Six to Sixteen Part 17

We laid in a stock of buns and chocolate lozenges for future consumption, and--thanks to Eleanor's presence of mind and experience--we got our luggage together, and started in the north train in a carriage by ourselves.

We talked very little now. Eleanor gazed out of her window, and I out of mine, in silence. As we got farther north, Eleanor's eyes dilated with a curious glow of pride and satisfaction. I had then no special attachment to one part of England more than another, but I had never seen so much of the country before, and it was a treat which did not lose by comparison with the limited range of our view at Bush House.

As we ran on, the bright, pretty, sociable-looking suburbs of London gave way to real country--beautiful, cared-for, garden-like, with grand timber, big houses, and grey churches, supported by the obvious parsonage and school; and deep shady lanes, with some little cart trotting quaintly towards the railway bridge over which we rushed, or boys in smock-frocks sitting on a gate, and shouting friendly salutations (as it seemed) to Eleanor and myself. Then came broad, fair pastures of fairy green, and slow winding rivers that we overtook almost before we had seen them, with ghostly grey pollard willows in formal mystical borders, contrasting with such tints of pale yellow and gay greens, which in their turn shone against low distances of soft blue and purple, that the sense of colour which my great-grandfather had roused in me made me almost tremble with a never-to-be-forgotten pleasure. From this flat but most fair country, the grey towers of Peterborough Cathedral stood up in ancient dignity; and then we ran on again. After a while the country became less rich in colour, and grander in form. No longer stretching flatly to low-lying distances of ethereal hue, it was broken into wooded hills, which folded one over the other with ever-increasing boldness of outline. Now and then the line ran through woods of young oak, with male ferns and bracken at their feet, where the wild hyacinths, which lie there like a blue mist in May, must for some weeks past have made way for the present carpet of pink campion.

And now the distance was no longer azure. Over the horizon and the lower part of the sky a thin grey veil had come--a veil of smoke. We were approaching the manufacturing districts. Grander and grander grew the country, less and less pure the colouring. The vegetation was rich almost to rankness; the well-wooded distances were heavily grey. Then tall chimneys poured smoke over the landscape and eclipsed the sun; and through strangely shaped furnaces and chimneys of many forms, which here poured fire from their throats like dragons, and there might have been the huge retorts and chemical apparatus of some giant alchemist, we ran into the station of a manufacturing town.

I gazed at the high blackened warehouses, chimneys, and furnaces, which loomed out of the stifling smoke and clanging noises, with horror and wonder.

"What a dreadful place!" I exclaimed. "Look at those dreadful things with flames coming out; and oh, Eleanor! there's fire coming out of the ground there. And look at that man opening that great oven door! Oh, what a fire! And what's he poking in it for? And do look! all the men are black. And what a frightful noise everything makes!"

Eleanor was looking all the time, but with a complacent expression. She only said, "It is a very busy place. I hear trade's good just now, too."

And, "You should see the furnaces at night, Margery, lighting up all the hills. It's grand!"

As she sniffed up the smoke with, I might almost say, relish, I felt that she did not sympathize with my disgust. But any discussion on the subject was stopped by our having to change carriages, and we had just settled ourselves comfortably once more, when I got a bit of iron "filings" into my eye. It gave me a good deal of pain and inconvenience, and by the time that I could look out of the window again, we had left the black town far behind. The hills were almost mountains now, and sloped away on all sides of us in bleak and awful grandeur. The woodlands were fewer; we were on the moors. Only a few hours back we had been amongst deep hedges and shady lanes, and now for hedges we had stone walls, and for deep embowered lanes we could trace the unsheltered roads, gleaming as they wound over miles of distant hills. Deep below us brawled a river, with here and there a gaunt mill or stone-built hamlet on its banks.

