Chapter II

Sir Frederick came forward with his set artificial smile, and shook hands with Mrs Bowood with much apparent cordiality. He was a slightly built man, rather under than over the ordinary height. As Mrs Bowood had remarked, he did not look nearly so old as his years; but he had taken great care of himself all his life, and he was now reaping his reward. He was as upright as a dart, and there was something of military precision in his carriage and bearing, although he had never been in the army. His once coal-black hair was now streaked with gray, but judiciously so, as though he were making a graceful concession to the remorseless advance of time. How much of its tint was due to nature and how much to art was a secret best known to himself and his valet. His face was close shaven, except for a small imperial, which was jet black. He had clear-cut aquiline features, and when younger, would doubtless have been considered by most people as a very handsome man. But his eyes were small, and their general expression was one of cold suspicion; they lent a touch of meanness to his face, which it would not otherwise have possessed. Sir Frederick was carefully dressed in the height of the prevalent fashion, but with the more prominent ‘points’ artistically toned down to harmonise with the obligations of advancing years.

‘Good-morning, Mrs Bowood,’ he said. ‘Is the Captain at home?’

‘Good-morning, Sir Frederick. You are quite a stranger.’—He had not been to Rosemount for five days.—‘Charles is somewhere about the grounds. I will send a servant to look for him.’

‘No, no, my dear Mrs Bowood; nothing of the kind, I beg. I will go in search of him myself presently. I have driven over to see him about that bay mare which I am told he wants to get rid of.’

Mrs Bowood smiled to herself. The excuse was too transparent. ‘Charles is one of those men who are never happy unless they have something to sell,’ she said.

‘Whereas your sex, if I may venture to say so’——

‘Are never happy unless there is something that we want to buy. How thoroughly you understand us, Sir Frederick!’

‘Consider for how many years I have made you my study.’

‘What a pity you did not make better use of your time!’

‘Where could I have found another study half so charming?’

‘You would graduate with honours, I do not doubt.’

‘If you were one of the examining Dons, that might be possible.’—There was a brief pause, then the Baronet said: ‘I trust that Lady Dimsdale is quite well?’

‘Quite well, I believe. She, too, is somewhere about the grounds. This lovely morning seems to have tempted every one out of doors.—You will stay luncheon of course, Sir Frederick?’

‘You are too good. A rusk and a glass of claret are all that I take in the middle of the day.’

It was one of the Baronet’s little weaknesses to like to be regarded as a semi-invalid, especially by the ladies.

‘Captain Bowood must add his entreaties to mine, and persuade you to stay.—By-the-bye, I had almost forgotten to ask after your nephew. Have you heard from him lately?’

Sir Frederick became animated in a moment. ‘I had a letter from the dear boy by last mail. He wrote in excellent spirits. I expect him over on leave in the course of the autumn, when I shall take the liberty of introducing him to my friends at Rosemount.’

‘I shall not fail to hold you to your promise.’

‘And now to find the Captain.’

‘The sun is rather oppressive. Had I not better send a servant?’

‘Thanks; no. I shall have no difficulty in finding him. _Au revoir._’ And with a smile and a bow, the Baronet made his exit. On reaching the veranda, he paused to put up his umbrella, as a protection from the sun, and then went gingerly on his way.

‘It is not Charles, but Laura, whom he has come to see,’ mused Mrs Bowood as her eyes followed the Baronet. ‘There’s something in his manner which makes me feel almost sure that he will propose before the day is over; but now that Mr Boyd has put in an appearance, I am afraid Sir Frederick’s chance is a very poor one.—By-the-bye, why did Laura wear those jewels last night, which, as I have heard her say more than once, she has never worn since before her marriage? Well, well; I suppose that neither sentiment nor romance is quite dead, even when people can look back upon their thirtieth birthday.’

Mrs Bowood took up her pen again; but at that moment a servant entered the room. ‘Beg pardon, ma’am, but here’s a man come to mend the drawing-room lamp; and the fishmonger is waiting to see you; and there’s a young gent with spectacles and long hair come to tune the pianos.’

‘Dear, dear! I shall have to finish my letter after luncheon, I suppose.—I will come at once, Sparks. But I gave no instructions to any one about tuning the pianos.’

‘Perhaps the Captain may have sent the young man, ma’am.’

‘Perhaps so; but he doesn’t generally interfere in such matters.’

Sparks left the room, and Mrs Bowood put away her unfinished letter in the davenport. ‘What can have become of Mr Boyd?’ she said to herself. ‘I have seen nothing of him since breakfast. Probably, he and Laura are somewhere in the grounds together; if so, poor Sir Frederick will have to find another opportunity.’

