The Other Cathy

by Nancy Buckingham

  THE OTHER CATHY

  Nancy Buckingham

  Chapter One

  August 1860

  Emma felt no dear presentiment, nor any sense of foreboding, yet here in the hushed and secret early morning atmosphere with a summer mist upon the moor she was conscious of a strange exhilaration, as though the key to all her dreams, to all her innermost longings, might be within her grasp.

  She sought no more than a brief half-hour of solitude. So rarely these days did she have a chance of being entirely alone and, besides, she told herself, she would be doing Seth a kindness.

  ‘You ride on to your grandmother’s to collect the new jacket you’re having for the Donkey Fair,’ she said with an air of decision. ‘You did say she’d have it ready for today?’

  ‘Aye, Miss Emma. But t’master will be reet wild if I leave thy side, so will thou come along with me?’

  ‘No, thank you, Seth, and it will be all right. There’s no reason why Uncle Randolph need find out. Off you go, and I’ll wait for you at Black Scar Rocks, up by the Abraham Stone.’

  A look of uncertainty clouded the lad’s dark gypsy eyes, but in a moment temptation won.

  ‘Tha’ll take reet good care of thyseln, miss?’ he grinned. ‘I’ll be that quick tha’ll hardly know I’m gone.’

  ‘You need not rush, Seth, I will come to no harm,’ she called after him as he cantered off and vanished into the mist.

  Alone, Emma urged the sorrel mare forward. The ground rose gently at first, then more steeply, until it broke clear of the mist and emerged into a world of hazy sunshine, where the heather glowed a rich soft purple. Looming above her, darkly threatening against the rose-flushed sky, was the massive ridge of Black Scar Rocks. The rugged outcrops of millstone grit thrust up like the bastions of a ruined castle; yet the loftiest crag of all was curiously flat-topped, like a sacrificial altar from some bygone age. Emma rode Kirstie at a walk, up the twisting sheep path where furze and whinberry grew in every crevice of the rocks, to the very base of the Abraham Stone. Then, dismounting and leaving the mare to nibble, she clambered up the irregular natural stairway, holding the skirt of her blue riding habit gathered in one hand, lest the coarse gritstone should catch at the soft cloth like teazles in the napping gig at her uncle’s woollen mill.

  Standing there on the slabbed top of the giant boulder, she looked down in the direction of the Brackle Valley, filled now with dense mist. She could see nothing of the large industrial village of Bythorpe with its crowded little houses and cottages, the mill buildings clustered around the tall furnace chimney or the railway line that wound along beside the wimpling river. All was hidden below a drifting cloud of whiteness. Even Bracklegarth Hall, which stood proudly alone halfway down the valley’s slope, was completely invisible. In her mind’s eye, casting a shadow across her mood, she recalled Cathy’s woebegone face at the window. Her young cousin, whose beautiful features bore a consumptive’s fragile bloom, had been in a plaintive mood this morning when Emma came down dressed to go riding.

  ‘You love it, don’t you?’ she had said accusingly. ‘You can hardly wait to get away from the house.’

  ‘Only for an hour or two, dearest. Just for a breath of air and a change of scene.’

  Cathy had laid aside her book with a sigh. ‘What do you think about when you’re up there on the moor, Emma? What are your secret longings? I know you have them, for I can see it in your eyes.’

  But Emma could scarcely even have named them to herself.

  Below her came a soft whinny from Kirstie, and an answering neigh from another horse. Emma felt a stab of disappointment and irritation. There was no need for Seth to have made such haste. His grandmother’s cottage was only half a mile away, cradled in one of the moorland’s little ravines, but Emma had expected him to linger there for a few more minutes, long enough at least to try on his new jacket and admire it. She looked for him without moving from her platform. But it was not Seth. She found herself looking down at a stranger, a man who sat tall in the saddle of a fine Cleveland bay. They regarded each other with surprise as he politely raised his silk hat.

  ‘I am relieved, madam, to see that you are uninjured. Coming upon a riderless mare, I feared there had been a mishap.’

  His speech had a nasal intonation that Emma could not place; it lacked polish, she decided, and his demeanour, for all that he was attired like a gentleman in an elegant dark green cutaway riding coat and fawn kerseymere trousers, was unrefined.

