OVER THE HILLS
Elias, however, did not lead the way. At first Anna declared she would go alone, but he would not hear of it—he would wait with her. They agreed that this should be at the bridge over the Woss, to which, for the sake of raising less remark, they would go by different ways.
She was there first. A hill with an abrupt turn led down to it. On either side lay a stray, in pasturage, to which the poor people of the town had common rights. It was sheltered by steep wooded banks that made the river's course still a valley. The river was thickly overhung with trees. Thickets of wild rose and bracken, overrun with bramble, bossed the hollows of the ground; golden spires of ragwort gleamed in the sun; the sleek red backs of the cattle were to be discerned in the patches of sultry shade. The air was breathlessly hot. Anna had walked quickly, and now, as she leant against the parapet, she felt sick and dizzy.
She had gone to the centre of the bridge before stopping. It was an old-fashioned structure, and the keystone of the arch was accented by a peak in the masonry. Along one side ran a narrow ridge as a footpath. Originally it had connected a mule-track. When mules in single file went out of fashion, it was widened for waggons. When the Marlowes vacated Old Lafer for the new Hall, to which this was the high road, the road was levelled and macadamised at great cost, but the old bridge underwent no alteration. It was said the Madam Marlowe of that day liked to keep her tenants waiting in their carts and shandrydans while her coach swung over it. At first this was taken as a matter of course, and the tenantry pulled their forelocks as the unwieldy vehicle, with its four black horses and buff-liveried out-riders, swayed past them. But gradually they became indifferent, then defiant, and at last it was known that some swore when they caught the glimpse of buff and the rattle of the drag that obliged them to pull up and stand to one side. More than once the present owner, the genial and popular old Admiral, had been petitioned by town and county to build a new one. It was represented to him that had it been a Borough bridge and within the jurisdiction of the Surveyor of Highways and dependent upon the ratepayers, it would have been done years before. He knew this, and declared himself glad that it was not. A generous and open-handed man, he had yet certain whims which no mortal power could combat; indeed, under the pressure of mortal power, a whim became a resolution. It did so in this case. He favoured the petitioners with his reasons for declining: there was not much traffic except on Wonston market-days; beyond the Hall the road ran only to the moors and the Mires, an unholy hamlet which he should allow gradually to fall into ruins; the old bridge was staunch in socket and rim—when he had been carried over it on his back Cynthia might do as she liked, but by that time electricity would probably have been adapted to night-travelling in carriages and her dinner-company would illumine the road beyond possibility of mishap.
One day he asked Cynthia what she would do.
'I shall build a new one, grandpapa,' she said.
'You will? Why?'
'That I may not fear an accident some dark night to some poor creature while I am comfortable here.'
'The poor creature would be some rascal from the Mires, old Kendrew probably, getting home drunk, Cynthy.'
'Perhaps the doctor coming to you or grandmamma.'
'Or you, my blooming damsel.'
'Or me. Why not?'
'Which God forbid!' cried the Admiral. 'But in any case we would send for him with well-trimmed lamps.'
'The foolish virgins trimmed their lamps too late,' said Cynthia.
'Well, see you don't,' said the Admiral, with provoking good-humour.
'Oh grandpapa, has never a Marlowe got drunk at his own dining-room table?'
'Cynthia!'
'Well, gentlemen do,' she said with shame, but decisively.
'Never here,' said the Admiral hastily. 'Perhaps at Old Lafer in the days of the Georges, never here! You go too far, Cynthy; you make me uncomfortable. What do you know of such things? I must instruct Mrs. Hennifer not to allow such a license of thought. Good Heavens, you will be turning Chartist next. There, there, I'm not going to tell you what that is.'
She looked wistful, but he laughed, chucked her under the chin and walked away.
A few days later she drove over the bridge with Mrs. Marlowe. Just as the coach took the turn on the Wonston side she looked back and her eye was caught by an unfamiliar gleam of white among the foliage from which they had emerged. It was a board on a post. She could not distinguish the notice inscribed on it but she must know what it was. She pulled the check-string and with an incoherent explanation to Mrs. Marlowe jumped out and ran back.
These were the words she read:
'Let all drunkards and blasphemers and otherwise unholy persons who are the destroyers of peace, plenty, and prosperity in their homes, beware of this bridge. To such it may prove an instrument, placed by Almighty God in the hands of the devil, for their destruction in the blackness of night or the fury of the tempest.
'Simon Marlowe,
'Lord of the Manor, 18—.'
She did not shudder. She realised instantly that such a warning as this might be efficacious, while a new bridge would encourage vice by ensuring safety. She was then a girl in her early teens, and now she was a woman. Each year the clear lettering of the words had been renewed. But there had been no judgment of God on the drunken men who clung to their saddles by His providence, or reeled to and fro on foot as they made their way home on pitch-dark nights, when the ring of a horse's hoofs could not be heard above the roar of the flood rushing below.