As the Baronet, holding his umbrella over his head, paced slowly down one of the winding sunny walks that led from the house, he kept a careful watch on other walks to right and left of him. He was evidently looking out for some one in particular. ‘Why delay longer? Why not do it to-day and at once?’ he was asking himself as he walked along. ‘I have purposely kept away from her for five days, only to find that her image dwells more persistently in my thoughts than ever. It is true that she rejected me once; but that was many years ago, when I was a poor man, and it is no reason why she should reject me a second time. She was a romantic school-girl then; she is a woman of the world now. Yes; the match is a desirable one in every way for both of us. She has money, and I have position. As the wife of Sir Frederick Pinkerton, she would be a very different personage from the widow of a City drysalter; and then her income added to mine would make a very comfortable thing.’ The Baronet would seem to have been unaware of that particular clause in the late Sir Thomas’s will by which his widow would be deprived of nearly the whole of her fortune in case she should marry again. It is possible that his ardour might have cooled down in some measure, had he been made aware of that important fact.

Presently he saw the object of his thoughts turn a corner of the path a little distance away. Her eyes were bent on the ground, and she did not see him. He stood still for a moment or two, watching her with a critical air. He flattered himself that he had a fastidious taste in most things that a gentleman should be fastidious about, and in women most of all. ‘She will do—she will do!’ he muttered to himself with an air of complacency. ‘She is really charming. She shall be Lady Pinkerton before she is three months older.’

Lady Dimsdale happened to look up at this moment. She could not repress a little start at the sight of Sir Frederick.

The Baronet pulled up his collar the eighth of an inch, squared his shoulders, and went slowly forward.

Laura Dimsdale was a tall, graceful-looking woman. She was fair, with a lovely clear complexion, which, especially when she became at all animated, had not yet lost all the tints of girlhood. She had large hazel eyes, instinct with sweetness and candour, delicately arched eyebrows, and a mass of brown silky hair. If the usual expression of her face when alone, or when not engaged in conversation, was not exactly one of melancholy, it was at least that of a woman who has lived and suffered, and to whom the world has taught more than one bitter lesson. And yet in the old days at the vicarage, which now seemed so far away, there had been no merrier-hearted girl than Laura Langton; and even now, after all these years, the boundary that divided her tears from her smiles was a very narrow one. She was gifted with a keen sense of humour, and it did not take much to cause her eyes to fill with laughter and her mobile lips to curve into a merry mocking smile.

Sir Frederick lifted his hat, and twisted his mouth into a smile that was a capital advertisement for his dentist. ‘This is indeed an agreeable surprise, Lady Dimsdale. I came in search of Captain Bowood, and I find—you!’

‘How cleverly you hide your disappointment, Sir Frederick!’ She gave him her fingers for a moment as she spoke. ‘As I have not seen the Captain since breakfast, I cannot tell you where to look for him. But you have been quite a truant during the last few days. We have all missed you.’ There was a mischievous twinkle in her eyes as she said these words.

‘Hum, hum. You flatter me, Lady Dimsdale. Business of importance took me to town for a few days.’ He had turned with her, and was now pacing slowly by her side. ‘Do you know, Lady Dimsdale, he went on presently, ‘that I never see a garden nowadays which seems half so charming to me as that dear, delightful wilderness of old-fashioned flowers behind your father’s vicarage?’

‘It was certainly a wilderness, and very old-fashioned into the bargain; but the flowers that grew there were very sweet.’

‘I spent many happy hours among its winding walks.’

‘And a few uncomfortable ones, I’m afraid. Have you forgotten that afternoon when, as you sat eating strawberries and cream in the summer-house, a caterpillar crawled down your neck? You made such extraordinary faces, that for a minute or two I felt quite frightened.’

‘Hum. I had certainly forgotten the caterpillar,’ answered the Baronet, not without a shade of annoyance.

‘And then I used to fancy that you were never quite easy in your mind as we sat together in the garden. There were certainly a great many frogs, and I think you never liked frogs.’

‘Not unless they were fricasséed. Trifling annoyances there might be, Lady Dimsdale; but when the presiding divinity was so fair’——

‘The presiding divinity, Sir Frederick? A painted divinity! We gave her a fresh coat of paint every spring. Poor old Aphrodite with her shell—she used to stand in the middle of the fishpond. But you forget, Sir Frederick, that she had lost her nose, and even a divinity hardly looks so charming without a nose as with one.’

Sir Frederick gave a sniff, and replied in his loftiest manner: ‘When I made use of the term “presiding divinity,” I need hardly say that I was referring to yourself, Lady Dimsdale.’

‘I really beg your pardon, Sir Frederick, but no one ever called me a divinity before. Do you know I rather like it.’ She led the way, as if unconsciously, to a wide-spreading yew, round the bole of which a low seat had been fixed. Here, in the grateful amplitude of shade, she sat down, and the Baronet seated himself a little distance away. It may be that she had some suspicion with regard to Sir Frederick’s errand this morning, and had made up her mind to get it over and have done with it at once and for ever.

‘Now for the plunge!’ said the Baronet to himself as he sat down. The plumage of his self-conceit had been somewhat ruffled both by her words and manner; but whatever temporary annoyance he might feel, it would never do to betray it at such an all-important crisis.

