CHAPTER X
‘Yes, very, very pretty,’ said Gundred approvingly. ‘No sugar, thank you.’
Delicately, with neatly-lifted little finger, she raised her cup and sipped. From top to toe she was the fine flower of deportment, and her manner exhaled a mild consciousness of being the perfect model of decorum for the country neighbour on whom she was conferring the honour of a call. The afternoon being brilliantly fine, Lady Adela had wished to take her daughter-in-law to call on some intimate friends of hers, proprietors of a celebrated view, who lived on the other side of the lowland valley that stretched beneath the glen of Ivescar. Gundred was happy in the opportunity of exacting provincial approval, and, against everyone’s wishes, including his own, Kingston had insisted that he and Isabel should join the polite pilgrimage. Accordingly the landau had duly sallied forth with its burden of four, and after more than an hour’s drive through the soft country beneath the hills, had brought them to their destination. Now, on the famous terrace of Blakebank, Gundred sat full in the light of her hostess’s admiration, consuming cakes and tea with her usual crisp yet ethereal daintiness.
‘The lights on the hills!’ cried Mrs. Norreys ecstatically, anxious that Mrs. Darnley should appreciate the full beauty of the prospect.
‘Delightfully pretty,’ replied Gundred, casting a comprehensive glance across the world. ‘One quite envies you, Mrs. Norreys. We have no view like this at Ivescar. A charming place to have tea, out on this terrace. Oh, thank you. How greedy I am!—yes? But this air makes one so famished, and these little cakes of yours, so delightful.’
With a sweet smile Gundred accepted a second cake, and devoted her whole attention to its decent consumption.
In front of Blakebank the ground sloped away sharply to the river far down below. Dense woodland filled the hollow in which the water flowed, and rose again in a blue foaming mass on the farther side of the valley. Thence the eye followed undulation after undulation of meadow and copse, fields of soft green, plumed hedgerows, a placid country full of opulent peace. The foreground of the picture was formed by a strip of meadow beneath the terrace that dropped in a steep brow towards the woods. Here the grass was hidden and gilded by a sheet of buttercups, and the pure ardour of their gold was touched to a keener fire by the shafts of sunlight that slanted across them. Beyond their blaze lay the voluminous splendours of the woodland, dull and heavy in sullen shadow. For the day had its sharp notes of contrast. The air was leaden and lurid, dazzling, here and there, with a golden rain of sunlight, and here and there, again, made sombre by thunderous masses of cloud. Huge curling crags of purple and silver rolled and towered above the world, and the sky was opalescent with a hundred shifting colours. The landscape, drowsy and complacent, was transfigured into something mystic and dreamy. From the poignant glory of gold in the foreground the eye wandered on over the steamy blueness of the woods, over the rippling waves of vaporous green and blue that filled the valley, to where, seeming very far away across the glamour, the great rampart of the hill-country lay high against the faint rosy lights of the north. The lowering air, the sleepy, fantastic colours of the day, seemed to remove things distant to another world, and the mountains, dim, misty in shades of amethyst and azure, hardly appeared distinct from the ranges of cloud amid which they faintly loomed. Far away, far above the valleys, they lay in crests and billows of dreamland along the border of a fairy world. Yet only six miles of comfortable peace was all that lay between Gundred at her tea and those mysterious giants in the haze.
Full in the middle of that walled horizon, isolated on all sides, rose the mass of the Simonstone, unrolling his apathetic splendour on the ranges of lesser hills that formed his throne. In steep, precipitous slopes his lines dropped abruptly to the western valley; to eastward they trailed away in long, placid curves. The ranges of white limestone that formed his pedestal shone dimly pink across the distance, and the towering bulk of the mountain was lucent as a carved sapphire from crown to base. His sheer stern western cliff, his flat summit, loomed disdainfully over the sleepy valleys at his feet; and his presence, serene and enormous, ruled the whole country with the inevitable weight of its majesty. Steep glens in the range divided him from the heights to either side; he stood out the conspicuous tyrant of the horizon. Away to the right, over a range of smaller fells, the leonine head of Ravensber stood up in secondary authority, and above the western cleft where Ivescar incongruously squatted in the undiscoverable distance, rose the slouching back of Carnmor. But of the trinity that dominated the hill-country, Ravensber and Carnmor, the lesser and the greater, were both subordinate to the imperious sweep of the Simonstone. Here, from the terrace of Blakebank, in the complete contemplation of his grandeur, might be perceived the full grotesqueness of the insolence that had planted Ivescar beneath the sombre glory of his shadow. From that parvenu house itself the blatancy of the contrast was not so evident; for Carnmor and the Simonstone were both shut out from view by the amphitheatre of white cliffs that closed in the glen, and gave support to their dominating mass. But to Blakebank, far away, the whole supremacy of the hills lay revealed in all its greatness, and their empire seemed, in the mysterious clouded lights of rose and blue, to belong to a world that had no knowledge of man or his evanescent doings. Gundred, meanwhile, having finished her tea, began to think of departure. She set to work delicately drawing on her gloves and preparing her farewells.
‘Such a long drive—yes?’ she said; ‘I am afraid we must really be starting, Mrs. Norreys. My husband’s aunt is coming to us to-day, and we ought to be home in time to receive her.’
The carriage was ordered, and the party stood exchanging compliments and politenesses.