Chapter Six.
Night.
Margaret did not remove her hand from Geoffrey’s grasp, partly because her mind was occupied with the difficulties of the position, partly because she naturally relied upon him. That position, trying to her, was pleasurable enough to Geoffrey, but he was too loyal to prolong it.
“I was told to look for the Tump,” he said. “Other landmarks were the Castle and Moonlight Firs. I think I should know the Tump, or the Castle, but cannot see either. Can you recognise Moonlight Firs?”
“Every hill seems to have a Folly,” she said, looking round. “I mean a clump of trees on the top. Yes,”—after a second searching gaze—“I believe that must be the Firs; it is larger than the rest.”
He took Kitty’s bridle, and led the chestnut in the direction of the copse. The distance was increased by the undulation of the ground, but in twenty minutes it grew more distinct.
“Yes, I am sure it is Moonlight Firs,” she said hopefully. “We shall find the track there.”
Kitty laboured up the steep slope wearily; Geoffrey patted and encouraged the mare.
“But what trees are these?” said Margaret, with a sudden change of tone as they reached the summit.
“I am afraid they are beeches,” said he. He ran forward, and found that they were. There were no firs. Margaret’s heart sank; the disappointment was very great.
“Look once more,” he said. “From this height there is a better view. See, there are three copses round us; is either like the Firs?”
“They are all just alike,” she said, in a troubled tone; then pleadingly, “Geoffrey—think.”
“There are the stars still,” he said.
“Ah, yes,” eagerly, and looking up. “I know the north star; there it is,” pointing to the faint sparkle that has been the lamp of hope to so many weary hearts on foaming ocean and trackless plain. “And the Great Bear; the men call it Dick and His Team; it shines every night opposite my window, over the dovecot. Why, of course, all we have to do is to turn our backs to it, and ride straight to Greene Ferne.”
“Not quite, I fear,” smiling at her impetuosity, for she was turning Kitty’s head. “You see we should start from a different base, and our straight line might be projected for eternity before it came to your window.”
“Then what’s the use of astronomy?” said Margaret promptly.
“Well—really,”—puzzled to give a direct reply, “the difficulty is the longitude. But tell me, are there any roads crossing the Downs?”
“One or two, I think.”
“Then we will go towards the north star; that will at least keep us in a straight line, and prevent us from going round in a circle. Sooner or later we must cross a road.”
“Is that all the stars can do for us?”
“Under present circumstances—yes.”
They descended the slope; on the level ground he began to run, urging the tired mare to trot.
“Do not do that,” she said; “you will be quite knocked up.”
“I do not mind in the least—for your sake. It is getting late, and we must hasten.”
He was now seriously anxious, for her sake, to seek a road, and pushed on as hard as he could. The mare, however, walked up the next rise; at the summit, Margaret pointed to the east.
“The clouds are coming up,” she said. Low down was a dark bank—a thicker night—rising swiftly, blotting out the stars one by one. Another burst forwards, and another walk, as Geoffrey began to feel the exertion.
The “messengers”—small detached clouds, that precede the rest—were already passing overhead. The white glow on the northern horizon, indicating the position of the summer sun just beneath, was covered. On three sides the edges of the cloud rose up and began to meet above. “I trust it will not rain,” thought Geoffrey.
“It is getting still warmer,” said Margaret presently; “the Great Bear is hidden now.” Under the mass of vapour the temperature, warm before, became sultry and oppressive.
“Stand up!” said Geoffrey sharply to the mare, as they descended a steeper slope, and she stumbled. Then to Margaret, “The mist is gone.” It had insensibly disappeared as the clouds came over; they had now covered the sky, and it was dark.
“Will it thunder?” she asked anxiously. “It is very hot, and I believe I felt a drop of rain—and another.”
“Only heat-drops,” said Geoffrey, but his mind misgave him. The clouds swept over at a rapid pace, yet there was no breeze; they were carried on an aerial current far above the earth. The pole star was hidden; still Geoffrey kept on walking as fast as he could, trying to keep a straight line. He spoke to and cheered the mare frequently; she stumbled, and seemed nervous. There was an intense electrical tension in the atmosphere.
“Oh, where are we now?” said Margaret, as Kitty’s knees rustled against something, and she stopped and dragged at the bridle. “What is this?”
In the gloom a white shimmering surface stretched out.
“A wheat field,” said Geoffrey; “we must go round it.” Kitty resisted, wanting to nibble at the succulent stalks, not yet dried into straw by the sun.
