Part 2

Roscoria went off accordingly, wondering what on earth he would _not_ do for Tregurtha, and, when he had waded the stream, climbed the tree, disentangled the line, and substituted other flies for those which had been jerked off, the two anglers started at a brisk walk to go further up the river.

It is a pleasant country this, in which to spend a summer day. The trees are very magnificent and full of foliage; the glens are bold and varied; and the river-courses glittering through many a winsome spot. With good sport, light hearts, intense capacities for enjoyment, the two young men spent a rare afternoon, to be long remembered in their winter evenings as one of the brightest of their holidays. They were approaching toward six o'clock the boundary of the famed Doone Valley, where they owned the fair spell of the enchanter Blackmore, who, with his poetic wand, has conjured up the past for us, and haled dead men out of their coffins to live again and be famous beyond the wildest hopes of their lifetime.

Then, whilst musing by himself, Roscoria chanced to notice a churlish coolness in the air, a depth of shadow from the neighboring oak, a meaning hush and quiet stealing all about; and all he said to the deepening beauty of the summer eve was this:

"Hang it all, I must put up my rod!" Sitting with his back turned to the river that he might not be tempted, Roscoria did so slowly, to give Tregurtha as many extra seconds as possible. He then went to fetch his unwilling companion, who had to be hauled from the bank by the coat-collar; then off and away to the place appointed for Jehu to meet them, and home in contented silence to the Young Gentlemen's Academy. The supper consumed within the halls of Torres that night was truly Homeric. Witness the behavior of the cook. She was an energetic woman; but she sank down at last upon the nearest chair, and, wringing stalwart arms in desperation, cried, "May the Lord stay their stomachs, for I cannot!"

III.

THE GODDESS.

One sultry afternoon Roscoria--the vices of boyhood vexing overmuch his burdened heart--betook himself to green meadows with a volume of Plato. He had announced his intention of reading in the same until he had cooled down, a process which usually took him precisely three hours. Long before he was expected, however, he was heard by Tregurtha coming along the bridge over the moat toward his front window, and presently he sprung in by the same, with an excited look in his eyes and the manner of a man who has a fact to tell.

"Save you, Tregurtha! I am hit hard," was his greeting.

"I beg your pardon," said Tregurtha, politely, looking up from a piece of carpentering.

"Did you ever hear, Dick, of love at first sight?"

"Yes; and a very shady proceeding it always seemed to me, if, indeed, it be not a chimera. But, Roscoria, you are not feeling anything in your head, are you? Giddiness, perhaps? A feeling as if you had lost your memory? I hope it's nothing serious; but, my dear fellow, the sun was rather hot when you started."

"You great ass! I tell you it is not the head that is affected; it's the _heart_."

"Same thing, dear boy."

"I have seen, Tregurtha--I have seen an Olympian goddess treading the grass of a nineteenth-century field!"

"You've seen a milkmaid!"

"Richard, if I thought I could annihilate you, I would try. She was majestic, pensive, golden-haired, distracting; a daughter of the gods, I swear."

"My dear sir, I think you had better take it easy," interposed Tregurtha anxiously. "Take the armchair near the window, and open your grief. There really is no hurry."

Roscoria was at last induced to sit down, Tregurtha standing by him, with bent brows of perplexity, in his shirt-sleeves, with his hammer still in his hand. Louis began his recital by a torrent of Greek, comparing his mysterious goddess to almost every heroine of antiquity, and using so great a multitude of compound adjectives and fantastic turns of speech that his hearer faintly seized a newspaper and fanned himself therewith.

"As it is some time since I was at school, Roscoria," interpolated his friend on the first opportunity, "you will excuse me if I do not quite follow you. If you could speak English mainly, I would pardon the use of a few Grecisms."

"I am sorry," said Roscoria, "and, by Jupiter, will try to speak of her in English. Listen. I was taking my solitary ramble through a field skirting a beautiful little wood of Sir John Villiers', filled with wild hyacinths. I had my eyes fixed on my book for a long while, but when I lifted them, what think you, friend, they saw?"

"From the way in which you have carried on, I should imagine a woman."

Roscoria looked up in admiration at his friend's sagacity.

