Joy; or, the Light of Cold-Home Ford

Front matter

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Chapter I

Whan that Apiille with his schowres swoote The drought of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in sw ich licour, Of which vertue engendered is the flour. Chaucer. A narrow glen ended in a little waterfall ; above and beyond it the moors stretched brown and unbroken by fences for miles, under the broad and benignant light of a spring sky. It was a solitary spot. The nearest dwelling was a farm house, nearly two miles away. The only human beings who passed there might be a stray shepherd coming down from the moorland by the path to the ford ; or, more seldom still, a distant farmer riding up to see his herds of roaming, half-wild red cattle and branded ponies. Never theless, there was a little human home here. Close against a high rock at the glen's mouth was a small cottage of grey moorstone, with a deep thatched roof and a little rounded porch rudely made of rubble and plastered with mud.

The brown-roofed cottage was built against the JOY. weather-worn cliff, much indeed as the house-martins' nests of dried clay found shelter under its own eaves. It looked so lonely, dropped down there in the wilderness, in spite of its guardian rock ! No wonder that when the shepherd, for whom it was first built, died, and the cottage was deserted, the passing peasants, shunning after nightfall those empty walls, perhaps infested by bogies, gave it the nickname of Cold home. Besides, there were ill tales told, on winter nights in the more cheerful little homes round, of wayfarers who had been drowned in the river close by where it stood. The Chad had its tiny well-spring far away up on the hills in the heather. Thence it flowed softly through the moor land, unconscious of growing strength, till all at once, coming to a leap down a rock-ledge, it laughed out loud.

After which, down and down it plunged with gurgling music in a strong rush of water foaming down into the heart of the glen, beneath overshadowing birches and oaks steeply rooted among the rocks, whose interlocked branches hid out the sunshine. Once below, after whirling round and round in a deep pool, the Chad rushed swiftly on. Its rock-bound channel was often blocked amid stream by great boulders, seeming flung there by giants at play, and once used as altars by the Druids for human sacrifice, said some wise folk. It flowed past all these, still carrying air-bells and foam-sprays on its clear brown flood, darkening some times in shadowed deep pools ; and again frolicking with many smiles over gravelly shallows, as if uncertain how to behave itself towards mother earth ; till at last, taking existence easily, it wound in accommodating pleasantness by primrose slopes, and through buttercup meadows, in the low rich lands that stretched from the breezy, upland wolds of its cradle to the far sea.

Some of those dark pools near the waterfall were dangerous enough, their edges being often wet and slippery with spray. J0\ 11 But worse than these was a broad sun-kissed one, so deceit fully clear you should swear your three-feet ashen staff could touch the shining, seemingly shifting bottom ; and yet tradition told that a strong pedlar, renowned at fairs for his wrestling prowess, and a favourite with his women customers, missing the ford one dark night, and stepping in here close by, was drowned. And thence the spot was called the Deadman's Pool. The ford was just opposite the cottage, which stood but a little way off; and, this being the only safe crossing-place for some distance up and down the Chad, needs must that the few wayfarers should come thereby, and, if wise, before nightfall.

Cold-home Cottage was no longer empty, however, at the time this story begins. And this, the beginning, is on an evening more than a quarter of this century back. It was also the time of year of ' April that messager is to May.' Very thin smoke rose faintly from the cottage chimney. Not a cow, pig, cat, or other animal was to be seen near, except a solitary she-goat tethered among the bushes ; no hens or ducks clucked and quacked on the threshold. In the miners' huts away on the other side of the moors one heard all day long the cries of romping, half-wild children, the rough voices often raised in scolding of wives and mothers. Ragged garments were always being dried on the loose stone walls, and, isa stray mallow or larkspur bloomed by the crazy door, it only looked down-trodden and miserable.

But this little brown house was as clean and sweet as a nut. Grass grew thick up to the solitary path that led to the porch which seemed crushed under its thatched roof, yet a honeysuckle and a rose twined round its entrance. The silence inside and around was so intense one could hear the calls and cries of the wild creatures and birds on the moor above ; these and the constant sound of falling JOY. 12 water among the rocks and alders up the dark glen. It seemed simply a moorman's hut. A rude herdsman might come home here to sleep after spending his days out on the heathery hillsides, watching his flocks of straying, active sheep, with an occasional eye to the shaggy, half-wild ponies or the more domesticated red cattle. The door opened this evening, and two dark women figures came out into the porch.

