And turning to seaward--space. The broad expanse of limitless sea, far
down, four hundred feet beneath--blue and placid as the firmament
overhead. Two or three brown specks--fishing boats lying with listless
sails--are the only signs of life upon its motionless waters. Not even
a gull is on the wing, and the wavelets have forgotten to break on the
shingly beach. The sun drives on his flaming chariot, slowly, slowly
towards the west, and the great cliffs of the bold coastline reflect his
lengthening rays in many a ruddy gleam--Hadden's Slide, and beyond,
Smugglers' Ladder, a black fissure, rending the whole face of the cliff
from brow to base. Then on the other side The Skegs, tranquil, and
forgetting to look grim and dour, as they start sleepily from their
setting of still, blue water--and above them the lofty headland where
looms the grey tower of Durnley Castle--a mouldering ruin. Farther and
farther recedes the outline of the rugged coast, in rocky bay and bold
promontory, with here a strip of shingle, there a line of
seaweed-covered reefs, till it loses itself in a faint confusion of
distant blue.
It is golden August now--rich, glowing, sensuous, lovely August--when
summer, as if suddenly awaking to a sense of opportunities neglected and
to the consciousness that her days are nearly numbered, would fain crowd
all her accumulated glories into the few yet remaining to her, pouring
out her choicest gifts with a lavish hand, as though anxious that we
should think kindly of her when she is no more, by virtue of her sudden
repentance and amendment at the eleventh hour.
Should you, while taking your walks abroad some fine summer's day,
chance, unexpectedly, and in a secluded spot, to light upon about six
foot of Young England taking it remarkably easy in a reclining attitude
among the soft and fragrant heather; and should you, moreover, descry
seated in very close juxtaposition to Young England aforesaid, a sweetly
pretty girl, occupied mainly in dividing the shelter of her sunshade
with the male and recumbent head, while listening attentively to words
of wisdom--or the reverse--emanating from the male lips; you would, we
trow, if of a kindly disposition, retire as you came, leaving the
idyllic pair undisturbed. If of a cynical turn you would, we trow,
chuckle, as you went, over one more instance of human fatuity. But
whatever your nature you would decide that affairs between this
particular couple had gone tolerably far.
Well--and so they had.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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