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Heriot's Choice

<h2>CHAPTER XXI</h2> <h3>UNDER STENKRITH BRIDGE</h3> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> 'I never felt chill shadow in my heart Until this sunset.'—George Eliot. </div> </div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> A few days after the Wharton Hall clipping, Mildred went down to the station to see some friends off by the train to Penrith. A party of bright-faced boys and girls had invaded the vicarage that day, and Mildred, who was never happier than when surrounded by young people, had readily acceded to their petition to walk back with them to the station. It was a lovely July evening, and as Mildred waved her last adieu, and ascended the steps leading to the road, she felt tempted to linger, and, instead of turning homewards, to direct her steps to a favourite place they often visited—Stenkrith Bridge. Stenkrith Bridge lies just beyond the station, and carries the Nateby road across the river and the South Durham railway. On either side of the road there are picturesque glimpses of this lovely spot. Leaning over the bridge, one can see huge fragmentary boulders, deep shining pools, and the spray and froth of a miniature cascade. There is an interesting account of this place by a contemporary which is worthy of reproduction. He says, 'Above the bridge the water of Eden finds its way under, between, or over some curiously-shaped rocks, locally termed "brockram," in which, by the action of pebbles driven round and round by the water in times of flood, many curious holes have been formed. Just as it reaches the bridge, the water falls a considerable depth into a round-shaped pool or "lum," called Coop Kernan Hole: the word hole is an unnecessary repetition. The place has its name from the fact that by the action of the water it has been partly hollowed out between the rock; at all events, is cup or coop-shaped, and the water which falls into it is churned and agitated like cream in an old-fashioned churn, before escaping through the fissures of the rocks. 'After falling into Coop Kernan Hole, the water passes through a narrow fissure into another pool or lum at the low side of the bridge, called "Spandub," which has been so named because the distance of the rocks between which the river ran, and which overshadow it, could be spanned by the hand. 'We doubt not that grown men and adventurous youths had many a time stretched their hands across the narrow chasm, and remembered and talked about it when far away from their native place; and when strangers came to visit our town, and saw the beautiful river, on the banks of which it stands, they would be hard to convince that half a mile higher up it was only a span wide. But William Ketching came lusting for notoriety, stretched out his evil hand across the narrow fissure, declared he would be the last man to span Eden, and with his walling-hammer broke off several inches from that part of the rock where it was most nearly touching. "It was varra bad," says an old friend of ours who remembers the incident; "varra bad on him; he sudn't hev done it. It was girt curiosity to span Eden."' Mildred had an intense affection for this beautiful spot. It was the scene of many a merry gipsy tea; and in the summer Olive and she often made it their resort, taking their work or books and spending long afternoons there. This evening she would enjoy it alone, 'with only pleasant thoughts for company,' she said to herself, as she strolled contentedly down the smooth green glade, where browsing cattle only broke the silence, and then made her way down the bank to the river-side. Here she sat down, rapt for a time by the still beauty of the place. Below her, far as she could see, lay the huge gray and white stones through which the water worked its channel. Low trees and shrubs grew in picturesque confusion—dark lichen-covered rocks towered, jagged and massive, on either side of the narrow chasm. Through the arch of the bridge one saw a vista of violet-blue sky and green foliage. The rush of the water into Coop Kernan Hole filled the ear with soft incessant sound. Some one beside Mildred seemed rooted to the spot. 'This is a favourite place with you, I know,' said a voice in her ear; and Mildred, roused from her dreams, started, and turned round, blushing with the sudden surprise. 'Dr. Heriot, how could you? You have startled me dreadfully!' 'Did you not see me coming?' he returned, jumping lightly from one rock to the other, and settling himself comfortably a little below her. 'I saw you at the station and followed you here. Do I intrude on pleasanter thoughts?' he continued, giving her the benefit of one of his keen, quiet glances. 'No; oh no,' stammered Mildred. All at once she felt ill at ease. The situation was novel—unexpected. She had often encountered Dr. Heriot in her walks and drives, but he had never so frankly sought her out as on this evening. His manner was the same as usual—friendly, self-possessed—but for the first time in her life Mildred was tormented with a painful self-consciousness. Her slight confusion was unnoticed, however, for Dr. Heriot went on in the same cool, well-assured voice— 'You are such a comfortable person, Miss Lambert, one can always depend on hearing the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth from you. I confess I should have been grievously disappointed if you had sent me about my own business.' 'Am I given to dismiss you in such a churlish manner, Dr. Heriot?' returned Mildred, with a little nervous laugh; but she only thought, 'How strange of him to follow me here!' 