OF HAPPY DAYS IN SPRING.
And these were the happy days of the courtship of Phœbe and Arthur.
They came with the spring blossoms, opening up a bright new future to
both.
Yes, happy days, perfectly happy. Philosophy says there is no perfect
happiness. Mr. Williamson would smile with quiet amazement at your
simplicity if you held that anybody had been perfectly happy, even for
an hour. But then, you know, he had been hit in his early days, and the
remembrance of his own transient approach to a sense of happiness may
have embittered his later existence.
Arthur Phillips, a year ago, would have entered into an abstract
argument with you upon the subject. He would have told you, with
Guizot, that the study of art perhaps contained the highest elements
of happiness; that, in the abstract, it was altogether unconnected
with the struggles and contests of ordinary life. Although he would
have told you that Guizot’s charming views about the study of art did
not always apply to the practice of it, he would have defended his
opinion of the unselfishness of a pure taste for the beautiful in art,
and demonstrated to you that it brought into play and had the power of
exciting the deepest emotions, gratifying both the nobler and softer
parts of our nature,--the imagination and the judgment, love of emotion
and power of reflection, the enthusiasm and the critical faculty, the
senses and the reason;--but the painter would have sighed as he quoted
this enthusiastic commendation of art, and thought how far short all
this was from perfect happiness.
To ramble about that old cathedral, to think of that dear, sweet
face, was happiness; yet it left so much to long for and regret, that
sometimes the pain was greater than the happiness.
But as he sits beside that fair girl in the farmer’s parlour, what
does he think of happiness now? The philosopher says perfect happiness
was never intended by the Deity to be the lot of man, but that He has
given us the power of an exceeding near approach to it. And we do not
hesitate to say, that He does give to some mortals a foretaste of that
perfect happiness which is to be the undying prize of the future day.
A wise lady, and a duchess, too, has said that our happiness in this
world depends on the affection we are enabled to inspire. Let Phœbe and
Arthur be judged by this standard, and they are to be envied indeed. To
sit hand in hand, to walk and talk with freedom of their love, of the
little incidents of past days, to recall their moments of doubt, and
look back to times of utter hopelessness, to trace their little acts
of sympathy from the first days of their love, to recall that grand
festival beneath the cathedral roof, to think of the days when each
loved the other in secret and in fear and dread and in solitude! Was
not this perfect happiness?
Friend Greybeard, does not the old love break out afresh as you
contemplate two lovers like these? Don’t you remember the old dream? If
there is a picture in thy brain such as that of which sings the poet
whose scrap of rhyme, with an American name at the bottom, has just
attracted my attention in the corner of the county newspaper, do not
shut it out.
“Upon the budded apple-trees
The robins sing by twos and threes,
And ever at the faintest breeze
Down drops a blossom;
And ever would that lover be
The wind that robs the burgeoned tree,
And lifts the soft tress daintily
On Beauty’s bosom.
“Ah, greybeard, what a happy thing
It was, when life was in its spring,
To peep through love’s betrothal ring
At fields Elysian;
To move and breathe in magic air,
To think that all that seems is fair--
Ah, ripe young mouth and golden hair,
Thou pretty vision!”
Let the old dream nestle in thine heart; there is nothing else therein
so beautiful. Don’t you remember what noble, unselfish things you would
have done in those days? What were capital and interest, and shares
at par or premium or discount to thee, except so far as money might
concern her happiness? You have not seen that curl of hair, wrapped
in faded paper, and put away in the dark corner of that old desk, for
years. Take it out, old friend; there is nothing unmanly in thy tears,
for it is manly to have loved, and it is better even “to have loved
and lost than never to have loved at all.” It is something to have the
memory of those happy times. You were happy, whatever you may say to
the contrary, you know you were--ten times happier when she smiled and
returned the pressure of your hand than you are now at the prosperous
state of markets and the thrift of your firm. You may deny it; but the
old times come back in the firelight, old friend, do they not, when
the heart confesses its own bitterness? Don’t deny it, and don’t look
ashamed at your own shadow in the glass, when you unfold that poor
little curl.
