The knowledge that she was Peter's wife angered him, but did not make him pause to restrain his feelings.
Joel's was an illogical mind—illogical by nature as well as training. He had never been able to see the true relation of events to one another, or follow a straight course without deviating from it down some byway. He strayed from the path, led by fancies instead of principles; rarely did he consult reason, or entertain reflection, or employ himself by taking a survey of the land through which he was travelling. He fell into morasses, which foresight would have shown him; he came to barriers which he could not climb, though the experience of wise men had set up a sign-post, pointing out the way, but he would not stop to read it; he reached a desert, where no water was, because he got tired of following the pilgrim's track. Yet he had always meant to do right; his failures had caused him regret.
When he brought Lucy to the dell, he stood for a moment gazing at her with a searching look. She was beautiful and desirable. But she seemed to be cold. He would stir her heart's depths and bring forgotten things to the surface. He would make tumult where there was calm.
"Lucy," he said, "why didn't you wait for me?"
"Don't let us rake up the past," she replied, her limbs beginning to tremble, for she remembered that she was Peter's wife. "There's nought to be got but ashes."
He did not heed her.
"Listen," he said, bringing his head to a level with hers; "listen and I'll tell you what life has been to me since we last met in this place. When I went into the wilderness I took with me the thought of you. I knew that I had done you wrong, but it was done without intention, and I said to myself, she will forgive, for she loves me. So I worked hard—men have to work hard out yonder, when they go seeking their fortunes. I suffered hunger and thirst, but counted it sweet for your sake. I sweated in the sun and shivered in the snow for your sake. There's nothing a man can do for the woman he loves, save die for her, that I haven't done for you."
He drew her nearer to him, and she did not resist. She had never been able to resist the fascination of this man, who looked at her with his handsome face aglow with a passion, that Peter had never shown.
"The first bit of gold I found," he continued, "I kept to make your wedding-ring. I tied it up in a handkerchief, and wore it over my heart day and night. I kept it even when I was down in my luck. But it reminded me of you, you, among the fells and dales of the home-country, waiting and longing for me. It was a foolish dream, I know. Then fortune smiled. Life looked all rose-colour, till one day I got your letter. If ever a man had climbed high with hopes, Lucy, I was that man, and if ever a man came sliding down at one blow, I was that man."
Lucy's self-possession began to give way. She might have justified her own actions, might have poured resentment and wrath upon him. She did none of these things.
"Oh, Joel," she cried, "life is very hard and bitter. But we must make the best of it."
She made an effort to go away, before her feelings betrayed her into any deeper revelations than she had a right to make. But he caught and kissed her. She struggled to free herself, but his arms were like steel bands. If Peter had ever kissed her thus she might have become his as truly in heart as she was in name. But Peter's kisses, though kind, did not thrill her. He never swept her off her feet in the flood of an overmastering emotion. He was always quiet and self-controlled, while she loved to feel as though a stormy sea were beating upon her bosom. She did not think that his love might be more enduring than that which could rise like a tempest, but as suddenly fall again.
For Joel and Lucy, just now, five years were blotted out, five years of separation and misunderstanding. Duty, too, was swept into oblivion by their reckless hands. Heedlessly they set out in an unsound boat upon a dangerous sea, and forgot the depths below, the yawning lips of the gulf which would suck them down sooner or later to everlasting regret.
"You are mine, Lucy," whispered Joel, "you are mine. I always knew you were."
For a few minutes she lay soothed within the shelter of his arms. Then she tore herself away. Without a word, but with a scared face, she fled back through the forest to her home. There she flung herself down by a chair and wept.
She remembered that her great-grandmother would be expecting her, but she dared not confront those eagle eyes in her present state of mind.
The world had taken on a darker hue since she had gone out but a little while ago. Yesterday was grey, but it had passed serenely. To-day clouds were rolling up, and she heard the mutter of approaching thunder.
Where was peace, that she might find it? Only in resignation. Where was happiness, that she might snatch at it? Only in devotion to duty. Where could she turn for safety? She felt that she was swinging over an abyss. There was safety with Peter. But resignation was a hard bed. Duty had lost its savour. And she was afraid of Peter now, for she knew that she had wronged him.
Joel remained in the dell for a while after Lucy had left him. His idyll had become a tragedy. His vision was defiled. He wondered if he should go away now, and never return. He wanted to keep Lucy as he had always thought of her—sweet, pure, dream-like. He could not do that and have her. He meant to have her. He would sacrifice his ideals to have her. How he would bring it to pass he did not know, but some time the way would open out. Had she not said that she loved him?
He burned with hatred towards Peter, towards the man who had circumvented him. What use was his wealth to him if he must live alone, deprived of the one thing he most wanted to have?
He might have remained there for a long time, struggling with his good and evil natures, but he was disturbed by the sudden entrance of the bear and Jake into his solitude. The beast had a particular affection for the pool in the dell, and preferred it to all others for its daily bath.
But no sooner did it set eyes on Joel, than it began to growl and bristle up with anger.
"Hulloa, Master Joel, back again to the dale," cried Jake.
"Back again," he replied with assumed cheerfulness. "But it seems as though I've found an enemy waiting for me."
The rat-catcher tightened his hand on the chain.
"Big Ben doesn't often show his teeth. Maybe you'd better hook it, master; seems as though he'd got a memory, eh?"
Joel laughed, but took the wiser part of withdrawing before the creature had strung up its ponderous limbs to deal him a blow, which would have ended his temptations for that day and many days to follow.
Joel looked in at Greystones on his way to the Shepherds' Meet. He would rather have passed the house by, for he was in no mood to talk to Mistress Lynn, but he did not like to seem discourteous to one who had been as kind to him as she had been.
"Why, Joel, man," she exclaimed, "thee's grown handsomer than ever. Thee always was a bonny lad, but thee'd better have a care now, or all the lasses will be making sheeps-eyes at thee up hill and down dale."
"You look very well," said Barbara.
He glanced from the old woman to her great-granddaughter, and smiled, throwing off the impatience that he felt with an effort.
"It's you who have grown handsomer, not I, Mistress Lynn," he replied. "You look nearly as young as Barbara. If you put that grand nightcap you're wearing on her head, she'd be the image of you, and you of her."
"Hoots-toots! and me going on a hundred!" She shook her finger at him. "I's too old to have my senses turned with such babblement. I was like Barbara once, but not in your day, my lad. It's to her you should be paying your compliments, not to her great-granny. Your grandfather gave me all I ever wanted."
She made him sit down by the four-poster, with his face to the windows, so that she could see him well.
"I couldn't pay Barbara a greater compliment," he said smoothly, yet with a glimmer of amusement in his eyes, for he saw the drift of her mind, "than by likening her to you. You and she are the handsomest, bonniest pair that I've set sight on since I last saw you both."
"Get away with you, Master Joel; you've got far too sly a tongue for simple folk like the lassie and me."
