THE DESERTED COTTON-MILL IN HILBECK GLEN
Hey the green ribbon! we kneeled beside it,
We parted the grasses dewy and sheen;
Drop over drop, there filtered and slided
A tiny bright beck that trickled between.
Tinkle, tinkle, sweetly it sung to us,
Light was our talk as of faëry bells—
Faëry wedding-bells faintly rung to us
Down in their fortunate parallels.—Jean Ingelow.
Richard came home for a few days towards the end of the long vacation. He was looking pale and thin in spite of his enforced cheerfulness, and it was easy to see that the inaction of the last few weeks had only induced restlessness, and a strong desire for hard, grinding work, as a sedative for mental unrest. His brotherly congratulations to Polly were mixed with secret amusement.
'So you are "Heriot's choice," are you, Polly?' he said, taking her hand kindly, and looking at the happy, blushing face.
'Are you glad, Richard?' she whispered, shyly.
'I can hardly tell,' he returned, with a curiously perplexed expression. 'I believe overwhelming surprise was my first sensation on hearing the wonderful intelligence. I gave such an exclamation that Roy turned quite pale, and thought something had happened at home, and then he got in a temper, and carried off the letter to read by himself; he would have it I was chaffing him.'
Polly pouted half-seriously. 'You are not a bit nice to me, Richard, or Roy either. Why has he never written to me himself? He must have got my two letters.'
'You forget; I have never seen anything of him for the last six weeks. Fancy my finding him off on the tramp when I returned that night, prosecuting one of his art pilgrimages, as he calls them, to some shrine of beauty or other. He had not even the grace to apologise for his base desertion till a week afterwards. However, Frognal without Rex was not to be borne; so I started off to Cornwall in search of our reading party, and then got inveigled by Oxenham, who carried me off to Ilfracombe.'
'It was very wrong of Rex to leave you; he is not generally so thoughtless,' returned Polly, who had been secretly chagrined by this neglect on the part of her old favourite. 'Is there no letter from Rex?' had been a daily question for weeks.
'Rex is a regular Bohemian since he took to wearing a moustache and a velvet coat. All the Hampstead young ladies are breaking their hearts over him. He looks so handsome and picturesque; if he would only cut his hair shorter, and open his sleepy eyes, I should admire him myself.'
Polly sighed.
'I wish he would come home, dear old fellow. I long to see him; but I am dreadfully angry with him, all the same; he ought to have written to Dr. Heriot, if not to me. It is disrespectful—unkind—not like Rex at all.' And Polly's bright eyes swam with tears of genuine resentment.
'I shall tell Roy how you take his unkindness to heart.'
She shook her head.
'It is very ungrateful of him, to say the least of it. You have spoiled him, Polly.'
'No,' she returned, very gravely. 'Rex is too good to be spoiled: he must have some reason for his silence. If he had told me he was going to be married—to—to any of those young ladies you mention, I would have gone to London to see his wife. I know,' she continued, softly, 'Rex was fonder of me than he was of Olive and Chriss. I was just like a favourite sister, and I always felt as though he were my own—own brother. Why there is nothing that I would not do for Rex.'
'Dear Polly, we all know that; you have been the truest little sister to him, and to us all.'
'Yes, and then for him to treat me like this—to be silent six whole weeks. Perhaps he did not like Aunt Milly writing. Perhaps he thought I ought to have written to him myself; and I have since—two long letters.'
'Dr. Heriot will be angry with Rex if he sees you fretting.'
'I am not fretting; I never fret,' she returned, indignantly; 'as though that foolish boy deserved it. I am happier than I can tell you. Oh, Richard, is he not good?'
And there was no mistaking the sweet earnestness with which she spoke of her future husband.
'Ah, that he is.'
'How grave you look, Richard! Are you really glad—really and truly, I mean?'
'Why, Polly, what a little Jesuit you are, diving into people's secret thoughts in this way.' And there was a shadow of embarrassment in Richard's cordial manner. 'Of course I am glad that you should be happy, dear, and not less so that Dr. John's solitary days are over.'
'Yes, but you don't think me worthy of him,' she returned, plaintively, and yet shrewdly.
