The Hillmen

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 166, 4 October 1927, Page 14

The Hillmen

E. PHILLIRS OPPENHEIM

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS Chapters I and ll.—Louise finds that she, her maid and chauffeur, are stranded on the Cumberland hills. The car has broken down. The Hillman comes to their aid. He escorts them to his home. John Strange wey introduces Louise to his elder brother Stephen. The family have a keen dislike to the fair sex, and it is years since a woman crossed the threshold. Stephen's welcome is hostile. In the large oid-fashioned bedroom Louise notes the family tree. The name Strangewey sounds familiar. At the foot of the stairs John meets her in evening dress. Louise adapts herself, and does justice; to the formidable meal. Stephen announces that they are haters of her sex, ;und enters into some family particulars to justify this attitude. The family portraits are examined. At ten o’clock *he bids them good-night. CHAPTER 111 (Continued) That is just your point of view, Aline.” she murmured; “but happiness —well, you would not understand. Tuey ar© strange nun, these two. The young one is different now, but as he grows older he will be like his brother. Vly hat. quickly, Aline! If I am not in that orchard in five minutes 1 shall be miserable! ” Louise found her way without difficulty across a cobbled yard, through a postern gate set in a red-brick wall, into the orchard. Very slowly, and with her head turned upward tow£ rd the trees, she made her way toward the boundary wall. Once, with a little exclamation of pleasure, she drew down a bough of the soft, cool blossom and pressed it against her cheek. She stopped for a moment or two to examine the contents of a row of chicken coops, and at every few steps she turned around to face the breeze which came: sweeping across the moorland from the other side of the house. Arrived at the farther end of the orchard, she came to a gate, against which she rested for a moment, leaning her arms upon the topmost bar. Before her was the little belt of ploughed earth, the fresh, pungent odour of which was a new tiling to her; a little way to the right, the roiling moorland, starred with clumps of gorse; in front, across the field on the other side of the grey stone wall, the rock-strewn hills. The sky—unusually blue it seemed to her, was dotted all over with little masses of fieecy, white clouds. She lingered there, absolutely bewildered by the rapid growth in her brain and senses of what surely must be ;*om« newly-kindled faculty of appreciation. There was a beauty in the which she had not felt before. She turned her head almost lazily a: tiie sound of a man’s voice. A team ot horses, straining at a plough, wore coming round th<- bend of the field, and by their side, talking to the labourer "3 guided them, was John Strange©he watched him as he came

into sight up the steep rise. Against the empty background, he seemed to lose nothing of the size and strength that had impressed her on the previous night. He was bareheaded and she noticed for the first time that his closely-cropped fair hair was inclined to curl a little near the ears. He walked in step with the ploughman by his side, but without any of the labourer’s mechanical plod, with a spring in his footsteps, indeed, as if his life and thoughts were full of joyous things. He was wearing black-and-white tweed clothes, a little shabby but well-fitting; breeches and gaiters; thick boots, plentifully caked now with mud. He was pointing with his stick along the furrow, so absorbed in the Instructions he was giving that ho was almost opposite the gate before ho was aware of her presence. He promptly abandoned his task and approached her. “Good morning! You have slept well?” he asked. “Better, I think, than ever before in my life,** she answered. “Differently, at any rate. And such an awakening!” He looked at her, a little puzzled. The glow upon her face and the sunlight upon her brown hair kept him silent. He was content to look at her and wonder. “Tell me,” she demanded impetuously, ‘ is this a little corner of fairyland that you have found? Does the sun always shine like this? Does the earth always smell as sweetly, and are your trees always :in blossom? Does your wind always taste as if God had breached the elixir of life into it?” He turned around to follow the sweep of her eyes. Something of the same glow seemed to rest for a moment upon his face. “It is good,” he said, “to find what you love so much appreciated by some one else.” They stood together in a silence almost curiously protracted. Then the ploughman passed again with his team of horses, and John called out some instructions to him. She followed him down to earth. “Tell me, Mr. Strange wey,” she inquired, “where are your farm-build-ings?” “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 plough; and then—but now—l won’t anticipate. This way!” Sue 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 passed. “Which way are we going, and what are we going to zee? Tell me, please 1.”

“Wait,” he began. “It is just a queer little corner among the hills, that is all.” They reached the end of the ploughed field’ and, passing 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 ?” “You will have to help me,” she pleaded. The last few steps were, indeed, almost precipitous. Fragments of rock, protruding through the grass 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!” They were on a roughly-made road now, which turned abruptly to the right a few yards ahead, skirting the side of a deep gorge. Thej'- 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 mountain; 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 grey stone and roofed witli red tiles; there were 15 or 20

stacks; a quaint, white-washed house of considerable size, almost covered on the southward side ,with creepers; a row of cottages, and a grey-walled enclosure —stretching with its white tombstones to the very brink of the descent-r-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 grey-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. “Why not? William Elwick there is a very real shepherd, I can assure you. He has sat on these hills for the last 68 years.” “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 1,100 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 realise 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 pa^h. “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; “labourers, 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, seeiped for a moment to paralyse 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, vet 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 61 years the faithful wife and helpmate of Ezra Cummings, 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. „ To be continued.