Phemie Keller

After parting from his new friend, Captain Stondon ascended the path that led past the waterfall, across the little mountain stream, and half way to the top of Helbeck. It was hard work climbing up the track which wound now through rocks, now over stones, till skirting the side of the mountain it bore off straight towards Grassenfel.

Heather, purple and glowing, bordered the track—wild flowers grew beside it. The whole earth was tinted with the hues of August. The richest, the most luxuriant month of all the year was sweeping, like a king in his glory, over the hills and the valleys, decking the former in their robes of state, clothing the latter with the yellow of the ripening corn and the emerald of the aftermath. To the right lay Tordale, bathed in the beams of the setting sun; below him lay the defile that led to Grassenfel; and, like a speck, he could discern the Broken Bridge which he must cross on his way back to his inn. Every crag and peak of Skillanscar shone in the bright rays of the glory wherein the whole landscape was steeped; and Captain Stondon, who had sat himself down amongst the heather to watch to its close this sunset amid the mountains, acknowledged to his heart that he had never seen anything in the way of scenery which so thoroughly satisfied and filled his soul as the smiling valley and the desolate hills—the gloomy ravine and the grey rugged mountains, on all of which the sun poured his light as though he were blessing the green earth ere leaving her to darkness and repose.

At last, with more than his accustomed pomp of red and gold and purple, he set behind the hills; and, as he did so, the cloud Mr. Conbyr had noticed, rolled up from the east, covering Helbeck with a dark curtain of gloom. It was very grand to see Skillanscar reflecting back the glory of the western sky, but it was by no means agreeable to Captain Stondon to perceive a storm brewing so near him. He knew he had lingered too long on the road already; for which reason he quickened his pace, and hurried to reach the point where the path began to descend into the ravine below. If he could but get to the Broken Stone bridge before the rain began, he thought he should be better able to work his way to Grassenfel.

It was not easy, however, to walk fast along the narrow track he was following, and when he at length commenced to descend, a flash of lightning heralded the approach of the coming storm. If his life had depended on it, Captain Stondon could not have helped halting to listen for the first peal of the thunder. After a pause it came, breaking the silence at first with a sullen roar like that of a distant cannonade; but with every flash it drew nearer and nearer, echoing from mountain to mountain, from summit to summit, till one might almost have thought that height was defying height, and firing volley after volley across the defile.

With the sun the wind had sunk to rest likewise, and as he stood watching the lightning darting down the hill-sides, running along the rocks, and leaping from crag to crag like a living foe, Captain Stondon became conscious that the air had suddenly become warm and oppressive, and that a heat like that of a furnace seemed to pervade the atmosphere.

“What an idiot I was to come this way at all,” he thought; “what a still greater idiot to loiter as I have done.” And with the lightning racing past him, with the thunder crashing and roaring overhead, the officer turned his face steadily towards the defile and pursued his road downwards.

But spite of all his haste he got on but slowly. In places the descent was steep and the path slippery; wherever grass grew, or wherever rock and stone mixed with the earth, it was difficult to get a firm footing. What with the evening shadows which were beginning to fall, and the darkness of the cloud overhead, and the dazzling flashes of the lightning that made everything seem darker afterwards for their sudden brilliancy, he soon found he was feeling his way rather than seeing it—groping down the path rather than pacing it securely.

“If I could but reach the road in the ravine,” he muttered, as he slipped and staggered and recovered himself, and then slipped again. “If I were only safe at the bottom I might——”

He never completed that mental sentence, for at the instant he stumbled over a loose stone and rolled down the path, clutching as he went at the short grass, at the heather, at the brambles.

Fighting for dear life, he caught sticks and stones; he tried to save himself by grasping the very earth itself; he saw as he went over and over, the mountain peaks, the ravine, the road he had been trying to reach, the track by which he had descended. He could see at that moment as he could not have seen had he been standing erect, with the noontide sun shining upon him. Even in his struggle he found time to wonder what would stop him—whether he should be dashed to pieces? Among the mountain peaks—a hundred miles above him as it seemed—the thunder was pealing. He heard it as he had heard the roaring of cannon on battle-fields far away. The lightning came flashing down among the rocks, and he found time to remember it resembled the flash which followed “Fire!” in the days when he was fighting like the best; and then all at once he held out his arms instinctively to save himself, and with a crash his descent was arrested; and stunned, and bruised, and battered—he remembered no more.

