The Essential George Meredith Collection. George Meredith
Sir Austin returned. "I trust the world is awakening, as you observe. I have been to my publisher, since my arrival in town, with a manuscript 'Proposal for a New System of Education of our British Youth,' which may come in opportunely. I think I am entitled to speak on that subject."
"Certainly," said the doctor. "You will admit, Sir Austin, that, compared with continental nations--our neighbours, for instance--we shine to advantage, in morals, as in everything else. I hope you admit that?"
"I find no consolation in shining by comparison with a lower standard," said the baronet. "If I compare the enlightenment of your views--for you admit my principle--with the obstinate incredulity of a country doctor's, who sees nothing of the world, you are hardly flattered, I presume?"
Doctor Bairam would hardly be flattered at such a comparison, assuredly, he interjected.
"Besides," added the baronet, "the French make no pretences, and thereby escape one of the main penalties of hypocrisy. Whereas we!--but I am not their advocate, credit me. It is better, perhaps, to pay our homage to virtue. At least it delays the spread of entire corruptness."
Doctor Bairam wished the baronet success, and diligently endeavoured to assist his search for a mate worthy of the pure-blood barb, by putting several mamas, whom he visited, on the alert.
CHAPTER XIX
Away with Systems! Away with a corrupt World! Let us breathe the air of the Enchanted Island.
Golden lie the meadows: golden run the streams; red gold is on the pine-stems. The sun is coming down to earth, and walks the fields and the waters.
The sun is coming down to earth, and the fields and the waters shout to him golden shouts. He comes, and his heralds run before him, and touch the leaves of oaks and planes and beeches lucid green, and the pine-stems redder gold; leaving brightest footprints upon thickly-weeded banks, where the foxglove's last upper-bells incline, and bramble-shoots wander amid moist rich herbage. The plumes of the woodland are alight; and beyond them, over the open, 'tis a race with the long-thrown shadows; a race across the heaths and up the hills, till, at the farthest bourne of mounted eastern cloud, the heralds of the sun lay rosy fingers and rest.
Sweet are the shy recesses of the woodland. The ray treads softly there. A film athwart the pathway quivers many-hued against purple shade fragrant with warm pines, deep moss-beds, feathery ferns. The little brown squirrel drops tail, and leaps; the inmost bird is startled to a chance tuneless note. From silence into silence things move.
Peeps of the revelling splendour above and around enliven the conscious full heart within. The flaming West, the crimson heights, shower their glories through voluminous leafage. But these are bowers where deep bliss dwells, imperial joy, that owes no fealty to yonder glories, in which the young lamb gambols and the spirits of men are glad. Descend, great Radiance! embrace creation with beneficent fire, and pass from us! You and the vice-regal light that succeeds to you, and all heavenly pageants, are the ministers and the slaves of the throbbing content within.
For this is the home of the enchantment. Here, secluded from vexed shores, the prince and princess of the island meet: here like darkling nightingales they sit, and into eyes and ears and hands pour endless ever-fresh treasures of their souls.
Roll on, grinding wheels of the world: cries of ships going down in a calm, groans of a System which will not know its rightful hour of exultation, complain to the universe. You are not heard here.
He calls her by her name, Lucy: and she, blushing at her great boldness, has called him by his, Richard. Those two names are the key-notes of the wonderful harmonies the angels sing aloft.
"Lucy! my beloved!"
"O Richard!"
Out in the world there, on the skirts of the woodland, a sheep-boy pipes to meditative eve on a penny-whistle.
Love's musical instrument is as old, and as poor: it has but two stops; and yet, you see, the cunning musician does thus much with it!
Other speech they have little; light foam playing upon waves of feeling, and of feeling compact, that bursts only when the sweeping volume is too wild, and is no more than their sigh of tenderness spoken.
Perhaps love played his tune so well because their natures had unblunted edges, and were keen for bliss, confiding in it as natural food. To gentlemen and ladies he fine-draws upon the viol, ravishingly; or blows into the mellow bassoon; or rouses the heroic ardours of the trumpet; or, it may be, commands the whole Orchestra for them. And they are pleased. He is still the cunning musician. They languish, and taste ecstasy: but it is, however sonorous, an earthly concert. For them the spheres move not to two notes. They have lost, or forfeited and never known, the first super-sensual spring of the ripe senses into passion; when they carry the soul with them, and have the privileges of spirits to walk disembodied, boundlessly to feel. Or one has it, and the other is a dead body. Ambrosia let them eat, and drink the nectar: here sit a couple to whom Love's simple bread and water is a finer feast.
Pipe, happy sheep-bop, Love! Irradiated angels, unfold your wings and lift your voices!
They have out-flown philosophy. Their instinct has shot beyond the ken of science. They were made for their Eden.
"And this divine gift was in store for me!"
So runs the internal outcry of each, clasping each: it is their recurring refrain to the harmonies. How it illumined the years gone by and suffused the living Future!
"You for me: I for you!"
"We are born for each other!"
They believe that the angels have been busy about them from their cradles. The celestial hosts have worthily striven to bring them together. And, O victory! O wonder! after toil and pain, and difficulties exceeding, the celestial hosts have succeeded!
"Here we two sit who are written above as one!"
Pipe, happy Love! pipe on to these dear innocents!
The tide of colour has ebbed from the upper sky. In the West the sea of sunken fire draws back; and the stars leap forth, and tremble, and retire before the advancing moon, who slips the silver train of cloud from her shoulders, and, with her foot upon the pine-tops, surveys heaven.
"Lucy, did you never dream of meeting me?"
"O Richard! yes; for I remembered you."
"Lucy! and did you pray that we might meet?"
"I did!"
Young as when she looked upon the lovers in Paradise, the fair Immortal journeys onward. Fronting her, it is not night but veiled day. Full half the sky is flushed. Not darkness, not day, but the nuptials of the two.
"My own! my own for ever! You are pledged to me? Whisper!"
He hears the delicious music.
"And you are mine?"
A soft beam travels to the fern-covert under the pinewood where they sit, and for answer he has her eyes turned to him an instant, timidly fluttering over the depths of his, and then downcast; for through her eyes her soul is naked to him.
"Lucy! my bride! my life!"
The night-jar spins his dark monotony on the branch of the pine. The soft beam travels round them, and listens to their hearts. Their lips are locked.
Pipe no more, Love, for a time! Pipe as you will you cannot express their first kiss; nothing of its sweetness, and of the sacredness of it nothing. St. Cecilia up aloft, before the silver organ-pipes of Paradise, pressing fingers upon all the notes of which Love is but one, from her you may hear it.
So Love is silent. Out in the world there, on the skirts of the woodland, the self-satisfied sheep-boy delivers a last complacent