Six to Sixteen: A Story for Girls
CHAPTER XIX.
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 bythe window, and made a running commentary upon everybody and everythingwe 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 circumstanceswe were to be excused. The reaction was overwhelming.
Eleanor and I sobered down after we parted from the other girls, andthus became sensible of some fatigue and faintness. We had been too muchexcited to eat any of the bread-and-butter prepared for our earlybreakfast at Bush House. We had run up and down and stood on our feetabout three times as much as need was; we had talked and laughed andshaken ourselves incessantly; we had put out our heads in the wind andsun as the train flew on; we had tried to waltz between the seats, andhad eaten two ounces of "mixed sweets" given us by the housemaid, anddeluged each other with some very heavy-scented perfume belonging toone 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 havetravelled north in rather a pitiful plight, had not a motherly-lookinglady, who sat in the waiting-room reading a very dirty book oftracts--and who had witnessed both our noisy parting from our companionsand the subsequent collapse--advised us to go to the refreshment-roomand get some breakfast. We yielded at last, out of complaisance towardsher, and were rewarded by feeling wonderfully refreshed by a solid meal.
We laid in a stock of buns and chocolate lozenges for futureconsumption, and--thanks to Eleanor's presence of mind andexperience--we got our luggage together, and started in the north trainin a carriage by ourselves.
We talked very little now. Eleanor gazed out of her window, and I out ofmine, in silence. As we got farther north, Eleanor's eyes dilated with acurious glow of pride and satisfaction. I had then no special attachmentto one part of England more than another, but I had never seen so muchof the country before, and it was a treat which did not lose bycomparison with the limited range of our view at Bush House.
As we ran on, the bright, pretty, sociable-looking suburbs of Londongave way to real country--beautiful, cared-for, garden-like, with grandtimber, big houses, and grey churches, supported by the obviousparsonage and school; and deep shady lanes, with some little carttrotting quaintly towards the railway bridge over which we rushed, orboys in smock-frocks sitting on a gate, and shouting friendlysalutations (as it seemed) to Eleanor and myself. Then came broad, fairpastures of fairy green, and slow winding rivers that we overtook almostbefore we had seen them, with ghostly grey pollard willows in formalmystical borders, contrasting with such tints of pale yellow and gaygreens, which in their turn shone against low distances of soft blue andpurple, that the sense of colour which my great-grandfather had rousedin me made me almost tremble with a never-to-be-forgotten pleasure. Fromthis flat but most fair country, the grey towers of PeterboroughCathedral stood up in ancient dignity; and then we ran on again. After awhile the country became less rich in colour, and grander in form. Nolonger stretching flatly to low-lying distances of ethereal hue, it wasbroken into wooded hills, which folded one over the other withever-increasing boldness of outline. Now and then the line ran throughwoods of young oak, with male ferns and bracken at their feet, where thewild hyacinths, which lie there like a blue mist in May, must for someweeks past have made way for the present carpet of pink campion.
And now the distance was no longer azure. Over the horizon and the lowerpart of the sky a thin grey veil had come--a veil of smoke. We wereapproaching the manufacturing districts. Grander and grander grew thecountry, less and less pure the colouring. The vegetation was richalmost to rankness; the well-wooded distances were heavily grey. Thentall chimneys poured smoke over the landscape and eclipsed the sun; andthrough strangely shaped furnaces and chimneys of many forms, which herepoured fire from their throats like dragons, and there might have beenthe huge retorts and chemical apparatus of some giant alchemist, we raninto the station of a manufacturing town.
I gazed at the high blackened warehouses, chimneys, and furnaces, whichloomed out of the stifling smoke and clanging noises, with horror andwonder.
"What a dreadful place!" I exclaimed. "Look at those dreadful thingswith flames coming out; and oh, Eleanor! there's fire coming out of theground 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 menare black. And what a frightful noise everything makes!"
Eleanor was looking all the time, but with a complacent expression. Sheonly 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 thehills. It's grand!"
As she sniffed up the smoke with, I might almost say, relish, I feltthat she did not sympathize with my disgust. But any discussion on thesubject was stopped by our having to change carriages, and we had justsettled 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 leftthe black town far behind. The hills were almost mountains now, andsloped away on all sides of us in bleak and awful grandeur. Thewoodlands were fewer; we were on the moors. Only a few hours back we hadbeen amongst deep hedges and shady lanes, and now for hedges we hadstone walls, and for deep embowered lanes we could trace the unshelteredroads, gleaming as they wound over miles of distant hills. Deep below usbrawled a river, with here and there a gaunt mill or stone-built hamleton its banks.
I had never seen any country like this; and if I had been horrified bythe black town, my delight with the noble scenery beyond it was inproportion. I stood at the open window, with the moor breeze blowing myhair into the wildest elf-locks, rapturously excited as the great hillsunfolded themselves and the shifting clouds sent shifting purple shadowsover them. Very dark and stern they looked in shade, and then, in amoment more, the cloud was past, and a broad smile of sunshine ran overtheir face, and showed where cultivation was creeping up the hillsideand turning the heather into fields.
Eleanor leaned out of the window also. Excitement, which set mechattering, always made her silent. But her parted lips, distendednostrils, and the light in her eyes bore witness to that strange powerwhich 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 complaintsof the sheltered (she called it _stuffy_) lane in which we walked twoand two when we "went into the country" at school. She used to raveagainst the park palings that hedged us in on either side, and declareher longing to tear them up and let a little air in, or at least to beherself somewhere where "one could see a few miles about one, andbreathe some wind."
As we stood now, drinking in the breeze, I think the same thought struckus both, and we exclaimed with one voice: "Poor Matilda! How she wouldhave 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 toknow her, and whom she seemed to understand, though his dialect wasunintelligible to me.
"I suppose we must have a cab," said Eleanor, at last. "They don'texpect us."
"_Tommusisinttarn_," said the porter suggestively; which, beinginterpreted, 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 youdon't mind a little bit of walking. We must find Thomas. We have to senddown to the town for meat," she added.
We found Thomas in the yard of a small inn. He was just about to starthomewards.
By Eleanor's order, Thomas lifted me into the dog-cart, and then, to myastonishment, asked "Miss Eleanor" if she would drive. Eleanor nodded,and, climbing on to the driver's seat, took the reins with reassuringcalmness.
Thomas balanced the meat-basket behind, and "t'owd mare"started at a good pace up a hill which would have reduced mostsouth-country horses to crawl.
"Father and Mother are away still," said Eleanor, after a pause. "SoThomas 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 thehills. To our left there was a precipitous descent to the vale of theriver. To our right, flowers, and ferns, and heather climbed the steephill, broken at every few yards by tiny torrents of mountain streams.The sun was setting over the distant Deadmanstone moors; little droppingwells tinkled by the roadside, where dozens of fat black snails were outfor an evening stroll, and here and there a brimming stone troughreflected the rosy tints of the sky.
It was grey and chilly when we drove into the village. A stonepack-horse track, which now served as footpath, had run by the road andlasted into the village. The cottages were of stone, the walls andouthouses were of stone, and the vista was closed by an old stonechurch, like a miniature cathedral. There was more stone than grass inthe churchyard, and there were more loose stones than were pleasant onthe steep hill, up which we scrambled before taking a sharp turn intothe Vicarage grounds.