by J. C. Snaith
CHAPTER VII
AN INSTRUCTIVE CHAPTER; IN WHICH IT IS SHOWN THAT IF A LITTLE LEARNINGIS DANGEROUS, MUCH MAY BE CALAMITOUS.
As we took our way through the grass of a most charming flower-coatedcountry, there was a kind of rivalry between us as to who should be thefirst to spy a church. The honour of doing so had not fallen to eitherof us, when Cynthia suddenly darted from the path to pick some whiteviolets out of a hedge.
"Why," says she, in the delight of finding them, "we will makeourselves a posy apiece to carry with us to church, as it is ourwedding morning. Oh, look at the marsh-marigolds at the side of thebrook there!"
She gave me the violets to hold, with some injunction as to the correctmanner of holding them, for my handling of them was much too crude toplease her, and ran away again to fetch the pretty yellow flowers. Allsorts of things she gathered for our nosegays, lady-smocks all silverwhite from the meadow, and daisies pied and violets blue, cowslips andeven a blue-bell. Nothing would content her but that we should makethem up into posies there and then; which we did, and bound them roundwith grasses. But hardly had we finished this pastoral employment andcontinued on our way, when we became the victims of a singulardiversion. We passed out of one meadow over a stile into another of asimilar kind. But in the second a few cows were browsing. To these wepaid no heed, but walked jauntily enough through the pasture,apprehending no danger; but by the time we had come perhaps to themiddle of the field we were startled by a commotion behind us. Turninground to discover whence it arose, we were horrified to find what thesource of it was. A young bull with its head grounded and its tail inthe air was charging down upon us. A single exclamation and afrightened instant of hesitation in which to take our bearings, andevolve a mode of escape, was all we had time for. The bull was comingso furiously that it was almost upon us, yet we were stranded full inthe middle of the field, with no chance whatever of taking refuge inflight. But happily my eye lit on a tree, a sturdy young sapling ayard or two off. Thither I pushed the terrified Cynthia, and literallylifted her into one of the lower branches, whilst she, with anadmirable conception of the case and how to act in it, scrambled with amighty rending of her garments into the boughs above. I clamberedafter her madly, not a second too soon. The vigorous snorting youngbull crashed his horns against the tree with great force. He was sonear to my leg that I instinctively felt it to be gashed wide open;whilst such a mighty shake did its impact give to our place of refugethat it was indeed a mercy we were not both of us thrown on to theground to be gored and trampled on. But despite our fright we wereable to cling to the branches; and when at last I was able to get aglimpse of my leg, I found to my relief that I had been the victim ofmy imagination.
The bellowing beast made divers onslaughts against the bark of thetree, whilst we very fearfully hurried up higher and higher, dreadingat each stroke of our enemy to feel ourselves flying through the air.Providentially, however, by clinging with rare tenacity to our vantageplace we were able to maintain ourselves in the security of the highestbranches of all. And presently our adversary having wreaked a gooddeal of his fury on the offending tree, desisted from an occupationthat brought him so little profit, and having walked off a yard or two,proceeded to regard us morosely. He seemed prepared to stay in thatemployment too for an indefinite period. But feeling our position,snug as it was and safe for the time being, to be yet highlyprecarious, since the very boughs on which we sat swayed and crackedand creaked in a truly alarming fashion, I determined to play a coup,ere any melancholy thing should happen which would put it out of mypower to play one.
Divesting myself with much difficulty of my cloak, although Cynthiarather audaciously, considering her own position at the time, lent me ahand, I committed that garment to her charge, and proceeded to selectthe most favourable moment for a speedy flight to the nearest hedge.Keeping perfectly motionless in our unhappy posture, we presentlycontrived to lull the unsuspecting bull into a state of quiescencewhich I am sure he would have been the first to admit, had he butknown, the circumstances hardly warranted. For suddenly taking anadvantage of his sleeping vigilance, I made a leap off the tree as faras possible from the spot on which he stood watching. It was then acase of run devil, run baker. I'm sure no poor devil ever ran morefleetly than I did then; whilst I am equally sure that there never wasa baker in this world that ran more swiftly than that roaring,rampageous bullock. Luckily for my precious bones I had a fair goodstart of the fellow, and the distance to the hedge was less than ahundred yards. Had it been otherwise this history had never beenwritten else, for not for a moment do I think Cynthia would ever havetroubled to write it; nor between ourselves, do I think she would everhave been capable of doing so, even had her ambition jumped in thatdirection. Running pell-mell, my heart beating holes in my ribs, andthe clear tones of Mrs. Cynthia issuing from the topmost branches ofthe tree in words of lusty encouragement such as: "Bravo, lad, bravo!Mightily done!" I panted to the hedge with the bull ever at my heels,and had just the strength to take a second leap at the green brambles,and half jump, half scramble through their tenacious barriers, and sointo the neighbouring field, while the bull, foiled for the secondtime, raged and vented his disappointment from the other side.
