Chapter Twelve.On The River.We left behind the painted buoyThat tosses at the harbour mouth;And madly danced our heart with joy,As fast we fleeted to the south.How fresh was every sight and soundOn open main, on winding shore!We knew the merry world was round,And we might sail for evermore.“Frank, what do you mean by behaving so unkindly to Minnie Clyde?” was the opening salutation of little Miss Pimpernell to me, the same evening, when I called round again at the vicarage, like Telemachus, in search of consolation.I was so utterly miserable and disheartened at the conviction that everything was over between Min and myself—at the sudden collapse of all my eager hopes and ardent longings—that I felt I must speak to somebody and unbosom myself; or else I should go out of my senses.“Ibehave unkindly to Miss Clyde!” I exclaimed, in astonishment at her thus addressing me, before I could get out a word as to why I had come to see her—“I—I—I—don’t know what you mean, Miss Pimpernell?”“You know, or ought to know very well, Frank, without my telling you,” she rejoined; and there was a grave tone in her voice, for which I could not account.However, the dear old lady did not leave me long in doubt.She was never in the habit of “beating about the bush;” but always spoke out straight, plump and plain, to the point.“Really, my boy,” she continued, “I think there is no excuse for your acting so strangely to the poor little girl, after all your attentions and long intimacy!”“But, Miss Pimpernell,” I commenced; however, she quickly interrupted me.“‘But me no buts,’ Frank Lorton,” she said, with more determination and severity than she had ever used to me since I had known her. “I’m quite angry with you. You have disappointed all my expectations, when I thought I knew your character so well, too! Learn, that there is no one I despise so much as a male flirt. Oh, Frank! I did not think you had a grain of such little-mindedness in you! I believed you to be straightforward, and earnest, and true. I’m sadly disappointed in you, my boy; sadly disappointed!” and she shook her head reproachfully.It was very hard being attacked in this way, when I had come for consolation!I had thought myself to be the injured party, whose wounds would have been bound up, and oil and wine inpoured by the good Samaritan to whom I had always looked as my staunchest ally; yet, here she was, upbraiding me as a heartless deceiver, a rôle which I had never played in my life!I did not know what to make of it.What was she driving at?“I assure you, Miss Pimpernell,” I said with all the earnestness which the circumstances really warranted, “that I have not behaved in any way, to my knowledge, of which you might be ashamed for my sake. I came in this evening to ask your sympathy; and, here, you accuse me like this, without waiting to hear a word I have to say! Miss Pimpernell, you are unjust to me. I will go.”And I made as if to leave the room in a huff.“Stop, Frank,” said the dear little old lady, rising to her feet, and speaking to me again with something of her old cordial manner—“You speak candidly; and I’ve always known you to tell the truth, so I won’t doubt you now. Perhaps things have only got into a muddle after all. Let me see if I cannot get to the bottom of it, and set them straight for you! You will not deny, I suppose, Frank, that up to a short time since you’ve been in the habit of paying a good deal of attention to Minnie Clyde?”“Miss Clyde is nothing to me now!” I said grandly: I did not deceive her, however, nor turn her from her purpose.“Wait a minute, my boy, and hear me out. You won’t deny that you have been what you call ‘spoony,’ in your abominable slang, eh, Frank?” she repeated, with a knowing glance from her beady black eyes.“Pay her attention, Miss Pimpernell,” I said impetuously. “Good heavens! Why, at one time I would have died for her, and let my body be cut into little pieces, if it would only have done her any good!”“Softly, Frank,” responded the old lady. “I don’t think thatwouldhave done her any good, or you either, for that matter! But, why have you changed towards her, Frank? I never thought you so false and fickle, my boy. She came in here to see me to-day, looking very excited and unhappy; and when she had sat down—there, in that very chair you are now sitting in,” continued Miss Pimpernell, emphasising her words by pointing to the corner I occupied, “and I asked her soothingly what distressed her, she burst into tears, and sobbed as if her little heart would break. I declare, my boy,” said the warm-hearted little body, with a husky cough, “I almost cried myself in company. However, I got it all out of her afterwards. It seems to me, Frank, that you have behaved very unkindly to her. She thought she had offended you in some way of which she declared that she was perfectly ignorant: she had asked you, she said, but you would not tell her—treating her as if she were a perfect stranger. She’s a sensitive girl, Frank, and you have hurt her feelings to the quick! Now, what is the reason of this—do you care for her still?”“Care for her! Miss Pimpernell,” I said. “Why I love her—although I did not intend telling you yet.”“As if I didn’t know all about that already,” said the old lady, laughing cheerily. “Oh, you lovers, you lovers! You are just for all the world like a herd of wild ostriches, that stick their heads in the bush, and fancy that they are completely concealed from observation! All of you imagine, that, because you do not take people into your confidence, they are as blind as you are! Can’t they see all that is going on well enough; don’t your very looks, much less your actions, betray you? Why, Frank, I knew all about your case weeks ago, my boy!—without any information from you or anybody else! Besides, you know, Ioughtto have somelittleexperience in such matters by this time; for, every boy and girl in the parish has made me their confidante for years and years past!” and she laughed again.Miss Pimpernell was once more her cheery old self, quite restored to her normal condition of good humour.No one, I believe, ever saw her “put out” for more than five minutes consecutively at the outside; and very seldom for so long, at that.“Ah!” I ejaculated with a deep sigh, “I wish I had told you before. Now, it is too late!”“Too late!” she rejoined, briskly. “Too late! Nonsense; it’s ‘never too late to mend.’”“It is in some cases,” I said, as mournfully as Lady Dasher could have spoken; “and this is one of them!”It was all over, I thought, so, why talk about it any more? What was done couldn’t be helped!“Rubbish!” replied Miss Pimpernell; “you’ve had a tiff with her, and think you have parted for ever! You see, I know all about it without your telling me. You lovers are ever quarrelling and making up again; though, how you manage it, I can’t think. But, Frank, there must always be two to make a quarrel, and Minnie Clyde does not seem to have been one to yours. Tell me why you have altered so towards her; and, let us see whether old Sally cannot mend matters for you.”She looked at me so kindly that I made a clean breast of all my troubles.“Well, Frank!” she exclaimed, when I had got to the end of my story, “you are a big stupid, in spite of all your cleverness! You are not a bit sharper than the rest of your sex:—a woman has twice the insight of any of you lords of creation! Did I not tell you, not to believe that absurd story about Mr Mawley long ago—that it was only a silly tale of Shuffler’s, and not worth a moment’s credence? But, you wouldn’t believe me; and, here you have been knocking your head against a wall just on account of that cock-and-a-bull-story, and nothing else! Ah, you lovers will never learn common sense! If it wasn’t for us old ladies, you would get into such fine scrapes that you would never get out of them, I can tell you!”“And you are sure it is not true, Miss Pimpernell?” I asked, imploringly.“Certainly, Frank. Where are your eyes? You are as blind as a mole, my boy.”“O, Miss Pimpernell!” I exclaimed, in remorse at my hasty conduct, “what shall I do to make my peace once more with her? She will never speak to me again, I know, unless you intercede for me, and tell her how the misunderstanding arose.”“You have been very foolish, Frank,” said my kind old friend; “but I will try what I can do for you. You ought to have known that she did not care for Mr Mawley—not in the way you mean; and, as for marrying him, why, the curate himself does not dream of such a thing. I cannot imagine how you could have been so blind!”“But youwillhelp me, Miss Pimpernell, won’t you?” I entreated.“Well, my boy, I will tell Minnie what you have just told me about your delusion, and say that you are very sorry for having treated her so badly.”“And tell her,” I interposed, “that she’s dearer to me than ever.”“I will do nothing of the sort,” hastily replied the old lady. “I am not going to give Miss Spight another chance of calling me ‘a wretched old match-maker,’ as she did once! No, Master Frank, you must do all your love-making yourself, my boy. I did not tell you that Minnie cares for you, you know; and, I can’t say whether she does, or no. She’s only very unhappy at your considering her no longer in the light of a friend, and has said nothing to lead me to imagine anything more than that. She would not have spoken to me at all about it, I’m confident, if she had not happened to have seen you only a moment before, and had her sensitive little heart wounded by your coldness! Why don’t you tell her yourself, Frank, what you wish me to say for you?”“So I would, Miss Pimpernell, at once,” I replied, “if I only had an opportunity; but I never get a chance of seeing her alone.”“Why don’t you make one, Frank?” said she. “For a young fellow of the day, you are wonderfully bashful and shy, not to be able to tell the girl of your heart that you love her! I declare, if I had only done what they wanted me, I would have proposed for half of the wives of the present married men of my acquaintance! When I was a girl, gentlemen seemed to have twice the ardour about them that they have now! You are all, now-a-days, like a pack of boarding-school misses, and have to be as tenderly coaxed on into proposing, as ifyouwere the wooed and not the wooers. You don’t understand what ladies like,” continued the old lady, who, like most elderly maidens, had a strong spice of the romantic in her composition; “they prefer having their affections taken by assault instead of all this shilly-shallying and faint-heartedness. If I had had my choice, when I thought, as girls will think, of such things, I would have liked my lover to carry me off like those gallant knights did in the good old days that we read of!”“And had him prosecuted for abduction,” said I, laughing at her enthusiasm.“Well, well, Frank,” she said, laughing too, “I don’t mean to advise you to go to that extent; yet, you might easily find an opportunity to speak to Minnie Clyde, if you only set your wits to work. There’s the school treat on Thursday, won’t that do for you?”“Really,” I replied, “I never thought of that, Miss Pimpernell; indeed I had made up my mind not to go; and—”“Why shouldn’t you?” said the energetic little old lady, interrupting me. “What better chance could you have, I should like to know—a nice long day in the country, a picnic excursion, a pleasant party, with lots of openings for private conversation? Dear me, Frank, you are not half a lover! If I were a handsome young fellow like you, I would soon cut you out, my boy! Only be bold and speak out to her. Girls like boldness. I wouldn’t have given twopence for a bashful man when I was young.”“So I will, Miss Pimpernell,” said I, carried away by her energy and enthusiasm; “I will go to the school treat—that is, if you will only kindly seeMiss Clydefor me”—I was rather diffident of letting Miss Pimpernell know of the friendly footing we had been on, regarding Christian nomenclature—“beforehand, and get her to forgive me. You will, won’t you, dear Miss Pimpernell?”“None of your soft-sawder, Master Frank,” replied the old lady; “I will do what I can to make your peace, as I promised; but, as to anything further, you must be a man, and speak up for yourself.”“I will, you may rely,” I said, determined to bring matters to an issue ere the week should close.Before Thursday came, however, I knew that Miss Pimpernell had kept her word in interceding for me, and that Min had quite forgiven me.She was “friends with me once more,” I was assured; for, when I passed her window the next evening, in fear and trembling lest she should still be hostile and not recognise me, she bowed and smiled to me in her own old sweet way, as she used to do before my fit of jealousy and our consequent estrangement.Oh! how ardently I looked forwards to the approaching school treat. I was then resolved to learn whether she loved me or no. “Faint heart never won fair lady,” as Miss Pimpernell had told me; I would deserve her reproach no longer.Thursday arrived at length, and with it the school treat.This summer “outing” had been an institution of annual celebration by our vicar long before it became a habit of London clergymen to send columns of appeals to the benevolent in the daily papers to assist the poor children of their respective congregations towards having “a day’s pleasuring in the country.”Our vicar, however, was not one of those who thus “passed round the hat” to strange laity! No, he madehisinstitution entirely a self-supporting one; and his school-children had the additional pleasure of knowing, that, they assisted in paying for their treat themselves, earning it in advance, with no thanks to “charity,” or strangers, all the same.For some two months beforehand, the little ones used to deposit a weekly penny for this special purpose; and, when their contributions were thought to nearly amount to a shilling each, the fund was held sufficient to carry out the long-looked-for treat—although, of course, the vicar and other kindly-disposed persons would largely help to make the affair go off with the eclat and dignity suited to the occasion, all of which resulted in its being turned into a general picnic for the parish.The anniversary of the fête this year, was celebrated with even grander effect than any former ones had been, imposing and satisfactory though they were held at the time to be. Richmond Park was the scene of our festivities; and, not only