He stayed at Greystones for half-an-hour, talking idly, and looking round the kitchen with very mingled feelings. It seemed to be just as it was the last time he had been there five years ago. Nothing was altered. The great oak table stood under the transom windows, the bridewain near the bed; he was sure that the fire had never been allowed to die out; and hams and three whole sheep hung curing in the chimney as he remembered they used to do. His eyes rested upon the clock. Once he had listened to it striking the hour of midnight under unhappy circumstances. Now he listened to it striking the hour of noon, under other circumstances, not less unhappy.
It was only twelve o'clock! He had arrived at day-break in a mood partaking more of resignation than disappointment, and already he had roused the sleeping dogs of his nature. They were in full cry after forbidden sport. He felt that he could sit no longer talking commonplaces to the old woman, and rose.
"What, off already!" she said.
"I'm going to the Meet. Most of my old friends will be there, and it's too good an opportunity of seeing them all to be lost. I'll come in again on my way back. Isn't Barbara going?"
"She's been and returned. Barbara's a good lass and looks after her old great-granny! The Lord will bless her!"
The girl walked with him to the garden gate, told him that Peter had promised to wrestle, and that he would be in time for the games if he hurried; then she came back to the kitchen, meditatively.
The misty morning had blossomed out into a fine noon. A few showers had fallen, but the sun glanced through them, and they were not heavy enough to damp the spirits of men used to bitter winds and merciless rains.
The patch of flat ground about the Shepherds' Rest thronged with life. Sheep, dogs, and human voices, both male and female, for the wives and daughters gathered to see the games, added to the clamour of a wild stream that rushed through the pass, below the inn. Above and all around, the grey crags and wide sweeps of heather and bracken were wrapped in sombre silence, save when a pair of herons flew screaming by to their feeding-ground on some distant tarn.
When Joel Hart came down the defile he halted for a moment to view the animated scene below him. He was drawn towards it, yet repulsed. The sight of so many well-known figures, after five years' wandering among strangers, quickened his blood. Yet between them and him the thought of Lucy flashed. He wished that he had not come, but returned to Forest Hall, where he could have indulged his feelings for her in undisturbed retreat; then, again, he was glad that he had come, for he wanted to distract his mind from the still small voice of conscience which would not let him be.
His meditation had an abrupt end. Someone saw him, and his old friends—those wild young men with whom he had wasted his substance in the past—carried him off to the inn, where he ordered drinks all round.
A reckless mood came over him. He thrust the vision of Lucy into a corner, and, with a laugh that was forced, yet strove to be genial, he entered into the spirit of the crowd, which was bent on extracting out of the next few hours as much pleasure as every man could hold.
His first impulse was to avoid Peter, yet, turn where he would, the quiet grey eyes of his rival—so he had come to regard him—seemed to meet his own.
Peter knew of Lucy's early love for Joel—though she had only spoken of it once, and that was shortly after their marriage—but he was free from the suspicion, which is the bane of little minds, so he greeted the newcomer frankly and calmly, unaware of the tumult which the sight of him had roused.
Joel flung back his head with a careless gesture. In his heart of hearts he would like to have knocked Peter down. Was not Peter his supplanter? Had he not, while pretending to be his friend, lured Lucy from him? But he swept his hand across his face, and with it obliterated the hatred of his glance, for he had no desire that it should betray him.
"You're getting stout, Fleming," he said, "stout and contented-looking, as befits a married man."
"Portly, eh?" replied Peter. "Yes, I sit too much."
"Thee should whickam-whackam, spickam-spackam more," said a young shepherd standing by. "Old Schoolie Satherwaite had arms like a crowbar, and o' with sugaring the cane. 'It's a grand receipt,' he used to say, 'a grand receipt for keeping the muscles in trim.'"
"He kept more than his muscles in trim," answered another, "for he trimmed our hides to some purpose. If he couldn't birch for aught, he birched for nought. I mind the day he called Jerry Langdale yonder into the middle of the floor, and, 'Jerry,' says he, 'I'm going to larrop you.' 'I's done nowt amiss,' says Jerry, as pert as you please. 'Nowt amiss,' says Schoolie, 'Good God, that's unnatural. I'll have to bensal the natural man back intil you, and so circumvent the deevil' Jerry got such a warming that it kept the frost out for many a day."
"Peter's over-gentlemanly with the rascals," said one.
"Peter can use the rod when he likes," replied another, nudging Fleming in the ribs. "I heard tell how you spanked Jake's Joie, and o' for telling a lie. Joie's mother told me that he took his porridge standing for a week after, and he's been a truthfuller lad ever since."
Peter pulled out his watch.
"Time is running on, lads," he said. "I'd better go and get ready to wrestle, or you'll give me no credit for having kept my muscles in trim with switching the bairns."
Joel was left with his own particular friends. They were not much liked by the shepherds, for they gave themselves airs; but they spent their money freely, and were treated with a certain amount of good-humour and respect.
Joel Hart was a lucky dog, they said, to go away and come back after five years a rich man. They had trudged along the same old paths, but not one of them had managed to find the goose that lays the golden eggs. There was not much wealth to be got out of the dales and fells. They had half a mind to try their fortunes overseas. They would have no misgivings, but most of them had married a wife. Joel was a wise man not to tie himself to a woman's apron-strings before he went away. Now he had come home, of course he would marry, and rear a progeny to make ducks and drakes of his money. That was always the way of it. Would he stay now he had come back? or would they find him gone again some fine morning?
Joel unbent under the combined effects of home-brewed ale, and lively companionship. He did not know if he would remain at Forest Hall. When he was out in the wilds he used to think his home the most beautiful spot on the earth, but he was not sure that he might not soon grow tired of it now, after the life he had been leading. He had no intention of taking a wife unless they could show him a lass that would cap his fancy.
But whether he stayed or not, he was glad to be back among his own folk again. Out in the wilderness he had often longed for a sight of a familiar face, and the sound of the Northern tongue. His arrival was most opportune, for he would have been sorry to miss the Shepherds' Meet.
Six years ago they had had a great time—did they remember? John Wheeler, the champion wrestler, had come, and given the native talent high praise. He had shown some of them—himself for one, and Peter Fleming for another—a few tricks. Wheeler dead since then! Ah! that was a pity! He was one of the few champions who belonged to the good old Westmorland stock.
"Out at the gold diggings," Joel continued, "there were two or three men who could wrestle. We often had a bout of an evening in front of the drinking booth."
"Wrestle now," said one. "There's your old friend Peter Fleming longing to try a fall with you, I don't doubt. Come along, man. No shaking of your head now. Lord! That's a good idea. We've not seen any decent wrestling since you went away."
Joel was carried off, making half-hearted protests. His mind was full of confused thoughts. He was gratified at the manner in which his old friends had received him; he felt a return of the reckless spirit that had always awakened in their company; moreover, he would like to throw Peter. He must double up that strong figure in ignominy; he must pay back old scores, and new ones also. Though Fleming was more muscular than he, yet his was the greater quickness and subtlety of action. He would come off victor.
He thought of Lucy, and emotion again rushed through his brain like a stream in spate, carrying reason before it.
But when he entered the ring he felt cool. He had a purpose to fulfil, and this gave him the full command of his senses. He knew now that, through the years of his absence, he had been moved with a vague antipathy towards this man. Their old friendship had been but a veil drawn over the blind face of hate. From the beginning they had been doomed to circumvent one another. Peter had circumvented him by marrying Lucy; the time had arrived for him to overcome Peter.
