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We left the great inverted arch of the valley behind us, looking back as long as we could at Blencathra, and Skiddaw over its shoulder, and the clouds were gathering over them at our last glimpse. At Ambleside we took another car for Newby Bridge, whither we drove along the eastern shore of Windermere.
To the south the Helvellyn range stretched in bold-flung curves and bosses; in the far distance rose the sharper peaks of Derwentwater; while close at hand Blencathra with its ravines, and all the harsh splendour of its white slopes and black precipices, alternately fascinated and repelled the little Southerner, starved morally and physically for lack of sun.
At a cross-road, leading to Duddon on the left, and to a remote valley running up the eastern side of Blencathra on the right, he reined up his horse to look for a moment at the sombre glow which held the western heaven; amid which the fells of Thirlmere and Derwentwater stood superbly ranged in threatening blacks and purples.
Lydia walked quickly home, down a sloping lane from which the ravines of Blencathra, edge behind edge, chasm beyond chasm, were to be seen against the sunset, and all the intermediate landscape wood, and stubble, and ferny slope steeped in stormy majesties of light. But for once the quick artist sense was shut against Nature's spectacles.
We left the great inverted arch of the valley behind us, looking back as long as we could at Blencathra, and Skiddaw over its shoulder, and the clouds were gathering over them at our last glimpse. At Ambleside we took another car for Newby Bridge, whither we drove along the eastern shore of Windermere.
But when the dark December morning arrived, with sleet showers whitening all the slopes of Helvellyn and the gashed breast of Blencathra, a dense crowd thronged all the exits of the Tower, and lined the steep lanes leading to the chapel. Faversham, Cyril Boden, and a Carlisle solicitor occupied the only carriage which followed the hearse.
John's Vale, that winding valley which, diverging from the Ambleside-Keswick road in an easterly direction, divides the northern slopes of the Helvellyn range from the splendid mass of Blencathra. So beautiful was the evening, so ravishing under its sway were heaven and earth, that Lydia's work went but slowly.
He mounted a stone foot-bridge to look at it, when, of a sudden, the curtain of cloud shrouding Blencathra was torn aside, and its high ridge, razor-sharp, appeared spectrally white, a seat of the storm-god, in a far heaven. The livid lines of just-fallen snow, outlining the cliffs and ravines of the great mountain, stamped its majesty, visionlike, on the senses.
Its park, lying on the eastern slopes of the mountain mass which includes Skiddaw and Blencathra, had none of the usual monotony of parks, but was a genuine "chase," running up on the western side into the heather and rock of the mountain where the deer were at home, while on the east and south its splendid oaks stood thick in bracken beside sparkling becks, overlooking dells and valleys of succulent grass where the sheep ranged at will.
There was much of the mystery still unexplained, but the morrow would reveal it; and Ralph lay down to sleep, and rose at daybreak, not with a lighter, but with an easier heart. When he took up his shepherd's staff that morning, he turned towards Fornside Fell. Rising out of the Vale of Wanthwaite, the fell half faced the purple heights of Blencathra.
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