As Borlase turned the corner to-day his eyes fell upon the board. He was driving slowly, as it was necessary to do at this point. A moment before he had caught the sound of voices above the murmur of the scanty summer stream. He knew they would be those of Constantine and Anna. And now, as his thoughts centred gravely on the words 'destroyers of peace' as for them the kernel of the warning at this hour, he came in sight of Anna.
She was sitting on the footway. Her hat was off, her head thrown back against the masonry, her hands were clasped round her knees. Over her there played the flecks of sunshine that filtered betwixt the foliage above. Her face was turned to Elias, who sat sideways upon the mare's back, looking down at her. Her attitude was listless, her face pale and grave. Just as Borlase saw her she raised her hand to impel silence and inclined her head to listen. Another moment and he became distinguishable in the shadow of the trees. A flash of relief so intense as to be almost joy crossed her face and she sprang up.
Not a word was spoken. All were too intent upon the plan they had to accomplish; the beating of their hearts swayed between hope and fear, misgiving and faith. It was too certain that if Mrs. Severn were to be made to return home before her husband, there was not a moment to be lost. Borlase helped Anna to the seat beside him, then whipped on his horse. Elias jogged ahead to open the gate which secured the cattle from straying, and Anna nodded as they passed him. In another moment they disappeared round a corner where one of the park lodges stood, and he retraced his way to the bridge where a lane led up the valley to East Lafer, and thence by the high road to Old Lafer. It would take an hour to reach the Mires even with Borlase's good horse. Beyond the park the road was rough and hilly. At first it was overhung with trees, then the hedges gave way to unmortared walls. The last tree, a sturdy, stunted oak, was left behind. They passed through a gate and struck across a benty pasture where cotton grass shimmered, through another with tufts of heather here and there, and then had reached the moor.
The ling was in full blow. It swelled round them for miles, purple melting into amethystine distances that faded under the heat-haze, into the sky-line. Here and there were patches of vivid green bilberry, silvery spagnum, or ash-gray burnt fibre. In the hollows was the dense olive velvet of the rush. Lichened boulders threw lengthening streaks of shadow. Deep gills with streams whose waters now gathered into still pools, then foamed round rocks, cut the hills in every direction. Over all the cloud-shadows sailed, eclipsing the sunshine that again flashed softly forth behind them and steeped the still earth in fragrant heat.
And now there was a fresh soft breeze. It seemed to blow from heights above Meupher Fell or Great Whernside, to be a very balm from Heaven. When Borlase mounted the dog-cart after closing the gate Anna took off her hat and the breeze blew over her face and through her hair, giving her a delicious feeling of renewed courage and energy. So far they had scarcely spoken. Now she suddenly felt a lightening of heart, a quenching of the fever of perplexity and grief. Her face cleared. Borlase caught the change as he took the reins again.
'Let us talk,' he said, smiling.
'I fear it will be on a well-worn subject.'
'Mrs. Severn? There might be a better as we know, but that "the nexte thinge" is the one to be faced.'
She looked straight ahead. It was so perfectly natural that Clothilde should be discussed with Borlase, not only as an old friend but in his confidential professional character, that she was scarcely conscious of the immense relief of being able to talk of her. But her trouble was far too poignant for her to venture to meet his eyes, though imagining that he only knew the half.
'You remember this happening before?' she said.
He nodded, carefully flicking a fly from his horse's ear.
'You called at Old Lafer that very day, just after Dad had gone to see if she would be persuaded to come back at once.'
'Yes, I did.'
Would he ever forget that call?
It was on a bleak day in early spring. No gleam of sunshine lit up the old house as he rode up the hill. A north-east wind blew off the moors, whose hollows were still snow-drifted. The roar of the swollen stream thundering down the gill filled the air; the larches strained away from the buildings they sheltered, creaking with every fresh blast. He had knocked at the front door without answer, then gone round to the back with the same result. Not even the bark of a dog disturbed the death-like silence. Returning to the flags he scanned the fields. In the corner of the first pasture was a temporary shed for the ewes. As he looked, Dinah Constantine emerged from it carrying two lambs. Her keen eyes noted him instantly. She ran back, put down the lambs, and came up the field at the top of her speed. On reaching him she grasped his arm with the grip of a vice, poured into his amazed ears her dreary story, and finally opened the parlour door and showed him Anna.
She was sitting at the table with outflung arms, in which her face was buried. It was her first sorrow. She was exhausted by a grief that had been passionate and now was sickening. It seemed to her earnest and matter-of-fact nature that happiness had flown for ever from Old Lafer. He sat down and reasoned with her after closing the door against Dinah. He did not go near her, knowing instinctively that to feel any one near her would be intolerable, circumscribing, as it would seem to do, both grief and sympathy. Standing near the window in silence for a while, then sitting down apart, but where she could see him when she looked up, as he hoped she would do soon, he set himself to win her through the struggle and show her the light again.
