Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

He kissed her hand, as if it were a queen's, and went on his way, thinking of the little daughter whose death left him childless in a foreign land.

Debby softly began to sing, "Oh, come unto the yellow sands!" but stopped in the middle of a line, to say,--

"Shall I tell you why I did what Aunt Pen would call a very unladylike and improper thing, Mr. Evan?"

"If you will be so kind"; and her companion looked delighted at the confidence about to be reposed in him.

"Somewhere across this great wide sea I hope I have a brother," Debby said, with softened voice and a wistful look into the dim horizon. "Five years ago he left us, and we have never heard from him since, except to know that he landed safely in Australia. People tell us he is dead; but I believe he will yet come home; and so I love to help and pity any man who needs it, rich or poor, young or old, hoping that as I do by them some tender-hearted woman far away will do by Brother Will."

As Debby spoke, across Frank Evan's face there passed the look that seldom comes but once to any young man's countenance; for suddenly the moment dawned when love asserted its supremacy, and putting pride, doubt, and fear underneath its feet, ruled the strong heart royally and bent it to its will. Debby's thoughts had floated across the sea; but they came swiftly back when her companion spoke again, steadily and slow, but with a subtile change in tone and manner which arrested them at once.

"Miss Dora, if you should meet a man who had known a laborious youth, a solitary manhood, who had no sweet domestic ties to make home beautiful and keep his nature warm, who longed most ardently to be so blessed, and made it the aim of his life to grow more worthy the good gift, should it ever come,--if you should learn that you possessed the power to make this fellow-creature's happiness, could you find it in your gentle heart to take compassion on him for the love of 'Brother Will'?"

Debby was silent, wondering why heart and nerves and brain were stirred by such a sudden thrill, why she dared not look up, and why, when she desired so much to speak, she could only answer, in a voice that sounded strange to her own ears,--

"I cannot tell."

Still, steadily and slow, with strong emotion deepening and softening his voice, the lover at her side went on,--

"Will you ask yourself this question in some quiet hour? For such a man has lived in the sunshine of your presence for eight happy weeks, and now, when his holiday is done, he finds that the old solitude will be more sorrowful than ever, unless he can discover whether his summer dream will change into a beautiful reality. Miss Dora, I have very little to offer you; a faithful heart to cherish you, a strong arm to work for you, an honest name to give into your keeping,--these are all; but if they have any worth in your eyes, they are most truly yours forever."

Debby was steadying her voice to reply, when a troop of bathers came shouting down the bank, and she took flight into her dressing-room, there to sit staring at the wall, till the advent of Aunt Pen forced her to resume the business of the hour by assuming her aquatic attire and stealing shyly down into the surf.

Frank Evan, still pacing in the footprints they had lately made, watched the lithe figure tripping to and fro, and, as he looked, murmured to himself the last line of a ballad Debby sometimes sang,--

"Dance light! for my heart it lies under your feet, love!"

Presently a great wave swept Debby up, and stranded her very near him, much to her confusion and his satisfaction. Shaking the spray out of her eyes, she was hurrying away, when Frank said,--

"You will trip, Miss Dora; let me tie these strings for you"; and, suiting the action to the word, he knelt down and began to fasten the cords of her bathing-shoe.

Debby stood looking down at the tall head bent before her, with a curious sense of wonder that a look from her could make a strong man flush and pale, as he had done; and she was trying to concoct some friendly speech, when Frank, still fumbling at the knots, said, very earnestly and low,--

"Forgive me, if I am selfish in pressing for an answer; but I must go to-morrow, and a single word will change my whole future for the better or the worse. Won't you speak it, Dora?"

If they had been alone, Debby would have put her arms about his neck, and said it with all her heart; but she had a presentiment that she should cry, if her love found vent; and here forty pairs of eyes were on them, and salt water seemed superfluous. Besides, Debby had not breathed the air of coquetry so long without a touch of the infection; and the love of power, that lies dormant in the meekest woman's breast, suddenly awoke and tempted her.

"If you catch me before I reach that rock, perhaps I will say 'Yes,'" was her unexpected answer; and before her lover caught her meaning, she was floating leisurely away.

Frank was not in bathing-costume, and Debby never dreamed that he would take her at her word; but she did not know the man she had to deal with; for, taking no second thought, he flung hat and coat away, and dashed into the sea. This gave a serious aspect to Debby's foolish jest. A feeling of dismay seized her, when she saw a resolute face dividing the waves behind her, and thought of the rash challenge she had given; but she had a spirit of her own, and had profited well by Mr. Joe's instructions; so she drew a long breath, and swam as if for life, instead of love. Evan was incumbered by his clothing, and Debby had much the start of him; but, like a second Leander, he hoped to win his Hero, and, lending every muscle to the work, gained rapidly upon the little hat which was his beacon through the foam. Debby heard the deep breathing drawing nearer and nearer, as her pursuer's strong arms cleft the water and sent it rippling past her lips. Something like terror took possession of her; for the strength seemed going out of her limbs, and the rock appeared to recede before her; but the unconquerable blood of the Pilgrims was in her veins, and "_Nil desperandum_" her motto; so, setting her teeth, she muttered, defiantly,--

"I'll not be beaten, if I go to the bottom!"

A great splashing arose, and when Evan recovered the use of his eyes, the pagoda-hat had taken a sudden turn, and seemed making for the farthest point of the goal. "I am sure of her now," thought Frank; and, like a gallant sea-god, he bore down upon his prize, clutching it with a shout of triumph. But the hat was empty, and like a mocking echo came Debby's laugh, as she climbed, exhausted, to a cranny in the rock.

