Chapter Four.“Hope.”“The wit, the vivid energy of sense,The truth of nature, which, with Attic point,And kind, well-temper’d satire, smoothly keen,Steals through the soul, and without pain corrects.”Yes, she it was of whom I had thought and dreamt, and built airy castles on imaginative foundations—châteaux en Espagne—that had almost crumbled into vacancy during those long and weary weeks, and monotonous months, of waiting, and watching, and longing!She entered; and the dull, disordered school-room, with its leaf-strewn floor all covered with broken branches and naked boughs of chopped-up evergreens, its mass of piled forms, its lumbering desks and hassocks, its broken windows, its down-hanging maps of colossal continents, seemed changed all at once, in a moment, as if by the touch of some magic wand, into an enchanted palace.The fairy princess had at last appeared, the sleeping beauty been awakened; and all was altered.The semi-transparent sprig of mistletoe, which Seraphine Dasher had mischievously suspended over the doorway, looked like a chaplet of pearls; the pointed stems of yew became frosted in silver; the variegated holly was transformed into branches of malachite, ornamented with a network of gold, its bright red berries glowing with a ruddy reflection as of interspersed rubies; while, above all, the glorious sunshine, streaming in through the shattered panes of the oriel at the eastern end, cast floods of quickening, mellow light, to the remotest corners of the room, making the floating atoms of dust turn to waves of powdery amber, and enriching every object it touched with its luminous rays. Even the very representations of Europe, Asia, and Africa, on the walls, lost their typographical characteristics, and shone out to me in the guise of tapestried chronicles, ancient as those of Bayeux, describing deeds of gallant chivalry—so my fancy pictured—and love, and knight-errantry, painted over with oriental arabesques in crimson gilding, the cunning handiwork of the potent sun-god. Her coming in effected all this to my mind.What a darling she looked, sitting there, with a pretty little scarlet and white sontag, of soft wool knitting, crossed over her bosom and clasped round her dainty, dainty waist; her busy fingers industriously weaving broad ivy garlands for the church columns, and her sweet, calm face bent earnestly over her task—the surrounding foliage, scattered here, there, and everywhere, bringing out her well-formed figure in relief, just like a picture in some rustic portrait frame! Micat inter omnes, as Virgil sang of “the young Marcellus,” his hero: she “glistened out before them all.”Of course she was introduced to me.“Mr Lorton—Miss Minnie Clyde.” Now, at last, I had met her and knew her name! What a pretty name she had, too, as little Miss Pimpernell had said! Just in keeping with its owner.As my name was pronounced, she raised her beautiful grey eyes from the garland in her lap; and I could perceive, from a sudden gleam of intelligence which shot through them for an instant, that I was at once recognised:—from my face, I’m sure, she must have noticed thatshehad not been forgotten.I was in heaven; I would not have relinquished my position, kneeling at her feet and stripping off ivy leaves for her use, no, not for a dukedom!Our conversation became again imperceptibly of a higher tone. Hers was light, sparkling, brilliant; and one could see that she possessed a fund of native drollery within herself, despite her demure looks and downcast eyes. She had a sweet, low voice, “that most excellent thing in woman;” while her light, silvery laughter rippled forth ever and anon, like a chime of well-tuned bells, enchaining me as would chords of Offenbach’s champagne music.In comparison with her, Lizzie Dangler’s prosy platitudes, which some deemed wit—Horner, par exemple—sank into nothingness, and Baby Blake, one of the “gushing” order of girlhood, appeared as a stick, or, rather, a too pliant sapling—her inane “yes’s” and lisping “no’s” having an opportunity of being “weighed in the balance,” and consequently, in my opinion, “found wanting.” All were mediocre beside her. Perhaps I was prejudiced; but, now, the remarks of the other girls seemed to me singularly silly.From light badinage, we got talking of literature. Some one, Mr Mawley the curate, I think, drew a parallel between Douglas Jerrold and Thackeray, describing both, in his blunt, dogmatic way, as cynics.To this I immediately demurred. In the first place, because Mawley was so antipathetical to me, that I dearly loved to combat his assertions; and, secondly, on account of his disparaging my beau ideal of all that is grand and good in a writer and in man.“You make a great mistake,” I said, “for Thackeray is a satirist pur et simple. Jerrold was a cynic, if you please, although he had a wonderful amount of kindly feeling even in his bitterest moods—indeed I would rather prefer calling him a one-sided advocate of the poor against the rich, than apply to him your opprobrious term.”“Well, cynic or satirist, I should like to know what great difference lies between the two?” the curate retorted, glad of an argument, and wishing, as usual, to display his critical acumen by demolishing me.“I will tell you with pleasure,” said I, not a bit “put out,” according to his evident wish and expectation, “and I will use the plainest language in my exposition, so that you may be able to understand me! A cynic, I take it, is one who talks or writes bitterly, in the gratification of a malicious temperament, merely for the sake of inflicting pain on the object of his attack, just as a bad-dispositioned boy will stick pins in a donkey, or persecute a frog, for the sheer sake of seeing it wince: a satirist, on the contrary, is a philosopher who ridicules traits of character, customs and mannerisms, with the intention of remedying existing evils, abolishing abuses, and reforming society—in the same way as a surgeon performs an operation to remove an injured limb, inflicting temporary pain on his patient, with the prospect of ultimate good resulting from it. I have never seen this definition given anywhere; consequently, as it is but my own private opinion, you need only take it for what it is worth.”“Thank you, Mr Lorton,” saidsomebody, giving me a gratefully intelligent look from a pair of deep, thinking grey eyes.“Oh, indeed! so that’s your opinion, Lorton?” put in Mr Mawley, as antagonistic as ever. “So that’s your opinion, is it? Iwilldo as you say, and take it for what it is worth—that is, keep my own still! You may be very sharp and clever, and all that sort of thing, my dear fellow; but I don’t see the difference between the two that you have so lucidly pointed out. Satire and cynicism are co-equal terms to my mind: your argument won’t persuade me, Lorton, although I must say that you are absolutely brilliant to-day. You should really start a school of Modern Literature, my dear fellow, and set up as a professor of the same!”“Please get my scissors, Frank,” said Miss Pimpernell, trying to stop our wordy warfare. I got them; but I had my return blow at the curate all the same.“I suppose you’d be one of my first pupils, Mr Mawley,” I said. “I think I could coach you up a little!”He was going to crush me with some of his sledge-hammer declamation, being thoroughly roused, when Bessie Dasher averted the storm, by entering the arena and changing the conversation to a broader footing.“How I dote on Thackeray!” she exclaimed with all her natural impulsiveness. “What a dear, delicious creature Becky Sharp is; and that funny old baronet, Sir Pitt something or other, too! When I first took upVanity FairI could not let it out of my hands until I finished it.”“That’s more than I can say,” said the curate. “I don’t like Thackeray. He cuts up every one and everything. Is not that a cynic for you?”“Not everybody,” said Min—I cannot call her anything else now—coming to my assistance, “not everybody, Mr Mawley. I think Thackeray, with all his satire and kindly laughter in his sleeve at persons that ought to be laughed down, has yet given us some of the most pathetic touches of human nature existing in English literature. There’s the old colonel inThe Newcomes, for instance. That little bit about his teaching his tiny grandson to say his prayers, before he put him into bed in his poor chamber in the Charter House, to which he was reduced, would make any one cry. And Henry Esmond, and Warrington, and Laura—where would you find more nobly-drawn characters than those?” and she stopped, out of breath with her defence of one of the greatest writers we have ever had, indignant, with such a pretty indignation, at his merits being questioned for a moment.“Of course I must bow to your decision, Miss Clyde,” said the curate, with one of those stock ceremonial bows that stood him in such good stead amongst the female community of the parish. He was a cunning fellow, Mawley. Knew which way his interest lay; and never went against the ladies if he could help it. “But,” he continued, “if we talk of pathos, there’s ‘the great master of fiction,’ Dickens; who can come up to him?”“Ah, yes! Mr Mawley,”—chorused the majority of the girls—“we quite agree with you: there’s nobody like Dickens!”It is a strange thing how perverse the divine sex is, in preferring confectionery to solid food; and superficial writers, to those who dive beneath the surface of society and expose its rottenness—like as they esteem Tupper’s weak-minded version of Solomon’s Proverbs beyond the best poetry that ever was written!I wasn’t going to be beaten by the curate, however, prattled he never so wisely with the cunning of the serpent-charmer. “I grant you,” said I, “that Dickens appeals oftener to our susceptible sympathies; but he isunrealin comparison with Thackeray. The one was a far more correct student of human nature than the other. Dickens selected exceptionalities and invested them with attributes which we never see possessed by their prototypes whom we may meet in the world. He gives us either caricature, or pictures of men and women seen through a rose-coloured medium: Thackeray, on the other hand, shows you lifeas it is. He takes you behind the scenes and lets you perceive for yourself how the ‘dummies’ and machinery are managed, how rough the distemper painting, all beauty from the front of ‘the house,’ looks on nearer inspection, how the ‘lifts’ work, and the ‘flats’ are pushed on; besides disclosing all the secrets connected with masks and ‘properties.’ He is not content in merely allowing you to witness the piece from before the curtain, in the full glory of that distance from the place of action which lends enchantment to the view, and with all the deceptive concomitants of music and limelights and Bengal fire! To adopt another illustration, I should say that Dickens was the John Leech of fictional literature, Thackeray its Hogarth. Even Jerrold, I think, in his most bitter, cynical moods, was truer to life and nature than Dickens. Did you ever read the former’sStory of a Feather, by the way?”“No,” answered Mawley, testily, “I can’t say I ever did; and I don’t think it likely I ever will.”“Well, I dare say you are quite right, Frank,” said the kindly voice of my usual ally little Miss Pimpernell, interposing just at the right time—as she always did, indeed—to throw oil on the troubled waters. “But, still, I like Dickens the best. Do you know, children,” she went on, looking round, as we all sat watching her dear old wrinkled face beaming cheerily on us through her spectacles, “do you know, children, I’ve no doubt you’ll laugh at me for telling you, but, when I first read ‘David Copperfield’—and I was an old woman then—I cried my eyes out over the account of the death of poor Dora’s little dog Gyp. Dear little fellow! Don’t you recollect how he crawled out of his tiny Chinese pagoda house, and licked his master’s hand and died? I think it’s the most affecting thing in fiction I ever read in my life.”“And I, too, dear Miss Pimpernell,” said Min, in her soft, low voice, which had a slight tremor as she spoke, and there was a misty look in her clear grey eyes—silent witnesses of the emotion that stirred her heart. “I shed more tears over poor Gyp than I can bear to think of now—except when I cried over little Tiny Tim, in the ‘Christmas Carol,’ where, you remember, the spirit told Uncle Scrooge that the cripple boy would die. That affected me equally, I believe; and I could not read it dry-eyed now.”“Nor I,” lisped Baby Blake, following suit, in order to keep up her reputation for sentimentality; “I would thob my eyth out!”“See,” quoted the curate, grandiloquently, “how ‘one touch of nature makes the whole world kin!’”“For my part,” exclaimed Miss Spight, who had taken no share in our conversation since we had dropped personalities, “I don’t see the use of people crying over the fabulous woes of a lot of fictitious persons that never existed, when there is such an amount of real grief and misery going on in the world.”“That is not brought home to us,” said Min, courageously; “but the troubles and trials of the people in fiction are; and I believe that every kind thought which a writer makes throb through our hearts, better enables us to pity the sorrows of actual persons.”“Bai-ey Je-ove!” exclaimed Horner, twisting his eye-glass round and making an observation for the first time—the discussion before had been apparently beyond his depth,—“Bai-ey Je-ove! Ju-ust what I was gaw-ing to say! Bai-ey Je-ove, yaas! But Miss Spight is much above human emawtion, you know, and all that sawt of thing, you know-ah!”“Besides,” continued Min, not taking any notice of our friend’s original remark I was glad to see, “one does not always cry over novels. I’m sure I’ve laughed more than I’ve wept over Dickens, and other authors.”“Ah!” said Lady Dasher, with a melancholy shake of her head, “life is too serious for merry-making! It is better to mourn than to rejoice, as I’ve often heard my poor dear papa say when he was alive.”“Nonsense, ma!” pertly said her daughter Seraphine; “you can’t believe that. I’m sure I’d rather laugh than cry, any day. And so would you, too, ma, in spite of your seriousness!”“Your mamma is quite right in some respects, my dear,” said little Miss Pimpernell. “We should not be always thinking of nothing but merry-making. Don’t you recollect those lines of my favourite Herrick?—“‘Time flies away fast!The while we never remember,How soon our life hereGrows old with the year,That dies in December.’”“Yes, I do, you cross old thing!” said the seraph, shaking her golden locks and laughing saucily; “and I remember also that your ‘favourite Herrick’ says something else about one’s ‘gathering rose-buds whilst one may.’”“You naughty girl!” said Miss Pimpernell, trying to look angry and frown at her; but the attempt was such a palpable pretence that we all laughed at her as much as the delinquent.