[Illustration: Dust cover]
[Frontispiece: Her gaze followed Dick's pointing finger. _p._ 177]
BEYOND THE HILLS
BY
MAYSEL JENKINSON
FREDERICK WARNE & CO. LTD.
LONDON AND NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT
FREDERICK WARNE & CO. LTD.
LONDON
_Printed in Great Britain_
To
"MARIE"
(_Founder of the Sunshine Guild_)
who
with kindly beckoning hand
has led these and many other of my little Travellers
towards the
Enchanted Unknown Hills
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. The Beckoning Hills
II. Great-Aunt Hewlett
III. The Libation Man
IV. Montague Francis de Vere
V. The Other Side
VI. The Prior
VII. Lionel and Dorothy
VIII. Matins and Breakfast
IX. The Rose-Vicar
X. An Encounter on the Hills
XI. The Fight
XII. "Fairest Masons"
XIII. Exploring with Dick
XIV. The Race
XV. Half-Confessions
XVI. The Derelict Car
XVII. Awakening
Beyond the Hills
CHAPTER I
THE BECKONING HILLS
Just across the water they lay, such a little way beyond the opposite
bank of the broad, golden river. If you sat on the old wall at the
foot of the garden you could see the whole long range of them, so
tantalizingly near, so altogether unattainable. True, you always had
the river; you had merely to run down the hill, scramble across a
meadow and through a gap in the hedge, and it was there, with all its
many moods, awaiting you. True, also, a very little walk would bring
you to the hilly forest country, but then both river and forest were
part of the everyday life and how can you find romance or adventure
except you go out to seek it in the Unknown?
For it was the Unknown that attracted the three children, more
especially the two elder ones. Not only the hills themselves in
their shadowy, mystic beauty, but what lay beyond them--the great
open, unexplored world where adventure would surely come leaping
towards you. To find the open world, to know Adventure! For how
could anything interesting ever happen if you just played in a garden
or a paddock, or strained your eyes down the river or across the
hills, simply wondering, wondering?
There was more than one influence at work on the children to stir
them to action. To begin with, there was that wander-blood in their
veins that had sent their young Uncle Val wandering over the face of
the earth. And then there was the river, the broad, gleaming
river--an everyday river, of course, but was it not rushing swiftly
to the sea and the open world? Had not Uncle Val himself told them
how it had called men to great adventures? Sir Walter Raleigh, for
instance. Sir Walter Raleigh, Billy's hero, was perhaps the biggest
influence of all at work on the children. For, though this was not
Devonshire, he had at one time inhabited the beautiful old house
above the Gleam in which the children lived. Probably it was he who
had whispered to Uncle Val of the Unknown, but whether that was so or
not Uncle Val, in his brief home visits, was never tired of telling
the children of the noble gentleman who had left his presence in the
riverside house. He would make them see pictures of Sir Walter
seated in the oak-panelled dining-room with perhaps Sir Francis Drake
and other adventurers as his guests, planning their expeditions into
the unexplored world; or again, sauntering slowly down the drive and
pausing at the white gate to look with half-closed eyes down the
Gleam towards the sea, sniffing the salt in the wind that blew up the
river, hearing its call to him as it soughed through the tall elms
along the drive.
And then there was Stevenson. It was Aunt Letty who was responsible
for introducing them to him and inspiring them with love and
admiration for the man who was known in Samoa by that pretty name
Tusitala. At least, Nancy, whose imagination quickly leaped towards
any word that had poetry in it, any new and interesting word, found
it pretty; indeed, there were many words in the passages Aunt Letty
read to them from Stevenson that appealed to her. Caryatides! That
was a word to make poetry of inside yourself and repeat over and over
again until you had made it your very own.
Billy, on the other hand was more interested in Stevenson the man
than in Stevenson the writer. His adventures in the _Arethusa_, his
wanderings with Modestine, above all, perhaps, his life in those
fascinating South Sea Islands appealed strongly to Billy. And the
chief charm about all the adventures lay in the fact that they were
_real_; they were not just a story book; Stevenson had actually lived
what he described, had gone out to meet adventure just as he, Billy,
longed so passionately to do.