That the occasion for wiping out the score was only a wrestling-match in a mountain pass did not take away from its significance. To the onlookers it was but a trial of strength and cunning; to Joel it had a deep human meaning. Not as a friendly rival did he now confront his antagonist, but as an embodied vengeance, determined to mark upon his adversary the humiliation which he had received at the other's hands.
Joel got strength, far beyond his physical powers, through the intensity of his passion. It was a spiritual strength, derived from a spiritual source, though not from the well of light. It bubbled up in a dark region where lost souls come to drink, and those who have wandered from the right path to seek forbidden things.
Peter confronted Joel with a gay laugh, unconscious of the conditions under which they were to wrestle. Peter played the game for the game's sake, and though he was keen to acquit himself worthily, yet he could take a fall, and think no worse of himself or like his conqueror less for it.
But now, as he and Joel swayed together with their hands locked behind each other's backs, he became aware of something unusual in the struggle. He could not have defined what it was, yet of its presence and force he had no doubt. Its effect upon himself was annoying. His good-humour left him. Over his mind came a chilling influence. He tried to shake it off, but in vain. He felt sure that he was wrestling for more than the barren triumph of muscle over muscle, but for what?
Had it not been for the strength which his feelings gave him, Joel would soon have measured a fall. As it was he exerted a force like that of a glacier, not swift, but slow, ever driven on by the sullen weight behind it, for Joel's hate was cold, not hot; callous not furious.
Peter's anger increased. He felt that he had been entrapped into a combat which he would have scorned had he known. The honest wrestling of the dalesfolk was being lowered to serve the purposes of personal ill-will. He could not withdraw honourably—no rule had been infringed—yet he loathed the stake for which they struggled. His spirit disdained the thought of heating itself in a common brawl. He had not the inclination, even if he had had the time, to wonder at the reason for Joel's attitude towards himself. When two men are at grips with each other, there is little opportunity for reflection or philosophising. Thoughts that do come, come like pictures flashed upon a screen, and are switched away in a moment, leaving behind a vague impression of their significance.
Before long the bystanders began to realise that in the wrestling of Peter and Joel there was an unusual element. At first they showed their interest without restraint, but, as the struggle grew keener, though neither had the mastery, feeling ran too strongly for much sound. A sudden shout, a long-drawn breath, a murmur that broke off abruptly, eyes which would not suffer the lids to blink, and hands that gripped the hurdles as though they clung for life, were the measure of their excitement. Those gathered round the ring were thrilled by such passions as must have swayed men at a gladiatorial show, when men fought for their lives.
The wrestlers grew heated; their bodies smoked; their lips curled back from their teeth; their eyes were bright. The spirit of the savage still sleeps in every man. In Peter it began to awaken, roused by the clutch of Joel's hands. The refinements of civilisation were in danger of falling away from him, and leaving him a creature of brute force, whose one idea was to bear down his enemy with cunning and superior strength. But he drew himself together; he had never lost control of his nature, and he would not do so now. Amid the ferment of his impulses he strove to be calm, to be resistless yet not fierce, to overcome, but without anger.
The feeling of the spectators was intensified, as they saw the two figures become motionless, though the veins on their arms stood up like cords, and their bodies were bent in such a manner as showed the straining of the great muscles of their backs and shoulders. Two figures modelled in clay they might have been, instead of two struggling forces.
Neither would give in. Their breasts laboured with painful breathing, the breath whistled as it came and went. Down their brows poured the sweat, making their faces shine in the yellow light of the November sun. Their hair was clotted, their shirts were drenched as though they had been dipped in the beck.
Peter felt his head grow dizzy. He thought that his temples would burst with the hammering of his blood. The sun got into his eyes and dazzled them, and, though he managed to shift his position, the glitter of it had already filled his brain.
He seemed to catch a vision of Lucy, sitting quietly at home. He wondered if she would ever come to know of the fierce battle fought for her sake. Apart from his direct consciousness, his mind had gone on working, and reached the conclusion that Joel's madness sprang out of his love for her.
The day was drawing to a close. Clouds were hurrying up from the south-west, and reflecting a lurid glow down into the pass. Soon there would be rain and night.
Joel made a supreme effort to throw Peter. He rallied all his failing powers, his face grew purple, he bent to give the last swing which should lift his adversary from his feet, when he slipped and fell.
There was a loud cheer from the onlookers; they leaped over the hurdles to shake Peter by the hand; the ring surged with men and dogs. Then silence fell, and hushed the words on men's tongues even when they did not know the cause.
Joel lay on the ground, his face ghastly as that of a corpse, while a red stream trickled from his mouth.
Barbara was alone at Ketel's Parlour. A lighted lamp hung from a hook in the ceiling, and a fire smouldered on a slab of blue slate, while the smoke escaped through a cleft in the wall. Outside was night, starless and black, though the hour was not much later than seven o'clock. Not long ago she had heard the village folk returning from the Meet, but they went home by a track on the other side of the beck, and did not come near the cave.
Barbara wanted to think, and, in order to think clearly, she must be alone. The huge fire at Greystones, that made every corner of the kitchen as bright as noon, and the alert old woman in the four-poster, prevented any such deep meditation as she craved. But as the work of the day was over, and Jess, the servant-lass, had sat down to spin by the ingle, she could absent herself for a while with a clear conscience.
The cave was part of herself. Its rocky walls seemed to have taken on the impression of her thoughts. She had stamped her personality upon it, and loved it as the habitation of her spirit. Here she was free, though free nowhere else in the world; here she shook off the cloak under which she hid her true being; here she could meet herself face to face without fear of prying eyes.
There was a charm in the cave which fitted her every mood. Were she happy, the spring that bubbled out of the floor and ran sparkling among the stones, laughed in unison with her. Were she sad, no sunlight could come here to stare and mock. Were she weary, yonder was a couch of heather and sheepskins for her body, and a silence that hung around her brain like a curtain. Did she feel herself inspired to pray, the walls and the dim light were solemn as those of a shrine.
Peter had given her the cresset lamp, and she had brought her books here, keeping them in an oak chest which she had found at Greystones, that preserved them from damp.
She knew the cave so well—every stone on the floor, every crack in the walls where tiny ferns grew—that she could have found her way about it blindfold. She often thought that, when she came to die, Ketel's Parlour would remain the most vivid picture in her mind.
Death was a familiar meditation to Barbara. She met it so often that it forced itself upon her notice. The destroyer tramped the fells even in summer-time, taking his toll of sheep and lambs, and now and then snatching away a man. But when winter came, with its storms of wind and rain; when it held the becks stiff behind icy bars; when it filled the gullies with drifting snow and levelled dangerous slopes, then it seemed to be a miracle that any living thing should come through it alive. Time and again, between November and March, those whose work took them to the great wastes, would face death, would go where a slip was destruction, where presence of mind, and swift, unerring action meant life; where nothing but the instinct that is born in some men, added to hard-won experience, could bring them safe and sound out of the valley of the shadow to their own hearth-stones.
