The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
age of seventeen, walked before, bearing a chaplet of white flowers--a
token that the deceased was a young and unmarried female. The corpse
was followed by the parents. They were a venerable couple of the better
order of peasantry. The father seemed to repress his feelings, but his
fixed eye, contracted brow, and deeply-furrowed face showed the struggle
that was passing within. His wife hung on his arm, and wept aloud with
the convulsive bursts of a mother’s sorrow.
I followed the funeral into the church. The bier was placed in the
centre aisle, and the chaplet of white flowers, with a pair of white
gloves, was hung over the seat which the deceased had occupied.
Every one knows the soul-subduing pathos of the funeral service, for who
is so fortunate as never to have followed some one he has loved to the
tomb? But when performed over the remains of innocence and beauty, thus
laid low in the bloom of existence, what can be more affecting? At that
simple but most solemn consignment of the body to the grave-“Earth
to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust!”--the tears of the youthful
companions of the deceased flowed unrestrained. The father still seemed
to struggle with his feelings, and to comfort himself with the assurance
that the dead are blessed which die in the Lord; but the mother only
thought of her child as a flower of the field cut down and withered
in the midst of its sweetness; she was like Rachel, “mourning over her
children, and would not be comforted.”
On returning to the inn I learnt the whole story of the deceased. It was
a simple one, and such as has often been told. She had been the beauty
and pride of the village. Her father had once been an opulent farmer,
but was reduced in circumstances. This was an only child, and brought up
entirely at home in the simplicity of rural life. She had been the pupil
of the village pastor, the favorite lamb of his little flock. The good
man watched over her education with paternal care; it was limited and
suitable to the sphere in which she was to move, for he only sought to
make her an ornament to her station in life, not to raise her above it.
The tenderness and indulgence of her parents and the exemption from
all ordinary occupations had fostered a natural grace and delicacy of
character that accorded with the fragile loveliness of her form. She
appeared like some tender plant of the garden blooming accidentally amid
the hardier natives of the fields.
The superiority of her charms was felt and acknowledged by her
companions, but without envy, for it was surpassed by the unassuming
gentleness and winning kindness of her manners. It might be truly said
of her:
“This is the prettiest low-born lass, that ever
Ran on the green-sward: nothing she does or seems
But smacks of something greater than herself;
Too noble for this place.”
The village was one of those sequestered spots which still retain some
vestiges of old English customs. It had its rural festivals and holiday
pastimes, and still kept up some faint observance of the once popular
rites of May. These, indeed, had been promoted by its present pastor,
who was a lover of old customs and one of those simple Christians that
think their mission fulfilled by promoting joy on earth and good-will
among mankind. Under his auspices the May-pole stood from year to year
in the centre of the village green; on Mayday it was decorated with
garlands and streamers, and a queen or lady of the May was appointed, as
in former times, to preside at the sports and distribute the prizes and
rewards. The picturesque situation of the village and the fancifulness
of its rustic fetes would often attract the notice of casual visitors.
Among these, on one May-day, was a young officer whose regiment had been
recently quartered in the neighborhood. He was charmed with the native
taste that pervaded this village pageant, but, above all, with the
dawning loveliness of the queen of May. It was the village favorite who
was crowned with flowers, and blushing and smiling in all the beautiful
confusion of girlish diffidence and delight. The artlessness of rural
habits enabled him readily to make her acquaintance; he gradually won
his way into her intimacy, and paid his court to her in that unthinking
way in which young officers are too apt to trifle with rustic
simplicity.
There was nothing in his advances to startle or alarm. He never even
talked of love, but there are modes of making it more eloquent than
language, and which convey it subtilely and irresistibly to the heart.
The beam of the eye, the tone of voice, the thousand tendernesses
which emanate from every word and look and action,--these form the true
eloquence of love, and can always be felt and understood, but never
described. Can we wonder that they should readily win a heart young,
guileless, and susceptible? As to her, she loved almost unconsciously;
she scarcely inquired what was the growing passion that was absorbing
every thought and feeling, or what were to be its consequences. She,
indeed, looked not to the future. When present, his looks and words
occupied her whole attention; when absent, she thought but of what had
passed at their recent interview. She would wander with him through the
green lanes and rural scenes of the vicinity. He taught her to see new
beauties in Nature; he talked in the language of polite and cultivated
life, and breathed into her ear the witcheries of romance and poetry.