had the vicar caused to be provided a couple of roomy four-horse omnibuses, the leading one of which sported a band, to accommodate the rank and file of the juveniles under the escort of such of their mothers as could spare the time to accompany them; but, those children who had particularly distinguished themselves during the year for good conduct, were permitted to go in the gondola, in which we oldsters proceeded, to the same destination by water. It was arranged that the “’buses” should meet us at Richmond, where both descriptions of conveyances were to disgorge their motley contents; and, the several and hitherto-severed parties, joining issue, would set about making as pleasant a day of it as could be effected under the circumstances.A “gondola” seems at first sight an anachronism on the Thames; still, on mature reflection, there does not appear to be any reason why we should not indulge in this respect equally as well as the inhabitants of much-idealised dirty Venice.Whether you agree with me or not, however, I can tell you that therearegondolas to be seen on our great watery highway—heavy barges, with bluff bows and fictitious awnings and problematical cushions, that may be had on hire for the asking, at most of the principal boating places along the banks from Chelsea to Chiswick.On first starting, one missed the many romantic associations with which the name of our floating vehicle was generally connected; yet, suggestive fancy could readily supply their place with kindred ideas culled from our more prosaic surroundings. We had, it is true, no crimson-sashed, ragged, ballet-costumed gondolier to “ply the measured oar;” because, in the first instance, we did not row up at all. We were a trifle too wise in our generation to pull up the river in a lumbering barge under a broiling sun, and fancy we were amusing ourselves! No, we had a horse and a tow-rope; and, went on our way gaily without exertion!Just you volunteer, for once, to row an excursion party up to Richmond:—you’ll enjoy it, I promise you! It is regular treadmill work; see, if you won’t afterwards think our plan the best, and adopt it, too, or I’m no prophet, that’s all!Our gondolier “was not;” but the mounted jockey who bestrode our towing horsewas; and, in lieu of waking the echoes with choice extracts from Tasso in the liquid Venesian or harsh, gritty Tuscan dialect,heoccasionally beguiled his monotonous jog-trot with a plaintive ballad, in which he rehearsed the charms of a certain “Pretty little Sarah;” or else, “made the welkin ring”—though what a “welkin” is, I have never yet been able to discover—with repeated injunctions to his somewhat lazy steed to “gee whup” and “gee wo!”We had no “Bridge of Sighs,” to pursue the parallel, where the roving eye might detect “a palace and a prison on either hand;” but, in its stead, we could gaze at the festooned chains of Hammersmith Suspension Bridge in all its simple beauty, and see the Soapworks and the Mall on the hither and further shore. Our course led, not through serpentine canals and past Doges’ palaces, gaudy with the lavish adornments of tricky Byzantine architecture; nor could we expect to see “lions” as historical as those which ornament the façade of Saint Mark’s. However, as we glided up against the tide, in slow but steady progress, by willowy banks and osiered eyots, our boat yawning in and out and requiring a stiff weather helm to keep her course, we often caught glimpses of ivy-wreathed churches, charming villa residences and gothic summer-houses, peeping out from amidst the river-lining trees—with a verdant meadow here and there to break the view, its smoothly-mown surface sweeping down to the water’s edge; while, we knew, also, that the stream which bore us on its bosom flowed over stakes and hurdles that our indigo-dyed ancestors, the ancient Britons, had planted in its bed, long before Caesar’s conquering legions crossed the channel, or Venice possessed “a local habitation and a name.”You may say, probably, that all this is a regular rigmarole of nonsense; but, what else would you have?It was a nice, beautiful, hot summer day, as our gondola glided on Richmondwards.We were a merry party, all in all, passing the time with genial and general conversation—and, occasionally, graver talk—as the mood suited us. The cheerful voices of the children, who were packed as tightly as herrings in a barrel in the bows of our craft, and their happy laughter, chimed in with the wash of the tide as it swept by the sides of our gallant barque, hurrying down to meet the flood at Gravesend. The larks were singing madly in the blue sky overhead. Each and all completed the harmony of the scene, affording us enjoyment in turn.Disgusted apparently with our merriment and frivolity, Miss Spight, shortly after we started, introduced a polemical discussion.“My dear sir,” said she to the vicar, our captain and coxswain in chief, who stately sat in the sternsheets of the gondola, “don’t you think Romanism is getting very rife in the parish? They are building a new nunnery, I hear, in the main road; and they are going to set about a chapel, too, I’m told.”“That won’t hurt us,” said the vicar, sententiously. He disliked sectarian disputes excessively, and always avoided them if he could.“But, don’t you think,” persisted Miss Spight, “that we ought to prevent this in some way?”“I was going to speak to you on the very point to-day, sir,” said Mr Mawley, before the vicar could answer. “Had we not better have a course of controversial lectures, each giving one in turn?”“No, Mawley,” replied the vicar, “since I have had the living, I have never yet permitted sectarian disputations to have a place in my pulpit; and, never will I do so as long as I live! We were instructed to preach the Gospel by our Saviour, not to wage war against this or that creed; and the Gospel is one of peace and love. Don’t you remember how Saint John, when he was upwards of fourscore years, continually taught this by his constant text, ‘Little children, love one another?’ Let us allow men to judge us by our works. The labour of Protestantism will not be accomplished by the pharisaical mode of priding ourselves on our faith, and damning that of every one else! Our mission is to preach the Gospel pure and simple. Too much time, too much money, too much of true religion is wasted, in our common custom of trying to proselytise others! We should look at home first, Mawley.”“Still, sir,” said the curate, “it is surely our mission to convert the heathen?”“I do not argue against that,” said the vicar. “God forbid that I should! But what I say is, that we are too apt, in seeking for foreign fields, to neglect the duty that lies nearer to us at home.”“It is a noble work, converting the heathen, though,” said Miss Spight.“That’s just what I mean,” responded our pastor. “All young minds are impressed with this romantic view of religion. It appears much nobler to go abroad as a missionary to the burning deserts of Africa, and to run the risk of being eaten up by cannibals, to working in this benighted land of ours, which needs conversion just as much as the negroes and Hindoos! But, there’s no romance about visiting dirty alleys in London!”“There are the Scripture readers and district visitors, are there not?” said Mr Mawley.“True,” replied the vicar, “and I would be the last to disparage their earnest efforts. What I meant was, that, while we give hundreds of pounds to foreign missions, pence are grudged for home work! There’s the Society for the Conversion of the Jews, for instance, to which I have sometimes to give up my pulpit. Now, I dare say, it is a very meritorious society, but how many Jews does it gain over really to Christianity in return for the large sums that its travelling secretaries collect every year?”“These travelling secretaries,” said I, “are what theSaturday Reviewwould call ‘spiritual bagmen,’ or ‘commercial travellers in the missionary line.’”“And not very far out, either,” said the vicar, smiling. “They are paid a salary, at all events, if they do not get a commission, to beg as much money as they can for the society to which they belong; and they do their work well, too! They succeed in carrying off an amount of money from poor parishes, which if laid out in the places where it is garnered, instead of being devoted to alien expenditure, would do far more good, and better advance the work of the Gospel than the conversion of a few renegade Jews, whose reclamation is, in the majority of cases, but a farce!”“But, my dear sir!”—exclaimed Mr Mawley, completely shocked at this overturning of all his prejudices.“Hear me out,” continued the vicar; “you must not misunderstand me. I’m not opposed to the principles of missions; but, to their being promoted to the disregard of all other considerations. Saint Paul says that we should do good to all, and especially to such as are ‘of the household of faith.’ Our missionary societies never seem to consider this. The endless number of charity sermons that we have to preach for their aid, not only extracts too much of what should be spent for the benefit of our own special communities, but militates against our getting contributions to other works of greater utility. Our congregations become so deadened bytheserepeated onslaughts on their benevolence, that they button up their pockets and respond in only a half-hearted way when we claim their assistance forour ownpoor and parish. Let us, I say, look at home first, and reclaim the lost, the fallen, the destitute in our streets; let us convert our own ‘heathen,’—our murderers, our drunkards, our wife-beaters, our thieves, our adulterers; and,then, let us talk of converting Hindoos and regenerating the Jews! Our duty, Mawley, as I hold my commission, is to preach Christ’s gospel in all its truth and simplicity and love. We do not want to run down this or that creed, however reprehensible we may think it. Let us be judged by our deeds, and acts, and words. Let us show forthourway of salvation, as we have learnt it: another authority, greater than us, will tell the world in his own good time which isthefaith!”A short pause ensued, after the vicar had thus spoken; none of us cared, for the moment, to pass on to the empty nothings of every-day talk.Seraphine Dasher was the first to break the silence.Seeing that Miss Spight had turned to address Monsieur Parole d’Honneur, who sat by her side, the good-natured Frenchman having accompanied us, to “assist at the fête” of his friend, “the good vicaire,” as he said, the wicked little seraph created a diversion.“Gracious, Miss Spight,” she exclaimed, “how you are flirting!”The indignation of the austere virgin, and the warmth with which she repelled this accusation, caused us all so much amusement, that in another moment or two we were in the full swing again of our ordinary chatter.As we passed under Barnes railway bridge, where the tide was rushing through the arches with all the pent-up waters of the reach beyond, Min, who had been hitherto apparently distrait, like myself, not having spoken, observed, that, the sight of a river flowing along always made her feel reflective and sad.“It recalls to my mind,” said she, “those lines of Longfellow’s, from theCoplas de Manrique.“‘Our lives are rivers, gliding free,To that unfathom’d boundless sea,The silent grave!Thither all earthly pomp and boastRoll, to be swallowed up and lostIn one dark wave.’”“I prefer,” said I, “Tennyson’sBrook. Our laureate’s description of a moving river is not so sombre as that of the American poet; and, besides, has more life and action about it.”“How many different poets have sung the praises of the Thames,” said Miss Pimpernell. “I suppose more poetry,—good, bad, and indifferent—has been written about it, than for all the other rivers of the world combined.”“You are right, my dear,” said the vicar; “more, by a good deal! The Jordan has been distinguished in Holy Writ especially; Horner has celebrated the Xanthus and Simois, and Horace the tawny Tiber; the rivers of Spain have been painted by Calderon, Lope de Vega and Aldana; the Rhine and its legends sang of by Uhland and Goethe and Schiller—not to speak of the fabled Nile, as it was in the days of Sesostris, when Herodotus wrote of it; and the Danube, the Po, and the Arno,—all rivers of the old world, that have been described by a thousand poets. But, above all these, the Thames has furnished a more frequent theme, and for great poets, too! Every aspirant for the immortal bays has tried his ’prentice hand on it, from Chaucer, in excelsis, down to the poet Close at the foot of the Parnassian ladder!“We were talking of the Thames,” continued the vicar, pouring out a flood of archaeological reminiscences—“The great reason why it is so suggestive, beyond the great practical fact that it is the silent highway of the fleets of nations, is, that it is also indissolubly bound up, as well, with by-gone memories of people that have lived and died, to the glory and disgrace of history—of places whose bare names we cherish and love! Every step, almost, along its banks is sacred to some noble name. ‘Stat magno nominis umbrâ’ should be its motto. Strawberry Hill reminds you of witty, keen-sighted Horace Walpole, and his gossiping chit-chat concerning wrangling princes, feeble-minded ministers, and all the other imbecilities of the last century. Twickenham brings back to one, bitter-tongued Pope, his distorted body and waspish mind. Richmond Hill recalls the Earl of Chatham in his enforced retirement, his gout, and the memorable theatrical speech he made on the floor of the House of Lords, at the time of our greatest national triumph and exertion, that closed his public life. Further up the stream, we come to old Windsor Castle, to be reminded of bluff Bluebeard, bigamous, wicked, king Hal; higher still, we are at Oxford, the nursery of our Church, the ‘alma mater’ of our learning. Lower down, at Whitehall stairs, we are face to face again with Roundheads, and regicides, and gunpowder plots; lower still, and we are at the Tower, with its cruel tyrannies and beheadings of traitors and patriots; and then, we find ourselves amidst a sea of masts which bear the English flag to the uttermost parts of the earth. No wonder our river has been so poetical:—it has deserved it! But, really, if all the poems that have been written in its honour could be collected in one volume, what a prodigious tome it would be!