‘You are still the same Laura Langton that you were during those sunny days at the vicarage,’ he began in what he considered his most insinuating manner. ‘The same charm, the same power of fascination exist still. A happy time—at least for one of those two. But the ending was not a happy one—no, anything rather than that.’

‘For which of the two people concerned was the ending not a happy one, Sir Frederick?’

Her coldly contemptuous tone touched him to the quick. A deep flush mounted to his face; for a moment or two he could not trust himself to answer her. ‘I thank you, Lady Dimsdale,’ he said at last. ‘The reproof implied by your words is a just one. To her, no doubt, the end was seen from the beginning—a dramatic effect to be worked up to from the opening of the comedy. To him it came as a thunder-clap, as a stab from a hand that a moment before had been pressed to his lips. Day after day he had been led on by eyes that seemed ever to brighten at his coming; by smiles that seemed ever to be those of welcome; by low-voiced replies; by a hundred pleasant lures, till at length the moment came when his silence found itself a tongue. A few burning words, and everything was told. The answer?—A mocking laugh, a scornful dismissal. His paradise had been the paradise of a fool. He had helped a pretty girl to pass away a few weeks in a dull country-house—and that was all!’ Sir Frederick spoke in low, almost impassioned accents. Any third person who might have chanced to overhear him would have been justified in assuming that he had been cruelly jilted.

But not a muscle of Lady Dimsdale’s face moved, and her answer came in tones as clear and incisive as those of a bell. ‘Were he here now of whom you speak, I would say to him: “You have an excellent memory for many things; is it possible that you can have forgotten Marietta Gray?”’

Sir Frederick started as if he had been stung. His face blanched suddenly. ‘Marietta Gray!’ he stammered out. ‘What do you, Lady Dimsdale, know of her?’

‘She was only a fisherman’s daughter, it is true,’ continued Lady Dimsdale in her clear cold accents. ‘A pretty toy for a fine gentleman to amuse himself with, and then to cast aside. I knew something of her, and I heard her story. When, a little later, one of the strange chances of life brought within my influence the man who had first won the affections of that poor girl and then basely deserted her, I resolved as far as lay in my power to avenge the cruel wrong. You have just told me, Sir Frederick, how well I succeeded in my object. I am happy to think, that the lesson has lingered so long in your memory.’

Sir Frederick rose and took one or two turns under the shade of the branching yew. Not for years had the still waters of his life been so deeply stirred. He took out his delicately perfumed handkerchief and wiped his forehead with it. His hands trembled a little—a thing that had rarely happened to him before. But through all his agitation and surprise, he felt that he had learned to care more for Laura Dimsdale during the last few minutes than he had ever cared for her before. If it were possible for him ever to really love a woman, here was that one woman. Even after all that had passed between them, he would ask her to become his wife. She was a generous, large-hearted creature, he felt sure; and now that she had stabbed him so cruelly, she would be the first to stoop and bind up his wounds. ‘It’s the way of her sex,’ he said to himself. Another reflection did not fail to impress itself upon him: Not to every one is given the chance of marrying a Baronet with six thousand a year. Women can forgive much under such circumstances.

Lady Dimsdale rose. ‘I must leave you now, Sir Frederick,’ she said.

‘One moment, if you please—just one moment,’ he urged.

She hesitated a little, and then sat down again. He spoke, standing in front of her. ‘The words you said to me just now, Lady Dimsdale, were very severe, but not more severe, perhaps, than the case warranted. _I_ can only cry _mea culpa_, and throw myself on your mercy. I have not a word to urge in self-defence. But the past is the past; however much we may regret it, we cannot alter or amend it. The passion I felt for Laura Langton was sincere. There is proof of it in the fact that it exists undiminished to the present day. The flame is still alight—the ashes still glow with the fire that was first kindled fifteen years ago. Lady Dimsdale, here and to-day, I repeat the offer I made you once before—here and to-day I ask you once more to become my wife.’ His manner was dignified, his words impressive.

The answer came without a moment’s hesitation: ‘Lady Dimsdale is infinitely obliged to Sir Frederick Pinkerton. She will not answer him to-day after the fashion she answered him years ago. She will simply say to him as editors say of rejected contributions, “Declined with thanks.”’

Sir Frederick changed colour. He had not expected so decided a rebuff. He bowed gravely. ‘May I be permitted to hope that your decision is not irrevocable—that it is open to reconsideration?’

‘Being a woman, I change my mind about many things; but I shall never change it about this.’

At this moment a childish voice was heard calling: ‘Aunty Laura—Aunty Laura, where are you? How tiresome of you to run away!’

Lady Dimsdale rose. ‘One of my tyrants is calling me, and I must obey. You will excuse me, Sir Frederick, I am sure.’

Again came the voice: ‘Aunty Laura, where are you?’

Lady Dimsdale drew a child’s trumpet from her pocket and blew a few notes on it. A moment later, Sir Frederick found himself alone.