'You are the soul of courtesy itself; you have a benevolent forehead, Miss Lambert. "Entertainment for Pilgrims" ought to be bound round it as a sort of phylactery. Why are women so much more unselfish than men, I wonder?' 'They need something to compensate them for their weakness,' she returned, softly. 'Their weakness is strength sometimes, and masters our brute force. I am in the mood for moralising, you see. Last Sunday evening I was reading my Pilgrim's Progress. I have retained my old childish penchant for it. Apollyon with his darts was my favourite nightmare for years. When I came to the part about Charity and the Palace Beautiful, I thought of you.' Mildred raised her eyes in surprise, and again the sensitive colour rose to her face. Dr. Heriot was given to moralising, she knew, but it was a little forced this evening. In spite of his coolness a suppressed excitement bordered the edge of his words; he looked like a man on the brink of a resolution. 'The damsel Discretion would suit me better,' she said at last, with assumed lightness. 'Yes, Discretion is your handmaid, but my name fits you more truly,' he returned, with a kind look which somehow made her heart beat faster. 'Your sympathy offers such a soft pillow for sore hearts, and aches and troubles—have you a ward for incurables, as well as for the sick and maimed waifs and strays of humanity, I wonder?' 'Dr. Heriot, what possesses you this evening?' returned Mildred, with troubled looks. How strangely he was talking!—was he in fun or earnest? Ought she to stay there and listen to him, or should she gently hint to him the expediency of returning home? A dim instinct warned her that this hour might be fraught with perilous pleasure; a movement would break its spell. She rose hastily. 'You are not going?' he exclaimed, raising himself in some surprise; 'it is still early. This is an ungrateful return for the compliment I have just paid you. I am certain it is Discretion now, and not Charity, that speaks.' 'They will be expecting me,' she returned. Dr. Heriot had risen to his feet, and now stretched out his hand to detain her. 'They do not want you,' he said, with a persuasive smile; 'they can exist an hour without Aunt Milly. Sit down again, Charity, I entreat you, for I have followed you here to ask your advice. I really need it,' he continued, seriously, as Mildred still hesitated; but a glance at the grave, kind face decided her. 'Perhaps, after all, he had some trouble, and she might help him. It could be no harm; it was only too pleasant to be sitting there monopolising his looks and words, usually shared with others. The opportunity might never occur again. She would stop and hear all that he had to say. Was he not her brother's friend, and hers also?' Dr. Heriot seemed in no hurry to explain himself; he sat throwing pebbles absently into the watery fissures at their feet, while Mildred watched him with some anxiety. Time had dealt very gently with Dr. Heriot; he looked still young, in the prime of life. A close observer might notice that the closely-cropped hair was sprinkled with gray, but the lines that trouble had drawn were almost effaced by the kindly hand of time. There was still a melancholy shade in the eyes, an occasional dash of bitterness in the kind voice, but the trouble lay far back and hidden; and it could not be denied that Dr. Heriot was visibly happier than he had been three years ago. Yes, it was true, sympathy bad smoothed out many a furrow; kindly fellowship and close intimacy had brightened the life of the lonely man; little discrepancies and angles had vanished under beneficent treatment. The young fresh lives around him, with their passionate interests, their single-eyed pursuits, lent him new interests, and fostered that superabundant benevolence; and Hope and its twin-sister Desire bloomed by the side of his desolate hearth. Dr. Heriot had ever told himself that passion was dead within him, slain by that deadly disgust and terror of years. 'A man cannot love twice as I loved Margaret,' he had said to his friend more than once; and the two men, drawn together by a loss so similar, and yet so diverse, had owned that in their case, and with their faithful tenacity, no second love could be possible. 'But you are a comparatively young man; you are in the very prime of life, Heriot; you ought to marry,' his friend had said to him once. 'I do not care to marry for friendship and companionship,' he had answered. 'My wife must be everything or nothing to me. I must love with passion or not at all.' And there had risen up before his mind the dreary spectacle of a degraded beauty that he once had worshipped, and which had power to charm him to the very last. It was three years since Dr. Heriot had uttered his bitter protest against matrimony, and since then there had grown up in his heart a certain sweet fancy, which had emanated first out of pure benevolence, but which, while he cherished and fostered it, had grown very dear to him. He was thinking of it now, as the pebbles splashed harmlessly in the narrow rivulets, while Mildred watched him, and thought with curious incongruity of the dark, sunless pool lying behind the gray rocks, and of the wild churning and seething of foamy waters which seemed to deaden their voices; would he ever speak, she wondered. She sat with folded hands, and a soft, perplexed smile on her face, as she waited, listening to the dreamy rush of the water. He roused himself at last in earnest. 'How good you are to me, Miss Lambert. After all, I have no right to tax your forbearance.' 'All friends have a right,' was the low answer. 