Transcriber’s note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.
[Illustration: “Now tell me what is your name?”]
A QUIET VALLEY
BY
AGNES GIBERNE,
AUTHOR OF
“GWENDOLINE; OR, HALCOTS AND HALCOMBES,” “THROUGH THE LINN,”
“NUMBER THREE WINIFRED PLACE,” ETC.
REVISED BY THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLICATION.
PHILADELPHIA:
THE AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION,
1122 CHESTNUT STREET.
NEW YORK: 8 AND 10 BIBLE HOUSE.
THE OXFORD PRESS,
PHILADELPHIA.
CONTENTS.
CHAP.
I. A WELSH HOTEL
II. THE CHILD
III. A SEARCH
IV. JOAN’S MOTHER
V. THE LETTER
VI. DAUGHTER OF THE HOUSE
VII. THE RED HOUSE
VIII. OLD MR. BROOKE
IX. “GEORGE’S VALLEY”
X. LIFE AND DEATH
XI. CAIRNS FARM
XII. “POLLY”
XIII. A COLLISION
XIV. MARIAN’S FEAR
XV. DULCIBEL’S NURSE
XVI. MOTHER AND CHILD
XVII. TROUBLE STILL
XVIII. ANOTHER MEETING
XIX. ABOUT THE FUTURE
XX. HALL AND FARM
XXI. AN UNLOOKED-FOR VISITOR
XXII. WHAT MIGHT BE
XXIII. A PRESENT HELP
XXIV. JOAN’S CONFESSION
XXV. PERPLEXITY
XXVI. SHOULD SHE GIVE HER UP?
XXVII. THE INTERVIEW
XXVIII. WARFARE
XXIX. HIS CHILD
XXX. THE VALLEY ONCE MORE
A QUIET VALLEY.
CHAPTER I.
A WELSH HOTEL.
“COME, Dulcie! Dulcie, my dear! Not ready yet?”
A spice of good-humored impatience breathed through the rich bass
tones. George Rutherford stood in the hall of a somewhat primitive
Welsh hotel. The door opening into a sitting-room, on one side,
displayed sundry ladies and gentlemen, occupied or non-occupied in
various ways. The door opening into the kitchen, on the other side,
displayed a waiter or two in shirtsleeves, coming and going. The front
door, opening on the hotel grounds, displayed a bare, gravelly space,
with shrubs around, a short avenue of trees beyond, and glimpses of
distant hills softly outlined against a blue sky.
Mr. Rutherford was a man of perhaps five or six-and-thirty years,
unusually tall and massive in make, yet not stout. Honest brown eyes
looked out from beneath a brow of remarkable breadth, which was framed
in an abundant growth of tawny hair, fine as silk in texture. Moustache
and beard, of a somewhat darker hue than the hair upon his head, almost
hid a mouth of characteristic and beautiful outlines. He stood at the
foot of the staircase, grasping a huge, crook-handled walking stick as
tall as himself; and blissfully unconscious of, or indifferent to, the
attention he was attracting from the inmates of the drawing-room, while
he called again, in tones “not loud, but deep” —
“Dulcie, my dear, make haste!”
“That’s the bridegroom,” murmured a mild-faced maiden lady, quite an
old resident at the hotel, since she had been there a fortnight. She
addressed herself to a “new arrival,” seated by her side. “We call them
‘our bride and bridegroom.’ They came two days ago.”
“Why, he might be the father of half-a-dozen children,” quoth the
newly arrived, a stout and genial widow, well on in middle life. “He a
bridegroom!”
“I don’t know whether there has been a former marriage, but I rather
imagine not. Oh, it is evidently a wedding tour!”
A boy of about ten came bounding downstairs in light leaps, clearing
four or five steps at a time. He too had brown eyes, and a mass of
tawny hair falling over a fine brow.
“She’s coming, uncle.”
“Would do for his son,” murmured the widow.
“Georgie dear,” called a small and eager voice from the landing above,
“I’ll be down directly—in one moment. There’s a button off my boot, and
I must sew it on.”
“All right,” responded Mr. Rutherford. “We’ll wait in front. Come,
Leo!” and he strode out.
“He doesn’t look much like a ‘Georgie,’” softly said the new-comer to
the maiden lady. “What a nice boy! But I don’t understand his presence
if it is a wedding tour.”
“I don’t know that any one exactly understands. I fancy Mr. Rutherford
is a man likely to do things in a fashion unlike everybody else.
Perhaps he has adopted the boy. Here comes the bride.”
