The Argosy. Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891

ACROSS THE RIVER

Here we sat beside the river           Long ago, my Love and I,Where the willows droop and quiver           'Twixt the water and the sky.We were wrapped in fragrant shadow,           'Twas the quiet vesper time,And the bells across the meadows           Mingled with the ripple's chime.With no thought of ill betiding,           "Thus," we said, "life's years shall beFor us twain a river gliding           To a calm, eternal sea."I am sitting by the river           Where we used to sit of old,And the willows droop and quiver           'Gainst a sky of burning gold;But my Love long since went onward,           Down the river's shining tide,To the land that is far sunward,           With the angels to abide;And in pastures fair and vernal,           In the coming by-and-bye,Far across the sea eternal           We shall meet—my Love and I.Helen M. Burnside.

AN APRIL FOLLY

By Gilbert H. Page

April 1, 1890. 58A, Lincoln's Inn Fields.—I execrate my fellow men—and women! To-day I was over at Catherine's. Not an unusual occurrence with me, but on a more than usually important mission. I needn't note down how I achieved it. Am I likely to forget my impotent speeches? Still, she had given me plenty of excuse for supposing she liked me, and I said so. And then Catherine laughed her exasperating little laugh that always dries up all sentiment on the spot, and makes my blood boil with anger. "I like you?" she repeated mockingly; "not at all! not in the least! What can you be dreaming of?"

I did for a moment dream of rolling her elaborately curled head in the dust of the drawing-room carpet; but I restricted myself to saying a few true and exceedingly bitter things, and departed without giving her time to reply; and herewith I register a vow on the tablets of my heart: "If ever again I make a single friendly overture to that young woman, may I cut off the hand that so betrays me!"

By-the-bye, it is April Fools' Day, an appropriate date by which to remember my folly.

April 2.—My feelings are still exceedingly sore. Oh for a cottage in some wilderness—some vast contiguity of shade—whither I might retire, like a stricken hart from the herd, and sulk majestically! The very thing! There rises before me an opportune vision of a certain lonely farm-house I wot of down by a lonely sea. I discovered it last summer while staying at Shoreford. I had ridden westward across the marsh lands of Windle, over the cliffs that form the coastline between this and Rexingham; and being thirsty, had followed some cows through a rick-yard, in the hopes of obtaining a glass of milk.

There, behind the hayricks, I had come upon my first view of Down End Farm; and the picture of its grey stone, lichened walls, red roof, cosy kitchen and comely mistress, had remained painted on my brain. So, too, I retained a scrap of my conversation with Mrs. Anderson, and her casual mention of the London family then occupying her best rooms. "We don't have many folk at Down End, it being so out of the way, sir; but the gentleman here now says he do like it, just on account of the solitude and quiet."

There was no particular reason at the time why these words should have so impressed me. Solitude was the last thing I desired then, having gone down to Shoreford for my holiday, merely because Catherine was spending the summer there too. But now that everything is over between us, the solitary farm comes as balm to my wounded spirit. Let me see; to-day is Tuesday the 2nd. Good Friday is the day after to-morrow; I could get away to-morrow evening. All right! I'll go out and telegraph to Mrs. Anderson, and pay for her reply.

April 4. Down End Farm.—I reached this last night. At seven o'clock I found myself driving up from Rexingham station, with the crimson flaming brands of the sunset behind me, and the soft mysterious twilight closing in on all sides. It was almost dark when we got to the top of Beacon Point Hill, and quite dark for a time as we began to descend the other side, for the road here is cut down between steep red gravel banks, crowned with sombre fir trees. When these were passed and we reached the remembered stack-yard gate, there was clear heaven again above my head, its exquisite ever-darkening blue already gemmed with the more brilliant stars. The Plough faintly outlined above, and beautiful spica hanging low over Windle Flats. A cheerful glow-worm of red earth-light gleamed from the farm-house windows as we drove round to the inner gate, while at the sound of the wheels the kitchen door opened, and my hostess came down the flagged pathway between the sleepy flowers to bid me welcome.

