thought Philip ought to take some blame to himself for the disaster on the stairs. She made no answer, and Guy asked what Philip had been doing to-day.
'Walking over the hills from Como. Do you always travel in this fashion, 'impedimentis relictis'?'
'Not exactly,' said Guy; 'the 'impedimenta' are, some at Varenna, some at the inn with Arnaud.'
'So you have Arnaud with you?'
'Yes, and Anne Trower,' said Amy, for her maid was a Stylehurst person, who had lived at Hollywell ever since she had been fit for service. 'She was greatly pleased to hear we were going to meet the captain.'
'We amuse ourselves with thinking how she gets on with Arnaud,' said Guy. 'Their introduction took place only two days before we were married, since which, they have had one continued tete-a-tete, which must have been droll at first.'
'More so at last,' said Amy. 'At first Anne thought Mr. Arnaud so fine a gentleman, that she hardly dared to speak to him. I believe nothing awed her so much as his extreme courtesy; but lately he has been quite fatherly to her, and took her to dine at his sister's chalet, where I would have given something to see her. She tells me he wants her to admire the country, but she does not like the snow, and misses our beautiful clover-fields very much.'
'Stylehurst ought to have been better training for mountains,' said Philip.
They were fast losing the stiffness of first meeting. Philip could not but acknowledge to himself that Amy was looking very well, and so happy that Guy must be fulfilling the condition on which he was to be borne with. However, these were early days, and of course Guy must be kind to her at least in the honeymoon, before the wear and tear of life began. They both looked so young, that having advised them to wait four years, he was ready to charge them with youthfulness, if not as a fault, at least as a folly; indeed, the state of his own affairs made him inclined to think it a foible, almost a want of patience, in any one to marry before thirty. It was a conflict of feeling. Guy was so cordial and good-humoured, that he could not help being almost gained; but, on the other hand, he had always thought Guy's manners eminently agreeable; and as happiness always made people good-humoured, this was no reason for relying on him. Besides, the present ease and openness of manner might only result from security.
Other circumstances combined, more than the captain imagined, in what is popularly called putting him out. He had always been hitherto on equal terms with Guy; indeed, had rather the superiority at Hollywell, from his age and assumption of character, but here Sir Guy was somebody, the captain nobody, and even the advantage of age was lost, now that Guy was married and head of a family, while Philip was a stray young man and his guest. Far above such considerations as he thought himself, and deeming them only the tokens of the mammon worship of the time, Philip, nevertheless, did not like to be secondary to one to whom he had always been preferred; and this, and perhaps the being half ashamed of it, made him something more approaching to cross than ever before; but now and then, the persevering amiability of both would soften him, and restore him to his most gracious mood.
He gave them their letters when they reached the inn, feeling as if he had a better right than they, to one which was in Laura's writing, and when left in solitary possession of the sitting-room--a very pleasant one, with windows opening on the terrace just above the water--paced up and down, chafing at his own perplexity of feeling.
Presently they came back; Guy sat down to continue their joint journal- like letter to Charles, while Amabel made an orderly arrangement of their properties, making the most of their few books, and taking out her work as if she had been at home. Philip looked at the books.
'Have you a 'Childe Harold' here?' said he. 'I want to look at something in it.'
'No, we have not.'
'Guy, you never forget poetry; I dare say you can help me out with those stanzas about the mists in the valley.'
'I have never read it,' said Guy. 'Don't you remember warning me against Byron?'
'You did not think that was for life! Besides,' he continued, feeling this reply inconsistent with his contempt for Guy's youth, 'that applied to his perversions of human passions, not to his descriptions of scenery.'
'I think,' said Guy, looking up from his letter, 'I should be more unwilling to take a man like that to interpret nature than anything else, except Scripture. It is more profane to attempt it.'
'I see what you mean,' said Amabel, thoughtfully.
'More than I do,' said Philip. 'I never supposed you would take my advice 'au pied de la lettre',' he had almost added, 'perversely.'
'I have felt my obligations for that caution ever since I have come to some knowledge of what Byron was,' said Guy.
'The fascination of his 'Giaour' heroes has an evil influence on some minds,' said Philip. 'I think you do well to avoid it. The half truth, resulting from its being the effect of self-contemplation, makes it more dangerous.'
'True,' said Guy, though he little knew how much he owed to having attended to that caution, for who could have told where the mastery might have been in the period of fearful conflict with his passions, if he had been feeding his imagination with the contemplation of revenge, dark hatred, and malice, and identifying himself with Byron's brooding and lowering heroes!
'But,' continued Philip, 'I cannot see why you should shun the fine descriptions which are almost classical--the Bridge of Sighs, the Gladiator.'
'He may describe the gladiator as much as he pleases,' said Guy; 'indeed there is something noble in that indignant line--
Butchered to make a Roman holiday;
but that is not like his meddling with these mountains or the sea.'
'Fine description is the point in both. You are over-drawing.'
'My notion is this,' said Guy,--'there is danger in listening to a man who is sure to misunderstand the voice of nature,--danger, lest by filling our ears with the wrong voice we should close them to the true one. I should think there was a great chance of being led to stop short at the material beauty, or worse, to link human passions with the glories of nature, and so distort, defile, profane them.'
'You have never read the poem, so you cannot judge,' said Philip, thinking this extremely fanciful and ultra- fastidious. 'Your rule would exclude all descriptive poetry, unless it was written by angels, I suppose?'
'No; by men with minds in the right direction.'
'Very little you would leave us.'
'I don't think so,' said Amabel. 'Almost all the poetry we really care about was written by such men.'
'Shakspeare, for instance?'
'No one can doubt of the bent of his mind from the whole strain of his writings,' said Guy. 'So again with Spenser; and as to Milton, though his religion was not quite the right sort, no one can pretend to say he had it not. Wordsworth, Scott--'
'Scott?' said Philip.
'Including the descriptions of scenery in his novels,' said Amy, 'where, I am sure, there is the spirit and the beauty.'
'Or rather, the spirit is the beauty,' said Guy.
'There is a good deal in what you say,' answered Philip, who would not lay himself open to the accusation of being uncandid, 'but you will forgive me for thinking it rather too deep an explanation of the grounds of not making Childe Harold a hand-book for Italy, like other people.'
Amabel thought this so dogged and provoking, that she was out of patience; but Guy only laughed, and said, 'Rather so, considering that the fact was that we never thought of it.'
There were times when, as Philip had once said, good temper annoyed him more than anything, and perhaps he was unconsciously disappointed at having lost his old power of fretting and irritating Guy, and watching him champ the bit, so as to justify his own opinion of him. Every proceeding of his cousins seemed to give him annoyance, more especially their being at home together, and Guy's seeming to belong more to Hollywell than himself. He sat by, with a book, and watched them, as Guy asked for Laura's letter, and Amy came to look over his half- finished answer, laughing over it, and giving her commands and messages, looking so full of playfulness and happiness, as she stood with one hand on the back of her husband's chair, and the other holding the letter, and Guy watching her amused face, and answering her remarks with lively words and bright smiles. 'People who looked no deeper than the surface would, say, what a well-matched pair,' thought Philip; 'and no doubt they were very happy,
