”
Mechanically
he drew the white hand
nearer his thumping heart.
nearer his thumping heart.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v17 - Mai to Mom
They grew between the
bank and the water. Apparently she found the fruit abundant,
for her hand was making pretty progress to her mouth. Fastid-
ious youth, which shudders and revolts at woman plumping her
exquisite proportions on bread and butter, and would (we must
suppose) joyfully have her quite scraggy to have her quite poeti-
cal, can hardly object to dewberries. Indeed, the act of eating
them is dainty and induces musing. The dewberry is a sister to
the lotus, and an innocent sister. You eat; mouth, eye, and hand
are occupied, and the undrugged mind free to roam. And so it
was with the damsel who knelt there. The little skylark went
up above her, all song, to the smooth southern cloud lying along
the blue; from a dewy copse standing dark over her nodding
hat the blackbird fluted, calling to her with thrice mellow note;
the kingfisher flashed emerald out of green osiers; a bow-winged
heron traveled aloft, seeking solitude; a boat slipped toward her,
containing a dreamy youth; and still she plucked the fruit, and
ate, and mused, as if no fairy prince were invading her territo-
ries, and as if she wished not for one, or knew not her wishes.
Surrounded by the green shaven meadows, the pastoral summer
buzz, the weirfall's thundering white, amid the breath and beauty
of wild flowers, she was a bit of lovely human life in a fair set-
ting; a terrible attraction. The Magnetic Youth leaned round to
note his proximity to the weir-piles, and beheld the sweet vision,
XVII-621
## p. 9922 (#330) ###########################################
9922
GEORGE MEREDITH
Stiller and stiller grew nature, as at the meeting of two electric
clouds. Her posture was so graceful that though he was making
straight for the weir, he dared not dip a scull. Just then one
most enticing dewberry caught her eyes. He was floating by
unheeded, and saw that her hand stretched low, and could not
gather what it sought. A stroke from his right brought him
beside her. The damsel glanced up dismayed, and her whole
shape trembled over the brink. Richard sprang from his boat
into the water. Pressing a hand beneath her foot, which she
had thrust against the crumbling wet sides of the bank to save
herself, he enabled her to recover her balance and gain safe
earth, whither, emboldened by the incident, touching her finger's
tip, he followed her.
HE HAD landed on an island of the still-vexed Bermoothes.
The world lay wrecked behind him; Raynham hung in the mists,
remote, a phantom to the vivid reality of this white hand which
had drawn him thither away thousands of leagues in an eye-
twinkle. Hark, how Ariel sung overhead! What splendor in the
heavens! What marvels of beauty about his enchanted head!
And, () you wonder! Fair Flame! by whose light the glories of
being are now first seen. Radiant Miranda! Prince Ferdinand is
at your feet.
Or is it Adam, his rib taken from his side in sleep, and thus
transformed, to make him behold his Paradise, and lose it?
The youth looked on her with as glowing an eye. It was the
First Woman to him.
And she — mankind was all Caliban to her, saving this one
princely youth.
So to each other said their changing eyes in the moment they
stood together; he pale, and she blushing.
She was indeed sweetly fair, and would have been held fair
among rival damsels. On a magic shore, and to a youth edu-
cated by a System, strung like an arrow drawn to the head, he,
it might be guessed, could fly fast and far with her. The soft
rose in her cheeks, the clearness of her eyes, bore witness to
the body's virtue; and health and happy blood were in her bear-
ing Had she stood before Sir Austin among rival damsels,
that Scientific Humanist, for the consummation of his System,
would have thrown her the handkerchief for his son. The wide
summer-hat, nodding over her forehead to her brows, seemed to
## p. 9923 (#331) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9923
>
flow with the flowing heavy curls, and those fire-threaded mellow
curls, only half-curls,— waves of hair, call them, - rippling at the
ends, went like a sunny red-veined torrent down her back almost
to her waist; a glorious vision to the youth, who embraced it as
a flower of beauty, and read not a feature. There were curious
features of color in her face for him to have read. Her brows,
thick and brownish against a soft skin showing the action of the
blood, met in the bend of a bow, extending to the temples long
and level: you saw that she was fashioned to peruse the sights
of earth, and by the pliability of her brows that the wonderful
creature used her faculty, and was not going to be a statue to
the gazer.
Under the dark thick brows an arch of lashes shot
out, giving a wealth of darkness to the full frank blue eyes,
a mystery of meaning — more than brain was ever meant to
fathom; richer, henceforth, than all mortal wisdom to Prince
Ferdinand. For when nature turns artist, and produces contrasts
of color on a fair face, where is the Sage, or what the Oracle,
shall match the depth of its lightest look ?
Prince Ferdinand was also fair. In his slim boating attire
his figure looked heroic. His hair, rising from the parting to
the right of his forehead, in what his admiring Lady Blandish
called his plume, fell away slanting silkily to the temples across
the nearly imperceptible upward curve of his brows there,— felt
more than seen, so slight it was,- and gave to his profile a
bold beauty, to which his bashful, breathless air was a flattering
charm. An arrow drawn to the head, capable of flying fast and
far with her. He leaned a little forward to her, drinking her in
with all his eyes,- and young Love has a thousand. Then truly
the System triumphed, just ere it was to fall; and could Sir
Austin have been content to draw the arrow to the head and let
it Ay, when it would fly, he might have pointed to his son again,
and said to the world, “Match him! ” Such keen bliss as the
youth had in the sight of her, an innocent youth alone has
powers of soul in him to experience.
"O women! ” says The Pilgrim's Scrip, in one of its solitary
outbursts, women, who like, and will have for hero, a rake!
how soon are you not to learn that you have taken bankrupts to
your bosoms, and that the putrescent gold that attracted you is
the slime of the Lake of Sin! »
If these two were Ferdinand and Miranda, Sir Austin was not
Prospero and was not present, or their fates might have been
different.
-
## p. 9924 (#332) ###########################################
9924
GEORGE MEREDITH
So they stood a moment, changing eyes, and then Miranda
spoke, and they came down to earth, feeling no less in heaven.
She spoke to thank him for his aid. She used quite com-
mon simple words; and used them, no doubt, to express a com-
mon simple meaning: but to him she was uttering magic, casting
spells, and the effect they had on him was manifested in the
incoherence of his replies, which were too foolish to be chron.
icled.
The couple were again mute. Suddenly Miranda, with an
exclamation of anguish, and innumerable lights and shadows play-
ing over her lovely face, clapped her hands, crying aloud, "My
book! my book! ” and ran to the bank.
Prince Ferdinand was at her side. What have you lost ? »
he said.
“My book! my book! ” she answered, her long delicious curls
swinging across her shoulders to the stream. Then turning to
him, divining his rash intention, "Oh, no, no! let me entreat you
not to,” she said: "I do not so very much mind losing it. ” And
in her eagerness to restrain him she unconsciously laid her gen-
tle hand upon his arm, and took the force of motion out of him.
Indeed, I do not really care for the silly book," she con-
tinued, withdrawing her hand quickly, and reddening. "Pray do
not!
The young gentleman had kicked off his shoes. No sooner
was the spell of contact broken than he jumped in. The water
was still troubled and discolored by his introductory adventure;
and though he ducked his head with the spirit of a dabchick,
the book was missing. A scrap of paper floating from the
bramble just above the water, and looking as if fire had caught
its edges, and it had flown from one adverse element to the
other, was all he could lay hold of; and he returned to land dis-
consolately, to hear Miranda's murmured mixing of thanks and
pretty expostulations.
"Let me try again,” he said.
