CHAPTER XIXINEVITABLE

Michael, after leaving the cottage of the tall young woman with the sick child, and delaying a little, to let his horse drink from the beck, had safely crossed the ford which had proved so disastrous to Eleanor, and was riding peaceably and slowly. In his life there had always been present one negative blessing which he had not perhaps recognised with the active gratitude which it deserved; implanted in his heart was a love of Nature and of her things—a keen recognition of the beauty of every season and every weather. He was not in the habit of talking about it; perhaps he did not know himself how strong it was—how fundamental a part of his mental constitution it formed. But it was there, and it was manifested in the fact that oftentimes, though wearied and busy, he could not force himself to ride onwards in haste, even over the roads that were very familiar to him; could not neglect to notice the page that was silently and lovingly spread for him by that friend who ‘never did betray the heart that loved her.’ Even on an afternoon like this, he found time to go slowly, and receive the silent influence of the scene into his heart; and did not refuse to let the brooding solemnity of the darkening sky, or thebodeful whisper of the stealing wind, tell their tale to him.

It was this vagrant humour, this unconfessed unwillingness to desert the ample exterior nature for the shelter and confinement of a roof and walls, which had caused him to be so little advanced on the road, that a loud halloo came distinctly to his ear; and after waiting a moment to hear if it should be any preconcerted signal, he concluded it to be a cry for help, and answered it, turning back down the lane towards the ford. In a few moments he was met by the ingenuous William, panting, and presenting an appearance of extreme disorder.

‘What’s the matter? Was it you who called?’

‘Yes, sir, if you plase, sir, Miss Askam is nearly drowned; leastways, her horse had a very bad tumble in th’ ford. A woman told us you was on afore, and I made bold to call upon you.’

Michael made no answer, but rode back to the ford, as fast as the darkness and the rough road would allow him. His keen eyes, well accustomed to search the country by this doubtful light, discerned the form of a woman on horseback; he saw that she drooped and wavered, and he heard the half-inarticulate cry she gave. He sprang from his horse just in time to catch her as she slipped from her saddle, and in so doing he discovered that her riding habit was dripping, and heavy as lead with the icy water with which it was filled. He wasted no time in wondering how she had got there, but placed her on a large rough boulder, behind which was the trunk of a great old thorn-tree, affording some support to her back, and he felt with one hand in his pocket for his flask, while he held her up with the other.

But before he had got the flask, she had recoveredfrom the momentary powerlessness—it was not a faint—which had overtaken her. She opened her eyes just as William, in a hoarse and terrified whisper, inquired—

‘Is she drowned, sir?’

The youth was standing in a drooping attitude between his mistress’s horse and his own, holding a rein of each, and shivering with fear in every limb. It was on him that Eleanor’s eyes fell as she opened them, and she gave a little convulsive laugh.

‘How queer he looks!’ she said, raising herself, and then stopping, as she saw Michael.

‘There, I thought you were not so very far gone,’ observed the latter with composure, raising himself from his knee and standing over her. ‘It was the cold, and the shock. Not very nice in the middle of the beck, I should fancy, was it?’

‘Oh, horrid!’ said Eleanor, shivering. ‘It is Dr. Langstroth, isn’t it?’

‘It is Dr. Langstroth—yes,’ was the dry reply. ‘You had better drink off this,’ he added, pouring out some of the brandy. ‘Then, if you can get on your horse and ride on at once, you may feel no bad effects.’ He proffered a prosaic flask, in a business-like manner.

Eleanor swallowed the portion presented to her with docility, and stood up.

‘I don’t think I fainted,’ she remarked thoughtfully; ‘but I shall never forget the coldness of that water when my horse plunged into that hole.’

‘I suppose you’re not liable to colds or coughs much?’ asked Michael, with apparent indifference.

‘Oh dear, no! I shall be all right, if I can but wring some of the water from my habit. It is so heavy with it.’

She stood up, feeling quite strong; and while Michael screwed the top on to his brandy-flask, she raised her soaking riding habit, and wrung out the water as well as she could.

