A Cathedral Courtship

* * * * *

I’m getting to adore Aunt Celia. I didn’t care for her at first, but she is so deliciously blind. Anything more exquisitely unserviceable as a chaperon I can’t imagine. Absorbed in antiquity, she ignores the babble of contemporaneous lovers. That any man could look at Kitty when he could look at a cathedral passes her comprehension. I do not presume too greatly on her absent-mindedness, however, lest she should turn unexpectedly and rend me. I always remember that inscription on the backs of the little mechanical French toys: ‘Quoiqu’elle soit très solidement montée, il faut ne pas brutaliser la machine.’

And so my courtship progresses under Aunt Celia’s very nose. I say ‘progresses’; but it is impossible to speak with any certainty of courting, for the essence of that gentle craft is hope, rooted in labour and trained by love.

I set out to propose to her during service this afternoon by writing my feelings on the flyleaf of the hymn-book, or something like that; but I knew that Aunt Celia would never forgive such blasphemy, and I thought that Kitty herself might consider it wicked. Besides, if she should chance to accept me, there was nothing I could do in a cathedral to relieve my feelings. No; if she ever accepts me, I wish it to be in a large, vacant spot of the universe, peopled by two only, and those two so indistinguishably blended, as it were, that they would appear as one to the casual observer. So I practised repression, though the wall of my reserve is worn to the thinness of thread-paper, and I tried to keep my mind on the droning minor canon, and not to look at her, ‘for that way madness lies.’

* * * * *SheYork, June 28,High Petergate Street.

My taste is so bad! I just begin to realize it, and I am feeling my ‘growing pains,’ like Gwendolen in ‘Daniel Deronda.’ I admired the stained glass in the Lincoln Cathedral the other day, especially the Nuremberg window. I thought Mr. Copley looked pained, but he said nothing. When I went to my room, I consulted a book and found that all the glass in that cathedral is very modern and very bad, and the Nuremberg window is the worst of all. Aunt Celia says she hopes that it will be a warning to me to read before I speak; but Mr. Copley says no, that the world would lose more in one way than it would gain in the other. I tried my quotations this morning, and stuck fast in the middle of the first.

Mr. Copley thinks I have been feeing the vergers too liberally, so I wrote a song about it called ‘The Ballad of the Vergers and the Foolish Virgin,’ which I sang to my guitar. Mr. Copley thinks it is cleverer than anything he ever did with his pencil. Of course, he says that only to be agreeable; but really, whenever he talks to me in that way, I can almost hear myself purring with pleasure.

We go to two services a day in the minster, and sometimes I sit quite alone in the nave drinking in the music as it floats out from behind the choir-screen. The Litany and the Commandments are so beautiful heard in this way, and I never listen to the fresh, young voices chanting ‘Write all these Thy laws in our hearts, we beseech Thee,’ without wanting passionately to be good. I love, too, the joyful burst of music in the Te Deum: ‘Thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers.’ I like that word ‘all’; it takes in foolish me, as well as wise Aunt Celia.

And yet, with all its pomp and magnificence, the service does not help me quite so much nor stir up the deep places, in me so quickly as dear old Dr. Kyle’s simpler prayers and talks in the village meeting-house where I went as a child. Mr. Copley has seen it often, and made a little picture of it for me, with its white steeple and the elm-tree branches hanging over it. If I ever have a husband I should wish him to have memories like my own. It would be very romantic to marry an Italian marquis or a Hungarian count, but must it not be a comfort to two people to look back on the same past?

* * * * *

We all went to an evening service last night. It was an ‘occasion,’ and a famous organist played the Minster organ.

I wonder why choir-boys are so often playful and fidgety and uncanonical in behaviour? Does the choirmaster advertise ‘Naughty boys preferred,’ or do musical voices commonly exist in unregenerate bodies? With all the opportunities they must have outside of the cathedral to exchange those objects of beauty and utility usually found in boys’ pockets, there is seldom a service where they do not barter penknives, old coins, or tops, generally during the Old Testament reading. A dozen little black-surpliced ‘probationers’ sit together in a seat just beneath the choir-boys, and one of them spent his time this evening in trying to pull a loose tooth from its socket. The task not only engaged all his own powers, but made him the centre of attraction for the whole probationary row.

