CHAPTER I

HE

Passing over Ickleworth Bridge and rounding up the heavily-shadowed river

of our narrow valley, I perceived a commotion as of bathers in a certain

bright space immediately underneath the vicar's terrace-garden steps. My

astonishment was considerable when it became evident to me that the vicar

himself was disporting in the water, which, reaching no higher than his

waist, disclosed him in the ordinary habiliments of his cloth. I knew my

friend to be one of the most absent-minded of men, and my first effort to

explain the phenomenon of his appearance there, suggested that he might

have walked in, the victim of a fit of abstraction, and that he had not

yet fully comprehended his plight; but this idea was dispersed when I

beheld the very portly lady, his partner in joy and adversity, standing

immersed, and perfectly attired, some short distance nearer to the bank.

As I advanced along the bank opposed to them, I was further amazed to

hear them discoursing quite equably together, so that it was impossible

to say on the face of it whether a catastrophe had occurred, or the great

heat of a cloudless summer day had tempted an eccentric couple to seek

for coolness in the directest fashion, without absolute disregard to

propriety. I made a point of listening for the accentuation of the 'my

dear' which was being interchanged, but the key-note to the harmony

existing between husband and wife was neither excessively unctuous, nor

shrewd, and the connubial shuttlecock was so well kept up on both sides

that I chose to await the issue rather than speculate on the origin of

this strange exhibition. I therefore, as I could not be accused of an

outrage to modesty, permitted myself to maintain what might be

invidiously termed a satyr-like watch from behind a forward flinging

willow, whose business in life was to look at its image in a brown depth,

branches, trunk, and roots. The sole indication of discomfort displayed

by the pair was that the lady's hand worked somewhat fretfully to keep

her dress from ballooning and puffing out of all proportion round about

her person, while the vicar, who stood without his hat, employed a spongy

handkerchief from time to time in tempering the ardours of a vertical

sun. If you will consent to imagine a bald blackbird, his neck being

shrunk in apprehensively, as you may see him in the first rolling of the

thunder, you will gather an image of my friend's appearance.

He performed his capital ablutions with many loud 'poofs,' and a casting

up of dazzled eyes, an action that gave point to his recital of the

invocation of Chryses to Smintheus which brought upon the Greeks disaster

and much woe. Between the lines he replied to his wife, whose remarks

increased in quantity, and also, as I thought, in emphasis, under the

river of verse which he poured forth unbaffled, broadening his chest to

the sonorous Greek music in a singular rapture of obliviousness.

A wise man will not squander his laughter if he can help it, but will

keep the agitation of it down as long as he may. The simmering of humour

sends a lively spirit into the mind, whereas the boiling over is but a

prodigal expenditure and the disturbance of a clear current: for the

comic element is visible to you in all things, if you do but keep your

mind charged with the perception of it, as I have heard a great expounder

deliver himself on another subject; and he spoke very truly. So, I

continued to look on with the gravity of Nature herself, and I could not

but fancy, and with less than our usual wilfulness when we fancy things

about Nature's moods, that the Mother of men beheld this scene with half

a smile, differently from the simple observation of those cows whisking

the flies from their flanks at the edge of the shorn meadow and its

aspens, seen beneath the curved roof of a broad oak-branch. Save for this

happy upward curve of the branch, we are encompassed by breathless

foliage; even the gloom was hot; the little insects that are food for

fish tried a flight and fell on the water's surface, as if panting. Here

and there, a sullen fish consented to take them, and a circle spread,

telling of past excitement.

I had listened to the vicar's Homeric lowing for the space of a minute or

so--what some one has called, the great beast-like, bellow-like, roar and

roll of the Iliad hexameter: it stopped like a cut cord. One of the

numerous daughters of his house appeared in the arch of white

cluster-roses on the lower garden-terrace, and with an exclamation, stood

petrified at the extraordinary spectacle, and then she laughed outright.

