‘Such a delightful day,’ said Gundred, ‘and a drive home in the evening so charming in weather like this—yes?’
‘You will have a lovely view of the hills as you go home,’ replied Mrs. Norreys. ‘You will have them in front of you all the way. Do notice the sunset-lights; too exquisite they are.’
Long habit had developed in Mrs. Norreys a proprietary manner when she talked of the distant hills that made the attraction of her terrace. She spoke of them as a successful actor-manager might speak of a scene that his own great skill has contrived and arranged.
‘Charming, charming!’ answered Gundred, with the enthusiasm which everyone thinks it a duty to manifest for landscape, though the true intelligent passion is so rare and sacred.
Then the carriage was announced, and the party from Ivescar embarked on their homeward voyage.
Kingston and Isabel had not contributed much to the gaiety of the entertainment. They had been possessed with the delight that Gundred had merely expressed. To them the beauty of the world as it lay unfolded before them had been so vast and holy as to make all comment obtrusive and irreverent. Kingston had felt the unspoken sympathy of Isabel’s mood, and her silence had mitigated for a time the feverish animosity with which he regarded her. As they drove home, there was little conversation between the four. Now and then Lady Adela made some remark on Mrs. Norreys’ kindness, her charm, the successful blend of her tea. But even Gundred was feeling too serene for speech. Everything combined to make her happy. Her gown was a perfect fit, the evening was comfortable, and she was conscious of having given her hostess a flawless model to copy—in manners, conversation, hair, and hat. Of course she never doubted her faultlessness or felt a qualm, but there were moments when its lovely perfection came upon her in a compelling wave of pleasure. She sat in a rapture of satisfaction as the carriage whirled her home through the quiet sunset. Tea and a good digestion assisted the placidity of her mood, and the influences of the atmosphere collaborated to make it complete. The twilight was pink and sweet as Gundred’s own opinion of herself. Immovably tranquil, roseate and mild, it had the fascination of a drowsy fairy tale. Cowslip and bean and hawthorn sent her their tribute in wafts of fragrance. She accepted everything as her due, and felt that all the world was showing a very proper spirit in conspiring to do her honour.
So their road led them up and down the gentle slopes that filled the valley with ripples of green. Sleepy old farmsteads they passed, nestling in dense knots of verdure, and villages with their brilliant little strips of garden. The day’s work was over, and in the clear air rose the song of peace and rest. Only far above, over the nearing mass of the mountains, rose stormy ranges of cloud, flushed and splendid in purple and gold. And so at last they had done with the broad lowland, and the road set itself to mount up towards the high glen of their destination. Now the country changed. Below lay the wooded, feathery richness of copse and hedgerow, meadow and pasture. Stone walls began to replace the hedges, stiff wiry moor-grass the lush growth of the valleys; the framework of the earth was near the surface; the soil became a thin stretched skin, no longer a warm soft coat of flesh; here and there the film broke, and the limestone bones protruded. So the road wound its way to the upper levels, and climbed at last to the glen between the hills. Far ahead of them it streamed away up towards Ivescar—an undulating stripe of whiteness. Above, to their right, rose, stiff and stark, a wall of white rock, shutting out from sight the mountain above. To their left lay the narrow desolation of the defile, a stream meandering among sparse meadows, with here and there a bare barn or a farm surrounded by a few wind-tormented trees. And beyond these again, towered the farther wall of the valley, another escarpment of long limestone cliffs, which could be seen rising tier upon tier to the first brown and violet slopes of Carnmor. The road, hugging the western precipice, commanded a full view of the valley’s eastern rampart, but of the cliffs overhead revealed only the first and lowest range. This, in the sunset-light, was radiantly pink, but the sheer rocks across the stream, cut off from the light, were grey and grim, rising up in bank upon bank towards the moors above. No colour touched them, no softness made them lovable. Their inhospitable, irreconcilable sternness foreshadowed the abomination of desolation, and gave the valley a stony, lifeless melancholy that recalled the land that once flowed with milk and honey, but is now a wilderness of sterile stone.
As the road led on up the narrowing pass, so the shadows deepened across the way of the travellers. Suddenly, however, the western wall of cliffs overhead, now no longer touched by the sun, dipped in an abrupt cleft; and there, very far above them, hung the sheer western face of Simonstone. Keen, precipitous, menacing, the mass of the mountain impended suddenly over the valley, and the apparition was almost terrifying in its unexpectedness. Another twenty yards, and the lower ranges would once more conceal it from view; here, for a swift moment, it revealed its over-lordship of the glen at its feet. Behind and over its brow high volumes of cloud stood stationary, and in the glow of evening the mountain and all the upper air was rich with a glamour of amethyst and hot violet.
Gundred was dominated by this revelation, and her powers of expression rose to the emergency.
‘Oh, look, how pretty!—yes?’ she cried, indicating the obvious with a neat wave of her neat hand.