‘Hum, hum. Rejected—and for the second time,’ he muttered to himself. He was excessively chagrined. After the fashion of other men, having failed to obtain the object of his desires, he appraised it at a higher value than he had ever done before. ‘There must be another man in the case. She would never have refused Sir Frederick Pinkerton and six thousand a year, unless there were another man in the case. Who can he be?’

He strolled slowly in the direction of the house. He would have a word with Captain Bowood, and then he would take his leave. He entered through the open French-windows, but the room was empty. A moment later the door was opened noisily, and Miss Elsie Brandon burst into the room.

She was a tall slim girl, with very bright eyes, and features that were instinct with vivacity. She gave the promise of considerable beauty in time to come. Her hair, cut nearly as short as a boy’s, was a mass of tiny yellow curls. She wore a pinafore, and a frock that scarcely reached to her ankles—her aunt, Miss Hoskyns, had worn a pinafore and a short frock at her age; consequently, they were the proper things for young ladies to wear nowadays.

‘Oh, I beg your pardon, Sir Frederick, but I thought that perhaps Charley might be here.’

‘Good-morning, Miss Brandon,’ said Sir Frederick as he held out his hand.—‘And pray, who is Charley?’

‘Charley Summers, of course—Captain Bowood’s nephew.’

‘But I was under the impression that Captain Bowood had discarded his nephew?’

‘So he has. Cut off his allowance, and forbade him the house eight months ago.’

‘And yet you expect to see him here to-day?’ The Baronet was always interested in the affairs of his neighbours, especially when those neighbours happened to be people of property.

‘I don’t mind telling you, but I had a note from Charley this morning—on the sly, you know.’

‘Pardon me, but young ladies in society don’t generally say “on the sly.”’

‘Charley says it, and he was educated at Harrow. Anyhow, I had a note from him, in which he said that he should certainly contrive to see me to-day. It’s a great risk for him to run, of course; but that won’t deter him in the least.’

‘You appear to be greatly interested in the young gentleman.’

‘Don’t call him a young gentleman, please—it sounds so awfully formal. Didn’t I tell you that we are in love? No; I don’t think I did. Well, we are. It’s a secret at present, and there are all sorts of dreadful obstacles in the way. But we have made up our minds to get married by-and-by, or else we shall commit suicide and die together.’ As Miss Brandon spoke thus, she flung into the air the Latin grammar she had been carrying and caught it deftly as it fell.

‘That would indeed be a terrible fate,’ said the Baronet with a smile.

‘By Jove, though, Sir Frederick, but we are serious!’

‘Young ladies in society don’t generally say “by Jove.”’

‘Charley does, and he was educated at Harrow.’ From a pocket in her dress she drew a box of bon-bons, opened it and popped one between her teeth. Then she proffered the box to Sir Frederick. ‘Have one?’ she said with all the nonchalance imaginable.—The Baronet smiled, and shook his head.—‘You need not notice my fingers, please,’ continued Miss Brandon. ‘I’ve inked them. Somehow, I always do ink them when I’ve an extra hard lesson to learn.—But I say, Sir Frederick, isn’t it a jolly shame that a great girl like me should still be learning lessons? I’m seventeen years two months and four days old.’

‘Young ladies’——

‘I know what you are going to say. I learned the word from Charley, so it must be right. Well, it _is_ a shame. I’ve a great mind to run away. I’ve five pounds saved up.’

‘Perhaps Charley, as you call him, might not like you to do that.’

‘No; I suppose not; and I must study him, poor boy. It’s an awful responsibility—sometimes my brain reels under it.’ Again the Latin grammar was flung high into the air and caught as it fell.

‘Is that the way you always learn your lessons, Miss Brandon?’

‘Not always. But, I say—I _do_ hate Latin. I shall never learn it; and if I were to learn it, it would never be of any use to me.’

‘Young ladies in society don’t generally bite the corners of their pinafores.’

‘Charley does, and—— No; that’s nonsense. Young ladies in society don’t wear pinafores, so of course they have none to bite.’

At this moment, Captain Bowood entered the room, followed by a foreign-looking young man, who was dressed in a shabby frock-coat buttoned close up to the throat, and a pair of shoes very much down at heel. In one hand he carried a hat that was considerably the worse for wear. His long hair, parted down the middle, fell over his coat collar, and he wore blue spectacles.

‘There you are, young man,’ said the Captain as he pointed to the piano. ‘And the sooner you are done and off the premises, the better.’

‘Very good, sare. Much oblige,’ answered the stranger.

At the sound of his voice, Miss Brandon started and gazed earnestly at the young man in the blue spectacles.

‘Good gracious! Why, it must _be_—it _is_ Charley!’ she muttered under her breath. ‘My poor dear boy! But what a fright he has made of himself!’

A KING OF ACRES.

III.—A RINGFENCE: CONCLUSION.

