Nell: a tale of the Thames

Front matter

ii

LlSi

Ui

Chapter I. Page

How Robert starts with Alfred from Folly Bridge to canoe down the Thames in quest of some out-of-the-way village in which he can quietly spend a summer holiday , . 3

CHAPTER H.

Tiie Hiitory of Robert and Alfred, and how they had grown

info friendship . . . . . .12

CHAPTER in.

How Robert and Alfred fare on the first day of their quest . 23

CHAPTER IV.

Hjw Robert at last chances to find the village he wishes, and

how Alfred goes back to town , . . • 3 1

CHAPTER V.

IVhif kind of a village it is that Robert finds lodgings in,

and what first impression it makes on him . , 46

B

IV

CHAPTER VI.

PAGE

How Robert first meets Nell in the village churchyard, and

their conversation . . . . .56

CHAPTER VII.

IVhat impression Nell creates on Robert . . .68

CHAPTER VIII.

How Robert ivhiles away the rest of his first day in the

CHAPTER IX.

How Robert wishes, and thinks to create an acquaintanie

with Nell, and how he fails . . . .83

CHAPTER X.

How Alfred comes unexpectedly back from London and luis made an appointment with some girl he has met in the trai?i ..... . -93

CHAPTER XI.

How Alfred with Robert keeps the appointment, and how Carrie {the girl whom Alfred has met in the train) chances to bring as her companion Nell [the girl w/wm Robert has met in the churchyard), and how this quartet arrange to meet daily . . , . .103

CHAPTER XII.

PAGE

How Robert and Nell are iluoivn constantly together, and come, after some natural nervousness, to understand each other . . . . , . . I F4

CHAPTER XIII.

/fo7V Nell tells Robert her history, and lioio her mother, notwithstanding the evident kindness of her uncle, had been reduced from comparative affluence into great straits

CHAPTER XIV.

How Robert boils over at the iniquitous looseness of the laws

on robbery — a matter that is only a digression . • 'S?

CHAPTER XV.

How Carrie has to go back to London, and so breaks vf the quartet; and how Nell tells Robert that tlieir own meetings must now terminate; together with Alfred's comments on this decision . . . -145

CHAPTER XVI.

Ho7V Robert, finding that Nell will no longer meet him, determines to go back to London, and packs up his things ; and how on his last evening he chances to meet Nell in the churchyard, and what is the result . . -156

VI

Part II. Chapter XVII

PAGE

How rhe months pass through winter into spring, till with the advent of May the river is again alive ivith pleasure-seekers . . . . . . .169

CHAPTER XVni.

How Nell has watched for the coining of Spring, and /tow Robert determines to live his week-ends in the country ; and how after Alfred's comment on this decision he takes his rooms of last year and goes down to them . .188

CHAPTER XIX.

How Robert meets Nell the morning after his arrival in the churchyard, and how site soys that she has determined that their acquaintanceship must end, and how in the evening she changes her mind . . . • 197

CHAPTER XX.

How Robert returns to town for the mid-week and tells Alfred how beautiful the country is ; together with Alfred's comments . . . , , vu

CHAPTER XXI.

How Nell, whilst Robert is in town, plans to get freedom by making a companion of Florence (Carrie's sister), and how Nell's mother, noting her daughter's greater bright - ness, encourages this; and further how Nell thereby manages to pass long evenings with Robert

CHAPTER XXII.

How Nell manages also to pass the mornings with Robert, and Iwiv he is introduced to the father of Florence, who is a farmer close by, and how Robert is so frequently at t/ie farm that he is taken in the village for an old friend of the farmer' s . . . . .216

CHAPTER XXIII.

How May passes into June, and hay time comes ; and how Robert helps in the haymaking, and on its first day thinks Nell would make him a sweet wife, and how the tivo stay to supper at the farm, after which he roivs her back home by the river — together with their conversation 223

CHAPTER XXIV.

How the week of haymaking comes to an end, and liow Robert having determined to marry Nell, writes to Alfred to tell him so , ,' , . . . , 235

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CHAPTER XXV.

