Peter Fleming sat by his study window, looking down into the quadrangle. It was early morning, so early that stars still glimmered round Saint Mary the Virgin's spire and over the Radcliffe Camera. Candles burnt dimly in the room at his back, and on the table, spotted with wine stains, lay the remains of supper. All the guests, but one, had gone, and he was only a voice, for the window curtains swallowed him up. To him Peter unburdened his soul; upon such an occasion, at such an hour as this, men are not afraid to speak of themselves.
Peter's college career was ended. Last night he had set the seal to it; this morning he was entering upon a new phase.
"You are not ambitious," said the voice—a mature voice, lacking the boyish note that rang so triumphantly off Peter's tongue, as though he were confident of conquering the world—"It's a pity; I always thought you were! With your honours it's monstrous, that you should turn school-master to your native vale, content with—how much?"
"'Passing rich on fourty pounds a year'—and a goosegate!"
"My dear fellow! it won't buy your books."
"I shall read the book of mother Earth."
"Sentimental rubbish! Is your mind quite made up?"
"Screwed to the sticking point."
The voice was silent for a moment, then continued:
"So you'll spend your days teaching the young to make pot-hooks! Are you going to succeed?"
"The truth is, I think a little reflection will be good for me."
"Reflection! What upon?"
"Life."
"Can't you reflect upon life without burying yourself first?"
"My friend, you have never been among the mountains."
"Conclusive! I haven't. I've only seen them from afar, and been chilled by them. But seriously, why didn't you accept that post in India? You were just the man for it—strong, honest, clever...."
"Don't catalogue my virtues, my good fellow."
"But why didn't you go?"
"I'm the only son of my mother."
"Hum ... a man's foes.... And if you return home now, what will you do eventually? I don't suppose village school-mastering will satisfy you long."
"Eventually! heaven knows. Perhaps I shall turn flute player up and down the countryside, go to all the fairs and markets and wakes and enjoy myself. Or I might become a potter, or a tinker, or make a modest income leading about a dancing bear. I've a predilection for the last."
"You're too versatile, Fleming. But I'm really troubled about you! That country of your's is a savage place—I make due apologies—nevertheless it's the truth. You'll get into a back-water of life; you'll be cut off from culture and learning—things you like, and long for, more than most,—I'm afraid that the lump will leaven you, not you the lump."
Peter put away his half-bantering tone, and became serious.
"I've had a good time here," he said. "If I weren't convinced that regret is a weed, which flourishes with the smallest encouragement, and chokes many and better things, I'd regret that it's over. Like Father Thames I've been mightily pleased to lap the stones of Oxford, and give no thought to the changes lower down, or the ultimate submergence in the salt sea."
"You're heir to a considerable patrimony, aren't you, Fleming?"
"I do not care about money," he replied without affectation.
"Lucky dog! that's a pinnacle of virtue to which I have never attained. Still money is an asset worth considering."
"My father has saved, I believe; how much, I don't know—he's given me all I ever asked for without stint. I can surely give him a year of my life in return and not grumble. Still, of course, India attracted me. But it would have broken his heart, his and my mother's, if I'd gone."
"Your folk wanted you to enter the Church, didn't they?—dedicated you, like Samuel, to the Lord, before you were born!"
"Yes."
Peter did not enlighten his friend further. He was not able to think without pain of his parents' grief, when he had told them that he could not fulfil their wishes. At first the miller had been very angry, had grudged the money he had spent on his son's education, had called it wasted, and said Peter was ungrateful, unfilial, and a fool. Then he had ended by imploring him, with tears, to think seriously before blighting his hopes. Peter's mother had kept silence, that was more distressing than his father's passion. When they found him obdurate, though greatly troubled because of their disappointment, they begged him to come home for a year, think it over, and see, if by reflection, he could not come to a happier decision. He had consented to their wishes, on condition that he should not be idle, but have the post of school-master, which the old pedagogue, who had held it for a lifetime, was now too old to fulfil any longer. This was easily arranged.
"You need not fear," he said breaking the silence, "I shall not drift and drift and at last get silted up in a stagnant pool of decaying promises. My time will come, and when it comes I shall be ready for it, and none the worse, I hope, for this interregnum."
"Heaven send it soon. I have no faith in your reflections. They may lead you anywhere. You're such a queer chap. Think of a man like you, looking forward, actually looking forward, to burying himself at the ends of the earth in the hey-day of his youth."
Peter laughed, a hopeful, manly laugh. He had no fears.
"You'll come and stay with me next summer, old fellow?" he said.
"Lord! do you expect to see me in that Hyperborean inaccessible, out-of-the-world vale of yours? Aren't the people savages, heathen, Goths? Didn't you once speak of a giantess, a sort of Polyphemus's mamma, that lived in a cave and herded sheep?"
"Oh, Barbara Lynn! Yes, I'll introduce you to Barbara Lynn. But let me tell you, you'll take off your hat to her as you would to a duchess."
"Look here, Fleming, don't make a fool of yourself."
"I assure you I have no intention of doing so."
"Well, you know what I mean. When you get up there among your mountains, and are locked in by ice and snow, you'll turn lonely. Nothing sucks the marrow out of a man's bones like loneliness. So take care. Don't marry a peasant lass."
"Most of my friends at home claim to be the sons and daughters of statesmen."
"Statesmen!"
"Yes, statesmen. It's the finest aristocracy in the world that lives in the little grey houses among the Westmorland fells. Most families can trace their pedigree back for more grandfathers than the greatest folk in the land. And they have coats of arms too, have them carved on their bread cupboards and meal kists—though you'll not find them at the College of Heralds."
The two men were quiet for a while; the dawn grew and the irregular buildings came out in blurred masses against the sky. There was not a spire or pinnacle, whose shape Peter could not clearly trace. They were drawn, as it were, upon his flesh, nay, engraved upon his bones so that the wasting tissues of age should not be able to fret their outlines. He had been marked indelibly by the finger-print of Oxford. To him had been given the gift of an historical imagination. He lived in hourly touch with the learning, the tragedies, the visions of the past. Hall and cloister, chapel and narrow stair, echoed with its voices.
On a summer's day his favourite haunt was the high gallery round Saint Mary the Virgin's spire, where he could look over the city from its centre, and delight his eyes and his mind with vision and picture. Town and gown would seem to swirl below him in the narrow streets; processions of monks and prelates would pass and repass; Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer would come and go, and face the flames yonder by Balliol College. Archbishop Laud might pause opposite to his great porch, which he had crowned with a statue of the Virgin and Child; the deformed figure of Alexander Pope might wander by from the tower of Stanton Harcourt, his mind stirring with the martial lines of Homer. Or Peter might see Matilda, when the snow lay thick on the ground, escaping from the castle, clad in white, while the armies of Stephen besieged it. Then he would look at the shady gardens, the great trees, the silver sheen of Cherwell or Isis, and remember that these had all been living in those far-off days, and were still living, and would continue to live, after he, and his generation had returned to dust.
