IN THE HILLS.
"Face to face with the true mountains
I stood silently and still,
Drawing strength from fancy's dauntings,
From the air about the hill,
And from Nature's open mercies, and most debonair good will."
The house-door opened first to shew a girl in short petticoats and blue
jacket holding up a light. Eleanor made towards it, across a narrow
strip of courtyard. She saw only the girl, and did not feel certain
whether she had come to the right house. For neither Mrs. Caxton nor
her home had ever been seen by any of Mr. Powle's children; though she
was his own sister. But Mrs. Caxton had married quite out of _Mrs_.
Powle's world; and though now a widow, she lived still the mistress of
a great cheese farm; quite out of Mrs. Powle's world still. The latter
had therefore never encouraged intercourse. Mrs. Caxton was an
excellent woman, no doubt, and extremely respectable; still, Ivy Lodge
and the cheese farm were further apart in feeling than in geographical
miles; and though Mrs. Caxton often invited her brother's children to
come and pick butter-cups in her meadows, Mrs. Powle always proved that
to gather primroses in Rythdale was a higher employment, and much
better for the children's manners, if not for their health. The Squire
at this late day had been unaffectedly glad of Eleanor's proposal;
avowing himself not ashamed of his sister or his children either. For
Eleanor herself, she had no great expectation, except of rural
retirement in a place where Mr. Carlisle would not follow her. That was
enough. She had heard besides that the country was beautiful, and her
aunt well off.
As she stepped up now doubtfully to the girl with the light, looking to
see whether she were right or wrong, the girl moved a little aside so
as to light the entrance, and Eleanor passed on, discerning another
figure behind. A good wholesome voice exclaimed, "You are welcome, my
dear! It is Eleanor?" and the next instant Mr Powle's daughter found
herself taken into one of those warm, gentle, genial embraces, that
tell unmistakeably what sort of a heart moves the enfolding arms. It
was rest and strength at once; and the lips that kissed her--there is a
great deal of character in a kiss--were at once sweet and firm.
"You have been all day travelling, my dear. You must be in want of
rest."
There was that sort of clear strength in the voice, to which one gives,
even in the dark, one's confidence. Eleanor's foot fell more firmly on
the tiled floor, as she followed her aunt along a passage or two; a
little uncertainty in her heart was quieted; she was ready prepared to
expect anything pleasant; and as they turned in at a low door, the
expectation was met.
The door admitted them to a low-ceiled room, also with a tiled floor,
large and light. A good wood fire burned in the quaint chimney-piece;
before it a table stood prepared for supper. A bit of carpet was laid
down under the table and made a spot of extra comfort in the middle of
the floor. Dark plain wainscotting, heavy furniture of simplest
fashion, little windows well curtained; all nothing to speak of; all
joined inexplicably to produce the impression of order, stability and
repose, which seized upon Eleanor almost before she had time to observe
details. But the mute things in a house have an odd way of telegraphing
to a stranger what sort of a spirit dwells in the midst of them. It is
always so; and Mrs. Caxton's room assured Eleanor that her first
notions of its mistress were not ill-founded. She had opportunity to
test and strengthen them now, in the full blaze of lamp and firelight;
as her aunt stood before her taking off her bonnet and wrappers and
handing them over to another attendant with a candle and a blue jacket.
In the low room Mrs. Caxton looked even taller than belonged to her;
and she was tall, and of noble full proportions that set off her
height. Eleanor thought she had never seen a woman of more dignified
presence; the head was set well back on the shoulders, the carriage
straight, and the whole moral and physical bearing placid and quiet. Of
course the actual movement was easy and fine; for that is with every
one a compound of the physical and moral. Scarcely Elizabeth Fry had
finer port or figure. The face was good, and strong; the eyes full of
intelligence under the thick dark brows; all the lines of the face kind
and commanding. A cap of very plain construction covered the abundant
hair, which was only a little grey. Nothing else about Mrs. Caxton
shewed age. Her dress was simple to quaintness; but, relieved by her
magnificent figure, that effect was forgotten, or only remembered as
enhancing the other. Eleanor sat down in a great leather chair, where
she had been put, and looked on in a sort of charmed state; while her
aunt moved about the table, gave quiet orders, made quiet arrangements,
and finally took Eleanor's hand and seated her at the tea-table.
