A WILD-GOOSE CHASE
It was nearly a fortnight later, and the dusk of evening crept over
everything. From the window of her sitting-room, facing south, with
a little inclination to west, Eleanor could catch a glimpse of the
evening sky, but not of the setting sun itself, which came but
little north of west at this time of the year. She could see the
terraces, spreading downwards to the river-side, and she had a
partial view of the stream itself, leaden in hue, but swift in the
race. The tall, heavy trees stood motionless: one realised all the
stateliness, and with it all the melancholy, of the place. For
Thorsgarth had always been a melancholy house.
Eleanor sat in the embrasure of the window, with a half-open book in
her lap. It had grown too dark to read any longer, and she raised
her eyes from the page and looked out. As the gloaming fell, the
firelight gleamed out more strongly, but it did not reach as far as
where she sat, and the cold light of the departing day was all that
fell upon her face. Perhaps this cold light lent something to the
impression of sadness, and even of sternness, which had overcast her
countenance since she had come home. Whether from that cause or from
some other, it was quite certain that there was a slight expression
of sternness upon her lips; the strength and resolution which lay
beneath her ripe and gracious beauty had decidedly stepped to the
front.
While she looked forth, with this expression deepening on her face,
there came a short, heavy knock upon the door; before she had time
to answer, the curtain was pushed aside, and Otho came in.
‘Otho!’ she exclaimed, for it was the first time he had entered the
room since her arrival.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said, glancing round. ‘What are you doing here,
all alone?’
‘Reading Homer,’ said Eleanor, promptly, with a rather wicked gleam
in her eye. As she had expected, an expression of slight alarm
crossed Otho’s countenance. But he drew a chair forward and sat
down.
‘Is that how you amuse yourself here?’ he asked.
‘One way,’ she replied, rather curtly. She had perceived, very
shortly after her arrival, that Otho was vexed with her presence,
and had resolved in consequence to take her own course. He had been
disappointed to find that she never uttered a word as to the dulness
of Bradstane or its want of society, nor ever mentioned any idea of
deserting it. Women with ‘resources within themselves’ were, of
course, an unknown species to Otho—he would vaguely have called them
‘blues,’ if asked for his views on the subject. His sister must be a
blue; and after a moment given to reflection on the situation, he
burst into a short, rough laugh.
‘Ha, ha! No wonder that you and Magdalen don’t get on. And if that’s
the sort of thing you have a fancy for, you never will. She’s
clever, deucedly clever, is Magdalen, but it isn’t in the _dead
languages_ that she excels.’ And he laughed again, as if some inner
thought greatly diverted him.
‘If she troubles herself as little as I do whether we get on or not,
she will be very indifferent about it,’ said Eleanor, annoyed in a
truly girlish fashion at thus having ‘Magdalen’ always thrust at
her.
‘Jealous!’ said Otho, with his great guffaw, rubbing his hands
together.
Eleanor felt her face in a flame.
‘Jealous—of that woman!’ was the thought in her mind, but she had
self-control enough to let it remain a thought. She merely smiled.
‘Did you learn nothing but Greek,’ pursued Otho, ‘when you were at
college?’
‘Why, of course, you goose. What would be the use of learning
nothing but Greek?’
‘Well, I certainly never could see the use of learning it—for me, at
any rate,’ said Otho. ‘But I mean, didn’t you go in for French, and
music, and those things?’
‘Well, I should hardly ask such a question as that. One “goes in,”
as you call it, for French as naturally as for English. Aunt Emily
always had some French person or other about. But Greek was a labour
of love.’
‘It seems to me that you must be what they call a blue,’ said Otho,
vaguely.
‘Does it? I’m not conscious of being of a different complexion from
other young women. Aunt Emily, poor dear, thought the reverse. She
considered that I was brought up too much with Paul, and altogether
too like a boy. She always said that if I had mixed more with girls
I should have been more alive to—oh, well, she thought it would have
been better for me.’
‘She thought that if you had been a bit more like other girls, you
wouldn’t have let that parson slip, but would have married him
instead of coming rambling off here, where you don’t know a
creature, and have to pass your time reading the “Iliad”; and I can
tell you I agree with her,’ said Otho.
‘Let him slip? I never tried to catch him,’ said Miss Askam, touchy,
despite her masculine education, upon this point.