—what a medley of versification it would present!”“Sure you’ve forgotten the Shannon entirely,” observed Lady Dasher in her plaintive way.She was certainly waking up from her normal melancholic condition; for, before this, she had been seen to smile—a phenomenon never noticed in her before by her oldest acquaintance.“You have quite forgotten the Shannon! My poor dear papa, when he was alive, used to say that it was the finest river in the world. I remember he had a favourite song about it—I don’t know if I quite recollect it now, but, I’ll try.”“Do, Lady Dasher, do,” said Mr Mawley, who, having been paying great attention to Bessie the while, wished, I suppose, to ingratiate himself with her mother.“I must put on the brogue, you know,” said she, looking round with an affectation of shyness, which was most incongruous on her melancholy visage; it was just like a death’s head trying to grin, I thought to myself;—and then, she commenced, in a thin, quavering voice, the lay of the departed earl, her “poor dear papa.”“‘O! Limerick is be-yewtifool, as iveryba-ady knows,And round about the city walls the reever Shannon flows;But ’tis not the reever, nor the feesh, that preys upon my mind,Nor, with the town of Limerick have I any fault to find!’”“Ah! Very nice indeed! Thank you, Lady Dasher, thank you!” said the vicar, when she had got thus far, and succeeded in arresting the progress of her ladyship’s melody; otherwise, she might have gone on the live-long summer day with the halting ditty, for it consisted, as she subsequently told us, of no less than five-and-forty verses, all in the same pleasant strain!“I don’t think,” said I, to change the conversation, “that poetry is nearly as highly regarded in the present day, as it was some forty years back or so—if one may judge by the biographies of literary men of that time.”“But, it sells more readily,” said Mr Mawley; “not only do fresh débutantes appear, but new editions of the old poets come out daily.”“That may be,” said I. “But they are not nearly so highly appreciated. I suppose it is because poetry is not so much a rarity now. We have so many mediocre poets, that our taste is more exigent. I dare say, if a very bright, particular star should arise, we would honour him; but we have no bright particular star; and, thus, we learn to read poetry without reflection. Forty years ago, people used to talk over the last production of the muse, and canvas its merits in coffee-rooms all over the town; now, we only dash through it, as we would take up the last new novel, or the evening paper, thinking no more about it!”“When I was younger,” said Miss Spight—she didn’t say when she was “young,” mark you—“no young gentlewoman’s education would have been thought complete without a course of the best poets, such as Milton’sParadise Lost.”“Which nine out of ten of the people who speak about it now, never read,” said I—and, Miss Spight did not reply.“What queer people poets are, generally speaking,” said Mr Mawley.“Do you think so?” said I.“Yes, I do,” he replied. “I would divide poets into three great classes, which I would call respectively the enthusiastic school, the water-cart school, and the horse-going-round-in-the-mill school.”“O–oh, Mr Mawley!” exclaimed Bessie Dasher, in the unmeaning manner common to young ladies, in lieu of saying anything, when they have got nothing to say: the exclamation expressing either astonishment, horror, alarm, or rebuke, as the case may require.“Instance, instance! Name, name!” said I, keeping the curate up to the mark.“Well, I will give you Horner, and Dante, Goethe, Byron, and, perhaps, Tennyson, from which to take your choice amongst those whom I call the enthusiastic school; Mrs Hemans, and others of her tearful race, in the second; and, in the third order, the majority of those who have spoilt good ink and paper, from Dryden down to Martin F Tupper.”“What, no exceptions; not even my favourite Longfellow?” asked Min.“No,” said Mr Mawley, “not one—although Longfellow belongs more by rights to the water-cart line. The fact is,” continued he, fairly started on his hobby, “that Pegasus, the charger of Mount Parnassus, is a most eccentric animal, who can be made to metamorphose himself so completely according to the skill and ability or weakness of his rider, that even Apollo would not recognise him sometimes! When backed by an intrepid spirit, like the grand heroic poets, Pegasus is the stately war-horse eager for the fray, and sniffing the battle from afar; or else, controlled by the nervous reins of genius like that of Shelley and Coleridge, he appears as the high-mettled racer, pure-blooded and finely-trained, who may win some great race, but is unfit for any ordinary work; or, again, when ridden by a Wordsworth, he plods along wearily, with lack-lustre eyes, dragging a heavy load, such asThe Excursion, behind him!”What the curate might have said further was lost to his hearers. Just at this moment, on turning a bend of the river, the pretty little low-arched bridge that spans it in front of Richmond came in sight; seeing which, the children raised such a shout of joy in the bows of the gondola, that our conversation shunted into a fresh channel, while our teamster, urging his horse by a multitude of “gee wo’s,” into a brisk trot, tightened our tow-rope and led us up in fine style to our goal.A short distance from the landing-place under the bridge, we found the detachments that had gone by road, awaiting us. Joining company, we proceeded together to the park, and set about our picnic in the usual harum-scarum fashion, chasing truant children, losing one another, finding one another, making merry over the most dire mishaps, and enjoying the whole thing hugely—elders, juveniles, and all—from beginning to end.The vicar made a perfect boy of himself. With a charming gleefulness, he did the most outrageous things—at which Master Adolphus, aetat twelve, would have turned up his nose, as being much beneath his years and dignity. He said he did it only to amuse the children; but, he took such an active part in the games he instituted, that we declared that he joined in them for his own personal gratification.Monsieur Parole d’Honneur, too, who was the gayest of the gay, specially distinguished himself for his vaulting powers in a sport which he entitled in his broken English manner “ze leap of ze frog;” and, as for grave Doctor Batson, whom we all thought so formal and dignified in his professional tether, why, the way in which he “stuck in his twopenny,” as the boys said, and “gave a ‘back,’” was a caution to the lookers-on!Then we had a substantial “soldier’s tea” in and around a little cottage conveniently-situated close to the park:—there, we boiled our kettles, and brewed great jorums of straw-coloured water, at the sight of which a Chinaman would have been filled with horror, impregnated as it was with the taste of new tin and the flavour of moist brown sugar and milk. The children enjoyed it, however, in conjunction with clothes baskets full of sliced bread-and-butter, and buns and cake galore:— so, our main consideration was satisfied.The whole thing passed off well, the only mishap, throughout the day, arising from Horner having filled Miss Spight’s galoshes with hot tea; but, as she did not happen to be wearing them at the time, the accident was not of much consequence, although she soundly rated the young gentleman for his awkwardness.Everybody, too, was satisfied—the vicar and Miss Pimpernell, at the success of the treat and the pleasure of the school-children; the churchwardens, that the expenses did not come out of their pockets; Lady Dasher, at Mr Mawley’s attentions to her daughter, which she really thought “quite marked;” and the rest of us, more youthful members of the parish gathering, at the general delightfulness of the day’s outing—the excursion by water, the picnic in the park, the gipsying, the fresh breeze, the bright sun, the everything!I was happy, too, although I had not yet had a chance of speaking to Min privately—in the boat there were more listeners near than I cared for, and on shore she was too busy entertaining a small crowd of toddlekins, for whose delectation she told deeply-involved fairy stories, and wove unlimited daisy-chains of intricate patterns and simple workmanship. Still, I knew that before night closed, I should have the wished-for opportunity of telling my tale; and, in the meantime, I was quite contented to sit near her, and hear her sweet voice, and be certain that she did not care for Mr Mawley after all!The day could not pass, however, without the curate and I having our customary spar; and it happened in this wise.On our way down to the gondola, after packing up the omnibus contingent of juveniles safely, in company with their mothers and a hecatomb of emptied baskets, and seeing the party off with a parting cheer from both sides, Miss Spight amiably suggested that she thought it was going to rain; at which, of course, there arose a general outcry.“Dear me,” said Miss Pimpernell, “I believe you are right, for, there are the midges dancing, too! I hope none of you girls will get your new bonnets spoilt! But, you needn’t be alarmed, my dears,” she added to reassure us, “it is certain not to come down before morning, if you will take an old woman’s word for it.”“You may believe Sally, and set your minds at ease,” said the vicar. “She’s a rare judge of the weather, and as good as a farmer or sailor in that respect.”“Are the midges a sign of rain?” asked Min; “I never heard that before.”“Yes, my dear,” said Miss Pimpernell, seating herself in the gondola, which we had now reached. “They always dance about twelve hours or so before it rains.”“Are there not some other signs given by animals, also, when there is going to be a change in the weather?” asked Bessie Dasher.“Yes,” said Mr Mawley, anxious, as usual, to show off his erudition, “cows low, swallows fly near the ground, sheep bleat, and—”“Asses bray,” said I, with emphasis.“So I hear,” said he quickly. The curate was getting sharper than ever.“Ah,” said I, “thatis only a ‘tu quoque!’”“What is that?” asked Bessie Dasher, thinking I was making use of some term of virulent abuse, I verily believe.“Oh!” said Mr Mawley, who was in high feather at having retorted my cut so brilliantly, “it is only a polite way of saying ‘you’re another,’ an expression which I dare say you have often heard vulgar little boys in the street make use of. I say, Lorton,” he added, addressing me, “I think that’s one to me, eh?”“All right,” said I, “score it up, if you like.”And, we started down the stream homeward bound.
We left behind the painted buoyThat tosses at the harbour mouth;And madly danced our heart with joy,As fast we fleeted to the south.How fresh was every sight and soundOn open main, on winding shore!We knew the merry world was round,And we might sail for evermore.
We left behind the painted buoyThat tosses at the harbour mouth;And madly danced our heart with joy,As fast we fleeted to the south.How fresh was every sight and soundOn open main, on winding shore!We knew the merry world was round,And we might sail for evermore.
“Frank, what do you mean by behaving so unkindly to Minnie Clyde?” was the opening salutation of little Miss Pimpernell to me, the same evening, when I called round again at the vicarage, like Telemachus, in search of consolation.
I was so utterly miserable and disheartened at the conviction that everything was over between Min and myself—at the sudden collapse of all my eager hopes and ardent longings—that I felt I must speak to somebody and unbosom myself; or else I should go out of my senses.
“Ibehave unkindly to Miss Clyde!” I exclaimed, in astonishment at her thus addressing me, before I could get out a word as to why I had come to see her—“I—I—I—don’t know what you mean, Miss Pimpernell?”
“You know, or ought to know very well, Frank, without my telling you,” she rejoined; and there was a grave tone in her voice, for which I could not account.
However, the dear old lady did not leave me long in doubt.
She was never in the habit of “beating about the bush;” but always spoke out straight, plump and plain, to the point.
“Really, my boy,” she continued, “I think there is no excuse for your acting so strangely to the poor little girl, after all your attentions and long intimacy!”
“But, Miss Pimpernell,” I commenced; however, she quickly interrupted me.
“‘But me no buts,’ Frank Lorton,” she said, with more determination and severity than she had ever used to me since I had known her. “I’m quite angry with you. You have disappointed all my expectations, when I thought I knew your character so well, too! Learn, that there is no one I despise so much as a male flirt. Oh, Frank! I did not think you had a grain of such little-mindedness in you! I believed you to be straightforward, and earnest, and true. I’m sadly disappointed in you, my boy; sadly disappointed!” and she shook her head reproachfully.
It was very hard being attacked in this way, when I had come for consolation!
I had thought myself to be the injured party, whose wounds would have been bound up, and oil and wine inpoured by the good Samaritan to whom I had always looked as my staunchest ally; yet, here she was, upbraiding me as a heartless deceiver, a rôle which I had never played in my life!
I did not know what to make of it.
What was she driving at?
“I assure you, Miss Pimpernell,” I said with all the earnestness which the circumstances really warranted, “that I have not behaved in any way, to my knowledge, of which you might be ashamed for my sake. I came in this evening to ask your sympathy; and, here, you accuse me like this, without waiting to hear a word I have to say! Miss Pimpernell, you are unjust to me. I will go.”
And I made as if to leave the room in a huff.
“Stop, Frank,” said the dear little old lady, rising to her feet, and speaking to me again with something of her old cordial manner—“You speak candidly; and I’ve always known you to tell the truth, so I won’t doubt you now. Perhaps things have only got into a muddle after all. Let me see if I cannot get to the bottom of it, and set them straight for you! You will not deny, I suppose, Frank, that up to a short time since you’ve been in the habit of paying a good deal of attention to Minnie Clyde?”
“Miss Clyde is nothing to me now!” I said grandly: I did not deceive her, however, nor turn her from her purpose.
