this is the time when bit by bit
the days begin to lengthen sweet,
and every minute gained is joy,
and love stirs in the heart of a boy.
this is the time the sun, of late
content to lie abed till eight,
lifts up betimes his sleepy head,
and love stirs in the heart of a maid.
—katherine tynan hinkson.
it was in the spring of 1640, just when king charles had dissolved the short parliament, after its three weeks’ existence, that hilary made a discovery. she possessed a voice, a voice which, after a few lessons from the cathedral organist, proved to be a source of real pleasure to herself and others. this event meant much more to her than the fact that england had again relapsed into the woeful plight of the last eleven years, and was once more without a parliament. at every spare minute she was practising her guitar, or singing scales and songs, and thus it very naturally fell about that gabriel, returning from oxford that summer, was greeted, as he hastened along the south walk to the little gate which made the boundary between the two gardens, by a song “more tuneable than lark to shepherd’s ear.” stealing quietly forward, he could catch the words, which were set to the pathetic air of “bara fostus’ dream”;
come, sweet love, let sorrow cease,
banish frowns, leave off dissension,
love’s wars make the sweetest peace,
hearts uniting by contention.
sunshine follows after rain,
sorrows ceasing, this is pleasing,
all proves fair again,
after sorrow soon comes joy;
try me, prove me, trust me, love me,
this will cure annoy.
the voice was a mezzo-soprano, with that strange gift of individual charm, without which far finer voices fail to please. it seemed to witch the very heart of the listener, and gabriel, determined as he was not to disturb the song, was all on fire to see the singer.
as she played the interlude on the guitar at the end of the first verse he stole over the grass, and, climbing up the old filbert tree, swung himself noiselessly on to the wall, and looked down eagerly through the leafy branches. not far off, at the opposite end of a grassy glade, sat hilary, her soft brown curls, held back by a snood of pink ribbon, but falling nevertheless about her comely face as she bent over the guitar. she wore a pale grey gown with dainty trimmings of pink, and the delicate colouring of her sweet womanly face made one think of apple-blossom.
gabriel’s heart throbbed fast. was this the child he had once teased? the companion he had sometimes wished a boy to share his rougher sports? the playmate he had quarrelled with so often, and kissed with careless kindliness when the dispute had ended? how had he ever dared to do it all? then again the song thrilled him
winter hides his frosty face,
blushing now to be more viewed:
spring return’d with pleasant grace,
flora’s treasures are renewed;
lambs rejoice to see the spring,
skipping, leaping, sporting, playing,
birds for joy do sing.
so let the spring of joy renew,
laughing, colling, kissing, playing,
and give love his due.
gabriel’s longing to see the singer’s downcast eyes almost overcame him but he waited while once more the bird-like voice rang through the quiet garden—
then, sweet love, disperse this cloud,
that obscures this scornful coying;
when each creature sings aloud,
filling hearts with over-joying.
as every bird doth choose her mate,
gently billing, she is willing
her true love to take.
with such words let us contend
(laughing, colling, kissing, playing),
so our strife shall end.
gabriel swung himself down by the filbert tree, brushed the dust from his dark green doublet, set his broad-brimmed hat at the correct angle with unusual care, and made his way through the gate as though he had never climbed a tree or lounged upon a wall in his life.
who would have dreamed that to walk down that familiar glade to greet hilary, would ever have caused his throat to grow dry and his breath to come in so strange a fashion, for all the world as though he were running a race! at last she looked up, and with a glad cry rose to welcome him; the guitar slipped unheeded on to the grass, and both her hands caught his, while her dark grey eyes smiled in a way that fairly dazzled the youth, who had but just realised that he was her lover.
“so you have come from oxford at last,” she cried. “how long it is since we met!” he stooped to kiss her hand.
“surely it was in some other life!” he said, with a strange feeling that suddenly all things had become new.
she laughed gaily as they sat down side by side. “here, at any rate, is the same old stone bench where you and i used to learn our lessons,” she said. “and yonder is the stump to which you tied my puppet the day you played at smithfield martyrs.”
“what a little brute i was.”
“you were a rare hand at teasing; but i’ll never forget it to you that you rescued my bartholomew babe from the power of the dog. how the wretch bit your arm!”
