Her servant, following, came through high and dry, but with chattering teeth.
‘What is the matter? Are you afraid?’ she asked, and was much astonished to hear the only answer he gave—a piercing view-halloo. There was a moment’s silence, then the halloo was answered from some distance before them, and William, saying, ‘You bide here a minute, miss,’ rode on.
‘What can he be thinking of?’ she speculated, in some annoyance. ‘Leaving me here in the cold! I shall follow him.’
It was a good resolution, but not easy to carry out. She began to feel the cold stealing over every limb, while her soaked habit hung down, and seemed like a mass of ice, dragging her downwards. She could now see only a glimmer of the surrounding country, and the angry beck—black, flecked with specks of white, rushing and roaring as it seemed to her with redoubled force. A feeling of fright and alarm at the loneliness of it, the darkness and the wildness, overcame her. She felt herself trembling in every limb. A wild suspicion that William had taken flight, and did not intend to return, seemed to turn her to stone.
She jerked the reins, putting her horse at the little bank she had to climb, with the idea that the motion of riding would restore the circulation to her benumbed limbs; but it did not. She felt the cold seize her very vitals; unconsciously she slipped from her seat, crying out almost without knowing it, ‘William!’
Her own voice sounded hoarse and far off, yet she dimly heard sounds of other horses coming rapidly towards her, vaguely beheld a rider—two riders, glimmering on her sight. Then she heard a voice say, ‘Miss Askam!’ in tones of astonishment, saw a man vault from his horse—all in vague, magnified proportions; and then for two or three moments she was so cold that she knew nothing at all.
CHAPTER XIX
INEVITABLE
Michael, after leaving the cottage of the tall young woman with the sick child, and delaying a little, to let his horse drink from the beck, had safely crossed the ford which had proved so disastrous to Eleanor, and was riding peaceably and slowly. In his life there had always been present one negative blessing which he had not perhaps recognised with the active gratitude which it deserved; implanted in his heart was a love of Nature and of her things—a keen recognition of the beauty of every season and every weather. He was not in the habit of talking about it; perhaps he did not know himself how strong it was—how fundamental a part of his mental constitution it formed. But it was there, and it was manifested in the fact that oftentimes, though wearied and busy, he could not force himself to ride onwards in haste, even over the roads that were very familiar to him; could not neglect to notice the page that was silently and lovingly spread for him by that friend who ‘never did betray the heart that loved her.’ Even on an afternoon like this, he found time to go slowly, and receive the silent influence of the scene into his heart; and did not refuse to let the brooding solemnity of the darkening sky, or the bodeful whisper of the stealing wind, tell their tale to him.
It was this vagrant humour, this unconfessed unwillingness to desert the ample exterior nature for the shelter and confinement of a roof and walls, which had caused him to be so little advanced on the road, that a loud halloo came distinctly to his ear; and after waiting a moment to hear if it should be any preconcerted signal, he concluded it to be a cry for help, and answered it, turning back down the lane towards the ford. In a few moments he was met by the ingenuous William, panting, and presenting an appearance of extreme disorder.
‘What’s the matter? Was it you who called?’