by Joan Smith
“Not Lady Emily. She would not care two straws for it. It really is a great pity,” she repeated, then cast her gaze about the countryside, to nod and smile at the blue-gray hills in the distance, patched with green and dotted with sheep.
“At least Edward has not fallen madly in love with her,” I mentioned.
“If she keeps hanging about the way she has been doing, he soon will,” she forecast gloomily.
She was right. Lady Emily kept on coming, at least twice, often four times, a week throughout that spring and summer. She caught Edward at home often enough that her beauty penetrated his consciousness. He was half in love with Lady Emily and half in love with love, as becomes a poet. He was not so fond of her as to curtail his jaunts over to Rydal Mount to meet with Mr. Wordsworth’s circle.
It seems to me that a man wishing to do honour to our beautiful Lake District (as our northwestern corner of England has been misnamed since the poets brought it into fashion) should do so with brush and canvas. All these poets have accomplished is to have us overrun with tourists who come in carriages to glance at what they call the lakes. Actually there is not a lake in the whole area. We natives refer to our bits of water as meres and tarns. A lake is something much larger, and much less lovely. It was Thomas Gray who first went spouting tales of the “lakes” to be enjoyed here. He was soon followed by others—Southey, Coleridge, and of course our own William Wordsworth, who lived right in Grasmere for several years.
Over the past ten years we have become the tourist attraction of the country. I cannot begin to describe the mess and confusion these visitors bring. In the first place, they have no real appreciation of our landscape. They peer from a carriage window when the beauty can only be gained by walking, by clambering up fells to look down at the tarns of various hues and shapes. The colour will change before your very eyes from blue to green or even black, as the clouds pass by overhead. The waters nestle in secret dales and valleys between the hills, the pikes, and the fells. The tourists who do not get out of their carriages miss the bracing air, the aroma of the bog myrtle, most of all the challenge of the fells. The fells are the real attraction of the place.
For maximum viewing pleasure one should avoid coming during the bracken season, as we call that time between late June and late September, which is exactly when the greatest number of tourists come. At that time the contours of the fells are hidden by the monotonous fern that covers them like a green blanket. The weather too is wretched—too hot most of the time, relieved only by the wettest rain in the world. It comes in blankets, in sheets, in counterpanes to saturate us. You have not been wet till you have been rained on here.
If you want to see us at our best, come in April or October. Do not come in the dead of the summer, like the tourists who clutter up the hotels and inns and drive up prices. Not that you will find a lack of accommodation! We have been inundated by a sea of businessmen wishing to capitalize on the new tourist industry. Many a garish mansion has been thrown up, to clash dreadfully with the simple architecture of the countryside and to take up land needed for our livelihood. I refer, of course, to our Herdwick sheep. Unlovely, smelly, oily, white-faced, and rugged as the natives, they dot the fells year round, eking out a diet that would starve other sheep, and growing a coarse, long fleece used for carpets and roughage in the Cumberland tweed.
But I have digressed into a travel brochure. Edward succumbed to Nature, in the form of Lady Emily. They walked out together; his poems found a new object of dedication. The “barren fells” and “limpid blue pools” of yore were transformed into “sweet delights” of femininity. The limpid blue pools remained but came in pairs, fringed with lashes. Edward had not begun to think of anything so down-to-earth as marriage, I am sure, but Emily was beginning to look about the saloon with a somewhat proprietary eye. She had hemmed up half a dozen handkerchiefs for him, embroidered with a design which Nora thinks is supposed to be an E. I think she would be better employed wielding a mop or broom at home.
Nora had not completely abandoned all thoughts of sharing the roof with a Lady. She is a wee bit of a snob, to tell the truth, but no one is perfect. “A pity about the dowry,” she was wont to say, but soon began adding such leading remarks as, “At least she is not demanding. She is always perfectly happy with pot luck.” On another occasion the remark, in the same insinuating spirit, was, “How very much at home Emily (sans the Lady now) looks in our little tinker’s wagon.”