Coming home, Aunt Celia walked ahead with Mrs. Benedict, who keeps turning up at the most unexpected moments. She’s going to build a Gothicky memorial chapel somewhere, and is making studies for it. I don’t like her in the least, but four is certainly a more comfortable number than three. I scarcely ever have a moment alone with Mr. Copley, for, go where I will and do what I please, as Aunt Celia has the most perfect confidence in my indiscretion, she is always en évidence.

Just as we were turning into the quiet little street where we are lodging, I said:

‘Oh dear, I wish that I really knew something about architecture!’

‘If you don’t know anything about it, you are certainly responsible for a good deal of it,’ said Mr. Copley.

‘I? How do you mean?’ I asked quite innocently, because I couldn’t see how he could twist such a remark as that into anything like sentiment.

‘I have never built so many castles in my life as since I’ve known you, Miss Schuyler,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ I answered as lightly as I could, ‘air-castles don’t count.’

‘The building of air-castles is an innocent amusement enough, I suppose,’ he said; ‘but I’m committing the folly of living in mine. I—’

Then I was frightened. When, all at once, you find you have something precious that you only dimly suspected was to be yours, you almost wish it hadn’t come so soon. But just at that moment Mrs. Benedict called to us, and came tramping back from the gate, and hooked her supercilious, patronizing arm in Mr. Copley’s, and asked him into the sitting-room to talk over the ‘lady-chapel’ in her new memorial church. Then Aunt Celia told me they would excuse me, as I had had a wearisome day; and there was nothing for me to do but to go to bed, like a snubbed child, and wonder if I should ever know the end of that sentence. And I listened at the head of the stairs, shivering, but all that I could hear was that Mrs. Benedict asked Mr. Copley to be her own architect. Her architect, indeed! That woman ought not to be at large—so rich and good-looking and unconscientious!

* * * * *HeYork, July 5.

I had just established myself comfortably near to Miss Van Tyck’s hotel, and found a landlady after my own heart in Mrs. Pickles, No. 6, Micklegate, when Miss Van Tyck, aided and abetted, I fear, by the romantic Miss Schuyler, elected to change her quarters, and I, of course, had to change too. Mine is at present a laborious (but not unpleasant) life. The causes of Miss Schuyler’s removal, as I have been given to understand by the lady herself, were some particularly pleasing window-boxes in a lodging in High Petergate Street; boxes overflowing with pink geraniums and white field-daisies. No one (she explains) could have looked at this house without desiring to live in it; and when she discovered, during a somewhat exhaustive study of the premises, that the maid’s name was Susan Strangeways, and that she was promised in marriage to a brewer’s apprentice called Sowerbutt, she went back to her conventional hotel and persuaded her aunt to remove without delay. If Miss Schuyler were offered a room at the Punchbowl Inn in the Gillygate and a suite at the Grand Royal Hotel in Broad Street, she would choose the former unhesitatingly; just as she refused refreshment at the best caterer’s this afternoon and dragged Mrs. Benedict and me into ‘The Little Snug,’ where an alluring sign over the door announced ‘A Homely Cup of Tea for Twopence.’ But she would outgrow all that; or, if she didn’t, I have common-sense enough for two; or if I hadn’t, I shouldn’t care a hang.

Is it not a curious dispensation of Providence that, just when Aunt Celia is confined to her room with a cold, Mrs. Benedict should join our party and spend her days in our company? She drove to the Merchants’ Hall and the Cavalry Barracks with us, she walked on the city walls with us, she even dared the ‘homely’ tea at ‘The Little Snug’; and at that moment I determined I wouldn’t build her memorial church for her, even at a most princely profit.

On crossing Lendal Bridge we saw the river Ouse running placidly through the town, and a lot of little green boats moored at a landing-stage.

‘How delightful it would be to row for an hour!’ exclaimed Miss Schuyler.

‘Oh, do you think so, in those tippy boats on a strange river?’ remonstrated Mrs. Benedict.

The moment I suspected she was afraid of the water, I lured her to the landing-stage and engaged a boat.

‘It’s a pity that that large flat one has a leak, otherwise it would have held three nicely; but I dare say we can be comfortable in one of the little ones,’ I said doubtfully.

‘Shan’t we be too heavy for it?’ Mrs. Benedict inquired timidly.

‘Oh, I don’t think so. We’ll get in and try it. If we find it sinks under our weight we won’t risk it,’ I replied, spurred on by such twinkles in Miss Schuyler’s eyes as blinded me to everything else.

‘I really don’t think your aunt would like you to venture, Miss Schuyler,’ said the marplot.