"A very neat thing, by Jove! Deuse take me if you a'n't 'an honor to your teacher, and a terror to the foe,' Miss Wilder," cried Mr. Joe, as he came up from a solitary cruise and dropped anchor at her side. "Here, bring along the hat, Evan; I'm going to crown the victor with appropriate what-d'-ye-call-'ems," he continued, pulling a handful of sea-weed that looked like well-boiled greens.

Frank came up, smiling; but his lips were white, and in his eye a look Debby could not meet; so, being full of remorse, she naturally assumed an air of gayety, and began to sing the merriest air she knew, merely because she longed to throw herself upon the stones and cry violently.

"It was 'most as exciting as a regatta, and you pulled well, Evan; but you had too much ballast aboard, and Miss Wilder ran up false colors just in time to save her ship. What was the wager?" asked the lively Joseph, complacently surveying his marine millinery, which would have scandalized a fashionable mermaid.

"Only a trifle," answered Debby, knotting up her braids with a revengeful jerk.

"It's taken the wind out of your sails, I fancy, Evan, for you look immensely Byronic with the starch minus in your collar and your hair in a poetic toss. Come, I'll try a race with you; and Miss Wilder will dance all the evening with the winner. Bless the man, what's he doing down there? Burying sunfish, hey?"

Frank had been sitting below them on a narrow strip of sand, absently piling up a little mound that bore some likeness to a grave. As his companion spoke, he looked at it, and a sudden flush of feeling swept across his face, as he replied,--

"No, only a dead hope."

"Deuse take it, yes, a good many of that sort of craft founder in these waters, as I know to my sorrow"; and, sighing tragically, Mr. Joe turned to help Debby from her perch, but she had glided silently into the sea, and was gone.

For the next four hours the poor girl suffered the sharpest pain she had ever known; for now she clearly saw the strait her folly had betrayed her into. Frank Evan was a proud man, and would not ask her love again, believing she had tacitly refused it; and how could she tell him that she had trifled with the heart she wholly loved and longed to make her own? She could not confide in Aunt Pen, for that worldly lady would have no sympathy to bestow. She longed for her mother; but there was no time to write, for Frank was going on the morrow,--might even then be gone; and as this fear came over her, she covered up her face and wished that she were dead. Poor Debby! her last mistake was sadder than her first, and she was reaping a bitter harvest from her summer's sowing. She sat and thought till her cheeks burned and her temples throbbed; but she dared not ease her pain with tears. The gong sounded like a Judgment-Day trump of doom, and she trembled at the idea of confronting many eyes with such a telltale face; but she could not stay behind, for Aunt Pen must know the cause. She tried to play her hard part well; but wherever she looked, some fresh anxiety appeared, as if every fault and folly of those months had blossomed suddenly within the hour. She saw Frank Evan more sombre and more solitary than when she met him first, and cried regretfully within herself, "How could I so forget the truth I owed him?" She saw Clara West watching with eager eyes for the coming of young Leavenworth, and sighed, "This is the fruit of my wicked vanity!" She saw Aunt Pen regarding her with an anxious face, and longed to say, "Forgive me, for I have not been sincere!" At last, as her trouble grew, she resolved to go away and have a quiet "think,"--a remedy which had served her in many a lesser perplexity; so, stealing out, she went to a grove of cedars usually deserted at that hour. But in ten minutes Joe Leavenworth appeared at the door of the summer-house, and, looking in, said, with a well-acted start of pleasure and surprise,--

"Beg pardon, I thought there was no one here. My dear Miss Wilder, you look contemplative; but I fancy it wouldn't do to ask the subject of your meditations, would it?"

He paused with such an evident intention of remaining that Debby resolved to make use of the moment, and ease her conscience of one care that burdened it; therefore she answered his question with her usual directness,--

"My meditations were partly about you."

Mr. Joe was guilty of the weakness of blushing violently and looking immensely gratified; but his rapture was of short duration, for Debby went on very earnestly,--

"I believe I am going to do what you may consider a very impertinent thing; but I would rather be unmannerly than unjust to others or untrue to my own sense of right. Mr. Leavenworth, if you were an older man, I should not dare to say this to you; but I have brothers of my own, and, remembering how many unkind things they do for want of thought, I venture to remind you that a woman's heart is a perilous plaything, and too tender to be used for a selfish purpose or an hour's pleasure. I know this kind of amusement is not considered wrong; but it _is_ wrong, and I cannot shut my eyes to the fact, or sit silent while another woman is allowed to deceive herself and wound the heart that trusts her. Oh, if you love your own sisters, be generous, be just, and do not destroy that poor girl's happiness, but go away before your sport becomes a bitter pain to her!"

Joe Leavenworth had stood staring at Debby with a troubled countenance, feeling as if all the misdemeanors of his life were about to be paraded before him; but, as he listened to her plea, the womanly spirit that prompted it appealed more loudly than her words, and in his really generous heart he felt regret for what had never seemed a fault before. Shallow as he was, nature was stronger than education, and he admired and accepted what many a wiser, worldlier man would have resented with auger or contempt. He loved Debby with all his little might; he meant to tell her so, and graciously present his fortune and himself for her acceptance; but now, when the moment came, the well-turned speech he had prepared vanished from his memory, and with the better eloquence of feeling he blundered out his passion like a very boy.