How delightful the first evening in country quarters always is. How comfortable the wood fire that flamed and sputtered on the parlour hearth, how inviting the meal of tea, new-laid eggs, homemade breads and jams, honey and hot scones spread out upon a spotless cloth around a centre piece of daffodils and early garden flowers. For a rejected suitor I felt singularly cheerful; for a blighted being I made a most excellent meal; and for the desperate misogynist I had determined on becoming I surely felt too much placid satisfaction at Mrs. Anderson's homely talk.

But it was really pleasant to lie back in the capacious leathern chair, while this good woman cleared away the tea-things, and lazily eyeing the fire, listen to the history of herself and her family, of her husband, her children, her landlord, of her courtship, her marriage, her troubles, of the death of her mother in the room overhead the year before last, and of the wedding of her eldest boy Robert which is to take place this summer as soon as the corn is carried.

Such openness of disposition, so often found among people of Mrs. Anderson's class, is very refreshing, and it is convenient too. You know at once where you stand. I wish it were the custom in society. I should then have learned from Catherine's own lips how many fellows she had already sent to the right-about, and I should have given her no opportunity of adding to their number.

I came down very late to breakfast this morning—my first breakfast in the country is always luxuriously late—and I found a tall and pretty young girl busy building up the fire in my sitting-room. I guessed at once she was the "Annie" of whom I heard a long and pleasing account last night. Annie is the image of what her mother must have been twenty years ago. She has the same agreeable blue eyes, the same soft straw coloured hair. But while Mrs. Anderson wears hers in bands at each side of the head, Annie's is drawn straight back to display the smoothest of white foreheads, the freshest of freckled little faces in the world. She is about seventeen, and a sweet girl, I feel sure. Could no more play with a man's feelings than she could torture one of the creatures committed to her care. She has charge of the poultry, she tells me, and is allowed half the profits. Mem.—I shall eat a great many eggs.

April 5.—I have done an excellent thing in exchanging the hollow shams of society for the healing powers of nature. I shall live to forget Catherine and to be happy yet. And there was after all something artificial about that girl. Pretty, certainly, but with the beauty of the stage; now little Annie here is pretty with the beauty of the sky and meadows.

I am delighted with this place. There is nothing like the country in early spring. Suppose I were never to go back to town again, but stay with the Andersons, see them through the lambing season, lend a hand at tossing the hay, swing a scythe at corn cutting (and probably cut off my own legs into the bargain), drink a health at son Robert's wedding, and then during the winter—yes, during the long dark winter evenings when the wind raves round the old house and whistles down the chimneys, when the boom of the sea echoes all along the coast as it breaks against the cliffs—then to sit in the cosy sitting-room, with the curtains drawn along the low windows, a famous fire flashing and glaring upon the hearth, one's limbs pleasantly weary with the day's labour, one's cheeks tingling from exposure to the keen air; would not this be an agreeable exchange for the feverish anxieties and stagnant pleasures of London life?

After a time, a considerable time no doubt, it would possibly occur to Catherine to wonder what had become of me.

April 6.—Easter Sunday. I am writing in my sitting-room window. I raise my eyes and see first the broad window-sill, whereon stand pots of musk and geranium, not yet in flower; then through the clear latticed panes, the bee-haunted garden, descending by tiny grassy terraces to the kitchen-garden with its rows of peas and beans, its beds of lettuce and potatoe, its neat patches of parsley and thyme; then a field beyond. I note the double meandering hedge-line that indicates the high road, and beyond again the ground rises in sun-bathed pastures and ploughed land to the gorse-covered cliff edge with its background of pure sky; a little to the right, yet still in full view from my window, is an abrupt dip in the cliff, which shows a great wedge of glittering sea. It is here that my eyes always ultimately rest, until they ache with the dazzle and the beauty, and then by a natural transition I think of—Catherine.

At this moment she is probably dressing to go to church, and is absorbed in the contemplation of a new hat. I should think she had as many hats on her head as hairs—no, I don't mean that; it suggests visions of "ole clo'es"—I mean she must have almost as many hats as hairs on her head.