"She came straight by me, walking softly and dreamily, looking aside at the blue hyacinths, and her hat was held in her hand, so that the sun shone on her wonderful hair till it scintillated like a shower of gold. She was tall, yes; but she had an air so ethereal, and in her white dress she showed so like a cloud, that I held my breath lest she should vanish. I thought, indeed, she was some mystic vision I had conjured up from Plato's pages--the Absolute Good she might have been--she was so fair, so spiritual, and the air was so still around us; and there were we alone in the summer silence."

"Did she speak?" inquired Tregurtha (for he was a sailor, and his friend's manner was impressive).

"When she saw me standing still before her she dropped her eyes and made for a gate leading into the wood. The fastening was troublesome, so I went and opened it for her. She turned as she passed through, and bent her head--with a queenliness, heavens!--and smiled and whispered a word of thanks. I saw her eyes then for an instant; they--but I ought not to speak of them, and, after all, I don't know what color they were. She walked a short distance whilst I was shutting the gate again, and I was not the man to spoil her solitude, so I went off very fast; but looking back just once--only once, Tregurtha--I saw her standing amongst those blue-bells, gathering them, whilst the sunbeams slanted through the pale green larch boughs on to that glinting, golden head. After all, what immense possibilities this world contains! I believe this--this vision to have been the daughter of a mortal man who was once a _boy_, probably also a schoolboy! But then there was a woman in the case."

"Thank you, old fellow," said Richard, consulting his watch: "this has been very instructive; just as good as 'Half-hours with the best Poets;' but I suppose we must all descend to commonplace. You must tone yourself down and come to supper."

"Supper!" gasped Roscoria, blankly.

"Supper," retorted Tregurtha, firmly. "You shall note that not all your boys are overcome by an _affaire de coeur_, and that if you keep them waiting much longer there will be a bread riot. Here is comfort for you. The Tremenheeres give a tennis party; hie you to it, and if this Oread of yours be mortal, she will surely there be found. It is a good way to distinguish women from angels: the former, if young, can scarcely resist a party."

IV.

THE WAY TO TAKE A PARTY.

In the interval between the evening mentioned and the day of the tennis-party, Roscoria was out early and late, whenever his calling permitted, roaming restlessly in the woods, haunting the sunny fields like a dark shadow, seeking for his goddess in the spot where he had seen her, and in every other romantic and flowery nook that he thought likely. Of course he never saw her. If he had been his own cook, the venerable Mrs. Tartlett, if he had been his youngest pupil, small Tom Rodda; if he had been the parish blacksmith, or cowboy, or even the parson--a _paterfamilias_--he would assuredly have seen her. But as he was her lover, and was searching for her high and low, he never caught so much as the glimmer of her fair white robe dim in the distance.

Consequently, Roscoria grew irritable, knowing the pangs of baffled will, but he did not lose his hope. He could have sworn that he should meet her again. So on the important day he got himself up in white flannels and pre-Raphaelite red cap, caught up his racket, and ran off. Half-way toward his destination he wisely slackened his pace, lest, meeting his charmer, he might be too much out of breath to speak to her. As he crossed a field not far from the hallowed locality where he had lost his heart, he stopped short and passed his hand across his eyes. Yes; surely she was no other! A tall form, walking in that dreamy, quiet, contented way that he had noticed before; in a white dress--_the_ white dress--and there came the sunlight down on her golden hair as she passed from under the shade of that oak. She held as a screen a large horse-chestnut leaf, and she stooped often to gather or to scrutinize some wild flower. It was the same lady, and the charm was the same. Roscoria began by an impulsive start after her, then he stopped again, for what could he possibly say? He could not rush forward and exclaim, "Lady, you are the most adorable creature beneath the sun--what is your name?" for that would sound _bizarre_, not to say impertinent. As he was thus musing, however, a chance occurred in his favor; drawing out her kerchief the unconscious maiden let an envelope slip from out her pocket and fall noiselessly in the grass. She walked on unwitting, but Roscoria saw his opportunity, ran up and seized the letter. It was addressed to "Miss Lyndis Villiers."

