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Still the same mild January weather; with unseasonable shoots putting forth, and forebodings on the part of all garden-lovers, as fresh and resentful as though such forebodings, with their fulfilments, were not the natural portion of all English gardeners.
In the Westmoreland dales, the month was rainier than elsewhere, but if possible, milder. Yellow buds were already foolishly breaking on the gorse, and weak primroses, as though afraid to venture, and yet venturing, were to be found in the depths of many woods.
Meynell had slept at Whindale. In the morning a trap conveyed him and his bag to the farmhouse at the head of the valley; and the winter sun had only just scattered the mists from the dale when, stick in hand, he found himself on the road to Mrs. Elsmere's little house, Burwood.
With every step his jaded spirits rose. He was a passionate lover of mountains, with that modern spirit which finds in them man's best refuge from modernness. The damp fragrance of the mossy banks and bare hedges; the racing freshness of the stream, and the little eddies of foam blown from it by the wind; the small gray sheep in the fields; the crags overhead dyed deep in withered heather; the stone farmhouses with their touch of cheerful white on door and window; all the exquisite detail of grass, and twig and stone; and overhead the slowly passing clouds in the wide sweep of the dale—these things to him were spiritual revival, they dressed and prepared him for that great hour to which dimly, yet through all his pulses, he felt he was going.
The little house sent up a straight column of blue smoke into the quiet air. Its upper windows were open; the sun was on its lichened porch, and on the silver stem of the birch tree which rose from the mossy grass beside it.
He did not need to knock. Mary was in the open doorway, her face all light and rose colour; and in the shadows of the passage behind her stood Catharine. When with the touch of Mary's hand still warm in his, Meynell turned to greet her mother, he was seized, even through the quiet emotion which held them all, by an impression of change. Some energy of physical life had faded from the worn nobility of Catharine's face, instead a "grave heavenliness" which disquieted the spectator, beautiful as it was.
But the momentary shock was lost in the quiet warmth of her greeting.
"You are going to take her for a walk?" she asked wistfully, as Mary left them alone in the little sitting-room.
"You allow it?" said Meynell, hardly knowing what he said, and still retaining her hand.