LLANBERIS

LLANBERIS, prim and small, and very, very Welsh, lies in the shadow of

great Snowdon, and all about it the lesser and more gracious

mountains--the mountains of green and purple and brown--stand with their

heads against the sky, bathing their feet in great lakes of smooth,

brown water. The inn has a beautiful and terraced garden; the stream

from the waterfall under Snowdon runs tumbling and gurgling down its

rocky bed. "The peace that is upon the lonely hills" may be yours at the

cost of a little breathless, happy climbing; the deeper peace of valleys

and lake may be yours for no more trouble than it takes to walk a couple

of hundred yards from the door of your inn. That the hotel was full did

not seem to matter--the other guests were off early, in breaks and

wagonettes, spending the long days in excursions from which they

returned late and hilarious, breaking the soft night quiet with loud

laughter and snatches of the kind of songs that nowadays delight the

great heart of the people. Trippers from Manchester and Liverpool came

for the day, but never strayed far from the inn, or, if they did, went

up Snowdon by the tiny railway. Everywhere, save on the way that led to

Snowdon, you were sure of quiet or peace, of a world where two could be

alone together.

Here the two tried to take up again the life of ordered ease that had

been theirs at Caernarvon, the little life they had prized and cherished

till the governor of Caernarvon prison had thrown a stone into their

magic pool, shattering all its mirrored beauty. They spent long mornings

on the hillside, cushioned by the heather; long evenings by the

lakeside, always careful to choose their resting-place so that they need

not see the scars where the waste slate is tipped into the lake, slowly

overlaying the green and graceful margin with which Nature, if you let

her alone, frames all water mirrors. And once they went as far as the

mysterious Round Tower, which stands alone, with no entrance but the

doorway high above your head.

"What a place to keep your enemy in," he said, "or your friend! Suppose

the tower had been my stronghold, in the old days. I could have brought

my princess here, and snapped my fingers at her relations drawn round

the tower in a ring, shaking their fists at me from their coal-black

steeds, and vowing vengeance when the tower should yield--which, of

course, it never would."

"Your princess would have starved," she said, "and you with her."

"Not at all," he assured her; "you underrate the resources of round

towers. To say nothing of the goats and sheep which we should drive in

and lower to the basement when our scout brought news that your kinsmen

were sending out the fiery cross or the blood eagle, or whatever it was

that they did send out; and there's an inexhaustible well inside the

tower, and of course we should have sacks of meal and casks of mead."

"But the enemy--her relations, I mean--would have all the sheep on the

mountains and all the flour in the mills. You'd have to give in, in the

end."

"You forget the underground passage. When we were tired of mocking your

uncles and cousins through the arrow-slits of our tower we'd quietly

creep away to our great castle--it's at Caernarvon, you know--and call

together all my uncles and cousins and sally out and have a great

battle, and the sound of our blows on their helmets would be heard on

the far side of Anglesea, and down to the very southernmost marches of

Merioneth."

"But suppose her relations won the battle and shut you up in a dungeon

and put her into a convent?"

"Oh, they wouldn't. All our armor would be so perfectly tempered that

nobody would be hurt. It would be like a tournament, and at the end,

just as your senior uncle and I had unhorsed each other and were about

to perish, mutually cloven to the chine, you would rush between us--in

white, with your hair flowing like a thunder-cloud behind you--and say

to each of us, 'Spare him for my sake.' And of course we should. And

then there would be a banquet in the great hall at Caernarvon and clean

rushes on the floor, and you and I and all our relations sitting in

state on the dais, and you'd be wearing your gown of cloth of gold and

your cloak of vair, and all your jewels--and I should have my furred

gown and my great ring, and we should drink out of the big silver

drinking-bowl--mead and strong ale--and feast our guests and their

men-at-arms and all our own people on roast boars' heads and barons of

beef, and all live happily ever afterward."