I had hitherto resisted, but the young lady's frank and boisterous

laughter carried me along, and I too let loose a peal, and discovered

myself. The vicar, seeing me, acknowledged a consciousness of his absurd

position with a laugh as loud. As for the scapegrace girl, she went off

into a run of high-pitched shriekings like twenty woodpeckers, crying: I

Mama, mama, you look as if you were in Jordan!'

The vicar cleared his throat admonishingly, for it was apparent that Miss

Alice was giving offence to her mother, and I presume he thought it was

enough for one of the family to have done so.

'Wilt thou come out of Jordan?' I cried.

'I am sufficiently baptized with the water,' said the helpless man. . .

'Indeed, Mr. Amble,' observed his spouse, 'you can lecture a woman for

not making the best of circumstances; I hope you'll bear in mind that

it's you who are irreverent. I can endure this no longer. You deserve Mr.

Pollingray's ridicule.'

Upon this, I interposed: 'Pray, ma'am, don't imagine that you have

anything but sympathy from me.'--but as I was protesting, having my mouth

open, the terrible Miss Alice dragged the laughter remorselessly out of

me.

They have been trying Frank's new boat, Mr. Pollingray, and they've upset

it. Oh! oh' and again there was the woodpeckers' chorus.

'Alice, I desire you instantly to go and fetch John the gardener,' said

the angry mother.

'Mama, I can't move; wait a minute, only a minute. John's gone about the

geraniums. Oh! don't look so resigned, papa; you'll kill me! Mama, come

and take my hand. Oh! oh!'

The young lady put her hands in against her waist and rolled her body

like a possessed one.

'Why don't you come in through the boat-house?' she asked when she had

mastered her fit.

'Ah!' said the vicar. I beheld him struck by this new thought.

'How utterly absurd you are, Mr. Amble!' exclaimed his wife, 'when you

know that the boat-house is locked, and that the boat was lying under the

camshot when you persuaded me to step into it.'

Hearing this explanation of the accident, Alice gave way to an

ungovernable emotion.

'You see, my dear,' the vicar addressed his wife, she can do nothing;

it's useless. If ever patience is counselled to us, it is when accidents

befall us, for then, as we are not responsible, we know we are in other

hands, and it is our duty to be comparatively passive. Perhaps I may say

that in every difficulty, patience is a life-belt. I beg of you to be

patient still.'

'Mr. Amble, I shall think you foolish,' said the spouse, with a nod of

more than emphasis.

My dear, you have only to decide,' was the meek reply.

By this time, Miss Alice had so far conquered the fiend of laughter that

she could venture to summon her mother close up to the bank and extend a

rescuing hand. Mrs. Amble waded to within reach, her husband following.

Arrangements were made for Alice to pull, and the vicar to push; both in

accordance with Mrs. Amble's stipulations, for even in her extremity of

helplessness she affected rule and sovereignty. Unhappily, at the

decisive moment, I chanced (and I admit it was more than an inadvertence

on my part, it was a most ill-considered thing to do) I chanced, I say,

to call out--and that I refrained from quoting Voltaire is something in

my favour:

'How on earth did you manage to tumble in?'

There can be no contest of opinion that I might have kept my curiosity

waiting, and possibly it may be said with some justification that I was

the direct cause of my friend's unparalleled behaviour; but could a

mortal man guess that in the very act of assisting his wife's return to

dry land, and while she was--if I may put it so--modestly in his hands,

he would turn about with a quotation that compared him to old Palinurus,

all the while allowing his worthy and admirable burden to sink lower and

dispread in excess upon the surface of the water, until the vantage of

her daughter's help was lost to her; I beheld the consequences of my

indiscretion, dismayed. I would have checked the preposterous Virgilian,

but in contempt of my uplifted hand and averted head, and regardless of

the fact that his wife was then literally dependent upon him, the vicar

declaimed (and the drenching effect produced by Latin upon a lady at such

a season, may be thought on):

Vix primos inopina quies laxaverat artus,

Et super incumbens, cum puppis parte revulsa

Cumque gubernaclo liquidas projecit in undas.'