"No indeed! ” she replied, and used the awful threat, “I will
run away if you do;” which effectually restrained him.
Her eye fell on the fire-stained scrap of paper, and bright-
ened as she cried, “There, there! you have what I want. It is
that. I do not care for the book. No, please' you are not to
look at it. Give it me. ”
Before her playfully imperative injunction was fairly spoken,
Richard had glanced at the document and discovered a Griffin
## p. 9925 (#333) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9925
between Two Wheatsheaves; his crest in silver; and below –
oh, wonderment immense, his own handwriting! remnant of his
burnt-offering! a page of the sacrificed poems! one blossom pre-
served from the deadly universal blight.
He handed it to her in silence. She took it, and put it in
her bosom.
Who would have said, have thought, that where all else per-
ished, - Odes, fluttering bits of broad-winged Epic, Idyls, Lines,
Stanzas, - this one Sonnet to the stars should be miraculously
reserved for such a starry fate! passing beatitude!
As they walked silently across the meadow, Richard strove
to remember the hour and the mood of mind in which he had
composed the notable production. The stars were invoked, as see.
ing and foreseeing all, to tell him where then his love reclined,
and so forth; Hesper was complaisant enough to do so, and
described her in a couplet —
« Through sunset's amber see me shining fair,
As her blue eyes shine through her golden hair. ”
And surely no words could be more prophetic. Here were two
blue eyes and golden hair; and by some strange chance, that
appeared like the working of a Divine finger, she had become
the possessor of the prophecy, she that was to fulfill it! The
youth was too charged with emotion to speak. Doubtless the
damsel had less to think of, or had some trifling burden on her
conscience, for she seemed to grow embarrassed. At last she
drew up her chin to look at her companion under the nodding
brim of her hat (and the action gave her a charmingly freakish
air), crying, “But where are you going to ? You are wet through.
Let me thank you again; and pray leave me, and go home and
change instantly. "
“Wet ? ) replied the magnetic muser, with a voice of tender
interest: “not more than one foot, I hope? I will leave you
while you dry your stockings in the sun. ”
At this she could not withhold a shy and lovely laugh.
« Not I, but you.
You know you saved me, and would try to
get that silly book for me, and you are dripping wet.
not very uncomfortable ? »
In all sincerity he assured her that he was not.
"And you really do not feel that you are wet ? ”
He really did not; and it was a fact that he spoke truth.
Are you
## p. 9926 (#334) ###########################################
9926
GEORGE MEREDITH
She pursed her sweet dewberry mouth in the most comical
way, and her blue eyes lightened laughter out of the half-closed
lids.
"I cannot help it,” she said, her mouth opening, and sound-
ing harmonious bells of laughter in his ears. “Pardon me, won't
>
you ? »
His face took the same soft smiling curves in admiration of
her.
“Not to feel that you have been in the water, the very mo-
ment after! ” she musically interjected, seeing she was excused.
"It's true,” he said; and his own gravity then touched him to
join a duet with her, which made them no longer feel strangers,
and did the work of a month of intimacy. Better than senti-
ment, laughter opens the breast to love; opens the whole breast
to his full quiver, instead of a corner here and there for a soli-
tary arrow. Hail the occasion propitious, O British young! and
laugh and treat love as an honest god, and dabble not with the
sentimental rouge. These two laughed, and the souls of each
cried out to other, “It is I. It is I. ”
They laughed, and forgot the cause of their laughter; and the
sun dried his light river clothing; and they strolled toward the
blackbird's copse, and stood near a stile in sight of the foam of
the weir and the many-colored rings of eddies streaming forth
from it.
Richard's boat, meanwhile, had contrived to shoot the weir,
and was swinging, bottom upward, broadside with the current
down the rapid backwater.
“Will you let it go ? ” said the damsel, eying it curiously.
« Yes,” he replied, and low, as if he spoke in the core of his
thought. « What do I care for it now! ”
His old life was whirled away with it, dead, drowned. His
new life was with her, alive, divine.
She flapped low the brim of her hat. « You must really not
come any farther,” she softly said.
"And will you go and not tell me who you are ? ” he asked,
growing bold as the fears of losing her came across him. "And
will you not tell me before you go " -- his face burned how
you came by that
that paper ? ”
She chose to select the easier question to reply to: "You
ought to know me: we have been introduced. ” Sweet was her
winning off-hand affability.
»
## p. 9927 (#335) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9927
C
« Then who, in heaven's name, are you? Tell me! I never
could have forgotten you. "
"You have, I think,” she said demurely.
“Impossible that we could ever have met, and I forget you! ”
She looked up to him quickly.
“Do you remember Belthorpe ? »
“Belthorpe! Belthorpe! ” quoth Richard, as if he had to touch
his brain to recollect there was such a place. “Do you mean old
Blaize's farm ? »
« Then I am old Blaize's niece. ” She tripped him a soft
curtsy.
The magnetized youth gazed at her. By what magic was it
that this divine sweet creature could be allied with that old
churl!
« Then what what is your name? ” said his mouth; while
his eyes added, "I wonderful creature? how came you to enrich
the earth ? »
Have you forgot the Desboroughs of Dorset, too ? ” She
peered at him archly from a side bend of the flapping brim.
« The Desboroughs of Dorset »» A light broke in on him.
"And have you grown to this? That little girl I saw there! ”
He drew close to her to read the nearest features of the
vision. She could no more laugh off the piercing fervor of his
eyes. Her volubility fluttered under his deeply wistful look,
and now neither voice was high, and they were mutually con-
strained.
“You see,” she murmured, we are old acquaintances. ”
Richard, with his eyes still intently fixed on her, returned,
“You are very beautiful! ”
The words slipped out. Perfect simplicity is unconsciously
audacious. Her overpowering beauty struck his heart, and like
an instrument that is touched and answers to the touch, he
spoke.
Miss Desborough made an effort to trifle with this terrible
directness; but his eyes would not be gainsaid, and checked her
lips. She turned away from them, her bosom a little rebellious.
Praise so passionately spoken, and by one who has been a dam-
sel's first dream, dreamed of nightly many long nights, and
clothed in the virgin silver of her thoughts in bud, - praise from
him is coin the heart cannot reject, if it would. She quickened
her steps to the stile.
»
(
>
## p. 9928 (#336) ###########################################
9928
GEORGE MEREDITH
»
“I have offended you! ” said a mortally wounded voice across
her shoulder.
That he should think so were too dreadful.
“Oh no, no! you would never offend me. ” She gave him her
whole sweet face
« Then why, why do you leave me ? »
«Because,” she hesitated, "I must go. ”
«No. You must not go. Why must you go! Do not go. ”
“Indeed I must,” she said, pulling at the obnoxious broad
brim of her hat; and interpreting a pause he made for his assent
to her rational resolve, shyly looking at him, she held her hand
out, and said “Good-by," as if it were a natural thing to say.
The hand was pure white white and fragrant as the frosted
blossom of a May night. It was the hand whose shadow, cast
before, he had last night bent his head reverentially above, and
kissed; resigning himself thereupon over to execution for pay-
ment of the penalty of such daring — by such bliss well rewarded.
He took the hand, and held it, gazing between her eyes.
“Good-by,” she said again, as frankly as she could, and at the
same time slightly compressing her fingers on his in token of
adieu. It was a signal for his to close firmly upon hers.
« You will not go ? ”
Pray let me," she pleaded, her sweet brows suing in wrin-
kles.
"You will not go ?
” Mechanically he drew the white hand
nearer his thumping heart.
"I must,” she faltered piteously.