“Wait a minute, my boy, and hear me out. You won’t deny that you have been what you call ‘spoony,’ in your abominable slang, eh, Frank?” she repeated, with a knowing glance from her beady black eyes.
“Pay her attention, Miss Pimpernell,” I said impetuously. “Good heavens! Why, at one time I would have died for her, and let my body be cut into little pieces, if it would only have done her any good!”
“Softly, Frank,” responded the old lady. “I don’t think thatwouldhave done her any good, or you either, for that matter! But, why have you changed towards her, Frank? I never thought you so false and fickle, my boy. She came in here to see me to-day, looking very excited and unhappy; and when she had sat down—there, in that very chair you are now sitting in,” continued Miss Pimpernell, emphasising her words by pointing to the corner I occupied, “and I asked her soothingly what distressed her, she burst into tears, and sobbed as if her little heart would break. I declare, my boy,” said the warm-hearted little body, with a husky cough, “I almost cried myself in company. However, I got it all out of her afterwards. It seems to me, Frank, that you have behaved very unkindly to her. She thought she had offended you in some way of which she declared that she was perfectly ignorant: she had asked you, she said, but you would not tell her—treating her as if she were a perfect stranger. She’s a sensitive girl, Frank, and you have hurt her feelings to the quick! Now, what is the reason of this—do you care for her still?”
“Care for her! Miss Pimpernell,” I said. “Why I love her—although I did not intend telling you yet.”
“As if I didn’t know all about that already,” said the old lady, laughing cheerily. “Oh, you lovers, you lovers! You are just for all the world like a herd of wild ostriches, that stick their heads in the bush, and fancy that they are completely concealed from observation! All of you imagine, that, because you do not take people into your confidence, they are as blind as you are! Can’t they see all that is going on well enough; don’t your very looks, much less your actions, betray you? Why, Frank, I knew all about your case weeks ago, my boy!—without any information from you or anybody else! Besides, you know, Ioughtto have somelittleexperience in such matters by this time; for, every boy and girl in the parish has made me their confidante for years and years past!” and she laughed again.
Miss Pimpernell was once more her cheery old self, quite restored to her normal condition of good humour.
No one, I believe, ever saw her “put out” for more than five minutes consecutively at the outside; and very seldom for so long, at that.
“Ah!” I ejaculated with a deep sigh, “I wish I had told you before. Now, it is too late!”
“Too late!” she rejoined, briskly. “Too late! Nonsense; it’s ‘never too late to mend.’”
“It is in some cases,” I said, as mournfully as Lady Dasher could have spoken; “and this is one of them!”
It was all over, I thought, so, why talk about it any more? What was done couldn’t be helped!
“Rubbish!” replied Miss Pimpernell; “you’ve had a tiff with her, and think you have parted for ever! You see, I know all about it without your telling me. You lovers are ever quarrelling and making up again; though, how you manage it, I can’t think. But, Frank, there must always be two to make a quarrel, and Minnie Clyde does not seem to have been one to yours. Tell me why you have altered so towards her; and, let us see whether old Sally cannot mend matters for you.”
She looked at me so kindly that I made a clean breast of all my troubles.
“Well, Frank!” she exclaimed, when I had got to the end of my story, “you are a big stupid, in spite of all your cleverness! You are not a bit sharper than the rest of your sex:—a woman has twice the insight of any of you lords of creation! Did I not tell you, not to believe that absurd story about Mr Mawley long ago—that it was only a silly tale of Shuffler’s, and not worth a moment’s credence? But, you wouldn’t believe me; and, here you have been knocking your head against a wall just on account of that cock-and-a-bull-story, and nothing else! Ah, you lovers will never learn common sense! If it wasn’t for us old ladies, you would get into such fine scrapes that you would never get out of them, I can tell you!”
“And you are sure it is not true, Miss Pimpernell?” I asked, imploringly.
“Certainly, Frank. Where are your eyes? You are as blind as a mole, my boy.”
“O, Miss Pimpernell!” I exclaimed, in remorse at my hasty conduct, “what shall I do to make my peace once more with her? She will never speak to me again, I know, unless you intercede for me, and tell her how the misunderstanding arose.”
“You have been very foolish, Frank,” said my kind old friend; “but I will try what I can do for you. You ought to have known that she did not care for Mr Mawley—not in the way you mean; and, as for marrying him, why, the curate himself does not dream of such a thing. I cannot imagine how you could have been so blind!”
“But youwillhelp me, Miss Pimpernell, won’t you?” I entreated.
“Well, my boy, I will tell Minnie what you have just told me about your delusion, and say that you are very sorry for having treated her so badly.”
“And tell her,” I interposed, “that she’s dearer to me than ever.”
“I will do nothing of the sort,” hastily replied the old lady. “I am not going to give Miss Spight another chance of calling me ‘a wretched old match-maker,’ as she did once! No, Master Frank, you must do all your love-making yourself, my boy. I did not tell you that Minnie cares for you, you know; and, I can’t say whether she does, or no. She’s only very unhappy at your considering her no longer in the light of a friend, and has said nothing to lead me to imagine anything more than that. She would not have spoken to me at all about it, I’m confident, if she had not happened to have seen you only a moment before, and had her sensitive little heart wounded by your coldness! Why don’t you tell her yourself, Frank, what you wish me to say for you?”
“So I would, Miss Pimpernell, at once,” I replied, “if I only had an opportunity; but I never get a chance of seeing her alone.”
“Why don’t you make one, Frank?” said she. “For a young fellow of the day, you are wonderfully bashful and shy, not to be able to tell the girl of your heart that you love her! I declare, if I had only done what they wanted me, I would have proposed for half of the wives of the present married men of my acquaintance! When I was a girl, gentlemen seemed to have twice the ardour about them that they have now! You are all, now-a-days, like a pack of boarding-school misses, and have to be as tenderly coaxed on into proposing, as ifyouwere the wooed and not the wooers. You don’t understand what ladies like,” continued the old lady, who, like most elderly maidens, had a strong spice of the romantic in her composition; “they prefer having their affections taken by assault instead of all this shilly-shallying and faint-heartedness. If I had had my choice, when I thought, as girls will think, of such things, I would have liked my lover to carry me off like those gallant knights did in the good old days that we read of!”
“And had him prosecuted for abduction,” said I, laughing at her enthusiasm.
“Well, well, Frank,” she said, laughing too, “I don’t mean to advise you to go to that extent; yet, you might easily find an opportunity to speak to Minnie Clyde, if you only set your wits to work. There’s the school treat on Thursday, won’t that do for you?”
“Really,” I replied, “I never thought of that, Miss Pimpernell; indeed I had made up my mind not to go; and—”
“Why shouldn’t you?” said the energetic little old lady, interrupting me. “What better chance could you have, I should like to know—a nice long day in the country, a picnic excursion, a pleasant party, with lots of openings for private conversation? Dear me, Frank, you are not half a lover! If I were a handsome young fellow like you, I would soon cut you out, my boy! Only be bold and speak out to her. Girls like boldness. I wouldn’t have given twopence for a bashful man when I was young.”
“So I will, Miss Pimpernell,” said I, carried away by her energy and enthusiasm; “I will go to the school treat—that is, if you will only kindly seeMiss Clydefor me”—I was rather diffident of letting Miss Pimpernell know of the friendly footing we had been on, regarding Christian nomenclature—“beforehand, and get her to forgive me. You will, won’t you, dear Miss Pimpernell?”
“None of your soft-sawder, Master Frank,” replied the old lady; “I will do what I can to make your peace, as I promised; but, as to anything further, you must be a man, and speak up for yourself.”
“I will, you may rely,” I said, determined to bring matters to an issue ere the week should close.
Before Thursday came, however, I knew that Miss Pimpernell had kept her word in interceding for me, and that Min had quite forgiven me.
She was “friends with me once more,” I was assured; for, when I passed her window the next evening, in fear and trembling lest she should still be hostile and not recognise me, she bowed and smiled to me in her own old sweet way, as she used to do before my fit of jealousy and our consequent estrangement.
Oh! how ardently I looked forwards to the approaching school treat. I was then resolved to learn whether she loved me or no. “Faint heart never won fair lady,” as Miss Pimpernell had told me; I would deserve her reproach no longer.
Thursday arrived at length, and with it the school treat.
This summer “outing” had been an institution of annual celebration by our vicar long before it became a habit of London clergymen to send columns of appeals to the benevolent in the daily papers to assist the poor children of their respective congregations towards having “a day’s pleasuring in the country.”
Our vicar, however, was not one of those who thus “passed round the hat” to strange laity! No, he madehisinstitution entirely a self-supporting one; and his school-children had the additional pleasure of knowing, that, they assisted in paying for their treat themselves, earning it in advance, with no thanks to “charity,” or strangers, all the same.
For some two months beforehand, the little ones used to deposit a weekly penny for this special purpose; and, when their contributions were thought to nearly amount to a shilling each, the fund was held sufficient to carry out the long-looked-for treat—although, of course, the vicar and other kindly-disposed persons would largely help to make the affair go off with the eclat and dignity suited to the occasion, all of which resulted in its being turned into a general picnic for the parish.
The anniversary of the fête this year, was celebrated with even grander effect than any former ones had been, imposing and satisfactory though they were held at the time to be. Richmond Park was the scene of our festivities; and, not only had the vicar caused to be provided a couple of roomy four-horse omnibuses, the leading one of which sported a band, to accommodate the rank and file of the juveniles under the escort of such of their mothers as could spare the time to accompany them; but, those children who had particularly distinguished themselves during the year for good conduct, were permitted to go in the gondola, in which we oldsters proceeded, to the same destination by water. It was arranged that the “’buses” should meet us at Richmond, where both descriptions of conveyances were to disgorge their motley contents; and, the several and hitherto-severed parties, joining issue, would set about making as pleasant a day of it as could be effected under the circumstances.
A “gondola” seems at first sight an anachronism on the Thames; still, on mature reflection, there does not appear to be any reason why we should not indulge in this respect equally as well as the inhabitants of much-idealised dirty Venice.
Whether you agree with me or not, however, I can tell you that therearegondolas to be seen on our great watery highway—heavy barges, with bluff bows and fictitious awnings and problematical cushions, that may be had on hire for the asking, at most of the principal boating places along the banks from Chelsea to Chiswick.
On first starting, one missed the many romantic associations with which the name of our floating vehicle was generally connected; yet, suggestive fancy could readily supply their place with kindred ideas culled from our more prosaic surroundings. We had, it is true, no crimson-sashed, ragged, ballet-costumed gondolier to “ply the measured oar;” because, in the first instance, we did not row up at all. We were a trifle too wise in our generation to pull up the river in a lumbering barge under a broiling sun, and fancy we were amusing ourselves! No, we had a horse and a tow-rope; and, went on our way gaily without exertion!
Just you volunteer, for once, to row an excursion party up to Richmond:—you’ll enjoy it, I promise you! It is regular treadmill work; see, if you won’t afterwards think our plan the best, and adopt it, too, or I’m no prophet, that’s all!
Our gondolier “was not;” but the mounted jockey who bestrode our towing horsewas; and, in lieu of waking the echoes with choice extracts from Tasso in the liquid Venesian or harsh, gritty Tuscan dialect,heoccasionally beguiled his monotonous jog-trot with a plaintive ballad, in which he rehearsed the charms of a certain “Pretty little Sarah;” or else, “made the welkin ring”—though what a “welkin” is, I have never yet been able to discover—with repeated injunctions to his somewhat lazy steed to “gee whup” and “gee wo!”
We had no “Bridge of Sighs,” to pursue the parallel, where the roving eye might detect “a palace and a prison on either hand;” but, in its stead, we could gaze at the festooned chains of Hammersmith Suspension Bridge in all its simple beauty, and see the Soapworks and the Mall on the hither and further shore. Our course led, not through serpentine canals and past Doges’ palaces, gaudy with the lavish adornments of tricky Byzantine architecture; nor could we expect to see “lions” as historical as those which ornament the façade of Saint Mark’s. However, as we glided up against the tide, in slow but steady progress, by willowy banks and osiered eyots, our boat yawning in and out and requiring a stiff weather helm to keep her course, we often caught glimpses of ivy-wreathed churches, charming villa residences and gothic summer-houses, peeping out from amidst the river-lining trees—with a verdant meadow here and there to break the view, its smoothly-mown surface sweeping down to the water’s edge; while, we knew, also, that the stream which bore us on its bosom flowed over stakes and hurdles that our indigo-dyed ancestors, the ancient Britons, had planted in its bed, long before Caesar’s conquering legions crossed the channel, or Venice possessed “a local habitation and a name.”
