‘CARELESSE CONTENTE’
The withdrawal of Crackpot from the running, on the very day before
the race, made a great sensation in the world of the turf. The
affair was looked upon with suspicion, especially in connection with
Otho Askam’s known character for slipperiness—a character which
stuck to him, although no one could exactly say how he had first got
it. But the sensation was very much confined to the circles
immediately connected with the event. Otho had managed with
sufficient skill to avoid having anything tangible brought up
against him. The rumours that were current did not penetrate to his
sister’s ears. The things that were written about the circumstance
were published in sporting or ‘society’ papers, which she never saw,
and in their own peculiar jargon. Michael, in his rounds, heard it
all freely discussed, but was careful never to let her know what he
heard. He wished her to forget it, and presently it seemed as if she
did. At her age, and with her temperament, the heart, though it is
peculiarly sensible to sorrow, and feels it with a keenness
resembling resentment, is also very open to joy; and there were
joyful influences at work in her life that summer. Michael did not
even tell her of the rumours he had heard, that Otho had lost a
great deal of money by withdrawing Crackpot from the race; for after
all, they were rumours, and not substantiated facts, though Michael
believed them to be true enough. Otho had what Michael considered
the good taste not to come near Thorsgarth after his escapade, and
for a season the land had rest from him and his presence.
It has been said that there were joyful influences at work in the
life of Eleanor this summer; and that was true. Her nature loved
sunshine, and just now it had it in plenty, both moral and material.
From May—after the bad news about Otho—till August, sunlight
prevailed. There was a long, hot, glorious summer, such as is not
often vouchsafed to us nowadays. Hitherto she had known Bradstane
literally only under its winter aspect. These months offered a
variety of view and climate; and she, keenly and intensely sensitive
to such influences, rejoiced with the rejoicing summer. Her life at
the Dower House just then was a far from unpleasant one. She had
gathered round her a little circle of friends, both young and old,
and they gave freshness and variety to her life, as she helped to
bring charm and poetry into theirs. She began for the first time
really to understand what pleasure money can give—the possession of
it, that is, and the power which that possession confers of
affording pleasure and relief to others. She helped to make the
summer golden to others beside herself. Amongst the pleasures of
that season, there were none she enjoyed more than the out-of-door
life which the unusual fineness and dryness of the summer rendered
possible. There were day-long excursions, begun early in the
morning, and only ended when the dew and the night were falling
together—excursions into the deep woods, over the glorious moors, or
beside the lovely streams which water and adorn that wild and
beautiful tract of Borderland, called Teesdale. Sometimes she and
her friends, the little Johnsons, would set off alone, swarming (the
children) in and out of a pony chaise which never seemed too small,
however many got into it; and which was yet never too large, even
when there were not more than two or three to occupy it. As often as
not the old doctor would be their guide and chaperon; and under his
direction they explored the country for miles around. It was new to
Eleanor; it was mostly new to her young companions, who had never
before had a fairy with a pony chaise to take them about. This was
very pleasant, with the lunches eaten ‘by shallow rivers,’ or under
leafy trees; when the children splashed and waded to their heart’s
content, and the days, long though they were, never seemed long
enough.
But there were also other and larger affairs, more important in
every sense of the word,—proper picnics, at which several parties
joined,—the Johnsons, Dr. Rowntree and his sister, Mrs. Parker,
Eleanor; and on one or two occasions, even Michael had managed to
snatch a day and join them, leaving his work to his assistant. On
one of these days when he was present, they explored Deepdale; on
another they managed to climb ‘Catcastle Crag.’ On both of these
occasions it was noticed that Michael’s behaviour was marked by an
unaccountable levity, and Miss Askam’s by a kind of laughing
apprehension. She, too, seemed to see jokes where no one else could
detect them. Michael, indeed, went so far as to tell the children
that this was not the first time that Miss Askam had been to
Catcastle, and having by means of sundry mysterious hints roused
their curiosity to fever pitch, and set them to attack her with
every kind of question they could think of, he fell into the rear,
and conversed with Mrs. Parker, leaving Eleanor to baffle them as
best she could.