‘I never said you did,’ remarked Otho. ‘However, I’m glad you are
intellectual and independent, for now I need not apologise for
leaving you alone. I’m going away this evening.’
‘Are you? Where?’
‘Oh, over into Friarsdale, on business. I don’t know when I shall be
back. Some time before Christmas, of course, because Gilbert will be
here then. You’ll have to do as well as you can.’
‘I shall do very well, thank you. I shall return a few of those
numerous calls I have received. I like some of the people very much.
I don’t think they look so dangerous as you seemed to think them.
But, of course, tastes differ. And on the first fine day I intend to
have a ride.’
‘I liked him very much when I had him before.... Isn’t evening an
odd time to be setting off on a journey? Where is this Friarsdale
that you speak of?’
‘Oh, I shall only go to Darlington to-night, and put up with a
fellow I know there. Then I shall drive on into Friarsdale
to-morrow.’
He still had not told her where it was, she noticed, nor what he
wanted there. She was not going to ask again, and in a short time
Otho said he must be off, wished her good afternoon, and departed.
He had gone in intending to recommend her to cultivate Miss Wynter’s
society, but the conversation which had taken place had caused him
to abandon this design.
‘Magdalen and she will never get on. I shall leave them both to it.
It’s plain to me that Eleanor is no fool in some things, whatever
she may be in others; but I verily believe she’d sooner have old
Lady Winthrop for a chum, or one of those charity-blanket Blundell
girls, than Magdalen.’
In which surmise Otho was perfectly correct.
‘It’s a rum sort of thing altogether,’ he reflected. ‘I shall ask
Gilbert what he thinks about it.’
It was on the following day that Eleanor, looking forth, decided
that there was a change in the weather, which decidedly entitled her
to the ride she had spoken of to Otho. The clouds had parted, and
the blue smiled forth, and the sun lent his aid to enliven the
prospect. Eleanor promptly ordered her horse to be saddled and
brought round immediately after an early lunch. In obedience to this
order, it appeared, and she was ready for it shortly before two
o’clock. She found the lad William holding her horse, and Barlow,
the old butler, standing at the door. William, it is necessary to
state, was not a native of Bradstane, nor, indeed, of Teesdale at
all, but of Swaledale, to the south, of which locality he was very
proud, and concerning which he was in the habit of relating many
tales of wonder. It was a subject on which his mistress already
loved to draw him out, and he was nothing loath to discourse upon
it. He had begun to plume himself amongst the other servants on
being Miss Askam’s own retainer, and would have felt bitterly
injured had she selected any one but himself as her attendant.
She told old Barlow that she did not expect to be back much before
five, and he, by reason of long service, and in the capacity of
‘friend of the family,’ took upon himself to ask if he might venture
to inquire in which direction she thought of riding.
‘Oh yes, Barlow, you had, perhaps, better know. I think of going
round by Cotherstone, to a place called Catcastle.’
‘It’s a very wild country, miss,’ said Barlow, with a look of alarm.
‘A very bleak road, indeed, Miss Askam, for a winter’s day.’
‘It is not like a winter’s day this afternoon, and I shall do
nothing rash, you may be sure,’ she said, repressing with a little
feeling of guiltiness the further information that ‘romantic
Deepdale’s slender rill’ had taken such hold on her imagination,
that after carefully consulting an ordnance map, and finding that
all the three places—Cotherstone, Catcastle, and Deepdale—were
within a circuit of ten miles, she had resolved to see them that
afternoon.
‘I don’t think Mr. Askam would quite approve,’ began Barlow, with an
anxious look.
‘Oh, Mr. Askam is away,’ said Eleanor, wilfully. ‘And, Barlow, be
sure to have some tea quite ready by five o’clock, for I am sure I
shall want it very badly when I get in.’
So saying, she chirped to her horse, and it carried her quickly
round the bend in the drive, William following her. Barlow stood at
the door, and shook his venerable head.
‘A real Askam for wilfulness,’ he said within himself, ‘but as sweet
as an angel in temper. Eh, dear! If poor dear Mr. Otho was but a bit
more like her! I don’t know where he’ll end, I’m sure.’
Again shaking his head with the true Jeremiah shake of an old
retainer who sees his most cherished prejudices overridden by a new
generation, Barlow closed the hall-door and retired to his own
quarters.