"Not poppies, nor mandragora" could have had such a power of soothing
over Eleanor's spirits. She sat at the table like a fairy princess
under a friendly incantation; and the spell was not broken by any word
or look on the part of her hostess. No questions of curiosity; no
endeavours to find out more of Eleanor than she chose to shew; no
surprise expressed at her mid-winter coming; nor so much pleasure as
would have the effect of surprise. So naturally and cordially and with
as much simplicity her visit was taken, as if it had been a yearly
accustomed thing, and one of Mr. Powle's children had not now seen her
aunt for the first time. Indeed so rare was the good sense and kindness
of this reception, that Eleanor caught herself wondering whether her
aunt could already know more of her than she seemed to know; and not
caring if she did! Yet it was impossible, for her mother would not tell
her story, and her father could not; and Eleanor came round to admiring
with fresh admiration this noble-looking, new-found relation, whose
manner towards herself inspired her with such confidence and exercised
already such a powerful attraction. And _this_ was the mistress of a
cheese-farm! Eleanor could not help being moved with a little curiosity
on her part. This lady had no children; no near relations; for she was
ignored by her brother's family. She lived alone; was she not lonely?
Would she not wear misanthropical or weary traces of such a life? None;
none were to be seen. Clear placidness dwelt on the brow, that looked
as if nothing ever ruffled it; the eye was full of business and
command; and the mouth,--its corners told of a fountain of sweetness
somewhere in the region of the heart. Eleanor looked, and went back to
her cup of tea and her supper with a renewed sense of comfort.
The supper was excellent too. It would have belied Mrs. Caxton's look
of executive capacity if it had not been. No fault was to be discerned
anywhere. The tea-service was extremely plain and inexpensive; such as
Mrs. Powle could not have used; that was certain. But then the bread,
and the mutton chops, and the butter, and even the tea, were such as
Mrs. Powle's china was never privileged to bear. And though Mrs. Caxton
left in the background every topic of doubtful agreeableness, the talk
flowed steadily with abundance of material and animation, during the
whole supper-time. Mrs. Caxton was the chief talker. She had plenty to
tell Eleanor of the country and people in the neighbourhood; of things
to be seen and things to be done; so that supper moved slowly, and was
a refreshment of mind as well as of body.
"You are very weary, my dear," said Mrs. Caxton, after the table was
cleared away, and the talk had continued through all that time. And
Eleanor confessed it. In the calm which was settling down upon her, the
strain of hours and days gone by began to be felt.
"You shall go to your room presently," said Mrs. Caxton; "and you shall
not get up to breakfast with me. That would be too early for you."
Eleanor was going to enter a protest, when her aunt turned and gave an
order in Welsh to the blue jacket then in the room. And then Eleanor
had a surprise. Mrs. Caxton took a seat at a little distance, before a
stand with a book; and the door opening again, in poured a stream of
blue jackets, three or four, followed by three men and a boy. All
ranged themselves on seats round the room, and Mrs. Caxton opened her
book and read a chapter in the Bible. Eleanor listened, in mute wonder
where this would end. It ended in all kneeling down and Mrs. Caxton
offering a prayer. An extempore prayer, which for simplicity, strength,
and feeling, answered all Eleanor's sense of what a prayer ought to be;
though how a woman could speak it before others and before _men_,
filled her with astonishment. But it filled her with humility too,
before it was done; and Eleanor rose to her feet with an intense
feeling of the difference between her aunt's character and her own;
only equalled by her deep gladness at finding herself under the roof
where she was.
Her aunt then took a candle and lighted her through the tiled passages,
up some low wooden stairs, uncarpeted; along more passages; finally
into a large low matted chamber, with a row of little lattice windows.
