Trust for trust

Contents

. Hint AND VALLEY

. ABOVE THE Hiz1s

. Tor ABYSS

Chapter I. Hill And Valley

A GOOD many years ago a girl, standing in one of the valleys of North Wales, was calling to a flock of sheep on the mountain. She called loudly and often. The sound was echoed, and the air rang with it. It was a high, wild, prolonged, and jubilant note, repeated at short intervals with considerable vigor. At a little distance it seemed to issue from the rocks, and to be the effect of their unseen vibration. It filled the valley with an invisible life, warm and musical; and when it ceased, the ear waited for its return as for a

VOL, I. B natural feature in the scenery. The valley lay among high mountains. It was nearly oval in shape, and perfectly flat; a level floor of grass, extending some distance lengthwise, but scarcely two hundred yards across, walled in by the surrounding heights, whose bases sprang abruptly out of it. The mountains on the northern side were not precipitous, but rose in a succession of green mounds and slopes, like the swelling pastures that have given the Alps their name; but on the south, the rocky wall, though green and sloping also to a considerable height, was far steeper everywhere, and ended above in crags and precipices, whose rough gray masses, broken by dark fissures, worn by torrents or shivered into ruin by frost and storm, hung grim and gaunt over the beauty they had guarded and fertilized through their own ages of desolation.

At both ends of the valley, the mountains approached each other. Westward, they descended on an irregular plain, to which a tolerably wide opening gave easy access, while eastward, the rocky heights grew continually higher, the valley ending there in a steep and dreadful pass several

HILL AND VALLEY. 3 miles in length, but for the most part, only broad enough for the passage of a mountain torrent, and for a path, little better than a sheep track, by its side. The torrent, foaming down over blocks of stone that would have choked up any lowland river, became in the level valley a broad stream, somewhat rapid, but never noisy, flowing between green banks, over gray and yellow pebbles, black weeds and starry moss. The pasturage on either bank was divided into small meadows by loose -stone fences, low earthen mounds, or scrubby hedges. In the midst there was a small scattered village; that is to say, there was a very low and towerless stone church, with perhaps thirty cottages, dotted about without the least suggestion of a street, or any regard to anything but the convenience of those who built them. They were all of stone, roughly whitewashed, with slated roofs continued almost to the ground behind, so as to cover their little out-houses. Most of them had small gardens, with a few gooseberry bushes, and there was a sprinkling of trees; birch, ash, and elm; of no great size, among them. A tolerable road passed B 2 up the valley, at the foot of the northern range of mountains; most of the cottages were near it; and the fields on that side of the stream had gates that opened into it, but it was continued only a little way beyond the village, and dwindled into a narrow track before it reached the pass. The girl was standing in one of the meadows on the other side of the stream, with her back to the water and her face raised towards the steep slopes of the southern range. She had been calling for perhaps half an hour, changing her position from time to time, and by degrees throwing back her head more and more, that her voice might strike the mountain higher up after each interval. Her purpose was not to draw the sheep into the valley, but to drive them from it. It was spring; the snow had melted, the streams were full. The lower pastures with their bogey soil had become too damp for the mountain flocks, who nevertheless came down to them, and had to be scared away to the drier neighbourhood of the crags. Unpractised eyes would at first see nothing on the mountain slope, except the green of its herbage, the gray colour

HILL AND VALLEY. %, of its rocks, the bright lines and patches where moisture trickled over them, and the brown furrows that were occasional watercourses when the snow melted suddenly, and after violent storms. But the girl herself saw the flock creeping slowly upwards, nibbling from side to side, pursued by two shepherd dogs, who, having worked hard all the morning, appeared to have grown tired and sluggish, and to be only kept from lying down comfortably behind the tails of their charges by the repeated ringing of her voice about their ears.

She was rather tall, and could! not be called slender. She was dressed in the short peasant’s dress of the country. Her face was very sweet to look at, though with a mouth perhaps too large, with eyes too small, and a forehead too promi-~ nent above for the rigid letter of beauty. But the face passed like light even through the sunbeams. Its complexion was neither white nor red, but like one of these seen through an atmosphere of the other. The hair was sunny brown; the eyes were happy: the lips pouted prettily when they were not smiling, and curved into archer lines when they were. It was an honest face; one to be loved and trusted; one likely enough to win its way, withal; and to have it, being won.

She had been watched for some little time by five individuals.

At the door of the cottage nearest to the field she was in, a man and a woman, past middle age, stood together, looking at her. They were both smiling; the man, sadly; the woman, proudly. Sometimes they spoke to one another, though only a few words.