Meanwhile little Cynthia, with a delightful intrepidity, also tookadvantage of our enemy. While Mr. Bull continued to thrust his head atthe hedge in his mighty rage, and roared forth his threats,high-couraged little Cynthia, if you please, very simply anddexterously dropped down my cloak out of the tree, neatly dropped downafter it, and then with the most gallant coolness gathered herself upagain, the cloak too, and even stayed to recover our late discardedposies, which the bull had evidently thought too mean to be worthy ofhis regard. With these articles tucked away in one hand, she gatheredher skirts in the other, and away scudded her dainty ankles through thegrass to the opposite fence. All this time the bull, foiled andnonplussed as he was, continued to fume and rush at the fence that kepthim from me, but never for an instant did he guess that Cynthia was inthe act of cheating him too.
Convinced by this that my little one had made good her escape, I couldnot restrain my joy. I began to jump and clap my hands, and bellow outhearty encouragements and applause to her across the field. Thisbehaviour so surprised the bull, that he whisked angrily round todiscover the cause of it. He beheld Cynthia in the very height of herrapid victorious transit. Away he dashed, head down, in pursuit ofher, but she was much too well advanced in her flight to have any fearof him whatever. By the time he had come level with the tree, Cynthiawas calmly climbing into security over the stile; and when theoutwitted animal rushed up and thrust his nose over it, she tauntingly,if a trifle vain-gloriously, shook the cloak and the posies at him.Never, I think, did I see an act more neatly or more bravely performed.
When we came presently together again in the middle of an adjoiningfield, a sort of half-way house from where the bull had respectivelyleft us, we were both in high feather and mightily pleased withourselves and one another.
"I declare," says I, "that hunting the fox becomes a tame and foolishsport by comparison. In all my amusements, from cards tocudgel-playing, I was never furnished, I'll swear, with so entertainingan episode. Besides, I am vastly proud of your conduct this morning,my prettiness. Come, let us waste not a moment; I am dying to getmarried at once."
The deep crimson in Cynthia's cheeks, that her late eminent exertionshad induced, lent her even more of an adorable appearance than even Ihad ever observed in her. And when she tossed me my cloak, and gravelygave one of the posies into my hands, I think I never saw the eyes of awoman beam with such mirth and high spirits. Flushed and breathless aswe were, no two human persons could possibly have been happier.Already our haphazard, vagrant life had proved the antidote of thatweariness of the world, that fatigue of mind and body, the chains ofpolite life had induced. Already we had come to take a fraternalpride, as it were, in one another. We no longer had to apprehend howwe should get through the day without
perishing of weariness, butrather how to pass it without perishing of hunger and violence. And wewere revealing such unexpected qualities to ourselves and each other inovercoming these calamities that we were falling in love anew with ourown heroic attributes, and were already prepared to vow to one anotherthat we were a monstrous well-assorted pair. Indeed, the foolish bullhad given us such a fine conceit of ourselves, that on the score of thehour of high-wrought happiness he brought us, he must, I am sure, beallowed after all to be our friend.
A good deal of walking through the blossoming fields brought us at laston to a good broad highway, and a little later having climbed up ahill, we saw from the top of it the thing we were seeking. A villagenestled below, and very properly the tallest roof among the collectionthat clustered there together, and by far the most imposing object ofthem all, was a sweet little country church, grey with age, surroundedby a low stone wall whose crannies were filled with moss. Approachingit we were overjoyed to find that a pretty little parsonage stoodbeside it, which in every particular matched the quaint and venerableappearance of the church itself. But no sooner had we come to thelatticed gate of the parson's house than our pleasure fled suddenlyaway. We had been bold enough in the contemplation of the deed, andhad even been disposed to treat it airily. Yet when our fingers fellon the parson's latch, we were suddenly confronted with its magnitude.We were going to be married!
