My work pressed upon me, but the louder it challenged me--such is the
heart of the timid fighter--the less stomach I felt for the contest. I
wrestled with it in my study, only to be driven to my books. I walked
out to meet it in the streets, only to seek shelter from it in music-hall
or theatre. Thereupon it waxed importunate and over-bearing, till the
shadow of it darkened all my doings. The thought of it sat beside me at
the table, and spoilt my appetite. The memory of it followed me abroad,
and stood between me and my friends, so that all talk died upon my lips,
and I moved among men as one ghost-ridden.
Then the throbbing town, with its thousand distracting voices, grew
maddening to me. I felt the need of converse with solitude, that master
and teacher of all the arts, and I bethought me of the Yorkshire Wolds,
where a man may walk all day, meeting no human creature, hearing no voice
but the curlew's cry; where, lying prone upon the sweet grass, he may
feel the pulsation of the earth, travelling at its eleven hundred miles a
minute through the ether. So one morning I bundled many things, some
needful, more needless, into a bag, hurrying lest somebody or something
should happen to stay me, and that night I lay in a small northern town
that stands upon the borders of smokedom at the gate of the great moors;
and at seven the next morning I took my seat beside a one-eyed carrier
behind an ancient piebald mare. The one-eyed carrier cracked his whip,
the piebald horse jogged forward. The nineteenth century, with its
turmoil, fell away behind us; the distant hills, creeping nearer,
swallowed us up, and we became but a moving speck upon the face of the
quiet earth.
Late in the afternoon we arrived at a village, the memory of which had
been growing in my mind. It lies in the triangle formed by the sloping
walls of three great fells, and not even the telegraph wire has reached
it yet, to murmur to it whispers of the restless world--or had not at the
time of which I write. Nought disturbs it save, once a day, the one-eyed
carrier--if he and his piebald mare have not yet laid their ancient bones
to rest--who, passing through, leaves a few letters and parcels to be
called for by the people of the scattered hill-farms round about. It is
the meeting-place of two noisy brooks. Through the sleepy days and the
hushed nights, one hears them ever chattering to themselves as children
playing alone some game of make-believe. Coming from their far-off homes
among the hills, they mingle their waters here, and journey on in
company, and then their converse is more serious, as becomes those who
have joined hands and are moving onward towards life together. Later
they reach sad, weary towns, black beneath a never-lifted pall of smoke,
where day and night the clang of iron drowns all human voices, where the
children play with ashes, where the men and women have dull, patient
faces; and so on, muddy and stained, to the deep sea that ceaselessly
calls to them. Here, however, their waters are fresh and clear, and
their passing makes the only stir that the valley has ever known. Surely,
of all peaceful places, this was the one where a tired worker might find
strength.
My one-eyed friend had suggested I should seek lodgings at the house of
one Mistress Cholmondley, a widow lady, who resided with her only
daughter in the white-washed cottage that is the last house in the
village, if you take the road that leads over Coll Fell.
"Tha' can see th' house from here, by reason o' its standing so high
above t'others," said the carrier, pointing with his whip. "It's theer
or nowhere, aw'm thinking, for folks don't often coom seeking lodgings in
these parts."
The tiny dwelling, half smothered in June roses, looked idyllic, and
after a lunch of bread and cheese at the little inn I made my way to it
by the path that passes through the churchyard. I had conjured up the
vision of a stout, pleasant, comfort-radiating woman, assisted by some
bright, fresh girl, whose rosy cheeks and sunburnt hands would help me
banish from my mind all clogging recollections of the town; and hopeful,
I pushed back the half-opened door and entered.
The cottage was furnished with a taste that surprised me, but in
themselves my hosts disappointed me. My bustling, comely housewife
turned out a wizened, blear-eyed dame. All day long she dozed in her big
chair, or crouched with shrivelled hands spread out before the fire. My
dream of winsome maidenhood vanished before the reality of a
weary-looking, sharp-featured woman of between forty and fifty. Perhaps
there had been a time when the listless eyes had sparkled with roguish
merriment, when the shrivelled, tight-drawn lips had pouted temptingly;
but spinsterhood does not sweeten the juices of a woman, and strong
country air, though, like old ale, it is good when taken occasionally,
dulls the brain if lived upon. A narrow, uninteresting woman I found
her, troubled with a shyness that sat ludicrously upon her age, and that
yet failed to save her from the landlady's customary failing of loquacity
concerning "better days," together with an irritating, if harmless,
affectation of youthfulness.
