THE FATHERLAND
There is a great contrast between the easy deshabille of the ocean life, and the prim attire, and conventional spirit of the land. In the first, there are but few to please, and these few are known, and they know us; upon the shore, there is a world to humor, and a world of strangers. In a brilliant drawing-room looking out upon the site of old Charing-Cross, and upon the one-armed Nelson, standing aloft at his coil of rope, I take leave of the fair voyager of the sea. Her white negligé has given place to silks; and the simple careless coiffe of the ocean, is replaced by the rich dressing of a modiste. Yet her face has the same bloom upon it; and her eye sparkles, as it seems to me, with a higher pride; and her little hand has I think a tremulous quiver in it (I am sure my own has)—as I bid her adieu, and take up the trail of my wanderings into the heart of England.
Abuse her, as we will—pity her starving peasantry, as we may—smile at her court pageantry, as much as we like—old England is dear old England still. Her cottage homes, her green fields, her castles, her blazing firesides, her church spires are as old as songs; and by song and story, we inherit them in our hearts. This joyous boast, was, I remember, upon my lip, as I first trod upon the rich meadow of Runnymede; and recalled that Great Charter: wrested from the king, which made the first stepping stone toward the bounties of our western freedom.
It is a strange feeling that comes over the Western Saxon, as he strolls first along the green by-lanes of England, and scents the hawthorn in its April bloom, and lingers at some quaint stile to watch the rooks wheeling and cawing around some lofty elm-tops, and traces the carved gables of some old country mansion that lies in their shadow, and hums some fragment of charming English poesy, that seems made for the scene. This is not sight-seeing, nor travel; it is dreaming sweet dreams, that are fed with the old life of Books.
I wander on, fearing to break the dream, by a swift step; and winding and rising between the blooming hedgerows, I come presently to the sight of some sweet valley below me, where a thatched hamlet lies sleeping in the April sun, as quietly as the dead lie in history; no sound reaches me save the occasional clink of the smith’s hammer, or the hedgeman’s bill-hook, or the plowman’s “ho-tup,” from the hills. At evening, listening to the nightingale, I stroll wearily into some close-nestled village, that I had seen long ago from a rolling height. It is far away from the great lines of travel—and the children stop their play to have a look at me, and the rosy-faced girls peep from behind half opened doors.
Standing apart, and with a bench on either side of the entrance, is the inn of the Eagle and the Falcon—which guardian birds, some native Dick Tinto has pictured upon the swinging signboard at the corner. The hostess is half ready to embrace me, and treats me like a prince in disguise. She shows me through the tap-room into a little parlor, with white curtains, and with neatly framed prints of the old patriarchs. Here, alone beside a brisk fire, kindled with furze, I watch the white flame leaping playfully through the black lumps of coal, and enjoy the best fare of the Eagle and the Falcon. If too late, or too early for her garden stock, the hostess bethinks herself of some small pot of jelly in an out-of-the-way cupboard of the house, and setting it temptingly in her prettiest dish, she coyly slips it upon the white cloth, with a modest regret that it is no better; and a little evident satisfaction—that it is so good.
I muse for an hour before the glowing fire, as quiet as the cat that has come in, to bear me company; and at bedtime, I find sheets, as fresh as the air of the mountains.
At another time, and many months later, I am walking under a wood of Scottish firs. It is near nightfall, and the fir tops are swaying, and sighing hoarsely, in the cool wind of the Northern Highlands. There is none of the smiling landscape of England about me; and the crags of Edinburgh and Castle Stirling, and sweet Perth, in its silver valley, are far to the southward. The larches of Athol and Bruar Water, and that highland gem—Dunkeld, are passed. I am tired with a morning’s tramp over Culloden Moor; and from the edge of the wood there stretches before me, in the cool gray twilight, broad fields of heather. In the middle, there rise against the night-sky, the turrets of a castle; it is Castle Cawdor, where King Duncan was murdered by Macbeth.
The sight of it lends a spur to my weary step; and emerging from the wood, I bound over the springy heather. In an hour, I clamber a broken wall, and come under the frowning shadows of the castle. The ivy clambers up here and there, and shakes its uncropped branches, and its dried berries over the heavy portal. I cross the moat, and my step makes the chains of the drawbridge rattle. All is kept in the old state; only in lieu of the warder’s horn, I pull at the warder’s bell. The echoes ring, and die in the stone courts; but there is no one astir, nor is there a light at any of the castle windows. I ring again, and the echoes come, and blend with the rising night wind that sighs around the turrets, as they sighed that night of murder. I fancy—it must be a fancy—that I hear an owl scream; I am sure that I hear the crickets cry.
I sit down upon the green bank of the moat; a little dark water lies in the bottom. The walls rise from it gray and stern in the deepening shadows. I hum chance passages of Macbeth, listening for the echoes—echoes from the wall; and echoes from that far-away time, when I stole the first reading of the tragic story.
