Sir Harry: A Love Story

by Archibald Marshall

The boy, the horse and the dogs—they had had the fine, fresh world to themselves throughout the afternoon, except for the strong birds of the sea and the little birds of the gorsy common. No buildings lay upon the path that Harry had taken to the shore, nor very near it, for he had ridden through the wood by a narrow ride, little used, and across the open ground had kept out of the way of trodden paths. There were sheep on this wide stretch of upland, and a shepherd might occasionally have been seen there. Otherwise it was little frequented; a human figure on it would arouse curiosity.

A human figure came into view as Harry had traversed the greater part of the open space, and the woods of Royd were a mile or so in front of him. It was the figure of a woman, and was immediately between him and the point towards which he was riding. He knew all the people who lived in the scattered cottages and farms between Royd and the sea; there were not many of them, and none just here. He wondered who it could be going in that direction, and what she was doing so far away from human habitation.

As he rode on, he saw that it was a girl, and a stranger, which was somewhat surprising, as the nearest place to which strangers came was miles away. He had left off singing, but one of the dogs barked, and the girl turned round, evidently startled and perhaps a little alarmed. He was near enough now to see her face. She was very young, hardly more than a child, for her hair was not knotted up under her hat, but tied behind with a big bow. She was tall and slim. The wind took her skirts as she stood there, and revealed the supple grace of her young figure, firmly but lightly poised against it. She was dressed in a coat and skirt of brown tweed, with a hat of soft straw firmly pinned on to her graceful head. So much Harry took in before he came near enough to see her face.

Her features were fine and true, and she had a delicate skin, its colour freshened by the wind. Her eyes were dark, with a starry radiance in them; her lips were slightly parted as she looked at him approaching. She was beautiful, with the beauty half of a child, half of a woman.

Harry reined in his horse as he came up to her, and for an appreciable instant they looked into one another's eyes without speaking. Then the girl said: "I have lost my way. I don't know where I'm going to," and laughed and blushed at the same time.

Harry laughed, too, and slipped down off his horse. "Where do you want to go?" he asked. "I'll show you the way, if you tell me."

She was staying with her father, she said, at a cottage on the edge of the woods; she had come out when the rain had ceased to walk towards the sea, but it was farther than she had thought, and when she had turned back to see the unbroken line of the woods before her there was nothing to tell her which point to make for.

The woman with whom she was lodging was the widow of a man who had worked in the Royd woods; he had died the year before and she had been given a pension and allowed to remain on in her cottage. It was in a group of three or four, about a mile from the Castle and a mile and a half from the village, which formed the nearest approach to an outlying hamlet that was to be found on the Royd lands. It was rather surprising that anybody should take lodgings there, though with the deep woods behind it and the moor in front, and the sea within view, many people might have chosen it to make holiday in, if it had come within their knowledge.

"Oh, Mrs. Ivimey," said Harry, pointing. "That's a mile and more away over there. I'm afraid you can't have much sense of direction."

They both laughed at that. It seemed the most natural thing for them to talk and laugh together. The secluded life that Harry had lived had brought some shyness into the way he addressed himself to strangers, though his natural manner was free and open. But this girl, walking freely over the windy moor, seemed to be in some way allied to those living influences of nature with which his contact was so real. And the spirit of youth informed all her looks and her ways and met the answering youth in him. There was no room for shyness in speaking to her, and as he neither felt nor showed it, her response was frank, too. "I'm a Londoner," she said. "You couldn't expect me to find my way about here, where the paths wind about anyhow, and everything is the same."