This was very frivolous nonsense, and they enjoyed it, as they enjoyed the hot summer sun, the cool streams, the shady woods, and even the fun they had in combating the swarms of wasps which usually followed them in these expeditions, and entirely frustrated their efforts to sit down, and, as Effie plaintively said, ‘eat a meal in peace.’
Once, deeper feelings were touched, and this was on a day when they had penetrated farther than ever before; and on this occasion, too, Michael was with them. Setting off very early, they drove in the morning coolness to Middleton-in-Teesdale, and thence onwards to High Force, where they rested and lunched; after which they drove onwards to some little huts at the edge of the moor, where path ended, and wilderness began; when they got out, and walked for a mile and a half to the wild spot where Tees comes first winding, sluggish and sinuous, over the moor top, in what is called the Weel, and then suddenly precipitates himself madly over ‘Caldron Snout,’ tearing down an incline of two hundred feet to the lower level, where he pursues a brawling way towards High Force, his next descent.
This is a very wild and desolate spot, and requires intrepid walking to get to it; plunging through the thymy moor, rough, pathless, and uneven, without guide, save for rough wooden posts like crosses, planted at intervals of several hundred yards, to show the directest way to the cataract. But so few persons visit Caldron Snout, so few tourists or picnickers care to be at the trouble of penetrating to it, that no road has got beaten out. Nature seems to sit enthroned in undesecrated queenliness in the fastnesses around the cataract.
It was a day that Michael and Eleanor never forgot. The children, literally frantic with the novelty and the wildness of the thing, and with the exhilarating moorland air, tore about in all directions—over heather and thyme, bluebells and boulders. Now came a scream of joy, and a mad rush to Michael or the doctor to ask the name of some hitherto unknown plant or flower—as the delicate autumn gentian, or, on some grassy banks, the poetical looking fragile ‘grass of Parnassus.’ Anon, wonder, quite awed and hushed, and treading on tiptoe to peep into a nest concealed beneath the grass, and containing five dirty-white eggs, with wine-coloured splashes on them. Then on again, to fresh fields and pastures new, till one wild whoop announced the discovery, in its steep hidden gorge, of the waterfall itself.
The elders walked more sedately, rejoicing with joy more cultivated, if not more intense, in the larger grandness of great, sweeping lonely fells, of miles of purple heather; and in the abstract impressiveness of such a solitary torrent as Caldron Snout.
It was as they were wending back towards their vehicles, in the evening, that Michael and Eleanor found themselves alone. The children were scattered, making the most of what time remained to them, for the collection of interesting natural objects. Mrs. Johnson, with an eye to her rockery at home, had stopped in front of a patch of fine bog-plants, and had made the doctor go on his knees, armed with an old table knife. She was standing over him, directing him to the finest plunder, perfectly deaf to his assurances that the fine purple pinguicula which she coveted could find lovely flies here for its sustenance, but that its poor carnivorous leaves would most likely shrivel up and die in the dark corner of her garden, devoted to the cultivation of ferns and house-leeks.
At some distance from these two Michael and Eleanor stood side by side, facing Mickle Fell, and gazing at the noble sight unfolded for their delight. Many a time Eleanor had seen this grand old mountain in the distance, overtopping his comrades, always; but now he rose straight before them, apparently not a mile away. They were both struck by what they saw. The great Fell, who seemed to spring aloft from the smaller ones which clustered about him, formed a centre and a focus to the picture, rising in a blunt, massive kind of point. His huge and grim sides were clothed in a violet veil of summer haze and heat, like a garment such as no earthly hands ever fashioned. This was beautiful; but it was not all. The sun stood, at the moment when it seemed to rest exactly on the midmost point of his summit, a blazing golden ball, and rays streamed away from it on every side, so that Mickle Fell seemed veritably to wear a crown of glory, surpassing all the crowns and all the jewels of all the kings in the whole world. Just at the moment, the stillness was utterly unbroken. Not even the murmur of the torrent reached them, nor the voices of the children ‘playing in the light of the setting sun.’ Earth seemed to hold her breath while one of her great hills received the crown and the benediction of the closing day. No hum of booming bee, no voice even of any bird, broke the dead silence; nor did these two venture to disturb it, but gazed and worshipped, and felt that even if they lived to be very old, they would not often see the heavens declare the glory of God so sublimely as at this moment.
And it was but for a moment; such scenes seldom last longer. Suddenly things seemed to change; the glory became dimmed; sounds became audible; the spell was loosed; and with one deep sigh both their hearts confessed it, as their eyes met.
Perhaps they both understood at that moment, though all that Michael said, was, ‘I am very glad that we have seen that—together.’
‘So am I,’ she rejoined, softly.