‘Oh, as to that, she knows I am accustomed to boating,’ replied Miss Schuyler.

‘And Miss Schuyler is such an excellent swimmer,’ I added.

Whereupon the marplot and killjoy remarked that if it were a question of swimming she should prefer to remain at home, as she had large responsibilities devolving upon her, and her life was in a sense not her own to fling away as she might like.

I assured her solemnly that she was quite, quite right, and pushed off before she could change her mind.

After a long interval of silence, Miss Schuyler observed in the voice, accompanied by the smile and the glance of the eye, that ‘did’ for me the moment I was first exposed to them:

‘You oughtn’t to have said that about my swimming, because I can’t a bit, you know.’

‘I was justified,’ I answered gloomily. ‘I have borne too much to-day, and if she had come with us and had fallen overboard, I might have been tempted to hold her down with the oar.’

Whereupon Miss Schuyler gave way to such whole-hearted mirth that she nearly upset the boat. I almost wish she had! I want to swim, sink, die, or do any other mortal thing for her.

We had a heavenly hour. It was only an hour, but it was the first time I have had any real chance to direct hot shot at the walls of the maiden castle. I regret to state that they stood remarkably firm. Of course, I don’t wish to batter them down; I want them to melt under the warmth of my attack.

SheYork, July 5.

We had a lovely sail on the river Ouse this afternoon. Mrs. Benedict was timid about boating, and did not come with us. As a usual thing, I hate a cowardly woman, but her lack of courage is the nicest trait in her whole character; I might almost say the only nice trait.

Mr. Copley tried in every way, short of asking me a direct question, to find out whether I had received the marked copy of ‘Persuasion’ in Bath, but I evaded the point.

Just as we were at the door of my lodging, and he was saying good-bye, I couldn’t resist the temptation of asking:

‘Why, before you knew us at all, did you put “Miss Van Tyck: Reserved,” on the window of the railway carriage at Bath?’

He was embarrassed for a moment, and then he said:

‘Well, she is, you know, if you come to that; and, besides, I didn’t dare tell the guard the placard I really wanted to put on.’

‘I shouldn’t think a lack of daring your most obvious fault,’ I said cuttingly.

‘Perhaps not; but there are limits to most things, and I hadn’t the pluck to paste on a pink paper with “Miss Schuyler: Engaged,” on it.’

He disappeared suddenly just then, as if he wasn’t equal to facing my displeasure, and I am glad he did, for I was too embarrassed for words.

Memoranda: In the height of roofs, nave, and choir, York is first of English cathedrals.

SheDurham, July something or other,At Farmer Hendry’s.

We left York this morning, and arrived in Durham about eleven o’clock. It seems there is some sort of an election going on in the town, and there was not a single fly at the station. Mr. Copley looked about in every direction, but neither horse nor vehicle was to be had for love or money. At last we started to walk to the village, Mr. Copley so laden with our hand-luggage that he resembled a pack mule.

We called first at the Three Tuns, where they still keep up the old custom of giving a wee glass of cherry-brandy to each guest on his arrival; but, alas! they were crowded, and we were turned from the hospitable door. We then made a tour of the inns, but not a single room was to be had, not for that night, nor for two days ahead, on account of that same election.

‘Hadn’t we better go on to Edinburgh, Aunt Celia?’ I asked, as we were resting in the door of the Jolly Sailor.

‘Edinburgh? Never!’ she replied. ‘Do you suppose that I would voluntarily spend a Sunday in those bare Presbyterian churches until the memory of these past ideal weeks has faded a little from my memory? What! leave out Durham and spoil the set?’ (In her agitation and disappointment she spoke of the cathedrals as if they were souvenir spoons.) ‘I intended to stay here for a week or more, and write up a record of our entire trip from Winchester while the impressions were fresh in my mind.’

‘And I had intended doing the same thing,’ said Mr. Copley. ‘That is, I hoped to finish off my previous sketches, which are in a frightful state of incompletion, and spend a good deal of time on the interior of this cathedral, which is unusually beautiful.’

At this juncture Aunt Celia disappeared for a moment to ask the barmaid if, in her opinion, the constant consumption of malt liquors prevents a more dangerous indulgence in brandy and whisky. She is gathering statistics, but as the barmaids can never collect their thoughts while they are drawing ale, Aunt Celia proceeds slowly.

‘For my part,’ said I, with mock humility, ‘I am a docile person, who never has any intentions of her own, but who yields herself sweetly to the intentions of other people in her immediate vicinity.’