In the first fervor of his satisfaction Roscoria imprinted a chaste salute upon the letters of her name; then, looking again at the handwriting, he observed, with a sharp revulsion of feeling, that it was rather manly in character. Perhaps he had kissed his rival's ink! With a shiver Roscoria proceeded to make the most of his time. He walked up after the lady, doffed his small cap, and said, "Excuse me--this is your letter, I think?" The lady gave a slight start, and received her property with a gratitude much tempered by the haughty surprise of the Englishwoman when addressed by a stranger. Then she blushed, for she recognized the handsome stranger. And then there seemed nothing more to be done, and Roscoria's wits were hampered by his admiration of her, so she bowed and went her way. This was well; but her way happened also to be Roscoria's, and he walked faster than she did; moreover, there was before them a stile, and beyond that stile the only lane, a narrow one, toward the Tremenheeres. He walked behind, like a footman, until the delay at the said stile obliged him to come up with the lady. Then, as he clomb the barrier and noted the narrowness of the lane below, a sense of the comic struck him hard, and he burst into a cheery, irrepressible laugh. Much pained he was with his own irreverence when he had done so, but Miss Villiers turned at the sound, and smilingly accosted him as she stood in the lane, looking upward:

"I fear I detain you; go on, you walk more quickly than I."

So brilliant an idea now flashed into Roscoria's brain that he saw blue sparks before his eyes for several minutes afterward.

"You have a racket to carry; as we are bound in the same direction, apparently, may I----?" Her lips parted for thanks, so Roscoria was over the stile with the dexterity of an acrobat, and next moment was walking by his goddess' side, her rackets in his hand, in the most blissful tremor.

"I ought to tell you my name to show you that I am respectable," he began. "I am Louis Roscoria, an instructor of youth, and owner of that curious, moldy building, Torres Hall."

"That beautiful, ivy-grown, moated mansion, with willows growing all round?"

"The same, if you call it beautiful."

"I have sketched it several times from a distance already" (beatification of Roscoria!), "although I have only recently come to live here. Of course I know your name. Have you not a great friend, a Mr. Tregurtha?"

"Rather!" cried Louis, "and I am glad that people connect the fact with my name."

"Why, of course," said Lyndis, looking up with kind eyes; "you two are called 'Damon and Pythias.'"

"I dare say. I am awfully proud of Dick (that's Tregurtha, Miss Villiers); he is a fine fellow, and he manages me completely. Whatever he suggests seems to be better, somehow, than what I can think of myself. It's his _nature_, you know; there's no system about it whatever: that's just where it lies. He has a way with him; I have no way with me; and all the Philosophy in the world won't give me one. Only, I hold that he makes one radical mistake in judging of my system of education: he won't let me thrash my own boys when he can help it, which I think is rather hard on any preceptor."

"Oh, it is!" said Lyndis, sympathetically; "but I dare say you are too fond of correction, or whence this dudgeon at being debarred from it?"

"Well---- But if there is such an anomaly as '_righteous_ indignation,' what a fervor of godliness must the sight of the average boy excite in the breast of the right-minded schoolmaster! And can indignation find a better vent than blows? Why, even the long-suffering Moses had to break something when he found his Hebrews dancing round a calf!"

"I would not adopt a profession which develops the indignation to so great an extent," said Lyndis, rather amused by her companion's impetuosity.

"Do not say that, Miss Villiers; whatever we have most at heart will disgust us sometimes. We have our ideal (or we ought to have), and the reality is coarse, indeed, in comparison, but it is better than nothing at all; and is it not in itself an ennobling thing to be constantly engaged in a tremendous struggle, whether the vantage be to you or no?"

Roscoria looked at Lyndis with a far-away intensity and a sad determination of expression, which made her think she had never seen so enthusiastic a young man.

"It is a glorious vocation, teaching," said Lyndis, gently.

"It seems so when you praise it."

Lyndis here grew a little absent-minded. She could follow him when he talked of his boys, but when he began on this new vein of sentiment she knew she must begin to dictate to him what he should say next. So she observed that the weather was fine, a fact that Roscoria had noticed before.

"It is the finest day I ever saw in my life, as well as the happiest," he replied loudly, and with fervor.