“If it is wheat we are certainly wrong,” said Margaret. “We ought not to get on the plain among the ploughed fields; our proper road is on the turf somewhere. Pluck me a wheat-ear, please; the stalk is sweet, and I am thirsty.”
He did so. Crushed by the teeth, the stalk yielded a pleasant sweetness to the parched mouth. “It is the wine of the corn,” she said. He wanted to lead the mare round the field; but beyond was another of barley, and Margaret was so certain that it was the wrong direction that he gave it up, and felt his way back to the hill as he thought. Proceeding along the ridge, a clump of trees loomed large close at hand.
“Moonlight Firs!” cried Margaret joyfully, urging the mare. “Please go and see what trees they are,” she said. “It is difficult to distinguish.”
He ran forward, and in two minutes returned, silent. “Yes?” she said impatiently.
“Beeches,” he replied; “the same beeches.”
“We have toiled round in a circle. What shall we do?—now we are lost indeed!” Her voice went straight to his heart, and roused him to fresh exertions.
“It is strange that we see no lights,” he said; “there must be farmhouses or cottages somewhere.”
“They all go to bed by daylight in summer—to save candles. Do let us go on—somewhere.” He easily understood her nervous desire to move. The darkness seemed to increase; but he led the mare slowly. Every now and then a lark rose from the turf—they could not see, but heard the wings—and fluttered away into the gloom.
“Hush!” whispered Margaret suddenly. “What was that? I thought I heard footsteps.”
“It was nothing,” said he, peering into the darkness. He had himself heard steps distinctly, but he would not let her be alarmed if he could help it.
“There!” she caught fast hold of his arm and drew him close. The heavy steps were distinctly audible for a moment, and then stopped.
“Who goes there?” shouted Geoffrey, startling her with the sudden noise. His voice sounded hollow and dead in the vastness of the mighty hills. They listened: no answer.
“Let us go on quick,” she said. Kitty moved again, painfully; her rider glanced back.
“I am sure I saw something far off moving,” she whispered.
“Nothing but a hawthorn bush,” said Geoffrey; yet he had himself discerned a shadowy something. Margaret had heard of the shepherds’ stories of the weird shapes that haunted the desolate places on the Downs. Kitty, obeying her impulse, pushed on more rapidly; when they looked back again there was nothing. But almost suddenly the darkness increased; it seemed to thicken and fall on them. In a few moments it was so intensely black that they could barely see each other. With it came a strange sense of oppression—a difficulty of breathing. Her hand on his shoulder trembled; even the man felt a sense of something unusual, bent his brow, and steeled himself to meet it. With her other hand she covered her face. In that pitch-black darkness, that almost sulphurous air, it seemed as if a thunderbolt must fall. The mare stood still.
In a minute there came a rushing sound—a rumbling of the ground; it swept by on their left at a short distance. A faint “baa” told what it was. “A flock of sheep,” said Geoffrey. “They have leapt the hurdles.”
“They always do when the clouds come down,” said Margaret, recollecting what the shepherds said. “It will thunder.”
But it did not. The noise of the frightened flock grew less as they raced headlong away. Shortly afterwards the extreme blackness lifted a little. Presently something like a copse came indistinctly into view ahead. This roused Margaret’s fainting hope; it might be Moonlight Firs, and they advanced again slowly. After a short while Kitty stood stock-still and would not move, neither for word nor blow; she backed instead.
“There must be something there,” said Geoffrey, leaving the bridle and walking forward. His feet caught in some bushy heath; he went on his knees and felt. In a yard his hand slipped into space—there was a chasm; he drew it back, then put his hand again and took up some earth from the side. It was white; then, dimly, he saw a white wall as it were beneath. An old chalk-quarry. “Thank Heaven for Kitty’s instinct!” he muttered. “We should have walked into it.” He did not tell Margaret that it was a quarry; he said it was a steep place. She wanted to go on to the copse; with regret he noticed the weariness of her voice; she was tired. He led Kitty far on one side of the quarry, giving it a wide berth, and taking the line of the sheep, who had avoided the precipice more by luck than any sense they possess in that way. The extreme darkness had now passed; but the clouds remained, and it was gloomy. He walked slowly, thinking now of possible flint-pits. Suddenly Margaret drew rein, and slipped out of the saddle.
“I can’t ride any longer,” she said. “I am so tired; let me walk.”
She took his arm; in a few minutes she began to lean heavily upon it. With the other hand he upheld the mare; thus the woman and the animal relied upon the man. But Margaret’s spirit was unbroken—she walked as fast as she could.
