Essential Novelists - Dinah Craik. August Nemo
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adjoining.”
“It must be a fine place, London.”
“Ay; I should like to see it. Your father says, perhaps he shall have to send me, this winter, on business — won’t that be fine? If only you would go too.”
I shook my head. I had the strongest disinclination to stir from my quiet home, which now held within it, or about it, all I wished for and all I loved. It seemed as if any change must be to something worse.
“Nevertheless, you must have a change. Doctor Jessop insists upon it. Here have I been beating up and down the country for a week past —‘Adventures in Search of a Country Residence’— and, do you know, I think I’ve found one at last. Shouldn’t you like to hear about it?”
I assented, to please him.
“Such a nice, nice place, on the slope of Enderley Hill. A cottage — Rose Cottage — for it’s all in a bush of cluster-roses, up to the very roof.”
“Where is Enderley?”
“Did you never hear of Enderley Flat, the highest tableland in England? Such a fresh, free, breezy spot — how the wind sweeps over it! I can feel it in my face still.”
And even the description was refreshing, this heavy, sultry day, with not a breath of air moving across the level valley.
“Shouldn’t you like to live on a hill-side, to be at the top of everything, overlooking everything? Well, that’s Enderley: the village lies just under the brow of the Flat.”
“Is there a village?”
“A dozen cottages or so, at each door of which half-a-dozen white little heads and a dozen round eyes appeared staring at me. But oh, the blessed quiet and solitude of the place! No fights in filthy alleys! no tan-yards — I mean”— he added, correcting himself —“it’s a thorough country spot; and I like the country better than the town.”
“Do you, still? Would you really like to take to the ‘shepherd’s life and state,’ upon which my namesake here is so eloquent? Let us see what he says.”
And from the handful of books that usually lay strewn about wherever we two sat, I took up one he had lately got, with no small pains I was sure, and had had bound in its own proper colour, and presented it to me —“The Purple Island,” and “Sicelides,” of Phineas Fletcher. People seldom read this wise, tender, and sweet-voiced old fellow now; so I will even copy the verses I found for John to read.
“Here is the place. Thyrsis is just ending his ‘broken lay.’
‘Lest that the stealing night his later song might stay —’”
“Stop a minute,” interrupted John. “Apropos of ‘stealing night,’ the sun is already down below the yew-hedge. Are you cold?”
“Not a bit of it.”
“Then we’ll begin:—
‘Thrice, oh, thrice happy, shepherd’s life and state:
When courts are happiness, unhappy pawns!’
That’s not clear,” said John, laying down the book. “Now I do like poetry to be intelligible. A poet ought to see things more widely, and express them more vividly, than ordinary folk.”
“Don’t you perceive — he means the pawns on the chess-board — the common people.”
“Phineas, don’t say the common people — I’m a common person myself. But to continue:—
‘His cottage low, and safely humble gate,
Shuts out proud Fortune, with her scorns and fawns:
No feared treason breaks his quiet sleep.
Singing all day, his flocks he learns to keep,
Himself as innocent as are his quiet sheep.’
(Not many sheep at Enderley, I fancy; the Flat chiefly abounds in donkeys. Well —)
‘No Serian worms he knows, that with their thread,
Drew out their silken lives — nor silken pride —’
Which reminds me that —”
“David, how can you make me laugh at our reverend ancestor in this way? I’m ashamed of you.”
“Only let me tell you this one fact — very interesting, you’ll allow — that I saw a silken gown hanging up in the kitchen at Rose Cottage. Now, though Mrs. Tod is a decent, comely woman, I don’t think it belonged to her.”
“She may have lodgers.”
“I think she said she had — an old gentleman — but HE wouldn’t wear a silken gown.”
“His wife might. Now, do go on reading.”
“Certainly; I only wish to draw a parallel between Thyrsis and ourselves in our future summer life at Enderley. So the old gentleman’s wife may appropriate the ‘silken pride,’ while we emulate the shepherd.
‘His lambs’ warm fleece well fits his little need —’
I wear a tolerably good coat now, don’t I, Phineas?”
“You are incorrigible.”
Yet, through all his fun, I detected a certain under-tone of seriousness, observable in him ever since my father’s declaration of his intentions concerning him, had, so to speak, settled John’s future career. He seemed aware of some crisis in his life, arrived or impending, which disturbed the generally even balance of his temperament.
“Nay, I’ll be serious;” and passing over the unfinished verse, with another or two following, he began afresh, in a new place, and in an altogether changed tone.
“‘His certain life, that never can deceive him,
Is full of thousand sweets and rich content;
The smooth-leaved beeches in the field receive him
With coolest shades till noon-tide’s rage is spent;
His life is neither tost on boisterous seas
Of troublous worlds, nor lost in slothful ease.
Pleased and full blest he lives, when he his God can please.
‘His bed of wool yields safe and quiet sleeps,
While by his side his faithful spouse hath place;
His little son into his bosom creeps,
The lively image of his father’s face;
Never his humble house or state torment him,
Less he could like, if less his God had sent him;
And when he dies, green turfs with grassy tomb content him.’”
John ceased. He was a good reader — but I had never heard him read like this before. Ending, one missed it like the breaking of music, or like the inner voice of one’s own heart talking when nobody is by.
“David,” I said, after a pause, “what are you thinking about?”
He started, with his old quick blush —“Oh, nothing — No, that’s not quite true. I was thinking that, so far as happiness goes, this ‘shepherd’s’ is my ideal of a happy life — ay, down to the ‘grassy tomb.’”
“Your fancy leaps at once to the grassy tomb; but the shepherd enjoyed a few intermediate stages of felicity before that.”
“I was thinking of those likewise.”
“Then you do intend some day to have a ‘faithful spouse and a little son’?”
“I hope so — God willing.”