Chapter IX: Transformation

A wonderful brief episode, as poignant as it had been evanescent! Who was she? The dolefuller spirit was all forgotten by Brion for the time being in the glamour engendered of that soft and radiant apparition. So were forgotten the loneliness, the desolation, the dreary emptiness of his existence. He dreamt of her by day and he dreamt of her by night. Would he ever see the dear subject of his dreams again? His longing was so great he could not but believe it must be assuaged. He had thought he had taken but light stock of his vision when in its presence; now, apart from it, he remembered its every tone and feature. Perhaps he exaggerated its beauty. She was a pretty girl, a little of the slumberous type, with a soft white skin as faintly flushed at the cheeks as if a rose had flicked them; but nothing transcendent--only warmly human. She lacked, if anything, on the side of animation; even when pursued, she had not fled like a willing doe, feeling a joy in motion; she had been easily captured. But there were the eyebrows, straight umber pencillings, so many shades darker than the hair where it winged loosely back under the shadow of the little broad-brimmed hat, with its roll of gray-green taffeta; and there were the eyes that sheltered under them, blue sleepy children full of love. They were enough in memory for Brion, upon whom they had wrought the transformation which ends the rough and tumble pantomime of boyhood. He was harlequin henceforth, and she the elusive passion-flower of his pursuit.

Judge him with gravity. Not yet sixteen--perhaps, but for his reserved disposition and solitary life, the transformation had been longer delayed, and had burned with a less romantic intensity when it arrived. But this vision had come upon him at an emotional pass, when to the melancholy of his days was added the depression of a morbid superstition. It had been the revelation of a sweet humanness, opening like a flower in the midst of that dark enigma, which had taken him like health out of sickness.

Whence had she come, and why been attracted to that haunted spot? Thinking of her, shadowy and indistinct in her gray cloak and kirtle, he did not wonder that, accepting the association of the place, she had appeared to him a spirit until her voice had dispelled the illusion. It had been a soft voice, which no excitement could lift to unmusicalness. What would he give to hear it once more and addressed in kindness to himself?

Now, one instantly healthy effect this awakening had on him was to send him abroad again hawking over the moors. Thither had she gone, and there, presumably, was to be sought. He had a confidence that somehow he would alight on her again, and without seeking, however cautiously, to identify and run her to earth. As to that he was jealous, too, of making his quest a public matter: it would dilute the heady romance of the situation, and deprive it of its most intimate charm. So he breathed no word of his secret to living soul, but carried it in his breast, like an anachronous electric torch, himself alone aware of the light which dwelt within him, awaiting on his touch either to flash into being or to vanish.

He took to wandering far afield in these days, even affecting to himself a topical interest in his explorations, while his eyes were unceasingly alert for some sign or token of their real objective. But enough pride remained to him to make him feign a nonchalance he was remote from feeling. He returned to angling, as it were to give some colour to his persistent haunting of the moors, and, recalling Clerivault’s instructions, dabbed and dibbled assiduously in the becks and streams, but without much success. However, as it happened, this pretext did actually at last lead him to the attainment of the company he coveted.

He had pushed, one glowing afternoon in May, to a point on the moor, where a couple of little sturdy brooks, running separately in their valleys, came together, like two romping dogs, and headed straight in one course for the Dart. South of him lay Holne Chase, where the rich City Knight dwelt--a beautiful domain contained within an arm of the river, here sunk in a rocky ravine whose heights were thick with foliage. Northward, rising above the heave and tumble of green, stood Buckland Tor, the beacon planted on its summit like a great red tulip waiting to flower; and at his feet bubbled the pretty rivulet, swirling and eddying, and in places returning upon itself to linger in still pools very inviting for a fisherman’s purpose.

Brion, hiding behind a convenient bush, got ready his tackle. This consisted of a twelve-foot fir rod, painted of a pale green with verdigris and linseed oil; of a line contrived of horse-hairs, in lengths tapering from a couple at the hook to seven at the base, and dyed of a glass colour in a concoction of October ale, soot, walnut tree juice and alum, and, finally, of a box of natural stone-flies, hatched out from the caddis worms then swarming in great quantities in the brooks and burns. Now of these flies he took a brace, and, spitting them on the hook, head to tail, cautiously projected his rod, himself concealed, over a likely pool, and let the bait bob gently up and down near the surface of the water--in the process called indifferently daping or dibbing or dippling, which is to imitate the action of a fly dancing--when, to his delight, after his scarce beginning, he felt a jerk and pull at his rod top; and there were the flies gone under in the midst of an oily ring of water, and a lively weight tugging at his hold of them. He was so excited for the moment as quite to forget his heartache; but all his thoughts were concentrated on the glory of his capture, and whether, having no net, he would be able to land it without his line snapping. Holding himself cool, however, and biding his time, as Clerivault had taught him, he presently felt the efforts of the fish to slacken; when, with a steady lift, he raised it clear of the pool and swung it swiftly to the bank, where it lay kicking and gasping, a grayling good fifteen inches long. Surveying his prize with rapture, he stooped to release it from the hook, when, glancing up as he knelt, he saw something which on the instant struck him motionless.

The side of the hill on which he looked sloped down to the glen, and was much confused with bush and foliage for two-thirds of its height; but above and beyond it broke into open spaces, which were multiplied continuously until a summit of bare grass was reached; and on this ridge, silhouetted against the sky, cropt a little donkey.

Brion waited, while the shock of tingling blood in his veins subsided: then very hurriedly he rose, and, discarding fish and flies and tackle, began to climb the hill in as straight a line as he could make for the small dusk object perched up aloft. Picking his way by bush and boulder, he soon enough lost sight of it; but the open ground once reached would enable him to correct his course, and it was for that he was striving when a little suppressed cough, uttered from somewhere close at hand, brought him to a stop as instant as though he had answered to a ‘stand and deliver.’