“And what is your favourite style of poetry, Miss Clyde?” asked the curate, taking advantage of the introduction of Herrick to change the subject.And then there followed a chorus of discussion: Miss Spight declared she adored Wordsworth: Mr Mawley tried to show off his superiority, and I attempted to put him down; I believe I was jealous lest Min should agree with him.“Now, Frank,” exclaimed Miss Pimpernell, “I will not have any more sparring between you and Mr Mawley, for I’m sure you’ve argued enough. It is ‘the merry Christmas-time,’ you know; and we ought all to be at peace, and gay and happy, too! What do you say, girls?”“But what shall we do to be merry?” asked Bessie Dasher.“Ah! my dear,” groaned her mother; “it is not right to be foolishly ‘merry,’ as you call it. This season of the year is a very sad one, and we ought to be thinking, as my poor dear papa used to say, of what our Saviour did for us and the other world! We have now arrived at the end of another year, and it is very sad, very sad!”“What!” exclaimed Min, “wrong to be merry at Christmas? The vicar said in his sermon last Sunday, that our hearts ought to expand with joy at this time; and that we should try, not only to be glad and happy in ourselves, but also to make others glad and happy, too. It appears to me,” and her face flushed with excitement as she spoke, “a very erroneous idea of religion that would only associate it with gloom and sadness. The same Creator endowed us with the faculty to laugh as well as cry; and we must take poor comfort in him if we cannot be glad in his company, to which the Christmas season always brings us nearer and into more intimate connection, as it were.”“Bravo, my little champion!” said the vicar, who had again stolen in unperceived by us all. “That is the spirit of true Christianity. You have preached a more practical sermon than I, my dear.” Then, seeing her confusion at being thus singled out and her embarrassment at having, as she thought, been too forward in speaking out impulsively on the spur of the moment, the vicar created a diversion. “And now, young ladies,” he said, “as we are going to be merry, what shall we play at?”“Oh, puss in the corner!” cried Seraphine Dasher. “That will be delightful!”“With all my heart; puss in the corner be it,” said the vicar, who could be a boy again on fitting occasions, and play with the best of us. “Come, Mawley,” he added, “come and exert yourself; and help to pull these forms out of the way,” setting to work vigorously at the same time, himself.In another minute or two we were in the middle of a wild romp, wherein little Miss Pimpernell and the vicar were the most active participants—they showing themselves to be quite as active as the younger hands; while Miss Spight and Lady Dasher were the only idle spectators. Min at first did not join in, as she was not accustomed to the ways of us old habitués, but she presently participated, being soon as gay and noisy as any. What fun we had in blindfolding Horner, and manoeuvring so that he should rush into the arms of Miss Spight! What a shout of laughter there was when he exclaimed, clasping her the while, “Bai-ey Je-ove! Yaas, I’ve cawght you at lawst!”The look of pious horror which settled on the face of the elderly maiden was a study.Thus our working day ended; and it became time to separate and go home. I had the further happiness of seeing Min to her door, both of us living in the same direction.It was the same on the morrow, and on the morrow after that, for a whole week.Of course, we did not talk “Shakspeare and the musical glasses” always. Our discourse was generally composed of much lighter elements, especially when Mr Mawley and I did not come in contact—argument being then, naturally, as a dead letter. Our conversation during these peaceful interregnums mainly consisted in friendly banter, parish news, and gossip. Scandal Miss Pimpernell never permitted; indeed, no one would have had the heart to say an ill-natured thing of anybody else in her presence.Day after day Min and I were closely associated together, learning to know more of one another than we might have acquired in years of ordinary society intercourse; day after day, I would watch her dainty figure, and study her beautiful face, and gaze into the fathomless depths of her honest grey eyes, my love towards her increasing by such rapid strides, that, at length, I almost worshipped the very ground on which she trod.And so the week wore by, until Christmas Eve arrived. Then our task was finished, and we decorated Saint Canon’s old church with all the wreaths and garlands, the crosses and illuminations, on which we had been so busy in the school-room; making it look quite modern in its festal preparation for the ensuing day, when the result of our handiwork would be displayed to the admiration, we hoped, of the congregation at large.On parting with Min late in the evening at her door—for our work at the church had occupied us longer than usual—I thought it the happiest Christmas Eve I had ever passed; and, as I went to bed that night, I wondered, dreamily, if the morning’s sun would rise for another as happy a day, while I prayed to God that He would shape my life in accordance with the fervent desire of my heart.
“The wit, the vivid energy of sense,The truth of nature, which, with Attic point,And kind, well-temper’d satire, smoothly keen,Steals through the soul, and without pain corrects.”
“The wit, the vivid energy of sense,The truth of nature, which, with Attic point,And kind, well-temper’d satire, smoothly keen,Steals through the soul, and without pain corrects.”
Yes, she it was of whom I had thought and dreamt, and built airy castles on imaginative foundations—châteaux en Espagne—that had almost crumbled into vacancy during those long and weary weeks, and monotonous months, of waiting, and watching, and longing!
She entered; and the dull, disordered school-room, with its leaf-strewn floor all covered with broken branches and naked boughs of chopped-up evergreens, its mass of piled forms, its lumbering desks and hassocks, its broken windows, its down-hanging maps of colossal continents, seemed changed all at once, in a moment, as if by the touch of some magic wand, into an enchanted palace.
The fairy princess had at last appeared, the sleeping beauty been awakened; and all was altered.
The semi-transparent sprig of mistletoe, which Seraphine Dasher had mischievously suspended over the doorway, looked like a chaplet of pearls; the pointed stems of yew became frosted in silver; the variegated holly was transformed into branches of malachite, ornamented with a network of gold, its bright red berries glowing with a ruddy reflection as of interspersed rubies; while, above all, the glorious sunshine, streaming in through the shattered panes of the oriel at the eastern end, cast floods of quickening, mellow light, to the remotest corners of the room, making the floating atoms of dust turn to waves of powdery amber, and enriching every object it touched with its luminous rays. Even the very representations of Europe, Asia, and Africa, on the walls, lost their typographical characteristics, and shone out to me in the guise of tapestried chronicles, ancient as those of Bayeux, describing deeds of gallant chivalry—so my fancy pictured—and love, and knight-errantry, painted over with oriental arabesques in crimson gilding, the cunning handiwork of the potent sun-god. Her coming in effected all this to my mind.
What a darling she looked, sitting there, with a pretty little scarlet and white sontag, of soft wool knitting, crossed over her bosom and clasped round her dainty, dainty waist; her busy fingers industriously weaving broad ivy garlands for the church columns, and her sweet, calm face bent earnestly over her task—the surrounding foliage, scattered here, there, and everywhere, bringing out her well-formed figure in relief, just like a picture in some rustic portrait frame! Micat inter omnes, as Virgil sang of “the young Marcellus,” his hero: she “glistened out before them all.”
Of course she was introduced to me.
“Mr Lorton—Miss Minnie Clyde.” Now, at last, I had met her and knew her name! What a pretty name she had, too, as little Miss Pimpernell had said! Just in keeping with its owner.
As my name was pronounced, she raised her beautiful grey eyes from the garland in her lap; and I could perceive, from a sudden gleam of intelligence which shot through them for an instant, that I was at once recognised:—from my face, I’m sure, she must have noticed thatshehad not been forgotten.
I was in heaven; I would not have relinquished my position, kneeling at her feet and stripping off ivy leaves for her use, no, not for a dukedom!
Our conversation became again imperceptibly of a higher tone. Hers was light, sparkling, brilliant; and one could see that she possessed a fund of native drollery within herself, despite her demure looks and downcast eyes. She had a sweet, low voice, “that most excellent thing in woman;” while her light, silvery laughter rippled forth ever and anon, like a chime of well-tuned bells, enchaining me as would chords of Offenbach’s champagne music.
In comparison with her, Lizzie Dangler’s prosy platitudes, which some deemed wit—Horner, par exemple—sank into nothingness, and Baby Blake, one of the “gushing” order of girlhood, appeared as a stick, or, rather, a too pliant sapling—her inane “yes’s” and lisping “no’s” having an opportunity of being “weighed in the balance,” and consequently, in my opinion, “found wanting.” All were mediocre beside her. Perhaps I was prejudiced; but, now, the remarks of the other girls seemed to me singularly silly.
From light badinage, we got talking of literature. Some one, Mr Mawley the curate, I think, drew a parallel between Douglas Jerrold and Thackeray, describing both, in his blunt, dogmatic way, as cynics.
To this I immediately demurred. In the first place, because Mawley was so antipathetical to me, that I dearly loved to combat his assertions; and, secondly, on account of his disparaging my beau ideal of all that is grand and good in a writer and in man.
“You make a great mistake,” I said, “for Thackeray is a satirist pur et simple. Jerrold was a cynic, if you please, although he had a wonderful amount of kindly feeling even in his bitterest moods—indeed I would rather prefer calling him a one-sided advocate of the poor against the rich, than apply to him your opprobrious term.”
“Well, cynic or satirist, I should like to know what great difference lies between the two?” the curate retorted, glad of an argument, and wishing, as usual, to display his critical acumen by demolishing me.
“I will tell you with pleasure,” said I, not a bit “put out,” according to his evident wish and expectation, “and I will use the plainest language in my exposition, so that you may be able to understand me! A cynic, I take it, is one who talks or writes bitterly, in the gratification of a malicious temperament, merely for the sake of inflicting pain on the object of his attack, just as a bad-dispositioned boy will stick pins in a donkey, or persecute a frog, for the sheer sake of seeing it wince: a satirist, on the contrary, is a philosopher who ridicules traits of character, customs and mannerisms, with the intention of remedying existing evils, abolishing abuses, and reforming society—in the same way as a surgeon performs an operation to remove an injured limb, inflicting temporary pain on his patient, with the prospect of ultimate good resulting from it. I have never seen this definition given anywhere; consequently, as it is but my own private opinion, you need only take it for what it is worth.”
“Thank you, Mr Lorton,” saidsomebody, giving me a gratefully intelligent look from a pair of deep, thinking grey eyes.
“Oh, indeed! so that’s your opinion, Lorton?” put in Mr Mawley, as antagonistic as ever. “So that’s your opinion, is it? Iwilldo as you say, and take it for what it is worth—that is, keep my own still! You may be very sharp and clever, and all that sort of thing, my dear fellow; but I don’t see the difference between the two that you have so lucidly pointed out. Satire and cynicism are co-equal terms to my mind: your argument won’t persuade me, Lorton, although I must say that you are absolutely brilliant to-day. You should really start a school of Modern Literature, my dear fellow, and set up as a professor of the same!”
“Please get my scissors, Frank,” said Miss Pimpernell, trying to stop our wordy warfare. I got them; but I had my return blow at the curate all the same.
“I suppose you’d be one of my first pupils, Mr Mawley,” I said. “I think I could coach you up a little!”
He was going to crush me with some of his sledge-hammer declamation, being thoroughly roused, when Bessie Dasher averted the storm, by entering the arena and changing the conversation to a broader footing.
“How I dote on Thackeray!” she exclaimed with all her natural impulsiveness. “What a dear, delicious creature Becky Sharp is; and that funny old baronet, Sir Pitt something or other, too! When I first took upVanity FairI could not let it out of my hands until I finished it.”
“That’s more than I can say,” said the curate. “I don’t like Thackeray. He cuts up every one and everything. Is not that a cynic for you?”
“Not everybody,” said Min—I cannot call her anything else now—coming to my assistance, “not everybody, Mr Mawley. I think Thackeray, with all his satire and kindly laughter in his sleeve at persons that ought to be laughed down, has yet given us some of the most pathetic touches of human nature existing in English literature. There’s the old colonel inThe Newcomes, for instance. That little bit about his teaching his tiny grandson to say his prayers, before he put him into bed in his poor chamber in the Charter House, to which he was reduced, would make any one cry. And Henry Esmond, and Warrington, and Laura—where would you find more nobly-drawn characters than those?” and she stopped, out of breath with her defence of one of the greatest writers we have ever had, indignant, with such a pretty indignation, at his merits being questioned for a moment.
“Of course I must bow to your decision, Miss Clyde,” said the curate, with one of those stock ceremonial bows that stood him in such good stead amongst the female community of the parish. He was a cunning fellow, Mawley. Knew which way his interest lay; and never went against the ladies if he could help it. “But,” he continued, “if we talk of pathos, there’s ‘the great master of fiction,’ Dickens; who can come up to him?”
“Ah, yes! Mr Mawley,”—chorused the majority of the girls—“we quite agree with you: there’s nobody like Dickens!”
It is a strange thing how perverse the divine sex is, in preferring confectionery to solid food; and superficial writers, to those who dive beneath the surface of society and expose its rottenness—like as they esteem Tupper’s weak-minded version of Solomon’s Proverbs beyond the best poetry that ever was written!
