With this scanty information, and some curiosity as to our destination in the North, I arrived at Chester, and there met mamma, from whom I soon learned that our excursion was to lead us into wild and beautiful scenery quite new to me.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

AT THE GEORGE AND DRAGON.

We had to wait for a long time at some station, I forget its name. The sun set, and night overtook us before we reached the end of our journey by rail. We had then to drive about twelve miles. The road, for many miles, lay through a desolate black moss. I could not have believed there was anything so savage in England. A thin mist was stretched like a veil over the more distant level of the dark expanse, on which, here and there, a wide pool gleamed faintly under the moonlight. To the right there rose a grand ma.s.s of mountain. We were soon driving through a sort of gorge, and found ourselves fenced in by the steep sides of gigantic mountains, as we followed a road that wound and ascended among them. I shall never forget the beautiful effect of the scene suddenly presented, and for the first time, as the road reached its highest elevation, and I saw, with the dark receding sides of the mountain we had been penetrating for a proscenium, my first view of Golden Friars. Oh! how beautiful!

Surrounded by an amphitheatre of Alpine fells, the broad mere of Golden Friars glimmered cold under the moonlight, and the quaint little town of steep gables, built of light grey stone, rose from its gra.s.sy margin surrounded by elms, single or in clumps, that looked almost black in contrast with the gleaming lake and the white masonry of the town. It looked like enchanted ground. A silvery h.o.a.r-frost seemed to cover the whole scene, giving it a filmy and half-visionary character that enhanced its beauty. I was exclaiming in wonder and delight as every minute some new beauty unfolded itself to view. Mamma was silent, as she looked from the window; I saw that she cried gently, thinking herself un.o.bserved. A beautiful scene, where childish days were pa.s.sed, awakes so many sweet and bitter fancies! The yearnings for the irrevocable, the heartache of the memory, opened the fountains of her tears; and I was careful not to interrupt her lonely thoughts. I left her to the enjoyment of that melancholy luxury, and gazed on in strange delight.

Here, then, was the dwelling-place of that redoubted enemy of our house whom fate seemed to have ordained as our persecutor. Here lived the old enchanter whose malign spells were woven about us, in busy London and quiet Malory, or the distant scenes of France and Italy. Even this thought added interest to the romantic scene.

We had now descended to the level of the sh.o.r.e of the lake, along whose margin our road swept in a gentle curve. The fells from this level rose stupendous, all around, striking their silvery peaks into the misty moonlight, and looking so aerial that one might fancy a stone thrown would pa.s.s through their sides as if they were vapour. Now we pa.s.sed under the shadow of the first clump of mighty elms; and now the white fronts and chimneys of the village houses rose in the foreground. There was no sign of life but the barking of the watch-dogs, and the cackling of the vigilant geese, and the light that glanced from the hall of the "George and Dragon," the substantial old inn that, looking across the road, faces the lake and distant fells. At the door of this ancient and comfortable inn drew up our chaise and four horses, no mere ostentation, but a simple necessity, where carriage and luggage were pulled, towards the close of so long a stage, over the steeps where the road pushes its way high among the fells.

So our journey was over; and we stood in the hall. Before we went up to our rooms mamma inquired whether Lady Lorrimer had arrived. Yes, her ladyship had been there since the day before yesterday. Mamma seemed nervous and uncomfortable. She sent down her maid to find out whether Sir Harry Rokestone was in the country; and when the servant returned and told her that he was not expected to arrive at Dorracleugh before a fortnight, she sighed, and I heard her say faintly, "Thank G.o.d!"

I confess it was rather a disappointment than a relief to me. I rather wished to see this truculent old wizard. After a sound sleep, which we both needed, I got up and had a little peep at that beautiful place, in the early sunlight, before breakfast. Lady Lorrimer's maid came with inquiries from her mistress, for mamma and me. Her ladyship was not very well, and could not see us till about twelve. She was so vexed at having to put us off, and hoped we were not tired; and also that we would take our dinner with her. To this mamma agreed.

I was curious to see Lady Lorrimer once more. My ideas had grown obscure, and my theory of that kinswoman had been disagreeably disturbed, ever since the evening on which she, or her double, had pa.s.sed by me so resolutely in the street.

