C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Richard and Lucy: An Idyl
By George Meredith (1828–1909)
W
Above green-flashing plunges of a weir, and shaken by the thunder below, lilies, golden and white, were swaying at anchor among the reeds. Meadow-sweet hung from the banks thick with weed and trailing bramble, and there also hung a daughter of earth. Her face was shaded by a broad straw hat with a flexible brim that left her lips and chin in the sun, and sometimes nodding, sent forth a light of promising eyes. Across her shoulders, and behind, flowed large loose curls, brown in shadow, almost golden where the ray touched them. She was simply dressed, befitting decency and the season. On a closer inspection you might see that her lips were stained. This blooming young person was regaling on dewberries. They grew between the bank and the water. Apparently she found the fruit abundant, for her hand was making pretty progress to her mouth. Fastidious youth, which shudders and revolts at woman plumping her exquisite proportions on bread and butter, and would (we must suppose) joyfully have her quite scraggy to have her quite poetical, can hardly object to dewberries. Indeed, the act of eating them is dainty and induces musing. The dewberry is a sister to the lotus, and an innocent sister. You eat; mouth, eye, and hand are occupied, and the undrugged mind free to roam. And so it was with the damsel who knelt there. The little skylark went up above her, all song, to the smooth southern cloud lying along the blue; from a dewy copse standing dark over her nodding hat the blackbird fluted, calling to her with thrice mellow note; the kingfisher flashed emerald out of green osiers; a bow-winged heron traveled aloft, seeking solitude; a boat slipped toward her, containing a dreamy youth; and still she plucked the fruit, and ate, and mused, as if no fairy prince were invading her territories, and as if she wished not for one, or knew not her wishes. Surrounded by the green shaven meadows, the pastoral summer buzz, the weirfall’s thundering white, amid the breath and beauty of wild flowers, she was a bit of lovely human life in a fair setting; a terrible attraction. The Magnetic Youth leaned round to note his proximity to the weir-piles, and beheld the sweet vision. Stiller and stiller grew nature, as at the meeting of two electric clouds. Her posture was so graceful that though he was making straight for the weir, he dared not dip a scull. Just then one most enticing dewberry caught her eyes. He was floating by unheeded, and saw that her hand stretched low, and could not gather what it sought. A stroke from his right brought him beside her. The damsel glanced up dismayed, and her whole shape trembled over the brink. Richard sprang from his boat into the water. Pressing a hand beneath her foot, which she had thrust against the crumbling wet sides of the bank to save herself, he enabled her to recover her balance and gain safe earth, whither, emboldened by the incident, touching her finger’s tip, he followed her.
Or is it Adam, his rib taken from his side in sleep, and thus transformed, to make him behold his Paradise, and lose it?
The youth looked on her with as glowing an eye. It was the First Woman to him.
And she—mankind was all Caliban to her, saving this one princely youth.
So to each other said their changing eyes in the moment they stood together; he pale, and she blushing.
She was indeed sweetly fair, and would have been held fair among rival damsels. On a magic shore, and to a youth educated by a System, strung like an arrow drawn to the head, he, it might be guessed, could fly fast and far with her. The soft rose in her cheeks, the clearness of her eyes, bore witness to the body’s virtue; and health and happy blood were in her bearing. Had she stood before Sir Austin among rival damsels, that Scientific Humanist, for the consummation of his System, would have thrown her the handkerchief for his son. The wide summer-hat, nodding over her forehead to her brows, seemed to flow with the flowing heavy curls, and those fire-threaded mellow curls, only half-curls,—waves of hair, call them,—rippling at the ends, went like a sunny red-veined torrent down her back almost to her waist; a glorious vision to the youth, who embraced it as a flower of beauty, and read not a feature. There were curious features of color in her face for him to have read. Her brows, thick and brownish against a soft skin showing the action of the blood, met in the bend of a bow, extending to the temples long and level: you saw that she was fashioned to peruse the sights of earth, and by the pliability of her brows that the wonderful creature used her faculty, and was not going to be a statue to the gazer. Under the dark thick brows an arch of lashes shot out, giving a wealth of darkness to the full frank blue eyes, a mystery of meaning—more than brain was ever meant to fathom; richer, henceforth, than all mortal wisdom to Prince Ferdinand. For when nature turns artist, and produces contrasts of color on a fair face, where is the Sage, or what the Oracle, shall match the depth of its lightest look?
