With other eyes

Part I The Isle Of Avalon Chapter I

Spring was in the year, and the Island valley of Avalon lay in all its greenness and brightness, under the stillness of the Sabbath evening.

A sense of hush, which suggested Nature’s hour of Benediction, rested on the flowery meadows, and on the placid streams, and on the soft red roofs of the mediaeval city.

To town-tired eyes the valley seemed to have been blessed, to be resting under the grace of the Laying-on of Hands.

A white road, made by Roman legionaries, along which devout pilgrims for many centuries had so unquestioningly trod, lay pointing the way to forgotten shrines and miraculous waters, the ancient healing wells of Avalon.

Above this haunt of peace, graced with the beauty of holiness and the dignity of Time, was a high clear sky, of the deepest blue. Its blueness was intensified by masses of quickly-moving clouds, floating mountain-tops, which seemed to have severed themselves from Italy’s snowy Alps, and drifted to this quiet Island valley.

They gave the heavens an architectural majesty, and brought to man’s mind the genius of Michelangelo.

This resemblance of the majestic clouds to Italy’s eternal snows was suggested by the spiritual atmosphere which quickens the ancient sanctuary of Avalon, in no less a degree than the spirits of St. Francis and St. Clare quicken and sanctify the Umbrian hillsides round the sacred city of Assisi.

Avalon has little connection with the outer world; like Assisi, it prefers to remain a spiritual background rather than a progressive centre, placid rather than prosperous. The stranger in search of rest will not find its Arcadian stillness disturbed by the siren whistles of modern traffic, while — out of reverence, it may be, to the memory of St. Joseph of Arimathaea, at whose shrine, in the Middle Ages, almost as many pilgrims gathered annually as at the famous shrine of St. Thomas a Becket at Canterbury — no trains are permitted to leave or arrive at Glastonbury on a Sunday. In this, the oldest ecclesiastical foundation in England, the Seventh Day is still the Lord’s Jjfiy. Here men set it apart for Him; here girls dress themselves for it; here housewives clean their homes for it, and farmers house their beasts for it.

The seventh-day calm in the valley is the repose of its week-days intensified and deepened by the spirit of prayer in the minds of men. You can feel Sunday in the air; the very actions of the beasts in the meadows suggest it; the swinging of the cow’s tail is not the quick tail-switching of a week-day — far from it; it is the gentle movement of a day of rest. The birds, as well as the beasts — all are conscious of its sanctity, from the deep slow cawing of the rooks, homing their familiar way to settlements in ancient trees, to the throat-notes of the thrush, who, on the Lord’s Day, restrains the passion of his song.

The gay wild flowers, which a wet spring had so lavishly bestowed upon the meadows and untrimmed hedges, lit up the land until it sparkled like a jewel, but they gave no sensuous beauty to the scene. There is nothing pagan about the Christian Valley of Avalon.

Just as in Assisi the company of saints and pilgrims seems in keeping with the atmosphere of the city, so at Glastonbury the sudden meeting with Joseph of Arimathaea would cause little surprise to a lonely stranger who might be wandering through its streets and watery byways.

On such an evening, near a meadow, whose tall daisies and buttercups decked the slopes of Weary-all Hill, a girl, a pilgrim from a far country, was lying on her back, gazing up at the blue sky overhead.

The gold buttercups which carpeted the meadows were to her the leaf-gold with which the monks had covered the backgrounds of their illustrated missals. The white daisies, the blue veronicas and the purple violas punctuated the meadows just as delicately painted flowers decorate the golden pages of mediaeval missals.

The blue of forget-me-nots, which marked the passage of a hidden stream leading from the Chalice Well, reminded the girl of a river bordered with flowers in “The Hours of the Virgin,” a velvet-bound family possession which had lain for as long as she could remember inside a glass-covered table in her -grandmother’s drawing-room. It was a token of the religion for which her forefathers had left their homes in the old world, hoping to find tolerance in the new.

