Part 18 (1/2)
THE FOUR DIAMONDS.
”_Where the hazel bank is steepest, Where the shadow falls the deepest, Where the cl.u.s.tering nuts fall free, That's the way for Billy and me._”--JAMES HOGG.
The spot was a hollow between two gra.s.sy meadows, where a brook came winding with a gentle fall, under coverts of hazel, willow and alder, to feed the ca.n.a.l. It was a quite diminutive brook, and its inflow, by the wharf known as Ibbetson's, troubled the stagnant ca.n.a.l water for a very short distance. But it availed, a mile above, to turn a mill, and-- a marvel in this country of factories--it had escaped pollution.
Below the mill-dam it hurried down a pretty steep declivity, dodging its channel from side to side, but always undercutting the bank on one side, while on the other it left miniature creeks or shoals and spits where the minnows played and the water-flies dried their wings on the warm pebbles; always, save that twice or thrice before finding its outlet it paused below one of these pebbly spits to widen and deepen itself into a pool where it was odds that the sun, slanting through the bushes, showed a brown trout lurking.
By such a pool--but they had scared away the trout--our two children were busy. Tilda, her ablutions over, had handed the cake of soap to Arthur Miles, scrambled out on the deeper side, and ensconced herself in the fork of an overhanging hazel-mote; where, having reached for a cl.u.s.ter of nuts and cracked them, she sat and munched, with petticoat dripping and bare legs dangling over the pool.
”Be sure you don't fergit be'ind the ears,” she admonished the boy.
”You may think you're on'y a small boy an' n.o.body's goin' to search yer corners; but back at the Good Samaritan there was a tex' nailed up-- _Thou Gawd seest me_; and Sister said 'E was most partic'lar just in the little places you wouldn't think.”
By her orders the boy had stripped off s.h.i.+rt and stockings, and stood now almost knee-deep in the water, lathering his hair and face and neck and shoulders with vigour. Tilda observed that his skin was delicately fair and white. She had never seen a more beautiful boy. But he was slender, and would need mothering.
”You're comin' to it nicely,” she called down to him. ”It feels funny to start with, but in the end you'll a'most get to like it.”
”I _do_ like it.”
She considered for a while.
”If that's so,” she said, ”you 'd better strip all over an' 'ave done with it. I was bringin' you to it gradual.”
”But--”
”Oh, _that's_ all right. I knows my manners. Be quick as you can, so's not to catch cold, an' I'll take a stroll up the bank an' give a call if anyone's comin'.”
She scrambled back to firm ground and set off for a saunter up stream, pausing here to reach for a nut, there to pluck a ripe blackberry, and again to examine a tangle of bryony, or the deep-red fruit of the honey-suckle; for almost all her waking life had been spent in towns among crowds, and these things were new and strange to her. She met no one on her way until, where the stream twisted between a double fold of green pasture slopes, she came to the mill--a tall rickety building, with a tiled roof that time had darkened and greened with lichens, and a tall wheel turning slowly in a splash of water, and bright water dancing over a weir below. In the doorway leaned a middle-aged man, powdered all over with white, even to the eyelids. He caught sight of her, and she was afraid he would be angry, and warn her off for trespa.s.sing; but he nodded and called out something in a friendly manner--”Good day,”
perhaps. She could not hear the words for the hum of the weir and the roaring of the machinery within the building.
It was time to retrace her steps, and she went back leisurably, peering for trout and plucking on the way a trail of the bryony, berried with orange and scarlet and yellow and palest green, to exhibit to Arthur Miles. She found him seated on the near bank, close beside her hazel-mote. He did not hear her barefooted approach, being absorbed in the movements of a wagtail that had come down to the pebbly spit for its bath; and Tilda started scolding forthwith. For he sat there naked to the waist, with his s.h.i.+rt spread to dry on the gra.s.s. He had given it a thorough soaping, and washed it and wrung it out: his stockings too.
”You'll catch yer death!” threatened Tilda.
But he was not s.h.i.+vering--so blandly fell the sun's rays, and so gently played the breeze.
”I can't make you out,” she confessed. ”First when I came on yer--an'
that was on'y yestiddy--you was like a thing afraid o' yer own shadder.
An' now you don't appear to mind nothin'--not even the chance o' bein'
found an' took back.”
The boy drew a long breath.
”You're shakin' with cold, though. There! What did I tell yer?” But a moment later she owned herself mistaken. He was not cold at all.
”It's all so--so good,” he murmured, more to himself than to her.
”What's good?”
He reached out for the trail of bryony in her lap and fingered it wonderingly, without speaking for a while. Then, lifting his hand, he laid it for a moment against her upper arm--the lightest touch--no more.