You may say, probably, that all this is a regular rigmarole of nonsense; but, what else would you have?
It was a nice, beautiful, hot summer day, as our gondola glided on Richmondwards.
We were a merry party, all in all, passing the time with genial and general conversation—and, occasionally, graver talk—as the mood suited us. The cheerful voices of the children, who were packed as tightly as herrings in a barrel in the bows of our craft, and their happy laughter, chimed in with the wash of the tide as it swept by the sides of our gallant barque, hurrying down to meet the flood at Gravesend. The larks were singing madly in the blue sky overhead. Each and all completed the harmony of the scene, affording us enjoyment in turn.
Disgusted apparently with our merriment and frivolity, Miss Spight, shortly after we started, introduced a polemical discussion.
“My dear sir,” said she to the vicar, our captain and coxswain in chief, who stately sat in the sternsheets of the gondola, “don’t you think Romanism is getting very rife in the parish? They are building a new nunnery, I hear, in the main road; and they are going to set about a chapel, too, I’m told.”
“That won’t hurt us,” said the vicar, sententiously. He disliked sectarian disputes excessively, and always avoided them if he could.
“But, don’t you think,” persisted Miss Spight, “that we ought to prevent this in some way?”
“I was going to speak to you on the very point to-day, sir,” said Mr Mawley, before the vicar could answer. “Had we not better have a course of controversial lectures, each giving one in turn?”
“No, Mawley,” replied the vicar, “since I have had the living, I have never yet permitted sectarian disputations to have a place in my pulpit; and, never will I do so as long as I live! We were instructed to preach the Gospel by our Saviour, not to wage war against this or that creed; and the Gospel is one of peace and love. Don’t you remember how Saint John, when he was upwards of fourscore years, continually taught this by his constant text, ‘Little children, love one another?’ Let us allow men to judge us by our works. The labour of Protestantism will not be accomplished by the pharisaical mode of priding ourselves on our faith, and damning that of every one else! Our mission is to preach the Gospel pure and simple. Too much time, too much money, too much of true religion is wasted, in our common custom of trying to proselytise others! We should look at home first, Mawley.”
“Still, sir,” said the curate, “it is surely our mission to convert the heathen?”
“I do not argue against that,” said the vicar. “God forbid that I should! But what I say is, that we are too apt, in seeking for foreign fields, to neglect the duty that lies nearer to us at home.”
“It is a noble work, converting the heathen, though,” said Miss Spight.
“That’s just what I mean,” responded our pastor. “All young minds are impressed with this romantic view of religion. It appears much nobler to go abroad as a missionary to the burning deserts of Africa, and to run the risk of being eaten up by cannibals, to working in this benighted land of ours, which needs conversion just as much as the negroes and Hindoos! But, there’s no romance about visiting dirty alleys in London!”
“There are the Scripture readers and district visitors, are there not?” said Mr Mawley.
“True,” replied the vicar, “and I would be the last to disparage their earnest efforts. What I meant was, that, while we give hundreds of pounds to foreign missions, pence are grudged for home work! There’s the Society for the Conversion of the Jews, for instance, to which I have sometimes to give up my pulpit. Now, I dare say, it is a very meritorious society, but how many Jews does it gain over really to Christianity in return for the large sums that its travelling secretaries collect every year?”
“These travelling secretaries,” said I, “are what theSaturday Reviewwould call ‘spiritual bagmen,’ or ‘commercial travellers in the missionary line.’”
“And not very far out, either,” said the vicar, smiling. “They are paid a salary, at all events, if they do not get a commission, to beg as much money as they can for the society to which they belong; and they do their work well, too! They succeed in carrying off an amount of money from poor parishes, which if laid out in the places where it is garnered, instead of being devoted to alien expenditure, would do far more good, and better advance the work of the Gospel than the conversion of a few renegade Jews, whose reclamation is, in the majority of cases, but a farce!”
“But, my dear sir!”—exclaimed Mr Mawley, completely shocked at this overturning of all his prejudices.
“Hear me out,” continued the vicar; “you must not misunderstand me. I’m not opposed to the principles of missions; but, to their being promoted to the disregard of all other considerations. Saint Paul says that we should do good to all, and especially to such as are ‘of the household of faith.’ Our missionary societies never seem to consider this. The endless number of charity sermons that we have to preach for their aid, not only extracts too much of what should be spent for the benefit of our own special communities, but militates against our getting contributions to other works of greater utility. Our congregations become so deadened bytheserepeated onslaughts on their benevolence, that they button up their pockets and respond in only a half-hearted way when we claim their assistance forour ownpoor and parish. Let us, I say, look at home first, and reclaim the lost, the fallen, the destitute in our streets; let us convert our own ‘heathen,’—our murderers, our drunkards, our wife-beaters, our thieves, our adulterers; and,then, let us talk of converting Hindoos and regenerating the Jews! Our duty, Mawley, as I hold my commission, is to preach Christ’s gospel in all its truth and simplicity and love. We do not want to run down this or that creed, however reprehensible we may think it. Let us be judged by our deeds, and acts, and words. Let us show forthourway of salvation, as we have learnt it: another authority, greater than us, will tell the world in his own good time which isthefaith!”
A short pause ensued, after the vicar had thus spoken; none of us cared, for the moment, to pass on to the empty nothings of every-day talk.
Seraphine Dasher was the first to break the silence.
Seeing that Miss Spight had turned to address Monsieur Parole d’Honneur, who sat by her side, the good-natured Frenchman having accompanied us, to “assist at the fête” of his friend, “the good vicaire,” as he said, the wicked little seraph created a diversion.
“Gracious, Miss Spight,” she exclaimed, “how you are flirting!”
The indignation of the austere virgin, and the warmth with which she repelled this accusation, caused us all so much amusement, that in another moment or two we were in the full swing again of our ordinary chatter.
As we passed under Barnes railway bridge, where the tide was rushing through the arches with all the pent-up waters of the reach beyond, Min, who had been hitherto apparently distrait, like myself, not having spoken, observed, that, the sight of a river flowing along always made her feel reflective and sad.
“It recalls to my mind,” said she, “those lines of Longfellow’s, from theCoplas de Manrique.
“‘Our lives are rivers, gliding free,To that unfathom’d boundless sea,The silent grave!Thither all earthly pomp and boastRoll, to be swallowed up and lostIn one dark wave.’”
“‘Our lives are rivers, gliding free,To that unfathom’d boundless sea,The silent grave!Thither all earthly pomp and boastRoll, to be swallowed up and lostIn one dark wave.’”
“I prefer,” said I, “Tennyson’sBrook. Our laureate’s description of a moving river is not so sombre as that of the American poet; and, besides, has more life and action about it.”
“How many different poets have sung the praises of the Thames,” said Miss Pimpernell. “I suppose more poetry,—good, bad, and indifferent—has been written about it, than for all the other rivers of the world combined.”
“You are right, my dear,” said the vicar; “more, by a good deal! The Jordan has been distinguished in Holy Writ especially; Horner has celebrated the Xanthus and Simois, and Horace the tawny Tiber; the rivers of Spain have been painted by Calderon, Lope de Vega and Aldana; the Rhine and its legends sang of by Uhland and Goethe and Schiller—not to speak of the fabled Nile, as it was in the days of Sesostris, when Herodotus wrote of it; and the Danube, the Po, and the Arno,—all rivers of the old world, that have been described by a thousand poets. But, above all these, the Thames has furnished a more frequent theme, and for great poets, too! Every aspirant for the immortal bays has tried his ’prentice hand on it, from Chaucer, in excelsis, down to the poet Close at the foot of the Parnassian ladder!
“We were talking of the Thames,” continued the vicar, pouring out a flood of archaeological reminiscences—“The great reason why it is so suggestive, beyond the great practical fact that it is the silent highway of the fleets of nations, is, that it is also indissolubly bound up, as well, with by-gone memories of people that have lived and died, to the glory and disgrace of history—of places whose bare names we cherish and love! Every step, almost, along its banks is sacred to some noble name. ‘Stat magno nominis umbrâ’ should be its motto. Strawberry Hill reminds you of witty, keen-sighted Horace Walpole, and his gossiping chit-chat concerning wrangling princes, feeble-minded ministers, and all the other imbecilities of the last century. Twickenham brings back to one, bitter-tongued Pope, his distorted body and waspish mind. Richmond Hill recalls the Earl of Chatham in his enforced retirement, his gout, and the memorable theatrical speech he made on the floor of the House of Lords, at the time of our greatest national triumph and exertion, that closed his public life. Further up the stream, we come to old Windsor Castle, to be reminded of bluff Bluebeard, bigamous, wicked, king Hal; higher still, we are at Oxford, the nursery of our Church, the ‘alma mater’ of our learning. Lower down, at Whitehall stairs, we are face to face again with Roundheads, and regicides, and gunpowder plots; lower still, and we are at the Tower, with its cruel tyrannies and beheadings of traitors and patriots; and then, we find ourselves amidst a sea of masts which bear the English flag to the uttermost parts of the earth. No wonder our river has been so poetical:—it has deserved it! But, really, if all the poems that have been written in its honour could be collected in one volume, what a prodigious tome it would be!—what a medley of versification it would present!”
“Sure you’ve forgotten the Shannon entirely,” observed Lady Dasher in her plaintive way.
She was certainly waking up from her normal melancholic condition; for, before this, she had been seen to smile—a phenomenon never noticed in her before by her oldest acquaintance.
“You have quite forgotten the Shannon! My poor dear papa, when he was alive, used to say that it was the finest river in the world. I remember he had a favourite song about it—I don’t know if I quite recollect it now, but, I’ll try.”
“Do, Lady Dasher, do,” said Mr Mawley, who, having been paying great attention to Bessie the while, wished, I suppose, to ingratiate himself with her mother.
“I must put on the brogue, you know,” said she, looking round with an affectation of shyness, which was most incongruous on her melancholy visage; it was just like a death’s head trying to grin, I thought to myself;—and then, she commenced, in a thin, quavering voice, the lay of the departed earl, her “poor dear papa.”
“‘O! Limerick is be-yewtifool, as iveryba-ady knows,And round about the city walls the reever Shannon flows;But ’tis not the reever, nor the feesh, that preys upon my mind,Nor, with the town of Limerick have I any fault to find!’”
“‘O! Limerick is be-yewtifool, as iveryba-ady knows,And round about the city walls the reever Shannon flows;But ’tis not the reever, nor the feesh, that preys upon my mind,Nor, with the town of Limerick have I any fault to find!’”
“Ah! Very nice indeed! Thank you, Lady Dasher, thank you!” said the vicar, when she had got thus far, and succeeded in arresting the progress of her ladyship’s melody; otherwise, she might have gone on the live-long summer day with the halting ditty, for it consisted, as she subsequently told us, of no less than five-and-forty verses, all in the same pleasant strain!
“I don’t think,” said I, to change the conversation, “that poetry is nearly as highly regarded in the present day, as it was some forty years back or so—if one may judge by the biographies of literary men of that time.”
“But, it sells more readily,” said Mr Mawley; “not only do fresh débutantes appear, but new editions of the old poets come out daily.”
“That may be,” said I. “But they are not nearly so highly appreciated. I suppose it is because poetry is not so much a rarity now. We have so many mediocre poets, that our taste is more exigent. I dare say, if a very bright, particular star should arise, we would honour him; but we have no bright particular star; and, thus, we learn to read poetry without reflection. Forty years ago, people used to talk over the last production of the muse, and canvas its merits in coffee-rooms all over the town; now, we only dash through it, as we would take up the last new novel, or the evening paper, thinking no more about it!”
“When I was younger,” said Miss Spight—she didn’t say when she was “young,” mark you—“no young gentlewoman’s education would have been thought complete without a course of the best poets, such as Milton’sParadise Lost.”
“Which nine out of ten of the people who speak about it now, never read,” said I—and, Miss Spight did not reply.
“What queer people poets are, generally speaking,” said Mr Mawley.
“Do you think so?” said I.
