href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@33043@[email protected]#chap29" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">THE GREAT STORM

WINDYRIDGE

CHAPTER I

THE CALL OF THE HEATHER

I am beginning to-day a new volume in the book of my life. I wrote the Prologue to it yesterday when I chanced upon this hamlet, and my Inner Self peremptorily bade me take up my abode here. My Inner Self often insists upon a course which has neither rhyme nor reason to recommend it, but as I am a woman I can plead instinct as the explanation—or shall I say the excuse?—of my eccentric conduct. Yet I don't think I have ever been quite so mad before as I fully realise that I am now, and the delight of it all is that I don't care and I don't repent, although twenty-four hours have passed since I impulsively asked the price of my cottage, and found that I could have it, studio and all, for a yearly rental of ten pounds. I have never been a tenant "on my own" before, and the knowledge that I am not going back to the attic bedroom and the hard "easy" chairs of the Chelsea lodging-house which has been my home for the last three years fills me with a great joy. I feel as if I should suffocate if I were to go back, but it is my soul which would be smothered. Subconsciously I have been panting for Windyridge for months, and my soul recognised the place and leaped to the discovery instantaneously.

Yet how strange it all seems: how ridiculously fantastic! I cannot get away from that thought, and I am constantly asking myself whether Providence or Fate, or any other power with a capital letter at the beginning, is directing the move for my good, or whether it is just whimsicalness on my part, self-originated and self-explanatory—the explanation being that I am mad, as I said before.

When I look back on the events of the last three days and realise that I have crossed my Rubicon and burned my boats behind me, and that I had no conscious intention of doing anything of the kind when I set out, I just gasp. If I had stayed to reason with myself I should never have had the courage to pack a few things into a bag and take a third-class ticket for Airlee at King's Cross, with the avowed intention of hearing a Yorkshire choir sing in a summer festival. Yet it seems almost prophetic as I recall the incident that I declined to take a return ticket, though, to be sure, there was no advantage in doing so: no reduction, I mean. Whether there was an advantage remains to be seen; I verily believe I should have returned rather than have wasted that return half. I dislike waste.

That was on Tuesday; on Wednesday I went to the Town Hall and entered a new world. It cost me a good deal in coin of the realm—much more than I had dreamed of—but I got it all back in the currency of heaven before I came away. It may have been my excitable temperament—for my mother, I remember, used to condone my faults by explaining that I was "highly-strung," whatever that may mean—or it may have been the Yorkshire blood in my veins which turned to fever heat as the vast volume of sweet sound rose and fell; one thing is certain, I lost myself completely, and did not find myself again until I discovered that the room was almost bare of people, and realised by the good-humoured glances of the few who remained that I appeared to be more vacant than the room, and was making myself foolishly conspicuous by remaining seated with my head in my hands and that far-away look in my eyes which tells of "yonderliness."

To be quite candid, I am not quite sure that I did find myself; I suspect some tenant moved out and another moved in that afternoon, and I am disposed to think that Airlee explains Windyridge. If I were to attempt to put down in cold words what I heard or what I felt I should fail, and it would seem very ordinary and uninspiring, so I shall not make the attempt. But when I got outside, the noise of the busy city grated on my senses, and the atmosphere—which was really not bad, for the day was bright and sunny—seemed heavy and stifling. I longed for something which I had not previously cared about; I did not understand my yearnings—I do not yet—but I wanted to get away from the wooden pavements, and the granite banks, and the brick warehouses, and the huge hotels, and the smoke and bustle and din, and lay my head in the lap of Nature, and think.

I slept a little, I am sure, but I tossed about a good deal in the cosy little bed of the modest hotel where I took lodging, and when morning came I found my Inner Self still harping on the same string, and more vigorously than ever. Perhaps, if I had been sensible, I should have gone straight to the station, and by this time have been going through the old routine in Bloomsbury and Chelsea, instead of which I made my way into the street after breakfast, and asked a kind-faced clergyman which tramcar would take me farthest away from the turmoil. He was a fatherly man, but his answers were so vague, and he seemed in so much doubt of their reliability, that I disregarded them and accosted a bright young workman who crossed the square a moment later. "A good long ride?" he repeated; "right into the country, eh? Take this car and go to the far end." With this he led me to one which bore the fateful sign "Fawkshill."

It was a lovely day even in the city, warm but not muggy. When I had found an outside seat at the extreme front of the upper deck of the car, the greater part of which was covered, and redolent of tobacco fumes, I made up my mind to enjoy the breeze and the experience. So far as I knew it was just a parenthesis in a chapter of my life, not the beginning of a new volume. In the background of my thoughts there was always Chelsea, though I affected to forget it. Meantime, in the foreground, there was a good deal to make even Chelsea attractive by comparison.

We made our way slowly along the grimy road, with its rows of monotonously uninteresting warehouses, and its endless drays filled with the city's merchandise. When the warehouses ended the grime remained. We passed street after street of brick-built cottages, over which spread a canopy of smoke from a hundred factory chimneys. When the country was reached—if the bleak and sad-looking fields could be called country—the mill chimneys were just as evident. They were everywhere, even on the horizon, and my spirits sank. The villages through which we passed were just suburbs, with the thumb-print of the city on them all. Every cottage, every villa, spoke of the mill or the shop. As we neared the terminus I found to my dismay that so far from leaving these things behind we were entering a prosperous-looking little town which was just Airlee on a smaller scale, with its full quota of smoke-producing factories. How I blamed myself for following the advice of the young workman and regretted that I had not trusted the parson!

I had an early lunch at a confectioner's and then wandered, aimlessly enough, up a quiet road which led away from the town and the tram-lines. It was not very promising at first, but when I had passed the last row of houses and found myself hemmed in by green, moss-grown walls, my spirits rose. By and by I reached cross-roads and a broad, white highway, which was manifestly one of the great arteries of this thriving district. It had no attractions for me and I crossed it, and continued my upward path. A sign-post told me that I was on my way to Windyridge.

I was now in a rather pleasant country road, but one which certainly could boast few attractions. Yet I was attracted, perhaps because I could see so little in front of me,