In the road, with his head resting on his arms, and his arms on the gate opening into the little meadow, a young man, about five-and-twenty, stood, sulky and silent, with a dog at his side. He had the dress of a working man. His round hat was pulled over hiseyes; perhaps to shade them from the cheerful sunshine. What could be seen of his face was dark and dogged: heavy brows; firm lips; cheeks square and pale. He was directly behind the girl; the field and the stream between them; and he also seemed watching her.

On the bank of the stream, lower down, stood

HILL AND VALLEY. 7 another young man, of the same age or thereabouts. He wore a handsome blue coat with brass buttons, white breeches, top boots, a gentleman’s hat and cravat, and a watch with a gold seal.

He was tall; well made; florid and handsome; with blue eyes and brown hair. He also had been looking at the girl as he approached the stream, but at this moment his eyes were on the water, as if he thought of stepping into it, but had not yet made up his mind.

The last of the five lookers-on sat at a greater distance than the rest, on a craggy knoll on the other side of the road. She was nearly hidden by the projecting rocks, and sat unobserved. She might have been almost a girl, but the beauty of her face, which might even be called splendid, was so marred and wasted by passion, sorrow, or time, that it seemed impossible to guess her age. She wore a hood instead of a bonnet, was dressed in black, and had wrapped herself in a shawl when she sat down.

The young gentleman who had been looking into the water, seemed to think it must be deeper than his boots, and being conscious that what- ‘ever he might gain in credit he must lose in appearance, by splashing through, he turned back rather impatiently to some rough stepping-stones lower down, and reached the other side without either having displayed his courage or spoilt his clothes. He walked quickly towards the girl, who continued her calling and was unconscious that he was coming. He stopped close behind her, paused a moment till the clear ringing note had ceased, and then spoke, smiling gallantly.

She turned round, blushing. Her hand went involuntarily to her hair, which was disordered. It was not a coarse hand, as might have been expected, but small and rather fair. He spoke again, raising his hat, and listened in a respectful attitude while she answered him. She looked towards the cottage; took two or three steps along the bank of the stream; stopped again as her companion followed, and listened in her turn. He took her by the hand, and they walked together slowly across the fields, passing at length out of sight behind a little rocky mound by the

HILL; AND VALLEY. 9 river. As they did so, the two old people spoke again to one another, and the wife re-entered the cottage: the young man leaning on the gate kicked his dog, and turned towards the village: and the woman among the rocks walked away in the direction of the pass.

The two who had disappeared behind the hillock were soon seen again on the other side. The girl’s hand was still held by her companion, and there was a bracelet on the wrist. He looked in high spirits and talked gaily to her. She seemed to make no answer. ‘The warm tint upon her face was warmer: her head was bent forward; her eyes looked only at the ground; her lips were just parted, trembling a little. They approached the stepping-stones. He handed her over them: her arm shook, and she seemed to need the unaccustomed help. They went together up to the cottage door where the old man was still standing. The young gentleman addressed him immediately in a spirited manner, and with a respectful bow. He replied in a few words; speaking to the girl herself. She raised her head, stepped quickly forward, and opened her arms. The old man clasped her in his own. In a second or two he made her turn towards her companion. She kept hold of her father’s hand, but she laid her head on her lover’s shoulder.

So that was settled.

Chapter II. Above The Hills

Tue old man’s name was John Griffiths. He was born in the valley, but he had not lived there all his days. As soon as he could walk he followed his father’s sheep into lonely places, and loved nothing better in his boyhood than to spend a day or a night upon the mountains, watching the flocks, tending the new born lambs, finding out the greenest pastures and the clearest streams, and learning in an unlettered way the beauty and tenderness of nature. He did not see anything terrible in the crags or the roaring torrents: they turned their kind faces towards him, and showed him only their beneficence. He grew up delicate, but active; with a stainless character and a modest intelligence. His mother was an Englishwoman. At eighteen an

English farmer hired him and took him away.

He soon pined after his mountains, and would have returned to them, but a new affection coming into his heart became gradually the stronger. His master’s niece lived at the farm and was kind to him. She was a fine country girl, well-bred, and in his eyes a lady. Her comparative elegance and refinement were a halo of light to him. He saw round her a vision of fairy-land. She seemed far off at first, and he revered her as one in another world, but as the years passed they appeared to bring her nearer. Her kindness became more timid; she even blushed sometimes when he spoke to her; and when a lawyer’s son came wooing her he was sent disconsolate away. However, if John Griffiths began to believe he loved her, he was far too poor to think of marrying her, so he sighed and lived on in the bright presence, very happy in his quiet way, always delicate in health, and thinking more and more of the life to come.

