The Girl of the Period, and Other Social Essays (Vol. 1&2). E. Lynn Linton
NYMPHS.
Between the time of the raw school-girl and that of the finished young lady is the short season of the nymph, when the physical enjoyment of life is perhaps at its keenest, and a girl is not afraid to use her limbs as nature meant her to use them, nor ashamed to take pleasure in her youth and strength. This is the time when a sharp run down a steep hill, with the chance of a tumble midway, is an exercise by no means objected to; when clambering over gates, stiles, and even crabbed stone-walls is not refused because of the undignified display of ankle which the adventure involves; when leaping a ditch comes in as one of the ordinary accidents of a marshland walk; and when the fun of riding is infinitely enhanced if the horse be only half broken or barebacked.
The nymph—an out-of-door, breezy, healthy girl, more after the pattern of the Greek Oread than the Amazon—is found only in the country; and for the most part only in the remoter districts of the country. In the town she degenerates into fastness, according to the law which makes evil merely the misdirection of force, as dirt is only matter in the wrong place. But among the mountains, in the secluded midland villages, or out on the thinly-populated moorland tracts, the nymph may be found in the full perfection of her nature. And a very beautiful kind of nature it is; though it is to be feared that certain ladies of the stricter sort would call her 'tomboy', and that those of a still narrower way of thought, unable to distinguish between unconventionality and vulgarity, would hold her to be decidedly vulgar—which she is not—and would wonder at her mother for 'letting her go on so.'
You fall upon the nymph at all hours and in all seasons. Indeed, she boasts that no weather ever keeps her indoors, and prefers a little roughness of the elements to anything too luscious or sentimental. A fresh wind, a sharp frost, a blinding fall of snow, or a pelting shower of rain are all high jinks to the nymph, to whom it is rare fun to come in like a water-dog, dripping from every hair, or shaking the snow in masses from her hat and cloak. She prefers this kind of thing to the suggestive beauty of the moonlight or the fervid heats of summer; and thinks a long walk in the crisp sharp frost, with the leaves crackling under her feet, worth all the nightingales in the wood. And yet she loves the spring and summer too, for the sake of the flowers and the birds and the beasts and the insects they bring forth; for the nymph is almost always a naturalist of the perceptive and self-taught kind, and has a marvellous faculty for finding out nests and rare habitats, and for tracking unusual trails to the hidden home.
There is no prettier sight among girls than the nymph when thoroughly at her ease, and enjoying herself in her own peculiar way. That wonderful grace of unconsciousness which belongs to savages and animals belongs to her also, and she moves with a supple freedom which affectation or shyness would equally destroy. To see her running down a green field, with the sunlight falling on her; her light dress blown into coloured clouds by the wind; her step a little too long for the correct town-walk—but so firmly planted and yet so light, so swift, so even!—her cheeks freshly flushed by exercise; her eyes bright and fearless; her white teeth shown below her upper lip as she comes forward with a ringing laugh, carrying a young bird which she has just caught, or a sheaf of wild flowers for which she has been perilling her neck, is to see a beautiful and gracious picture which you remember with pleasure all your life after. Or you meet her quite alone on a wide bleak moor, with her hat in her hand and her hair blowing across her face, looking for plovers' eggs, or ferns and orchids down in the damp hollows. She is by no means dressed according to the canons of Le Follet, and yet she always manages to have something picturesque about her—something that would delight an artist's taste, and that is in perfect harmony with herself and her surroundings—which she wears with profound ignorance as to how well it suits her—or at most with only an instinctive knowledge that it is the right thing for her. She may be shy as she meets you; if she is passing out of the nymph state into that of conscious womanhood, she will be shy; but if still a nymph with no disturbing influences at work, she will probably look at you with a fixed, perplexing, half-provoking look of frank curiosity which you can neither notice nor take advantage of; the trammels of conventional life fettering one side heavily, if not the other.
Shocking as it is to say, the nymph may sometimes be met on the top of a haycart, and certainly in the hayfield, where she is engaged in scattering the 'cocks,' if not in raising them; and where even the haymakers themselves—and they are not a notably romantic race—do not grumble at the extra trouble she gives them, because of her evident delight in her misdeeds. Besides, she has a bright word for them as she passes; for the nymph has democratic tendencies, and is frank and 'affable' to all classes alike. She needs to be a little looked after in this direction, not for mischief but for manners; for, if not judiciously checked, she may become in time coarse. There are seamy sides to everything, and the nymph does not escape the general law.
If the nymph condescends to any game at all, it is croquet, at which she is inexorably severe. She knows nothing of the little weakness which makes her elder sisters overlook the patent spooning of the favourite curate, even though he is opposed to them—nothing of the tender favouritism which pushes on an awkward partner by deeds of helping outside the law. The nymph, who has no weakness nor tenderness of that kind, knows only the game; and the game has not elastic boundaries. Therefore she is inflexible in her justice to one side and the other. Is it not the game? she says when reproached with being disagreeable and unamiable.
But even croquet is slow to the nymph, who has been known to handle a bat not discreditably, and who is an adept at firing at a mark with real powder and ball. If she lives near a lake, a river, or the sea, she is first-rate at boating, can feather her oar and back water with the skill of a veteran oarsman, and can reef a sail or steer close without the slightest hesitation or nervousness. She is also a famous swimmer, and takes the water like a duck; and at an ordinary summer seaside resort, if by chance she ever profanes herself by showing off there, she attracts a crowd of beach-loungers to watch her feats far outside the safe barrier of the bathing-machines. She is a great walker, wherever she lives. If a mountaineer, she is a clever cragswoman, making it a point of honour to go to the top of the most difficult and dangerous mountains in her neighbourhood, and coaxing her brothers to let her join them and their friends in expeditions which require both nerve and strength.
Her greatest sphere of social glory is a picnic, where she always heads the exploring party, clambering up the rocks of the waterfall, or diving down into the close-smelling caves, or scaling the crumbling walls of the ruin before any one else can come up to her. She is specially happy at old ruins, where she flits in and out among the broken columns and under the mouldering arches, like a spirit of the place unduly disturbed. Sometimes she climbs up by unseen means, till she reaches a point where it makes one dizzy to see her; and sometimes she startles her company by the sudden bleating of a sheep, or the wild hoot of an owl. For she can imitate the sounds of animals for the most part with wonderful accuracy; though she can also sing simple ballads without music, with sweetness and correctness. She is fond of all animals and fears none. She will pass through a field thronged with wild-looking cattle without the least hesitation; and makes friends even with the yelping farm-dogs which come snapping and snarling at her heels. In winter she feeds the wood-birds by flocks, and always takes care that the horses have a handful of corn or a carrot when she goes to see them, and that the cows are the better for her visit by a bunch of lucerne or a fat fresh cabbage-leaf. The home-beasts show their pleasure when they hear her fleet footstep on the paved yard; and her favourite pony whinnies to her in a peculiar voice as she passes his stable door. These are her friends, and their love for her is her reward.
In her early days the nymph was notorious for her dilapidated attire, perplexing mother and nurse to mend, or to understand why or how it had come about. But as her favourite hiding-place was in a forked branch midway up an old tree in the shrubbery, or a natural arbour which she had cut out for herself in the very heart of the underwood, it was scarcely to be wondered at if cloth and cotton testified to the severity of her retreats. She has still mysterious rents in her skirts, got no one knows how; and her mother still laments over her aptitude for rags, and wishes she could be brought to see the beauty of unstained apparel. She is given to early rising—to fits indeed of rising at some wild hour in the morning,