There were great elms in the Out-park, whose limbs or boughs, as large as the trunk itself, came down almost to the ground. They touched the tops of the white wild parsley; and when sheep were lying beneath, the jackdaws stepped from the sheep’s back to the bough and returned again. The jackdaws had their nests in the hollow places of these elms; for the elm as it ages becomes full of cavities. These great trees often divided into two main boughs, rising side by side, and afar off visible as two dark streaks among the green. For many years no cattle had been permitted in the park, and the boughs of the trees had grown in a drooping form, as they naturally do unless eaten, or broken by animals pushing against them. But since the times of agricultural pressure, a large part of the domain had been fenced off, and was now partly grazed and partly mown, being called the Out-park. There were copses at the farther side, where in spring the May flowered, the purple orchis was drawn up high by the trees and bushes—twice as high as its fellows in the mead, where a stray spindle-tree grew; and from these copses the cuckoos flew round the park.

But the thinnest hedge about the wheat-fields was as interesting as the park or the covers; and this is the remarkable feature of English scenery, that its perfection, its beauty, and its interest are not confined to any masterpiece here and there, walled in or inclosed, or at least difficult of access and isolated, but it extends to the smallest portion of the country. Wheat-field hedges are the thinnest of hedges, kept so that the birds may find no shelter, and that the numerous caterpillars may not breed in them more than can be helped. Such a hedge is so low it can be leaped over, and so narrow that it is a mere screen of twisted hawthorn branches which can be seen through, like screens of twisted stone in ancient chapels. But the sparrows come to it, and the finches, the mice, and weasels, and now and then a crow, who searches along, and goes in and out and quests like a spaniel. It is so tough this twisted screen of branches that a charge of shot would be stopped by it; if a pellet or two slid through an interstice, the majority would be held as if by a shield of wicker-work. Old Bartholomew, the farmer, sent his men once or twice along with reaping-hooks to clear away the weeds that grew up here under such slight shelter; but other farmers were not so careful. Then convolvulus grew over the thin screen, a corncockle stood up taller than the hedge itself; in time of harvest, yellow St John’s wort flowered beside it, and later on, bunches of yellow-weed.

A lark rose on the other side, and so caused the glance to be lifted and to look farther, and away yonder was a farmhouse at the foot of a hill. Pale yellow stubble covered the hill, rising like a background to the red-tile roof, and to the elms beside the house, among whose branches there were pale yellow spots. Round wheat-ricks stood in a double row on the left hand; count them, and you counted the coin of the land—bank-notes in straw—and on the right and in front were green meads, and horses feeding, horses who had done good work in plough-time and harvest-time, and would soon be at plough again. There were green meads, because some green meads are a necessity of an English farmhouse, and there are few without them, even when in the midst of corn. Meads in which the horses feed, a pony for the children and for the pony-cart, turkeys, two or three cows; all the large and small creatures that live about the place. When the land was torn up and ploughed for corn of old time, these green inclosures were left to stay on, till now it seems as if pressure of low prices for wheat would cause the cornland to again become pasture. Of old time, golden wheat conquered and held possession, and now the grass threatens to oust the conqueror.

Had any one studied either of these three, the great elms in the Out-park, or the thin twisted screen of hedge, or the red-tile roof, and the yellow stubble behind it on the hill, he might have found material for a picture in each. There was, in truth, in each far more than any one could put into a picture, or than any one could put into a book; for the painter can but give one aspect of one day, and the writer a mere catalogue of things; but nature refreshes the reality every day with different tints, and as it were new ideas, so that, although it is always there, it is never twice the same. Over that stubble on the hill there were other hills, and among these a coombe or valley, in which stood just such another farmhouse, but so differently placed, with few trees, and those low, somewhat bare in its immediate surroundings, but above, on each side, close at hand, sloping ramparts of green turf rising high, till the larks that sang above seemed to sing in another land, like that found by Jack when he clomb the beanstalk. Along this coombe was a cover of gorse, and in spring there was a mile of golden bloom, richer than gold in colour, leading like a broad highway of gold down to the house. From those ramparts in high summer—which is when the corn is ripe and the reapers in it—there could be seen a slope divided into squares of varied grain. This on the left of the fertile undulation was a maize colour, which, when the sunlight touched it, seemed to have a fleeting hue of purple somewhere within. There is no purple in ripe wheat visible to direct and considering vision; look for it specially, and it will not be seen. Purple forms no part of any separate wheatear or straw; brown and yellow in the ear, yellow in the upper part of the straw, and still green towards the earth. But when the distant beams of sunlight travelling over the hill swept through the rich ripe grain, for a moment there was a sense of purple on the retina. Beyond this square was a pale gold piece, and then one where the reapers had worked hard, and the shocks stood in diagonal rows; this was a bronze, or brown and bronze, and beside it was a green of clover.