“Yes, I do,” he replied. “I would divide poets into three great classes, which I would call respectively the enthusiastic school, the water-cart school, and the horse-going-round-in-the-mill school.”
“O–oh, Mr Mawley!” exclaimed Bessie Dasher, in the unmeaning manner common to young ladies, in lieu of saying anything, when they have got nothing to say: the exclamation expressing either astonishment, horror, alarm, or rebuke, as the case may require.
“Instance, instance! Name, name!” said I, keeping the curate up to the mark.
“Well, I will give you Horner, and Dante, Goethe, Byron, and, perhaps, Tennyson, from which to take your choice amongst those whom I call the enthusiastic school; Mrs Hemans, and others of her tearful race, in the second; and, in the third order, the majority of those who have spoilt good ink and paper, from Dryden down to Martin F Tupper.”
“What, no exceptions; not even my favourite Longfellow?” asked Min.
“No,” said Mr Mawley, “not one—although Longfellow belongs more by rights to the water-cart line. The fact is,” continued he, fairly started on his hobby, “that Pegasus, the charger of Mount Parnassus, is a most eccentric animal, who can be made to metamorphose himself so completely according to the skill and ability or weakness of his rider, that even Apollo would not recognise him sometimes! When backed by an intrepid spirit, like the grand heroic poets, Pegasus is the stately war-horse eager for the fray, and sniffing the battle from afar; or else, controlled by the nervous reins of genius like that of Shelley and Coleridge, he appears as the high-mettled racer, pure-blooded and finely-trained, who may win some great race, but is unfit for any ordinary work; or, again, when ridden by a Wordsworth, he plods along wearily, with lack-lustre eyes, dragging a heavy load, such asThe Excursion, behind him!”
What the curate might have said further was lost to his hearers. Just at this moment, on turning a bend of the river, the pretty little low-arched bridge that spans it in front of Richmond came in sight; seeing which, the children raised such a shout of joy in the bows of the gondola, that our conversation shunted into a fresh channel, while our teamster, urging his horse by a multitude of “gee wo’s,” into a brisk trot, tightened our tow-rope and led us up in fine style to our goal.
A short distance from the landing-place under the bridge, we found the detachments that had gone by road, awaiting us. Joining company, we proceeded together to the park, and set about our picnic in the usual harum-scarum fashion, chasing truant children, losing one another, finding one another, making merry over the most dire mishaps, and enjoying the whole thing hugely—elders, juveniles, and all—from beginning to end.
The vicar made a perfect boy of himself. With a charming gleefulness, he did the most outrageous things—at which Master Adolphus, aetat twelve, would have turned up his nose, as being much beneath his years and dignity. He said he did it only to amuse the children; but, he took such an active part in the games he instituted, that we declared that he joined in them for his own personal gratification.
Monsieur Parole d’Honneur, too, who was the gayest of the gay, specially distinguished himself for his vaulting powers in a sport which he entitled in his broken English manner “ze leap of ze frog;” and, as for grave Doctor Batson, whom we all thought so formal and dignified in his professional tether, why, the way in which he “stuck in his twopenny,” as the boys said, and “gave a ‘back,’” was a caution to the lookers-on!
Then we had a substantial “soldier’s tea” in and around a little cottage conveniently-situated close to the park:—there, we boiled our kettles, and brewed great jorums of straw-coloured water, at the sight of which a Chinaman would have been filled with horror, impregnated as it was with the taste of new tin and the flavour of moist brown sugar and milk. The children enjoyed it, however, in conjunction with clothes baskets full of sliced bread-and-butter, and buns and cake galore:— so, our main consideration was satisfied.
The whole thing passed off well, the only mishap, throughout the day, arising from Horner having filled Miss Spight’s galoshes with hot tea; but, as she did not happen to be wearing them at the time, the accident was not of much consequence, although she soundly rated the young gentleman for his awkwardness.
Everybody, too, was satisfied—the vicar and Miss Pimpernell, at the success of the treat and the pleasure of the school-children; the churchwardens, that the expenses did not come out of their pockets; Lady Dasher, at Mr Mawley’s attentions to her daughter, which she really thought “quite marked;” and the rest of us, more youthful members of the parish gathering, at the general delightfulness of the day’s outing—the excursion by water, the picnic in the park, the gipsying, the fresh breeze, the bright sun, the everything!
I was happy, too, although I had not yet had a chance of speaking to Min privately—in the boat there were more listeners near than I cared for, and on shore she was too busy entertaining a small crowd of toddlekins, for whose delectation she told deeply-involved fairy stories, and wove unlimited daisy-chains of intricate patterns and simple workmanship. Still, I knew that before night closed, I should have the wished-for opportunity of telling my tale; and, in the meantime, I was quite contented to sit near her, and hear her sweet voice, and be certain that she did not care for Mr Mawley after all!
The day could not pass, however, without the curate and I having our customary spar; and it happened in this wise.
On our way down to the gondola, after packing up the omnibus contingent of juveniles safely, in company with their mothers and a hecatomb of emptied baskets, and seeing the party off with a parting cheer from both sides, Miss Spight amiably suggested that she thought it was going to rain; at which, of course, there arose a general outcry.
“Dear me,” said Miss Pimpernell, “I believe you are right, for, there are the midges dancing, too! I hope none of you girls will get your new bonnets spoilt! But, you needn’t be alarmed, my dears,” she added to reassure us, “it is certain not to come down before morning, if you will take an old woman’s word for it.”
“You may believe Sally, and set your minds at ease,” said the vicar. “She’s a rare judge of the weather, and as good as a farmer or sailor in that respect.”
“Are the midges a sign of rain?” asked Min; “I never heard that before.”
“Yes, my dear,” said Miss Pimpernell, seating herself in the gondola, which we had now reached. “They always dance about twelve hours or so before it rains.”
“Are there not some other signs given by animals, also, when there is going to be a change in the weather?” asked Bessie Dasher.
“Yes,” said Mr Mawley, anxious, as usual, to show off his erudition, “cows low, swallows fly near the ground, sheep bleat, and—”
“Asses bray,” said I, with emphasis.
“So I hear,” said he quickly. The curate was getting sharper than ever.
“Ah,” said I, “thatis only a ‘tu quoque!’”
“What is that?” asked Bessie Dasher, thinking I was making use of some term of virulent abuse, I verily believe.
“Oh!” said Mr Mawley, who was in high feather at having retorted my cut so brilliantly, “it is only a polite way of saying ‘you’re another,’ an expression which I dare say you have often heard vulgar little boys in the street make use of. I say, Lorton,” he added, addressing me, “I think that’s one to me, eh?”
“All right,” said I, “score it up, if you like.”
And, we started down the stream homeward bound.
Chapter Thirteen.“Good-Night!”Era già l’ora che volge ’l disio,A’ naviganti e ’ntenerisce il cuore,Lo di ch’ ban detto a’ dolci amici addio,E che lo nuova peregrin d’amorePunge, se ode Squilla di lontano,Che paja ’l giorno pianger che si muore!“Parting is such sweet sorrow,That I could say good-night till it be morrow!”We were sitting side by side, Min and I, leaning over the gunwale of the “gondola” which was rapidly gliding down the river; the stream being in our favour, and our teamster on the towing path keeping his horse up to a brisk trot, that caused us to proceed at a faster rate than we could have pulled even a lighter boat.It was a lovely summer night, calm and still, with hardly a breath of wind in the air; although, it was not at all unpleasantly close or oppressive.A bright crescent moon was shining, touching up the trees that skirted the bank with a flood of silvery-azure light, that brought out each twig and particle of foliage in strong relief, and cast their trunks in shade; while, the surface of the water, unstirred by the slightest ripple, gleamed like a mirror of burnished steel, winding in and out, in its serpentine course, between masses of dense shadow—until it was lost to sight in the distance, behind a sudden bend, and a dark projecting clump of willows and undergrowth.Our boat seemed to be the only floating thing for miles!Had it not been for an occasional twinkle from the far-off window of some riparian villa, and the “whish” of a startled swan as it swerved aside to allow the boat to sweep by, we might easily have imagined ourselves traversing the bosom of one of those vast, solitary rivers of the wilderness across the sea.The children were nearly all asleep, tired out with happiness in excess; and, most of us were silent, being awed by the beauty of the evening into voiceless admiration.A little girl near us, wakeful still, was breaking one of the daisy-chains that Min had woven her at Richmond, and casting the pieces one by one into the current as it hurried along:—the daisy cups sometimes keeping pace with us, as our tow-rope slackened, and then falling astern, on our horse trotting ahead once more.“Don’t you remember,” said I to Min, “those lines of Schiller’sDer Jungling am Bache? They seem appropriate to that little incident,”—I continued, pointing to the small toddlekin, who was destroying the daisy-chain:—“‘An der Quelle sass der KnabeBlumen wand er sich zum Kranz,Und er sah sie fortgerissenTreiben in den wellen Tanz.Und so fleihen meine Tage,Wie die quelle rastlos hin!Und so bleichet meine Jugend,Wie die Kränze schnell verblühn!’”“They are very pretty,” said Min. “Still, do you know, as a rule I do not think German poetry nice. It always sounds so harsh and guttural to me, however tender and sentimental the words may be.”“That may be true in some respects,” I answered; “but if you hear it well read, or sung, there is much more pathos and softness about it than one is able to discern when simply skimming it over to oneself. Some of Goethe’s little ballads, for instance, such as ‘The Erl King,’ and others that Walter Scott has translated, are wonderfully beautiful; not to speak of Uhland’s poetry, and La Motte Fouque’s charmingUndine, which is as pretty a poem as I have ever read.”“I confess,” said Min, “that I have not had any general experience of German literature. Indeed, I have quite neglected it since I left school; and then I only studied heavy books—such asThe History of Frederick the Great, that wearisomeJungfrau von Orleans, and others of Schiller’s plays.”“Ah!” I replied, “that accounts for it, then. The more you read German, the more you will like it. I think our schoolmasters and schoolmistresses make a great mistake, generally, in the books they select for the instruction and familiarising of their pupils with foreign languages. They appear, really, to choose the driest authors they can pick out! If I had anything to do with ‘teaching the young idea how to shoot,’ I should adopt a very different plan.”“Dear me!” she exclaimed, laughing. “I can fancy I see you, a grim old pedagogue, with a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles and a snuff-coloured coat! What would be your new system, Mr Professor?”“Well,” said I, “in the first place, I should not dream of putting books like Schiller’s dramas into their hands, as is the ordinary course, before they were able to translate pretty fluently, gathering the sense of what they read without the aid of a dictionary. I say nothing against the masterpieces of the great German classic. I like Schiller, myself. But, what boy or girl can appreciate the poetry of his descriptions, and the grandeur of his verse, when every second word they meet with is a stumbling-block, that has to be sought out diligently in the lexicon ere they can understand the context? Instead of this inculcating a love for what they read, it breeds disgust. Even now, I confess, I cannot take an interest inWilliam Tell, just because he, and his fellow Switzers, of Uri and elsewhere, will always be associated in my mind with so many lines of translation and repetition that I had to learn by heart at school.”“But, what would you give your pupils to study in lieu of such works?” she asked.“Vividly interesting stories—novels, if you like—in the language they had to learn. Not short pieces, or ‘elegant extracts;’ but, good, long tales of thrilling adventure and well worked-up plots, whose interest, and the desire to know what was coming next, would make them read on and stammer out the sense, until they reached the dénouement. And, if it should be objected that German and French novels are not exactly what you would place before young children for study, I would retort, that, the majority of the works of our best authors are now translated into both those languages almost as soon as they are published over here; let them read those! However, you were saying that you did not think German poetry pleasing or euphonious?”“No,” she said, “I do not; although, it may be owing to what you have remarked, that school study has given me a distaste for it. Still, you have now made me wish that I knew more of it. I think I will take it up again; and, perhaps, Mr Professor, under your tuition, I may learn better to like it.”“I should be only too glad, Min,” I said, “to unfold its beauties to you; but, I’m the worst teacher in the world, and too impatient of blunders. Yet, I don’t think I could be a very hard master toyou” I added, lowering my voice to a whisper.