'I don't think you really grown up, you mean; you wear long dresses, you are quite a fashionable young lady now, but to me you always seem little Polly.'
'Rude boy,' she returned, with a charming pout, 'one would think you had gray hairs, to listen to you. I can't be so very young or so very silly, or he would not have chosen me, you know.'
'I suppose you have bewitched him,' returned Richard, smiling; but Polly refused to hear any more and ran away laughing.
Richard's face clouded over his thoughts when he was left alone. Whatever they were he kept them locked in his own breast; during the few days he remained at home, he was observant of all that passed under his eyes, and there was a deferential tenderness in his manner to Mildred that somewhat surprised her; but neither to her nor to any other person did he hint that he was disappointed by Dr. Heriot's choice.
During the first day there had been no mention of Kirkleatham or Ethel Trelawny, but on the second day Richard had himself broken the ice by suggesting that Mildred should contrive some errand that should take her thither, and that in the course of her visit she should mention his arrival at the vicarage.
'I must think of her, Aunt Milly; we are neither of us ready to undergo the awkwardness of a first meeting. Perhaps in a few months things may go on much as usual. I always meant to write to her before my ordination. Tell her that I shall only be here for a few days—that Polly wants me to wait over her birthday, but that I have no intention of intruding on her.'
'Are you so sure she will regard it as an intrusion?' asked Mildred, quietly.
'There is no need to debate the question,' was the somewhat hasty reply. 'I must not deviate from the rule I have laid down for myself, to see as little as possible of her until after my ordination.'
'And that will be at Whitsuntide?'
'Yes,' he returned, with an involuntary sigh; 'so, Aunt Milly, you will promise to go after dinner?'
Mildred promised, but fate was against her. Olive and Polly had driven over to Appleby with Dr. Heriot, and relays of callers detained her unwillingly all the afternoon; she saw Richard was secretly chafing, as he helped her to entertain them with the small talk usual on such occasions. He was just bidding a cheerful good-bye to Mrs. Heath and her sister, when horses' hoofs rung on the beck gravel of the courtyard, and Ethel rode up to the door, followed by her groom.
Mildred grew pale from sympathy when she saw Richard's face, but there was no help for it now; she saw Ethel start and flush, and then quietly put aside his assistance, and spring lightly to the ground; but she looked almost as white as Richard himself when she came into the room, and not all her dignity could hide that she was trembling.
'I did not know, I thought you were alone,' she faltered, as Mildred kissed her; but Richard caught the whisper.
'You shall be alone if you wish it,' he returned, trying to speak in his ordinary manner, but failing miserably.
Poor lad, this unexpected meeting with his idol was too much even for his endurance. 'I was not prepared for it,' as he said afterwards. He thought she looked sweeter than ever under the influence of that girlish embarrassment. He watched her anxiously as she stood still holding Mildred's hand.
'You shall not be made uncomfortable, Miss Trelawny; it is my fault, not yours, that I am here. I told Aunt Milly to prevent this awkwardness. I will go, and then you two will be alone together;' and he was turning to the door, but Ethel's good heart prompted her to speak, and prevented months of estrangement.
'Why should you go, Richard? this is your home, not mine; Mildred, ask him not to do anything so strange—so unkind.'
'But if my presence embarrasses you?' he returned, with an impetuous Cœur-de-Lion look that made Ethel blush.
She could not answer.
'It will not do so if you sit down and be like yourself,' said Mildred, pleadingly. She looked at the two young creatures with half-pitying, half-amused eyes. Richard's outraged boyish dignity and Ethel's yearning overture of peace to her old favourite—it was beautiful and yet sad to watch them, she thought. 'Richard, will you ring that bell, please?' continued the wary woman; 'Ethel has come for her afternoon cup of tea, and she does not like to be kept waiting. Tell Etta to be quick, and fetch some of her favourite seed-cake from the dining-room sideboard.'
Mildred's common sense was rarely at fault; to be matter-of-fact at such a crisis was invaluable. It restored Richard's calmness as nothing else could have done; it gave him five minutes' grace, during which he hunted for the cake and his mislaid coolness together; that neither could be found at once mattered little. Richard's overcharged feelings had safe vent in scolding Etta and creating commotion and hubbub in the kitchen, where the young master's behests were laws fashioned after the Mede and Persian type.