From the wider view he would turn to the winged monkeys, the griffins, the pelicans of the roof below him, and he would hear again the chip, chip, of chisel and hammer in the thirteenth century, when the very stones he could lay his hands upon were first placed there.
Northward he would gaze with Saint Cuthbert, who stands in his niche, holding the head of King Oswald in his hand—and he would link his own wild Northern hills, where Barbara Lynn herded sheep, with this ancient city of civilization. Mayhap, as he thought of Barbara Lynn, his eyes would light upon Christ Church, and he would remember the saint whose shrine it guards, to whom Oxford owes her birth—Saint Frideswide, blue-eyed and yellow-haired, who might have worn a crown.
Thought is linked to thought, North to South, man to man, in endless succession. Since Adam there has not been one break in the chain; the whole of life is knitted up without a rent. Saint Frideswide and Barbara Lynn stretched their hands to each other through the dim years. Something of the same spirit lived in both, a spirit of self-mastery and aspiration though one refused a crown to keep herself unspotted from the world, the other, pure as any lily, should be crowned—so Timothy Hadwin had prophesied.
Peter did not despise the present because he lived so much in the past. He was no step-bairn of his glorious mother, but received a full inheritance from her hands. In the life about him he found inspiration and fellowship, without which he would have been shorn of his Samson locks. And he was a power among his fellow students. They might laugh at his childlike enthusiasms; but they found him a tower of strength when strength was needed; and under his outward sentimentality, they tapped a clear spring of common sense. He had a masculine love of independence; he could work with mind and muscle strained to their utmost; he could idle like an Oriental; but he rose at dawn, slept on a truckle bed, ate plain fare like an ascetic. Of his lowly birth he made no secret. Patronage ran off him like water off a duck's back. He was curiously insensible to differences of rank or breeding. In mental ability he stood second to few. That which was said of William Pitt might be said equally well of him—"He never seemed to learn, but simply to recollect."
Thus his academic years had passed; now he stood without the closed door. His friends were going forth to careers of interest or influence; he was drifting back to his Northern home to teach the village children how to make pot-hooks.
He had wrestled with himself for one bitter day, when the offer of a post, under the East India Company, had come from one, who had seen and understood his worth. A glorious prospect had opened out before him—golden hands had beckoned, the fair face of Fame had smiled. But he had turned away resolutely after one keen, longing glance, and forbade his eyes to stray after the vision again. Then his parents had begged him to come home, and though he could have found other spheres of work and influence congenial to him, he felt that the wishes of those who had given him birth, had struggled, denied themselves all, denied him nothing, had lived only for him, must be respected. Now he was not sorry, though at first he had been bitterly disappointed. He was fatalist enough to believe that no other course would bring him success, that the way would open out sooner or later; and wise enough to know that a period spent alone in reflection might be made of infinite benefit.
The sun was rising. Over the slender minarettes came a broad yellow beam that lighted up Saint Mary's spire, which soared into the blue air—a being of character and destiny, a maker and moulder of men, as well as a symbol of their deepest need.
Great buildings, like great minds, deepen and fix their personality with the passing years. The varied winds of life round their corners, refine their angles, and blend them into a harmonious whole. Great buildings, like great minds, endure a loneliness that is awful in its magnitude. It is the price which must be paid by those who would rise above the fretting trivialities of existence. And this is their compensation—they uplift, they inspire others: they are an eternal assurance of the wonder and sacredness of human life.
There is nothing great in the world that has not this spirit of loneliness. Mountains, piercing the clouds, stars glittering overhead, purple seas, pyramids, palaces, cathedrals—no man knows them with the familiarity that can breed contempt. They may rouse hatred and fear, fire and sword have been turned against them; but fingers have rarely been snapped in their faces, or shoulders shrugged under their shadow.
The church of Saint Mary the Virgin, at Oxford, with the sun on its spire moved Peter profoundly. It had influenced him all his college days, it was influencing him still. It was sending him back to his home with two strong guardians for his soul—Faith and Duty—to help him in the monotonous way. It was giving him over—as it were—to the mountains to be taught by them.
That which the mountains have to give, they give freely to those who seek it. David and Mahommed, simple herders of sheep, were not ashamed to learn at their knees. Buddha and John the Baptist sought them in manhood and returned to be teachers of men, and to change the current of thought through all the world.
Peter did not know what his future would be. He believed that he would learn about it among his native hills.
As the light grew, the man who was only a voice withdrew from the shadow of the window curtains, and went away. With an uncompromising sunbeam in the room to light up the supper dishes and soiled cloth, who could speak of those things, which for the most part, remain hidden in the heart?
But he thought of Peter as he climbed up the narrow winding stair to his own room. He believed that his friend would succeed, yet he regretted, nearly as deeply as Peter, that it had not been possible for him to accept the post in India. He would have been a great man, he thought; now he was likely to be simply a good man—a good man lacking distinction. Then he shrugged his shoulders with a laugh. The powers that be, no doubt, set the latter above the former in their book of human achievements.
Later in the day Peter left Oxford. As he turned his horse on the London road to look back upon the city, he looked with regret, it is true, regret because he was leaving the place where the happiest years of his life had been passed; but he was full of hope for the future. If fritillaries hung in the Christ Church meadows, blue geraniums grew in Boar Dale; if there were no spires and pinnacles at High Fold, there was the grey gable of the old mill-house, and the revolving wooden wheel. Though a great dome like the Radcliffe Camera did not rise out of Cringel Forest, Thundergay was more noble. He would not be lonely for there was Timothy Hadwin to sustain and inspire him.
He flicked his horse's reins and rode away. It was vain to stand and gaze. Deep in his heart was a thought to which he would not allow expression, but for some time he could not see distinctly or breathe with the ease of a man who is reviewing his past and looking forward to his future with an undivided mind.
Barbara sat on a stool in the mouth of the cave, reading aloud Pope's translation of the Iliad to Timothy Hadwin. The old man watched the girl narrowly, and felt his mind swing back through the ages to the days of Greek and Trojan.
Had Barbara lived then she would have been called the daughter of a god. Thetis of the Silver-foot ought to have been her mother, and some strong warrior king her father. She would have made a worthy sister to Achilles, a fit wife for Hector, tamer of horses. A wife! a wife! Timothy wondered. Would Barbara Lynn ever become the wife of some good, honest, plain man, and chain her mind to making and mending, the bearing of children, the ordinary toils of a married woman's life. He could not imagine her as such. She was in her fitting place as a herder of sheep upon the mountains, where sun and tempest were her familiar friends. Would she be happier if her lot brought her down from the clouds to the earth? Would not the four grey walls of a cottage choke her? He felt that in her nature was an intensity of feeling so great, that it was more likely to bring her sorrow than happiness.
The hour was noon of a summer's day. All around the heat shimmered upon rock and grass; the tarn lay white and motionless; Thundergay was wrapped in a haze; not a breath of air stirred the fern fronds.
Barbara's voice when she read had an exaltation, which it lacked in ordinary conversation. Her eyes, also, had lost their prevailing meditativeness, and shone with an inner light. She thrilled to the depths of her soul with the lives of the people about whom she read. Her ears were alert to catch the voices still echoing down the centuries.