PAGE

Hoiv Alfred, ivhilst Carrie is sitting in his rooms, receives Roberfs letter, which he reads, and then hands to her ; and how Alfred and Carrie, for separate reasons, determine to prevent Robert's marrying Nell, and to go down to the village for this purpose . . . .245

CHAPTER XXVI.

Jlojti with the advent of July, Alfred goes down with Carrie to tlie village, and hoiv he fails to alter Robert's determination to marry Nell . . . . -257

CHAPTER XXVn.

Ifow Alfred tells Carrie on his return to town that tJiey have utterly failed to change Robert's mind ; and hotv Carrie laughs at this, and says she has managed it, and explains ■why . . . . , . .275

CHAPTER XXVin.

Ifo7v Robert and Nell are relieved when Alfred and Carrie have gone ; hit how t/ie poison these latter left behind begins to work . . . . . .284

CHAPTER XXIX.

Bow hot August runs through, and Robert and Nell nieet

openly to the scandal of the village , , , 295

IX

CHAPTER XXX.

How Robert during a thunderstorm on the last day of August reviews everything, and determines absolutely to telL Nell that evening that he will marry her ; and how they meet, and how Nell comes to shame .... 301

CHAPTER XXXI.

How Nell and Robert go back to the village, and their thoughts 314

CHAPTER XXXn.

How Nell fares on the following day, and how she meets Robert

in the same place, and all things are the same again . 318

CHAPTER XXXin.

How September passes, and how whilst all things go on the same, Nell comes to think less of her mother and more of Robert. . .... 326

CHAPTER XXXIV.

How October passes through, and how Nell, feeling that all the village guesses at her shame, determines to get away to town and writes to her Uncle to arrange this, and further tells Robert of this intention . . -33°

CBl AFTER XXXV.

PAGE

How NeWs Uncle comes down and arranges that Nell should take a place in town, and how Robert leaves the village for London, on the understanding that Nell is to follow in a fortnight ...... 340

CHAPTER XXXVI.

/fow Nell's last evening in the village comes, and how it is passed with her Mother ; and how the next morning she leaves and is met by Robert at Faddington ; and how the Mother returns in grief to her vacant hoine . . 347

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

How Robert starts with A Ifred from Folly Bridge to canoe down the Thames in quest of some out-of-the-way village in which he could quietly spend a summer holiday.

WHERE Oxford's royal city tops the Thames, Late on a sunny August afternoon. There stood upon the landing stage beneath That bridge whose name is Folly, two young men. Lithe and athletic were they both, and bore The well-knit grace of constant exercise. With faces brown beneath the summer's sun And arms and hands all brown, and boating shoes Brown too, but being coatless, all else white. And near them, on the water, lightly lay Their bass canoe, which by Ontario's shore The colonist had deftly fashioned out On the design that long years since he reft From the defenceless savage. He it was First stripped the ready birch of its loose bark. And with rude art and simplest implements Ventured a craft so aptly perfected And of such truth that all the measured thought Of modern Science, with its regular use Of rule and line and level, could not scheme

No odds what thinking, that which can surpass

This handiwork of a barbarian.

Safe in this fragile shell he raced adown

Rivers to which the Thames is pigmy, rode

On whirling rapids where the riding seemed

A very sport with death, pursued with ease

The water's denizens as prey for food,

Flashed in the sunlight of the day, or slid

Stealthily through the shadows of the night,

Or when the summer of the year had robed

The trees in richest leaf, would lie therein

Beneath the shadowy branch through idle hours

In love's soft reverie to dream upon

The Indian maid he wooed. It was with her

He hoped to journey down the stream of life ;

From her he hoped to get and breed and rear

Another generation, trained as he

To man's ambitions and possessed as she

Of woman's gentleness, who in their turn

Would wed and multiply ; till as a stone

Breaching still water sends its wavelets out

To such enlargement that at last the eye

Can follow them no longer, so their brood

Their children's children's children should extend

To where the shadowed future dims in end.