When he came to his senses it was dark, and the rain pouring in torrents; the lightning had ceased; the thunder had rolled far away; there was not a sound to be heard save the rushing of the rain, and the greedy noise which the dry earth made as she drank the welcome moisture in. It was some time before he could remember what had happened, and then he tried to raise himself, but fell back shrieking with pain.

He shouted for help, but if help had been close at hand, the noise of the pelting rain sweeping down the mountains would have drowned his feeble cries. Mercilessly, pitilessly the rain beat upon him as he lay there powerless. With an effort he turned his face towards the piece of rock which had stayed his fall; and while the large drops fell on his unprotected head, he lay and thought in a kind of half delirium about the end that was to be.

Was he to die there? Was he to die all alone on the mountain side with the rain pouring down upon him, alone in this solitude, amid the darkness of night? Before now he had lain wounded on a battle-field, but that had not seemed so desolate as this. His comrades had sought him out then, but here no one would dream of looking for him. His landlord at Grassenfel did not know where he had gone; he had no one to miss him—to wonder at his absence; no one in Cumberland—no one on earth.

If Montague Stondon could only imagine where he was lying, how happy he would be. Was he to die thus to gratify him? Was the life-story (one which had been none too happy) to be finished thus? How long could he lie there and live? Was it likely any one would find him? Would his body ever be discovered, or would it lie there for the winter’s snows to fall on?—for the winter’s wind to moan over?

If he was not found, how soon could Montague Stondon take possession of Marshlands? Was there any chance of making himself heard? How far down the ravine did he lie? When the morning dawned he should be able to see. His arm was broken, he supposed, but the intolerable pain in his ankle was harder to endure than that. He tried once again to raise himself, and, spite of what the effort cost, managed to get his back up against the rock. He was drenched with rain; a pool had formed round about where he lay; every thread of his light summer clothes was saturated; and yet, though he was shivering with the damp and the wet, the pain caused by the slightest movement threw him into a violent heat.

He had not strength to keep himself against the rock, and ere long he slipped back on to the earth,—back with a jar which made him scream aloud once more. Then everything grew confused—he was in India—he was at sea—he was at home, dreaming of being in some awful peril; he peopled the mountain sides with shapes of horror; the darkness did not seem like darkness, for he could see phantoms and spectres flitting hither and thither ceaselessly. At last they all came rushing down on him, but the very horror of the vision made him recall his scattered senses. Where was he? What had happened? He remembered, and then his mind wandered off afresh. He was a boy again, robbing the first bird’s nest he had ever despoiled; he was playing truant, and looking for blackberries with Bob Sedgemore, and as they passed Farmer Gooday’s straw-yard they hunted Mrs. Gooday’s favourite cat with Bob’s terrier up the bank of the little stream, till the poor thing turned on her tormentors, when Bob and he stoned her to death.

He had not thought about that tortoise-shell cat for seven-and-forty years. What could make him remember her now? The way she stretched out her legs and turned up her eyes was horrid, and yet Bob and he had not been affected by the sight then. Bob merely kicked her into the stream, after which agreeable interlude they went on, and ate more blackberries.

Bob was dead. He had seen his corpse so blackened with powder, so maimed, and mangled, and mutilated, that the mother who bore him would not have recognised her boy. He was dead—everybody was dead; the girl he had been walking with only the other day, as it seemed, beside the yew-hedge in her father’s garden, was dead and buried too. People came by their deaths in every conceivable way, and why should he not come to his on the side of a Cumberland mountain, with the wet earth for his bed, and the rain and darkness for companions?

Heavens, how the rain poured down!—how the dead gathered round about him! There were the men and women of the long and long ago walking along the path he had followed from Tordale. He saw them looking down at him through the night. There was his mother; could she be looking for him? Yes; he could hear her light footfall on the grass—she was coming to fetch him. She put her cold hand on his cheek, and Captain Stondon, with a shout for help, fainted again.

After that he heard, as in a confused dream, answering shouts coming up the valley; he heard dogs barking, and people talking, and knew that he was lifted and carried a long distance to a house, into which he was borne like a dead man.

He remembered a vain attempt that was made to get him to swallow something which they held to his lips. He recollected subsequently the scared look with which the bystanders started back at the scream he uttered when an attempt was made to pull off his right boot; then all became a blank; for days and days he raved incessantly; for days his life hung on a thread, and he knew nothing of the patient care, of the devoted nursing which brought him back from the Valley of the Shadow of Death to the morning and the sunshine of life and health,—from the bleak hill-side and the cold earth’s breast, to such home comfort, happiness, and contentment, as through all the years of his pilgrimage he had never known.