Having heard that she was quite ready to see us, we paid our visit. I wondered how she would receive me, and my suspense amounted almost to excitement as I reached the door. A moment more, and I could not believe that Lady Lorrimer and the woman who so resembled her were the same.

Nothing could be more affectionate than Lady Lorrimer. She received us with a very real welcome, and so much pleasure in her looks, tones, and words. She was not, indeed, looking well, but her spirits seemed cheerful. She embraced mamma, and kissed her very fondly; then she kissed me over and over again. I was utterly puzzled, and more than doubted the ident.i.ty of this warm-hearted, affectionate woman with the person who had chosen to cut me with such offensive and sinister persistence.

"See how this pretty creature looks at me!" she said to mamma, laughing, as she detected my conscious scrutiny.

I blushed and looked down; I did not know what to say.

"I'm very much obliged to you, dear, for looking at me, so few people do now-a-days; and I was just going to steal a good look at you, when I found I was antic.i.p.ated. I have just been saying to your mamma that I have ordered a boat, and we must all have a sail together on the lake after dinner; what do you say?"

Of course I was delighted; I thought the place perfectly charming.

"I lived the earlier part of my life here," she resumed, "and so did your mamma, you know--when she was a little girl, and until she came to be nineteen or twenty--I forget which you were, dear, when you were married?" she said, turning to mamma.

"Twenty-two," said mamma, smiling.

"Twenty-two? Really! Well, we lived at Mard.y.k.es. I'll point out the place on the water when we take our sail; you can't see it from these windows."

"And where does Sir Harry Rokestone live?" I asked.

"You can't see that either from these windows. It is further than Mard.y.k.es, at the same side. But we shall see it from the boat."

Then she and mamma began to talk, and I went to the window and looked out.

Lady Lorrimer, with all her airs of conventual seclusion, hungered and thirsted after gossip; and whenever they met, she learned all the stories from mamma, and gave her, in return, old scandal and ridiculous anecdotes about the predecessors of the people with whose sayings, doings, and mishaps mamma amused her.

Two o'clock dinners, instead of luncheons, were the rule in this part of the world. And people turned tea into a very substantial supper, and were all in bed and asleep before the hour arrived at which the London ladies and gentlemen are beginning to dress for a ball.

You are now to suppose us, on a sunny evening, on board the boat that had been moored for some time at the jetty opposite the door of the "George and Dragon." We were standing up the lake, and away from the Golden Friars sh.o.r.e, towards a distant wood, which they told me was the forest of Cl.u.s.ted.

"Look at that forest, Ethel," said Lady Lorrimer. "It is the haunted forest of Cl.u.s.ted--the last resort of the fairies in England. It was there, they say, that Sir Bale Mard.y.k.es, long ago, made a compact with the Evil One."

Through the openings of its magnificent trees, as we nearer, from time to time, the ivied ruins of an old manor-house were visible. In this beautiful and, in spite of the monotony of the gigantic fells that surround the lake, ever-varying scenery, my companions gradually grew silent for a time; even I felt the dreamy influence of the scene, and liked the listless silence, in which nothing was heard but the rush of the waters, and the flap of the sail now and then. I was living in a world of fancy: they in a sadder one of memory.

In a little while, in gentle tones, they were exchanging old remembrances; a few words now and then sufficed; the affecting a.s.sociations of scenes of early life re-visited were crowding up everywhere. As happens to some people when death is near, a change, that seemed to be quite beautiful, came over mamma's mind in the air and lights of this beautiful place! How I wished that she could remain always as she was now!

With the old recollections seemed to return the simple rural spirit of the early life. What is the town life, of which I had tasted, compared with this? How much simpler, tenderer, sublimer, this is! How immensely nearer heaven! The breeze was light, and the signs of the sky a.s.sured the boatmen that we need fear none of those gusts and squalls that sometimes burst so furiously down through the cloughs and hollows of the surrounding mountains. I, with the nautical knowledge acquired at Malory, took the tiller, under direction of the boatmen. We had a good deal of tacking to get near enough to the sh.o.r.e at Cl.u.s.ted to command a good view of that fine piece of forest. We then sailed northward, along the margin of the "mere," as they call the lake; and, when we had gone in that direction for a mile or more, turned the boat's head across the water, and ran before the breeze towards the Mard.y.k.es side. There is a small island near the other side, with a streak of grey rock and bushes nearly surrounding what looked like a ruined chapel or hermitage, and Lady Lorrimer told me to pa.s.s this as nearly as I could.