His thoughts often took the form of verses. He became the village poet. His compositions were chiefly hymns. They were often sung at the rustic church when a sermon was to be

ABOVE THE HILLS. 13 preached for some special occasion. One of them began as follows—the verse illustrating the general leaning of his simple mind : — “Come, my friend, and go with me To yon place called Calvary ; Where my dear Redeemer died, Where my Lord was crucified.”

In his way, too, he became a great astronomer —not in the technical sense, to be sure; but the stars were his familiar friends and he loved them individually. His favourite constellations were the Corona Borealis, which he took to be the pattern of the crowns of Heaven; and the Pleiades, because he thought they were twinkling eyes from which God was wiping away the tears. He had a special fondness, too, for the second bright star in the tail of the Great Bear, with its small companion. It loooked at him, he said, like a ewe sheep with her little one. When he had been ten years in the same place, the farmer’s niece being still unmarried, a legacy was left him, amounting to fifty pounds a year. He received the news in silence, but he looked up tearfully to the sky, and then went on with his work. That night and the two following, he spent among the fields with the sheep, the bats, and the great firmament over all: he told his happiness to his favourite stars, and his gratitude to the Lord who made them, and an hour before daybreak he went to his bed for a short, dreamy slumber. On the fourth day he offered himself and all he had to his master’s niece, and she became his Mary.

After his marriage he went back to his native valley took one of its small farms and sheepwalks, and became a principal inhabitant in the village. He had one child only. She bore her mother’s name and was her father’s darling. Mrs. Griffiths, from her own acquirements, was able to give her daughter something of an English education; her husband had gathered many stores of genuine knowledge, and their means raising them above the necessity of much hard labour, Mary grew up a different being to the other maidens of the valley. She knew two languages to begin with; an uncommon thing in those days among those mountains; and though proficiency in Welsh is not a fashionable accom-

ABOVE THE HILLS. 15 plishment, her knowledge of English gave her an immense advantage. She was now in her seventeenth year; she could read, write, and sum; had never seen a piano, but could sing her country’s songs and her father’s hymns. Her clear round voice was famous in the valley; and when the sheep had to be scared it was generally Mary’s task to do it. The dogs knew her well, and would work for her longer than for their master; and the sound of her calling would ring up the mountain sides where most other voices became inaudible. She led no idle life; she washed and scrubbed, made hay and milked, cut wood and carried water when required; but the Griffiths were well enough off to keep a strapping lass for most of the dirty work, and the weather-beaten father, proud of his child’s fair skin and pretty fingers, was better pleased to see her at her needle or with a book in her hands, or to have her with him on the mountains, listening to his simple thoughts or telling him her own. Mrs. Griffiths had become a stout, comely person, much shrewder and more worldly than her husband; very fond of him, and very praiseworthy in all her deeds. One object of her life was the quiet assertion of her own good-breeding; another was the reproduction of it in her daughter’s manners. She succeeded well in both: for as to the first, there was no one else in the valley who could hold a candle to her; and as to the second, Mary had her father’s natural refinement, and, being a woman, any grace or propriety once suggested to her was taken instinctively and became a part of her nature. Among other things, boys flourished in the valley, as usual. According to custom they developed also into youths, and finally into lovers. Six of them scratched their heads in Mary’s presence in the course of a year, and desired to keep company with her. They got gentle but summary answers. Their mothers gossipped together on the heinous character of pride; and the other girls of the village wished to know what there was in Mary Griffiths. She was looked npon as sour grapes for half a year, and then a seventh arm was raised to pluck her. Mr. Owen Williams, aged four and twenty, born at Milford

Haven, endowed with a knowledge of English, a

ABOVE THE HILLS. slg clever head and a most resolute will, a petty overlooker in the neighbouring slate quarries, and, moreover, the son of a tradesman who might leave him five hundred pounds when he died, tock courage one January morning and told Mary he wished to marry her. When she told him she was much obliged to him, but she couldn’t think of it, he grew dark and stern, spoke harshly and fiercely, and left her at last quite frightened by the assurance that he had made up his mind to have her, and have her he would. Now Mary, in spite of her gentleness, had on some occasions as strong a will of her own as may become a woman, and had he waited till her momentary fright was over,, she would have told him plainly that if he indeed would have her it must be in another world, for she would rather die ten times than marry him im this. Though he did not hear this, however, he understood perfectly well that his rejection was point blank and definite, and he lapsed into a sullen state of daily reflection as to the means whereby she might be won. My story begins in the spring that followed this January of rejection, and Mr. Owen Williams was the gentleman who

VOL. I. GC felt it necessary to kick his dog when he saw Mr. Anthony Forrest,'the successful lover, go with Mary across the field.

