A tear fell on the broad yellow page of the old Prayerbook the Squire held so closely to his face. This was why the low grey church was so dear to him; it was full of the past. Shadowy forms hid behind the pillars; faces looked down from the worm-eaten rafters; bright and yet quick-fading groups of other days appeared through the greenish-yellow panes of the windows.
“I am an old fool,” he said to himself. “If these young fellows see me, they will laugh.”
But the young fellows by his side were otherwise engaged. They too had noted the extravagant bonnet; but their thoughts went no farther than the face beneath it. The old man thought of the father; the young men of the living daughter. But, indeed, Margaret Estcourt could not but be observed, standing so manifestly apart from, and yet among, that simple congregation. A single flower in a gloomy room will sometimes light it up as with a glory—the eye instantly rests upon it; a single violet will fill the place with perfume. She was the violet in that ancient building. Yet there was nothing extraordinary about her—no marvellous hyacinthine or golden tresses, no burning eye flashing with southern passion. She was simply very near the ideal of a fair young English girl, in the full glow of youth and with all its exquisite bloom. Perhaps at the first glance the beautiful pose of the tall and graceful figure seemed her most distinctive characteristic. The slight form of May Fisher brought her still more into relief.
So to the young men in the chancel pew the old grey church began to grow very dear, and the first part of the service slipped by speedily, despite Basil’s droning. Then the choir gave out a hymn with all their might, sturdily drowning the organ, stimulated to an extra effort by the presence of visitors in the Squire’s pew. Jabez the shepherd sang like a giant refreshed with wine, and got through four verses magnificently. But in the triumph of the moment he forgot the clerk’s warning not to “zeng too fast.” The verse finished with the word “Jacob:” Jabez unfortunately got a little in advance of the time, and desperately struggling to lengthen it out, an alehouse chorus slipped from his tongue: “Ja-aa-fol-de-rol-cob!”
When Basil went up into the pulpit the Squire quietly folded a silk handkerchief as a cushion to protect the back of his head from the hard oak of the pew, and slumbered peacefully till at the Rector’s “Fifthly, and in conclusion,” the stir of relief that ran through the congregation awoke him, as it usually did. Thorpe waited in the churchyard for Mrs. Estcourt, and walked with her as far as the wicket-gate, his own carriage waiting at the road entrance. There at the wicket the group paused a moment on the edge of the green fields. The sweetness of the air coming from the Downs, after the close and yet chilly atmosphere of the church, was in itself an exquisite pleasure. The larks still sang, the sun still shone, and the clouds came over the hill. Yet there was something more beautiful still in the mantling colour of Margaret’s soft check. Youth and love—youth and love and May-time!
Cuckoo—cuckoo! from the bird on the elm below the hill.
“O, look!” said Mrs. Estcourt, suddenly, in some alarm, yet laughing. “My poor shepherd”—for Jabez worked for her. Wildly he fled over grassy grave and tombstone, chased by a mob of smock-frocks and boys yelling “Fol-de-rol-cob!” at his heels, till, reaching the wall, he leaped, hitched his toe in the coping, and fell prone among the docks and nettles and pigs.
The Squire laughed heartily. By-and-by, as he leaned back in his carriage, the thought came into his mind that this was human life in little. First, pathos in the memory of his old friend; next, love—for he shrewdly suspected Geoffrey and Val—and beside that love the grim tomb and sad low mound; finally, the grotesque. Wherefore the old monks, seeing that all life came to the church in their day, carved fantastic faces on the gargoyles grinning down, sneering and mocking at it. And even sweet young love brought its regret. “For,” thought he to himself, as he narrowly scanned the faces of the young men sitting opposite, “I fancy I detect a coldness and distance already between these boys, who used to be more than brothers. Margaret has come between them.”
II
“The Sweet New Grass with Flowers.”
Baa—baa! A long-drawn pettish bleating that sometimes sounded absurdly like the “Ma—ma!” of a spoilt child. The lambs gambolled in the genial sunshine over the daisies; the ewes, arrived at the age of common sense, fed steadily on the young sweet grass, and did not notice the flowers.
Geoffrey Newton looked at them from the other side of the hedge, where indeed he had no business to be. He had carelessly wandered in a daydream from the footpath, and was now in the midst of mowing-grass, to walk in which is against the unwritten laws of country life, because when trampled down it is difficult to mow. Yet there is a great pleasure in pushing through it, tall grasses and bennets and sorrel stems reaching to the knee—the very dogs delight in it. See a spaniel just let loose; how he circles round, plunging over it!—visible as he bounds up, lost to sight next moment in the matted mass; the higher it is the more he likes it.
Baa—maa!
“For how many thousand years have the lambs been happy in the spring-tide?” thought Geoffrey. “And yet it is said that the world is growing old! Nature is always young. Earth was never younger than she is today. Goethe
