“You forget one thing; I hadn't time. At the best, it would have taken me three or four years to get straight, and as you haven't much imagination, I suppose you don't realize what Helen's trials would have been in the meanwhile. An engaged girl's situation isn't easy when her lover is away. She stands apart, forbidden much others may enjoy, and Helen would have had to bear her friends' contemptuous pity for being bound to a man who had turned out a failure or worse.”
“I expect that's true,” Festing agreed. “However, there's another difficulty. Suppose I persuade Miss Dalton that you made a plucky fight and only gave her up when you were beaten? She may refuse to let you go, and insist on coming out to help.”
Charnock started, but with a rather obvious effort recovered his calm. “You must see your suggestion's stupid. Helen can't come out; I'm going to marry Sadie.”
“I forgot,” said Festing. “Well, since you urge me, I'll do what I can, although I don't like the job.”
He left the homestead shortly afterwards, but felt puzzled as he walked across the plain. When he suggested that Miss Dalton might resolve to join and help her lover, Charnock had looked alarmed. This was strange, because although Festing had, for a moment, forgotten Sadie, it was ridiculous to imagine that Bob had done so. Then why had he started. There were, however, one or two other things that disturbed Festing, who felt that he had made a rash promise. But the promise had been made, and he must do his best to carry it out.
He had a fine voyage, and a week after his arrival in the Old Country walked up and down the terrace of a house among the hills in the North of England. His host was an old friend of the family who had shown Festing some kindness when he was young, and his daughter, Muriel, approved her father's guest. She liked the rather frank, brown-skinned, athletic man, whom she had joined on the terrace. He was a new and interesting type; but although she was two or three years the younger and attractive, their growing friendship was free from possible complications. Muriel, as Festing had learned, was going to marry the curate.
After the roar of activity at the bridge, where the hammers rang all day and often far into the night, he found his new surroundings strangely pleasant. In Canada, he had lived in the wilds; on the vast bare plains, and among snowy mountains where man grappled with Nature in her sternest mood. Thundering snowslides swept away one's work, icy rocks must be cut through, and savage green floods threatened the half-built track when the glaciers began to melt. Every day had brought a fresh anxiety, and now he welcomed the slackening of the strain. The struggle had left its mark on him; one saw it in his lean, muscular symmetry, his quiet alertness, and self-confidence. But he could relax, and found the English countryside had a soothing charm.
The sun was low and rugged hills cut against the pale-saffron sky. The valley between was filled with blue shadow, but in the foreground a river twinkled in the fading light. Feathery larches grew close up to the house, and a beck splashed in the gloom among their trunks. Farther off, a dog barked, and there was a confused bleating of sheep, but this seemed to emphasize the peaceful calm.
“It's wonderfully quiet,” Festing remarked. “I can't get used to the stillness; I feel as if I was dreaming and would wake up to hear the din of the rivers and the ballast roaring off the gravel cars. However, I have some business to do to-morrow that I'm not keen about. Can one see Knott Scar from here?”
“It's the blue ridge, about six miles off. The dark patch on its slope is a big beech wood.”