Читать книгу The Bright Pavilions - Hugh Walpole - Страница 8
THE MINERS
ОглавлениеNicholas Herries soon saw that, in this young Gilbert Armstrong, he had found a companion after his own heart and mind. During the ride up North they had many opportunities of mutual discovery. Now Nicholas was a man who must see and feel a thing truly to believe in it. No good to tell him that something existed because someone else had seen it. True probably that men with three heads and two fundaments lived on the other side of the sea, that pearls were as common there as potatoes, and naked girls shining like brown leather were your humble servants, but he must see first for himself. He would in fact have been off on a voyage of discovery with Drake or Hawkins or Grenville long ago had it not been that his father depended on him to take over the property and become head man of the house.
And so with everything. It was of no use talking to him of the next world or a lump of coal that might become a lump of gold or poems that told you about King Arthur or the Queen of the Amazons. He must have reality. So it was apparently with Armstrong, who was as sensible a young man as you would find in England. He showed his common sense in the first place by an instant worship of Nicholas. When they had to share a bed at an inn, Gilbert was never tired of admiration of Nicholas’ thews and sinews. He had never before seen a man so great physically who at the same time was so adroit, lithe in his movements, delicate in his footwork. He taught Nicholas all that he knew of wrestling, and this was to be useful later. But it was not only, not chiefly, physical prowess that began to bind the two men together. In all incidents and crises they seemed to think alike; Nicholas the master, Gilbert the servant, but beneath that social difference the beginning of a firm friendship.
Nothing very epochal occurred in their travels: there was a pedlar who was surely a Roman priest and carried in his buttock-pocket a Bull against the Queen, there were the vagrant soldiers who broke a window in the hostelry at Newbury and were put in the stocks, there was the thief hanging on the gibbet at the cross-roads by Doncaster whose nose was being pecked by gigantic crows as they passed, there were the two witches ducked to their death at the little village on the moor towards York city, and, best of all, there was the landlord of the scurvy inn below the Pennines who crept into Nicholas’ room at night to steal from his bag, was caught by him, stripped as bare as the day he was born and tied to the pump in his courtyard for the rest of the night until he was found there by the maids in the morning purple with cold.
In these and all else Gilbert Armstrong showed admirable common sense, anticipating Nicholas in his own ideas about everything. He thought, as all true Englishmen thought, that no foreigner was worth a plate of pease, that everything the Queen did was right. What pleased him about the Queen was that she took her people into her confidence, that she talked to them as though she were their own brother or sister. He liked the way that she boxed the ears and pulled the noses of her courtiers and bishops. He liked her for her tempers and meannesses and flirtations and sudden generosities. He liked her because she was always a Queen and yet she was a common human being as well. He neither knew nor cared whether she was truly a virgin or no, whether she had been to bed with Robert Dudley or no. That always seemed to him a woman’s own business. He asked Nicholas why it was that he and his brother had not sought service at Court. Surely no one in the realm would make so splendid a Queen’s Pensioner as Nicholas! Gilbert always asked questions directly, with no apologies for possible impertinences. He spoke as man to man.
‘The Court?’ asked Nicholas. ‘What would I do with the Court? My brother possibly. Can you see me twiddling my thumbs and bending my buttocks, and remembering my Latin tags and telling the Queen, with her black teeth and the rest, that I sigh my heart out to go to bed with her? God forgive me, I mean nothing against Her Majesty, at whose nod I’d fight the whole of Spain if need be—but I’m no courtier, Gilbert. Fine clothes sit ill on my big body, my tongue’s too clumsy for compliments. It’s a game you must play, the Court game, with smiles for your enemy, and down on your hams to those you despise, and waiting in corridors and whispering for advancement.
‘What I like, Gilbert, is an adventure like this—riding Juno on a fair road with all the world around you, three days and nights in that strange little town where you live and then back home again. I must be on the move, exercising my body and speaking to men I can trust and being friendly with women.’
‘What do you think of the Roman religion?’ Gilbert asked.
‘Why, I think very evilly of it because it conspires against the Queen.’
‘Do you think, Mr. Herries, there’s another world besides this one?’
