In the vestry of the church reposed a curious relic—a pyx, I believe, is the correct name. It was a gilded metal chalice with a top, into which, if my memory serves me, were screwed little soldiers to guard the sacred body; these were loose, and how I coveted them! In the case were certain spikes and branches of crystal, the broken remains, I believe, of a spreading crystal tree which once adorned the top. How far my memory serves me I know not, but I am sure that the relic which may still survive, is a most interesting thing; and I can recollect that when a high dignitary of the Church stayed with us, it was kindly brought over by the clergyman for his inspection, and his surprise was very great.
The Hall lay back from the common, sheltered by great trees. The house itself, a low white building, was on those summer days cool and fragrant. The feature of the place was the great fish-ponds—one lay outside the shrubbery; but another, formerly I believe a monastic stew-pond, was a long rectangle just outside the windows of the drawing-room, and only separated from it by a gravel walk: along part of it ran an ancient red-brick wall. This was our favourite fishing-place; but above it, brooded over by huge chestnuts, lay a deeper and stiller pond, half covered with water-lilies—too sacred and awful a place to be fished in or even visited alone.
Upon the fishing hours I do not love to dwell; I would only say that of such cruelties as attended it I was entirely innocent. I am sure that I never thought of a perch as other than a delightful mechanical thing, who had no grave objection to being hauled up gasping, with his black stripes gleaming, and prickling his red fins, to be presently despatched, and carried home stiff and cold in a little basket.
The tea under the tall trees of the lawn; the admiring inspection of our prey; the stuffed dog in the hall with his foot upon a cricket-ball—all these are part of the dream-pictures; and the whole is invested for me with the purpureal gleams of childhood.
Grately Thirty Years After
The other day I found myself on a bicycle near enough to Grately to make it possible to go there; into the Hall grounds I did not venture, but I struck across the common and went down the lane to the mill. I was almost ashamed of the agitation I felt, but the sight of the common, never visited for nearly thirty years, induced a singular physical distress. It was not that everything had grown smaller, even changed the places that they occupy in my mental picture, but a sort of homesickness seemed to draw tight bands across my heart. What does it mean, this intense local attachment, for us flimsy creatures, snapped at a touch, and with so brief a pilgrimage? A strange thought! The very intensity and depth of the feeling seems to confer on it a right to permanence.
The lane came abruptly to an end by the side of a commonplace, straight-banked, country brook. There were no trees, no water-plants; the road did not dip to the stream, and in front of me lay a yellow brick bridge, with grim iron lattices. Alas! I had mistaken the turn, and must retrace my steps. But stay! what was that squat white house by the waterside? It was indeed the old mill, with its boarded projections swept away, its barns gone, its garden walled with a neat wall. The old high-timbered bridge was down; some generous landlord had gone to great expense, and Grately had a good convenient road, a sensible bridge, and an up-to-date mill. Probably there was not a single person in the parish who did not confess to an improvement.
But who will give me back the tall trees and the silent pool? Who will restore the ancient charm, the delicate mysteries, the gracious dignity of the place? Is beauty a mere trick of grouping, the irradiation of a golden mood, a chance congeries of water and high trees and sunlight? If beauty be industriously hunted from one place by ruthless hands, does she spread her wings and fly? Is the restless, ceaseless effort of nature to restore beauty to the dismal messes made by man, simply broken off and made vain? Or has she leisure to work harder yet in unvisited places, patiently enduring the grasp of the spoiling hand?
It was with something like a sob that I turned away. But of one thing no one can rob me, and that is the picture of Grately Mill, glorified indeed by the patient worship of years, which is locked into some portfolio of the mind, and can be unspread in a moment before the gazing eye.
Egeria