When he re-entered the room Mildred knew she could trust him. He found Ethel sitting by the open window with her hat and gauntlets off, enjoying the tea Mildred had provided. He carried the cake gravely to her, as though it were a mission of importance, and Ethel, who could not have swallowed a mouthful to save her life, thanked him with a sweet smile and crumbled the fragments on her plate.
By and by Mildred was called away on business. She obeyed reluctantly when she saw Ethel's appealing look.
'I shall only be away a few minutes. Give her some more tea, Richard,' she said as she closed the door.
Richard did as he was bid; but either his hand shook or Ethel's, though neither owned to the impeachment, and the cup slipped, and some of the hot liquid was spilt on the blue cloth habit.
The laugh that followed was a very healing one. Richard was on his knees trying to undo the mischief and blaming himself in no measured terms for his awkwardness. When he saw the sparkle in Ethel's eye his brow cleared like magic.
'You are not angry with me, then?'
'Angry with you! What an idea, Richard; such a trifling accident as that. Why it has not even hurt the cloth.'
'No, but it has scalded your hand; let me look.' And as Ethel tried to hide it he held it firmly in his own.
'You see it is nothing, hardly a red spot!' but he did not let it go.
'Ethel, will you promise me one thing? No, don't draw your hand away, I shall say nothing to frighten you. I was a fool just now, but then one is a fool sometimes when one comes suddenly upon the woman one loves. But will you promise not to shun me again, not as though you hated me, I mean?'
'Hated you! For shame, Richard.'
'Well, then, as though you were afraid of me. You disdained my assistance just now, you would not let me lift you from your horse. How often have I done so before, and you never repulsed me!'
'You ought not to have noticed it, you ought to have understood,' returned Ethel, with quivering lips. It was very sweet to be talking to him again if only he would not encroach on his privilege.
'Then let things be between us as they always have been,' he pleaded. 'I have done nothing to forfeit your friendship, have I? I have humbled myself, not you,' with a flavour of bitterness which she could not find it in her heart to resent. 'Let me see you sitting here sometimes in my father's house; such a sight will go far to soothe me. Shall it be so, Ethel?'
'Yes, if you wish it,' she returned, almost humbly.
Her only thought was how she should comfort him. Her womanly eyes read signs of conflict and suffering in the pale, wan face; when she had assented, he relinquished her hand with a mute clasp of thanks. He looked almost himself when Mildred came back, apologising for her long delay. Had she really been gone half-an-hour—neither of them knew it. Ethel looked soothed, tranquillised, almost happy, and Richard not graver than his wont.
Mildred was relieved to find things on this agreeable footing, but she was not a little surprised when two days afterwards Richard announced his intention of going up to Kirkleatham, and begged her to accompany him.
'I will promise not to make a fool of myself again; you shall see how well I shall behave,' he said, anticipating her remonstrance. 'Don't raise any objection, please, Aunt Milly. I have thought it all over, and I believe I am acting for the best,' and of course Richard had his way.
Ethel's varying colour when she met them testified to her surprise, and for a little while her manner was painfully constrained, but it could not long remain so. Richard seemed determined that she should be at her ease with him. He talked well and freely, only avoiding with the nicest tact any subject that might recall the conversation in the kitchen garden.
Mildred sat by in secret admiration and wonder; the simple woman could make nothing of the young diplomatist. That Richard could talk well on grave subjects was no novelty to her; but never had he proved himself so eloquent; rather terse than fluent, addicted more to correctness than wit, he now ranged lightly over a breadth of subjects, touching gracefully on points on which he knew them to be both interested, with an admirable choice of words that pleased even Ethel's fastidiousness.
Mildred saw that her attention was first attracted, and then that she was insensibly drawn to answer him. She seemed less embarrassed, the old enthusiasm woke. She contradicted him once in her old way, he maintained his opinion with warm persistence;—they disagreed. They were still in the height of the argument when Mildred looked at her watch and said they must be going.