I wasn’t going to be beaten by the curate, however, prattled he never so wisely with the cunning of the serpent-charmer. “I grant you,” said I, “that Dickens appeals oftener to our susceptible sympathies; but he isunrealin comparison with Thackeray. The one was a far more correct student of human nature than the other. Dickens selected exceptionalities and invested them with attributes which we never see possessed by their prototypes whom we may meet in the world. He gives us either caricature, or pictures of men and women seen through a rose-coloured medium: Thackeray, on the other hand, shows you lifeas it is. He takes you behind the scenes and lets you perceive for yourself how the ‘dummies’ and machinery are managed, how rough the distemper painting, all beauty from the front of ‘the house,’ looks on nearer inspection, how the ‘lifts’ work, and the ‘flats’ are pushed on; besides disclosing all the secrets connected with masks and ‘properties.’ He is not content in merely allowing you to witness the piece from before the curtain, in the full glory of that distance from the place of action which lends enchantment to the view, and with all the deceptive concomitants of music and limelights and Bengal fire! To adopt another illustration, I should say that Dickens was the John Leech of fictional literature, Thackeray its Hogarth. Even Jerrold, I think, in his most bitter, cynical moods, was truer to life and nature than Dickens. Did you ever read the former’sStory of a Feather, by the way?”
“No,” answered Mawley, testily, “I can’t say I ever did; and I don’t think it likely I ever will.”
“Well, I dare say you are quite right, Frank,” said the kindly voice of my usual ally little Miss Pimpernell, interposing just at the right time—as she always did, indeed—to throw oil on the troubled waters. “But, still, I like Dickens the best. Do you know, children,” she went on, looking round, as we all sat watching her dear old wrinkled face beaming cheerily on us through her spectacles, “do you know, children, I’ve no doubt you’ll laugh at me for telling you, but, when I first read ‘David Copperfield’—and I was an old woman then—I cried my eyes out over the account of the death of poor Dora’s little dog Gyp. Dear little fellow! Don’t you recollect how he crawled out of his tiny Chinese pagoda house, and licked his master’s hand and died? I think it’s the most affecting thing in fiction I ever read in my life.”
“And I, too, dear Miss Pimpernell,” said Min, in her soft, low voice, which had a slight tremor as she spoke, and there was a misty look in her clear grey eyes—silent witnesses of the emotion that stirred her heart. “I shed more tears over poor Gyp than I can bear to think of now—except when I cried over little Tiny Tim, in the ‘Christmas Carol,’ where, you remember, the spirit told Uncle Scrooge that the cripple boy would die. That affected me equally, I believe; and I could not read it dry-eyed now.”
“Nor I,” lisped Baby Blake, following suit, in order to keep up her reputation for sentimentality; “I would thob my eyth out!”
“See,” quoted the curate, grandiloquently, “how ‘one touch of nature makes the whole world kin!’”
“For my part,” exclaimed Miss Spight, who had taken no share in our conversation since we had dropped personalities, “I don’t see the use of people crying over the fabulous woes of a lot of fictitious persons that never existed, when there is such an amount of real grief and misery going on in the world.”
“That is not brought home to us,” said Min, courageously; “but the troubles and trials of the people in fiction are; and I believe that every kind thought which a writer makes throb through our hearts, better enables us to pity the sorrows of actual persons.”
“Bai-ey Je-ove!” exclaimed Horner, twisting his eye-glass round and making an observation for the first time—the discussion before had been apparently beyond his depth,—“Bai-ey Je-ove! Ju-ust what I was gaw-ing to say! Bai-ey Je-ove, yaas! But Miss Spight is much above human emawtion, you know, and all that sawt of thing, you know-ah!”
“Besides,” continued Min, not taking any notice of our friend’s original remark I was glad to see, “one does not always cry over novels. I’m sure I’ve laughed more than I’ve wept over Dickens, and other authors.”
“Ah!” said Lady Dasher, with a melancholy shake of her head, “life is too serious for merry-making! It is better to mourn than to rejoice, as I’ve often heard my poor dear papa say when he was alive.”
“Nonsense, ma!” pertly said her daughter Seraphine; “you can’t believe that. I’m sure I’d rather laugh than cry, any day. And so would you, too, ma, in spite of your seriousness!”
“Your mamma is quite right in some respects, my dear,” said little Miss Pimpernell. “We should not be always thinking of nothing but merry-making. Don’t you recollect those lines of my favourite Herrick?—
“‘Time flies away fast!The while we never remember,How soon our life hereGrows old with the year,That dies in December.’”
“‘Time flies away fast!The while we never remember,How soon our life hereGrows old with the year,That dies in December.’”
“Yes, I do, you cross old thing!” said the seraph, shaking her golden locks and laughing saucily; “and I remember also that your ‘favourite Herrick’ says something else about one’s ‘gathering rose-buds whilst one may.’”
“You naughty girl!” said Miss Pimpernell, trying to look angry and frown at her; but the attempt was such a palpable pretence that we all laughed at her as much as the delinquent.
“And what is your favourite style of poetry, Miss Clyde?” asked the curate, taking advantage of the introduction of Herrick to change the subject.
And then there followed a chorus of discussion: Miss Spight declared she adored Wordsworth: Mr Mawley tried to show off his superiority, and I attempted to put him down; I believe I was jealous lest Min should agree with him.
“Now, Frank,” exclaimed Miss Pimpernell, “I will not have any more sparring between you and Mr Mawley, for I’m sure you’ve argued enough. It is ‘the merry Christmas-time,’ you know; and we ought all to be at peace, and gay and happy, too! What do you say, girls?”
“But what shall we do to be merry?” asked Bessie Dasher.
“Ah! my dear,” groaned her mother; “it is not right to be foolishly ‘merry,’ as you call it. This season of the year is a very sad one, and we ought to be thinking, as my poor dear papa used to say, of what our Saviour did for us and the other world! We have now arrived at the end of another year, and it is very sad, very sad!”
“What!” exclaimed Min, “wrong to be merry at Christmas? The vicar said in his sermon last Sunday, that our hearts ought to expand with joy at this time; and that we should try, not only to be glad and happy in ourselves, but also to make others glad and happy, too. It appears to me,” and her face flushed with excitement as she spoke, “a very erroneous idea of religion that would only associate it with gloom and sadness. The same Creator endowed us with the faculty to laugh as well as cry; and we must take poor comfort in him if we cannot be glad in his company, to which the Christmas season always brings us nearer and into more intimate connection, as it were.”
“Bravo, my little champion!” said the vicar, who had again stolen in unperceived by us all. “That is the spirit of true Christianity. You have preached a more practical sermon than I, my dear.” Then, seeing her confusion at being thus singled out and her embarrassment at having, as she thought, been too forward in speaking out impulsively on the spur of the moment, the vicar created a diversion. “And now, young ladies,” he said, “as we are going to be merry, what shall we play at?”
“Oh, puss in the corner!” cried Seraphine Dasher. “That will be delightful!”
“With all my heart; puss in the corner be it,” said the vicar, who could be a boy again on fitting occasions, and play with the best of us. “Come, Mawley,” he added, “come and exert yourself; and help to pull these forms out of the way,” setting to work vigorously at the same time, himself.
In another minute or two we were in the middle of a wild romp, wherein little Miss Pimpernell and the vicar were the most active participants—they showing themselves to be quite as active as the younger hands; while Miss Spight and Lady Dasher were the only idle spectators. Min at first did not join in, as she was not accustomed to the ways of us old habitués, but she presently participated, being soon as gay and noisy as any. What fun we had in blindfolding Horner, and manoeuvring so that he should rush into the arms of Miss Spight! What a shout of laughter there was when he exclaimed, clasping her the while, “Bai-ey Je-ove! Yaas, I’ve cawght you at lawst!”
The look of pious horror which settled on the face of the elderly maiden was a study.
Thus our working day ended; and it became time to separate and go home. I had the further happiness of seeing Min to her door, both of us living in the same direction.
It was the same on the morrow, and on the morrow after that, for a whole week.
Of course, we did not talk “Shakspeare and the musical glasses” always. Our discourse was generally composed of much lighter elements, especially when Mr Mawley and I did not come in contact—argument being then, naturally, as a dead letter. Our conversation during these peaceful interregnums mainly consisted in friendly banter, parish news, and gossip. Scandal Miss Pimpernell never permitted; indeed, no one would have had the heart to say an ill-natured thing of anybody else in her presence.
Day after day Min and I were closely associated together, learning to know more of one another than we might have acquired in years of ordinary society intercourse; day after day, I would watch her dainty figure, and study her beautiful face, and gaze into the fathomless depths of her honest grey eyes, my love towards her increasing by such rapid strides, that, at length, I almost worshipped the very ground on which she trod.
And so the week wore by, until Christmas Eve arrived. Then our task was finished, and we decorated Saint Canon’s old church with all the wreaths and garlands, the crosses and illuminations, on which we had been so busy in the school-room; making it look quite modern in its festal preparation for the ensuing day, when the result of our handiwork would be displayed to the admiration, we hoped, of the congregation at large.
On parting with Min late in the evening at her door—for our work at the church had occupied us longer than usual—I thought it the happiest Christmas Eve I had ever passed; and, as I went to bed that night, I wondered, dreamily, if the morning’s sun would rise for another as happy a day, while I prayed to God that He would shape my life in accordance with the fervent desire of my heart.
Chapter Five.“Joy.”“Love took up the glass of Time, and turn’d it in his glowing hands;Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the chords with might;Smote the chord of self that, trembling, pass’d in music out of sight!”It was a regular joyous, jolly, old-fashioned Christmas morning: bright, sparkling, exhilarating.Just sufficient snow had fallen during the night to give that semblance of winter to the house-tops and hedge-rows, with a faint white powdering of the roadway and pavement, which adds so much to the quondam season of family gatherings, merrymakings, and plum-pudding; and this, King Frost had hardened by his patent adamantine process, so that it might not cause any inconvenience to foot passengers or lose its virgin freshness; while, at the same time, he decked and bedizened each separate twig and branch of the poor, leafless, skeleton trees with rare festal jewels and ear-drops of glittering icicles; besides weaving fantastic devices of goblin castles and airy, feathery foliage on the window panes, fairy armies in martial array and delicate gnome-tracery—transforming their appearance from that of ordinary glass into brilliantly-embroidered flakes of transparent, lucent crystal. Ah me! Jack Frost is a cunning enchanter: his will is all-powerful, his taste wondrous.The clanging church bells were merrily ringing in “the day of glad tidings,” as our good vicar styled it, when I jumped out of bed and looked out to see what the weather was like. It was exactly as I could have wished—if I had had any choice in the matter—Christmas all over!A little robin acquaintance, who never omitted his daily call at my window-ledge for his matutinal crumbs, was stretching his tiny crimson throat to its fullest extent, with quivering heart-notes of choral song, from a solitary poplar-tree in the adjacent garden on which my room out-looked, making the still air re-echo with his melody; my old retriever, Catch, a good dog and true, was pawing and scratching at the door to be admitted, in his customary way, and sniffing a cordial welcome, as he wondered and grumbled, in the most intelligible doggy language, at my being so late in taking him out for his preprandial walk—when it was such a fine morning, too! I heard the maid wishing me a cheery “Merry Christmas, sir!” as she left my hot water; so, it is not to be wondered that, after I had had the moral courage to plunge into my cold tub, dressing afterwards in a subsequent glow, I became infected with the buoyant spirit of all these social surroundings; and felt as light-hearted and “seasonable” as Santa Claus and his wintry comrades, the church bells, little robin redbreast, dog Catch, and Bridget the maid, could either inspire or expect.Dog Catch and I sallied forth for our walk—I, cheerful, and drinking in healthy draughts of the fresh, frosty aether; he with great red tongue lolling out, as he trotted along in front of me, coming back every second step and looking up into my face with a broad grin on his jaws and a roguish glance in his brown eyes—I suppose at some funny canine joke or other, which he could not permit me to share—or else, darting backwards and forwards, gleefully barking and making sundry feints and dashes at me; or, prancing up in his elephantine bounds, with felonious intentions regarding my walking stick, which he considered he had a much better right to carry than myself.We had lots of meetings and greetings when strolling along.First, there was the gardener’s dog at the corner, an old chum of Catch’s, who passed the time of day to us with a cheerful bow-wow; although I was surprised to see that he had not “a posy tied to his tail,” according to the orthodox adage of typical smartness. Then there was the milkman’s dog, a gaunt retriever like mine, but of a very bad disposition, and a surly brute withal. He and Catch were deadly foes, as is frequently the case with dogs of the same breed; so, of course, they could never meet without quarrelling: on this occasion they exchanged ferocious challenges, and parted with signs and symptoms of unmitigated contempt on both sides, expressed by growls and barks, tail risings, and mane upliftings.Further on, we encountered Mrs O’Flannagan, an Irish lady, who kept the fruit stall at the corner by the cross roads. She was dressed, as neatly as a new pin, in an “illigant” Connemara cloak, which seemed to be donned for the first time, besides a bran new bonnet; and, thanks to “elbow grease,” her peachy, soap-scrubbed cheeks shone again. She was returning from early chapel, whither she had gone to mass and confession; and where I trust she had received absolution for her little peccadilloes. I’ve no doubt shedidget absolution, for she told me that Father Macmanus was “a raal gintleman.”Then Catch chased a roving cat until it got within the neighbouring shelter of its domiciliary railings, whence it me-ai-ouwed to him, through all the vowels of pussy’s vocabulary, a Christmas compliment—with, probably, a curse tacked on to the tail of it, or that “phoo! phoo! phiz!” meant nothing. But the feline expletives were all thrown away; for Catch was only “full of fun and with nobody to play with him,” like Peter Mooney’s goose, and had only chased pussy in the natural exuberance of his spirits, having no “hard feelings” towards her, or any desire, I know, to injure her soft tabby fur.We next came across old Shuffler, the house-agent, waddling along, with his sound eye rolling buoyantly on its axis, while the artificial orb glared steadily forward in a fixed, glassy stare.