They paused a moment, and, as if from habit, looked first across the stream at the track leading from the moors to the ford near their door, and then down the widened valley into the cultivated fields and meadows. Nothing — no living human being to be seen. Then both stepped out and walked silently towards the river's edge, as if also from unconscious habit. They wore odd-looking capes, with hoods almost entirely concealing their faces, and black gowns of coarse serge, just long enough to escape touching the ground, and that fell in severe folds around them. Yet any passer-by with a quick eye for beauty might perhaps have detected that both women had unusually well-shaped figures under those homely, awkwardly made gowns. One, who was the smaller of the two, seemed more soft and plump in her natural curves than her companion ; the other had a grand gait, a tall, even commanding figure.

As they reached the brink of the Chad and sat down absently under the fresh green alders, finding resting-places among the mossy rocks lying scattered around, the hood of the taller silent being fell a little back. She was a beautiful woman. Her eyes were dark and rather long, with a deep, inward look as of one absorbed in thought, while her strong figure seemed meant for action. Her forehead was ample and finely shaped, framed in heavy bands of jet-black hair. Her nose was somewhat JOY. 13 prominent, but with the great sweetness of her mouth only added to her whole air of firmness wedded to gentleness ; and, as might have been expected from the rest of her appearance, her throat was full and massive, a sign of mental as of bodily strength. She might have been a Catholic saint, living in austerity in a desert; she might have been a Judith, her deed of patriotic deliverance done.

One might at least imagine thatsome great unspoken, almost unutterable sorrow had taken up its home for life in her heart, and could dimly be seen through her eyes — the soul's windows. But it was no living sorrow, rather the ribs of a wreck that now rested in a hushed sea of love — of peace. Looking at her still smile, one could well believe that no murmurs ever crossed those lips. Who was this woman ? What was she doing in these moors ? How had she won that expression of great calm which many a saint might hardly have reached after years of struggle ? No one for miles around could have told. She sat upright on a solitary stone, her hands clasped round her knees, her head raised as if she liked to feel the wide, moorland breeze blowing upon her temples. The other, who was her sister, lay beside her resting against a tree trunk, as if seeking ease ; and she shivered slightly at times in the mild air, while her hood was drawn close over light, curling, fair hair.

Her wide, turquoise eyes wandered earthward over the mossy carpet at her feet, seeming to see curiously every fresh green frondlet of the new spring, and each withered leaf of last year's prime rolled up like a tiny brown parch ment fallen from Nature's great book. It was a charming and secluded nook. The little river brawled down among the rocks, and spread into a deep, dark pool before them. The weather was a mingling of warmth and moisture, sun and shower, as befitted the time JOY. 14 of year. Thorns were all bursting into the fresh leaf-buds called in olden days 'ladies' meat' The birches were like a green-dotted haze, suspended in the air, while below their stems shone as silver pillars. Elms put out their belated, rougher buds in a defiant manner ; but the horse-chestnuts were everywhere generously unfolding five little joined leaflets like babe-fingers, that would be spread, when warm June came, into a broad shelter from the heat.

Half an hour passed, and neither of the two quiet sitters had stirred. Neither had spoken a word. The sun had moved, however, and now sent golden beams through the trees over the river. Up rose thereat a little swarm of dancing flies, seen clearly in the bright, low light. Down darted some hawking swallows in arrowy glancings. A few house-martins followed in more fluttering flight, eager to fill their beaks for the tender, gaping bills of the callow nestlings under the eaves of the little brown house yonder. They flitted to and fro between it and the hunting-ground with ceaseless energy. Twitter ! twitter ! as they flew, still they came and went. Then the taller woman stirred a little, smiled, and said, in a deep but sweet tone : ' Yea, the swallow hath found her a nest . . . well, even our poor home may be a temple to the Lord of Hosts when the incense of prayer and praise is offered up in it.

Look at the row of mud nests under the porch now, Magdalen. Three more since yesterday.' (She was glancing at their brown hut, which was only a little distance away, and she had very long eyesight.) ' They remind me of the mud hovels in Egypt that we used to see plastered against the ruined temples.' Strange words to be said in this remote English moorland, far from the likely haunts of travelled beings; and spoken too by anyone inhabiting that rude cottage with its JOY. 15 cob porch. What was more strange was, that this woman had also the refined speech of a gentlewoman of education, and — what many ladies have not — a voice so singularly musical that it resembled often the sounds of an Eolian harp.