It was Ethel's turn now to proffer hospitality, but to her surprise Richard quietly refused it. He would come again and bid her good-bye, he said gravely, holding her hand; he hoped then that Mr. Trelawny would be at home.
His manner seemed to trouble Ethel. She had stretched out her hand for her garden-hat. It had always been a custom with her to walk down the croft with Mildred, but now she apparently changed her mind, for she replaced it on the peg.
'You are right,' said Richard, quietly, as he watched this little by-play, 'it is far too hot in the crofts, and to-day Aunt Milly has my escort. Old customs are sometimes a bore even to a thorough conservative such as you, Miss Trelawny.'
'I will show you that you are wrong,' returned Ethel, with unusual warmth, as the broad-brimmed hat was in her hand again. There was a pin-point of sarcasm under Richard's smooth speech that grazed her susceptibility.
Perhaps Richard had gained his end, for an odd smile played round his mouth as he walked beside her. He did not seem to notice that she did not address him again, but confined her attention to Mildred. Her cheeks were very pink, possibly from the heat, when she parted from them at the gate, and Richard got only a very fleeting pressure of the hand.
'Richard, I do not know whether to admire or to be afraid of you,' said Mildred, half in jest, as they crossed the road.
A flash of intelligence answered her.
'Did I behave well? It is weary work. Aunt Milly; it will make an old man of me before my time, but she shall reverence me yet,' and his mouth closed with the old determined look she knew so well.
Dr. Heriot had planned a picnic to Hillbeck in honour of Polly's eighteenth birthday, the vicarage party and Mr. Marsden being the only guests.
Hillbeck Wood was a very favourite place of resort on hot summer days. To-day dinner was to be spread in the deep little glen lying behind an old disused cotton-mill, a large dilapidated building that Polly always declared must be haunted, and to please this fancy of hers Dr. Heriot had once fabricated a weird plot of a story which was so charmingly terrible, as Chriss phrased it, that the girls declared nothing would induce them to remain in the glen after sundown.
There was certainly something weird and awesome in the very silence and neglect of the place, but the glen behind it was a lovely spot. The hillsides were thickly wooded; through the bottom of the glen ran a sparkling little beck; the rich colours of the foliage, wearing now the golden and red livery of autumn, were warm and harmonious; while a cloudless sky and a soft September air brightened the scene of enjoyment.
Mildred, who, as usual on such occasions, was doomed to rest and inaction, amused herself with collecting a specimen of ruta muraria for her fernery, while Polly and Chriss washed salad in the running stream, and Richard and Hugh Marsden unpacked the hampers, and Olive spread the tempting contents on dishes tastefully adorned with leaves and flowers under Dr. Heriot's supervision, while Mr. Lambert sat by, an amused spectator of the whole.
There was plenty of innocent gaiety over the little feast. Hugh Marsden's blunders and large-handed awkwardness were always provocative of mirth, and he took all in such good part. Polly and Chriss waited on everybody, and even washed the plates in the beck, Polly tucking up her fresh blue cambric and showing her little high-heeled shoes as she tripped over the grass.
When the meal was over the gentlemen seemed inclined to linger in the pleasant shade; Chriss was coaxing Dr. Heriot for a story, but he was too lazy to comply, and only roused himself to listen to Richard and Hugh Marsden, who had got on the subject of clerical work and the difficulty of contesting northern prejudice.
'Their ignorance and hard-headedness are lamentable,' groaned Hugh; 'dissent has a terrible hold over their mind; but to judge from a few of the stories Mr. Delaware tells us, things are better than they were.'
'My father met with a curious instance of this crass ignorance on the part of one of his parishioners about fifteen years ago,' returned Richard. 'I have heard him relate it so often. You remember old W——, father?'
'I am not likely to forget him,' replied Mr. Lambert, smiling. 'It was a very pitiful case to my mind, though one cannot forbear a smile at the quaintness of his notion. Heriot has often heard me refer to it.'
'We must have it for Marsden's benefit then.'
'I think Richard was right in saying that it was about fifteen years ago that I was called to minister to an old man in his eighty-sixth year, who had been blind from his birth, I believe, and was then on his deathbed. I read to him, prayed for him, and talked to him; but though his lips moved I did not seem to gain his attention. At last, in despair, I said good-afternoon, and rose to go, but he suddenly caught hold of me.