‘It is too bad that you should have been troubled about this,’ she said, suddenly stopping in her operations, as it all at once flashed into her mind that he was waiting there entirely on her account. ‘Is my groom there? William!’

‘Yes, miss!’

‘You should not have ridden away and left me. If you had waited a moment, I should have been all right, and Dr. Langstroth need not have been detained.’

‘Do not scold him,’ said Michael, in a low voice. ‘The poor lad is frightened out of his senses. He thought you were drowned, and wished for medical assistance. His promptitude in calling for it, and getting rid of responsibility——’

‘The responsibility of this insane expedition is mine,’ said Eleanor, shortly, beginning to realise the situation. ‘But, indeed, Dr. Langstroth, do not let me keep you here in the cold. We cannot miss the road again, and I am ashamed to have troubled you so much.’

‘Do not be distressed on my account,’ said Michael, calmly. He had restored the flask to his pocket, and now he picked up the gauntlets which she had pulled off and thrown to the ground, and stood watching her, in the ever-deepening twilight, in silence, for some little time after he had spoken. He felt something unreal and dreamlike in the whole situation—in the shadowy woman’s figure, with its quick, graceful, movements; in the surrounding dark, the rushing stream, the sharp night air. Eleanor said nothing to him, for she feltsomewhat embarrassed. She did not wish to trouble him, but when she thought of that five miles of a ride to Bradstane, in the dark, with no guide but William, her courage did not exactly rise. She would have felt very well satisfied to be ordered by a competent authority to hold her tongue and do as she was bidden, and it was this, in effect, which Michael did tell her when he next spoke.

‘Here are your gloves’—he saw she had wrung her habit as well as she could, and he had noted, even in the dusk, the beautiful curves and strong, flexible power of her white hands and wrists—‘there are your gloves; and when you have put them on, the sooner we move forward again, the better for you.’

‘Yes, I am sure of that. I should very soon be chilled to the bone again, if I stood here,’ she said, drawing on her gloves, and feeling a little thrill of pleased excitement and wonder. ‘This is the second time he has come to my help,’ she informed herself, with accurate recollection of the former circumstance.

‘Now shall I help you?’ said Michael, in his coldest, most civil tone, as William led up the horse. He held his hand for her foot, and in a moment she was in her saddle, remarking—

‘Now I shall be not a bit the worse.’

‘Perhaps not,’ said Michael, instinctively speaking with greater dryness and curtness as he began to feel a sense of pleasure and interest in the adventure and the heroine of it. He liked her hardihood; hardy she was, for he knew pretty well that she could not be feeling very warm or comfortable, under the circumstances; and the sousing with cold water, and the shock and danger of the accident would have been, as he well knew, excuseenough for hysteria and nervous attacks, in nine cases out of ten. She was evidently no friend to such demonstrations. He mounted his own horse, and they started, William falling behind, thankfully enough.

‘We shall go as far as the end of this lane together?’ said Eleanor tentatively; ‘but you must not let me take you farther out of your way.’

‘My way is where I choose or need to go,’ replied Michael carelessly. ‘I see your groom has dropped behind, but if you will allow me, I will just tell him to ride on as fast as he can—even he cannot now very well miss the way. He must see your maid, and tell her to have lots of dry things ready for you, and some hot tea or coffee; and then, perhaps, you may escape without harm. Otherwise, I would not answer for consequences.’

‘But——’

‘Oh, of course I will ride home with you,’ he answered to her unspoken objection. ‘It will be all right.’

Eleanor’s high spirit failed to come to her aid.

‘Thorsgarth is so much out of your way,’ she said, in a low tone.

‘Not when I choose to go there. Wait a moment,’ he answered; and stopping, he called the groom up, gave him his directions succinctly, and bade him ride on. William touched his hat, spurred on, and was soon out of sight in the glimmering, shadowy light.

