AT THE GEORGE AND DRAGON.
We had to wait for a long time at some station, I forget its name. The
sun set, and night overtook us before we reached the end of our journey
by rail. We had then to drive about twelve miles. The road, for many
miles, lay through a desolate black moss. I could not have believed
there was anything so savage in England. A thin mist was stretched like
a veil over the more distant level of the dark expanse, on which, here
and there, a wide pool gleamed faintly under the moonlight. To the right
there rose a grand mass of mountain. We were soon driving through a sort
of gorge, and found ourselves fenced in by the steep sides of gigantic
mountains, as we followed a road that wound and ascended among them. I
shall never forget the beautiful effect of the scene suddenly presented,
and for the first time, as the road reached its highest elevation, and I
saw, with the dark receding sides of the mountain we had been
penetrating for a proscenium, my first view of Golden Friars. Oh! how
beautiful!
Surrounded by an amphitheatre of Alpine fells, the broad mere of Golden
Friars glimmered cold under the moonlight, and the quaint little town of
steep gables, built of light grey stone, rose from its grassy margin
surrounded by elms, single or in clumps, that looked almost black in
contrast with the gleaming lake and the white masonry of the town. It
looked like enchanted ground. A silvery hoar-frost seemed to cover the
whole scene, giving it a filmy and half-visionary character that
enhanced its beauty. I was exclaiming in wonder and delight as every
minute some new beauty unfolded itself to view. Mamma was silent, as she
looked from the window; I saw that she cried gently, thinking herself
unobserved. A beautiful scene, where childish days were passed, awakes
so many sweet and bitter fancies! The yearnings for the irrevocable, the
heartache of the memory, opened the fountains of her tears; and I was
careful not to interrupt her lonely thoughts. I left her to the
enjoyment of that melancholy luxury, and gazed on in strange delight.
Here, then, was the dwelling-place of that redoubted enemy of our house
whom fate seemed to have ordained as our persecutor. Here lived the old
enchanter whose malign spells were woven about us, in busy London and
quiet Malory, or the distant scenes of France and Italy. Even this
thought added interest to the romantic scene.
We had now descended to the level of the shore of the lake, along whose
margin our road swept in a gentle curve. The fells from this level rose
stupendous, all around, striking their silvery peaks into the misty
moonlight, and looking so aerial that one might fancy a stone thrown
would pass through their sides as if they were vapour. Now we passed
under the shadow of the first clump of mighty elms; and now the white
fronts and chimneys of the village houses rose in the foreground. There
was no sign of life but the barking of the watch-dogs, and the cackling
of the vigilant geese, and the light that glanced from the hall of the
"George and Dragon," the substantial old inn that, looking across the
road, faces the lake and distant fells. At the door of this ancient and
comfortable inn drew up our chaise and four horses, no mere ostentation,
but a simple necessity, where carriage and luggage were pulled, towards
the close of so long a stage, over the steeps where the road pushes its
way high among the fells.
So our journey was over; and we stood in the hall. Before we went up to
our rooms mamma inquired whether Lady Lorrimer had arrived. Yes, her
ladyship had been there since the day before yesterday. Mamma seemed
nervous and uncomfortable. She sent down her maid to find out whether
Sir Harry Rokestone was in the country; and when the servant returned
and told her that he was not expected to arrive at Dorracleugh before a
fortnight, she sighed, and I heard her say faintly, "Thank God!"
I confess it was rather a disappointment than a relief to me. I rather
wished to see this truculent old wizard. After a sound sleep, which we
both needed, I got up and had a little peep at that beautiful place, in
the early sunlight, before breakfast. Lady Lorrimer's maid came with
inquiries from her mistress, for mamma and me. Her ladyship was not very
well, and could not see us till about twelve. She was so vexed at having
to put us off, and hoped we were not tired; and also that we would take
our dinner with her. To this mamma agreed.