And the sharp echo comes back—“Hark!” And at dead of night, in the thatched cottage under the castle walls, where a dark-faced, Gaelic woman, in plaid turban, is my hostess, I wake, startled by the wind, and my trembling lips say involuntarily—“hark!”
Again, three months later, I am in the sweet county of Devon. Its valleys are like emerald; its threads of waters stretched over the fields, by their provident husbandry, glisten in the broad glow of summer, like skeins of silk. A bland old farmer, of the true British stamp, is my host. On market days he rides over to the old town of Totness, in a trim, black farmer’s cart; and he wears glossy-topped boots, and a broad-brimmed white hat. I take a vast deal of pleasure in listening to his honest, straight-forward talk about the improvements of the day and the state of the nation. I sometimes get upon one of his nags, and ride off with him over his fields, or visit the homes of the laborers, which show their gray roofs, in every charming nook of the landscape. At the parish church I doze against the high pew backs, as I listen to the see-saw tones of the drawling curate; and in my half wakeful moments, the withered holly sprigs (not removed since Easter) grow upon my vision, into Christmas boughs, and preach sermons to me—of the days of old.
Sometimes, I wander far over the hills into a neighboring park; and spend hours on hours under the sturdy oaks, watching the sleek fallow deer gazing at me with their soft liquid eyes. The squirrels, too, play above me, with their daring leaps, utterly careless of my presence, and the pheasants whir away from my very feet.
On one of these random strolls—I remember it very well—when I was idling along, thinking of the broad reach of water that lay between me and that old forest home—and beating off the daisy heads with my cane—I heard the tramp of horses coming up one of the forest avenues. The sound was unusual, for the family, I had been told, was still in town, and no right of way lay through the park. There they were, however: I was sure it must be the family, from the careless way in which they came sauntering up.
First, there was a noble hound that came bounding toward me—gazed a moment, and turned to watch the approach of the little cavalcade. Next was an elderly gentleman mounted upon a spirited hunter, attended by a boy of some dozen years, who managed his pony with a grace, that is a part of the English boy’s education. Then followed two older lads, and a traveling phaëton in which sat a couple of elderly ladies. But what most drew my attention was a girlish figure, that rode beyond the carriage, upon a sleek-limbed gray. There was something in the easy grace of her attitude, and the rich glow that lit up her face—heightened as it was, by the little black riding cap, relieved with a single flowing plume—that kept my eye. It was strange, but I thought that I had seen such a figure before, and such a face, and such an eye; and as I made the ordinary salutation of a stranger, and caught her smile, I could have sworn that it was she—my fair companion of the ocean. The truth flashed upon me in a moment. She was to visit, she had told me, a friend in the south of England; and this was the friend’s home; and one of the ladies of the carriage was her mother; and one of the lads, the schoolboy brother, who had teased her on the sea.
I recall now perfectly her frank manner, as she ungloved her hand to bid me welcome. I strolled beside them to the steps. Old Devon had suddenly renewed its beauties for me. I had much to tell her, of the little outlying nooks, which my wayward feet had led me to: and she—as much to ask. My stay with the bland old farmer lengthened; and two days’ hospitalities at the Park ran over into three, and four. There was hard galloping down those avenues; and new strolls, not at all lonely, under the sturdy oaks. The long summer twilight of England used to find a very happy fellow lingering on the garden terrace—looking, now at the rookery, where the belated birds quarreled for a resting place, and now down the long forest vista, gray with distance, and closed with the white spire of Madbury church.
English country life gains fast upon one—very fast; and it is not so easy, as in the drawing-room of Charing Cross, to say—adieu! But it is said—very sadly said; for God only knows how long it is to last. And as I rode slowly down toward the lodge after my leave-taking, I turned back again, and again, and again. I thought I saw her standing still upon the terrace, though it was almost dark; and I thought—it could hardly have been an illusion—that I saw something white waving from her hand.
Her name—as if I could forget it—was Caroline; her mother called her—Carry. I wondered how it would seem for me to call her—Carry! I tried it—it sounded well. I tried it—over and over—until I came too near the lodge. There I threw a half crown to the woman who opened the gate for me. She courtesied low, and said—“God bless you, sir!”
I liked her for it; I would have given a guinea for it: and that night—whether it was the old woman’s benediction, or the waving scarf upon the terrace, I do not know—but there was a charm upon my thought, and my hope, as if an angel had been near me.
It passed away though in my dreams; for I dreamed that I saw the sweet face of Bella in an English park, and that she wore a black-velvet riding cap, with a plume; and I came up to her and murmured, very sweetly, I thought—“Carry, dear Carry!” and she started, looked sadly at me, and turned away. I ran after her, to kiss her as I did when she sat upon my mother’s lap, on the day when she came near drowning: I longed to tell her, as I did then—I do love you. But she turned her tearful face upon me, I dreamed; and then—I saw no more.