THE TERRACE AT ALL SAINTS' COLLEGE.
Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne,
Die liebt ich einst alle in Liebeswonne.
—Heine.
Somewhere in the fairyland of Dorothea's imagination rises a visionary city, with towers and gables straggling against the sky. The streets go up hill and down hill, leading by cloisters and gateways and by walls, behind which gardens are lying like lakes of green among the stones and the ivy. A thrush is singing, and the shrill echoes of some boyish melancholy voices come from a chapel hard by. It is a chapel with a pile of fantastic columns standing in the quiet corner of a lane. All round the side door are niches and winding galleries, branches wreathing, placed there by faithful hands, crisp saints beatified in stony glory. Are these, one is tempted to ask, as one looks at the generous old piles, the stones that cry out now-a-days when men are silent? They have, for the last century or two, uttered warnings and praises to many a generation passing by: speaking to some of a bygone faith, to others of a living one. They still tell of past love and hope, and of past and present charity.
But in these times charity is a destroying angel; even the divine attributes seem to have changed, and Faith, Hope, and Charity have gone each their separate way.
To Dolly Vanborough, who had thought happiness was over for ever, it was the first great song of her youth that these old stones sang to her on her eighteenth birthday. She hears it still, though her youth is past. It is the song of the wonder of life, of the divine in the human. As we go on its echoes reach us repeated again and again, reverberating from point to point; who that has heard them once will ever forget them? To some they come with happiness and the delight of new undreamt-of sympathy, to others with sorrow and the realisation of love.... Its strains came with prayer and long fasting to the saints of old. This song of Pentecost, I know no better name for it, echoes on from generation to generation from one heart to another. Sometimes by chance one has looked into a stranger's face and seen its light reflected. Frank Raban saw its light in Dolly's face that day as she came out of the chapel to where her brother had left her. Just for an instant it was there while the psalm still sung in her heart. And yet the light in Dolly's face dimmed a little when she saw, not the person she had expected to see, but Mr. Raban waiting there.
'I came in Henley's place,' said he, hastily, guessing her thought. 'He was sent for by the Vice-Chancellor, and begged me to come and tell you this. He will join us directly.'
Mr. Raban had been waiting in the sunshiny street while Dolly deliberately advanced down the worn steps of the chapel, crossed the flagged court, and came out of the narrow iron wicket of which the barred shadow fell upon her white fête-day dress. Miss Vanborough's face was shaded by a broad hat with curling blue feathers; she wore a pink rose in her girdle; it was no saintly costume; she was but a common-place mortal maiden in sprigged muslin, and saints wear, as we all know, red and blue, and green stained glass and damask and goatskins; and yet Frank Raban thought there was something saint-like in her bright face, which, for an instant, seemed reflecting all her heart.
'Henley lives on my staircase,' continued Raban. 'Those pink frills are his. He makes himself comfortable, as you see.'
'I'm glad of that,' said Dolly, smiling. 'How nice it must be for you to have him so near.'
'He always takes ladies to see his rooms,' Raban continued. 'He is a great favourite with them, and gives tea-parties.'
'A great favourite!' said Dolly, warmly. 'Of course one likes people who are kind and good and clever and true and nice.'
'Who are, in short, an addition sum, made up of equal portions of all the cardinal virtues,' said Raban.
He was ashamed of himself, and yet he did not care to hear Henley's praises from Dolly. It seemed to him dishonest to acquiesce.
Dolly stopped for half a second and looked at him.
Dorothea was a tall woman and their eyes were on a line, and their looks met. My heroine was at no pains to disguise the meaning of her indignant glances. 'How can you be so ungenerous?' she said, as plainly as if she had spoken.
Frank answered her silence in words.
'No, I don't like him,' he said, 'and he don't like me; and I don't care to pretend to better feelings than I really have. We are civil enough, and pull very well together. I beg your pardon. I own he deserves to succeed,' said the young man. 'There, Miss Vanborough, this is our garden, where we refresh ourselves with cigars and beer after our arduous studies.'
Dolly was still too much vexed to express her admiration.
They all began calling to them from under the tree. John Morgan, who was of the party, was lying flat upon his broad back, beaming at the universe, and fanning away the flies, Rhoda was sitting on the grass, in a foam of white muslin and Algerian shawls. George Vanborough, privileged for the day, was astride on a wooden table; a distant peacock went strutting across the lawn; a little wind came blowing gently, stirring all the shadows; a college bell began to tinkle a little, and then left off.