The happiness of Arthur and Phœbe was something to look upon and be
happy at. If Asmodeus had taken you to that model farm-house, that
you might have been a calm spectator of the love that had folded his
wings and settled down there beside that hearth, you would have been
happier for the sight. For it was a catching happiness, that of Phœbe
and Arthur; an epidemic of joy and bliss and peace. You could not
possibly have come within a yard of its influence without feeling a
certain delight. If you happened to be a young fellow, a slight touch
of envy might, perhaps, have struggled into your heart and embittered
the sight; for Phœbe might have struck you as the realisation of all
your dreams of beauty, so soft, and gentle, and pulpy, and rosy, and
innocent, and loving.
We only meet with those beauties in books, you say, and in pictures.
But this is a common calumny upon English women. Such beauties as
Phœbe Somerton are rare, no doubt; but there are tender, kitten-like,
innocent, candid, pretty girls like her in many an English county. Ay,
and girls as good and true and generous. If our friend Mr. Williamson
were criticising this book for the _Pyrotechnic_, he would probably
say at this point that so far as the heroines are concerned, the male
novelist usually describes his characters as the perfection of beauty
and goodness, impossibly lovely, impossibly true and generous; whilst
the lady novelist combines beauty with devilry, and makes her charming
women fiends beyond the imagination of men; and as Mr. W. has a smart
epigrammatic way of writing, he would possibly say that whilst most men
draw women as they ought to be, most women depict them as they ought
not to be, and the public are waiting to see them painted as they are.
We need not take the trouble to convince the _Pyrotechnic_ that Phœbe
Somerton is drawn to the life, if the _Pyrotechnic_ thinks otherwise;
but let us tell you, friendly reader, who has accompanied us,
paper-knife in hand, that Phœbe Somerton was all we have described her
in beauty and in gentleness and truth. And no wonder that she had been
attracted by Arthur Phillips, with his big, black, melancholy eyes,
and his fine intellectual face. One good nature speedily detects its
counterpart in another, and it was a testimonial of high and noble
character to be loved by a woman like Phœbe. Love perpetrates strange,
mad freaks, but it would have been next to impossible for a pure nature
like Phœbe’s to have allied itself with another that was unworthy.
Luke Somerton and his wife grew quite genial in the presence of the
radiating love-beams that seemed to shine about the lovers; and the
bailiff thought about his young days in the great Lincolnshire fens and
wolds. He and his elder brother had quarrelled when they were boys,
about Sarah Howard, his present wife. Luke had loved her passionately,
and had been persistent in his attentions towards her; but Sarah played
her cards to win the elder brother, who would come in for the great
bulk of the property. She was worldly, as you have seen, and had fixed
upon doing great things if she married the elder Somerton. But it was
only Luke who really loved her; his brother flirted with her, and
eventually married a rich widow, whereupon Sarah Howard was fain to be
content with Luke, who had quarrelled with his brother, not because his
brother loved Sarah, but because he did not. For Luke, like a great,
fond Lincolnshire lad as he was, on learning that Miss Howard liked
his elder brother better than himself, had actually given her up, and
called upon his brother to marry her. And now Luke looked back to
these days, and remembered the time when Sarah had professed to return
his love, and when they walked to the church through the meadows, and
over the bridge that spanned the sparkling beck; and he heard the
half-a-dozen bells ringing afterwards,--heard them now after all those
years: and he was happier in these memories because he knew that these
two lovers really loved each other, both of them as truly as he had
loved Sarah Howard.
Mrs. Somerton would now and then become quite cheerful, and tell Arthur
in fun how she had disliked him once, because she could see he was
after Amy; and this would start conversations and confessions that gave
the greatest pleasure to all concerned.