‘I don’t bother my head about it. Time enough when we get there.’ But he sighed. He was thinking, as he always was, of Robin.
Gilbert interested Nicholas greatly with all that he had to say about the country life as he had found it. He spoke strongly and rather scornfully of the ‘new gentlemen’ who were rising everywhere. Almost anyone now, by a little usury and cheating, could bear the charges of a gentleman, could have a coat of arms, and then be called ‘master’ with the title ‘esquire.’ And with them were the new ‘yeomen’ who were farmers of their own holdings but also farmed the squire’s land, kept servants and grew rich. ‘The new rich’ were in fact the subject of Gilbert’s strong disgust. Nicholas thought of his Uncle Henry. He mentioned him.
‘You had come to town on his business?’
‘Yes, he has purchased some interest in the Newlands mine. Under the Queen of course. But then he’s of a fine family. That’s another matter.’
‘There’s none of our family ever been wealthy before,’ Nicholas said.
‘I have no belief in money,’ Gilbert said, ‘nor in great possessions. I will have a little house and a good horse, and my sons shall make their own way.’
‘You will be married then?’ Nicholas asked him.
‘When the day comes. But I will have my freedom first.’
He complained that everywhere in England now they must be building, so that all the trees were cut down and the beautiful forests and wild life disappearing. He had no liking either for those new-fangled chimneys that everyone must be putting up, and thought that they gave men colds and rheumatism. Smoke hardened both timbers and men, keeping colds away.
But his principal and most vehement complaint was against the bodgers and loaders. The bodgers bought up all the stocks of corn and then raised the price so that the poor man could not buy his weekly needs. Already the land was taken from the poor man who had once, under the monasteries, in the good old days, enjoyed free use of it. And the bodgers were terrible men, he said, practising every kind of deceit. They kept the corn until it was musty, and then the poor man was forced to buy it and died of the plague. There were altogether too many dealers, and as there were no standard weights and measures, these dealers bought by the larger measure and sold by the smaller one.
In fact Gilbert did not like this new world that was springing up about him. England would soon be covered with houses and the middleman would make all the profit and country life would be spoilt. These carriages and coaches that were just coming in would make it so that you would have no peace any more and could not keep yourself safe from strangers. It was a noisy, cheap, common new world, and money was the only thing that mattered.
As to himself, he told Nicholas that he was the only son of his mother, a widow. His father had been a Cumbrian farmer who had been killed resisting Scottish raiders near Carlisle. His mother was of better birth, coming from a good Devon family—not that he was ashamed of his father’s family. He was prouder of it than anything. His mother, an old lady of over sixty years, lived in a little house outside Keswick.
Nicholas felt once again the strange elation that he had known before as they rode over from Penrith. It was midway through the winter afternoon and the hills in the distance had a faint haze of sun upon their tops. Below them it was dark and the sky above them was black. Only this line of sunlight caught the heads of the hills, which were without snow, but seemed to tremble between the two darknesses as though showing their pleasure at the unexpected light.
They pulled in their horses for the moment and looked down at the Lake that was more faintly dark than the surrounding valley. The silence was so intense that they did not themselves speak. Any sound seemed like a desecration.
Nicholas slept at the inn, where he was greeted like an old friend. He was determined not, on this occasion, to visit his uncle. He had but three days to spend and they should be all his own.
In the morning of the following day they rode over to Newlands. When they had come down the little path and turned into the valley they were almost surrounded by hills. A thin rain was falling, a caressing rather than an unpleasant rain. With a breeze behind it the texture of the rain was like a curtain, and the clouds seemed to move with it so that there was constant stirring in the sky, and the hills seemed to shift with the sky. The bleating of sheep, the running of a stream, filled this little enclosed world with sound and with freshness. Life was everywhere, and an important life. Feeling that, you lost the strained insistence of your own personality. You were part of something larger than yourself.