I had never seen any country like this; and if I had been horrified by the black town, my delight with the n.o.ble scenery beyond it was in proportion. I stood at the open window, with the moor breeze blowing my hair into the wildest elf-locks, rapturously excited as the great hills unfolded themselves and the s.h.i.+fting clouds sent s.h.i.+fting purple shadows over them. Very dark and stern they looked in shade, and then, in a moment more, the cloud was past, and a broad smile of suns.h.i.+ne ran over their face, and showed where cultivation was creeping up the hillside and turning the heather into fields.

Eleanor leaned out of the window also. Excitement, which set me chattering, always made her silent. But her parted lips, distended nostrils, and the light in her eyes bore witness to that strange power which hill country sways over hill-born people. To me it was beautiful, but to her it was home. I better understood now, too, her old complaints of the sheltered (she called it _stuffy_) lane in which we walked two and two when we "went into the country" at school. She used to rave against the park palings that hedged us in on either side, and declare her longing to tear them up and let a little air in, or at least to be herself somewhere where "one could see a few miles about one, and breathe some wind."

As we stood now, drinking in the breeze, I think the same thought struck us both, and we exclaimed with one voice: "Poor Matilda! How she would have enjoyed this!"

We next stopped at a rather dreary-looking station, where we got out, and Eleanor got our luggage together, aided by a porter who seemed to know her, and whom she seemed to understand, though his dialect was unintelligible to me.

"I suppose we must have a cab," said Eleanor, at last. "They don't expect us."

"_Tommusisinttarn_," said the porter suggestively; which, being interpreted, meant, "Thomas is in the town."

"To be sure, for the meat," said Eleanor. "The dog-cart, I suppose?"

"And t'owd mare," added the porter.

"Well, the boxes must come by the carrier. Come along, Margery, if you don't mind a little bit of walking. We must find Thomas. We have to send down to the town for meat," she added.

We found Thomas in the yard of a small inn. He was just about to start homewards.

By Eleanor's order, Thomas lifted me into the dog-cart, and then, to my astonishment, asked "Miss Eleanor" if she would drive. Eleanor nodded, and, climbing on to the driver's seat, took the reins with rea.s.suring calmness. Thomas balanced the meat-basket behind, and "t'owd mare"

started at a good pace up a hill which would have reduced most south-country horses to crawl.

"Father and Mother are away still," said Eleanor, after a pause. "So Thomas says. But they'll be back in a day or two."

We were driving up a sandy road such as we had seen winding over the hills. To our left there was a precipitous descent to the vale of the river. To our right, flowers, and ferns, and heather climbed the steep hill, broken at every few yards by tiny torrents of mountain streams.

The sun was setting over the distant Deadmanstone moors; little dropping wells tinkled by the roadside, where dozens of fat black snails were out for an evening stroll, and here and there a br.i.m.m.i.n.g stone trough reflected the rosy tints of the sky.

It was grey and chilly when we drove into the village. A stone pack-horse track, which now served as footpath, had run by the road and lasted into the village. The cottages were of stone, the walls and outhouses were of stone, and the vista was closed by an old stone church, like a miniature cathedral. There was more stone than gra.s.s in the churchyard, and there were more loose stones than were pleasant on the steep hill, up which we scrambled before taking a sharp turn into the Vicarage grounds.

CHAPTER XX.

THE VICARAGE--KEZIAH--THE DEAR BOYS--THE COOK--A YORKs.h.i.+RE TEA--BED-FELLOWS.

It was Midsummer. The heavy foliage brushed our faces as "the old mare,"

with slack reins upon her back, drew us soberly up the steep drive, and stood still, of her own accord, before a substantial-looking house, built--"like everything else," I thought--of stone. Huge rose-bushes--literal _bushes_, not "dwarfs" or "standards"--the growth of many years, bent under their load of blossoms. The old "maiden's blush," too rare now in our bedding plant gardens, the velvety "damask,"

the wee Scotch roses, the prolific white, and the curious "York and Lancaster," with monster moss-rose trees, hung over the carriage-road.

The place seemed almost overgrown with vegetation, like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty.