Barbara often wondered how her own end would come. Would she be like a shepherd, who had gone out one wild night to bring the ewes to a more sheltered spot, and who was blown over a precipice? Would she fall into a drift when helping to dig out the sheep, and perish of the suffocating snow in which a sheep may live, but not a human being? Would she grow dizzy when climbing some steep ascent, and fall down to be dashed on the rocks below? Or would she, like her great-grandmother, live for a hundred years, and die at last in the four-poster, with the bridewain on one side of her and the dresser on the other?
No; anything but that. She hoped that death would not forget her, as it had forgotten Mistress Lynn, that grim, grey, human Sphynx, which could look back along the years for a century. That such a lot might be hers filled the girl with horror. But she would not believe it. She cared not how death came, but she hoped he would not tarry, for life held nothing now that could make her wish to live. Life was full of renunciation and sacrifice, and she was tired of striving after righteousness.
She had not been long alone when she heard a voice calling her:
"Barbara! Barbara!"
Absorbed in her thoughts, she imagined that the voice came from her inner consciousness, and was spirit speaking unto spirit. But it called again, and this time fell upon her ear with unmistakable urgency:
"Barbara!"
Lucy was running across the slope, towards the light issuing from the cavern's doorway. She looked excited, her cheeks were aflame, her eyes shining.
"You must come with me," she cried. "You must come at once, over the Robber's Rake to the Shepherd's Rest. Joel is dying."
She took her sister's hand, and began to draw her towards the door.
"Sit down, Lucy, and calm thyself," said Barbara.
"Sit down! Nay, I tell you we must go at once. Come, there is no time to lose. He may be dead before we see him."
"I don't understand," said Barbara.
She stood under the cresset's light like a rock, while Lucy, like a wave, fretted about her. Exasperating to such a nature as Lucy's was her sister's calmness.
"Oh! you don't understand," she cried. "You never have understood. You have a heart like a lump of ice. You have always been against Joel and me. It is you who thrust us apart. But, now that he is dying, I thought you'd relent. Still, I'll go——"
"Has he sent for you?"
"Nay! I tell you he's dying. Oh, Joel, Joel, to think you should be leaving me again so soon. But I'm coming, yes, I'm coming."
The girl wrung her hands, looked wildly round, then her face hardened.
"If you'll not come, I'll go alone," she said. "I'm not afraid of the dark."
But Barbara barred the doorway. She pointed to the stool from which she had risen. "Sit down," she said, "and tell me what you know. Then, if you're determined to go, I'll go too."
"Joel may be dead by then."
"Whether he lives or dies is not in your hands. It's not to you, Lucy, that his soul will be given."
"Oh, I wish I had passed by and left you alone. I might have known, I might have had more sense, than think you would feel for me. You were always hard as flint, though I used to believe you were a saint. But don't cast me off, Barbara. I'm very miserable."
Barbara knelt down by the distracted girl, and put her arms round her.
"What is wrong with Joel?" she asked softly.
"He's dying, oh God, he's dying, and I'm not there to bid him good-bye."
Then, amid sobs, she told her sister all that she knew, about the way Joel and Peter had wrestled, and how Joel had strained himself and broken a blood-vessel. He was now lying at the Shepherd's Rest, attended by Timothy Hadwin and her husband. Peter had sent her word that he could not get home that night.
"I'll never forgive Peter," wept Lucy. "He oughtn't to have wrestled. He knows I hate wrestling. I've always hated it. Perhaps I knew at the back of my mind it would some day bring trouble to me."
"This is childish, Lucy," said Barbara, with a note of revolt in her voice. She scorned her sister for preferring Joel to Peter. Joel had nothing to recommend him save his physical perfection, and his old name. His claim to sympathy, his affectionate nature, had never touched her, so she failed to realise their effect on Lucy. If Peter had been her husband, she would have found a glory in loving where duty pointed. Alas, duty bade her pluck out her love and cast it from her.
Barbara had known for a long time that her sister was not happy. There was less simplicity in her manners than of old, less desire to please, and much less concern about her fine clothes and good looks. That she was nursing vain regrets Barbara needed no telling to know, and she had hoped often that Joel would not return. Providence had willed it otherwise. For the stricken creature nothing remained but to turn its face from temptation, and follow the straight and narrow way, with grace if possible, at all costs with determination. But Lucy had no intention of keeping to so strict a path.
"Come," she said.
Barbara rose slowly from her knees. She knew that Lucy must not go. She went to the doorway, and stood for a moment looking out. The night was dark with clouds, and wind came shuffling over the grass at fitful intervals. Now and again she heard the tinkle of waves breaking on the shores of Swirtle Tarn; near at hand a sheep called, and was answered by another and yet another, till the mournful bleat of the most distant member of the flock died upon her ear.
Lucy stared at her sister's back. She did not get off her stool for, impulsive and excited as she was, stubborn too at times, she read something in Barbara's pose that kept her silent. The firelight lit up the shining hair pleated round the fine large head; one lock had become loose and hung down upon her shoulder. She looked like a tower of strength to the fearful heart, but to the antagonist she was a fortress that no assault could take.
Barbara never dealt in vague reasonings, or tried to veil the face of denial to make it look less stern. She had called her own feelings of the morning by no condoning name, and she now turned to Lucy with firm lips and eyes.
"You must go home, Lucy," she said, "back to the mill-house, and wait there for Peter. He is kind, and will not keep you long in suspense, wondering whether Joel is alive or dead. If he lives you can have no place in his life; if he dies you can't help him on his way."
"I'll at least bid him good-bye. Don't waste any more breath on me. Barbara. I've made up my mind to go."
"Then you will blacken both your souls, and such stains won't wash out."
"What do you mean?" asked Lucy, turning her face away.
"You know what I mean. You're letting your mind run after a man that's not your husband. The Bible calls it by a black name, in thought as well as deed." Barbara lifted her sister's face between her hands, and looked at it for a moment. "Lucy," she continued, "you've always been proud of your fair skin and your white body, but that sort of mind, the mind you're letting yourself get, is ugly—ugly as a toad."
Lucy twisted herself away with repulsion.
"You've a bonny way of putting things," she replied haughtily, but her lips quivered. She abhorred toads. From being a child, the sight of them had filled her with loathing; they seemed too ugly to have been created. And now Barbara said her mind was becoming like one.
"You don't understand," she cried. "You're so high and mighty you couldn't love a man as I love Joel. If you did you'd find a kindlier name for it than saying it's like something that turns you sick to look at it."
Could she have seen her sister's face just then she would have been dumbfounded by the change that passed over it. Throat and cheek and chin became suffused with a passionate glow, and her lips quivered. But in a moment the flood sank back again, leaving her pale and weary-eyed.
"We've had a warning set us since we were born," she said. "I mean great-granny. Neither of us would like to grow old in her way."
"I never should. But you might, Barbara, for everyone says that you're her living picture. And your heart doesn't come far short of hers for hardness."
Barbara winced, and Lucy, ever ready to make amends for her sharp words, grasped her sister's hand.
"Don't heed me," she said, "I'm beside myself. There's no fear of either of us following in great-granny's steps."