Comfort and simplicity were in all its arrangements; a little fire
burning for her; Eleanor's trunks in a closet. When Mrs. Caxton had
shewed her all that was necessary, she set down her candle on the low
mantelshelf, and took Eleanor in her arms. Again those peculiar, gentle
firm kisses fell upon her lips. But instead of "good night," Mrs.
Caxton's words were,
"Do you pray for yourself, Eleanor?"
Eleanor dropped her head like a child on the breast before her. "Aunt
Caxton, I do not know how!"
"Then the Lord Jesus has not a servant in Eleanor Powle?"
Eleanor was silent, thoughts struggling.
"You have not learned to love him, Eleanor?"
"I have only learned to wish to do it, aunt Caxton! I do wish that. It
was partly that I might seek it, that I wanted to come here."
Then Eleanor heard a deep-spoken, "Praise the Lord!" that seemed to
come out from the very heart on which she was leaning. "If you have a
mind to seek him, my dear, he is willing that you should find. 'The
Lord is good to the soul that seeketh him.'"
She kissed Eleanor on the two temples, released her and went down
stairs. And Eleanor sat down before her fire, feeling as if she were in
a paradise.
It was all the more so, from the unlikeness of everything that met her
eye, to all she had known before. The chimney-piece at which she was
looking as she sat there--it was odd and quaint as possible, to a
person accustomed only to the modern fashions of the elegant world; the
fire-tongs and shovel would have been surely consigned to the kitchen
department at Ivy Lodge. Yet the little blazing fire, framed in by its
rows of coloured tiles, looked as cheerfully into Eleanor's face as any
blaze that had ever greeted it. All was of a piece with the fireplace.
Simple to quaintness, utterly plain and costless, yet with none of the
essentials of comfort forgotten or neglected; from the odd little
lattice windows to the tiled floor, everything said she was at a great
distance from her former life, and Mr. Carlisle. The room looked as if
it had been made for Eleanor to settle her two life-questions in it.
Accordingly she took them up without delay; but Eleanor's mind that
night was like a kaleidoscope. Images of different people and things
started up, with wearying perversity of change and combination; and the
question, whether she would be a servant of God like her aunt Caxton,
was inextricably twisted up with the other question; whether she could
escape being the baroness of Rythdale and the wife of Mr. Carlisle. And
Eleanor did nothing but tire herself with thinking that night; until
the fire was burnt out and she went to bed. Nevertheless she fell
asleep with a sense of relief more blissful than she had known for
months. She had put a little distance at least between her and her
enemies.
Eleanor had meant to be early next day, but rest had taken too good
hold of her; it was long past early when she opened her eyes. The rays
of the morning sun were peeping in through the lattices. Eleanor sprang
up and threw open, or rather threw back, one of the windows, for the
lattice slid in grooves instead of hanging on hinges. She would never
have found out how to open them, but that one lattice stood slightly
pushed back already. When it was quite out of her way, Eleanor's breath
almost stopped. A view so wild, so picturesque, so rare in its outlines
of beauty, she thought she had never seen. Before her, at some
distance, beyond a piece of broken ground, rose a bare-looking height
of considerable elevation, crowned by an old tower massively
constructed, broken, and ivy-grown. The little track of a footpath was
visible that wound round the hill; probably going up to the tower.
Further beyond, with evidently a deep valley or gorge between, a line
of much higher hills swept off to the left; bare also, and moulded to
suit a painter of weird scenes, yet most lovely, and all seen now in
the fair morning beams which coloured and lighted them and the old
tower together. Nothing else. The road indeed by which she had come
passed close before Eleanor's window; but trees embowered it, though
they had been kept down so as not to hinder this distant view. Eleanor
sat a long while spell-bound before the window.
A noise disturbed her. It was one of the blue jackets bringing a tray
with breakfast. Eleanor eagerly asked if Mrs. Caxton had taken
breakfast; but all she got in return was a series of unintelligible
sounds; however as the girl pointed to the sun, she concluded that the
family breakfast hour was past. Everything strange again! At Ivy Lodge
the breakfast hour lasted till the lagging members of the family had
all come down; and here there was no family! How could happiness belong
to anybody in such circumstances? The prospect within doors, Eleanor
suddenly remembered, was yet more interesting than the view without.
