'The swearing ploughman that I watched this morning—driving his plough through old pastures and swearing at the horse—"Dang ye! Darned old hoss! Pull up, will ye—pull up, dang ye!"
'Elterwater, and the soft grouping of the hills. The blue lake, the woods in tints of pale green and pinkish brown, nestling into the fells, the copses white with wind flowers. Everywhere, softness and austerity side by side—the "cheerful silence of the fells," the high exhilarating air, dark tortured crags and ghylls—then a soft and laughing scene, gentle woods, blue water, lovely outlines, and flower-carpeted fields.
'The exquisite colour of Westmoreland in May! The red of the autumn still on the hills—while the bluebells are rushing over the copses.'
The little cottage of Robin Ghyll, where the first chapters were written, stands, sheltered by its sycamore, high on the fell-side, above the road that leads to the foot of the Langdale Pikes. But—in the dream-days when the Fenwicks lived there!—it was the old cottage, as it was up to ten or fifteen years ago;—a deep-walled, low-ceiled labourer's cottage of the sixteenth century, and before any of the refinements and extensions of to-day were added.
The book was continued at Stocks, during a quiet summer. Then with late September came fatigue and discouragement. It was imperative to find some stimulus, some complete change of scene both for the tale and its writer. Was it much browsing in Saint-Simon that suggested to me Versailles? I cannot remember. At any rate by the beginning of October we were settled in an apartment on the edge of the park and a stone's throw from the palace. Some weeks of quickened energy and more rapid work followed—and the pleasures of that chill golden autumn are reflected in the later chapters of the book. Each sunny day was more magnificent than the last. Yet there was no warmth in the magnificence. The wind was strangely bitter; it was winter before the time. And the cold splendour of the weather heightened the spell of the great, dead, regal place; so that the figures and pageants of a vanished world seemed to be still latent in the sharp bright air—a filmy multitude.
This brilliance of an incomparable décor followed me back to Hertfordshire, and remained with me through winter days. But when the last pages came, in December, I turned back in spirit to the softer, kinder beauty amid which the little story had taken its rise, and I placed the sad second spring of the two marred lives under the dear shelter of the fells.
MARY A. WARD.
PART I
WESTMORELAND
'Who can contemplate Fame through clouds unfold
The star which rises o'er her steep, nor climb?'
CHAPTER I
Really, mother, I can't sit any more. I'm that stiff!—and as cold as anything.'
So said Miss Bella Morrison, as she rose from her seat with an affected yawn and stretch. In speaking she looked at her mother, and not at the painter to whom she had been sitting for nearly two hours. The young man in question stood embarrassed and silent, his palette on his thumb, brush and mahlstick suspended. His eyes were cast down: a flush had risen in his cheek. Miss Bella's manner was not sweet; she wished evidently to slight somebody, and the painter could not flatter himself that the somebody was Mrs. Morrison, the only other person in the room beside the artist and his subject. The mother looked up slightly, and without pausing in her knitting—'It's no wonder you're cold,' she said, sharply, 'when you wear such ridiculous dresses in this weather.'
It was now the daughter's turn to flush; she coloured and pouted. The artist, John Fenwick, returned discreetly to his canvas, and occupied himself with a fold of drapery.
'I put it on, because I thought Mr. Fenwick wanted something pretty to paint. And as he clearly don't see anything in me!'—she looked over her shoulder at the picture, with a shrug of mock humility concealing a very evident annoyance—'I thought anyway he might like my best frock.'
'I'm sorry you're not satisfied, Miss Morrison,' said the artist, stepping back from his canvas and somewhat defiantly regarding the picture upon it. Then he turned and looked at the girl—a coarsely pretty young woman, very airily clothed in a white muslin dress, of which the transparency displayed her neck and arms with a freedom not at all in keeping with the nipping air of Westmoreland in springtime—going up to his easel again after the look to put in another touch.
As to his expression of regret, Miss Morrison tossed her head.
'It doesn't matter to me!' she declared. 'It was father's fad, and so I sat. He promised me, if I didn't like it, he'd put it in his own den, where my friends couldn't see it. So I really don't care a straw!'
'Bella! don't be rude!' said her mother, severely. She rose and came to look at the picture.
Bella's colour took a still sharper accent; her chest rose and fell; she fidgeted an angry foot.
'I told Mr. Fenwick hundreds of times,' she protested, 'that he was making my upper lip miles too long—and that I hadn't got a nasty staring look like that—nor a mouth like that—nor—nor anything. It's—it's too bad!'
The girl turned away, and Fenwick, glancing at her in dismay, saw that she was on the point of indignant tears.
Mrs. Morrison put on her spectacles. She was a small, grey-haired woman with a face, wrinkled and drawn, from which all smiles seemed to have long departed. Even in repose, her expression suggested hidden anxieties—fears grown habitual and watchful; and when she moved or spoke, it was with a cold caution or distrust, as though in all directions she was afraid of what she might touch, of possibilities she might set loose.
She looked at the picture, and then at her daughter.
'It's not flattered,' she said, slowly. 'But I can't say it isn't like you, Bella.'
'Oh, I knew you'd say something like that, mother!' said the daughter, scornfully. She stooped and threw a shawl round her shoulders; gathered up some working materials and a book with which she had been toying during the sitting; and then straightened herself with an air at once tragic and absurd.
'Well, good-bye, Mr. Fenwick.' She turned to the painter. 'I'd rather not sit again, please.'
'I shouldn't think of asking you, Miss Morrison,' murmured the young man, moving aside to let her pass.
'Hullo, hullo! what's all this?' said a cheery voice at the door.
'Bella, where are you off to? Is the sitting done?'
'It's been going on two hours, papa, so I should think I'd had about enough,' said Miss Bella, making for the door.
But her father caught her by the arm.
'I say, we are smart!—aren't we, mamma? Well, now then—let me have a look.'
And drawing the unwilling girl once more towards the painter, he detained her while he scrutinised the picture.
'Do I squint, papa?' said Miss Morrison, with her head haughtily turned away.
'Wait a minute, my dear.'
'Have I got the colour of a barmaid, and a waist like Fanny's?' Fanny was the Morrison's housemaid, and was not slim.
'Be quiet, Bella; you disturb me.'
Bella's chin mounted still higher; her foot once more beat the ground impatiently, while her father looked from the picture to her, and back again.
Then he released her with a laugh. 'You may run away, child, if you want to. Upon my word, Fenwick, you're advancing!