As they rode slowly up the valley Nicholas saw that in the sky, through the rain, a circumference of pale gold was forming. Across this, sweeps of vaporous grey cloud were driving, but the gold grew ever more tensely powerful, and phantom sheets of light, as though thrown by a sun infinitely distant, spread affectionately upon the shoulders of the hills. The rain still sheeted the air, but in the valley there was a reflected glow as though from a conflagration many miles away. It was against this rain-driven iridescence that he saw men standing, buildings behind them and a mountain peaked like a horn (or so in that light it seemed) above them.
By some trick of light these men appeared gigantic: they were inhuman guardians of some protected sacred territory. Then, closely approached, they diminished, and, at that same moment, the sun broke through in the sky, a round disc of pale glowing white, and on the fell-side there sprang forward a stretch of crying green brighter than glass.
Nicholas stayed Juno, jumped off, let her nuzzle against his chest and waited.
Two of the men started forward and Gilbert Armstrong went to meet them. They shook hands, and then stood, apparently gazing at Nicholas. They told him afterwards that he also appeared to them a gigantic figure and, because of the rain and the shifting light, seemed to move in the air.
They met and Armstrong introduced them. One of them was called Christian Beck; the other, Hans Opperer. Beck was a tall wiry man with a rugged skin and large rough hands. He looked like the branch of a tree. Opperer was stout and jolly, very German in appearance, with a heavy black beard. They both spoke English but with a strong accent.
They all stood there as though they were never going to move again. There was something exceedingly solid about the two Germans, their feet were planted deep into the soil. They knew Armstrong well, but Nicholas felt that they were suspicious of himself; they must make quite sure of him before they moved back to the mine. What they seemed to be asking was: why was he there? what purpose had he?
‘I will wait here if you wish,’ he said, ‘until my friend has done his business with you.’
‘Nein, nein,’ Opperer answered in a deep guttural voice. But after that he stood grinning, without, it seemed, any intention of moving.
‘My uncle in London,’ Nicholas said, ‘has some new business in the mines here, but I myself am no man of business. I came from London with my friend here because I wanted fresh air and to be away from London for some days.’
‘That is a beautiful horse,’ Beck said solemnly.
Nicholas was delighted. He beamed like a boy. ‘Come and see her. She is the finest mare in England.’
Beck came to Juno and felt her quarters and looked at her mouth and stroked her back in the way of a man who knew about horses, while Juno submitted patiently, turning her beautiful eyes to her master, as much as to say: ‘You are here so this is permitted, but I would prefer that too many do not touch me.’
Beck looked at Nicholas and smiled. His voice had now quite a different tone.
‘Come,’ he said simply.
When they reached the mines they were in a world of bustle and noise. Men were everywhere, moving like ghosts in the wet mist. There was one long, stoutly-built house of one storey; there were a number of smaller buildings. A load of wood was being dragged on a wheeled stretcher. Everywhere there was the noise of creaking ropes and pulleys. Near by was a smelt-house and there was a rhythmic, strong beat from a smithy at the brow of the hill. Two men, in a superior dress, were standing a little way off trying the ‘streak’ on the touchstone; a cart moved past them loaded with lime, and in the further distance men were busy piling slate.
Everywhere movement and intense energy, as though this were a little world all of its own, altogether unconscious of the outer world, superior to it.
‘Come in out of the rain, sir,’ the stout Opperer said, and Nicholas followed him into one of the smaller houses.
When he entered he was surprised by its comfort. The roof was lined with netting, and this, Opperer explained, was to keep out the bats who could be a trouble at night-time. The room was smoky and close, but that was what Nicholas was accustomed to. There was a broad, strong table, a handsome carved settle, two chairs and some stools. On to one wall was pinned a highly coloured picture of some foreign town.
Opperer motioned Nicholas to the chair and sat down with Armstrong on the settle while Beck went to bring the wine. They were silent for a time. Beck returned with Malvoisie, Muscatel and Rhenish and a large half-consumed cold pie.
They drank one another’s health. Two other men came in and were introduced; one, a little mousy man, was Hans Dieneck. The other was a big-chested rather self-important fellow in a rich brown fustian suit with a thin gold chain round his neck. This was the foreman, Hans Häring.
Nicholas, who was intensely interested, asked innumerable questions.
‘Are you making a good thing of this?’