« You will not go ? ”
“Oh yes, yes! ”
« Tell me — do you wish to go ? ”
The question was subtle. A moment or two she did not
answer, and then forswore herself and said Yes.
“Do you — do you wish to go ? ” He looked with quivering
eyelids under hers.
A fainter Yes responded to his passionate repetition.
« You wish — wish to leave me? ) His breath went with the
words.
« Indeed I must. ”
Her hand became a closer prisoner.
All at once an alarming delicious shudder went through her
frame From him to her it coursed, and back from her to him.
»
>>>
## p. 9929 (#337) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9929
Forward and back love's electric messenger rushed from heart to
heart, knocking at each till it surged tumultuously against the
bars of its prison, crying out for its mate. They stood trem-
bling in unison, a lovely couple under these fair heavens of the
morning.
When he could get his voice it said, “Will you go ? ”
«
But she had none to reply with, and could only mutely bend
upward her gentle wrist.
« Then farewell! ” he said; and dropping his lips to the soft
fair hand, kissed it, and hung his head, swinging away from her,
ready for death.
Strange, that now she was released she should linger by him.
Strange, that his audacity, instead of the executioner, brought
blushes and timid tenderness to his side, and the sweet words,
“You are not angry with me? "
“With you, O Beloved! ” cried his soul. "And you forgive
me, fair charity! ”
She repeated her words in deeper sweetness to his bewildered
look; and he, inexperienced, possessed by her, almost lifeless with
the divine new emotions she had realized in him, could only sigh
and gaze at her wonderingly.
“I think it was rude of me to go without thanking you
again,” she said, and again proffered her hand.
The sweet heaven-bird shivered out his song above him. The
gracious glory of heaven fell upon his soul. He touched her
hand, not moving his eyes from her nor speaking; and she, with
a soft word of farewell, passed across the stile, and up the path-
way through the dewy shades of the copse, and out of the arch
of the light, away from his eyes.
And away with her went the wild enchantment. He looked
on barren air.
But it was no more the world of yesterday.
The marvelous splendors had sown seeds in him, ready to spring
up and bloom at her gaze; and in his bosom now the vivid con-
juration of her tones, her face, her shape, makes them leap and
illumine him like fitful summer lightnings - ghosts of the van-
ished sun.
There was nothing to tell him that he had been making love
and declaring it with extraordinary rapidity; nor did he know it.
Soft flushed cheeks! sweet mouth! strange sweet brows! eyes of
softest fire! - how could his ripe eyes behold you, and not plead
## p. 9930 (#338) ###########################################
9930
GEORGE MEREDITH
to keep you? Nay, how could he let you go? And he seriously
asked himself that question.
To-morrow this place will have a memory,- the river and the
meadow, and the white falling weir: his heart will build a tem-
ple here; and the skylark will be its high priest, and the old
blackbird its glossy-gowned chorister, and there will be a sacred
repast of dewberries. To-day the grass is grass; his heart is
chased by phantoms and finds rest nowhere. Only when the
most tender freshness of his flower comes across him does he
taste a moment's calm; and no sooner does it come than it gives
place to keen pangs of fear that she may not be his forever.
Ere long he learns that her name is Lucy. Ere long he
meets Ralph, and discovers that in a day he has distanced him
by a sphere.
RICHARD'S ORDEAL IS OVER
From «The Ordeal of Richard Feverel:
W"
HERE are the dreams of the hero when he learns he has a
child ? Nature is taking him to her bosom. She will
speak presently. Every domesticated boor in these hills
can boast the same; yet marvels the hero at none of his visioned
prodigies as he does when he comes to hear of this most com-
mon performance. A father? Richard fixed his eyes as if he
were trying to make out the lineaments of his child.
Telling Austin he would be back in a few minutes, he sallied
into the air, and walked on and on. “A father! ” he kept repeat-
ing to himself: "a child! ” And though he knew it not, he was
striking the keynotes of Nature. But he did know of a singular
harmony that suddenly burst over his whole being.
The moon was surpassingly bright; the summer air heavy
and still. He left the high-road and pierced into the forest. His
walk was rapid: the leaves on the trees brushed his cheeks;
the dead leaves heaped in the dells noised to his feet Some-
thing of a religious joy — a strange sacred pleasure — was in
him. By degrees it wore; he remembered himself; and now he
was possessed by a proportionate anguish. A father! he dared
never see his child. And he had no longer his phantasies to fall
upon, He was utterly bare to his sin. In his troubled mind it
seemed to him that Clare looked down on him Clare, who saw
## p. 9931 (#339) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9931
him as he was- and that to her eyes it would be infamy for
him to go and print his kiss upon his child. Then came stern
efforts to command his misery and make the nerves of his face
iron.
By the log of an ancient tree, half buried in dead leaves of
past summers, beside a brook, he halted as one who had reached
his journey's end. There he discovered he had a companion in
Lady Judith's little dog. He gave the friendly animal a pat of
recognition, and both were silent in the forest silence.
It was impossible for Richard to return; his heart was sur-
charged. He must advance; and on he footed, the little dog fol-
lowing:
An oppressive slumber hung about the forest branches. In the
dells and on the heights was the same dead heat. Here where
the brook tinkled, it was no cool-lipped sound, but metallic, and
without the spirit of water. Yonder, in a space of moonlight
on lush grass, the beams were as white fire to sight and feeling.
No haze spread around. The valleys were clear, defined to the
shadows of their verges; the distances sharply distinct, and with
the colors of day but slightly softened. Richard beheld a roe
moving across a slope of sward far out of rifle mark. The breath-
less silence was significant, yet the moon shone in a broad blue
heaven. Tongue out of mouth trotted the little dog after him;
couched panting when he stopped an instant; rose weariedly
when he started afresh. Now and then a large white night-moth
flitted through the dusk of the forest.
On a barren corner of the wooded highland, looking inland,
stood gray topless ruins set in nettles and rank grass blades.
Richard mechanically sat down on the crumbling flints to rest,
and listened to the panting of the dog. Sprinkled at his feet
were emerald lights; hundreds of glow-worms studded the dark
dry ground.
He sat and eyed them, thinking not at all. His energies
were expended in action. He sat as a part of the ruins, and the
moon turned his shadow westward from the south. Overhead,
as she declined, long ripples of silver cloud were imperceptibly
stealing toward her. They were the van of a tempest. He did
not observe them, or the leaves beginning to chatter. When he
again pursued his course with his face to the Rhine, a huge
mountain appeared to rise sheer over him, and he had it in his
mind to scale it. He got no nearer to the base of it for all his
## p. 9932 (#340) ###########################################
9932
GEORGE MEREDITH
vigorous outstepping The ground began to dip; he lost sight of
the sky
Then heavy thunder drops struck his cheek, the leaves
were singing, the earth breathed, it was black before him and
behind. All at once the thunder spoke. The mountain he had
marked was bursting over him.
Up started the whole forest in violet fire. He saw the coun-
try at the foot of the hills, to the bounding Rhine, gleam, quiver,
extinguished. Then there were pauses: and the lightning seemed
as the eye of heaven, and the thunder as the tongue of heaven,
each alternately addressing him; filling him with awful rapture.
Alone there — sole human creature among the grandeurs and
mysteries of storm — he felt the representative of his kind; and
his spirit rose and marched and exulted, - let it be glory, let it
be ruin! Lower down the lightened abysses of air rolled the
wrathful crash; then white thrusts of light were darted from the
sky, and great curving ferns, seen steadfast in pallor a second,
were supernaturally agitated, and vanished. Then a shrill song
a
roused in the leaves and the herbage. Prolonged and louder it
sounded, as deeper and heavier the deluge pressed. A mighty
force of water satisfied the desire of the earth. Even in this,
drenched as he was by the first outpouring, Richard had a sav-
age pleasure. Keeping in motion, he was scarcely conscious of
the wet, and the grateful breath of the weeds was refreshing.
