The Other Cathy

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 kind
ness.

‘
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 mas
sive 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 sacri
ficial 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, hold
ing 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 cot
tages, 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 her
self.

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 plat
form. 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. Com
ing 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 un
refined.

‘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 instruc
tion.’

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 bet
ter 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 re
appear 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 be
side him.

‘A bit poorly like, is Gran’mer. Her palpitations, she says.
Can’t seem to cure herseln like she cures 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 her
self, 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.

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 fol
lowed 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 side
board and plenty of hot buttered toast and orange marmalade.
That his mill hands – over a hundred men, women and child
ren – 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 trivi
alities and thought it little wonder she had never found her
self 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 be
trayed 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.