"Miss Dora, I never meant to make trouble between Clara and her lover; upon my soul, I didn't, and wish Seguin had not put the notion into my head, since it has given you pain. I only tried to pique you into showing some regret, when I neglected you; but you didn't, and then I got desperate and didn't care what became of any one. Oh, Dora, if you knew how much I loved you, I am sure you'd forgive it, and let me prove my repentance by giving up everything that you dislike. I mean what I say; upon my life I do; and I'll keep my word, if you will only let me hope."

If Debby had wanted a proof of her love for Frank Evan, she might have found it in the fact that she had words enough at her command now, and no difficulty in being sisterly pitiful toward her second suitor.

"Please get up," she said; for Mr. Joe, feeling very humble and very earnest, had gone down upon his knees, and sat there entirely regardless of his personal appearance.

He obeyed; and Debby stood looking up at him with her kindest aspect, as she said, more tenderly than she had ever spoken to him before,--

"Thank you for the affection you offer me, but I cannot accept it, for I have nothing to give you in return but the friendliest regard, the most sincere good-will. I know you will forgive me, and do for your own sake the good things you would have done for mine, that I may add to my esteem a real respect for one who has been very kind to me."

"I'll try,--indeed, I will, Miss Dora, though it will be powerful hard without yourself for a help and a reward."

Poor Joe choked a little, but called up an unexpected manliness, and added, stoutly,--

"Don't think I shall be offended at your speaking so, or saying 'No' to me,--not a bit; it 's all right, and I'm much obliged to you. I might have known you couldn't care for such a fellow as I am, and don't blame you, for nobody in the world is good enough for you. I'll go away at once, I'll try to keep my promise, and I hope you'll be very happy all your life."

He shook Debby's hands heartily, and hurried down the steps, but at the bottom paused and looked back. Debby stood upon the threshold with sunshine dancing on her winsome face, and kind words trembling on her lips; for the moment it seemed impossible to part, and, with an impetuous gesture, he cried to her,--

"Oh, Dora, let me stay and try to win you! for everything is possible to love, and I never knew how dear you were to me till now!"

There were sudden tears in the young man's eyes, the flush of a genuine emotion on his cheek, the tremor of an ardent longing in his voice, and, for the first time, a very true affection strengthened his whole countenance. Debby's heart was full of penitence; she had given so much pain to more than one that she longed to atone for it,--longed to do some very friendly thing, and soothe some trouble such as she herself had known. She looked into the eager face uplifted to her own and thought of Will, then stooped and touched her lover's forehead with the lips that softly whispered, "No."

If she had cared for him, she never would have done it; poor Joe knew that, and murmuring an incoherent "Thank you!" he rushed away, feeling very much as he remembered to have felt when his baby sister died and he wept his grief away upon his mother's neck. He began his preparations for departure at once, in a burst of virtuous energy quite refreshing to behold, thinking within himself, as he flung his cigar-case into the grate, kicked a billiard-ball into a corner, and suppressed his favorite allusion to the Devil,--

"This is a new sort of thing to me, but I can bear it, and upon my life I think I feel the better for it already."

And so he did; for though he was no Augustine to turn in an hour from worldly hopes and climb to sainthood through long years of inward strife, yet in after-times no one knew how many false steps had been saved, how many small sins repented of, through the power of the memory that far away a generous woman waited to respect him, and in his secret soul he owned that one of the best moments of his life was that in which little Debby Wilder whispered "No," and kissed him.

As he passed from sight, the girl leaned her head upon her hand, thinking sorrowfully to herself,--

"What right had I to censure him, when my own actions are so far from true? I have done a wicked thing, and as an honest girl I should undo it, if I can. I have broken through the rules of a false propriety for Clara's sake; can I not do as much for Frank's? I will. I'll find him, if I search the house,--and tell him all, though I never dare to look him in the face again, and Aunt Pen sends me home to-morrow."

Full of zeal and courage, Debby caught up her hat and ran down the steps, but, as she saw Frank Evan coming up the path, a sudden panic fell upon her, and she could only stand mutely waiting his approach.

It is asserted that Love is blind; and on the strength of that popular delusion novel heroes and heroines go blundering through three volumes of despair with the plain truth directly under their absurd noses: but in real life this theory is not supported; for to a living man the countenance of a loving woman is more eloquent than any language, more trustworthy than a world of proverbs, more beautiful than the sweetest love-lay ever sung.

Frank looked at Debby, and "all her heart stood up in her eyes," as she stretched her hands to him, though her lips only whispered very low,--

"Forgive me, and let me say the 'Yes' I should have said so long ago."

Had she required any assurance of her lover's truth, or any reward for her own, she would have found it in the change that dawned so swiftly in his face, smoothing the lines upon his forehead, lighting the gloom of his eye, stirring his firm lips with a sudden tremor, and making his touch as soft as it was strong. For a moment both stood very still, while Debby's tears streamed down like summer rain; then Frank drew her into the green shadow of the grove, and its peace soothed her like a mother's voice, till she looked up smiling with a shy delight her glance had never known before. The slant sunbeams dropped a benediction on their heads, the robins peeped, and the cedars whispered, but no rumor of what further passed ever went beyond the precincts of the wood; for such hours are sacred, and Nature guards the first blossoms of a human love as tenderly as she nurses May-flowers underneath the leaves.

* * * * *

Mrs. Carroll had retired to her bed with a nervous headache, leaving Debby to the watch and ward of friendly Mrs. Earle, who performed her office finely by letting her charge entirely alone. In her dreams Aunt Pen was just imbibing a copious draught of Champagne at the wedding-breakfast of her niece, "Mrs. Joseph Leavenworth," when she was roused by the bride elect, who passed through the room with a lamp and a shawl in her hand.