How inexpressibly mean and petty this devotion to rags and tags and gewgaws seems when one stands in the face of the Immensities and the Eternities! Yet it would appear as though the feminine mind were really incapable of impression by such Carlylean sublimities, for I saw Annie start for church awhile since in a most terrible combination of maroon and magenta. Her best clothes evidently, cachemire and silk, with two flowers and a feather in her hat, her charming baby prettiness as much crushed and eclipsed as bad taste and a country town dressmaker could accomplish. What I like to see Annie in is the simple stuff gown she wears of a morning, with the big bib apron of white linen, and the spotless white collar caressing her creamy throat. I would lock her best clothes up in that delightful carved oak chest that stands upstairs on the landing and throw the key into the sea; and little Annie would let me do it; she is evidently the most docile of child-women. Catherine, now, had I ever ventured on adverse criticism of her garments, would have thrown me into the sea instead.

April 7.—Bank holiday, and wet, of course. The weather is never propitious on the feast of St. Lubbock. The old Saints apparently owe a grudge to this latest addition to the calendar. How beastly it must be in town, with the slushy streets and the beshuttered shops! How depressing for Paterfamilias who arose at seven in the morning to set off with his wife and his brats and the family food-basket to catch some early excursion train! How much more depressing for him who has no train to catch, and nothing at all to do but worry through twelve mortal pleasure hours!

St. Lubbock's malevolent influence doesn't fortunately extend down here, where everything seems to work in time-worn ruts. I walked over the fields opposite. There were a great many new-dropped lambs in the second meadow. They didn't appear to mind the drizzle, but kneeling with their little front legs doubled under them, they sucked vigorously at their mothers, while their long tails danced and quivered in the air.

There was one lamb lying quietly on its side. The ewe stood by, staring down at it with a sort of quiescent curiosity from her brown, stupid, white-lashed eyes. When I went over to her I saw the lamb was dying; its lips moved incessantly, its little body kept rising and falling with its laboured breath, now and then it made a violent effort to get up, but always fell back in the same position. I passed back through the same field about an hour after. There was the lamb still dying, still breathing painfully, still moving its lips as before, but the mother, tired of the spectacle, had walked off, and was calmly munching mangel-wurzel in another part of the field.

I sentimentalised and moralised—naturally; and naturally, too, I thought of Catherine. Strange there should be that vein of hardness running through the entire female sex.

As the rain still continued this afternoon, I proposed to Mrs. Anderson she should show me the house. The excellent creature, busy with the dairy, offered me Annie as her substitute. We went from cellar to garret, and the child's companionship and her ingenuous prattle successfully beguiled a couple of hours. The house in reality consists of two houses placed at right angles to each other. The older part, built between two and three hundred years ago, is inhabited by the Andersons themselves. It consists of a long, low kitchen, with an enormous hearth-place, an oaken settle, smoke-browned rafters, and a bricked floor.

In the centre of the room is a massive but worm-eaten table, capable of seating twenty persons at least. It was built up in the kitchen itself some two hundred years ago, since no earthly ingenuity could have coaxed it through the low windows or narrow door.

Two of these, latticed like those of my sitting room, with the door between them, face west; but long before the sun is down the wooded eminence opposite has intercepted all his beams. Outside is also a garden, full of forget-me-not, daffodil, and other humble flowers. Here Scot, the watch-dog, lies dreaming in his kennel, and beyond the gate the cocks and hens lay dolefully in the rain, or bunch themselves up, lumps of dirty feather, under the shelter of the wood shed.

Upstairs are three sleeping rooms, and the attics, with curious dormer windows, still higher. We come down again to the first floor. A long matted passage runs from one end of the house to the other. It sinks half a step where the newer portion is joined on. This part, containing in all four rooms, two here and two below, was built in July, 1793, as a rudely scratched tablet on the wall outside informs me.

I sit with Annie on the carved chest at the southern end of the passage. The window behind us gives an extensive view of grey rain and grey sea. But I prefer to look at the smiling, freckled face that speaks so eloquently of sunny days. The wet, trailing fingers of the briar-rose climbing over the porch tap at the casement, the loose branch of the plane-tree creaks in the wind, the distant sea moans and murmurs; but I prefer to listen to my little friend's artless and occasionally "h-less" English, as she tells me how the Andersons have always been tenants of Down End since her great-grandfather came to the county and added on the living-house to the farm-house for his young wife.