'"Stop ye, parson," he said; "stop ye a bit, an' just hear me say my prayers, will ye?" I thought it a singular request, but I remained, and he began repeating the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, the collect "Lighten our darkness," and finished up with the quaint old couplet beginning—
"Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on,"
and after he had finished he said triumphantly, "Hoo d'ye think I've deean?" I said, "em gay weel. D'ye think I'll pass?"
'Of course I said something appropriate in reply; but his attention seemed wholly fixed on the fact that he could say his prayers correctly, as he had been probably taught in his early childhood, and when I had noticed his lips moving he had been conning the prayers over to himself before repeating them for my judgment.'[3]
A lugubrious shake of the head was Hugh's only answer.
'I grant you such a state of things seems almost incredible in our enlightened nineteenth century,' continued Mr. Lambert, 'but many of my older brethren have curious stories to tell of their parishioners, all of them rather amusing than otherwise. Your predecessor, Heriot—Dr. Bailey—had a rare stock of racy anecdotes, with which he used to entertain us on winter evenings over a glass of hot whisky toddy.'
'To which he was slightly too much addicted,' observed Dr. Heriot.
'Well, well, we all have our faults,' replied the vicar, charitably. 'We will not speak against poor Bailey, who was in the main a downright honest fellow, though he was not without his weakness. Betha used to remonstrate with him sometimes, but it was no use; he said he was too old to break off a habit. I don't think, Heriot, he ever went to great lengths.'
'Possibly not,' was the somewhat dry reply, 'but we are willing to be amused by the old doctor's reminiscences.'
'You know the old Westmorland custom for giving names; well, some forty years ago George Bailey, then a young doctor new to practice, was sent for to visit a man named John Atkinson, who lived in a house at the head of Swale-dale.
'Having reached the place, he knocked at the door, and asked if John Atkinson lived there.
'"Nay," says the woman, "we've naebody ev that nyam hereaboots."
'"What?" says Bailey, "nobody of the name in the dale?"
'"Nyah," was the reply, made with the usual phlegm and curtness of the genuine Daleswoman. "There's naebody ev that nyam."
'"Well, it is very odd," returned Bailey, in great perplexity. "This looks like the house to which I was directed. Is there any one ill in the dale?"
'"Bless me, bairn," exclaimed the woman, "ye'll mean lile Geordie John. He's my man; en's liggen en theyar," pointing to an inner room, "varra badly. Ye'll be t'doctor, I warn't. Cum, cum yer ways in en see him. Noo I think on't, his reet nyam is John Atkinson, byt he allus gas by lile Geordie John. His fad'r was Geordie, ye kna, an' nobbut a varra lile chap."'
'Capital!' observed Dr. Heriot, as he chuckled and rubbed his hands over this story. 'Bailey told it with spirit, I'll be bound. How well you have mastered the dialect, Mr. Lambert.'
'I made it my study when I first came here. Betha and I found a fund of amusement in it. Have you ever noticed, Heriot, there is a dry, heavy sort of wit—a certain richness and appropriateness of language—employed by some of these Dalesmen, if one severs the grain from the rough husk?'
'They are not wanting in character or originality certainly, though they are often as rugged as their own hills. I fancy Bailey had lived among them till he had grown to regard them as the finest people and the best society in the world.'
'I should not wonder. I remember he told me once that he was called to a place in Orton to see an elderly man who was sick. "Well, Betty," he said to the wife, "how's Willy?"
'"Why," says Betty, "I nau'nt; he's been grumbling for a few days back, and yesterday he tyak his bed. I thout I'd send for ye. He mebbe git'nt en oot heat or summat; byt gang ye in and see him." The doctor having made the necessary examination came out of the sickroom, and Betty followed him.
'"Noo, doctor, hoo div ye find him?"
'"Well, Betty, he's very bad."
'"Ye dunnot say he's gangen t'dee?"
'"Well," returned Bailey, reluctantly, "I think it is not unlikely; to my thinking he cannot pull through."