Arthur would bring Phœbe bundles of newspapers and magazines in which
his pictures were criticised. And Phœbe would blush with delight
over the praises there bestowed upon her lover, and look dreadfully
astonished when any critic threw in some adverse suggestion or
observation. The _Pyrotechnic_ said Arthur Phillips was at the head
of his profession; no previous artist had combined landscape and
figure painting with the success which had crowned his efforts: he was
Salvator Rosa and Wilkie in one. Happily the higher class journals and
the art magazines were more judicious in their commendations than this,
but they all agreed that Mr. Phillips had a genius for painting, and
knew how to put that genius into his pictures; so the artist was not
only on the high-road to lasting fame, but to monetary competence. He
therefore talked to Phœbe of their future with confidence, and Mrs.
Somerton was not a little pleased to learn that after all her daughter
would be the wife of a thriving man.
There was something prophetic, Arthur thought, in his title of that
picture which had given the finishing touch to his professional
reputation; and Phœbe pressed his arm as he said so whilst they were
walking up to the summer-house on those dear Berne Hills. Something
quite prophetic! That gleam of inspiration which had fallen upon him
in connection with those poor emigrants could only have been a stroke
of Destiny: the tide was at the flood, and Fate pointed in the right
direction. “Seeking New Homes!” It was the key-note to all the recent
events in their history. They were all on the eve of seeking new homes:
Mr. Somerton, Mrs. Somerton, Paul Somerton, Miss Tallant, and Phœbe,
and himself. New homes! What a pleasant, happy ring there was in the
words! Arthur drew all sorts of imaginary word-pictures of their home
in the future; and it was a paradise indeed, with such a studio, where
Phœbe should have an easel, too,--such a home, the home of Love and Art!
If Arthur grew enthusiastically poetic in the contemplation of this
future, who could feel surprised? Walking abroad with Phœbe Somerton
hanging on his arm, betrothed to him, almost mated like the birds that
were building their nests all round about them. Was it not a poetic
time? Is there any period of the year more eloquent to lovers, more
fairy-like, more hopeful than Spring?
And Spring in that Berne Hill country! Alike in every other season you
saw all the special beauties of the time in the neighbourhood of Barton
Hall. Standing near the summer-house (where Richard Tallant played the
eaves-dropper to that _naïve_ conversation, of which he reminded his
sister so recently), Arthur and Phœbe may well feel that their lines
have been cast in pleasant places; that Heaven is dealing tenderly with
them; that the future will be a blessed time like this. The sky above
them is full of blue and white,--great silver mountains piled upon
each other in an azure sea. A lark is mounting upwards, with a cheery
song that is answered by a thousand wood-notes in the grove beneath.
Far away on every side stretch the green fields dotted with homesteads
and villages, past which winds the river sparkling in the sun. Old
church towers and steeples peep over the tree-tops in quiet glades,
and white wreaths of smoke in the distance mark the course of railway
trains hurrying on their way to London. A misty cloud, half-penetrated
by the sun, hangs over the Linktown Hills, and envelopes the sharp
outlines that come out here and there in undulating curves, picturesque
indications of their graceful lines of beauty. How eloquently Arthur
dwelt upon the glories of this great picture of Nature’s own painting!
The trees were clothed with delicate verdant tints, through which
the graceful shapes of the budding branches were seen, and the white
birch did indeed stand out like the fair lady of the woods, nodding her
pretty head and shaking her tresses to the music of the birds. Phœbe
hushed Arthur’s voice at the piping of a nightingale in a copse hard
by, and the artist recalled old Izaak Walton’s exclamation, “Lord, what
music hast Thou provided for the saints in heaven, when Thou affordest
bad men such music on earth!”
Whether it was the associations of the place with former times or the
words “bad men” that set Phœbe thinking of the time when the wickedness
of Richard Tallant was first strongly put before her, listeth not; but
she began to talk of Amy and of Lionel Hammerton.