Now although I had started from town not twelve hours before as cynicaland desperate a character as any to be found, the humane influencesthat had been brought to bear upon me, even in that short period, hadnot been without their effect. I began to see things in their truerelation once again, and even to be sensible of feelings I had so longoutlived that I almost forgot that I had ever known them. Forinstance, the emotion of timidity that overtook me at the parson'sgate, I could have sworn I had never met with before in my life. Theuncomfortable sense of the bashful business to follow caused me tofalter with my hand still at the latch, and to parley with Cynthia.
"I think you had better go first, my prettiness," says I seductively,"I don't doubt that you will make a better hand of it than I, and youwill have a better knowledge of how to talk to the parson. I am sodevilish unused to talking to parsons, d'ye see."
"Oh, yes, I quite see that," says Cynthia significantly, "and I alsosee that you are afraid."
"I dare say you might have shot wider of the truth," says I. "It isthe first time I have been called on to smell this kind of powder, andburn me! if ever I want to be called on again."
"I hope you won't be," says Cynthia.
She herself, I must confess, was as cool as a cucumber. Her colour wasa little high perhaps, and the animation in her eyes was, I think, morethan usually fine. But take her altogether, she seemed to have all thecalmness and assurance of an old campaigner, whilst I was wincing andstarting like a raw recruit. They say that all women are alike inthis. They go to church as complacently as they go to Ranelagh, andtake as keen an enjoyment from the reading of the marriage service asthey do in the performance of the Italian dancers at the theatre inCovent Garden. And it is said again that never a man of us all,whatever his years, disposition and ideas, comes to this ceremony butwhat he is beset with those same qualms that fastened upon me sounexpectedly at the parson's gate.
When we walked up the pretty garden and came to the door of theparson's house, it was Cynthia who unhesitatingly knocked upon it. Butthe operation had to be repeated ere it was replied to. And when atlast the door was drawn back from within we were confronted by a stout,red-faced woman in a gown of printed calico. Her sleeves were rolledup above the elbow, her cap and apron were awry, and there was a lookof industrious ill-temper about her that contributed nothing to ourencouragement. She stuck her hands on her hips, filled the whole ofthe doorway with her defiant presence, very like the dragon in thefable that barred the way to the princess in the enchanted palace, andsurveyed us in a grimly critical fashion from top to toe.
"Is the parson at home?" says the audacious Cynthia.
"He be!" says the woman in a loud, harsh voice.
"We wish to see him then, if you please," says Cynthia.
"What might your business be?" says the woman, looking us all over witha really disconcerting keenness.
"I think we must explain that to the parson himself," says Cynthia.
"Then I think you will not then," says the woman, mighty uncivilly."I've formed my own opinion of you. You shall not see the master, notif I know it. He's got such a character for softness of heart allabout the countryside that you vagrant beggars come for miles to getwhat you can out of him. It's mortal lucky he's got me to look afterhim, or he would have given away the shirt off his back this many ayear ago."
It was impossible to deny that the good woman's estimate of our stationand business was shrewd enough. We were certainly a pair of vagrants,if ever there was a pair in the world, and were certainly come to getsomething of the parson that we had no means of requiting him for. AndI am sure neither of us, singly or together, would have stood a chanceof melting that adamantine bosom, since everything we said seemed moreclearly to reveal our humble not to say destitute condition; indeed wehad come to the point where this clergyman's uncompromising guardianwas about to bang the door in our faces, when the parson himself made avery welcome intervention.
He came shuffling along the path from some remote part of the vicaragegarden, in a pair of old down-trodden carpet slippers, wearing over anold-fashioned wig a beaver grotesquely battered and green with age.His cassock hung in tatters at his heels, and he made about as unkemptand disreputable a figure of a clergyman as it was possible toconceive. Besides, he was a very small and insignificant rat of afellow, and had a strange odd way of peering through his hornspectacles. But the moment he began to speak such a pleasant twinkleof courtesy came into his ugly countenance--by itself it was plain tothe point of ugliness, although to this day Cynthia will never allow itto be so--and his voice was so wondrous musical, that straightway weforgot that he had such a singular appearance, and fell in love withhim.
"A very good morning to you," says he. "I hope you are drinking inthis golden morning that God hath sent us. Hey, what a thing it is tobe a human being!"
