Part 9 (1/2)
”Been seeing the train away?” the latter suggested. ”It's a popular diversion with idle folk.”
”I was saying good-by to somebody I met on the west coast,” Vane explained.
”Weel,” chuckled Nairn, ”she has bonny een.”
CHAPTER V
THE OLD COUNTRY
A month after Vane said good-by to Kitty he and Carroll alighted one evening at a little station in northern England. Brown moors stretched about it, for the heather had not bloomed yet, rolling back in long slopes to the high ridge which cut against leaden thunder-clouds in the eastern sky. To the westward, they fell away; and across a wide, green valley smooth-backed heights gave place in turn to splintered crags and ragged pinnacles etched in gray and purple on a vivid saffron glow. The road outside the station gleamed with water, and a few big drops of rain came splas.h.i.+ng down, but there was a bracing freshness in the mountain air.
The train went on, and Vane stood still, looking about him with a poignant recollection of how he had last waited on that platform, sick at heart, but gathering his youthful courage for the effort that he must make. It all came back to him--the dejection, the sense of loneliness--for he was then going out to the Western Dominion in which he had not a friend. Now he was returning, moderately prosperous and successful; but once again the feeling of loneliness was with him--most of those whom he had left behind had made a longer journey than he had done. Then he noticed an elderly man, in rather shabby livery, approaching, and he held out his hand with a smile of pleasure.
”You haven't changed a bit, Jim!” he exclaimed. ”Have you got the young gray in the new cart outside?”
”T' owd gray was shot twelve months since,” the man replied. ”Broke his leg comin' down Hartop Bank. New car was sold off, done, two or t'ree years ago.”
”That's bad news. Anyway, you're the same.”
”A bit stiffer in the joints, and maybe a bit sourer,” was the answer.
Then the man's wrinkled face relaxed. ”I'm main glad to see thee, Mr.
Wallace. Master wad have come, only he'd t' gan t' Manchester suddenly.”
Vane helped him to place their baggage into the trap and then bade him sit behind; and as he gathered up the reins, he glanced at the horse and harness. The one did not show the breeding of the gray he remembered, and there was no doubt that the other was rather the worse for wear.
They set off down the descending road, which wound, unconfined, through the heather, where the raindrops sparkled like diamonds. Farther down, they ran in between rough limestone walls with gleaming spar in them, smothered here and there in trailing brambles and clumps of fern, while the streams that poured out from black gaps in the peat and flowed beside the road flashed with coppery gold in the evening light. It was growing brighter ahead of them, though inky clouds still clung to the moors behind.
By and by, ragged hedges, rent and twisted by the winds, climbed up to meet them, and, clattering down between the straggling greenery, they crossed a river sparkling over banks of gravel. After that, there was a climb, for the country rolled in ridge and valley, and the crags ahead, growing nearer, rose in more rugged grandeur against the paling glow.
Carroll gazed about him in open appreciation as they drove.
”This little compact country is really wonderful, in its way!” he exclaimed. ”There's so much squeezed into it, even leaving out your towns. Parts of it are like Ontario---the southern strip I mean--with the plow-land, orchards and homesteads sprinkled among the woods and rolling ground. Then your Midlands are like the prairie, only that they're greener--there's the same sweep of gra.s.s and the same sweep of sky, and this”--he gazed at the rugged hills rent by winding dales--”is British Columbia on a miniature scale.”
”Yes,” agreed Vane; ”it isn't monotonous.”
”Now you have hit it! That's the precise difference. We've three belts of country, beginning at Labrador and running west--rock and pine scrub, level prairie, and ranges piled on ranges beyond the Rockies. Hundreds of leagues of each of them, and, within their limits, all the same. But this country's mixed. You can get what you like--woods, smooth gra.s.s-land, mountains--in a few hours' ride.”
Vane smiled.
”Our people and their speech and habits are mixed, too. There's more difference between county and county in thirty miles than there is right across your whole continent. You're cast in the one mold.”
”I'm inclined to think it's a good one,” laughed Carroll. ”What's more, it has set its stamp on you. The very way your clothes hang proclaims that you're a Westerner.”
Vane laughed good-humoredly; but as they clattered through a sleepy hamlet with its little, square-towered church overhanging a brawling river, his face grew grave. Pulling up the horse, he handed the reins to Carroll.
”This is the first stage of my pilgrimage. I won't keep you five minutes.”
He swung himself down, and the groom motioned to him.