Chapter 2

Gbe Cits of Vocte*

"P\ICK went home in a glow of emotion. He felt as if he must shout aloud, tell everybody that he had won the love of the sweetest woman in all the country-side !

" Gee up, Nancy ; gee up, my lass ! Doesn't this breeze inspire you? Now then, father, down the hill at full speed, and you'll be half up the other side before ye know where you are !"

" D'ye want to break all our necks ?" inquired the Yorkshireman slowly. " That's the way with you youngsters. Yo leave me aloan, my lad ; Nancy and me understands one another! Eh, Nancy?"

Nancy jogged on downhill, with her ridiculous tilted body swinging from side to

36 A ROMANCE OF THE MOORS.

side, her ears put back to catch her master's tones.

When they had toiled up three or four steep hills and reached the farm lands, there were several obstructive gates to pass through, and Dick would swing down from the high cart to open them. When they were through the last one, instead of mounting again, he went off to the farmyard to make certain that everything was secure for the night.

The calm light lay over the broad-roofed barns and outhouses, over the deserted cot- tage by the roadside. There were many such ruined dwellings on the farm, for times were sadly changed since the Coverdales had been among the wealthier of the Niddesdale yeomen. The deserted cottage was on the road that led past the farm-house, on the same side of the way. Between the two buildings, a gate opened into a large paddock behind the house, where Mrs. Coverdale

A ROMAMC& OP THE MOOkS. 37

brought up her poultry. It was studded with hen-coops, the abode of numerous promising families now retired for the night. An occasional faint " cheep," a subdued re- mark of a musing character from the presid- ing hens, might be heard as Dick passed the coops, which were carefully covered with sacking by Mrs. Coverdale.

He heard her voice calling him, and turned.

" Yer faither says ye'd better just tak' a look at the gray mare," said Mrs. Coverdale.

" Johnny was tellin' him she seems a bit ail-

* »» ing.

" I did take a look at her, mother; she's a little off her feed. We'll see how she is to- morrow. Has my father seen her ?"

" Your faither doesna like the appearance of her. 'A wish 'a could bring the poor beast into th' hoose and see to her mysel'," added Mrs. Coverdale. " That's just the way that brown Meg went off, after her furrest foal !"

38 A ROMANCE OF T&E MOORS.

The farmer's wife was going the round of the hen-coops.

" They hawks has been takin' the young turkeys awfu' this year," she said plaintively. " Look at they feathers ; that's the wee one wi' the brown speckles on his breast. That's thirrteen a've lost this spring, and May not over yet; an' what wi' the stoats an' the foxes, there soon won't be a burrd left !"

Dick proposed to wire in a bit of the pas- ture for the young chickens, but Mrs. Cover- dale shook her head.

" Oh, it's easily done," said Dick, whose reading had enlarged his ideas of the attain- able beyond all known bounds.

" The wire'd cost so much," said Mrs. Coverdale ; " and, besides, I dinna see how it would answer."

" Better than losing the poultry," returned her reckless son. N

But the project, when mentioned to the

A ROMANCE OF THE MOORS. 39

farmer, met with so much discouragement that the young chickens continued to pay their tithes to the hawks and the weasels, and Mrs. Coverdale bemoaned their fate in the same plaintive and helpless manner, as if Heaven had set its face against their rescue. She was in a conversational mood this even- ing, and inclined to discuss with her son the affairs of the Wellbeloveds, which were not so flourishing as they had been a few years ago.

"Yon lassie's an expense to them," she observed, " what wi' her clothes and a' ; and her appetite's healthy. Not that she ate much at tea/' added Mrs. Coverdale, medita- tively. "Puir lassie, I doubt she finds her aunt a bit dour; she seemed scared like. Weel, she's bonny, and I daresay she'll be getting a husband soon ; eh, Dick ?" (This with a meaning glance at her son.) " But ah ! Thomas '11 miss her sorely ; he's awfu'

40 A ROMANCE OE THE MOORS.

taken up with the mitherless bairn, and havin' nane o* his ain." Mrs. Coverdale smiled benevolently.

Dick hesitated. Should he tell his mother of his betrothal to Bessie? Why not?

He had it on his tongue more than once, but something made him hold back — a vague, unformed motive that he could not have explained, probably an instinctive sense that to announce would be to bind himself ; and this idea irked him intolerably.