Chapter II

' Spring, like Love, Doth stir a sad, sweet trouble in the heart.' The woman called Magdalen started, with a quick, nervous movement, as her sister spoke. She had not been thinking, however ; but in a sort of restless silence had been amusing herself with trifles, like a child, or lying with eyes almost closed in a half sleep. Ten minutes ago she had descried two ants hurrying hivewards, and had amused herself ever since laying twigs and leaves in their path. Poor, small insects, so full, doubtless, of duties and anxieties. She vexed them, she knew it ! and smiled with a sort of almost infantile malice in her pretty face ; for, though worn, her features were very pretty. But, once startled from this noiseless, secret sport, she looked up sharply and listened. ' Egypt ! I was never there like you.

But I have travelled, too. I could tell you of mud huts in South America — and in Mexico. Ah ! that was a life — always gaiety, excitement, and change ! — change !' She stopped and laughed : just two happy notes ending in one more so sharp and discordant that the darker sister turned and looked at her with a comforting glance. Magdalen's eyes, light blue as forget-me-nots, now wandered JOY. wearily over the landscape around. There rose sweep after sweep of brown moor, hill behind hill, each standing shoulder to shoulder, none much higher than his brethren, but many topped with tors, giant crowns of rock jutting out in strange, different shapes. ' They never change,' she murmured pettishly, yet almost as if she did not wish her complaint overheard. 'There they are, that ugly mask-head, like a sphinx, and the castle one and all the rest ....

Oh, I am tired of them.' (Now, to be reasonable, why should the hills change their faces?) ' Magdalen, they do change,' said the other women tenderly. Both spoke in the peculiar conscious tone of persons who seldom did talk ; but this one especially as if words were living symbols, each to be thoughtfully chosen, though from her gentleness this seemed not pedantic, and she was herself unaware of it. 'Yes, they change. Why, every hollow on the moor is bright green now, though we are too far off here to see. And already, every here and there, you can see some gorse in flower, but presently up behind our cottage to the hill-brow will be one yellow blaze of sweet blossoms, and, as old Dunbar says, the skies will "ring with shouting of the larks." ' Magdalen could hardly be said to reply, but in an inconsequent way she lilted to herself the old saying, ' When the gorse is out o' bloom, Kissing's out o' favour.' 'Then, dear, think of the summer coming, and the warm days you are so fond of, and the long twilight evenings on the hills.

The heather will come out in bloom, but first the meadows down by Farmer Berrington's will be full of mowers, and then comes harvest. But the hills are lovely already. Look at that change ' A dark blue shadow passed rapidly over the fair hill JOY. 17 range that was a steep barrier to the opposite valley. Ten seconds ! — it was gone like a past dream, and the whole hill side laughed in clear sunlight. Another dream is coming, its dark point pushing forward — on, on, but this wave lower than the last, the crest of the ridge and each jutting point still bright above it against the soft blue sky. So, dreaming and waking, now above, now below, chasing and still returning, sunshine and shadow played upon the hilly moorland. As she had said, it was lovely ! Magdalen looked, and impatiently burst out, as if she could not endure the view : ' Yes, Rachel, they do change, and we can't. And they don't change, but stand always, always there, and I hate them for it ! . . .

Summer coming, you say ! Why, that it is the very time when we should be enjoying ourselves, be gay, be happy.' She made a little movement with her arms, as if indicating the motion of a dance ; the merest abortive sign instantly subsiding. Then, with a plaintive passion, she went on : ' How many human beings have we seen this past week ? One shepherd coming down that far path ' ' Do we want to see human creatures ?' said the other sister, with an inexpressible tone, as if a depth of sadness lay beneath, but was not stirred. ' No, no, no ! But still, what are our lives worth ? We might as well be brutes.' ' You forget the two lives our lantern may have saved last Saturday market-night.' ' The lantern, yes ; is that all we are good for, to help tipsy boors from a ducking ?' ' No ; human souls from drowning.

