A Girl's Awakening

Chapter I At The Sluice

Celia. West of this place, down in the neighbour bottom, The rank of Osier by the murmuring stream, Left on your right hand, leads you to the place. Her cheeks soft light, her rosy lips, No length of time will e'er eclipse, Her downward glance in passing by, Deep in my heart is stamped for aye. A manifest stranger to the place and its ways was lost for a moment under the great beech tree, which stretched across the lade to droop over the narrow path. As he rose erect on the far side, he was arrested with the branch in his hand. From beyond the stream, one approached the sluice which shed the water, to send half to the mill hidden by the ash tree, and half away round the meadow in its old picturesque channel. He saw little except a sweet face A and brown hair, but that little was sufficient to give him pause.

The situation was awkward. Under such conditions, the narrow and broken woodwork formed a trying passage. But the girl had come too far to retreat, without making tacit confession of the cause. A sense of the ludi crous mingled with her timidity, and she smiled through her blushes. In the reflection in the water he followed the passage across. Once she swayed, as if about to fall, but, steadying herself, she reached the nearer side in safety. ' Shall I assist you ? ' ' Oh, no, thank you. I am quite accustomed to it,' she said in a voice so low and flurried as to be barely audible. Once more blushing at being betrayed into the admission, she leapt lightly down and disappeared under the branches. On that very afternoon Alan Fordyce had come to settle for awhile in Thistledown, and learn about the simple people who lived under thatch.

He was glad to see the cab that brought him roll out of sight over the brae, and leave the scene in its native quiet. In print gown and white apron, Mrs Gourlay met him at the door, and helped him in with his luggage. A spotless cloth filled the room with the freshness of the country air in which it was bleached. A bright flower from the garden shed the old-fashioned scents in which country people, and those who love the neighbourhood of hamlets and cottar houses, delight. The twilight atmosphere, the low roof, the deepset windows, pleased him. The very dis comforts had a charm of their own. The want of space, the overcrowding of large furniture, the corners, whose dimness the low afternoon sun, which looked straight in and made the mid-day of the room, could scarce relieve, were so many features of the pleasant whole.

Any remaining doubts, as to whether this was what he desired and had pictured to him self, were dissolved by a tour round his not very large domain. He paused before the highly-coloured artificial fruit under its semi circular glass case, examined the dim present ment of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea, done in Berlin wool, and peered into the faded Daguerreotype over the chimneypiece ; and then he opened the window to let some of the rosebuds, pressing their sweet faces against the glass, drop lightly on the broad ledge. ' It's the absence of art that strikes the artistic eye,' he mused. ' Somewhat of a para dox no doubt, but still true. A glare of light, and more so-called taste would spoil all.' By drawing aside the dark panel behind which it was hidden away, he had a peep into the mystery of his dormitory.

There the snow-white sheets were already folded back from the snow-white pillow cases, all bleached in the selfsame air as the tablecloth, so that freshness would breathe around him as he slept. Finally he threw himself on the hair-bottomed chair, stretched his feet over the faded tiger on the mat, and straightway fell into a pleasing reverie, which lasted till his landlady brought in the teapot. He fell to admiring the pattern on the outside of the cosy as he uncovered the pot, and the spray on the cup as he poured out the tea. He ate, less from hunger than because he was so pleased with everything, just as one eats the first night by the seaside, or in a farmhouse ; within sound of the breakers or the lowing kine ; nor did he cease till the plates were empty, and he was face to face with the four-pound loaf.

Then Alan rose and went forth to have a look at the outside. Every woman seemed to be on her doorstep, every man busy in the garden, which ran in long strips down to the lade. He stooped over the coloured primroses and polyanthus in front of the house, passed along the moist walk, where the springing peas grew behind a scented border of balm, and thyme, and southernwood ; and stopped to speak to a tall, wiry man who was working, to the music of his hoe, on the other side of the paling. ' Fine weather.' ' Might be waur,' was the reply, without raising the head. The first advance was not encouraging ; but Alan was in too excellent a humour to acknowledge a rebuff. This day of small but interesting things — his first in Thistledown — was brought to a close by the pleasanter incident at the sluice.

The influence of that encounter was to send him back to his room so little satisfied with the absence of art, which he had so belauded but an hour or two before, that he straightway set himself to hide, or refine away some of the rudeness. To-night — being a fortnight later — he added the last touch, and then issued with his rod to spend an hour by the water side. He crossed the road, stepped over the low dyke, and followed the path by the lade. Trout broke the surface into rings, which melted into one another, or mingled with the ripples of the current, or vanished beneath the grasses of the bank. A little loquacious sedgewarbler, on the tallest of reed grasses, rained the yellow pollen on to the water, as he swung from the moist shadow down to the very surface of the dim and musical current, and back to shadow again.