Mrs. Coverdale at length returned to the big, dusky parlor, where her husband was snoring in the horsehair arm-chair before the empty fireplace ; the tall eight-day clock in the corner behind him solemnly recording the minutes that he dedicated to oblivion. Dick accompanied his mother to the house ; begged for a chunk of bread, as he might not be in for supper; and then made his

A ROMANCE OF THE MOORS. 4*

way back through the numerous invalid animals bivouacked in the kitchen, and out of the paddock. This he traversed, crossed the stile and a by-road into another large meadow where cows were grazing. A long, gawky-looking shadow strode before him across the greensward, and the hedgerow trees, as he passed through field after field, cast similar distorted images of themselves in the glowing but declining sunlight.

The fields now rose steadily towards the heights, till finally Dick entered a picturesque patch of waste-land, trending uphill, dotted with fantastic trees, bits of copse and groups of gorse ; and further on he passed a wild tangle of undergrowth, at the foot of a high rock.

A stir in the air announced that the moorland heights were almost gained. The great rampart that crowned the hills above Braisted plunged here into the soil, and

42 A ROMANCE OF THE MOORS.

about its foot sprang wild, self - sown growths of mountain-ash and birch, seed- ling ash-trees and oaks with young foliage shining ruby-red.

Dick clambered up the steep ascent, along a rough, winding track, and presently found himself standing, with the wind in his face, on the high eastern verge of the " Rocks," looking over an immense expanse of country across Niddesdale to the opposite hills, which were growing deeper and deeper purple with the increasing splendor of the sunset.

Beside him to westward lay a confused mass of rocks, some of them close enough together to allow a nimble person to jump from one to another, here and there sepa- rated by large clefts and spaces. Every- where the bilberry-bushes surged up like an emerald sea among the gray boulders.

Dick could see across the country to the

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valley where Dedborough lay, at the foot of its little protecting hill. The town was not visible, but Dick's practised eye detected its position, and he tried to picture Bessie in the dull little parlor with her aunt and uncle, her thoughts straying across the hills to Braisted, as the lover knew. Again, for the hundredth time, he re-acted in imagina- tion the afternoon's experience.

His leading thought was how to make her happy, how to satisfy the claims of her af- fection: for he felt instinctively that with her to love was to claim, not peremptorily but pathetically, and therefore, from a nature like Dick's, almost irresistibly.

How to make her happy? He felt vaguely disturbed as the question haunted him. His eye wandered from the shut-in little town, sheltered and still, where Bessie passed her days, to the great expanse of hill and dale stretching from east to west, with

44 A ROMANCE OF THE MOOES.

the bounding moors to northward, and the sweeping wild lines of the clouds above the western ranges. The contrast had for him an ominous significance. His hand sought the volume of poems in his breast-pocket, but not to draw it forth. He sank down on the rocky ledge where he stood, at the foot of a boulder (a rabbit scudded away into a cleft as he did so), and resting his head on his hand, he looked out over the landscape in a tumult of confused feeling.

A sense of vast happiness was crossed with currents of longing, as the sensuous element strangely mixed with the loftiest aspirations, shifting, like the colors in sunlit water, to greedy but transitory grasping of worldly ambition, when, for a base clear- visioned moment, he saw Bessie as a hope- less obstacle to his career. The color surged into his cheeks with disgust and shame.

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Then there swept over him a gust of passion, not for Bessie, not for anything human, but a passion for life, — for the earth on which he stood, for the sky which spread its canopy over him, for the hills and the fields; for the ivy at his side, that was

breaking into young, green leaves on the

*

rock-face ; for the tiny herbs that crept be- tween the crevices and the mosses and lichen, painting it with green and brown ; for the golden gorse that sent up whiffs of warm fragrance into hie nostrils, and for the great upgrowth of heather that swept over the moors behind the rocks in unbroken line to the horizon. He rose impetuously and plunged across the boulders, from one to another, with an occasional leap over a min- iature chasm, through the bilberry bushes, across the open spaces of grass, and on towards the mysterious castellated groups of rocks, about which gruesome stories were

46 A ROMANCE OF THE MOORS.

told of human sacrifice in the days of the Druids.

The light was dying over the moors ; the clouds banking up to westward were turn- ing gray and black. A look of mystery and gloom crept over the place ; the dying wind stirred stealthily among the crevices ; every shadow seemed to conceal a secret. Ahead stood the great rocks, looking in the twi- light like some deserted Cyclopean city.

