IIIt was the last week in April, and Mr. Gatty’s Easter holiday was near its end. On the Monday, very early in the morning, the young clerk would leave Queningford for town.By Friday his manner had become, as Susie Purcell expressed it, “so marked” that the most inexperienced young lady could have suffered no doubt as to the nature of his affections. But no sooner had Aggie heard that he was going than she had begun to doubt, and had kept on doubting (horribly) up to Saturday morning. All Friday she had been botheringSusie. Did Susie think there was any one in town whom he was in a hurry to get back to? Did Susie think such a man as Mr. Gatty could think twice about a girl like her? Did Susie think he only thought her a forward little minx? Or did she think he really was beginning to care? And Susie said: “You goose! How do I know, if you don’t? He hasn’t said anything to me.”And on Saturday morning Aggie all but knew. For that day he asked permission to take her for a drive, having borrowed a trap for the purpose.They drove up to a northern slope of the Cotswolds, by a road that took them past High Farm; and there they found John Hurst superintending his sheep-shearing. Aggie, regardless of his feelings, insisted on getting out of the trap and looking on. John talkedall the time to the shepherd, while Arthur talked to Aggie, and Aggie, cruel little Aggie, made remarks about the hard-heartedness of shearers.Arthur (“that bald-faced young Cockney snob,” as John called him) was depressed by the dominating presence of his rival and his visible efficiency. He looked long and thoughtfully at the sheep-shearing.“Boni pastoris est,” he observed, “tondere oves, non deglubere.”Aggie shook her pretty head, as much as to say Latin was beyond her; and he was kind enough to translate. “It is the part of a good shepherd to shear, not flay, the sheep.”“Is that from Virgil?” she asked, looking up into his face with a smile of unstained intellectual innocence.A terrific struggle arose in young Arthur’s breast. If he said it wasfrom Virgil (it was a thousand to one against her knowing), he might leap into her love at one high bound. If he said he didn’t know where it came from before it got into his Latin exercise, he would be exactly where he was before, which, he reflected, dismally, was nowhere. Whereas, that fellow Hurst was forever on the spot.On the other hand, where would he be if—if—supposing that she ever found him out?A thousand to one against it. He who aims high must take high risks. He took them.“Yes,” he said, “it’s Virgil.” And he added, to clinch the matter, “From the ‘Georgics.’”The light in her believing eyes told him how inspired he had been.The more he thought of it the more likely it seemed. A flash of reminiscencefrom his school-days visited him; he remembered that Virgil did write some things called “Georgics,” and that Georgics were a kind of pastoral, and that pastorals always had sheep in them, and shepherds. It was a good risk, anyhow, and he could see that it was justified by success. When his conscience reproached him for pretending he knew more Latin than he did, he told it that he would soon know heaps. If all by himself, in cold blood, and for no particular reason, he could keep slogging away at a difficult language evening after evening, what couldn’t he do with Aggie’s love as an incentive? Why, he could learn enough Latin to read Virgil in two months, and to teach Aggie, too. And if any one had asked him what good that would do either of them, he would have replied, contemptuously,that some things were ends in themselves.Still, he longed to prove his quality in some more honorable way. He called at the Laurels again that evening after supper. And, while Mrs. Purcell affected to doze, and Susie, as confidante, held Kate and Eliza well in play, he found another moment. With a solemnity impaired by extreme nervousness, he asked Miss Purcell if she would accept a copy ofBrowning’s Poems, which he had ventured to order for her from town. He hadn’t brought it with him, because he wished to multiply pretexts for calling; besides, as he said, he didn’t know whether she would really care—Aggie cared very much, indeed, and proved it by blushing as she said so. She had no need now to ask Susie anything. She knew.And yet, in spite of the Browning and the Virgil, it was surprising how cool and unexcited she felt in the face of her knowledge, now she had it. She felt—she wouldn’t have owned it—but she felt something remarkably like indifference. She wondered whether she had seemed indifferent to him (the thought gave her a pang that she had not experienced when John Hurst laid