It is not easy when you are unacquainted with the language, to retort

upon Latin, even when the attempt to do so is made in English. Very few

even of the uneducated ears can tolerate such anti-climax vituperative as

English after sounding Latin. Mrs. Amble kept down those sentiments which

her vernacular might have expressed. I heard but one groan that came from

her as she lay huddled indistinguishably in the, arms of her husband.

'Not--praecipitem! I am happy to say,' my senseless friend remarked

further, and laughed cheerfully as he fortified his statement with a run

of negatives. 'No, no'; in a way peculiar to him. 'No, no. If I plant my

grey hairs anywhere, it will be on dry land: no. But, now, my dear; he

returned to his duty; why, you're down again. Come: one, two, and up.'

He was raising a dead weight. The passion for sarcastic speech was

manifestly at war with common prudence in the bosom of Mrs. Amble;

prudence, however, overcame it. She cast on him a look of a kind that

makes matrimony terrific in the dreams of bachelors, and then wedding her

energy to the assistance given she made one of those senseless springs of

the upper half of the body, which strike the philosophic eye with the

futility of an effort that does not arise from a solid basis. Owing to

the want of concert between them, the vicar's impulsive strength was

expended when his wife's came into play. Alice clutched her mother

bravely. The vicar had force enough to stay his wife's descent; but Alice

(she boasts of her muscle) had not the force in the other direction--and

no wonder. There are few young ladies who could pull fourteen stone sheer

up a camshot.

Mrs. Amble remained in suspense between the two.

Oh, Mr. Pollingray, if you were only on this side to help us,' Miss Alice

exclaimed very piteously, though I could see that she was half mad with

the internal struggle of laughter at the parents and concern for them.

'Now, pull, Alice,' shouted the vicar.

'No, not yet,' screamed Mrs. Amble; I'm sinking.'

'Pull, Alice.'

'Now, Mama.'

'Oh!'

'Push, Papa.'

'I'm down.'

'Up, Ma'am; Jane; woman, up.'

'Gently, Papa: Abraham, I will not.'

'My dear, but you must.'

'And that man opposite.'

'What, Pollingray? He's fifty.'

I found myself walking indignantly down the path. Even now I protest my

friend was guilty of bad manners, though I make every allowance for him;

I excuse, I pass the order; but why--what justifies one man's bawling out

another man's age? What purpose does it serve? I suppose the vicar wished

to reassure his wife, on the principle (I have heard him enunciate it)

that the sexes are merged at fifty--by which he means, I must presume,

that something which may be good or bad, and is generally silly--of

course, I admire and respect modesty and pudeur as much as any

man--something has gone: a recognition of the bounds of division. There

is, if that is a lamentable matter, a loss of certain of our young tricks

at fifty. We have ceased to blush readily: and let me ask you to define a

blush. Is it an involuntary truth or an ingenuous lie? I know that this

will sound like the language of a man not a little jealous of his

youthful compeers. I can but leave it to rightly judging persons to

consider whether a healthy man in his prime, who has enough, and is not

cursed by ambition, need be jealous of any living soul.

A shriek from Miss Alice checked my retreating steps. The vicar was

staggering to support the breathing half of his partner while she

regained her footing in the bed of the river. Their effort to scale the

camshot had failed. Happily at this moment I caught sight of Master

Frank's boat, which had floated, bottom upwards, against a projecting

mud-bank of forget-me-nots. I contrived to reach it and right it, and

having secured one of the sculls, I pulled up to the rescue; though not

before I had plucked a flower, actuated by a motive that I cannot account

for. The vicar held the boat firmly against the camshot, while I, at the

imminent risk of joining them (I shall not forget the combined expression

of Miss Alice's retreating eyes and the malicious corners of her mouth)

hoisted the lady in, and the river with her. From the seat of the boat

she stood sufficiently high to project the step towards land without

peril. When she had set her foot there, we all assumed an attitude of

respectful attention, and the vicar, who could soar over calamity like a

fairweather swallow, acknowledged the return of his wife to the element

with a series of apologetic yesses and short coughings.