All other details were, however, most satisfactory; and at the window
commanding the road that leads through the valley towards the distant
world I settled down to face my work.
But the spirit of industry, once driven forth, returns with coy steps. I
wrote for perhaps an hour, and then throwing down my halting pen I looked
about the room, seeking distraction. A Chippendale book-case stood
against the wall and I strolled over to it. The key was in the lock, and
opening its glass doors, I examined the well-filled shelves. They held a
curious collection: miscellanies with quaint, glazed bindings; novels and
poems; whose authors I had never heard of; old magazines long dead, their
very names forgotten; "keepsakes" and annuals, redolent of an age of
vastly pretty sentiments and lavender-coloured silks. On the top shelf,
however, was a volume of Keats wedged between a number of the
_Evangelical Rambler_ and Young's _Night Thoughts_, and standing on tip-
toe, I sought to draw it from its place.
The book was jambed so tightly that my efforts brought two or three
others tumbling about me, covering me with a cloud of fine dust, and to
my feet there fell, with a rattle of glass and metal, a small miniature
painting, framed in black wood.
I picked it up, and, taking it to the window, examined it. It was the
picture of a young girl, dressed in the fashion of thirty years ago--I
mean thirty years ago then. I fear it must be nearer fifty, speaking as
from now--when our grandmothers wore corkscrew curls, and low-cut bodices
that one wonders how they kept from slipping down. The face was
beautiful, not merely with the conventional beauty of tiresome regularity
and impossible colouring such as one finds in all miniatures, but with
soul behind the soft deep eyes. As I gazed, the sweet lips seemed to
laugh at me, and yet there lurked a sadness in the smile, as though the
artist, in some rare moment, had seen the coming shadow of life across
the sunshine of the face. Even my small knowledge of Art told me that
the work was clever, and I wondered why it should have lain so long
neglected, when as a mere ornament it was valuable. It must have been
placed in the book-case years ago by someone, and forgotten.
I replaced it among its dusty companions, and sat down once more to my
work. But between me and the fading light came the face of the
miniature, and would not be banished. Wherever I turned it looked out at
me from the shadows. I am not naturally fanciful, and the work I was
engaged upon--the writing of a farcical comedy--was not of the kind to
excite the dreamy side of a man's nature. I grew angry with myself, and
made a further effort to fix my mind upon the paper in front of me. But
my thoughts refused to return from their wanderings. Once, glancing back
over my shoulder, I could have sworn I saw the original of the picture
sitting in the big chintz-covered chair in the far corner. It was
dressed in a faded lilac frock, trimmed with some old lace, and I could
not help noticing the beauty of the folded hands, though in the portrait
only the head and shoulders had been drawn.
Next morning I had forgotten the incident, but with the lighting of the
lamp the memory of it awoke within me, and my interest grew so strong
that again I took the miniature from its hiding-place and looked at it.
And then the knowledge suddenly came to me that I knew the face. Where
had I seen her, and when? I had met her and spoken to her. The picture
smiled at me, as if rallying me on my forgetfulness. I put it back upon
its shelf, and sat racking my brains trying to recollect. We had met
somewhere--in the country--a long time ago, and had talked of
common-place things. To the vision of her clung the scent of roses and
the murmuring voices of haymakers. Why had I never seen her again? Why
had she passed so completely out of my mind?
My landlady entered to lay my supper, and I questioned her assuming a
careless tone. Reason with or laugh at myself as I would, this shadowy
memory was becoming a romance to me. It was as though I were talking of
some loved, dead friend, even to speak of whom to commonplace people was
a sacrilege. I did not want the woman to question me in return.
"Oh, yes," answered my landlady. Ladies had often lodged with her.