The Holy Hill, the flower-decked meadows, the one high church-spire, very grey and slim against the golden background, were all familiar to her; they were all in the miniatures.

This new-old world of Avalon made her feel a pilgrim, and very far from home. The spirit of stillness linked the place with the past.

After weeks of moisture and rain, the grass was not dry enough to lie upon for very long with safety, so after gazing at the landscape from many points of view — from under her arms, with her slim body bent almost double; from her knees, with her head bowed down and upwards; from a standing attitude, which necessitated the throwing of her head backwards until her eyes saw the Gothic architecture of the white clouds, surrounded by the green and gold of the meadows, and the tops of the houses, and the church-spire, upside down — she shook out her skirts, and became a normal being once more.

As she stood slimly upright, she faced a stranger, a young man who, to her mind, was the very embodiment of English good looks and conventional breeding. Noticing the glint of humour in his eyes, she felt that some sort of apology was necessary for her extraordinary behaviour — that is to say, if he had been watching her odd gymnastics, which she felt sure he had.

Her hat had fallen to the ground, her hair was disordered by its contact with the flowers of the meadow. Gleaming petals of buttercups powdered its darkness with patches of pure gold, while the small heads of bruised veronicas dotted her white frock with blue.

Herrick’s lines:

“A sweet disorder in the dress Kindles in clothes a wantonness . .

were exquisitely applicable to the girl’s appearance at that moment.

“I have been looking at the world from upside-down,” she said. “I suppose you were watching me?”

“I was,” he said — he spoke with equal frankness. “Did you find it good?”

The girl’s candid manner amused him. She was completely self-possessed. “It is just like an illuminated missal. I have one at home, and the resemblance made me homesick. It’s odd how such a tiny thing can flood our minds with a thousand big memories, isn’t it?”

“Then you are a stranger to Avalon?”

“Why, certainly! My home is very far from here. But I didn’t feel at all sad or far away until I thought of that little book. ‘The Hours of the Virgin’ — took me right back.”

“Don’t think of it now,” he said. “It’s too fine an evening to be sad.”

“I wasn’t definitely sad,” she said. “Not a bit — only a little homesick, for, in an odd way, this Somerset valley resembles the valley I live in. It, too, is historically romantic, and it has a famous well which strangers visit.”

The words were spoken, the man thought, to arouse his interest. The girl was too frank to be a coquette, yet she was sure enough of herself to seek to provoke his curiosity. He was already conscious of her attractions as a woman, and he knew that he could best provoke her interest in himself as a man by refraining from asking her where her valley lay.

“I am glad you like Avalon,” he said. “It is my country. I have just returned to it after a long spell in London. I invariably climb to the top of Weary-all Hill before I do anything else, just to clear my lungs.”

“And your eyes, too, I should think! It’s so beautiful! That old grey church down there is mothering the red-roofed town just as a hen mothers her chickens. It pleases me almost as much as the famous Abbey ruins.”

“How did the church look in the upside-down world?” He hazarded the remark simply to detain her, for her soft felt hat was being ruthlessly pressed close down upon her dark head. She was obviously going to dismiss him with a frank “Good evening.”

“Quite beautiful, of course. When I admire a scene very much, I always look at it upside-down. I suppose it struck you as odd?”

“For the moment it did. I suppose it is only when you are in the country that you look at it that way?” His eyes gleamed. This stranger smiled with his eyes delightfully; they spoke a hundred things at the moment. “It wouldn’t be so easy to do it in London.”

They both laughed. A flash of Irish humour illuminated the girl’s distinctly tragic type of beauty.

“Imagine lying on one’s back in the Strand !” he said.

“I shouldn’t want to,” she replied. “It’s only when the world is beautiful that I feel I must see it upside-down.”

“But the Strand can look beautiful, with a beauty all its own — the charm of London is not wanting in the Strand on a slightly misty evening, when a low winter sun is setting.”

“I’ve been in London city so little — I can’t say. When I was in the Strand my only idea was to get out of it again with all my bones intact! I confess that I had no eyes for atmospheric effects.”

