Sometimes walking for a mile or two while her grandfather rode inside, and sometimes even prevailing upon the schoolmaster to take her place and lie down to rest, Nell travelled on very happily until they came to a large town, where the waggon stopped, and where they spent a night.They passed a large church; and in the streets were a number of old houses, built of a kind of earth or plaster, crossed and re-crossed in a great many directions with black beams, which gave them a remarkable and very ancient look.
The doors, too, were arched and low, some with oaken portals and quaint benches, where the former inhabitants had sat on summer evenings.The windows were latticed in little diamond panes, that seemed to wink and blink upon the passengers as if they were dim of sight.They had long since got clear of the smoke and furnaces, except in one or two solitary instances, where a factory planted among fields withered the space about it, like a burning mountain.
When they had passed through this town, they entered again upon the country, and began to draw near their place of destination.
It was not so near, however, but that they spent another night upon the road; not that their doing so was quite an act of necessity, but that the schoolmaster, when they approached within a few miles of his village, had a fidgety sense of his dignity as the new clerk, and was unwilling to make his entry in dusty shoes, and travel-disordered dress.It was a fine, clear, autumn morning, when they came upon the scene of his promotion, and stopped to contemplate its beauties.
'See--here's the church!' cried the delighted schoolmaster in a low voice; 'and that old building close beside it, is the school-house, I'll be sworn.Five-and-thirty pounds a-year in this beautiful place!'
They admired everything--the old grey porch, the mullioned windows, the venerable gravestones dotting the green churchyard, the ancient tower, the very weathercock; the brown thatched roofs of cottage, barn, and homestead, peeping from among the trees; the stream that rippled by the distant water-mill; the blue Welsh mountains far away.It was for such a spot the child had wearied in the dense, dark, miserable haunts of labour.Upon her bed of ashes, and amidst the squalid horrors through which they had forced their way, visions of such scenes--beautiful indeed, but not more beautiful than this sweet reality--had been always present to her mind.They had seemed to melt into a dim and airy distance, as the prospect of ever beholding them again grew fainter; but, as they receded, she had loved and panted for them more.
'I must leave you somewhere for a few minutes,' said the schoolmaster, at length breaking the silence into which they had fallen in their gladness.'I have a letter to present, and inquiries to make, you know.Where shall I take you? To the little inn yonder?'
'Let us wait here,' rejoined Nell.'The gate is open.We will sit in the church porch till you come back.'
'A good place too,' said the schoolmaster, leading the way towards it, disencumbering himself of his portmanteau, and placing it on the stone seat.'Be sure that I come back with good news, and am not long gone!'
So, the happy schoolmaster put on a bran-new pair of gloves which he had carried in a little parcel in his pocket all the way, and hurried off, full of ardour and excitement.
The child watched him from the porch until the intervening foliage hid him from her view, and then stepped softly out into the old churchyard--so solemn and quiet that every rustle of her dress upon the fallen leaves, which strewed the path and made her footsteps noiseless, seemed an invasion of its silence.It was a very aged, ghostly place; the church had been built many hundreds of years ago, and had once had a convent or monastery attached; for arches in ruins, remains of oriel windows, and fragments of blackened walls, were yet standing-, while other portions of the old building, which had crumbled away and fallen down, were mingled with the churchyard earth and overgrown with grass, as if they too claimed a burying-place and sought to mix their ashes with the dust of men.Hard by these gravestones of dead years, and forming a part of the ruin which some pains had been taken to render habitable in modern times, were two small dwellings with sunken windows and oaken doors, fast hastening to decay, empty and desolate.
Upon these tenements, the attention of the child became exclusively riveted.She knew not why.The church, the ruin, the antiquated graves, had equal claims at least upon a stranger's thoughts, but from the moment when her eyes first rested on these two dwellings, she could turn to nothing else.Even when she had made the circuit of the enclosure, and, returning to the porch, sat pensively waiting for their friend, she took her station where she could still look upon them, and felt as if fascinated towards that spot.