Eleanor heaved a deep, if silent sigh. She had not given way under the shock of her plunge into the cold water, nor, except physically, and for a moment, afterwards; but now something laid a strange oppression over her heart. Michael was very polite to her; he neglected not a thing which could help her, even to this forethought about acquainting her maid with what hadhappened. She had thought about him more than once during the last fortnight; had heard of him a great deal oftener than once, chiefly from Mrs. Parker, the old doctor’s sister, with whom she had become acquainted, and from many others. All she had heard had prepossessed her in his favour, but now that she was with him, actually in his presence, and as it were under his guidance, for the time, she felt afraid of him—felt a strange and painful constraint; was nervous, timid, tongue-tied. Woman-like, she had the story of his slighted love and his other wrongs, very large and very much present in her mind; and she credited him with having them before himself in just the same proportion. Then, too, his tone was curt, if civil. It did not invite to anything like friendly and familiar intercourse.

‘Civil, civil,’ repeated Eleanor in her own mind. ‘Yes, indeed, “civil as an orange,” and—oh, if he would but speak!’

He did, exactly at that moment.

‘I have ridden over this road for ten years,’ he remarked, ‘and I may have met an acquaintance on it, perhaps, three or four times, and the hounds now and then. How came you to be here?’

‘I don’t know myself how I got on to this road,’ said she, laughing a little nervously. ‘But I know what I intended to do when I set out.’ And then she related to him the scheme of exploration which had taken possession of her mind.

Michael was diverted at the idea of any one setting off on such an expedition with no better guide than her recollections of the ordnance map, and a groom who did not know any of the cross roads.

‘Barlow, our butler, warned me against the expedition,’she added, when Michael had once or twice laughed at her explanations. ‘But I would not listen to him. And I only told him about Catcastle. I did not mention either of the other places.’

‘No wonder he warned you,’ said Michael, silently noting, however, with approval, her independence of spirit. ‘Why, Catcastle alone is an excursion for a summer’s afternoon and evening.... And well worth the time it is,’ he added, half to himself. ‘But Deepdale! You evidently have not the faintest idea what kind of a place it is. It’s one of old Drayton’s “Helbecks,” eerie enough at the best of times, utterly impossible in weather like this. I suppose it was its “slender rill,” which attracted your fancy?’

‘Yes, it was, because it was

‘“Last and least, but loveliest still.”’

‘Ha, ha! Yes—

‘“Romantic Deepdale’s slender rill.”

It will be roaring away at the bottom of the chasm, just now, in a manner a good deal more vigorous than romantic.’

‘Well, I think it is very disappointing. I set off intending to see three places, and I have not seen even one.’

‘But have got a good drenching in cold water instead. Don’t you think you might take it as an omen?’ said Michael, mockingly still, for he was determined not to allow himself to be interested in her; quite resolved not to yield to the pleasure of giving his full appreciation to the music of the round, fresh young voice, with its soft, southern accent, and unmistakable sincerity of tone.Michael was more of a connoisseur now, than he once had been, in such items. And as for the wonder which had just arisen in his mind—‘what is the charm about her?’—that he felt was a problem which it was quite outside of his province to consider.

‘As an omen!’ she repeated, sweetly. ‘Perhaps I might if I chose. I don’t know that I care much about the drenching.’

Michael scarcely heard her. He was thinking that he could not even call to-morrow upon her, to ask her how she did. Not that he was afraid of Thorsgarth, or of Otho; but simply because he had no part or lot in the Askam clan. He was separated from them for ever, by circumstances which could never—no, never be bridged over. Nothing could ever make it possible for him to have anything to do with them. And this girl by whose side he was now riding was Otho’s sister, and the present mistress of Thorsgarth.

‘I mean to see the places some other day,’ her voice continued; ‘and the drenching does not alter the fact that Barlow is an old man who potters about the house, and is rather slow about his work, and that I am a young woman, accustomed to take long rides.’

‘Alone, and in a rough country like this, no doubt.’

‘N—no. I must say I have never before ridden alone in a country like this.’

