Part 21 (2/2)

”In the half-century that followed the Great Change,” said Morsom, ”it began to be noteworthy; machine after machine was quietly dropped under the excuse that the machines could not produce works of art, and that works of art were more and more called for. Look here,” he said, ”here are some of the works of that time--rough and unskilful in handiwork, but solid and showing some sense of pleasure in the making.”

”They are very curious,” said I, taking up a piece of pottery from amongst the specimens which the antiquary was showing us; ”not a bit like the work of either savages or barbarians, and yet with what would once have been called a hatred of civilisation impressed upon them.”

”Yes,” said Morsom, ”you must not look for delicacy there: in that period you could only have got that from a man who was practically a slave. But now, you see,” said he, leading me on a little, ”we have learned the trick of handicraft, and have added the utmost refinement of workmans.h.i.+p to the freedom of fancy and imagination.”

I looked, and wondered indeed at the deftness and abundance of beauty of the work of men who had at last learned to accept life itself as a pleasure, and the satisfaction of the common needs of mankind and the preparation for them, as work fit for the best of the race. I mused silently; but at last I said--

”What is to come after this?”

The old man laughed. ”I don't know,” said he; ”we will meet it when it comes.”

”Meanwhile,” quoth d.i.c.k, ”we have got to meet the rest of our day's journey; so out into the street and down to the strand! Will you come a turn with us, neighbour? Our friend is greedy of your stories.”

”I will go as far as Oxford with you,” said he; ”I want a book or two out of the Bodleian Library. I suppose you will sleep in the old city?”

”No,” said d.i.c.k, ”we are going higher up; the hay is waiting us there, you know.”

Morsom nodded, and we all went into the street together, and got into the boat a little above the town bridge. But just as d.i.c.k was getting the sculls into the rowlocks, the bows of another boat came thrusting through the low arch. Even at first sight it was a gay little craft indeed--bright green, and painted over with elegantly drawn flowers. As it cleared the arch, a figure as bright and gay-clad as the boat rose up in it; a slim girl dressed in light blue silk that fluttered in the draughty wind of the bridge. I thought I knew the figure, and sure enough, as she turned her head to us, and showed her beautiful face, I saw with joy that it was none other than the fairy G.o.dmother from the abundant garden on Runnymede--Ellen, to wit.

We all stopped to receive her. d.i.c.k rose in the boat and cried out a genial good morrow; I tried to be as genial as d.i.c.k, but failed; Clara waved a delicate hand to her; and Morsom nodded and looked on with interest. As to Ellen, the beautiful brown of her face was deepened by a flush, as she brought the gunwale of her boat alongside ours, and said:

”You see, neighbours, I had some doubt if you would all three come back past Runnymede, or if you did, whether you would stop there; and besides, I am not sure whether we--my father and I--shall not be away in a week or two, for he wants to see a brother of his in the north country, and I should not like him to go without me. So I thought I might never see you again, and that seemed uncomfortable to me, and--and so I came after you.”

”Well,” said d.i.c.k, ”I am sure we are all very glad of that; although you may be sure that as for Clara and me, we should have made a point of coming to see you, and of coming the second time, if we had found you away the first. But, dear neighbour, there you are alone in the boat, and you have been sculling pretty hard I should think, and might find a little quiet sitting pleasant; so we had better part our company into two.”

”Yes,” said Ellen, ”I thought you would do that, so I have brought a rudder for my boat: will you help me to s.h.i.+p it, please?”

And she went aft in her boat and pushed along our side till she had brought the stern close to d.i.c.k's hand. He knelt down in our boat and she in hers, and the usual fumbling took place over hanging the rudder on its hooks; for, as you may imagine, no change had taken place in the arrangement of such an unimportant matter as the rudder of a pleasure- boat. As the two beautiful young faces bent over the rudder, they seemed to me to be very close together, and though it only lasted a moment, a sort of pang shot through me as I looked on. Clara sat in her place and did not look round, but presently she said, with just the least stiffness in her tone:

”How shall we divide? Won't you go into Ellen's boat, d.i.c.k, since, without offence to our guest, you are the better sculler?”

d.i.c.k stood up and laid his hand on her shoulder, and said: ”No, no; let Guest try what he can do--he ought to be getting into training now.

Besides, we are in no hurry: we are not going far above Oxford; and even if we are benighted, we shall have the moon, which will give us nothing worse of a night than a greyer day.”

”Besides,” said I, ”I may manage to do a little more with my sculling than merely keeping the boat from drifting down stream.”

They all laughed at this, as if it had a been very good joke; and I thought that Ellen's laugh, even amongst the others, was one of the pleasantest sounds I had ever heard.

To be short, I got into the new-come boat, not a little elated, and taking the sculls, set to work to show off a little. For--must I say it?--I felt as if even that happy world were made the happier for my being so near this strange girl; although I must say that of all the persons I had seen in that world renewed, she was the most unfamiliar to me, the most unlike what I could have thought of. Clara, for instance, beautiful and bright as she was, was not unlike a _very_ pleasant and unaffected young lady; and the other girls also seemed nothing more than specimens of very much improved types which I had known in other times.

But this girl was not only beautiful with a beauty quite different from that of ”a young lady,” but was in all ways so strangely interesting; so that I kept wondering what she would say or do next to surprise and please me. Not, indeed, that there was anything startling in what she actually said or did; but it was all done in a new way, and always with that indefinable interest and pleasure of life, which I had noticed more or less in everybody, but which in her was more marked and more charming than in anyone else that I had seen.

We were soon under way and going at a fair pace through the beautiful reaches of the river, between Bensington and Dorchester. It was now about the middle of the afternoon, warm rather than hot, and quite windless; the clouds high up and light, pearly white, and gleaming, softened the sun's burning, but did not hide the pale blue in most places, though they seemed to give it height and consistency; the sky, in short, looked really like a vault, as poets have sometimes called it, and not like mere limitless air, but a vault so vast and full of light that it did not in any way oppress the spirits. It was the sort of afternoon that Tennyson must have been thinking about, when he said of the Lotos- Eaters' land that it was a land where it was always afternoon.

Ellen leaned back in the stern and seemed to enjoy herself thoroughly. I could see that she was really looking at things and let nothing escape her, and as I watched her, an uncomfortable feeling that she had been a little touched by love of the deft, ready, and handsome d.i.c.k, and that she had been constrained to follow us because of it, faded out of my mind; since if it had been so, she surely could not have been so excitedly pleased, even with the beautiful scenes we were pa.s.sing through. For some time she did not say much, but at last, as we had pa.s.sed under s.h.i.+llingford Bridge (new built, but somewhat on its old lines), she bade me hold the boat while she had a good look at the landscape through the graceful arch. Then she turned about to me and said:

”I do not know whether to be sorry or glad that this is the first time that I have been in these reaches. It is true that it is a great pleasure to see all this for the first time; but if I had had a year or two of memory of it, how sweetly it would all have mingled with my life, waking or dreaming! I am so glad d.i.c.k has been pulling slowly, so as to linger out the time here. How do you feel about your first visit to these waters?”

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