Lady Gertrude talked incessantly and agreeably, but I was a very dull companion, and, being in a musing humour, would much rather have been alone. At length we saw the moon shining on the white walls of the villa. “I fear we have tired you with our childish party of pleasure,” said Lady Gertrude, with a malicious fling at my silence.
“Perhaps I am tired,” I replied, ingenuously. “Pleasures are fatiguing, especially when one is not accustomed to them.”
“Satirist!” said Lady Gertrude. “You come from the brilliant excitement of London, and what may be pleasure to us must beennuito you.”
“Nay, Lady Gertrude, let me tell you what a very clever and learned man, a Minister of State, said the other day at one of those great public ceremonial receptions which are the customary holidays of a Minister of State. ‘Life,’ said he, pensively, ‘would be tolerably agreeable if it were not for its amusements.’ He spoke of those ‘brilliant excitements,’ as you call them, which form the amusements of capitals. He would not have spoken so of the delight which Man can extract from a holiday with Nature. But tell me, you who have played so considerable a part in the world of fashion, do you prefer the drawing-rooms of London to the log-house by the lake?”
“Why,” said Lady Gertrude, honestly, and with a half-sigh; “I own I should be glad if Percival would consent to spend six months in the year, or even three, in London. However, what he likes I like. Providence has made us women of very pliable materials.”
“Has it?” said I; “that information is new to me—one lives to learn.” And here, as the pony stopped at the porch, I descended to offer my arm to the amiable charioteer.
Nothing worth recording took place the rest of the evening. Henry and the Painter played at billiards, Lady Gertrude and the Librarian at backgammon. Clara went into the billiard-room, seating herself there with her work: by some fond instinct of her loving nature she felt as if she ought not to waste the minutes yet vouchsafed to her—she was still with him who was all in all to her!
I took down ‘The Faithful Shepherdess,’ wishing to refresh my memory of passages which the scenes we had visited that day vaguely recalled to my mind. Looking over my shoulder, Percival guided me to the lines I was hunting after. This led to comparisons between ‘The Faithful Shepherdess’ and the ‘Comus,’ and thence to that startling contrast in the way of viewing, and in the mode of describing, rural nature, between the earlier English poets and those whom Dryden formed upon Gallic models, and so on into the pleasant clueless labyrinth of metaphysical criticism on the art of poetic genius. When we had parted for the night, and I regained my own room, I opened my window and looked forth on the moonlit gardens. A few minutes later, a shadow, moving slow, passed over the silvered ground, and, descending the terrace stairs, vanished among the breathless shrubs and slumbering flowers. I recognised the man who loved to make night his companion.
(To be continued.)
(To be continued.)
(To be continued.)