his heart out to be trampled on). She wondered whether shewereindifferent, really. How could you tell when you really loved a man? She had looked for great joy and glory and uplifting. And they hadn’t come. It was as if she had held her heart in her hand and looked at it, and, because she felt no fluttering, had argued that love had never touched it; for she did not yet know that love’s deepest dwelling-place is in the quietheart. Aggie had never loved before, and she thought that she was in the sanctuary on Saturday, when she was only standing on the threshold, waiting for her hour.It came, all of a sudden, on the Sunday.Aggie’s memory retained every detail of that blessed day—a day of spring sunshine, warm with the breath of wall-flowers and violets. Arthur, walking in the garden with her, was so mixed up with those delicious scents that Aggie could never smell them afterwards without thinking of him. A day that was not only all wall-flowers and violets, but all Arthur. For Arthur called first thing before breakfast to bring her the Browning, and first thing after breakfast to go with her to church, and first thing after dinner to take her for a walk.They went into the low-lying Queningford fields beside the river. They took the Browning with them; Arthur carried it under his arm. In his loose, gray overcoat and soft hat he looked like a poet himself, or a Socialist, or Something. He always looked like Something. As for Aggie, she had never looked prettier than she looked that day. He had never known before how big and blue her eyes were, nor that her fawn-colored hair had soft webs of gold all over it. She, in her clean new clothes, was like a young Spring herself, all blue and white and green, dawn-rose and radiant gold. The heart of the young man was quick with love of her.They found a sheltered place for Aggie to sit in, whileArthur lay at her feet and read aloud to her. He read “Abt Vogler,” “Prospice,” selectionsfrom “The Death in the Desert” (the day being Sunday); and then, with a pause and a shy turning of the leaves, and a great break in his voice, “Oh, Lyric Love, Half Angel and Half Bird,” through to the end.Their hearts beat very fast in the silence afterwards.He turned to the fly-leaf where he had inscribed her name.“I should like to have written something more. May I?”“Oh yes. Please write anything you like.”And now the awful question for young Arthur was: Whatever should he write? “With warmest regards” was too warm; “kind regards” were too cold; “good wishes” sounded like Christmas or a birthday; “remembrances” implied that things were atan end instead of a beginning. All these shades, the warmth, the reticence, the inspired audacity, might be indicated under the veil of verse. If he dared—“I wish,” said Aggie, “you’d write me something of your own.” (She knew he did it.)What more could he want than that she should divine him thus?For twenty minutes (he thought they were only seconds), young Arthur lay flat on his stomach and brooded over the Browning. Aggie sat quiet as a mouse, lest the rustle of her gown should break the divine enchantment. At last it came.“Dear, since you loved this book, it is your own—” That was how it began. Long afterwards Arthur would turn pale when he thought of how it went on; for it was wonderful howbad it was, especially the lines thathadto rhyme.He did not know it when he gave her back the book.She read it over and over again, seeing how bad it was, and not caring. For her the beginning, middle, and end of that delicate lyric were in the one word “Dear.”“Do you mind?” He had risen and was standing over her as she read.“Mind?”“What I’ve called you?”She looked up suddenly. His face met hers, and before she knew it Aggie’s initiation came.“Ah,” said Arthur, rising solemn from the consecration of the primal kiss, and drawing himself up like a man for the first time aware of his full stature, “that makesthatseem pretty poor stuff, doesn’t it?”Young Arthur had just looked upon Love himself, and for that moment his vision was purged of vanity.“Not Browning?” asked Aggie, a little anxiously.“No—Not Browning. Me. Browning could write poetry. I can’t. I know that now.”And she knew it, too; but that made no difference. It was not for his poetry she loved him.“And so,” said her mother, after Arthur had stayed for tea and supper, and said his good-bye and gone—“so that’s the man you’ve been waiting for all this time?”“Yes, that’s the man I’ve been waiting for,” said Aggie.Three days later Queningford knewthat Aggie was going to marry Arthur Gatty, and that John Hurst was going to marry Susie.Susie was not pretty, but she had eyes like Aggie’s.