Dick continued to leap across the boul- ders till he came to the open sweep of bil- berry-covered moor, rising steeply towards a hill to the west, and to northward leading to a bare tract of high land, where a lonely farmstead stood unsheltered. Keeping on the downward slope of the land, Dick found himself among the gloomy by-ways of the "City of Rocks," whose walls and towers rose above him threateningly. Some wild

A ROMANCE OF THE MOORS. 47

bird was uttering a shrill note far away among the heather.

Dick sat down on the narrow ledge of the rampart, at the outlet of a narrow defile between two upright boulders, which showed signs on their water- marked faces of an existence centuries ago passed on the sea- shore. Upon these cliffs the waves had beaten perhaps for ages, where now the beech-trees swayed against them in more gentle fashion — perhaps for ages to come. Dick was sitting with his head against the rock, his foot pressed against the side of the niche, and his hands flung behind his neck. The scene, awful in its grandeur, was work ing upon his mind so strangely that he felt afraid of his own impressions. His person- ality shrank away shivering, as if it dared not face the Infinite in Time and Space that haunted the darkness and the silence of this moorland city.

48 A ROMANCE OF THE MOORS.

The black stillness was appalling. It seemed to put all human hopes to shame. The fragmentary scraps of religious faith that had been real factors of conduct (as- tonishingly few are these factors among even the most devout) came piteously plead- ing, swaying like reeds in the wind of the new thought. They fought hard for life, lifting their heads again and again after the blast of Doubt had swept by; but they were unprepared for the fierce encounter, accustomed only to tender handling and a sheltered existence under the shadow of sleepy creeds and dogmas unassailed. They quailed and sank. There were strange low sounds in the air, as if a host of demons laughed them to scorn. The great black gulf that lay there in ghastly silence, cold, indifferent absolute, seemed but a type of the Abyss of Mystery on whose verge we laugh and love, and weep and — die.

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The Dance of Life seemed so piteous a thing, with all its fantastic figures, its grace, its stateliness, its reckless gayety, its infinite variety, if the last step — be it slow and halting, be it swift and merry — plunged the dancer forever into the fathomless Darkness. All that was warm and living, all powers newly awakened with their thrilling prophe- cies, turned sick at the thought. Yet there was no looking back ; the tattered shreds of a creed that had long ago ceased to rule the life or the philosophy, offered no warmth or shelter.

The Ambassadors of Faith went away un- satisfied.

«

He wanders, like a day-appearing dream, Through the dim wilderness of the mind ;

Through desert-woods and tracts, which seem like ocean, Homeless, boundless, unconfined."

The stillness was broken at last by the

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patter of rain on the beech-trees at the foot of the cliffs, and on the slender little moun- tain-ash that grew out of a crevice close by. The rock received the accustomed on- slaught in silent stoicism. The niche in which Dick sat was roofed over by a slab, and he remained where he was, dry and secure. The rain increased rapidly, and presently it was pouring down out of the black clouds in straight, determined streams, made sharply visible by an occasional gleam of summer lightning.

Dick drew a deep breath as it pelted down with hiss and clamor, as he heard the thirsty soil drinking it up, the gurgling and bubbling, the rush and tumult of the watery festival.

The woods and hills and the little streams were in high revel, quailing to one another in the heavenly vintage ; the brook just be- low was singing a rollicking drinking-song,

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and the old Earth grew drunk and merry.

Glad would be the heart of the farmer at sight of these timely floods! No anx- iety now about his hay-crop. This made all safe, thank Heaven! The old man would be standing at his door watching the downpour, as his fathers had stood for gen- erations. Perhaps ancestral influences were at work in the joy which the rain inspired, in the subtle sympathy with the soil and its growths, which had become in the far- mer's son little short of a passion.

Presently he started up to listen to a sound other than that of the rain, that smote on his ear. He fancied he heard the breaking of a branch and the rattling of a a stone, as if it had been dislodged and fallen down a rough slope, knocking against other stones on its way. He knew the sound so well in his own wanderings. He

52 A ROMANCE OF THE MOORS.

went a few steps through the defile that led to his niche, and then he heard the tread of a footstep — whether human or not, he was unable to guess. Probably some sheep, or one of the horses belonging to the little farm-house below the rocks, had strayed from its paddock. The footsteps approached slowly, moving up towards the twin-boulders which formed the defile and niche.

"Who's there?" Dick called out.