‘A very good thing, Mr. Herries—or we shall do if we are given our rights.’
The Queen’s personality hung above them all; she interpenetrated their daily lives as she interpenetrated the lives of every man, woman and child in England. You saw her standing in the doorway of that room—her carroty hair, her pale bony face with the sharp eyes, the intense, severe, but human mouth, the high ruff, the jewels, the thin active fingers.
‘If too many gentlemen in London haven’t their fingers in our pie.’
‘How long have you been here?’
‘It started in ‘64. A contract was made then between the Queen, Thomas Thurland, and our master Daniel Hochstetter. The Queen is to have one-tenth of the gold and silver and a royalty on the other metals.’
‘Gold and silver?’ Nicholas leaned forward eagerly. ‘Have you found much of it?’
‘No, sir.’ Opperer grinned through his beard. ‘Very little. Copper’s the thing.’
‘Under what system do you work it? Is this a good mine here in Newlands?’
‘Gottesgab? The best. The best of them all. There are three sorts of miners—the Arbeiter, the day labourers, and the Geding, bargain or contract workers, and the Lehrenschaften, men who choose their own place, hew at their own pleasure and are paid a percentage on the ore’s value.’
‘Have the people of the place been friendly?’
Opperer grinned again.
‘There was some trouble at the beginning. Not much though. We are peaceful folk and the Keswick men soon found that we meant no harm. More than half of us have married Keswick women and they make good wives.’
The foreman spoke for the first time. He was a pompous man with much humming and hawing.
‘They see now that these mines mean much profit for them. The life of the whole district is changed. They have more money to spend than ever before.’
Beck broke in excitedly:
‘And we have bought an island—Vicar’s Island on the Lake. It was a ruin when we purchased it, one little tumbled house and the land covered with growth. We are clearing it now and we will build there and settle. There is to be a windmill and a brewery and we shall make a garden. We bought it for sixty pounds.’
Beck spoke of the island as though it were his own; his eyes shone and his hands trembled.
‘Do your wives and families not live with you?’
‘Of course, sir. We have our homes in and around Keswick. Sometimes when there is much work at Gottesgab they come out to us for the night. This evening some of them are coming.’
Opperer, who seemed to have taken a liking to Nicholas, said:
‘You should stay with us here to-night, Mr. Herries, and see how it is. We have music and dancing as we have at home.’
Nicholas slapped his knee. ‘Indeed I will, if you wish me to. I like it here. I could be a miner myself.’
The wine had warmed all their hearts and they soon began to talk very sentimentally of their own homes in Germany, the bright houses with the painted eaves, the running rivers, broad and strong, the meadows in the winter flooded for skating, the festivals and, above all, the music. They were hungry here for music and for sun.
‘Your English climate is good, but the sun never shines. It comes for a moment and then hides its head as though ashamed.’
But they liked the North of England people. They had much in common with themselves. They were slow and cautious and waited to see how a man was before they trusted him. But they could themselves be trusted. They made good friends when you knew them.
Finally, first and last, there was the Queen. They were eager to know whether Nicholas had met and spoken with her, and when he said that he had, and that he had seen her smack the cheek of a courtier so that her rings cut his flesh, and seen her with tears in her eyes because some old man had bent to kiss her hand and fainted with the emotion of it, and seen her smile at the crowd as she left her barge and take a child by the hand and stroke its hair, all this delighted them. She was the greatest woman in the world and, ‘Almaynes’ though they were, it was for her they were working always. Would she but send them a message one day! Ah! that would be something! Perhaps Mr. Herries, when he returned to London, could have a suggestion conveyed to her that she should write them a letter.
Even the pompous Mr. Häring drank her health in the excellent Rhenish. They all stood up with him and shouted:
‘Her Majesty the Queen!’
Later Opperer said: ‘See where we sleep.’ He took Nicholas’ arm and they went into the long low building. The early afternoon had brought a pale thin wash of sun to all the valley. The sunlight was cold but tender. Inside the building was a kind of dormitory with some thirty stuffed couches and a deep-red figured curtain drawn across one end.
‘It’s behind this the women sleep when they come.’