He stood at the moment beside a great rock, clothed in a plush of lichen, which stuck from the hillside in a leafy place, and it seemed that the sound had come from behind that covert. Listening, and hearing no more, he turned and, wading in a sea of green, doubled the corner of the promontory--and saw her. She sat cross-legged like a Turk, her hands clasped about her knees, in a little mossy alcove so formed for a natural bower that nothing could have been prettier or more secure. There was a fence about it of the silver-birch sapling; its floor was level grass; hidden from all else, she could yet command through the trees a view of the lovely glen, with the shining river looping through it. Brion, standing waist-deep in bush, looked up at his goddess, like a young Leander rising from the sea; and she, for her part, returned his look--it seemed without apprehension.

So they remained, both speechless, till something happened: two little tell-tale dimples suddenly appeared at the wings of the girl’s short nose and flickered there. They meant--a characteristic feature which Brion came to love--that she must break the spell or laugh.

‘I am not going to laugh,’ she said, instantly and haughtily, to Brion’s expectant eyes. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Is it a private seat?’ answered the boy. ‘I had not known it.’

‘If I choose to make it private----’ began the girl.

‘You should not cough,’ he said.

‘If I happen to have a cold----’

‘You do not look as if you had.’

‘Thank you for the rudeness. It is only such as I should expect from you.’

‘You remember me, then?’

‘Alack! I have good reason.’

‘I prithee forgive me, mistress. You would, if you knew how I had suffered in my mind. I thanked you for that cough!’

‘Did you think it was uttered to attract you?’

‘If I dared to hope so!’

‘Insolence! Well, it was.’

‘It was!’ He cried it in rapture. ‘Then you wanted to speak to me--to forgive me?’

‘I will hear your story first.’ So the inquisitive jade confessed herself.

‘O, O! May I come up beside you?’

She regarded him from under superior lids; and then the little dimples flickered again. Leaning back against the rock, she patted the turf beside her.

‘Come.’

He was by her side in a moment. He could hardly believe in his happiness. She was the prettiest flower of a maid he had ever seen--hat and garb all the gray dove of his memory.

‘If you knew,’ he said; ‘if you knew!’

‘What, please?’

‘How I have dreamt of this meeting. Ever since that day I have been looking and longing for you.’

‘Methinks I should not let you so speak to me. Besides, I am little enough to look at.’

‘I think you are my Heaven, Mistress.’

‘You speak bold for a boy, Master Middleton.’

‘What! You know my name?’

‘Is it a secret, then? Who does not know whose name on these moors?’

‘I know not yours.’

‘Would you know it?’

‘_Would_ I!’

‘I think I shall not tell you.’

‘Then I will ask none other than yourself, lest coarser lips should desecrate it.’

‘You are old for your years. What are they?’

‘Yet I am old for them! Will you tell me your name, and I will answer?’

‘What fashion of name likes you in a woman?’

‘Yours.’

‘Well, I have allowed you too long. I must go.’

‘O! not yet!’

‘This moment. What brought you up the hill?’

‘I saw a donkey browsing, and hoped it might be yours.’

‘It was my Gritty: she loves me like a dog, and bears me--like an angel. If it were not for her----’

‘Why do you stop?’

‘I think I should put a milestone round my neck and drown.’

Brion wondered. What tragedy spoke here--apart from the verbal accident? The young face was suddenly clouded; the voice spoke in dejection. But he had had already, in little Alse, some experience of the small tragedies of girlhood, and was not inclined to attach too much importance to their manifestations.

‘Is it like that?’ he said sympathetically. ‘Then, if one donkey can save you, two might make you happy.’

‘Yourself?’ she said, her eyebrows lifted at him. ‘So you are a donkey for wishing to know me?’

‘Ay, if losing me, you will promise to drown yourself.’

She looked at him, the sleepy merriment come back to her eyes; then got to her feet, and he with her.

‘That is another matter,’ she said. ‘I have heard a proverb that two proud men cannot ride one ass, and, by the token, one woman cannot ride two asses. I wish you good-even, Sir.’

‘O! You are not going?’

‘Indeed, yes.’

‘You have neither forgiven me nor heard my story.’

‘Both will keep.’

‘Then you will let me come again--to this pretty bower?’

‘Why not?’

‘And meet you here?’

‘Nay, I said not that. What was the fish you caught?’

‘It was a grayling.’

‘They say the stream here is full of them. Good luck to your further fishing, Sir. I must away.’

‘At least let me put you on your Gritty.’

‘In good earnest, no.’ She looked genuinely alarmed.

‘Why not?’

‘Because, if you would know, the hill-top where she grazes is bare, and open to the scrutiny of eyes.’

‘What eyes?’

‘Some in the Chase yonder, perchance.’

‘Holne Chase!’ Brion opened _his_ eyes in wonderment. ‘Do you come from there?’

The girl, hanging her head, gave ever so little a nod with it.

‘Mistress,’ cried Brion, at a wild venture: ‘I think Joan the sweetest name in all the world.’

She glanced at him askance: ‘Have you guessed my secret?’ and, putting her finger rosily to her lips, bade him stay where he was, and not attempt to follow her. And with that she vanished round the rock, leaving the boy standing as if stupefied.

Joan, sole child and heiress of the wealthy Knight! and he, a penniless dependent on a kinsman’s bounty! What would come of it? What could?

With a sigh he turned to the rock, and tracing on it in invisible characters the name Joan Medley, put his lips to it as if it were a face.