Read Ebook: Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature Science and Art Fifth Series No. 1 Vol. I January 5 1884 by Various

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BY MEAD AND STREAM

A STORY.

BY CHARLES GIBBON,

The sun still bright on the hilltop; figures rising to its crest, and there halting, with hands shading their eyes, to take a glad or sad look backward. Then, impelled by the master Time, they move downward through deepening shades to join the great crowd in the bosky glen at the foot of the mountain. Mingling in the crowd, they become themselves shadows, making strange shapes in the beautiful garden ground where they find rest.

But in that pause on the bright hilltop, in that look back along the slope which has been climbed, there falls a mist from the eyes. There is the straight easy road up to the height which we might have taken, and there are the devious paths like the mazy involutions of the lines on a railway map, which we have taken, and which have made the journey appear so wearisome to many, so short to the happy few.

But all see what a much pleasanter road they could travel if they might only start afresh with this new vision.

Old friends meet and exchange compliments about birthdays--some accepting them contentedly, others regarding them as grim jokes which would be honoured in the omission. But gay or sad, every one has in the heart a plaintive note which sounds that monosyllable 'IF!'

'If I had only been advised at the right moment, how different it would be with me now,' sighs the pallid invalid, closing his eyes in vain and trying to forget.

Then the sad-faced maiden:

'If he had only trusted me a little more--if I had only doubted him a little less, how sweet it would have been to have gone down this hillside hand in hand together.'

'If I could only have persuaded him not to make that last journey,' murmurs the widow.

'If my son had been spared,' moans the childless.

'If I had known his falsehood,' bitterly exclaims the betrayed.

'I wish the guv'nor's cash had not gone so fast,' mutters the spendthrift, 'and it might have lasted long enough to have made this an easy slide, if I had only thought about it. Now I suppose it will be a regular plunge.'

'If I had only left off play before my luck turned,' growls the gambler.

'If I had left those shares alone I would have been all right,' says the bankrupt.

'Looking back, sir, is seldom pleasant,' says the successful man with a complacent smile and with a wave of his hand patronising the whole past, 'but to me it is agreeable enough. The struggle was hard, sir, hard; and if it had not been for untiring energy on my part--well, I should not be where I am. But if I had it all to do over again, why, I could double my fortune.'

But he is content enough to go gently down the slope in his carriage, whilst others are tumbling or creeping down the same course bearing that burden 'If.' The miserable ones know that their state would have been more gracious if they could have seen the way more clearly; but they have no wish to go back; they crawl voiceless over the hilltop, in haste to reach the end of the journey.

'Cheated of my due,' the man of ambition cries; 'but if there had been a fair field for me I would have accomplished all my aims, and the world would have been the gainer.'

Oh, that infinite 'If!'

The place was the garden of Willowmere. The time was the middle of August, when trees and fields and bracken were faltering into that full ripeness which bodes decay. At that period, note the gradation of hues in the forest land--from deep watery green to pale, sensitive yellow, every leaf trembling in the sunlight with ever-changing shades. In the garden the forward apples were showing ruddy cheeks, and the late pear presented a sullen gray green.

The persons were Madge Heathcote, niece of Richard Crawshay, the sturdy yeoman farmer of Willowmere, and Philip Hadleigh, son of the master of Ringsford Manor.

She was somewhat pale and anxious: he was inclined to hustle her anxiety aside with the blissful hopefulness of youth and indifference to consequences.

'I am going to give you very bad advice, Madge; will you listen to it?'

'Is it very bad?' she asked, lifting her eyes, in which there was an expression curiously compounded of pathos and coquetry.

'Very bad indeed,' he responded cheerfully, 'for I am going to tell you that you are not to mind your uncle at all, but be guided by me now, as you will be, I hope, at no very distant date.'

'But you know he always liked you, Philip, and you must have done something--something awfully bad to have made him turn so suddenly against you.'

But although she tried to make him believe that she was quite sure he had done something very wicked, she somehow failed to impress the youth with any deep sense of her indignation.

'I cannot measure the degree of my iniquity until you give me some hint as to what it is.'

'Don't you know?'

'On my honour I do not. My conscience is as clear of it as your own. Now speak--tell me my crime.'

