CHAPTER XXXIII
WALKS IN THE COUNTRY
The above title is given to many a delightful ramble to which Mary Russell Mitford takes her readers.
Writing one day in the month of June, she exclaims: “What a glowing, glorious day! Summer in its richest prime, noon in its most sparkling brightness, little white clouds dappling the deep blue sky, and the sun, now partially veiled and now bursting through them with an intensity of light.... We are going to drive to the old house at Aberleigh, to spend a morning under the shade of those balmy firs and amongst those luxuriant rose trees and by the side of that brimming Loddon river.
“‘Do not expect us before six o’clock,’ said I as I left the house.
“‘Six at soonest,’ added my charming companion, and off we drove in our little pony-chaise drawn by an old mare, and with the good-humoured urchin, Henry’s successor, who takes care of horse and chaise, and cow and garden for our charioteer.
“My comrade ... Emily is a person whom it is a privilege to know. She is quite like a creation of the older poets, and might pass for one of Shakespeare’s or Fletcher’s women stepped into life; just as tender, as playful, as gentle and as kind....
[Illustration: BRIDGE ON THE LODDON]
“But here we are at the bridge! Here we must alight! ‘This is the Loddon, Emily. Is it not a beautiful river? rising level with its banks, so clear and smooth and peaceful ... bearing on its pellucid stream the snowy water-lily, the purest of flowers, which sits enthroned on its own cool leaves looking chastity itself, like the lady in Comus ...’. We must dismount here and leave Richard to take care of our equipage under the shade of these trees whilst we walk up to the house. See, there it is! We must cross this stile, there is no other way now.
“And crossing the stile we were immediately ... in full view of the Great House, a beautiful structure of James the First time, whose glassless windows and dilapidated doors form a melancholy contrast with the strength and entireness of the rich and massive front. The story of that ruin—for such it is—is always to me singularly affecting. It is that of the decay of an ancient and distinguished family gradually reduced from the highest wealth and station to actual poverty.... But here we are in the smooth, grassy ride on the top of a steep turfy slope descending to the river, crowned with enormous firs and limes of equal growth, looking across the winding waters into a sweet, peaceful landscape of quiet meadows, shut in by distant woods. What a fragrance is in the air from the balmy fir trees and the blossomed limes! What an intensity of odour! And what a murmur of bees in the lime trees! And what a pleasant sound it is! the pleasantest of busy sounds, that which comes associated with all that is good and beautiful—industry and forecast, and sunshine and flowers.
“Emily exclaimed in admiration as we stood under the deep, strong, leafy shadow and still more ... when roses, really trees, almost intercepted our passage.
“‘On, Emily! farther yet! Force your way by that jessamine—it will yield; I will take care of this stubborn white rose bough.’ ... After we won our way through that strait, at some expense of veils and flounces, she stopped to contemplate and admire the tall, graceful shrub whose long, thorny stems, spreading in every direction, had opposed our progress, and now waved those delicate clusters over our heads.... ‘What an exquisite fragrance!’ she exclaimed, ‘and what a beautiful flower! so pale and white and tender, and the petals thin and smooth as silk! What rose is it?’
“‘Don’t you know? Did you never see it before? It is rare now, I believe, and seems rarer than it is because it only blossoms in very hot summers; but this, Emily, is the musk-rose—that very musk-rose of which Titania talks, and which is worthy of Shakespeare and of her.’”
Having reached some steps that led to a square summer-house, formerly a banqueting-hall with a boat-house beneath it, they were soon close to the old mansion. “But it looked sad and desolate,” remarks Miss Mitford, “and the entrance, choked with brambles and nettles, seemed almost to repel our steps.”
Later on a halt was made on the further side of the river for “Emily” to take a sketch, and this entailed “a delicious walk, when the sun, having gone in, a reviving coolness seemed to breathe over the water,” and, lastly, a drive home amid the lengthening shadows. So ended their pleasant jaunt.
The old house known now as Arborfield House was rebuilt some years after Miss Mitford knew it. The style is, of course, quite modern, but the beautiful grounds, with their magnificent trees and the river winding through them, remain unchanged, together with the luxuriant flower gardens, but which are now carefully tended. We have wandered through those grounds and have seen the poplars and acacias and firs gracefully blending their foliage together as she has described them.
[Illustration: IN ABERLEIGH PARK]
Miss Mitford had a decided liking for gipsies, and they often figure in her village stories. “There is nothing under the sun,” she writes, “that harmonizes so well with nature, especially in her woodland recesses, as that picturesque people who are, so to say, the wild genus—the pheasants and roebucks of the human race.”
In one of these tales, after describing a spot of singularly wild beauty some miles distant from her home, where a dark deep pool lay beneath the shade of great trees, she says:—
“In this lovely place I first saw our gipsies. They had pitched their little tent under one of the oak trees.... The party consisted only of four—an old crone in a tattered red cloak and black bonnet who was stooping over a kettle of which the contents were probably as savoury as that of Meg Merrilees, renowned in story; a pretty black-eyed girl at work under the trees; a sunburnt urchin of eight or nine, collecting sticks and dead leaves to feed their out-of-door fire; and a slender lad two or three years older, who lay basking in the sun, with a couple of shabby dogs of the sort called mongrel in all the joy of idleness, whilst a grave, patient donkey stood grazing hard by. It was a pretty picture, with its soft autumnal sky, its rich woodiness, its sunshine, its verdure, the light smoke curling from the fire, and the group disposed around so harmless poor outcasts! and so happy—a beautiful picture! I stood gazing at it till I was half ashamed to look longer, and came away half afraid that they should depart before I could see them again.