"What time is it, and where are you going, dear?" she asked, dozily wondering if the carriage for the wedding-tour was at the door so soon.

"It's only nine, and I am going for a sail, Aunt Pen."

As Debby spoke, the light flashed full into her face, and a sudden thought into Mrs. Carroll's mind. She rose up from her pillow, looking as stately in her nightcap as Maria Theresa is said to have done in like unassuming head-gear.

"Something has happened, Dora! What have you done? What have you said? I insist upon knowing immediately," she demanded, with somewhat startling brevity.

"I have said 'No' to Mr. Leavenworth and 'Yes' to Mr. Evan; and I should like to go home to-morrow, if you please," was the equally concise reply.

Mrs. Carroll fell flat in her bed, and lay there stiff and rigid as Morlena Kenwigs. Debby gently drew the curtains, and stole away, leaving Aunt Pen's wrath to effervesce before morning.

The moon was hanging luminous and large on the horizon's edge, sending shafts of light before her till the melancholy ocean seemed to smile, and along that shining pathway happy Debby and her lover floated into that new world where all things seem divine.

* * * * *

WET-WEATHER WORK.

BY A FARMER.

III.

Will any of our artists ever give us, on canvas, a good, rattling, saucy shower? There is room in it for a rare handling of the brush:--the vague, indistinguishable line of hills, (as I see them to-day,)--the wild scud of gray, with fine gray lines, slanted by the wind, and trending eagerly downward,--the swift, petulant dash into the little pools of the highway, making fairy bubbles that break as soon as they form,--the land smoking with excess of moisture,--and the pelted leaves all wincing and shining and adrip.

I know no painter who has so well succeeded in putting a wet sky into his pictures as Turner; and in this I judge him by the literal _chiaroscuro_ of engraving. In proof of it, I take down from my shelf his "Rivers of France": a book over which I have spent a great many pleasant hours, and idle ones too,--if it be idle to travel leagues at the turning of a page, and to see hill-sides spotty with vineyards, and great bridges wallowing through the Loire, and to watch the fishermen of Honfleur putting to sea. There are skies, as I said, in some of these pictures which make a man instinctively think of his umbrella, or of his distance from home: no actual rain-drift stretching from them, but such unmistakable promise of a rainy afternoon, in their little parallel wisps of dark-bottomed clouds, as would make a provident farmer order every scythe out of the field.

In the "Chair of Gargantua," on which my eye falls, as I turn over the pages, an actual thunder-storm is breaking. The scene is somewhere upon the Lower Seine. From the middle of the left of the picture the lofty river-bank stretches far across, forming all the background;--its extreme distance hidden by a bold thrust of the right bank, which juts into the picture just far enough to shelter a white village, which lies gleaming upon the edge of the water. On all the foreground lies the river, broad as a bay. The storm is coming down the stream. Over the left spur of the bank, and over the meeting of the banks, it broods black as night. Through a little rift there is a glimpse of serene sky, from which a mellow light streams down upon the edges and angles of a few cliffs upon the farther shore. All the rest is heavily shadowed. The edges of the coming tempest are tortuous and convulsed, and you know that a fierce wind is driving the black billows on; yet all the water under the lee of the shores is as tranquil as a dream; a white sail, near to the white village, hangs slouchingly to the mast: but in the foreground the tempest has already caught the water; a tall lugger is scudding and careening under it as if mad; the crews of three fishermen's boats, that toss on the vexed water, are making a confused rush to shorten sail, and you may almost fancy that you hear their outcries sweeping down the wind. In the middle scene, a little steamer is floating tranquilly on water which is yet calm; and a column of smoke piling up from its tall chimney rises for a space placidly enough, until the wind catches and whisks it before the storm. I would wager ten to one, upon the mere proof in the picture, that the fishermen and the washerwomen in the foreground will be drenched within an hour.

When I have once opened the covers of Turner,--especially upon such a wet day as this,--it is hard for me to leave him until I have wandered all up and down the Loire, revisited Tours and its quiet cathedral, and Blois with its stately chateau, and Amboise with its statelier, and coquetted again with memories of the Maid of Orléans.

From the Upper Loire it is easy to slip into the branching valleys which sidle away from it far down into the country of the Auvergne. Turner does not go there, indeed; the more's the pity; but I do, since it is the most attractive region rurally (Brittany perhaps excepted) in all France. The valleys are green, the brooks are frequent, the rivers are tortuous, the mountains are high, and luxuriant walnut-trees embower the roads. It was near to Moulins, on the way hither, through the pleasant Bourbonnois, that Tristram Shandy met with the poor, half-crazed Maria, piping her evening service to the Virgin.

And at that thought I must do no less than pull down my "Tristram Shandy," (on which the dust of years has accumulated,) and read again that tender story of the lorn maiden, with her attendant goat, and her hair caught up in a silken fillet, and her shepherd's pipe, from which she pours out a low, plaintive wail upon the evening air.

It is not a little singular that a British author should have supplied the only Arcadian resident of all this Arcadian region. The Abbé Delille was, indeed, born hereabout, within sight of the bold Puy de Dome, and within marketing-distance of the beautiful Clermont. But there is very little that is Arcadian, in freshness or simplicity, in either the "Gardens" or the other verse of Delille.

