Honours flash in the summer sun, as green corn does in the morning;
then they gleam mature and mellow at the time of reaping; they are
bagged, perhaps by a womanʼs arm, with a cut “below the knees”; set
on their butt for a man to sit under while eating his bread and
cheese; then they wither, and are tossed into chaff by a contumelious
steam–engine with a leathern strap inflexible.
Cradockʼs “Ireland” has gone by, and another has succeeded it, and
this has fallen, as most things fall, to the sap of perseverance,
steel–tipped with hard self–confidence—this Ireland has fallen to the
lot of Brown Balliolensis. Clayton would not go in for it; his pride,
or rather vanity, would not allow him to do so. Was he going to take
Cradockʼs leavings, and be a year behind him, when he was only two
minutes younger? However, he went in for the Hertford, and, what was
a great deal more, he got it; for Cradock would not stand; and, even
if he had, perhaps the result would have been the same. Viley had made
up his mind to win it, and worked very hard indeed; and so won it very
easily. Cradock could usually beat him in Greek, but not so often in
Latin. And Clayton wrote the prettiest, most tripping, coquettish,
neat–ankled hendecasyllables that ever whisked roguishly round a
corner, wondering where Catullus was.
Ah! light–hearted poet, sensitively sensuous, yet withal deep–hearted,
with a vein of golden philosophy, and a pensive tenderness, now–a–days
we overlook thee. Horace is more fashionable, more suited to a flippant
age, because he has no passion.
Early on a sunripe evening in the month of June, “when the sun was
shifting the shadows of the hills, and doffed the jaded oxenʼs yoke,
distributing the love time from his waning chariot”, a forest dell,
soft, clear, and calm, was listening to its thrushes. And more than at
the throstleʼs flute, or flageolet of the blackbird, oaks and chestnuts
pricked their ears at the voice of a gliding maiden. Where the young
fern was pluming itself, arching, lifting, ruffling in filigree, light
perspective, and depth of Gothic tracery, freaked by the nip of fairy
fingers, tremulous as a coral grove in a crystal under–current, the
shyer fronds still nestling home, uncertain of the world as yet, and
coiled like catherine–wheels of green; where the cranesbill pushed
like Zedekiah, and the succory reared its sky–blue windmill (open
for business till 8 P.M.); where the violet now was rolled up in the
seed–pod, like a stylite millipede, and the great bindweed, in its
crenate horn, piped and fluted spirally, had forgotten the noonday
flaunt: here, and over the nibbled sward, where the crisp dew was not
risen yet, here came wandering the lightest foot that ever passed,
but shook not, the moss–bed of the glow–worm. Under the rigorous oaks
(so corded, seamed, and wenned with humps of grey), the stately,
sleek, mouse–coloured beech, the dappled, moss–beridden ash, and the
birch–tree peeling silverly, beneath the murmuring congress of the
sunproof leaves; and again in the open breaks and alleys, where light
and shade went see–saw; by and through and under all, feeling for and
with every one, glanced, and gleamed, and glistened, and listened the
loveliest being where all was love, the pet in the nest of nature.
Of all the beauty in that sweet dell, where the foot of man came
scarcely once in a year; of all the largesse of earth and heaven; of
all the grace which is Natureʼs gratitude to her heavenly Father: there
was not one, from the lily–bell to the wild rose and the heather–sprig,
fit for a man to put in his bosom, and look at Amy Rosedew.
It is told of a certain good manʼs child, whose lineage still is
cherished, that when she was asked by her father (half–bantering, half
in earnest) to tell him the reason why everybody loved her so, she
cast down her eyes with a puzzled air, then opened them wide, as a
child does to the sunrise of some great truth—“Father, perhaps it is
because I love everybody so”. Lucan has it in a neater form: “amorem
quæris amando”. And that was Amy Rosedewʼs secret, by herself undreamed
of—lovely, because she could not help loving all our God has made.
And of all the fair things He has made, and pronounced to be very
good, since sunshine first began to gleam, to glow, and to fade away,
what home has beauty found so bright, so rich in varied elegance, so
playfully receptive of the light shed through creation—the light of
the Makerʼs smile—as a young maiden, pure of heart, natural, true, and
trusting?
She came to the brink of a forest pool, and looked at herself in the
water. Not that she thought more than she could help of the outward
thing called “Amy”, but that she wondered how her old favourites,
Cradock and Clayton Nowell, would esteem her face and style of dress
now she was turned seventeen. Most likely they had seen ever so many
girls, both at Oxford and in London, compared with whom poor Amy was
but a rustic Phidyle, just fit to pick sticks in the New Forest.
The crystal mirror gave her back even the shade on her own sweet face,
which fell from the cloud of that simple thought; for she stood where
the westering sunshine failed to touch the water, but flushed with
rich relief of gold the purity of her figure. Every sapling, dappled
hazel, sloughing birch, or glabrous maple, glistened with the plumes
of light, and every leaf was twinkling. The columns of the larger trees
stood like metal cylinders, whereon the level gleam rules a streak,
and glints away round the rounding. Elbows, arms, and old embracings,
backed with a body–ground of green, laced with sunsetʼs golden bodkin,
ever shifting every eyelet,—branch, and bough, and trunk, and leaves,
ruffling and twisting, or staunch and grand, they seemed but a
colonnade and arch, for the sun to peep through at the maiden, and tell
of her on the calm waters.
