She and I

She and I - Volume 1
by John Conroy Hutcheson
CHAPTER ONE.
AT FIRST SIGHT.
"I muse, as in a trance, when e'er The languors of thy love-deep eyes
Float on me. I would I were So tranced, so wrapt in ecstasies, To stand
apart, and to adore, Gazing on thee for evermore!"
I saw her first in church.
Do you happen to know a quaint, dreamy old region in the west of
London, which bricks and mortar have not, as yet, overtaken, nor
newfangled villas vulgarised?
A region of innumerable market gardens that are principally laid out in
long, narrow beds, lost into nothingness as they dwindle down in the
dim vista of perspective, and which are planted with curly endive,
piquante- looking lettuces, and early cabbages; squat rows of
gooseberry bushes and currant trees, with a rose set here and there in
between; and sweet- smelling, besides, of hidden violets and
honeysuckles, and the pink and white hawthorn of the hedges in May:--
A region of country lanes, ever winding and seemingly never ending,
leading down to and past and from the whilom silent, whilom bustling
river, that never heeds their tortuous intricacies, but hurries by on its
way through the busy city towards the sea below; lanes wherein are to
be occasionally met with curious old stone houses, of almost historical
antecedents and dreamy as the region in which they lie, scattered about
in the queerest situations without plan or precedent, on which the
casual pedestrian comes when he least expects:--

Do you know this quaint old region, this fleeting oasis in the Sahara of
the building-mad suburban metropolis? I do, well; its market gardens,
its circumambient lanes, its old, antiquarian stone houses, and all!
Many a time have I wandered through them; many a time watched the
heavy waggons as they went creaking on their way to town and the
great emporium at Covent Garden, groaning beneath the wealth and
weight of the vegetable produce they carried, and laden so high with
cunningly- arranged nests of baskets on baskets, that one believed each
moment that they would topple over, and held the breath for fear of
hastening their fall; many a time sought to trace each curving lane to its
probable goal, or tried to hunt out the hidden histories which lay
concealed within the crumbling walls of the old dwellings on which I
might happen to light in my walks.
But my favourite ramble, eclipsing all others now in pleasant
recollections of by-gone days, was through the Prebend's Walk,
bordered with its noble grove of stately lime trees and oaks and elms on
either hand; and passing by open fields, that are, in spring, rich with
yellow buttercups and star-spangled daisies, and, in summer, ripe with
the aromatic odours of new-mown hay.
The Prebend's Walk, beyond where the lime-grove ends, whence the
prebend's residence can be faintly distinguished through the clustering
masses of tree-foliage, merges into the open, commanding the river in
front; but it is still marked out by a stray elm or horse-chestnut, placed
at scanty intervals, to keep up the idea of the ancient avenue beyond.
Here, turning to the right and crossing a piece of unkempt land, half
copse, half meadow, the scene again changed.
You came to a stile. That surmounted and left behind, a narrow by-path
led you through its twisting turns until you reached a tiny, rustic stone
bridge--such a tiny, little bridge! This was over the sluice and aqueduct
from the adjacent river, which supplied the fosse that in olden times
surrounded the prebend's residence, when there were such things as
sieges and besiegements in this fair land of ours.

The prebend's residence was then a castle, protected, probably, by
battlements and mantlets and turreted walls, and with its keep and its
drawbridge, its postern and its fosse--simple works of defence that were
armed for retaliation, with catapult and mangonel, the canon raye of the
period, besides arquebuse and other hand weapons wielded, no doubt,
by mighty men at arms, mail-clad and helmeted, who knew how to give
and take with the best of them; now, it was but a peaceful priest's
dwelling, inhabited by as true a clergyman and gentleman as ever lived,
although it was still a fine old house.
As for the fosse, it sank long ages ago to the level and capacity of a
common ditch, and was almost hidden from view by the overhanging
boughs and branches of the park trees on the opposite side, and the
half- decayed trunks of former monarchs of the forest that filled its
bed--a ditch covered with a superstratum of slimy, green water, lank
weeds, and rank vegetation; and wherein, at flood time, urchin anglers
could fish for eels and sticklebats, and, at ebb, the village ducks disport