'"Oh, dear me," sighed Betty, "poor auld man. He's ben a varra good man t'me, en I'll be wa to looes him, byt we mun aw gang when oor time cums. Ye'll cum agen, doctor, en deeah what ye can for hym. We been lang t'gither, Willy an me, that ha' we."
'Well, Bailey continued his visits every alternate day, giving no hope, and on one Monday apprising her that he thought Willy could not last long.
'Tuesday was market-day at Penrith, and Betty, who thought she would have everything ready, sent to buy meat for the funeral dinner.
'On Wednesday Bailey pronounced Willy rather fresher, but noticed that Betty seemed by no means glad; and this went on for two or three visits, until Betty's patience was quite exhausted, and in answer to the doctor's opinion that he was fresher than he expected to have seen him and might live a few days longer, she exclaimed—
'"Hang leet on him! He allus was maist purvurse man I ivver knew, an wad nobb't du as he wod! Meat'll aw be spoilt this het weather."
'"Never mind," said Bailey, soothingly, "you can buy some more."
'"Buy mair, say ye?" she returned indignantly. "I'll du nowt o't mack; he mud ha deet when he shapt on't, that mud he, en hed a dinner like other fok, but noo I'll just put him by wi' a bit breead an cheese."
'As a matter of fact, the meat was spoilt, and had to be buried a day or two before the old man died.'
Hugh Marsden's look of horror at the conclusion of the vicar's anecdote was so comical that Dr. Heriot could not conceal his amusement; but at this moment a singular incident put a check to the conversation.
For the last few minutes Polly had seemed unusually restless, and directly Mr. Lambert had finished, she communicated in an awe-stricken whisper that she had distinctly seen the tall shadow of a man lurking behind the wall of the old cotton-mill, as though watching their party.
'I am sure he is after no good,' continued Polly. 'He looks almost as tall and shadowy as Leonard in Dr. Heriot's story; and he was crouching just as Leonard did when the phantom of the headless maiden came up the glen.'
Of course this little sally was received with shouts of laughter, but as Polly still persisted in her incredible story, the young men declared their intention of searching for the mysterious stranger, and as the girls wished to accompany them, the little party dispersed across the glen.
Mildred, who was busy with one of the maids in clearing the remnants of the feast and choosing a place where they should boil their gipsy kettle, heard every now and then ringing peals of laughter mixed with odd braying sounds.
Chriss was the first to reappear.
'Oh, Aunt Milly,' she exclaimed breathlessly, 'what do you think Polly's mysterious Leonard has turned out to be? Nothing more or less than an old donkey browsing at the head of the glen. Polly will never hear the last of it.'
'Leonard-du-Bray "In a bed of thistles,"' observed Richard, mischievously. 'Oh, Polly, what a mare's nest you have made of it.'
Polly looked hot and discomposed; the laugh was against her, and to put a stop to their teasing, Mildred proposed that they should all go up to the Fox Tower as they had planned, while she stayed behind with her brother.
'We will bring you back some of the shield and bladder fern,' was Chriss's parting promise. Mildred watched them climbing up the wooded side of the glen, Dr. Heriot and Polly first, hand-in-hand, and Olive following more slowly with Richard and Hugh Marsden; and then she went and sat by her brother, and they had one of their long quiet talks, till he proposed strolling in the direction of the Fox Tower, and left her to enjoy a solitary half-hour.
The little fire was burning now. Etta, in her picturesque red petticoat and blue serge dress, was gathering sticks in the thicket; the beck flowed like a silver thread over the smooth gray stones; the sunset clouds streaked the sky with amber and violet; the old cotton-mill stood out gray and silent.
Mildred, who felt strangely restless, had strolled to the mill, and was trying to detach a delicate spray of ivy frond that was strongly rooted in the wall, when a footstep behind her made her start, and in another moment a shadow drew from a projecting angle of the mill itself.
Mildred rose to her feet with a smothered exclamation half of terror and surprise, and then turned pale with a vague presentiment of trouble. The figure behind her had a velvet coat and fair moustache, but could the white haggard face and bloodshot eyes belong to Roy?
'Rex, my dear Roy, were you hiding from us?'
'Hush, Aunt Milly, I don't want them to see me. I only want you.'