NORTHWARDS--THE BLACK COUNTRY--THE STONE COUNTRY.
We had a very noisy, happy journey to London. We chattered, and laughed,
and hopped about like a lot of birds turned out of a cage. Emma sat by
the window, and made a running commentary upon everybody and everything
we passed in a strain of what seemed to us irresistible wit and humour.
I fear that our conduct was not very decorous, but in the circumstances
we were to be excused. The reaction was overwhelming.
Eleanor and I sobered down after we parted from the other girls, and
thus became sensible of some fatigue and faintness. We had been too much
excited to eat any of the bread-and-butter prepared for our early
breakfast at Bush House. We had run up and down and stood on our feet
about three times as much as need was; we had talked and laughed and
shaken ourselves incessantly; we had put out our heads in the wind and
sun as the train flew on; we had tried to waltz between the seats, and
had eaten two ounces of "mixed sweets" given us by the housemaid, and
deluged each other with some very heavy-scented perfume belonging to
one of us.
After all this, Eleanor and I felt tired before our journey had begun.
We felt faint, sick, anything but hungry, and should probably have
travelled north in rather a pitiful plight, had not a motherly-looking
lady, who sat in the waiting-room reading a very dirty book of
tracts--and who had witnessed both our noisy parting from our companions
and the subsequent collapse--advised us to go to the refreshment-room
and get some breakfast. We yielded at last, out of complaisance towards
her, and were rewarded by feeling wonderfully refreshed by a solid meal.
We laid in a stock of buns and chocolate lozenges for future
consumption, and--thanks to Eleanor's presence of mind and
experience--we got our luggage together, and started in the north train
in a carriage by ourselves.
We talked very little now. Eleanor gazed out of her window, and I out of
mine, in silence. As we got farther north, Eleanor's eyes dilated with a
curious glow of pride and satisfaction. I had then no special attachment
to one part of England more than another, but I had never seen so much
of the country before, and it was a treat which did not lose by
comparison with the limited range of our view at Bush House.
As we ran on, the bright, pretty, sociable-looking suburbs of London
gave way to real country--beautiful, cared-for, garden-like, with grand
timber, big houses, and grey churches, supported by the obvious
parsonage and school; and deep shady lanes, with some little cart
trotting quaintly towards the railway bridge over which we rushed, or
boys in smock-frocks sitting on a gate, and shouting friendly
salutations (as it seemed) to Eleanor and myself. Then came broad, fair
pastures of fairy green, and slow winding rivers that we overtook almost
before we had seen them, with ghostly grey pollard willows in formal
mystical borders, contrasting with such tints of pale yellow and gay
greens, which in their turn shone against low distances of soft blue and
purple, that the sense of colour which my great-grandfather had roused
in me made me almost tremble with a never-to-be-forgotten pleasure. From
this flat but most fair country, the grey towers of Peterborough
Cathedral stood up in ancient dignity; and then we ran on again. After a
while the country became less rich in colour, and grander in form. No
longer stretching flatly to low-lying distances of ethereal hue, it was
broken into wooded hills, which folded one over the other with
ever-increasing boldness of outline. Now and then the line ran through
woods of young oak, with male ferns and bracken at their feet, where the
wild hyacinths, which lie there like a blue mist in May, must for some
weeks past have made way for the present carpet of pink campion.
And now the distance was no longer azure. Over the horizon and the lower
part of the sky a thin grey veil had come--a veil of smoke. We were
approaching the manufacturing districts. Grander and grander grew the
country, less and less pure the colouring. The vegetation was rich
almost to rankness; the well-wooded distances were heavily grey. Then
tall chimneys poured smoke over the landscape and eclipsed the sun; and
through strangely shaped furnaces and chimneys of many forms, which here
poured fire from their throats like dragons, and there might have been
the huge retorts and chemical apparatus of some giant alchemist, we ran
into the station of a manufacturing town.
I gazed at the high blackened warehouses, chimneys, and furnaces, which
loomed out of the stifling smoke and clanging noises, with horror and
wonder.
"What a dreadful place!" I exclaimed. "Look at those dreadful things
with flames coming out; and oh, Eleanor! there's fire coming out of the
ground there. And look at that man opening that great oven door! Oh,
what a fire! And what's he poking in it for? And do look! all the men
are black. And what a frightful noise everything makes!"