I was curious to see Lady Lorrimer once more. My ideas had grown
obscure, and my theory of that kinswoman had been disagreeably
disturbed, ever since the evening on which she, or her double, had
passed by me so resolutely in the street.
Having heard that she was quite ready to see us, we paid our visit. I
wondered how she would receive me, and my suspense amounted almost to
excitement as I reached the door. A moment more, and I could not believe
that Lady Lorrimer and the woman who so resembled her were the same.
Nothing could be more affectionate than Lady Lorrimer. She received us
with a very real welcome, and so much pleasure in her looks, tones, and
words. She was not, indeed, looking well, but her spirits seemed
cheerful. She embraced mamma, and kissed her very fondly; then she
kissed me over and over again. I was utterly puzzled, and more than
doubted the identity of this warm-hearted, affectionate woman with the
person who had chosen to cut me with such offensive and sinister
persistence.
"See how this pretty creature looks at me!" she said to mamma, laughing,
as she detected my conscious scrutiny.
I blushed and looked down; I did not know what to say.
"I'm very much obliged to you, dear, for looking at me, so few people do
now-a-days; and I was just going to steal a good look at you, when I
found I was anticipated. I have just been saying to your mamma that I
have ordered a boat, and we must all have a sail together on the lake
after dinner; what do you say?"
Of course I was delighted; I thought the place perfectly charming.
"I lived the earlier part of my life here," she resumed, "and so did
your mamma, you know--when she was a little girl, and until she came to
be nineteen or twenty--I forget which you were, dear, when you were
married?" she said, turning to mamma.
"Twenty-two," said mamma, smiling.
"Twenty-two? Really! Well, we lived at Mardykes. I'll point out the
place on the water when we take our sail; you can't see it from these
windows."
"And where does Sir Harry Rokestone live?" I asked.
"You can't see that either from these windows. It is further than
Mardykes, at the same side. But we shall see it from the boat."
Then she and mamma began to talk, and I went to the window and looked
out.
Lady Lorrimer, with all her airs of conventual seclusion, hungered and
thirsted after gossip; and whenever they met, she learned all the
stories from mamma, and gave her, in return, old scandal and ridiculous
anecdotes about the predecessors of the people with whose sayings,
doings, and mishaps mamma amused her.
Two o'clock dinners, instead of luncheons, were the rule in this part of
the world. And people turned tea into a very substantial supper, and
were all in bed and asleep before the hour arrived at which the London
ladies and gentlemen are beginning to dress for a ball.
You are now to suppose us, on a sunny evening, on board the boat that
had been moored for some time at the jetty opposite the door of the
"George and Dragon." We were standing up the lake, and away from the
Golden Friars shore, towards a distant wood, which they told me was the
forest of Clusted.
"Look at that forest, Ethel," said Lady Lorrimer. "It is the haunted
forest of Clusted--the last resort of the fairies in England. It was
there, they say, that Sir Bale Mardykes, long ago, made a compact with
the Evil One."
Through the openings of its magnificent trees, as we nearer, from time
to time, the ivied ruins of an old manor-house were visible. In this
beautiful and, in spite of the monotony of the gigantic fells that
surround the lake, ever-varying scenery, my companions gradually grew
silent for a time; even I felt the dreamy influence of the scene, and
liked the listless silence, in which nothing was heard but the rush of
the waters, and the flap of the sail now and then. I was living in a
world of fancy: they in a sadder one of memory.
In a little while, in gentle tones, they were exchanging old
remembrances; a few words now and then sufficed; the affecting
associations of scenes of early life re-visited were crowding up
everywhere. As happens to some people when death is near, a change, that
seemed to be quite beautiful, came over mamma's mind in the air and
lights of this beautiful place! How I wished that she could remain
always as she was now!