As we turned the corner towards the house, Eleanor put out her left hand and dragged off a great branch of "maiden's blush." She forgot the recoil, which came against my face. All the full-blown flowers shed their petals over me, and I made my first appearance at the Vicarage covered with rose-leaves.

It was Keziah who welcomed us, and I have always had an affection for her in consequence. She was housemaid then, and took to the kitchen afterwards. After she had been about five years at the Vicarage, she announced one day that she wished to go. She had no reason to give but that she "thought she'd try a change." She tried one--for a month--and didn't like it. Mrs. Arkwright took her back again, and in kitchen and back premises she reigns supreme to this day.

From her we learned that Mr. and Mrs. Arkwright, who had gone away for a parson's fortnight, were still from home. We had no lack of welcome, however.

It seems strange enough to speak of a fire as comfortable in July. And yet I well remember that the heavy dew and evening breeze was almost chilly after sunset, and a sort of vault-like feeling about the rooms, which had been for a week or more unused, made us offer no resistance when Keziah began to light a fire. While she was doing so Eleanor exclaimed, "Let's go and warm ourselves in the kitchen."

Any idea of comfort connected with a kitchen was quite new to me, but I followed Eleanor, and made my first acquaintance with the old room where we have spent so many happy hours.

We found the door shut; much, it seemed, to Eleanor's astonishment. But the reason was soon evident. As our footsteps sounded on the stone pa.s.sage there arose from behind the kitchen door an utterly indescribable din of howling, yowling, squealing, scratching, and barking.

"It's the dear boys!" said Eleanor, and she ran to open the door. For a moment I thought of her brothers (who must, obviously, be maniacs!), but I soon discovered that the "dear boys" were the dogs of the establishment, who were at once let loose upon us _en ma.s.se_. I have a faint remembrance of Eleanor and a brown retriever falling into each other's arms with cries of delight; but I was a good deal absorbed by the care of my own small person, under the heavy onslaught of dogs big and little. I was licked copiously from chin to forehead by the more impetuous, and smelt threateningly at the calves of my legs by the more cautious of the pack.

They were subsiding a little, when Eleanor said, "Oh, cook, why did you shut them up? Why didn't you let them come and meet us?"

"And how was I to know who it was at the door, Miss Eleanor?" replied an elderly, stern-looking female, who, in her time, ruled us all with a rod of iron, the dogs included. "Dear knows it's not that I want them in the kitchen. The way them dogs behaves, Miss Eleanor, is _scandilus_."

"Dear boys!" murmured Eleanor; on which all the dogs, who were settling down to sleep on the hearth, wagged their tails, and threatened to move.

"Much good it is me cleaning," cook continued, "when that great big brown beast of yours goes roaming about every night in the shrubberies, and comes in with his feet all over my clean floor."

"It makes rather pretty marks, I think," said Eleanor; "like pot-moulding, only not white. But never mind, you've me at home now to wipe their paws."

"They've missed you sorely," said the cook, who seemed to be softening.

"I almost think they knew it was you, they were so mad to get out."

"Dear boys!" cried Eleanor, once more; and the dogs, who were asleep now, wagged their tails in their dreams.

"And there's more's missed you than them," cook continued. "But, bless us, Miss Eleanor, you don't look much better for being in strange parts.

That young lady, too, looks as if she enjoyed poor health. Well, give me native air, there's nothing like it; and you've not got back to yours too soon."

Eleanor threw her arms round the cook, and danced her up and down the kitchen.

"Oh, dear cookey!" she cried; "I am so glad to be back again. And do be kind to us, and give us tea-cakes, and brown bread toast, and let the dogs come in to tea."

Cook pushed her away, but with a relenting face.

"There, there, Miss Eleanor. Take that jug of hot water with you, and take the young lady up-stairs; and when you've cleaned yourselves, I'll have something for you to eat; and you may suit yourselves about the dogs,--I'm sure I don't want them. You've not got so much more sensible with all your schooling," she added.