Eleanor rode quickly forth, feeling the air and the sunshine thrill
through her, and rejoice her very soul. She lifted her beautiful
face upwards towards the field of blue—albeit a pale November blue,
one could see the colour it was meant for—and inhaled the fresh,
westerly breeze, which had in it, could she have understood its
‘feel,’ a promise of north in the not distant future.
They trotted briskly through Bradstane town, past the shops, and up
the cobble-stoned street, sharply on through long, unlovely Bridge
Street, and so over the old stone bridge under the castle crag, and
upon a road on the Yorkshire side of the river, leading through the
village of Lartington to that of Cotherstone.
‘Is that building a church, William?’ she asked, pointing to one
with her whip.
‘Yes, miss,’ he replied, riding up and touching his hat.
‘I think it is the smallest one I ever saw,’ she remarked.
‘By your leave, miss, I have seen one, and been in it, not above
half the size—at Lunds,’ he said, his eyes growing round, and his
face red, from which signs Miss Askam knew infallibly that he had a
tale of wonder to unfold.
‘Indeed; and where is Lunds?’ she asked.
‘If you please, miss, on Abbotside Common, going from Hawes to Hell
Gill,—to Kirby Stephen, that is; it lies off on the common, to the
right. ’Tis a rare small ‘un; and there was another peculiar thing
about it, too.’
‘What was that?’
‘Well, the folk about was poor, vary poor indade; and they couldn’t
afford a bell. So for many a year th’ sexton used to climb to t’ top
of th’ church—’twere such a vary lile church, you see—wi’ a tin can
full o’ stones in’s hand, and wi’ that he used to shake it to and
fro, so as to mak’ the stones rattle, and a’ called out at the same
time, “Boll-loll, boll-loll, boll-loll!” at top of his voice while
t’ congregation got all come in, and then he clammert down again,
and went in hissel! That were i’stead of a bell, you know; they
couldn’t get t’ money to buy one. Ay, Lunds church was known for
miles around.’
‘I should think so,’ said Miss Askam, laughing. ‘Do you know of any
more customs like that?’
‘No, ma’am; except there was another vary small church where there
was a queer habit, more like than a custom——’
‘Indeed,’ said she, amused within herself at the distinction.
‘A vary lile one it was, too, i’ Langstrothdale——’
‘Langstrothdale—where’s that?’ she asked, quickly.
‘On the other side o’ Cam Fell, miss. They do say that that’s where
the doctor’s and Mr. Gilbert’s family first came fro’, and that
they’re not Durham at all, but Yorkshire. I reckon doctor desarves
to be a Yorkshire-man, choose what Mr. Gilbert——’
‘Never mind about that. What of the little church?’
‘Only that th’ congrygation there was vary poor too, and it was a
door as they were in want of,—just like i’ Lunds they couldna get a
bell. So, when service was o’er, they used to stick a big thorn in
th’ doorway, to fill it up; but shape’ (the sheep) ‘used to get in
in t’ winter weather, and make a shelter of it; and they had to be
cleared out regular, ivery Sunda’—that’s all, miss,’ said William,
exhausted with his two prolonged narrative efforts, and falling into
his place behind again.
Eleanor rode on, smiling to herself at the picture of the man who
shook a tin can full of stones, and cried ‘boll-loll’ from the top
of the church to summon the congregation. He must have had lusty
lungs, she thought, that Yorkshire sexton.
Cotherstone was safely reached about three o’clock, and Eleanor must
ride down to the river, and see where Balder emptied his waters into
Tees, and repeat to herself—
‘Then Balder, one bleak garth was thine;
And one sweet brooklet’s silver line.’
The ‘sweet brooklet’ was just then rushing onwards, muddy and
swollen, in anything but a silver line. Eleanor turned back, and
finding that William’s knowledge of the country here became rather
misty, made inquiries in the village as to the nearest way to
‘Catcastle Crag.’
Visible astonishment arose upon the countenance of the rustic whom
she addressed—an elderly labourer, who made answer, after the wary
manner of the English of the north—
‘It’s a vary rough rooäd to Catcastle.’
‘Is it? Well, would you tell me the nearest way?’
‘Your horse won’t go within half a mile of the crag.’
‘Well, I would like to know how you get within half a mile of the
crag, if you will please to tell me the nearest way.’
‘Nearest rooäd is o’er yonder,’ was the reply, accompanied by a
sweep of a long and stalwart arm, which sweep might embrace some
fifteen or twenty miles of country.