Alas, vain mocking and delusive dream Mused in the sureness of an unfound land Ere the white foot had trod its virgin wilds. And ere the vast Atlantic had been ploughed By ribbed and oaken timbers. Now no more Through the majestic width of half a world

Rises the voice of children of the soil, No more upon the rivers are they borne Like infants on a tender mother's breast. The tide of progress with its grim advance Across the hemispheres has swamped and killed The life-spring of a people : the fell lead And bowie of the Christian ; that damned curse Of all men, drink ; the scourging of disease Which crept across the ocean from the West And glutted deep on a pure-blooded race ; All these have reft in one conspiracy A rich dominion of its heritage, And wiped eternally from off the face Of a whole continent, its rightful race.

Nations are born, and live and die. Ideas

Are born and live, and still go on when those

Whose brains have birthed them out of secrecy

Are turned to parent dust — and thus bequeathed

These memorable legacies untied

Become the prizes of posterity.

So now, as beggared Lazarus at the gate

Of Dives, floated on the cultured Thames

At richest Erudition's very door.

This relic of the poor barbarian.

And that which once served the necessity

Of the rude savage in an ancient age.

Was now become merely the sport and play

Of modern youth in leisured holiday.

But lo, the two to whom this craft belonged,

The sum for nightly storage duly paid, With practised care took each his proper seat, Thrust back his sleeves, and caught his paddle up, And, as the sternmost gave the starting word. Grasped at the water with such ready sway That the good craft sped light and swift away. The boatman watched the even rise and fall Of those strong arms, half critical and half Careless, glanced at the coins within his palm, And, these consigned within his pocket's hold, Turned on his heel to think of other things. Then graceful as a smoothly gliding swan. As beautiful in movement and in form, Swept surely downward by strong measured strokes And aided by the agreement of the stream. The little bark moved as a phantom on. No noisy splashing of the rhythmic oar. No rowlocks rattling regular to time, No ceaseless ripple from a swirling prow. But almost silent, almost feather-like It held its way along the serried line Of college barges rich with gilded arms. And gay with many colours, where these lie Drawn like a line of ancient triremes up Abreast the Christ Church river-meeting meads. And past where Cherwell's consummated stream Mingles its volume with the gathering Thames. But scarcely had they sped this little way, When he who plied the guiding blade astern Cried, " Hold an instant, Alfred ! Let us take One farewell look at Oxford, ere we slip Between thege meadows fairly out of sight,"

At which the other with a merry laugh, Called, " Tired already, Robert, as your wont. There never was a man so little fit To trip with on the river as yourself. You hardly go a hundred yards or so But make excuse to stop and look about, And then, to veil what is mere laziness. You get some handy beauty to admire, Some mouldering heap of stone and mortar, or Some clouds rose-tinted in the evening sky. Or else some light reflected on the stream. Or any such-like rubbish — things I hold Proper enough in their artistic place But not to mope and muse on. Robert, if You only give yourself a moment's thought, People, not things, are worth the studying. Now if, by chance, we met a pretty girl With neat trim figure and with laughing eyes. And a complexion rich with country blood And ankles but half hid beneath the grass, (And being so the more seductive for it) I grant it then might be worth while to pause To interchange a glance, or smile, or word, And in this interchange to puzzle out What mind she holds lurking beneath the mask Of her sweet face and figure ; everything She does or says or wears but forms a key To solve the very riddle that she tries As women do, her utmost to conceal. Mankind is worth your study, women most Food for your contemplation ; but with you. Ignoring what is living and to hand,

A sky, a tree, a ripple, or a moon

Rouses its fund of heart-sick sentiment

Which you think love of nature." Railing thus

He set the idle paddle on his knee,

And cheerly laughed with all the merriment

Of careless manhood sipping at the world,

Whilst the canoe caught one side in its way,

Seeing the stern was deepest in the stream,

Swung slowly round and floated hindmost down,

Their backs their way, their faces to the town.

Mankind, re-echoed Robert, See you where

Like ancient oaks amidst new undergrowth

The venerable piles of Oxford rise

From out a fringe of modern-fashioned brick ;

Those hewn memorials of centuries

Have looked with cold, grey and inanimate stone

Upon hot-blooded stirring swarms of youth

Gathered as bees into a flowered field

To-^uck up Learning's honey and to hive it

In the receptive purlieus of the brain ;

Have seen in ceaseless eddies round them play

All varied characters of men, strong-marked

The more from bearing nature's fresher stamp

Ere that life's usages have under-edged

The crude impress and dimmed the brightness of it.