“London is the most temperamental city in the world,” he said. “There are times when it is prosaic and hideous, and there are times when it is so wonderful that it is a city of mystery and charm.”

“Then Turner was not exaggerating? Of course I went to see his pictures in the Tate Gallery — I am a good tourist, you see!”

“Not a scrap, if you strike the right hour and the right atmosphere. On the Embankment you can see a more Tumeresque effect than ever Turner dared to paint. You should have sailed down the Thames to Greenwich, and met the ships, with their big brown sails flapping, through the soft lights of greys and oranges and misty blues, and seen St. Paul’s dome looking like a balloon in the distance. You would have understood Turner better if you had.” He paused just a little ashamed of his enthusiasm.

Her hat was fastened on her head — or, to speak more exactly, she had pushed her head into her hat. The man wondered if she was anxious to hide the ever-changing blue of her eyes, or whether her soft hat was always worn that way to protect the whiteness of her forehead. He was not the first man who has cursed the modem fashion of wearing hats.

“Good evening! I must be going back now.” She spoke decidedly.

She was wondering whether the man had been climbing up the hill or coming down it when he came across her. She had not yet been to the top, and she had meant to do so; but she had better give up the idea, and say that she was returning to the town. That he would accept his conge, she did not doubt.

“Have you seen the view from the top?” he asked. “It is well worth the climb, and if you are only returning to Glastonbury so as to get rid of me, I’ll walk up the other side if you like!”

A warm blush and a smile came simultaneously to the girl’s pale face. “No, I haven’t been to the top yet, but it will keep — the view has been here for so long, it won’t run away now. And I have dawdled too long already. Besides, if you walked up the other side, we should meet at the top.” She smiled again; the idea was absurd.

“Then why not come to the top with me?” he said. “It won’t take you many minutes, and I could tell you the points of interest.” He looked at her quizzically. “I won’t bite because I haven’t been introduced, you know, and I am really quite respectable, after a fashion, and few of us are more than that.”

Laughingly the girl turned and began to climb the hill.

“Why is it called Weary-all?” she said. “It isn’t really so hard to climb as Tor Hill. I went to the top of the Tor on the wrong side last night, and I had to go most of the way on my hands and feet.”

“You seem fond of acrobatic methods! I think it is called Weary-all because legend says that Joseph of Arimathaea, who is supposed to have landed in Wales and wandered with his eleven disciples to Somerset, reached the Isle of Avalon on Christmas Day, and being very weary they sat themselves down on this hillside. No doubt they enjoyed the view of the orchardhills in the midst of the marshes. . . , That, of course, is pure legend! If you want the real derivation of the word, I believe it’s a corruption of Orwall — Over-all.”

“Oh no, I don’t! Leave it at the legend, please! Don’t spoil the romance of the valley by matter-of-fact derivations!”

“Well, you’ll find plenty of legendary romance here if you’re in search of it. When you’re tired of Joseph of Arimathaea and his flowering staff, you can turn your mind to King Arthur and his Knights, and the Holy Grail.”

“Joseph’s flowering staff reminds me of Tannhauser and the Pope’s sprouting staff.”

“Yes,” he said, “except that Joseph left no Venus behind him — or if he did, history does not mention her — and he was pious before his staff sprouted — in fact, it sprouted because he was so pious.”

They stopped suddenly at a spot marked with a stone and an inscription.

“This marks the site,” he said, “of the two thorns which sprang from Joseph’s staff. They were only hewn down by the soldiers of Oliver Cromwell — this records their death.”

The girl made a face. “Oh, those hateful Puritans!”

“Your sympathy is on the other side?”

“My sympathies are never with intolerance! But did the thorn really blossom each Christmas Day?”

“Yes, and every year they still contrive to have a piece of flowering thorn on the altar at St. John’s Church.” He smiled. “Shall I be killing romance again if I tell you that it’s not so very difficult in this soft mild climate, because the thorn is the crataegus praecox which flowers twice a year; it grows freely all over the West Country? And perhaps Joseph was a water finder.”