'Glorious afternoon, isn't it?' says John Morgan, from the grass.
'It is like heaven,' says Dolly, looking up and round and about.
Rhoda's slim fingers clasp her pearl locket, which has come out again. They were in the shade, the sun was shining hot and intense upon the old garden. The roses, like bursting bubbles, were breaking in the heat against the old baked bricks, upon rows of prim collegiate flowers: lilies, and stocks, and marigolds. There was a multiplicity of sweet scents in the air, of shadows falling on the lawns (they flow from the old gates to the river); a tone is struck, an insect floats away along the garden wall. With its silence and flowers, and tremulous shades and sunshine, I know no sweeter spot than the old garden of All Saints'.
The gardener had placed seats and a bench under the old beech-tree for pilgrims to rest upon, weary with their journeys from shrine to shrine. Mrs. Palmer was leaning back in a low garden-chair; the sweep of her flowing silks seemed to harmonise with her languid and somewhat melancholy grace. Rhoda was helping to open her parasol (the parasol was dove-coloured and lined with pink). There was a row of Morgans upon the bench; Mrs. Morgan upright in the midst, nicely curled and trimmed with satin bows and a white muslin daughter on either side.
It all happened in a moment: the sky burnt overhead, the sun shone upon the river, upon the colleges, with their green gardens: the rays seemed to strike fire where they met the water. The swans were sailing along the stream in placid state, followed by their grey brood, skimming and paddling in and out among the weeds and the green stems and leaves that sway with the ripple of the waters; a flight of birds high overhead crossed the vault of the heavens and disappeared in the distance. Dorothea Vanborough was standing on the terrace at the end of the old college garden, where everything was so still, so sweet, and so intense that it seemed as if time was not, as if the clocks had stopped on their travels, as if no change could ever be, nor hours nor seasons sweep through the tranquil old place.
They were all laughing and talking; but Dolly, who was too lazy and too happy to talk, wandered away from them a little bit, to the garden's end, where she stood stooping over the low wall and watching the water flow by; there was a man fishing on the opposite bank, and casting his line again and again. In the distance a boat was drifting along the stream, some insects passed out towards the meadows humming their summer drone, a wasp sailed by. Dolly was half standing, half-sitting, against the low terrace wall; with one hand she was holding up her white muslin skirt, with the other she was grasping the ledge of the old bricks upon which the lichen had been at work spreading their gold and grey. So the girl waited, sunning herself; herself a part of the summer's day, and gently blooming and rejoicing in its sweetness like any rose upon the wall.
There are blissful moments when one's heart seems to beat in harmony with the great harmony: when one is oneself light and warmth, and the delight of light, and a voice in the comfortable chorus of contentment and praise all round about. Such a minute had come to Dolly in her white muslin dress, with the Cam flowing at her feet and the lights dazzling her grey eyes.
Mrs. Morgan gave a loud sneeze under the tree, and the beautiful minute broke and dispersed away.
'I wonder what it can be like to grow old,' Dolly wonders, looking up; 'to remember back for years and years, and to wear stiff curls and satinette?' Dolly began to picture to herself a long procession of future selves, each older and more curiously bedizened than the other. Somehow they seemed to make a straight line between herself and Mrs. Morgan under the tree. It was an uncomfortable fancy. Dolly tried to forget it, and leant over the wall, and looked down into the cool depths of the stream again. Was that fish rising? What was this? Her own face again looking up from the depth. Then Dolly turned, hearing a step upon the gravel, to see Robert Henley coming towards her. He was dressed in his college cap and gown, and he advanced, floating balloon-like, along the terrace. He looked a little strange, she thought, as he came up to her.
'I couldn't get away before,' he said. 'I hope you have been well looked after.'
'Yes, indeed. Come and sit down here, Robert. What a delicious old garden this is! We are all so happy! Look at those dear little swans in the river!'
'Do you like the cygnets?' said Robert, abruptly, as he looked her full in the face, and sat down on the low wall beside her. 'Do you remember Charles Martindale?' he asked; 'we met once at John Morgan's, who went out to India? He is coming home next October.'
'Is he?' said Dolly. 'Look at that little grey cygnet scuttling away!'
'Dolly,' said Henley, quickly, 'they sent for me to offer me his place, and I—I—have accepted it.'