Suddenly he stopped short, lifting a curious nostril. He fancied
he smelt meadow-sweet. He had never seen the flower in Rhine.
land — never thought of it; and it would hardly be met with in
a forest.
He was
sure he smelt it fresh in dews. His little
companion wagged a miserable wet tail some way in advance.
He went on slowly, thinking indistinctly. After two or three
steps he stooped and stretched out his hand to feel for the
flower,— having, he knew not why, a strong wish to verify its
growth there. Groping about, his hand encountered something
warm that started at his touch; and he, with the instinct we
have, seized it and lifted it to look at it. The creature was very
small, evidently quite young. Richard's eyes, now accustomed
to the darkness, were able to discern it for what it was,-a tiny
leveret; and he supposed that the dog had probably frightened
its dam just before he found it. He put the little thing on one
hand in his breast, and stepped out rapidly as before.
The rain was now steady; from every tree a fountain poured.
So cool and easy had his mind become that he was speculating
## p. 9933 (#341) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9933
on what kind of shelter the birds could find, and how the butter-
flies and moths saved their colored wings from washing Folded
close they might hang under a leaf, he thought. Lovingly he
looked into the dripping darkness of the coverts on each side, as
one of their children. Then he was musing on a strange sensa-
tion he experienced. It ran up one arm with an indescribable
thrill, but communicated nothing to his heart. It was purely
physical, ceased for a time, and recommenced, till he had it all
through his blood, wonderfully thrilling. He grew aware that
the little thing he carried in his breast was licking his hand
there. The small rough tongue going over and over the palm of
his hand produced this strange sensation he felt. Now that he
knew the cause, the marvel ended; but now that he knew the
cause, his heart was touched and made more of it.
The gentle
scraping continued without intermission as on he walked. What
did it say to him ? Human tongue could not have said so much
just then.
A pale gray light on the skirts of the flying tempest dis-
played the dawn. Richard was walking hurriedly. The green
drenched weeds lay all about in his path, bent thick, and the
forest drooped glimmeringly. Impelled as a man who feels a a
revelation mounting obscurely to his brain, Richard was passing
one of those little forest chapels, hung with votive wreaths, where
the peasant halts to kneel and pray. Cold, still, in the twilight
it stood, rain-drops pattering round it. He looked within, and
,
saw the Virgin holding her Child. He moved by. But not
many steps had he gone ere his strength went out of him, and
he shuddered. What was it ? He asked not. He was in other
hands. Vivid as lightning the Spirit of Life illumined him. He
felt in his heart the cry of his child, his darling's touch. With
shut eyes he saw them both. They drew him from the depths;
they led him a blind and tottering man. And as they led him,
he had a sense of purification so sweet he shuddered again and
again.
When he looked out from his trance on the breathing world,
the small birds hopped and chirped: warm fresh sunlight was
over all the hills. He was on the edge of the forest, entering a
plain clothed with ripe corn under a spacious morning sky.
## p. 9934 (#342) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9934
AMINTA TAKES A MORNING SEA-SWIM: A MARINE DUET
From Lord Ormont and his Aminta. Copyright 1894, by Charles Scribner's
Sons
on a sea
A.
GLORIOUS morning of flushed open sky and sun
chased all small thoughts out of it. The breeze was from
the west; and the Susan, lightly laden, took the heave of
smooth rollers with a flowing current-curtsy in the motion of her
speed. Foresail and aft were at their gentle strain; her shadow
rippled fragmentarily along to the silver rivulet and boat of her
wake. Straight she flew to the ball of fire now at spring above
the waters, and raining red gold on the line of her bows. By
comparison she was an ugly yawl, and as the creature of wind
and wave beautiful.
They passed an English defensive fort, and spared its walls,
in obedience to Matthew Shale's good counsel that they should
forbear from sneezing. Little Collett pointed to the roof of his
mother's house twenty paces rearward of a belt of tamarisks,
green amid the hollowed yellows of shore banks yet in shade,
crumbling to the sands. Weyburn was attracted by a diminutive
white tent of sentry-box shape; evidently a bather's, quite as evi.
dently a fair bather's. He would have to walk on some way for
his dip. He remarked to little Collett that ladies going into the
water half-dressed never have more than half a bath.
His arms
and legs flung out contempt of that style of bathing, exactly in
old Matey's well-remembered way.
Half a mile off shore, the Susan was put about to flap her
sails, and her boat rocked with the passengers. Turning from a
final cheer to friendly Matthew, Weyburn at the rudder espied
one of those unenfranchised ladies in marine uniform issuing
through the tent-slit. She stepped firmly, as into her element.
A plain look at her, and a curious look, and an intent look, fixed
her fast, and ran the shock on his heart before he knew of a
guess. She waded, she dipped; a head across the breast of the
waters was observed: this one of them could swim. She was
making for sea, a stone's throw off the direction of the boat.
Before his wits had grasped the certainty possessing them,
fiery envy and desire to be alongside her set his fingers fretting
at buttons. A grand smooth swell of the waters lifted her, and
her head rose to see her world. She sank down the valley,
where another wave was mounding for its onward roll: a gentle
## p. 9935 (#343) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9935
scene of the Bárt éteóvra of Weyburn's favorite Sophoclean chorus.
Now she was given to him — it was she. How could it ever have
been any other! He handed his watch to little Collett, and gave
him the ropes, pitched coat and waistcoat on his knees, stood
free of boots and socks, and singing out truly enough the words
of a popular cry, “White ducks want washing,” went over and in.
>
Aminta soon had to know she was chased. She had seen the
dive from the boat, and received an illumination. With a chuckle
of delighted surprise, like a blackbird startled, she pushed sea-
ward for joy of the effort, thinking she could exult in imagina-
tion of an escape up to the moment of capture, yielding then
only to his greater will; and she meant to try it.
The swim was a holiday; all was new - nothing came to her
as the same old thing since she took her plunge; she had a sea-
mind — had left her earth-mind ashore. The swim, and Matey
Weyburn pursuing her, passed up out of happiness, through the
spheres of delirium, into the region where our life is as we
would have it be: a home holding the quiet of the heavens, if
but midway thither, and a home of delicious animation of the
whole frame, equal to wings.
He drew on her; but he was distant, and she waved an arm.
The shout of her glee sprang from her: "Matey! ” He waved:
she heard his voice. Was it her name? He was not so drunken
of the sea as she: he had not leapt out of bondage into buoyant
waters, into a youth without a blot, without an aim, satisfied in
tasting; the dream of the long felicity.
A thought brushed by her: How if he were absent ?
It relaxed her stroke of arms and legs. He had doubled the
salt sea's rapture, and he had shackled its gift of freedom. She
turned to float, gathering her knees for the funny sullen kick,
until she heard him near. At once her stroke was renewed vig-
orously; she had the foot of her pursuer, and she called, "Adieu,
Matey Weyburn!
Her bravado deserved a swifter humiliation than he was able
to bring down on her; she swam bravely: and she was divine to
see as well as overtake.