Timothy Hadwin had told her that nothing which happened had an end. No thought ever thought, no action ever committed could cease. Just as a pebble, dropped into the sea, caused waves to spread all about it, which rolled on and on in ever widening circles till they communicated their movements to the edges of the world, so the accumulated energy of the past was still surging around, beating upon human brains, and influencing the latest born of man, though its origin had been swallowed up and forgotten in the darkness of antiquity.
Barbara believed this. Through books she reached direct contact with the past. She was a vessel into which the magic old wine could be poured, and it warmed her, filled her serene mind with passions and sympathies, unknown to it at other times.
Often through the week Barbara went to Timothy Hadwin's cottage, or he came to Ketel's Parlour to hear her read, and to impart some of his knowledge to her hungry soul. The brief hour was a treasure snatched from the crowded commonplaces of the day, and was valued accordingly.
Just now, Barbara was reading about the ransoming of Hector's body. Her voice thrilled, and her eyes grew luminous as she pictured the old king stealing across the plain by night with a wain filled with rich vestments, tripods, shining cauldrons, and a priceless bowl of gold to offer them in return for the dead body of his son. She could see the whole scene—the city of Troy with its battlements and towers vaguely outlined against the darkness, the dreadful plain of war, the long black boats of the Greeks, behind which sounded the ever-rolling sea. She saw Achilles' hut with its palisades, and pine bolt, that three strong men were wont to drive home at night, though Achilles could drive it home himself. And near by lay the body of Hector, face-downwards in the dust, as Achilles had left him after dragging him round the barrow of his dead friend at the dawn of day. Her eyes filled with tears for Hector, tamer of horses, Hector of the glancing helm, who strove against fate; but strove in vain, who was still beloved of Jove, and cared for in death by the god of the winged sandals, who closed his wounds, and kept his flesh from corruption.
But that which touched her most was Achilles' speech to the old king, when he came a suppliant to his hut in the night. The two urns standing by the throne of Jupiter, one full of curses, one full of blessings arrested her attention. Was it not true? Did the god not deal a mingled lot to most of his creatures, but gave them an enduring soul to bear it? The best and most beautiful things in the world were fraught with sorrow. The sunset often made her sad; equally sad sounded the singing of birds in spring; and love, the love of father, mother, husband, child, was saddest of all. This she had learnt among her friends of the dale.
She read on to the end of the book, where the mourners sat down to the sepulchral feast:
"And peaceful slept the mighty Hector's shade."
"And peaceful slept the mighty Hector's shade."
Then she closed the volume and looked at Timothy.
"Why do we sup it so eagerly?" she asked. "It's a poisoned cup to some, a bitter one to most, and sweet only to a few, a very few."
The old man knew that she referred to life.
"There was a preacher once," he said, "who thought it a burden too heavy to be borne. He believed in re-birth, countless re-births through generations, and the idea filled him with despair. His name was Gautama, but people called him Buddha, the Enlightened One, the Enlightener. He found a way of salvation and opened it to men."
"Was it a good way?"
"Judge for thyself, Barbara.The mind" he said, "approaching the eternal, has attained to the extinction of all desires?"
She mused for a moment upon the words.
"I don't like them," she replied, "If I had no desires I shouldn't be Barbara Lynn but a lump of clay."
"Then drink the cup. Buddha turned it upside down so that it could hold nothing. He emptied it of the sweetness as well as the bitterness. But thou, hold it up to be filled and drink."
"I shall have sorrow, Timothy?"
"Yes, child."
"Pain and disappointment."
"It is the lot of those who would dig to find the riches of their own nature."
"The soil might be poor, and suffering turn up nought but dead ashes."
"Tears fertilize it, Barbara."
"Do you think that's the reason we have so much to bear? Should we be like weakly flowers, things that would wither up with the heat of the sun, or the cold winds o' winter, if suffering did not set us to deep trenching?"
All the vehemence had died out of her voice now. Speech had sunk to the meditative tones of every day life.
"Contentment leads to shallowness," said the old man. "If you had been born in a great house instead of an upland farm, I doubt if you would have striven so hard to know and understand things that lie far out of your beaten track."
"I've got a bitter envy towards those who have chances denied to me."
"To some learning may be the goal; to you it may be the means to a higher goal."
"What dost mean, Timothy?"
"You're a better scholar at self-discipline than at your books, my lass."
Her face fell and she looked disappointed.
"Don't I do well? Will Peter think I have not improved?"
He patted her shoulder.
"You do very well indeed. I'm proud of you."
Her brow flushed with pleasure and she rose, dwarfing and bedimming the little man with her large frame and golden head.
"To-morrow you'll come to me at the cottage," he said.
She nodded, and they parted, he going down the dale, and she, leaping like a deer up the fellside, to the sheep pastures high upon Thundergay.
She paused on a rocky point and looked back. Below her lay Swirtle Tarn, and far, far off the shining waters of the great mere. She could see Greystones, no bigger than a pebble, lying under the cliffs, and the trees of Cringel Forest like a bundle of green wool fallen down between a split in the hills. Troy, and the battle-field, and the long black boats had vanished; but the land was mysterious with the epic of her own life.
She did not ask herself the reason for this emergence of her spirit into fuller existence. But she was aware of a veil which had been drawn over the arduous toils of the day, and the unveiling of beautiful things that made a new setting to her mind.
Peter Fleming was coming back. She often thought of Peter, and wondered what changes he would bring to the lonely life of the fells. But her imagination was nebulous; it pictured nothing concrete; she was content to let her mind hover round the sun-glistening vapour and leave the realisation for the unfolding of time.
Surprise, which gave rise to many wild rumours in the dale, had greeted the announcement that Peter Fleming was going to keep school. No one could think of an adequate reason for such a descent from the pinnacle of learning where he stood. Anyone could keep school, but few had the opportunity or ability to become a bishop. Dusty John said little, but Peter's mother lost her disappointment at the turn of affairs in having the school-room cleaned for her son, in seeing the moss scraped from the doorstep, and in herself hanging curtains in all the windows. Peter would live at home, and sleep in his attic under the mill-house roof, but the school-parlour was to be his study. There he could have silence, his books, and grow wise.
The village school of High Fold was a little stone building standing just within the fringe of Cringel Forest. The road ran by it, and the trees crowded so closely around, that they seemed to jostle each other in their eagerness to peer through the doors and windows. A kitchen, bed-chamber and parlour, and a long room fitted with desks and benches made up the interior, the walls of which were plastered and white-washed, and patterned by the ever-moving shadows of the encroaching trees. There the rustle of leaves was never silent. A cobbled path led from road to threshold. Just now, in the late summer, it was bordered on either side by a rank growth of hemlock.
Barbara had passed by it several times lately, and looked at it with speculative interest. She thought of a house as the shell of the mind that inhabited it. Greystones was the cipher of her great-grandmother's personality. The old woman had made it what it was, had given it an atmosphere of a wild, yet living, past. What would Peter make of the little green-bowered cot in Cringel Forest? She pondered upon Peter all through the day, which sped with winged feet.
