News From Nowhere, Or, an Epoch of Rest, Being Some Chapters From a Utopian Romance

minute’s pause, came down to meet me, leaving Ellen in the garden; then we three went down to the boat, talking mere morning prattle.  We stayed there a little, Dick arranging some of the matters in her, for we had only taken up to the house such things as we thought the dew might damage; and then we went toward the house again; but when we came near the garden, Dick stopped us by laying a hand on my arm and said,—

“Just look a moment.”

I looked, and over the low hedge saw Ellen, shading her eyes against the sun as she looked toward the hay-field, a light wind stirring in her tawny hair, her eyes like light jewels amidst her sunburnt face, which looked as if the warmth of the sun were yet in it.

“Look, guest,” said Dick; “doesn’t it all look like one of those very stories out of Grimm that we were talking about up in Bloomsbury?  Here are we two lovers wandering about the world, and we have come to a fairy garden, and there is the very fairy herself amidst of it: I wonder what she will do for us.”

Said Clara demurely, but not stiffly: “Is she a good fairy, Dick?”

“O, yes,” said he; “and according to the card, she would do better, if it were not for the gnome or wood-spirit, our grumbling friend of last night.”

We laughed at this; and I said, “I hope you see that you have left me out of the tale.”

“Well,” said he, “that’s true.  You had better consider that you have got the cap of darkness, and are seeing everything, yourself invisible.”

That touched me on my weak side of not feeling sure of my position in this beautiful new country; so in order not to make matters worse, I held my tongue, and we all went into the garden and up to the house together.  I noticed by the way that Clara must really rather have felt the contrast between herself as a town madam and this piece of the summer country that we all admired so, for she had rather dressed after Ellen that morning as to thinness and scantiness, and went barefoot also, except for light sandals.

The old man greeted us kindly in the parlour, and said: “Well, guests, so you have been looking about to search into the nakedness of the land: I suppose your illusions of last night have given way a bit before the morning light?  Do you still like, it, eh?”

“Very much,” said I, doggedly; “it is one of the prettiest places on the lower Thames.”

“Oho!” said he; “so you know the Thames, do you?”

I reddened, for I saw Dick and Clara looking at me, and scarcely knew what to say.  However, since I had said in our early intercourse with my Hammersmith friends that I had known Epping Forest, I thought a hasty generalisation might be better in avoiding complications than a downright lie; so I said—

“I have been in this country before; and I have been on the Thames in those days.”

“O,” said the old man, eagerly, “so you have been in this country before.  Now really, don’t you find it (apart from all theory, you know) much changed for the worse?”

“No, not at all,” said I; “I find it much changed for the better.”

“Ah,” quoth he, “I fear that you have been prejudiced by some theory or another.  However, of course the time when you were here before must have been so near our own days that the deterioration might not be very great: as then we were, of course, still living under the same customs as we are now.  I was thinking of earlier days than that.”

“In short,” said Clara, “you have theories about the change which has taken place.”

“I have facts as well,” said he.  “Look here! from this hill you can see just four little houses, including this one.  Well, I know for certain that in old times, even in the summer, when the leaves were thickest, you could see from the same place six quite big and fine houses; and higher up the water, garden joined garden right up to Windsor; and there were big houses in all the gardens.  Ah!  England was an important place in those days.”

I was getting nettled, and said: “What you mean is that you de-cockneyised the place, and sent the damned flunkies packing, and that everybody can live comfortably and happily, and not a few damned thieves only, who were centres of vulgarity and corruption wherever they were, and who, as to this lovely river, destroyed its beauty morally, and had almost destroyed it physically, when they were thrown out of it.”