Here young industrious workers mined the past

Sucking sweet Learning's milky sources dry,

And robbed the nights of half their restful hours

To bear by day drawn pallid faces full

Of care and thought and wisdom's inventory ;

Here have insane and reckless revellers

Letting their mettle kick at due restraint

Fooled in irreverence at Learning's door

And made the place their wanton pleasure ground,

Breaking the hedged and proper boundaries

Of virtue to rush riot in the waste

Of all too neighbouring voluptuousness,

Until at last lost opportunities

Have choked their feebling minds and stolen away

The better part of life's too precious day.

Here striplings stood in youth's bright path and some

Foreshadowed future greatness : others made

The brilliant openings of a life that turned

To gall and bitterness, on which the drop

Fell to a frosted tragedy, and damned.

Mankind you say ! Mankind ! Why here have been

Men of all kinds and every sort and stamp

As nature with her first investiture

Cast them their parts like actors in a play :

The generous sponged on by the parasite,

The reckless falling prey to cooler heads.

The upright and the villain, modesty

And brazenfacedness, the spendthrift and

The hard close-fisted stingy niggard, those

Whom overflow of wealth made liberal,

And others sadly economical

From mother's pinched, and sisters' povertied :

The chattering scandalbox, the taciturn.

The sloven and the fop, the grave, the gay,

The manly and the coward ; or, diving down

To actions deeper hidden roofings, men lO

Who based their souls to hell by every sin

Or soared by purest virtues up to heaven.

In short there's not one single bodiment

That fashions forth from our inherent clay

Which has not found material character

In that old city. There, why there^ — why there —

But Alfred, catching at this little check Cried, Talk for ever, Robert, I but play The Sancho Panza to your knightly tongue Which wags, and will wag on. I might as well Attempt to stop an earthspring with my heel, Or bid the stream to stay or call the breeze To cease from blowing suddenly, as try To bar your overflood of wordiness. Talk as you list, so you but paddle on Talk as you list, you speak but to my back A proper audience of your eloquence. The sum of all these wasted minutes gulfs Our practicable time, assuredly We never shall reach Abingdon to-night Unless you work the more, and talk the less. Action is better than a world of thoughts Even when richly babbled on the scours Of such a rippling wordiness as yours.

Well, well, said Robert, I have done : we leave

The classic learning of the world behind,

The teaching of the Schools, the epitome

Of ancient thought, the knowledge which we drew

With studied labour from the cerements

Of extinct language, discipline, restraint,

II

The straight and artificial ways of towns Where men by congregation formal grow, And seek the country's sweet simplicity, Change Athens for Arcadia, pass unknown To simple hamlets and pure villages Where folks are artless. Oh, what a relief To quit prim cultivated gardens crammed With rich exotic and art-nurtured ilowers Whose heavy odours lade the wall-cooped air, Where the eye sicks of order and the brain Is leadened only with narcotic scents, And to ily free from towns to fields wherein Blossoms grow wild and all untutored draw Their nurture from the natural soil, exhale Their essence on an unrestrained breeze, Hold random places and embellish them, And where in sweet unfettered liberty Restraint is loosed from shackle and set free !

Go on, I will not argue, Alfred said, A fig for all your village simpleness. The pettier circles have the pettier ways. Paddle, and you will get the sooner down To your fool's paradise. So Robert ceased : Both caught their blades, turned the canoe about. And put their energies to paddling out.

Chapter II

The History of Robert and Alfred, and how they had grown into Friendship.

FRIENDSHIP has forgery in most strange ways ; From sameness now, and now from opposites. Sometimes it is community that makes The link and line which bind two men together, Identity of pleasures or of cares. Of occupation, place, or residence ; And yet as oft as not 'tis the reverse And a disparity becomes the bond That mocks antithesis. So was it here ; For no two men in look or ways of thought. Means, occupation, education.

Could be more wholly different than these. Alfred, fair-haired, grey-eyed, and with a face Cut to make women ponder. Robert, dark, With deep-set thoughtful orbs that scarce redeemed Rough features from a plain uncomeliness. But Alfred first : — younger a year or so, His father was an Actor, one who had Drawn with such truth the mimic lives of others That this had brought his own to opulence. But after all what is paternity ?

