On a beautiful night late in summer a solitary man, who was returning
from some wedding festivities, was rapidly crossing Fair Snape. The
moon was at the full, and threw her glamour upon the lovely fell, as a
breeze sighed among the tall ferns which waved gently to and fro under
the sweet invisible influence, and the only sounds which fell upon the
wayfarer's ear were the almost inaudible rustling of the bracken, and
the occasional faint bark of a distant watch-dog. Giles Roper,
however, was not thinking of the beauty of the night, or of the
scenery, but, naturally enough, was congratulating himself upon being
ever so much nearer to the stocking of that farm without which he
could not hope for the hand of the miller's rosy daughter. Thoughts of
a chubby, good-hearted little woman like Liza were calculated to
drive out all other and less pleasant ones; but Giles was rapidly
approaching a part of the hillside said to be haunted. Many tales had
he heard by the winter's fire of the doings of the nameless
appearance, the narrators speaking in hushed voices, and the hearers
instinctively drawing closer together on the old settle; and these
narratives crowded into his recollection as he left the cheerful
moonlight and stepped into the shade of the little clough. Before he
had got very far down he was prepared to see or hear anything; but,
making allowance for the fear which somehow or other had taken
possession of him, he knew that there was something more than fancy in
a melancholy wail which broke upon his ears as he reached a bend in
the ravine. There was nothing however in the sad note of lamentation
calculated to terrify, save the consciousness that such sweet music
could not be that of a mortal. Instinctively Giles looked in the
direction whence the sound had come, and in the dim light he saw the
figure of a woman with a pallid face of singular and unearthly beauty,
her hair falling behind her like a sheet of gold, and her eyes
emitting a strange lustre, which, however, was not sufficiently
intense to conceal their beautiful azure hue. The bewildered spectator
gazed in rapt worship, for though his limbs still trembled he no
longer felt any fear, but rather a wild delirious longing to speak to,
and to be addressed by, the beautiful being before him. He was
sufficiently near to the appearance to be able to distinguish the
features clearly, and when he saw a movement of the lips his heart
throbbed violently under the expectation that he was about to receive
a mysterious commission. He was, however, doomed to be disappointed,
for the only sound emitted by the phantom was another low melodious
cry, even more pathetic and mournful than that by which his attention
had first been attracted to the lovely object. At the same time Giles
saw that the figure was more distant than before, and that it was
slowly gliding away, but beckoning to him, as though anxious that he
should follow. The young man, spell-bound and fascinated by the
enchanting eyes, which were beautiful enough to turn the head of one
wiser than the raw country lad upon whom they were fixed, followed
eagerly, but at the end of the clough, where the moonlight was
brilliant, the figure vanished, leaving Giles, not with that feeling
of relief said to follow the disappearance of a mysterious visitant,
but, on the contrary, anxious to behold the vision again. He therefore
turned and retraced his steps to the undulating summit of the fell,
where the wind was sighing over the many-flowered heather, but there
was nothing to be seen of the blue-eyed phantom, and only for the
faint wash of the rustling ferns all would have been silent.
Unwilling to leave the spot, although he was conscious that the task
was a fruitless one, he continued to wander from one point to another,
and it was not until daybreak that he finally gave up the search and
descended the fell. Not caring to allude to his adventure and vain
search upon the pike, Giles accounted for his lateness by asserting
that he had remained until midnight at the distant farmhouse where the
rejoicings had taken place, and had afterwards lost his way on the
fells. With this excuse, however, his relatives were quite content,
one sarcastic farm-servant drily remarking that after wedding
festivities it was wonderful he had been able to find his way home at
all.
The extraordinary thoughtfulness which Giles evinced during the day
was of too marked a nature to remain unobserved; but the old father
attributed it merely to that natural dislike to settled labour which
generally follows boisterous relaxation, and the mother thought it was
due to a desire to be off again to see the chubby daughter of the
miller. The old dame, therefore, was not surprised when her son
announced his intention to leave home for a few hours, and she
congratulated herself on her foresight and discernment, finishing her
soliloquy by saying--'Well, hoo's a bonny wench as he's after; an',
what's mooar, hoo's as good as hoo's pratty.'
It was not, however, to the far-off dwelling of the miller that Giles
was making his way.
On the contrary, he was leisurely pacing in quite an opposite
direction, his back turned to the old mill, and his eyes fixed upon
the distant fells, which he did not care to reach until the gloaming
had given way to moonlight. Not that he was afraid of being seen, the
road he trod was too lonely for that; but he thought it was unlikely
his watchings would be rewarded before the night had properly set in.