Eleanor was looking all the time, but with a complacent expression. She
only said, "It is a very busy place. I hear trade's good just now, too."
And, "You should see the furnaces at night, Margery, lighting up all the
hills. It's grand!"
As she sniffed up the smoke with, I might almost say, relish, I felt
that she did not sympathize with my disgust. But any discussion on the
subject was stopped by our having to change carriages, and we had just
settled ourselves comfortably once more, when I got a bit of iron
"filings" into my eye. It gave me a good deal of pain and inconvenience,
and by the time that I could look out of the window again, we had left
the black town far behind. The hills were almost mountains now, and
sloped away on all sides of us in bleak and awful grandeur. The
woodlands were fewer; we were on the moors. Only a few hours back we had
been amongst deep hedges and shady lanes, and now for hedges we had
stone walls, and for deep embowered lanes we could trace the unsheltered
roads, gleaming as they wound over miles of distant hills. Deep below us
brawled a river, with here and there a gaunt mill or stone-built hamlet
on its banks.
I had never seen any country like this; and if I had been horrified by
the black town, my delight with the noble scenery beyond it was in
proportion. I stood at the open window, with the moor breeze blowing my
hair into the wildest elf-locks, rapturously excited as the great hills
unfolded themselves and the shifting clouds sent shifting purple shadows
over them. Very dark and stern they looked in shade, and then, in a
moment more, the cloud was past, and a broad smile of sunshine ran over
their face, and showed where cultivation was creeping up the hillside
and turning the heather into fields.
Eleanor leaned out of the window also. Excitement, which set me
chattering, always made her silent. But her parted lips, distended
nostrils, and the light in her eyes bore witness to that strange power
which hill country sways over hill-born people. To me it was beautiful,
but to her it was home. I better understood now, too, her old complaints
of the sheltered (she called it _stuffy_) lane in which we walked two
and two when we "went into the country" at school. She used to rave
against the park palings that hedged us in on either side, and declare
her longing to tear them up and let a little air in, or at least to be
herself somewhere where "one could see a few miles about one, and
breathe some wind."
As we stood now, drinking in the breeze, I think the same thought struck
us both, and we exclaimed with one voice: "Poor Matilda! How she would
have enjoyed this!"
We next stopped at a rather dreary-looking station, where we got out,
and Eleanor got our luggage together, aided by a porter who seemed to
know her, and whom she seemed to understand, though his dialect was
unintelligible to me.
"I suppose we must have a cab," said Eleanor, at last. "They don't
expect us."
"_Tommusisinttarn_," said the porter suggestively; which, being
interpreted, meant, "Thomas is in the town."
"To be sure, for the meat," said Eleanor. "The dog-cart, I suppose?"
"And t'owd mare," added the porter.
"Well, the boxes must come by the carrier. Come along, Margery, if you
don't mind a little bit of walking. We must find Thomas. We have to send
down to the town for meat," she added.
We found Thomas in the yard of a small inn. He was just about to start
homewards.
By Eleanor's order, Thomas lifted me into the dog-cart, and then, to my
astonishment, asked "Miss Eleanor" if she would drive. Eleanor nodded,
and, climbing on to the driver's seat, took the reins with reassuring
calmness. Thomas balanced the meat-basket behind, and "t'owd mare"
started at a good pace up a hill which would have reduced most
south-country horses to crawl.
"Father and Mother are away still," said Eleanor, after a pause. "So
Thomas says. But they'll be back in a day or two."
We were driving up a sandy road such as we had seen winding over the
hills. To our left there was a precipitous descent to the vale of the
river. To our right, flowers, and ferns, and heather climbed the steep
hill, broken at every few yards by tiny torrents of mountain streams.
The sun was setting over the distant Deadmanstone moors; little dropping
wells tinkled by the roadside, where dozens of fat black snails were out
for an evening stroll, and here and there a brimming stone trough
reflected the rosy tints of the sky.
It was grey and chilly when we drove into the village. A stone
pack-horse track, which now served as footpath, had run by the road and
lasted into the village. The cottages were of stone, the walls and
outhouses were of stone, and the vista was closed by an old stone
church, like a miniature cathedral. There was more stone than grass in
the churchyard, and there were more loose stones than were pleasant on
the steep hill, up which we scrambled before taking a sharp turn into
the Vicarage grounds.