'If you don't know what it is,' she said slowly, whilst she studied intently a weed that had grown in the path and which now sprouted at her restless foot. 'If you really don't know what it is--I think we had better say nothing about it.'

'Very well and with all my heart. Still I can't help thinking that your uncle might have come to me, or allowed me to go to him, before he made up his mind that we should never pull together.'

'Would you have believed him if he had?' he interrupted, with an under-current of laughter in his voice and yet with a shade of curiosity in his expression.

She looked at him. That was enough. The pale blue eyes, which seemed in extreme lights quite gray, had that wistful, trustful expression of a dog when being chidden by a loved master for some offence of which it is innocent. But presently the expression changed to one of thoughtfulness, the flush faded from her cheek, and she again sought inspiration from the weed at her foot.

'That's my Madge,' he said in a low glad tone, as he clasped her hand.

'At the same time,' she went on gravely, 'you must remember that Uncle Dick has not only been good and kind to me; but he has, besides, shown himself wise in the advice he has given to others, and it would be very wrong of me not to think seriously over anything he may counsel about my future.'

'Not very much, but he was in earnest. He told me that if I cared for myself or cared for him, I was to have nothing more to do with any of the Ringsford Manor people.'

'That was when he came home from the market yesterday?'

'Yes.' Her lips trembled a little and she did not seem disposed to continue.

'Well, out with it,' he exclaimed cheerfully.

'He said--that--he wished he saw you fairly off on your wildgoose chase.'

Philip understood now why the lips had trembled and why the words came from her lips with so much effort.

'Poor Madge,' he said gently as he drew her arm under his own and patted the hand which rested on his wrist.

Then they walked together in silence.

He was a broad-shouldered, stalwart fellow, with short, curly, brown hair, a moustache of darker hue; chin and cheeks bare. His was a frank, sanguine face--Hope flashing from the clear eyes and brightening all the features. The square brow, the well-defined lines of nose and jaws, were suggestive of firmness; the soft curves of mouth and chin dispelled all hints of hardness in the character. A resolute but not an obdurate man, one might say.

She was tall and graceful, age between twenty-three and twenty-five, but in certain moods she appeared to be much older; and in others no one would have thought that she was quite out of her teens. Long regular features; silken hair that had once been very fair but had darkened as she grew in years; a quiet, self-possessed manner which made all comers easy in her presence, instantly inspiring confidence and respect. Some people said she had more influence over the labourers in the parish than the parson himself. The parson's wife--although a kindly woman in her way--never had anything like the success of 'Missie' Heathcote, as she was affectionately called by the working-folk, in persuading Hodge to give up his extra pot of a Saturday and inducing Hodge's 'old woman' to keep her cottage and her children neat.

To Philip Hadleigh in his calmest ravings about her she was the most beautiful creature in all woman-nature. He had learned Wordsworth's lines about the 'noble woman nobly planned' who was yet 'not too bright or good for human nature's daily food,' and he was never tired of repeating them to himself. They presented a perfect portrait of Madge. She, too, was beautiful in mind and body--true, earnest, devoted. She would die for the man she loved; she could never be false to him. And he had won that love! He did not know how, or why or when. He was dazed by his great fortune. He could not realise it; so he shut his eyes and was happy.

But 'Missie' Heathcote herself knew that she was capable of saying and doing very foolish things. She feared that she was capable of Hate as passionate and fierce as her Love.

So far all had gone smoothly with them. True, their engagement was between themselves; there had been no formal asking of the sanction of her uncle and guardian's leave, or of his father's approval. But everybody knew what had been going on and no objection had been raised. In his easy way Philip took for granted that those who had any right to their confidence understood everything and did not require him to go through the conventional explanations. She had not considered explanations necessary until they should come to the arrangements for the wedding-day.

Their elders did understand: Mr Hadleigh of Ringsford was indifferent or too proud to proffer even to his son advice which was not asked: Crawshay of Willowmere was content to let Madge please herself. He thought her choice a good one, for he liked Philip and believed in him. Of course in the way of money and position she might have done better. Hadleigh was a wealthy man, but his ownership of Ringsford was of recent date, and although he was doing everything in his power to secure recognition as one of the county families, all his riches could not place him on a level with Dick Crawshay, whose ancestors had been masters of Willowmere from a period before the arrival of the Conqueror--going back to the time of the Romans, as was sometimes asserted.

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