“This fear I soon found to be groundless. The old gipsy was a celebrated fortune-teller.... The whole village rang with the predictions of this modern Cassandra.... I myself could not help admiring the real cleverness, the genuine gipsy tact with which she adapted her foretellings to the age, the habits and the known desires and circumstances of her clients.
“To our little pet Lizzie, for instance, a damsel of seven, she predicted a fairing; to Ben Kirby, a youth of thirteen, head batter of the boys, a new cricket ball; to Ben’s sister Lucy, a girl some three years his senior, a pink top-knot; whilst for Miss Sophia Matthews, an old-maidish schoolmistress ... she foresaw one handsome husband; and for the smart widow Simmons two, etc. etc.
“No wonder that all the world—that is to say all our world—were crazy to have their fortunes told—to enjoy the pleasure of hearing from such undoubted authority that what they wished to be should be. Amongst the most eager to take a peep into futurity was our pretty maid Harriet; although her desire took the not unusual form of disclamation, ‘nothing should induce her to have her fortune told, nothing upon earth!’ ‘She never thought of the gipsy, not she!’ and to prove the fact she said so at least twenty times a day. Now Harriet’s fortune seemed told already; her destiny was fixed. She, the belle of the village, was engaged, as everybody knows, to our village beau Joel Brent; they were only waiting for a little more money to marry.... But Harriet, besides being a beauty, was a coquette, and her affections for her betrothed did not interfere with certain flirtations which came like Isabella ‘by the by,’ and occasionally cast a shadow of coolness between the lovers. There had probably been a little fracas in the present instance, for she [remarked] ‘that none but fools believed in gipsies; that Joel had had his fortune told and wanted to treat her to a prophecy, but she was not such a simpleton.’
“About half an hour after the delivery of this speech I happened, when tying up a chrysanthemum, to go to our wood yard for a stick of proper dimensions and there, enclosed between the faggot pile and the coal shed, stood the gipsy in the very act of palmistry, conning the lines of fate in Harriet’s hand.... She was listening too intently to see me, but the fortune-teller did, and stopped so suddenly that her attention was awakened and the intruder discovered.
“Harriet at first meditated a denial. She called up a pretty unconcerned look, answered my silence (for I never spoke a word) by muttering something about ‘coals for the parlour,’ and catching up my new-painted green watering-pot instead of the coal-scuttle began filling it with all her might ... [while making] divers signs to the gipsy to decamp. The old sybil, however, budged not a foot, influenced probably by two reasons, one the hope of securing a customer in the new-comer, whose appearance is generally, I am afraid, the very reverse of dignified, rather merry than wise, the other a genuine fear of passing through the yard gate on the outside of which a much more imposing person, my greyhound Mayflower, who has a sort of beadle instinct anent drunkards and pilferers and disorderly persons of all sorts, stood barking most furiously.
“... But the fair consulter of destiny, who had by this time recovered from the shame of her detection, extricated us from our dilemma by smuggling the old woman away through the house.
“Of course, Harriet was exposed to some raillery and a good deal of questioning about her future fate, as to which she preserved an obstinate but evidently satisfied silence. At the end of three days, however, [the prescribed period] when all the family except herself had forgotten the story, our pretty soubrette, half bursting with the long retention, took the opportunity of lacing on my new half-boots to reveal the prophecy. ‘She was to see within the week, and this was Saturday, the young man, the real young man, whom she was to marry.’
“‘Why, Harriet, you know, poor Joel.’
“‘Joel indeed! the gipsy said that the young man, the real young man, was to ride up to the house dressed in a dark great-coat (and Joel never wore a great-coat in his life—all the world knew that he wore smock-frocks and jackets) and mounted on a white horse—and where should Joel get a white horse?’
“‘Had this real young man made his appearance yet?’
“‘No; there had not been a white horse past the place since Tuesday; so it must certainly be to-day.’
“A good look-out did Harriet keep for white horses during this fateful Saturday, and plenty did she see. It was the market day at B——, and team after team came by with one, two and three white horses; cart after cart and gig after gig, each with a white steed; Colonel M——‘s carriage, with its prancing pair—but still no horseman. At length one appeared, but he had a great-coat whiter than the animal he rode; another, but he was old farmer Lewington, a married man; a third, but he was little Lord L——, a schoolboy on his Arabian pony. Besides, they all passed the house....
“At last, just at dusk, just as Harriet, making believe to close our casement shutters, was taking her last peep up the road something white appeared in the distance coming leisurely down the hill. Was it really a horse? Was it not rather Titus Strong’s cow driving home to milking? A minute or two dissipated that fear; it certainly was a horse, and as certainly it had a dark rider. Very slowly he descended the hill, pausing most provokingly at the end of the village, as if about to turn up the Vicarage lane. He came on, however, and after another short stop at the ‘Rose,’ rode full up to our little gate, and catching Harriet’s hand as she was opening the wicket, displayed to the half-pleased, half-angry damsel the smiling, triumphant face of her own Joel Brent, equipped in a new great-coat and mounted on his master’s newly purchased market nag. Oh, Joel! Joel! The gipsy! the gipsy!”