“Bootiful weether!” said he, cordially, to me, touching his hat—“bootiful weether, sir!”“Itisa fine day,” I responded. “A merry Christmas to you, Mr Shuffler.”“Same to you, sir, and many on ’em,” he replied, courteously.“Thank you, Shuffler,” I said, satisfied with the colloquy, “but I must now say good day!”“Good day, and a ’appy noo year to you,” answered he, passing on his way. Really, everybody appeared to be very civil and good natured to-day; and everything joyous and rose-coloured! Was it owing to the bright morning, or to the fact of its being Christmas, or to the sweet feelings I had lying hidden in my heart anent my darling?I cannot tell: can you?After a time Catch and I reached the river. It was not now rolling by, a muddy, silent, whilom sluggish, whilom busy stream. It was quite transformed in its appearance and resembled more some frozen arctic stream than the old Thames which I knew so well. Far as the eye could reach, it was covered with sheets of broken ice, again congealed together and piled up with snow—so many little bergs, that had been born at Great Marlow and Hampton, and other spots above the locks; gradually increasing in size and bulk as they span round and swept by on the current, until they should reach the bridges below. Then, they would, perhaps, be formed into one great icefield, stretching from bank to bank, whereon a grand bullock-roasting festival might be held, or a fancy fair instituted, as happened in the reign of James, the king, “of ever pious memory:” that is, if my chronology be right and my memory not at fault, as may very possibly be the case.Doggy did not mind the ice a bit, however. He plunged in, time after time, to fetch out my in-thrown stick, with a frisky bound; emerging after the performance with ice-pendants to his glossy, silken ears and coat smartly curled, as if he had just paid a visit to Truefitt’s, and been manipulated by the dexterous hands of one of the assistants at that celebrated establishment, armed with the crinal tongs and anybody’s best macassar.By-and-by we returned; and whom should I then meet on my way home but, positively, my eye-glass acquaintance of Downing Street. Fancy his being out before nine o’clock in the morning! It was an unparalleled occurrence.“Hullo, Horner!” I sang out, “’morning, old fellow. Compliments of the season!”“Bai-ey Je-ove! Lorton, how you stawtled me—’do!”“You don’t mean to say,” I asked, on getting closer to him, “that you’ve actually taken to early rising?”“No, ’pon honah, I asshaw you, my deah fellah, no!” he replied, quite excitedly. “No, I asshaw you, no,” he repeated.“Well, then, what on earth makes you come out at this early unearthly hour?” I said.“Oh—ah! you see—ah, my deah fellah,” he answered, “it was all those confawnded little bahds and the bells kicking up such a raow; that, ’pon honah, I couldn’t sleep and so I came out. I asshaw you it was all those bweastwy little bahds and the bells!”“At all events, I must congratulate you on your reformation,” I said.“Yaas? But it was all those bweastwy little bahds and the bells, you know; and it’s only once a ye-ah you know, Lorton,” he added.“So you will never do so again till next time—is that what you mean, Horner?” I asked.“Yaas! But, bai-ey Je-ove, I say, Lorton, my deah fellah, were the Clydes those ladies in hawf-mawning, eh?” said he, smiling feebly in his usual suave manner. He thought he had got hold of a grand joke at my expense.However, I was not in the least angry with him. I felt too happy to have lost my temper with any one, especially Horner, whom I generally regarded as a poor creature to be tolerated rather than blamed.“Did you ever hear, Horner,” said I, “how Peabody made his first fortune?”“No, ’pon honah, I asshaw you, no.”“Well, then, I’ll tell you, Horner,” said I. “It was by minding his own business, my dear fellow.”“Bai-ey Je-ove!” he ejaculated, adding, after a pause, “Weally, Lorton, you dawn’t mean it?”“I suppose,” I continued, “that you are also just as ignorant again how Mr Peabody made his second and greater fortune, eh?”“Yaas,” he drawled out.“Ah,” said I, “he gotthatby letting other people’s business alone!”“Bai-ey Je-ove!” said Horner, quite staggered at this second blow. “Vewy amusing anecdote, indeed! Thank you, Lorton. Much obwiged, and all that sawt of thing, for the in-fawmation. Yaas, bai-ey Je-ove! And so I’ll say good day. Good day, Lorton; good day to you!” and he started off, with a quick step, in the very opposite direction to that which he had been previously going. I went on homeward, with Catch following obediently at my heels.Which way did we go?Can you not guess, or must I have to tell you?How very obtuse some persons are!Why, by The Terrace, of course. Was it not there that Min lived; and might I not chance to get a glance from her love-speaking, soft grey eyes? Only one glance—and I would be amply repaid!I passed by her house. Yes, there she was at the window, attending to her flowers and carefully shielding a much-prized little maidenhair fern with a bell glass from the rays of the sun, which beamed as though Phoebus had mistaken the season and thought it a summer day.She saw me as I sauntered by, recognising me with a little nod and smile and a sudden heightening of colour; and came to the door. Of course I went up the steps and spoke to her.Youwould have proceeded on your way with a passing bow? Oh, yes!“Good morning, Mr Lorton,” she said. “How very early you are out to be sure! I thought gentlemen were always lazy, but you’re an exception to the rule, it seems;” and her soft grey eyes sparkled.“Well, I don’t know that, Miss Clyde,” I said. “I suppose I’m just as lazy as the rest. I only came out to give my old doggy a walk and a dip, as I generally do every morning before breakfast. If it were not for him, I do not believe I would get up sooner than anybody else; but he’s such a pertinacious fellow that he won’t be denied his walk, always rousing me up at eight o’clock ‘sharp.’ Would you believe it, he brings my boots up to my door, and it is a trick he taught himself!”“Dear old doggy,” she said, stooping down and patting his head. “What a nice sagacious fellow you are! Come here, sir, and give me your paw! Now, shake hands. Doggy, do you like me?” Catch could tell a friend at once; so looking up, he licked her hand, expressing, as intelligently as possible, that he was pleased to make her acquaintance. “How I love dogs!” she ejaculated, rising up again.“Do you!” said I. “Ah, Miss Clyde! ‘Love me, love my dog.’”“What nonsense, Mr Lorton!” she said, with a warm blush tinting her cheek. “But, I declare you haven’t wished me the compliments of the season yet. How very ungallant you are! I will set you an example—a merry Christmas, Mr Lorton!”“A thousand to you, Miss Clyde; and each happier than the last!” I said.“Oh dear, dear!” she exclaimed in mimic dismay; “I am sure I would not care about having so many as that! Fancy a thousand Christmases—why, what an old, old woman I should be then!”“And a very nice old woman, too,” said I.“Merci pour le compliment, Monsieur,” she replied, making me an elaborate curtsey and laughing merrily. “And what have you got there?” she asked, pointing to a little bunch of violets that I was extracting from my overcoat pocket, and which I had procured for her when Catch met his friend the gardener’s dog.“I got them for you, Miss Clyde,” said I, somewhat bashfully; “and—and—”“Oh,thankyou, Mr Lorton,” she said, quite pleased. “I love violets more than any other flower. You could not have given me a nicer present. I was only wishing for some just now. But, I hear mamma coming down stairs; so, as I’ve not made the tea yet, I must go in—good-bye!”“Good-bye,” I echoed, clasping her tiny hand in mine. “Good-bye, and many good wishes for the day,my darling!” I courageously added the last two words, lowering my voice over them, as she gently closed the door.She was not offended, if shehadheard the term of endearment I used, for she gave me another nice little bow and smile from the window. Still I think shedidhear me. I fancied I saw a conscious look in the dancing grey eyes, a blush yet lingering on her damask cheek.I went home with joy in my heart—joy which fed upon itself and increased each moment. Don’t you remember what Herder says? Let but the heart once awake, and wave follows wave of newborn feelings—“So bald sich das Herz ergiesst,Strömt Welle auf Welle!”I only know that I was as happy as possible, and astonished everybody by the breakfast I ate.You fancy, perhaps, that I wasn’t really in love, or I wouldn’t probably have been hungry? Nonsense! Let me tell you that happy lovers are always hungry, and have great appetites. It is only your poor, miserable, disappointed suitors, who are in a state of suspense, that go about with a hang-dog look and cannot eat. I firmly believe that Shakespeare intended to convey the idea that Valentine was mad, or he would never have put into his mouth such ridiculous words as those, that he could “break his fast, dine, sup, and sleep, upon the very naked name of love!” If that gentleman of Verona had been sane knowing how his passion was reciprocated and that his lady loved him in return, he would have had just as good an appetite as I had that morning; when, joyous as a bird, I was as hungry as a hunter.As for dog Catch, you should have seen how he galloped into his oatmeal porridge after his walk—how the oatmeal porridge galloped into him would, however, be a more correct form of expression. You should have only seen him, that’s all!Next came church; and, of all occasions when church-going strikes even an uninterested spectator, generally lacking in religious zeal, with feelings of unwonted emotion, commend me to Christmas day. Then, to paraphrase the well-known lines of the poet, those in the habit of being regularly present at worship “went the more;” while those go now “who never went before.” People make a practice of visiting church on that day who seldom, if ever, attend a religious service at any other time, taking the year all through. It is like the wedding feast to which the lame, the halt, and the blind were invited. Every one goes then; every class and clan is represented.Saint Canon’s was a sight. Its garland-twined oaken columns, its wreath-hung galleries, its scroll-work in the chancel—where “Unto us a son is born,” and the message of glad tidings, which the shepherds of Bethlehem first heard when they “watched their flocks by night,” and saw the star in the east, two thousand years ago, shone forth in blazonments of red and purple and gold—all reminded the congregation of the festival they had assembled to commemorate; the day of peace and good-will to all, that had dawned for them once more, as I trust it will dawn again and again for us yet on many more future anniversaries. The place, too, was crammed, contrary to Lady Dasher’s fears concerning the spread of unbelief and the degeneracy of the present age. Everybody was there that could go at all, for it was a year in which we had to be specially mindful of mercies vouchsafed to us. Even old Shuffler, who had not been seen inside a place of public worship before within the memory of man, was not an absentee.I was not thinking of him, however, nor of the display which the decorations made, nor of the congregation—indeed, I hardly attended to the service. All my thoughts were centred on Min.A madonna-like face, a pair of honest, steadfast, speaking, grey eyes were ever before me; although I could not actually see her, except when we stood up during the service, according to the ordinances of the rubric, as she sat a long way off. Notwithstanding my usual attachment towards them, I felt inclined to quarrel with the high pews that hid her from my sight; and, I’m afraid, despised Bishop Burnet for his innovation. The vicar, they told me afterwards, preached a simple, beautiful sermon, that struck home to the hearts of every one present; but I heard none of it. My sermon was in my heart, and bore for its text one little word of four letters. O Min, Min! you had a good deal to answer for.“Long was the good man’s sermon,Yet it seemed not so to me;For he spoke of Ruth the beautiful,And still I thought of thee.“Long was the prayer he uttered,Yet it seemed not so to me;For in my heart I prayed with him,And still I thought of thee!”After service, of course everybody met everybody else, each of their own respective little world, at the church door, exchanging those good wishes and seasonable greetings proper to the day.There was a grand throng without the porch. Horner was there. It would have been nothing at all without him and his eye-glass. He did not appear to bear me any hard feelings, I was glad to see, for my unkindness of the morning. He nodded affably, and said “’do!” to me, in his usual way, as if he had not met me before.Min and her mother did not linger as did the other parishioners; so, I had only an opportunity of a passing bow, without that other tender little hand-clasp which I had hoped for. But she looked at me, and that was something.Lady Dasher, however, stopped for a minute or two; so did her daughters.“Beautiful weather for Christmas, Lady Dasher,” hazarded I. She evidently did not agree with me, for she looked about her mournfully, with a down-drawn visage, just as if we were all attending a funeral, of which she was the chief mourner.“Really, Mr Lorton, do you think so?” came her answer at length. “Don’t you find it very cold?”“Dear me, ma! why you said last Christmas that it was too warm!” said her daughter Bessie.“Ah! Mr Lorton,” continued her mother, not noticing her remark, “we never have those good, old-fashioned Christmases that we had when my poor dear papa was alive!”“No, I suppose not,” I answered; “people say that it is because of the vast American forests being gradually cut down, admitting freer currents of air all over the world; while others put the change down to the influence of the Gulf Stream. Still, I dare say, it will all come right again at some time or other.”“Ah, Mr Lorton,” said Lady Dasher, “I’m afraid it willnevercome right again. You are too sanguine, like all young people.”“Oh, ‘never’ is a long day,” I said; “we should all be hopeful and merry, I think, at least on this one day in the year.”“I could never be merry again, Mr Lorton,” she said, with a prodigious sigh, which seemed to come from the depths of her heart, “since poor dear papa died;” and she then passed on mournfully homewards, with Bessie and Seraphine in her wake. Their cheerful faces, as they nodded back and smiled at Horner and myself, contrasted strongly with their mother’s lugubrious visage. I wonder if anybody ever saw her laugh? I’ve got my doubts about it.Then came out Miss Pimpernell, her kind old face beaming with smiles as she bowed here and there, and gave a cordial greeting to us young fellows, who still stood around the church porch. She did not forget me, you may be certain. “God bless you, Frank, my boy!” she said, in her affectionate, purring way; dismissing me home with a light heart to eat the traditionary roast turkey and plum-pudding, at peace with all mankind, and in love with all womankind for her sake.What a happy, happy day it had been!That night I passed and repassed Min’s house a dozen times at least, only that I might see her shadow on the blinds, weaving luxurious castles in Spain the while. I would be a great general, a distinguished orator, a famous statesman, a celebrated author! I would do some grand, heroic action. I desired to be “somebody,” something, only great and glorious! And yet, as One above is my judge, I had not one selfish craving, not a single purely-personal thought in connection with these mad wishes. It was but forhersake that I longed for honour and fame and advancement. Only for her, only for her!
