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THE GIRLS' FIRST WALK.
The Governor, Peregrine and Palmer as he was, did not care about
walking at any time, not even when he HAD to do it because other
people did; the mother, of whom there would have been little left
had the sweetness in her moral, and the house-keeping in her
practical nature, been subtracted, had things to see to within
doors: the young people must go out by themselves! They put on their
hats, and issued.
The temperature was keen, though it was now nearly the middle of
August, by which time in those northern regions the earth has begun
to get a little warm: the house stood high, and the atmosphere was
thin. There was a certain sense of sadness in the pale sky and its
cold brightness; but these young people felt no cold, and perceived
no sadness. The air was exhilarating, and they breathed deep breaths
of a pleasure more akin to the spiritual than they were capable of
knowing. For as they gazed around them, they thought, like Hamlet's
mother in the presence of her invisible husband, that they saw all
there was to be seen. They did not know nature: in the school to
which they had gone they patronized instead of revering her. She
wrought upon them nevertheless after her own fashion with her
children, unheedful whether they knew what she was about or not. The
mere space, the mere height from which they looked, the rarity of
the air, the soft aspiration of earth towards heaven, made them all
more of children.
But not one of them being capable of enjoying anything by herself,
together they were unable to enjoy much; and, like the miser who,
when he cannot much enjoy his money, desires more, began to desire
more company to share in the already withering satisfaction of their
new possession--to help them, that is, to get pleasure out of it, as
out of a new dress. It is a good thing to desire to share a good
thing, but it is not well to be unable alone to enjoy a good thing.
It is our enjoyment that should make us desirous to share. What is
there to share if the thing be of no value in itself? To enjoy alone
is to be able to share. No participation can make that of value
which in itself is of none. It is not love alone but pride also, and
often only pride, that leads to the desire for another to be present
with us in possession.
The girls grew weary of the show around them because it was so
quiet, so regardless of their presence, so moveless, so monotonous.
Endless change was going on, but it was too slow for them to see;
had it been rapid, its motions were not of a kind to interest them.
Ere half an hour they had begun to think with regret of Piccadilly
and Regent street--for they had passed the season in London. There
is a good deal counted social which is merely gregarious. Doubtless
humanity is better company than a bare hill-side; but not a little
depends on how near we come to the humanity, and how near we come to
the hill. I doubt if one who could not enjoy a bare hill-side alone,
would enjoy that hill-side in any company; if he thought he did, I
suspect it would be that the company enabled him, not to forget
himself in what he saw, but to be more pleasantly aware of himself
than the lone hill would permit him to be;--for the mere hill has
its relation to that true self which the common self is so anxious
to avoid and forget. The girls, however, went on and on, led mainly
by the animal delight of motion, the two younger making many a
diversion up the hill on the one side, and down the hill on the
other, shrieking at everything fresh that pleased them.
The house they had just left stood on the projecting shoulder of a
hill, here and there planted with firs. Of the hardy trees there was
a thicket at the back of the house, while toward the south, less
hardy ones grew in the shrubbery, though they would never, because
of the sea-breezes, come to any height. The carriage-drive to the
house joined two not very distant points on the same road, and there
was no lodge at either gate. It was a rough, country road, a good
deal rutted, and seldom repaired. Opposite the gates rose the steep
slope of a heathery hill, along the flank of which the girls were
now walking. On their right lay a piece of rough moorland, covered
with heather, patches of bracken, and coarse grass. A few yards to
the right, it sank in a steep descent. Such was the disposition of
the ground for some distance along the road--on one side the hill,
on the other a narrow level, and abrupt descent.
As they advanced they caught sight of a ruin rising above the brow
of the descent: the two younger darted across the heather toward it;
the two elder continued their walk along the road, gradually
descending towards a valley.
"I wonder what we shall see round the corner there!" said Mercy, the
younger of the two.
"The same over again, I suppose!" answered Christina. "What a rough
road it is! I've twice nearly sprained my ankle!"
"I was thinking of what I saw the other day in somebody's
travels--about his interest in every turn of the road, always
looking for what was to come next."
"Time enough when it comes, in my opinion!" rejoined Christina.
For she was like any other mirror--quite ready to receive what was
thrown upon her, but incapable of originating anything, almost
incapable of using anything.