‘Well,’ said Michael, indifferently, and more for something to say than for any feeling he had about it, ‘it was not a safe expedition, and I rather wonder that your brother allowed it.’

‘Oh, I know perfectly well that Otho would not allow it, so I seized upon the opportunity while he was away.’

‘Ah, he is away?’

‘Yes. He has gone to some place called Friarsdale. I don’t know where that is. Can you tell me?’

‘Easily. It is over beyond Swaledale and Wensleydale; a good way off, and very out of the way; but, of course, that makes it all the better fitted for your brother’s purpose. It is a good place for the stables, and capital exercise for the——’

‘Stables!’ echoed she, quickly. ‘Has Otho got stables there?’

‘The training stables, I mean. He has some splendid yearlings there. You should get him to take you over to see them—if you care for horses, that is.’

‘But, Mr. Langstroth, you do not mean to tell me that Otho has anything to do with racing—my brother? Oh, well, I have heard that he took an interest in “the turf,” as they call it; but in a racing stable—impossible!’

Michael suppressed a ‘whew!’ of sheer astonishment. The natural reply to the question, and the one which he would have made to any man, would have been to laugh, and say, ‘Oh, hasn’t he, though?’ But he remembered himself in time, and, after a moment’s pause, said, ‘Oh, didn’t you know? I thought every one was acquainted with that fact. It is certainly no secret; only I rather think you are mixing up two things. Your brother’s place is not what one would call a “racing stable”—that is, it is not a place where they train race-horses. They breed horses there for racers, and sell them. It is a purely business kind of thing. I’m surprised you have not happened to hear of it, because his stables are very well known, though, it’s true, not perhaps in your world, up to now.’

‘But,’ said Eleanor, anxiously, her mind apparently fixed on one point, ‘he doesn’t race with them, does he?’

‘With the horses?’ said Michael, laughing, in spite of himself. ‘He has not run one of his own, so far; but I believe he intends to at the next Derby, and some people say that Crackpot will be the favourite.’

‘Crackpot—is that the horse’s name?’ asked Eleanor, in the tone with which one speaks of some extremely ugly and repulsive thing, so that Michael again smiled to himself in the dark.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He’s called after a waterfall in Swaledale, noted for its swiftness.’

Eleanor did not smile at the joke, if joke it were.

‘It seems,’ thought Michael, ‘that I have opened her eyes in an unexpected manner—by accident. Who was to suppose that she could be so exceedingly simple as never to gather what he was after in Friarsdale? If she’s going to take that so much to heart, I am afraid there will be some other rather unpleasant surprises in store for her.’

At this point she broke in again, in a voice which betrayed her uneasiness.

‘You speak as if you did not think much of it, Mr. Langstroth; but, surely, that sort of thing is not for gentlemen.’

‘My dear Miss Askam, you have got quite a wrong impression, I assure you. You must know that some very fine gentlemen have to do with such things. The only thing is, it is such a frightfully expensive hobby, and——’

‘It’s a low kind of amusement, I think,’ she began.

‘Not at all—at least, not of necessity. You must excuse me for contradicting you; but——’

‘Well, if he keeps this place to get money, why not turn horse-dealer at once?’ said Eleanor, resentfully.

Michael felt that extreme innocence can, and does ask more awkward questions, in perfect good faith, than the most hardened wickedness could possibly devise. If he had spoken the truth aloud, he would have been obliged to say that the fact of being a horse-dealer by profession could scarcely be considered a reproach to a man, whatever ignorant young ladies might think on the subject; but that in Otho Askam’s neck-or-nothing way of carrying on what he was pleased to call his ‘business,’ there was matter for reproach, and that, as a matter of fact, a respectable horse-dealer had the pull over the master of Thorsgarth, as regarded character. But he could not say this to Miss Askam, who evidently considered the matter in another light—as a low pursuit, namely,—one, perhaps, of other low pursuits which her brother was in the habit of following. It let a new light into his mind as to her character and her ignorance, and he followed a natural impulse—the impulse to reassure her.