"She let her mind stray where it had no right to," continued Barbara. "And you know what comfort it brought her. She grew to hate her husband, and she cared nothing for her children. But her life was loveless and a blank; still, she had to give her heart to something; so must all men and women. We're made that way and can't alter it. You know where she gave her heart—it's in her money-bags."
A picture flashed across Lucy's mind of the sight she had seen when she had looked through the door on the night of the wake long ago. She remembered with curious distinctness the stealthy movements of the thin old hands, as they counted the coins. Another scene rose before her; she saw Cringel Forest, and the dell where she and Joel used to meet. She saw it in summer-time, gay with blue-bells; she saw it again in winter. She thought how she and Joel had met there only a few hours ago. Come spring, come autumn, still she loved and was loved. Back swung her mind to the old woman in the great bed, giving up her soul to the hoarding of money. Could this last scene be the outcome of such an one as that of the morning? She saw herself old and grey—the beauty of life and its warmth fled; and dead her heart to all joy in the sun and the flowers; gone the sympathy of her soul with other souls; hardened into indifference the power of loving and careless of being loved. Could her soul grow like that? like her great-grandmother's?
"You're havering," she said. "I'm no more like her than I'm like a corby-crow."
Still she was ill at ease.
"Won't you go away home now?" said Barbara.
Lucy had half a mind to say that she would not go. But her blood had cooled, and her reason began to reassert itself. She was dominated by her sister's will and mortally afraid of the long dark track into Girdlestone Pass. She rose and drew her cloak closer around her.
"If Joel dies," she said, tears filling her eyes, "you'll have it on your conscience that you kept us apart when we might have given each other some cheer to carry us along our dark ways."
"Lucy, Lucy," cried Barbara, "put Joel out of your head. You've got a good husband, better no woman ever had. Can't you give all your love to him? Make him happy. You'll be happy then yourself. You'll find life worth living, better worth living than great-grandmother's has been; better, far better than mine. Mine's a lonely life, Lucy. There'll never be home and husband for me. But, down at the mill-house yonder, love is waiting for you. For your own sake, for Peter's sake, for Joel's sake, too, cleave to the man you've taken for better and worse."
"You should have married him yourself," replied Lucy, with a somewhat uneasy glance.
"It was not I that Peter chose for his wife," said Barbara simply.
Just then the herd brought a message from Mistress Lynn to know how much longer Barbara was going to linger at the cave.
"Tell her I've something to do that'll keep me here awhile," replied she.
Lucy bade her sister good-night and went away with the herd. She no longer wanted to fly to the sick bed of the man she loved. Weariness succeeded her passion of the morning and excitement of the night. Barbara always had this effect upon her sister. When she opened her heart to her, Barbara put it in a cleansing fire, and, though the process might be painful, it was morally purifying.
When Lucy and Tom had gone, Barbara put her hands to her head, and lifted the locks that lay so heavily upon her brow. Then she stirred the peats into flame. Her face was very white, and looked suddenly old.
All the time that she had been reasoning with Lucy she had been reasoning with herself. She had dealt with herself so severely that she was now ready to give that which conscience demanded.
She opened the oak chest. There lay her few treasures—books which Peter had given her, that she cherished more than she would have done jewels. She caught her lip between her teeth, but the hesitation was mental, not moral. Like Lucy, she was seeing visions.
She saw herself sitting in the school-room, reading these books, feeding her hungry mind upon the feast that they spread for her. But they were all associated with Peter, she had read them in the light of his mind, he had shared them with her. She could not look at them without, at the same time, seeing the face of her dearly-loved master.
Then she saw herself growing old, with haunted eyes, with disappointed heart, longing for that which could never be, and soured by the denial.
Then she saw herself as she meant to be. She was free, because her own soul's master. She was full, because she had renounced; she loved still, but with no desire for recompense, no thought of return, giving out perpetually like the sun, but not receiving.
To attain such a height she must cut off her right hand and pluck out her right eye. She must set her face firmly in the direction she meant to go. It would be a road of toil, loneliness, sacrifice. She must never cast so much as a glance at that other path, with all its alluring lights and gorgeous flowers, which yet smelt of death.
She lifted the books one by one, and laid them on the fire. The white pages grew luminous, the black letters grew blacker, a splash, like blood, blotted them out; they rolled up like a scroll and fell to ashes.
Peter Fleming came to the cave on his way home; for he saw the light. Joel was better, and as Timothy was remaining behind at the Shepherd's Rest with him, there was no reason why he should stay.
Barbara did not hear the shuffle of his feet on the grass; and unknown to her he was a witness to her action of burning her books. He stood for a moment, hesitated whether to speak, then stole away, as though he had been prying into a secret chamber that his eyes had no right to see.
He knew that Barbara would come no more to the night-school. He understood her reasons, and bitterly reproached himself for the sorrow that he had brought upon her. He thought of her fine soul and deplored the narrowing and stifling of her intellect, that must follow this deliberate cutting off of herself from such sources of life.
Yet he felt exalted too. In spite of all, he was lifted up by the knowledge of her strength. She seemed to rise and fill the night with her spreading hair, and wide blue eyes, an embodiment of the power of love, which holds all human hearts in the hollow of its immortal hands.
Joel Hart sat on a bench, staring at the fire in the kitchen of the Shepherd's Rest. Timothy Hadwin was bending over a basket of moss and late mountain flowers, dissecting them with a small scalpel, while he held a magnifying glass in his left hand through which he continually peered. The good dame of the inn was spinning, and the whirr of the wheels' rapid turning made a pleasant hum in the room, like the buzzing of bees. Her good man had gone to the nearest market town on business.
Outside a cold white mist hugged the fells. Little could be seen but a patch of monotonous landscape in front of the inn, and nothing heard save the thunder of the beck which was in spate.
Joel was silent, preoccupied with his thoughts or else sunk in a melancholy mood. Timothy looked at him from under his mild brows, then took a pinch of snuff, and leaning back in his chair said:
"You'll soon be well enough to go home, Joel."
There was no answer. Either the young man had not heard, or he did not want to talk.
"Aye, he's gotten on gaily," said the inn-keeper's wife, a little woman with beady black eyes and a smile that could be both kindly and malicious. "He owes his life to you, Master Hadwin. You couldn't have treated him better if he'd been your own son. But he wants waking up now. Come, come, young gentleman, look as though you were glad to be sitting in Jamie Brown's warm kitchen, and not lying cold and stark in the kirk-garth."
Joel raised himself with an effort.
"I'm not sure," he replied, attempting a laugh, "that the kirk-garth wouldn't be a better place for me. This sickness has taken all the sap out of my limbs. I feel like a rotten tree, just waiting for the first wind that blows to fling it down."
"You're needing a cherry cordial to put new life into you," said the dame, and she bustled to her press, bringing out a bottle that shone like a ruby in the genial fire-glow.
"Cherry cordial," he answered, "it's something stronger than cherry cordial that I need."
"Take my advice, young master, and don't drink any more wine to-day. You've had as much as is good for you. Now sup this up. It'll put a little colour into your white whisht-face, without addling your brains."