“i am much indebted to him,” said gabriel, smiling, “and would not for the world lose that honourable scar. nothing would please me more than to suffer again in your service.”
his face was aglow, and hilary, with a little stirring of the heart, turned from him and plucked a rose from the great hush of sweet-briar growing near the bench.
there was a minute’s silence, broken by the snapping of one of her guitar strings. she took a fresh string from the case, and was about to put it on, when she found the guitar quietly taken from her.
“let me do that,” said gabriel, pleadingly; and hilary, with a novel sense of pleasure in being helped, allowed him to have his way, glancing now and again at his intent face, which was the same, yet not the the same, she had known all her life.
truth to tell, gabriel was no lover of books; he had not at all the look of the pallid student, and had burnt no midnight oil at oxford. but the university life had changed him from boy to man, his chest was a good two inches broader from rowing; he had an air of health and vigour, and the clearly-cut features, which were of the roman type, had kept their refinement, but had lost the stamp of physical delicacy they had once borne.
“how well i remember nero’s onslaught that day,” said hilary. “it was the day we heard of sir john eliot’s death in the tower.”
“did you hear that mr. valentine and mr. strode, who were imprisoned at the same time as sir john eliot, were released last january? they had been in gaol nigh upon eleven years,” said gabriel; and as he looked up from the guitar, hilary saw an indignant gleam in his hazel eyes which startled her.
“now you look as you used to look when we quarrelled,” she said, smiling. “by the bye, what did we quarrel about the day the dog bit you? i have quite forgot.”
“we wrangled over something in the sun-trap,” said gabriel, his eyes growing tender once more. “what was it?”
laughingly they both turned their minds back to the days when they had been children together, and presently, in a flash, the whole scene came back to them. once again hilary saw her father’s look of amusement as she gave her childish explanation of the dispute, “i said i wouldn’t be gabriel’s wife, but we have made it up again, and i have given him my promise.”
the colour surged up into her face as for an instant she met gabriel’s eyes, for in their liquid depths she could read love and eager hope, and withal just a touch of the mirthful expression which she knew so well of old. she knew that he, too, had heard that voice from the past.
dropping the briar rose and hastily taking the guitar, she began to tune the string he had just fixed. the sound awoke gabriel to the consciousness that they were not alone in the world, that the garden was no garden of eden, and that lovemaking was not so simple as in the days of their childhood. he remembered mrs. unett and bishop coke, who would assuredly have much to say as soon as this midsummer’s dream had formed itself into words. “sing to me,” he said, when the string at length was in tune. “so far i have but heard bara fostus from the other side of the wall—a sweet air, but somewhat melancholy.”
hilary racked her brain for a song which was not a love song, but failed to find anything better than “phyllis on the new-mown hay,” which she sang with a spirit so gay and debonnair, and a voice so exquisitely fresh, that gabriel’s passion was increased ten-fold. like the lover in the song, he bid fair to be a most “faithful damon,” and hilary knew it, and wondered how it had come to pass that but an hour before they had been well content to think of each other merely as old friends and playfellows.
they were deep in conversation when, looking up, hilary saw her grandfather slowly pacing down the garden. the palace was not far from mrs. unett’s house, and the old man loved to escape from the state and ceremony that surrounded him, and to enjoy the quiet of his daughter’s home. gabriel, who had been much away from hereford, had only met the bishop occasionally. but when at oxford he had heard complaints of the tyranny, the mischief-making and the political intrigues of bishops in general, he had always looked on their own bishop as a remarkable exception to the general rule. glancing now at the stately old man, whose scholarly face bore a striking resemblance to that of his brother, sir john coke, the recently-dismissed secretary of state, he knew that he was confronting the arbiter of his fate, and noted with relief the kindly look in the bishop’s eyes as he caught sight of them.
“so, mr. harford, you are returned to us once more,” said the old man, giving him a courteous greeting. “i heard my granddaughter’s voice, but did not know of your arrival.”
“the plague is increasing at oxford, my lord,” said gabriel; “and it was thought best that we should not remain there. i returned to brampton bryan with ned harley.”
the name of harley brought a shadow over the bishop’s face, for sir robert’s puritanism met with little favour in the county. he reflected with some uneasiness that gabriel harford was of the same persuasion, in all probability, and not altogether a good companion for hilary.