The lady, running swiftly downstairs, could hardly have been less than
six or seven-and-twenty in age. She was as small and slim in make as
her husband was tall and massive, and so fair in coloring that his
tawny beard might almost be counted dark beside her smooth flaxen hair.
The pale fringes to her blue eyes were unwontedly long and thick, and
there was enough coloring in her cheeks to obviate insipidity. Her
manner was marked by an eagerness amounting to flurry; and as she ran
out of the front door she grasped a long stick, a rolled-up waterproof,
a closed basket, a book, and a pair of gloves.
“Georgie, dear, I’m so sorry,” she was heard to say.
“All right,” responded Mr. Rutherford once more. “Hadn’t you better
give me some of your paraphernalia?”
“Oh, yes—oh, thank you, dear! It’s only this book—Trench’s Poems, you
know. You said you would read me some of it. Will it go into your
pocket? And Leo said I must be sure to take my stick. And I thought
we might want my cloak to sit on, if the grass should be damp. And in
case of being late for lunch, it is best to have some biscuits and a
sandwich or two, because then we shall not feel so hurried.”
“Anything else?” asked George, with an expressive intonation.
Mrs. Rutherford looked up, her anxious little fair face breaking into a
smile.
“Now you are laughing at me, Georgie, dear.”
“Not at all. Always best to be prepared for emergencies. Well, come
along, both of you. We shall not be back, at this rate, till—”
“Midnight,” suggested Leonard.
“No; dinner.”
“Lunch won’t matter, now we have something with us,” said Dulcibel,
beginning to subside from her flurry. “You are going to show me your
favorite valley, are you not, dear? Oh, don’t! I can easily carry the
basket, please.”
“Give it to me. Here, Dulcie—I mean what I say. Leo will take your
waterproof. If you can carry yourself there and back it will be as much
as you are equal to.”
“I am sure I can. I feel equal to anything to-day.”
“Equal to anything” meant, as her husband knew by experience, equal
to four or five miles, the latter part performed distressfully.
Twenty or thirty miles were nothing to him. In her own home, before
marriage, Dulcibel Lloyd had counted two miles an arduous undertaking,
but George Rutherford was getting her slowly into training. They had
been married just seven months, so it was not precisely a case of the
honeymoon. In one sense they might be said to be still on their wedding
trip, however. Dulcie had not yet seen her husband’s home, extensive
alterations in it making a prolonged absence necessary.
They were by no means in one of the more mountainous parts of Wales.
The hotel stood outside a small village, on the verge of a wild moor;
the name of the village containing the liquid double “l,” as did
the names of many villages near. Undulating hills lay around in all
directions, showing autumn tints; and two or three mountains, attaining
the respectable height of two thousand feet or more, were visible at a
little distance.
George Rutherford had been to the spot a few years earlier, and he
retained warm recollections of his visit. He was anxious now to display
the charms of the place to his wife and nephew.
The walk to his favorite valley was fair enough, and the valley proved
to be fairer still. Dulcibel would not attempt to learn the name, which
had a softly indefinite sound like running water, perplexing to Saxon
ears.
“I want to see what you like, but I don’t care what it is called,”
she protested. “It will always be ‘Georgie’s Valley’ to me. I dislike
having to talk consonants; and what is the use?”
George laughed, and gave in.
The valley lay level and green, with rounded well-clothed hills
surrounding, and a wide stream or small river partly skirting it. The
stream had to be crossed by a “shaking bridge” of local celebrity, a
somewhat narrow structure of planks bound strongly together with wire,
the whole depending on chains, and showing a singular elasticity, for
it vibrated and swung at every step.
Dulcibel shrank back at first, absolutely refusing to cross or to
let her companions cross. It was “dangerous,” she said; something
would give way, or somebody would be giddy and tumble in. But George
mercilessly strode to the centre and stood there, keeping the bridge in
motion, with evident enjoyment of its undulations, and Leonard dashed
merrily over. Dulcibel was fain to summon up her courage, and consent
to be led across by her husband’s strong hand, growing absolutely white
with fear.
“I shall enjoy nothing with the thought of having to go back,” she
averred, tremulously, on the other side.
George looked down on her with a strong, tender pity, and said softly—
“O thou of little faith!”
“Georgie, dear, I’m very wrong—I’m always frightened at something,” she
said, apologetically; “but you know it is my way.”
“You don’t really think I would bring my little wife where there was
danger?”
“Oh, no! O Georgie, dear, no! It’s only that I am silly,” she said, her
thick fair lashes downcast and wet.