His hook floated up into the ash tree which partly shaded the road, caught the end leaf of the willow twig, idly bobbing on the current, buried itself in the cream-coloured spray of the meadowsweet that was furthest out of reach, and disturbed the sedgewarbler by well nigh wrenching out by the roots his reedy perch. He dropped his cast, together with two yards of line, on the stillest water, in loops and tangles, whose shape and size were marked out by showers of spray"; and still the trout kept rising, in that insulting way in which they are in the habit of ignoring all such crude splashing. In passing under the beech tree, so hopelessly entangled did he become, that release was only possible at the expense of a cast. Hot and breathless he emerged on the far side. Never did he approach that sluice without its aspect, when he first saw it, coming vividly back ; never, perhaps, was it possible for him to see the bare, lifeless sluice again.

All the half-forgotten details, which it would have been impossible to recall elsewhere, filled themselves in. ' It was j'ust here she stood,' he muttered. And he silently rehearsed the whole little drama, phase by phase, scene by scene. When he came to the part where he looked down during her passage, and yet, all the time, saw the trembling shadow, he again dropped his eyes as he did then. Long ago had that shadow vanished through the sluice, been distorted in the current, broken on the mill wheel, scattered in a thousand drops over the waterfall, and finally vanished in rain bow hues. Still he looked, and bent down more closely, while the crimson light of evening lay reflected beneath. Ofttimes imagination is of the nature of eyesight. If the outer object is reflected from within, the process may sometimes be reversed, and the inner impression be re flected from without.

The latter is only a second image, cast by, and dimmer than, the first. A face faintly defined, gloriously tinted, shone from beneath. Could it be that the vision was restored, that the mist and the spray had given it again to the fall, that the currents had flowed backward, weaving it meanwhile in their loom, and now passed it on to the smooth, glancing water as it was ? He rubbed his eyes to convince him self. The crimson hues died away into twilight grey, the depths were more shadowy. The vision was still there, but the fulness had softened into oval ; the colour had passed and left the cheeks pale. The brown eyes had retreated into the infinitude behind, and changed into two large and lustrous stars. The face turned away, mingling with the shades, and a vision, as if cast from the sluice, passed over the dark current.

There was something mystic — a touch of sadness — resting on the exceeding beauty of that evening. Alan lingered long after the deepening twilight made further revelations impossible, and wondered if the water would ever give back that pale face with the lustrous eyes.

Chapter II

maiden vows Celia. Rosalind lacks, then, the love Which teacheth thee that thou and I am one. Shall we be sundered ? Shall we part, sweet girl ? From within the cool black shadow of the great beech, which lay like an eddy amid the universal light, with half-shut eyes and hands under head, Alan lazily watched the stream of incense rising from the heated earth, and listened to the drowsy sound. ' Pshaw ! ' he muttered, ' I have only seen her once, and it may only be the circumstances under which we met that made her seem so interesting and attractive. After all there is a good deal in background. She was part of a charming picture, worthy to be put on canvas and called "Approaching the Sluice." How she paused in the act of taking a step, as if turned to blushing stone : that is the moment the artist would seize upon.' Rattling volleys of fairy artillery passed along the bank, raining tiny bullets down on the prostrate figure, assailing hands and face and rolling into every crevice of his dress.

The shrivelling broompods exploded with a sharp crack. Alan paused in his reverie to eject some dark seeds from between his collar and his neck. ' Besides, I may never see her again, and that will make an end of the matter. She has got a scare likely to keep her from coming for some time.' And Alan once more lapsed into a fit of musing, in which a thousand silver and tawny sun rays shot hither and thither in the loom of thought. He had learned that the secret of com munion with Nature, and the condition of fellowship with the shiest of her wild creatures, was simply to remain hidden, motionless or quiet. The sedgewarbler, too busy to gossip, as in the garrulous springtime, wound in and out among the reeds by the water side, taking no more notice of him than if he were a log- Whitethroats emerged from the shadow land of the broom forest ; and one, bolder than the rest, perched for a moment on the branch of the trailing rose, which seemed to have grown over him where he lay.