If the beautiful object was a spirit--and what else could it have
been?--it would come at its own time, and who ever heard of spirits
appearing before midnight? The young fellow, therefore, waited until
the moon rose and bathed the hills in her golden flood, when he at
once began to climb the fell, making his way up the ravine in which on
the previous night he had heard the mysterious voice.
It was some time from midnight, and he stopped to rest, taking his
seat upon a moss-covered stone. Here he waited patiently; but he had
begun to fear that his visit was to be a fruitless one, when once more
he heard the peculiar mournful wail, and rapidly turning round, he saw
that he was not alone. Again the weird eyes, in all their unearthly
beauty, were fixed upon him, and the long white arms were extended as
though to beckon him to draw nigh.
Instinctively Giles rose in obedience to the pleading attitude of the
fair vision; but as he approached the phantom it grew less and less
distinct, and at length vanished. As on the previous night, the young
fellow wandered about in the hope of again seeing the lovely being,
and once more he was obliged to return to the farm unsuccessful.
Possessed by a maddening and irresistible desire to gaze upon the
wondrous face which had bewitched him, the approach of nightfall
invariably found Giles on his way to the fell, and it can easily be
imagined to what unpleasantness in his family circle this course of
conduct gave rise. On the one hand the parents gave the rein to all
sorts of vague suspicions as to the cause of the night rambles; and
the lad's disinclination to give any explanations did not help the old
people to think more kindly of him. The father of the girl whom he had
asked in marriage also did not fail to expostulate with him, in the
idea that he had fallen into evil ways, and that his pilgrimages were
to a distant town; while the girl herself, loving him as she did with
all the vigour of her simple and earnest nature, and uninfluenced by
any foolish feeling of false shame, came to his parents' house in the
hope of obtaining a promise of better things.
Her pleadings and her womanly threats, however, were unavailing, the
whilom lover in a shamefaced manner refusing to make any promise of
different behaviour. The interview was a painful one; for the girl,
feeling certain that her father's interpretation was correct, used all
her powers to induce Giles to abandon his evil courses; but at length,
finding that her prayers were ineffectual, she bitterly reproached him
with his want of honesty.
'It's no evil as I'm after, lass! Don't think that on mi,' said the
young man, in an appealing tone; but the girl was not to be convinced
by mere assertion.
'It's no good as teks tha away o'er t' pike neet after neet,' said
she, with a sudden access of grief, 'it'ull come by tha in some way or
another, Giles.' And in tears she turned away from him.
'Whisht, lass, whisht! If tha nobbut knew, O tha'd pity i'stid o'
blaming mi.'
The girl heeded not these words, but kept on her way. When she got to
a turn in the road, however, she looked back mournfully, as though in
doubt whether to return and cast herself upon his breast, and bid him
trust in her; but pride overcame her, and she resisted the impulse.
That night, as two of the miller's men were poaching, they were
startled by the unexpected sound of a human voice, and hastily hiding
themselves beneath the tall ferns, they saw Giles emerge from the
clough and run towards the place where they were concealed. He seemed
to be half mad with excitement, and as he ran he was crying aloud some
words they could not catch. When he drew nearer, however, they were
able to hear more distinctly, and to their surprise they found that he
was appealing to an invisible being to appear to him.
For some time they remained in their place of concealment, Giles
hovering about the spot; but when the young fellow ran to a distance,
they emerged from their hiding-place and rapidly made their way to the
mill. For obvious reasons, however, they agreed to keep silence as to
what they had seen and heard.
The day after this episode Giles was in a fever and delirious, raving
continually about the bonny face and 'breet een' of the being he had
seen in the ravine. His afflicted parents found in the wild utterances
sad confirmation of their worst fears, and, half broken-hearted, they
hovered sorrowfully about his bed. For weeks he battled with the
disorder, and at nightfall frequently endeavoured to leave the house,
and vainly struggled with the friends who prevented him, to whom he
frantically cried that she of the blue eyes was calling him.
A cloud fell over the hitherto happy household. Night and day the old
people watched over their sick lad, each of them feeling that the task
would have been a comparatively easy one had not the patient's
delirious ravings revealed to them so terrible a background to the
round of their primitive and innocent daily life. Not that they loved
their child any less because of the revelations he had unconsciously
made to them, but they brooded and fretted over his supposed
wickedness, and bowed their heads in grief and shame as they
unwillingly heard his impassioned cries.
