh! did you never hear? Young Mr. Brithwood is the 'squire now. He
married, last month, Lady Somebody Something, a fine lady from abroad."
"And Mr. March--what of him?"
"I haven't the least idea. Come now, shall I read the paper?"
He read well, and I liked to listen to him. It was, I remember,
something about "the spacious new quadrangles, to be called Russell and
Tavistock Squares, with elegantly laid out nursery-grounds adjoining."
"It must be a fine place, London."
"Ay; I should like to see it. Your father says, perhaps he shall have
to send me, this winter, on business--won't that be fine? If only you
would go too."
I shook my head. I had the strongest disinclination to stir from my
quiet home, which now held within it, or about it, all I wished for and
all I loved. It seemed as if any change must be to something worse.
"Nevertheless, you must have a change. Doctor Jessop insists upon it.
Here have I been beating up and down the country for a week
past--'Adventures in Search of a Country Residence'--and, do you know,
I think I've found one at last. Shouldn't you like to hear about it?"
I assented, to please him.
"Such a nice, nice place, on the slope of Enderley Hill. A
cottage--Rose Cottage--for it's all in a bush of cluster-roses, up to
the very roof."
"Where is Enderley?"
"Did you never hear of Enderley Flat, the highest tableland in England?
Such a fresh, free, breezy spot--how the wind sweeps over it! I can
feel it in my face still."
And even the description was refreshing, this heavy, sultry day, with
not a breath of air moving across the level valley.
"Shouldn't you like to live on a hill-side, to be at the top of
everything, overlooking everything? Well, that's Enderley: the
village lies just under the brow of the Flat."
"Is there a village?"
"A dozen cottages or so, at each door of which half-a-dozen white
little heads and a dozen round eyes appeared staring at me. But oh,
the blessed quiet and solitude of the place! No fights in filthy
alleys! no tan-yards--I mean"--he added, correcting himself--"it's a
thorough country spot; and I like the country better than the town."
"Do you, still? Would you really like to take to the 'shepherd's life
and state,' upon which my namesake here is so eloquent? Let us see
what he says."
And from the handful of books that usually lay strewn about wherever we
two sat, I took up one he had lately got, with no small pains I was
sure, and had had bound in its own proper colour, and presented it to
me--"The Purple Island," and "Sicelides," of Phineas Fletcher. People
seldom read this wise, tender, and sweet-voiced old fellow now; so I
will even copy the verses I found for John to read.
"Here is the place. Thyrsis is just ending his 'broken lay.'
'Lest that the stealing night his later song might stay--'"
"Stop a minute," interrupted John. "Apropos of 'stealing night,' the
sun is already down below the yew-hedge. Are you cold?"
"Not a bit of it."
"Then we'll begin:--
'Thrice, oh, thrice happy, shepherd's life and state:
When courts are happiness, unhappy pawns!'
That's not clear," said John, laying down the book. "Now I do like
poetry to be intelligible. A poet ought to see things more widely, and
express them more vividly, than ordinary folk."
"Don't you perceive--he means the pawns on the chess-board--the common
people."
"Phineas, don't say the common people--I'm a common person myself. But
to continue:--
'His cottage low, and safely humble gate,
Shuts out proud Fortune, with her scorns and fawns:
No feared treason breaks his quiet sleep.
Singing all day, his flocks he learns to keep,
Himself as innocent as are his quiet sheep.'
(Not many sheep at Enderley, I fancy; the Flat chiefly abounds in
donkeys. Well--)
'No Serian worms he knows, that with their thread,
Drew out their silken lives--nor silken pride--'
Which reminds me that--"
"David, how can you make me laugh at our reverend ancestor in this way?
I'm ashamed of you."
"Only let me tell you this one fact--very interesting, you'll
allow--that I saw a silken gown hanging up in the kitchen at Rose
Cottage. Now, though Mrs. Tod is a decent, comely woman, I don't think
it belonged to her."
"She may have lodgers."
"I think she said she had--an old gentleman--but HE wouldn't wear a
silken gown."
"His wife might. Now, do go on reading."