As they descended, and the hill-side, here covered with bracken and
boulders, grew higher and higher above them, the valley, in front
and on the right, gradually opened, here and there showing a glimpse
of a small stream that cantered steadily toward the sea, now
tumbling over a rock, now sullen in a brown pool. Arriving at length
at a shoulder of the hill round which the road turned, a whole mile
of the brook lay before them. It came down a narrow valley, with
scraps of meadow in the bottom; but immediately below them the
valley was of some width, and was good land from side to side, where
green oats waved their feathery grace, and the yellow barley was
nearly ready for the sickle. No more than the barren hill, however,
had the fertile valley anything for them. Their talk was of the last
ball they were at.
The sisters were about as good friends as such negative creatures
could be; and they would be such friends all their lives, if on the
one hand neither of them grew to anything better, and on the other
no jealousy, or marked difference of social position through
marriage, intervened. They loved each other, if not tenderly, yet
with the genuineness of healthy family-habit--a thing not to be
despised, for it keeps the door open for something better. In itself
it is not at all to be reckoned upon, for habit is but the merest
shadow of reality. Still it is not a small thing, as families go, if
sisters and brothers do not dislike each other.
They were criticizing certain of the young men they had met at the
said ball. Being, in their development, if not in their nature,
commonplace, what should they talk about but clothes or young men?
And why, although an excellent type of its kind, should I take the
trouble to record their conversation? To read, it might have amused
me--or even interested, as may a carrot painted by a Dutchman; but
were I a painter, I should be sorry to paint carrots, and the girls'
talk is not for my pen. At the same time I confess myself incapable
of doing it justice. When one is annoyed at the sight of things
meant to be and not beautiful, there is danger of not giving them
even the poor fair-play they stand in so much the more need of that
it can do so little for them.
But now they changed the subject of their talk. They had come to a
point of the road not far from the ruin to which the children had
run across the heather.
"Look, Chrissy! It IS an old castle!" said Mercy. "I wonder whether
it is on our land!"
"Not much to be proud of!" replied the other. "It is nothing but the
walls of a square house!"
"Not just a common square house! Look at that pepper-pot on one of
the corners!--I wonder how it is all the old castles get deserted!"
"Because they are old. It's well to desert them before they tumble
down."
"But they wouldn't tumble down if they weren't neglected. Think of
Warwick castle! Stone doesn't rot like wood! Just see the thickness
of those walls!"
"Yes, they are thick! But stone too has its way of rotting.
Westminster palace is wearing through, flake by flake. The weather
will be at the lords before long."
"That's what Valentine would call a sign of the times. I say, what a
radical he is, Chrissy!--Look! the old place is just like an empty
egg-shell! I know, if it had been mine, I wouldn't have let it come
to that!"
"You say so because it never was yours: if it had been, you would
know how uncomfortable it was!"
"I should like to know," said Mercy, after a little pause, during
which they stood looking at the ruin, "whether the owners leave such
places because they get fastidious and want better, or because they
are too poor to keep them up! At all events a man must be poor to
SELL the house that belonged to his ancestors!--It must be miserable
to grow poor after being used to plenty!--I wonder whose is the old
place!"
"Oh, the governor's, I suppose! He has all hereabout for miles."
"I hope it is ours! I SHOULD like to build it up again! I would live
in it myself!"
"I'm afraid the governor won't advance your share for that purpose!"
"I love old things!" said Mercy.
"I believe you take your old doll to bed with you yet!" rejoined
Christina. "I am different to you!" she continued, with Frenchified
grammar; "I like things as new as ever I can have them!"
"I like new things well enough, Chrissy--you know I do! It is
natural. The earth herself has new clothes once a year. It is but
once a year, I grant!"
"Often enough for an old granny like her!"
"Look what a pretty cottage!--down there, half-way to the burn! It's
like an English cottage! Those we saw as we came along were either
like a piece of the earth, or so white as to look ghastly! This one
looks neat and comfortable, and has trees about it!"
The ruin, once a fortified house and called a castle, stood on a
sloping root or spur that ran from the hill down to the bank of the
stream, where it stopped abruptly with a steep scaur, at whose foot
lay a dark pool. On the same spur, half-way to the burn, stood a
low, stone-built, thatched cottage, with a little grove about it,
mostly of the hardy, contented, musical fir--a tree that would seem
to have less regard to earthly prosperity than most, and looks like
a pilgrim and a stranger: not caring much, it thrives where other
trees cannot. There might have been a hundred of them, mingled, in
strangest contrast, with a few delicate silver birches, about the
cottage. It stood toward the east side of the sinking ridge, which
had a steep descent, both east and west, to the fields below. The
slopes were green with sweet grass, and apparently smooth as a lawn.