As he came up and observed Cynthia more closely, he, bowed with awonderful grave dignity, and took off his hat with a flourish thatbecame him most inimitably well. Such courtesy from an appearance sodiscourteous never was seen.
"La, master, what be you at?" says the woman, highly scandalized by sopolite a demeanour. "Do you not see these are an arrant pair ofvagrant beggars? I must get you more artful spectacles if you willstay so close at your book-reading."
"Peace, my good Blodgett," says the parson. "Do you think I do notknow breeding when I see it? It is a rare possession that nothing candisguise. There is sensibility here, in this fair countenance, andpride and candour, and the features are almost highly classical intheir outline. A little too full in the lips perhaps, yes, I think alittle too full, or this would have been the countenance of Minervawith the animation of Diana in it. I must remind you again, my goodBlodgett, that appearances are apt to deceive; _non semper ea sunt quaevidentur_, as the excellent Phaedrus has so wisely said. You will do methe honour, I hope, my dear young lady, of entering my house andpartaking of a glass of my gooseberry-wine and of eating a piece ofBanbury cake. And you, sir, also, I hope and trust; although in yourcase the credentials you bear in your countenance are nothing like sonoteworthy. But as Plautus very pertinently asks, _non soles respicerete_, to look at oneself ere one abuses another, the less said thesooner we shall mend it, _tulum silentii praemium_. Come this way, Ibeg you."
During this peroration poor Blodgett wrung her hands and shook herhead, and kept repeating some such mystical phrase as:
"He is off at the top again! He is off at the top again!"
However, this strange old parson, all unconscious of the distress ofmind he was occasioning his handmaid or housekeeper, or wh
atever shemight call herself, flowed on and on in his extraordinary monologue,and led us indoors into a spacious room full of a remarkable disorderof books, which doubtless composed his library. Books open and shut,piled up and overlaid, were on the table, and under the table, on thechairs, and on the floor. Any square inch of space wherein a bookmight insinuate itself, there was a book to be found. Dusty,black-letter, grimy Aldine, foxed Elzevir, any folio, quarto, oroctavo, providing it was old enough and dirty enough, was assembledthere. Those that lay open seemed to be annotated and scored under,and embellished with marginal notes in a delicate minute handwriting,on every page. And among all these tomes there was never a one thatwas in a new dress, or done in a reasonable easy print, nor one writtenby a reasonably modern author. To observe the _Paradise Lost_, withthe imprint of Jacob Tonson upon it, was to be startled with that senseof gratified surprise that one would experience at unexpectedly meetingwith a personal friend in a foreign country.
The parson was an odd match to his books. His conversation was asmusty, learned and interminable as themselves. He talked of all topicsbut those that could have been of the least interest to anybody. Henever thought to ask who we were, or what business had brought usthither, but having lured us into his library, he very vigorously beganto engage us with matters at least a thousand years old. We were verypolite at first, and nodded our heads in deep interest at the mentionof the first Punic war, and kept saying, "Ah, to be sure!" andinserting "yes" and "oh yes" whenever we found half a chance to get inso much in the middle of some animadversions he thought fit to make onthe behaviour of the Carthaginians generally. But when proceeding tomove with an air of great mystery and consequence to topics of the mostinconsequent character, and presently to prove to us that in hisopinion the battle of Cannae, or it may have been Marathon, or the siegeof Troy for aught we knew or cared, was not so important and decisivean affair as the historians of these times had represented, ourobservance of a polite interest showed signs of giving out.
We might shuffle, however, and shift our stations, and cough, and takeour weight off our right leg and lean it on our left, but it never madeone bit of difference to this terrible monologue. The old parson, withhis eyes half closed and his hands spread forth, poured out the finestprose in his mellifluous voice, with every period rounded to such aperfection that had he been a historian and his speech a printed pagethe world could never have sufficiently admired his attainments. Andevery emphasis and quantity seemed so indubitably exact in theclassical tongues he so freely quoted, as must have made him the envyof pedagogues and the paragon among them all. And all this time wewere striving to maintain our well-bred interest as best we might, andinwardly cursed Rome and Greece and the whole race of poets, historiansand soldiers that ever sprang from them.
