“Your magpies and stock-doves may flirt among trees
And chatter their transports in groves if they please;
But a house is much more to my taste than a tree,
And for groves! oh! a fine grove of chimneys for me!”
I say that I should have been sick of Updown and the natural scenery around it in less than a week, had it not been for Grove End. But there I found a human interest, powerful enough to inform the country for miles round with an extraordinary attraction.
Yes, Eugenio! before I had known my cousin three weeks I was in love with her. How could I look into her fathomless blue eyes, and not sink deep—deep—deep out of sight? How could I take her little snow-white hand and not wish to hold it for ever? My aunt encouraged me. It was her fault. I noticed that she was always fond of leaving Conny and me alone; that she contrived that Conny and I should sit side by side at the dinner-table; and that Conny should accompany us in our drives, which we used to take after the bank was closed, the carriage often calling for me at my lodgings.
I remember one fine evening at the latter end of June, that I left the drawing-room and strolled on to the lawn, and seated myself under a fine old oak tree. I wanted Conny to join me, and hoped she would take the hint, or that her mamma would send her with a cigar; for as I have said, Mrs. Hargrave took great pleasure in seeing us together. I made up my mind, if Conny came, to tell her that I loved her. I was suffering at that moment from an access. Everybody knows that love is an intermittent fever, and that the delirium is very powerful at times. I had sat next to her at table; I had said something soft to her, and lo! she had turned her eyes slowly up to mine. Heavens! what did I read there? A sensibility that transported me! Could I question that my unspoken love was recognised and shared? Oh, Eugenio! either hold thy tongue, or agree with me instantly, that the spirit hath a voice which makes itself audible to the spirit of the beloved, albeit no human language is uttered. Of course the eyes can talk. They are faculties given to women to convey thoughts which all the terms and all the definitions in Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary put together, could never express. I had read a profound and inspiring truth in Conny’s eyes. Her tongue could no more have said it than my eyes could have looked it, beautiful and piercing as my poor fat Pauline used to consider them. That truth had sent me to the old oak tree, and now kept me pensively waiting for her to come forth.
But her mother came instead. The kind old lady stepped on to the lawn, and seeing me, approached and took a seat at my side.
“Why, how is it you are not smoking?” she asked.