In the evening Barbara went home. Swirtle Tarn smoked like a cauldron of boiling water as she threaded its lonely shore. The vapour swirled up in spiral form, and when it reached the light of the moon, appeared most strange and beautiful, like columns of white marble rising from a floor of polished blue stone. It was late, and Lucy must have gone to bed some time ago; yet she would linger for a while to enjoy the beauty of the night.
The air was very still; even the waterfalls were subdued; the birds were silent; the flocks were asleep; everything looked unsubstantial.
Barbara thought that she had never before felt quite the same sense of mystery in the night. Surely that which she looked upon was not the material form of the earth, but its spiritual body! Were not those white vapours its thoughts going up to the Eternal Being who gave them? All thoughts had the same origin. The universe was full of them, but only into the receptive mind could they come. There they worked magic, were humanized themselves, while they spiritualized the human being in whose brain they lodged. And having suffered this metamorphosis, they flowed back again, as the glistening vapours flowed back to their source.
Thus man and his Creator come into touch with each other. The Creator gives the thought, the creature returns it with its own interpretation thereof. So man is made spiritual, and God human.
Such ideas as these were the outcome of Barbara's conversations with Timothy. But she did not accept his many strange statements without question. She pondered them for days, coloured them with her own imagination, absorbed them at length into her own personality. This gave her beliefs the force of experience.
Barbara went home.
Lucy had gone to bed but she was not asleep. Nevertheless, she shut her eyes, and made no movement when her sister entered their room. She knew that Barbara was bending over her, that Barbara's face was full of compassion for her sorrow. But she was too weary with weeping to long for anything save silence, and a corner where she could indulge her tears unseen.
Barbara dreamed that night of the mingled cup, which Jove gave the children of men to drink. She tasted it herself, and Lucy drank it to the dregs. Peter, laughing as was his wont, took it from Jove's hand, and she saw his eyes grow wild, his hair white, his cheeks haggard like a ghost. Then the vapours of the tarn rose around, swirling, twirling up to the light of the moon, blotting out their faces. After this dream the night was a blank until the day dawned.
"Do you know when Peter will be back?" asked Barbara, as she milked the kye in the grey of early morning.
"Nay," replied Lucy: then she added passionately, "if I had a chance of leaving the dale I'd never come back to it, never again. I'd put the memory away like a bad dream. It's an ill place. It's under a ban. Peter's silly to set foot in it when the world is free for him to walk in."
"I'm glad Peter is coming home," said Barbara.
Lucy made no reply. So far she had not given much heed to Peter's return. Now the thought sent a touch of colour to her face.
Since Joel went away life had dragged for her. Drudgery had become her lot, unlightened by any pleasant experience, or made bearable by hope. She ate her bread with tears. She was glad when each day dawned, and thankful when each day died. She longed for change, any change that would break the monotony of her existence. She was weary of living, although so young. Yet she did not desire death. All that she wanted was to fall asleep, and waken up with the thread of her old life cut, and the possibility of a new life before her. To go on and on, year after year, always following the same humdrum path was a contingency, which she could not contemplate without despair. She had striven to put Joel's image out of her mind. He had written once, but his letter was superficial, and she believed that he had ceased to care for her. Regret that the past was past drove her to spend many a night in weeping. If she could, willingly she would have forgotten him; but she was unable to forget.
Some days later as Lucy was walking through Cringel Forest she saw Peter sitting on the trunk of a fallen tree near the school-house. He did not hear her approach, and she had been watching him with gradually brightening eyes for a few moments before he felt their influence. Then he rose with a laugh; but it was not as spontaneous and merry as it used to be.
"You're welcome back, Peter," said Lucy. "The dale is very dull without you."
"Is that so?" he replied, taking her hand, and looking affectionately into her face.
"Even great-granny smiled when she heard you were back. 'Tell him to come to Greystones,' she said, 'and bring his dancing bear with him. I want waking up.'"
"Well," he answered, with a faint note of sarcasm in his voice, "it's some compensation for giving up your heart's desire to fill the role of merry-andrew with satisfaction."
"Didn't you want to come back, Peter?"
"I was just thinking when I saw you, how duty, and affection and inclination get mixed up and twisted into a knot in a man's soul."
"In a woman's too," she replied.
He looked at her. There was a pensiveness in her face that attracted him. It had lost the inconsequence of childhood, and taken on the maturity of the woman. She was less vivacious, but there was a sympathetic glow in her sweet eyes. He saw all this at a glance; she was not like Barbara, who hid her feelings under a placid brow. Lucy lived and suffered in the eyes of the world. Peter had heard rumours of an attachment between her and Joel Hart, but as Joel had neither substance, nor—to a man's eyes—much character, he had paid little heed to them in the past. Now he wondered if Joel had treated her badly. Poor Lucy! she was far too good for him.
He walked with her through the forest.
"You know I'm going to keep school?" he said.
"Aye. The children are delighted. They think you will feed them on lollipops and give them no lessons to do. They call you Peter Piper, you know."
"Peter Piper is it! Soon it will be Peppery Peter. I'll go out to-morrow morning and cut birch-rods to put in pickle."
Lucy thought that in spite of his laugh he was sad. Her own sorrow had opened up her nature so that she could understand others in a way she had never been able to do before. Peter felt her sympathy. Though she said little, the knowledge of it was conveyed to him by those unspoken words, which are uttered and heard by the heart alone. He told her about the post in India which had been such a temptation to him; about his parents' disappointment because he would not enter the Church; and how he had consented to their wishes to come home for a time, so as to give the matter a longer consideration.
"I wish I could do what they want," he said, "especially as my dear old father is failing. Don't you think he's failing, Lucy? He is so much quieter and slower than he used to be!"
"Oh, your coming will cheer him up."
"You have great faith in that side of my nature."
"It's true, Peter, you've cheered me up a lot in the last half hour."
"By telling you my troubles?"
"I'm sorry," she said kindly. "I can understand, oh, believe me, I can understand how you felt when you gave up the thought of going to India. I've learnt a lot lately; I've had to give up things myself. Life isn't all roses at Greystones, you know!"
He looked down at her.
"We've both lost some of the sparkle out of our eyes, Lucy," he said. "It's the price men and women have to pay for the possession of their own souls."
Lucy sat on the bridge that spanned the beck just above the farm. The water had diminished to a thin stream, trickling between the stones; the pools were nearly empty; the moss on the rocks was yellow instead of green. All things looked parched; even the marshes were dry. The summer had been as nearly rainless as a summer can be among the dales and fells.
Lucy's eyes were fixed upon the low grey house before her. The weeds, which grew between its rough slates, were dead; the feathery grasses, that found congenial crannies in the walls, drooped; the garden—a narrow patch between the door and the beck—was already seared by the hand of autumn.
But that which Lucy's eyes beheld was not the Greystones of to-day, gilded by the westering sun, but the Greystones of the days to come, swept by the rain, beaten by winds, or wreathed round and round by the whirling white sheets of a snow-storm.