"I don't think she'd wear her ermine mantle. Wouldn't she wear the one

of woven red, with your coat of arms embroidered on it, and the gold

beads you brought her from the East when you went to the wars there?"

"Perhaps you would," he conceded. "I believe I could climb up to that

doorway. I should like to--just to be sure there's really a well

inside."

"No, don't," said she, "because you might find out that there wasn't; or

that this isn't really the tower that has the underground passage

leading to Caernarvon, and then we should know that we're not really

remembering that other life when you carried her off, but only making it

up."

"Of course we remember it. Do you remember whether you were angry with

me for carrying you off."

"If she hadn't wanted to be carried off," she said, demurely, "she

wouldn't have been. Or if she hadn't been able to help herself she'd

have found a little knife, like the brown bride, or else something to

put in your mead-cup, so that the first draught you had from her hand

would have been the last. She wasn't the sort of woman to be taken

against her will. Come away before you spoil the story with any more

questions. I liked it best when we took the tale for granted--"

It was high up among the heather, with Charles safely tethered and the

steep hillside dotted with hundreds and hundreds of sheep, that the talk

grew earnest and dwelt not on dreams of old days, but the desire of new

ones.

"Do you remember," he said, "what you told me when we were going to

Warwick?" He spoke as though this had been a long time ago, as, indeed,

by any count but time it was. "You remember about the scattered farms,

and the way the little houses call to you to come home."

"Yes," she said.

"All that you said about the life--it was like my other self speaking."

"You mean that when I spoke, your inside self said, 'Yes, yes; that's

what I mean'?"

"I mean more than that. My inside self said, 'Yes, yes, that's what I

always meant. That's what I meant and what I wanted before ever I met

you.' Then meeting you obscured everything else, but when you spoke I

saw that what I had always wanted rhymed with what you had always

wanted. But I want to be quite sure. May I ask questions?"

"Yes."

"Suppose we had been really married--would you have been contented to

spend your working life on a farm, to live just that life that you spoke

of that day going to Warwick?"

She did not speak for a moment, and for a moment he wished that he had

not questioned. And when she did speak it was not to give him an answer.

"I didn't believe it was possible," she said. "I thought people

couldn't make farming succeed, nowadays, and I don't think I could bear

to spend my working life, as you call it, on a thing that is foredoomed

to failure."

"Nor could I; and I don't mean to, either. My farm will succeed. If it

costs me every penny I have it shall succeed. I shall go a new way to

work. You know I've really got quite a lot of money, and I have a plan."

"Tell me about it."

"It's quite simple, and absolutely opposed to all the accursed teachings

of political economy. Of course I shall get the best machinery and the

best seeds and the best implements. But I shall also get the best

labor."

"Doesn't every one try to do that?"

"Oh yes, every farmer tries to get the best labor he can, at current

rates. I sha'n't bother about the current rates. I shall get the best

men that are to be got and I shall pay them wages that will make them

glad to come to me rather than to any one else. If I find a man's good I

shall give him a share in the profits of the farm; if I find he isn't

any good I shall sack him."

"I wonder," she said, "whether you'd have the heart to sack any one?"

"I might hesitate to sack a mere fool," he admitted. "I might be tempted

to keep him on and find some work for him that even a fool could do.

But I'd chuck a slacker at a week's notice and never turn a hair. You'll

see; I shall have failures, many of them, but the whole thing won't be a

failure. Before I've done I shall have the best carters, the best

dairy-women, the best bailiff, and the best plowman and the most

successful farm in the country. You don't know how men can work who are

working for themselves and not just for a master."

"You mean to make it a sort of communal farm?"

"Never," he said. "That's the last thing I mean it to be. But it will be

a profit-sharing farm, and I shall run it. It's my own idea, the darling

of my soul, and I won't trust its life to any other man. I'm almost

afraid to trust it to you, for fear you should not be kind to it. But if

what you said on the way to Warwick meant something that lasts in

you--not just the beautiful thoughts of the moment--tell me, if we were

really married could you endure a life like that?"

