So also Rose, the witty, sparkling Rose, laughed and made them laugh, without having uttered a single joke fit to be repeated; because if its wit happened to be undeniable, it would, nevertheless, ill bear transplanting.
This is the dilemma into which a novelist is forced if he chance to select a lively girl for a heroine: either he must consent to suppress her conversation, or else to give the impression of a vulgar, personal, flippant, disagreeable creature. In real life, vivacity gives point to a poor joke, and carries off the coarseness from a personal witticism. A laughing girl, with roguish eyes, and unmistakeable hilarity of manner, may utter almost anything—commonplace or personality—not only with impunity, but with positive applause. But I am certain that if the conversation of lively young ladies were printed, it would be scouted as the coarse daubing of one who knew not what ladies were. Simply because a narrator can only give the words; he cannot give tone and manner.
Be good enough to understand, therefore, that Rose was provokingly witty, though I cannot repeat what she said. Take my word for it. Repose upon the "easier-to-be-imagined-than-described" belief. Represent to yourself a young and lively girl during a delightful canter, with her lover by her side, whom she likes to tease, and then "imagine" what conversation must have passed: there can be no difficulty about the wit, as you have to draw from your own stores.
A happy day they passed. The ride to the sea-shore was through pleasant lanes, strewed with fallen leaves; and the sea-shore itself presented a magnificent view. The tide was very low, and the distant sands and sea had the appearance of the early dawn of a summer's day. The sails of a fishing-smack or two dotted the horizon. A fresh, salt sea-weed fragrance saluted their nostrils; the scrunch (beautiful word!) of small shells and pebbles followed their footsteps; small stranded crabs, with incoherent efforts, were hurrying here and there; huge entangled masses of weed offered their pops to Rose's delicate fingers; and a basketful of beautiful shells was soon the result of their search.
In this extremely primitive occupation, the time fled on. Meredith Vyner had wandered a long way down the shore, talking to Mrs. St. John respecting the virtues and accomplishments of his wife, and the manner in which his girls repaid her affection; which was followed up by a circumstantial history of his commentary on Horace: how the idea first came to him in reading a variorum edition: how the more he learned to know the commentators, the more he had learned to despise them, and to feel that a new edition was imperatively called for: how he had worked for years at this edition, and how, in short, he had finally got together the materials from which his monument would be built.
The tide was fast returning, and a rolling sea poured its restless waters, like the plunging of a powerful steed. Violet, seated on a rock, was contemplating it in silence; in silence Marmaduke dropped little pebbles into a tiny pool of water left in the rock. Both were sad, but with the sadness which is sweeter than joy. Both were silent, but with the silence which is more eloquent than speech. The breeze was playing with their hair, the music of "old ocean's roar" was sounding in their ears; the declining rays of an autumnal sun gave a poetic splendour to the scene, which was disturbed by no sound save the ceaseless wash of the advancing tide as it rolled upon the shingle.
It was one of those exquisite moments when the soul seems to tremble with delight at every thought which crosses it, when the susceptibility to external influences is so keen that the veriest trifles are robed in the splendour of imagination, and a scene which at other times would attract, perhaps, but little attention, has the enchantment of Armida's gardens. There are moments when the soul, with a vague but irresistible yearning, seems anxious to burst its earthly bonds, and to identify itself with the great spirit of beauty which hovers over the world—moments when the desire to love is so imperious, when the soul so eagerly seeks communion with some other soul, that the being, whom at other times we have perhaps regarded as indifferent, suddenly becomes the idol to whom a heart is offered as a sacrifice. The halo of mysterious feelings is around that being's head, and we mistake it for the luminous glory which encircles the Chosen. Just as the feeling of the moment sheds its lustre over a common-place scene, will it make an idol out of a common-place person.
How many fatal mistakes in love are attributable to such illusions?
Marmaduke and Violet were both under the spell of such a feeling. Yet neither spoke; words were too imperfect to express what passed within them. He rolled his pebbles one after the other into the pool, with mechanical precision; she watched the broad advancing sea, and listened to its music.
Had he declared his passion at that moment, he would assuredly have been accepted; and the whole course of their lives would have been altered. But he paused; he "dallied with the faint surmise;" he played with his own heart, and waited for her to break the silence.