"Certainly; I only wish to draw a parallel between Thyrsis and
ourselves in our future summer life at Enderley. So the old
gentleman's wife may appropriate the 'silken pride,' while we emulate
the shepherd.
'His lambs' warm fleece well fits his little need--'
I wear a tolerably good coat now, don't I, Phineas?"
"You are incorrigible."
Yet, through all his fun, I detected a certain under-tone of
seriousness, observable in him ever since my father's declaration of
his intentions concerning him, had, so to speak, settled John's future
career. He seemed aware of some crisis in his life, arrived or
impending, which disturbed the generally even balance of his
temperament.
"Nay, I'll be serious;" and passing over the unfinished verse, with
another or two following, he began afresh, in a new place, and in an
altogether changed tone.
"'His certain life, that never can deceive him,
Is full of thousand sweets and rich content;
The smooth-leaved beeches in the field receive him
With coolest shades till noon-tide's rage is spent;
His life is neither tost on boisterous seas
Of troublous worlds, nor lost in slothful ease.
Pleased and full blest he lives, when he his God can please.
'His bed of wool yields safe and quiet sleeps,
While by his side his faithful spouse hath place;
His little son into his bosom creeps,
The lively image of his father's face;
Never his humble house or state torment him,
Less he could like, if less his God had sent him;
And when he dies, green turfs with grassy tomb content him.'"
John ceased. He was a good reader--but I had never heard him read like
this before. Ending, one missed it like the breaking of music, or like
the inner voice of one's own heart talking when nobody is by.
"David," I said, after a pause, "what are you thinking about?"
He started, with his old quick blush--"Oh, nothing--No, that's not
quite true. I was thinking that, so far as happiness goes, this
'shepherd's' is my ideal of a happy life--ay, down to the 'grassy
tomb.'"
"Your fancy leaps at once to the grassy tomb; but the shepherd enjoyed
a few intermediate stages of felicity before that."
"I was thinking of those likewise."
"Then you do intend some day to have a 'faithful spouse and a little
son'?"
"I hope so--God willing."
It may seem strange, but this was the first time our conversation had
ever wandered in a similar direction. Though he was twenty and I
twenty-two--to us both--and I thank Heaven that we could both look up
in the face of Heaven and say so!--to us both, the follies and
wickednesses of youth were, if not equally unknown, equally and alike
hateful. Many may doubt, or smile at the fact; but I state it now, in
my old age, with honour and pride, that we two young men that day
trembled on the subject of love as shyly, as reverently, as delicately,
as any two young maidens of innocent sixteen.
After John's serious "God willing," there was a good long silence.
Afterwards, I said--
"Then you propose to marry?"
"Certainly! as soon as I can."
"Have you ever--" and, while speaking, I watched him narrowly, for a
sudden possibility flashed across my mind--"Have you ever seen any one
whom you would like for your wife?"
"No."
I was satisfied. John's single "No" was as conclusive as a score of
asseverations.
We said no more; but after one of those pauses of conversation which
were habitual to us--John used to say, that the true test of friendship
was to be able to sit or walk together for a whole hour in perfect
silence, without wearying of one another's company--we again began
talking about Enderley.
I soon found, that in this plan, my part was simply acquiescence; my
father and John had already arranged it all. I was to be in charge of
the latter; nothing could induce Abel Fletcher to leave, even for a
day, his house, his garden, and his tan-yard. We two young men were to
set up for a month or two our bachelor establishment at Mrs. Tod's:
John riding thrice a-week over to Norton Bury to bring news of me, and
to fulfil his duties at the tan-yard. One could see plain enough--and
very grateful to me was the sight--that whether or no Abel Fletcher
acknowledged it, his right hand in all his business affairs was the lad
John Halifax.
On a lovely August day we started for Enderley. It was about eight
miles off, on a hilly, cross-country road. We lumbered slowly along in
our post-chaise; I leaning back, enjoying the fresh air, the changing
views, and chiefly to see how intensely John enjoyed them too.