Whether the same secret would surprise those of his own kind was not so evident. Hitherto the shy among women, whom he would fain surprise, had remained in hiding. Often he lay there of an afternoon as preferable to the stifling atmosphere of his room. When abroad it was natural that the sun should drive him into the shadow. But why the branches of the beech, and not those of the horse chestnut on the Thistledown side of the bank ? The water entered the lade with a cool gurgle. The current higher up came in undertones, which lost themselves in the splash of water over the fall at the mill dam, varied by the drum-beat of the wheel. Still another sound stole in on his consciousness, and finally separated itself from the liquid music of the ripple as articulate speech. The tones were human : they were feminine : they were girlish.

One seemed to be read ing.— ' We, Margaret, like two artificial gods, Have with our neelds created both one flower, Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion, Both warbling of one song, both in one key, As if our hands, our sides, voices and minds, Had been incorporate. So we grew together, Like to a double cherry, seeming parted ; But yet a union in partition, Two lovely berries moulded on one stem.' 'Two lovely berries, mark.' 'Now we are to be severed; and I, who have never known what it was to be without you, left to live my poor half-life alone — ' ' But I shall come back.' ' And go again. These gaps never quite close up. We shall not be altogether the same.' ' How very sad we are.

You mean you won't ! ' 'Oh, yes!' ' And I am the naughty one, who can snap ties like gossamer threads, and part cherries like a ruthless blackbird.' ' I don't mean that ; but I have no one to put in your place, even if I wished ; and you are going where you will see fresh faces and make new friends.' 'And you expect me to say, " Now, all you new faces that I have never seen before, and who have no association with what is holiest and sweetest in my life, I wish you to take possession of me, and chase away the likeness of Margaret Grant.' Hear me swear on my bended knees — I, Gwendolen Anderson — ' ' You mustn't be tragic' ' If you won't be pathetic, and unreason able, and tell little fibs against me, and against what you know to be true.' ' I was foolish ; but you don't mind me missing you ? ' 'And think you that you will have all the missing to yourself; that my heart will never ache for the dear old place, even in the dear old wintertime, when the trees are dripping and the Dovan surging down in brown spate ; that I sha'n't have many an hour when I would give all the world to be where you are ?

We shall write often, sha'n't we ? and arrange to do the same thing at the same time, and be ever so sentimental. But, what are we about? It's an age of weeks yet till I go ! ' Under the branches appeared the skirts, with the feet playing in and out. And slowly the speakers descended into view. A fair girl's arm, linked in that of her darker friend, and holding a book open in front of both. ' I have a message to Thistledown for papa.' And without more ado the fair girl leapt on to the support of the sluice. ' I'm not coming.' ' Why ? ' said the other, turning and balanc ing herself midway over the current in a manner which implied frequent practice. ' I'd rather not,' said the dark girl, with a blush. It was their first little secret. That's a woman's reason. Another, please.' I haven't one.' Timid? ' Not exactly.' Tired, then ? ' Not tired either.' ' Enigmatic as the Sphinx.

Not timid, not tired, and won't go ! I'm not good at riddles. What has happened since the last time we were here ? Now that I think of it, we haven't come this way for some months. And I can scarcely tell why, except that I followed you.' Margaret blushed a deeper red, ' How old are we? ' ' You know.' ' Nineteen last month. That may account A GIRL'S AWAKENING for it,' said the fair girl, thoughtfully. 'You see I am only eighteen, and privileged. I have another six months' run of the sluice. Here goes half of the double cherry that nothing was to part. Heigh-ho ! ' And she turned on her heel, as if on a broad path, and crossed the other half of the current. ' Wait,' said Margaret, who walked over the woodwork with the aspect of a timid fawn. When they came opposite where he lay, Alan drew his feet within the cover of the branch. ' Papa was teasing me last night about you going.

He pretended not to believe that girls can be friends, at least not true friends.' ' Mere prejudice of sex,' commented Gwen dolen. ' All the friendships we read about are among men ; and he waxed quite learned about David and Jonathan, and all the rest.' ' Slightly musty,' interpolated Gwendolen. ' He pointed out two stars as Castor and Pollux — we were driving home at the time — who were noted for their constancy.' ' Want of individuality, perhaps, leading to a tendency to run in couples,' said Gwendolen, judicially. ' It would be a long time before two wo men were put up there,' he said. ' Do you remember, in all your reading, a case of woman's friendship? so that I may answer him.' ' If I come upon one I shall let you know ; but I can't say that I'm very eager about it. If there isn't such a thing, we can show the example, that's all.

