“Who is Dipsychus?” said Flossie Gower.
“Have you never met him, then?” said Wemyss. And coming back, she took his arm across the fields.
Wemyss pressed it gently, and began to analyze himself, whether he was in love with her or not. It rather flattered him to think he was.
CHAPTER XXI.
ARTHUR GOES HOME.
THE days were growing unnumbered by this time, measure of time being only necessary when one has daily petty duties, and existence is not a continuous, untroubled joy. Arthur positively bloomed; even Derwent seemed a shade less anxious for the souls of men, and Mr. Wemyss a point less analytic. And the morning was one to bring a bit of fresh color to the cheek of a very Tannhäuser who had been long years jaded with Venus’s joys, his dull eyes rested with the lights of earth again, his ear soothed by notes of spring and human love. The land was beautiful with bud-promise, the air steeped with joyous light of life. And the girls came down to breakfast, looking each and all a Hebe.
For the will of the world comes out in this—that all that has to do with life, new life, charms and attracts us; that all that speaks of over-thought, of over-soul, if you will, is wan and weird—either positively uncanny, or laughable, like the chorus of old men in Faust! Instinctively, we all turn to the flower, to the fresh looks of the young girl, to the rosy lips, full of the promise of future life. No wrinkled wisdom, no sorrowful lines of character, can make up for this. The first thoughtless girl we meet shows her beauté du diable more than a match for all the crow’s-feet of the intellect. And this is the magnetism of vitality; it is your full-blooded man that the masses of the world delight to follow. The unthinking are repelled by too much consciousness, as by disease.
We all have known such sunny mornings, when we that are living live, and the dead lie dead in their churchyards. Gayly the party mounted; and the strong horses galloped over the roads. They were still in the broad valley of the Hudson; far behind them lay the river, unseen, but farther still was visible yet the blue film of the Catskills. They crossed a broad intervale, and ahead of them was a gap in the hills, over which the road wound in a sort of pass. And now as they galloped up it in the shadow of the elms it was as if they had gone through a narrow door into a different country; the scene changed, the hills grew small, rugged, and broken; the vegetation was less rich; they were in New England. So marked was it that Wemyss pointed out the change; even the color of the houses was not the same, nor the look of the barns. They were small and neat, and painted sternly white; the very gates were better hung, and the sidewalks more neatly trimmed; the squalid, unkempt look was gone, and with it the greater luxuriance. One no longer felt the vastness of the Continent, but seemed to be in an older corner of it, the bars not yet let down, where elbow-room was less, and ideas and conventions artificially preserved. The hills were smaller, and the trees looked stunted; human habitations had a look like an old dress which the wearer in her penury still struggled to keep neat. Arthur was reminded at once of the look of the land about the hill-town to which he had driven on that day with Gracie. They had crossed the line into Connecticut, and the boundary was more marked than is usual in political divisions. Even in New York there had been a suggestion of the Western prairies; here was none. But there was a greater vigor in the air, which had a sort of moorland sparkle in it; and the talk was livelier than ever. They had a long and breezy drive of it, and the cock-horse was used many times in pulling up the grassy old road, which led uncompromisingly up the barren, ferny hills. For lunch they stopped at a little place called Lakeville, nestling in the hills between two clear blue ponds; and here John Haviland (having performed his errand) had to leave them to take his train back to the city.
In the afternoon Arthur was allowed to try his hand at driving; he sat on the box-seat with Miss Farnum, who was very silent, and Mrs. Gower and Wemyss had the rear seat to themselves. Kill Van Kull was allowed to get into the “cabin” and go to sleep, a refreshment which he averred the country air made most needful to him. Behind him on the middle seat the party were very noisy, and Arthur had much ado to keep his attention on the horses, who seemed also to feel the tang of the keen soft air. As they were going down a crooked hill, longer than he had expected, so that no shoe had been put on, the horses got almost beyond his control. He gathered the four reins together and pulled his best, and just managed to keep them in the road. The people behind were laughing and talking, unconscious of what was going on; and Arthur had already begun to congratulate himself upon his escape, when, as they were nearing the bottom, he got too far on the outer curve, and the heavy wheels sank deep in the gravel, still wet with the spring rains. One awful moment of suspense, and then the ponderous vehicle swayed heavily, rolled majestically over on its side. A shrill scream resounded behind him—it is not the custom for American girls to scream—and Mrs. Hay threw her arms wildly around Lord Birmingham, with the feminine instinct to embrace something in emergencies. But it was of no avail; and they all sailed gracefully off into the long grass, Arthur still devotedly hanging to the reins.
No one was hurt; and after a bare pause for reflection, everybody burst forth in a roar of laughter. Loudly and long they laughed, holding their sides; they were laughing too much to get up; one horse was down, and the others rearing and plunging. Van Kull put his head ruefully out of the window of the coach that was uppermost and contemplated the scene. His hat was crushed, he was nigh smothered with shawls and veils, and his hair hanging down over his eyes; and his head protruded slowly, like a disabled jack-in-the-box, amid the merriment of the company.