Eleanor laughed, and after some difficulty induced her informant so
far to commit himself as to mention one or two roads by name, which
thing he did very reluctantly; but she gathered from what he said
that she had ‘three miles and a piece’ to ride, not continuing on
the same road, but always keeping to the left whenever cross roads
came, and that by doing this she would arrive as near Catcastle Crag
as her horse would take her; while by skirting round it, still to
the left, she would come to a road leading to Deepdale, and thence
home.
‘But,’ observed her interlocutor, with a look of tolerant pity, ‘I
think it’s something of a fool’s errand, of a day like this. Wind’s
changing, and we’ll have frost before midnight.’
Eleanor thanked him, and set off cheerily, thinking with a smile
that the tea would have to wait till after five o’clock, and that
she hoped Barlow would not be worrying his old head about her, or
sending in all directions to meet her.
The three miles ‘and a piece’ proved exceedingly like the ‘mile and
a bittock’ of story. That is, the three miles were presently
accomplished, but the ‘piece’ stretched far before them, and the
light was no longer so clear as it had been. Moreover, the wary
peasant’s prophecy was being fulfilled with a startling promptness.
The wind had already shifted, and was blowing from the north, almost
in her face, keen and piercing. Every cloud had disappeared, and the
sky was of a crystalline clearness, ominous of coming frost; and
still Catcastle Crag—though they could see what Eleanor imagined
must be that remarkable eminence—grew no nearer. They seemed to have
got round it, and it still kept provokingly to their left, with the
road, and several fields, and a thicket between them and it.
‘I suppose,’ said Eleanor within herself, ‘that they call this part
of the road a “piece,” because they have no numbers with which to
count its length in miles.’ She had grown thoughtful. Dusk had
fallen over her high spirits, as well as over the landscape.
At length she called William, and said she thought they had better
leave the crag and keep to the homeward road, a proposition to which
he yielded a cheerful assent, and fell back into his place. Eleanor
rode on; she supposed they were on the right road, but it wound on
and on without seeming to lead to anywhere in particular. She was
sure, from what she remembered of the map, that they ought to be at
Deepdale before now. Deepdale, she knew, was a wood. But here was no
sign of any wood to be seen. The road was a bare, bleak road, with a
rough stone wall on either side, a road which must have been dreary
and monotonous at any season; but which now, in the grim November
evening, with the dusk rapidly falling—not a sound to be heard but
the faint piping of a bitter wind from the black wall of fells to
the north; not a sight to be seen save the bare fields on either
side, and at a little distance a clump of trees—was melancholy in
the extreme; and Eleanor, looking at the frowning escarpments to the
left, no longer felt that her listed to
‘Climb Catcastle’s giddy crag,’
as, before setting off, she had fondly hoped to do ere her return.
She was of a nature at once poetical and highly imaginative, and for
all the hard, stony prose of the road, there was something
attractive to her in the very bleakness and chillness of it;—that
faintly moaning wind seemed to whisper that it came from the north,
that it had its cradle in the ultimate Thule, where its breath was
more piercing even than here.
She felt all the force of the contrast to this scene which was
presented by the sudden appearance of a light gleaming out of the
clump of trees before spoken of.
‘Oh,’ she said, quickly, ‘there must be a house behind those
trees—some place, at any rate, where we can ask if we are in the
right road to Bradstane.’
She rode on, and they presently stopped at the door of a wayside
farmlet, if such a term be admissible. William knocked, and a young
woman, with a gentle, handsome countenance, and in stature like some
female Hercules, came to the door, looked at them with astonishment
in her great clear gray eyes, and asked to know their will.
Eleanor preferred her request for information as to whether they
were on the right road for Bradstane; she said not a word now of
Catcastle.
‘For Bradstane! Eh, what! but ye’re mony a mile out o’ t’ straight
rooad,’ was the reply, which struck dismay into her hearer.
On further investigation, however, it turned out to be not so bad as
had seemed at first. They must keep straight on for half a mile till
they came to the Balder Beck, which they would have to ford, and
then they would be in the right road, and five miles away from
Bradstane.
‘Straight along, do we go? and is the beck deep?’ asked Eleanor,
thinking of the darkness.