“I certainly prefer the legendary explanation. I don’t see the use of visiting these ancient places with an entirely modern and material mind.”

“We stick to local legends,” he said. “We are very proud of them. For instance, those fields lying down there are still familiarly known as ‘the Vineyards,’ because they are mentioned under Glastonbury in the Doomsday Book as ‘three arpents of vineyards.’ ”

“How nice! That’s what I came to England to enjoy.”

When they reached the top of the hill the view was so enchanting that she became enthusiastic. She found herself talking to her companion as if they were friends. It is true that their conversation was almost limited to geographical and historical features, but they were young, and the country was bathed in the very ether of legendary romance and poetry.

He pointed out a little town in the green valley below, lying in the peat moors to the south of Glastonbury, and told her that it was called Street, and that it owes its name to the fact that it lies on the old Roman street or road to Exeter. The girl gazed at it long and steadily; he wished that she would look at him instead.

“To-day,” he said, “it owes its existence to boot and shoe, and to its limestone quarries.”

“I don’t suppose you can understand how greatly these things appeal to us,” she said gravely. “Is it worth going to see?”

“Scarcely, I think, from your point of view, unless you are really fond of antiquarianizing. I believe there are the remains of a Roman villa on that hill.” He came near to her and pointed with his stick. “You can see it — Ivy Thom Hill it is called — and there is a rather good little museum with some interesting fossils in it. They have been discovered in the limestone quarries, and have thrown a good deal of light on the ancient history of the place ; they prove that Street and Glastonbury were closely in touch with each other in the old days. You can go by omnibus from Glastonbury to Street, but if you haven’t lots of time to spare, I’d advise you to leave Street alone.”

“But I have lots of time,” she said. “I like the way it lies, and I like its simple name of Street, and the name of its hill. Ivy Thorn Hill. . . .” She repeated the name slowly to

herself. “The names here are as pretty as the names at home,” she said aloud, “at least, almost. Weary-all Hill, Chalice Hill, The Isle of Avalon, Fishers Hill, Magdalen Street, and Glastonbury itself — aren’t they full of story?”

“I suppose they are,” he said. “Probably it’s because they have been so familiar to me all my life that I don’t think about them. The town looks well from here, doesn’t it?”

“Indeed it does!” she said eagerly. “Look at the red roofs against the green valley in this wonderful light, and that dear old grey church rising up above it all — it’s so mediaeval and big! I love it! What churches they did build in Catholic times ! I should think their size had little to do with the number of worshippers they accommodated; it was just to do honour to the glory of God.”

“Or to the Church!” he said. “Don’t you think the church was always more than God to the ecclesiastics? Or the Saint it was dedicated to, and whose relic it was built to hold? A pilgrimage church used to bring vast wealth to a city. That was why the churches often gave huge sums for spurious relics. The demand for relics started a brisk trade in rubbish, which the credulous believed in.”

“Now that’s killing romance again!” she said. “And please remember that I don’t want to hear that King "Arthur wasn’t buried in the Vale of Avalon, for I saw his stone coffin in the Abbey ruins only this morning, and I’m going to believe it’s true ! And also please don’t do away with the romance of the Holy Grail, and the Chalice Hill, or the healing powers of Joseph’s Well, or give scientific reasons for its — medicinal efficacy!”

“Certainly not!” he said. “May I tell you instead something about the geological and geographical features of the place?”

“Why, yes, please do, if they won’t detract from the charm of the scene. To me it’s just full of poetry and romance ! These little streams, covered with mauve ranunculuses, make it ever so like an illuminated Missal.”

They had turned their backs on Street, and were looking over the meadows and the city towards the soft blue hills on the horizon.

“Some people say that these watery meadows and all this valley once formed a bay of the sea. The Mendip Hills, the Quantocks and the Polden Ridge formed the old coastline. Their gigantic cliffs do suggest the sea-lashed rocks of a coastline, don’t you think?”

