ST. MARY-KIRBY.
Champagne has many good qualities, but none more marked than the mild
and temporary nature of the stimulus it affords. The bright and
cheerful excitement it produces--so long as it is neither Russian
champagne, nor one of those highly ingenious products which chemistry
and the wit of man have devised--does not last so long as to interfere
with any serious occupation, even should that be merely sleep; while it
involves none of the gloomy reaction which too often haunts the sparkle
of other wines with a warning shadow. When Will Anerley got up on the
morning following the wild escapade on Hounslow Heath, it was not
indulgence in wine which smote him with a half-conscious remorse. He
had neither a throbbing headache nor a feverish pulse. But as he looked
out of his bedroom window and saw the pale sun glimmering down on the
empty streets, the strange calm of a Sunday morning--touching even in
the cramped thoroughfares of London--fell upon him, and he thought of
the hectic gaiety of the previous night, and knew that all the evening
one tender girlish heart had been wearying for his coming, away down in
a quiet Kentish vale.
His absence was the more inexcusable in that it was uncertain how soon
he might have to leave England. He was a civil engineer; and from the
time he had left the apprentice stool his life had been a series of
foreign excursions. He had been two years in Turkey, another year in
Canada, six months in Russia, and so on; and at this moment he had been
but a short time home from Wallachia, whence he had returned with his
face browner his frame tougher than ever. There was little of the young
Englishman about him. There was a Celtic intensity in him which had
long ago robbed him of the loose fat, the lazy gait, the apathetic
indifference which generally fall to the lot of lads born and brought up
as he had been; and now--with his big brown moustache, thick hair, and
hazel eyes, and with that subdued determination in his look, which had
made the little _soubrette_ call him an Ancient Briton--he was a man
whom some would call handsome, but whom most people would admire chiefly
on account of the intelligence, firmness of character, and determination
written upon his face.
He dressed and breakfasted hastily; got a cab, and was just in time to
catch the train. After nearly an hour's drive down through
Kent--pleasant enough on that bright Spring morning--he reached Horton,
the station nearest to St. Mary-Kirby.
Horton stands on the top of a hill sloping down into the valley in which
lies St. Mary-Kirby; and if you climb, as Will Anerley did, to the top
of a coal heap which generally stands besides the empty trucks of the
station, you will see the long wooded hollow from end to end, with its
villages, churches, and breadths of field and meadow. It was not to
look again, however, on that pretty bit of scenery which he knew so well
that he scrambled to the top of the coals, and stood there, with his
hand shading his eyes from the sunlight. It was Dove Anerley he wished
to see come along the valley, on her way to church; and he waited there
to discover what route she should take, that so he might intercept her.
Yet there seemed to be no living thing in the quiet valley. Sleepily
lay the narrow river in its winding channel, marked by twin rows of
pollard willows, now green with their first leaves; sleepily lay the
thin blue smoke above the far white cottages and the grey churches;
sleepily lay the warm sunlight over the ruddy ploughed fields, the green
meadows, the dark fir-wood along the top of the hill; and sleepily it
struck on the great, gleaming chalk-pit on the side of the incline;
while a faint blue haze hung around the dim horizon, half hiding the
white specks of houses on the distant uplands. It was a beautiful
picture in the tender light of the young spring; but there was no Dove
Anerley there.
He looked at his watch.
"Half-past ten," he thought, "and as our church is under repair, she is
sure to walk to Woodhill church. But if I go down into the valley, I
shall be sure to miss her."
As he spoke, there was visible a tiny speck of grey and brown crossing a
broad meadow near the river; and almost at the same moment the subdued
and distant music of the church bells floated up on the air. Will
Anerley leaped from the coal-heap to the ground; and then straight down
the hill he went, making free use of the fields on his way.
He suddenly found that the still valley was full of life, and sound, and
gladness; that the morning was a miracle of mornings; that the breath of
the sweet spring air seemed laden with the secret odours of innumerable
flowers. And, indeed, as he walked on, there was plenty to delight him,
even had Dove Anerley not been there. For the lamblike March had
bequeathed to his fickle sister a legacy of golden weather, and she now
carried it in her open hand, sharing it with all of us. The orchards
were white with bloom, here and there a rose-red apple-tree among the
snowy bunches of the pears; the meadows were thick with daisies and
cowslips, the grey sheep throwing sharp black shadows on the glowing
green; the tall elms, sprinkled over with young leaves, rose from rough
and ragged earth banks that were covered with withered brier, and
glistening celandine, dull coltsfoot, and ruddy dead-nettle; the stately
chesnuts had burst their resinous buds and were already showing brown
spikes of closed flowers; along the hedges, where the blackbird was
nursing her young, and the thrush sitting on her second nestful of blue
eggs, the blossoms of the blackthorn sparkled here and there like white
stars among the rich, thick green of the elm; and through all these
colours and lights and shadows ran, and hummed, and sung the coarse
cawing of rooks, the murmur of bees, the splashing of the river down at
the mill, and the silvery music of a lark which hung as if suspended by
a thread from the cold, clear blue above.