The glow of evening was by this time in the western sky. The sun was hidden behind the fells that form a n.o.ble barrier between Golden Friars and the distant moss of Dardale, where stands Haworth Hall. In deepest purple shadow the mountains here closely overhang the lake. Under these, along the margin, Lady Lorrimer told me to steer.

We were gliding slowly along, so that there was ample leisure to note every tree and rock upon the sh.o.r.e as we pa.s.sed. As we drifted, rather than sailed, along the sh.o.r.e, there suddenly opened from the margin a narrow valley, reaching about a quarter of a mile. It was a sudden dip in the mountains that here rise nearly from the edge of the lake.

Steep-sided and wild was this hollow, and backed by a mountain that, to me, looking up from the level of the lake, appeared stupendous.

The valley lay flat in one unbroken field of short gra.s.s. A broad-fronted, feudal tower, with a few more modern buildings about it, stood far back, fronting the river. A rude stone pier afforded shelter to a couple of boats, and a double line of immense lime-trees receded from that point about half-way up to the tower. Whether it was altogether due to the peculiar conformation of the scene, or that it owed its character in large measure to its being enveloped in the deep purple shadow cast by the surrounding mountain, and the strange effect of the glow reflected downward from the evening clouds, which touched the summits of the trees, and the edges of the old tower, like the light of a distant conflagration, I cannot say; but never did I see a spot with so awful a character of solitude and melancholy.

In the gloom we could see a man standing alone on the extremity of the stone pier, looking over the lake. This figure was the only living thing we could discover there.

"Well, dear, now you see it. That's Dorracleugh--that's Harry Rokestone's place," said Lady Lorrimer.

"What a spot! Fit only for a bear or an anchorite. Do you know," she added, turning to mamma, "he is there a great deal more than he used to be, they tell me. I know if I were to live in that place for six months I should never come out of it a sane woman. To do him justice, he does not stay very long here when he does come, and for years he never came at all. He has other places, far away from this; and if a certain event had happened about two-and-twenty years ago," she added, for my behalf, "he intended building quite a regal house a little higher up, on a site that is really enchanting, but your mamma would not allow him; and so, and so----" Lady Lorrimer had turned her gla.s.ses during her sentence upon the figure which stood motionless on the end of the pier; and she said, forgetting what she had been telling me, "I really think--I'm nearly certain--that man standing there is Harry Rokestone!"

Mamma started. I looked with all my eyes; little more than a hundred yards interposed, but the shadow was so intense, and the effect of the faint reflected light so odd and puzzling, that I could be certain of nothing, but that the man stood very erect, and was tall and powerfully built. Lady Lorrimer was too much absorbed in her inspection to offer me her gla.s.ses, which I was longing to borrow, but for which I could not well ask, and so we sailed slowly by, and the hill that flanked the valley gradually glided between us and the pier, and the figure disappeared from view. Lady Lorrimer, lowering her gla.s.ses, said:

"I can't say positively, but I'm very nearly certain it was he."

Mamma said nothing, but was looking pale, and during the rest of our sail seemed absent and uncomfortable, if not unhappy.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

NOTICE TO QUIT.

We drank tea with Lady Lorrimer. Mamma continued very silent, and I think she had been crying in her room.

"They can't tell me here whether Harry has arrived or not," said Lady Lorrimer. "He might have returned by the Dardale Road, and if so, he would not have pa.s.sed through Golden Friars, so it is doubtful. But I'm pretty sure that was he."

"I wish I were sure of that," said mamma.

"Well, I don't know," said Lady Lorrimer, "what to advise. I was just going to say it might be a wise thing if you were to make up your mind to see him, and to beard the lion in his den."

"No," said mamma; "if you mean to meet him and speak to him, I could not do that. I shall never see him again--nothing but pain could come of it; and he would not see me, and he ought not to see me; and he ought not to forgive me--never!"

"Well, dear, I can't deny it, you did use him very ill. And he is, and always was, a fierce and implacable enemy," answered Lady Lorrimer. "I fancied, perhaps, if he did see you, the old chord might be touched again, and yield something of its old tone on an ear saddened by time.

But I daresay you are right. It was a Quixotic inspiration, and might have led to disaster; more probably, indeed, than to victory."