Alice | Page 4

stirring. So she tripped along, singing from very glee, to secure
a companion, and let out Sultan; and a few moments afterwards, they
were scouring over the grass, and descending the rude steps that wound
down the cliff to the smooth sea sands. Evelyn was still a child at heart,
yet somewhat more than a child in mind. In the majesty of--
"That hollow, sounding, and mysterious main,"--
in the silence broken but by the murmur of the billows, in the solitude
relieved but by the boats of the early fishermen, she felt those deep and
tranquillizing influences which belong to the Religion of Nature.
Unconsciously to herself, her sweet face grew more thoughtful, and her
step more slow. What a complex thing is education! How many
circumstances, that have no connection with books and tutors,
contribute to the rearing of the human mind! The earth and the sky and
the ocean were among the teachers of Evelyn Cameron; and beneath
her simplicity of thought was daily filled, from the turns of invisible
spirits, the fountain of the poetry of feeling.
This was the hour when Evelyn most sensibly felt how little our real
life is chronicled by external events,--how much we live a second and a
higher life in our meditations and dreams. Brought up, not more by
precept than example, in the faith which unites creature and Creator,
this was the hour in which thought itself had something of the holiness
of prayer; and if (turning from dreams divine to earlier visions) this
also was the hour in which the heart painted and peopled its own
fairyland below, of the two ideal worlds that stretch beyond the inch of
time on which we stand, Imagination is perhaps holier than Memory.
So now, as the day crept on, Evelyn returned in a more sober mood,
and then she joined her mother and Mrs. Leslie at breakfast; and then
the household cares--such as they were--devolved upon her, heiress
though she was; and, that duty done, once more the straw hat and
Sultan were in requisition; and opening a little gate at the back of the
cottage, she took the path along the village churchyard that led to the

house of the old curate. The burial-ground itself was surrounded and
shut in with a belt of trees. Save the small time-discoloured church and
the roofs of the cottage and the minister's house, no building--not even
a cotter's hut--was visible there. Beneath a dark and single yew-tree in
the centre of the ground was placed a rude seat; opposite to this seat
was a grave, distinguished from the rest by a slight palisade. As the
young Evelyn passed slowly by this spot, a glove on the long damp
grass beside the yew-tree caught her eye. She took it up and sighed,--it
was her mother's. She sighed, for she thought of the soft melancholy on
that mother's face which her caresses and her mirth never could wholly
chase away. She wondered why that melancholy was so fixed a habit,
for the young ever wonder why the experienced should be sad.
And now Evelyn had passed the churchyard, and was on the green turf
before the minister's quaint, old-fashioned house. The old man himself
was at work in his garden; but he threw down his hoe as he saw Evelyn,
and came cheerfully up to greet her.
It was easy to see how dear she was to him.
"So you are come for your daily lesson, my young pupil?"
"Yes; but Tasso can wait if the--"
"If the tutor wants to play truant; no, my child; and, indeed, the lesson
must be longer than usual to-day, for I fear I shall have to leave you
to-morrow for some days."
"Leave us! why?--leave Brook-Green--impossible!"
"Not at all impossible; for we have now a new vicar, and I must turn
courtier in my old age, and ask him to leave me with my flock. He is at
Weymouth, and has written to me to visit him there. So, Miss Evelyn, I
must give you a holiday task to learn while I am away."
Evelyn brushed the tears from her eyes--for when the heart is full of
affection the eyes easily run over--and clung mournfully to the old man,
as she gave utterance to all her half-childish, half-womanly grief at the

thought of parting so soon with him. And what, too, could her mother
do without him; and why could he not write to the vicar instead of
going to him?
The curate, who was childless and a bachelor, was not insensible to the
fondness of his beautiful pupil, and perhaps he himself was a little
more distrait than usual that morning, or else Evelyn was peculiarly
inattentive; for certain it is that she reaped very little benefit from