I like to be first. The world is so used up, that it's quite a boon to discover something that hasn't been done before. Who knows what some gallant astronomer, if there is such a thing, may do for us. By the way, do you remember these two trees ? ' ' Oh, yes ! The elm was mine because its foliage was dark like me, and the beech was yours because it was fair like you.' ' And I kept house beneath the beech, and you beneath the elm. Ah, me ! for those days. You are not going to break with them so completely as I, and yet you expect all the sympathy,' said Gwendolen, with a passing shade of feeling. ' Suppose we christen them ! ' And, stooping over the lade, she threw one handful of water at the elm and another at the beech. b A GIRL'S AWAKENING 18 In the name of the great god Pan!' Oh, Gwen, what would your father say ? ' The instinct comes from him.

Besides, it's only a way of taking formal possession, and making the tie lasting. For all time coming, while the meadowsweet grows and the Dovan runs, I appoint thee — Uncle Tom is a lawyer, and cousin Jim writes poetry to the newspapers, and I muddle the two — to be named after the most loving of friends, Margaret and Gwendolen.' Alan lay motionless as the water pattered among the crisp beech leaves. ' I daresay their roots are so intertwined, that they could never be separated out now, not even if one went to Girton,' said Gwen dolen, in a more serious mood. ' I often think that we are blended of one another, and — ' The close of the sentence was lost as they dropped the branch behind them and disappeared in the direction of Thistledown. ' Not a bad girl,' muttered Alan, as he rose to his feet, at peace with Girton and all the world. 'If I were an astronomer, now.' He took out his knife, as if to cut something on the tree, but quickly closed it again. ' No, it would be like wounding a living thing.

I shall do it in some less cruel way.' And he mused concerning the two friends, estranged, for the first time, by emotions which neither understood, and which the younger would share by and by, when she joined her darker sister on the far side of the line which divides those who are wandering among the latter teens. Was Gwendolen safe in counting on six months more of the sluice?

Chapter III

narcisse Miranda. This Is the third man e'er I saw, The first that e'er I sighed for. Margaret. I would give something now to know Who yonder gentleman might be. He had a gallant air I trow, And doubtless was of high degree. ' Uncle.' The speaker was a fragile girl, transparent rather than pale of complexion, and with large eyes heavily pencilled by drooping lashes. The lines of the delicate body bent towards the fire had a certain fluidity and spiritual suggestiveness, as if they refused to be fixed. ' Ay, my dautie.' But, like one who utters a word in sleep, the girl had relapsed into dreaminess. ' Uncle,' she said after a pause, as if she had been vaguely musing in one direction ; and again she gazed dreamily into the fire. NARCISSE 21 The man knew her way, and remained silent. ' Uncle.' And the word was attended by the ghost of a sigh. ' That's the third time,' he said, with a humorous contraction of the eyebrows, ' and it might be interestin' to ken what it's a' to lead up to.

Aiblins a new bannet, a bonnie gown, or some fal-de-ral ! ' This was only fun, as her wear was of the simplest, and she had not yet become vain. ' I'm not too heavy, am I ? ' ' What an ambitious puss. Gin it werena for your saft arm and purrin' ways I wouldna ken you were there.' ' This is a dull place to live in.' And the sigh was unmistakable. ' I ken that, dear ; for you it is,' was the mournful reply. Often had the man chided himself for shutting up the young life, whose earlier, if vague, impressions were of something more stirring, in an out-of-the-way place, amid surroundings, so harsh and cold that they seemed to chill her spirit, and stunt her growth. Summer might not have been so bad if he could have got her to go more out into the sun. But when the door was shut against the rawness of winter, and the snow drift lay in moist patches in the stone passage, and nothing was to be seen from the window but the brown water of the Dovan, or heard, save the wind among the leafless branches of the park, he moved uneasily about because of her.

Was this loyalty to him from whom he had taken her in charge? Had he any right to tyrannize over her because the place suited him, and it had ceased to matter where he spent the brief remnant of his days? Was he not bound to sacrifice his winter to one who was passing through her springtime ? ' I thought ye might ha'e ta'en to the Miss Altcastles when they wanted to be sae kind to you ; and then ye could ha'e gane to Lunnon wi' them. Maybe ye could get some genteel wark i' the town, and come hame at night ? ' ' I don't want to leave you,' cried Narcisse, impatiently, ' and I won't ask you to go away from here again.' And she rubbed her cheek against his. The old man was happy ; for she had never made such a promise before. ' If — ' she added, looking away. NARCISSE 23 There's an if in't after a'.