Joel drank, then set the glass on the bench beside him. For a while longer he remained in a state of gloomy silence, but a glow began to steal over his body, and soon loosened his tongue.
"I once heard of a man," he said, "that strained himself as I did, but he died. For a twelve month and a day afterwards he came out of his grave every night, and sucked the veins of living folk until he had gained what he'd lost. Then he slept quietly."
"An uncanny tale," replied the good wife. "I wouldn't think of it if I was you. There's a long life and a merry one before you yet. Be cheery now."
"It was only one man whose blood he sucked," he said as though it were an afterthought. Then he flung back his head and turned to Timothy. "Shall we have a game at chess?" he asked. "You were going to teach me a new move. Chess is a game worth playing, though I used to despise it. I thought it slow. Do you know, I get great amusement out of giving all the pieces the names of my friends, and seeing how they check-mate one another."
The old man got up with alacrity. He was always glad to interest Joel in anything that would take the spleen from his voice and the dis-spirited look from his face. As a physician of the soul as well as the body, he desired to pour a healing balm on the hidden wound, which he saw was causing suffering of an intense nature. Timothy had found the thread which led him through the gloomy, cavernlike mind of the young man. He saw that which was seated in the innermost depths of his being. But, so far, all his efforts had been unable to dispel it.
He got out the chess board, drew the table to the fire, and began to give his pupil a lesson. Joel's interest seemed to be centred upon one particular piece, and he watched all its movements with the eagerness of a child.
"It was a good idea of yours, Timothy, to teach me the game," he said once or twice. "On beastly days like this, when no one is likely to pay us a visit, it passes the time—eh?"
"I used to be a great chess-player when I was a young man," replied Timothy, "but I was afraid I had forgotten a great deal until I began to show you the way. It's pleasant to sit in the fire-glow, when the storms of life are over and revive old habits. It makes one feel young again."
While they were thus absorbed, the sound of many hoofs drew near.
"List," said the good-wife, "there's Red Geordie and the pack horses. He'll cheer us up a bit. He's better than a town-crier any day for telling the news."
Joel looked through the fire-window under which he sat—it was a little window in the chimney—and saw, coming out of the mist, a string of horses led by a black stallion. At the end of the trail rode a man on a stout little galloway. His coat collar was pulled up to his eyes, and a fur cap, with a sprig of bog myrtle in it, was drawn well down upon his brows. The black stallion stopped of its own accord at the inn door, and its train of followers halted also, and began to nibble the turf by the road side.
Their master stirred his pony, and, in a few moments, entered the kitchen, shaking the dew from his cap. He was a man of medium height, squarely built, with a bald head, and a fringe of red hair and whiskers, that framed his face in a fearsome manner.
"Come to the fire," said the good-wife, pushing up a chair, "come and warm thyself."
"That I will, mistress, and thank you kindly. It's a raw day, masters, better in than out. And how goes the world with all of you?"
He nodded to Joel and Timothy with a friendly laugh.
"How goes the world?" exclaimed the dame. "Sometimes this way, sometimes that; whiles it runs straight, whiles agee; whiles smooth, and whiles like a clog wheel. But we've been lively lately, for this time o' year. We've had a wheen visitors since the Meet, folk coming and going to see Master Joel Hart yonder. He's been ill. You'll have heard of it, Geordie, on your way up the country."
"Master Hart, of course!" the new comer bent forward, peering into Joel's face with his little sharp eyes. "Sakes! man, how thoo's changed. I shouldn't have knowed tha. But welcome, welcome back, my hearty. Twice welcome since thoo comes with well-feathered pockets."
He shook hands with zest.
"And how fend tha noo, Master Joel?" he asked.
"Gaily," replied Joel in an off-hand manner.
"He's nobbut very sweemish," interposed the good-wife, with just a touch of malice in her tones. "He wants cheering up a bit."
Red Geordie slapped his thigh and laughed.
"It's the lassies he's missing," he said, "mistress, mistress, thoo should have 'ticed up a posey o' bonny faces for him to look at."
"To the Girdlestone in this weather!" she replied.
"If thoo said, 'Here's a fine bird worth the picking,' they'd have come like a flock of starlings after a bone, aye, would they."
Joel turned away with a haughty shrug of his shoulders, and Red Geordie sniggered, in no way disconcerted.
"Well, what's been adoing down-by?" asked the dame, anxious not to offend her lordly guest.
"Marrying, kersening, and burying—just the day's work o' common folk."
"Day's work, says you! It's little we sees o' such goings on in the Girdlestone, saving the mating o' wind and rain, the birth o' snow-storm, and the death o' summer on the fells. Be canny now and tell us o' the news. Whose married? whose been kirsened? and whose dead down-by?"
"Well," replied Red Geordie, sipping his mulled ale with satisfaction, "there's triplets in Troutbeck, and they's been called Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego."
"Sakes alive! it's enough to make Anabaptists o' them; they'll be wanting to be rekirstened when they're grown up. Whatever was their mother thinking o' to lay such a saddle on the lad-bairns's backs?"
Red Geordie tossed off his ale and handed the mug back to be filled again.
"Pack horses, pack horses," he cried, "hey, mistress, we're all pack horses on the road. Some on us carries one thing, some on us carries another; some has his mother's follies, and some his dadda's sins, forbye the sins and follies of his own getting."
"Aye, it's a wonder when you come to think o' it—the cross-bred sheep we be!" said the good-wife.
Red Geordie again handed back his mug.
"I'll have another glass, mistress, with a dash more nutmeg in it to warm the thrapple. Now, Master Camomile, what kind o' fate would you foretell for the three lad bairns, born at a birth? They ought to turn out something by-ordinary."
Timothy shook his head.
"Doubtless they will suffer the common lot of man," he replied, "and pass through the fiery furnace of tribulation like other folks. Happy will they be if they can sing with the Hebrew children, 'Oh, ye fire and heat, bless ye the Lord, praise Him and magnify Him for ever.'"
Joel looked up quickly.
"I never believed the story," he said, "men don't praise God in the midst of the fiery furnace. They're more likely to curse Him."
Ever since the pack-master's rollicking personality had entered the inn kitchen, Joel had kept a moody silence. He disliked the quizzical glance of the man; and the bald head, with its upstanding fringe of red hair, raised an unreasonable antipathy in his mind. If the weather had not been so cold and damp, he would have left his seat in the ingle-nook and gone out, preferring the mist to becoming the target for Red Geordie's eyes.
His sudden outburst caused an uneasy pause, not so much because of the words, but the intensity with which they were spoken. They seemed to have been thrown off from the man's mind as smoke is thrown up from a volcano. They were the sign of the fires burning within him.
"Heigh-ho," exclaimed Red Geordie, who felt it his duty to restore the conversation to a more natural tone, "I'll have to be taking the road again. It's a dree day for a body to be riding through the Girdlestone, a dree day, but less dree than it used to be before the Shepherd's Rest was built. I mind well, when the snow lay on the fells, and wind swept down them like a beast, trying to snap off your fingers and toes, and there was neither inn nor cot for twenty miles! Those were days! I've seen me riding with a match-lock over my shoulder and a brace of pistols in my belt, like any rumbustical cateran. What with robbers and winds and thunderstorms, the frights I got bristled up my hair so that it's never laid down since."