‘You really think quite too much about it,’ he said, lightly. ‘Every true Yorkshire man—and every true border-man, for that matter—has a strain of the jockey in him. And when a man lives in the country, and has his soul in country pursuits it is inevitable that horses should come into the list.’

‘That horses should come into the list!’ repeated Eleanor, in the same tone of mortification. ‘How many more things come into the list of country pursuits? “Running factories,” that is one—buying shares: he told me that his friend, Mr. Langstroth, kept him from plunging too deep into that.’ She had forgotten who was with her; and as she uttered the next words, a flash of lurid, hideous light seemed to burn the meaningof it all into her brain. ‘Card-parties——’ Her breath failed her for a moment. Michael never forgot the voice with which she suddenly asked him, with desperate, urgent haste, ‘Mr. Langstroth, for God’s sake—is Otho a gambler?’

Michael hesitated for one moment. But he knew he could not shirk the question. So asked, it must be answered truly, however cruel the blow.

‘I’m sorry you have asked me that question,’ said he. ‘But there is only one answer to it. He is a born gambler.’

He awaited her next words with an eagerness and anxiety which surprised himself, and when no words came, he was again surprised at the feeling of chill regret which came over him. For Eleanor made no answer whatever to his answer to her question. The vibrating eagerness of her voice, of the voice with which she had asked if Otho were a gambler, was stilled. In the darkness, which was now deep, they rode on in drear, unbroken silence. What she felt, what she thought, she did not betray. She was not made of the stuff that wails and laments over the discovery that life is not a track of smooth grass, warmed by unclouded sunshine.

‘Well,’ said Michael to himself, as this silence grew more and more oppressive to him; ‘she asked the question. I had to speak the truth. She must have learnt it sooner or later. I can’t imagine how it is she has not found it out already....’ Then an intense, eager wish. ‘If she would only speak! How she must hate me! Yes, she must hate me for telling her that. How can she help? I expect she is wishing now that she had never seen me. It’s a pity for her that sheshould have come up here, to be thrown into the midst of such doings. Otho for her brother, Magdalen for her friend, and my brother—well, forl’ami de la maison! A nice company for her to be in.... And, after all, what is it to me? Only it’s a piece of cursed ill-luck that I should have got mixed up with her at all.... I wish she would speak.’

But Eleanor did not speak for what seemed a very long time, except when Michael, who felt the silence absolutely unbearable, said to her once, in a curt tone, to cover his unhappiness, ‘Don’t you think we had better trot along this road? You will get cold if we go too slowly.’ To which she replied in a measured voice, ‘Yes, no doubt,’ and at once put her horse into a trot, but made no further remark.

This state of things continued until, having made considerable progress, they were going up the hill towards the old bridge, and had about twenty minutes more of a ride before them. Just as they had reached the bridge and got into the light, they met Roger Camm striding out of the town. He gazed with visible astonishment at Michael and his companion, raised his hat, and passed on. Then Eleanor spoke, quite quietly and composedly.

‘Is not that your friend, Mr. Camm?’

‘Yes,’ said Michael, with a profound sense of relief. ‘But, if I may ask, how do you know he is my friend, and what do you know of him?’

‘I heard about him when Otho took me to see Miss Wynter. And Miss Dixon was there too——’

‘When was that?’ asked Michael.

‘Why, the day after I came to Thorsgarth. You were there when we called. Don’t you remember?’

‘I remember that occasion perfectly; but it is a fortnight ago.’

‘Well, I have never been since.’ Michael raised his eyebrows. She had never been since! ‘Miss Dixon came before we left,’ went on Eleanor. ‘She said Mr. Camm was going out to fetch her home. Miss Wynter told me you and he were great friends.’

‘Yes, Roger and I have knocked about together a good deal. We know the best and the worst of each other, I fancy; and if you can stick together after that it means that you are friends.’

‘Yes, I suppose so. He looks—he has an original-looking face. Is he clever?’