When what is round us breeds to ill or good More than the force of any fatherhood.

This Actor, kindly, genial, generous, Had in his holding of acquaintances Poets, critics, artists, sculptors, authors, men Who kept them out of old worn ruts to move In free and self-made pathways, men who cut Their names by the creation of their brains And had Humanity's true ranking based On Genius, not on Genealogies. It was with these and with their families That Alfred as he grew was thrown ; in fact. They were his schooling, for his all of school Was but a day-boy's measured smattering From some close-by Academy. At first Like nine days' blinded kittens he but heard And could see nothing. Women petted him. Stroked his child's head, and heedless chattered on Of the last scandal, speculated why This wife and husband were at loggerheads. What pleased them most in this new-rising man ; Whilst men regardless of his presence thought His little ears were sealed by innocence. And unintelligence stood sentinel Against words' meanings, so that language flowed Like water through the weir above a mill Divest of grossness. Hence they bared their mind Holding his ears as deaf and eyes as blind. • But he unthought of sopped their driftings up, And fed upon them whilst his knowledge grew Driblet by driblet as the scales fell off,

And that right picture of the world which men

Canvas just ere they quit it, he sketched out

Straight at the very onset, borrowing

From others their hard-earned experience,

Which comes so often at such tardy rate,

It mocks at those who learn its use too late.

Such was his training : as to learning, he

Gathered enough at. his attended school

To leave as cultured, and at seventeen

Was found by some exerted influence

A Government appointment, held at which

Exempt from all responsibility

He worked a meagre day, all remnant time

Being his own for use. Then as a bee

New ventured from its winter-bonded hive,

When that its thrall is solved by genial spring,

Rushes in vagrant quest from flower to flower

And sucks its full of honey, so he sought

And sipped at worldly pleasures, spurning still

All grosser vices since he haply knew

At second-hand their folly. Further he

Holding by nature that diplomacy

Was guide to action, speech was veil to thought,

A pleasant pliancy to others' views

Brought a perpetual welcome, held aback

All independence, harboured others' thoughts,

Did not obtrude his own except as lure

To gently draw his fellows, rather would

Insinuate than bluntly fight his way ;

And lived at full for pleasure, but as well

Though with the fumbling of a just-out boy,

The ways of men and women — women most, —

And since he mixed with literary men,

His father's guests and friends and noted they

Built all their power on knowledge and in main

Were scholars whom the wavering of intent

Had turned from grooves to which they had been bred.

He took to reading gravely to compare

His green experience with the records left

By ancient writers and looked out for friends

Whose erudition might subserve these ends.

So when he lit on Robert, who was read

In all the classic learning of the past

He gripped him with a double grappling hook

Holding him very suitable to be

His man for friendship — and utility.

With Robert all was different : at eight

He went to Boarding-School, and at thirteen

To Public School where with five hundred more

He rubbed and fought his fisted way, matured

His muscles in the football field, and trained

His eyes and hands with cricket ; ran and jumped

As though an Isthmian prize were everything,

And whilst his body rested, stuffed his brains

Full with the honoured classics of the past.

Wound through the grammared labyrinth of Greek,

Absorbed the Latin legacies of Rome,

And where close scholarship gave grace for thought.

Filled to the margin his unworldly mind

With extinct plots and dead philosophies

And ancient things. Then up to College went

To run in freer ways but similar.

i6

And four years later was turned out to life

An athlete and a scholar : took with him

As the result of all his tutored youth

And weapons for the battle of the world

Much erudition, much simplicity.

Of people he knew nothing, but of books

Published in centuries ago he knew

All that an ordinary man could learn —

And this it as that sober common sense

Holds education, worth the best expense.

So he went back to London, and because

In part his father held that life at home

Might mar his studied reading for the Bar,

In part because himself was more inclined

To live as he had lived in college rooms.

Took chambers at an ancient legal Inn

In London's deepest heart around whose walls

The loud pulsation of perpetual trade

Throbbed in the vehicled streets, but in whose close

And solemn precincts sober quiet was

Native, a heritage of centuries.

