‘Infancy? What if the rose-streak of morning
Pale and depart in a passion of tears?
Once to have hoped is no matter for scorning:
Love once: e’en love’s disappointment endears;
A moment’s success pays the failure of years.’
R. Browning.
The wonder would have been if he had not fallen in love with her, for
a more fascinating girl I never saw. She had only just returned from
school at Compiegne, and was not yet out; her charming freshness
was unsullied; she had all the simplicity and straightforwardness of
unspoilt, unsophisticated girlhood. I well remember our first sight
of her. We had been invited for a fortnight’s yachting by Calverley of
Exeter. His father, Sir John Calverley, had a sailing yacht, and some
guests having disappointed him at the last minute, he gave his son carte
blanche as to who he should bring to fill the vacant berths.
So we three travelled down to Southampton together one hot summer day,
and were rowed out to the Aurora, an uncommonly neat little schooner
which lay in that over-rated and frequently odoriferous roadstead,
Southampton Water. However, I admit that on that evening--the tide being
high--the place looked remarkably pretty; the level rays of the setting
sun turned the water to gold; a soft luminous haze hung over the town
and the shipping, and by a stretch of imagination one might have thought
the view almost Venetian. Derrick’s perfect content was only marred
by his shyness. I knew that he dreaded reaching the Aurora; and sure
enough, as we stepped on to the exquisitely white deck and caught sight
of the little group of guests, I saw him retreat into his crab-shell of
silent reserve. Sir John, who made a very pleasant host, introduced us
to the other visitors--Lord Probyn and his wife and their niece, Miss
Freda Merrifield. Lady Probyn was Sir John’s sister, and also the sister
of Miss Merrifield’s mother; so that it was almost a family party,
and by no means a formidable gathering. Lady Probyn played the part of
hostess and chaperoned her pretty niece; but she was not in the least
like the aunt of fiction--on the contrary, she was comparatively young
in years and almost comically young in mind; her niece was devoted to
her, and the moment I saw her I knew that our cruise could not possibly
be dull.
As to Miss Freda, when we first caught sight of her she was standing
near the companion, dressed in a daintily made yachting costume of blue
serge and white braid, and round her white sailor hat she wore the
name of the yacht stamped on a white ribbon; in her waist-band she
had fastened two deep crimson roses, and she looked at us with frank,
girlish curiosity, no doubt wondering whether we should add to or
detract from the enjoyment of the expedition. She was rather tall,
and there was an air of strength and energy about her which was most
refreshing. Her skin was singularly white, but there was a healthy glow
of colour in her cheeks; while her large, grey eyes, shaded by long
lashes, were full of life and brightness. As to her features, they
were perhaps a trifle irregular, and her elder sisters were supposed to
eclipse her altogether; but to my mind she was far the most taking of
the three.
I was not in the least surprised that Derrick should fall head over ears
in love with her; she was exactly the sort of girl that would infallibly
attract him. Her absence of shyness; her straightforward, easy way of
talking; her genuine goodheartedness; her devotion to animals--one of
his own pet hobbies--and finally her exquisite playing, made the
result a foregone conclusion. And then, moreover, they were perpetually
together. He would hang over the piano in the saloon for hours while she
played, the rest of us lazily enjoying the easy chairs and the fresh air
on deck; and whenever we landed, these two were sure in the end to be
just a little apart from the rest of us.
It was an eminently successful cruise. We all liked each other; the sea
was calm, the sunshine constant, the wind as a rule favourable, and I
think I never in a single fortnight heard so many good stories, or had
such a good time. We seemed to get right out of the world and its narrow
restrictions, away from all that was hollow and base and depressing,
only landing now and then at quaint little quiet places for some merry
excursion on shore. Freda was in the highest spirits; and as to Derrick,
he was a different creature. She seemed to have the power of drawing him
out in a marvellous degree, and she took the greatest interest in his
work--a sure way to every author’s heart.
But it was not till one day, when we landed at Tresco, that I felt
certain she genuinely loved him--there in one glance the truth flashed
upon me. I was walking with one of the gardeners down one of the long
shady paths of that lovely little island, with its curiously foreign
look, when we suddenly came face to face with Derrick and Freda. They
were talking earnestly, and I could see her great grey eyes as they were
lifted to his--perhaps they were more expressive than she knew--I cannot
say. They both started a little as we confronted them, and the colour
deepened in Freda’s face. The gardener, with what photographers usually
ask for--‘just the faint beginning of a smile,’--turned and gathered a
bit of white heather growing near.
“They say it brings good luck, miss,” he remarked, handing it to Freda.
