THE RETURN OF SPRING
The smoke curls up once more from the chimneys of Alton Grange; the
woman in possession, she with the soapy arms and unkempt hair, who was
always cleaning with no result, has been paid for her occupancy and sent
back to her own untidy home in the adjoining village. The windows are
fresh painted, the lawn fresh mown, the garden trimmed, and the walks
rolled; nay, the unwonted sound of wheels is sometimes heard upon the
gravel sweep in front of the house, for the country neighbours, a race
who wage unceasing war against anything mysterious, and whose thirst for
"news," and energy in the acquisition of gossip, are as meritorious as
they are uncalled for, have lavished their attentions on the solitary,
and welcomed him back to his lonely home far more warmly than he
deserves. The estate, too, has been at nurse ever since he went away.
An experienced man of business has taken it into his own especial
charge, but somehow the infant has not attained any great increase of
vigour under his fostering care, and the proprietor is ungrateful enough
to think he could have managed it better for himself. Inside, the house
is dark and gloomy still. I miss poor Bold dreadfully. After a day of
attention to those trivial details which the landowner dignifies with
the title of "business," or worse still, of vacant, dreary hours passed
in listless apathy, it is very lonely to return to a solitary dinner and
a long silent evening, to feel that the wag of a dog's tail against the
floor would be company, and to own there is solace in the sympathy even
of a brute's unreasoning eye. It is not good for man to be alone, and
that is essentially a morbid state in which solitude is felt to be a
comfort and a relief; more especially does the want of occupation and
companionship press upon one who has been leading a life of busy
every-day excitement such as falls to the lot of the politician or the
soldier; and it has always appeared to me that the worst of all possible
preparations for the quiet, homely duties of a country gentleman, are
the very two professions so generally chosen as the portals by which the
heir of a landed estate is to enter life. It takes years to tame the
soldier, and the politician seldom _really_ settles down at all; but of
course you will do what your fathers did--if the boy is dull, you will
gird a sword upon his thigh; if he is conceited, you will get him into
Parliament, and fret at the obtuse deafness of the House. Perhaps you
may as well be disappointed one way as the other; whatever you do with
him, by the time he is thirty you will wish you had done differently,
and so will he. Action, however, is the only panacea for despondency;
work, work, is the remedy for lowness of spirits. What am I that I
should sit here with folded hands, and repine at the common lot? There
are none so humble but they can do some little good, and in this the
poor are far more active than the rich. Let me take example by the day
labourers at my gate. There is a poor family not a mile from here who
sadly lack assistance, and whom for the last fortnight I have neglected
to visit. A gleam of sunshine breaks in through the mullioned window,
and gilds even the black oak wainscoting: the clouds are passing rapidly
away, I will take my hat and walk off at once towards the common. Oh,
the hypocrisy of human motives! The poor family are tenants of
Constance de Rohan; their cottage lies in the direct road to Beverley
Manor.
It has been raining heavily, and the earth is completely saturated with
moisture. The late spring, late even for England, is bursting forth
almost with tropical luxuriance. Dank and dripping, the fragrant hedges
glisten in the noonday beams. Brimful is every blossom in the orchard,
fit chalice for the wild bird or the bee. Thick and tufted, the wet
grass sprouts luxuriantly in the meadow-lands where the cowslip hangs
her scented head, and the buttercup, already dry, reflects the sunshine
from its golden hollow. The yellow brook laughs merrily on beneath the
foot-bridge, and the swallows shoot hither and thither high up against
the clear blue sky. How fresh and tender is the early green of the
noble elms in the foreground, and the distant larches on the hill. How
sweet the breath of spring; how fair and lovable the smile upon her
face. How full of hope and promise and life and light and joy. Oh, the
giant capacity for happiness of the human heart! Oh, what a world it
might be! What a world it is!
The children are playing about before the door of the cottage on the
common. Dirty, and noisy, and rosy, the little urchins stare,
wonder-struck, at the stranger, and disappear tumultuously into certain
back settlements, where there are a garden, and a beehive, and a pig.