Darting to the close parallel, he said, “What sea-nymph sang
me my name ? »
She smote a pang of her ecstasy into him: "Ask mine! »
“ Browny! ”
(
## p. 9936 (#344) ###########################################
9936
GEORGE MEREDITH
>
They swam; neither of them panted; their heads were water-
flowers that spoke at ease.
bank and the water. Apparently she found the fruit abundant,
for her hand was making pretty progress to her mouth. Fastid-
ious youth, which shudders and revolts at woman plumping her
exquisite proportions on bread and butter, and would (we must
suppose) joyfully have her quite scraggy to have her quite poeti-
cal, can hardly object to dewberries. Indeed, the act of eating
them is dainty and induces musing. The dewberry is a sister to
the lotus, and an innocent sister. You eat; mouth, eye, and hand
are occupied, and the undrugged mind free to roam. And so it
was with the damsel who knelt there. The little skylark went
up above her, all song, to the smooth southern cloud lying along
the blue; from a dewy copse standing dark over her nodding
hat the blackbird fluted, calling to her with thrice mellow note;
the kingfisher flashed emerald out of green osiers; a bow-winged
heron traveled aloft, seeking solitude; a boat slipped toward her,
containing a dreamy youth; and still she plucked the fruit, and
ate, and mused, as if no fairy prince were invading her territo-
ries, and as if she wished not for one, or knew not her wishes.
Surrounded by the green shaven meadows, the pastoral summer
buzz, the weirfall's thundering white, amid the breath and beauty
of wild flowers, she was a bit of lovely human life in a fair set-
ting; a terrible attraction. The Magnetic Youth leaned round to
note his proximity to the weir-piles, and beheld the sweet vision,
XVII-621
## p. 9922 (#330) ###########################################
9922
GEORGE MEREDITH
Stiller and stiller grew nature, as at the meeting of two electric
clouds. Her posture was so graceful that though he was making
straight for the weir, he dared not dip a scull. Just then one
most enticing dewberry caught her eyes. He was floating by
unheeded, and saw that her hand stretched low, and could not
gather what it sought. A stroke from his right brought him
beside her. The damsel glanced up dismayed, and her whole
shape trembled over the brink. Richard sprang from his boat
into the water. Pressing a hand beneath her foot, which she
had thrust against the crumbling wet sides of the bank to save
herself, he enabled her to recover her balance and gain safe
earth, whither, emboldened by the incident, touching her finger's
tip, he followed her.
HE HAD landed on an island of the still-vexed Bermoothes.
The world lay wrecked behind him; Raynham hung in the mists,
remote, a phantom to the vivid reality of this white hand which
had drawn him thither away thousands of leagues in an eye-
twinkle. Hark, how Ariel sung overhead! What splendor in the
heavens! What marvels of beauty about his enchanted head!
And, () you wonder! Fair Flame! by whose light the glories of
being are now first seen. Radiant Miranda! Prince Ferdinand is
at your feet.
Or is it Adam, his rib taken from his side in sleep, and thus
transformed, to make him behold his Paradise, and lose it?
The youth looked on her with as glowing an eye. It was the
First Woman to him.
And she — mankind was all Caliban to her, saving this one
princely youth.
So to each other said their changing eyes in the moment they
stood together; he pale, and she blushing.
She was indeed sweetly fair, and would have been held fair
among rival damsels. On a magic shore, and to a youth edu-
cated by a System, strung like an arrow drawn to the head, he,
it might be guessed, could fly fast and far with her. The soft
rose in her cheeks, the clearness of her eyes, bore witness to
the body's virtue; and health and happy blood were in her bear-
ing Had she stood before Sir Austin among rival damsels,
that Scientific Humanist, for the consummation of his System,
would have thrown her the handkerchief for his son. The wide
summer-hat, nodding over her forehead to her brows, seemed to
## p. 9923 (#331) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9923
>
flow with the flowing heavy curls, and those fire-threaded mellow
curls, only half-curls,— waves of hair, call them, - rippling at the
ends, went like a sunny red-veined torrent down her back almost
to her waist; a glorious vision to the youth, who embraced it as
a flower of beauty, and read not a feature. There were curious
features of color in her face for him to have read. Her brows,
thick and brownish against a soft skin showing the action of the
blood, met in the bend of a bow, extending to the temples long
and level: you saw that she was fashioned to peruse the sights
of earth, and by the pliability of her brows that the wonderful
creature used her faculty, and was not going to be a statue to
the gazer.
Under the dark thick brows an arch of lashes shot
out, giving a wealth of darkness to the full frank blue eyes,
a mystery of meaning — more than brain was ever meant to
fathom; richer, henceforth, than all mortal wisdom to Prince
Ferdinand. For when nature turns artist, and produces contrasts
of color on a fair face, where is the Sage, or what the Oracle,
shall match the depth of its lightest look ?
Prince Ferdinand was also fair. In his slim boating attire
his figure looked heroic. His hair, rising from the parting to
the right of his forehead, in what his admiring Lady Blandish
called his plume, fell away slanting silkily to the temples across
the nearly imperceptible upward curve of his brows there,— felt
more than seen, so slight it was,- and gave to his profile a
bold beauty, to which his bashful, breathless air was a flattering
charm. An arrow drawn to the head, capable of flying fast and
far with her. He leaned a little forward to her, drinking her in
with all his eyes,- and young Love has a thousand. Then truly
the System triumphed, just ere it was to fall; and could Sir
Austin have been content to draw the arrow to the head and let
it Ay, when it would fly, he might have pointed to his son again,
and said to the world, “Match him! ” Such keen bliss as the
youth had in the sight of her, an innocent youth alone has
powers of soul in him to experience.
"O women! ” says The Pilgrim's Scrip, in one of its solitary
outbursts, women, who like, and will have for hero, a rake!
how soon are you not to learn that you have taken bankrupts to
your bosoms, and that the putrescent gold that attracted you is
the slime of the Lake of Sin! »
If these two were Ferdinand and Miranda, Sir Austin was not
Prospero and was not present, or their fates might have been
different.
-
## p. 9924 (#332) ###########################################
9924
GEORGE MEREDITH
So they stood a moment, changing eyes, and then Miranda
spoke, and they came down to earth, feeling no less in heaven.
She spoke to thank him for his aid. She used quite com-
mon simple words; and used them, no doubt, to express a com-
mon simple meaning: but to him she was uttering magic, casting
spells, and the effect they had on him was manifested in the
incoherence of his replies, which were too foolish to be chron.
icled.
The couple were again mute. Suddenly Miranda, with an
exclamation of anguish, and innumerable lights and shadows play-
ing over her lovely face, clapped her hands, crying aloud, "My
book! my book! ” and ran to the bank.
Prince Ferdinand was at her side. What have you lost ? »
he said.
“My book! my book! ” she answered, her long delicious curls
swinging across her shoulders to the stream. Then turning to
him, divining his rash intention, "Oh, no, no! let me entreat you
not to,” she said: "I do not so very much mind losing it. ” And
in her eagerness to restrain him she unconsciously laid her gen-
tle hand upon his arm, and took the force of motion out of him.
Indeed, I do not really care for the silly book," she con-
tinued, withdrawing her hand quickly, and reddening. "Pray do
not!
The young gentleman had kicked off his shoes. No sooner
was the spell of contact broken than he jumped in. The water
was still troubled and discolored by his introductory adventure;
and though he ducked his head with the spirit of a dabchick,
the book was missing. A scrap of paper floating from the
bramble just above the water, and looking as if fire had caught
its edges, and it had flown from one adverse element to the
other, was all he could lay hold of; and he returned to land dis-
consolately, to hear Miranda's murmured mixing of thanks and
pretty expostulations.
"Let me try again,” he said.
"No indeed! ” she replied, and used the awful threat, “I will
run away if you do;” which effectually restrained him.