'That would furnish a good concert for the poets,' he remarked. 'A

parting, a separation of lovers; "even as a body from the watertorn," or

"from the water plucked"; eh? do you think--"so I weep round her, tearful

in her track," an excellent--'

But the outraged woman, dripping in grievous discomfort above him, made a

peremptory gesture.

'Mr. Amble, will you come on shore instantly, I have borne with your

stupidity long enough. I insist upon your remembering, sir, that you have

a family dependent upon you. Other men may commit these follies.'

This was a blow at myself, a bachelor whom the lady had never persuaded

to dream of relinquishing his freedom.

'My dear, I am coming,' said the vicar.

'Then, come at once, or I shall think you idiotic,' the wife retorted.

'I have been endeavouring,' the vicar now addressed me, 'to prove by a

practical demonstration that women are capable of as much philosophy as

men, under any sudden and afflicting revolution of circumstances.'

'And if you get a sunstroke, you will be rightly punished, and I shall

not be sorry, Mr. Amble.'

'I am coming, my dear Jane. Pray run into the house and change your

things.'

'Not till I see you out of the water, sir.'

'You are losing your temper, my love.'

'You would make a saint lose his temper, Mr. Amble.'

'There were female saints, my dear,' the vicar mildly responded; and

addressed me further: 'Up to this point, I assure you, Pollingray, no

conduct could have been more exemplary than Mrs. Amble's. I had got her

into the boat--a good boat, a capital boat--but getting in myself, we

overturned. The first impulse of an ordinary woman would have been to

reproach and scold; but Mrs. Amble succumbed only to the first impulse.

Discovering that all effort unaided to climb the bank was fruitless, she

agreed to wait patiently and make the best of circumstances; and she did;

and she learnt to enjoy it. There is marrow in every bone. My dear. Jane,

I have never admired you so much. I tried her, Pollingray, in

metaphysics. I talked to her of the opera we last heard, I think fifty

years ago. And as it is less endurable for a woman to be patient in

tribulation--the honour is greater, when she overcomes the fleshy trial.

Insomuch,' the vicar put on a bland air of abnegation of honour, 'that I

am disposed to consider any male philosopher our superior; when you've

found one, ha, ha--when you've found one. O sol pulcher! I am ready to

sing that the day has been glorious, so far. Pulcher ille dies.'

Mrs. Amble appealed to me. 'Would anybody not swear that he is mad to see

him standing waist-deep in the water and the sun on his bald head, I am

reduced to entreat you not to--though you have no family of your own--not

to encourage him. It is amusing to you. Pray, reflect that such folly is

too often fatal. Compel him to come on shore.'

The logic of the appeal was no doubt distinctly visible in the lady's

mind, though it was not accurately worded. I saw that I stood marked to

be the scape goat of the day, and humbly continued to deserve well,

notwithstanding. By dint of simple signs and nods of affirmative, and a

constant propulsion of my friend's arm, I drew him into the boat, and

thence projected him up to the level with his wife, who had perhaps

deigned to understand that it was best to avoid the arresting of his

divergent mind by any remark during the passage, and remained silent. No

sooner was he established on his feet, than she plucked him away.

'Your papa's hat,' she called, flashing to her daughter, and streamed up

the lawn into the rose-trellised pathways leading on aloft to the

vicarage house. Behind roses the weeping couple disappeared. The last I

saw of my friend was a smiting of his hand upon his head in a vain effort

to catch at one of the fleeting ideas sowed in him by the quick passage

of objects before his vision, and shaken out of him by abnormal hurry.

The Rev. Abraham Amble had been lord of his wife in the water, but his

innings was over. He had evidently enjoyed it vastly, and I now

understood why he had chosen to prolong it as much as possible. Your

eccentric characters are not uncommonly amateurs of petty artifice. There

are hours of vengeance even for henpecked men.

I found myself sighing over the enslaved condition of every Benedict of

my acquaintance, when the thought came like a surprise that I was alone

with Alice. The fair and pleasant damsel made a clever descent into the

boat, and having seated herself, she began to twirl the scull in the

rowlock, and said: 'Do you feel disposed to join me in looking after the

other scull and papa's hat, Mr. Pollingray?' I suggested 'Will you not

get your feet wet? I couldn't manage to empty all the water in the boat.'