Here within shelved and book-girt walls he lodged

And sat the mornings grappling legal lore

And in long pauses (for the man is nought

Who has not his profession in his heart)

Would dream of dinners eaten, and on this

Ambiguous examiners well pleased.

The formal calling by his ancient Inn,

The address of crowded courts, a name built up

By brilliant earned success, a silken gown.

Then rapid elevation to the Bench,

And in the fine his learned head adorned

With the full token of supremacy

And gravely ruling from the treasured sack

Above long lordly lines of seated peers

Hereditary legislation.

And then — but dreams like lanes all have an end —

He would jerk back to present hours, and look

Athwart the muUioned windows of his rooms

On stately walks and gardens planted in

The golden days of their Elizabeth,

Where sparrows chirped as then, and the bold thrush

Secure and impudently tripped the turf ;

On which his thoughts would wander forth afield,

To glades and woods and purling brooks and dells

And modest cottages amidst the trees.

And he would ask — Since food is given me

With life's necessities, is after all

This fevered clutching at the rungs of fame

Not wasted effort and a thankless task ?

Were it not better in some village home,

Hearted in Nature's beauties, to pursue

A worldless, calm, and contemplative life

Without one single care ? Then in its turn

This dream as well of leisured idleness

Would burst, and he would plunge again to book

As if to catch fled time — with fingers mixed

Amidst his hair and elbows table-fixed.

But for his leisure, having deeply missed

His old companions, he had slowly formed

Acquaintanceships with newly ventured men.

And, feeling now his want of worldly wit.

Sought rather those who knew the ways of life

Than parchment scholars. So that when it chanced

He met with Alfred, whose bright episodes, Freely rung off with lively realism. Sounded as travels in an unknown world. He was enchanted by him and he fell Under the holding of such novel spell. Hence the two grew to be inseparable. And that (as is set down) by opposites, Like partners in a business where each Has what his fellow lacks : for one enheld All that experience had aptly caught. The other everything that could be taught.

So when their work was done, together they

(For it was winter when they first came friends)

Or drove the frozen evenings through the night

With merry chatter by clear-burning fires

Into the smaller hours of the morn.

But when the frigid months were spent, and spring

Brought lengthening days, then they began to shirk

The din and dirt of town, and taking train

Went down to Kingston in the afternoons

To get huge exercise upon the Thames

At sculling or canoeing till the dark

Drove them to town again. Then summer carne.

And when its amplitude had heralded

The long vacation, Alfred found that he

Must with his people to the Continent ;

And therefore said to Robert, Come with us,

The foreign life will dust and brush your brains

Of all the cornered webs of frowsy law,

And we shall be together. Nay not so.

Had Robert answered, I have made my mind ;

I shall take books and papers, sketching things

With the canoe and scour the Upper Thames

And find some village absolutely free

From townish taint, shall there take rooms and live

Two months in flannels and bucolic peace,

Small bound in either pocket of my coat.

Well if you fix things so (said Alfred), I,

Since we have full a week before we start,

Will come up with you for a day or two.

And help your choice of this Utopia.

Look let us send the good canoe by rail

To Oxford, put it on the river there.

And paddle slowly down until we find

This village and the rooms you wish, on which

When I have seen you once installed and left

Out as it vi^ere to nurse with simpleness,

I will get back to town and thence away

To spend my Continental holiday.

My life — to look at foreign girls and judge

Whether the bright vivacity of France,

Or the deep languid loves of Italy,

Or the full frankness of the German maids

Be best ; and yours — I know it all by heart,

A Spartan souse each morning in the Thames,

A giant breakfast — great heroic pulls

Devoutly dedicate to exercise.

Long lazy afternoons beneath the trees,

Spent part in thought but most in lethargy :

And to fill in the odds and ends of time

Big talks with ploughboys over crops and oats

And such like rubbish, added to the which A strict avoidance of all womanhood. Ho, ho, like the three witches in Macbeth, I greet you Thane of Arcady, beware The milkmaid and the dairymaid, beware The simple guileless modest village maiden, In fact for you I sound this solemn note Beware the dangers of the petticoat !