“Ah, this is not the Firs either!” she cried, as they reached some low underwood—nut-tree and hawthorn and thick bramble, overtopped by some stunted beeches, with but two or three firs among them. Passing round the small copse they came to an opening, and in the dimness saw some large grey stones inside. Utterly wearied and disappointed she left his arm, sat down on the soft turf, and leaned against a boulder. He looked closer.
“There is a dolmen under the trees,” he said. “Margaret dear, have you ever heard of this place?”
“These are Grey Wethers,” she said, in a low tone. “And no doubt what you call the dolmen is the Cave.”
“Then you know where we are?”
“Oh, no; just the reverse. I have only heard people talk of it; I have never been here before; all I know is we must have been going right away from Millbourne, just the opposite direction.”
“Do not trouble, dear; it seems a little lighter. Stay here while I go out of the copse and look round.”
“You will not go far away?” She could not help saying it.
“No, indeed I will not.” He went out some thirty yards, and then stopped, finding the ground began to decline. As she sat on the turf she could see his form against the sky; it was certainly lighter. In a rude circle the great grey boulders crouched around her; just opposite was the dolmen. It was built of three large flat stones set on edge, forming the walls, and over these an immense flat one—the table-stone—made the roof, which sloped slightly aside. A dwarf house, of Cyclopaean masonry; a house of a single chamber, the chamber of the dead. The place, she had heard, was the sepulchre of an ancient king—of a nameless hero. This Cave, as the shepherds called it, was a tomb. They had a dim tradition of the spirits haunting such magic circles of the Past. A sense of loneliness came over her—the silence of the vast expanse around weighed upon her; an unwonted nervousness took possession of her, as it naturally might in that dreary gloom. She tried to smile at herself, and yet put out her hand, and touched the mare’s neck—she was grazing near: it was companionship.
“Margaret!” Her name startled her in the oppressive stillness; she was glad to rise and go to him, away from that shadowy place.
“The clouds are breaking fast,” he said. “It will not rain; I am going to light a fire.”
“A fire! Why, it is too warm now.”
“Not for heat, but as a beacon. Some shepherd may see it, and come to us.”
“Indeed he would not,”—a little petulantly, for she was overtired. “He would be afraid, and say it was Jack o’ the Lanthorn.”
“Well, I will try; possibly a farmer may see it.”
“But where is your fuel? You cannot see to pick up sticks in the copse.”
“I stumbled on two hurdles just now; one has been thatched with straw.”
“I know; that is what the shepherds prop up with a stake, and sit behind as a shelter from the wind.”
“And the furze-bush here will burn.” She watched him tear some leaves out of his pocket-book, and place the fragments under the furze; then he added a little straw from the thatched hurdle, and a handful of dry grass.
“The stars are coming out again,” said Margaret, looking round; “and what is that glow of light yonder?” There was a white reflection above the eastern horizon where she pointed.
“It must be the moon rising,” he said, and applied a match to his bonfire. A blue tongue of flame curled upwards, an odour of smoke arose, and then a sharp crackling, and a sudden heat, that forced them to stand away. The bush burned fiercely, hissing and crackling as the fibres of the green wood and the pointed needles shrivelled up. By the light of the tawny flames he now saw the weary expression of her face; she must rest somewhere and somehow.
“Quick, Geoffrey! it is going out; throw your hurdles on.”
“On second thoughts I will not burn the hurdles.” Nothing flares so swiftly or sinks so soon as furze; in a few minutes the beacon was out.
“I must rest,” she said, and went back to the trees and sat on a boulder. Opposite, the pale glow in the east shot up into the sky; as it rose it became thinner and diffused. Slowly the waning moon came up over the ridge of a distant hill, whose top was brought out by the light behind it, as a well-defined black line against the sky. Vast shadows swept along and filled the narrow vales—dark as the abyss of space; the slopes that faced eastwards shone with a faint grey. The distorted gibbous disk lifted itself above the edge—red as ruddle and enlarged by the refraction: a giant coppery moon, weird and magical. The forked branches of a tree on the hill stretched upwards across it, like the black arms of some gibbering demon.
“Look round once more,” he said, as the disk cleared the ridge. “Perhaps you may recognise some landmark, and I will run and bring assistance.”
“And leave me here alone!” reproachfully.
“No, I will never leave you.” There was an intense pleasure in feeling how thoroughly she relied upon him. They went outside the copse and looked round. The dim moonlight was even more indefinite than the former mist and starlight. She saw nothing but hills, grey where the moonbeams touched them, black elsewhere; great cavernous coombes; behind them a shadowy plain. Here and there a hawthorn bush, fantastic in the faint light. It seemed as if a lengthened gaze might perhaps distinguish strange shapes flickering to and fro in the mystic waste.