  ‘Thank you, sir, but I am perfectly safe. I merely came up here for – for the view.’

  ‘In this mist,’ he remarked, with a touch of irony.

  Emma had thought she knew everybody in the district for miles around, at least by sight, but she was certain that never before had she seen this man. And there was something about him that she found – menacing would hardly be too strong a word. His face was lean, almost gaunt, giving the dark eyes an appearance of lurking in shadowed pools; the skin of his cheeks was deeply scored and roughened, as though from long exposure to the elements. Behind the courteous mask Emma sensed a passionate temperament; taut self-control that could suddenly give way to unbridled anger. She felt this, but her awareness left Emma curiously unafraid.

  ‘I am above the mist up here,’ she pointed out, ‘and it will clear presently.’

  He continued to look at her steadily, intently, and she wished she could see the expression in those hollowed eyes. His hat was still in his hand and he raked back a strand of black hair which had fallen across his brow.

  He said, ‘I find it surprising that even in this advanced age it is considered safe and proper for a young lady to ride alone in such a deserted spot. It was not always so, I think.’

  ‘It is still not so, sir, as you must be well aware.’ Emma tried her best to appear calmly composed. ‘My groom is calling upon his grandmother, who lives nearby. He will be back at any moment.’

  ‘It sounds to me as if the fellow is somewhat remiss about his duties.’

  ‘No, I gave him permission. Or rather, it was an instruction.’

  A smile touched his lips. ‘How considerate of you. And how fortunate for me! Riding across this empty moor, I had hardly anticipated the pleasure of coming across an angelic figure poised so charmingly upon a high pedestal. Perhaps I had better leave before I discover that you are a figment of my imagination.’

  ‘I assure you that I am real,’ she said.

  ‘I remain unconvinced.’

  His horse skittered towards Kirstie and he tightened the rein. Looking up again at Emma, he said, ‘Well, if you assure me you are not in distress I suppose I must bid you farewell.’

  ‘Thank you for coming to investigate that I wasn’t hurt,’ she said quickly, remembering her manners. ‘It was good of you.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  Yet neither of them turned away. He remained gazing up at her, she down at him. For an immeasurable instant they stayed thus; then, as if recollecting himself, the man bowed from the saddle, replaced his hat and wheeled his horse round. A moment later he had disappeared from view behind a shoulder of rock. Emma turned her gaze to where she expected him to reappear but there was no further sign of him, and no sound.

  Seth’s return took her by surprise. She stared at the lad in such a strange way that he enquired anxiously if she was all right.

  ‘Yes, yes, thank you, Seth. Did you get your jacket?’

  ‘Aye, I did that, miss.’ He indicated a bundle tied behind his saddle. ‘Reet grand, it looks!’

  ‘I am so glad. How was your grandmother today?’ She turned and cautiously descended, step by step, and stood beside him.

  ‘A bit poorly like, is Gran’mer. Her palpitations, she says. Can’t seem to cure herseln like she cur
es other folks.’ Seth pushed aside his cap and scratched his black curls. He gave Emma a baffled look. ‘She warned me there’s bad trouble a’coming, miss.’

  ‘Trouble? For whom?’

  ‘Bad trouble for all of us hereabouts, is what Gran’mer meant.’ He frowned as he strove to remember, ‘Trouble coming from somewheres far off, that’s what she said.’

  Seth gave her a hand up and as she settled in the saddle Emma tried to appear amused and unconcerned. “That sounds typical of Ursly, to be full of dire forebodings. She would like us all to think she can see into the future.’

  ‘Happen she can, miss.’

  ‘That is difficult to believe, Seth.’

  They started on the homeward journey and, indulging herself, Emma allowed her thoughts to return to the stranger. He had called her angelic, questioning whether she was real. But perhaps it was he who had no substance; perhaps he had been no more than a fancy arising from the curious exhilaration she had felt this morning. Yet it was surely an extraordinary ploy of imagination to conjure up that hard, gaunt man with hollowed eyes and ravaged features. She was tempted to ask Seth if he had met a lone horseman on his way back from Ursly’s cottage, but refrained, clinging jealously to the memory of her strange encounter, and unwilling to share it.