“sing to us, child,” he said, glancing at his granddaughter and hilary, who had noted his change of expression, began his favourite air
“hark, hark, the lark at heaven’s gate sings!”
the song soon lulled the old bishop into tranquility; he had taken out his ivory tablets with the intention of making some such entry as this: “mem: to warn my daughter not to countenance any matrimonial proposal in respect of g. h. and hilary.” for was it not well known that dr. harford had spoken strongly against the war in scotland—“the bishops’ war,” now in progress—and who could tell what difficulties might arise in the future? but somehow, as the song proceeded, he slid into a state of dreamy content, and noted instead on the tablets a fresh idea for his treatise on the epistle to the colossians, which was suggested in part by the music and in part by the faces of gabriel and hilary. he looked benevolently across at the two young people, his mind hovering betwixt heaven and earth and the grievous divisions of his day all forgot.
thus it chanced that through the halcyon days of that wonderful summer, gabriel wooed hilary in peace until, one morning, early in september, he found the present not sufficient for him, but must needs try to ensure the future, and hear from her own lips the promise that would set him at rest.
they had been out riding with the doctor, but had found the day hot, and, leaving the horses with the groom, had wandered across a bit of wild country bordering the road, to find rest and shelter in a little wood. great beech trees made a solemn shade over the russet carpet of last year’s leaves, and here and there the sunbeams slanting through the branches turned the russet to gold and threw a silvery sheen over the brake fern growing around. the robins sang cheerfully overhead, and now and then a squirrel would dance from branch to branch scampering the faster as it caught sight of the two intruders resting in the shade beneath.
the very quiet of the place made gabriel think involuntarily of the strange contrast to be found in “towered cities” amid “the busy hum of men.” surely never again would he find so sweet a paradise in which to speak his love. the audacity of his childhood filled him now with amaze. what would he not have given for the easy flow of words which had then been at his command?
“this is perfection,” said hilary, taking off her hat and fanning herself leisurely with a great fern.
“there is one thing wanting,” said gabriel.
“you are exacting,” said hilary, with a little rippling laugh. “what more can heart desire?”
“a bliss that would last,” said gabriel, his voice trembling.
“ah! but that is asking too much,” she answered, musingly. “nothing lasts.”
“nothing but love,” he said, in a tone that made her lift her eyes to his, and speedily drop them.
the colour rushed to her face, but her confusion seemed to cheer him.
“hilary,” he exclaimed, “do you not know that i love you? you who first wakened love in me—who first made me truly live—surely you must know? i love you with all my being; only be mine—be mine.”
“i am your friend,” she faltered—“have ever been your friend.”
“friendship is not enough,” he said, eagerly; “that was for childish days, but now—now—it is death to me to be without you. i am yours, body and soul. give me hope, hilary; give me hope!”
she raised her head and looked into his eager, hazel eyes, reading there the utter devotion of a first genuine passion, “i give you my heart,” she said in a voice so soft that the words seemed more breathed than spoken, and the robin which had been the sole spectator of this love scene ventured a little nearer, even as she spoke, only taking flight when gabriel caught her in his arms for what seemed the first kiss he had ever given her, so strangely did it differ from the careless salute of their childhood.
the robin sang overhead now, and sang so blithely that even the happy lovers gave heed to the song.
“’tis the sweetest i ever heard,” said hilary. “or is it that all things seem more beautiful because of love?”
“that must be it. hitherto we have but dreamed; now we are awake, and this is the joy that lasts.”
so they lived through that exquisite dawn of love, and their bliss knew no alloy until the ruthless groom strode into the wood.
“i ha’ tethered the horses to the gibbet, sir,” he said to gabriel, “and ha’ come to tell ye that the doctor is in sight.”
the lovers started to their feet. suddenly to see simon’s uncomprehending face; suddenly to hear the ill-omened word “gibbet,” roused them roughly enough from their paradise. they hurriedly left the little wood, not once even looking back, for was not simon tramping heavily behind them, driving them forth into the thorns and thistles of the world just as effectually as if he had been the angel with the flaming sword!