'Accepted it?' said his cousin, forgetting the cygnets, and looking up a little frightened. 'Will you have to go to India and leave everybody?'
Her face changed a little, and Robert's brightened, though he tried to look as usual.
'Not everybody,' he said. 'Not if——' He took the soft hand in his that was lying on the wall beside him. 'Dolly! will you come too?' he said.
'Me?' cried the unabashed Dolly. 'Oh, Robert, how could I?'
'You could come if I married you,' said Robert, in his quiet voice and most restrained manner. 'Dearest Dorothea, don't you think you can learn to love me? It will be nearly five months before I start.'
It was all so utterly incomprehensible that the girl did not quite realise her cousin's words. Robert was looking very strange and unlike himself; Dolly could hardly believe that it was not some effect of the dazzle of light in her own eyes. He was paler than usual; he seemed somehow stirred from his habitual ways and self. She thought it was not even his voice that she heard speaking. 'Is this being in love?' she was saying to herself. A little bewildered flush came into her cheeks. She still saw the sky, and the garden, and the figures under the tree; then for a minute everything vanished, as tangible things vanish before the invisible,—just as spoken words are hushed and lose their meaning when the silent voices cry out.
It was but for a moment. There she stood again, staring at Robert with her innocent, grey-eyed glance.
Henley was a big, black-and-white melancholy young man, with a blue shaved chin. To-day his face was pale, his mouth was quivering, his hair was all on end. Could this be Robert who was so deliberate; who always knew his own mind; who looked at his watch so often in church while music was going on? Even now, from habit, he was turning it about in his pocket. This little trick made Dolly feel more than anything else that it was all true—that her cousin loved her—incredible though it might appear—and yet even still she doubted.
'Me, Robert?' repeated Dorothea, in her clear, childish tones, looking up with her frank yet timid eyes. 'Are you sure?'
'I have been sure ever since I first saw you,' said Henley, smiling down at her, 'at Kensington, three years ago. Do you remember the snowball, Dolly?'
Then Dolly's eyes fell, and she stood with a tender, puzzled face, listening to her first tale of love. She suddenly pulled away her hand, shy and blushing.
The swans had hardly passed beyond the garden-terrace; the fisherman had only thrown his line once again; Dolly's mamma had time to shift her parasol; that was all. Henley waited, with his handsome head a little bent. He was regaining his composure; he knew too much of his cousin's uncompromising ways to be made afraid by her silence. He stood pulling at his watch, and looking at her—at the straight white figure amid dazzling blue and green; at the line of the sweet face still turned away from him.
'I thought you would have understood me better?' he said, reproachfully.
Still Dolly could not speak. For a moment her heart had beat with an innocent triumph, and then came a doubt. Did she love him—could she love him? Had he then cared for her all this time, when she herself had been so cold and so indifferent, and thinking so little of him? Only yesterday she had told Rhoda she would never marry. Was it yesterday? No, it was to-day, an hour ago.... What had she done to deserve so much from him?—what had she done to be so overprized and loved? At the thought quick upspringing into her two grey eyes came the tears, sparkling like the diamonds in Rhoda's cross.
'I never thought you thought,' Dolly began. 'Oh, Robert! you have been in earnest all this time, and I only—only playing.'
'Don't be unhappy,' said her cousin. 'It was very natural; I should not have wished it otherwise. I did not want to speak to you till I had something worth your acceptance.'
'All this long time!' repeated Dolly.
Did the explanations of true love ever yet run smooth? 'Dolly!' cried Mrs. Palmer, from under the tree.
'Hulloa, Robert!' shouted George, coming across the grass towards them.
'Oh, Robert!' said Dorothea, earnestly, unexpectedly, with a sudden resolution to be true—true to him and to herself, 'thank you a thousand times for what you have told me: only it mustn't be—I don't care enough for you, dear Robert! You deserve——'
Henley said not a word. He stood with a half-incredulous smile; his eyes were still fixed on Dolly's sweet face; he did not answer George, who again called out something as he came up. As for Dolly, she turned to her brother and sprang to meet him, and took his arm as if for protection, and then she walked quickly away without another look, and Henley remained standing where she had been. Instead of the white-muslin maiden, the cygnets may have seen a black-silk young man, who looked at his watch, and then walked away too; while the fisherman quietly baited his line and went on with his sport.