Out of his own mouth (the little green-backed book, my boy) I will condemn him:--

"Ce n'est plus cette simple et rustique déesse
Qui suit ses vieilles lois; c'est une enchanteresse
Qui, la baguette en main, par des hardis travaux
Fait naître des aspects et des trésors nouveaux,
Compose un sol plus riche et des races plus belles,
Fertilise les monts, dompte les rocs rebelles."

The _baguette_ of Delille is no shepherd's crook; it has more the fashion of a drumstick,--_baguette de tambour_.

If I follow on southward to Provence, whither I am borne upon the scuds of rain over Turner's pictures, and the pretty Bourbonnois, and the green mountains of Auvergne, I find all the characteristic literature of that land of olives is only of love or war: the vines, the olive-orchards, and the yellow hill-sides pass for nothing. And if I read an old _Sirvente_ of the Troubadours, beginning with a certain redolence of the fields, all this yields presently to knights, and steeds caparisoned,--

"Cavalliers ab cavals armatz."

It is smooth reading, and is attributed to Bertrand de Born,[3] who lived in the time when even the lion-hearted King Richard turned his brawny fingers to the luting of a song. Let us listen:--

"The beautiful spring delights me well,
When flowers and leaves are growing;
And it pleases my heart to hear the swell
Of the birds' sweet chorus flowing
In the echoing wood;
And I love to see, all scattered around,
Pavilions and tents on the martial ground;
And my spirit finds it good
To see, on the level plains beyond,
Gay knights and steeds caparisoned."

[Footnote 3: M. Raynouard, _Poésies de Troubadours_, II. 209.]

But as the Troubadour nestles more warmly into the rhythm of his verse, the birds are all forgotten, and the beautiful spring, and there is a sturdy clang of battle, that would not discredit our own times:--

"I tell you that nothing my soul can cheer,
Or banqueting or reposing,
Like the onset cry of 'Charge them!' rung
From each side, as in battle closing;
Where the horses neigh,
And the call to 'aid' is echoing loud,
And there, on the earth, the lowly and proud
In the foss together lie,
And yonder is piled the mingled heap
Of the brave that scaled the trenches steep.

"Barons! your castles in safety place,
Your cities and villages, too,
Before ye haste to the battle-scene:
And Papiol! quickly go,
And tell the lord of 'Yes and No'
That peace already too long hath been!"[4]

[Footnote 4: I cannot forbear taking a bit of margin to print the closing stanzas of the original, which carry the clash of sabres in their very sound.

"Ie us dic que tan no m' a sabor
Manjars ni beure ni dormir
Cum a quant aug cridar: A lor!
D'ambas las partz; et aug agnir
Cavals voitz per l'ombratge,
Et aug cridar: Aidatz! Aidatz!
E vei cazer per los fossatz
Paucs e grans per l'erbatge,
E vei los mortz que pels costatz
An los tronsons outre passatz.

"Baros, metetz et gatge
Castels e vilas e ciutatz,
Enans q' usquecs no us guerreiatz.

"Papiol, d'agradatge
Ad _Oc e No_ t' en vai viatz,
Dic li que trop estan en patz."

It would seem that the men of that time, like men of most times, bore a considerable contempt for people who said "Yes" one day, and "No" the next.]

I am on my way to Italy, (it may as well be confessed,) where I had fully intended to open my rainy day's work; but Turner has kept me, and then Auvergne, and then the brisk battle-song of a Troubadour.

When I was upon the Cajano farm of Lorenzo the Magnificent, during my last "spell of wet," it was uncourteous not to refer to the pleasant commemorative poem of "Ambra," which Lorenzo himself wrote, and which, whatever may be said against the conception and conduct of it, shows in its opening stanzas that the great Medici was as appreciative of rural images--fir-boughs with loaded snows, thick cypresses in which late birds lurked, sharp-leaved junipers, and sturdy pines fighting the wind--as ever he had been of antique jewels, or of the rhythm of such as Politiano. And if I have spoken slightingly of this latter poet, it was only in contrast with Virgil, and in view of his strained Latinity. When he is himself, and wraps his fancies only in his own sparkling Tuscan, we forget his classic frigidities, and his quarrels with Madonna Clarice, and are willing to confess that no pen of his time was dipped with such a relishing _gusto_ into the colors of the hyacinths and trembling pansies, and into all the blandishments of a gushing and wanton spring.[5]

[Footnote 5: See Wm. Parr Greswell's _Memoirs of Politiano_, with translations.]

But classical affectation was the fashion of that day. A certain Bolognese noble, Berò by name, wrote ten Latin books on rural affairs: Tiraboschi says he never saw them; neither have I. Another scholar, Pietro da Barga, who astonished his teachers by his wonderful proficiency at the age of twelve, and who was afterward guest of the French ambassador in Venice, wrote a poem on rural matters, to which, with an exaggerated classicism, he gave the Greek name of "_Cynegeticon_"; and about the same time Giuseppe Voltolina composed three books on kitchen-gardening. I name these writers only out of sympathy with their topics: I would not advise the reading of them: it would involve a long journey and scrupulous search to find them, through I know not what out-of-the-way libraries; and if found, no essentially new facts or theories could be counted on which are not covered by the treatise of Crescenzi. The Pisans or Venetians may possibly have introduced a few new plants from the East; the example of the Medici may have suggested some improvements in the arrangement of forcing-houses, or the outlay of villas; but in all that regarded general husbandry, Crescenzi was still the man.