“Couldn’t you?” she said. “I don’t know about that, Master Frank! I well remember a particular evening, and my birthday party; and how a certain gentleman—whom I won’t name—behaved then and since.”“Oh! Haven’t you forgiven me yet, Min?” I exclaimed. “I thought—”“Don’t mind about that,” she said, hurriedly.—“Go on with what you were telling me concerning German; the others will hear you! Do you think the language soft?”“I can’t say exactly that itisas soft as our own,” I proceeded to say, for the benefit of Miss Spight, who appeared to be listening to our conversation.—“But, a good many people, who call the Teuton tongue uncouth, seem to forget its close resemblance both in style and expression, to English. Either language can be rendered in the vernacular of the other, without losing its force or even sound; and that is more than can be said for French or Italian. Shakspeare, for instance, in German, is almost equally as telling and forcible as Shakspeare in English; while, in French—Bah! you should just hear it asonceI heard it, and you would laugh! Indeed, if we are strictly logical on the point of the euphony of language, the Italian dialect, which we deem so soft and liquid, sounds quite harsh, I’m told, in comparison with the labial syllables that the Polynesian islanders use in the South Seas.”We then relapsed into silence again, Min still leaning over the side of the boat and dipping her fingers in the limpid, silvery water, which sparkled with gem-like coruscations of light as she stirred it to and fro.At Mortlake she splashed a shower of sprinkling pearls over an irate swan pater-familias, who had hurried out from the alders, to see what business we meant by coming at that time of night so near the domain of Mrs Swan and her cygnet progeny. We were both much amused at the fierce air with which he advanced, as if to eat us all up; and then, his precipitate retreat, on getting wetted so unceremoniously. He turned tail at once; and, propelling himself away with vigorous strokes of his webbed sculls, made the water foam from his prow-like curving neck, leaving a broad wake behind him of glistening sheen.“What a nice day we have had,” said Min, presently. “All has gone off so well, without a hitch. We have had such a nice talk, too. Why is it, I wonder,” she continued, musingly, “that ordinary conversation is generally so empty and silly? Gentlemen appear to believe that ladies know nothing but about balls, and dancing, and the weather, and croquet! I do not mean, when we are all talking together, as to-day; but, when one is alone with them, and not one of a circle of talkers, they never say anything of any depth and reflection. Perhaps, when I go out, it is my fate to meet with exceptional partners at parties. But, I declare, they never utter a sensible remark! I suppose they think me very stupid, and not worth the trouble of seriously conversing to. Really, I imagine that gentlemen believe all girls to belong to an inferior order of intellect; and fancy that it is necessary for them to descend from their god-like level, in order to talk to them about such senseless trivialities as they think suited to their age and sex!”“Perhaps it is not all the fault of the men,” said I. “They are probably bashful, as most of us are.”“Bashful?” she replied; “I like that, Master Frank. Why, you are all a most intolerable set of conceited mortals! No, it is not that:—it is, because the ‘lords of creation’ think us beneath the notice of their superior minds.”—And she tossed her little head proudly.“Well, then,” I said, “your duty is to draw us out. Many men are diffident of speaking earnestly and showing their feelings, from the fear of being laughed at, or ridiculed, as solemn prigs and book-worms. Ladies should think of this, and encourage us.”“Yet, some of you,” she replied, undauntedly, “are not so reticent and retiring. There is Mr Mawley, for instance. He always talks to me about literature and art, and politics, too—although I do not care much aboutthem—just as if I were a man like himself, and blessed with the same understanding!”“Oh,” said I, “the curate is usually fond of hearing himself talk!”“You need not abuse poor Mr Mawley,” she said, laughing. “‘Those who live in glass houses,’ you know, ‘should not throw stones!’Youare, also, not averse to airing your opinions, Master Frank! But, don’t get angry—” she continued, as I slightly withdrew from her side, in momentary pique at hearing the curate’s part taken.—“I like to hear you talk of such things, Frank, far better than if you only spoke to me of commonplace matters, as most gentlemen do, or dosed me with flattery, which I detest!”“I do not talk so toeverybody,”—I said, meaningly, coming closer to her again and taking one of her hands captive.—“Do you know why I like to let you know my deeper thoughts, Min, and learn more of my inner nature than others?” I whispered, bending over her.“N–o!” she said, faintly, turning away her head.“Because, Min—” I said, hesitatingly, almost abashed at my own rashness—“because, I—I—love you!”She said nothing in reply; but she bent her head lower, so that I could not see her face; and, the little hand I held, trembled in my grasp.At this point, too, our conversation was interrupted by the vicar asking Bessie Dasher and her sister to start the “Canadian Boat Song,” in which we all joined in harmony:—the music, borne far and wide over the expanse of resonant water, sounding like some fairy chorus of yellow-haired sea-maidens, singing fathoms deep below in ocean caves!When I was seeing her home, however, after we had all arrived at the vicarage, and separated severally with a cheerful “good-night,” I was able to prosecute my wooing.We were walking along side by side—she declined taking my arm, being shy, and quite unlike the frank, straightforward Min whom I had before known. I was not downhearted at this change, though:—I really felt shy, and nervous, myself!As soon as we had got a safe distance from the others, and there was no fear of being overheard in the stillness of the night, I again spoke to her.“Min,” I said, “do you remember what I said to you just now when we were on the river?”She made no answer; but, quickening her steps, walked on hurriedly, I still keeping pace by her side.“Min, my darling,” I said once more, “I love you dearer than life. Won’t you try to like me a little in return? Won’t you listen to me? Won’t you hear me?”“O–oh, Frank!” she exclaimed.“Ever since I first saw you in church, so many long months ago, Min, I have thought of you, dreamt of you, loved you!”—I proceeded, passionately.—“O, my darling! my darling! won’t you try and like me a little; or, have I been deceived in thinking that you could care for me?”“Idolike you, Frank,” she said, softly, laying her little hand on my arm.I seized it in transport, and put it within my arm proudly.“Sweet!” I said, “likingalone will not do for me! You must learn to love me, darling, as I love you! Will it be very hard?”“I don’t know, Frank, I can try,” she said, demurely; looking up at me with her deep, grey eyes, which, now suffused with a tender love-light, had a greater charm for me than ever.I felt as if I were walking on air!After a little pause, during which we both walked on slowly, I too happy to speak, Min squeezed my arm.“Do you then love me soverymuch, Frank?” she said; and, there was a wistful look in her eyes, an earnest pathos in her voice, that touched me to the heart.“Love you, Min? I adore you! I dote on you! I worship the very ground you walk on; and, if you were cruel to me, I think I would die to-morrow!”“Poor fellow!” she said, pressing closer to my side.“O, Min,”—I went on,—“if you only knew the agony I have suffered in thinking that you cared for some one else! I love you so much, that I am jealous of every word you speak, every glance of your darling eyes which is not directed to me. I envied my very dog the other day because you caressed him!”“What!” she exclaimed, “Jealous of poor Catch! Do you know, Frank, that made me ove you first, your fondness for your dog and little Dicky Chips!”“Youdolove me, then? O, Min, my darling!” I exclaimed in ecstasy.“I didn’t say so, did I?” she said, saucily. “Well, then,” I entreated, “say it now, sweet! Say that you love me, my darling!”“You are much too exacting, sir!”—she said, drawing herself up with the air of a haughty little Empress.—“I must consider your petition first.”“But youdolove me, darling; so why cannot you say it? Tell me, pet, ‘Frank, I love you;’ and, you’ll make me happy for ever!” I pleaded.“Ishan’tbe ordered,” she said, with a piquante coquetry which made her appear all the more winning.—“I’m not going to tell you anything of the kind, for I won’t be dictated to; but, I’ll say ‘I love you, Frank.’ There! sir, will that please your lordship, although it is not in the exact words you have asked me?”—and she made a pretty little gesture of affected disdain.“O Min, my love! my pet! my darling!”—said I, rapturously—I stopped, breathless with emotion. I could not get out a word more!We had now reached her door, and she said she must go in. I persuaded her, however, to wait a little while longer before she knocked, as I could not say ‘Good-night’ yet. Parting was too hard, though sweet. So, we talked on in whispers to one another for some minutes—it may have been hours, for all I know to the contrary—what might be to you only a lot of uninteresting talk, but, what was heaven to me!“Good-night, Frank!” Min said at length. “I really must go in now, or mamma will think me lost. And, O Frank!” she exclaimed in alarm, as the sudden thought struck her—“whatwillshe say when she hears of this!”“Oh, never mind thinking of that now!” I said. “I will come round to-morrow afternoon, sweet, and ask her whether I may be allowed to hope, and win you for my own dear, darling little wife!”We were standing close together in the porch, just under the gas-light. I was gazing into her eyes, which seemed to me ever so much brighter than the light of the lamp above us, or the stars overhead.The little ear next me got quite pink.She quickly bent down her head in confusion.“You mustn’t call me names, Frank!” she said. “I won’t have it, sir! I won’t have it! You have no right!”I clasped her little hand firmly in mine.“This belongs to me now, darling, does it not? Youwillbe my own darling little wife, won’t you?” I repeated.She said nothing, but, after a moment, she raised her face to mine; and, as I bent down my head, and looked into her very soul, through the deep, honest, trusting, loving, grey eyes, our lips met in one long thrilling kiss.It was a foretaste of paradise!End of First Volume.
Era già l’ora che volge ’l disio,A’ naviganti e ’ntenerisce il cuore,Lo di ch’ ban detto a’ dolci amici addio,E che lo nuova peregrin d’amorePunge, se ode Squilla di lontano,Che paja ’l giorno pianger che si muore!“Parting is such sweet sorrow,That I could say good-night till it be morrow!”
Era già l’ora che volge ’l disio,A’ naviganti e ’ntenerisce il cuore,Lo di ch’ ban detto a’ dolci amici addio,E che lo nuova peregrin d’amorePunge, se ode Squilla di lontano,Che paja ’l giorno pianger che si muore!“Parting is such sweet sorrow,That I could say good-night till it be morrow!”
We were sitting side by side, Min and I, leaning over the gunwale of the “gondola” which was rapidly gliding down the river; the stream being in our favour, and our teamster on the towing path keeping his horse up to a brisk trot, that caused us to proceed at a faster rate than we could have pulled even a lighter boat.
It was a lovely summer night, calm and still, with hardly a breath of wind in the air; although, it was not at all unpleasantly close or oppressive.
A bright crescent moon was shining, touching up the trees that skirted the bank with a flood of silvery-azure light, that brought out each twig and particle of foliage in strong relief, and cast their trunks in shade; while, the surface of the water, unstirred by the slightest ripple, gleamed like a mirror of burnished steel, winding in and out, in its serpentine course, between masses of dense shadow—until it was lost to sight in the distance, behind a sudden bend, and a dark projecting clump of willows and undergrowth.
Our boat seemed to be the only floating thing for miles!
Had it not been for an occasional twinkle from the far-off window of some riparian villa, and the “whish” of a startled swan as it swerved aside to allow the boat to sweep by, we might easily have imagined ourselves traversing the bosom of one of those vast, solitary rivers of the wilderness across the sea.
The children were nearly all asleep, tired out with happiness in excess; and, most of us were silent, being awed by the beauty of the evening into voiceless admiration.
A little girl near us, wakeful still, was breaking one of the daisy-chains that Min had woven her at Richmond, and casting the pieces one by one into the current as it hurried along:—the daisy cups sometimes keeping pace with us, as our tow-rope slackened, and then falling astern, on our horse trotting ahead once more.
“Don’t you remember,” said I to Min, “those lines of Schiller’sDer Jungling am Bache? They seem appropriate to that little incident,”—I continued, pointing to the small toddlekin, who was destroying the daisy-chain:—
“‘An der Quelle sass der KnabeBlumen wand er sich zum Kranz,Und er sah sie fortgerissenTreiben in den wellen Tanz.Und so fleihen meine Tage,Wie die quelle rastlos hin!Und so bleichet meine Jugend,Wie die Kränze schnell verblühn!’”
“‘An der Quelle sass der KnabeBlumen wand er sich zum Kranz,Und er sah sie fortgerissenTreiben in den wellen Tanz.Und so fleihen meine Tage,Wie die quelle rastlos hin!Und so bleichet meine Jugend,Wie die Kränze schnell verblühn!’”
“They are very pretty,” said Min. “Still, do you know, as a rule I do not think German poetry nice. It always sounds so harsh and guttural to me, however tender and sentimental the words may be.”
