“Ah, this is merry England,” said Felix, who loved his cigar, watching the tiny cloud float away from its tip. “The blackbird sings in the scorching sun at noonday, when the other songbirds are silent. You did not know Geof was a writer, did you?” He drew forth a piece of paper, when Newton began to protest, and would have taken it from him by main force, had not the ladies insisted on hearing the contents. So Felix read the verses.
Noontide in the Meadow.
Idly silent were the finches—
Finches fickle, fleeting, blithe;
And the mower, man of inches,
Ceased to swing the sturdy scythe.All the leafy oaks were slumb’rous;
Slumb’rous e’en the honeybee;
And his larger brother, cumbrous,
Humming home with golden knee.But the blackbird, king of hedgerows—
Hedgerows to my memory dear—
By the brook, where rush and sedge grows,
Sang his liquid love-notes clear.
Margaret, toying with a June rose—the white petal delicately tinted with pink between her soft rosy fingers—dreamily repeated half to herself—
“All the leafy oaks were slumb’rous.”
Valentine glanced at her swiftly, and inwardly resolved to remove the impression on her mind. He took out his pocketbook.
“My verses,” said he, “are only copied, but they seemed to me a gem in their way. It is a piece of Bacchic meditation from the Vaux de Vire, exquisitely translated by some clever author whose name I have forgotten. You are gazing at our friend Augustus’ bibulous nose,” he nodded towards the recumbent figure with the hand on the bottle, “and see it through your own glass:
“Fair nose! whose beauties many pipes have cost
Of white and rosy wine;
Whose colours are so gorgeously embossed
In red and purple fine;
Great nose, who views thee, gazing through great glass,
Thee still more lovely thinks.
Thou dost the nose of creature far surpass
Who only water drinks.”
It was so appropriate to poor Augustus that they could not choose but smile. Valentine begged Margaret to sing: they all joined in the request, and she sang with a faint blush, looking down—for she knew, though the rest did not, that it was Geoffrey’s favourite—the beautiful old ballad of the “Bailiff’s Daughter of Islington.” With the wild-rose in her hand, the delicate bloom on her cheek, the green hedge behind, the green elm above, and the sweet scent of the hay, she looked the ballad as well as sang it.
“Ah,” said Felix, “no sign of study in those old ballads, no premeditation, no word-twisting and jerking; rugged metre so involved that none can understand it without pondering an hour or two. This is the way we criticise poetry nowadays, in our mechanical age—just listen: somebody has been measuring Tennyson with a foot-rule. I read from a professor’s analysis—‘The line is varied by dactylic or iambic substitution, as well as by truncation and anacrusis;’ ‘the line is varied by anapaestic and trochaic (rarely dactylic) substitutions, and by initial truncation.’ As Faust says, not all these word-twisters have ever made a Maker yet.”
Crash!—splintering of wood and breaking of boughs.
“Here gwoes! Come on, you! Hoorah! Us ull put it up, missus; doan’t ’ee be afeared! you bin a good missus to we. So into’t, you vellers!”
Eight or ten men came crashing through a gap in the hedge, and seizing the prongs and rakes that were lying about with no more explanation than these brief ejaculations, dashed out to work. Heartily tired of rambling idly about, hands in pockets, seeing no prospect of the men on the other farms joining them, they had been hanging round the place in a sheepish way, till, finally observing the ladies working, the sense of shame got the better, and they made a rush for the hay, and gave up the strike. For there is sterling worth and some rude chivalry in these men, though simple enough, and easily led astray; the more the pity that no one has yet taken the lead among them with a view to their own real and solid advancement.
“I will go home and send them some refreshment,” said Mrs. Estcourt. All the party rose and accompanied her. In the next field they passed the mowers preparing to begin mowing again. Geoffrey and Valentine both tried to mow, but utterly failed; the point of the scythe persistently stuck into the ground.
“A’ be a’ akkerd tool for a body as bean’t used to un,” said the eldest of the men, taking out his stone rubber from the sling at his back, preparatory to giving the scythe a touch up after such rough handling; “and um bean’t what um used to be when I wur a bwoy.”
“How do you mean?” said Felix.
“Aw,” said the mower, tilting his hat back, “th’ blades be as good as ever um wur—thaay folk at Mells be th’ vellers to make scythes. Thur bean’t none as good as thaim. But it be th’ handle, look’ee, as I means. I minds when thaay wur made of dree sarts of wood, a main bit more crooked than this yer stick, and sart o’ carved a bit; doant ’ee see? It took a chap a week zumtimes to find a bit a’ wood as ud do. But, bless ee, a’moast anything does now.”
Swish went the keen blade through the tall grass. They watched him a few minutes.
“Thur be some blight about,” said the man; “scythe do scum up terrable,” and he showed them the blade all covered with a greenish-white froth, supposed to be caused by insects. “Thur be blight up thur, look.”
He pointed to a dark heavy cloud that seemed to float at a great height in the east.
“It will thunder,” said May.
“Aw, no it wunt, miss,” said the mower. “A’ reckon as it’ll be nation hot; thuck cloud be nothing but blight. Spile the fruit, bless’ee.”
“So even the scythe handles used to be artistic,” said Felix, as they walked away. “There used to be art and taste and workmanship even in so common