I linger about this period, and the writers of this time, because I snuff here and there among them the perfume of a country bouquet, which carries the odor of the fields with it, and transports me to the "empurpled hill-sides" of Tuscany. Shall I name Sannazaro, with his "Arcadia"?--a dead book now,--or "Amyntas," who, before he is tall enough to steal apples from the lowest boughs, (so sings Tasso,) plunges head and ears in love with Sylvia, the fine daughter of Montano, who has a store of cattle, "_richissimo d'armenti_"?

Then there is Rucellai, who, under the pontificate of Leo X., came to be Governor of the Castle of Sant' Angelo, and yet has left a poem of fifteen hundred lines devoted to Bees. In his suggestions for the allaying of a civil war among these winged people, he is quite beyond either Virgil or Columella or Mr. Lincoln. "Pluck some leafy branch," he says, "and with it sprinkle the contending factions with either honey or sweet grape-juice, and you shall see them instantly forego their strife":--

"The two warring bands joyful unite,
And foe embraces foe: each with its lips
Licking the others' wings, feet, arms, and breast,
Whereon the luscious mixture hath been shed,
And all inebriate with delight."

So the Swiss,[6] he continues, when they fall out among themselves, are appeased by some grave old gentleman, who says a few pleasant words, and orders up a good stoop of sweet wine, in which all parties presently dip their beards, and laugh and embrace and make peace, and so forget outrage. It may have been the sixteenth-century way of closing a battle.

[Footnote 6:
"Come quando nei Suizzeri si muove
Sedizione, e che si grida a l' arme;
Se qualche nom grave allor si leva in piede
E comincia a parlar con dolce lingua,
Mitiga i petti barbari e feroci;
E intanto fa portare ondanti vasi
Pieni di dolci ed odorati vini;
Ahora ognun le labbra e 'l mento immerge
Ne' le spumanti tazze," etc.
]

Guarini, with all his affectations, has little prettinesses which charm like the chirping of a bird;--as where he paints (in the very first scene of the "Pastor Fido") the little sparrow flitting from fir to beech, and from beech to myrtle, and twittering, "How I love! how I love!" And the bird-mate ("_il suo dolce desio_") twitters in reply, "How I love, how I love, too!" "_Ardo d' amore anch' io._"

Messer Pietro Bembo was a different man from Guarini. I cannot imagine him listening to the sparrows; I cannot imagine him plucking a flower,--except he have some courtly gallantry in hand, perhaps toward the Borgia. He was one of those pompous, stiff, scholastic prigs who wrote by rules of syntax; and of syntax he is dead. He was clever and learned; he wrote in Latin, Italian, Castlian: but nobody reads him; he has only a little crypt in the "Autori Diversi." I think of him as I think of fine women who must always rustle in brocade embossed with hard jewels, and who never win the triumphs that belong to a charming morning _déshabillé_ with only the added improvisation of a rose.

In his "Asolani" Bembo gives a very full and minute description of the gardens at Asolo, which relieved the royal retirement of Caterina, the Queen of Cyprus. Nothing could be more admirable than the situation: there were skirts of mountain which were covered, and are still covered, with oaks; there were grottos in the sides of cliffs, and water so disposed--in jets, in pools inclosed by marble, and among rocks--as to counterfeit all the wildness of Nature; there was the same stately array of cypresses, and of clipped hedges, which had belonged to the villas of Pliny; temples were decorated with blazing frescoes, to which, I dare say, Carpaccio may have lent a hand, if not that wild rake, Giorgione. Here the pretty Queen, with eight thousand gold ducats a year, (whatever that amount may have been,) and some seventy odd retainers, held her court; and here Bembo, a dashing young fellow at that time of seven or eight and twenty, became a party to those disquisitions on Love, and to those recitations of song, part of which he has recorded in the "Asolani." I am sorry to say, the beauty of the place, so far as regards its artificial features, is now all gone. The hall, which may have served as the presence-chamber of the Queen, was only a few years since doing service as a farmer's barn; and the traces of a Diana and an Apollo were still coloring the wall under which a few cows were crunching their clover-hay.

All the gardening of Italy at that period, as, indeed, at almost all times, depended very much upon architectural accessories: colonnades and wall-veil with frescoes make a large part of Italian gardening to this day. The Isola Bella in the Lago Maggiore, and the Borghese Garden at Rome, are fair types. And as I recall the sunny vistas of this last, and the noontide loungings upon the marble seats, counting white flecks of statues amid the green of cypresses, and watching the shadow which some dense-topped pine flings upon a marble flight of steps or a marble balustrade, I cannot sneer at the Italian gardening, or wish it were other than it is. The art-life of Italy is the crowning and the overlapping life. The Campagna seems only a bit of foreground to carry the leaping arches of the aqueducts, and to throw the hills of Tivoli and Albano to a purple distance. The farmers (_fattori_) who gallop across the fields, in rough sheepskin wrappers, and upon scurvy-looking ponies, are more picturesque than thrifty; and if I gallop in company with one of them to his home upon the farther edge of the Campagna, (which is an allowable wet-day fancy,) I shall find a tall stone house smeared over roughly with plaster, and its ground-floor devoted to a crazy cart, a pony, a brace of cows, and a few goats; a rude court is walled in adjoining the house, where a few pigs are grunting. Ascending an oaken stair-way within the door, I come upon the living-room of the _fattore_; the beams overhead are begrimed with smoke, and garnished here and there with flitches of bacon; a scant fire of fagots is struggling into blaze upon an open hearth; and on a low table bare of either cloth or cleanliness, there waits him his supper of _polenta_, which is nothing more or less than our plain boiled Indian-pudding. Add to this a red-eyed dog, that seems to be a savage representative of a Scotch colley,--a lean, wrinkled, dark-faced woman, who is unwinding the bandages from a squalling _Bambino_,--a mixed odor of garlic and of goats, that is quickened with an ammoniacal pungency,--and you may form some idea of the home of a small Roman farmer in our day. It falls away from the standard of Cato; and so does the man.