“Love took up the glass of Time, and turn’d it in his glowing hands;Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the chords with might;Smote the chord of self that, trembling, pass’d in music out of sight!”
“Love took up the glass of Time, and turn’d it in his glowing hands;Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the chords with might;Smote the chord of self that, trembling, pass’d in music out of sight!”
It was a regular joyous, jolly, old-fashioned Christmas morning: bright, sparkling, exhilarating.
Just sufficient snow had fallen during the night to give that semblance of winter to the house-tops and hedge-rows, with a faint white powdering of the roadway and pavement, which adds so much to the quondam season of family gatherings, merrymakings, and plum-pudding; and this, King Frost had hardened by his patent adamantine process, so that it might not cause any inconvenience to foot passengers or lose its virgin freshness; while, at the same time, he decked and bedizened each separate twig and branch of the poor, leafless, skeleton trees with rare festal jewels and ear-drops of glittering icicles; besides weaving fantastic devices of goblin castles and airy, feathery foliage on the window panes, fairy armies in martial array and delicate gnome-tracery—transforming their appearance from that of ordinary glass into brilliantly-embroidered flakes of transparent, lucent crystal. Ah me! Jack Frost is a cunning enchanter: his will is all-powerful, his taste wondrous.
The clanging church bells were merrily ringing in “the day of glad tidings,” as our good vicar styled it, when I jumped out of bed and looked out to see what the weather was like. It was exactly as I could have wished—if I had had any choice in the matter—Christmas all over!
A little robin acquaintance, who never omitted his daily call at my window-ledge for his matutinal crumbs, was stretching his tiny crimson throat to its fullest extent, with quivering heart-notes of choral song, from a solitary poplar-tree in the adjacent garden on which my room out-looked, making the still air re-echo with his melody; my old retriever, Catch, a good dog and true, was pawing and scratching at the door to be admitted, in his customary way, and sniffing a cordial welcome, as he wondered and grumbled, in the most intelligible doggy language, at my being so late in taking him out for his preprandial walk—when it was such a fine morning, too! I heard the maid wishing me a cheery “Merry Christmas, sir!” as she left my hot water; so, it is not to be wondered that, after I had had the moral courage to plunge into my cold tub, dressing afterwards in a subsequent glow, I became infected with the buoyant spirit of all these social surroundings; and felt as light-hearted and “seasonable” as Santa Claus and his wintry comrades, the church bells, little robin redbreast, dog Catch, and Bridget the maid, could either inspire or expect.
Dog Catch and I sallied forth for our walk—I, cheerful, and drinking in healthy draughts of the fresh, frosty aether; he with great red tongue lolling out, as he trotted along in front of me, coming back every second step and looking up into my face with a broad grin on his jaws and a roguish glance in his brown eyes—I suppose at some funny canine joke or other, which he could not permit me to share—or else, darting backwards and forwards, gleefully barking and making sundry feints and dashes at me; or, prancing up in his elephantine bounds, with felonious intentions regarding my walking stick, which he considered he had a much better right to carry than myself.
We had lots of meetings and greetings when strolling along.
First, there was the gardener’s dog at the corner, an old chum of Catch’s, who passed the time of day to us with a cheerful bow-wow; although I was surprised to see that he had not “a posy tied to his tail,” according to the orthodox adage of typical smartness. Then there was the milkman’s dog, a gaunt retriever like mine, but of a very bad disposition, and a surly brute withal. He and Catch were deadly foes, as is frequently the case with dogs of the same breed; so, of course, they could never meet without quarrelling: on this occasion they exchanged ferocious challenges, and parted with signs and symptoms of unmitigated contempt on both sides, expressed by growls and barks, tail risings, and mane upliftings.
Further on, we encountered Mrs O’Flannagan, an Irish lady, who kept the fruit stall at the corner by the cross roads. She was dressed, as neatly as a new pin, in an “illigant” Connemara cloak, which seemed to be donned for the first time, besides a bran new bonnet; and, thanks to “elbow grease,” her peachy, soap-scrubbed cheeks shone again. She was returning from early chapel, whither she had gone to mass and confession; and where I trust she had received absolution for her little peccadilloes. I’ve no doubt shedidget absolution, for she told me that Father Macmanus was “a raal gintleman.”
Then Catch chased a roving cat until it got within the neighbouring shelter of its domiciliary railings, whence it me-ai-ouwed to him, through all the vowels of pussy’s vocabulary, a Christmas compliment—with, probably, a curse tacked on to the tail of it, or that “phoo! phoo! phiz!” meant nothing. But the feline expletives were all thrown away; for Catch was only “full of fun and with nobody to play with him,” like Peter Mooney’s goose, and had only chased pussy in the natural exuberance of his spirits, having no “hard feelings” towards her, or any desire, I know, to injure her soft tabby fur.
We next came across old Shuffler, the house-agent, waddling along, with his sound eye rolling buoyantly on its axis, while the artificial orb glared steadily forward in a fixed, glassy stare.
“Bootiful weether!” said he, cordially, to me, touching his hat—“bootiful weether, sir!”
“Itisa fine day,” I responded. “A merry Christmas to you, Mr Shuffler.”
“Same to you, sir, and many on ’em,” he replied, courteously.
“Thank you, Shuffler,” I said, satisfied with the colloquy, “but I must now say good day!”
“Good day, and a ’appy noo year to you,” answered he, passing on his way. Really, everybody appeared to be very civil and good natured to-day; and everything joyous and rose-coloured! Was it owing to the bright morning, or to the fact of its being Christmas, or to the sweet feelings I had lying hidden in my heart anent my darling?
I cannot tell: can you?
After a time Catch and I reached the river. It was not now rolling by, a muddy, silent, whilom sluggish, whilom busy stream. It was quite transformed in its appearance and resembled more some frozen arctic stream than the old Thames which I knew so well. Far as the eye could reach, it was covered with sheets of broken ice, again congealed together and piled up with snow—so many little bergs, that had been born at Great Marlow and Hampton, and other spots above the locks; gradually increasing in size and bulk as they span round and swept by on the current, until they should reach the bridges below. Then, they would, perhaps, be formed into one great icefield, stretching from bank to bank, whereon a grand bullock-roasting festival might be held, or a fancy fair instituted, as happened in the reign of James, the king, “of ever pious memory:” that is, if my chronology be right and my memory not at fault, as may very possibly be the case.
Doggy did not mind the ice a bit, however. He plunged in, time after time, to fetch out my in-thrown stick, with a frisky bound; emerging after the performance with ice-pendants to his glossy, silken ears and coat smartly curled, as if he had just paid a visit to Truefitt’s, and been manipulated by the dexterous hands of one of the assistants at that celebrated establishment, armed with the crinal tongs and anybody’s best macassar.
By-and-by we returned; and whom should I then meet on my way home but, positively, my eye-glass acquaintance of Downing Street. Fancy his being out before nine o’clock in the morning! It was an unparalleled occurrence.
“Hullo, Horner!” I sang out, “’morning, old fellow. Compliments of the season!”
“Bai-ey Je-ove! Lorton, how you stawtled me—’do!”
“You don’t mean to say,” I asked, on getting closer to him, “that you’ve actually taken to early rising?”
“No, ’pon honah, I asshaw you, my deah fellah, no!” he replied, quite excitedly. “No, I asshaw you, no,” he repeated.
“Well, then, what on earth makes you come out at this early unearthly hour?” I said.
“Oh—ah! you see—ah, my deah fellah,” he answered, “it was all those confawnded little bahds and the bells kicking up such a raow; that, ’pon honah, I couldn’t sleep and so I came out. I asshaw you it was all those bweastwy little bahds and the bells!”
“At all events, I must congratulate you on your reformation,” I said.
“Yaas? But it was all those bweastwy little bahds and the bells, you know; and it’s only once a ye-ah you know, Lorton,” he added.
“So you will never do so again till next time—is that what you mean, Horner?” I asked.
“Yaas! But, bai-ey Je-ove, I say, Lorton, my deah fellah, were the Clydes those ladies in hawf-mawning, eh?” said he, smiling feebly in his usual suave manner. He thought he had got hold of a grand joke at my expense.
However, I was not in the least angry with him. I felt too happy to have lost my temper with any one, especially Horner, whom I generally regarded as a poor creature to be tolerated rather than blamed.
“Did you ever hear, Horner,” said I, “how Peabody made his first fortune?”
“No, ’pon honah, I asshaw you, no.”
“Well, then, I’ll tell you, Horner,” said I. “It was by minding his own business, my dear fellow.”
“Bai-ey Je-ove!” he ejaculated, adding, after a pause, “Weally, Lorton, you dawn’t mean it?”
“I suppose,” I continued, “that you are also just as ignorant again how Mr Peabody made his second and greater fortune, eh?”
“Yaas,” he drawled out.
“Ah,” said I, “he gotthatby letting other people’s business alone!”
“Bai-ey Je-ove!” said Horner, quite staggered at this second blow. “Vewy amusing anecdote, indeed! Thank you, Lorton. Much obwiged, and all that sawt of thing, for the in-fawmation. Yaas, bai-ey Je-ove! And so I’ll say good day. Good day, Lorton; good day to you!” and he started off, with a quick step, in the very opposite direction to that which he had been previously going. I went on homeward, with Catch following obediently at my heels.
Which way did we go?
Can you not guess, or must I have to tell you?
How very obtuse some persons are!
Why, by The Terrace, of course. Was it not there that Min lived; and might I not chance to get a glance from her love-speaking, soft grey eyes? Only one glance—and I would be amply repaid!
I passed by her house. Yes, there she was at the window, attending to her flowers and carefully shielding a much-prized little maidenhair fern with a bell glass from the rays of the sun, which beamed as though Phoebus had mistaken the season and thought it a summer day.
She saw me as I sauntered by, recognising me with a little nod and smile and a sudden heightening of colour; and came to the door. Of course I went up the steps and spoke to her.Youwould have proceeded on your way with a passing bow? Oh, yes!
“Good morning, Mr Lorton,” she said. “How very early you are out to be sure! I thought gentlemen were always lazy, but you’re an exception to the rule, it seems;” and her soft grey eyes sparkled.
“Well, I don’t know that, Miss Clyde,” I said. “I suppose I’m just as lazy as the rest. I only came out to give my old doggy a walk and a dip, as I generally do every morning before breakfast. If it were not for him, I do not believe I would get up sooner than anybody else; but he’s such a pertinacious fellow that he won’t be denied his walk, always rousing me up at eight o’clock ‘sharp.’ Would you believe it, he brings my boots up to my door, and it is a trick he taught himself!”
“Dear old doggy,” she said, stooping down and patting his head. “What a nice sagacious fellow you are! Come here, sir, and give me your paw! Now, shake hands. Doggy, do you like me?” Catch could tell a friend at once; so looking up, he licked her hand, expressing, as intelligently as possible, that he was pleased to make her acquaintance. “How I love dogs!” she ejaculated, rising up again.
“Do you!” said I. “Ah, Miss Clyde! ‘Love me, love my dog.’”
“What nonsense, Mr Lorton!” she said, with a warm blush tinting her cheek. “But, I declare you haven’t wished me the compliments of the season yet. How very ungallant you are! I will set you an example—a merry Christmas, Mr Lorton!”
“A thousand to you, Miss Clyde; and each happier than the last!” I said.
“Oh dear, dear!” she exclaimed in mimic dismay; “I am sure I would not care about having so many as that! Fancy a thousand Christmases—why, what an old, old woman I should be then!”
“And a very nice old woman, too,” said I.
“Merci pour le compliment, Monsieur,” she replied, making me an elaborate curtsey and laughing merrily. “And what have you got there?” she asked, pointing to a little bunch of violets that I was extracting from my overcoat pocket, and which I had procured for her when Catch met his friend the gardener’s dog.
