A BURNISHED STREAM
"IS this what you call the Dale-head?" asked Giles.
"Perhaps more properly higher up. But I think we mean the whole of the
valley, as far as you can see, and beginning here. Isn't it pretty?"
It was more than pretty. She used a word inadequate.
They were seated by the river, on its grass bank. Not the little
Midfell stream, but a more important watercourse; a river to which the
Midfell stream was a tributary.
It flowed between steep banks; and the colour of the water was that of
a burnished red-brown chestnut. Hundreds of stones, large enough to
act as small breakwaters, lay scattered on the river-bed; and around
each separate stone curled a perpetual wave, foam-white, with a gleam
of golden light shining as from a fairy-lamp at its centre. This was
repeated times without number.
Behind them and in front were rounded fells, like a series of
land-waves struck into immobility, forming the sides of the valley; and
every fell differed from its neighbour. Here was one shaded in purple
and brown; there another bright grassy-green; yet another dark from
base to summit with masses of bracken; a fourth clad in patches of
dull red, purple rather than crimson, from early heather-bloom; and a
round-topped hill which had donned a veil of blue gauze. To the left,
higher up, might be seen a solitary farmhouse; a rough pathway, deluged
with stones, winding thither.
"They would give us milk at the farm," remarked Phyllys. But, with a
smile, he produced sandwiches and a cup.
"I don't know any place like this," murmured Phyllys, after their
simple luncheon. She was in a state of measureless content.
Giles said little, and she hardly looked at him; yet she knew that he
felt with her. That was the one thing she had lacked and longed for;
and it made all the difference.
"Nor I." He had been thinking how like her hair was to the burnished
chestnut of the water. "One hardly expects such a spot in England. Few
of us know our own country."
Phyllys lay back, resting her head on folded arms, and looking at the
sky. It gave Giles a fuller view than he had yet gained of her eyes. He
forgot fell and river in the contemplation.
"I wonder," she murmured, "whether other worlds are half as lovely
as this. I wonder whether they have stuffy meetings in Jupiter and
Mars—and horrid good people making speeches about the badness of other
good people?"
"Jupiter is probably too warm."
She went into a chime of laughter.
"I forgot! I ought to have known." She sat up suddenly. "Tell me about
your home."
"You would find it flat." He refrained still from letting her know how
soon she would see for herself. "No fells. No mountain-torrents."
"And the house?"
"Respectably old. There was a castle—once. Only a wall of it remains."
"And Mrs. Keith and 'Colin' live there with you. He is not really your
cousin, I suppose?"
Giles explained the connection. Thomas Randolph, his grandfather, had
one son and one daughter, James and Annie. The son, James, married;
and his wife died soon after the birth of their only child—"myself,"
interjected Giles—the widower dying a little later, thus leaving an
infant possessor of the Castle Hill property. The daughter, Annie,
married Geoffry Keith, and she too died early; after which her husband
married again, his second wife being a Miss Cecil Reeves. They had one
little boy, named Colin.
"So at best he can only be called my step-cousin. But when my mother
was taken, Mrs. Keith had entire charge of me; and on the death of
my father that arrangement became permanent. Colin and I have been
brothers from babyhood."
"I understand now. It always puzzled me. And was he not ill for a long
time? Somebody said he had an accident when he was a boy, and didn't
get over it for years."
"Yes." A stern set came to Giles' face, darkening it as a landscape is
darkened by a cloud passing over the sun.
Phyllys was perplexed.
"Barbara is as much your cousin as I am," she remarked, saying the
first thing that came into her head. "I suppose you would have asked
her first to visit Castle Hill!"—"Heaven forbid!" was on Giles'
lips—"But she never goes anywhere, so I come next."
"I think you come first," he said drily, and she laughed.
"If only I had the least hope of going!"
"I don't think it will be long before we meet again." His manner said
that he intended it should not be. "Till then, I hope you will remember
that you offered me your friendship."
Her colour went up. "But that was silly. We were strangers. I spoke
without thinking."