Mr. Forrest’s present visit to the mountain village was by no means his first. He went there two years before on a fishing excursion ; in ill health, irritable and unhappy. He was accommodated with lodgings in John Griffiths’ cottage, and he went home to England in the course of two or three weeks, pretty well, and quite cheerful. The next year he came again; first in the spring, and then in the autumn. We always found it convenient to lodge at the shepherd’s cottage, and to be on good terms with the shepherd’s daughter, and on the last occasion, her parents began to look grave, and to express to one another their doubts as to his intentions. When he had gone, Mrs. Griffiths took an opportunity of speaking to Mary on the subject, and the girl blushed a little, but said with her pouting lips—that it was all nonsense. What was Mr. Forrest to her? She never expected to see him again. A very pretty little lie, | but Mary thought it must be true, or she would

ABOVE THE HILLS. 19 not have said it. Happily for her peace, and for human honor, and for sweet Nature’s heartstrings, Mr. Forrest’s purposes were straightforward and unexceptionable, at least as soon as he knew them himself. When the snow melted he returned; and after another week at their cottage, he was in love with Mary, and acknowledged it to himself. A second visit within a month made him resolve to marry her. He came a third time, after a shorter interval; arrived in the evening, entertained the farmer and his. wife till midnight with the interest of his conversation and the flow of his spirits; saw Mary’s pretty confusion when he spoke to her; her blushes when she bade him good-night, and her timid glance behind her at the foot of the stairs; went radiant to bed, and in the morning, when Mary was in the fields, explained his wishes to her parents. He made a frank exposition of his means, which were splendid enough in their eyes; told them candidly that he was twenty-five years old, and a partner in his father’s bank ; assured them that though his parents knew nothing of his attachment, he would answer for,

€ 2 and presently obtain their approval of it, and in regard to their daughter’s tender age, he remarked that his own mother was married on her seventeenth birthday, had had several children, and still remained a handsome woman. Against such fair proposals, made by one whose honorable character they already knew, no objection could be raised. He went at once from them, across the stepping-stones, and came back with Mary.

Chapter III. The Abyss

To Mary’s simple vision the engagement between herself and Anthony seemed a matter whose interest extended no further than the village where she lived, and the home to which she might be taken. She knew nothing of life’s complicated machinery, and never dreamt that the little wheel of fortune, turning now so pleasantly before her eyes, was one only of a long series, was itself moved forward by the backward motion of another, and in its turn was setting other cogs agoing, with what possible result only the Maker of the machine could say beforehand.

A storm had broken on the south coast of England about a fortnight before the day of Anthony’s proposal, and a fisherman’s boat went down in the wild surf within half a mile of the shore. It was a rising tide, and the wind blew from the sea, and in a short time one of the drowned men was thrown upon the beach oppesite a grand hotel. A wife was standing by the surf when the boat went down; but when the dead body floated to her feet, a widow took it in her arms. There was a crowd round her; it closed, increased, grew quiet; moved again, opened; and the corpse was carried by three rough sailors, tenderly alone the grand parade, for this was a fashionable wateringplace. The widow followed close. None could see her face, for it was covered, but her grief was seen; and the windows of the grand parade were filled with spectators till the sad sea tragedy passed out of sight.

One of those spectators was in the best drawing-room of the great hotel. It was a crimson room, with heavy crimson curtains and a crimson carpet; long mirrors on the walls, and a chandelier of glass over the table. On the table were two decanters, some wine glasses, unused, and a tumbler which had been used and was half empty. Between the table and the fire, in a heavy easy-chair covered with crimson and gold damask, sat a short, thin man, with a red forehead and unquiet eyes. He was little more than thirty years old; but the thin lips and selfish chin, the sunken cheeks and irritable nose; the weak hair, already turning gray, and the smile, half cunning and half weariness, into which the unhealthy features were habitually drawn, showed that a lifetime of dissipation had been pressed into those thirty years. He had a sporting newspaper in his hand, was drinking wine at intervals out of the tumbler, and biting between the draughts the ends of his cadaverous and tremulous fingers.