They happened to be alone for a few moments on the occasion of the
Deepdale expedition, and he seized the opportunity to say—
‘I notice that you still retain that ingenuous youth, William, for
your special body-servant; I suppose it is his complete incapacity
which recommends him to you? You do not like to dismiss him, because
you are quite sure no one else would take him on; and you think it
is better that he should have the semblance of an occupation than
that you should have to support him by charity.’
‘You wrong poor William, Mr. Langstroth. He is a very good servant,
and a most faithful creature.’
‘So I should fancy. He knows the country almost as well as his
mistress does, and has such wonderful presence of mind, as to make
him invaluable in any emergency.’
‘Well, I think he has the presence of mind, at any rate, to know
when help was nigh.’
‘Say, rather, the power of lung to invoke that help when it was afar
off. You don’t know what a long way I rode back, summoned by that
unearthly yell of his.’
Eleanor laughed. ‘Poor William!’ she said.
‘Ah, I do admire William. Do you see, he knows we are talking about
him, and the children are beginning to be suspicious too. I believe
William fears we are going to ask him to act as guide to some place.
Would you mind my catechising him a little on the geography of the
district? It would keep him up to the mark, you know, and would be
such a useful thing for the children as well.’
‘Please don’t, Mr. Langstroth. You will make me look ridiculous
before them all.’
‘If I have seen you looking ridiculous, and if William has seen you
looking ridiculous,’ said Michael, ‘as we certainly did, you know,
on a never-to-be-forgotten occasion, what can it matter if a set of
children and their mother see the same thing?’
‘Oh, nothing, perhaps,’ was the sweet reply. ‘But are you sure you
did not look a little ridiculous too? And if Effie once had her
confidence in your infallibility shaken——’
‘That is true. Like the villains in novels, you have a power over
me, through the innocent ones whom I love. I will keep silence this
time, but take care how you provoke me too far.’
‘Do not be so childish.’
This was very frivolous nonsense, and they enjoyed it, as they
enjoyed the hot summer sun, the cool streams, the shady woods, and
even the fun they had in combating the swarms of wasps which usually
followed them in these expeditions, and entirely frustrated their
efforts to sit down, and, as Effie plaintively said, ‘eat a meal in
peace.’
Once, deeper feelings were touched, and this was on a day when they
had penetrated farther than ever before; and on this occasion, too,
Michael was with them. Setting off very early, they drove in the
morning coolness to Middleton-in-Teesdale, and thence onwards to
High Force, where they rested and lunched; after which they drove
onwards to some little huts at the edge of the moor, where path
ended, and wilderness began; when they got out, and walked for a
mile and a half to the wild spot where Tees comes first winding,
sluggish and sinuous, over the moor top, in what is called the Weel,
and then suddenly precipitates himself madly over ‘Caldron Snout,’
tearing down an incline of two hundred feet to the lower level,
where he pursues a brawling way towards High Force, his next
descent.
This is a very wild and desolate spot, and requires intrepid walking
to get to it; plunging through the thymy moor, rough, pathless, and
uneven, without guide, save for rough wooden posts like crosses,
planted at intervals of several hundred yards, to show the directest
way to the cataract. But so few persons visit Caldron Snout, so few
tourists or picnickers care to be at the trouble of penetrating to
it, that no road has got beaten out. Nature seems to sit enthroned
in undesecrated queenliness in the fastnesses around the cataract.
It was a day that Michael and Eleanor never forgot. The children,
literally frantic with the novelty and the wildness of the thing,
and with the exhilarating moorland air, tore about in all
directions—over heather and thyme, bluebells and boulders. Now came
a scream of joy, and a mad rush to Michael or the doctor to ask the
name of some hitherto unknown plant or flower—as the delicate autumn
gentian, or, on some grassy banks, the poetical looking fragile
‘grass of Parnassus.’ Anon, wonder, quite awed and hushed, and
treading on tiptoe to peep into a nest concealed beneath the grass,
and containing five dirty-white eggs, with wine-coloured splashes on
them. Then on again, to fresh fields and pastures new, till one wild
whoop announced the discovery, in its steep hidden gorge, of the
waterfall itself.
