Not Without Thorns. Molesworth Mrs.
out of the dead level so depressing to pedestrians in search of “a view,” and the undulating ground encouraged one to hope that in time, provided, of course, one walked far enough, one might come to something in the shape of a hill. Nor were such hopes deceptive. There really was a hill, or a very respectable attempt at one, which went by the name of Ayclough Brow, and half-way up which, one came upon the tiny little lake known as Ayclough Pool. There was rather a nice old farmhouse, perched up there too, not far from the Pool, and a chatty old farmer’s wife who was fond of entertaining visitors with her reminiscences of “the old days,” days when sheep could browse on the Brow without getting to look like animated soot-bags; when it was possible to gather a posy without smearing one’s hands with the smuts on the leaves; when Wareborough was a little market town, where the mail-coach to London from Bridgenorth used to stop twice a week, and rattle out again in grand style, horn and all, along the Ayclough Road. Many an accident to this same Royal Mail could the old body tell of, for her husband’s forbears had lived on the same ground for generations, and the smashes of various kinds that had taken place at a sharp bend of the road just below the Brow had been the great excitement in the lives of the dwellers in the lonely farmhouse, and the records thereof had been handed down religiously from father to son. More than one unfortunate traveller had been carried up to the farm, as the nearest dwelling-house, there to remain till the fractured limb was sound again, or till the bruised body and shaken nerves had recovered their equilibrium, or, in one or two yet sadder cases, under the roof-tree of the old house, far from home and friends, to end indeed the journey.
There was one story which Eugenia since childhood had listened to with intense sympathy – a really tragic story – notwithstanding the exaggerated ghastliness of detail with which, like all local legends of the kind, in process of time it had become embellished. It was that of a bride and bridegroom, married “the self-same morn,” who had been among the victims of one of those terrible overturns. The bride had escaped unhurt, the husband was killed on the spot. They had carried him up to the farm, and then, for the day or two that elapsed before her friends could be communicated with, the poor girl had knelt in frantic agony beside the body, refusing to be comforted, at times wildly persisting he was not, could not be dead. By the next morning, the old farmer’s wife used to add in a solemnly impressive tone, “she had heard tell, th’ young leddy’s hair were that grey she moight ’a been sixty.” She had been taken away at last a raging lunatic, said the legend (probably in violent and very excusable hysterics), and of course never recovered her reason. There was no record of her name, the accident had occurred more than a hundred years ago, yet the story still clung to Ayclough Farm, and some people were not over and above fond of passing the bend in the road of a dark night. “’Twas lonesome, that bit of the way, very,” said the old woman, and the wind among the trees – there was a good deal of wind up Ayclough way sometimes – made queer sounds like a coach galloping furiously in the distance, and there were people that said still queerer sights were to be seen now and again on the fatal spot.
Altogether there was a good deal of fascination about Ayclough, fascination felt all the more strongly by the Laurence girls, on account of the unusual dearth of the picturesque or of any material food for romance in their dull Wareborough home. A walk to the old farm had always been one of their recognised childish “treats,” though Eugenia used to get dreadfully frightened, and hide herself well under the bedclothes when they were left alone by their nurse at night, after one of these expeditions. Sydney used to feel her way across the room in the dark, and climb into Eugenia’s cot, and try to reason her into calmness.
“How could the ghost of the young lady be so silly as to come back to the place where her husband had been killed, when it was more than a hundred years ago, and they must be both happy in heaven now, like the lovers on the willow pattern plates.”
“They were turned into birds,” Eugenia would remonstrate, but Sydney could not see that that signified; “they were happy any way, and people in heaven must be even happier than birds. She couldn’t think what they should ever want to come back for, or suppose they did, why any one should be afraid of them.”
Then Eugenia would shift her ground, and defend her terrors by a new argument.
“Suppose ghosts weren’t really people’s souls, but evil spirits who looked like them? She had read something so horrible like that in one of papa’s books the other day. It was a poem – she couldn’t remember the name – but it was ‘from the German.’ If it was only light, she would tell it to Sydney.”
But Sydney was not at all sure that she wanted to hear it, and she thought papa would be angry if he knew that Eugenia read books he left about, whereupon Eugenia would promise to do so no more, and in the diversion of her thoughts thus happily brought about, Sydney, finding the outside of her sister’s bed less warm and comfortable than the inside of her own, would seize the opportunity of returning to her little cot, and in two minutes would be fast asleep, rousing for a moment again to agree sleepily to the entreaty that came across the room in Eugenia’s irritatingly wideawake voice, “that she wouldn’t tell nurse she had been frightened, or they would never be allowed to go to Ayclough any more.”
Volume One – Chapter Eight.
On the Brink
I love snow, and all the forms
Of the radiant frost;
I love waves and winds and storms,
Everything almost
Which is nature’s, and may be
Untainted by man’s misery.
Of the many times the sisters had walked to Ayclough they had never had a lovelier day for their ramble than the one on which they set off with Frank Thurston and the young Dalrymples, to skate on the Pool. It was February, early February, and the Frost spirit, who had been late of coming this year, seemed inclined to make up for the delay by paying a pretty long visit now he had really got as far down south from his own home as Wareshire. He had greatly disappointed his special friends, the school-boys of the community, by not spending Christmas with them, as in the good old days, we are told, was his invariable custom, and the last two Saturdays Arthur and Bob Dalrymple had hardly consented to eat any dinner, so eager were they to make the most of their friend’s company on these precious holiday afternoons.
“We expect Captain Chancellor to come with us, Frank,” said Sydney, as the little party were setting off from Mr Laurence’s door. “He said he would join us at the Brook Bridge at half-past one. He passes that way coming to our house, you know. He dined with us last night, and when he heard where we were going to-day, he said he would like to come too.”
“All right,” said Frank. “I expect some one too. I persuaded Gerald to promise to come. He never gives himself any play now at all. Ever since he came back from India he has been working far too hard. I don’t think he is looking well either. He’s not half the man he was before he went to India. Ah, there he comes! You girls must make a great deal of him to-day, for I want to coax him to give himself more relaxation.”
Eugenia and Sydney were very ready to do as Frank wished, and when Gerald came up to them he was most graciously received. It was quite true that he was not looking well. Eugenia noticed it very distinctly; he was looking much less well even than on his first return, and her heart smote her for the scanty thought she had of late bestowed on her old friend.
“I am so very glad you can come with us to-day, Gerald,” she said. “It is like old times, isn’t it?”
“Like, but very different,” he thought to himself, but aloud he answered cheerfully, and in spite of himself his spirits began to rise. It was like old times to have Eugenia walking beside him, her sweet bright face looking up in his, no one to dispute his claim upon her for the time. But his visions were soon dispelled. A new expression stole into her eyes, a soft flush crept over her face even while he watched it, and following the direction of her gaze to discover the cause of the change, Mr Thurston saw – Captain Chancellor coming forward quickly in their direction.
The two men had never met since the evening of Gerald’s return. They had eyed each other with covert suspicion