“I got them for you, Miss Clyde,” said I, somewhat bashfully; “and—and—”
“Oh,thankyou, Mr Lorton,” she said, quite pleased. “I love violets more than any other flower. You could not have given me a nicer present. I was only wishing for some just now. But, I hear mamma coming down stairs; so, as I’ve not made the tea yet, I must go in—good-bye!”
“Good-bye,” I echoed, clasping her tiny hand in mine. “Good-bye, and many good wishes for the day,my darling!” I courageously added the last two words, lowering my voice over them, as she gently closed the door.
She was not offended, if shehadheard the term of endearment I used, for she gave me another nice little bow and smile from the window. Still I think shedidhear me. I fancied I saw a conscious look in the dancing grey eyes, a blush yet lingering on her damask cheek.
I went home with joy in my heart—joy which fed upon itself and increased each moment. Don’t you remember what Herder says? Let but the heart once awake, and wave follows wave of newborn feelings—
“So bald sich das Herz ergiesst,Strömt Welle auf Welle!”
“So bald sich das Herz ergiesst,Strömt Welle auf Welle!”
I only know that I was as happy as possible, and astonished everybody by the breakfast I ate.
You fancy, perhaps, that I wasn’t really in love, or I wouldn’t probably have been hungry? Nonsense! Let me tell you that happy lovers are always hungry, and have great appetites. It is only your poor, miserable, disappointed suitors, who are in a state of suspense, that go about with a hang-dog look and cannot eat. I firmly believe that Shakespeare intended to convey the idea that Valentine was mad, or he would never have put into his mouth such ridiculous words as those, that he could “break his fast, dine, sup, and sleep, upon the very naked name of love!” If that gentleman of Verona had been sane knowing how his passion was reciprocated and that his lady loved him in return, he would have had just as good an appetite as I had that morning; when, joyous as a bird, I was as hungry as a hunter.
As for dog Catch, you should have seen how he galloped into his oatmeal porridge after his walk—how the oatmeal porridge galloped into him would, however, be a more correct form of expression. You should have only seen him, that’s all!
Next came church; and, of all occasions when church-going strikes even an uninterested spectator, generally lacking in religious zeal, with feelings of unwonted emotion, commend me to Christmas day. Then, to paraphrase the well-known lines of the poet, those in the habit of being regularly present at worship “went the more;” while those go now “who never went before.” People make a practice of visiting church on that day who seldom, if ever, attend a religious service at any other time, taking the year all through. It is like the wedding feast to which the lame, the halt, and the blind were invited. Every one goes then; every class and clan is represented.
Saint Canon’s was a sight. Its garland-twined oaken columns, its wreath-hung galleries, its scroll-work in the chancel—where “Unto us a son is born,” and the message of glad tidings, which the shepherds of Bethlehem first heard when they “watched their flocks by night,” and saw the star in the east, two thousand years ago, shone forth in blazonments of red and purple and gold—all reminded the congregation of the festival they had assembled to commemorate; the day of peace and good-will to all, that had dawned for them once more, as I trust it will dawn again and again for us yet on many more future anniversaries. The place, too, was crammed, contrary to Lady Dasher’s fears concerning the spread of unbelief and the degeneracy of the present age. Everybody was there that could go at all, for it was a year in which we had to be specially mindful of mercies vouchsafed to us. Even old Shuffler, who had not been seen inside a place of public worship before within the memory of man, was not an absentee.
I was not thinking of him, however, nor of the display which the decorations made, nor of the congregation—indeed, I hardly attended to the service. All my thoughts were centred on Min.
A madonna-like face, a pair of honest, steadfast, speaking, grey eyes were ever before me; although I could not actually see her, except when we stood up during the service, according to the ordinances of the rubric, as she sat a long way off. Notwithstanding my usual attachment towards them, I felt inclined to quarrel with the high pews that hid her from my sight; and, I’m afraid, despised Bishop Burnet for his innovation. The vicar, they told me afterwards, preached a simple, beautiful sermon, that struck home to the hearts of every one present; but I heard none of it. My sermon was in my heart, and bore for its text one little word of four letters. O Min, Min! you had a good deal to answer for.
“Long was the good man’s sermon,Yet it seemed not so to me;For he spoke of Ruth the beautiful,And still I thought of thee.“Long was the prayer he uttered,Yet it seemed not so to me;For in my heart I prayed with him,And still I thought of thee!”
“Long was the good man’s sermon,Yet it seemed not so to me;For he spoke of Ruth the beautiful,And still I thought of thee.“Long was the prayer he uttered,Yet it seemed not so to me;For in my heart I prayed with him,And still I thought of thee!”
After service, of course everybody met everybody else, each of their own respective little world, at the church door, exchanging those good wishes and seasonable greetings proper to the day.
There was a grand throng without the porch. Horner was there. It would have been nothing at all without him and his eye-glass. He did not appear to bear me any hard feelings, I was glad to see, for my unkindness of the morning. He nodded affably, and said “’do!” to me, in his usual way, as if he had not met me before.
Min and her mother did not linger as did the other parishioners; so, I had only an opportunity of a passing bow, without that other tender little hand-clasp which I had hoped for. But she looked at me, and that was something.
Lady Dasher, however, stopped for a minute or two; so did her daughters.
“Beautiful weather for Christmas, Lady Dasher,” hazarded I. She evidently did not agree with me, for she looked about her mournfully, with a down-drawn visage, just as if we were all attending a funeral, of which she was the chief mourner.
“Really, Mr Lorton, do you think so?” came her answer at length. “Don’t you find it very cold?”
“Dear me, ma! why you said last Christmas that it was too warm!” said her daughter Bessie.
“Ah! Mr Lorton,” continued her mother, not noticing her remark, “we never have those good, old-fashioned Christmases that we had when my poor dear papa was alive!”
“No, I suppose not,” I answered; “people say that it is because of the vast American forests being gradually cut down, admitting freer currents of air all over the world; while others put the change down to the influence of the Gulf Stream. Still, I dare say, it will all come right again at some time or other.”
“Ah, Mr Lorton,” said Lady Dasher, “I’m afraid it willnevercome right again. You are too sanguine, like all young people.”
“Oh, ‘never’ is a long day,” I said; “we should all be hopeful and merry, I think, at least on this one day in the year.”
“I could never be merry again, Mr Lorton,” she said, with a prodigious sigh, which seemed to come from the depths of her heart, “since poor dear papa died;” and she then passed on mournfully homewards, with Bessie and Seraphine in her wake. Their cheerful faces, as they nodded back and smiled at Horner and myself, contrasted strongly with their mother’s lugubrious visage. I wonder if anybody ever saw her laugh? I’ve got my doubts about it.
Then came out Miss Pimpernell, her kind old face beaming with smiles as she bowed here and there, and gave a cordial greeting to us young fellows, who still stood around the church porch. She did not forget me, you may be certain. “God bless you, Frank, my boy!” she said, in her affectionate, purring way; dismissing me home with a light heart to eat the traditionary roast turkey and plum-pudding, at peace with all mankind, and in love with all womankind for her sake.
What a happy, happy day it had been!
That night I passed and repassed Min’s house a dozen times at least, only that I might see her shadow on the blinds, weaving luxurious castles in Spain the while. I would be a great general, a distinguished orator, a famous statesman, a celebrated author! I would do some grand, heroic action. I desired to be “somebody,” something, only great and glorious! And yet, as One above is my judge, I had not one selfish craving, not a single purely-personal thought in connection with these mad wishes. It was but forhersake that I longed for honour and fame and advancement. Only for her, only for her!
Chapter Six.“Ecstasy!””...From thy rose-red lips my nameFloweth; and then, as in a swoon,With dinning sound my ears are rife,My tremulous tongue faltereth,I lose my colour, I lose my breath,I drink the cup of a costly death,Brimm’d with delirious draughts of warmest life!”Some few days after Christmas, little Miss Pimpernell gave a small evening party for the especial delectation of those who had so meritoriously assisted in the decoration of the church.Of course, it was not at all like the “barty” the celebrated Hans Breitman “giv’d” to his friends for the imbibition of “lager beer” ad libitum; but still, one may feel inclined to exclaim, in the exquisite broken words of that worthy, “Where am dat barty now?” For, time has worked its usual changes; and all of us have long since been divided, separated, scattered, and dispersed to the four winds of heaven, so to speak, to the severance of old ties, and all kindred associations.I had not had the slightest inkling that the “little affair” was about to “come off” beforehand. I had met Miss Pimpernell out the very morning of the day on which it took place; yet—sly old lady that she was—she hardly gave me a hint of her social intent.She certainly said that she had a little surprise in store for me; but when I pressed her to learn what that “something” was, she preserved a provoking reticence, declining to enlighten me any further. “No, Frank,” she said in her cheery way, “it is of no use your trying to coax me with your ‘dear Miss Pimpernell,’ or think to flatter me into divulging my news by false compliments paid to my shabby old bonnet! No, you shall hear it all in good time, so don’t be impatient. I won’t tell you another word now, my boy, there!” she added finally, trotting off on her parochial rounds and leaving me in suspense until the evening, to exercise my imagination regarding her contemplated “surprise.”Then, however, I was let into the secret; and the party was all the more pleasurable from coming quite unexpectedly. I always like doing things on the spur of the moment, without premeditation. If you look out for anything long beforehand, it is apt to pall on the palate when it arrives within your reach. “Unlooked-for blessings” are generally twice as grateful as those which you are led to expect—so, at least, I have found them.On my return home from a walk in the evening, I found a little note of invitation awaiting me, in which Miss Pimpernell requested me to come round to the vicarage precisely at eight, “dressed all in my best,” like the impassioned lover of “Sally in our Alley,” as she “expected a few friends.” She added in a postscript, underlined with one of her characteristic dashes, thatMiss Clydewould be there, if that would be any further inducement for me.Oh Miss Pimpernell, you machiavellian old lady! I would not have thought you could have practised such great dissimulation. Would Min’s presence be any further inducement to me! Wouldn’t it? Oh, dear no, certainly not!In ten minutes’ time I was dressed en règle and at the vicarage.It was quite a nice little party. Not one too many, and not a single discordant element. Old ladies and gentlemen seemed to have been rigidly tabooed, with the exception, naturally, of our host and hostess, the vicar and his sister; for Lady Dasher, owing to some fortunate conjuncture of circumstances, was unable to come: Miss Spight was busy at home, entertaining an elderly relative who had suddenly thrown herself on her hospitality; while Mr Mawley was at Oxford enjoying the season with sundry dogmatic Fellows of his own calibre. Minus these charmers, our gathering was pretty much what it had been down in the old school-room at the decorations. There were the Dasher girls, two young collegians from Cambridge—ex-pupils of the vicar—to entertain Bessie and Seraphine, Lizzie Dangler, Horner with his inseparable eye-glass and faultless toilet, Baby Blake forhisentertainment—Miss Pimpernell was a wise caterer—Min, and myself.Our hostess had so planned that we should all pair off, each lady having her cavalier, as she said, in the good old-fashioned way. She planned very ably, as we had one of the pleasantest evenings imaginable, without any stiffness or formality or being forced to make a toil of enjoyment, in the customary manner of most fashionable reunions: we were not “fashionable,” thank goodness. But we had “a good time” of it, as young America says, all the same.What did we do?Well, then, there were none of those abominable “round games,” which, unless they descend to vulgar romping, are the dreariest attempts at conviviality possible to conceive; none of those dreadful and much-to-be-avoided exactions and remissions of “forfeits,” that plunge everybody into embarrassing situations, and destroy, instead of creating, sociability; none of those stock—so-called—“drawing-room entertainments;” in fact, which always result in hopeless boredom. But, we had a little music and part-singing: a little lively, general chit-chat, in which all could join and each take a share: a few anecdotes well told—a complete success, to be brief, in making us all feel perfectly natural and at ease, for we were allowed to do and say exactly what we pleased in moderation.Each of us was made to feel that his or her absence would have detracted from the happiness of the rest; andthatis the true art of treating one’s guests—an art which both the vicar and Miss Pimpernell had apparently studied to perfection, although it really proceeded from their natural good-heartedness.But, amongst our company I had almost forgotten to enumerate the name of Monsieur Parole d’Honneur, one of the nicest of French emigrés and a dear friend of the vicar’s; one known to most of us, also, for many years.Perhaps you may chance to remember the noise that the great Barnard extradition case made in the newspapers—and, indeed, all over England too, for that matter—in the year 1859?You don’t? Why, it nearly led to a war between France and Britain! Did you never hear how the fiercely-moustachioed Gallic colonels swaggered about the Boulogne cafés, loud in their denunciations of perfidious Albion, while smoking their endless cigarettes and sipping their poisonous absinthe; and how, but for the staunch fidelity of the ill-fated Emperor Napoleon—since deserted by his quondam ally—and the jaunty pluck of our then gallant premier, brave “old Pam”—whose loss we have had ample reason, oftentimes of late, to deplore—there might have been a sudden rupture of that “entente cordiale” between the two nations, which was cemented in the