“I see nothing but hills,” she said. “I do not like to look; let us go back to the trees.”
She sat down again on the sunken boulder, where only a part of the space around and its spectral shadows was visible.
“I feel so sleepy,” she said. Doubtless the warmth made her drowsy as well as weariness. “I think I shall lie down.” She sat on the sward and leaned against the stone; Geoffrey felt the short grass, it was perfectly dry.
“If only I had something to wrap round you!” he said. “How foolish I have been! Mr Fisher’s rug that was strapped on my horse would have been the very thing! I am so angry with myself—I ought to have thought of it.”
“But how could you anticipate?”
“At least, wrap your handkerchief about your neck.”
“I do not want it; it is too warm. But I will, as you wish me to.”
An idea suddenly occurred to him; he went on his knees and crawled right under the table-stone of the dolmen—into the tomb. She watched him with a sleepy horror of the place. In a minute he emerged triumphant.
“I have found it—this is it. It is a house built on purpose for you.”
“Oh, I hope not,” shuddering; “though, of course, we must all die.”
“Why—what do you mean?”
“That is a tomb.”
“A tomb!” laughing; “oh, yes, perhaps it was once, two thousand years ago, before Pisces became Aries.”
“I do not understand,” petulantly. “Do let me sleep.”
“I mean before the precession of the equinoxes had changed the position of the stars; it was so very long ago—”
“Please don’t talk to me.”
“But I want you to come in here.”
“In there! Impossible!”
“But do, Margaret; it is quite empty; only like a room. The ground inside is as dry as a floor, and the roof will shelter you from the night air, and, perhaps, save you from illness.”
“I couldn’t—no; please.”
“Well, just come and look.”
“I won’t—there!” quite decidedly.
“Margaret!”
He took her arm; notwithstanding her declaration, she rose and followed him. She did not resent his making her do it in that wild and desolate place; had he tried to compel her in civilisation, he would have failed. Once inside it, the Cave was not at all dreadful; she could sit upright, and, as he said, it was merely a chamber, open on one side. He then went to fetch the hurdles to make her a rough couch—it was with some thought of this that he had not burned them—knowing anything between the sleeper and the bare ground will prevent stiffness or chill. He saw that the moon had illuminated a valley on the right hand, and walked to the edge, thinking that perhaps a cottage might be in the hollow. There was nothing, but this caused him to be a little longer gone. Now Margaret was just in that state between waking and sleeping when shadows take shape and the silence speaks, nor could she forget that the Cave had once been a tomb. She looked out and involuntarily uttered a cry. Among the boulders stood a shapeless whiteness—a form rather than a thing, in the midst of the circle. She covered her face with her hands. Geoffrey returning heard the cry, and came running.
“What! How fortunate!” he exclaimed. She looked again—it was the grey, Geoffrey’s horse; in her nervous dread she had not recognised it in the shadow.
“This is fortunate,” he said, ignoring her alarm. “The poor fellow must have hobbled after us—perhaps not so very far, as we went round in a circle. Why, this must have been what we heard—the heavy steps, don’t you remember? I can make a couch now,”—unstrapping the rug, and removing the saddle, and also from Kitty. Then he took the thatched hurdle, and placed it on the floor of the Cave, straw uppermost. It was perfectly clean; the straw bleached white by the wind of the hills. The saddles made a rude support for her shoulders. She stood up, and he wound the rug—which was a large one—about her till she was swathed in it, and a kind of hood came round her head. She reclined upon the hurdle, leaning against the saddles; and lastly, at his wish, adjusted the handkerchief lightly over her face, so that she might breathe easily, and yet so as to keep the night air away. Then he placed the second hurdle, which was not thatched, across the open side of the Cave, partly closing it like a door, but not too completely.
“Why, I am quite comfortable,” she said. “Only it is too warm.”
“That is a good fault; good-night.”
“Good-night.” A long pause.
“Geoffrey—where are you?”
“Sitting by the door of your chamber.”
“You have been very kind.”
“I have done nothing.”
“You have no shelter; what shall you do?”
“I do not mind in the least; you forget I have been used to the bush.” A second long silence.
“Geoffrey!” very gently.
“I am here, dear.”
“Do not go far away.”
“Rest assured I will not.”
Silence again—this time not broken.
By-and-by he approached and listened; the low regular breathing convinced him that she slept at last. “She must be very, very weary,” he thought, “and I—” Scarce a word had been said that might not have been uttered before the world, and yet he felt a secret assurance that her heart was turning towards him.