Beautiful Lyndis! she looked up with those starry eyes of hers and--begged his pardon! So the poor young man was obliged to pretend he had said something else. And there they were at the Tremenheeres' gate already, and Lyndis, with a somewhat more distant smile, took her racket, passed through the tiresome gate, and was lost amongst the laurels, whilst Roscoria hesitated. He did not attempt to follow her, but, after speaking a few words to his host and hostess, went in search of Tregurtha.

Now Tregurtha, though he had started a quarter of an hour after his friend, and taken the longer route by the circumambient road, instead of going across country, had--for some reason inexplicable except to very young people--arrived long before Roscoria, and was disposed to be foolishly jocose upon the subject. Louis checked this tendency in his friend, though with some difficulty; and Tregurtha grew somber as he recounted the boredom of his experiences over a set of tennis, wherein his antagonists had dawdled about without any manner of spirit, whilst, as he himself was the best player on the ground, his partner naturally was the worst. Observing that Roscoria grew lax in his attention to these plaints, Tregurtha went and hovered aimlessly around a tea-table. He was speedily dislodged from this refuge by the hostess herself, who stormed up to him with a rustle of silk akin in sound to the spray of a mighty cataract, and an all-conquering inflation of demeanor peculiar to the grandees of Devonshire and Cornwall, and, seizing him by the arm, bore down upon the other end of the long _salon_ with him in tow.

Tregurtha was a Cornishman himself, so he was equal to the occasion--drew up his height and adopted an attitude of breezy and elegant ease as he listened to Mrs. Tremenheere lisping something about a "Miss ----" (he could not catch the name), "introduce--very clever--not my style--pretty though----" etc., until she stormed off again, leaving Tregurtha anchored opposite a small but rather stately foreign-looking damsel, of pleasing exterior, with a pair of great soft blue-black eyes, which were gazing up at him with an expression of absolute fright. The occasion did not seem to warrant this nervousness, and Tregurtha was just thinking to himself, "What a shame to bring her out just yet! she looks so young and shy," when the maiden before him turned hastily round and slipped out by the French window on to the lawn, laughing consumedly. That laugh! he knew it. Dick pursued in hot curiosity and identified her. This was she--the heroine of the stockingless episode--this was Thetis--this was Arletta of Falaise.

"I think we have met before," quoth he, not without relish of the joke. But the lady of the hyacinthine eyes was too deeply conscious of that fact to enunciate a syllable. So there they two stood together on that almost deserted lawn (let us not be compelled to explain that every one else was drinking claret-cup!), under the heat of that summer sun, for several silent moments; and the man was losing his heart.

There was magic in the air that afternoon, for out came Roscoria presently (looking very much _en l'air_), and with him a tall, fair-haired woman, who only wanted wings. Tregurtha forgot himself in an instant, and, laying his hand on Louis' shoulder, led him up to Thetis, impressively and proudly observing:

"Miss ----, allow me to introduce my friend" (with emphasis) "Louis Roscoria!"

"Keeper of the Wild Beasts' Asylum, Torres Hall," murmured the said Roscoria, irreverently. "I have been deputed to arrange another set; shall we four play?"

Tregurtha gave vent to a muffled cheer, and the quartet marched (with some unseemly haste, lest other men should take their bishoprics) to the best ground, and there began. Tregurtha and Roscoria were noted players; together they were, in Devonshire at least, invincible. In a single, Tregurtha had the best of it.

The set was exciting. At first the two sides won game for game. Lyndis, as a tennis-player, was grace personified. She looked so lovely and moved so lightly that it seemed a marvel why hers was not always the winning side. Roscoria, too, exerted every muscle, and writhing about with the cleverness of a lively cobra, ought to have done wonders, but he tried too hard, and lost. Tregurtha, with less grace, had a longer reach and a greater power of hard hitting, so he turned to his partner about the fourth game, saying, "We will win this set, I think," and proceeded to do so. His partner was a capital player, shirked no balls, and had a prompt little way with a back-hander, which looked spirited and was useful. It was she who won the set (said Tregurtha), for it was she who returned Roscoria's last serve, with the twist on, by a malicious little slant just over the net, where the ball fell almost a yard before the feet of the goddess Lyndis, who beamed with gracious impotence upon it.