It was the last week in April, and Mr. Gatty’s Easter holiday was near its end. On the Monday, very early in the morning, the young clerk would leave Queningford for town.
By Friday his manner had become, as Susie Purcell expressed it, “so marked” that the most inexperienced young lady could have suffered no doubt as to the nature of his affections. But no sooner had Aggie heard that he was going than she had begun to doubt, and had kept on doubting (horribly) up to Saturday morning. All Friday she had been botheringSusie. Did Susie think there was any one in town whom he was in a hurry to get back to? Did Susie think such a man as Mr. Gatty could think twice about a girl like her? Did Susie think he only thought her a forward little minx? Or did she think he really was beginning to care? And Susie said: “You goose! How do I know, if you don’t? He hasn’t said anything to me.”
And on Saturday morning Aggie all but knew. For that day he asked permission to take her for a drive, having borrowed a trap for the purpose.
They drove up to a northern slope of the Cotswolds, by a road that took them past High Farm; and there they found John Hurst superintending his sheep-shearing. Aggie, regardless of his feelings, insisted on getting out of the trap and looking on. John talkedall the time to the shepherd, while Arthur talked to Aggie, and Aggie, cruel little Aggie, made remarks about the hard-heartedness of shearers.
Arthur (“that bald-faced young Cockney snob,” as John called him) was depressed by the dominating presence of his rival and his visible efficiency. He looked long and thoughtfully at the sheep-shearing.
“Boni pastoris est,” he observed, “tondere oves, non deglubere.”
Aggie shook her pretty head, as much as to say Latin was beyond her; and he was kind enough to translate. “It is the part of a good shepherd to shear, not flay, the sheep.”
“Is that from Virgil?” she asked, looking up into his face with a smile of unstained intellectual innocence.
A terrific struggle arose in young Arthur’s breast. If he said it wasfrom Virgil (it was a thousand to one against her knowing), he might leap into her love at one high bound. If he said he didn’t know where it came from before it got into his Latin exercise, he would be exactly where he was before, which, he reflected, dismally, was nowhere. Whereas, that fellow Hurst was forever on the spot.
On the other hand, where would he be if—if—supposing that she ever found him out?
A thousand to one against it. He who aims high must take high risks. He took them.
“Yes,” he said, “it’s Virgil.” And he added, to clinch the matter, “From the ‘Georgics.’”
The light in her believing eyes told him how inspired he had been.
The more he thought of it the more likely it seemed. A flash of reminiscencefrom his school-days visited him; he remembered that Virgil did write some things called “Georgics,” and that Georgics were a kind of pastoral, and that pastorals always had sheep in them, and shepherds. It was a good risk, anyhow, and he could see that it was justified by success. When his conscience reproached him for pretending he knew more Latin than he did, he told it that he would soon know heaps. If all by himself, in cold blood, and for no particular reason, he could keep slogging away at a difficult language evening after evening, what couldn’t he do with Aggie’s love as an incentive? Why, he could learn enough Latin to read Virgil in two months, and to teach Aggie, too. And if any one had asked him what good that would do either of them, he would have replied, contemptuously,that some things were ends in themselves.
Still, he longed to prove his quality in some more honorable way. He called at the Laurels again that evening after supper. And, while Mrs. Purcell affected to doze, and Susie, as confidante, held Kate and Eliza well in play, he found another moment. With a solemnity impaired by extreme nervousness, he asked Miss Purcell if she would accept a copy ofBrowning’s Poems, which he had ventured to order for her from town. He hadn’t brought it with him, because he wished to multiply pretexts for calling; besides, as he said, he didn’t know whether she would really care—
Aggie cared very much, indeed, and proved it by blushing as she said so. She had no need now to ask Susie anything. She knew.