St. Mary-Kirby was just visible and no more. You could see the quaint
old mill down by the riverside, and near it an ancient farm-house, with
black cattle and horses in the yard, and white pigeons flying about the
rusty-red tiles of the farm buildings. Further up, the old grey church,
built of "Kentish rag," shone brightly in the sunshine; and then, among
the trees, you caught a glimpse of the cottages, of Mr. Anerley's house,
fronting the village-green, and of the old inn with its swaying sign.
There is not in Kent a more thoroughly English village than St.
Mary-Kirby; and one, at least, of its inhabitants used to pray fervently
every Sunday morning that no railway should ever come near its
precincts.
When Will Anerley reached the bottom of the valley, he found a number of
St. Mary-Kirby people walking in isolated groups, towards Woodhill
church; but one only of these people had chosen a somewhat circuitous
route through the meadows lying on the south side of the river. Why she
had chosen this route was probably known only to herself; but, at any
rate, Will paused by the side of a stile to which the path through the
meadows led. He had recognised from a considerable distance the
slate-grey silk dress and brown velvet jacket which she wore; and now,
as he watched her coming along, he saw that she, too, had recognised
him, and that there was a pleased look in her eyes.
"Why did you come this way?" he asked, as she drew near.
"Because I thought I should meet you," she replied, with a frank smile.
He helped her up and down the rude wooden steps, and as she alit upon
the other side she suffered him to touch her cheek with his lips.
"Good morning, Dove."
"Good morning, Will. I made up my mind to scold you dreadfully; and all
the way over from St. Mary I have been thinking what I should say to
you; and now I haven't it in my heart to say a single word."
"Heaght" for "heart," she said, and "woghd" for "word;" and there was a
quaint softness in this purring, half-foreign pronunciation which made
her utterances all the more tender, and seemed to harmonize with the
childlike prettiness of the large violet eyes set in the delicate face,
which was surrounded by crisp and wavy light-brown hair.
"That's a good girl," he said; and then she put her hand on his arm, and
they walked away between the green hedges, towards Woodhill Church.
It was at a concert in St. James's Hall that I first saw Dove Anerley;
and while the people sang "Athalie," I sate and wondered what was the
story written on that beautiful, almost sad face. It was one of those
rare faces which tantalize you in the very act of admiring them. There
was nothing in it of that mature, vigorous, definite beauty of form and
complexion which a man may calmly observe and criticise in the face of a
woman; but a tender uncertainty, a half-suggested and shrinking
loveliness, which made one vaguely conscious that this frail and
beautiful smile of nature might suddenly vanish from the fine features.
It was not that the girl seemed unwell, or even in any degree fragile;
but simply that one, in looking at her face, could not help regretting
that her loveliness was not less delicate and more pronounced, that
there was not more life and less sensitiveness in her large violet eyes.
How beautiful she looked that evening! The passionate music seemed to
have called up a flush upon her bright complexion, and lent some strange
wistfulness to her big eyes; and then, when she turned to her companions
and smiled, her pretty mouth and nut-white teeth might have driven a
painter mad. Indeed, I know of at least one artist then present who
forgot all about Mendelssohn in trying so to fix her expression on his
memory that he might afterwards reproduce it on canvas--her expression,
her face, and the loose golden-brown hair bound down by a band of
dark-blue velvet. It was two years afterwards that accident threw me in
the way of the Anerleys. I had never forgotten the meaning apparently
written on that sensitive face; but Dove's story, as I then heard it,
differed entirely from what I had imagined.
"Why have you come alone this morning?" said Will Anerley to his
companion, as they walked.
"You know papa never goes to church," said the young girl. "And mamma
has never gone to hear Mr. Oldham since he spoke to her about the
Athanasian creed. I suppose you did not hear about that since you came
home?"
"No," said Will; though he had an idea why his mother--whom Dove had
also been taught to call "mamma"--feared the Athanasian creed.
"You know," continued the girl, very seriously, "how anxious mamma is
because papa won't go to church, and because of his studies and the
strange things he says at times; and sometimes she gets very sad about
it. It is the only thing she is ever sad about; and when I tell her
that there can't be much wrong in what so good a man believes, she only
gets the sadder, and sometimes cries a little bit. Well, this Sunday
morning she and I were talking about it all the way to church, and she
was very much disturbed. I don't think she had ever paid any attention
to the Athanasian creed before; but on that morning, Mr. Oldham read it,
and I saw her look strangely at him and at the book. Then all at once
her face got quite white, she shut the book, and without a word to me
walked out of the church and went straight home."