Sometimes people stayed the whole summer, wandering about the woods and
fells, but to her thinking the great hills were lonesome. Some of her
lodgers had been young ladies, but she could not remember any of them
having impressed her with their beauty. But then it was said women were
never a judge of other women. They had come and gone. Few had ever
returned, and fresh faces drove out the old.
"You have been letting lodgings for a long time?" I asked. "I suppose it
could be fifteen--twenty years ago that strangers to you lived in this
room?"
"Longer than that," she said quietly, dropping for the moment all
affectation. "We came here from the farm when my father died. He had
had losses, and there was but little left. That is twenty-seven years
ago now."
I hastened to close the conversation, fearing long-winded recollections
of "better days." I have heard such so often from one landlady and
another. I had not learnt much. Who was the original of the miniature,
how it came to be lying forgotten in the dusty book-case were still
mysteries; and with a strange perversity I could not have explained to
myself I shrank from putting a direct question.
So two days more passed by. My work took gradually a firmer grip upon my
mind, and the face of the miniature visited me less often. But in the
evening of the third day, which was a Sunday, a curious thing happened.
I was returning from a stroll, and dusk was falling as I reached the
cottage. I had been thinking of my farce, and I was laughing to myself
at a situation that seemed to me comical, when, passing the window of my
room, I saw looking out the sweet fair face that had become so familiar
to me. It stood close to the latticed panes, a slim, girlish figure,
clad in the old-fashioned lilac-coloured frock in which I had imagined it
on the first night of my arrival, the beautiful hands clasped across the
breast, as then they had been folded on the lap. Her eyes were gazing
down the road that passes through the village and goes south, but they
seemed to be dreaming, not seeing, and the sadness in them struck upon
one almost as a cry. I was close to the window, but the hedge screened
me, and I remained watching, until, after a minute I suppose, though it
appeared longer, the figure drew back into the darkness of the room and
disappeared.
I entered, but the room was empty. I called, but no one answered. The
uncomfortable suggestion took hold of me that I must be growing a little
crazy. All that had gone before I could explain to myself as a mere
train of thought, but this time it had come to me suddenly, uninvited,
while my thoughts had been busy elsewhere. This thing had appeared not
to my brain but to my senses. I am not a believer in ghosts, but I am in
the hallucinations of a weak mind, and my own explanation was in
consequence not very satisfactory to myself.
I tried to dismiss the incident, but it would not leave me, and later
that same evening something else occurred that fixed it still clearer in
my thoughts. I had taken out two or three books at random with which to
amuse myself, and turning over the leaves of one of them, a volume of
verses by some obscure poet, I found its sentimental passages much scored
and commented upon in pencil as was common fifty years ago--as may be
common now, for your Fleet Street cynic has not altered the world and its
ways to quite the extent that he imagines.
One poem in particular had evidently appealed greatly to the reader's
sympathies. It was the old, old story of the gallant who woos and rides
away, leaving the maiden to weep. The poetry was poor, and at another
time its conventionality would have excited only my ridicule. But,
reading it in conjunction with the quaint, naive notes scattered about
its margins, I felt no inclination to jeer. These hackneyed stories that
we laugh at are deep profundities to the many who find in them some
shadow of their own sorrows, and she--for it was a woman's handwriting--to
whom this book belonged had loved its trite verses, because in them she
had read her own heart. This, I told myself, was her story also. A
common enough story in life as in literature, but novel to those who live
it.
There was no reason for my connecting her with the original of the
miniature, except perhaps a subtle relationship between the thin nervous
handwriting and the mobile features; yet I felt instinctively they were
one and the same, and that I was tracing, link by link, the history of my
forgotten friend.
I felt urged to probe further, and next morning while my landlady was
clearing away my breakfast things, I fenced round the subject once again.
"By the way," I said, "while I think of it, if I leave any books or
papers here behind me, send them on at once. I have a knack of doing
that sort of thing. I suppose," I added, "your lodgers often do leave
some of their belongings behind them."
It sounded to myself a clumsy ruse. I wondered if she would suspect what
was behind it.
"Not often," she answered. "Never that I can remember, except in the
case of one poor lady who died here."