Crimea, and expired but a couple of years ago under the besieged walls of Paris?Ah! that was a time when the whilom “Cupid’s” boast, “Civis Anglicanus sum,” was not an empty claim, as it is in these days of poverty-stricken “retrenchments,” and senile forfeitures of all that made England great and grand through five hundred years of history!But the Barnard case—you must have heard of that, surely? It was just about the period when the wonderful volunteer fever commenced to rage with such intense earnestness over here; and when our “valuable auxiliary forces”—as amateur military critics in the House are so fond of repeating—were first instituted, in the fear of a second invasion of this sacred realm of liberty. We did not then place much reliance on the “streak of silver sea,” when in the direct face of danger, as a great “statesman” would have us do now that it no longer confronts us! Ha, at last you recollect, eh? I need not prompt your memory any further.Bien. It was at this period that Monsieur Parole d’Honneur was advised in high official circles that it would be for the benefit of his health if he quitted French soil for awhile. He had been known to have once been intimately associated with Mazzini, and that gentleman was supposed to be implicated in the Orsini affair—when an attempt was made against Napoleon’s life in the Place d’Opera; so, as Parole d’Honneur had likewise been heard to speak rather unguardedly at a political club of patriots to which he belonged, the prefectorial mind “putting that and that together,” very reasonably presumed that our friend must have some connection with the bomb conspirators. The consequences were, that Parole d’Honneur was told to quit Paris instantly, and leave France itself within four-and-twenty hours,—although he was innocent of the slightest knowledge concerning the plot.However, there was no help for it. Prefects are not in the habit of discussing their suspicions with suspected persons; and thus he had to bid adieu to his country in a hurry. He thereupon shook off its dust from his papier-maché-soled boots, coming to England, in the manner of his compatriots, to earn his livelihood as a teacher of languages.Having the highest recommendations, he easily obtained as much employment as he wanted, and devoted himself to giving conversational lectures to a circle of collegiate establishments lying in different parts of London, which he visited bi-weekly, or so, in turn. Amongst these was one in our suburb; hence, first an acquaintance and then a lasting friendship sprung up between him and the vicar, both taking to each other immensely through their large-hearted philosophy; thus, too, I also got acquainted with one of the brightest, cheeriest, kindest Gauls of many that I have had the happiness of knowing.At the time of which I write, Parole d’Honneur was a very happy emigré, despite his enforced exile in the land of fogs. Indeed, he was an exile no longer in the strict sense of the word, as he had received permission to go back to France whenever he pleased; a permission of which he had already availed himself, having paid a visit, in company with me, to Paris, the previous month, at the time when I had been so miserable and despondent about not meeting Min again. However, he had become so fond of England and things English, from his long enforced residence here, that he avowed his determination of living and dying amongst us—that is, unless his country and “the cause” should have need of his services.On the evening of Miss Pimpernell’s little party, this patriotic gentleman, in the presence of ladies, whom he reverenced with a knight-errant’s devotion and homage, was the life of our circle. He carried an aroma of fun and light-heartedness about him that was simply contagious. He sang Beranger’s ditties with a verve and élan that brought back bonny Paris and student days to those of us who were acquainted with them. One moment he played exquisite bits from Mozart on his violin, to the accompaniment of the vicar’s violoncello, that were most entrancing; the next, scraped away at some provoking tarantella that almost set the whole of us dancing, in defiance of the proprieties generally observed at the vicarage.We were asking each other riddles and conundrums. Monsieur Parole suddenly bethought him of one. “Ah, ha!” he said, “I heard one good reedel ze ozer day. A leetle mees at one of my academies told it me. Young ladies, why is ze old gentlemans, le diable, zat is—”“O–oh! Monsieur Parole!” ejaculated Miss Pimpernell.“Your pardon, Mees Peemple,” said Monsieur Parole—he never could give her the additional syllable to her name—“Your pardon, Mees Peemple; but we wiz call hims somesing else. Why is—ah, ha! I have got hims. Why is Lucifers like, when riding sur un souris, on a mouse, like the very same tings? You gives him up? Ah, ha! I t’ought you would never guess him!” he continued, on our professing our ignorance of the solution. “Because he is synonime!—vat you calls sin-on-a-mouse! Ha, ha, ha!” and he burst into a chuckle of his merry laughter.This reminded Horner of one. “Bai-ey Je-ove!” he said, after a long pause. “I—ah, came akwass a vewy good one the othah day—ah. A blind beggah had a bwoth-ah, and the bwoth-ah died; now, what welation was—ah, the blind beggah to the—ah, dead beggah?”“His sister, of course,” said Bessie Dasher, promptly.“Weally,” said Horner, who usually put on most of hiswandrish airs when in the presence of ladies in evening costume: in the day he sometimes spoke more plainly. “Weally, how clevah you ah! I asshaw you, I didn’t gwess it for neawy a week—ah!”“I can quite believethat!” said Seraphine, wickedly.“Did you ever hear any of Praed’s charades?” I asked Min.“No,” she said. “Do you recollect some?”“Ah,” put in the vicar, “Praed was a clever fellow; and a true poet, too.”“Indeed?” said Min. “I have heard his name, but I’ve never seen anything that he wrote. Do you recollect any of his charades, Mr Lorton?” she asked again, turning to me.“I think I remember one,” I said, repeating those three spirited verses which are well-known, beginning “Come from my First, ay, come!”“How beautiful the lines are!” said Min; “but it seems a pity that they should be thrown away on a mere charade.”“That was exactly Praed’s way,” said the vicar. “I remember well, when I was a young man at college, what a stir his name made, and what great things were predicted of him, that he never lived to realise.”“He died young, did he not?” asked Min.“Yes,” said the vicar, “in his thirty-second year. If he had lived, he would probably have been one of the foremost men in England to-day.”“‘Whom the gods love, die young,’” quoted I grandiloquently, like Mawley.“True,” said the vicar. “There is more philosophy in that, than in most of those old Pagan beliefs: there is a glimmering of Christianity about the saying.”“I wonder,” said Miss Pimpernell, “whether there is any connection between it and the text, ‘Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth’?”“I can’t say, my dear,” said the vicar, “if you are right in this instance; but there is often a great similarity between different parts of the Bible and the utterances of profane writers.”“Have you ever noticed, sir,” said Min, “how David says in the Psalms that ‘all the foundations of the world are out of course;’ while Shakespeare makes Hamlet observe that ‘the world is out of joint’?”“Yes,” said the vicar, “and there are many other parallels that could be drawn from Shakespeare. He was frequently indebted to the inspired volume for his reflections; whether wittingly or unknowingly, I cannot say.”“I think,” said I, “that Douglas Jerrold’s celebrated bon mot about Australia must be put down to the same source. He said, if you remember, speaking of the prolific nature of the soil of the new continent, ‘Tickle her with a hoe, and she will laugh with a harvest;’ and in the Psalms we have the verse, ‘The valleys also shall stand so thick with corn, that they shall laugh and sing.’”“It is debatable,” said the vicar, “whether we should ascribe these striking resemblances to unconscious plagiarism or to similarity of thought.”“We will have to agree with Solomon,” said I, “that there is nothing new under the sun!”“True enough, Frank,” said the vicar. “From the explorations at Nineveh and at Pompeii, we have already learnt that the ancients well knew of what we in our pride long ascribed to modern inquiry and research.”Miss Pimpernell here calling upon her brother and Monsieur Parole for some more of their concerted music, they sat down to a sonata of Beethoven. The remainder of us broke up into little coteries; Min and I having a long quiet talk, under cover of the deep tones of the vicar’s violoncello, in a corner by the piano, where we entrenched ourselves for some time undisturbed.What did we say?I’m sure I can’t tell you. Probably we talked about the weather and the crops; the prospects of the coming season; the expected new tenor at the opera, who was said to rival Orpheus and put Mario into the shade; or, peradventure, we discussed political economy, grumbling over the high price of meat and the general expenses of housekeeping! But, please put yourself in our place, and you will be able, I have no doubt, to imagine all we could possibly have found to chat about, much better, probably, than I can describe it. I will merely say for your guidance, without entering into details, that it was happiness, rapture to me, to be only beside her—will that enlighten you at all?Later on, came supper.After that we had some part-singing of good old glees, like “The Chough and Crow,” “Here in cool Grot,” and the ever-beautiful “Dawn of Day.” We then separated, after the pleasantest of evenings, when it was close on midnight:—Miss Pimpernell’s party had been emphatically a social success.Of course I walked home with Min. I had been so much with her of late, that I somehow or other began to look upon her as my own property; and was jealous of the interference of anyone else. You should have seen how I glared at Horner when he suggested, good-naturedly enough, that Min should go round, by the way that the Dasher girls and the others went, under his escort! How overjoyed I was when she politely declined the offer, saying that, as her mamma was sitting up for her, she must hurry home by the shortest way!She looked like a little fairy, tripping along beside me through the fresh-looking frozen snow, her dark dress and scarlet petticoat showing out in strong relief against the glittering white of the roadway. The moon was shining brightly, so that it was as light as day; and I could see her face distinctly as she looked up into mine every now and then to answer some remark. Her honest, lustrous, grey eyes sparkled with fun, while a little ripple of silvery laughter came occasionally from the rosebud-parted coral lips! We chatted merrily, exchanging notes touching the enjoyments of the evening.We gradually approached her door. I was telling her that, instead of mere days, I seemed to have known her for years and could not affect to treat her as a stranger.She said that she looked upon me almost as an old friend already.I asked her if she would let me abandon the formal appellation of “Miss Clyde,” and call her “Min?”She said, “Yes.”I asked her then, ere the door opened, on wishing her “good-bye,” with a lingering hand-clasp, whether she would not call me by my Christian name, too?She gently whispered, “Frank”—so softly, so faintly, that the night-wind, sighing by, could not catch the accents and bear the sound to alien ears; butIheard it, and my heart throbbed in a delirious tempest of happiness; I lost my senses almost: my head swam in a whirlwind of tumultuous joy: I was intoxicated with ecstasy!“Good-night, Frank!” I heard her dear, sweet voice whispering, like strains of music in my heart, as I went homewards. I seemed to feel her warm violet breath still on my cheek. I could fancy I yet gazed into the star-depths of her soul-speaking, deep, grey eyes.“Good-night, Frank!” The words sang in my ears all night, and I slept in fairyland.
”...From thy rose-red lips my nameFloweth; and then, as in a swoon,With dinning sound my ears are rife,My tremulous tongue faltereth,I lose my colour, I lose my breath,I drink the cup of a costly death,Brimm’d with delirious draughts of warmest life!”
”...From thy rose-red lips my nameFloweth; and then, as in a swoon,With dinning sound my ears are rife,My tremulous tongue faltereth,I lose my colour, I lose my breath,I drink the cup of a costly death,Brimm’d with delirious draughts of warmest life!”
Some few days after Christmas, little Miss Pimpernell gave a small evening party for the especial delectation of those who had so meritoriously assisted in the decoration of the church.
Of course, it was not at all like the “barty” the celebrated Hans Breitman “giv’d” to his friends for the imbibition of “lager beer” ad libitum; but still, one may feel inclined to exclaim, in the exquisite broken words of that worthy, “Where am dat barty now?” For, time has worked its usual changes; and all of us have long since been divided, separated, scattered, and dispersed to the four winds of heaven, so to speak, to the severance of old ties, and all kindred associations.
I had not had the slightest inkling that the “little affair” was about to “come off” beforehand. I had met Miss Pimpernell out the very morning of the day on which it took place; yet—sly old lady that she was—she hardly gave me a hint of her social intent.
She certainly said that she had a little surprise in store for me; but when I pressed her to learn what that “something” was, she preserved a provoking reticence, declining to enlighten me any further. “No, Frank,” she said in her cheery way, “it is of no use your trying to coax me with your ‘dear Miss Pimpernell,’ or think to flatter me into divulging my news by false compliments paid to my shabby old bonnet! No, you shall hear it all in good time, so don’t be impatient. I won’t tell you another word now, my boy, there!” she added finally, trotting off on her parochial rounds and leaving me in suspense until the evening, to exercise my imagination regarding her contemplated “surprise.”
Then, however, I was let into the secret; and the party was all the more pleasurable from coming quite unexpectedly. I always like doing things on the spur of the moment, without premeditation. If you look out for anything long beforehand, it is apt to pall on the palate when it arrives within your reach. “Unlooked-for blessings” are generally twice as grateful as those which you are led to expect—so, at least, I have found them.
On my return home from a walk in the evening, I found a little note of invitation awaiting me, in which Miss Pimpernell requested me to come round to the vicarage precisely at eight, “dressed all in my best,” like the impassioned lover of “Sally in our Alley,” as she “expected a few friends.” She added in a postscript, underlined with one of her characteristic dashes, thatMiss Clydewould be there, if that would be any further inducement for me.
Oh Miss Pimpernell, you machiavellian old lady! I would not have thought you could have practised such great dissimulation. Would Min’s presence be any further inducement to me! Wouldn’t it? Oh, dear no, certainly not!
In ten minutes’ time I was dressed en règle and at the vicarage.
