I had a mind to say that I did not know the way thither2, and that the river-side dwellers3 should lead; but almost without my will my feet moved on along the road they knew. The raised way led us into a little field bounded by a backwater of the river on one side; on the right hand we could see a cluster of small houses and barns, new and old, and before us a grey stone barn and a wall partly overgrown with ivy4, over which a few grey gables showed. The village road ended in the shallow of the aforesaid backwater. We crossed the road, and again almost without my will my hand raised the latch5 of a door in the wall, and we stood presently on a stone path which led up to the old house to which fate in the shape of Dick had so strangely brought me in this new world of men. My companion gave a sigh of pleased surprise and enjoyment6; nor did I wonder, for the garden between the wall and the house was redolent of the June flowers, and the roses were rolling over one another with that delicious superabundance of small well-tended gardens which at first sight takes away all thought from the beholder7 save that of beauty. The blackbirds were singing their loudest, the doves were cooing on the roof-ridge, the rooks in the high elm-trees beyond were garrulous8 among the young leaves, and the swifts wheeled whining9 about the gables. And the house itself was a fit guardian10 for all the beauty of this heart of summer.
Once again Ellen echoed my thoughts as she said:
“Yes, friend, this is what I came out for to see; this many-gabled old house built by the simple country-folk of the long-past times, regardless of all the turmoil11 that was going on in cities and courts, is lovely still amidst all the beauty which these latter days have created; and I do not wonder at our friends tending it carefully and making much of it. It seems to me as if it had waited for these happy days, and held in it the gathered crumbs13 of happiness of the confused and turbulent past.”
She led me up close to the house, and laid her shapely sun-browned hand and arm on the lichened14 wall as if to embrace it, and cried out, “O me! O me! How I love the earth, and the seasons, and weather, and all things that deal with it, and all that grows out of it — as this has done!”
I could not answer her, or say a word. Her exultation15 and pleasure were so keen and exquisite16, and her beauty, so delicate, yet so interfused with energy, expressed it so fully12, that any added word would have been commonplace and futile17. I dreaded18 lest the others should come in suddenly and break the spell she had cast about me; but we stood there a while by the corner of the big gable of the house, and no one came. I heard the merry voices some way off presently, and knew that they were going along the river to the great meadow on the other side of the house and garden.
We drew back a little, and looked up at the house: the door and the windows were open to the fragrant19 sun-cured air; from the upper window-sills hung festoons of flowers in honour of the festival, as if the others shared in the love for the old house.
“Come in,” said Ellen. “I hope nothing will spoil it inside; but I don’t think it will. Come! we must go back presently to the others. They have gone on to the tents; for surely they must have tents pitched for the haymakers — the house would not hold a tithe20 of the folk, I am sure.”
She led me on to the door, murmuring little above her breath as she did so, “The earth and the growth of it and the life of it! If I could but say or show how I love it!”
We went in, and found no soul in any room as we wandered from room to room — from the rose-covered porch to the strange and quaint21 garrets amongst the great timbers of the roof, where of old time the tillers and herdsmen of the manor22 slept, but which a-nights seemed now, by the small size of the beds, and the litter of useless and disregarded matters — bunches of dying flowers, feathers of birds, shells of starling’s eggs, caddis worms in mugs, and the like — seemed to be inhabited for the time by children.
Everywhere there was but little furniture, and that only the most necessary, and of the simplest forms. The extravagant23 love of ornament24 which I had noted25 in this people elsewhere seemed here to have given place to the feeling that the house itself and its associations was the ornament of the country life amidst which it had been left stranded26 from old times, and that to re-ornament it would but take away its use as a piece of natural beauty.
We sat down at last in a room over the wall which Ellen had caressed27, and which was still hung with old tapestry28, originally of no artistic29 value, but now faded into pleasant grey tones which harmonised thoroughly30 well with the quiet of the place, and which would have been ill supplanted31 by brighter and more striking decoration.
I asked a few random32 questions of Ellen as we sat there, but scarcely listened to her answers, and presently became silent, and then scarce conscious of anything, but that I was there in that old room, the doves crooning from the roofs of the barn and dovecot beyond the window opposite to me.
My thought returned to me after what I think was but a minute or two, but which, as in a vivid dream, seemed as if it had lasted a long time, when I saw Ellen sitting, looking all the fuller of life and pleasure and desire from the contrast with the grey faded tapestry with its futile design, which was now only bearable because it had grown so faint and feeble.
She looked at me kindly33, but as if she read me through and through. She said: “You have begun again your never-ending contrast between the past and this present. Is it not so?”
“True,” said I. “I was thinking of what you, with your capacity and intelligence, joined to your love of pleasure, and your impatience34 of unreasonable35 restraint — of what you would have been in that past. And even now, when all is won and has been for a long time, my heart is sickened with thinking of all the waste of life that has gone on for so many years.”