The baffled pair, Roscoria and Miss Villiers, strolled to an arbor, and there sat talking. It might have been ten minutes that they sat there--as Roscoria thought it was--or it might have been an hour and ten minutes to boot. Anyhow, it was heaven. There sat Lyndis Villiers in a low wicker chair, all embowered in fragrant honeysuckle, and looking herself like pink eglantine with her gold hair and soft rose cheeks. The admiring sunlight played on her dress, all snowy white, save where a pretty caprice had moved her to place a bunch of glittering buttercups. There she rested, one hand round a branch of honeysuckle, her eyes still, kind, and peaceful; her voice sweet and calm, speaking her very thoughts, and those such wise and pure ones! There was Lyndis, the Ideal realized, and there opposite sat Roscoria, clasping his knee in his hands in deep preoccupation, not himself at all, nor conscious of himself, but "a self aloof, that gazed and listened like a soul in dreams, weaving the wondrous tale it marvels at." He only knew from time to time, as her voice ceased, or her head was turned away for a moment, that he had come under one of those divine madnesses which the gods send upon men; that life grew more wonderful every moment, and that ever after he should be able to say--I have once been happy.

Meanwhile Tregurtha and his partner of the white face and dark eyes were eating strawberries in an adjacent hayfield. It was pleasant there also, and the damsel, for all her grave looks, was playful, and conversation was uninterrupted. "Tell me a sea story," she asked, after a little desultory persiflage had been exchanged; and Tregurtha settled himself on a large haycock and began to recount his own adventures in various storms and casualties on the ocean, just as he told them to Roscoria's boys at night. And as he did so, his blue eyes kindling, and his hands closing and unclosing with the excitement of memory and the thought of the wild sea wind, he caught full sight of the blue-black eyes of his hearer, who had come nearer and was watching and listening to him with parted lips. She reminded him of a woman he had known years ago in Spain, who died; and those eyes struck a sharp pain to his heart, so that he finished his story with his hand over his brow to keep them from him. So, as he did not look again at her, Rosetta quietly finished all the strawberries, for she was, as yet, very young.

A loud, impatient halloo aroused them both, as a stout, warlike, flurried, elderly gentleman came puffing indignantly through the tumbled hay (most like a threshing machine), much encumbered by a large feminine shawl, which he carried on his arm, and shouting to Rosetta:

"Why, why, dash it, my love, I call this insubordination, you know. Didn't I tell you an hour you should have and no more? And how long do you suppose you've kept the horses waiting? I can tell you, madam, you're the only human being who dare keep Admiral Sir John Villiers' carriage and himself waiting in this way. How d'ye do, sir? I'm glad to make your acquaintance. Sailor, I see. Of course! didn't I know what the tattooing on your wrist meant? Got an anchor on mine, sir. Confound your impudence, miss, what are you laughing at? Oh! the shawl--stuck to my coat-button, has it? Well, and if it has; have you no reverence, you saucy minx? Put it round your neck, treasure. I hate a woman who catches cold!"

Thus was Rosetta swept off from the glances of her first admirer by Admiral Sir John Villiers, the owner of Braceton Park, renowned as the most awkward customer in Devonshire.

V.

THE GODDESS IS HUMAN.

The friends found their way home together in the cool of the evening; both very quiet, but Roscoria evidently meditating some deep design. At night, growing confidential as they patrolled the garden, smoking, Louis proceeded to rave of his goddess "for an hour by his dial." Tregurtha heard and nodded in silence. He was a more reserved man than his friend, so he did not even mention the maid who ate his share of the strawberries. Indeed, he forgot her whilst listening to the outpourings of his ingenuous comrade.

"I shall never be any good at my work, I'm afraid," complained Roscoria; "that beautiful face is the only thing my mind will comprehend."

"Well, if I were you, as you seem so far gone, I should take some steps," advised Dick. "I'm no friend of shilly-shallying. If you love the girl, go and tell her so, I advise."

"I wish I'd more money," sighed the schoolmaster.

"Many a good _paterfamilias_ has wished that before you, my lad," observed Tregurtha, with a laugh. "How does the country curate get on with his six children, do you suppose?"