“No — let us be still — it is all so still — I love it best of all now.”
Emily and I talked, sitting at the base of the alders, a little way on. After an excitement, and in the evening, especially in autumn, one is inclined to be sad and sentimental. We had forgotten that the darkness was weaving. I heard in the little distance Leslie’s voice begin to murmur like a flying beetle that comes not too near. Then, away down in the yard, George began singing the old song, “I sowed the seeds of love”.
This interrupted the flight of Leslie’s voice, and as the singing came nearer, the hum of low words ceased. We went forward to meet George. Leslie sat up, clasping his knees, and did not speak. George came nearer, saying:
“The moon is going to rise.”
“Let me get down,” said Lettie, lifting her hands to him to help her. He, mistaking her wish, put his hands under her arms, and set her gently down, as one would a child. Leslie got up quickly, and seemed to hold himself separate, resenting the intrusion.
“I thought you were all four together,” said George quietly. Lettie turned quickly at the apology:
“So we were. So we are — five now. Is it there the moon will rise?”
“Yes — I like to see it come over the wood. It lifts slowly up to stare at you. I always think it wants to know something, and I always think I have something to answer, only I don’t know what it is,” said Emily.
Where the sky was pale in the east over the rim of wood came the forehead of the yellow moon. We stood and watched in silence. Then, as the great disc, nearly full, lifted and looked straight upon us, we were washed off our feet in a vague sea of moonlight. We stood with the light like water on our faces. Lettie was glad, a little bit exalted; Emily was passionately troubled; her lips were parted, almost beseeching; Leslie was frowning, oblivious, and George was thinking, and the terrible, immense moonbeams braided through his feeling. At length Leslie said softly, mistakenly:
“Come along, dear”— and he took her arm.
She let him lead her along the bank of the pond, and across the plank over the sluice.
“Do you know,” she said, as we were carefully descending the steep bank of the orchard, “I feel as if I wanted to laugh, or dance — something rather outrageous.”
“Surely not like that now,” Leslie replied in a low voice, feeling really hurt.
“I do though! I will race you to the bottom.”
“No, no, dear!” He held her back. When he came to the wicket leading on to the front lawns, he said something to her softly, as he held the gate.
I think he wanted to utter his half-finished proposal, and so bind her.
She broke free, and, observing the long lawn which lay in grey shadow between the eastern and western glows, she cried:
“Polka! — a polka — one can dance a polka when the grass is smooth and short — even if there are some fallen leaves. Yes, yes — how jolly!”
She held out her hands to Leslie, but it was too great a shock to his mood. So she called to me, and there was a shade of anxiety in her voice, lest after all she should be caught in the toils of the night’s sentiment.
“Pat — you’ll dance with me — Leslie hates a polka.” I danced with her. I do not know the time when I could not polka — it seems innate in one’s feet, to dance that dance. We went flying round, hissing through the dead leaves. The night, the low-hung yellow moon, the pallor of the west, the blue cloud of evening overhead went round and through the fantastic branches of the old laburnum, spinning a little madness. You cannot tire Lettie; her feet are wings that beat the air. When at last I stayed her she laughed as fresh as ever, as she bound her hair.
“There!” she said to Leslie, in tones of extreme satisfaction. “That was lovely. Do you come and dance now.”
“Not a polka,” said he, sadly, feeling the poetry in his heart insulted by the jigging measure.
“But one cannot dance anything else on wet grass, and through shuffling dead leaves. You, George?”
“Emily says I jump,” he replied.
“Come on — come on”— and in a moment they were bounding across the grass. After a few steps she fell in with him, and they spun round the grass. It was true, he leaped, sprang with large strides, carrying her with him. It was a tremendous, irresistible dancing. Emily and I must join, making an inner ring. Now and again there was a sense of something white flying near, and wild rustle of draperies, and a swish of disturbed leaves as they whirled past us. Long after we were tired they danced on.
At the end, he looked big, erect, nerved with triumph, and she was exhilarated like a Bacchante.
“Have you finished?” Leslie asked.
She knew she was safe from his question that day.
“Yes,” she panted. “You should have danced. Give me my hat, please. Do I look very disgraceful?”
He took her hat and gave it to her.
“Disgraceful?” he repeated.
“Oh, you are solemn tonight! What is it?”
“Yes, what is it?” he repeated ironically.
“It must be the moon. Now, is my hat straight? Tell me now — you’re not looking. Then put it level. Now then! Why, your hands are quite cold, and mine so hot! I feel so impish,” and she laughed.
“There — now I’m ready. Do you notice those little chrysanthemums trying to smell sadly; when the old moon is laughing and winking through those boughs. What business have they with their sadness!” She took a handful of petals and flung them into the air: “There — if they sigh they ask for sorrow — I like things to wink and look wild.”
Chapter 6
The Education of George
As I have said, Strelley Mill lies at the north end of the long Nethermere valley. On the northern slopes lay its pasture and arable lands. The shaggy common, now closed, and the cultivated land was bounded on the east by the sharp dip of the brook course, a thread of woodland broadening into a spinney and ending at the upper pond; beyond this, on the east, rose the sharp, wild, grassy hillside, scattered with old trees, ruinous with the gaunt, ragged bones of old hedge-rows, grown into thorn trees. Along the rim of the hills, beginning in the north-west, were dark woodlands, which swept round east and south till they raced down in riot to the very edge of southern Nethermere, surrounding our house. From the eastern hill-crest, looking straight across, you could see the spire of Selsby church, and a few roofs, and the head-stocks of the pit.
So on three sides the farm was skirted by woods, the dens of rabbits, and the common held another warren.
Now the squire of the estate, head of an ancient, once even famous, but now decayed house, loved his rabbits. Unlike the family fortunes, the family tree flourished amazingly; Sherwood could show nothing comparable. Its ramifications were stupendous; it was more like a banyan than a British oak. How was the good squire to nourish himself and his lady, his name, his tradition, and his thirteen lusty branches on his meagre estates? An evil fortune discovered to him that he could sell each of his rabbits, those bits of furry vermin, for a shilling or thereabout in Nottingham; since which time the noble family subsisted by rabbits.
Farms were gnawed away; corn and sweet grass departed from the face of the hills; cattle grew lean, unable to eat the defiled herbage. Then the farm became the home of