“So many centuries,” she said, “so many ages!”
“True,” I said; “too true,” and sat silent again.
She rose up and said: “Come, I must not let you go off into a dream again so soon. If we must lose you, I want you to see all that you can see first before you go back again.”
“Lose me?” I said —“go back again? Am I not to go up to the North with you? What do you mean?”
She smiled somewhat sadly, and said: “Not yet; we will not talk of that yet. Only, what were you thinking of just now?”
I said falteringly36: “I was saying to myself, The past, the present? Should she not have said the contrast of the present with the future: of blind despair with hope?”
“I knew it,” she said. Then she caught my hand and said excitedly, “Come, while there is yet time! Come!” And she led me out of the room; and as we were going downstairs and out of the house into the garden by a little side door which opened out of a curious lobby, she said in a calm voice, as if she wished me to forget her sudden nervousness: “Come! we ought to join the others before they come here looking for us. And let me tell you, my friend, that I can see you are too apt to fall into mere37 dreamy musing38: no doubt because you are not yet used to our life of repose39 amidst of energy; of work which is pleasure and pleasure which is work.”
She paused a little, and as we came out into the lovely garden again, she said: “My friend, you were saying that you wondered what I should have been if I had lived in those past days of turmoil and oppression. Well, I think I have studied the history of them to know pretty well. I should have been one of the poor, for my father when he was working was a mere tiller of the soil. Well, I could not have borne that; therefore my beauty and cleverness and brightness” (she spoke40 with no blush or simper of false shame) “would have been sold to rich men, and my life would have been wasted indeed; for I know enough of that to know that I should have had no choice, no power of will over my life; and that I should never have bought pleasure from the rich men, or even opportunity of action, whereby I might have won some true excitement. I should have wrecked41 and wasted in one way or another, either by penury42 or by luxury. Is it not so?”
“Indeed it is,” said I.
She was going to say something else, when a little gate in the fence, which led into a small elm-shaded field, was opened, and Dick came with hasty cheerfulness up the garden path, and was presently standing43 between us, a hand laid on the shoulder of each. He said: “Well, neighbours, I thought you two would like to see the old house quietly without a crowd in it. Isn’t it a jewel of a house after its kind? Well, come along, for it is getting towards dinner-time. Perhaps you, guest, would like a swim before we sit down to what I fancy will be a pretty long feast?”
“Yes,” I said, “I should like that.”
“Well, good-bye for the present, neighbour Ellen,” said Dick. “Here comes Clara to take care of you, as I fancy she is more at home amongst our friends here.”
Clara came out of the fields as he spoke; and with one look at Ellen I turned and went with Dick, doubting, if I must say the truth, whether I should see her again.
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1
strand
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| vt.使（船）搁浅，使（某人）困于（某地） | |
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thither
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| adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的 | |
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3
dwellers
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| n.居民，居住者( dweller的名词复数 ) | |
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ivy
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| n.常青藤，常春藤 | |
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5
latch
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| n.门闩，窗闩；弹簧锁 | |
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6
enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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7
beholder
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| n.观看者，旁观者 | |
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8
garrulous
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| adj.唠叨的，多话的 | |
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9
whining
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| n. 抱怨，牢骚 v. 哭诉，发牢骚 | |
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10
guardian
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| n.监护人；守卫者，保护者 | |
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11
turmoil
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| n.骚乱，混乱，动乱 | |
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12
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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13
crumbs
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| int. (表示惊讶)哎呀 n. 碎屑 名词crumb的复数形式 | |
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lichened
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| adj.长满地衣的，长青苔的 | |
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15
exultation
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| n.狂喜，得意 | |
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16
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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17
futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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18
dreaded
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| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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19
fragrant
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| adj.芬香的，馥郁的，愉快的 | |
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20
tithe
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| n.十分之一税；v.课什一税，缴什一税 | |
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21
quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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manor
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| n.庄园，领地 | |
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23
extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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24
ornament
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| v.装饰，美化；n.装饰，装饰物 | |
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25
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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26
stranded
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| a.搁浅的，进退两难的 | |
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caressed
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| 爱抚或抚摸…( caress的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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tapestry
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| n.挂毯，丰富多采的画面 | |
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29
artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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30
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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31
supplanted
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| 把…排挤掉，取代( supplant的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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random
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| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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33
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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34
impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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35
unreasonable
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| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
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36
falteringly
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| 口吃地，支吾地 | |
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37
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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38
musing
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| n. 沉思，冥想 adj. 沉思的, 冥想的 动词muse的现在分词形式 | |
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39
repose
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| v.(使)休息；n.安息 | |
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40
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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41
wrecked
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| adj.失事的，遇难的 | |
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42
penury
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| n.贫穷，拮据 | |
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43
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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