He looked extremely well to-day--handsome, I was about to write; but
John was never, even in his youth, "handsome." Nay, I have heard
people call him "plain"; but that was not true. His face had that
charm, perhaps the greatest, certainly the most lasting, either in
women or men--of infinite variety. You were always finding out
something--an expression strange as tender, or the track of a swift,
brilliant thought, or an indication of feeling different from, perhaps
deeper than, anything which appeared before. When you believed you had
learnt it line by line it would startle you by a phase quite new, and
beautiful as new. For it was not one of your impassive faces, whose
owners count it pride to harden into a mass of stone those lineaments
which nature made as the flesh and blood representation of the man's
soul. True, it had its reticences, its sacred disguises, its noble
powers of silence and self-control. It was a fair-written, open book;
only, to read it clearly, you must come from its own country, and
understand the same language.
For the rest, John was decidedly like the "David" whose name I still
gave him now and then--"a goodly person;" tall, well-built, and strong.
"The glory of a young man is his strength;" and so I used often to
think, when I looked at him. He always dressed with extreme
simplicity; generally in grey, he was fond of grey; and in something of
our Quaker fashion. On this day, I remember, I noticed an especial
carefulness of attire, at his age neither unnatural nor unbecoming.
His well-fitting coat and long-flapped vest, garnished with the
snowiest of lawn frills and ruffles; his knee-breeches, black silk
hose, and shoes adorned with the largest and brightest of steel
buckles, made up a costume, which, quaint as it would now appear, still
is, to my mind, the most suitable and graceful that a young man can
wear. I never see any young men now who come at all near the picture
which still remains in my mind's eye of John Halifax as he looked that
day.
Once, with the natural sensitiveness of youth, especially of youth that
has struggled up through so many opposing circumstances as his had
done, he noticed my glance.
"Anything amiss about me, Phineas? You see I am not much used to
holidays and holiday clothes."
"I have nothing to say against either you or your clothes," replied I,
smiling.
"That's all right; I beg to state, it is entirely in honour of you and
of Enderley that I have slipped off my tan-yard husk, and put on the
gentleman."
"You couldn't do that, John. You couldn't put on what you were born
with."
He laughed--but I think he was pleased.
We had now come into a hilly region. John leaped out and gained the
top of the steep road long before the post-chaise did. I watched him
standing, balancing in his hands the riding-whip which had replaced the
everlasting rose-switch, or willow-wand, of his boyhood. His figure
was outlined sharply against the sky, his head thrown backward a
little, as he gazed, evidently with the keenest zest, on the breezy
flat before him. His hair--a little darker than it used to be, but of
the true Saxon colour still, and curly as ever--was blown about by the
wind, under his broad hat. His whole appearance was full of life,
health, energy, and enjoyment.
I thought any father might have been proud of such a son, any sister of
such a brother, any young girl of such a lover. Ay, that last tie, the
only one of the three that was possible to him--I wondered how long it
would be before times changed, and I ceased to be the only one who was
proud of him.
We drove on a little further, and came to the chief landmark of the
high moorland--a quaint hostelry, called the "Bear." Bruin swung aloft
pole in hand, brown and fierce, on an old-fashioned sign, as he and his
progenitors had probably swung for two centuries or more.
"Is this Enderley?" I asked.
"Not quite, but near it. You never saw the sea? Well, from this point
I can show you something very like it. Do you see that gleaming bit in
the landscape far away? That's water--that's our very own Severn,
swelled to an estuary. But you must imagine the estuary--you can only
get that tiny peep of water, glittering like a great diamond that some
young Titaness has flung out of her necklace down among the hills."
"David, you are actually growing poetical."
"Am I? Well, I do feel rather strange to-day--crazy like; a high wind
always sends me half crazy with delight. Did you ever feel such a
breeze? And there's something so gloriously free in this high level
common--as flat as if my Titaness had found a little Mont Blanc, and
amused herself with patting it down like a dough-cake."
"A very culinary goddess."