By-and-by the story of these ravings got noised about, and the
miller's daughter, who hitherto had been suffering bravely, broke down
altogether when she knew that she was an object of pity to the
gossips. It fortunately happened, however, that the miller's men who
had seen Giles at the pike got into conversation with their master
about the matter, and it struck one of them that the woman about whom
Giles was supposed to be raving, and of whom tales of all sorts were
being circulated, was a feeorin of some kind that the young fellow had
seen on the lonely fell. No sooner was this idea arrived at than off
they started to see the distressed parents, the miller's daughter
hastening with them. They found no difficulty in gaining credence for
their narrative, and with a burst of thankfulness the old people felt
that the gulf which had yawned between them and their eldest born was
for ever closed; while, as for the girl, her transports of joy were
almost painful in their intensity. So great a weight was lifted from
all hearts that the illness of the patient was for the time almost
forgotten. Giles, however, still remained in a very critical
condition, but he soon had an additional nurse, who, despite the
watchings and the toil of which she relieved the old people, was
rapidly becoming more and more like the ruddy-faced damsel to whom the
young fellow had plighted his troth, for she could listen to and
disregard the ravings of her lover and look forward to the time when
happiness should again smile upon them.
A few weeks passed. The violence of the disorder abated, and the
patient recovered so far as to be able to bear removal to a large
chair by the kitchen fire. As he sat quietly dreaming the short autumn
days away, without any allusions to the beauty about whom he had so
constantly raved during his delirium, the old people and the miller's
daughter began to congratulate themselves that the dream-madness had
passed away with the worst phase of the illness. The girl, however,
although she did not utter any complaint, suffered deeply from the
coolness with which Giles treated her. Not that he was ungrateful,
for, on the contrary, it was impossible to do anything for him,
however slight the service might be, without a thankful
acknowledgment; but there was a visible constraint in his manner which
could not escape the keen sight of love. Fearing to distress him by
any remonstrances, the patient girl refrained from referring to the
past or showing that she was observant of any change in his behaviour
towards her, but she brooded over her grief when she was alone. The
young fellow knew that the poor girl was suffering, but for the life
of him he could not assume that which he did not feel. Much as he had
loved her before the night of his adventure on the pike, from the
moment when he had first seen the face of the mysterious being his
affection for her had faded away, consumed by the intense longing
which filled his soul night and day whenever he thought of the eyes
illumined by a fire that was not human, and of the features and hair
so exquisitely beautiful in the faint moonlight. Calm and quiet as he
looked, seated propped with cushions in the old chair by the fire, he
was inwardly fretting against the weakness that kept him from the
fells, and his longing soul came into his eyes as he gazed through the
little diamond-paned window, and saw the pike, in all the beauty of
many-tinted autumn, kissed by the setting sun as the blushing day sank
into the swarthy arms of night.
Slowly winter came, bringing snow and storm, and as though influenced
by a feeling that even Nature had interposed her barriers between him
and the lovely being, one afternoon, as the mists crept slowly over
the white landscape, and hid in their shimmering folds the distant
fells where he had first seen the sweet face so seldom absent from
his feverish dreams, he could not resist the desire which seized him
to visit once more the haunted ravine. The various members of the
little household were away from the house engaged in their labours
about the farm, and taking advantage of this, Giles fled from the
dwelling, and made his way through the dim light to the hills. It was
not long, however, before his absence was discovered, but some time
elapsed before the men-folk could be gathered, and the shades of night
had fallen before the anxious pursuers reached the foot of the pike.
The thick mist had enveloped everything, and as the lanterns, choked
as they were by the damp, threw but a fitful light, it was with the
utmost difficulty that the men found the footmarks of the wanderer in
the snow up the fell side. The searchers were led by the father of
Giles, who spoke not, but glanced at the track as though in dread of
discovering that which he had come to find. Suddenly the old man gave
a startled cry, for he had followed the marks to the edge of a little
cliff, over which he had almost fallen in his eagerness. It was
forthwith determined to follow the ravine to its commencement, and
although nothing was said by any of the party, each man felt certain
that the missing young fellow would be found at the bottom. It did not
take long to reach the entrance, and with careful steps the old man
led the way over the boulders. He had not gone far before the light
from his lantern fell upon the upturned face of his son, whose body
lay across the course of a little frozen stream. The features were set
in the sleep of death, for Giles had fallen from the level above, the
creeping mists having obscured the gorge where he first saw the lovely
phantom, in search of which he had met an untimely end.