“That may be true in some respects,” I answered; “but if you hear it well read, or sung, there is much more pathos and softness about it than one is able to discern when simply skimming it over to oneself. Some of Goethe’s little ballads, for instance, such as ‘The Erl King,’ and others that Walter Scott has translated, are wonderfully beautiful; not to speak of Uhland’s poetry, and La Motte Fouque’s charmingUndine, which is as pretty a poem as I have ever read.”
“I confess,” said Min, “that I have not had any general experience of German literature. Indeed, I have quite neglected it since I left school; and then I only studied heavy books—such asThe History of Frederick the Great, that wearisomeJungfrau von Orleans, and others of Schiller’s plays.”
“Ah!” I replied, “that accounts for it, then. The more you read German, the more you will like it. I think our schoolmasters and schoolmistresses make a great mistake, generally, in the books they select for the instruction and familiarising of their pupils with foreign languages. They appear, really, to choose the driest authors they can pick out! If I had anything to do with ‘teaching the young idea how to shoot,’ I should adopt a very different plan.”
“Dear me!” she exclaimed, laughing. “I can fancy I see you, a grim old pedagogue, with a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles and a snuff-coloured coat! What would be your new system, Mr Professor?”
“Well,” said I, “in the first place, I should not dream of putting books like Schiller’s dramas into their hands, as is the ordinary course, before they were able to translate pretty fluently, gathering the sense of what they read without the aid of a dictionary. I say nothing against the masterpieces of the great German classic. I like Schiller, myself. But, what boy or girl can appreciate the poetry of his descriptions, and the grandeur of his verse, when every second word they meet with is a stumbling-block, that has to be sought out diligently in the lexicon ere they can understand the context? Instead of this inculcating a love for what they read, it breeds disgust. Even now, I confess, I cannot take an interest inWilliam Tell, just because he, and his fellow Switzers, of Uri and elsewhere, will always be associated in my mind with so many lines of translation and repetition that I had to learn by heart at school.”
“But, what would you give your pupils to study in lieu of such works?” she asked.
“Vividly interesting stories—novels, if you like—in the language they had to learn. Not short pieces, or ‘elegant extracts;’ but, good, long tales of thrilling adventure and well worked-up plots, whose interest, and the desire to know what was coming next, would make them read on and stammer out the sense, until they reached the dénouement. And, if it should be objected that German and French novels are not exactly what you would place before young children for study, I would retort, that, the majority of the works of our best authors are now translated into both those languages almost as soon as they are published over here; let them read those! However, you were saying that you did not think German poetry pleasing or euphonious?”
“No,” she said, “I do not; although, it may be owing to what you have remarked, that school study has given me a distaste for it. Still, you have now made me wish that I knew more of it. I think I will take it up again; and, perhaps, Mr Professor, under your tuition, I may learn better to like it.”
“I should be only too glad, Min,” I said, “to unfold its beauties to you; but, I’m the worst teacher in the world, and too impatient of blunders. Yet, I don’t think I could be a very hard master toyou” I added, lowering my voice to a whisper.
“Couldn’t you?” she said. “I don’t know about that, Master Frank! I well remember a particular evening, and my birthday party; and how a certain gentleman—whom I won’t name—behaved then and since.”
“Oh! Haven’t you forgiven me yet, Min?” I exclaimed. “I thought—”
“Don’t mind about that,” she said, hurriedly.—“Go on with what you were telling me concerning German; the others will hear you! Do you think the language soft?”
“I can’t say exactly that itisas soft as our own,” I proceeded to say, for the benefit of Miss Spight, who appeared to be listening to our conversation.—“But, a good many people, who call the Teuton tongue uncouth, seem to forget its close resemblance both in style and expression, to English. Either language can be rendered in the vernacular of the other, without losing its force or even sound; and that is more than can be said for French or Italian. Shakspeare, for instance, in German, is almost equally as telling and forcible as Shakspeare in English; while, in French—Bah! you should just hear it asonceI heard it, and you would laugh! Indeed, if we are strictly logical on the point of the euphony of language, the Italian dialect, which we deem so soft and liquid, sounds quite harsh, I’m told, in comparison with the labial syllables that the Polynesian islanders use in the South Seas.”
We then relapsed into silence again, Min still leaning over the side of the boat and dipping her fingers in the limpid, silvery water, which sparkled with gem-like coruscations of light as she stirred it to and fro.
At Mortlake she splashed a shower of sprinkling pearls over an irate swan pater-familias, who had hurried out from the alders, to see what business we meant by coming at that time of night so near the domain of Mrs Swan and her cygnet progeny. We were both much amused at the fierce air with which he advanced, as if to eat us all up; and then, his precipitate retreat, on getting wetted so unceremoniously. He turned tail at once; and, propelling himself away with vigorous strokes of his webbed sculls, made the water foam from his prow-like curving neck, leaving a broad wake behind him of glistening sheen.
“What a nice day we have had,” said Min, presently. “All has gone off so well, without a hitch. We have had such a nice talk, too. Why is it, I wonder,” she continued, musingly, “that ordinary conversation is generally so empty and silly? Gentlemen appear to believe that ladies know nothing but about balls, and dancing, and the weather, and croquet! I do not mean, when we are all talking together, as to-day; but, when one is alone with them, and not one of a circle of talkers, they never say anything of any depth and reflection. Perhaps, when I go out, it is my fate to meet with exceptional partners at parties. But, I declare, they never utter a sensible remark! I suppose they think me very stupid, and not worth the trouble of seriously conversing to. Really, I imagine that gentlemen believe all girls to belong to an inferior order of intellect; and fancy that it is necessary for them to descend from their god-like level, in order to talk to them about such senseless trivialities as they think suited to their age and sex!”
“Perhaps it is not all the fault of the men,” said I. “They are probably bashful, as most of us are.”
“Bashful?” she replied; “I like that, Master Frank. Why, you are all a most intolerable set of conceited mortals! No, it is not that:—it is, because the ‘lords of creation’ think us beneath the notice of their superior minds.”—And she tossed her little head proudly.
“Well, then,” I said, “your duty is to draw us out. Many men are diffident of speaking earnestly and showing their feelings, from the fear of being laughed at, or ridiculed, as solemn prigs and book-worms. Ladies should think of this, and encourage us.”
“Yet, some of you,” she replied, undauntedly, “are not so reticent and retiring. There is Mr Mawley, for instance. He always talks to me about literature and art, and politics, too—although I do not care much aboutthem—just as if I were a man like himself, and blessed with the same understanding!”
“Oh,” said I, “the curate is usually fond of hearing himself talk!”
“You need not abuse poor Mr Mawley,” she said, laughing. “‘Those who live in glass houses,’ you know, ‘should not throw stones!’Youare, also, not averse to airing your opinions, Master Frank! But, don’t get angry—” she continued, as I slightly withdrew from her side, in momentary pique at hearing the curate’s part taken.—“I like to hear you talk of such things, Frank, far better than if you only spoke to me of commonplace matters, as most gentlemen do, or dosed me with flattery, which I detest!”
“I do not talk so toeverybody,”—I said, meaningly, coming closer to her again and taking one of her hands captive.—“Do you know why I like to let you know my deeper thoughts, Min, and learn more of my inner nature than others?” I whispered, bending over her.
“N–o!” she said, faintly, turning away her head.
“Because, Min—” I said, hesitatingly, almost abashed at my own rashness—“because, I—I—love you!”
She said nothing in reply; but she bent her head lower, so that I could not see her face; and, the little hand I held, trembled in my grasp.
At this point, too, our conversation was interrupted by the vicar asking Bessie Dasher and her sister to start the “Canadian Boat Song,” in which we all joined in harmony:—the music, borne far and wide over the expanse of resonant water, sounding like some fairy chorus of yellow-haired sea-maidens, singing fathoms deep below in ocean caves!
When I was seeing her home, however, after we had all arrived at the vicarage, and separated severally with a cheerful “good-night,” I was able to prosecute my wooing.
We were walking along side by side—she declined taking my arm, being shy, and quite unlike the frank, straightforward Min whom I had before known. I was not downhearted at this change, though:—I really felt shy, and nervous, myself!
As soon as we had got a safe distance from the others, and there was no fear of being overheard in the stillness of the night, I again spoke to her.
“Min,” I said, “do you remember what I said to you just now when we were on the river?”
She made no answer; but, quickening her steps, walked on hurriedly, I still keeping pace by her side.
“Min, my darling,” I said once more, “I love you dearer than life. Won’t you try to like me a little in return? Won’t you listen to me? Won’t you hear me?”
“O–oh, Frank!” she exclaimed.
“Ever since I first saw you in church, so many long months ago, Min, I have thought of you, dreamt of you, loved you!”—I proceeded, passionately.—“O, my darling! my darling! won’t you try and like me a little; or, have I been deceived in thinking that you could care for me?”
“Idolike you, Frank,” she said, softly, laying her little hand on my arm.
I seized it in transport, and put it within my arm proudly.
“Sweet!” I said, “likingalone will not do for me! You must learn to love me, darling, as I love you! Will it be very hard?”
“I don’t know, Frank, I can try,” she said, demurely; looking up at me with her deep, grey eyes, which, now suffused with a tender love-light, had a greater charm for me than ever.
I felt as if I were walking on air!
After a little pause, during which we both walked on slowly, I too happy to speak, Min squeezed my arm.
“Do you then love me soverymuch, Frank?” she said; and, there was a wistful look in her eyes, an earnest pathos in her voice, that touched me to the heart.
“Love you, Min? I adore you! I dote on you! I worship the very ground you walk on; and, if you were cruel to me, I think I would die to-morrow!”
“Poor fellow!” she said, pressing closer to my side.
“O, Min,”—I went on,—“if you only knew the agony I have suffered in thinking that you cared for some one else! I love you so much, that I am jealous of every word you speak, every glance of your darling eyes which is not directed to me. I envied my very dog the other day because you caressed him!”
“What!” she exclaimed, “Jealous of poor Catch! Do you know, Frank, that made me ove you first, your fondness for your dog and little Dicky Chips!”
“Youdolove me, then? O, Min, my darling!” I exclaimed in ecstasy.
“I didn’t say so, did I?” she said, saucily. “Well, then,” I entreated, “say it now, sweet! Say that you love me, my darling!”
“You are much too exacting, sir!”—she said, drawing herself up with the air of a haughty little Empress.—“I must consider your petition first.”
“But youdolove me, darling; so why cannot you say it? Tell me, pet, ‘Frank, I love you;’ and, you’ll make me happy for ever!” I pleaded.
“Ishan’tbe ordered,” she said, with a piquante coquetry which made her appear all the more winning.—“I’m not going to tell you anything of the kind, for I won’t be dictated to; but, I’ll say ‘I love you, Frank.’ There! sir, will that please your lordship, although it is not in the exact words you have asked me?”—and she made a pretty little gesture of affected disdain.
“O Min, my love! my pet! my darling!”—said I, rapturously—
I stopped, breathless with emotion. I could not get out a word more!
We had now reached her door, and she said she must go in. I persuaded her, however, to wait a little while longer before she knocked, as I could not say ‘Good-night’ yet. Parting was too hard, though sweet. So, we talked on in whispers to one another for some minutes—it may have been hours, for all I know to the contrary—what might be to you only a lot of uninteresting talk, but, what was heaven to me!
“Good-night, Frank!” Min said at length. “I really must go in now, or mamma will think me lost. And, O Frank!” she exclaimed in alarm, as the sudden thought struck her—“whatwillshe say when she hears of this!”
“Oh, never mind thinking of that now!” I said. “I will come round to-morrow afternoon, sweet, and ask her whether I may be allowed to hope, and win you for my own dear, darling little wife!”
We were standing close together in the porch, just under the gas-light. I was gazing into her eyes, which seemed to me ever so much brighter than the light of the lamp above us, or the stars overhead.
The little ear next me got quite pink.
She quickly bent down her head in confusion.
“You mustn’t call me names, Frank!” she said. “I won’t have it, sir! I won’t have it! You have no right!”
I clasped her little hand firmly in mine.
“This belongs to me now, darling, does it not? Youwillbe my own darling little wife, won’t you?” I repeated.
She said nothing, but, after a moment, she raised her face to mine; and, as I bent down my head, and looked into her very soul, through the deep, honest, trusting, loving, grey eyes, our lips met in one long thrilling kiss.
It was a foretaste of paradise!