‘Are you?’ asked Mr. Copley, taking out his pencil.

‘Yes, I said so. What are you doing?’

‘Merely taking note of your statement, that’s all. Now, Miss Van Tyck’ (of course Aunt Celia appeared at this delightful moment), ‘I have a plan to propose. I was here last summer with a couple of Harvard men, and we lodged at a farmhouse about a mile distant from the cathedral. If you will step into the coffee-room for an hour, I’ll walk up to Farmer Hendry’s and see if they will take us in. I think we might be fairly comfortable.’

‘Can Aunt Celia have Apollinaris and black coffee after her morning bath?’ I asked.

‘I hope, Katharine,’ said Aunt Celia majestically—‘I hope that I can accommodate myself to circumstances. If Mr. Copley can secure apartments for us, I shall be more than grateful.’

So here we are, all lodging together in an ideal English farmhouse. There is a thatched roof on one of the old buildings, and the dairy-house is covered with ivy, and Farmer Hendry’s wife makes a real English curtsey, and there are herds of beautiful sleek Durham cattle, and the butter and cream and eggs and mutton are delicious, and I never, never want to go home any more. I want to live here for ever and wave the American flag on Washington’s birthday.

I am so happy that I feel as if something were going to spoil it all. Twenty years old to-day! I wish mamma were alive to wish me many happy returns.

The cathedral is very beautiful in itself, and its situation is beyond all words of mine to describe. I greatly admired the pulpit, which is supported by five pillars sunk into the backs of squashed lions; but Mr. Copley, when I asked him the period, said, ‘Pure Brummagem!’

There is a nice old cell for refractory monks, that we agreed will be a lovely place for Mrs. Benedict if we can lose her in it. She arrives as soon as they can find room for her at the Three Tuns.

Memoranda:—Casual remark for breakfast-table or perhaps for luncheon—it is a trifle heavy for breakfast: ‘Since the sixteenth century, and despite the work of Inigo Jones and the great Wren (not Jenny Wren: Christopher), architecture has had, in England especially, no legitimate development.’ This is the only cathedral with a Bishop’s Throne or a Sanctuary Knocker.

* * * * *HeDurham, July 19.

O child of fortune, thy name is J. Q. Copley! How did it happen to be election time? Why did the inns chance to be full? How did Aunt Celia relax sufficiently to allow me to find her a lodging? Why did she fall in love with the lodging when found? I do not know. I only know Fate smiles; that Kitty and I eat our morning bacon and eggs together; that I carve Kitty’s cold beef and pour Kitty’s sparkling ale at luncheon; that I go to matins with Kitty, and dine with Kitty, and walk in the gloaming with Kitty—and Aunt Celia. And after a day of heaven like this, like Lorna Doone’s lover—ay, and like every other lover, I suppose—I go to sleep, and the roof above me swarms with angels, having Kitty under it.

She was so beautiful on Sunday. She has been wearing her favourite browns and primroses through the week, but on Sunday she blossomed into blue and white, topped by a wonderful hat, whose brim was laden with hyacinths. She sat on the end of a seat in the nave, and there was a capped and gowned crowd of university students in the transept. I watched them and they watched her. She has the fullest, whitest eyelids, and the loveliest lashes. When she looks down I wish she might never look up, and when she looks up I am never ready for her to look down. If it had been a secular occasion, and she had dropped her handkerchief, seven-eighths of the students would have started to pick it up—but I should have got there first! Well, all this is but a useless prelude, for there are facts to be considered—delightful, warm, breathing facts!

We were coming home from evensong, Kitty and I. (I am anticipating, for she was still ‘Miss Schuyler’ then, but never mind.) We were walking through the fields, while Mrs. Benedict and Aunt Celia were driving. As we came across a corner of the bit of meadow land that joins the stable and the garden, we heard a muffled roar, and as we looked around we saw a creature with tossing horns and waving tail making for us, head down, eyes flashing. Kitty gave a shriek. We chanced to be near a pair of low bars. I hadn’t been a college athlete for nothing. I swung Kitty over the bars, and jumped after her. But she, not knowing in her fright where she was nor what she was doing, supposing also that the mad creature, like the villain in the play, would ‘still pursue her,’ flung herself bodily into my arms, crying, ‘Jack! Jack! save me!’