Prince Ferdinand was also fair. In his slim boating attire his figure looked heroic. His hair, rising from the parting to the right of his forehead, in what his admiring Lady Blandish called his plume, fell away slanting silkily to the temples across the nearly imperceptible upward curve of his brows there,—felt more than seen, so slight it was,—and gave to his profile a bold beauty, to which his bashful, breathless air was a flattering charm. An arrow drawn to the head, capable of flying fast and far with her. He leaned a little forward to her, drinking her in with all his eyes,—and young Love has a thousand. Then truly the System triumphed, just ere it was to fall; and could Sir Austin have been content to draw the arrow to the head and let it fly, when it would fly, he might have pointed to his son again, and said to the world, “Match him!” Such keen bliss as the youth had in the sight of her, an innocent youth alone has powers of soul in him to experience.
“O women!” says The Pilgrim’s Scrip, in one of its solitary outbursts, “women, who like, and will have for hero, a rake! how soon are you not to learn that you have taken bankrupts to your bosoms, and that the putrescent gold that attracted you is the slime of the Lake of Sin!”
If these two were Ferdinand and Miranda, Sir Austin was not Prospero and was not present, or their fates might have been different.
So they stood a moment, changing eyes, and then Miranda spoke, and they came down to earth, feeling no less in heaven.
She spoke to thank him for his aid. She used quite common simple words; and used them, no doubt, to express a common simple meaning: but to him she was uttering magic, casting spells, and the effect they had on him was manifested in the incoherence of his replies, which were too foolish to be chronicled.
The couple were again mute. Suddenly Miranda, with an exclamation of anguish, and innumerable lights and shadows playing over her lovely face, clapped her hands, crying aloud, “My book! my book!” and ran to the bank.
Prince Ferdinand was at her side. “What have you lost?” he said.
“My book! my book!” she answered, her long delicious curls swinging across her shoulders to the stream. Then turning to him, divining his rash intention, “Oh, no, no! let me entreat you not to,” she said: “I do not so very much mind losing it.” And in her eagerness to restrain him she unconsciously laid her gentle hand upon his arm, and took the force of motion out of him.
“Indeed, I do not really care for the silly book,” she continued, withdrawing her hand quickly, and reddening. “Pray do not!”
The young gentleman had kicked off his shoes. No sooner was the spell of contact broken than he jumped in. The water was still troubled and discolored by his introductory adventure; and though he ducked his head with the spirit of a dabchick, the book was missing. A scrap of paper floating from the bramble just above the water, and looking as if fire had caught its edges, and it had flown from one adverse element to the other, was all he could lay hold of; and he returned to land disconsolately, to hear Miranda’s murmured mixing of thanks and pretty expostulations.
“Let me try again,” he said.
“No indeed!” she replied, and used the awful threat, “I will run away if you do;” which effectually restrained him.
Her eye fell on the fire-stained scrap of paper, and brightened as she cried, “There, there! you have what I want. It is that. I do not care for the book. No, please! you are not to look at it. Give it me.”
Before her playfully imperative injunction was fairly spoken, Richard had glanced at the document and discovered a Griffin between Two Wheatsheaves; his crest in silver; and below—oh, wonderment immense, his own handwriting! remnant of his burnt-offering! a page of the sacrificed poems! one blossom preserved from the deadly universal blight.
He handed it to her in silence. She took it, and put it in her bosom.
Who would have said, have thought, that where all else perished,—Odes, fluttering bits of broad-winged Epic, Idyls, Lines, Stanzas,—this one Sonnet to the stars should be miraculously reserved for such a starry fate! passing beatitude!