I thought it would be queer without ane.' 'If— ' ' Out wi't now.' ' If you'll only try to make it a little livelier.' ' Mair company like. Maun I spier a wheen lassies in ? ' ' No,' she said quickly and decidedly. ' Or aiblins some o' the laddies ? ' And those expressive brows of his once more contracted. 'Uncle!' she cried indignantly, springing from his knee, while the red blood came like a tide into the clear face. ' It's just my nonsense. But gin ye'll tell me at ance, and no beat round the bush, I'll mak' nae mair mistak's.' On this understanding she returned to her post, and, resting her head on his cheek, looked away into the fire. ' Who is Mr Fordyce ? ' ' It's that you've been thinkin' o' thae twa or three weeks back ! How can I tell ? I'm no a warlock.' ' You know what I mean,' she cried, with the petulance of annoyance at being forced to explain.

That's just what I dinna.' I've heard you talk about gentlemen. Is he a gentleman ? ' ' That's a question it's no' sae easy to answer affhand.' ' Is he like those you meet in the world ?' ' Some o' them. He wears braw claes enough, except whiles when he's gaun to the fishin', but I ha'ena seen that auld suit this while back.' 'Why did he leave it off?' said the girl, quickly. If the man guessed he did not tell. ' Does he talk as gentlemen do ? ' ' Whiles ye get a mouthfu' o' sense out o' him.' ' Uncle,' cried the girl, ' I shall go away and not come back. I mean, does he talk nicely, and seem to know as much as you do, only — ' Mair delicate like.' No ! no ! not that.' He'll pass muster in a' thae respec's.' ' Uncle, dear,' and again she rubbed her cheek against his. ' Is't a' to begin ower again ? ' ' Mightn't I hear what you say ?

I've often watched you from the window when I'd nothing NARCISSE 25 to do or dream about — it's hard sometimes even to dream — until I thought you had forgotten that I was here at all.' ' Na ! I'm no' like to forget ; but — ' Perhaps you think I couldn't understand ; but it wouldn't very much matter.' ' It's no' exactly that.' The man could not find words to tell why he would rather that things remained as they were. ' I'd sit very quiet in the corner, and not say a word, but only listen,' said Narcisse. The uncle said nothing ; but the girl knew she had gained her wish. The interior thus unexpectedly opened to Alan was simple even to sternness. The wooden floor was scrubbed to an almost un comfortable degree of cleanness. Hides of wild beasts were thrown down here and there — one magnificent skin covering the space in front of the empty grate.

A plain, oblong table, four deal chairs, and a large iron-ribbed box were the furnishings. A telescope filled one corner ; and above the mantlepiece hung a rude frame, within which, in a large, unformed hand, were written the words, — ' Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades and loose the bands of Orion ? ' The tall, spare, gaunt man who stood in the midst seemed as if he might have grown out of his surroundings, so much did the one seem to be a part of the other. ' Sit down : there's nae choice where they're a' alike. I was sae long awa frae luxury that I'd tak ill wi't. A hard seat and a hard bed keep the flesh firm and the head clear. Was and windows maun be clear, gin I'm to get my breath.' Alan was shamefaced because of the care he was taking of his precious person, and asked himself if a little similar discipline might not put vigour into the work he was forecasting. 'It's a' in the trainin',' continued Douglas, as if reading the other's thoughts. ' Gin I had been brought up at hame I might ha'e likit a cushion as weel as my neebors.

But I canna' gang back to them. And there's the mair need for ane to haud a tight grip o' himsel' when he's gettin' auld, if he would walk to the end wi' a straight back.' Alan sat up in his chair when he saw that the other was resting on nothing. In fact, NARCISSE 27 his whole intercourse with this remarkable man impressed him with the idea of one who never relaxed the discipline to which he had been accustomed, and who regarded the latter part of his life as a campaign, through which he must walk as under the eye of a superior officer. That ghost of a sigh, which is scarcely distinguishable from silence, issued from a corner, where sat Narcisse, leaning against an iron box. So well had she observed her compact that not a sign had betrayed her presence till now. Few could keep so still or remain so long unnoticed.

All was so strange — the visitor strangest of all ! To have him there, and to be one of the three ! She was looking rather than listening. The sigh of wonder and pleasure escaped unbidden. Alan started at a vision so unlike anything he expected to see there. The delicate head was bent, the lids still trembled as if the eyes had been almost caught in their slow retreat from wandering over him. The expression was of one who knew she was being looked at. Some suggestion was there which he could not at the moment trace. A spirit passed over the girl's face, which differed from articulate speech only in that it was so much more eloquent. This was their first communication. The room suddenly changed its aspect. The environment, so characteristic of the man, was unfitted for the girl, as if she had been cased in armour.