Not far from where the cottage seemed to rest rather than rise or
stand, the burn rushed right against the side of the spur, as if to
go straight through it, but turned abruptly, and flowed along the
side to the end of it, where its way to the sea was open. On the
point of the ridge were a few more firs: except these, those about
the cottage, the mole on the hill-cheek, and the plantation about
the New House, up or down was not a tree to be seen. The girls stood
for a moment looking.
"It's really quite pretty!" said Christina with condescension. "It
has actually something of what one misses here so much--a certain
cosy look! Tidy it is too! As you say, Mercy, it might be in England
--only for the poverty of its trees.--And oh those wretched bare
hills!" she added, as she turned away and moved on.
"Wait till the heather is quite out: then you will have colour to
make up for the bareness."
"Tell true now, Mercy: that you are Scotch need not keep you from
speaking the truth:--don't you think heather just--well--just a
leetle magentaish?--not a colour to be altogether admired?--just a
little vulgar, don't you know? The fashion has changed so much
within the last few years!"
"No, I don't think so; and if I did I should be ashamed of it. I
suppose poor old mother Earth ought to go to the pre-Raphaelites to
be taught how to dress herself!"
Mercy spoke with some warmth, but Christina was not sufficiently
interested to be cross. She made no answer.
They were now at the part of the road which crossed the descending
spur as it left the hill-side. Here they stopped again, and looked
down the rocky slope. There was hardly anything green betwixt them
and the old ruin--little but stones on a mass of rock; but
immediately beyond the ruin the green began: there it seemed as if a
wave of the meadow had risen and overflowed the spur, leaving its
turf behind it. Catching sight of Hope and Grace as they ran about
the ruin, they went to join them, the one drawn by a vague interest
in the exuviae of vanished life, the other by mere curiosity to see
inside the care-worn, protesting walls. Through a gap that might
once have been a door, they entered the heart of the sad unhoping
thing dropt by the Past on its way to oblivion: nothing looks so
unlike life as a dead body, nothing so unfit for human dwelling as a
long-forsaken house.
Finding in one corner a broken stair, they clambered up to a gap in
the east wall; and as they reached it, heard the sound of a horse's
feet. Looking down .the road, they saw a gig approaching with two
men. It had reached a part not so steep, and was coming at a trot.
"Why!" exclaimed Christina, "there's Val!--and some one with him!"
"I heard the governor say to mamma," returned Mercy, "that Val was
going to bring a college friend with him,--'for a pop at the
grouse,' he said. I wonder what he will be like!"
"He's a good-big-looking fellow," said Christina.
They drew nearer.
"You might have said a big, good-looking fellow!" rejoined Mercy.
"He really is handsome!--Now mind, Mercy, I was the first to
discover it!" said Christina.
"Indeed you were not!--At least I was the first to SAY it!" returned
Mercy. "But you will take him all to yourself anyhow, and I am sure
I don't care!"
Yet the girls were not vulgar--they were only common. They did and
said vulgar things because they had not the sensitive vitality to
shrink from them. They had not been well taught--that is roused to
LIVE: in the family was not a breath of aspiration. There was plenty
of ambition, that is, aspiration turned hell-ward. They thought
themselves as far from vulgar as any lady in any land, being in this
vulgar--that they despised the people they called vulgar, yet
thought much of themselves for not being vulgar. There was little in
them the world would call vulgar; but the world and its ways are
vulgar; its breeding will not pass with the ushers of the high
countries. The worst in that of these girls was a FAST, disagreeable
way of talking, which they owed to a certain governess they had had
for a while.
They hastened to the road. The gig came up. Valentine threw the
reins to his companion, jumped out, embraced his sisters, and seemed
glad to see them. Had he met them after a like interval at home, he
would have given them a cooler greeting; but he had travelled so
many miles that they seemed not to have met for quite a long time.
"My friend, Mr. Sercombe," he said, jerking his head toward the gig.
Mr. Sercombe raised his POT-LID--the last fashion in head-gear--and
acquaintance was made.
"We'll drive on, Sercombe," said Valentine, jumping up. "You see,
Chris, we're half dead with hunger! Do you think we shall find
anything to eat?"
"Judging by what we left at breakfast," replied Christina, "I should
say you will find enough for--one of you; but you had better go and
see."
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