His mind was filled with a vast deal of knowledge of a recondite sort.It could have been of no possible service to anybody, least of all tohimself. Yet he moved lightly and easily from one antediluvian topicto others more antediluvian still. He was armed with a great array oftheories of no moment at all, and a matchless sheaf of facts thatproved and disproved and proved them over again. How weary we became!How we fidgeted and looked at one another in our despair, for he grewmore minute as he proceeded, and called up, extempore, authority uponauthority to show that Lais was a woman of virtue, and that Virgil didnot write his own works. He split straws with Aristotle, and pickedholes in his Ethics. He said that Cicero was a windbag, and that Platowas a dunce. He said that Herodotus was loose in his facts, and nomore worthy of credence than Plutarch, and that Plutarch was not a whitbetter than Herodotus neither. He said that Homer was the biggestimpostor in history. He had nothing to do with the _Iliad_, whilst asfor the _Odyssey_, he had long come at the truth that it was by afemale hand, most probably one of the Hesperides, though to be sure hehad not quite satisfied himself as to which, just as the plays of thepoet Shakespeare would one day be allowed to be the handiwork of LordBacon, the eminent lawyer and philosopher; and again, as the world,purblind as it was, would one day discover that Mr. Fielding'sso-called novel of _Joseph Andrews_ had sprung from the fertile brainof Mr. Colley Gibber. Indeed I was so fearful lest he should takesteps to disprove my grandfather's claims to have produced hiscelebrated Commentary on the _Analects of Confucius_, that I becamequite desperate, and determined to put a stop to the unceasing currentof his talk, even at the risk of making a hole in my good manners.Having reached a point in his discourse wherein he showed that Caesardid not cross the Rubicon, I slapped my hand on the table with a vigourthat knocked down half-a-score of tomes and startled everything andeverybody but the speaker himself; and, says I, at the top of myheartiest voice:
"I quite agree with you there, sir; I do indeed."
"I presume, sir," says the parson, "you know the authorities there areagainst us, and what adversaries of weight, Caesar himself, Suetonius,and Plutarch, to name only three, that we have to face."
"I care not if there are three thousand," says I valiantly, "in thismatter I am entirely of your mind."
The parson, whose simplicity was as great as his learning, grasped myhand with the utmost fervour.
"My dear sir," says he, "I can never sufficiently extol your spirit.It is excellently said, sir, excellently said. Would that there weremore persons like you in the world. I can but offer you somegooseberry-wine and a piece of Banbury cake, but I am sure you are verywelcome. I do declare that Blodgett has forgotten them; I will go andsee about them myself."
At last in the very height of our sufferings we obtained in this trulyunexpected, not to say whimsical fashion, a brief instant of relief.It was plain that this learned wight was possessed of a mind of themost singular simplicity and inconsequence. Everything that was toldhim he took for gospel. He had the faith of a child. Everything thathad the least interest for himself he felt that all men werelanguishing to hear of. With him evidently to think was to act; he wasthe slave of his own whims; no sooner did he mention a thing than hewent straightway and performed it.
The prospects of being united in the bonds of wedlock by soextraordinary a gentleman were indeed remote; but armed with theknowledge of his character we had already gained, we concluded that ifwe beat about the bush at all, he would be quite content for his ownpart to detain us a "month of Sundays" in his library, while heunfolded his facts and propounded his theories. On his own initiativehe would not be in the least likely to surrender a single moment to ouraffairs. We must be bold and decisive, and grapple firmly with him.
Therefore when the good parson returned, preceding the umbrageousBlodgett, who bore the Banbury cakes and the gooseberry-wine on a tray,before he had the chance to open his mouth to take up his discourse,says I, in a truly dramatic manner:
"If it pleases you, sir, we are here, this lady and I, to ask you tomarry us."
"Marry you," says he, without a moment's reflection. "I shall bedelighted. Blodgett, have the goodness to set down the tray on the topof the _De Imitatione_ there and go and find the clerk, and tell him toopen the church. And tut, tut! my good woman, how often must I beseechyou not to dust my books with your sacrilegious apron."
While Mrs. Blodgett flounced out to find the clerk, and the good parsonin the height of his courtesy poured out the gooseberry-wine and servedus with it, Cynthia and I fell to talking at the top of our voicesabout nothing at all, since we were certain that as soon as the parsongot an opportunity he would furnish us with a criticism of Strabo'sgeographies, which, however damaging to that worthy ancient, would beeven more so to us; or prove that it was a vulgar error to speak ofCastor as the twin of Pollux; and proceed to demonstrate that Achilleswas vulnerable in other places than his heel.