As they walked silently across the meadow, Richard strove to remember the hour and the mood of mind in which he had composed the notable production. The stars were invoked, as seeing and foreseeing all, to tell him where then his love reclined, and so forth; Hesper was complaisant enough to do so, and described her in a couplet—
“Wet?” replied the magnetic muser, with a voice of tender interest: “not more than one foot, I hope? I will leave you while you dry your stockings in the sun.”
At this she could not withhold a shy and lovely laugh.
“Not I, but you. You know you saved me, and would try to get that silly book for me, and you are dripping wet. Are you not very uncomfortable?”
In all sincerity he assured her that he was not.
“And you really do not feel that you are wet?”
He really did not; and it was a fact that he spoke truth.
She pursed her sweet dewberry mouth in the most comical way, and her blue eyes lightened laughter out of the half-closed lids.
“I cannot help it,” she said, her mouth opening, and sounding harmonious bells of laughter in his ears. “Pardon me, won’t you?”
His face took the same soft smiling curves in admiration of her.
“Not to feel that you have been in the water, the very moment after!” she musically interjected, seeing she was excused.
“It’s true,” he said; and his own gravity then touched him to join a duet with her, which made them no longer feel strangers, and did the work of a month of intimacy. Better than sentiment, laughter opens the breast to love; opens the whole breast to his full quiver, instead of a corner here and there for a solitary arrow. Hail the occasion propitious, O British young! and laugh and treat love as an honest god, and dabble not with the sentimental rouge. These two laughed, and the souls of each cried out to other, “It is I. It is I.”
They laughed, and forgot the cause of their laughter; and the sun dried his light river clothing; and they strolled toward the blackbird’s copse, and stood near a stile in sight of the foam of the weir and the many-colored rings of eddies streaming forth from it.
Richard’s boat, meanwhile, had contrived to shoot the weir, and was swinging, bottom upward, broadside with the current down the rapid backwater.
“Will you let it go?” said the damsel, eying it curiously.
“Yes,” he replied, and low, as if he spoke in the core of his thought. “What do I care for it now!”
His old life was whirled away with it, dead, drowned. His new life was with her, alive, divine.
She flapped low the brim of her hat. “You must really not come any farther,” she softly said.
“And will you go and not tell me who you are?” he asked, growing bold as the fears of losing her came across him. “And will you not tell me before you go”—his face burned—“how you came by that—that paper?”
She chose to select the easier question to reply to: “You ought to know me: we have been introduced.” Sweet was her winning off-hand affability.
“Then who, in heaven’s name, are you? Tell me! I never could have forgotten you.”
“You have, I think,” she said demurely.
“Impossible that we could ever have met, and I forget you!”
She looked up to him quickly.
“Do you remember Belthorpe?”
“Belthorpe! Belthorpe!” quoth Richard, as if he had to touch his brain to recollect there was such a place. “Do you mean old Blaize’s farm?”
“Then I am old Blaize’s niece.” She tripped him a soft curtsy.
The magnetized youth gazed at her. By what magic was it that this divine sweet creature could be allied with that old churl!
“Then what—what is your name?” said his mouth; while his eyes added, “O wonderful creature! how came you to enrich the earth?”
“Have you forgot the Desboroughs of Dorset, too?” She peered at him archly from a side bend of the flapping brim.
“The Desboroughs of Dorset?” A light broke in on him. “And have you grown to this? That little girl I saw there!”
He drew close to her to read the nearest features of the vision. She could no more laugh off the piercing fervor of his eyes. Her volubility fluttered under his deeply wistful look, and now neither voice was high, and they were mutually constrained.
“You see,” she murmured, “we are old acquaintances.”
Richard, with his eyes still intently fixed on her, returned, “You are very beautiful!”
The words slipped out. Perfect simplicity is unconsciously audacious. Her overpowering beauty struck his heart, and like an instrument that is touched and answers to the touch, he spoke.
Miss Desborough made an effort to trifle with this terrible directness; but his eyes would not be gainsaid, and checked her lips. She turned away from them, her bosom a little rebellious. Praise so passionately spoken, and by one who has been a damsel’s first dream, dreamed of nightly many long nights, and clothed in the virgin silver of her thoughts in bud,—praise from him is coin the heart cannot reject, if it would. She quickened her steps to the stile.
