"Beautiful? -
only that! Do you see nothing more?"
I answered, looking back into her eyes: "Yes - I think there is
something more but I don't know what it is. Does it come from you - your
eyes - your voice, all this that is passing in my mind?"
"What is passing in your mind?" she asked.
"I don't know. Thoughts - perhaps memories: hundreds, thousands - they
come and go like lightning so that I can't arrest them - not even one!"
She laughed, and the laugh was like her eyes and her voice and the
touch of her hand on my temples.
Was it sad or glad? I don't know, but it was the most beautiful sound I
had ever heard, yet it seemed familiar and stirred me in the strangest
way.
"Let me think," I said.
"Yes, think!" they all together cried laughingly; and then instantly
when I cast my eyes down there was a perfect stillness as if they were
all holding their breath and watching me.
That sudden strange stillness startled me: I lifted my eyes and they
were gone - the radiant beautiful people who had surrounded and
interrogated me, and with them their shining golden village, had all
vanished. There was no village, no deep green lanes and pink and white
clouds of apple blossoms, and it was not May, it was late October and I
was lying in bed in Exeter seeing through the window the red and grey
roofs and chimneys and pale misty white sky.
XV
THE VANISHING CURTSEY
'Tis impossible not to regret the dying out of the ancient, quaintly-
pretty custom of curtseying in rural England; yet we cannot but see the
inevitableness of it, when we consider the earthward drop of the body -
the bird-like gesture pretty to see in the cottage child, not so
spontaneous nor pretty in the grown girl, and not pretty nor quaint,
but rather grotesque (as we think now) in the middle-aged or elderly
person - and that there is no longer a corresponding self-abasement and
worshipping attitude in the village mind. It is a sign or symbol that
has lost, or is losing, its significance.
I have been rambling among a group of pretty villages on and near the
Somerset Avon, some in that county, others in Wiltshire; and though
these small rustic centres, hidden among the wooded hills, had an
appearance of antiquity and of having continued unchanged for very many
years, the little ones were as modern in their speech and behaviour as
town children. Of all those I met and, in many instances, spoke to, in
the village street and in the neighbouring woods and lanes, not one
little girl curtseyed to me. The only curtsey I had dropped to me in
this district was from an old woman in the small hill-hidden village of
Englishcombe. It was on a frosty afternoon in February, and she stood
near her cottage gate with nothing on her head, looking at the same
time very old and very young. Her eyes were as blue and bright as a
child's, and her cheeks were rosy-red; but the skin was puckered with
innumerable wrinkles as in the very old. Surprised at her curtsey I
stopped to speak to her, and finally went into her cottage and had tea
and made the acquaintance of her husband, a gaunt old man with a face
grey as ashes and dim colourless eyes, whom Time had made almost an
imbecile, and who sat all day groaning by the fire. Yet this worn-out
old working man was her junior by several years. Her age was eighty-
four. She was very good company, certainly the brightest and liveliest
of the dozen or twenty octogenarians I am acquainted with. I heard the
story of her life, - that long life in the village where she was born
and had spent sixty-five years of married life, and where she would lie
in the churchyard with her mate. Her Christian name, she mentioned, was
Priscilla, and it struck me that she must have been a very pretty and
charming Priscilla about the thirties of the last century.
To return to the little ones; it was too near Bath for such a custom to
survive among them, and it is the same pretty well everywhere; you must
go to a distance of ten or twenty miles from any large town, or a big
station, to meet with curtseying children. Even in villages at a
distance from towns and railroads, in purely agricultural districts,
the custom is dying out, if, for some reason, strangers are often seen
in the place. Such a village is Selborne, and an amusing experience I
met with there some time ago serves to show that the old rustic
simplicity of its inhabitants is now undergoing a change.
I was walking in the village street with a lady friend when we noticed
four little girls coming towards us with arms linked. As they came near
they suddenly stopped and curtseyed all together in an exaggerated
manner, dropping till their knees touched the ground, then springing to
their feet they walked rapidly away. From the bold, free, easy way in
which the thing was done it was plain to see that they had been
practising the art in something of a histrionic spirit for the benefit
of the pilgrims and strangers frequently seen in the village, and for
their own amusement. As the little Selbornians walked off they glanced
back at us over their shoulders, exhibiting four roguish smiles on
their four faces. The incident greatly amused us, but I am not sure
that the Reverend Gilbert White would have regarded it in the same
humorous light.