It was the first time she had called me ‘Jack,’ and I needed no second invitation. I proceeded to save her, in the usual way, by holding her to my heart and kissing her lovely hair reassuringly as I murmured:

‘You are safe, my darling; not a hair of your precious head shall be hurt. Don’t be frightened.’

She shivered like a leaf.

‘I am frightened,’ she said; ‘I can’t help being frightened. He will chase us, I know. Where is he? What is he doing now?’

Looking up to determine if I need abbreviate this blissful moment, I saw the enraged animal disappearing in the side-door of the barn; and it was a nice, comfortable Durham cow, that somewhat rare but possible thing—a sportive cow.

‘Is he gone?’ breathed Kitty from my waistcoat.

‘Yes, he is gone—she is gone, darling. But don’t move; it may come again.’

My first too hasty assurance had calmed Kitty’s fears, and she raised her charming flushed face from its retreat and prepared to withdraw. I did not facilitate the preparations, and a moment of awkward silence ensued.

‘Might I inquire,’ I asked, ‘if the dear little person at present reposing in my arms will stay there (with intervals for rest and refreshment) for the rest of her natural life?’

She withdrew entirely now, all but her hand, and her eyes sought the ground.

‘I suppose I shall have to—that is, if you think—at least, I suppose you do think—at any rate, you look as if you were thinking—that this has been giving you encouragement.’

‘I do indeed—decisive, undoubted, bare-faced encouragement.’

‘I don’t think I ought to be judged as if I were in my sober senses,’ she replied. ‘I was frightened within an inch of my life. I told you this morning that I was dreadfully afraid of bulls, especially mad ones, and I told you that my nurse frightened me, when I was a child, with awful stories about them, and that I never outgrew my childish terror. I looked everywhere about. The barn was too far, the fence too high; I saw him coming, and there was nothing but you and the open country. Of course, I took you. It was very natural, I’m sure; any girl would have done it.’

‘To be sure,’ I replied soothingly, ‘any girl would have run after me, as you say.’

‘I didn’t say any girl would have run after you—you needn’t flatter yourself; and besides, I think I was really trying to protect you as well as to gain protection, else why should I have cast myself on you like a catamount, or a catacomb, or whatever the thing is?’

‘Yes, darling, I thank you for saving my life, and I am willing to devote the remainder of it to your service as a pledge of my gratitude; but if you should take up life-saving as a profession, dear, don’t throw yourself on a fellow with—’

‘Jack! Jack!’ she cried, putting her hand over my lips, and getting it well kissed in consequence. ‘If you will only forget that, and never, never taunt me with it afterwards, I’ll—I’ll—well, I’ll do anything in reason—yes, even marry you!’

* * * * *HeCanterbury, July 31,The Royal Fountain.

I was never sure enough of Kitty, at first, to dare risk telling her about that little mistake of hers. She is such an elusive person that I spend all my time in wooing her, and can never lay the flattering unction to my soul that she is really won.

But after Aunt Celia had looked up my family record and given a provisional consent, and Papa Schuyler had cabled a reluctant blessing, I did not feel capable of any further self-restraint.

It was twilight here in Canterbury, and we were sitting on the vine-shaded veranda of Aunt Celia’s lodging. Kitty’s head was on my shoulder. There is something very queer about that; when Kitty’s head is on my shoulder, I am not capable of any consecutive train of thought. When she puts it there I see stars, then myriads of stars, then, oh! I can’t begin to enumerate the steps by which ecstasy mounts to delirium; but, at all events, any operation which demands exclusive use of the intellect is beyond me at these times. Still, I gathered my stray wits together, and said:

‘Kitty!’

‘Yes, Jack?’

‘Now that nothing but death or marriage can separate us, I have something to confess to you.’

‘Yes,’ she said serenely, ‘I know what you are going to say. He was a cow.’

I lifted her head from my shoulder sternly, and gazed into her childlike, candid eyes.

‘You mountain of deceit! How long have you known about it?’

‘Ever since the first. Oh, Jack, stop looking at me in that way! Not the very first, not when I—not when you—not when we—no, not then, but the next morning, I said to Farmer Hendry, “I wish you would keep your savage bull chained up while we are here; Aunt Celia is awfully afraid of them, especially those that go mad, like yours!” “Lor’, miss!” said Farmer Hendry, “he haven’t been pastured here for three weeks. I keep him six mile away. There ben’t nothing but gentle cows in the home medder.” But I didn’t think that you knew, you secretive person! I dare say you planned the whole thing in advance, in order to take advantage of my fright!’