In a few weeks' time winter would be here; long, wild nights would follow short, wild days; the sun would be blotted out, or rise above the mountain rampart for a few hours, roll across the dale like a red wheel, and plunge down behind another mountain rampart amid lurid mists, or smoky clouds.
Her mind dwelt upon this picture with dread. She told herself that she could not pass another winter at Greystones, cooped up with the fearsome old woman, her great-grandmother. She would lose her wits if she did, or die; at any rate, lose her youth. Youth was not so much a matter of a few years as of happiness—the happy were always young, the sad old long before their time.
As Lucy sat on the bridge this fair autumn evening, herself as fair as a little rosy cloud floating overhead, although she was outwardly calm and unoccupied, she was listening, not with the best of grace, to two voices talking in her own soul. One had been trying to make itself heard for days, nay, weeks; but she would pay no heed to it. Now it refused to be stifled any longer.
"You are doing wrong," said this better self, but the other part of her vehemently protested innocence.
Ever since Peter Fleming had returned to High Fold Lucy's attitude towards life had changed. She had not been happier, but she had been less willing to suffer with resignation. She had looked facts in the face. She considered Joel's departure and the possibility of his ever returning; would she not be grey-haired by then? Fortunes were not made in a day. She weighed her own chances of escape from a life that she detested. There was only one. So she made up her mind that sorrow should not fall upon her like a blighting sickness, take the roses out of her cheeks, the light from her eyes, the hope from her heart. She refused to be thrust into darkness. If happiness was not bestowed upon her as a gift, she would go out and seek it.
Yet she was ill at ease—beset by fears, troubled by conscience.
She rose from her seat upon the bridge and looked down the dale to Forest Hall. Her eyes had lost their sweetness and were hard, her lips were compressed.
She was passionately wishing that Joel had not gone away, but stayed at home and made the best of his luck. But as he had gone, why had he not been kinder? The summer was nearly over, winter was at hand, and he had only written once—a letter so cold that it might have been read from the housetops, and even the rooks flying home would have got as much satisfaction out of it as she. A loving word from him would have brought summer back to her. She would have made shift to put up with her present existence. She would have waited till fortune had smiled upon him. If it had kept a sullen face, she would have given him cheer and hope. But he had forgotten her. She told herself this again and again making a reason out of it for her own actions. She would forget, too, and find someone else to spend her affection upon.
She had determined one thing—she would remain no longer than she must at Greystones. She hated it. She hated the loneliness, the crags that overhung the house, the snow, and the winds, and the rain. She hated her great-grandmother. So hardened had she become by that which she had suffered that she was not afraid to express her real feelings to herself. She would cease to fetch and carry for the old woman, she would refuse to be a drudge. She would be happy before she was too old to enjoy happiness.
She turned away from gazing down the dale as though she had fixed her determination, but her better self would not let her be. It insisted that happiness was a state of the soul and she could not win it until hers was at rest.
"I am doing no wrong," she argued, "nothing that hundreds of women do not do. I am lonely, I seek companionship. I am sad, I seek happiness. I want sympathy, so I give it."
But, in spite of her protestations, her endeavour to throw a cloak over the real meaning of her actions, she was conscious of a certain lowering of her ideals. She was no longer the innocent girl she had been a few months ago.
"You are playing a game to win a man's heart," said her better self. "You are wiling him by arts and ways that only a woman can use. You know that men are attracted, like children, by that which is beautiful and looks good, so you lay yourself out to please his eyes, and win his love."
Lucy moved restlessly from one side of the bridge to the other, as though by such means she could get away from the troublesome voice.
Was it true? she asked herself. Was she acting a part? She liked Peter very much; she felt safe with him; she meant to marry him if it lay in her power to do so; but did she love him? Was she not still in love with Joel? In spite of all that had happened his features and form were constantly in her mind's eye. He influenced her still; she could not shake off the fascination that he had exerted over her from the beginning of their courtship. Lucy rose. The communion of herself with herself had brought her no satisfaction.
Listlessly she wandered down the dale. She wanted to do that which was right, but many conflicting emotions swayed her. Hurt affection, fear of the future, wish for change, out-weighed other and better desires. She strolled on. The sun had set, but a mellow light filled the aisles of Cringel Forest. Without conscious direction her feet took her to the dell, where Joel and she had spent many a twilight hour. She peered in, standing on the banks above. How cool and green it looked! The holly screen was coralled with berries, the mosses were luxuriant, the pool gleamed like a dark jewel. Then the past rushed back upon her—the months of separation shrivelled up; it seemed to be but yesterday that she had met Joel there.
Life came to a standstill. She did not cry out, or fling herself upon the ground, or flee from the haunted spot. She remained peering through the bushes, her eyes set wide, and her lids rigid. She was seeing a vision of Joel Hart in her mind's eye. The place was full of him. The pool had many a time reflected his features, he used to sit upon that stone, lean against yonder tree. The harebells were in bloom when he and she were last here—still two or three frail flowers hung fading upon their stems.
A footstep started her. So vivid was her impression of his presence, that she half expected to hear him call, or see him rise up out of the shadows. The blood surged through her veins, her heart beat loudly, her breath came hurriedly.
But it was only Peter Fleming that burst through the haunted silence—plain-featured Peter Fleming and his big brown bear. She drew further among the bushes, not wishing to be seen. The beast lumbered down to the pool, splashed about in it, greatly to the delight of its master; and, having churned up the mud, robbed the place of its magic, and exorcised the vision, man and brute went away.
Lucy returned to Greystones as troubled as she had left it.
The first few weeks after Peter's return home had been spent by him in schooling his heart to accept his present life cheerfully. He never showed a desponding frame of mind to any one but Lucy, and only to her, because she had—as it were—enticed him into unusual confidences by her fair face and gentle sympathy. But his was not a nature to whine over that which it could not have, and before long he got back—outwardly, at any rate—his jovial temper. The villagers found him the same gay fellow, ready to wrestle with them on the green when the day's work was done; the lads and lasses teased him about his lap dog, Big Ben, the bear; the children were more certain than ever that lollipops would be their daily fare, when school began after the harvest was over.
Peter passed a few days cutting down the trees round the school-cottage. He made a clearing where the sun could look through, and he dug a flower-bed under the window. Soon after day-break each morning, he left the mill, swung up the village street past the church and entered the forest. He spent many hours there, his eyes and ears alert to all the wondrous life going on in the sweet green shade. Hares and rabbits, water-rats and weasels scurried away before his approaching footsteps, then stopped to look at him from a fern, or a tree-trunk, or a moss-grown stone. Squirrels leaped among the boughs overhead, and threw empty nuts down, and birds, less shy, and more mercenary, scavenged in the drifts of last year's leaves, not heeding him at all. Often he passed many hours with Timothy Hadwin, discoursing of things, that lie at the roots of human development. He laughingly said that he was always ready for an excuse to fling himself upon the warm, sweet-smelling earth, and look at the sky, which hung over the tree-tops like a blue china cup. But he was not idle. He read books of Theology and books on Philosophy in the little white-washed parlour of the school-house. He read sincerely, even with ardour, but ever came to the same conclusion that the priesthood was not his vocation.