An air of increased comfort pervades the dwelling, and its mistress has
lost the wan, anxious look it pained me so to see some ten days ago.
With a corner of her apron she dusts a chair for me to sit down, and
prepares herself for a gossip, in which experience tells me the talking
will be all one way. "Her 'old man' is gone out to-day for the first
time to his work. He is quite stout again at last, but them low fevers
keeps a body down terrible, and the doctor's stuff was no good, and she
thinks after all it's the fine weather as has brought him round;
leastways, that and the broth Lady Beverley sent him from the Manor
House; and she to come up herself only yesterday was a week, through a
pour of rain, poor dear! for foreign parts has not agreed with her, and
she's not so rosy as she were when I knew her first, but a born angel
all the same, and ever will be."
Tears were in the good woman's eyes, and her voice was choked. I stayed
to hear no more. Lady Beverley, as she called her, was, then, once more
at home. She had been here--here on this very spot, but one short week
ago. I could have knelt down and kissed the very ground she had
trodden. I longed if it was only to see her footprints. I, who had
schooled myself to such a pitch of stoicism and apathy, who had stifled
and rooted out and cut down the germs of passion till I had persuaded
myself that they had ceased to exist, and that my heart had become hard
and barren as the rock,--I, who had thought that when the time came I
should meet her in London with a kindly greeting, as became an old
friend, and never turn to look the way she went; and now, because she
had been here a week ago, because there was a possibility of her being
at the moment within three miles of where I stood, to feel the blood
mounting to my brow, the tears starting to my eyes,--oh! it was scarlet
shame, and yet it was burning happiness too.
The sun shone brighter, the birds sang more merrily now. There was no
longer a mockery in the spring. The dry branch seemed to blossom once
more--the worn and weary nature to imbibe fresh energies and renewed
life. There was hope on this side the grave, hope that might be
cherished without bitterness or remorse. Very dark had been the night,
but day was breaking at last. Very bitter and tedious had been the
winter, but spring, real spring, was bursting forth. I could hardly
believe in the prospect of happiness thus opened to me. I trembled to
think of what would be my destiny if I should lose it all again.
In the ecstasy of joy, as in the tumult of uncertainty and the agony of
grief, there is but one resource for failing human strength, how feeble
and failing none know so well as those whom their fellows deem the
noblest and the strongest. That resource has never yet played man false
at his need. The haughty brow may be compelled to stoop, the boasted
force of will be turned aside, the proud spirit be broken and humbled to
the dust, the race be lost to the swift and the battle go against the
strong, but the victory shall be wrested, the goal shall be attained by
the clasped hands and the bended knees, and the loving heart that
through good and evil has trusted steadfastly to the end.
* * * * *
I may lock the old desk now. I have told my tale; 'tis but the
every-day story of the ups and downs of life--the winnings and losings
of the game we all sit down to play. One word more, and I have done.
In the solitude of my chamber I took from its hiding-place a withered
flower; once it had been a beautiful white rose, how beautiful, how
cherished, none knew so well as I. Long and steadfastly I gazed at it,
conjuring up the while a vision of that wild night, with its flying
clouds and its waving fir-trees, and the mocking moonlight shining
coldly on the gravel path, and the bitterness of that hour, the
bitterness of all that had yet fallen to my lot, and so I fell asleep.
And behold it seemed to be noon, midsummer-noon in a garden of flowers,
hot and bright and beautiful. The butterfly flitted in the sunshine,
and the wood-pigeon mourned sweetly and sadly in the shade. Little
children with laughing eyes played and rolled about upon the sward, and
ran up, warm and eager, to offer me posies of the choicest flowers. One
by one I refused them all, for amongst the pride of the garden there was
none to me like my own withered rose that I had cherished so long, and I
turned away from each as it was brought me, and pressed her closer to my
heart where she always lay.
Then, even as I clasped her she bloomed in her beauty once more, fresh
and pure and radiant as of old, steeping my very soul in fragrance, a
child of earth indeed, but wafting her sweetness up to heaven.
And I awoke, and prayed that it might not be all a dream.
THE END
_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London & Bungay._