Farther on, the different green of the hill turf, and white sheep, feeding in an extended crescent, the bow of the crescent gradually descending the sward. The hills of themselves beautiful, and possessing views which are their property and belong to them; a twofold value. The woods on the lower slopes full of tall brake fern, and holding in their shadowy depths the spirit of old time. In the woods it is still the past, and the noisy mechanic present of this manufacturing century has no place. Enter in among the round-boled beeches which the squirrels rush up, twining round like ivy in ascent, where they nibble the beech-nuts forty feet aloft, and let the husks drop to your feet, where the wood-pigeon sits and does not move, safe in the height and thickness of the spray. There are jew-berries or dew-berries on a bramble-bush, which grows where the sunlight and rain fall direct to the ground, unchecked by boughs. They are full of the juice of autumn, black, rich, vine-like, taken fresh from the prickly bough. Low down in the hollow is a marshy spot, sedge-grown, and in the sedge lie yellow leaves of willow already fallen. Here in the later months will come a woodcock or two, with feathers so brown and leaf-like of hue, and markings, that the plumage might have been printed in colours from brown leaves of beech. No springes are set for the woodcocks now, but the markings are the same on the feathers as centuries since; the brown beech-leaves lie in the dry hollows the year through just as they did then; the large dew-berries are as rich; and the nuts as sweet. It is the past in the wood, and Time here never grows any older. Could you bring back the red stag—as you may easily in fancy—and place him among the tall brake, and under the beeches, he should not know that a day had gone by since the stern Roundheads shot down the last of his race hereabouts in Charles I.’s days. For the leaves are turning as they turned then to the altered colour of the sun’s rays as he declines in his noonday arch, lower and lower every day; his rays are somewhat yellower than in dry hot June; a little of the tint of the ripe wheat floats in the sunshine. To this the woods turn. First, the nut-tree leaves drop, and the green brake is quickly yellow; the slender birch becomes lemon on its upper branches; the beech reddens; by-and-by the first ripe acorn falls, and there’s as much cawing of the rooks in the oaks at acorn-time as at their nests in the elms in March.

All these things happened in the old old time before the red stags were shot down; the leaves changed as the sunbeams became less brilliantly white, the woodcocks arrived, the mice had the last of the acorns which had fallen, and which the rooks and jays and squirrels had spared for them after feasting to the full of their greediness. This ancient oak, whose thick bark, like cast-iron for ruggedness at the base, has grown on steadily ever since the last deer bounded beneath it, utterly heedless of the noisy rattle of machinery in the northern cities, unmoved by any shriek of engine, or hum, or flapping of loose belting, or any volume of smoke drifting into the air—I wish that the men now serving the great polished wheels, and works in iron and steel and brass, could somehow be spared an hour to sit under this ancient oak in Thardover South Wood, and come to know from actual touch of its rugged bark that the past is living now, that Time is no older, that nature still exists as full as ever, and to see that all the factories of the world have made no difference, and therefore not to pin their faith to any theory born and sprung up among the crush and pale-faced life of modern time; but to look for themselves at the rugged oak-bark, and up to the sky above the highest branches, and to take an acorn and consider its story and possibilities, and to watch the sly squirrel coming down, as they sit quietly, to play almost at their feet. That they might gather to themselves some of the leaves—mental and spiritual leaves—of the ancient forest, feeling nearer to the truth and soul, as it were, that lives on in it. They would feel as if they had got back to their original existence, and had become themselves, as they ought to be, could they live such life, untouched by artificial care. Then, how hurt they would be if any proposed to cut down that oak; if any proposed the felling of the forest; and the death of its meaning. It would be like a blow aimed at themselves. No picture that could be bought at a thousand guineas could come near that ancient oak; but you can carry away the memory of it, the picture and thought in your mind for nothing. If the oak were cut down, it would be like thrusting a stick through some valuable painting on your walls at home.

The common below the South Wood, even James Thardover with all his desire for improvement could not do much good with; the soil, and the impossibility of getting a fall for draining, all checked effort there. A wild, rugged waste, you say, at first, glancing at the rushes, and the gaunt signpost standing up among them, the anthills, and thistles. Thistles have colour in their bloom, and the prickly leaves are finely cut; rushes—green rushes—are notes of the season, and with their slender tips point to the days in the book of the year; they are brown now at the tip, and some bent downwards in an angle. The brown will descend the stalk till the snipes come with gray-grass colours in their wings. But all the beatings of the rain will not cast the rushes utterly down; they will send up fresh green successors for the spring, for the cuckoo to float along over on his way to the signpost, where he will perch a few minutes, and call in the midst of the wilderness. There, too, the lapwings leave their eggs on the ground among the rushes, and rise, and complainingly call. The warm showers of June call up the iris in the corner where the streamlet widens, and under the willows appear large yellow flowers above the flags. Pink and white blossom of the rest-harrow comes on bushy plants where the common is dry, and there is heath, and heather, and fern. The waste has its treasures too—as the song-thrush has his in the hawthorn bush—its treasures of flowers, as the wood its beauties of tree and leaf, and the hills their wheat.

