Deadham Hard | Page 7

by blue-brown
waterways--gather, as a brood of chickens gathers about a mothering

hen. Beyond lie the pale glinting levels of the estuary, guarded on the
west by gently upward sloping cornlands and on the south by the dark
furze and heath-clad mass of Stone Horse Head. Beyond again, to the
low horizon, stretches the Channel sea.
The very simplicity of the picture gives it singular dignity and repose.
Classic in its clearness of outline and paucity of detail, mediaeval in
sentiment, since the great Norman church dominates the whole, its
appeal is at once wistful and severe. And, this afternoon, just as the
nearness 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