He takes his twenty or thirty acres, upon shares, from some wealthy proprietor of Rome, whose estate may possibly cover a square mile or two of territory. He sells vegetables, poultry, a little grain, a few curds, and possibly a butt or two of sour wine. He is a type of a great many who lived within the limits of the old Papal territory; whether he and they have dropped their musty sheepskins and shaken off their unthrift under the new government, I cannot say.

Around Bologna, indeed, there was a better race of farmers: the intervening thrift of Tuscany had always its influence. The meadows of Terni, too, which are watered by the Velino, bear three full crops of grass in the season; the valley of the Clitumnus is like a miniature of the Genesee; and around Perugia the crimson-tasselled clovers, in the season of their bloom, give to the fields the beauty of a garden.

The old Duke of Tuscany, before he became soured by his political mishaps, was a great patron of agricultural improvements. He had princely farms in the neighborhood both of his capital and of Pisa. Of the latter I cannot speak from personal observation; but the dairy-farm, _Cascina_, near to Florence, can hardly have been much inferior to the Cajano property of the great Lorenzo. The stables were admirably arranged, and of permanent character; the neatness was equal to that of the dairies of Holland. The Swiss cows, of a pretty dun-color, were kept stalled, and luxuriously fed upon freshly cut ray-grass, clover, or vetches, with an occasional sprinkling of meal; the calves were invariably reared by hand; and the average _per diem_ of milk, throughout the season, was stated at fourteen quarts; and I think Madonna Clarice never strained more than this into the cheese-tubs of Ambra. I trust the burghers of Florence, and the new _Gonfaloniere_, whoever he may be, will not forget the dun cows of the Cascina, or their baitings with the tender vetches.

The redemption of the waste marshlands in the Val di Chiana by the engineering skill of Fossombroni, and the consequent restoration of many thousands of acres which seemed hopelessly lost to fertility, is a result of which the Medici would hardly have dreamed, and which would do credit to any age or country.

About the better-cultivated portions of Lombardy there is an almost regal look. The roads are straight, and of most admirable construction. Lines of trees lift their stateliness on either side, and carry trailing festoons of vines. On both sides streams of water are flowing in artificial canals, interrupted here and there by cross sluices and gates, by means of which any or all of the fields can be laid under water at pleasure, so that old meadows return three and four cuttings of grass in the year. There are patches of Indian-corn which are equal to any that can be seen on the Miami; hemp and flax appear at intervals, and upon the lower lands rice. The barns are huge in size, and are raised from the ground upon columns of masonry.

I have a dapper little note-book of travel, from which these facts are mainly taken; and at the head of one of its pages I observe an old ink-sketch of a few trees, with festoons of vines between. It is yellowed now, and poor always; for I am but a dabbler at such things. Yet it brings back, clearly and briskly, the broad stretch of Lombard meadows, the smooth Macadam, the gleaming canals of water, the white finials of Milan Cathedral shining somewhere in the distance, the thrushes, as in the "Pastor Fido," filling all the morning air with their sweet

"Ardo d' amore! ardo d' amore!"

the dewy clover-lots, looking like wavy silken plush, the green glitter of mulberry-leaves, and the beggar in steeple-crowned hat, who says, "_Grazia_," and "_Á rivedervi!_" as I drop him a few kreutzers, and rattle away to the North, and out of Italy.

* * * * *

About the year 1570, a certain Conrad Heresbach, who was Councillor to the Duke of Cleves, (brother to that unfortunate Anne of Cleves who was one of the wife-victims of Henry VIII.,) wrote four Latin books on rustic affairs, which were translated by Barnaby Googe, a Lincolnshire farmer and poet, who was in his day gentleman-pensioner to Queen Elizabeth. Our friend Barnaby introduces his translation in this style:--"I haue thought it meet (good Reader) for thy further profit & pleasure, to put into English these foure Bookes of Husbandry, collected & set forth by Master Conrade Heresbatch, a great & a learned Counceller of the Duke of Cleues: not thinking it reason, though I haue altered & increased his worke, _with mine owne readings & obseruations_, joined with the experience of sundry my friends, to take from him (as diuers in the like case haue done) the honour & glory of his owne trauaile: Neither is it my minde, that this either his doings or mine, should deface, or any waves darken the good enterprise, or painfull trauailes of such our countrymen, of England, as haue plentifully written of this matter: but always haue, & do giue them the reuerence & honour due to so vertuous, & well disposed Gentlemen, namely, _Master Fitz herbert_, & _Master Tusser_: whose workes may, in my fancie, without any presumption, compare with any, either _Varro_, _Columella_, or _Palladius_ of _Rome_."