She eat her breakfast and dressed and went down.
But to find the room where she had been the evening before, was more
than her powers were equal to. Going from one passage to another,
turning and turning back, afraid to open doors to ask somebody; Eleanor
was quite bewildered, when she happily was met by her aunt. The morning
kiss and greeting renewed in her heart all the peace of last night.
"I cannot find my way about in your house, aunt Caxton. It seems a
labyrinth."
"It will not seem so long. Let me shew you the way out of it."
Through one or two more turnings Mrs. Caxton led her niece, and opening
a door took her out at the other side, the back of the house, where
Eleanor's eyes had not been. Here there was a sort of covered gallery,
extending to some length under what was either an upper piazza or the
projection of the second story floor. The ground was paved with tiles
as usual, and wooden settles stood along the wall, and plain stone
pillars supported the roof. But as Eleanor's eyes went out further she
caught her aunt's hand in ecstasy.
From almost the edge of the covered gallery, a little terraced garden
sloped down to the edge of a small river. The house stood on a bank
above the river, at a commanding height; and on the river's further
shore a rich sweep of meadow and pasture land stretched to the right
and left and filled the whole breadth of the valley; on the other side
of which, right up from the green fields, rose another line of hills.
These were soft, swelling, round-topped hills, very different in their
outlines from those in another quarter which Eleanor had been enjoying
from her window. It was winter now, and the garden had lost its glory;
yet Eleanor could see, for her eye was trained in such matters, that
good and excellent care was at home in it; and some delicate things
were there for which a slight protection had been thought needful. The
river was lost to view immediately at the right; it wound down from the
other hand through the rich meadows under a thick embowering bosky
growth of trees; and just below the house it was spanned by a rude
stone bridge, from which a hedged lane led off on the other side. All
along the fences or hedges which enclosed the fields grew also
beautiful old trees; the whole landscape was decked with wood growth,
though the hills had little or none. All the more the sweet contrast;
the rare harmony; the beautiful mingling of soft cultivation with what
was wild and picturesque and barren. And the river gurgled on, with a
fresh sound that told of its activity; and a very large herd of cows
spotted the green turf in some of the meadows on the other side of the
stream.
"I never saw any place so lovely," exclaimed Eleanor; "never!"
"This is my favourite walking place in winter," said Mrs. Caxton; "when
I want to walk under shelter, or not to go far from home."
"How charming that garden must be when the spring comes!"
"Are you fond of gardening?" said Mrs. Caxton.
A talk upon the subject followed, in which Eleanor perceived with some
increase of respect that her aunt was no ignoramus; nay, that she was
familiar with delicacies both in the practice and the subjects of
horticulture that were not well known to Eleanor, in spite of her
advantages of the Lodge and Rythdale conservatories and gardens both
together. In the course of this talk, Eleanor noticed anew all the
indications that had pleased her last night; the calm good sense and
self-possession; the quiet dignity; the decision; the kindness. And
perhaps Mrs. Caxton too made her observations. But this was the
mistress of the cheese-farm!
A pause fell in their talk at length; probably both had matter for
reflection.
"Have you settled that question, Eleanor?" said her aunt meaningly.
"That question?--O no, aunt Caxton! It is all confusion; and it is all
confused with another question."
There was more than talk in this evidently, for Eleanor's face had all
darkened. Mrs. Caxton answered calmly,
"My dear, the first thing I would do, would be to separate them."
"Aunty, they are like two wrestlers; I cannot seem to separate them. If
I think of the one, I get hold of he other; and if I take up the other,
I am obliged to think of the one; and my mind is the fighting ground."
"Then the two questions are in reality one?"
"No, aunt Caxton--they are not. Only they both press for attention at
once."
"Which is the most important?"
"This one--about which you asked me," Eleanor said, drooping her head a
little.
"Then decide that to-day, Eleanor."