Made restless and impatient by unavailing study, he at length flung his books aside, turned to the free breezy life of the fells, and went fishing. Swirtle Tarn, and all the mountain streams, saw his grey clad figure through the dusks of early morning and night. Neither rain nor heat could keep him at home. He was out from sunrise to sunset, his skin burnt brown as an Autumn leaf, and his hair bleached to the colour of wind-blown bent.
Sometimes he saw Barbara, her figure outlined against the sky; or he spied her climbing like a goat up the gaunt face of Thundergay; or he caught the light glancing from her reaping hook as she cut bracken for the cows' winter bedding; and once, when the sun was level with the hills, a giant shadow of horse and woman fell upon him, and she passed close by, leading home the peats.
Peter did not often have speech with Barbara. He did not seek her, for his mind was preoccupied with his own concerns, and she did not cross his path. He saw Lucy much oftener, but he was too open and honest to imagine that their frequent meetings were planned by the brain that lay behind such blue and innocent eyes.
Thus the summer died upon the hills.
Harvesting, stacking turf, and bringing sheep from the highest pastures made the "back end" busy for the fell folk. A spirit of good fellowship inspired them, and they helped each other, gathering first at this farm, then at that, toiling through the heat of the day and feasting at night; dancing the harvest moon up into the sky, or out of it—as the case might be. No lack of willing workers came to Greystones, and Mistress Lynn indulged her pent-up generosity on this occasion, providing liberal ale, bread, and cheese for her guests.
On the night of the kern supper, the harvesters brought home the kern baby in triumph to Greystones. The kern baby was made of the last cut of corn, platted into some semblance of the human figure, its head stuffed with a red apple. They hung it up on the kitchen wall, near the four-poster, where it would remain until the end of the year, when the best cow would get the corn and Jan Straw the apple.
For half a century the kern apple had been Jan's meed on Christmas morning. He took it to the kirk-garth, and laid it on the grave of "her o' the white fingers." During the night some wild creature came out of the forest and ate it up, but he never knew, for the churchyard was too holy a place to be disturbed by many pilgrimages. He had an idea that the apples were all garnered up somewhere, watched over by an angel, and that he would find them again, hereafter, in a golden heap.
The weather continued summerlike; the bracken grew taller and taller in the moister places of the dale until it stood as high as Lucy's shoulder.
"We'll have to pay for this by and by," said Mistress Lynn.
One morning a cloud hung over Thundergay. The next day the sky was overcast, the air oppressive, and faint thunder rolled, like the booming of great waves on a distant shore.
"Didst ever have weather like this before?" asked Barbara.
"Aye, long ago." The old woman laid down her knitting needles and told the story of that time, with the awe of one who had heard the flocks calling upon the hills night and day for water—a sound which lingers in human ears for ever.
"The ground cracked like an overbaked pot," she said. "The becks ran dry and Swirtle Tarn shrank till it was little better than a farm-yard puddle."
Barbara went out. She took the cattle track to the cave where she and the hind gathered the sheep from Thundergay. All through the hot oppressive hours they toiled, and by the afternoon the flocks were huddled upon the slopes above Swirtle Tarn, watching with frightened eyes the flashes of light, that lit up the gathering darkness. Then the hind left her to drive in the cattle.
Barbara was the only human being in that gloomy place. And she was the only living thing that was not afraid. The moor fowl called restlessly to each other, flew hither and thither, or hid themselves among the ling. A hare, crossing a strip of fern-clad slope, raised its head to sniff suspiciously, when it shot away, swift as an arrow.
At Greystones Lucy sat by the open door spinning. She dreaded a thunderstorm as something supernatural. She would rather have been with Barbara at Ketel's Parlour, than alone, here, with the old woman.
She lifted her eyes again and again to look at the mountain round which the blackest clouds were gathered. It seemed to draw nearer, until it stood like a black blot just beyond the barn. Then she got up and shut the door.
Mistress Lynn watched the girl with keen eyes. She had noticed that Lucy's face of late had regained its colour. But there was a hard expression upon it, and her speech came slower and less gaily than of old. The old woman knew the meaning of it. She could see into Lucy's mind almost as easily as if it were laid open for her inspection.
The daylight struggled and died; a grey unearthly gloom came on all things, a stillness as of death.
"Are you frightened, Lucy?" asked Mistress Lynn.
"Maybe it's the last day," replied the girl.
The old woman's face was ghastly as the face of a corpse in the strange light which filtered through the windows. The kitchen seemed to be swallowed up by a weird sepulchral vapour.
She laughed.
"Get down on thy knees, Lucy Lynn," she said ironically, "get to thy knees and pray for a sinful old woman and an innocent lass. Don't forget Peter Fleming forbye. I misgive me he'll come in for a wetting if he doesn't tie wings to his heels. He went up the fells a few hours ago."
"Peter! when? I didn't see him."
"Why shouldsta? He came to see me, and you were in the dairy."
Lucy seized the poker to stir the peats; it was heavy bar of iron and clanged like a bell when she knocked it in her nervousness and irritation against the stone jambs of the fireplace. Then she jumped up and looked in at the cow-house, where the hind was just stalling the cattle. There she saw Jan Straw, sitting with his hands on his knees, staring into vacancy. He did not seem to see her, but he laughed like a mindless creature at every rumble of distant thunder.
"It's going to be a fearful storm, Tom," she said to the hind.
"A regular smasher!" he replied.
"You didn't see anyone coming down the fellside, did you, when you were gathering the kye?"
"Nay, never a soul. Every man o' sense has got his flocks into shelter by now."
Lucy returned to the kitchen.
"Jan Straw's by with himself," she said.
Her great-grandmother continued to knit composedly.
"Look up the dale, and see if you can spy Peter," she said with a wicked gleam in her eyes.
"He's old enough to look after himself," replied the girl tartly.
"Then look up the dale and see if the storm has broken on Thundergay. I'm wondering about Barbara."
Lucy did as she was bid. The sky was shrouded by a heavy pall, through which the sun still shone as through smoked glass. But the mountain had disappeared. Now and then it flashed into sight as the lightning played round it, then darkness swallowed it up.
Meanwhile Barbara was standing at the mouth of the cave. She looked a very solitary being in the midst of that tremendous gathering of the tempest. The forces which nature had wakened were so overpowering and mysterious, they could have swept her away, if she had exposed herself to them, like a withered leaf. Everything around her was magnified by the lightning—the cliffs were towers, the bushes distorted creatures, the rocks—fragments from the heights above, which former storms had thrown about like pebbles—loomed in the darkness as big as elephants or those prehistoric beasts, the mammoths that Timothy Hadwin had told her about. Behind her the mouth of the cave yawned like a black mouth waiting to swallow her up. The dogs crept close to her side, the sheep, too, seemed to be reassured by her presence. Could they have spoken they might have uttered the words said by the Red-skins to Montcalm:
"It is when we look into your eyes that we see the greatness of the pinetree and the fire of the eagle."