And yet, in spite of the Browning and the Virgil, it was surprising how cool and unexcited she felt in the face of her knowledge, now she had it. She felt—she wouldn’t have owned it—but she felt something remarkably like indifference. She wondered whether she had seemed indifferent to him (the thought gave her a pang that she had not experienced when John Hurst laid his heart out to be trampled on). She wondered whether shewereindifferent, really. How could you tell when you really loved a man? She had looked for great joy and glory and uplifting. And they hadn’t come. It was as if she had held her heart in her hand and looked at it, and, because she felt no fluttering, had argued that love had never touched it; for she did not yet know that love’s deepest dwelling-place is in the quietheart. Aggie had never loved before, and she thought that she was in the sanctuary on Saturday, when she was only standing on the threshold, waiting for her hour.
It came, all of a sudden, on the Sunday.
Aggie’s memory retained every detail of that blessed day—a day of spring sunshine, warm with the breath of wall-flowers and violets. Arthur, walking in the garden with her, was so mixed up with those delicious scents that Aggie could never smell them afterwards without thinking of him. A day that was not only all wall-flowers and violets, but all Arthur. For Arthur called first thing before breakfast to bring her the Browning, and first thing after breakfast to go with her to church, and first thing after dinner to take her for a walk.
They went into the low-lying Queningford fields beside the river. They took the Browning with them; Arthur carried it under his arm. In his loose, gray overcoat and soft hat he looked like a poet himself, or a Socialist, or Something. He always looked like Something. As for Aggie, she had never looked prettier than she looked that day. He had never known before how big and blue her eyes were, nor that her fawn-colored hair had soft webs of gold all over it. She, in her clean new clothes, was like a young Spring herself, all blue and white and green, dawn-rose and radiant gold. The heart of the young man was quick with love of her.
They found a sheltered place for Aggie to sit in, whileArthur lay at her feet and read aloud to her. He read “Abt Vogler,” “Prospice,” selectionsfrom “The Death in the Desert” (the day being Sunday); and then, with a pause and a shy turning of the leaves, and a great break in his voice, “Oh, Lyric Love, Half Angel and Half Bird,” through to the end.
Their hearts beat very fast in the silence afterwards.
He turned to the fly-leaf where he had inscribed her name.
“I should like to have written something more. May I?”
“Oh yes. Please write anything you like.”
And now the awful question for young Arthur was: Whatever should he write? “With warmest regards” was too warm; “kind regards” were too cold; “good wishes” sounded like Christmas or a birthday; “remembrances” implied that things were atan end instead of a beginning. All these shades, the warmth, the reticence, the inspired audacity, might be indicated under the veil of verse. If he dared—
“I wish,” said Aggie, “you’d write me something of your own.” (She knew he did it.)
What more could he want than that she should divine him thus?
For twenty minutes (he thought they were only seconds), young Arthur lay flat on his stomach and brooded over the Browning. Aggie sat quiet as a mouse, lest the rustle of her gown should break the divine enchantment. At last it came.
“Dear, since you loved this book, it is your own—” That was how it began. Long afterwards Arthur would turn pale when he thought of how it went on; for it was wonderful howbad it was, especially the lines thathadto rhyme.
He did not know it when he gave her back the book.
She read it over and over again, seeing how bad it was, and not caring. For her the beginning, middle, and end of that delicate lyric were in the one word “Dear.”
“Do you mind?” He had risen and was standing over her as she read.
“Mind?”
“What I’ve called you?”
She looked up suddenly. His face met hers, and before she knew it Aggie’s initiation came.
“Ah,” said Arthur, rising solemn from the consecration of the primal kiss, and drawing himself up like a man for the first time aware of his full stature, “that makesthatseem pretty poor stuff, doesn’t it?”
Young Arthur had just looked upon Love himself, and for that moment his vision was purged of vanity.
“Not Browning?” asked Aggie, a little anxiously.
“No—Not Browning. Me. Browning could write poetry. I can’t. I know that now.”
And she knew it, too; but that made no difference. It was not for his poetry she loved him.
“And so,” said her mother, after Arthur had stayed for tea and supper, and said his good-bye and gone—“so that’s the man you’ve been waiting for all this time?”
“Yes, that’s the man I’ve been waiting for,” said Aggie.
Three days later Queningford knewthat Aggie was going to marry Arthur Gatty, and that John Hurst was going to marry Susie.
Susie was not pretty, but she had eyes like Aggie’s.