Deadham Hard | Page 7

of the sea tempered the atmosphere lifting all oppressive weight from the brooding sunshine, so did it temper the colouring, lending it an ethereal quality, in which blue softened to silver, grey to lavender, while green seemed overspread by powdered gold. The effect was exquisite, reminding Tom of certain water-colour drawings, by Danvers and by Appleyard, hanging in the drawing-room of the big house at Canton Magna, and of certain of Shelley's lyrics--both of which, in their different medium, breathed the same enchantment of natural and spiritual loveliness, of nameless desire, nameless regret. And, his nerves being somewhat strained by the emotions of the day, that enchantment worked upon him strangely. The inherent pathos of it, indeed, took him, as squarely as unexpectedly, by the throat. He suffered a sharp recoil from the solicitation of the future, an immense tenderness towards the past.--A tenderness for those same years of tutelage and all they had brought him, not only in over-flowing animal spirits, happy intercourse and intellectual attainment; but in their limitation of private action, their security of obligation, of obedience to authority, which at the time had seemed irksome enough and upon release from which he had so recently congratulated himself.
Love of home, of England, of his own people--of the Archdeacon, in even his most full-voiced and moralizing mood--love of things tested, accustomed and friendly, touched him to the quick. Suddenly he asked himself to what end was he leaving all these and going forth to encounter untried conditions, an unknown Nature, a moral and social order equally unknown? Looking at the peaceful, ethereally lovely landscape, set in such close proximity and notable contrast to the unrest of that historic highway of the nations, the Channel sea, he felt small and lonely, childishly diffident and weak. All the established safety and comfort of home, all the thoughtless irresponsible delights of vanished boyhood, pulled at his heart-strings. He wanted, wanted wildly, desperately, not to go forward but to go back.
Mind and body being healthy, however, the phase was a passing one, and his emotion, though sincere and poignant, of brief duration. For young blood--happily for the human story, which otherwise would read altogether too sad--defies forebodings, gaily embraces risks; and, true soldier of fortune, marches out to meet whatever fate the battlefield of manhood may hold for it, a song in its mouth and a rose behind its ear.
Tom Verity speedily came to a steadier mind, pouring honest contempt upon his momentary lapse from self-confidence. He was ashamed of it. It amounted to being silly, simply silly. He couldn't understand, couldn't account for it. What possessed him to get a regular scare like this? It was too absurd for words. Sentiment?--Yes, by all means a reasonable amount of it, well in hand and thus capable of translation--if the fancy took you--into nicely turned elegiac verse; but a scare, a scare pure and simple, wasn't to be tolerated! And he got up, standing astraddle to brace himself against the swinging of the train, while he stretched, settling himself in his clothes--pulled down the fronts of his waistcoat, buttoned the jacket of his light check suit; and, taking off his wide-awake, smoothed his soft, slightly curly russet-coloured hair with his hand. These adjustments, and the assurance they induced that his personal appearance was all which it should be, completed his moral restoration. He stepped down on to the platform, into the serene light and freshness, as engaging and hopeful a youth of three and twenty as any one need ask to see.
"For The Hard? Very good, sir. Sir Charles's trap is outside in the station yard. One portmanteau in the van? Quite so. Don't trouble yourself about it, sir. I'll send a porter to bring it along."
This from the station-master, with a degree of friendly deference far from displeasing to the recipient of it.
Whatever the defects of the rank and file of the Verity family in respect of liberal ideas, it can safely be asserted of all its members, male and female, clerical and lay, alike, that they belonged to the equestrian order. Hence it added considerably to Tom's recovered self-complacency to find a smart two-wheel dog-cart awaiting him, drawn by a remarkably well-shaped and well-groomed black horse. The coachman was to match. Middle-aged, clean-shaven, his Napoleonic face set as a mask, his undress livery of pepper-and-salt mixture soberly immaculate. He touched his hat when our young gentleman appeared and mounted beside him; the horse, meanwhile, shivering a little and showing the red of its nostrils as the train, with strident whistlings, drew out of the station bound westward to Stourmouth and Barryport.
Later the horse broke up the abiding inertia of Marychurch High Street, by dancing as it passed the engine of a slowly ambulant thrashing machine; and only settled fairly into its