BOOK IV

XIX

Tatham was returning alone from a run with the West Cumbrian hounds.  The December day was nearly done, and he saw the pageant of its going from a point on the outskirts of his own park.  The park, a great space of wild land extending some miles to the north through a sparsely peopled county, was bounded and intersected throughout its northerly section by various high moorland roads.  At a cross-road, leading to Duddon on the left, and to a remote valley running up the eastern side of Blencathra on the right, he reined up his horse to look for a moment at the sombre glow which held the western heaven; amid which the fells of Thirlmere and Derwentwater stood superbly ranged in threatening blacks and purples.  To the east and over the waste of Flitterdale, that great flat “moss” in which the mountains die away, there was the prophecy of moonrise; a pearly radiance in the air, a peculiar whiteness in the mists that had gathered along the river, a silver message in the sky.  But the wind was rising, and the westerly clouds rushing up.  The top of Blencathra was already hidden; it might be a wild night.

Only one luminous point was to be seen, at first, in all the wide and splendid landscape.  It shone from Threlfall Tower, a dark and indistinguishable mass amid its hanging woods.

“Old Melrose—­counting out his money!”

But as the scornful fancy crossed his mind, a few other dim and scattered lights began to prick the gloom of the fast-darkening valley.  That twinkle far away, in the direction of St. John’s Vale, might it not be the light of Green Cottage—­of Lydia’s lamp?

He sat his horse, motionless, consumed with longing and grief.  Yet, hard exercise in the open air, always seemed to bring him a kind of physical comfort.  “It was a jolly run!” he thought, yet half ashamed.  His young blood was in love with life, through all heartache.

Suddenly, a whirring sound from the road on his right, and the flash of moving lamps.  He saw that a small motor was approaching, and his mare began to fidget.

“Gently, old girl!”

The motor approached and slowed at the corner.

“Hallo Undershaw! is that you?”

The motor stopped and Undershaw jumped out, and turned off his engine.  Tatham’s horse was pirouetting.

“All right,” said Undershaw; “I’ll walk by you a bit.  Turn her up your road.”

The beautiful mare quieted down, and presently the two were in close talk, while the motor left to itself blazed on the lonely moorland road.

Undershaw was describing a visit he had paid that morning to old Brand, the bailiff, who was now quietly and uncomplainingly losing hold on life.

“He may go any time—­perhaps to-night.  The elder son’s departure has finished him.  I told the lad that if he cared to stay till his father’s death, you would see that he got work meanwhile on the estate; but he was wild to go—­not a scrap of filial affection that I could make out!—­and the poor old fellow has scarcely spoken since he left the house.  So there he is, left with the feeble old wife, and the half-witted son, who grows queerer and madder than ever.  I needn’t say the woman was very grateful—­”