The lightning played off its fire-works against the inky clouds; the thunder crashed like the wheels of a great car hurtling down Thundergay. The dales and ravines rolled and reverberated. Every pinnacle spat fire, every cliff gave back the sound in twofold, threefold, even sevenfold echoes.
Still Barbara stood at the mouth of the cave and watched. She had not seen a storm like this before—though thunderstorms were common occurrences among the fells. She thought it was like the convulsion which must have attended the making of the earth. She could imagine that a god was moving within the cloud, striking upon his anvil with a great hammer, and forging bands for a new world.
The lightning and thunder ceased. The quietness was more oppressive than the noise had been. A waterfall rang startlingly clear like a call. The darkness increased with the silence. All the nearer objects sank into a thick atmosphere.
Then came the rain. It did not fall in drops, but in a flood. It drummed upon the grass and rocks; it sounded like an army coming down the mountain side and passing along the dale. Every well-head, that had been dry for weeks, broke into clamouring; Thundergay gushed with fountains; the fountains gathered; they rushed along like mad horses.
The cow-house was dim, like night, when a cloudy moon is shining, although the clock had just struck four. Through a small window the grey light stole and vaguely lit up the horned heads of the cattle. It showed Jan Straw sitting in a corner.
Rain beat on the roof like the trampling of heavy feet; it fell in a sheet from the eaves, and spouted like a waterfall from the drip-stone; the noise of the beck increased until it became a roar.
With a heave and a snort Cushy, Barbara's favourite cow, got up. She feared! she did not know what she feared; but perhaps in those days when the earth was new-made and cataclysms were frequent occurrences, her forbears had learnt to dread the sounds of a rising flood. She stirred the other beasts into restlessness, although they had borne the thunder and lightning with timid resignation.
Jan Straw sat motionless. He had stopped muttering, and his eyes were half-closed. His hands were cold as ice. The flame of life was burning very low. To him had come a presentiment that death was on his way to put it out. Once he had seen a play acted upon the village green in which Death came by with all his bones a-jangling, and the memory of it had not faded. His intellect was too beclouded to fear. The dogged stolidity, that had made him an unrepining drudge through manhood to old age, now made him a placid watcher for the fleshless form that would extinguish his little candle.
Lucy heard the trampling and snorting of the beasts, and she came to the cow-house door. Peter Fleming was with her, for he had reached Greystones just in time to take shelter there. The sudden change from the brightly lit kitchen, where the candles were burning, to the dimness of this place at first bewildered him; he could not distinguish anything clearly—the cattle looked like ungainly shadows, and their horns like the bare and twisted branches of trees. Then one by one the forms took shape, and his eyes fell upon the old man.
"Hulloa," he cried, laying his hand on Jan's bent shoulder, "What ho, Jan! how goes thyself? Why! I believe you've been asleep in the midst of all this racket. It's loud enough to waken the dead."
The old man roused himself from his lethargy, gathered his scattered wits, and looked at the countenance bending over him for some moments without replying.
At last he asked in a voice that trembled away into silence:
"Will it waken her?"
Peter knew of whom he was thinking.
"Nay," he said kindly, "her bed is a bed of peace."
The grey face fell, and the young man saw that he had not anticipated Jan's desire.
"I shouldn't wonder," he replied, "if she doesn't hear it in her sleep, and dream of you."
"I thought as how she might waken and be watching," answered Jan.
"M'appen she is," Lucy spoke with tenderness, for she was fond of the old man. "She'll certainly be looking out for thee, Jan. She'll never sleep so heavily but she'll hear thy step when thee goes."
"I's going soon."
His head sunk upon his breast; he was old, forlorn and weary.
"Nay, Jan, nay," said Lucy, "you mustn't leave us yet. Barbara and me. We'd be so lonesome sitting by the winter fire, wanting thy face that's smiled on us ever since we were born."
"We's o' comers and gangers," he replied. "There's new faces coming to take the place of the old ones. I's ganging. He'll soon pass by."
"Who, Jan?"
"Him with the reaping-hook."
Lucy laughed his words away, though she shivered.
"It's a coach and six white horses that'll come for thee, Jan. Thee shall ride on velvet cushions, the horses will be shod with gold, and the bits will be made of silver."
"Aye, that's the manner of it," said Peter cheerfully.
"Six white horses and a coach," repeated the old man, then he shook his head. "Coaches is for gentry folk. I'll have to go away with him, the man of the bare bones. He's like me the way he gets his bread, reaping the harvest from the fields, and no' finding mickle fatness in it nouther."
"Come to the fire," said Peter. "You're cold here, come and get warm."
He helped Jan to his feet, and supported the tottering footsteps to the kitchen, where the old man sank into his seat in the ingle-cheek.
The rain was still clattering overhead, and sweeping down the windows in a solid sheet of water, so that nothing could be seen through the glass. Peter went to the door, and looked out.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "the beck has wakened up with a vengeance."
"It won't sweep away the house, will it?" asked Lucy. She felt much relieved to have Peter by her side, and even dared to cast her eyes upon the angry stream, swirling under the garden wall.
Her great-grandmother laughed.
"Lucy's a timid lass," she said. "Before you came she thought it was the last day, but I knew the good God was a better landlord than that, and would want more market out o' his green fields than he's gotten so far, before he burnt them into ashes. Now she's afraid Greystones will fall! Hoots-toots, bairn. Greystones will stand as long as there's a Lynn to care for it. I've seen many a worser storm than this."
The old woman talked on. When her mind got back to bygone days she was garrulous. Some of her stories offended the fastidious tastes of Lucy, but Peter liked them. Strange customs and coarser habits did not blind him to the fact that life and its passions are much the same in every age, only wearing a different garb.
Lucy and Peter still stood, one at each side of the doorway, looking out. The beck raced below them, spluttering and foaming, and they could hear the grinding of rocks under its feet. It rose rapidly higher. Even as they watched it snatched at a bush on the opposite bank, twisted it as a child might twist a blade of grass, rooted it up, and swept it away.
"Barbara will get wet!" said Lucy. "She's at Ketel's Parlour. There's a crack in the roof, and the rain sometimes gets in."
Peter cast a glance at the still teeming clouds. He had not seen Barbara for a long time, and he was half inclined to venture forth, make his way up the dale, through a hundred spouting waterfalls, and share her lonely vigil.
Lucy divined his thoughts. She shut the door hastily and drew him to a seat.
"We'll have tea; you'd like tea, Peter? And great-granny is dying for a cup," she said. Then she whispered so that the old woman could not hear: "I'm so thankful you came—I really was frightened."
Peter allowed himself to be ruled by her, making only a laughing protest. The prospect outside was not enticing, and the prospect within was comfortable and bright.
Lucy stepped lightly about her duties, spreading the table with clap-cakes, butter and honey. Peter's presence excited her; her eyes sparkled; her movements were lively. She dulled her ears to the roar of the torrent, and the rushing of the rain—though both were deafening.
