The only other person in the room — the only person in the house related to me — was my father. He was Mr. Ruthyn, of Knowl, so called in this county, but he had many other places, was of a very ancient lineage, who had refused a baronetage often, and it was said even a viscounty, being of a proud and defiant8 spirit, and thinking themselves higher in station and purer of blood than two-thirds of the nobility into whose ranks it was said, they had been invited to enter. Of all this family lore9 I knew but little and vaguely10; only what is to be gathered from the fireside talk of old retainers in the nursery.
A girl of a little more than seventeen, looking, I believe, younger still; slight and rather tall, with a great deal of golden hair, dark grey-eyed, and with a countenance6 rather sensitive and melancholy7, was sitting at the tea-table, in a reverie. I was that girl.
But when we reached the old bridge, with the tall osiers standing42 by the buttress43, and looked back at poor Knowl — the places we love and are leaving look so fairy-like and so sad in the clear distance, and this is the finest view of the gabled old house, with its slanting44 meadow-lands and noble timber reposing45 in solemn groups — I gazed at the receding46 vision, and the tears came at last, and I wept in silence long after the fair picture was hidden from view by the intervening uplands.
I was relieved, and when we had made our next change of horses, and got into a country that was unknown to me, the new scenery and the sense of progress worked their accustomed effects on a young traveller who had lived a particularly secluded47 life, and I began to experience, on the whole, a not unpleasurable excitement.
Mary Quince and I, with the hopefulness of inexperienced travellers, began already to speculate about our proximity48 to Bartram–Haugh, and were sorely disappointed when we heard from the nondescript courier — more like a ostler than a servant, who sat behind in charge of us and the luggage, and represented my guardian’s special care — at nearly one o’clock, that we had still forty miles to go, a considerable portion of which was across the high Derbyshire mountains, before we reached Bartram–Haugh.
The fact was, we had driven at a pace accommodated rather to the convenience of the horses than to our impatience49; and finding, at the quaint50 little inn where we now halted, that we must wait for a nail or two in a loose shoe of one of our relay, we consulted, and being both hungry, agreed to beguile51 the time with an early dinner, which we enjoyed very sociably52 in a queer little parlour with a bow window, and commanding, with a little garden for foreground, a very pretty landscape.
Good Mary Quince, like myself, had quite dried her tears by this time, and we were both highly interested, and I a little nervous, too, about our arrival and reception at Bartram. Some time, of course, was lost in this pleasant little parlour, before we found ourselves once more pursuing our way.
The slowest part of our journey was the pull up the long mountain road, ascending53 zig-zag, as sailors make way against a head-wind, by tacking54. I forget the name of the pretty little group of houses — it did not amount to a village — buried in trees, where we got our four horses and two postilions, for the work was severe. I can only designate it as the place where Mary Quince and I had our tea, very comfortably, and bought some gingerbread, very curious to look upon, but quite uneatable.
The greater portion of the ascent55, when we were fairly upon the mountain, was accomplished at a walk, and at some particularly steep points we had to get out and go on foot. But this to me was quite delightful56. I had never scaled a mountain before, and the ferns and heath, the pure boisterous57 air, and above all the magnificent view of the rich country we were leaving behind, now gorgeous and misty58 in sunset tints, stretching in gentle undulations far beneath us, quite enchanted59 me.
We had just reached the summit when the sun went down. The low grounds at the other side were already lying in cold grey shadow, and I got the man who sat behind to point out as well as he could the site of Bartram–Haugh. But mist was gathering60 over all by this time. The filmy disk of the moon which was to light us on, so soon as twilight61 faded into night, hung high in the air. I tried to see the sable62 mass of wood which he described. But it was vain, and to acquire a clear idea of the place, as of its master, I must only wait that nearer view which an hour or two more would afford me.
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