  They rode on, following the ancient pack-horse track that would lead them down between dry-stone sheep walls into the valley. Now the sun was higher in the sky and gathering heat, the morning mist was fast evaporating in the warm air and no breeze stirred. It would be a sultry day. From somewhere far off in the lonely hills came a low rumbling sound, echoed close behind them from Black Scar Rocks. Emma shivered, and glanced enquiringly at Seth.

  ‘Aye, it’ll be thundering all reet thisnight, Miss Emma, a real bad storm,’ he said.

  Chapter Two

  Randolph Hardaker came home for breakfast, as he did each morning, six days a week, on the stroke of eight o’clock. He greeted his womenfolk who were hovering in the hall and followed them into the dining room. After two hours of hard work at the mill Randolph was ready for a hearty meal, and considered he had earned it; porridge and cream on the table, kidneys and bacon waiting under a silver cover on the sideboard and plenty of hot buttered toast and orange marmalade. That his mill hands – over a hundred men, women and children – might have had as keen appetites as his own but had to be content with a hunk of coarse bread brought from home was a thought that did not for one moment enter his head.

  Glancing at his sister Chloe, presiding over the teapot at the other end of the table in her brown bombazine dress and white net morning cap, Randolph felt irritated by her flow of trivialities and thought it little wonder she had never found herself a husband. Like most of the Hardaker family, Chloe was tall and big boned, but instead of making an impressive figure she merely looked ungainly. Now, in her middle age, she was the archetype of a prudish, sour old maid. Randolph’s gaze rested on Emma and he fervently hoped that such a fate did not await her, but there seemed little danger of it. Though built in the same mould as her aunt, and until recently an awkward tomboyish child, Emma had acquired poise and dignity during the past eighteen months, since coming to live at Bracklegarth Hall following her mother’s death. He doubted that Emma would ever be called a beauty but her features were good, especially the lively brown eyes, and for a woman she was intelligent. In due course she would make some man a wife to be proud of, but for the present, although the girl was nearing twenty, Randolph had no wish for her hand to be sought in marriage. There was too much need of her here.

  Randolph turned to his daughter Cathy, who was toying with a piece of thin toast. Sadly, she had not inherited the Hardaker strength and stamina but had taken after her mother. She was a sweet child, with delicate features framed by a mass of soft, silky hair that fell in golden ringlets. Her pale skin was stretched finely over high cheekbones, where two bright spots of colour added that unnatural beauty which betrayed the consumptive. She had all too little flesh on her bones, and was growing visibly thinner by the week. Randolph was resigned now to the knowledge that it would not be long before his daughter followed her mother to the grave.

  Cutting off in mid-sentence Chloe’s complaint about the cost of bacon, he remarked to Cathy with a fond smile, ‘I am happy to see you breakfasting down here this morning, my lass. Were you disturbed by the thunder in the night?’

  ‘Oh yes, papa! It was so loud that I was quite frightened, but Emma came and read to me until I fell asleep again.’

  He gave Emma a warm look of appreciation. ‘What should we all do without our dear Emma? I would have come to your room myself, my pet, but I was still out when the storm broke.’

  ‘I hope you did not get very wet, papa, or you might have caught a nasty cold.’

  Randolph repressed an inward chuckle, reflecting how snugly he had been tucked up last night. At nearly sixty he congratulated himself that he could still show a mill lass he was as virile as any young lad of her own class. Under the damask tablecloth he gripped his firm and powerful thighs and touched his belly, which was hard and flat. In the sideboard mirror he caught his reflection: a fine head of hair – admittedly greying, but still thick and springy; a wide forehead and bushy brows that almost met above his strong, decisive nose. As he swept his glance round the table, he saw that Chloe’s lips were pursed in distaste. His sister was deeply shocked by his nocturnal adventures, though she never dared say so. A mischievous streak in him almost wished she would, then he could remind her that passionless virgins shouldn’t interfere in things they did not understand.

  ‘Nay, Cathy, love,’ he said tenderly, ‘I didn’t get wet, so there’s nowt to fret about. And the storm’s brought us fine weather. It was right grand just now walking up from the mill, cool and fresh-smelling and not a trace of mist on the hills. I reckon it would do you no harm to sit in the garden a bit this morning.’