‘Yes, he is very clever. He has a career before him—at least——’

‘At least?’

‘I believe I was going to say he would have, if he were not engaged to Ada Dixon; but I don’t see that she need hinder him so much, after all.’

‘I do not know Mr. Camm, of course; but I should not imagine she was his equal, if he is really a clever and able man.’

‘I fear you are right. But Roger has crotchets, and one of them is, that he is a working man. In a way, he is, as we all are, or ought to be; but his father was a clergyman of the Church of England. He is never going to be anything else, according to his own theory; and working men, from what he says, must marry in their own sphere, or else they will always be in a false position, and “getting into lumber,” as he calls it.’

‘Well, there may be a good deal in that; but from what I saw of Miss Dixon that afternoon, I should think she was the last person to be a suitable wife for a realworking man. She seemed to feel herself quite outside anything of that kind.’

‘Of course. She is outside anything of that kind, practically. But Roger wants to marry her, and, of course, theories are elastic, under certain circumstances. I suppose he was going out to Balder Hall now, to fetch her home.’

‘Yes,’ said Eleanor, and they did not pursue the topic. They were now very near Thorsgarth; a few minutes more brought them to its gates, and as they rode up the avenue, Eleanor suddenly said, in an extinguished voice—

‘HowtiredI am! I never was so tired in my life before.’

He was silent. They stopped before the door, over which burned a light. Eleanor’s hands dropped on her lap, as she sat still and tired out. Michael dismounted and came to her to lift her from her horse.

‘Won’t you ring?’ said she; ‘then they will send the men round, and save you any more trouble.’

‘Let me do my own way,’ said he, lifting her down. For a moment, just one moment, he held her in his arms, and as the light fell upon her, he thought he had never seen so sad and proud an expression on any woman’s face. Something rose in his throat for a moment. Then, just as he turned to put his hand on the bell, she said—

‘Stop one moment. I am very tired, and cannot talk to-night; but there is something that I must speak to you about. Yes, I must,’ she added, almost vehemently. ‘All the way I have been thinking of it; I can never rest till I have asked you about it. Will you call to-morrow afternoon? Would you very much mind? I will not keep you long.’

‘I will call,’ said he, after a very brief pause. ‘At what hour?’

‘Shall we say four? I think you are exceedingly good. I—I cannot thank you.’

‘No, you have nothing to thank me for,’ said Michael drily, as he pulled the bell. ‘But since you are pleased to feel grateful to me for something or other, prove it by not thinking or fretting too much about—what we were speaking of,’ and he looked meaningly at her. He could not speak so indifferently as he would have wished to. He knew, with unerring certainty, that she had not a careless nature, but a deep one—not a nature that lives on the surface. He had pained her; that thought, though unreasonable, was persistently present in his mind. She smiled rather wanly in answer to his exhortation.

‘I will do what I can,’ she said.

‘I wish you had never askedmethat question,’ said Michael, and his voice betrayed his disturbance.

‘Let me repeat your own advice—do not think too much about it,’ said she, turning as the door was opened.

Barlow stood there uttering an exclamation of joy. Eleanor held out her hand to Michael, and said in a very distinct voice—

‘I thank you for your escort. And you will do me the favour to call to-morrow afternoon?’

‘I shall do so,’ said he, and stood with his hat in his hand till the door was closed behind her. Then he turned, to find William in possession of his mistress’s horse, and inquiring anxiously if she was likely to be any the worse.

‘I hope not,’ said Michael, getting on to his own horse again. ‘But listen to me, my lad. When Miss Askam thinks of riding long distances ‘cross country,and you don’t know the way, another time let me advise you to tell her so, and not get into such a mess again.’

He rode away, leaving William speechless between concern at what had happened and desperate puzzlement as to how he was possibly to refuse to obey his mistress’s orders.

‘I isn’t here to tell her what she ought to do,’ reflected the youth. ‘I’se here to do what she tells me. How be I to do both? Perhaps you could’—with a nod after the vanishing figure,—‘but I’se different from you.’

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