Two Years Ago, Volume I | Page 8

the flat park, past the great house with its Doric fa?ade, which the eighteenth century had raised above the quiet cell of the Minchampstead recluses.
"It is very ugly," said Stangrave; and truly.
"Comfortable enough, though; and, as somebody said, people live inside their houses, and not outside 'em. You should see the pictures there, though, while you're in the country. I can show you one or two, too, I hope. Never grudge money for good pictures. The pleasantest furniture in the world, as long as you keep them; and if you're tired of them, always fetch double their price."
After Minchampstead, the rail leaves the sands and clays, and turns up between the chalk hills, along the barge river which it has rendered useless, save as a supernumerary trout-stream; and then along Whit, now flowing clearer and clearer, as we approach its springs amid the lofty clowns. On through more water-meadows, and rows of pollard willow, and peat-pits crested with tall golden reeds, and still dykes,--each in summer a floating flower-bed; while Stangrave looks out of the window, his face lighting up with curiosity.
"How perfectly English! At least, how perfectly un-American! It is just Tennyson's beautiful dream--"
'On either side the river lie Long fields, of barley and of rye, Which clothe the wold and meet the sky, And through the field the stream runs by, To many towered Camelot.'
"Why, what is this?" as they stop again at a station, where the board bears, in large letters, "Shalott."
"Shalott? Where are the
'Four grey walls, and four grey towers,'
which overlook a space of flowers?"
There, upon the little island, are the castle-ruins, now converted into a useful bone-mill. "And the lady?--is that she?"
It was only the miller's daughter, fresh from a boarding-school, gardening in a broad straw-hat.
"At least," said Claude, "she is tending far prettier flowers than ever the lady saw; while the lady herself, instead of weaving and dreaming, is reading Miss Young's novels, and becoming all the wiser thereby, and teaching poor children in Hemmelford National School."
"And where is her fairy knight," asked Stangrave, "whom one half hopes to see riding down from that grand old house which sulks there above among the beech-woods as if frowning on all the change and civilisation below!"
"You do old Sidricstone injustice. Vieuxbois descends from thence, now-a-days, to lecture at mechanics' institutes, instead of the fairy knight, toiling along in the blazing summer weather, sweating in burning metal, like poor Perillus in his own bull."
"Then the fairy knight is extinct in England!" asked Stangrave, smiling.
"No man less; only he (not Vieuxbois, but his younger brother) has found a wide-awake cooler than an iron kettle, and travels by rail when he is at home; and when he was in the Crimea, rode a shaggy pony, and smoked cavendish all through the battle of Inkermann."
"He showed himself the old Sir Lancelot there," said Stangrave,
"He did. Wherefore the lady married him when the Guards came home; and he will breed prize pigs; and sit at the board of guardians; and take in the Times; clothed, and in his right mind; for the old Berserk spirit is gone out of him; and he is become respectable, in a respectable age, and is nevertheless just as brave a fellow as ever."
"And so all things are changed, except the river; where still--
'Willows whiten, aspens quiver. Little breezes dash and shiver On the stream that runneth ever.'"
"And," said Claude, smiling, "the descendants of mediaeval trout snap at the descendants of mediaeval flies, spinning about upon just the same sized and coloured wings on which their forefathers spun a thousand years ago; having become, in all that while, neither bigger nor wiser."
"But is it not a grand thought," asked Stangrave,--"the silence and permanence of nature amid the perpetual flux and noise of human life?--a grand thought that one generation goeth and another cometh, and the earth abideth for ever?"
"At least it is so much the worse for the poor old earth, if her doom is to stand still, while man improves and progresses from age to age."
"May I ask one question, sir?" said Stangrave, who saw that their conversation was puzzling their jolly companion. "Have you heard any news yet of Mr. Thurnall!"
Mark looked him full in the face.
"Do you know him?"
"I did, in past years, most intimately."
"Then you knew the finest fellow, sir, that ever walked mortal earth."
"I have discovered that, sir, as well as you. I am under obligations to that man which my heart's blood will not repay. I shall make no secret of telling you what they are at a fit time."
Mark held out his broad red hand, and grasped Stangrave's till the joints cracked: his face grew as red as a turkey-cock's; his eyes filled with tears.
"His father must hear that! Hang it; his father must hear that! And Grace too!"
"Grace!"