“Well, don’t be silly any more. There are troubles enough in life,
without manufacturing them out of nothing. See, isn’t this pretty?”
A very old gray church stood in the centre of the level green valley;
and this of course had to be entered and examined, the key having been
procured at a cottage on the way thither. The whitewashed walls and
dusty floor within roused George’s displeasure; and Dulcibel cried out
against the great roof-beams as “ugly,” till she found that he counted
them worthy of admiration, whereupon she quieted into brief silence.
They found their way then to the river edge, near the church;
and Dulcibel would be content with nothing short of an immediate
preliminary luncheon.
“Not the sandwiches yet,” she said; “but biscuits. Now don’t say you
are not hungry, Georgie dear; for I know you are. I’m almost starving.”
George disposed of a biscuit obediently, and then found himself called
upon to read poetry aloud. Not that Dulcibel possessed any ear or soul
for poetry; but she knew George loved it, and she was a most dutiful
wife. George thoroughly appreciated her wish to please him, though no
doubt he would have appreciated still more heartily the discovery of
a kindred taste in her. But this was not to be expected; so he only
smiled under his tawny moustache, and asked—
“What shall I read?”
“Oh, something short and pretty, dear! Trench’s poems have such nice
stories in them sometimes.”
The tawny moustache twitched again.
“Now don’t, Georgie, dear! You know I shall like whatever you choose.
What have you opened upon now?”
“These are only couplets—favorites of mine, rather. How do you like
this, Dulcie?—
“Things earthly we must know ere love them; ’tis alone
Things heavenly that must be first loved and after known.”
“To see the face of God, this makes the joy of heaven;
The purer then the eye, the more joy will be given.”
* * * * * *
“When God afflicts thee, think he hews a rugged stone,
Which must be shaped or else aside as useless thrown.”
“I don’t like that,” said Dulcibel. “Why, Georgie, it sounds as if one
ought to wish for trouble.”
“No; only to recognize the good of trouble when it comes.”
“But I can’t. And I dislike the thought of its coming—of anything ever
changing. I’m so perfectly happy now, I should like to go on and go
on always—just like this. But I know I can’t. I suppose one has to
be ‘shaped’; but it seems to me very dreadful. I can’t bear to look
forward sometimes, and to fancy all the things that may happen in life.”
“Fearing again, Dulcie?”
“How can I help it? I love you so; and changes must come. And I dread
changes.”
Her hand was on George’s knee, and the words came with almost sobs
between. Once more George said softly—
“‘O thou of little faith,’ Dulcie!”
“I think I must have little faith—very, very little. Looking forward
makes me so afraid. I can’t bear the thought of anything passing
away—as things are now. I never was so happy in all my life before.
Georgie—was it very foolish of me?—last night I was lying awake,
crying, thinking what it would be if you were to be taken. Life
wouldn’t be worth living then. It wouldn’t, dear;” and there came a
downright sob.
The boy Leo was away at some distance. George’s eyes fell again on the
open page of the book; and he read aloud, in answer—
“Ill fares the child of Heaven who will not entertain
On earth the stranger’s grief, the exile’s sense of pain.”
“But I don’t,” said Dulcibel. “Of course one speaks of heaven as one’s
home; and I suppose it ought to seem so. But I don’t feel the least
like an exile on earth. And the pain is in expecting things to change,
knowing death must come; not in being away from heaven now.”
“Dulcie, I would leave off expecting and fearing,” said her husband.
“I can’t. It is my way.”
George turned a few pages, and read aloud once more, in his strong deep
voice:—
“I say to thee—do thou repeat
To the first man thou mayest meet,
In lane, highway, or open street—”
“That he and we and all men move
Under a canopy of love,
As broad as the blue sky above;”
“That doubt and trouble, fear and pain
And anguish, all are shadows vain,
That death itself shall not remain;”
“That weary deserts we may tread,
A dreary labyrinth may thread,
Through dark ways underground be led.”
“Yet if we will one Guide obey,
The dreariest path, the darkest way,
Shall issue out in heavenly day.”
“And we, on divers shores now cast,
Shall meet, our perilous voyage past,
All in our Father’s House at last.”
Dulcibel’s hand came over the page.
“George, you are making me dreadfully melancholy. I don’t think I can
hear any more. I shall have to cry outright. I’m quite sure the last
verse means something about being parted, and I can’t bear to think of
parting. Please stop! I’m going to dip my hands in the water: and you
can read a little more to yourself if you like. I wonder if there are
any fish in the river.”