"And I suppose my father laughed a little, and tried to make her believe
that he had already constructed some theoretical fire-escape from the
dangers with which he was threatened?"
"Mr. Oldham came over next day to call upon mamma, and he was talking
very seriously to her, and making her very miserable--indeed, she was
crying nearly all the time--when papa came into the room."
"Oh--was it by the door that Mr. Oldham left?"
"What do you mean? Papa stood there, with that curious smile he has on
his face when he puzzles and perplexes people, you know; and in a few
minutes Mr. Oldham was in a terrible rage. I remember distinctly one
thing papa said. 'Mr. Oldham,' he said, with a sort of twinkle in his
eye, 'I am not surprised that you have the Athanasian creed in your
service; for clergymen, like other men, must be allowed the use of bad
language occasionally. But you should indulge yourself privately, and
not frighten women when they go to pray in your church.'"
"How very wicked of him! But then, Dove, Mr. Oldham belongs to the next
parish; and he had no business to go poaching on Mr. Bexley's manor."
"And so very anxious she is about you also, Will. She is sometimes very
sad about papa; but she can't help seeing what a good man he is. She
says to me that you are young, and that if you grow up to believe what
he believes, you may not be quite the same--you know, dear, that is only
a feeling she has."
"Who wouldn't be orthodox to please such a mother?" said Will.
"And I, too," said the girl, with a touch of colour in her cheek, and in
rather a lower voice, "I should be grieved to think that--that--that you
did not care about going to church, and that you did not believe as we
do."
"What should have made you think about all these things?" asked Anerley,
with some astonishment.
"Well, when you wrote to us from Jassy, saying you were coming home,
mamma came to papa and begged him to lock up all those dangerous books
he is so fond of. 'My dear,' he said to her, 'Will knows more about
such matters than I know; for he has breathed the new atmosphere of
these new times, whereas I have nothing to help me but reading.' Is it
true, Will?"
"Is what true? I tell you, darling, I will be whatever you wish me to
be; so don't distress your mind about it."
It was their arrival at the church-door which stopped this conversation.
They entered, and seated themselves in a tall, damp pew, while a small
organ was sending its smooth and solemn notes through the hushed little
building.
They were not "engaged," these two; but themselves and everybody
connected with them looked forward to their marriage as a matter of
course. Dove Anerley was the daughter of a distant relative of Mrs.
Anerley's, who had gladly escaped from a variety of misfortunes by the
easy gateway of death; and Mr. Anerley had adopted the child, brought
her up, and grown passionately fond of her. He was a man of very
peculiar notions, which had earned for him among the vulgar the
charitable title of atheist and materialist; and so this dangerous and
wicked person sat down one day before his son, when the young man had
come home from college, and said to him:
"Attend to what I am going to say, Will. You have a good prospect
before you: you have a sound constitution, a tolerable education, and
plenty of natural ability. I am not going to spoil your chances in life
by letting you fancy that you will have any money at my death--do you
understand? I will start you in any profession you choose; thereafter
you must fight your own battle, as befits a man; and whatever I leave
will go to your mother and to Dove. If you were a fool, I should make
some provision for you; as it is, I won't."
"Why, you don't suppose, father, I would rob either Dove or my mother of
anything you could give them?"
That was all that passed between the two men on the subject; and in time
it came to be regarded as a matter of course that Dove Anerley was to
inherit whatever wealth her foster-father should leave behind him,
irrespective of the provision for his widow. Had Will Anerley stayed at
home, and been accustomed to regard Dove as his sister, he would never
have thought of marrying her. But even in his boyhood he had been of a
singularly active and inquiring character; always anxious to study new
subjects, new scenes, new faces; never satisfied with any achievement as
an ultimate result; and so, his apprenticeship completed, instead of
hiring himself out as an assistant to the engineer of some railway or
other company, and spending a dull life in a dingy office, he threw
himself boldly upon the world, and went up and down, acquiring such
knowledge as no man can gain by the study of books. Nor was it only in
professional directions that his inquiries extended! He had caught what
is called "the spirit" of these times; was full of vague idealisms,
particularly of a philanthropic kind; and was moved by a restless desire
to trace back to first principles the commonest conditions of modern
existence. That is a phase through which most young men who read books
pass. Now and again only do we find a man of sufficient strength of
character to preserve those gentle tendencies against the rough wear and
tear of travel and its consequent experience. Great, therefore, was his
delight to have a profession which allowed him to move freely about; and
wherever he went the tender remembrance of Dove Anerley went with him.