Perhaps there could not have been a passion between the sexes more pure
than this innocent girl’s. The gallant figure of her youthful admirer
and the splendor of his military attire might at first have charmed her
eye, but it was not these that had captivated her heart. Her attachment
had something in it of idolatry. She looked up to him as to a being of
a superior order. She felt in his society the enthusiasm of a mind
naturally delicate and poetical, and now first awakened to a keen
perception of the beautiful and grand. Of the sordid distinctions
of rank and fortune she thought nothing; it was the difference of
intellect, of demeanor, of manners, from those of the rustic society
to which she had been accustomed, that elevated him in her opinion. She
would listen to him with charmed ear and downcast look of mute delight,
and her cheek would mantle with enthusiasm; or if ever she ventured a
shy glance of timid admiration, it was as quickly withdrawn, and she
would sigh and blush at the idea of her comparative unworthiness.
Her lover was equally impassioned, but his passion was mingled with
feelings of a coarser nature. He had begun the connection in levity,
for he had often heard his brother-officers boast of their village
conquests, and thought some triumph of the kind necessary to his
reputation as a man of spirit. But he was too full of youthful fervor.
His heart had not yet been rendered sufficiently cold and selfish by a
wandering and a dissipated life: it caught fire from the very flame it
sought to kindle, and before he was aware of the nature of his situation
he became really in love.
What was he to do? There were the old obstacles which so incessantly
occur in these heedless attachments. His rank in life, the prejudices of
titled connections, his dependence upon a proud and unyielding father,
all forbade him to think of matrimony; but when he looked down upon
this innocent being, so tender and confiding, there was a purity in her
manners, a blamelessness in her life, and a beseeching modesty in her
looks that awed down every licentious feeling. In vain did he try to
fortify himself by a thousand heartless examples of men of fashion, and
to chill the glow of generous sentiment with that cold derisive levity
with which he had heard them talk of female virtue: whenever he came
into her presence she was still surrounded by that mysterious but
impassive charm of virgin purity in whose hallowed sphere no guilty
thought can live.
The sudden arrival of orders for the regiment to repair to the Continent
completed the confusion of his mind. He remained for a short time in a
state of the most painful irresolution; he hesitated to communicate the
tidings until the day for marching was at hand, when he gave her the
intelligence in the course of an evening ramble.
The idea of parting had never before occurred to her. It broke in at
once upon her dream of felicity; she looked upon it as a sudden and
insurmountable evil, and wept with the guileless simplicity of a child.
He drew her to his bosom and kissed the tears from her soft cheek; nor
did he meet with a repulse, for there are moments of mingled sorrow
and tenderness which hallow the caresses of affection. He was naturally
impetuous, and the sight of beauty apparently yielding in his arms, the
confidence of his power over her, and the dread of losing her forever
all conspired to overwhelm his better feelings: he ventured to propose
that she should leave her home and be the companion of his fortunes.
He was quite a novice in seduction, and blushed and faltered at his own
baseness; but so innocent of mind was his intended victim that she was
at first at a loss to comprehend his meaning, and why she should leave
her native village and the humble roof of her parents. When at last
the nature of his proposal flashed upon her pure mind, the effect was
withering. She did not weep; she did not break forth into reproach; she
said not a word, but she shrunk back aghast as from a viper, gave him a
look of anguish that pierced to his very soul, and, clasping her hands
in agony, fled, as if for refuge, to her father’s cottage.
The officer retired confounded, humiliated, and repentant. It is
uncertain what might have been the result of the conflict of his
feelings, had not his thoughts been diverted by the bustle of departure.
New scenes, new pleasures, and new companions soon dissipated his
self-reproach and stifled his tenderness; yet, amidst the stir of camps,
the revelries of garrisons, the array of armies, and even the din of
battles, his thoughts would sometimes steal back to the scenes of rural
quiet and village simplicity--the white cottage, the footpath along
the silver brook and up the hawthorn hedge, and the little village maid
loitering along it, leaning on his arm and listening to him with eyes
beaming with unconscious affection.
The shock which the poor girl had received in the destruction of all her
ideal world had indeed been cruel. Faintings and hysterics had at first
shaken her tender frame, and were succeeded by a settled and pining
melancholy. She had beheld from her window the march of the departing
troops. She had seen her faithless lover borne off, as if in triumph,
amidst the sound of drum and trumpet and the pomp of arms. She strained
a last aching gaze after him as the morning sun glittered about his
figure and his plume waved in the breeze; he passed away like a bright
vision from her sight, and left her all in darkness.
It would be trite to dwell on the particulars of her after story. It
was, like other tales of love, melancholy. She avoided society and
wandered out alone in the walks she had most frequented with her lover.
She sought, like the stricken deer, to weep in silence and loneliness
and brood over the barbed sorrow that rankled in her soul. Sometimes
she would be seen late of an evening sitting in the porch of the village
church, and the milk-maids, returning from the fields, would now and
then overhear her singing some plaintive ditty in the hawthorn walk. She
became fervent in her devotions at church, and as the old people saw her
approach, so wasted away, yet with a hectic gloom and that hallowed air
which melancholy diffuses round the form, they would make way for her as
for something spiritual, and looking after her, would shake their heads