‘Straight down this lane. Deep?—nay, you needna be afeard—not a
little bit, you needna. It’s no a bad ford;—a bit swollen with th’
rains just now, but safe enough. I’d show you th’ way, only my
child’s ill, and I canna lave it. But you cannot go wrong. And th’
doctor’s not been gone five minutes. Happen you may light on him in
th’ lane, and then, if you’re in doubt, you might ask him. He kens
all th’ rooads rarely,—both them that’s bad and them that’s good.’
‘Thank you,’ said Eleanor, not deriving so much comfort from this
suggestion as the woman seemed to think would be natural; for during
her short residence in Bradstane she had not been left ignorant of
the relations between Michael Langstroth, his brother, her brother,
and Magdalen Wynter. The version of the story given to her by the
latter had been supplemented by revised ones, explained and
annotated in a very different spirit. Eleanor felt that, taken all
in all, she would prefer not to overtake Dr. Langstroth.
It was not, however, very likely that they would do so, for he would
probably ride on quickly, being, as the woman said, well acquainted
with all the roads; whereas they had to go very slowly, being
ignorant of them, and the dark fast falling.
She wished the woman good-night, and rode on. Presently they came in
sight of the ford, or, at any rate, of the beck which they had to
ford at this juncture. It was rushing along, brown, noisy, and
swollen, and Eleanor, though a hardy horsewoman, drew back a little
as she saw it. Which, and where might be the ford? Whether to
venture across, or to return all the dreary way they had ridden—ten
miles or more? As she paused, debating, her eyes strained through
the dusk on the other side; she almost hoped, now, that she might
see a figure; but there was nothing except some gaunt trees, and as
for sounds, the rattle of the beck drowned them all in the noise it
made.
Tired of reflecting, and noticing a broad mark, as if wheels had
here entered the stream, and a corresponding one on the other side,
showing that they had safely emerged from it, Eleanor put her horse
at the water, telling William to wait till she was across. The boy
was not old enough, nor possessed of sufficient self-confidence, to
make the lady pause till he had tried the ford himself; he felt
unhappy, but did as he was told. She found herself in a moment in
the midst of the roar and the darkness. About the middle of the
stream, her horse displayed an evident desire to diverge to the
right hand, down-stream. Eleanor, seeing the cart-tracks faintly on
the other side, a little to the left, and bewildered with the rush
and the noise and the swirl of the waters, became somewhat confused,
and persisted in pushing the animal’s head up-stream. In a moment
her horse plunged into a hole, so deeply that she felt the water
washing round her own knees. She gave an involuntary short cry, and
heard a loud despairing—
‘Oh, Lord, miss, what shall I do?’
The tragic utterance restored her to herself. She gave her horse his
head, and he, after another wild plunge or two, and a desperate,
scraping scramble, succeeded in pulling himself up and taking his
own way; went first a little to the right, and then a little to the
left, and emerged in the cart-track.
Her servant, following, came through high and dry, but with
chattering teeth.
‘What is the matter? Are you afraid?’ she asked, and was much
astonished to hear the only answer he gave—a piercing view-halloo.
There was a moment’s silence, then the halloo was answered from some
distance before them, and William, saying, ‘You bide here a minute,
miss,’ rode on.
‘What can he be thinking of?’ she speculated, in some annoyance.
‘Leaving me here in the cold! I shall follow him.’
It was a good resolution, but not easy to carry out. She began to
feel the cold stealing over every limb, while her soaked habit hung
down, and seemed like a mass of ice, dragging her downwards. She
could now see only a glimmer of the surrounding country, and the
angry beck—black, flecked with specks of white, rushing and roaring
as it seemed to her with redoubled force. A feeling of fright and
alarm at the loneliness of it, the darkness and the wildness,
overcame her. She felt herself trembling in every limb. A wild
suspicion that William had taken flight, and did not intend to
return, seemed to turn her to stone.
She jerked the reins, putting her horse at the little bank she had
to climb, with the idea that the motion of riding would restore the
circulation to her benumbed limbs; but it did not. She felt the cold
seize her very vitals; unconsciously she slipped from her seat,
crying out almost without knowing it, ‘William!’
Her own voice sounded hoarse and far off, yet she dimly heard sounds
of other horses coming rapidly towards her, vaguely beheld a
rider—two riders, glimmering on her sight. Then she heard a voice
say, ‘Miss Askam!’ in tones of astonishment, saw a man vault from
his horse—all in vague, magnified proportions; and then for two or
three moments she was so cold that she knew nothing at all.