Things came to a head one evening, while they were watching old Daddy
Petherham drifting down the tide towards the sea.
"Wouldn't you think he'd get tired of fishing round here every day?"
said Billy. "Wouldn't you s'pose he'd just have to go a little
further and a little further and then right out to sea? Wouldn't you
think he'd want to know what it's like out there and sail away till
he came to other countries and foreign people? _I_ should if I were
Daddy Petherham."
"No, not if you were Daddy Petherham you wouldn't," Nancy replied.
"I'm sure he wouldn't like not to sit in his doorway and smoke and
watch his grandchildren playing. And wouldn't it be funny not to see
him sitting sometimes on the bench outside the 'Anchor' shaking his
head in that funny way of his at the young fishermen? It's queer,
but I always think of Daddy Petherham as part of Nestcombe; he's kind
of grown into it."
"Well," Billy replied, "_I_ shouldn't want to live in a village till
I'd grown to be one of the fixtures, would you?"
"No," Nancy replied thoughtfully, "I don't _think_ I should. I--I
want, I want--oh, it's not easy to put into words just what I want."
"I know what _I_ want," Billy replied, decidedly. "I want to have
adventure, lots of it, and how can we if we just stay here? Don't
you both feel," he added eagerly, "that we must have one? Let's go
somewhere. We haven't got a boat so we can't sail away as Daddy
Petherham could if he wanted to, but--but _how_ shall we go, Nancy?"
Nancy, who had been seeing visions of the wants that would not go
into words ("dweaming dweams," as she used to call them when she was
a little girl), came back to earth and stared at Billy.
"Do you mean it _really_, Billy?" she asked slowly.
"Do you mean a long, long way?" little Mavis added. "And see lots
and lots of pretty places?"
"Yes, really and truly, a long, long way--where we've never been
before!"
Now, it is quite probable that neither Nancy nor Mavis felt at that
moment any imperative need in them to leave their happy home, for
Mavis was a "home" child and Nancy, with her vivid imagination, could
leave it at will to wander in a "Never Never Land," but if Billy
wanted to go, why, then of course they wanted to go, too, for that
one should do anything important without the other two was as
impossible as for old Daddy Petherham not to sit year in, year out,
smoking by his cottage door.
And, since it was decided that something must be done, both the girls
entered with eager interest into Billy's plans.
"Would it do for us to have kind of travels with a donkey?" Nancy
asked. "We've got Ladybird. There aren't any mountains, but there
are the hills over there. Oh, Billy, I would _like_ to see the other
side of the hills; I kind of feel there's some wonderful land hidden
away behind them. Could we get as far, do you think? It's a long
way, isn't it? We'd have to go to Gleambridge and cross the river
there and _then_ we'd begin to be in the hills, wouldn't we? Oh,
Billy, could we ever get there?"
Gleambridge, the county town, was a quite familiar place to the
children. It is one thing to go there by train with grown-ups on
shopping expeditions, but to go by road through unexplored country
towards a city that is the gateway of the land of your dreams--that
is something quite different. The train journey leads you to tailors
and drapers and dentists, well, and perhaps to cakes and ice-creams,
and yes, of course, the cathedral; but the dusty, winding road leads
you straight to a world of romance, out of which rises the fair tower
of the cathedral, and beyond it and above it and around it the
entrancing hills. Should they, could they go?
Thus it was decided. They would go for a week; not longer, as little
Mavis thought that quite long enough to be away from "Muvee." They
would leave a note of explanation assuring the grown-ups that there
was no need to worry, and they would take Ladybird, their very own
donkey, with them. This, of course, would occasion a re-christening
ceremony, for though "Ladybird" was the nicest name imaginable for a
little home donkey, for one who was to seek with them the open world
nothing but "Modestine" would satisfy the young adventurers.