“And you think he really loves Amy now?” said Phœbe, half-aloud, half to herself.
“Not as I love you,” said Arthur; “but our love, dearest, is a love apart from any other love; it seems to me that nobody in the whole world is blessed like I am with a love so generous, so noble. What have I done that I should deserve so much happiness?”
“Dear Arthur!” was all Phœbe could say, and then for a time they forgot all the world but themselves and the trees and flowers and grasses and the distant hills and the spring sky above them, with the hopeful lark in the sunshine, and the nightingale singing in the shade.
What a delightful path it was, that old familiar way by which they returned to the farm! Wood-sorrel, buttercups, sweet woodroof, primroses, and violets bespangled and scented the way; green grasses and ferns shot out like emerald spikes and crooks from amongst dead leaves that autumn winds had left in out-of-the-way corners. The lake in the shadow of the hills shone here and there through the trees like glints of silver, and the sunbeams sparkled white and shimmery on the windows of Barton Hall. At length the lovers stopped beside a rustic stile near the foot of the hills—one of those old-fashioned, moss-grown, lichen-coloured stiles, which give such additional charms to straggling hedge-rows, with great clumps of flowering hawthorn here and there at the top, and patches of red and brown and amber in the old roots at the bottom. Beneath a bending branch of budding May-flowers Arthur pointed out the spot where he had sat for hours to paint and think of her in the summer-time, and she saw that the place commanded a full view of the room where she mostly sat.
Oh, what a happy time it was! The spring wind went about the woods in gentle murmurs, as if it were saying so in every nook and corner. “How are you, old friend?” it seemed to say every now and then, as it rustled the young leaves of an oak or an elm—“glad to see you looking so well—pleasant day;” and the trees seemed to nod and look happy, and congratulate each other that the south wind had come again, and the ash trees shook their jangling locks with delight. Everything seemed to say the winter is over, and we are glad of it and sure of it. The frogs croaked by the margin of the lake, and the crows replied as they winged their way over them up into the elms that glassed themselves in the deep. Bees hummed musically in the air, and darted into the midst of great yellow buttercups as if in very wantonness of joy. What a happy time it was! Everything seemed to say so—birds and trees and hills and fields. There was a general jubilation of Nature, such as the Psalmist might have had in his mind when he sang, “Let the floods clap their hands, and let the hills be joyful together before the Lord.”
Happy days! Why do we dwell upon them? It is not easy to close any page which has spring sunshine in it. We have all of us so many dear, treasured associations with it, bringing us back to the spring-time of life when the world looked so hopeful and charming—when there were flowers of love and friendship in our paths, and we knew nothing of the thorns that lurked beneath them.
CHAPTER XV.
FINANCE AND “FINESSE.”
The spring did not bring happy days with it in the city of London. The south wind had no influence on that financial storm which had not yet subsided. It brought no comfort to unhappy speculators and tottering houses of trade. The city sparrows shambled from under the eaves, and rolled themselves in the dust of the great city, and street boys whistled merrily along the hard pavements; but great merchants held down their heads, directors of companies hurried to and fro with great secrets in their hearts that troubled them sorely; countrymen stared vacantly up at offices and banks that were closed and marked “To Let.” The genius of finance, and not spring, had full possession of the City, and he was tormenting it with panic fiends and imps of all kinds.
People had said six months previously that the worst was over; but the genius of finance looked on with a sardonic grin, and after breathing awhile quietly he set to work again, shaking the city with all his might, and letting flights of rumours out of his black bag that frightened people almost out of their wits. Then the telegraph wires carried the rumours far away into the country once more, and newspaper editors began to write furiously about the currency; deputations waited on the Chancellor of the Exchequer to talk about the Bank Charter Act; and the court of the Bank of England sat in secret, and raised the rate of discount. The more that big demon of finance shook the City, the higher went up the Bank barometer, and the higher it rose the lower fell the hopes of traders, and discounters, and shaky companies.
The period of panic through which the monetary world is passing whilst we are writing this history, has nearly all the characteristics of the one which occurred in the days of Thomas Dibble and Richard Tallant, and the other persons who make up this poor drama of life. Every ten years these storms occur, they say; and yet the wise people who say so, never seem prepared for the rainy day.