Her eye fell on the fire-stained scrap of paper, and bright-
ened as she cried, “There, there! you have what I want. It is
that. I do not care for the book. No, please' you are not to
look at it. Give it me. ”
Before her playfully imperative injunction was fairly spoken,
Richard had glanced at the document and discovered a Griffin
## p. 9925 (#333) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9925
between Two Wheatsheaves; his crest in silver; and below –
oh, wonderment immense, his own handwriting! remnant of his
burnt-offering! a page of the sacrificed poems! one blossom pre-
served from the deadly universal blight.
He handed it to her in silence. She took it, and put it in
her bosom.
Who would have said, have thought, that where all else per-
ished, - Odes, fluttering bits of broad-winged Epic, Idyls, Lines,
Stanzas, - this one Sonnet to the stars should be miraculously
reserved for such a starry fate! passing beatitude!
As they walked silently across the meadow, Richard strove
to remember the hour and the mood of mind in which he had
composed the notable production. The stars were invoked, as see.
ing and foreseeing all, to tell him where then his love reclined,
and so forth; Hesper was complaisant enough to do so, and
described her in a couplet —
« Through sunset's amber see me shining fair,
As her blue eyes shine through her golden hair. ”
And surely no words could be more prophetic. Here were two
blue eyes and golden hair; and by some strange chance, that
appeared like the working of a Divine finger, she had become
the possessor of the prophecy, she that was to fulfill it! The
youth was too charged with emotion to speak. Doubtless the
damsel had less to think of, or had some trifling burden on her
conscience, for she seemed to grow embarrassed. At last she
drew up her chin to look at her companion under the nodding
brim of her hat (and the action gave her a charmingly freakish
air), crying, “But where are you going to ? You are wet through.
Let me thank you again; and pray leave me, and go home and
change instantly. "
“Wet ? ) replied the magnetic muser, with a voice of tender
interest: “not more than one foot, I hope? I will leave you
while you dry your stockings in the sun. ”
At this she could not withhold a shy and lovely laugh.
« Not I, but you.
You know you saved me, and would try to
get that silly book for me, and you are dripping wet.
not very uncomfortable ? »
In all sincerity he assured her that he was not.
"And you really do not feel that you are wet ? ”
He really did not; and it was a fact that he spoke truth.
Are you
## p. 9926 (#334) ###########################################
9926
GEORGE MEREDITH
She pursed her sweet dewberry mouth in the most comical
way, and her blue eyes lightened laughter out of the half-closed
lids.
"I cannot help it,” she said, her mouth opening, and sound-
ing harmonious bells of laughter in his ears. “Pardon me, won't
>
you ? »
His face took the same soft smiling curves in admiration of
her.
“Not to feel that you have been in the water, the very mo-
ment after! ” she musically interjected, seeing she was excused.
"It's true,” he said; and his own gravity then touched him to
join a duet with her, which made them no longer feel strangers,
and did the work of a month of intimacy. Better than senti-
ment, laughter opens the breast to love; opens the whole breast
to his full quiver, instead of a corner here and there for a soli-
tary arrow. Hail the occasion propitious, O British young! and
laugh and treat love as an honest god, and dabble not with the
sentimental rouge. These two laughed, and the souls of each
cried out to other, “It is I. It is I. ”
They laughed, and forgot the cause of their laughter; and the
sun dried his light river clothing; and they strolled toward the
blackbird's copse, and stood near a stile in sight of the foam of
the weir and the many-colored rings of eddies streaming forth
from it.
Richard's boat, meanwhile, had contrived to shoot the weir,
and was swinging, bottom upward, broadside with the current
down the rapid backwater.
“Will you let it go ? ” said the damsel, eying it curiously.
« Yes,” he replied, and low, as if he spoke in the core of his
thought. « What do I care for it now! ”
His old life was whirled away with it, dead, drowned. His
new life was with her, alive, divine.
She flapped low the brim of her hat. « You must really not
come any farther,” she softly said.
"And will you go and not tell me who you are ? ” he asked,
growing bold as the fears of losing her came across him. "And
will you not tell me before you go " -- his face burned how
you came by that
that paper ? ”
She chose to select the easier question to reply to: "You
ought to know me: we have been introduced. ” Sweet was her
winning off-hand affability.
»
## p. 9927 (#335) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9927
C
« Then who, in heaven's name, are you? Tell me! I never
could have forgotten you. "
"You have, I think,” she said demurely.
“Impossible that we could ever have met, and I forget you! ”
She looked up to him quickly.
“Do you remember Belthorpe ? »
“Belthorpe! Belthorpe! ” quoth Richard, as if he had to touch
his brain to recollect there was such a place. “Do you mean old
Blaize's farm ? »
« Then I am old Blaize's niece. ” She tripped him a soft
curtsy.
The magnetized youth gazed at her. By what magic was it
that this divine sweet creature could be allied with that old
churl!
« Then what what is your name? ” said his mouth; while
his eyes added, "I wonderful creature? how came you to enrich
the earth ? »
Have you forgot the Desboroughs of Dorset, too ? ” She
peered at him archly from a side bend of the flapping brim.
« The Desboroughs of Dorset »» A light broke in on him.
"And have you grown to this? That little girl I saw there! ”
He drew close to her to read the nearest features of the
vision. She could no more laugh off the piercing fervor of his
eyes. Her volubility fluttered under his deeply wistful look,
and now neither voice was high, and they were mutually con-
strained.
“You see,” she murmured, we are old acquaintances. ”
Richard, with his eyes still intently fixed on her, returned,
“You are very beautiful! ”
The words slipped out. Perfect simplicity is unconsciously
audacious. Her overpowering beauty struck his heart, and like
an instrument that is touched and answers to the touch, he
spoke.
Miss Desborough made an effort to trifle with this terrible
directness; but his eyes would not be gainsaid, and checked her
lips. She turned away from them, her bosom a little rebellious.
Praise so passionately spoken, and by one who has been a dam-
sel's first dream, dreamed of nightly many long nights, and
clothed in the virgin silver of her thoughts in bud, - praise from
him is coin the heart cannot reject, if it would. She quickened
her steps to the stile.
»
(
>
## p. 9928 (#336) ###########################################
9928
GEORGE MEREDITH
»
“I have offended you! ” said a mortally wounded voice across
her shoulder.
That he should think so were too dreadful.
“Oh no, no! you would never offend me. ” She gave him her
whole sweet face
« Then why, why do you leave me ? »
«Because,” she hesitated, "I must go. ”
«No. You must not go. Why must you go! Do not go. ”
“Indeed I must,” she said, pulling at the obnoxious broad
brim of her hat; and interpreting a pause he made for his assent
to her rational resolve, shyly looking at him, she held her hand
out, and said “Good-by," as if it were a natural thing to say.
The hand was pure white white and fragrant as the frosted
blossom of a May night. It was the hand whose shadow, cast
before, he had last night bent his head reverentially above, and
kissed; resigning himself thereupon over to execution for pay-
ment of the penalty of such daring — by such bliss well rewarded.
He took the hand, and held it, gazing between her eyes.
“Good-by,” she said again, as frankly as she could, and at the
same time slightly compressing her fingers on his in token of
adieu. It was a signal for his to close firmly upon hers.
« You will not go ? ”
Pray let me," she pleaded, her sweet brows suing in wrin-
kles.
"You will not go ?
” Mechanically he drew the white hand
nearer his thumping heart.
"I must,” she faltered piteously.
« You will not go ? ”
“Oh yes, yes! ”
« Tell me — do you wish to go ? ”
The question was subtle. A moment or two she did not
answer, and then forswore herself and said Yes.