It was quite a nice little party. Not one too many, and not a single discordant element. Old ladies and gentlemen seemed to have been rigidly tabooed, with the exception, naturally, of our host and hostess, the vicar and his sister; for Lady Dasher, owing to some fortunate conjuncture of circumstances, was unable to come: Miss Spight was busy at home, entertaining an elderly relative who had suddenly thrown herself on her hospitality; while Mr Mawley was at Oxford enjoying the season with sundry dogmatic Fellows of his own calibre. Minus these charmers, our gathering was pretty much what it had been down in the old school-room at the decorations. There were the Dasher girls, two young collegians from Cambridge—ex-pupils of the vicar—to entertain Bessie and Seraphine, Lizzie Dangler, Horner with his inseparable eye-glass and faultless toilet, Baby Blake forhisentertainment—Miss Pimpernell was a wise caterer—Min, and myself.
Our hostess had so planned that we should all pair off, each lady having her cavalier, as she said, in the good old-fashioned way. She planned very ably, as we had one of the pleasantest evenings imaginable, without any stiffness or formality or being forced to make a toil of enjoyment, in the customary manner of most fashionable reunions: we were not “fashionable,” thank goodness. But we had “a good time” of it, as young America says, all the same.
What did we do?
Well, then, there were none of those abominable “round games,” which, unless they descend to vulgar romping, are the dreariest attempts at conviviality possible to conceive; none of those dreadful and much-to-be-avoided exactions and remissions of “forfeits,” that plunge everybody into embarrassing situations, and destroy, instead of creating, sociability; none of those stock—so-called—“drawing-room entertainments;” in fact, which always result in hopeless boredom. But, we had a little music and part-singing: a little lively, general chit-chat, in which all could join and each take a share: a few anecdotes well told—a complete success, to be brief, in making us all feel perfectly natural and at ease, for we were allowed to do and say exactly what we pleased in moderation.
Each of us was made to feel that his or her absence would have detracted from the happiness of the rest; andthatis the true art of treating one’s guests—an art which both the vicar and Miss Pimpernell had apparently studied to perfection, although it really proceeded from their natural good-heartedness.
But, amongst our company I had almost forgotten to enumerate the name of Monsieur Parole d’Honneur, one of the nicest of French emigrés and a dear friend of the vicar’s; one known to most of us, also, for many years.
Perhaps you may chance to remember the noise that the great Barnard extradition case made in the newspapers—and, indeed, all over England too, for that matter—in the year 1859?
You don’t? Why, it nearly led to a war between France and Britain! Did you never hear how the fiercely-moustachioed Gallic colonels swaggered about the Boulogne cafés, loud in their denunciations of perfidious Albion, while smoking their endless cigarettes and sipping their poisonous absinthe; and how, but for the staunch fidelity of the ill-fated Emperor Napoleon—since deserted by his quondam ally—and the jaunty pluck of our then gallant premier, brave “old Pam”—whose loss we have had ample reason, oftentimes of late, to deplore—there might have been a sudden rupture of that “entente cordiale” between the two nations, which was cemented in the Crimea, and expired but a couple of years ago under the besieged walls of Paris?
Ah! that was a time when the whilom “Cupid’s” boast, “Civis Anglicanus sum,” was not an empty claim, as it is in these days of poverty-stricken “retrenchments,” and senile forfeitures of all that made England great and grand through five hundred years of history!
But the Barnard case—you must have heard of that, surely? It was just about the period when the wonderful volunteer fever commenced to rage with such intense earnestness over here; and when our “valuable auxiliary forces”—as amateur military critics in the House are so fond of repeating—were first instituted, in the fear of a second invasion of this sacred realm of liberty. We did not then place much reliance on the “streak of silver sea,” when in the direct face of danger, as a great “statesman” would have us do now that it no longer confronts us! Ha, at last you recollect, eh? I need not prompt your memory any further.
Bien. It was at this period that Monsieur Parole d’Honneur was advised in high official circles that it would be for the benefit of his health if he quitted French soil for awhile. He had been known to have once been intimately associated with Mazzini, and that gentleman was supposed to be implicated in the Orsini affair—when an attempt was made against Napoleon’s life in the Place d’Opera; so, as Parole d’Honneur had likewise been heard to speak rather unguardedly at a political club of patriots to which he belonged, the prefectorial mind “putting that and that together,” very reasonably presumed that our friend must have some connection with the bomb conspirators. The consequences were, that Parole d’Honneur was told to quit Paris instantly, and leave France itself within four-and-twenty hours,—although he was innocent of the slightest knowledge concerning the plot.
However, there was no help for it. Prefects are not in the habit of discussing their suspicions with suspected persons; and thus he had to bid adieu to his country in a hurry. He thereupon shook off its dust from his papier-maché-soled boots, coming to England, in the manner of his compatriots, to earn his livelihood as a teacher of languages.
Having the highest recommendations, he easily obtained as much employment as he wanted, and devoted himself to giving conversational lectures to a circle of collegiate establishments lying in different parts of London, which he visited bi-weekly, or so, in turn. Amongst these was one in our suburb; hence, first an acquaintance and then a lasting friendship sprung up between him and the vicar, both taking to each other immensely through their large-hearted philosophy; thus, too, I also got acquainted with one of the brightest, cheeriest, kindest Gauls of many that I have had the happiness of knowing.
At the time of which I write, Parole d’Honneur was a very happy emigré, despite his enforced exile in the land of fogs. Indeed, he was an exile no longer in the strict sense of the word, as he had received permission to go back to France whenever he pleased; a permission of which he had already availed himself, having paid a visit, in company with me, to Paris, the previous month, at the time when I had been so miserable and despondent about not meeting Min again. However, he had become so fond of England and things English, from his long enforced residence here, that he avowed his determination of living and dying amongst us—that is, unless his country and “the cause” should have need of his services.
On the evening of Miss Pimpernell’s little party, this patriotic gentleman, in the presence of ladies, whom he reverenced with a knight-errant’s devotion and homage, was the life of our circle. He carried an aroma of fun and light-heartedness about him that was simply contagious. He sang Beranger’s ditties with a verve and élan that brought back bonny Paris and student days to those of us who were acquainted with them. One moment he played exquisite bits from Mozart on his violin, to the accompaniment of the vicar’s violoncello, that were most entrancing; the next, scraped away at some provoking tarantella that almost set the whole of us dancing, in defiance of the proprieties generally observed at the vicarage.
We were asking each other riddles and conundrums. Monsieur Parole suddenly bethought him of one. “Ah, ha!” he said, “I heard one good reedel ze ozer day. A leetle mees at one of my academies told it me. Young ladies, why is ze old gentlemans, le diable, zat is—”
“O–oh! Monsieur Parole!” ejaculated Miss Pimpernell.
“Your pardon, Mees Peemple,” said Monsieur Parole—he never could give her the additional syllable to her name—“Your pardon, Mees Peemple; but we wiz call hims somesing else. Why is—ah, ha! I have got hims. Why is Lucifers like, when riding sur un souris, on a mouse, like the very same tings? You gives him up? Ah, ha! I t’ought you would never guess him!” he continued, on our professing our ignorance of the solution. “Because he is synonime!—vat you calls sin-on-a-mouse! Ha, ha, ha!” and he burst into a chuckle of his merry laughter.
This reminded Horner of one. “Bai-ey Je-ove!” he said, after a long pause. “I—ah, came akwass a vewy good one the othah day—ah. A blind beggah had a bwoth-ah, and the bwoth-ah died; now, what welation was—ah, the blind beggah to the—ah, dead beggah?”
“His sister, of course,” said Bessie Dasher, promptly.
“Weally,” said Horner, who usually put on most of hiswandrish airs when in the presence of ladies in evening costume: in the day he sometimes spoke more plainly. “Weally, how clevah you ah! I asshaw you, I didn’t gwess it for neawy a week—ah!”
“I can quite believethat!” said Seraphine, wickedly.
“Did you ever hear any of Praed’s charades?” I asked Min.
“No,” she said. “Do you recollect some?”
“Ah,” put in the vicar, “Praed was a clever fellow; and a true poet, too.”
“Indeed?” said Min. “I have heard his name, but I’ve never seen anything that he wrote. Do you recollect any of his charades, Mr Lorton?” she asked again, turning to me.
“I think I remember one,” I said, repeating those three spirited verses which are well-known, beginning “Come from my First, ay, come!”
“How beautiful the lines are!” said Min; “but it seems a pity that they should be thrown away on a mere charade.”
“That was exactly Praed’s way,” said the vicar. “I remember well, when I was a young man at college, what a stir his name made, and what great things were predicted of him, that he never lived to realise.”
“He died young, did he not?” asked Min.
“Yes,” said the vicar, “in his thirty-second year. If he had lived, he would probably have been one of the foremost men in England to-day.”
“‘Whom the gods love, die young,’” quoted I grandiloquently, like Mawley.
“True,” said the vicar. “There is more philosophy in that, than in most of those old Pagan beliefs: there is a glimmering of Christianity about the saying.”
“I wonder,” said Miss Pimpernell, “whether there is any connection between it and the text, ‘Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth’?”
“I can’t say, my dear,” said the vicar, “if you are right in this instance; but there is often a great similarity between different parts of the Bible and the utterances of profane writers.”
“Have you ever noticed, sir,” said Min, “how David says in the Psalms that ‘all the foundations of the world are out of course;’ while Shakespeare makes Hamlet observe that ‘the world is out of joint’?”
“Yes,” said the vicar, “and there are many other parallels that could be drawn from Shakespeare. He was frequently indebted to the inspired volume for his reflections; whether wittingly or unknowingly, I cannot say.”
“I think,” said I, “that Douglas Jerrold’s celebrated bon mot about Australia must be put down to the same source. He said, if you remember, speaking of the prolific nature of the soil of the new continent, ‘Tickle her with a hoe, and she will laugh with a harvest;’ and in the Psalms we have the verse, ‘The valleys also shall stand so thick with corn, that they shall laugh and sing.’”
“It is debatable,” said the vicar, “whether we should ascribe these striking resemblances to unconscious plagiarism or to similarity of thought.”
“We will have to agree with Solomon,” said I, “that there is nothing new under the sun!”
“True enough, Frank,” said the vicar. “From the explorations at Nineveh and at Pompeii, we have already learnt that the ancients well knew of what we in our pride long ascribed to modern inquiry and research.”
Miss Pimpernell here calling upon her brother and Monsieur Parole for some more of their concerted music, they sat down to a sonata of Beethoven. The remainder of us broke up into little coteries; Min and I having a long quiet talk, under cover of the deep tones of the vicar’s violoncello, in a corner by the piano, where we entrenched ourselves for some time undisturbed.
What did we say?
I’m sure I can’t tell you. Probably we talked about the weather and the crops; the prospects of the coming season; the expected new tenor at the opera, who was said to rival Orpheus and put Mario into the shade; or, peradventure, we discussed political economy, grumbling over the high price of meat and the general expenses of housekeeping! But, please put yourself in our place, and you will be able, I have no doubt, to imagine all we could possibly have found to chat about, much better, probably, than I can describe it. I will merely say for your guidance, without entering into details, that it was happiness, rapture to me, to be only beside her—will that enlighten you at all?
Later on, came supper.
After that we had some part-singing of good old glees, like “The Chough and Crow,” “Here in cool Grot,” and the ever-beautiful “Dawn of Day.” We then separated, after the pleasantest of evenings, when it was close on midnight:—Miss Pimpernell’s party had been emphatically a social success.
Of course I walked home with Min. I had been so much with her of late, that I somehow or other began to look upon her as my own property; and was jealous of the interference of anyone else. You should have seen how I glared at Horner when he suggested, good-naturedly enough, that Min should go round, by the way that the Dasher girls and the others went, under his escort! How overjoyed I was when she politely declined the offer, saying that, as her mamma was sitting up for her, she must hurry home by the shortest way!
She looked like a little fairy, tripping along beside me through the fresh-looking frozen snow, her dark dress and scarlet petticoat showing out in strong relief against the glittering white of the roadway. The moon was shining brightly, so that it was as light as day; and I could see her face distinctly as she looked up into mine every now and then to answer some remark. Her honest, lustrous, grey eyes sparkled with fun, while a little ripple of silvery laughter came occasionally from the rosebud-parted coral lips! We chatted merrily, exchanging notes touching the enjoyments of the evening.
We gradually approached her door. I was telling her that, instead of mere days, I seemed to have known her for years and could not affect to treat her as a stranger.
She said that she looked upon me almost as an old friend already.
I asked her if she would let me abandon the formal appellation of “Miss Clyde,” and call her “Min?”
She said, “Yes.”
I asked her then, ere the door opened, on wishing her “good-bye,” with a lingering hand-clasp, whether she would not call me by my Christian name, too?
She gently whispered, “Frank”—so softly, so faintly, that the night-wind, sighing by, could not catch the accents and bear the sound to alien ears; butIheard it, and my heart throbbed in a delirious tempest of happiness; I lost my senses almost: my head swam in a whirlwind of tumultuous joy: I was intoxicated with ecstasy!
“Good-night, Frank!” I heard her dear, sweet voice whispering, like strains of music in my heart, as I went homewards. I seemed to feel her warm violet breath still on my cheek. I could fancy I yet gazed into the star-depths of her soul-speaking, deep, grey eyes.
“Good-night, Frank!” The words sang in my ears all night, and I slept in fairyland.