As for her, she had never taken any pains to conceal from anybody her
fondness for him--a fondness which had grown to be a part of her life.
He was mixed up in all the finest aspirations, he was the creator of all
the noblest idealisms, of her too delicately sensitive organization. In
that supreme religious exaltation which is produced by fine music, by
earnest prayer, or by a beautiful sunset, his was the human face towards
which, unconsciously to herself, she looked for the divine sympathy and
compassion which in such moments man begs from the Deity. Even now, as
they stood in the old oaken pew, and as she sang sweetly and clearly
that tenderest of hymns--
"Abide with me. Fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide!
When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me!"
--was she guilty of any great crime in involuntarily making him the
object of that impassioned cry? Her love was her religion, her religion
her love; she knew not how to distinguish between them, and like the old
Romans had but one word to describe this holiest feeling of her nature.
"Now, Will," she said, cheerfully, as the people streamed out of the
close little building into the sweet-smelling air, "let us have a nice
long walk through Woodhill Wood on our way home; it is covered with
flowers just now; and then you will tell me why you did not come down
last night. Everybody expected you, and dinner was as dull as it could
be without you. The Hepburns were over, you know, and Mr. Drysdale, and
they came half an hour too soon and sate in the drawing-room, and talked
of nothing but the number of breeding partridges, and the condition of
the trout, and how they hoped the orchards wouldn't suffer by this early
hot weather. Only big John Hepburn--who does nothing in the world but
shoot and go to hounds, you know--made papa laugh very much by
stretching his long legs, yawning, and saying disconsolately, 'Ah, yes,
Mr. Anerley, we're getting into the dreary summer months.' He couldn't
understand why papa laughed, and said he had made no joke he was aware
of."
By this time they had walked through the tall green grass of the
churchyard, had clambered up the hill a bit, and left the warm sunshine
for the cool shade of the wood. Only here and there did the sunlight
glimmer down through the dense forest of young oak and birch; but there
was no need of sunlight to make that tangled carpeting of moss and grass
and wild-flowers any the brighter. All around them, and as far as they
could see down the glades between the trees, the earth was thick with
anemones and great clusters of primroses, here and there a few wild
hyacinths among patches of tenderly veined wood-sorrel, and everywhere
the blush-coloured cuckoo-flower with its coronet of pale pink buds.
Hushed and still the place was, except when a jay went screaming from
one tall tree to another, or some cawing rook flew past through the
width of fleecy blue and white overhead.
"I stayed in town, then, Dove, to go to a little supper, and there I met
Miss Brunel."
"The actress whom everybody is talking about?"
"Yes."
"You met her privately?"
"Yes; why should that astonish you?"
"Do tell me what she is like--what she said to you--did she speak to
you?"
"She is a very handsome girl, with splendid hair and eyes, and the most
charming manner. What amused me chiefly was the half-maternal way in
which she talked to me--who might have been her father,--and the airs of
profound experience which she quite unconsciously gave herself. Then
all the time she was ready to be amused by the tiniest things; indeed,
it was quite a pleasure to sit near her and watch the comfortable,
self-satisfied, almost childish way in which she delighted herself with
everything."
Will spoke quite warmly; his companion was silent for some time
afterwards.
"Why are you so quiet this morning, Dove?" he asked.
"Am I more than usually quiet?" she said.
"Indeed," he continued, without taking further notice of the matter, "I
_was_ vexed with myself for not coming down last evening. The fact is,
I may not have many Saturday afternoons down at the old place before I
leave again. I am thinking of going to Honduras----"
"To Honduras!" she repeated, rather faintly; "why should you go to
Honduras?"
"They want to sink some Artesian wells about----"
"Is there no one in Honduras can sink Artesian wells?" she asked, with a
scarcely-concealed pout of vexation. "Your father says you have thrown
away plenty of your life in going abroad, and that now you should settle
here and get up a good connexion in your own country."
"Although Miss Brunel made me feel old by her efforts to play the mother
to me, Dove, I am young enough to feel a touch of wandering blood stir
in me yet."
"Send Miss Brunel to make the Artesian wells!" said Dove, with a quick
flush on her face, and then she broke out laughing, partly because she
was amused at herself, and partly because she was out of humour with
him.
Indeed nothing delighted him so much as to see a little harmless break
in the even gentleness of the young girl's manner. It was like the
rustling of a piece of tissue paper, or the crumpling of a rose-leaf;
the little petulances of which she was sometimes guilty were but a
source of amusement to both of them.