  ‘I’m going down to the village with Aunt Chloe and Emma, papa. We have to call at the bank for the Donkey Fair shillings.’

  ‘I see.’ Randolph thought of the bright new silver shillings to be presented to each of the servants for their spending money at the annual village fair. Jacob Hoad and his wife, butler and cook; two maid-servants; the gardener, Brigg; Joseph the coachman; and young Seth. Damn it, for seven shillings he could get more than a full week’s work from any lad or lass down at the mill. His mother had begun the custom when his father rose in the world and built Bracklegarth Hall, and it was expected of him to continue it when he came into his inheritance; it would not look well if he were to drop it now. The fact was that he could have given more, with trade so good; and if the Yorkshire Post prediction of civil war across the Atlantic proved correct, there would be a cotton famine in Lancashire and a bigger boom than ever in West Riding woollens, but he was not a man to throw money away.

  Randolph had gone back to the mill by the time that the three ladies were ready to set out, and the open carriage was brought round by the dour Joseph, with young Seth beside him on the boxseat. Both wore the livery of dark blue coat and tall hat with a crimson cockade, befitting Chloe’s pretensions to the dignity of the Hardakers.

  It was one of Cathy’s better days and she chatted gaily to Seth as they bowled along the dusty valley road. Cathy had a special relationship with Seth which Chloe, frown and grimace as she might, was powerless to prevent, This stemmed from the time when Ursly had brought her dead daughter’s new-born baby to the attic room she occupied at Bracklegarth Hall.

  Emma, in her childhood, had more than once heard a servant remark that the strange gypsy woman up at t’Hall seemed to have cast a spell over Mrs Randolph Hardaker, ‘always closeted together, they was, and Ursly’s grandson allowed to play with Miss Cathy just as if they was equals’. The two small children were inseparable and had roamed freely in the gardens and beyond; and on one occasion there had been a panic when they could not be found anywhere. Ursly had solved the mystery in her uncanny way, almost as if she had a vision, and Cathy
and Seth were discovered high up on the moor, happily playing among the boulders of Black Scar Rocks. There had been a rumpus, of course, from Randolph, but even after this episode the children had not been kept apart. Cathy’s mother had taught her to read and write but was too frail to tolerate her little daughter’s lively presence for long, and in Seth’s company the child was always content. At the time of Henrietta Hardaker’s death, four years ago, Seth was already working as stable-boy and Cathy remained as fond of him as ever. Randolph might well have taken the chance to put a stop to it then, but he was a devoted father and already painfully sure that Cathy herself was slowly declining; and so she was petted and pampered, her every whim indulged.

  Now Cathy said excitedly, ‘Seth, have you fetched your new jacket from your grandmother’s yet?’

  ‘Aye, Miss Cathy, so I have.’

  ‘Then why haven’t I seen it? As soon as we get back home you are to put it on and show me.’ Her imperious manner broke, and she added with childish wistfulness, ‘Oh, I do hope papa will let me go to the Donkey Fair.’

  ‘He is hardly likely to do so, remembering that you were too unwell to attend church last Sunday,’ Chloe pointed out.

  ‘But I am feeling so much better now. Emma, you will make sure papa lets me go, won’t you?’

  ‘If your father says no,’ sniffed Chloe, ‘there will be no argument about it.’

  ‘Oh, but Emma could persuade him if she tried,’ Cathy pointed out artlessly, thus earning a black look from her aunt.

  They crossed the river by the pack-horse bridge, near which stood the old water-driven fulling mill where the first enterprising Hardaker, Randolph’s great-grandfather, had set up as a master clothier nearly a hundred years ago, processing broadcloth from the looms of local hand weavers. Now the building was used as a warehouse for the Hardakers’ big new steam-powered spinning and weaving mill a little further up the valley; while the terraced rows of weavers’ cottages with their long window-lights upstairs had become homes for the mill workers. From there the village street snaked steeply upwards, lined with huddled shops and houses which were built from the local millstone grit, and were cold, dark and austere despite the brightness of the August sunshine.