“Do you — do you wish to go ? ” He looked with quivering
eyelids under hers.
A fainter Yes responded to his passionate repetition.
« You wish — wish to leave me? ) His breath went with the
words.
« Indeed I must. ”
Her hand became a closer prisoner.
All at once an alarming delicious shudder went through her
frame From him to her it coursed, and back from her to him.
»
>>>
## p. 9929 (#337) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9929
Forward and back love's electric messenger rushed from heart to
heart, knocking at each till it surged tumultuously against the
bars of its prison, crying out for its mate. They stood trem-
bling in unison, a lovely couple under these fair heavens of the
morning.
When he could get his voice it said, “Will you go ? ”
«
But she had none to reply with, and could only mutely bend
upward her gentle wrist.
« Then farewell! ” he said; and dropping his lips to the soft
fair hand, kissed it, and hung his head, swinging away from her,
ready for death.
Strange, that now she was released she should linger by him.
Strange, that his audacity, instead of the executioner, brought
blushes and timid tenderness to his side, and the sweet words,
“You are not angry with me? "
“With you, O Beloved! ” cried his soul. "And you forgive
me, fair charity! ”
She repeated her words in deeper sweetness to his bewildered
look; and he, inexperienced, possessed by her, almost lifeless with
the divine new emotions she had realized in him, could only sigh
and gaze at her wonderingly.
“I think it was rude of me to go without thanking you
again,” she said, and again proffered her hand.
The sweet heaven-bird shivered out his song above him. The
gracious glory of heaven fell upon his soul. He touched her
hand, not moving his eyes from her nor speaking; and she, with
a soft word of farewell, passed across the stile, and up the path-
way through the dewy shades of the copse, and out of the arch
of the light, away from his eyes.
And away with her went the wild enchantment. He looked
on barren air.
But it was no more the world of yesterday.
The marvelous splendors had sown seeds in him, ready to spring
up and bloom at her gaze; and in his bosom now the vivid con-
juration of her tones, her face, her shape, makes them leap and
illumine him like fitful summer lightnings - ghosts of the van-
ished sun.
There was nothing to tell him that he had been making love
and declaring it with extraordinary rapidity; nor did he know it.
Soft flushed cheeks! sweet mouth! strange sweet brows! eyes of
softest fire! - how could his ripe eyes behold you, and not plead
## p. 9930 (#338) ###########################################
9930
GEORGE MEREDITH
to keep you? Nay, how could he let you go? And he seriously
asked himself that question.
To-morrow this place will have a memory,- the river and the
meadow, and the white falling weir: his heart will build a tem-
ple here; and the skylark will be its high priest, and the old
blackbird its glossy-gowned chorister, and there will be a sacred
repast of dewberries. To-day the grass is grass; his heart is
chased by phantoms and finds rest nowhere. Only when the
most tender freshness of his flower comes across him does he
taste a moment's calm; and no sooner does it come than it gives
place to keen pangs of fear that she may not be his forever.
Ere long he learns that her name is Lucy. Ere long he
meets Ralph, and discovers that in a day he has distanced him
by a sphere.
RICHARD'S ORDEAL IS OVER
From «The Ordeal of Richard Feverel:
W"
HERE are the dreams of the hero when he learns he has a
child ? Nature is taking him to her bosom. She will
speak presently. Every domesticated boor in these hills
can boast the same; yet marvels the hero at none of his visioned
prodigies as he does when he comes to hear of this most com-
mon performance. A father? Richard fixed his eyes as if he
were trying to make out the lineaments of his child.
Telling Austin he would be back in a few minutes, he sallied
into the air, and walked on and on. “A father! ” he kept repeat-
ing to himself: "a child! ” And though he knew it not, he was
striking the keynotes of Nature. But he did know of a singular
harmony that suddenly burst over his whole being.
The moon was surpassingly bright; the summer air heavy
and still. He left the high-road and pierced into the forest. His
walk was rapid: the leaves on the trees brushed his cheeks;
the dead leaves heaped in the dells noised to his feet Some-
thing of a religious joy — a strange sacred pleasure — was in
him. By degrees it wore; he remembered himself; and now he
was possessed by a proportionate anguish. A father! he dared
never see his child. And he had no longer his phantasies to fall
upon, He was utterly bare to his sin. In his troubled mind it
seemed to him that Clare looked down on him Clare, who saw
## p. 9931 (#339) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9931
him as he was- and that to her eyes it would be infamy for
him to go and print his kiss upon his child. Then came stern
efforts to command his misery and make the nerves of his face
iron.
By the log of an ancient tree, half buried in dead leaves of
past summers, beside a brook, he halted as one who had reached
his journey's end. There he discovered he had a companion in
Lady Judith's little dog. He gave the friendly animal a pat of
recognition, and both were silent in the forest silence.
It was impossible for Richard to return; his heart was sur-
charged. He must advance; and on he footed, the little dog fol-
lowing:
An oppressive slumber hung about the forest branches. In the
dells and on the heights was the same dead heat. Here where
the brook tinkled, it was no cool-lipped sound, but metallic, and
without the spirit of water. Yonder, in a space of moonlight
on lush grass, the beams were as white fire to sight and feeling.
No haze spread around. The valleys were clear, defined to the
shadows of their verges; the distances sharply distinct, and with
the colors of day but slightly softened. Richard beheld a roe
moving across a slope of sward far out of rifle mark. The breath-
less silence was significant, yet the moon shone in a broad blue
heaven. Tongue out of mouth trotted the little dog after him;
couched panting when he stopped an instant; rose weariedly
when he started afresh. Now and then a large white night-moth
flitted through the dusk of the forest.
On a barren corner of the wooded highland, looking inland,
stood gray topless ruins set in nettles and rank grass blades.
Richard mechanically sat down on the crumbling flints to rest,
and listened to the panting of the dog. Sprinkled at his feet
were emerald lights; hundreds of glow-worms studded the dark
dry ground.
He sat and eyed them, thinking not at all. His energies
were expended in action. He sat as a part of the ruins, and the
moon turned his shadow westward from the south. Overhead,
as she declined, long ripples of silver cloud were imperceptibly
stealing toward her. They were the van of a tempest. He did
not observe them, or the leaves beginning to chatter. When he
again pursued his course with his face to the Rhine, a huge
mountain appeared to rise sheer over him, and he had it in his
mind to scale it. He got no nearer to the base of it for all his
## p. 9932 (#340) ###########################################
9932
GEORGE MEREDITH
vigorous outstepping The ground began to dip; he lost sight of
the sky
Then heavy thunder drops struck his cheek, the leaves
were singing, the earth breathed, it was black before him and
behind. All at once the thunder spoke. The mountain he had
marked was bursting over him.
Up started the whole forest in violet fire. He saw the coun-
try at the foot of the hills, to the bounding Rhine, gleam, quiver,
extinguished. Then there were pauses: and the lightning seemed
as the eye of heaven, and the thunder as the tongue of heaven,
each alternately addressing him; filling him with awful rapture.
Alone there — sole human creature among the grandeurs and
mysteries of storm — he felt the representative of his kind; and
his spirit rose and marched and exulted, - let it be glory, let it
be ruin! Lower down the lightened abysses of air rolled the
wrathful crash; then white thrusts of light were darted from the
sky, and great curving ferns, seen steadfast in pallor a second,
were supernaturally agitated, and vanished. Then a shrill song
a
roused in the leaves and the herbage. Prolonged and louder it
sounded, as deeper and heavier the deluge pressed. A mighty
force of water satisfied the desire of the earth. Even in this,
drenched as he was by the first outpouring, Richard had a sav-
age pleasure. Keeping in motion, he was scarcely conscious of
the wet, and the grateful breath of the weeds was refreshing.