The ringfence goes farther than this; it incloses the living creatures, yet without confining them. The wing of the wood-pigeon as the bird perches, forms a defined curve against its body. The forward edge of the wing—its thickest part—as it is pressed to its side, draws a line sweeping round; a painter’s line. How many wood-pigeons are there in the South Wood alone, besides the copses and the fir-plantations? How many turtle-doves in spring in the hedges and outlying thickets, in summer among the shocks of corn? And all these are his—the Squire’s—not in the sense of possession, for no true wild creature was ever any one’s yet; it would die first; but still within his ringfence, and their destinies affected by his will, since he can cut down their favourite ash and hawthorn, or thin them with shot. Neither of which he does. The robin, methinks, sings sweetest of autumn-tide in the deep woods, when no other birds speak or trill, unexpectedly giving forth his plaintive note, complaining that the summer is going, and the time of love, and the sweet cares of the nest; telling you that the berries are brown, the dew-berries over-ripe, and dropping of over-ripeness like dew as the morning wind shakes the branch; that the wheat is going to the stack, and that the rusty plough will soon be bright once more by the attrition of the earth.

Many of them sing thus in the South Wood, yet scarce any two within sound of each other, for the robin is jealous, and likes to have you all to himself as he tells his tale. Song-thrushes—what ranks of them in April; larks, what hundreds and hundreds of them on the hills above the green wheat; finches of varied species; blackbirds; nightingales; crakes in the meadows; partridges; a whole page might be filled merely with their names.

These, too, are in the ringfence with the hills and woods, the yellow iris of the common, and the red-roofed farmhouses. Besides which, there are beings infinitely higher, something of whom has been said in a previous chapter—namely, men and women in village and hamlet, and more precious still, those little children with hobnail boots and clean jackets and pinafores, who go a-blackberrying on their way to school. All these are in the ringfence. Upon their physical destinies, the Squire can exercise a powerful influence, and has done so, as the school itself testifies.

Now, is not a large estate a living picture? Or rather, is it not formed of a hundred living pictures? So beautiful it looks, its hills, its ripe wheat, its red-roofed farmhouses, and acres upon acres of oaks; so beautiful, it must be valuable; most valuable; it is visible, tangible wealth. It is difficult to disabuse any one’s mind of that idea; yet, as we have seen, with all the skill, science, and expenditure Thardover could bring to bear upon it, all his personal effort was in vain. It was a possession, not a profit. Had not James Thardover’s ancestors invested their wealth in building streets of villas in the outskirts of a great city, he could not have done one-fifth what he had. Men who had made their fortunes in factories—the noisy factories of the present century—paid him high rents for these residences; and thus it was that the labour and time of the many-handed operatives in mill, factory, and workshop really went to aid in maintaining these living pictures. Without that outside income the Squire could not have reduced the rents of his tenants so that they could push through the depression; without that outside income he could not have drained the lands; put up those good buildings; assisted the school, and in a hundred ways helped the people. Those who watched the polished machinery under the revolving shaft, and tended the loom, really helped to keep the beauties of South Wood, the grain-grown hills, the flower-strewn meadows. These were so beautiful, it seemed as if they must represent money—riches; but they did not. They had a value much higher than that. As the spring rises in the valley at the foot of the hills and slowly increases till it forms a river, to which ships resort, so these fields and woods, meads and brooks, were the source from which the city was derived. If the operative in the factory, or tending the loom, had traced his descent, he would have found that his grandfather, or some scarcely more remote ancestor, was a man of the land. He followed the plough, or tended the cattle, and his children went forth to earn higher wages in the town. For the hamlet and the outlying cottage are the springs whence the sinew and muscle of populous cities are derived. The land is the fountainhead from which the spring of life flows, widening into a river. The river at its broad mouth disdains the spring; the city in its immensity disdains the hamlet and the ploughman. Yet if the spring ceased, the ships could not frequent the river; if the hamlet and the ploughman were wiped out by degrees, the city must run dry of life. Therefore the South Wood and the park, the hamlet and the fields, had a value no one can tell how many times above the actual money rental, and the money earned by the operatives in factory and workshop could not have been better expended than in supporting it.

But it had another value still—which they too helped to sustain—the value of beauty. Parliament has several times intervened to save the Lake district from the desecrating intrusion of useless railways. So too, the beauty of these woods, and grain-grown hills, of the very common, is worth preservation at the hands and votes of the operatives in factory and mill. If a man loves the brick walls of his narrow dwelling in a close-built city, and the flowers which he has trained with care in the window; how much more would he love the hundred living pictures like those round about Thardover House. After any artificer had once seen such an oak and rested under it, if any threatened to cut it down, he would feel as if a blow had been delivered at his heart. His efforts, therefore, should be not to destroy these pictures but to preserve them. All the help that they can give is needed to assist a King of Acres in his struggle, and the struggle of the farmers and labourers—equally involved—against the adverse influences which press so heavily on English agriculture.

