Bleak and wind-swept is the little town of Kirkby-Malhouse, harsh and
forbidding are the fells upon which it stands. It stretches in a single
line of grey-stone, slate-roofed houses, dotted down the furze-clad slope
of the rolling moor.
In this lonely and secluded village, I, James Upperton, found myself in
the summer of '85. Little as the hamlet had to offer, it contained that
for which I yearned above all things--seclusion and freedom from all
which might distract my mind from the high and weighty subjects which
engaged it. But the inquisitiveness of my landlady made my lodgings
undesirable and I determined to seek new quarters.
As it chanced, I had in one of my rambles come upon an isolated dwelling
in the very heart of these lonely moors, which I at once determined
should be my own. It was a two-roomed cottage, which had once belonged
to some shepherd, but had long been deserted, and was crumbling rapidly
to ruin. In the winter floods, the Gaster Beck, which runs down Gaster
Fell, where the little dwelling stood, had overswept its banks and torn
away a part of the wall. The roof was in ill case, and the scattered
slates lay thick amongst the grass. Yet the main shell of the house
stood firm and true; and it was no great task for me to have all that was
amiss set right.
The two rooms I laid out in a widely different manner--my own tastes are
of a Spartan turn, and the outer chamber was so planned as to accord with
them. An oil-stove by Rippingille of Birmingham furnished me with the
means of cooking; while two great bags, the one of flour, and the other
of potatoes, made me independent of all supplies from without. In diet I
had long been a Pythagorean, so that the scraggy, long-limbed sheep which
browsed upon the wiry grass by the Gaster Beck had little to fear from
their new companion. A nine-gallon cask of oil served me as a sideboard;
while a square table, a deal chair and a truckle-bed completed the list
of my domestic fittings. At the head of my couch hung two unpainted
shelves--the lower for my dishes and cooking utensils, the upper for the
few portraits which took me back to the little that was pleasant in the
long, wearisome toiling for wealth and for pleasure which had marked the
life I had left behind.
If this dwelling-room of mine were plain even to squalor, its poverty was
more than atoned for by the luxury of the chamber which was destined to
serve me as my study. I had ever held that it was best for my mind to be
surrounded by such objects as would be in harmony with the studies which
occupied it, and that the loftiest and most ethereal conditions of
thought are only possible amid surroundings which please the eye and
gratify the senses. The room which I had set apart for my mystic studies
was set forth in a style as gloomy and majestic as the thoughts and
aspirations with which it was to harmonise. Both walls and ceilings were
covered with a paper of the richest and glossiest black, on which was
traced a lurid and arabesque pattern of dead gold. A black velvet
curtain covered the single diamond-paned window; while a thick, yielding
carpet of the same material prevented the sound of my own footfalls, as I
paced backward and forward, from breaking the current of my thought.
Along the cornices ran gold rods, from which depended six pictures, all
of the sombre and imaginative caste, which chimed best with my fancy.
And yet it was destined that ere ever I reached this quiet harbour I
should learn that I was still one of humankind, and that it is an ill
thing to strive to break the bond which binds us to our fellows. It was
but two nights before the date I had fixed upon for my change of
dwelling, when I was conscious of a bustle in the house beneath, with the
bearing of heavy burdens up the creaking stair, and the harsh voice of my
landlady, loud in welcome and protestations of joy. From time to time,
amid the whirl of words, I could hear a gentle and softly modulated
voice, which struck pleasantly upon my ear after the long weeks during
which I had listened only to the rude dialect of the dalesmen. For an
hour I could hear the dialogue beneath--the high voice and the low, with
clatter of cup and clink of spoon, until at last a light, quick step
passed my study door, and I knew that my new fellow lodger had sought her
room.
On the morning after this incident I was up betimes, as is my wont; but I
was surprised, on glancing from my window, to see that our new inmate was
earlier still. She was walking down the narrow pathway, which zigzags
over the fell--a tall woman, slender, her head sunk upon her breast, her
arms filled with a bristle of wild flowers, which she had gathered in her
morning rambles. The white and pink of her dress, and the touch of deep
red ribbon in her broad drooping hat, formed a pleasant dash of colour
against the dun-tinted landscape. She was some distance off when I first
set eyes upon her, yet I knew that this wandering woman could be none
other than our arrival of last night, for there was a grace and
refinement in her bearing which marked her from the dwellers of the
fells. Even as I watched, she passed swiftly and lightly down the
pathway, and turning through the wicket gate, at the further end of our
cottage garden, she seated herself upon the green bank which faced my
window, and strewing her flowers in front of her, set herself to arrange
them.
As she sat there, with the rising sun at her back, and the glow of the
morning spreading like an aureole around her stately and well-poised
head, I could see that she was a woman of extraordinary personal beauty.
Her face was Spanish rather than English in its type--oval, olive, with
black, sparkling eyes, and a sweetly sensitive mouth. From under the
broad straw hat two thick coils of blue-black hair curved down on either
side of her graceful, queenly neck. I was surprised, as I watched her,
to see that her shoes and skirt bore witness to a journey rather than to
a mere morning ramble. Her light dress was stained, wet and bedraggled;
while her boots were thick with the yellow soil of the fells. Her face,
too, wore a weary expression, and her young beauty seemed to be clouded
over by the shadow of inward trouble. Even as I watched her, she burst
suddenly into wild weeping, and throwing down her bundle of flowers ran
swiftly into the house.
Distrait as I was and weary of the ways of the world, I was conscious of
a sudden pang of sympathy and grief as I looked upon the spasm of despair
which, seemed to convulse this strange and beautiful woman. I bent to my
books, and yet my thoughts would ever turn to her proud clear-cut face,
her weather-stained dress, her drooping head, and the sorrow which lay in
each line and feature of her pensive face.
Mrs. Adams, my landlady, was wont to carry up my frugal breakfast; yet it
was very rarely that I allowed her to break the current of my thoughts,
or to draw my mind by her idle chatter from weightier things. This
morning, however, for once, she found me in a listening mood, and with
little prompting, proceeded to pour into my ears all that she knew of our
beautiful visitor.
"Miss Eva Cameron be her name, sir," she said: "but who she be, or where
she came fra, I know little more than yoursel'. Maybe it was the same
reason that brought her to Kirkby-Malhouse as fetched you there yoursel',
sir."
"Possibly," said I, ignoring the covert question; "but I should hardly
have thought that Kirkby-Malhouse was a place which offered any great
attractions to a young lady."
"Heh, sir!" she cried, "there's the wonder of it. The leddy has just
come fra France; and how her folk come to learn of me is just a wonder. A
week ago, up comes a man to my door--a fine man, sir, and a gentleman, as
one could see with half an eye. 'You are Mrs. Adams,' says he. 'I
engage your rooms for Miss Cameron,' says he. 'She will be here in a
week,' says he; and then off without a word of terms. Last night there
comes the young leddy hersel'--soft-spoken and downcast, with a touch of
the French in her speech. But my sakes, sir! I must away and mak' her
some tea, for she'll feel lonesome-like, poor lamb, when she wakes under
a strange roof."