Barbara Lynn Part 36

Tears did not relieve her; they only spoiled the colour of her cheeks, made her eyes red, and her head ache. So she dried them and looked up.

Daylight was streaming through the window and turning the lamp's flame to a sickly yellow hue that paled and dwindled, like the changeling children who are said to dwindle in the cradle when morning dawns. There was something so unpleasant and unwholesome in its light that Lucy rose and turned it out. Then she called the servant-la.s.s to come and clear away the breakfast dishes.

She wandered in and out from parlour to kitchen, and kitchen to parlour.

She lifted up first this thing, then that; started to mend her frills, but p.r.i.c.ked her finger and tossed the work aside; took up a book but dropped it listlessly; sat first in one chair, then in another; and at last sank down on a three-legged stool before the hearth.

The hours dragged. She glanced out, but the prospect was not inviting.

Bare and brown stood the trees; the beck rushed along as brown as they; the road in Cringel Forest would be inches deep in mud; not a bird chirruped. She wondered if she should go up to Greystones. She had promised Peter that she would go, yet why should she? She liked her own home best. She preferred its present dreariness to her great-grandmother's tongue. Besides, up there, every movement would be watched and criticised. And she might--she did not think it likely--still she might want to go out without being asked where she was going.

This was the day that the Need Fire was to be lit in Boar Dale. Lucy had no wish to come into the midst of a bellowing herd of cattle, so she found in it another reason for deferring her visit.

Towards noon a lad knocked at the door and left a small package for her.

She untied it with trembling fingers, for she knew that it was from Joel. Out of it fell a little lump of gold, and a note asking her for the sake of old times to come over the Robber's Rake to see him. He gave no reasons, but she was not surprised. He had been ill; he was not yet well enough to return to Forest Hall, and he had been longing to see her, as she to see him. Perhaps he knew that Peter was away, and that it would be easier for them to meet now than ever again.

She dropped the gold and the sc.r.a.p of paper as though they had been red-hot cinders, and stood looking at them as if she expected them to speak. And they did speak. No tongue could have been more eloquent than that little bit of metal, no voice more full of entreaty than the scrawled characters of Joel's handwriting. They were urgent. With them she could not expostulate, excuse herself, or maintain a virtuous reserve.

Her dead hopes, dreams, promises came again to life and seemed to stand about her, looking into her face with blinkless eyes. They entreated her, for old sake's sake, to grant his wish.

She knit her brows in perplexity. Should she go? Would it be wise to go?

Why should she not go? Wherein lay the unwisdom? She wanted to see Joel for the last time, to tell him that they must never meet again; that he must forget her, as she would endeavour to forget him. He need not leave High Fold in order to escape her; for she and Peter were going away; but he must not follow or attempt to renew their friendship. So plausible, so self-controlled, so wise appeared her reasons to her own mind that she could find no serious objection to complying with his request.

She forgot, or would not allow herself to remember, that this was the call which she had feared. But a thing far off looks so different to the same thing at hand that she did not recognise them as one and the same.

Musing thus, and undecided still, with her eyes flitting about the room as though in fear of seeing something which would turn her from the purpose she wanted to form, it seemed to her that she saw the grey-clad figures of the miller and his wife come in at the door and sit down in their vacant chairs. They did not look at her, they were but shadows, but Lucy fled. She was afraid of Peter's dead father and mother. They had loved him so, his honour was their honour, and they had died heart-broken thinking her unworthy to be his wife. She had bitterly resented their reproachful eyes, she bitterly resented that they should cross her vision now, as though they had come to guard their son's good name when he was away.

Lucy put on her cloak and went out.

In order to escape any undesirable questions or inquisitive eyes she did not follow the road through the forest, but took one of the innumerable paths that led along the fells, opposite to Greystones, on the other side of the beck.

Heavy clouds, that were purple underneath, but stained with a murky brown along their upper edges, lay motionless upon the higher hills, levelling their rugged peaks as with a knife. No gleam of sunlight or patch of blue lit the savage landscape. It was made of iron and bronze, a hard menacing corner of the world, whose scars and gashes, dealt by an earlier age, kindly Time had not yet managed to rub out or smooth into pleasant lines. The weather had been fine for several days, and a high wind had dried the dead bracken and benty gra.s.s, but there was every appearance of coming rain.

From a field in the bottom of the dale, near Greystones, smoke was rolling as though a subterranean fire had broken through the earth's crust, and begun to belch forth its pent up energies in fountains of acrid vapour. Now and then a red tongue leaped among it, only to be smothered by a denser cloud.

The Need Fire[1] was an ancient inst.i.tution to which the dalesfolk had formerly resorted in times of disaster. All the household fires were extinguished, and it was lit by rubbing together two pieces of wood, which had never been inside a human habitation. Peter had smiled when he had heard that it was to be lighted in Boar Dale, and pa.s.sed on from farm to farm through that district. But Timothy Hadwin believed in it, and Barbara was strongly in its favour.

[Footnote 1: The last "Need Fire" was set going near Kendal in 1840. At Crosthwaite its "smoke" was in the Kirk Lane on Sunday, November 15th of that year.]

Lucy looked down as she hurried along.

A loud bellowing and bleating rose from the field. Little could be seen for the drifting smoke, but she thought of Barbara in the midst of it, helping to drive through the cattle, blackened--she did not doubt--by the fire, blear-eyed, probably, with its stinging vapour, but in her proper element. Barbara had been born into her true sphere--the bleak mountains, the grey crags, the eagle, beating its wings as it were against the overhanging clouds, were her fitting companions. But she, Lucy, had never been at her ease with them. She had always felt forlorn in this land of the dales and fells. It was not her spirit's country, although her native land. Perhaps London would be more to her mind.