“I have offended you!” said a mortally wounded voice across her shoulder.
That he should think so were too dreadful.
“Oh no, no! you would never offend me.” She gave him her whole sweet face.
“Then why—why do you leave me?”
“Because,” she hesitated, “I must go.”
“No. You must not go. Why must you go? Do not go.”
“Indeed I must,” she said, pulling at the obnoxious broad brim of her hat; and interpreting a pause he made for his assent to her rational resolve, shyly looking at him, she held her hand out, and said “Good-by,” as if it were a natural thing to say.
The hand was pure white—white and fragrant as the frosted blossom of a May night. It was the hand whose shadow, cast before, he had last night bent his head reverentially above, and kissed; resigning himself thereupon over to execution for payment of the penalty of such daring—by such bliss well rewarded.
He took the hand, and held it, gazing between her eyes.
“Good-by,” she said again, as frankly as she could, and at the same time slightly compressing her fingers on his in token of adieu. It was a signal for his to close firmly upon hers.
“You will not go?”
“Pray let me,” she pleaded, her sweet brows suing in wrinkles.
“You will not go?” Mechanically he drew the white hand nearer his thumping heart.
“I must,” she faltered piteously.
“You will not go?”
“Oh yes! yes!”
“Tell me—do you wish to go?”
The question was subtle. A moment or two she did not answer, and then forswore herself and said Yes.
“Do you—do you wish to go?” He looked with quivering eyelids under hers.
A fainter Yes responded to his passionate repetition.
“You wish—wish to leave me?” His breath went with the words.
“Indeed I must.”
Her hand became a closer prisoner.
All at once an alarming delicious shudder went through her frame. From him to her it coursed, and back from her to him. Forward and back love’s electric messenger rushed from heart to heart, knocking at each till it surged tumultuously against the bars of its prison, crying out for its mate. They stood trembling in unison, a lovely couple under these fair heavens of the morning.
When he could get his voice it said, “Will you go?”
But she had none to reply with, and could only mutely bend upward her gentle wrist.
“Then farewell!” he said; and dropping his lips to the soft fair hand, kissed it, and hung his head, swinging away from her, ready for death.
Strange, that now she was released she should linger by him. Strange, that his audacity, instead of the executioner, brought blushes and timid tenderness to his side, and the sweet words, “You are not angry with me?”
“With you, O Beloved!” cried his soul. “And you forgive me, fair charity!”
She repeated her words in deeper sweetness to his bewildered look; and he, inexperienced, possessed by her, almost lifeless with the divine new emotions she had realized in him, could only sigh and gaze at her wonderingly.
“I think it was rude of me to go without thanking you again,” she said, and again proffered her hand.
The sweet heaven-bird shivered out his song above him. The gracious glory of heaven fell upon his soul. He touched her hand, not moving his eyes from her nor speaking; and she, with a soft word of farewell, passed across the stile, and up the pathway through the dewy shades of the copse, and out of the arch of the light, away from his eyes.
There was nothing to tell him that he had been making love and declaring it with extraordinary rapidity; nor did he know it. Soft flushed cheeks! sweet mouth! strange sweet brows! eyes of softest fire!—how could his ripe eyes behold you, and not plead to keep you? Nay, how could he let you go? And he seriously asked himself that question.
To-morrow this place will have a memory,—the river and the meadow, and the white falling weir: his heart will build a temple here; and the skylark will be its high priest, and the old blackbird its glossy-gowned chorister, and there will be a sacred repast of dewberries. To-day the grass is grass; his heart is chased by phantoms and finds rest nowhere. Only when the most tender freshness of his flower comes across him does he taste a moment’s calm; and no sooner does it come than it gives place to keen pangs of fear that she may not be his forever.
Ere long he learns that her name is Lucy. Ere long he meets Ralph, and discovers that in a day he has distanced him by a sphere.