"The first time I rode through the pass," said Timothy, "I thought I had come to the Delectable Mountains. It was a summer morning. I rode on and on in a kind of a dream till suddenly I came to a gibbet with a dead man swinging upon it. It distressed me." The little silver-headed man looked as though the memory of it still distressed him. "For the rest of my journey, I meditated upon our nature and the divine justice that is above our justice, for it sees with the eyes of mercy."
"I know who he was," said Red Geordie. "You can spare your sympathy for him, master. He murdered his wife and flung her body into Quaking Hag, and that minds me, by the by, I saw the last time I passed that Devil's pot that the fence is broken."
The good wife busied herself about preparing a meal. She made the fire burn brighter, and put the kettle on to boil; all the time she talked.
"They say he walks round Quaking Hag at nights, carrying a light to lead witless folk into the peat holes. If the fence is down I wonder you let your horses go on their lone. They might wander from the track and you'd never see them no more."
"Oh," laughed the man, "Black Geordie kens the road as well as me. With a Black Geordie in front, and a Red Geordie behind, it's not many spooks will trouble us. I'll go and whisper a word in the old fellow's lug, and send him on. He'll be past the Hag before I catch him up. He should have been a general in the army—that old fellow—for he comes clean out o' all messes."
He went to the door, and soon there was the sound of hoofs upon the road. Joel saw the string of beasts disappear into the mist as they went on up the pass. Their master came back to the kitchen, and with him entered Peter Fleming.
"Another glass, mistress," cried Red Geordie. "One for each of us; glasses all round; a stirrup cup for me, and a happy union for you. Your health, Master Joel Hart! and school-master Peter, here's to you!"
At Peter's entrance Joel's haughtiness vanished, and with it went the white whisht-look that had caused the dame anxiety. His eyes began to burn, and his lips twitched. Colour mounted to his brow, and concentrated into two red patches upon his cheek-bones. He got up from his seat, in the furthest corner of the ingle-nook, and moved nearer to Peter, looking at him with a gaze that roused suspicions in Red Geordie's mind.
He thought of the rumours that were flying about, concerning these two men. Rumours were never to be relied upon—twenty years following the pack-horses had shown him their inconsequence. He had an intimate knowledge of the manner in which they grew, as they rolled from village to village, himself being an active agent in starting them upon their mad careers.
He watched Joel intently, and scrubbed his upstanding whiskers with a rasping sound. Peter might not know it, but hate was the fire that glittered in Hart's eyes, hate was the colour that painted his wan cheeks, hate made his lips twitch, and drew him from his corner to the other end of the bench, for like love it finds satisfaction in being near the object of its passion.
"Good Lord!" he said to himself. "Here's enough gunpowder to blow us all up."
Then he turned to Peter.
"And how's your bonny wife, school-master?" said he. "You should have brought her with you to make a little sunshine in the Girdlestone, such a dim, dark day as this is! A bonny face is always a bonny face, and worth looking at, even when it does belong to another man."
Joel scowled.
"When Fleming's here I want no bonny faces," he replied. "Peter's a good friend, and an old one. We're the best of friends, even though we did wrestle in such a manner that it brought me to death's door. But we'll have another wrestling yet, eh? Come, we'll drink to the next wrestling. Mistress, wine, and the best you've got."
"I'm glad to see you in such good spirits," said Peter kindly, but he thought that Joel had already had more wine than was good for him.
"Spirits! Yes, I'm looking forward to the next time we try a fall together."
"I've given up wrestling," said Peter.
"Man, will you not try another fall with me?"
"No. I'm going to let my muscles run to fat—as the good folk predict. You gave me such a taste of it at the Shepherds' Meet, that my appetite is satisfied for ever."
"Satisfied, no! You'll not be able to stand still, when you see other men in the ring. Besides we haven't finished the bout. You didn't throw me, you know. We'll finish it some fine day when I go back to Forest Hall."
"Let me ken the hour," said Red Geordie, picking up his whip, "I'll come and umpire. Hoo! but I'd like fine to see the end o' that wrestling. Well, I must be off or Black Geordie will bring the whole lot back to look for me. Good-bye, to you Master Hart. Good-bye, Peter Fleming. A word with you, Master Timothy."
The old man accompanied Red Geordie to the door.
"He's mad," said the pack-master, indicating the kitchen with his whip.
The kind old face looked distressed.
"A hint in your ear, master," and the man bent down and whispered, "murder."
"No, no, you're mistaken. He's just excited and has been drinking too much."
"It's murder! I saw it in his face. If School-master Peter is a wise man he'll go school-mastering to another place, and take his wife with him."
Red Geordie mounted his horse, and rode off saying:
"I ken what's what in the man's face. I don't ride the pack roads for nowt, master."
The winter was one of storms. They rose suddenly towards evening, and continued intermittently throughout the night, with long, strange pauses between each, until the dawn of the next morning, when the sun got up amid bars of yellow and purple cloud. But the glory of sunrise was brief. The days were cold, short, and grey, and when darkness fell the wind howled as though nature were in a fury bordering upon madness. The silences, too, which fell so suddenly, when the storm was at its highest, seemed to indicate periods of exhaustion, like those which follow upon the unbridled passions of human beings.
In the bleak and solitary dale, where the farm of Greystones stood, there was little light till noon, for the mountain-wall surrounding it, kept out the rays of the sun; and Thundergay, at its head, poured a current of raw air into the hollow filling it with mist, through which the wild geese called mournfully, and the sheep wandered, too depressed to bleat, but seeking always for sustenance among the loose rocks and beds of scree. Once a day their scanty meal was supplemented by a feast of holly twigs which Barbara or the hind cut for them. They knew the time by instinct, and, half an hour before, might be seen travelling along the dale from all directions, and gathering round the thicket where the hollies grew.
This winter Mistress Annas Lynn began to feel the cold, and another woollen rug was put on the bed. She spent most of the day in keeping herself warm, and her usual occupation of knitting ceased. She did not sleep much, and often Barbara would tip-toe to the bedside to see if her great-grandmother were awake, and would find the bright eyes open, and raised to her face in an instant, with a keen searching look. But she spoke little, and appeared to find plenty of interest in her own thoughts. Strange thoughts they must have been, which passed through a mind so strong, individual, and so old.
But at night when the door was shut, the curtains drawn, the fire bright, she would sit up in bed and talk of the days long past, and times that were rude, but full of a spirit that kept the brain alive and made the flesh glow.
When she was young, men and women lived upon the strong meat of exertion and adventure. She said that they were giants compared to their sons and daughters, who could not digest anything more solid than pap. The old woman had a great contempt for the rising generation that she saw around her. She flung many a gibe at them, when they gathered in the kitchen, as they sometimes did of a winter evening, to hear her recount stories that made their hair stand on end and their flesh creep.
