Two Years Ago Volume I Part 2

"Trust us for that, sir! We know a man when we see him here; I hope they'll do the same across the water."

There was silence for a minute or two; and then Mark began again.

"Look!--there's the farm; that's my lord's. I should like to show you the short-horns there, sir!--all my Lord Ducie's and Sir Edward Knightley's stock; bought a bull-calf of him the other day myself for a cool hundred, old fool that I am. Never mind, spreads the breed. And here are mills--four pair of new stones. Old Whit don't know herself again. But I dare say they look small enough to you, sir, after your American water-power."

"What of that? It is just as honourable in you to make the most of a small river, as in us to make the most of a large one."

"You speak like a book, sir. By the by, if you think of taking home a calf or two, to improve your New England breed--there are a good many gone across the sea in the last few years--I think we could find you three or four beauties, not so very dear, considering the blood."

"Thanks; but I really am no farmer."

"Well--no offence, I hope: but I am like your Yankees in one thing, you see;--always have an eye to a bit of business. If I didn't, I shouldn't be here now."

"How very tasteful!--our own American shrubs! what a pity that they are not in flower! What is this," asked Stangrave,--"one of your n.o.blemen's parks?"

And they began to run through the cutting in Minchampstead Park, where the owner has concealed the banks of the rail for nearly half a mile, in a thicket of azaleas, rhododendrons, and clambering roses.

"All!--isn't it pretty? His lordship let us have the land for a song; only bargained that we should keep low, not to spoil his view; and so we did; and he's planted our cutting for us. I call that a present to the county, and a very pretty one too! Ah, give me these new brooms that sweep clean!"

"Your old brooms, like Lord Vieuxbois, were new brooms once, and swept well enough five hundred years ago," said Stangrave, who had that filial reverence for English antiquity which sits so gracefully upon many highly educated and far-sighted Americans.

"Worn to the stumps, now, too many of them, sir; and want new-hething, as our broom-squires would say; and I doubt whether most of them are worth the cost of a fresh bind. Not that I can say that of the young lord. He's foremost in all that's good, if he had but money; and when he hasn't, he gives brains. Gave a lecture, in our inst.i.tute at Whitford, last winter, on the four great Poets. Shot over my head a little, and other people's too: but my Mary--my daughter, sir, thought it beautiful; and there's nothing that she don't know."

"It is very hopeful, to see your aristocracy joining in the general movement, and bringing their taste and knowledge to bear on the lower cla.s.ses."

"Yes, sir! We're going all right now, in the old country. Only have to steer straight, and not put on too much steam. But give me the new-comers, after all. They may be close men of business;--how else could one live? But when it comes to giving, I'll back them against the old ones for generosity, or taste either. They've their proper pride, when they get hold of the land; and they like to show it, and quite right they. You must see my little place too. It's not in such bad order, though I say it, and am but a country banker: but I'll back my flowers against half the squires round--my Mary's, that is--and my fruit too.--See, there! There's my lord's new schools, and his model cottages, with more comforts in them, saving the size, than my father's house had; and there's his barrack, as he calls it, for the unmarried men--reading-room, and dining-room, in common; and a library of books, and a sleeping-room for each."

"It seems strange to complain of prosperity," said Stangrave; "but I sometimes regret that in America there is so little room for the very highest virtues; all are so well off, that one never needs to give; and what a man does here for others, they do for themselves."

"So much the better for them. There are other ways of being generous besides putting your hand in your pocket, sir! By Jove! there'll be room enough (if you'll excuse me) for an American to do fine things, as long as those poor negro slaves--"

"I know it; I know it," said Stangrave, in the tone of a man who had already made up his mind on a painful subject, and wished to hear no more of it. "You will excuse me; but I am come here to learn what I can of England. Of my own country I know enough, I trust, to do my duty in it when I return."

Mark was silent, seeing that he had touched a tender place; and pointed out one object of interest after another, as they ran through the flat park, past the great house with its Doric facade, which the eighteenth century had raised above the quiet cell of the Minchampstead recluses.

"It is very ugly," said Stangrave; and truly.

"Comfortable enough, though; and, as somebody said, people live inside their houses, and not outside 'em. You should see the pictures there, though, while you're in the country. I can show you one or two, too, I hope. Never grudge money for good pictures. The pleasantest furniture in the world, as long as you keep them; and if you're tired of them, always fetch double their price."

After Minchampstead, the rail leaves the sands and clays, and turns up between the chalk hills, along the barge river which it has rendered useless, save as a supernumerary trout-stream; and then along Whit, now flowing clearer and clearer, as we approach its springs amid the lofty clowns. On through more water-meadows, and rows of pollard willow, and peat-pits crested with tall golden reeds, and still d.y.k.es,--each in summer a floating flower-bed; while Stangrave looks out of the window, his face lighting up with curiosity.

"How perfectly English! At least, how perfectly un-American! It is just Tennyson's beautiful dream--"

'On either side the river lie Long fields, of barley and of rye, Which clothe the wold and meet the sky, And through the field the stream runs by, To many towered Camelot.'

"Why, what is this?" as they stop 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 s.p.a.ce 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' inst.i.tutes, 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 s.h.a.ggy 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-c.o.c.k's; his eyes filled with tears.

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