The Hillman Part 5

"Come and I will show you," he answered, opening the gate to let her through. "Keep close to the hedge until we come to the end of the plow; and then--but no, I won't antic.i.p.ate. This way!"

She walked by his side, conscious every now and then of his frankly admiring eyes as he looked down at her. She herself felt all the joy of a woman of the world imbibing a new experience. She did not even glance toward the dismantled motor in the barn which they pa.s.sed.

"I am glad," he remarked presently, "that you look upon us more charitably than your maid."

"Aline is a good girl," Louise said, smiling, "but hot-water taps and electric lights are more to her than suns.h.i.+ne and hills. Do you know,"

she went on, "I feel like a child being led through an undiscovered country, a land of real adventures. Which way are we going, and what are we going to see? Tell me, please!"

"Wait," he begged. "It is just a queer little corner among the hills, that is all."

They reached the end of the plowed field, and, pa.s.sing through a gate, turned abruptly to the left and began to climb a narrow path which bordered the boundary wall, and which became steeper every moment. As they ascended, the orchard and the long, low house on the other side seemed to lie almost at their feet. The road and the open moorland beyond, stretching to the encircling hills, came more clearly into sight with every backward glance. Louise paused at last, breathless.

"I must sit down," she insisted. "It is too beautiful to hurry over."

"It is only a few steps farther," he told her, holding out his hand; "just to where the path winds its way round the hill there. But perhaps you are tired?"

"On the contrary," she a.s.sured him, "I never felt so vigorous in my life. All the exercise I take, as a rule, is in Kensington Gardens; and look!" She pointed downward to her absurd little shoes, and held out her hand, "You will have to help me," she pleaded.

The last few steps were, indeed, almost precipitous. Fragments of rock, protruding through the gra.s.s and bushes, served as steps. John moved on a little ahead and pulled her easily up. Even the slight tightening of his fingers seemed to raise her from her feet. She looked at him wonderingly.

"How strong you are!"

"A matter of weight," he answered, smiling. "You are like a feather. You walk as lightly as the fairies who come out on midsummer night's eve and dance in circles around the gorse-bushes there."

"Is it the home of the fairies you are taking me to?" she asked. "If you have discovered that, no wonder you find us ordinary women outside your lives!"

He laughed.

"There are no fairies where we are going," he a.s.sured her.

They were on a rough-made road now, which turned abruptly to the right a few yards ahead, skirting the side of a deep gorge. They took a few steps further, and Louise stopped short with a cry of wonder.

Around the abrupt corner an entirely new perspective was revealed--a little hamlet, built on a shoulder of the mountains; and on the right, below a steep descent, a wide and sunny valley. It was like a tiny world of its own, hidden in the bosom of the hills. There was a long line of farm-buildings, built of gray stone and roofed with red tiles; there were fifteen or twenty stacks; a quaint, white-washed house of considerable size, almost covered on the southward side with creepers; a row of cottages, and a gray-walled enclosure--stretching with its white tombstones to the very brink of the descent--in the midst of which was an ancient church, in ruins at the further end, partly rebuilt with the stones of the hillside.

Louise looked around her, silent with wonder. A couple of sheep-dogs had rushed out from the farmhouse and were fawning around her companion. In the background a gray-bearded shepherd, with Scottish plaid thrown over his shoulder, raised his hat.

"It isn't real, is it?" she asked, clinging for a moment to John Strangewey's arm.

He patted one of the dogs and smiled down at her.

"Why not? William Elwick there is a very real shepherd, I can a.s.sure you. He has sat on these hills for the last sixty-eight years."

She looked at the old man almost with awe.

"It is like the Bible!" she murmured. "Fancy the sunrises he must have seen, and the sunsets! The coming and the fading of the stars, the spring days, the music of the winds in these hollow places, booming to him in the night-time! I want to talk to him. May I?"

He shook his head. The old man was already shambling off.

"Better not," he advised. "You would be disappointed, for William has the family weakness--he cannot bear the sight of a woman. You see, he is pretending now that there is something wrong with the hill flock. You asked where the land was that we tilled. Now look down. Hold my arm if you feel giddy."

She followed the wave of his ash stick. The valley sheer below them, and the lower hills, on both sides, were parceled out into fields, enclosed within stone walls, reminding her, from the height at which they stood, of nothing so much as the quilt upon her bed.

"That's where all our pasture is," he told her, "and our arable land. We grow a great deal of corn in the dip there. All the rest of the hillside, and the moorlands, of course, are fit for nothing but grazing; but there are eleven hundred acres down there from which we can raise almost anything we choose."

Her eyes swept this strange tract of country backward and forward. She saw the men like specks in the fields, the cows grazing in the pasture like toy animals. Then she turned and looked at the neat row of stacks and the square of farm-buildings.

"I am trying hard to realize that you are a farmer and that this is your life," she said.

He swung open the wooden gate of the churchyard, by which they were standing. There was a row of graves on either side of the prim path.

"Suppose," he suggested, "you tell me about yourself now--about your own life."

The hills parted suddenly as she stood there looking southward. Through the chasm she seemed to see very clearly the things beyond. Her own life, her own world, spread itself out--a world of easy triumphs, of throbbing emotions always swiftly ministered to, always leaving the same dull sensation of discontent; a world in which the pathways were broad and smooth, but in which the end seemed always the same; a world of receding beauties and mocking desires. The faces of her friends were there--men and women, brilliant, her intellectual compeers, a little tired, offering always the same gifts, the same homage.

"My life, and the world in which I live, seem far away just now," she said quietly. "I think that it is doing me good to have a rest from them. Go on talking to me about yourself, please."

He smiled. He was just a little disappointed.

"We shall very soon reach the end of all that I have to tell you," he remarked. "Still, if there is anything you would like to know--"

"Who were these men and women who have lived and died here?" she interrupted, with a little wave of her hand toward the graves.

"All our own people," he told her; "laborers, shepherds, tenant-farmers, domestic servants. Our clergyman comes from the village on the other side of that hill. He rides here every Sunday on a pony which we have to provide for him."

She studied the names upon the tombstones, spelling them out slowly.

"The married people," he went on, "are buried on the south side; the single ones and children are nearer the wall. Tell me," he asked, after a moment's hesitation, "are you married or single?"

She gave a little start. The abruptness of the question, the keen, steadfast gaze of his compelling eyes, seemed for a moment to paralyze both her nerves and her voice. Again the hills rolled open, but this time it was her own life only that she saw, her own life, and one man's face which she seemed to see looking at her from some immeasurable distance, waiting, yet drawing her closer toward him, closer and closer till their hands met.

She was terrified at this unexpected tumult of emotion. It was as if some one had suddenly drawn away one of the stones from the foundation of her life. She found herself repeating the words on the tombstone facing her:

"And of Elizabeth, for sixty-one years the faithful wife and helpmate of Ezra c.u.mmings, mother of his children, and his partner in the life everlasting."

Her knees began to shake. There was a momentary darkness before her eyes. She felt for the tombstone and sat down.

IV

The churchyard gate was opened and closed noisily. They both glanced up.

Stephen Strangewey was coming slowly toward them along the flinty path.

Louise, suddenly herself again, rose briskly to her feet.

"Here comes your brother," she said. "I wish he wouldn't glower at me so! I really am not such a terrible person as he seems to think."