CHAPTER II. "Sweet recreation barred what does ensue, SHAKESPEARE. ON the prostrate stem of an old beech-tree towards the end of the month of May, about six years after Maurice had left Stonehouseleigh for London, Gertrude and Mary were sitting in a spot, which exhibits in all its varieties the peculiar beauties of English forest scenery. The first tinge of spring was colouring with its delicate green the thorns, the aspens, and the briars, which in innumerable natural avenues and picturesque intricacies formed a labyrinth, out of which sturdy oaks rose in grim majesty, their gnarled and twisted branches still exhibiting all the barrenness of winter, save where here or there the young moss or the misletoe clung to their rugged arms, and disguised their leaflessness. Daisies, cowslips, and primroses, the blue hyacinth and the frail anemone, were scattered about in abundance, here in rich clusters, there in brilliant carpets, everywhere in graceful beauty and confusion. It was exactly the moment when spring shows as great a variety of colours as autumn, when it is as gorgeous in its greetings as the latter season in its adieus. As short-lived as it is beautiful, this hour of Nature's promise is no sooner arrived than it disappears, and deepens into the monotony of summer. Often in their childhood these two girls had met to play where how they came to converse. Their bonnets were lying on the grass, and served as receptacles for the flowers which they gathered by handfuls without moving from their places. "So you are expecting Maurice to-day!" Gertrude exclaimed, after a pause in the conversation. She was answered by a smile and a faint blush of pleasure, not of embarrass ment. "How this spot puts me in mind of old times!" (at that age the lapse of a few years constitutes a remote antiquity) "of our games and our spoutings under this very tree, upon which we are now sitting. Is Maurice much altered since he last went away? Should I know him again?" "He is a great deal taller, but his features are not changed, at least I think not, but as I have seen him every year in my winter visits to my aunt, perhaps I can hardly judge. His large dark eyes and pale complexion are just what they always were." "And is he as fond of poetry as ever? Music has not made him neglect it?" "O no! he thinks, like Shakespeare, that 'music and sweet poetry agree, as well they may - the sister and the brother;' the more he studies the one, the more he delights in the other. When I was in London he brought something or other of that kind to read to me almost every evening. It was pleasant there to hear of fields and woods and streams. Only it would have made me long to come home again, if only he could have got away too." "Then you know what it is to be so weary of a place as to hate the very sight of it?" "No, not quite that either; I did not hate London, only I like the country much better." "Whereas I would give anything to go to London. It is too bad really never to have seen it.” "You can hardly imagine how different it is from Stonehouseleigh, or even from Lancaster, Chester, or any of the towns in our neighbourhood." "The more unlike it is to this part of the world, the better it would please me. The thickest of the London fogs, of which people talk so much, would be brighter to me than the finest day at Lifford Grange." "It makes me sad to hear you speak in that way of your home." "My home!" (O! "the world of dreary gloom that rose in the shadowy depths of those deep-set eyes," as the word was re-echoed with emphatic meaning.) "You who have had change in your life, Mary, and that before you cared or wished for it, can hardly understand the pining desire I feel for it. It is be coming quite a passion with me. The world must be such a beautiful, such an exciting thing!" "Do you mean the world that God has made, or the one man makes according to Cowper's definition?" "I mean the world as God has made it, as man has adorned it, as genius describes, and as imagination paints it. I mean London, not as you saw it, Mary, from a small house in an out-of-the-way street, and in its work-day dress of business and routine, but London with its luxury', its wealth, its court, its parliament, and what Charles Lamb - a greater poet perhaps than your favourite, Cowper calls its poetry. And I mean Paris with all its brilliancy; Italy with its bright skies, its paintings, its music, its ruins, and its churches. I mean the Alps with their eternal snows. I mean the sea with its restless waves. I mean politics and literature and theatres and society, and everything that has change, and life, and spirit, and movement about it. That is what I read of, long for, pine for, and never shall enjoy." "You look like a child, Lady-Bird, but you do not talk like one; no, nor like the very young girl that you are. How do you come to know and to wish for all these things? I have seen more of the world than you have, but they have scarcely entered into my thoughts." "Books, Mary, books tell me a great deal, and give me strange feelings of pain and of pleasure. You do not know how much I read sometimes for hours together; and when I do not read, I dream. Do you know the pleasure of that?" "Well, I rather like it at times; but as I sleep very soundly, it does not happen to me often." Gertrude smiled and said: "I do not mean sleeping, but waking dreams, sitting with folded hands, and eyes fixed on some object that amuses without engrossing the mind; and letting yourself drift, as it were at random, down the stream of your impressions, borne here and there by the current of your thoughts; motionless as if nothing was stirring in your soul, and weaving the while the thread of your own destiny into a web which a sound or a word can dissolve, as the wing of an insect breaks the light gossamer, or a breath melts the fanciful landscapes that frost prints on the windows. Have you never dreamed in this way, Mary?" Mary answered with a faint blush and a smile, "Yes, but when my thoughts stray away, I endeavour to catch and bring them back again." "Your's always run in the same direction, I suspect, so you always know where to find them." Mary's head was turned away, and Gertrude continued "The last book I have read is 'Corinne.' I found it in the library, hidden under a heap of pamphlets, and have lived in it for the last three days. It has redoubled my wish to see, to hear, to live in |