Come, Magdalen, you know well enough that if the ford is low to-night, and the stones plain to see, still how often, after a freshet, any- JOY. 1 8 one passing in the dark might easily lose their lives, like those before them, in the Deadman's Pool.' ' I do know. I am glad to help. You know that. Still . . still . . .' Magdalen's voice died away as she seated herself low on the grass, with her arm under her head, apparently forgetting what she had meant to say. Silence again followed for some time. At last, when many thoughts had come to the darker woman's brain, and that a soothed and restful expression was visible on her face, the voice from the prostrate form asked, pathetically enough : 'Rachel, why does one feel each spring like a bird longing to migrate to other lands ? Not to have the wings of a dove, to flee away and be at rest . . that's you !

I feel like a swallow, wanting to dart off in the air to see the sun elsewhere, and again elsewhere, to fly and flit . . to have no fixed home — and to forget !' She spoke disconnectedly, and with sudden pauses. Rachel seemed used to this, and waited, though with slow trouble just stirring her mind like a quiet ripple on the surface of depth. More was coming. ' Can't you speak ? Do you never feel it ?' went on the other, yet not waiting for an answer. ' Are you become a stock or a stone, living in this wilderness, and yet you are younger than I am ? . . . Why, no one would think it !' Perhaps not, mused Rachel, her lips just curving with a smile. Nothing cynical in it, no longer dreamy ; but the smile of a good woman, who bids a brave farewell to the beauty she held dear with youth and other gladnesses of life, yet who is capable of a sense of humour when told she does not feel it — humour which some hold to have been an attribute of the divine man, and that Nature shows in some of her animal motions.

It is rare in women. Not know the nameless trouble and vague longing of JOY. 19 spring ? Why, during this past hour of quiet, Rachel had felt so much a part of the surrounding universal nature that the quickening of renewed life pouring from the great heart of the earth — rising in every grass-blade, stealing in sweet sap up all the tree-trunks, and thrilling out till their utmost twigs felt the influence, causing buds to swell and softly burst from their cases into colours of rosy-white, yellow, and lilac drawn mysteriously from the brown earth- — all seemed a secret into which she entered, of which she partook. But only she herself knew how hard it was to answer. Twice she tried to begin, for surely here was a good opportunity of uttering a wish that had been growing in her heart all spring.

Twice her lips failed, but the third time, with the sudden conviction that it was right, Rachel said softly, putting all her powers of gentle persuasiveness, all her love and sympathy forth in her voice and tones : ' Perhaps what we both want — indeed, I am almost sure — is some gladness ; all Nature is full of it, every spring. Why, there are the very trees ! — the wind used to sigh through their branches in winter so mournfully, and now the young leaves are full of rustlings like laughing, and some times, if you listen, a rushing music of leaves when the wind sways all the trees, as if it was Ariel's spirit. And the birds, too, they consider happiness as their birthright each spring. Yes, and so it is ; and ours too. They are happy in the sunshine, and their nests and young ones, as the trees and plants are in their leaves and blossoms, and all that God gives them.

We may be happy too — in their way.' 'Never! I happy?— never again. What do you mean, Rachel ? Why, you are mad !' cried her sister, starting from her recumbent posture with parted lips and a pale, strange look on her face. ' If you only would, dear, but it must be in Nature's own way,' Rachel forced herself to repeat, with gentle impressive- 2 JOY. 20 ness, though her heart felt, sinking. ' If you and I have lost the mere joy of being young, there are other ways of being happy still left to us. We feel the want of some change, some break, some brightness in our lives. Well, then — let us have the child here.' ' The— child ! Why ? . . . Rachel, you are evidently quite crazy. What right have you to startle me by these wild ideas, when we were living so peacefully and quietly here ?' cried her sister with weak querulousness, her lips slightly trembling, and her pretty blue eyes wandering round, as if to find some good reasons to help herself out in the resist ance she offered instinctively and at once from a spirit of opposition. ' Why not, dear — at last ?

It is surely safe now, Mag dalen. Who has disturbed us these almost five years ? If there is some danger (very little here), there is a great duty. Believe me, it would just be the one ray of human sunlight in our lives to have that little child, with its cheery laugh and diamond eyes, playing about us.' ' Her eyes !' retorted the other, in an outburst of fury so sudden it was like a storm out of a summer sky. ' She has her father's eyes, and I hate to see them in her !' (' And I love her when she looks at me out of them,') thought Rachel deep in her heart, but did not say so. Some deprecating answers, still a few gentle remonstrances she attempted, although the blue eyes flashed at her, and the passionate voice said one or two bitter, wild words hard to be borne. Then she saw it was of no use !

