"They want me to stay at the Grange for a few weeks," she said, and smiled. "An hour ago I felt crushed and beaten – and now, though my voice has probably gone for good, I don't seem to mind. Isn't it almost bewilderingly curious that both these letters should have come to sweep my troubles away to-night?"
"No," said her companion; "it's distinctly natural – just what one would have expected. You wrote the man in Canada soon after you'd seen the specialist, and his answer was bound to arrive in the next few days."
"But I certainly didn't write the folks at the Grange."
Winifred's eyes twinkled. "As it happens, I did, two days ago. I ventured to point out their duty to them, and they were rather nice about it in another letter."
Agatha stretched herself out in the low chair with a little sigh of content. "Well," she said, "it probably wouldn't have the least effect if I scolded you. I believe I'm horribly worn out, Winny, and it will be a relief unspeakable to get away. If I can arrange to give up those pupils I'll go to-morrow."
Winifred made no answer, and kneeling with one elbow resting on the arm of her companion's chair gazed straight in front of her. They were both of them very weary of the long grim struggle, and now a change was close at hand.
CHAPTER V.
THE OLD COUNTRY
It was a still, clear evening of spring when Wyllard, unstrapping the ruchsack from his shoulders, sat down beside a frothing stream in a dale of Northern England. On arriving in London a week or two earlier he had found a letter from Mrs. Hastings, who was then in Paris, awaiting him, in which she stated that she could not at the moment say when she would go home again, but that she expected to advise him shortly. After answering it he started North, and, obtaining Agatha's address from Miss Rawlinson, went on again to a certain little town which stands encircled by towering fells beside a lake in the North Country.
He had, however, already recognised that his mission was rather a delicate one, and he decided that it would be advisable to wait until he heard from Mrs. Hastings before calling upon Miss Ismay. There then remained the question, what to do with the next few days. A conversation with some pedestrian tourists whom he met at his hotel, and a glance at a map of the hill-tracks decided him, and remembering that he had on several occasions kept the trail in Canada for close on forty miles on end, he bought a Swiss pattern ruchsack, and set out on foot through the fells.
Incidentally, he saw such scenery as gave him a new conception of the Old Country, and nearly broke the hearts of his new friends the tourists, who volunteered to show him the way over what they evidently considered to be a rather difficult pass. To their great astonishment the brown-faced stranger, who wore ordinary tight-fitting American attire and rather pointed American shoes, went up it apparently without an effort, and for the credit of the clubs they belonged to, it seemed incumbent on them to keep pace with him. They naturally did not know that he had carried bags of flour and mining tools over very much higher passes close up to the limit of eternal snow, but after two days' climbing they were, on the whole, relieved to part company with him.
A professional guide who overtook them, however, recognised the capabilities of the man when he noticed the way he lifted his feet and how he set them down. This, he decided, was one accustomed to walking among the heather, but he was wrong; for it was the trick the bushman learns when he plods through leagues of undergrowth and fallen branches, or the tall grass of the swamps; and it is a memorable experience to make a day's journey with such a man. For the first hour the thing seems easy, for the pace is never forced, but it also never slackens down; and as the hours go by the novice, who flounders and stumbles, grows horribly weary of trying to keep up with that steady, persistent swing.
Wyllard had travelled since morning along a ridge of fells when he sat down beside the water and contentedly filled his pipe. On the one hand, a wall of crags high above was growing black against the evening light, and the stream came boiling down clear as crystal among great boulder stones; but he had wandered through many a grander and more savage scene of rocky desolation, and it impressed him less than the green valley in front of him. He had, at least, never seen anything like that either on the Pacific slope or in Western Canada.
Early as it was in the season, the meadows between rock and water were green as emerald, and the hedge-rows, just flushed with verdure, were clipped and trimmed as though their owner loved them. There was not a dead tree in the larch copse which dipped to the stream, and all its feathery tassels were sprinkled with tiny flecks of crimson and wondrous green. Great oaks dotted the meadows, each one perfect in symmetry. It seemed that the men who held this land cared for single trees. The sleek, tame cattle that rubbed their necks on the level hedge-top and gazed at him ruminatively were very different from the wild, long-horned creatures whose furious stampede he had now and then headed off, riding hard while the roar of hoofs rang through the dust-cloud that floated like a sea fog across the sun-scorched prairie. Here, it seemed, all went smoothly; the whole vale was steeped in peace and tranquillity.
Then he noticed the pale primroses that pushed their yellow flowers up among the withered leaves, and the faint blue sheen beneath the beech trunks not far away. There was a vein of artistic daintiness in this man, and the elusive beauty of these things curiously appealed to him. He had seen the riotous, sensuous blaze of flowers kissed by Pacific breezes, and the burnished gold of wheat that rolled in mile-long waves; but it seemed to him that the wild things of the English North were, after all, more wonderful. They matched its deep peacefulness; their beauty was chaste, fairy-like, and ethereal.
By and bye a wood pigeon cooed softly somewhere in the shadows, and a brown thrush perched on a bare oak bough began to sing. The broken, repeated melody went curiously well with the rippling murmur of sliding water, and Wyllard leaned back with a smile to listen, though he could not remember ever having done anything of that kind before. His life had been a strenuous one, spent for the most part in the driving-seat of great ploughs that rent their ample furrows through virgin prairie, guiding the clinking binders through the wheat under a blazing sun, or driving the plunging dories through the clammy fog over short, slopping seas. Now, however, the tranquillity of the English valley stole in on him, and he began to understand how the love of that well-trimmed land clung to the men out West, who spoke of it tenderly as the Old Country.
Then, for he was in an unusually susceptible mood, he took a little deerhide case, artistically made by a Blackfoot Indian, from his pocket, and extracted from it the somewhat faded photograph of an English girl. He had got it from the lad he had buried among the ranges of the Pacific slope, and it had been his companion in many a desolate camp and on many a weary journey. The face was delicately modelled, and there was a freshness in it which is, perhaps, seldom seen outside the Old Country; but what pleased him more was the serenity in the clear, innocent eyes.
He was not in love with the picture – he would probably have smiled at the notion – but he had a curious feeling that he would meet the girl some day, and that it would then be a privilege only to speak to her. This was, after all, not so extravagant a fancy as it might appear, for romance, the mother of chivalry and many graces, still finds shelter in the hearts of such men as him from the wide spaces of the newer lands. Shrewd as they are, and practical, they see visions now and then, and, what is more, prove them to be realities with bleeding hands and toil incredible.
By and bye he put the photograph back in his pocket, and filled his pipe again, while it was almost dark before he had smoked it out. The thrush had gone, and only the ripple of the water broke the silence, until he heard footsteps on the stones behind him. Then, looking round, he saw a young woman moving towards the river, and he watched her with a quiet interest, for his perceptions were a little sharper than usual then, and it seemed to him that she was very much in harmony with what he thought of as the key-tone of the place. She was tall and shapely, and she moved with a quiet grace. When she stopped a moment, poised upon a shelf of rock as though considering the easiest way to the water, her figure fell into reposeful lines, but that was after all only what he had expected, for he now remembered that he had half-consciously studied the Englishwomen he had met in the West.
The Western women usually moved, and certainly spoke, with an almost superfluous vivacity and alertness. There was in them a feverish activity, which contrasted