But in the midst of her quips and quiddities, she would sometimes break off to talk of Barbara. As her own energies began to fail, she drew vitality from the robust nature of her great-granddaughter. The girl was true kin to the strenuous souls of old. She had in her veins the blood of shepherd princes, her spirit was the spirit of kings—stern perhaps, silent perhaps, but tempered as steel, unflinching before lightning flash, or whirlwind, ready as her forefathers had been to face the moss-troopers should they ever come again to rob the sheep-fold. But Barbara was born three generations too late. She was like an eagle with clipped wings, and had never a chance to show the mettle of her make.
Sometimes Barbara was present at these story-tellings. She would sit with her cheek resting on her hand, watching the flames, and seeing in them pictures which her great-grandmother's words painted. She, too, often longed for a life of adventure. Now that she had cut herself off from her books and intercourse with Peter—she saw him as little as was compatible with their relationship—now that she had clipped her own wings, she found life stale, lacking in all enterprise and interest.
She would not allow herself to meditate upon the past. She swept her mind clear of it, no regrets, no longings, no phantoms or shadows must find a lodging there. But an individuality such as hers could not become thus permanently dwarfed. She might clip her own wings, but they would grow again, and bear her upwards to cleave other air, and find other climes than those to which she had been borne away in the past.
Through the grey winter days and the wild winter nights, she flung a part of herself to the winds, and as it fluttered upon the blast like an autumn leaf, she thought of the trees in Cringel Forest, and pitied their nakedness. But they would grow green again, and spread their glory to the summer. So, perhaps for her, there would come a renewal, and her soul would blossom like the may—nay—not like the may, sweet and beautiful as it was, but like the corn of wheat, which unless it fall into the ground and die, cannot bring forth fruit. She felt compassionate towards the wheat which went so patiently into the tomb, and came forth, like a shriven almoner of old, to give itself without reserve to the service of others.
Often when the wind shrieked about the old house, and the sycamores groaned under the lash, Mistress Lynn would listen with eager ears for the sound of Barbara's footsteps on the threshold. She knew by instinct, and understood by experience, that her great-granddaughter was going through some travail of soul. But she said nothing, only watched and waited, noting with her keen old brain the change of Barbara from a dreamy girl to a woman, whose will was becoming fixed in an inflexible mould, and whose mind was changing to something more mature but less comprehensible. As the winter deepened, the change grew more marked. Often in the pauses of the storm Barbara would enter with a slight smile, and a look as though she had been talking with someone, and was still full of that which she had heard.
"Where hast been?" the old woman would ask her.
"At Ketel's Parlour."
"Alone?"
Barbara laughed, and there was a new inflection in her voice.
"I'm never alone. I have the sheep and the heather and the birds. Besides, there's Thundergay. Thundergay is father and brother and sister and lover all in one. You know that, great-granny. You sent me to Thundergay when I was only a bairn, and you said he'd teach me the way we Lynns must walk in the world. Thundergay has opened his heart to me, and I'm never lonely with him."
At other times, in the midst of the battering of the wind, the girl would come in, her eyes shining, and her hair in wild disorder. She would go about her work with an energy never seen before in her movements. The hinds and Jess looked afraid of her, and kept their eyes fixed on their work.
Lucy was surprised, she wondered what had come over her sister. But the old woman said never a word to enlighten her. She was seeing, as it were, a picture of herself eighty years ago. Lucy did not often get speech with her sister at this time. Since the night at Ketel's Parlour, when she had gone back to the mill-house instead of fulfilling her plan of going to see Joel at the Shepherd's Rest, they had never opened their lips upon the subject. Lucy felt aggrieved, though why she hardly knew. She had expected to have Barbara's constant sympathy, after she had bent to her wishes; she had relied upon having a strong arm to uphold her in the path in which she had agreed to walk. Instead she was left to herself: she had to pick her own way without encouragement and without pity for her sufferings.
She thought Barbara cold and without understanding. Lucy was miserable. She was miserable because she was half-hearted; she still hankered after forbidden things, instead of turning away from them, and determining to draw out of her duty sustenance to enable her to fulfil it.
Peter, too, seemed to be preoccupied and weary. He was smitten by the blight of failure, by remorse, and stirred to a most righteous anger. "You have cast an Evil Eye on Barbara," said his self-condemning spirit. Reason murmured against the assertion; conscious of his integrity he would not be condemned unheard. Fate had laid a snare, covering it with pleasant things, so that he had stepped in without warning. "You sat down in the Siege Perilous, who were not strong enough to fill it," said the same condemning self, "and now you are learning what the consequences are."
But Peter saw one thing clearly and it was this: he must go away, and take Lucy with him. He dared not leave her behind; for he was under no misconception about the attitude of Joel towards himself or his wife. Then, amid other scenes, he would beg her to help him, as he would help her, to bring order and happiness out of the disorder of their lives. Barbara he could not aid, save by going away.
Barbara was working out her own salvation. As in all severe discipline of either body or soul, some of the grace of her nature was sacrificed to the attainment of strength. A stern light began to shine in the soft eyes, and made their expression difficult to fathom. Folk with mean spirits could no longer sustain their gaze with equanimity. She was not so silent as she used to be, but her words were more enigmatical, and seemed to spring from a current of thought flowing deeper than ordinary mortals could probe. Like an underground river, it passed through scenes of wonder and mystery that would have astonished them beyond measure could they have followed its course.
Barbara had diverted the flow of her passion for Peter out of the usual channels in which such feelings run. Had she been free to love him in the way that men and women are meant to love, she would have become the most devoted of creatures, excelling others by a greater degree of intensity in her affection, and not by an unique difference in its nature. As a wife and mother she would have been calm, self-sacrificing, supremely happy, viewing the larger world with a placid generosity, the overflow of her own abundance.
But in this direction her love could not flow. And as a subverted river will change the face of the country through which it runs, so her nature was changed.
She loved Peter still, not passionately, but none the less strongly; not despairingly, for she hoped for nothing; not with reservation, for no human barrier blocked the way; neither sorrowfully, nor ashamed. All that can be said is that she loved him as a human being, who has shaken off the flesh and all its bonds, might love one who is still under its dominion.
The intensity of her love quickened the manifold energies of her nature. As a wife and mother she would have awakened to a realization of the riches of life's common things. Now that she must turn away from so well-trodden a path, she came into a world none the less real, none the less stirring with forces both spiritual and material, though undemonstrated to the ordinary mind and eye of man.
Life is seen through many windows. As time passes new ones are opened, and old ones blocked up, sometimes by our own hands, often by the hands of others. Barbara had deliberately shuttered one of her windows when she burnt her books; but now a new one was to be opened for her. The revelation came suddenly. The mountain Thundergay, the beloved nurse of her youth, and her well-tried companion, drew back the curtains, and she looked out, at first with blinking eyelids as though unaccustomed to the strange light. What did she see? A wonderful world, a land of mystery, a country inhabited by immortals.
Nature was no longer dumb. It spoke to her in a language that she could understand. It took the place of her books, and human friends; it came into the circle of her love—that love which surrounded Peter with so white a light, and emanated from her in never dimming radiance.
She felt herself to be a part of a great order. There was a bond between the golden clouds of dawn and herself, between the winds and her. She had a common bond, too, with all living things, sheep, birds, and also the foxes and the ravens. All were in their place, and she was in her place. This gave to her life a sense of repose.