All the yearnings of her woman's instincts of motherliness, the secret hope through the long-growing spring days that thus her loneliness of heart might be filled, these must be given up. The moors and hills looked darker for it, even to her patient eyes. But her deep tones were now heard only in tender JOY. 21 soothing. Gradually the replies changed from passion to peevishness ; then the subject was turned, and became monosyllables of raillery. After that, both voices ceased ; the silence that seemed usual was resumed. Presently, as the shadows grew longer, the two women rose, and went slowly back to the little brown cottage. Neither had spoken so much together for a long time. The hut only boasted of two earthen-floored rooms. The inner one was the bedroom, and that into which the door opened from the porch was kitchen and dwelling-room com bined.

In the window-sill, cut in the whole thickness of the wall, was set a tin lantern, holding a tallow candle. The sun had not yet sunk, however, and the candle was still unlit.

Chapter III

' What time the sun reversed the mountain shadows, And from the yoke released the wearied oxen ; As his own chariot slowly passed away, Leaving on earth the friendly hour of rest.' Lord Lytton's Horace. The sun was setting that same evening, as the owner of the farm nearest to Cold-home Cottage took his way through the fields. He was going by a path that, after once crossing the high-road, led towards the glen, now a mile and a half away, and he was carrying a large covered basket. A call in a childish treble sounded behind him, and a boy of about eight or nine came trotting along. The farmer stopped. ' Father, are you going to the cottage ?' JOY. 22 ' I am, my son.' ' Take me with you,' and the little fellow nestled his hand into the big, sunburnt paternal one that was unoccupied, whispering his request in a rather awed voice.

The father, a broad, hearty-looking man, looked down at the sunshiny head below him. ' You bean't afraid ?' ' No. What would make me ?' ' Who was it would never come these last several weeks, and asked me the other night if those two were not witches, eh?' ' Well, and you said they weren't, and that it was wicked of any folk to say so,' returned the little fellow stoutly, as if that was sufficient reason to satisfy the world. ' Come along, Blyth,' was all the farmer replied, with a smile that wrinkled up the crows' feet at the corners of his twinkling eyes, and on they went. Farmer Berrington had a face of hearty English ruddiness, as round and inexpressive as a full moon, and a mouth as cherubic as 'a child's — one quite comical, in fact, between his mutton-chop whiskers. He likewise was a man of few words, but his little son found his a most conversable silence.

He would walk on chewing a leaf-twig, gazing at the new-ploughed fields with such intense attention that Blyth would stare too. Thereupon his parent, turning to him, might ejaculate solemnly, ' Good land !' with such a full-satisfied nod and air of good fellowship as implied that was his whole mind and now Blyth knew it. On which the boy, feeling thoroughly taken into the confidence of the big man beside him, would nod too, trying to imitate the paternal air of Jove, and perhaps put likewise a leaf between his own rosy lips. But such intense gravity could only last a few minutes. Soon Blyth would be prattling again in the highest spirits, telling how he had climbed a tree that after- JO A 23 noon after a bird's nest, and coming down had fallen, bump ing his head badly ; but that did not matter, only the fall had broken the eggs he had carried in his mouth for safety.

At such a tale the child's upturned face would always meet the father's downward glance ; and, though the farmer's lips were mute, those wise, small, half-shut eyes would be all suffused with gleaming laughter that twitched, sometimes, when more excessive, the muscles of his face. Little Blyth found his father a very merry man. Just as both were about to cross a lane, before again taking their path through the fields, came the sound of horses approaching at a trot. The farmer peered over the stile, whistling under his breath. Then, seeing who the new-comers were, he dropped his heavy basket and proceeded leisurely to get into the lane empty-handed. ' Father — father, you've forgotten ' begun little Blyth. ' 'Sh, my boy ; I know,' and a good-humoured tap of two fingers on his straw hat admonished the small man that bigger men have mysterious ways of behaving which must be submitted to in them ; though the nine-year-old manner of conduct seems much simpler, and more easy of under standing.