"July, 1793." The date takes my fancy. I can see the Anderson of those days, large-boned, sinewy, stooping, with a red, fiery beard, like his present representative, stolid, laborious, contented, building his house here facing the coasts of France, nearly as ignorant of, and quite as indifferent to, the wild work going on over there in Paris town as little Annie herself can be. King, Dictator, Emperor, King, Emperor, Commune, have come and gone, but the sturdy race of farmers sprung from great-grandfather Anderson still carry on the same way of life in the same identical spot.

"But I'm not amusing you," says Annie, regretfully. "If only it would leave off raining we might go out and have a ride on the tin-tan." It takes me some little time, and a closely-knit series of questions, to discover that tin-tan is Southshire for see-saw; and I think how Catherine would laugh at the spectacle of my bobbing up and down on one end of a plank and this little country damsel at the other. Her detestable laughter; but, thank Heaven! I need never suffer from it again.

April 8.—Gloomy again to-day. Ink-coloured rain clouds hanging close over the hills, their fringe-like lower edges showing ragged across a pale sky, against which the hills themselves rise dark and sharp. Now and again a shower of rain falls, but not energetically; the wind blows, the clouds shift, the rain ceases, and the sky darkens or gleams with a watery brightness alternately. Looking over the wide landscape and leaden sea, here and there a patch of sunshine falls, while I myself walk in gloom; now the sails of a ship catch the radiance, now a farmstead, now a strip of sand over by Windle Flats.

I feel slightly bored. Annie went into Rexingham this morning with Robert and the early milk cart. She is to spend the day with an aunt, and return with the empty cart this evening. Twice a day the Andersons send in their milk to Rexingham, and winter and summer son Robert must rise at 3 a.m. to see to the milking, harness Dolly or Dobbin, and jog off his seven miles. Seven miles there, and seven miles back, morning and evening; that is twenty-eight miles in all, and ever the self-same bit of road in every weather. So that a farmer's life has its seamy side also. But then, to get back of a night! To find a good little wife like Annie waiting for you at the upper gate or by the house door. To eat your supper and smoke your pipe, with your feet on the mantel-piece if you pleased, and no possibility of being ordered into dress clothes to go to some vile theatre or idiotic dance—above all, to know that Catherine knew you were perfectly happy without her—by the bye, I wonder she has not written to me! Not that I want her to, of course. This would entail a few frozen conventional lines back by way of answer. But I am surprised she can endure thus easily the neglect of even the most insignificant of her subjects. I felt sure she would write to ask why I did not call on Sunday. She trusts, no doubt, to the greatness of my folly to bring me again, unasked, to her feet. Her confidence is for once misplaced.

April 9.—A great improvement in the weather. I was awakened by the sun pouring in at my window, and looked out on to a light, bright blue sky, full of white cumuli that cast down purple shadows upon a grey-green sea. I draped myself in the white dimity window curtain, and watched Annie making her way up between the lettuce rows, with her hands full of primroses. She came from the orchard, where the green tussucked grass at the foot of the apple trees is starred with these lovely little flowers.

I must have a talk with Annie in the orchard one day. It would be just the background to show off her particular style of beauty. I like to suit my scenery to the drama in hand. Catherine would be quite out of place in an orchard, where she might stain her gown, or a harmless beetle or spider terrify her into fits.

There appears to be only one post a day here; but Mrs. Anderson tells me that by walking up to Orton village I might find letters awaiting to-morrow's morning delivery. I was ass enough to go over this afternoon, and of course found nothing.

As I passed the barn on my way in, my ear was saluted by much laughter and shouting. I came upon Annie giving her little brothers a swing. Both great doors of the barn were turned back upon the outside wall and the swing hanging by long ropes to the rafters, and holding two chubby urchins together on the seat, swung out now into the sunshine, now back into the gloom, while Annie stood and pushed merrily. Three tiny calves, penned off in a loose box at one end of the building, stared over the low partition with soft, astonished eyes. It was a charming little picture.