“Do you think Mr. Hammerton was really fond of Amy?” she asked.
“I do, indeed,” said Arthur.
“Were they engaged to be married?”
“Oh no, I think not; there was nothing so serious between them as
that.”
“So serious!” repeated Phœbe, archly.
“So sweet,” said Arthur, promptly and tenderly--“serious is the
conventional phrase.”
“Why did he neglect her? Did he speak of her unkindly when he left
England?”
“He said something about Paul--her brother in those days, you know,
when you were Miss Tallant--something about prying into his affairs.”
“Indeed!”
“Paul had followed him to the club, and warned him against some persons
who were conspiring to win his money at cards.”
“Oh yes, I remember something of it; but I was not aware that the
surveillance had gone so far. Mr. Hammerton was being deceived, I
think, Amy said. There was a plot against him, she thought; but, poor
girl, she was so deeply in love with him.”
“He felt annoyed that she had interfered in his private doings,” said
Arthur; “he thought it was officious, I suppose.”
“Was that all?” asked Phœbe. “Then he did not love her.”
Arthur had too much regard for his old friend even now to hint that
Lionel thought Amy was influenced by mere worldly motives.
“And you think he really loves Amy now?” said Phœbe, half-aloud, half
to herself.
“Not as I love you,” said Arthur; “but our love, dearest, is a love
apart from any other love; it seems to me that nobody in the whole
world is blessed like I am with a love so generous, so noble. What have
I done that I should deserve so much happiness?”
“Dear Arthur!” was all Phœbe could say, and then for a time they forgot
all the world but themselves and the trees and flowers and grasses and
the distant hills and the spring sky above them, with the hopeful lark
in the sunshine, and the nightingale singing in the shade.
What a delightful path it was, that old familiar way by which they
returned to the farm! Wood-sorrel, buttercups, sweet woodroof,
primroses, and violets bespangled and scented the way; green grasses
and ferns shot out like emerald spikes and crooks from amongst dead
leaves that autumn winds had left in out-of-the-way corners. The lake
in the shadow of the hills shone here and there through the trees
like glints of silver, and the sunbeams sparkled white and shimmery
on the windows of Barton Hall. At length the lovers stopped beside a
rustic stile near the foot of the hills--one of those old-fashioned,
moss-grown, lichen-coloured stiles, which give such additional charms
to straggling hedge-rows, with great clumps of flowering hawthorn here
and there at the top, and patches of red and brown and amber in the old
roots at the bottom. Beneath a bending branch of budding May-flowers
Arthur pointed out the spot where he had sat for hours to paint and
think of her in the summer-time, and she saw that the place commanded a
full view of the room where she mostly sat.
Oh, what a happy time it was! The spring wind went about the woods
in gentle murmurs, as if it were saying so in every nook and corner.
“How are you, old friend?” it seemed to say every now and then, as it
rustled the young leaves of an oak or an elm--“glad to see you looking
so well--pleasant day;” and the trees seemed to nod and look happy, and
congratulate each other that the south wind had come again, and the ash
trees shook their jangling locks with delight. Everything seemed to say
the winter is over, and we are glad of it and sure of it. The frogs
croaked by the margin of the lake, and the crows replied as they winged
their way over them up into the elms that glassed themselves in the
deep. Bees hummed musically in the air, and darted into the midst of
great yellow buttercups as if in very wantonness of joy. What a happy
time it was! Everything seemed to say so--birds and trees and hills and
fields. There was a general jubilation of Nature, such as the Psalmist
might have had in his mind when he sang, “Let the floods clap their
hands, and let the hills be joyful together before the Lord.”
Happy days! Why do we dwell upon them? It is not easy to close any
page which has spring sunshine in it. We have all of us so many dear,
treasured associations with it, bringing us back to the spring-time of
life when the world looked so hopeful and charming--when there were
flowers of love and friendship in our paths, and we knew nothing of the
thorns that lurked beneath them.