'All friends, yes. I wonder what any very special friend dare claim from you? I could fancy your goodness without stint or limit then; it would bear comparison with the deep waters of Coop Kernan Hole itself.' 'Then you flatter me;' but she blushed, yes, to her sorrow, as Mildred rarely blushed. 'You see I am disposed to shelter myself beside it. Miss Lambert, I need not ask you—you know my trouble.' 'Your trouble? Oh yes; Arnold told me.' 'And you are sorry for me?' 'More than I can say,' and Mildred's voice trembled a little, and the tears came to her eyes. With a sort of impulse she stretched out her hand to him—that beautiful woman's hand he had so often admired. 'Thank you,' he returned, gratefully, and holding it in his. 'Miss Lambert, I feel you are my friend; that I dare speak to you. Will you give me your advice to-night, as though—as though you were my sister?' 'Can you doubt it?' in a voice so low that it was almost inaudible. A slight, almost imperceptible shiver passed over her frame, but her mild glance still rested on his averted face; some subtle sadness that was not pain seemed creeping over her; somewhere there seemed a void opened, an empty space, filled with a dying light. Mildred never knew what ailed her at that moment, only, as she sat there with her hands once more folded in her lap, she thought again of the dark, sunless pool lying behind the gray rocks, and of the grewsome cavern, where the churned and seething waters worked their way to the light. Somewhere from the distance Dr. Heriot's voice seemed to rouse her. 'You are so good and true yourself, that you inspire confidence. A man dare trust you with his dearest secret, and yet feel no dread of betrayal; you are so gentle and so unselfish, that others lay their burdens at your feet.' 'No, no—please don't praise me. I have done nothing—nothing—that any other woman would not have done,' returned Mildred, in a constrained tone. She shrank from this praise. Somehow it wounded her sensibility. He must talk of his trouble and not her, and then, perhaps, she would grow calm again, more like the wise, self-controlled Mildred he thought her. 'I only want to justify the impulse that bade me follow you just now,' he returned, with gentle gravity. 'You shall not lose the fruit of your humility through me, Miss Lambert. I am glad you know my sad story, it makes my task an easier one.' 'You must have suffered greatly, Dr. Heriot.' 'Ah, have I not?' catching his breath quickly. 'You do not know, how can you, how a man of my nature loves the woman he has made his wife.' 'She must have been very beautiful.' The words escaped from Mildred before she was aware. 'Beautiful,' he returned, in a tone of gloomy triumph. 'I never saw a face like hers, never; but it was not her beauty only that I loved; it was herself—her real self—as she was to others, never to me. You may judge the power of her fascination, when I tell you that I loved her to the last in spite of all—ay, in spite of all—and though she murdered my happiness. Oh, the heaven our home might have been, if our boy had lived,' speaking more to himself than to her, but her calm voice recalled him. 'Time heals even these terrible wounds.' 'Yes, time and the kindness of friends. I was not ungrateful, even in my loneliness. Since Margaret died, I have been thankful for moderate blessings, but now they cease to content me: in spite of my resolve never to call another woman my wife, I am growing strangely restless and lonely.' 'You have thought of some one; you want my advice, my assistance, perhaps.' Would those churning waters never be still? A fine trembling passed through the folded fingers, but the sweet, quiet tones did not falter. Were there two Mildreds, one suffering a new, unknown pain; the other sitting quietly on a gray boulder, with the water lapping to her very feet. 'Yes, I have thought of some one,' was the steady answer. 'I have thought of my ward.' 'Polly!' Ah, surely those seething waters must burst their bounds now, and overwhelm them with a noisy flood. Was she dreaming? Did she hear him aright? 'Yes, Polly—my bright-faced Polly. Miss Lambert, you must not grow pale over it; I am not robbing Aunt Milly of one of her children. Polly belongs to me.' 'As thy days so shall thy strength be;' the words seemed to echo in her heart. Mildred could make nothing of the pain that had suddenly seized on her; some unerring instinct warned her to defer inquiry. Aunt Milly!—yes, she was only Aunt Milly, and nothing else. 'You are right; Polly belongs to you,' she said, looking at him with wistful eyes, out of which the tender, shining light seemed somehow faded, 'but you must not sacrifice yourself for all that,' she continued, with the old-fashioned wisdom he had ever found in her. 'There you wrong me; it will be no sacrifice,' he returned, eagerly. 'Year by year Polly has been growing very dear to me. I have watched her closely; you could not find a sweeter nature anywhere.' 'She is worthy of a good man's love,' returned Mildred, in the same calm, impassive tone. 'You are so patient that I must not stint my confidence!' he exclaimed. 'I must tell you that for the last two years this thought has been growing up in my heart, at first with reluctant anxiety, but lately with increasing delight. I love Polly very dearly, Miss Lambert; all the more, that she is so dependent on me.' Mildred did not answer, but evidently Dr. Heriot found her silence sympathetic, for he went on in the same absorbed tone— 'I do not deny that at one time the thought gave me pain, and that I doubted my ability to carry out my plan, but now it is different. I love her well enough to wish to be her protector; well enough to redeem her father's trust. In making this young orphan my wife, I shall console myself; my conscience and my heart will be alike satisfied.' 