Some dozen naked men were sprawled asleep—night workers.
‘Now I must go on my business,’ Opperer said. ‘I have much to do. Soon if you watch you will see the women coming up the valley. To-night we will have songs and we’ll dance.’
He looked at Nicholas, pulling his black beard, his eyes twinkling. He laid his hand against Nicholas’ neck. His eyes were filled with friendly kindliness.
‘You are as proper a young man as I have ever seen. Yes, even in my own country.’ He held out his hand. ‘If I am familiar, Mr. Herries, tell me so. I am not a man of fine manners. But I am a true Bavarian and such are worthy of any good man’s friendship.’
Nicholas gripped his hand.
‘Friends we are, Hans Opperer.’
Nicholas stood looking out across the valley. Gilbert Armstrong came to say farewell. He must stay the night with his old mother or there would be trouble. He suggested that, on the following morning, he should take Nicholas to see the island. At a distance he turned on his horse and waved his hand.
Nicholas standing, his legs straddling, thought: ‘I’ve made two friends.’ He was greatly pleased. Friendship to men of his time was as important as love and had in it often a romantic emotional quality, something perhaps of the old Greek spirit of mutual love and care growing up through common hardship and sacrifice. Nicholas was young and liked definite relationships, as again was the manner of his time. Friends or enemies—there was some hot stirring of the blood in all his doings: love, friendship, play, work; love of women, love of friends, love of home and relations, love of country, love of danger, love of new experience—it was all ardour and fire for life. He must live: every minute of the day he must live. He swallowed new experience as a dog swallows meat.
Now, once more, he felt this consciousness that new life was pouring into his veins. Something unusual was occurring to him so that already this dying year seemed to him the most important he had known.
‘What is it?’ he thought. ‘What was it I felt first a year ago, when I saw the man on the moor, and only now, the other night, in my uncle’s house, when I saw Irvine’s face in the mirror? What is it? Am I in love? If so, with whom? Am I sickening for the plague perhaps? Are spirits warning me of some great event?’
But he was never introspective. He could never think a thing out. He shook his great head and swung his great legs and knew that he was happy with a fine fiery sense of living. He knew that he loved this North country, this valley, these miners; soon there would be girls and women dancing. But these men were real men, living a hard life, their muscles taut, their arms straining; sleeping, when the moment came, as he had seen them in there, drunk with weariness, abandoning their strong bodies to the luxury of full absolute emotions, as he abandoned his.
He stretched his arms, grunted, and found a man at his side. This man was perhaps thirty years of age, bare-headed, his hair very flaxen, strong, thick-set, short. He had a handsome, square, strong-jawed face but his expression was surly. They talked a little and the man was as though he were challenging Nicholas for his right to be there. He sniffed at Nicholas as one dog sniffs at another. Nicholas explained how and why he was there. The man told him his name—Joris Fisher. He was an Englishman working at Gottesgab. His work was finished for the day and he was now clean and in a good dark green doublet and hose. He was waiting, he explained, for the women coming in from Keswick.
‘It’s not often,’ he said at last, ‘we have strangers around here.’
‘Nor do you like them,’ Nicholas said, laughing, ‘when they do come, Mr. Fisher.’
‘That’s as may be. But you’ll be returning to London?’
‘Who knows?’ Nicholas went on teasing him. ‘I shall see how these girls may be.’
Joris Fisher’s face flushed.
‘A gentleman from London has an advantage.’
‘Do you think so? We shall see.’
And the time was not to be long, for now up the cool dusky valley (the sun having sunk into a bank of watery cloud) horses could be seen with women on them, and presently the women could be heard laughing and one of them singing.
When they were near, two or three of them waved their hands and several men ran towards them. When they were close Nicholas saw that one of them was the girl he had kissed a year ago in Keswick, Catherine Hodstetter.
She was sitting on a little horse, her back straight, her yellow hair coiled on top of her hatless head. Her dress was the gold-yellow of her hair, the stuff printed with little red and brown and white flowers. She saw Nicholas and of course at once recognized him. Who, having seen him, would ever forget him? She gave him one straight look with her bright blue eyes.
He saw then that Joris Fisher was already at her horse’s head. She did not allow him to assist her but sprang to the ground.
‘Ah, so that’s the way it is,’ Nicholas thought. Now Opperer and Beck had joined the party. Their wives had come and were introduced to Nicholas. Catherine Hodstetter was introduced to him. He bowed and took her hand for an instant. He was introduced to Mistress Hodstetter, Catherine’s mother. Here was a strange woman indeed! She might have been Catherine’s elder sister; she was slim and tall with hair so pale as to be almost white. She wore a grey silk gown with a little cloak of red. All this was ordinary enough. What was there then that was strange? Her face was long, thin, sharply pointed and very pale. Her eyes were grey and deep. They looked into you, through you, beyond you. She was remote as though she were thinking of other things. For a moment the four were in a group together: Nicholas, Fisher, Catherine and her mother. Nicholas had an unpleasant feeling about Mistress Hodstetter. She made him wish to be safe and comfortable within doors.
The table was laden with food and drink. A great fire burnt on the level hearth at the room end and the grey smoke went curling in woolly curves about the room. It was stifling and hot, but no one cared because they were accustomed to it. The table was cleared away and they began to dance to the music of an old scruffy man, hairy like a monkey, who played well on the violin, and a young man with a flute. There were perhaps thirty men and women. They sang as they danced in and out, round and round, stamping with their feet. They moved in a circle changing partners, and when the music altered its tune they stopped and every man kissed the woman he was with.
Nicholas danced with everyone except Catherine. He liked Mistress Beck, a jolly, apple-dumpling woman who kissed him with a great smack of the lips. She had a coarse and merry tongue and said that any woman in his arms would be lost, not know where she was, he was so large.
‘I’d be her guide,’ said Nicholas.
‘Fancy a great London gentleman like you honouring us poor folks.’
‘Mine’s the honour,’ said Nicholas. ‘Hasn’t it been strange to marry a German?’ he asked.
‘Germans are made just like other men,’ she said, laughing.
‘Have you children?’
‘One at present—a daughter, Urwyn—born last year.’
‘And what will she be—a little German or a little Cumbrian?’
‘I’m a Bewley,’ she said, as though she’d said ‘I’m a Howard’—‘And Bewleys are always Bewleys.’
‘And are not Becks always Becks?’
‘He is half a Bewley already.’
And at last Nicholas had the information he was seeking. He sat with Hans Opperer drinking on the settle near the fire and watched the dancing.
‘Now that’s a fine girl,’ he said to Opperer carelessly.
‘Which girl?’
‘The one with the yellow hair and the broad back—with the flowers on her clothes.’
‘Yes,’ said Opperer, his beard deep in his drinking-mug. He looked up and wiped his black beard. ‘That is Catherine—Catherine Hodstetter.’
‘Her father works in the mines?’
‘She has no father.’
‘That was her mother who came with her—standing now alone by the door?’
Opperer grinned. ‘Yes. You seem to take notice of her, Mr. Herries.’
Nicholas said: ‘I notice every woman—and so do you, I wager.’
Opperer’s gaze into the room was suddenly serious.
‘Her situation is a sad one. She came with her father and mother here three years back. Six months later, Hodstetter was found drowned in the Lake by Portinskill—a little place outside Keswick.’
‘That was a misfortune, but——’
‘Yes. They say that her mother is a witch.’
‘A witch?’ Nicholas, horrified, repeated.
‘They say so. They say Mistress Hodstetter contrived her man’s death. You know what country people are. And I am not myself certain. Catherine’s mother is not as other women. She is learned and goes into the country gathering herbs. They say she can heal any sickness.’ He dropped his voice. ‘They say she has been seen naked at night dancing at the Druids’ Circle. There is great fear because of her. This makes it a lonely life for Catherine, who is a good girl.’
Nicholas said nothing. He believed in witches and spells. His very soul trembled and, with that, he wished to rise and put his arm around Catherine and protect her. He watched her. She appeared happy enough. She danced with a grace and lightness that was remarkable in anyone of her strong vigorous frame, and when the dancers paused and all together sang a chorus, she lifted up her face, her eyes shining in a happy pleasure, and sang like a bird on a tree.
Joris Fisher was clearly her courtier; he danced with her a number of times and always his set, sulky face commanded hers. He spoke not at all, but when his arm was about her waist he held her as though he possessed her against the world.
In a pause while everyone was drinking and cracking chicken bones with their fingers and throwing marchpane into open grinning mouths, and the old monkey-man dreamily fondling the strings of his violin and the smoke turning faces into a ribald mist, Nicholas saw that she stood alone by the door. Then she slipped out.
He crossed the floor unnoticed and slipped out after her. She was alone, with the valley seethed in mist below her, while a moon, gold, on its back, lay in a sky of frosted milk: soft, white, with only this shred of gold, but the crisp of frost curling the breath, stiffening the rough ragged soil at their feet.
It seemed that she had expected him, for she turned at sight of the great shadow that he flung from the lighted door behind him and said:
‘I knew that one day you would come back.’
He did not touch her.
‘You remembered it then?’
Her hands were folded behind her lifted head. She was gazing at the gold moon-slip.
‘Oh, I remember many things. You are larger than most men.’
He came nearer to her so that the stiff shoulder of his doublet touched her sleeve.
‘It’s very cold. Is there nowhere we can go?’
She gave him her hand, smiling.
‘Of course.’
She led him a little way up the hill until the first brow where there was the smithy. They went in and closed the door behind them. Stumbling, he found some straw, very friendly with the smell of horses. He lay down in it and at once she was folded on to him, in his arms. There was a thick frothy moonlight from the window. They kissed many times. Her cheek lay against his. Her hand on his heart felt a tumultuous deep beating. He laid his hand gently on her breast and then began, with great delicacy, to undo the buttons of her dress.
Herself as gently as he, she stayed his hand.
‘I loved you from the first moment I saw you in Keswick. But we shall never be lovers—never, never, never.’
She said these last words with an infinity of sadness and, to his great surprise, he found that she was crying. Tears fell upon his palm. This roused him to a violent passion. He would have betrayed himself and her had it not been that she offered neither resistance nor response. His hand stayed on her uncovered breast. He allowed her to rise and arrange herself, coiling up the hair that had come uncoiled, fastening the buttons. He saw her as a dim aureoled shadow in the moonlight.
He sat up on the straw, staring at her.
‘It is for longer then,’ he said at last, ‘than a moment.’
‘For me it is for so long that it will never end. But for you, I am sure, only one girl more.’
She suddenly knelt down, catching his hand in hers.
‘We must not stay here. They will already wonder where you are.’
She put up her hand to his cheek.
‘You must understand that I am separate from everyone. My mother and I are outside all happiness, all real friendliness, and I think that our end will be very unfortunate. You are a gentleman and to-morrow you will go and never think of me again. But you have kissed me and held me in your arms, and that is as much good fortune, I expect, as I shall ever have in my life.’
‘How is this then?’ Nicholas said quickly. ‘How many hundreds of girls I have kissed I don’t know—kissed and forgotten. A year ago I kissed you for one moment and rode out of Keswick. A year later in a room with mirrors and candles I see a man of your country and the first thing I ask him is, “Do you know Catherine Hodstetter?” And the next day I ride North to find you.’
She caught him up. ‘A long room with mirrors and candles and two men are wrestling on a table. You look in the mirrors for someone’s face—’ She seemed ashamed. ‘I saw it all. My mother showed me . . . she has a power . . . she knew you would be here.’
‘Then,’ he cried eagerly, holding her once again tightly in his arms, ‘we are bound. In some way we are bound. Listen, I am here to-morrow. We will ride into the hills——’
She struggled a little and, once more to his own surprise, he released her.
She kneeled towards him, placed her hand on his heart inside the doublet. With her other hand drew his head down, and kissed his forehead, his eyes, his mouth. Then she slipped out of the door. When he followed her he saw only the mist stirring like water in the valley and the thin moon like a boat in the sky.
When he went into the shouting, smoking, drunken room she was not there, nor her mother.
Nor did he see her on the following day.