Had he not lost the love of his life too, albeit twenty-and-one years before? How could he tolerate his own comfortable contentment, with that kind of void at the core of his existence? How could he bear to look at me, let alone love me, knowing that it was in giving birth to me that his wife had died?
Emily, dear heart, had not lived long enough to celebrate our wedding, let alone to give birth to my child, but that did not make my pain one whit less intense. I felt that my soul had been ripped apart, and could never be healed
I had taken to wandering on the moors every day, whatever the weather. At first, I had done so merely in order to walk from our isolated house at Stonecroft to the village churchyard in Haughtonlin, where Emily was buried, but it had become so very difficult to tear myself away from my meditation in order to return to the awful normality of home that I had taken to going further on rather than reversing my direction. Nor did I stick to the path that wound around the hillside before crossing the beck at the little wooden bridge and making its way back to the York road. Instead, I plunged into the wilderness of gorse and heather, punctuated by hawthorn spinneys and outcrops of black rock, which dressed the slopes above the bog, forming a basin whose broken granite rim served as a source for rills that combined their trickling waters lower down to form the beck.
It was desolate land, impossible to cultivate, into which sheep were reluctant to stray, and it suited the temper of my moods very well. The cloud which, by some freak of nature, always dressed the summit of Arnlea Moor came to see strangely welcoming, although I usually refrained from going so far up the hill as to immerse myself in its mists.
My father had hoped that I might make a soldier, like him, but I had no appetite at all for the looming conflict in the Crimea. My childhood dreams had been fantasies of exploration, following in the footsteps of James Cook or Mungo Park. Had I not fallen in love with Emily, I might have taken ship for the Pacific isles or the shores of darkest Africa, but she had kept me at home, and kept me still now that she had been laid to rest in the soil of Arnleadale. It was easy enough, however, to imagine myself as an explorer whenever I ventured into the upper reaches of the vale, struggling through what was, in a literal though perhaps rather trivial sense, trackless wilderness. There were foxes and pheasants living wild on the heath, but no hunt or shooting-party ever came this far from either of the manor houses that presided like Medieval forts over the valley’s neck. Stonecroft, which had once belonged to one of Lord Arnlea’s stewards but had been sold off fifty years before, was the limit at which sport stopped and untroubled Nature began.
My father, a devotee of natural theology, had often said that there was more to be learned about the mysterious mind of God in the bleak and misty head of the valley than there was from its carefully tamed and excessively man-handled mouth. I was not so sure that what was revealed there was the mind of God, but I had thought the judgment likely to be truthful even before I lost my lovely Emily. Afterwards, I became convinced. Even so, I had difficulty following my father’s perennial advice to see the Divine Plan in everything that existed or occurred upon the Earth. What kind of divinity could possibly manifest itself in the premature death of such a charming soul as Emily?
I was never intimidated in my excursions by the weather, although the moor could become a direly dismal place when the ever-present cloud turned to drizzle, or when a brisk west wind brought darker clouds scurrying from the distant Atlantic Ocean to unleash a deluge on the slopes. There was no man-made shelter in the wilderness, but there were natural coverts formed by overhanging rocks, and clefts that sometimes extended back into the hillside to become pot-holes. I knew many of them, though by no means them all, and regarded them as my own…until, one day, I raced to the remotest of them all to escape a sudden squall, and found it already occupied, by a young woman dressed in black.
I had never seen her before, and was quite at a loss to understand how she had got there, since I would surely have caught a glimpse of her had she come by way of Haughtonlin. When I saw her, I hesitated at the mouth of the cave, and was actually about to turn around and go back into the storm when she spoke.
“There’s no need to get wet on my account,” she said, in a soft and strangely musical voice. “The shelter is narrow, but there’s room enough for two. The shower cannot last long at this level of violence.”
I hesitated still, studying her carefully. Her coat was long, and bulky enough to conceal the precise contours of her body her walking-boots sturdy. Her bonnet was as black as her coat, and so was the hair tucked up within it. Her complexion was pale—which made her eyebrows stand out remarkably—and her eyes were grey, completing the strange impression that she was a figure drawn in monochrome, a charcoal sketch rather than a portrait in oils.
Eventually, I bowed, and said: “I’m Edward Grayling of Stonecroft. I apologize for my rudeness, but I was startled to find anyone abroad in this lonely region—especially a woman.”
“My name is Mary McQueen,” she said, lightly. “I fear that I’m a little lost. I’m staying at Raggandale Hall, and I do not know the county at all.”
“Raggandale Hall! Why, that’s six miles away, even as the crow flies. You must have come over the crest of the moor, through the fog. Did no one warn you not to come this way? The ridge is rarely free from its shroud of low-lying cloud, and the damp ground on this side is treacherous even for sheep.”
“No,” she said, “no one warned me. I’m quite used to taking six-mile walks at home, although I will admit that the ground is much flatter there, and I never lose my bearings to the extent of not knowing when and how to turn around. The mist on the heights of the moor is very deceptive, and I was surprised to find that I had come out on the opposite side”
“I’ll take you home when the squall blows over,” I said, compelled to play the gallant in spite of my dark mood, “but it’s a long way, and far from easy. There’s very little chance of reaching Raggandale by nightfall.” I paused again, for reflection, and then said: “In fact, it would be foolish to attempt it. You must come the other way, at least as far as Haughtonlin. The innkeeper at the Black Bull has a fly, and might be willing to lend you his servant to take you home by road. It’s a long way round, but it’s safe. If the fly’s hired out or the servant can’t be spared, you can stay overnight at the inn—or come back to Stonecroft with me, if you prefer. The scullion can be pressed into temporary service as a chambermaid. I can drive you home myself tomorrow.”
“That’s very kind,” she said, “but quite unnecessary. I’m sure that I can find my own way home.”
“I’m perfectly sure that you cannot,” I told her, insistently. “I know how different this moorland is from most of England. Whether you know it or not, Miss McQueen, you’re in an alien land here. This rain is not the first we’ve had this week, and the bog will be exceedingly treacherous for some time to come. There’s no question of your going back that way this evening. You must come with me, at least as far as Haughtonlin.”
“Very well,” she said. “Since you insist, I must bow to your superior knowledge of this alien land, and accept your guidance. I shall stay the night in Haughtonlin, if there is room at the inn, and make my way home tomorrow. If the weather is fine, though, I shall go on foot. I may be resident in the vicinity for some time, if my cousins at Raggandale are willing to accommodate me, and I ought to get to know the country—especially its dangerous regions.”
I had to be content with that, for the time being, but we continued chatting. I told her something of myself—my education, my father’s military adventures, my adventures in journalism—but I said nothing about Emily or my current state of mind. It seemed to me that she might be hiding something too, although she gave me abundant news of my acquaintances at Raggandale and described her impressions of the estate in some detail. When I eventually left her at the Black Bull, I told her that I would return in the morning, and that if she really was intent on going