The girl cast her eyes over the line he indicated. “It certainly looks as if it had once been the sea ! It’s just a green bay of meadows, with hills encircling it, isn’t it?”

“There are legends which tell of how ships sailed up from the Bristol Channel to ports which lay on the estuary. Anyhow, it’s quite certain that in prehistoric times Glastonbury stood either on an island or on a peninsula, and that all these meadows were either a lake or an inland arm of the sea. There is quite a large lake village near Glastonbury; some of the things they dug up in it are in the museum here.”

“Is there anything to see at the lake village itself?” Her eyes brightened. “Any little brown men with canoes and long poles?” She spoke laughingly.

“No, nothing at all at the present moment but buttercups and daisies. After the settlement was excavated, and the things which were found in it were put into the museum, the place was allowed to go back again to grazing land. Still, if you care to make an expedition, and if we by any good chance should get properly introduced to one another, I should be only too glad to show you the site. My father is a keen antiquarian — he helped to excavate it. That’s how I have been telling you these things — they aren’t first-hand.”

The girl hoped in her heart that they would meet with the necessary introduction, but all she said was, “Are cows just browsing on the top of the village now? Is there absolutely nothing to be seen?”

“No, nothing at all,” he said. “You must remember that the settlements of these little brown Iberians were no longer here even when Julius Caesar made his famous landing on the Island, so you can’t expect much, can you?”

The girl smilingly agreed. They next tried to discern the towers of Wells Cathedral and the Bristol Channel, but a soft evening mist was creeping over the landscape.

“It all reminds me more and more of my own home,” she said. “We point out to visitors the historical Bay of Minas, and Blomidon rises out of the Valley of Grand Pre just as the hills here rise out of these flowery meadows.”

“Then your home is in Nova Scotia?” he asked.

“Why, yes, I come from Acadie.”

“ ‘All the way from Acadie, from Acadie/ ” she said, adapting a line from a poem which she knew would not be familiar to him. “Yes, all the way from Acadie, where at the moment the meadows will be knee-deep with hay-grass and aromatic with honey-clover and big marguerites. Oh, it’s really Arcady, and I love it!”

As she spoke she looked like a fair wanderer from Arcady, with the blue of the veronicas and the gold from the buttercups still powdering her dress and hair.

“And do all the people in Acadie look at the world upside-down?” he asked.

“If they have any good sense they do,” she said.

“Isn’t Grand Pre in the Evangeline country?” he said. “That much, and no more, I know about the poem, for I really have forgotten it, if I ever knew anything about Evangeline”

“I don’t suppose you ever did,” she said, “for Longfellow is no longer fashionable. His clear simplicity received its deathknell when Robert Browning started the craze for cryptic poetry. Still, the Well of Evangeline has its pilgrims, and so has the Valley of Grand Pre.”

“Please don’t think I’m proud of not knowing,” he said. “I just don’t. I’ve a sort of an idea that the poem is very sentimental and ‘goody-goody.’ The name Evangeline is associated in my mind with a love-sick maiden of the old pious order of Early Victorian heroine.”

“Is that so?” the girl smiled, and her smile was as cryptic as any line of Robert Browning’s poems.

“Am I not right?” he asked.

. “The poem is rather anti-English, I suppose, for history will no longer allow that the Acadians were unfairly treated by the English Government.”

“Does Longfellow infer that they were?”

The girl looked at him and laughed full-heartedly. “You certainly don’t know much about the poem, do you?”

“No — I told you I didn’t. Evangeline sounds to me such a silly name; it puts me off — not that I ever thought of reading the poem.”

“But it has a lot to do with English history,” she said laughingly. “Oh, you are all alike! I never met an English person yet who knew a word about the history of their Colonies!”

“I must apologize for my countrymen, and plead guilty!”