Floating, fleeting, shimmering there, in a frame of stately summer
flags, vivid upon the crystal shade, and twinkling every now and then
to the plash of a distant moorhen, or the dip of a swallowʼs wing, lay
her graceful image, wondering in soft reply to her play of wonder. She
took off her light chip hat, and laughed; lo! the courteous picture
did the same. She offered, with a mincing air, her little frail of
wood–strawberries; and the shadowy Amy put them back with the prettiest
grace ever dreamed of. Then she cast the sparkling night of her tresses
down the white shoulders and over her breast; and the other Amy was
looking at her through a ripple of cloudiness, with the lissom waist
retiring. She smoothed her hair like a scarf around her, withdrew her
chin on the curving neck, and bowed the shapely forehead, well pleased
to see thus the foreshortening undone, and the pure, bright oval shown
as in a glass. Then, frightened almost at the lustrous depth of her
large grey eyes, deep–fringed with black, she thought of things all
beyond herself, and woke, from Natureʼs innocent joy in her own brief
luck of beauty, to the bashful consciousness, the down of a maidenʼs
dreamings. Bridling next at her mirrored face, with a sudden sense
of humour, all the time she watched the red lips, and the glimmer of
pearls between them, “Amy”, she cried, “now, after this, donʼt come to
me for a character, unless you want one, you pretty dear, for conceit
and self–admiration”.
So saying, she tossed her light head at herself, and looked round
through her flickering cloudlets. What did she see? What made the
dark water flame upon the instant with a richer glow than sunset? The
delicate cheeks, the fair forehead and neck, even the pearly slope of
the shoulders, were flooded with deepest carmine. Her pride fell flat,
as the cistus stamen at a touch droops away on the petal. Then she
shrank back into a flowering broom, and cowered among the spikelets,
and dared not move to wipe away the tears she was so mad with. Oh! the
wretched abasement earned by a sweet little bit of vanity!
How she hated herself, and the light, and the water, her senseless
habit of thinking aloud, above all, her despicable fancy that she was
growing—what nonsense!—such a pretty girl! Thenceforth and for ever,
she felt quite sure, she never could look in a glass again, unless it
were just for a moment, to put her hair to rights, when she got home.
“To think of my hair all down my neck, and the way I had turned in the
gathers”!—the poor little thing had been making experiments how she
would look in a low–necked dress—“Oh! that was the worst thing of all.
I might have laughed at it but for that. And now I am sure I can never
even peep at his face again. Whatever will he think of me, and what
would my papa say”?
After crying until she began to laugh, she resolved to go straight
home, and confess all her crime to Aunt Eudoxia, John Rosedewʼs maiden
sister, who had come to live with him when he lost his wife, three
dreary years agone. So Amy rolled up her long hair anyhow, without a
bit of pride in it, shrank away and examined herself, to be sure that
all was right, and, after one peep, came bravely forth, trying to look
as much as possible like her good Aunt Doxy; then she walked at her
stateliest, with the basket of strawberries, picked for papa, in one
hand, and the other tightly clasped upon the bounding of her heart. But
her eyes were glancing right or left, like a fawnʼs when a lion has
roared; and even the youngest trees saw quite well that, however rigid
with Miss Eudoxia the gliding form might be, it was poised for a dart
and a hide behind them at every crossing shadow.
But fortune favours the brave. She won her own little sallyport
without the rustle of a blackberry–leaf, and thereupon rushed to a
hasty and ostrich–like conclusion. She felt quite sure that, after
all, none but the waters and winds could tell the tale of her little
coquetry. Beyond all doubt, Cradock Nowell was deep in the richest
mental metallurgy, tracing the vein of Greek iambics, as he did before
his beard grew; and she never, never would call them “stupid iambics”
again.
Cradock, who had seen her, but turned away immediately (as became a
gentleman), did not, for the moment, know his little Amy Rosedew. A
year and a half had changed her from a stripling, jumping girl to a shy
and graceful maiden, dreadfully afraid of sweethearts. She had not been
away from Nowelhurst throughout that year and a half, for her father
could not get on without her for more than a month at a time, and all
that month he fretted. But the twins had spent the last summer in
Germany, with a merry reading (or talking) party; and their Christmas
and Easter vacations were dragged away in London, through a strange
whim of Sir Cradock Nowell; at least, they thought it strange, but
there was some reason for it.
Young Cradock Nowell was not such a muff as to be lost in Greek
senarii; no trimeter acatalectics of truest balance and purest fall
could be half so fair to scan; not “Harmony of the golden hair”, and
her nine Pierid daughters round the crystal spring, were worth a
glance of the mental eye, when fortune granted bodily vision of our
unconscious Amy. But he did not stand there watching mutely, as some
youths would have done; for a moment, indeed, he forgot himself in
the flush of admiration. The next moment he remembered that he was a
gentleman; and he did what a gentleman must have done—whether marquis
or labourer: he slipped away through the bushes, feeling as if he had
done some injury. Then the maiden, glancing round, caught one startled
glimpse, as Nyssia did of the stealthy Gyges, or Diana of Actæon. From
that one glimpse she knew him, though he was so like his brother; but
he had failed to recognise the Amy of his boyhood.