"Aunty, I have decided it--in one way. I am determined what I will
be--if I can. Only I do not see how. And before I do see
how,--perhaps--the other question may have decided itself; and
then--Aunty, I cannot tell you about it to-day. Let me wait a few days;
till I know you better and you have time to know me."
"Then, as it is desirable you should lose no time, I shall keep you
with me, Eleanor. Would you like to-morrow to go through the dairies
and see the operation of cheese-making? Did you ever see it?"
"Aunt Caxton, I know no more about cheese than that I have eaten it
sometimes. I would like to go to-morrow, or to-day; whenever you
please."
"The work is nearly over for to-day."
"Do they make cheese in your dairy every day, aunt Caxton?"
"Two every day."
"But you must have a great number of cows, ma'am?"
"There they are," said her aunt, looking towards the opposite meadows.
"We milk between forty and fifty at present; there are about thirty
dry."
"Seventy or eighty cows!" exclaimed Eleanor. "Why aunt Caxton, you must
want the whole valley for their pasturing."
"I want no more than I have," said Mrs. Caxton quietly. "You see, those
meadows on the other side of the river look rich. It is a very good
cheese farm."
"How far does it extend, aunty?"
"All along, the meadowland, as far as you see."
"I do not believe there is a pleasanter or prettier home in all the
kingdom!" Eleanor exclaimed. "How charming, aunt Caxton, all this must
be in summer, when your garden is in bloom."
"There is a way of carrying summer along with us through all the year,
Eleanor; do you know that?"
"Do you wear the 'helmet' too?" thought Eleanor. "I have no doubt but
you do, over that calm brow!" But she only looked wistfully at her
aunt, and Mrs. Caxton changed the conversation. She sat down with
Eleanor on a settle, for the day was mild and the place sheltered; and
talked with her of home and her family. She shewed an affectionate
interest in all the details concerning her brother's household and
life, but Eleanor admired with still increasing and profound respect,
the delicacy which stopped every inquiry at the point where delicacy
might wish to withhold the answer. The uprightest self-respect went
hand in hand with the gentlest regard and respect for others. To this
reserve Eleanor was more communicative than she could have been to
another manner; and on some points her hesitancy told as much, perhaps,
as her disclosures on other points; so that Mrs. Caxton was left with
some general idea, if not more, of the home Eleanor had lived her life
in and the various people who had made it what it was. On all things
that touched Rythdale Eleanor was silent; and so was Mrs. Caxton.
The conversation flowed on to other topics; and the whole day was a
gentle entertainment to Eleanor. The perpetual good sense, information,
and shrewdness of her hostess was matter of constant surprise and
interest. Eleanor had never talked with anybody who talked so well; and
she felt obliged unconsciously all the time to produce the best of
herself. That is not a disagreeable exercise; and on the whole the day
reeled off on silver wheels. It concluded as the former day had done;
and in the warm prayer uttered by her aunt, Eleanor could not help
feeling there was a pulse of the heart for _her;_ for her darkness and
necessities. It sent her to her room touched, and humbled, and
reminded; but Eleanor's musings this night were no more fruitful of
results than those of last night had been. They resolved themselves
into a long waking dream. Mr. Carlisle exercised too much mastery over
her imagination, for any other concern to have fair chance till his
question was disposed of. Would he come to look for her there? It was
just like him; but she had a little hope that her mother's pride would
prevent his being furnished with the necessary information. That
Eleanor should be sought and found by him on a cheese farm, the
mistress of the farm her own near relation, would not probably meet
Mrs. Powle's notions of what it was expedient to do or suffer. A
slender thread of a hope; but that was all. Supposing he came? Eleanor
felt she had no time to lose. She could only deal with Mr. Carlisle at
a distance. In his presence, she knew now, she was helpless. But a
vague sense of wrong combated all her thoughts of what she wished to
do; with a confused and conflicting question of what was right. She
wearied herself to tears with her dreaming, and went to bed to
aggravate her troubles in actual dreams; in which the impossible came
in to help the disagreeable.