"I should know nothing about it; I should be of no use. And we're not

married--"

"You could learn; we could both learn. Let's pretend for a moment that

we're really going to spend our lives together, anyhow. Let's leave

Mrs. Basingstoke out of it. Would Miss Basingstoke have been able to

endure such a life?"

"Miss Basingstoke would have loved it," she said. "Miss Basingstoke

would have done her best to learn, and--she isn't really stupid, you

know--I think Miss Basingstoke would have succeeded."

"It would need patience," he said, "patience and bravery and

loving-kindness and gentleness and firmness and unselfishness."

"And curiosity," she said. "That quality, at least, Miss Basingstoke

has. She would have wanted to know all about everything, and that's one

way of learning. She wants, now, to know ever so much more. Tell her

everything that you've thought of about it, everything you've decided or

not decided."

"You'll be kind to my darling dream, then," he said. "Well, here goes."

And with that he told her, and she listened and questioned, and he

answered again till the shadows had grown heavy in the valley and they

were very late indeed for dinner.

You cannot be long in Llanberis without wanting to "see over" a

slate-quarry. It was on their fifth day that the desire came to these

two. The mention of Colonel Bertram's name gained for them a personally

conducted tour through the rows of little slate-roofed sheds where

skilled workmen strip and chip and shape the flakes of quarried slate

till they are the size and form needed for roofing cottages and schools

and Nonconformist chapels. Having seen how the slate is treated in the

sheds, they were taken into the quarry itself to see how the slate is

got.

A big slate-quarry is a very impressive sight. You walk across a great

amphitheater whose walls of slate rise high above you, their

green-trimmed edges sharply cut against the sky. You pick your way among

pools of water so smooth, so clear, that they reflect like mirrors the

blue sky and the high slate walls of the quarry. One such pool--the

largest--lay in the middle of the vast amphitheater, and in it the

towering cliffs of slate were reflected even more clearly than in the

others.

"I never saw such reflections," she was saying, as they skirted the big

pond. "They're almost more real than the real thing. I am glad we came

here; it's all so clear and bright and new-looking. I wonder--"

"I wouldn't walk quite so near the edge, if I was you, sir," said the

foreman, who was their guide.

"Why?" Edward asked, gazing at the reflection of high cliffs in the pool

at his side, "is the water deep--"

And even as he spoke his eyes were opened; but before he could obey

their mandate, with a cry that went to his heart and held it she caught

his arm and pulled him back. For in that instant she, too, had seen that

this pool which reflected so perfectly the tall precipices of the quarry

was not a pool at all, but another deep quarry within the first, and

that what it held was no reflection, but a sheer and dreadful depth of

precipice going down--she would not look to see how far. And he had been

walking within six inches of its brink, carelessly and at ease, as one

does walk by the safely shelving edge of any pond.

She did not let his arm go when she had drawn him away from that

perilous edge; she held it closely pressed against her side, and when he

looked at her he saw that her face was white and changed. The great

precipice above them swayed a little to her eyes--she dared not look at

the precipice below. She held his arm closely and more closely, folding

both hands on it. The foreman was saying something. Neither of them

heard what it was, only both caught the concluding words:

"Perhaps you'd like to see the place, sir."

"Thank you," said Edward, mechanically, "and then I think we must leave

you. It's been most kind of you to show us all this; we've been most

interested."

Her heart was beating in so wild an ecstasy of thanksgiving for an

unspeakable horror escaped, his heart was beating in so passionate and

proud and humble a recognition of what her touch on his arm confessed,

that neither of them heard the foreman's words or guessed at the meaning

of what he was calmly and coldly telling them. Only afterward the memory

of his words came back, bringing with it understanding. They were led

across a flat wilderness of splintered slate toward the tall cliff from

which now and then came the noise like thunder which blasting-powder

makes when it does its work. They two, hardly conscious of anything but

that they held each other--the one who had been in danger, safe; the

other passionately grateful for that other's safety; and the endangered

one, passionately sensible of her passionate gratitude, heard not a word

that the foreman spoke, though he spoke all the time.