“Thank you,” she said, laughing, “I hope it will bring it to me. At
any rate it will remind me of this beautiful island. Isn’t it just like
Paradise, Mr. Wharncliffe?”
“For me it is like Paradise before Eve was created,” I replied, rather
wickedly. “By the bye, are you going to keep all the good luck to
yourself?”
“I don’t know,” she said laughing. “Perhaps I shall; but you have only
to ask the gardener, he will gather you another piece directly.”
I took good care to drop behind, having no taste for the third-fiddle
business; but I noticed when we were in the gig once more, rowing back
to the yacht, that the white heather had been equally divided--one half
was in the waist-band of the blue serge dress, the other half in the
button-hole of Derrick’s blazer.
So the fortnight slipped by, and at length one afternoon we found
ourselves once more in Southampton Water; then came the bustle of
packing and the hurry of departure, and the merry party dispersed.
Derrick and I saw them all off at the station, for, as his father’s ship
did not arrive till the following day, I made up my mind to stay on with
him at Southampton.
“You will come and see us in town,” said Lady Probyn, kindly. And Lord
Probyn invited us both for the shooting at Blachington in September. “We
will have the same party on shore, and see if we can’t enjoy ourselves
almost as well,” he said in his hearty way; “the novel will go all the
better for it, eh, Vaughan?”
Derrick brightened visibly at the suggestion. I heard him talking to
Freda all the time that Sir John stood laughing and joking as to the
comparative pleasures of yachting and shooting.
“You will be there too?” Derrick asked.
“I can’t tell,” said Freda, and there was a shade of sadness in her
tone. Her voice was deeper than most women’s voices--a rich contralto
with something striking and individual about it. I could hear her quite
plainly; but Derrick spoke less distinctly--he always had a bad trick of
mumbling.
“You see I am the youngest,” she said, “and I am not really ‘out.’
Perhaps my mother will wish one of the elder ones to go; but I half
think they are already engaged for September, so after all I may have a
chance.”
Inaudible remark from my friend.
“Yes, I came here because my sisters did not care to leave London till
the end of the season,” replied the clear contralto. “It has been a
perfect cruise. I shall remember it all my life.”
After that, nothing more was audible; but I imagine Derrick must have
hazarded a more personal question, and that Freda had admitted that it
was not only the actual sailing she should remember. At any rate her
face when I caught sight of it again made me think of the girl described
in the ‘Biglow Papers’:
“‘’Twas kin’ o’ kingdom come to look
On sech a blessed creatur.
A dogrose blushin’ to a brook
Ain’t modester nor sweeter.’”
So the train went off, and Derrick and I were left to idle about
Southampton and kill time as best we might. Derrick seemed to walk the
streets in a sort of dream--he was perfectly well aware that he had met
his fate, and at that time no thought of difficulties in the way had
arisen either in his mind or in my own. We were both of us young and
inexperienced; we were both of us in love, and we had the usual lover’s
notion that everything in heaven and earth is prepared to favour the
course of his particular passion.
I remember that we soon found the town intolerable, and, crossing by the
ferry, walked over to Netley Abbey, and lay down idly in the shade of
the old grey walls. Not a breath of wind stirred the great masses of
ivy which were wreathed about the ruined church, and the place looked so
lovely in its decay, that we felt disposed to judge the dissolute
monks very leniently for having behaved so badly that their church and
monastery had to be opened to the four winds of heaven. After all, when
is a church so beautiful as when it has the green grass for its floor
and the sky for its roof?
I could show you the very spot near the East window where Derrick told
me the whole truth, and where we talked over Freda’s perfections and the
probability of frequent meetings in London. He had listened so often and
so patiently to my affairs, that it seemed an odd reversal to have to
play the confidant; and if now and then my thoughts wandered off to the
coming month at Mondisfield, and pictured violet eyes while he talked of
grey, it was not from any lack of sympathy with my friend.
Derrick was not of a self-tormenting nature, and though I knew he was
amazed at the thought that such a girl as Freda could possibly care for
him, yet he believed most implicitly that this wonderful thing had come
to pass; and, remembering her face as we had last seen it, and the look
in her eyes at Tresco, I, too, had not a shadow of a doubt that she
really loved him. She was not the least bit of a flirt, and society
had not had a chance yet of moulding her into the ordinary girl of the
nineteenth century.
Perhaps it was the sudden and unexpected change of the next day that
makes me remember Derrick’s face so distinctly as he lay back on the
smooth turf that afternoon in Netley Abbey. As it looked then, full of
youth and hope, full of that dream of cloudless love, I never saw it
again.