With the old recollections seemed to return the simple rural spirit of
the early life. What is the town life, of which I had tasted, compared
with this? How much simpler, tenderer, sublimer, this is! How immensely
nearer heaven! The breeze was light, and the signs of the sky assured
the boatmen that we need fear none of those gusts and squalls that
sometimes burst so furiously down through the cloughs and hollows of the
surrounding mountains. I, with the nautical knowledge acquired at
Malory, took the tiller, under direction of the boatmen. We had a good
deal of tacking to get near enough to the shore at Clusted to command a
good view of that fine piece of forest. We then sailed northward, along
the margin of the "mere," as they call the lake; and, when we had gone
in that direction for a mile or more, turned the boat's head across the
water, and ran before the breeze towards the Mardykes side. There is a
small island near the other side, with a streak of grey rock and bushes
nearly surrounding what looked like a ruined chapel or hermitage, and
Lady Lorrimer told me to pass this as nearly as I could.
The glow of evening was by this time in the western sky. The sun was
hidden behind the fells that form a noble barrier between Golden Friars
and the distant moss of Dardale, where stands Haworth Hall. In deepest
purple shadow the mountains here closely overhang the lake. Under these,
along the margin, Lady Lorrimer told me to steer.
We were gliding slowly along, so that there was ample leisure to note
every tree and rock upon the shore as we passed. As we drifted, rather
than sailed, along the shore, there suddenly opened from the margin a
narrow valley, reaching about a quarter of a mile. It was a sudden dip
in the mountains that here rise nearly from the edge of the lake.
Steep-sided and wild was this hollow, and backed by a mountain that, to
me, looking up from the level of the lake, appeared stupendous.
The valley lay flat in one unbroken field of short grass. A
broad-fronted, feudal tower, with a few more modern buildings about it,
stood far back, fronting the river. A rude stone pier afforded shelter
to a couple of boats, and a double line of immense lime-trees receded
from that point about half-way up to the tower. Whether it was
altogether due to the peculiar conformation of the scene, or that it
owed its character in large measure to its being enveloped in the deep
purple shadow cast by the surrounding mountain, and the strange effect
of the glow reflected downward from the evening clouds, which touched
the summits of the trees, and the edges of the old tower, like the light
of a distant conflagration, I cannot say; but never did I see a spot
with so awful a character of solitude and melancholy.
In the gloom we could see a man standing alone on the extremity of the
stone pier, looking over the lake. This figure was the only living thing
we could discover there.
"Well, dear, now you see it. That's Dorracleugh--that's Harry
Rokestone's place," said Lady Lorrimer.
"What a spot! Fit only for a bear or an anchorite. Do you know," she
added, turning to mamma, "he is there a great deal more than he used to
be, they tell me. I know if I were to live in that place for six months
I should never come out of it a sane woman. To do him justice, he does
not stay very long here when he does come, and for years he never came
at all. He has other places, far away from this; and if a certain event
had happened about two-and-twenty years ago," she added, for my behalf,
"he intended building quite a regal house a little higher up, on a site
that is really enchanting, but your mamma would not allow him; and so,
and so----" Lady Lorrimer had turned her glasses during her sentence
upon the figure which stood motionless on the end of the pier; and she
said, forgetting what she had been telling me, "I really think--I'm
nearly certain--that man standing there is Harry Rokestone!"
Mamma started. I looked with all my eyes; little more than a hundred
yards interposed, but the shadow was so intense, and the effect of the
faint reflected light so odd and puzzling, that I could be certain of
nothing, but that the man stood very erect, and was tall and powerfully
built. Lady Lorrimer was too much absorbed in her inspection to offer me
her glasses, which I was longing to borrow, but for which I could not
well ask, and so we sailed slowly by, and the hill that flanked the
valley gradually glided between us and the pier, and the figure
disappeared from view. Lady Lorrimer, lowering her glasses, said:
"I can't say positively, but I'm very nearly certain it was he."
Mamma said nothing, but was looking pale, and during the rest of our
sail seemed absent and uncomfortable, if not unhappy.