And as he won her back to patience, he was himself won to love. Her bitter tears, yet the spasmodic efforts at smiles that pierced her hopelessness with hope and showed her capable of bracing herself for trial; her ardent love for Clothilde; her fierce shame and agony of remorse for Mr. Severn; her refrain at each point gained as to what had possessed Clothilde to be so 'wicked' as to leave her home, and her simple perplexity at its having been 'allowed' by God, expressing themselves on her face and in her gestures more than by word, made a never-to-be-forgotten impression upon him. This school-girl, whom he had as a matter of course either overlooked or patronised, and who was certainly plain to the point of being the ugly duckling of the family, dwelt thenceforth enthroned in his heart. His thoughts centred round her. His steps took him to her side at every opportunity. Other women, though beautiful, palled upon him. There insensibly stole into his soul a tender reverence that gradually made him hold aloof from the very intensity of his longing to be near her. He discovered in himself a new nature, capable of chivalrous self-control and subtly delicate adoration. Anna Hugo was dearer to him than life itself, except for her sake. She was a girl whom time would mature into a noble womanhood, and the stern realities of life at once strengthen and sweeten; the one woman whom—if he were to have his heart's desire—he must win for his wife.
And here she was to-day, at his side but still not won. However, she knew now that she was wooed. He would know more soon. Mrs. Severn should not come between them a third time, either directly or indirectly.
'The first time she ran away I was at school,' Anna said. 'Dad has never spoken of it, but Dinah has told me how awful it was. He became frantic when hours passed and there was no news or trace of her. There had been a heavy storm, and the waters were out, and he was certain she had been in the gill and slipped in and been drowned. And then old Hartas Kendrew came over from the Mires and told them she had gone there to see Scilla. Of course they thought it was a call; and Scilla made tea and then expected she would go. But the storm came on, and so she waited, and when it cleared Scilla proposed to set her home. Then she looked at her and said, "Prissy, I am come to stay with you, my husband won't let me go to Paris." She always calls Scilla Prissy, though she knows how she dislikes it. Scilla thought she was joking. Fancy going to the Mires because she could not go to Paris! But she would stay, and so Hartas came to tell us.'
'And Mr. Severn brought her back?'
'Yes. He was very angry, and insisted, and she was frightened. The second time he tried to persuade her, and she would not be persuaded, so he let her stay, and at a month's end she came back. But she never asked him to forgive her, and it was heart-rending to see him so gentle. He blamed himself, said he should never have asked her to marry him, that she was too young and handsome and well-born, and had he not been too selfish to let her alone she would have married some man who could have given her all the wealth and pleasure she had a right to expect. Last time he did not even try to coax her, though he actually went to see her. He said she must be happy in her own way. He had only his love to plead, and she had taught him she did not care for that.'
Her voice had sunk to the lowest of tones. Its inflexion touched the chord in his heart, of whose vibration in devotion to herself she was far from thinking in this hour. He caught his breath and abruptly turned his head away. He could not have borne to glance at her. For a moment he could not speak.
'Constantine said Mrs. Hennifer had called,' he said.
'Yes. She often does, but it is generally to see me now. Somehow she and Clothilde don't care for each other, though they've known each other for years. Clothilde was at her sister's school in London, and while she was there Mrs. Hennifer married and went out to India.'
'It seemed a strange coincidence that brought them into proximity again here.'
'That was years after. Captain Hennifer left her badly off, and she was glad to get such a delightful sinecure as looking after Cynthia.'
'Where is Miss Marlowe now?'
'In Jersey with the Kerrs. They're all going to winter there together.'
'Perhaps Mrs. Kerr will ask the Canon to join them by and by. I suppose she is his favourite sister.'
'Yes, and particularly as she's Cynthia's friend. But she will scarcely venture to ask him unless Cynthia wishes it. His being with them could only have one meaning, but I fear Cynthia won't wish it. I wish, every one does, that she would marry Canon Tremenheere.'
Above the ridge before them there just then wavered into the air a thin thread of peat reek. Anna saw it and averted her head. But Borlase had seen the rush of colour over face and neck. He put his hand on hers.
'Shall I come down with you?' he said.
She shook her head, with a swift half-frightened glance at him. He knew she did not know how she would find Mrs. Severn.
'Well, remember I am here and will do what you wish.'
'I'll come and tell you.'
'You really will?' he said, smiling into her eyes. She suddenly felt herself inspired with fortitude, and with a confidence so full and free that she could have told him anything.
'Yes, I will,' she said.
What wonder that his hand closed over hers with a sense of possession? Yet neither wished at the moment that there were time for more,—it is sweet to anticipate the joy that is very near. They were on the ridge. In the hollow below lay the Mires.