'Oh' cried she, with a toss of her head; I wet feet never hurt young

people.'

There was matter for an admonitory lecture in this. Let me confess I was

about to give it, when she added: But Mr. Pollingray, I am really afraid

that your feet are wet! You had to step into the water when you righted

the boat:

My reply was to jump down by her side with as much agility as I could

combine with a proper discretion. The amateur craft rocked threateningly,

and I found myself grasped by and grasping the pretty damsel, until by

great good luck we were steadied and preserved from the same misfortune

which had befallen her parents. She laughed and blushed, and we tottered

asunder.

'Would you have talked metaphysics to me in the water, Mr. Pollingray?'

Alice was here guilty of one of those naughty sort of innocent speeches

smacking of Eve most strongly; though, of course, of Eve in her best

days.

I took the rudder lines to steer against the sculling of her single

scull, and was Adam enough to respond to temptation: 'I should perhaps

have been grateful to your charitable construction of it as being

metaphysics.'

She laughed colloquially, to fill a pause. It had not been coquetry:

merely the woman unconsciously at play. A man is bound to remember the

seniority of his years when this occurs, for a veteran of ninety and a

worn out young debauchee will equally be subject to it if they do not

shun the society of the sex. My long robust health and perfect

self-reliance apparently tend to give me unguarded moments, or lay me

open to fitful impressions. Indeed there are times when I fear I have the

heart of a boy, and certainly nothing more calamitous can be conceived,

supposing that it should ever for one instant get complete mastery of my

head. This is the peril of a man who has lived soberly. Do we never know

when we are safe? I am, in reflecting thereupon, positively prepared to

say that if there is no fool like what they call an old fool (and a man

in his prime, who can be laughed at, is the world's old fool) there is

wisdom in the wild oats theory, and I shall come round to my nephew's way

of thinking: that is, as far as Master Charles by his acting represents

his thinking. I shall at all events be more lenient in my judgement of

him, and less stern in my allocutions, for I shall have no text to preach

from.

We picked up the hat and the scull in one of the little muddy bays of our

brown river, forming an amphitheatre for water-rats and draped with great

dockleaves, nettle-flowers, ragged robins, and other weeds for which the

learned young lady gave the botanical names. It was pleasant to hear her

speak with the full authority of absolute knowledge of her subject. She

has intelligence. She is decidedly too good for Charles, unless he

changes his method of living.

'Shall we row on?' she asked, settling her arms to work the pair of

sculls.

'You have me in your power,' said I, and she struck out. Her shape is

exceedingly graceful; I was charmed by the occasional tightening in of

her lips as she exerted her muscle, while at intervals telling me of her

race with one of her boastful younger brothers, whom she had beaten. I

believe it is only when they are using physical exertion that the eyes of

young girls have entire simplicity--the simplicity of nature as opposed

to that other artificial simplicity which they learn from their

governesses, their mothers, and the admiration of witlings. Attractive

purity, or the nice glaze of no comprehension of anything which is

considered to be improper in a wicked world, and is no doubt very useful,

is not to my taste. French girls, as a rule, cannot compete with our

English in the purer graces. They are only incomparable when as women

they have resort to art.

Alice could look at me as she rowed, without thinking it necessary to

force a smile, or to speak, or to snigger and be foolish. I felt towards

the girl like a comrade.

We went no further than Hatchard's mile, where the water plumps the poor

sleepy river from a sidestream, and, as it turned the boat's head quite

round, I let the boat go. These studies of young women are very well as a

pastime; but they soon cease to be a recreation. She forms an agreeable

picture when she is rowing, and possesses a musical laugh. Now and then

she gives way to the bad trick of laughing without caring or daring to

explain the cause for it. She is moderately well-bred. I hope that she

has principle. Certain things a man of my time of life learns by

associating with very young people which are serviceable to him. What a

different matter this earth must be to that girl from what it is to me! I

knew it before. And--mark the difference--I feel it now.