'She is very young,' began Mildred, but he interrupted her a little sadly. 'That is my only remaining difficulty—she is so young. The discrepancy in our ages is so apparent. I sometimes doubt whether I am right in asking her to sacrifice herself.' A strange smile passed over Mildred's face. 'Are you sure she will regard it in that light, Dr. Heriot?' 'What do you think?' he returned, eagerly. 'It is there I want your advice. I am not disinterested. I fear my own selfishness, my hearth is so lonely. Think how this young girl, with her sweet looks and words, will brighten it. Dare I venture it? Is Polly to be won?' 'She is too young to have formed another attachment,' mused Mildred. 'As far as I know, she is absolutely free; but I cannot tell, it is not always easy to read girls.' A fleeting thought of Roy, and a probable childish entanglement, passed through Mildred's mind as she spoke, but the next moment it was dismissed as absurd. They were on excellent terms, it was true, but Polly's frank, sisterly affection was too openly expressed to excite suspicion, while Roy's flirtations were known to be legion. A perfectly bewildering number of Christian names were carefully entered in Polly's pocket-book, annotated by Roy himself. Polly was cognisant of all his love affairs, and alternately coaxed and scolded him out of his secrets. 'And you think she could be induced to care for her old guardian?' asked Dr. Heriot, and there was no mistaking the real anxiety of his tone. 'Why do you call yourself old?' returned Mildred, almost brusquely. 'If Polly be fond of you, she will not find fault with your years. Most men do not call themselves old at eight-and-thirty.' 'But I have not led the life of most men,' was the sorrowful reply. 'Sometimes I fear a bright young girl will be no mate for my sadness.' 'It has not turned you into a misanthrope; you must not be discouraged, Dr. Heriot; trouble has made you faint-hearted. The best of your life lies before you, you may be sure of that.' 'You know how to comfort, Miss Lambert. You lull fears to sleep so sweetly that they never wake again. You will wish me success, then?' 'Yes, I will wish you success,' she returned, with a strange melancholy in her voice. Was it for her to tell him that he was deceiving himself; that benevolence and fancy were painting for him a future that could never be verified? He would take this young girl into the shelter of his honest heart, but would he satisfy her, would he satisfy himself? Would his hearth be always warm and bright when she bloomed so sweetly beside it; would her innocent affection content this man, with his deep, passionate nature, and yearning heart; would there be no void that her girlish intellect could not fill? Alas! she knew him too well to lay such flattering unction to her soul; and she knew Polly too. Polly would be no child-wife, to be fed with caresses. Her healthy woman's nature would crave her husband's confidence without stint and limit; there must be response to her affection, an answer to every appeal. 'I will wish you success,' she had said to him, and he had not detected the sadness of her tone, only as he turned to thank her she had risen quickly to her feet. 'Is it so late? I ought not to have kept you so long,' he exclaimed, as he followed her. 'Yes, the sun has set,' returned Mildred hurriedly; but as they walked along side by side she suddenly hesitated and stopped. She had an odd fancy, she told him, but she wanted to see the dark pool on the other side of the gray rock, Coop Kernan Hole she thought they called it, for through all their talk it had somehow haunted her. 'If you will promise me not to go too near,' he had answered, 'for the boulders are apt to be slippery at times.' And Mildred had promised. He was a little surprised when she refused all assistance and clambered lightly from one huge boulder to another, and still more at her quiet intensity of gaze into the black sullen pool. It was so unlike Mildred—cheerful Mildred—to care about such places. The sunset had quite died away, but some angry, lurid clouds still lingered westward; the air was heavy and oppressed, no breeze stirred the birches and aspens; below them lay Coop Kernan Hole, black and fathomless, above them the pent-up water leaped over the rocks with white resistless force. 'We shall have a storm directly; this place looks weird and uncanny to-night; let us go.' 'Yes, let us go,' returned Mildred, with a slight shiver. 'What is there to wait for?' What indeed? She did not now refuse the assistance that Dr. Heriot offered her; her energy was spent, she looked white and somewhat weary when they reached the little gate. Dr. Heriot noticed it. 'You look as if you had seen a ghost. I shall not bring you to this place again in the gloaming,' he said lightly; and Mildred had laughed too. What had she seen? Only a sunless pool, with night closing over it; only gray rocks, washed evermore with a foaming torrent; only a yawning chasm, through which churning waters seethed and worked their way, where a dying light could not enter; and above thunder-clouds, black with an approaching storm. 'Yes, I shall come again; not now, not for a long time, and you shall bring me,' she had answered him, with a smile so sweet and singular that it had haunted him. True prophetic words, but little did Mildred know when and how she would stand beside Coop Kernan Hole again. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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