‘You will be discreet with her, Herbert,’ said Mr. Hayward gently, giving his hand.
Herbert could only press it in acknowledgment. In a moment afterwards they were gone.
Mr. Hayward turned to the window involuntarily, to watch them as they descended the gentle slope of the lawn. There was a vague thought in his mind that they had better not have gone; but as he could find no reason for the idea, he dismissed it. He was a benevolent, simple-hearted man; he had had neither the necessity nor the inclination to study character, and could not at once estimate the effect such a communication as his daughter was about to receive would have upon her; nor did it at once strike him that the long and intimate association she had held with Herbert could have produced any tenderer feeling than she had ever expressed or appeared to entertain. Her mother, had she been there, might have judged differently; but, as Mr. Hayward soliloquised, as their retreating figures were lost to his view behind a low shrubbery, ‘Matters must take their own course now; it is too late to recall them.’
Onwards they went; leaving the broad walk which led by the side of the lawn and shrubberies, they at once struck across the park, down one of the noble glades of beech-trees from whence the place took its name. The day was bright and warm—one of those blessed days of June, when all nature seems to put forward her choicest productions for the gratification and admiration of man—when cowslip and daisy, buttercup and wild anemone, with a thousand other flowers of lowly pretensions yet of exquisite beauty, have opened their bright blossoms to the sunlight, and are wooing it in silent thankfulness.
The verdant carpet beneath them was full of these, glowing in their freshest bloom; the sheep and lambs, dotted here and there upon every slope, lazily cropped the short, soft herbage; and the tinkling of their bells and the faint bleating of the lambs, now distant, now near, mingled with the hum of the many bees which busily drew their loads of sweets, roaming from flower to flower. Butterflies of many hues, their gorgeous wings glaring in the bright light, fluttered swiftly along, coquetting as it were with the flowers, and enjoying in their full vigour the sunny brightness of their short lives.
There was no wind, and yet a freshness in the air which tempered the heat of the sun; the beech-trees, with their shining leaves, appeared sleeping in the sunlight, and as if resting, during the short period there might be allowed them, from their almost ceaseless waving. Far around them the park stretched away into broad glades, some ended by woods, others presenting peeps of blue and dim distance; while through all there was a vapour floating, sufficient only to take off the harshness from every outline, whether of tree or distance, and to blend the whole harmoniously into that soft dreamy appearance, so exquisite and so soothing to behold.
‘How lovely the park is to-day, Herbert!’ said Amy, ‘is it not? Every step we take seems to present a new picture which ought to be drawn. Look now at that group of sheep and deer almost intermixed; the deer have chosen the fern which is partly under that magnificent beech, the sheep are all among them, and their young lambs enjoying their merry gambols; the light is falling in that beautiful chequered manner which I strive in vain to represent; and yet how great are the masses, how perfect the unstudied composition, how exquisite the colour! The brightest and warmest green, spangled with flowers, is before us; this is broken by the shadows: beyond the tree there is a delicious grey, melting imperceptibly into the most tender blue. Is it not a picture now, Herbert?’
‘A lovely one indeed, Amy; a study worthy of Berghem or Cuyp. What exquisite perceptions of nature must they have had! their pictures, and those of many of the same class, how simple! and yet painted with the most consummate art and nicest finish. Scarcely a flower escapes them, yet there is not one too many represented, nor one in any way interfering with the harmony of their colouring. I often long for such power; for we only can appreciate their skill and genius, by our own awkward attempts to imitate them. Indeed, when I look on the works of any of these great masters, my own appear so contemptible in my eyes, that I am tempted to forswear the gentle craft altogether.’
‘Indeed, you are to do no such thing, Herbert, but help me to sketch, and to blunder on through many a drawing yet, I have no idea of being put out of conceit of my own performances, for which I have a high respect, I assure you. But come, if we stay loitering by every old beech-tree and group of sheep or deer, I shall get no sketch done in time for you to copy on my drawing, and shall be obliged perhaps to listen to some terrible excuses of duty or business. So come, we have yet a good way to walk.’
Beguiling the way, little more than a quarter of a mile, by gentle converse upon familiar, yet to them interesting subjects, they reached the busy, murmuring river,—now stealing quietly under a bank,—now chafed in its passage over a few stones,—here eddying past a rock and covered with white foam,—there widening out into a little pool, partly natural, partly artificial, the glassy surface of which was broken into circles by the rapid rising of the trout, which eagerly leaped after the flies that sported upon it.