Jan Straw wakened from the sleep into which the kindly warmth of the kitchen had thrown him, and followed her with a steady gaze. He thought that she was a being between an angel and a fairy. Her eyes were blue like flowers with the morning dew in them, her skin was soft and white as the breast feathers of a swan, her cheeks were like roses. He had a confused remembrance of a story, still told in the dale, about the man who had seen the last of the fairies. He had disturbed them at their play, and they had run up a ladder into a cloud, shutting a door after them. No one ever saw them again among the tarns and meres, dancing by moonlight. "Her o' the white fingers" had, also, gone up into a cloud, and been seen no more. But she was an angel. Looking at Lucy he forgot the man with the reaping hook.
Lucy masked the tea, and called Jan to the table. They tried to forget that awesome sound of rushing water outside. Mistress Lynn could be a jovial companion when she chose, and she liked to cross wits with Peter. He dared to contradict her—such a rare experience she appreciated, for it was done good-humouredly. The old woman had a purpose in unbending to him. She wanted him to marry Lucy.
She wanted it for several reasons—because she liked him and knew he was no fortune-hunter, because she wished to see Lucy settled before Joel came back—she had other plans for Joel—because she was sorry for the girl's disappointment: she knew what blighted hopes felt like when the heart was young. Though she would not have scrupled to add disappointment to disappointment had it suited her purpose, in this case she was at one with her great-grand-daughter, and determined to bring about that which they both desired.
When tea was finished Peter bent over Lucy's chair to read her cup.
"Health and wealth and happiness," he said.
"I've heard it many times," said she, with a light laugh. "I've got the first, and dreamed of the last, but I've still to catch a glint of the other. Read Jan's," she handed him the old man's mug. "Perhaps you'll find something worth having there."
"Nowt but the rheumatics has ever come out o' my cup," said Jan gravely.
"But I see six white horses and a coach," replied Peter.
"Do 'ee now?" Jan put his finger into the empty mug and sorted the tea-leaves one by one, counting them aloud. "So there be," he said.
Lucy began to wash up the dishes, childishly pleased to bare her round, white arms, when there was someone to see them.
Throughout the meal, which had been a merry one, they had tacitly ignored the rain, although it was still coming down—as they say in the dales—whole watter. Now they were suddenly silent. But on the slates it clattered, on the walls it slashed, on the ground it spluttered, through the air it fell hissing. Over and above it the beck thundered.
Mistress Lynn sat upright in her bed, and listened with an expression of awe upon her grim old countenance; Lucy drew nearer to Peter, her eyes wide and panic-stricken; Jan Straw left the ingle.
"Hark!" said the old woman.
Peter went to the door and looked out.
Down the bed of the stream came a foaming, boiling cataract. Seen through the gloom it was suggestive of flying, riderless horses, tossing their manes in the air, and chafing at their bits.
"Six white horses and a coach," muttered Jan, stumbling bare-headed into the rain.
"Come back," cried Lucy.
"Come back," cried Peter.
"Jan, Jan, you old fool," said Mistress Lynn, leaning out from her great bed, and peering across the candle-lit room to the darkness framed by the open door.
But Jan was gone. The garden wall fell and the water rolled up to the doorstep, where it seemed to pause before slowly withdrawing. It did not go back alone. Lucy, regardless of her own safety, impulsive to recklessness where her affections were concerned, followed it, and thinking that she saw Jan but a few steps ahead, ran forward.
The ground gave way under her feet, and the beck had its grip on her in a moment.
The incident happened so swiftly that Peter was already struggling with the flood for the possession of the girl before he realised what had taken place. When he tried to recall it afterwards he could remember nothing save that his hand, by its own sense and cunning, had snatched at her frock as she was being swept past him. He dragged her from the water, and carried her into the house, laying her drenched form down before the fire. She was not unconscious, and stumbled to her feet, crying:
"Jan, save Jan, Peter!"
She would have followed him out again into the slashing rain, but Mistress Lynn called her back peremptorily.
The old woman was terribly upset. She had had to lie in the four-poster and know that something dreadful was taking place outside. She had watched Jan rush out, then Lucy, then Peter; but she had heard nothing save the roar of waters, and seen nothing save a faint white gleam as they foamed by. Now she strove for composure, and wiped the tears that had come unbidden upon her cheeks.
"Go and fettle thyself," she said to the shivering girl. "Then you'll be fit to look after the old man if he needs looking after any more."
Peter raced the beck through the copse where it was ploughing among the tree-trunks; he sought along the basin by the falls, but he could not find a trace of Jan Straw. He shouted, but he could not hear his own voice among the roaring of the waters, much less a cry for help were it uttered. He followed the flood through Cringel Forest to the village, where he told what had happened. Then, knowing that there was no chance now of finding the old man alive, if there had ever been a chance, he retraced his steps to Greystones.
He found Lucy kneeling before the fire drying her hair. A sob broke from her when he returned alone for she had hoped against hope.
"You couldn't find him?" she said.
He shook his head sorrowfully.
"Poor old Jan is gone," he replied.
Lucy covered her face with her hands, but the old woman leaned back upon her pillows, a red patch on each cheek.
"Gone!" she said, "gone! Jan Straw gone! The last link with my ain generation." She was silent, seeing the years which he had kept alive for her, fading away. "So Jan's gone, the old, old, creature, but younger than me by twenty winters. Poor Jan."
Then she turned upon Lucy. She must find some vent for the choking emotion of age.
"This o' comes of your fairy-tales," she said. "Six white horses and a coach! You'd better have left him sitting in the cow-house, waiting for the man with the reaping-hook."
"Don't blame me," cried the girl. "I would have saved him if I could."
"You'd have drownded yourself to no purpose. What could a lass like you do when the beck's in spate? It would have twisted you up like a windle-straw."
Lucy turned to Peter with entreaty in her eyes.
He took her hand and stroked it.
"I think you were very brave," he said.
He saw again the water with its tigerish lips, the crunching rocks, the broken body of a sheep tossing among the foam; he looked at the girl, at her tearful eyes, her damp hair hanging in jetty rings round her face; she seemed to be but a child, a forlorn, unhappy child, seeking for sympathy.
Hardly realizing what he did he bent down and kissed her.
"Old Jan was glad to go, Lucy," he said. "You must remember that, and not grieve for him. He had a long life and a lonely one. But he is now walking beside still waters with her o' the white hands."
Night came, the rain ceased, and the moon reaped the stars with a golden sickle. The sky was calm, but the fells and dales were still roaring with the sound of many waters, and streaking the darkness with silver threads. Peter went home, stirred to the depths of his being.
The next afternoon, when the beck had subsided to its normal flow, Jan Straw's body was found in a pool and taken to Greystones. All the village, and shepherds from distant cots among the hills, were bidden to the funeral. Lucy and Barbara had no time for tears. Mistress Lynn would not have it said that she had not shown honour to her old servant, and, two days before the burial, the sisters were busy from dawn to dark baking arval cakes to be given to the guests. These little cakes were made of wheaten meal, and taken piously home, to be eaten in remembrance of the dead.
The ceremony was a solemn one in the mill-house. The old man, Peter's father, ate the arval cake with one hand over his eyes, and his figure bent as though in prayer. Peter's mother wept behind her handkerchief, and nibbled a crumb of it, saying softly: