“I’m glad you came to take me a walk,” she continued —“Doesn’t Strelley Mill look pretty? Like a group of orange and scarlet fungi in a fairy picture. Do you know, I haven’t been, no, not for quite a long time. Shall we call now?”
“The daylight will be gone if we do. It is half-past five — more! I saw him — the son — the other morning.”
“Where?”
“He was carting manure — I made haste by.”
“Did he speak to you — did you look at him?”
“No, he said nothing. I glanced at him — he’s just the same, brick colour — stolid. Mind that stone — it rocks. I’m glad you’ve got strong boots on.”
“Seeing that I usually wear them.”
She stood poised a moment on a large stone, the fresh spring brook hastening towards her, deepening sidling round her.
“You won’t call and see them, then?” she asked.
“No. I like to hear the brook tinkling, don’t you?” he replied.
“Ah, yes — it’s full of music.”
“Shall we go on?” he said, impatient but submissive. “I’ll catch up in a minute,” said I.
I went in and found Emily putting some bread into the oven. “Come out for a walk,” said I.
“Now? Let me tell Mother — I was longing —”
She ran and put on her long grey coat and her red tam-o’-shanter. As we went down the yard, George called to me. “I’ll come back,” I shouted.
He came to the crew-yard gate to see us off. When we came out onto the path, we saw Lettie standing on the top bar of the stile, balancing with her hand on Leslie’s head. She saw us, she saw George, and she waved to us. Leslie was looking up at her anxiously. She waved again, then we could hear her laughing, and telling him excitedly to stand still, and steady her while she turned. She turned round, and leaped with a great flutter, like a big bird launching, down from the top of the stile to the ground and into his arms. Then we climbed the steep hill-side — Sunny Bank, that had once shone yellow with wheat, and now waved black tattered ranks of thistles where the rabbits ran. We passed the little cottages in the hollow scooped out of the hill, and gained the highlands that look out over Leicestershire to Charnwood on the left, and away into the mountain knob of Derbyshire straight in front and towards the right.
The upper road is all grassy, fallen into long disuse. It used to lead from the Abbey to the Hall; but now it ends blindly on the hill-brow. Half-way along is the old White House farm, with its green mounting-steps mouldering outside. Ladies have mounted here and ridden towards the Vale of Belvoir — but now a labourer holds the farm.
We came to the quarries, and looked in at the lime-kilns. “Let us go right into the woods out of the quarry,” said Leslie. “I have not been since I was a little lad.”
“It is trespassing,” said Emily.
“We don’t trespass,” he replied grandiloquently.
So we went along by the hurrying brook, which fell over little cascades in its haste, never looking once at the primroses that were glimmering all along its banks. We turned aside, and climbed the hill through the woods. Velvety green sprigs of dog-mercury were scattered on the red soil. We came to the top of a slope, where the wood thinned. As I talked to Emily I became dimly aware of a whiteness over the ground. She exclaimed with surprise, and I found that I was walking, in the first shades of twilight, over clumps of snowdrops. The hazels were thin, and only here and there an oak tree uprose. All the ground was white with snowdrops, like drops of manna scattered over the red earth, on the grey-green clusters of leaves. There was a deep little dell, sharp sloping like a cup, and white sprinkling of flowers all the way down, with white flowers showing pale among the first inpouring of shadow at the bottom. The earth was red and warm, pricked with the dark, succulent green of bluebell sheaths, and embroidered with grey-green clusters of spears, and many white flowerets. High above, above the light tracery of hazel, the weird oaks tangled in the sunset. Below, in the first shadows, drooped hosts of little white flowers, so silent and sad; it seemed like a holy communion of pure wild things, numberless, frail, and folded meekly in the evening light. Other flower companies are glad; stately barbaric hordes of bluebells, merry-headed cowslip groups, even light, tossing wood-anemones; but snowdrops are sad and mysterious. We have lost their meaning. They do not belong to us, who ravish them. The girls bent among them, touching them with their fingers, and symbolising the yearning which I felt. Folded in the twilight, these conquered flowerets are sad like forlorn little friends of dryads.
“What do they mean, do you think?” said Lettie in a low voice, as her white fingers touched the flowers, and her black furs fell on them.
“There are not so many this year,” said Leslie.
“They remind me of mistletoe, which is never ours, though we wear it.” said Emily to me.
“What do you think they say — what do they make you think, Cyril?” Lettie repeated.
“I don’t know. Emily says they belong to some old wild lost religion. They were the symbol of tears, perhaps, to some strange-hearted Druid folk before us.”
“More than tears,” said Lettie. “More than tears, they are so still. Something out of an old religion, that we have lost. They make me feel afraid.”
“What should you have to fear?” asked Leslie.
“If I knew I shouldn’t fear,” she answered. “Look at all the snowdrops”— they hung in dim, strange flecks among the dusky leaves —“look at them — closed up, retreating, powerless. They belong to some knowledge we have lost, that I have lost and that I need. I feel afraid. They seem like something in fate. Do you think, Cyril, we can lose things off the earth — like mastodons, and those old monstrosities — but things that matter — wisdom?”
“It is against my creed,” said I.
“I believe I have lost something,” said she.
“Come,” said Leslie, “don’t trouble with fancies. Come with me to the bottom of this cup, and see how strange it will be, with the sky marked with branches like a filigree lid.”
She rose and followed him down the steep side of the pit, crying, “Ah, you are treading on the flowers.”
“No,” said he, “I am being very careful.”
They sat down together on a fallen tree at the bottom. She leaned forward, her fingers wandering white among the shadowed grey spaces of leaves, plucking, as if it were a rite, flowers here and there. He could not see her face.
“Don’t you care for me?” he asked softly.
“You?”— she sat up and looked at him, and laughed strangely. “You do not seem real to me,” she replied, in a strange voice.
For some time they sat thus, both bowed and silent. Birds “skirred” off from the bushes, and Emily looked up with a great start as a quiet, sardonic voice said above us:
“A dove-cot, my eyes if it ain’t! It struck me I ‘eered a cooin’, an’ ’ere’s th’ birds. Come on, sweethearts, it’s th’ wrong place for billin’ an’ cooin’, in th’ middle o’ these ’ere snowdrops. Let’s ‘ave yer names, come on.”
“Clear off, you fool!” answered Leslie from below, jumping up in anger.
We all four turned and looked at the keeper. He stood in the rim of light, darkly; fine, powerful form, menacing us. He did not move, but like some malicious Pan looked down on us and said:
“Very pretty — pretty! Two — and two makes four. ’Tis true, two and two makes four. Come on, come on out o’ this ’ere bridal bed, an’ let’s ‘ave a look at yer.”