About half a mile from Tossil's Barton (the farmhouse where we lived)
there is a valley, or rather a vast ravine, of a very uncommon
formation. A narrow winding rocky combe, where slabs, and tors, and
boulder stones, seem pasturing on the velvet grass, or looking into the
bright trout-stream, which leaps down a flight of steps without a tree
to shade its flash and foam; this narrow, but glad dingle, as it nears
the sea, bursts suddenly back into a desert gorge, cleaving the heights
that front the Bristol Channel. The mountain sides from right and left,
straight as if struck by rule, steeply converge, like a high-pitched
roof turned upside down; so steep indeed that none can climb them.
Along the deep bottom gleams a silver chord, where the cramped stream
chafes its way, bedded and banked in stone, without a blade of green.
From top to bottom of this huge ravine there is no growth, no rocks, no
cliffs, no place to stay the foot, but all a barren, hard, grey stretch
of shingle, slates, and gliddery stones: as if the ballast of ten
million fleets had been shot in two enormous piles, and were always on
the slip. Looking at it we forget that there is such a thing as life:
the desolation is not painful, because it is so grand. The brief noon
glare of the sun on these Titanic dry walls, where even a lichen dies;
the gaunt desert shade stealing back to its lair in the early afternoon;
the solemn step of evening stooping to her cloak below--I know not which
of these is the most impressive and mournful. No stir of any sort, no
voice of man or beast, no flow of tide, ever comes to visit here; the
little river, after a course of battles, wins no peaceful union with the
sea, but ponds against a shingle bar, and gurgles away in slow
whirlpools. Only a fitful moaning wind draws up and down the melancholy
chasm. The famous "Valley of Rocks," some four miles to the east, seems
to me common-place and tame compared to this grand defile. Yet how many
men I know who would smoke their pipes throughout it!
Thinking so much of this place, I long wished my mother to see it; and
finding her rather stronger one lovely April morning, I persuaded her
forth, embarked on Mrs. Huxtable's donkey. We went, down a small
tributary glen, towards the head of the great defile. The little glen
was bright, and green, and laughing into bud, and bantering a swift
brook, which could hardly stop to answer, but left the ousels as it
passed to talk at leisure about their nests, and the trout to make those
musical leaps that sound so crisp through the alders. Another stream
meets it among the bushes below, and now they are entitled to the
dignity of a bridge whereon grows the maidenhair fern, and which, with
its rude and pointed arch, looks like an old pack-saddle upon the
stream.
From this point we followed a lane, leading obliquely up the ascent,
before the impassable steep begins. Having tethered our quiet donkey to
a broken gate, I took my mother along a narrow path through the thicket
to the view of the great ravine. Standing at the end of this path, she
was astonished at the scene before her. We had gained a height of about
two hundred feet, the hill-top stretched a thousand feet above us. We
stood on the very limit of vegetation, a straight line passing clown the
hill where the quarry-like steep begins.
My dear mother was tired, and I had called her to come home, lest the
view should make her giddy; when suddenly she stepped forward to gather
a harebell straggling among the stones. The shingle beneath her foot
gave way, then below her, and around, and above her head, began in a
great mass to glide. Buried to the knees and falling sideways, she was
sinking slowly at first, then quickly and quicker yet, with a hoarse
roar of moving tons of stone, gathering and whelming upon her, down the
rugged abyss. Screaming, I leaped into the avalanche after her, never
thinking that I could only do harm. Stronger, and swifter, and louder,
and surging, and berged with shouldering stone the solid cascade rushed
on. I saw dearest mother below me trying to clasp her hands in prayer,
and to give me her last word. With a desperate effort dragging my shawl
from the gulfing crash, I threw it towards her, but she did not try to
grasp it. A heavy stone leaped over me, and struck her on the head; her
head dropped back, she lay senseless, and nearly buried. We were
dashing more headlong and headlong, in the rush of the mountain side, to
the precipice over the river, and my senses had all but failed, and
revenge was prone before judgment, when I heard through the din a shout.
On the brink of firm ground stood a man, and signed me to throw my
shawl. With all my remaining strength I did so, but not as he meant,
for I cast it entirely to him, and pointed to my mother below. One
instant the avalanche paused, he leaped about twenty feet down, through
the heather and gorse, and stayed his descent by clutching a stout ash
sapling. To this in a moment he fastened my shawl, (a long and strong
plaid), and just as my mother was being swept by, he plunged with the
other end into the shingle tide. I saw him leap and struggle towards
her, and lift her out of the gliding tomb, gliding himself the while,
and sway himself and his burden, by means of the shawl, not back (for
that was impossible), but obliquely downwards; I saw the strong sapling
bow to the strain like a fishing-rod, while hope and terror fought hard
within me; I saw him, by a desperate effort, which bent the ash-tree to
the ground, leap from the whirling havoc, and lay my mother on the dead
fern and heath. Of the rest, I know nothing, having become quite
unconscious, before he saved me, in the same manner.
We must have been taken home in Farmer Huxtable's butt, for I remember
well that, amidst the stir and fright of our return, and while my mother
was still insensible, Mrs. Huxtable fell savagely upon poor Suke, for
having despatched that elegant vehicle without cleaning it from the lime
dust; whereby, as she declared, our dresses (so rent and tattered by the
jagged stones) were "muxed up to shords." Poor Suke would have been
likely to fare much worse, if, at such a time, she had stopped to dust
the cart.
When the farmer came home, his countenance, rich in capacity for
expressing astonishment, far outdid his words. "Wull, wull, for sure!
wuther ye did or no?" was all the vent he could find for his ideas
during the rest of the day; though it was plain to all who knew him that
he was thinking profoundly upon the subject, and wholly occupied with
it. In the course of the following week he advised me very impressively
never to do it again; and nothing could ever persuade him but that I
jumped in, and my mother came to rescue me.
But his wife very soon had all her wits about her. She sent to "Coom"
for the doctor (I begged that it might not be Mr. Dawe's physician), she
put dear mother to bed, and dressed her wounds with simples worth ten
druggists' shops, and bathed her temples with rosemary, and ran down the
glen for "fathery ham" (Valerian), which she declared "would kill nine
sorts of infermation;" then she hushed the entire household, permitting
no tongue to move except her own, and beat her eldest boy (a fine young
Huxtable) for crying, whereupon he roared; she even conquered her strong
desire to know much more than all could tell; and showed my mother such
true kindness and pity that I loved her for it at once, and ever since.
Breathing slowly and heavily, my poor mother lay in the bed which had
long been the pride of Tossil's Barton. The bedstead was made of carved
oak, as many of them are in North Devon, and would have been handsome
and striking, if some ancestral Huxtable had not adorned it with
whitewash. But the quilt was what they were proud of. It was formed of
patches of diamond shape and most incongruous colours, with a death's
head in the centre and crossbones underneath.
When first I beheld it, I tossed it down the stairs, but my mother would
have it brought back and used, because she knew how the family gloried
in it, and she could not bear to hurt their feelings.
One taper white hand lay on it now, with the tender skin bruised and
discoloured by blows. She had closed the finger which bore her wedding
ring, and it still remained curved and rigid. In an agony of tears, I
knelt by the side of the bed, watching her placid and deathlike face.
Till then I had never known how strongly and deeply I loved her.
I firmly believe that she was revived in some degree by the glare of the
patched quilt upon her eyes. The antagonism of nature was roused, and
brought home her wandering powers. Feebly glancing away, she came
suddenly to herself, and exclaimed:
"Is she safe? is she safe?'
"Yes, mother; here I am, with my own dear mother."
She opened her arms, and held me in a nervous cold embrace, and thanked
God, and wept.