She had not gone far when her thoughts came back with a start to the object of her journey over the fells. The colour left her face and her eyes were filled with alarm. The temporary wandering of her mind, though it had only been for a moment, had again unsettled her. She hesitated, wondered whether to go or return. Her heart was tossed about like drift-weed upon unquiet waters. She felt that she was out upon a stormy sea. If she retreated, would she regret her action when she got back again into the safe harbour? She was afraid to go on, for she did not know with what sunken perils the way was strewn.

She came to the end of the sheep-track, where it joined the Robber's Rake on the far side of the tarn from Ketel's Parlour. She halted by a post that pointed the way, when the ground lay covered with snow. She looked up and down. Just as the sign-post pointed in two directions, so her mind was drawn in two directions. To go one way was right, to go the other wrong. But which was right and which wrong? First she decided this, then that, but as hastily reversed her ideas again. She arranged them to suit her wishes, or her sense of justice, or expediency. She could not decide.

She walked on a little further.

Then she saw a figure rise up from a rock upon which it had been sitting, and come to meet her. It was Joel.

CHAPTER XXII

THE TRYST AT GIRDLESTONE Pa.s.s

"Shall we go to the Shepherd's Rest?" Lucy timidly suggested.

Joel would not hear of it. The good-wife was in the house, he said, and she had a tongue for babbling that would challenge any mountain beck.

But in that wild and rock-strewn pa.s.s was many a sheltered nook, where two people could meet unnoticed, and undisturbed, save by wandering sheep or screaming curlews. He guided Lucy to the stone, which gave its name to the place, and there they sat down.

A more secluded spot they could not have found. It was wild beyond expression. Before them the fellside shelved away, strewn with slatey scree, at the foot of which a stream tumbled, and sent its thunders reverberating along the pa.s.s. The pack-horse track marched with the stream in the direction of the inn, which stood below them to the left, hidden by the unevenness of the ground. To the right the road still went on up a steep ascent, then, dipping over a brow, ran through low and marshy moorland for many miles, until it reached the great North Road.

In the midst of this boggy part lay Quaking Hag. Overhead was poised the girdle stone, a ma.s.sive fragment fallen from the crags above, and supported by rocks, that the storms of centuries had rough-hewn into the shape of pillars. Underneath it the ground was dry and sheltered from the raw air. Behind rose the mountain Thundergay, as rugged on this side as upon that which looked into Boar Dale.

Joel regarded Lucy with an intent gaze, and she stole many a glance at him. He was not as altered as she had expected to find him. Indeed, save for a restless light in his eyes, lines about his mouth, and the pallor of his face there was little change to be seen. She wondered why he had not returned to Forest Hall; for he had recovered from his illness sufficiently to have walked the few miles between the Shepherd's Rest and High Fold.

"So you've come to see me at last, Lucy," he said, fondling her fingers and looking into her face.

"Did you expect me before?" she asked, wishing to withdraw her hand from his, yet not liking to do so for fear it would seem unkind.

"No, but I wondered if you would manage to give Peter the slip some day, and get away. I used to buoy myself up through the long nights when I couldn't sleep, with the hope of hearing your voice in the morning."

"I'm sorry you have been so ill, Joel."

"Don't be sorry, Lucy, at least don't cry, for it clouds your eyes, which are just like two bits of blue sky, and there's not much blue sky to be seen to-day. Do you know, my dear, when I lay sick in the inn yonder, I often comforted myself by thinking that you were sitting by the bedside, hidden behind the curtains, and that I could, if I liked, pull them back and look at you. Fortunately I had sense enough not to try the experiment. So I got the pleasure without the disappointment."

"I wanted to come," she began hurriedly, "I would have come, but Barbara wouldn't let me. I longed and longed and longed----"

She broke off abruptly for his glance disturbed her. What was the meaning of the light in his eyes? She had seen them grow radiant in the past as lamps lit by some inner fire, but never seen them shine as now, so fierce and glowing that they frightened her. She cast a look in the direction of the Shepherd's Rest.

"Isn't it too cold for you out here?" she said. "I don't mind being seen by the woman at the inn. We are doing nothing we need hide. It is quite natural that I should come to see how you are when Peter is away."

"Is it?" he asked with a strange laugh. "I doubt if the good-wife would think so."

"Well, if it isn't," she replied, colouring and feeling more and more reluctant to stay alone with him, "I'd better go home."

He controlled his feelings, whatever they were, and laid a detaining hand upon her arm.

"Let's talk calmly like two sensible folk," he said.

"I'm sure you oughtn't to be out. Don't forget how ill you've been, and that this isn't a summer's day."

"It's been a summer's day since you came, Lucy. But sit down. I haven't spent five years in a land covered with snow for half the time without becoming inured to some discomfort. Be good and kind. I've seen so little of you, and thought so much that you shouldn't grudge me this bit of pleasure."

She sat down again, drawing her cloak closer about her. She thought that the Girdlestone was not a fitting spot to talk with a man who had once been her lover. She was perplexed at his manner. She felt instinctively that a change had taken place in him. She could not have defined it; but the deterioration which had been going on in his character for the last few weeks showed through his words and actions, though they were as affectionate as they had always been.

For some moments he leaned back against the rock, letting his eyes rove over her face.

"I've carried your picture here," he said, tapping his breast, "all the years I've been away; I'm now comparing it with the original."