Each sally was met with a steely eye from myself. I (who was in charge of the accounts for the establishment) knew we must marry Edward to at least a small heiress, not an impecunious Lady who might well change her demands once she was installed as mistress of Ambledown. Due to Edward’s detached, lackadaisical way of going on, June waned into July, the heat rose, the old earl at Carnforth Hall declined, and still there was no firm announcement of any approaching nuptials. There was soon an announcement of a much more distressing nature to plague us, but it had nothing to do with Edward or Emily or marriage.
Chapter Two
Ambledown (my home, if I failed to mention it) is located just at the northern tip of Lake Grasmere, right at the heart of the Lake District. Windermere, just below us, is thought to be prettier by some, but I prefer the wilder, craggier fells of home. Being right at the hub of the whole delightful region, Grasmere has fallen due to most of the unwanted tourist activity. We blame the majority of this on a certain Captain Wingdale, retired officer of the Royal Navy. His pockets are heavy with prize money taken during the late wars. It is his aim to make them even heavier by destroying our whole town and neighbourhood with his business activities. Bad enough he threw up a spurious Elizabethan inn, whose half timbers stand out like a sore thumb in this area that has still a strong Nordic flavour. Bad enough indeed that every cit and clerk who can afford the journey comes with a carriageful of children to fill his rooms and our streets, and to make such a racket into the night and on the Sabbath that the local inhabitants have no peace. Captain Wingdale is in the process of modernizing us by holding assemblies in the largest room of his hotel—not monthly, not even weekly, but nightly throughout the summer for the delight of his clients and the less discriminating of the local inhabitants.
There are some folks broad-minded enough to forgive him all these atrocities, for while he has driven up prices in the local shops to ridiculous heights, he has brought more custom than usual to the village. Rooms are let by many a spinster and widow who would otherwise be deprived of this little additional income. Tea shops flourish; souvenirs are imported from London and stamped with the names of the various lakes; pamphlets abound bruiting our charms to the travellers. As Ambledown is two miles from the village, even I was large-hearted enough to forgive Wingdale, but his latest crime neither I nor anyone else for miles around can condone.
The crime (and the distressing announcement referred to earlier) is this Captain Wingdale has taken into his head to create an entirely new town. It is to be located between the present village and Ambledown—right on our doorstep, you see. He has used the coincidence of there being several places ending in the termination “dale” to name the town after himself, Wingdale, ignoring the fact that Dunnerdale, Grizedale, and so on are not named after people, but are in fact dales—valleys. Wingdale is nothing of the sort. It will be built on a slight incline. By some underhanded means he snapped up several acres of land outside of Grasmere and was busy every day trying to seize the rest of it. It would not surprise me in the least if he has set his greedy sights on Ambledown.
Indeed, the plan of his new town is incomplete without it. Our ancestral home forms the focal point of the road that runs north from Grasmere, with Berwick Pike towering behind it. Ambledown would be incorporated into the town even if Edward manages to hold on to it—a thing by no means certain in our perilous financial state. The Plans for Wingdale are on prominent display in the window of Wingdale Hause. In his sublime ignorance, the Captain mistook the old Nordic “hause” to mean house, or so I assu
me. It means a narrow pass, in case you are interested. Wingdale Hause is his spurious Elizabethan inn, right on the main street. He pulled down three shops and the existing inn to build it. The inn was of great historical interest, being several hundred years old, but Wingdale does not even profess to have any interest in history, unless it is recent enough to concern his own naval exploits.
When you have been accustomed to look out your door or window on to quiet meadows, to serene fells and water, it is distressing to consider that within a year or two the sight will be changed to a hodge-podge of poorly designed modern cottages with not two yards of land between them, those two yards doubtlessly cluttered with noisy youngsters and dogs. He speaks, too, of bringing some “industry” in as an added incentive to lure people to Wingdale. The exact nature of the industry has not been revealed, which is in itself suspicious. If it were some clean, light business, he would not hesitate to name it. My imagination fails to give me any notion what he has in mind, but with mines closeby the ugly spectre of some smoke-belching foundry occasionally looms up.