MRS SHAW: THE LATE PRINCE IMPERIAL’S NURSE.

Visitors to Paris during the meretricious glories of the Second Empire may possibly recall to mind that amidst the glare and glitter of that feverish epoch, one wholesome and interesting sight was constantly to be seen in the Tuileries gardens when the court was in residence at the palace—a bright-looking child playing with his English nurse; and the spectators were particularly attracted by the devoted attachment that appeared to exist between them. The child was the Prince Imperial of France; and his attendant, the pleasant-looking Yorkshire woman, was known in Paris as Mrs Shaw. A curious history is connected with her entrance into the imperial household, the story of which the writer obtained from what she believes to be a well-authenticated source.

Mrs Shaw was a valued nurse in a family where she had lived for some time, when one morning she startled her mistress with the announcement that she had dreamt she was destined to have the charge of the future Prince Imperial of France, and must leave her place at once. Although the expected event was causing the greatest excitement in Paris, it seems unlikely that it should have created much interest in a quiet English establishment, and naturally enough, her inspiration was treated as an unreasonable and inconvenient delusion. But no persuasions or arguments could induce her to remain, or remove what appeared to be an aberration of mind. Off she set, back to her Yorkshire village, and sought an interview with the clergyman of the parish, who appears to have been one of those worthy souls to whom his parishioners could resort as to a father-confessor; and struck with her determination and energy, he promised, after some expostulation, to assist her to the best of his power, though holding out no hope of success. He happened to have a slight acquaintance with the eminent London physician who had been honoured by Her Imperial Majesty with instructions to select a certain number of nurses, from whom she herself would choose the one that seemed most fitting for the post. Although besieged with applications, he consented to place Mrs Shaw on his list of candidates, and to grant her an interview, which resulted in his sending her with five others to Paris for the Empress’s approval, who at once chose her; and her dream was fulfilled!

The strength of character that had carried her to this triumphant issue, by no means deserted her in this new position. Amusing anecdotes reached us from time to time of the way in which the sensible, homely Yorkshire woman carried all before her in the imperial nurseries; would have no foreign ways or interference from court dames or lady-superintendents, or allow her small charge to be harassed with tedious toilets and fatiguing ceremonials; and finally gained her point, after personally appealing to the Emperor, who was only too glad to have the child brought up in the healthy English fashion; and fully appreciating her fidelity, gave orders that she was to rule alone, without let or hindrance; and always treated her with the greatest kindness and consideration.

And is it not possible that the true and perfect knight the Prince in after-years became, may have been owing in some measure to this early training in English ways and English thoughts, which made us look upon him as the child of our adoption when in exile among us, and take a mournful pride in his heroic martyrdom?

At the end of seven years, rumours of another tug of war reached us from the nursery domain. Mrs Shaw was to retire with a pension, and the Prince transferred to tutors and governors, as befitted his exalted prospects. But she absolutely refused to go and break her heart and the child’s too; and again gaining her point, was transformed into a sort of Madame la Gouvernante, and allowed to retain her apartments in the Tuileries; and a pleasant retreat they must have been for the poor Prince, when bored and wearied with lessons and precepts and all the miseries attendant upon high education, which seem to be inflicted in a more burdensome form upon royal pupils than on their subjects, perhaps because it is conducted on the solitary confinement fashion, without the competition and other natural excitements of a public school. The writer believes she afterwards married an officer in the Imperial Guard, so that her fortunes were still more closely bound up with those whom she loved and served so well; and we often wondered what became of her in the dark days of Sedan and the downfall of their race, and whether she lived to join them in exile, and share the last crushing sorrow with the beloved and bereaved Empress.

A YEAR’S WOOING.

’Twas autumn when first they stood on the bridge;
Ripe pears on the pear-tree, ripe corn on the ridge;
The swallows flew swiftly far up in the blue,
And speeding still southward, were lost to the view.
Said he: ‘Can you love me, as I can love you?’
She said, quite demurely: ‘Already I do!’

’Twas winter when next they met on the bridge;
The pear-trees were brown, and white was the ridge;
The swallows were feathering their nests in Algiers.
She looked in his face, and she burst into tears!
His nose it was pinched, and his lips they were blue.
Said she: ‘I can’t love you!’ Said he: ‘Nor I you!’

’Twas spring-time when next they stood on the bridge,
And white was the pear-tree, and green was the ridge;
The swallows had thoughts of a speedy return;
And the midges were dancing a-down the brown burn.
He said: ‘Pretty maiden, let by-gones go by—
Can you love me again?’ She said: ‘I can try.’

’Twas summer when next they stood on the bridge;
There were pears on the pear-tree, tall corn on the ridge;
The swallows wheeled round them, far up in the blue,
Then swooped down and snapped up a midgelet or two.
Said he: ‘Lest some trifle should come in the way,
And part us again, will you mention the day?’
She stood, looking down on the fast-flowing rill,
Then answered, demurely: ‘As soon as you will!’

H. L. R.

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