“Longfellow tells the story of the French Acadians and their sufferings from an exaggerated and sentimental point of view; he makes out that their treatment by King George’s men was simply brutal. But if you read later history on the subject, you will be told that the Acadians had been really very, very troublesome to the English, and that the French had been egging them on for years to break and defy every English law, until at last the only thing for England to do was to ship them all off to a new country, where the influence of the French would cease. Besides the soldiers who did it were from Massachusetts. That’s your history, and the other side to Evangeline.”

“I feel ashamed,” he said, “to know so little about it. I’ll read the poem to-night.”

“It might be a good plan,” she said. “And a bit of Canadian history to-morrow?”

He laughed. “I quite agree with you that we are horribly ignorant of our own history, let alone the history of our Colonies! Your people come over here, and you all know about the history of the things you are going to see.”

She looked at him with her candid smile, a smile which was individual and attractive. It was the first time he had a chance of seeing how really beautiful she was.

“In England you all live beside things of immemorial interest and beauty just as though they were grain stores or jam-factories ! And I’ve discovered that it’s bad form to be enthusiastic, and one ought never to be seen with a guide-book ; it’s better to lose your way than ask it, and to remain ignorant than to read a guide-book! I wonder who set up all your strange ideas of good and bad form?”

“It would be well to see ourselves as others see us,” he said. “I suppose it would give us some nasty jars.”

“I always feel that this place ought to be Catholic still,” she said, by way of turning the conversation. “Monks and nuns would complete the picture, wouldn’t they?”

“You come to it as a pilgrim,” he said. “The past history of the place is what most interests you about it?”

“Why, it is its raison d’etre!” she said. “As far as I can see, the present-day people don’t live — they are merely existing as a part of the placid, untroubled landscape. They are nice people, but not a good substitute for monks and nuns from a scenic point, are they?” i

“I, too, always look upon the place as a sort of sanctuary,” he said. “I feel that if I can only get here somehow, I shall be safe from everything that troubles and jars and endangers.”

“If it was Catholic, and never had been Protestant, think of how glorious it would be still, with its shrines and its spiritual atmosphere!”

“Are you a Roman Catholic?” he asked, interrupting her.

“Not now. We are not French-Canadians. My mother comes of staunchly Presbyterian stock.”

“But the illuminated Missal?” he said.

“Oh, it is a relic of my father’s Jacobean ancestors. His people were good Catholics until a generation or so ago.”

This conversation had carried them to the bottom of Wearyall Hill. At the corner of Breere Lane and Fishers Hill, the girl suddenly stopped and said good-night.

Feeling that he was dismissed, the man had to say good-night, but not before he had said, “I hope that Fate will be kind enough to allow me to meet you again ! It has been kind to allow me to walk with you up the hill.”

She laughed. “Isn’t it odd when you come to think of it? — someone whom neither of us may know very well will probably say, ‘Allow me to introduce Mr. So-and-So,’ and then it will be quite correct for us to stop and speak to one another if we meet again, but until then I must say good-bye.”

They parted, smiling at the absurdity of conventions.

“Dash it all!” the man said to himself, as he watched her disappearing, with youthful ease of movement, down the hilly street. “She took good care not to introduce herself — she avoided telling me her name. What heavenly blue eyes she’s got!”

He wondered what her name was; fitted some to her personality, and quickly rejected them all. Her candour and freshness pleased him; there was something big and untrammelled about her individuality which impressed him even more pleasantly than her beauty. And “she was not the least Colonial.” He said the last words with all the unconscious vanity of the insular untravelled Englishman.

These were his most definite thoughts on the subject of their chance meeting, but for the rest of the evening his male sense of her beauty troubled him, and held tenaciously to her.

The persistence of even the most delightful thing can become annoying. To look at the girl’s eyes while he was standing near her had been very delightful, but to have their blueness thrust itself before his own while he was examining some of his father’s latest treasures in the way of ammonites and shells, was irritating. And they were so damnably blue, and there was also a smile in them which hurt his vanity.

The girl dismissed him from her thoughts much more quickly. She had a mission to perform for her mother which necessitated the giving of instructions to a dressmaker who lived in a small cottage in Breere Lane.