The Complete Essays | Page 7

voice became quite fervent, when she had
evidently failed to follow; it was as if he would have been impatient,
only he knew he must not, because she was a lady and younger than
himself, and he loved her.
They sat down just below my nook, and began to count the petals of a
chicory flower, and slowly she nestled in to him, and he put his arm
round her. Never did I see such sedate, sweet lovering, so trusting on
her part, so guardianlike on his. They were like, in miniature--- though
more dewy,--those sober couples who have long lived together, yet
whom one still catches looking at each other with confidential
tenderness, and in whom, one feels, passion is atrophied from never
having been in use.
Long I sat watching them in their cool communion, half-embraced,

talking a little, smiling a little, never once kissing. They did not seem
shy of that; it was rather as if they were too much each other's to think
of such a thing. And then her head slid lower and lower down his
shoulder, and sleep buttoned the lids over those chicory- blue eyes.
How careful he was, then, not to wake her, though I could see his arm
was getting stiff! He still sat, good as gold, holding her, till it began
quite to hurt me to see his shoulder thus in chancery. But presently I
saw him draw his arm away ever so carefully, lay her head down on the
grass, and lean forward to stare at something. Straight in front of them
was a magpie, balancing itself on a stripped twig of thorn-tree. The
agitating bird, painted of night and day, was making a queer noise and
flirting one wing, as if trying to attract attention. Rising from the twig,
it circled, vivid and stealthy, twice round the tree, and flew to another a
dozen paces off. The boy rose; he looked at his little mate, looked at the
bird, and began quietly to move toward it; but uttering again its queer
call, the bird glided on to a third thorn-tree. The boy hesitated then--but
once more the bird flew on, arid suddenly dipped over the hill. I saw
the boy break into a run; and getting up quickly, I ran too.
When I reached the crest there was the black and white bird flying low
into a dell, and there the boy, with hair streaming back, was rushing
helter-skelter down the hill. He reached the bottom and vanished into
the dell. I, too, ran down the hill. For all that I was prying and must not
be seen by bird or boy, I crept warily in among the trees to the edge of
a pool that could know but little sunlight, so thickly arched was it by
willows, birch-trees, and wild hazel. There, in a swing of boughs above
the water, was perched no pied bird, but a young, dark-haired girl with,
dangling, bare, brown legs. And on the brink of the black water
goldened, with fallen leaves, the boy was crouching, gazing up at her
with all his soul. She swung just out of reach and looked down at him
across the pool. How old was she, with her brown limbs, and her
gleaming, slanting eyes? Or was she only the spirit of the dell, this
elf-thing swinging there, entwined with boughs and the dark water, and
covered with a shift of wet birch leaves. So strange a face she had, wild,
almost wicked, yet so tender; a face that I could not take my eyes from.
Her bare toes just touched the pool, and flicked up drops of water that
fell on the boy's face.
>From him all the sober steadfastness was gone; already he looked as

wild as she, and his arms were stretched out trying to reach her feet. I
wanted to cry to him: "Go back, boy, go back!" but could not; her elf
eyes held me dumb-they looked so lost in their tender wildness.
And then my heart stood still, for he had slipped and was struggling in
deep water beneath her feet. What a gaze was that he was turning up to
her--not frightened, but so longing, so desperate; and hers how
triumphant, and how happy!
And then he clutched her foot, and clung, and climbed; and bending
down, she drew him up to her, all wet, and clasped him in the swing of
boughs.
I took a long breath then. An orange gleam of sunlight had flamed in
among the shadows and fell round those two where they swung over
the dark water, with lips close together and spirits lost in one another's,
and in their eyes such drowning ecstasy! And then they kissed! All
round me pool, and leaves, and air