The work is written in the form of a dialogue, the parties being Cono, a country-gentleman, Metella, his wife, Rigo, a courtier, and Hermes, a servant. The first book relates to tillage, and farm-practice in general; the second, to orcharding, gardens, and woods; the third, to cattle; and the fourth, to fowl, fish, and bees. He had evidently been an attentive reader of the older authors I have discussed, and his citations from them are abundant. He had also opportunity for every-day observation in a region which, besides being one of the most fertile, was probably at that time the most highly cultivated in Europe; and his work may be regarded as the most important contribution to agricultural literature since the days of Crescenzi. He reaffirms, indeed, many of the old fables of the Latinists,--respects the force of proper incantations, has abiding faith in "the moon being aloft" in time of sowing, and insists that the medlar can be grafted on the pine, and the cherry upon the fir. Rue, he tells us, "will prosper the better for being stolen"; and "If you breake to powder the horne of a Ram & sowe it watrying it well, it is thought it will come to be good Sperage" (Asparagus). He assures us that he has grafted the pear successfully when in full bloom; and furthermore, that he has seen apples which have been kept sound for three years.

Upon the last page are some rules for purchasing land, which I suspect are to be attributed to the poet of Lincolnshire, rather than to Heresbach. They are as good as they were then; and the poetry none the worse:--

"First see that the land be clear
In title of the seller;
And that it stand in danger
Of no woman's dowrie;
See whether the tenure be bond or free,
And release of every fee of fee;
See that the seller be of age,
And that it lie not in mortgage;
Whether ataile be thereof found,
And whether it stand in statute bound;
Consider what service longeth thereto,
And what quit rent thereout must goe;
And if it become of a wedded woman,
Think thou then on covert baron;
And if thou may in any wise,
Make thy charter in warrantise,
To thee, thine heyres, assignes also;
Thus should a wise purchaser doe."

The learned Lipsius was a contemporary of Councillor Heresbach, and although his orthodoxy was somewhat questionable, and his Calvinism somewhat stretchy, there can be no doubt of the honest rural love which belongs to some of his letters, and especially to this smack of verse (I dare not say poetry) with which he closes his _Eighth (Cent. I.)_

"Vitam si liceat mihi
Formare arbitriis meis:
Non fasces cupiam aut opes,
Non clarus niveis equis
Captiva agmina traxerim.
In solis habitem locis,
Hortos possideam atque agros,
Illic ad strepitus aquæ
Musarum studiis fruar.
Sic cum fata mihi ultima
Pernerit Lachesis mea;
Tranquillus moriar senex."

And with this I will have done with a dead language; for I am come to a period now when I can garnish my talk with the flowers of good old English gardens. At the very thought of them, I seem to hear the royal captive James pouring madrigals through the window of his Windsor prison,--

"the hymnis consecrat
Of lovis use, now soft, now loud among,
That all the gardens and the wallis rung."

And through the "Dreme" of Chaucer I seem to see the great plain of Woodstock stretching away under my view, all white and green, "green y-powdered with daisy." Upon the half-ploughed land, lying yonder veiled so tenderly with the mist and the rain, I could take oath to the very spot where five hundred years ago the plowman of Chaucer, all "forswat,"

"plucked up his plowe
Whan midsomer mone was comen in
And shoke off shear, and coulter off drowe,
And honged his harnis on a pinne,
And said his beasts should ete enowe
And lie in grasse up to the chin."

But Chaucer was no farmer, or he would have known it to be bad husbandry (even for poetry) to allow cattle steaming from the plough to lie down in grass of that height.

* * * * *

Sir Anthony Fitz-herbert is the first duly accredited writer on British husbandry. There are some few earlier ones, it is true,--a certain "Mayster Groshede, Bysshop of Lyncoln," and a Henri Calcoensis, among them. Indeed, Mr. Donaldson, who has compiled a bibliography of British farm-writers, and who once threatened a poem on kindred subjects, has the effrontery to include Lord Littleton. Now I have a respect for Lord Littleton, and for Coke on Littleton, but it is tempered with some early experiences in a lawyer's office, and some later experiences of the legal profession; he may have written well upon "Tenures," but he had not enough of tenderness even for a teasel.

I think it worthy of remark, in view of the mixed complexion which I have given to these wet-day studies, that the oldest printed copy of that sweet ballad of the "Nut Browne Mayde" has come to us in a Chronicle of 1503, which contains also a chapter upon "the crafte of graffynge & plantynge & alterynge of fruyts." What could be happier than the conjunction of the knight of "the grenwode tree" with a good chapter on "graffynge"?

Fitz-herbert's work is entitled a "Boke of Husbandrie," and counts, among other headings of discourse, the following:--

"Whether is better a plough of horses or a plough of oxen."

"To cary out dounge & mucke, & to spreade it."

"The fyrste furryng of the falowes."

"To make a ewe to love hir lambe."

"To bye lean cattel."

"A shorte information for a young gentyleman that entendeth to thryve."

"What the wyfe oughte to dooe generally."

(_seq._) "To kepe measure in spendynge."

"What be God's commandments."

By all which it may be seen that Sir Anthony took as broad a view of husbandry as did Xenophon.

Among other advices to the "young gentyleman that entendeth to thryve" he counsels him to rise betime in the morning, and if "he fynde any horses, mares, swyne, shepe, beastes in his pastures that be not his own; or fynde a gap in his hedge, or any water standynge in his pasture uppon his grasse, whereby he may take double herte, bothe losse of his grasse, & rotting of his shepe, & calves; or if he fyndeth or seeth anything that is amisse, & wold be amended, let him take out his tables & wryte the defautes; & when he commeth home to dinner, supper, or at nyght, then let him call his bayley, & soo shewe him the defautes. For this," says he, "used I to doo x or xi yeres or more; & yf he cannot wryte, lette him nycke the defautes uppon a stycke."