The elders walked more sedately, rejoicing with joy more cultivated,
if not more intense, in the larger grandness of great, sweeping
lonely fells, of miles of purple heather; and in the abstract
impressiveness of such a solitary torrent as Caldron Snout.
It was as they were wending back towards their vehicles, in the
evening, that Michael and Eleanor found themselves alone. The
children were scattered, making the most of what time remained to
them, for the collection of interesting natural objects. Mrs.
Johnson, with an eye to her rockery at home, had stopped in front of
a patch of fine bog-plants, and had made the doctor go on his knees,
armed with an old table knife. She was standing over him, directing
him to the finest plunder, perfectly deaf to his assurances that the
fine purple pinguicula which she coveted could find lovely flies
here for its sustenance, but that its poor carnivorous leaves would
most likely shrivel up and die in the dark corner of her garden,
devoted to the cultivation of ferns and house-leeks.
At some distance from these two Michael and Eleanor stood side by
side, facing Mickle Fell, and gazing at the noble sight unfolded for
their delight. Many a time Eleanor had seen this grand old mountain
in the distance, overtopping his comrades, always; but now he rose
straight before them, apparently not a mile away. They were both
struck by what they saw. The great Fell, who seemed to spring aloft
from the smaller ones which clustered about him, formed a centre and
a focus to the picture, rising in a blunt, massive kind of point.
His huge and grim sides were clothed in a violet veil of summer haze
and heat, like a garment such as no earthly hands ever fashioned.
This was beautiful; but it was not all. The sun stood, at the moment
when it seemed to rest exactly on the midmost point of his summit, a
blazing golden ball, and rays streamed away from it on every side,
so that Mickle Fell seemed veritably to wear a crown of glory,
surpassing all the crowns and all the jewels of all the kings in the
whole world. Just at the moment, the stillness was utterly unbroken.
Not even the murmur of the torrent reached them, nor the voices of
the children ‘playing in the light of the setting sun.’ Earth seemed
to hold her breath while one of her great hills received the crown
and the benediction of the closing day. No hum of booming bee, no
voice even of any bird, broke the dead silence; nor did these two
venture to disturb it, but gazed and worshipped, and felt that even
if they lived to be very old, they would not often see the heavens
declare the glory of God so sublimely as at this moment.
And it was but for a moment; such scenes seldom last longer.
Suddenly things seemed to change; the glory became dimmed; sounds
became audible; the spell was loosed; and with one deep sigh both
their hearts confessed it, as their eyes met.
Perhaps they both understood at that moment, though all that Michael
said, was, ‘I am very glad that we have seen that—together.’
‘So am I,’ she rejoined, softly.
Then suddenly, almost at their feet, broke forth a gossipy,
importunate, ‘Brek-kek-kek!’ and behind them children’s voices
shouted. They smiled. The awe and the solemnity had gone, but the
joy remained and was abiding. It did not die away, even after the
sun had set and the golden rays were quenched in night. It made
itself felt all through the long drive home through the darkling
lanes, and it breathed out of the delicious scent of the firwoods,
beneath which part of their road lay. It looked out of the eyes of
both, as they clasped hands and parted after it was all over.
That was the last of some cloudlessly happy days. It was, in
reality, the first day of Michael’s summer holiday, and he knew it
would be the best. On the following morning he set off to Leeds,
where that year the British Medical Association had its annual
meeting; after which, he and Roger were going to take a short
country tour together.
One evening, in August, soon after Michael had gone, Eleanor was
startled to see Otho walk into her drawing-room, looking ill and
haggard. He threw himself into a chair, gave a long kind of sigh,
and asked her how she did.