Two Years Ago, Volume I. Charles Kingsley

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СКАЧАТЬ again at a station, where the board bears, in large letters, "Shalott."

      "Shalott? Where are the 'Four grey walls, and four grey towers,' which overlook a space of flowers?"

      There, upon the little island, are the castle-ruins, now converted into a useful bone-mill. "And the lady?—is that she?"

      It was only the miller's daughter, fresh from a boarding-school, gardening in a broad straw-hat.

      "At least," said Claude, "she is tending far prettier flowers than ever the lady saw; while the lady herself, instead of weaving and dreaming, is reading Miss Young's novels, and becoming all the wiser thereby, and teaching poor children in Hemmelford National School."

      "And where is her fairy knight," asked Stangrave, "whom one half hopes to see riding down from that grand old house which sulks there above among the beech-woods as if frowning on all the change and civilisation below!"

      "You do old Sidricstone injustice. Vieuxbois descends from thence, now-a-days, to lecture at mechanics' institutes, instead of the fairy knight, toiling along in the blazing summer weather, sweating in burning metal, like poor Perillus in his own bull."

      "Then the fairy knight is extinct in England!" asked Stangrave, smiling.

      "No man less; only he (not Vieuxbois, but his younger brother) has found a wide-awake cooler than an iron kettle, and travels by rail when he is at home; and when he was in the Crimea, rode a shaggy pony, and smoked cavendish all through the battle of Inkermann."

      "He showed himself the old Sir Lancelot there," said Stangrave,

      "He did. Wherefore the lady married him when the Guards came home; and he will breed prize pigs; and sit at the board of guardians; and take in the Times; clothed, and in his right mind; for the old Berserk spirit is gone out of him; and he is become respectable, in a respectable age, and is nevertheless just as brave a fellow as ever."

      "And so all things are changed, except the river; where still—

      'Willows whiten, aspens quiver.

      Little breezes dash and shiver

      On the stream that runneth ever.'"

      "And," said Claude, smiling, "the descendants of mediaeval trout snap at the descendants of mediaeval flies, spinning about upon just the same sized and coloured wings on which their forefathers spun a thousand years ago; having become, in all that while, neither bigger nor wiser."

      "But is it not a grand thought," asked Stangrave,—"the silence and permanence of nature amid the perpetual flux and noise of human life?—a grand thought that one generation goeth and another cometh, and the earth abideth for ever?"

      "At least it is so much the worse for the poor old earth, if her doom is to stand still, while man improves and progresses from age to age."

      "May I ask one question, sir?" said Stangrave, who saw that their conversation was puzzling their jolly companion. "Have you heard any news yet of Mr. Thurnall!"

      Mark looked him full in the face.

      "Do you know him?"

      "I did, in past years, most intimately."

      "Then you knew the finest fellow, sir, that ever walked mortal earth."

      "I have discovered that, sir, as well as you. I am under obligations to that man which my heart's blood will not repay. I shall make no secret of telling you what they are at a fit time."

      Mark held out his broad red hand, and grasped Stangrave's till the joints cracked: his face grew as red as a turkey-cock's; his eyes filled with tears.

      "His father must hear that! Hang it; his father must hear that! And Grace too!"

      "Grace!" said Claude: "and is she with you?"

      "With the old man, the angel! tending him night and day."

      "And as beautiful as ever?"

      "Sir!" said Mark solemnly, "when any one's soul is as beautiful as hers is, one never thinks about her face."

      "Who is Grace?" asked Stangrave.

      "A saint and a heroine!" said Claude. "You shall know all; for you ought to know. But you have no news of Tom; and I have none either. I am losing all hope now."

      "I'm not, sir!" said Mark fiercely. "Sir, that boy's not dead; he can't be. He has more lives than a cat, and if you know anything of him, you ought to know that."

      "I have good reason to know it, none more: but—"

      "But, sir! But what? Harm come to him, sir? The Lord wouldn't harm him for his father's sake; and as for the devil!—I tell you, sir, if he tried to fly away with him, he'd have to drop him before he'd gone a mile!" And Mark began blowing his nose violently, and getting so red that he seemed on the point of going into a fit.

      "Tell you what it is, gentlemen," said he at last, "you come and stay with me, and see his father. It will comfort the old man—and—and comfort me too; for I get down-hearted about him at times."

      "Strange attraction there was about that man," says Stangrave, sotto voce to Claude.

      "He was like a son to him—"

      "Now, gentlemen. Mr. Mellot, you don't hunt?"

      "No, thank you," said Claude.

      "Mr. Stangrave does, I'll warrant."

      "I have at various times, both in England and in Virginia."

      "Ah! Do they keep up the real sport there, eh? Well that's the best thing I've heard of them, sir!—My horses are yours!—A friend of that boy, sir, is welcome to lame the whole lot, and I won't grumble. Three days a week, sir. Breakfast at eight, dinner at 5.30—none of your late London hours for me, sir; and after it the best bottle of port, though I say it, short of my friend S–'s, at Reading."

      "You must accept," whispered Claude, "or he will be angry."

      So Stangrave accepted; and all the more readily because he wanted to hear from the good banker many things about the lost Tom Thurnall.

* * * * *

      "Here we are," cries Mark. "Now, you must excuse me: see to yourselves. I see to the puppies. Dinner at 5.30, mind! Come along, Goodman, boy!"

      "Is this Whitbury?" asks Stangrave.

      It was Whitbury, indeed. Pleasant old town, which slopes down the hill-side to the old church,—just "restored," though by Lords Minchampstead and Vieuxbois, not without Mark Armsworth's help, to its ancient beauty of grey flint and white clunch chequer-work, and quaint wooden spire. Pleasant churchyard round it, where the dead lie looking up to the bright southern sun, among huge black yews, upon their knoll of white chalk above the ancient stream. Pleasant white wooden bridge, with its row of urchins dropping flints upon the noses of elephantine trout, or fishing over the rail with crooked pins, while hapless gudgeon come dangling upward between stream and sky, with a look of sheepish surprise and shame, as of a school-boy caught stealing apples, in their foolish visages. Pleasant new national schools at the bridge end, whither the urchins scamper at the sound of the two o'clock bell. Though it be an ugly pile enough of bright red brick, it is doing its work, as Whitbury folk know well by now. Pleasant, too, though still more ugly, those long red arms of new houses which Whitbury is stretching out along its fine turnpikes,—especially СКАЧАТЬ