CHAPTER VI

A BURNISHED STREAM

"IS this what you call the Dale-head?" asked Giles.

"Perhaps more properly higher up. But I think we mean the whole of the valley, as far as you can see, and beginning here. Isn't it pretty?"

It was more than pretty. She used a word inadequate.

They were seated by the river, on its grass bank. Not the little Midfell stream, but a more important watercourse; a river to which the Midfell stream was a tributary.

It flowed between steep banks; and the colour of the water was that of a burnished red-brown chestnut. Hundreds of stones, large enough to act as small breakwaters, lay scattered on the river-bed; and around each separate stone curled a perpetual wave, foam-white, with a gleam of golden light shining as from a fairy-lamp at its centre. This was repeated times without number.

Behind them and in front were rounded fells, like a series of land-waves struck into immobility, forming the sides of the valley; and every fell differed from its neighbour. Here was one shaded in purple and brown; there another bright grassy-green; yet another dark from base to summit with masses of bracken; a fourth clad in patches of dull red, purple rather than crimson, from early heather-bloom; and a round-topped hill which had donned a veil of blue gauze. To the left, higher up, might be seen a solitary farmhouse; a rough pathway, deluged with stones, winding thither.

"They would give us milk at the farm," remarked Phyllys. But, with a smile, he produced sandwiches and a cup.

"I don't know any place like this," murmured Phyllys, after their simple luncheon. She was in a state of measureless content.

Giles said little, and she hardly looked at him; yet she knew that he felt with her. That was the one thing she had lacked and longed for; and it made all the difference.

"Nor I." He had been thinking how like her hair was to the burnished chestnut of the water. "One hardly expects such a spot in England. Few of us know our own country."

Phyllys lay back, resting her head on folded arms, and looking at the sky. It gave Giles a fuller view than he had yet gained of her eyes. He forgot fell and river in the contemplation.

"I wonder," she murmured, "whether other worlds are half as lovely as this. I wonder whether they have stuffy meetings in Jupiter and Mars—and horrid good people making speeches about the badness of other good people?"

"Jupiter is probably too warm."

She went into a chime of laughter.

"I forgot! I ought to have known." She sat up suddenly. "Tell me about your home."

"You would find it flat." He refrained still from letting her know how soon she would see for herself. "No fells. No mountain-torrents."

"And the house?"

"Respectably old. There was a castle—once. Only a wall of it remains."

"And Mrs. Keith and 'Colin' live there with you. He is not really your cousin, I suppose?"

Giles explained the connection. Thomas Randolph, his grandfather, had one son and one daughter, James and Annie. The son, James, married; and his wife died soon after the birth of their only child—"myself," interjected Giles—the widower dying a little later, thus leaving an infant possessor of the Castle Hill property. The daughter, Annie, married Geoffry Keith, and she too died early; after which her husband married again, his second wife being a Miss Cecil Reeves. They had one little boy, named Colin.

"So at best he can only be called my step-cousin. But when my mother was taken, Mrs. Keith had entire charge of me; and on the death of my father that arrangement became permanent. Colin and I have been brothers from babyhood."

"I understand now. It always puzzled me. And was he not ill for a long time? Somebody said he had an accident when he was a boy, and didn't get over it for years."

"Yes." A stern set came to Giles' face, darkening it as a landscape is darkened by a cloud passing over the sun.

Phyllys was perplexed.

"Barbara is as much your cousin as I am," she remarked, saying the first thing that came into her head. "I suppose you would have asked her first to visit Castle Hill!"—"Heaven forbid!" was on Giles' lips—"But she never goes anywhere, so I come next."

"I think you come first," he said drily, and she laughed.

"If only I had the least hope of going!"

"I don't think it will be long before we meet again." His manner said that he intended it should not be. "Till then, I hope you will remember that you offered me your friendship."

Her colour went up. "But that was silly. We were strangers. I spoke without thinking."

"It would disappoint me if you took your words back."

"It was too soon. I am always saying things in a hurry, and then wishing I had not." She twisted a grass-blade round her fingers. "Does one ever quite get over doing that?"

He ignored the question. "Don't you think we know one another well enough now?"

"Of course I've rather wanted a friend—sometimes," she admitted. "The only one I had went away. There are Mr. and Mrs. Hazel, but Barbara tries to keep me from them. And they are much older. But people ought to wait till they are sure."

"You do not feel sure yet?"

The steady purposefulness of his gaze held her spellbound. It was not that he saw deeply, but that he stirred deep feeling in her. For a moment he had a curious sense that he might do what he willed with Phyllys.

It did not last. She dropped her eyes, and the spell was broken. He did not really as yet will anything further. Their mutual knowledge each of the other was small; and he only felt that he wished to know her better. Besides, he was a man of punctilious honour, and she had been confided to his care.

So they reverted to surface topics, and no more was said about friendship. The word to Giles meant little. If he wanted anything, he wanted more; but it served as a stepping-stone to intimacy. To Phyllys it meant, for the moment, a good deal—more than would have been guessed from her next careless remark—"I was afraid this morning it was going to be a wet day. That would have been provoking."

"There was an early shower, I believe."

"Just the Pride o' the Morning."

He looked an inquiry.

"It's a saying about here. When a little early shower comes, not meaning a wet day, they say, 'Oh, it's just the Pride o' the Morning.' Mr. Hazel sometimes calls 'me' that!"—smiling.

The name sounded far from inappropriate, yet he was conscious of revolt, as he inquired, "Who is Mr. Hazel?"

"Our Vicar. Such a kind man. But I know why he calls me so. It was one day—"

"Yes."

"I don't very often give in, but things were worrying. And I had a silly little cry in the meadow. He came upon me, and he said it was just an early shower—'just the pride o' the morning.' He told me one must not expect to have everything always smooth, but he hoped mine was going to be a happy life. And since then when we meet, he often says, 'Well, little Pride of the Morning, how goes the world with you now?'"

"I should like to know your Vicar."

"Would you? Barbara doesn't like him. And Grannie—sometimes—says he's too fond of ceremonies."

"I am sure I should like him."

Not till well on in the afternoon did they once more stand at the garden gate of Burn Cottage, within which sat the handsome old lady, with a look of trouble on her face. She had been during the interim sedulously lectured by her elder grand-daughter for lapse of principle; and her own conscience was not happy.

After all these years keeping the undesirable nephew out of reach, and tabooing his acquaintance for Phyllys, it was a degree startling that she should have succumbed at the first touch. To Barbara, over whom Giles had exercised no attraction—perhaps could not if he would!—the change of front was inexplicable. She had no imagination, and she could not picture those memories of Phyllys' father, first stirred by Mr. Dugdale, then called into life by Giles. In her eyes the consent was simply an act of weakness and folly. She neither knew nor cared what her grandmother's motives might be. She disliked the idea of Phyllys going to Castle Hill, and she never dreamt of searching into her own sub-surface workings, to find the hidden jealousy.

Having been long used to submit to the joint dictum of Barbara and Miss Robins, Mrs. Wyverne could not meet their condemnation with indifference. She took herself seriously to task for allowing the walk and consenting to the visit.

Still, consent was consent. When, after Giles' departure, a fresh attack was made upon her by the combined forces of the two women, she refused to withdraw permission.

"I cannot alter now," she said. "The matter is settled and I have given my word. If I have yielded wrongfully, I trust I may be forgiven. And I hope that Phyllys, when away from home, will not be led into evil."

Phyllys kissed her grandmother, in token of right intentions. What could she say? The idea of being "led into evil" by Giles was absurd. Though she did not yet know him well, she had not a particle of doubt as to his goodness.