None of us at home had a good word to say about his scheme. Neither had Emily, as soon as she learned Edward was against it. She sat with us on a Sunday afternoon out in the garden, where Nora netted (what else?) and I was ostensibly studying Edward’s latest poetical effusion, with a view to criticizing it before submission to Blackwood’s Magazine.
“I hear the Leroys have sold to Wingdale,” Edward commented idly, with a glance down the road in the direction of Ronald Leroy’s home.
There was only the Chapman’s farm remaining between Leroy’s and Ambledown. “You cannot mean it!” I exclaimed, dropping his ode to the ground in my consternation. “Why on earth would Ronald do such a thing? He is against the new town.”
“He has had a terrible run of luck,” Edward reminded me. “You remember how many head of sheep he lost when some poison got into his spring dip. Close to a hundred it was, and then at the end of June the wool he had stored in his barn for market was burned up. He has been scrambling to meet his mortgage ever since. It turned out Wingdale had bought it from the bank, and he foreclosed. Well, Leroy was three months overdue. Wingdale was very gentlemanly about it, they say in town. He has given Ronald a few months to relocate and has even offered to buy his herd from him so that he will have money to get started up in something else.”
“Where can he go? What will he do? He doesn’t know any other business but sheep,” Nora lamented, when the exigencies of her work allowed her to draw breath.
“I expect he will go to work for one of the larger farmers. Not much else he can do. I wish I could afford to hire him,” Edward said. Poor Edward. His heart was in the right place, but his head, alas, was in the clouds. He could hardly afford to hire me, at the price of rack and manger.
Edward looks as a poet should look, with a fine dreamy eye, a sweet expression, and an ineffectual mouth which either smiles or sulks but never assumes the determined line of a man of resolution. He looked to Emily and fell into a reverie, very likely composing a few lines on her beauty. He was not to be disturbed during these moments of creation—it was tacitly understood. I addressed my next remark to Nora.
“We’ll be the next to go,” I warned her. “I shall go to the bank tomorrow and make sure our mortgage has not been taken over by Wingdale. I doubt it is legal for them to sell it without letting us know.”
“Wingdale is always legal,” Nora pointed out. “He has hired that London solicitor full time, to represent his interests.”
“I begin to wonder whether he has not hired an arsonist full time as well. You remember how he got Berkens’ place last winter? A fire started in the barn and spread to the house.”
“That kind of talk will get you in trouble,” she cautioned me. “Wingdale’s lawyer threatened Berkens with a slander suit when he suggested the fire was not accidental.”
“It’s not slander if you can prove it. If I were a man I would do some investigating.” I said, speaking rather loudly in Edward’s general direction.
I did not really hope he would hear. His next speech showed me my error. “You are thinking Beetham had something to do with it, Chloe.”
“Beetham? Why should I think anything of the sort?”
“Well, Beetham used to work for Berkens, and when he left him he went to Leroy, so it might look like a connection, but he was in the tavern at Wingdale Hause the night Leroy’s wool was burned, so it could not have been his doing.”
“I had not realized such rumours were running around town. We’ll have to be a good deal more careful, if Wingdale is causing these fires and accidents,” I said, feeling a strong sense of alarm.
The afternoon was unpleasant enough, with the news of our old neighbour losing his farm. It soon deteriorated even further when I spotted Tom Carrick jiggling down the road in his whisky. He often comes to court me on a Sunday afternoon. The rest of the week he is busy, thank goodness. The wooing has taken on an even stronger flavour of distaste since the proposal. I would have refused him by now were it not for Nora’s constant singing of his praises, and my own fears for our future.
“Why, here is Tom!’’’ she said, glancing up as she stopped to turn the mesh in her netting. How she could imbue one monosyllable with so much approval is a wonder. She drew it out, in a sing-song way, going up and down in tones. The two lovers (Edward and Emily, I mean) turned warm, conspiratorial smiles on me. Soon their gaze reverted to each other. A silent agreement being reached between them, they arose to wander off towards Barwick Pike. As Emily was wearing patent slippers, I trusted they did not have in mind climbing it.