"You are here; I hold you safe; but, oh, if I had lost you!" her heart

was singing to a breathless, syncopated measure.

"You cared; you cared as much as this. If I had fallen over that

perilous edge. . . . Oh, but you care, you care! It is as much as this

to you," his heart sang, keeping time to hers.

It was a trance of mutual meeting emotion such as they had not yet

known. In that one moment, when he walked the narrow edge of that

precipice and when she had seen the precipice for the horror it was, she

learned more than in all her life before. And he, in the moments that

followed, knew, beyond possibility of mistake or misunderstanding, what

it was that she had learned. If only they could have walked straight out

of that quarry into the world of stream and mountain, the world where

you are only two--but the foreman was there, walking and talking, and at

last stopping and saying:

"This is where it happened."

And they came out of their dream to find themselves close to the slate

cliff at whose base lay great blocks of slate newly fallen, and to see

the flat slate flakes at their feet, brown and wet.

"Where what happened?" Edward asked, vaguely.

"What I've been telling you about," said the foreman, aggrieved. "Where

one of our workmen was killed just now, blasting; that's his blood what

you're standing in," said he.

Then, indeed, she clung to his arm. "Take me away," she whispered. "Oh,

why does everything turn horrible like this? It's like a horrible dream.

Let's get away. Give him something and let's get away."

"It's not my fault," said the foreman, in very injured tones. "She said

she'd like to see it. I wondered, at the time, but there's no accounting

for females, is there?"

They got away from the place--out of the quarry and into the road. They

found the stream that flows from the waterfall under Snowdon, and the

flagged path that lies beside the stream. They passed along it, she

still clinging to his arm. Presently a smooth, mossy rock invited them,

and before either of them knew it they were seated there, side by side,

and she was weeping on his shoulder.

He did not need her whispered words that broke a long silence--"Thank

God, you're safe"--to tell him what he had to think, nor what, from that

hour, he had to live for.

"But, oh," she said at last, lifting her face from his coat-sleeve,

"what a horrible day! We've struck a streak of horrible things. Let's go

back to the south, where things aren't like this."

"We'll go to-night, if you like," he said.

"Yes," she answered, eagerly, "yes. But this isn't the end. I feel

there's something more coming--I felt it at Chester. It wasn't only that

thing I couldn't tell you--something's going to happen to separate us."

"Nothing can--but you," he said, hugging to his heart all that her

admission implied.

"I feel that something will," she said.

And he, for all that he laughed at her fears and her predictions, with

pride and joy swelling in his heart till they almost broke the

resolution of quiescence, of waiting, of submitting his will to her

will, yet felt in those deep caves that lie behind the heart, behind the

soul, behind the mind of man, the winds of coming misfortune blow

chilly.

It was no surprise to either of them to find at the hotel a telegram for

Mrs. Basingstoke:

Aunt Alice much worse. Please come at once.

It was signed with the name of the aunt whose dog-cart had run over

Charles, and beneath whose legs Charles had experienced his miraculous

resurrection from death.

There was no reason to mistrust this telegram as they had mistrusted the

advertisement. But she said to herself, "There! That's because of what I

said at Warwick."

They caught the last train to London that night, and through the long,

lamp-lit journey Charles no longer lay between them. The white, bullet

head lay on her lap--but on her other side was Edward, and her shoulder

and his touched all the way, even as, on the journey to Warwick, he had

dreamed of their touching. They spoke little; it seemed as though

everything had been said. Only when her head drooped against his

shoulder and he knew that she had fallen asleep he felt no sense of

daring, no doubts as to his rights or her resentments when he passed his

arm around her and rested his chin on her soft hair, gazing straight

before him in the flickering half-light while she slept--oh, dreams come

true--upon his breast.