"Yes! but a goddess after all. And her dough-cake, her mushroom, her
flattened Mont Blanc, is very fine. What a broad green sweep--nothing
but sky and common, common and sky. This is Enderley Flat. We shall
come to its edge soon, where it drops abruptly into such a pretty
valley. There, look down--that's the church. We are on a level with
the top of its tower. Take care, my lad,"--to the post-boy, who was
crossing with difficulty the literally "pathless waste."--"Don't lurch
us into the quarry-pits, or topple us at once down the slope, where we
shall roll over and over--facilis descensus Averni--and lodge in Mrs.
Tod's garden hedge."
"Mrs. Tod would feel flattered if she knew Latin. You don't look upon
our future habitation as a sort of Avernus?"
John laughed merrily. "No, as I told you before, I like Enderley Hill.
I can't tell why, but I like it. It seems as if I had known the place
before. I feel as if we were going to have great happiness here."
And as he spoke, his unwonted buoyancy softened into a quietness of
manner more befitting that word "happiness." Strange word! hardly in
my vocabulary. Yet, when he uttered it, I seemed to understand it and
to be content.
We wound a little way down the slope, and came in front of Rose
Cottage. It was well named. I never in my life had seen such a bush
of bloom. They hung in clusters--those roses--a dozen in a group;
pressing their pinky cheeks together in a mass of family fragrance,
pushing in at the parlour window, climbing up even to the very attic.
There was a yellow jasmine over the porch at one front door, and a
woodbine at the other; the cottage had two entrances, each distinct.
But the general impression it gave, both as to sight and scent, was of
roses--nothing but roses.
"How are you, Mrs. Tod?" as a comely, middle-aged body appeared at the
right-hand doorway, dressed sprucely in one of those things Jael called
a "coat and jacket," likewise a red calamanco petticoat tucked up at
the pocket-holes.
"I be pretty fair, sir--be you the same? The children ha' not
forgotten you--you see, Mr. Halifax."
"So much the better!" and he patted two or three little white heads,
and tossed the youngest high up in the air. It looked very strange to
see John with a child in his arms.
"Don't 'ee make more noise than 'ee can help, my lad," the good woman
said to our post-boy, "because, sir, the sick gentleman bean't so well
again to-day."
"I am sorry for it. We would not have driven up to the door had we
known. Which is his room?"
Mrs. Tod pointed to a window--not on our side of the house, but the
other. A hand was just closing the casement and pulling down the
blind--a hand which, in the momentary glimpse we had of it, seemed less
like a man's than a woman's.
When we were settled in the parlour John noticed this fact.
"It was the wife, most likely. Poor thing! how hard to be shut up
in-doors on such a summer evening as this!"
It did seem a sad sight--that closed window, outside which was the
fresh, balmy air, the sunset, and the roses.
"And how do you like Enderley?" asked John, when, tea being over, I lay
and rested, while he sat leaning his elbow on the window-sill, and his
cheek against a bunch of those ever-intruding, inquisitive roses.
"It is very, very pretty, and so comfortable--almost like home."
"I feel as if it were home," John said, half to himself. "Do you know,
I can hardly believe that I have only seen this place once before; it
is so familiar. I seem to know quite well that slope of common before
the door, with its black dots of furze-bushes. And that wood below;
what a clear line its top makes against the yellow sky! There, that
high ground to the right; it's all dusky now, but it is such a view by
daylight. And between it and Enderley is the prettiest valley, where
the road slopes down just under those chestnut-trees."
"How well you seem to know the place already."
"As I tell you, I like it. I hardly ever felt so content before. We
will have a happy time, Phineas."
"Oh, yes!" How--even if I had felt differently--could I say anything
but "yes" to him then?
I lay until it grew quite dark, and I could only see a dim shape
sitting at the window, instead of John's known face; then I bade him
good-night, and retired. Directly afterwards, I heard him, as I knew
he would, dash out of the house, and away up the Flat. In the deep
quiet of this lonely spot I could distinguish, for several minutes, the
diminishing sound of his footsteps along the loose, stony road; and the
notes, clear and shrill, of his whistling. I think it was "Sally in
our Alley," or some such pleasant old tune. At last it faded far off,
and I fell into sleep and dreams.