_ Atone of the windows his wife stood looking out upon the sea. She was tall and very handsome, but her beauty was in the wildest ruins. It was not dissipation, but passion that had wasted it; nor was the ruin after all a grand one, for her face expressed strong feeling but little intellect, and was altogether that of a woman who, haying rushed into a foolish error, has aggravated the evil of its consequences by a foolish rage, rather than of one whose bloom has perished in the struggle with inevitable sorrow. She was ten years younger even than her husband: her hair was black, and worn in long curls over her shoulders; a fierce, bright colour was on her cheeks, and her forehead, pure white, but neither broad nor high, was crowned by an impatient wrinkle. She had stood for half an hour without stirring, leaning against the crimson curtains, with her hands joined together on her black velvet dress, moving the rings, one by one, slowly up and down her fingers, without looking at them. She had been watching the tragedy on the shore; had seen the dead fisherman thrown at his widow’s feet; had observed the signs of momentary hope, and of the grief that followed; and had unconsciously been arraigning Providence, not in pity but in selfishness. Her thoughts took no definite form in her own mind, but if they had done so it would have been pretty nearly as follows: “That woman loved her husband, and she has lost him. I detest mine, and he is safe in his chair. She has children, no doubt, who will grow up orphans and be very poor.

I have no children; and if I had, the sooner their father died the better for them. She must be half ruined by this loss ; her husband was her chief estate; she can have nothing left but the pitiful rent-roll of her woman’s labour. It will cost her a month’s earnings to bury him, and she will measure out the crape by inches because of her children’s bread. [ should be a richer widow than I am a wife; there might be plumes enough, and crape enough, and a marble monument over the family grave. I should give new caps to all the widows in the parish instead of wearing one myself, and the money spent upon the funeral would make the undertaker a happy man. If somebody must be drowned, why should it have been this poor fisherman? Suppose my husband had been in the boat; he might have been. He went out fishing yesterday, when the sea was quiet, and had very nearly gone again this morning before it began to blow. I believe he would have gone if I had opposed it. What possessed me that I was so good-natured? He never deserves to have his schemes approved; and I ought to know by this time that when I agree to anything he is sure to change his plan. He talked about it at breakfast; said the doctor recommended fishing, and it did him good. I wanted to get rid of him, and he knows that, I am sure. How stupid to let him see it! The boats were lying ready, and this was one of them. He actually went half down the beach before he turned back. If I had only beckoned to him when he turned, he would have gone on board, I know; but he saw me looking vexed and so, of course, he came back again. Cannot we have it over again, that I may beckon to him? He has been drinking all day, and a pretty night we shall have; and the fisherman will be lying dead, and his wife a free woman again.”

“ Kitty,” said the gentleman in the easy chair, after a long draught from the tumbler, “ you may pack up your traps, for I shan’t stay here another day. I’m as strong as a horse, and Ill go down to Cambridge to-morrow, and ride the mare’s tail off, by jingo.”

“Do as you please. I don’t believe there has ever been anything the matter with you, or ever will be.”

THE ABYSS. Pz

“Don’t you though, by Jove! I should like to change nerves with you, Mrs. Fraser. I should like to lend you the back of my head, Mrs. Fraser.”

“Very well: be as ill as you can—the worse the better.”

“Oh, that’s it, is it? Don’t be in a hurry, Kitty. It’s not a killing complaint. I shall live till youre old and ugly, anyhow. There never was a Fraser that didn’t bury his own wife. My father lived seven years dead drunk, and died on the wrong side of seventy, and he: never would have died at all if the doctor, God bless him, hadn’t stopped his grog.”

“Mr. Fraser, you grow more disgusting every day. I shall not stay with you; I shall leave you to imitate your father.”

* Go and do it, Kitty; but, by Jove, you shall live on five shillings a week, or you shall live with me. You’re a fine girl still, when you’re quiet, or I wouldn’t have anything to say to you.”

“JT shall petition for a separation, sir, and a suitable allowance.”

“Go and do it, then. I tell you, there are girls I like every bit as well as yourself, and a wife ’s rather in the way sometimes.”

“Mr. Fraser! Do you think I shall submit to hear such language? If you cannot be decent, I shall ring the bell, and have witnesses to prove what you are saying.”

He had stretched himself out in his chair, and was chuckling inwardly. He made no immediate reply; and his wife, turning her back upon him, stood shaking with rage and indignation by the crimson curtain. The room was hot and close, for its windows had been padded to keep out the storm; a large fire was burning, and a heavy atmosphere in a crimson room neither inspires nor mollifies. She felt herself helpless against him. She had married him under circumstances which put her entirely in his power; there was no considerable insult among those available for domestic purposes which she had not received already from her husband, but when she hastily resented them with threats, like those she had just made use of, it was only to feel directly afterwards, heow vain her fury was, and how impossible it was for her to do anything but clench her teeth, as she did now, and let her breast heave, as it was heaving, under the black velvet bodice and the ringlets round it. When he spoke again, which was after a pause of two or three minutes, she did not turn to him or notice the change in his voice.