"It would disappoint me if you took your words back."
"It was too soon. I am always saying things in a hurry, and then
wishing I had not." She twisted a grass-blade round her fingers. "Does
one ever quite get over doing that?"
He ignored the question. "Don't you think we know one another well
enough now?"
"Of course I've rather wanted a friend—sometimes," she admitted. "The
only one I had went away. There are Mr. and Mrs. Hazel, but Barbara
tries to keep me from them. And they are much older. But people ought
to wait till they are sure."
"You do not feel sure yet?"
The steady purposefulness of his gaze held her spellbound. It was not
that he saw deeply, but that he stirred deep feeling in her. For a
moment he had a curious sense that he might do what he willed with
Phyllys.
It did not last. She dropped her eyes, and the spell was broken. He did
not really as yet will anything further. Their mutual knowledge each
of the other was small; and he only felt that he wished to know her
better. Besides, he was a man of punctilious honour, and she had been
confided to his care.
So they reverted to surface topics, and no more was said about
friendship. The word to Giles meant little. If he wanted anything, he
wanted more; but it served as a stepping-stone to intimacy. To Phyllys
it meant, for the moment, a good deal—more than would have been guessed
from her next careless remark—"I was afraid this morning it was going
to be a wet day. That would have been provoking."
"There was an early shower, I believe."
"Just the Pride o' the Morning."
He looked an inquiry.
"It's a saying about here. When a little early shower comes, not
meaning a wet day, they say, 'Oh, it's just the Pride o' the Morning.'
Mr. Hazel sometimes calls 'me' that!"—smiling.
The name sounded far from inappropriate, yet he was conscious of
revolt, as he inquired, "Who is Mr. Hazel?"
"Our Vicar. Such a kind man. But I know why he calls me so. It was one
day—"
"Yes."
"I don't very often give in, but things were worrying. And I had a
silly little cry in the meadow. He came upon me, and he said it was
just an early shower—'just the pride o' the morning.' He told me one
must not expect to have everything always smooth, but he hoped mine was
going to be a happy life. And since then when we meet, he often says,
'Well, little Pride of the Morning, how goes the world with you now?'"
"I should like to know your Vicar."
"Would you? Barbara doesn't like him. And Grannie—sometimes—says he's
too fond of ceremonies."
"I am sure I should like him."
Not till well on in the afternoon did they once more stand at the
garden gate of Burn Cottage, within which sat the handsome old lady,
with a look of trouble on her face. She had been during the interim
sedulously lectured by her elder grand-daughter for lapse of principle;
and her own conscience was not happy.
After all these years keeping the undesirable nephew out of reach, and
tabooing his acquaintance for Phyllys, it was a degree startling that
she should have succumbed at the first touch. To Barbara, over whom
Giles had exercised no attraction—perhaps could not if he would!—the
change of front was inexplicable. She had no imagination, and she could
not picture those memories of Phyllys' father, first stirred by Mr.
Dugdale, then called into life by Giles. In her eyes the consent was
simply an act of weakness and folly. She neither knew nor cared what
her grandmother's motives might be. She disliked the idea of Phyllys
going to Castle Hill, and she never dreamt of searching into her own
sub-surface workings, to find the hidden jealousy.
Having been long used to submit to the joint dictum of Barbara and
Miss Robins, Mrs. Wyverne could not meet their condemnation with
indifference. She took herself seriously to task for allowing the walk
and consenting to the visit.
Still, consent was consent. When, after Giles' departure, a fresh
attack was made upon her by the combined forces of the two women, she
refused to withdraw permission.
"I cannot alter now," she said. "The matter is settled and I have given
my word. If I have yielded wrongfully, I trust I may be forgiven. And I
hope that Phyllys, when away from home, will not be led into evil."
Phyllys kissed her grandmother, in token of right intentions. What
could she say? The idea of being "led into evil" by Giles was absurd.
Though she did not yet know him well, she had not a particle of doubt
as to his goodness.