Tom dismounted and tethered the reins to a tree, then came towards me. He was carrying an ominous bundle, newspaper-wrapped, which was the manner in which he brought his edible offerings of fish and fowl, and an occasional rabbit. “Don’t leave us, Nora,” I said before he got within hearing range. She was unhappy, but obedient.
I really don’t know why it is I cannot love Tom, or at least like him better than I do, for I am hardly in the springtime of life, where love is all to me. There is nothing amiss in either his appearance or character. He is tall enough (five feet, nine inches), handsome enough (dark hair, fair skin, not deformed in either face or body), rich enough (five thousand per annum), and old enough (thirty-three years). There is just some little je ne sais quoi lacking. Maybe I do sais quoi, but hesitate to relate it. The man is possessed of no single atom of that element whose excess I have been lamenting all these pages in my brother—romance. Like everything else, it is wanted in the proper degree, which is to say in this case, sparingly. When Tom proposed, for example, he complimented me on my good character, my hard work at keeping Ambledown running, my economy, my interest in the local charity work, and my family’s old origins. He mentioned that I would be a useful helpmate to him. Not in just those words, of course, but that was the gist of it.
I do not denigrate that he took account of these matters, but that it was these and no others he chose to mention at such a time. I did not expect to hear him say, as Captain Wingdale once did, that I was “the prettiest little lady in town”. I am not, but I hope I am not quite an offence to the eyes either. If my brown hair would only turn black, my blue eyes green, my few freckles fade, and my chin shrink about an inch, I think I might be said to possess some claims to beauty.
Tom was upon us, making his bows and asking permission to take up the chair vacated by Edward, while he looked at his soggy newspaper and his hands and my hands, feeling, I suppose, that he should be making some more formal greeting. He is a little inclined to formality.
“Have a chair, Tom,” Nora said.
“Pity about Ronald Leroy,” he commented, sitting down, still holding his bundle. The sun was shining, blackbirds wheeled overhead, and I was wearing a new fichu on my best gown. The man had come courting, but his first words after being seated were, “Pity about Ronald Leroy.”
“We were just discussing it,” Nora answered, glancing to the
newspaper expectantly.
“We were wondering whether Wingdale is not having these fires set,” I said, and watched for his reaction,
“There is no evidence of that. I would not say such a thing in company, Chloe,” he warned me, with a nervous look.
“He is too sharp to leave any evidence,” I pressed on. "There is only Chapman’s between Grasmere and Ambledown now. If Chapman’s goes up in smoke, I mean to call in a constable and have it investigated. In fact, it ought to be done now. The men of the area should get together and insist,” I said, casting a challenging look on him.
“Chapman won’t give him any trouble,” was his answer. “He has got the concession of brewmaster for Wingdale Hause. Well, he never had more than a nominal interest in sheep and will be glad to be rid of what he has. He is tickled pink with the new village. It will bring a good deal of prosperity to the area. I’m not sure it is a bad thing, when all’s said and done.”
“It is a wretched thing! You would say so too if your estate were situated in his path, instead of safely away on the far side of the mere.”
“As to that, Miss Barwick, you are welcome to join me any time, away from all the construction that will soon be going forth. And your aunt, Mrs. Whitmore, as well,” he added punctiliously, with a nod to include her in his proposal. “As to Edward,” he went on, to account for the whole family, “I expect there would be plenty of room for him at Carnforth Hall. Wingdale will not plan to include it in his village.”
Naturally we had not bruited about town the state of Carnforth’s finances, but it struck me of a sudden that the Hall might very well be included in Wingdale’s ultimate plans. It would be easy picking. He might have the mortgages for it in his pocket this minute for all we knew. The Hall had sat like a fortress guarding that situation known as Kirkwell Pass for centuries. The blood fairly boiled to think of its falling to Wingdale’s commercial hands. He would turn it into a haunted house, or some such thing, to attract customers. Ices and lemonades and gingerbread would be served on the grounds, assemblies held nightly in the ballroom. And the only people in the world to prevent this happening were Lord Carnforth, bellowing out his obscene songs in a drunken stupor, and Lady Emily, mooning around under the trees with Edward.