Suddenly he stopped short, lifting a curious nostril. He fancied
he smelt meadow-sweet. He had never seen the flower in Rhine.
land — never thought of it; and it would hardly be met with in
a forest.
He was
sure he smelt it fresh in dews. His little
companion wagged a miserable wet tail some way in advance.
He went on slowly, thinking indistinctly. After two or three
steps he stooped and stretched out his hand to feel for the
flower,— having, he knew not why, a strong wish to verify its
growth there. Groping about, his hand encountered something
warm that started at his touch; and he, with the instinct we
have, seized it and lifted it to look at it. The creature was very
small, evidently quite young. Richard's eyes, now accustomed
to the darkness, were able to discern it for what it was,-a tiny
leveret; and he supposed that the dog had probably frightened
its dam just before he found it. He put the little thing on one
hand in his breast, and stepped out rapidly as before.
The rain was now steady; from every tree a fountain poured.
So cool and easy had his mind become that he was speculating
## p. 9933 (#341) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9933
on what kind of shelter the birds could find, and how the butter-
flies and moths saved their colored wings from washing Folded
close they might hang under a leaf, he thought. Lovingly he
looked into the dripping darkness of the coverts on each side, as
one of their children. Then he was musing on a strange sensa-
tion he experienced. It ran up one arm with an indescribable
thrill, but communicated nothing to his heart. It was purely
physical, ceased for a time, and recommenced, till he had it all
through his blood, wonderfully thrilling. He grew aware that
the little thing he carried in his breast was licking his hand
there. The small rough tongue going over and over the palm of
his hand produced this strange sensation he felt. Now that he
knew the cause, the marvel ended; but now that he knew the
cause, his heart was touched and made more of it.
The gentle
scraping continued without intermission as on he walked. What
did it say to him ? Human tongue could not have said so much
just then.
A pale gray light on the skirts of the flying tempest dis-
played the dawn. Richard was walking hurriedly. The green
drenched weeds lay all about in his path, bent thick, and the
forest drooped glimmeringly. Impelled as a man who feels a a
revelation mounting obscurely to his brain, Richard was passing
one of those little forest chapels, hung with votive wreaths, where
the peasant halts to kneel and pray. Cold, still, in the twilight
it stood, rain-drops pattering round it. He looked within, and
,
saw the Virgin holding her Child. He moved by. But not
many steps had he gone ere his strength went out of him, and
he shuddered. What was it ? He asked not. He was in other
hands. Vivid as lightning the Spirit of Life illumined him. He
felt in his heart the cry of his child, his darling's touch. With
shut eyes he saw them both. They drew him from the depths;
they led him a blind and tottering man. And as they led him,
he had a sense of purification so sweet he shuddered again and
again.
When he looked out from his trance on the breathing world,
the small birds hopped and chirped: warm fresh sunlight was
over all the hills. He was on the edge of the forest, entering a
plain clothed with ripe corn under a spacious morning sky.
## p. 9934 (#342) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9934
AMINTA TAKES A MORNING SEA-SWIM: A MARINE DUET
From Lord Ormont and his Aminta. Copyright 1894, by Charles Scribner's
Sons
on a sea
A.
GLORIOUS morning of flushed open sky and sun
chased all small thoughts out of it. The breeze was from
the west; and the Susan, lightly laden, took the heave of
smooth rollers with a flowing current-curtsy in the motion of her
speed. Foresail and aft were at their gentle strain; her shadow
rippled fragmentarily along to the silver rivulet and boat of her
wake. Straight she flew to the ball of fire now at spring above
the waters, and raining red gold on the line of her bows. By
comparison she was an ugly yawl, and as the creature of wind
and wave beautiful.
They passed an English defensive fort, and spared its walls,
in obedience to Matthew Shale's good counsel that they should
forbear from sneezing. Little Collett pointed to the roof of his
mother's house twenty paces rearward of a belt of tamarisks,
green amid the hollowed yellows of shore banks yet in shade,
crumbling to the sands. Weyburn was attracted by a diminutive
white tent of sentry-box shape; evidently a bather's, quite as evi.
dently a fair bather's. He would have to walk on some way for
his dip. He remarked to little Collett that ladies going into the
water half-dressed never have more than half a bath.
His arms
and legs flung out contempt of that style of bathing, exactly in
old Matey's well-remembered way.
Half a mile off shore, the Susan was put about to flap her
sails, and her boat rocked with the passengers. Turning from a
final cheer to friendly Matthew, Weyburn at the rudder espied
one of those unenfranchised ladies in marine uniform issuing
through the tent-slit. She stepped firmly, as into her element.
A plain look at her, and a curious look, and an intent look, fixed
her fast, and ran the shock on his heart before he knew of a
guess. She waded, she dipped; a head across the breast of the
waters was observed: this one of them could swim. She was
making for sea, a stone's throw off the direction of the boat.
Before his wits had grasped the certainty possessing them,
fiery envy and desire to be alongside her set his fingers fretting
at buttons. A grand smooth swell of the waters lifted her, and
her head rose to see her world. She sank down the valley,
where another wave was mounding for its onward roll: a gentle
## p. 9935 (#343) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9935
scene of the Bárt éteóvra of Weyburn's favorite Sophoclean chorus.
Now she was given to him — it was she. How could it ever have
been any other! He handed his watch to little Collett, and gave
him the ropes, pitched coat and waistcoat on his knees, stood
free of boots and socks, and singing out truly enough the words
of a popular cry, “White ducks want washing,” went over and in.
>
Aminta soon had to know she was chased. She had seen the
dive from the boat, and received an illumination. With a chuckle
of delighted surprise, like a blackbird startled, she pushed sea-
ward for joy of the effort, thinking she could exult in imagina-
tion of an escape up to the moment of capture, yielding then
only to his greater will; and she meant to try it.
The swim was a holiday; all was new - nothing came to her
as the same old thing since she took her plunge; she had a sea-
mind — had left her earth-mind ashore. The swim, and Matey
Weyburn pursuing her, passed up out of happiness, through the
spheres of delirium, into the region where our life is as we
would have it be: a home holding the quiet of the heavens, if
but midway thither, and a home of delicious animation of the
whole frame, equal to wings.
He drew on her; but he was distant, and she waved an arm.
The shout of her glee sprang from her: "Matey! ” He waved:
she heard his voice. Was it her name? He was not so drunken
of the sea as she: he had not leapt out of bondage into buoyant
waters, into a youth without a blot, without an aim, satisfied in
tasting; the dream of the long felicity.
A thought brushed by her: How if he were absent ?
It relaxed her stroke of arms and legs. He had doubled the
salt sea's rapture, and he had shackled its gift of freedom. She
turned to float, gathering her knees for the funny sullen kick,
until she heard him near. At once her stroke was renewed vig-
orously; she had the foot of her pursuer, and she called, "Adieu,
Matey Weyburn!
Her bravado deserved a swifter humiliation than he was able
to bring down on her; she swam bravely: and she was divine to
see as well as overtake.
Darting to the close parallel, he said, “What sea-nymph sang
me my name ? »
She smote a pang of her ecstasy into him: "Ask mine! »
“ Browny! ”
(
## p. 9936 (#344) ###########################################
9936
GEORGE MEREDITH
>
They swam; neither of them panted; their heads were water-
flowers that spoke at ease.