"There, Tim! I can only give you six more!" cries Annie. "I've got to go and make the puddings" (she said "puddens," but what matter?). Before she goes she pulls a handful of grass from the threshold and offers it to the calves. While they tug it this way and that to get it from her hand, she endeavours to plant a kiss on the moist black muzzle of the smallest, but he promptly and ungallantly backs and the grass falls to the ground. At the same moment the children discover me, and an awed silence succeeds to their chatter. Not to embarrass them, I move off and fall a-musing as to whether Catherine could make a pudding to save her life? It is pretty certain it would cost a man his to have to eat it; does not even her violin playing, to which she has given indubitable time and attention, set one's teeth on edge to listen to?

Yet why this bitterness? Let me erase Catherine and her deficiencies from my mind for ever.

April 10.—Again no letter! Very well! I know what I will do. I am almost certain I will do it. But first I will go down to the beach and give it a couple of hours' sober reflection. No one shall say I acted hastily, ill-advisedly, or in pique.

I cross over to the cliff edge. Here the gorse is aflame with blossom; the short dry grass is full of tiny insect life. Various larks are singing; each one seems to sing the same song differently; perhaps each never sings the same arrangement twice!

I go down the precipitous coastguards' stairs. At every step it grows hotter. Down on the beach it is very hot, but there is shade to be found among the boulders at the cliff's base. I sit down and stare along the vacant shore; at the ships floating on the sea; at the clouds floating in the sky; there is no sound but the little grey-green waves as they break and slosh upon the stones.

I think of Catherine and Annie, and I remark that the breakwaters are formed of hop-poles, twined together and clasped with red-rusted iron girdles; the wood has been washed by the tides white and clean as bones. I wonder whether I shall ask Annie to be my wife, and I wonder also whence came those—literally—millions of wine bottle corks that strew the beach to my right. From a wreck? from old fishing nets? or merely from the natural consumption of beer at the building of the breakwater?

Coming back to Down End, I find a travelling threshing machine at work in the rick-yard. I had heard the monotonous thrumming of its wheels a good way off. The scene is one of great animation, the machine is drawn up against the conical-shaped haystack, its black smoke stretches out in serpentine coils against the sky. A dozen men are busy about her: those who work her, old Anderson, son Robert—a dreadful lout he is too, quite unlike his sister—various other louts of the same calibre, the two little boys, very much in everyone's way, and Mrs. Anderson and Annie, who have just brought out jugs of ale. I naturally stop to say a few words to Annie and watch the threshing. Anderson is grinding out some of last year's oats for the cattle.

Son Robert comes to take a pull out of Annie's jug. "That's prime, measter, ain't it?" he says to me, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. I go in thoughtfully. Is son Robert exactly the sort of man I should care to call brother-in-law?

April 11, 12.—These two days I have been casting up the pros and cons of a marriage with Annie. Shall it be—or not be? I suffer from a Hamlet-like perplexity. On the one hand I get a good, an amiable, an adoring little wife, who would forestall my slightest wish, who would warm my slippers for me, for whom I should be the Alpha and Omega of existence. She would never argue with me, never contradict me, never dream of laughing at me; would never laugh at all unless I allowed her, for she would give into my keeping, as a good wife should, the key of her smiles and of her tears. But of course I should wish her to laugh. I should wish the dear little creature to remain as merry and thoughtless as possible. Dear Annie! what surprise and delight will shine in your innocent blue eyes when I tell you my story! Your childlike gratitude will be almost embarrassing. Last, and perhaps most weighty pro of all—when Catherine hears of it she will be filled with regret; yes, she may act indifference as gaily as she pleases, I am convinced that in her heart of hearts she will be sorry.

Now for the cons; they, too, are many. As I said before, I should not like son Robert to call me brother. I should find honest old Anderson père rather a trial with his red beard, his broken nails, the yawning chasm between his upper teeth; even Mrs. Anderson, so comely and pleasant here in her own farm-house, would suffer by being transplanted to Lincoln's Inn. So might little Annie herself. A lapsed "h" in a country hay-field has much less significance than when lost at a London dinner-table. How is it, I wonder, that while the dear child generally speaks of 'ay and 'ouse, she invariably besmirches with the strongest of aspirates the unfortunate village of H'Orton? Still, it would be easy to correct this, delightful to educate her during our quiet evenings, to read with her all my favourite prose writers and poets! And, even supposing she couldn't learn, is classical English in the wife an infallible source of married happiness? Let me penetrate below externals and examine into the realities of things.