‘We shall have to arrange an ambush for you to fall into,’ replied Hermione, laughing good-humouredly. ‘We are willing to mend our ways in minor matters when we think we are wrong, but not merely to copy English fashions because they _are_ English, which would be affectation indeed, and very properly expose us to ridicule.’
‘_Nothing_ that you or Miss Vanda could say or do would end so disastrously. I hope you believe me,’ he added in a lower tone, ‘and forgive my imprudence?’
‘I grant you my royal pardon,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘I confess that we Australians are just a trifle touchy, and I began to be frightened that I had committed some enormity.’
Saturated as the feminine division of the pilgrims was with the Wordsworth cult, nothing but the necessity of laying out regular stages and abiding by them prevented them from lingering in this enchanted spot.
But the route was given; the leaders decreed the hour; and protests were unavailing.
But, hark! the summons—down the placid lake Floats the soft cadence of the church-tower bells.
Northward, ever northward, was now the appointed course of the wanderers: across moor and fell to Yorkshire, with its somewhat rude inhabitants. Uninviting as it was in appearance, with barren-looking moors and desolate stretches of rocky undulations, it held within its bosom a jewel of priceless worth. There stood the lonely parsonage of world-wide fame, where had lived the Brontë family—the wondrous girls who, from that dreary parsonage, standing among graves, on a wind-beaten hill-top, aroused the admiration of the keenest literary intelligences of the period. Then the order of the day was the route to Keighley in Yorkshire, four miles only from Haworth; and to Keighley by ordinary, perhaps prosaic, methods the pilgrims proceeded.
For to Keighley, they were aware, the Brontës, these strange children, fiercely desirous of knowledge of all and every kind and sort, were accustomed to walk from the village of Haworth. Why? Because there was a draper’s shop? Because there was at rare intervals a fair of the period? None of these provincial recreations interested this remarkable family. No! But because there was a circulating library. For that sole reason did these delicate little creatures undertake the rough moorland walk of eight miles—four miles there and four miles back—‘happy, though often tired to death, if only they brought home a novel by Scott or a poem by Southey.’ Brought home! To what a home did the tired feet and aching limbs bring these eager searchers after knowledge! To a ‘grey parsonage standing among graves, on a wind-beaten hill-top; the neighbouring summits wild with moors. A lonely place, among half-dead ash trees and stunted thorns. The world cut off on one side by the still ranks of the serried dead; distanced on the other by mile-wide stretches of heath.’ Such, we know, was Emily Brontë’s home, the vicinity inhabited by Catharine, by Heathcliff, by Earnshaw, and Hindley.