"Timothy's brain is all froth, like a beat-up egg. He wanted me to take some of his magic messes last winter, when I had yon bad cough, but I said, 'No, no, my man, none of your pesky stuff has ever found it's way down my throat, nor ever will.' 'It'll ease your kist, Mistress Lynn,' said he. 'Thank you kindly,' said I, 'but my kist is a hundred years old, and if it's a bit stiff in the hinges we needn't wonder. Cranky bits of furniture are none the better for tinkering at.'"
"Barbara always laughed at Timothy's sooth-saying," replied Lucy; "all the same, she often thought about it, I'm sure of that."
"You'll never get to the bed-rock of Barbara's mind," answered the old woman; "your spade's too short, my lass, for digging there. Though the good God made you both out of the same clay, he filled you with beck-water and Barbara with red wine. Havering! havering! An old woman's tongue sometimes runs away. Light the candles, lass; its getting dark, and Peter will soon be coming in."
The candles, in their tall iron sconces, filled the kitchen with a mellow light. The colour had vanished from the fells, but the stars glittered, and the wide snowfields gave a moonlight glimmer to the landscape. Lucy stood at the window for a moment, before putting up the shutters, thinking about her great-grandmother's words. Glancing at Thundergay, she thought how far and cold it looked against the star-fringed edges of the sky. There was her sister's throne, there on the highest peak with an outlook wide but wild, where she breathed an air too clear and sharp for common mortals.
She turned to the warm kitchen, recognising, with a glow of comfort, that such was her fitting place. She did not desire a large perspective—her eyes could not have taken it in. She did not crave for communion with nature, she did not want to dip herself into the mysterious pools that lay about the path of life. A common round, enclosed within four walls, satisfied her needs. Yet she knew that her husband's mind would sometimes escape from the warm nest that she would make for him. Now and again he would leave her to climb such high places as Barbara knew. There she would not be able to follow him. Yet she would not murmur. She would make his home such that he would always return to it for rest and sympathy. Ah, yes, if she were but a vessel full of beck-water, as her great-grandmother had said, she would be able to quench his human thirst. Barbara might stir and exalt as wine did, but hers would be the more womanly office of attending to common needs.
Peter had gone to the mill-house, Barbara was in the byre, Jess's shrill voice could be heard in the yard, and the hinds were out. Mistress Lynn seemed inclined to sleep, so Lucy returned to her seat, and stared into the fire, looking like a child making pictures there.
She was, in fact, seeing again the witch-lights and Girdlestone Pass. The place had been so impressed upon her mind, that it returned with startling vividness to haunt her, whenever her mind was unoccupied. In the warmest corner of the chimney-nook it would make her shiver; in the brightest flood of fire and candlelight she would see the rolling darkness about her feet, and then the will-o'-the-wisp gleam with its alluring, fitful flame. The horror of that time would remain with her all her life. It had killed anything that was left of her love for Joel, made her appreciate her position as Peter's wife, filled her with gratitude towards him, for he had forgiven her with the utmost gentleness. Had Joel stood before her now she would have turned from him without a tremor save that of shame.
Mistress Lynn was not asleep; like Lucy, she was thinking of the past. The years that were gone came back to her in a long, long train. From childhood, from her earliest memory, she followed events up through girlhood to wifehood and widowhood, and here at last she had come from the cradle to the four-poster, from having been a golden-haired bairn to be a bedridden old woman. It seemed hardly believable the way in which the years had gone. Yet the old clock, ticking in the corner, had marked off the moments of her existence with a relentless hand. Often it had been her solitary companion through long and wakeful nights, and she had listened to it, and watched its white face flicker with the firelight, never thinking that it was a stern angel, telling out the passing of her years.
As she passed her life in review, she thought that she had few regrets. The last one—the failure of Joel Hart to fulfil her hopes for him—soon fell away from her mind. She was too old to trouble any more about the cross-purposes of other people's lives. Still, she would like to have seen him again. Though she would have bitterly resented had any stain been put upon her name, perhaps, at the back of her old brain, she felt that, had his grandfather asked her to flee with him, she would have gone, so great was her love—and made herself strong enough, and brave enough, to take the consequences, and never cast a look behind.
Joel Hart had not gone away. He had meant to go, day after day, but had not had the resolution to carry out his intentions. He spent the dreary time at Forest Hall in vain longings, and in reviving his hate for Peter. He did not go out, but did his best to empty his wine-cellar. At last, however, he made up his mind, and told Mally Ray that he would ride off, as he had come home, in the dusk of early morning. The night before, a restless spirit took him into the dale. He thought that he would look at it for the last time.