“You know how I was always taught that in due time I should work the lands of Lindale Hall, and how, when we found on my father’s death that there was nothing left, I tried the cotton-mill. Well, after four years’ trial I like it worse than I did at the beginning, and now I feel that I must give it up. I am going back to the soil again, even if it is across the sea.”
Alice made no answer for a few moments; then she said slowly: “Ralph you will not be rash; think it over well. Now tell me if you have any definite plans—you know how I always used to advise you?”
I felt I needed sympathy, and Alice was a faithful confidant, so I opened my heart to her, and she listened with patient interest. It seemed to me that my cousin had never looked so winsome as she sat close beside me with a slight flush of color in her usually pale face where the soft lamplight touched it. So we sat and talked until Martin Lorimer entered unobserved, and when, on hearing a footstep, I looked up I saw that he was smiling with what seemed grim approval as his eyes rested on us, and this puzzled me. Then his daughter started almost guiltily as he said, “I wondered where you two were. Dinner has been waiting, and you never heard the bell.”
I retired early that night, and, being young, forgot my perplexities in heavy slumber. The next morning I noticed that Alice’s eyes seemed heavy, and I wondered what 14 could be the reason. In after years I mentioned it when Grace and I were talking about old times together, but she only smiled gravely, and said, “I sometimes think your cousin was too good for this world.”
The next day was one of those wet Sundays which it is hard to forget. The bleak moor was lost in vapor, and a pitiless drizzle came slanting down the valley, while the raw air seemed filled with falling leaves. A prosperous man with a good conscience may make light of such things, but they leave their own impression on the poor and anxious; so, divided between two courses, I wandered up and down, finding rest nowhere until I chanced upon a large new atlas in my uncle’s library. Martin Lorimer was proud of his library. He was a well-read man, though like others of his kind he made no pretense at scholarship, and used the broad, burring dialect when he spoke in his mill. Here I found occupation studying the Dominion of Canada, especially the prairie territories, and lost myself in dreams of half-mile furrows and a day’s ride straight as the crow flies across a cattle run, all of which, though I scarcely dared hope it then, came true in its own appointed time.
My uncle had ridden out early, for he was to take part in the new mayor’s state visit to church in the manufacturing town, and even Alice seemed out of spirits, so when I left the library there was the weary afternoon to be dragged through somehow. It passed very slowly, and then as I stood by the stables a man from the house at the further end of the valley, where Colonel Carrington was staying, said to our stable lad:
“I mun hurry back. Our folks are wantin’ t’ horses; maister an’ t’ Colonel’s daughter’s going to the church parade. They’re sayin’ it’s a grand turnout, wi’ t’ firemen, bands, an’ t’ volunteers, in big brass helmets!” 15
Neither of them saw me, and presently calling the lad I bade him put the bay horse into the dog-cart.
“He’s in a gradely bad temper,” said the lad doubtfully. “Not done nothink but eat for a long time now, an’ he nearly bit a piece out of me; I wish t’ maister would shoot him.”
I laughed at the warning, though I had occasion to remember it, and looking for Alice I said, “I am driving in to church to-night. Would you like to come with me?”