There was a sudden, low, sharp cry of fear or astonishment, and then a pause, during which the rain made a continuous roar all round.

" Don't be alarmed !" he called out to the unknown one.

He went through the defile, and became aware of a woman's form leaning against the side of a big stone which was half- smothered by bilberry bushes. She seemed

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to be tall and stoutly built, with a certain air that suggested habitual self-possession, in spite of the fact that she was at the present moment overcome by fatigue or alarm. There was something well-finished and delicate about her appearance, notwith- standing its robustness, that could be de- tected in the half-light.

" You will be drenched, out in this rain," said Dick, wondering how to inspire her with confidence. "There is a little corner through here where you will be entirely sheltered, if you will let me show it you."

" Thank you ; you are very kind, but I think I ought to try to get home."

The soft, cultivated voice was still rathei tremulous.

" Let me show you the place ; I have been there all through the storm, and I am as dry as a hayrick."

Dick could see that the young woman

54 A ROMANCE OF THE MOORS.

was looking at him searchingly, as if won- dering whether she might trust him.

" My name is Coverdale ; perhaps you may have heard it? My father has the farm yonder, about two miles from here across the fields."

" Oh, I have heard the name often ! Thank you ; I shall be greatly obliged to you if you will show me that place you speak of."

" This way. Can you get over the hillock there? That's right — now along this sheep-track: if you give me your hand, and that thing you are carrying, I can help you along. I know the path as well in the dusk as at mid-day."

She held out a long, rather thin, capable- looking hand, and placed it in Dick's large and horny one. Although it trembled slightly, she seemed to have no distrust of her companion, who led her along the path

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A ROMANCE OF THE MOORS. $5

to the defile. She stopped then with a comic air of dismay.

" Do you mean to tell me I have to get through there ?"

" It's not so narrow as it looks," said Dick, with one of his beaming smiles.

That smile seemed to give the last touch to her growing confidence. She became cheerful and friendly at once.

" If I remain wedged between the rocks, Mr. Coverdale," she said, " my blood will be upon your head !"

" No fear," he answered.

The transit was safely achieved, and the new comer uttered an exclamation of pleas- ure when she saw the cosy nook entirely sheltered and furnished by her companion with a carpet of dried fern-leaves.

" This is delicious ! But please don't trouble any more ; I am supremely com- fortable."

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" Your cloak is wet through," said Dick, proud of his position as knight to a dis- tressed dame : " if you will — if you wouldn't mind having my coat ?" he stammered.

" Oh no — no !" she said quickly, " that would be madness on your part. I will take off my wet cloak, and then I shall be all right. It is a warm night, though one can't deny that it rains a little."

The deafening roar all round made them smile at one another in a manner that struck them immediately afterwards as surprisingly intimate, considering the date of their ac- quaintance.

" I had come up to the moors to sketch," she explained, "and lost my way. I am staying at the inn in Winterbridge. I sup- pose you don't know of any lodgings to be had there, do you? The inn is not very comfortable. The sunset to-night was so fine that I forgot to watch the hour, and it

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grew dusk, and I got confused among these innumerable boulders and found myself walking over precipices ; and then the rain began, and I came up here thinking to get shelter. I was feeling very nervous. Your moors, Mr. Coverdale, are eerie places at dusk ; and I was thinking of all the horrid stories I had heard, and devoutly hoping I should meet nobody, when suddenly, quite close to me, I heard your voice. It was a bad moment, I assure you !"

Dick looked at her in surprise. She was so unlike a person whom one would expect to be easily moved by indefinable terrors. He said that he was very sorry he had Startled her, and then sank into silence. He felt not quite at ease. His quick nerves or instinct made him suspect that his compan- ion was regarding him as an honest young bumpkin whom she might patronize, though she was too cultivated and clever to mark

5 8 A ROMANCE OF THE MOOES.

any patronage in her manner. Dick, with the consciousness within him of a wide mental outlook and large uncouth powers, had a sense that he was in a false position, a vague resentment at being treated with in- terested indulgence, well-veiled though it might be.

His unwilling admiration made the rela- tions that were springing up between himself and the new comer the more annoying, especially as he found himself adopting — with a fatal facility that besets natures of this order — the rdle she had assigned him, answering as accurately to her expectations as an electric needle to the dominant cur- rent.

She had fashioned for him (as we all do as soon as we are confronted with a new personality) an imaginary mental form, which he saw floating before him Hke an abhorred ghost in the darkness ; and this