A quiet valley

A WELSH HOTEL.

“COME, Dulcie! Dulcie, my dear! Not ready yet?”

A spice of good-humored impatience breathed through the rich bass tones. George Rutherford stood in the hall of a somewhat primitive Welsh hotel. The door opening into a sitting-room, on one side, displayed sundry ladies and gentlemen, occupied or non-occupied in various ways. The door opening into the kitchen, on the other side, displayed a waiter or two in shirtsleeves, coming and going. The front door, opening on the hotel grounds, displayed a bare, gravelly space, with shrubs around, a short avenue of trees beyond, and glimpses of distant hills softly outlined against a blue sky.

Mr. Rutherford was a man of perhaps five or six-and-thirty years, unusually tall and massive in make, yet not stout. Honest brown eyes looked out from beneath a brow of remarkable breadth, which was framed in an abundant growth of tawny hair, fine as silk in texture. Moustache and beard, of a somewhat darker hue than the hair upon his head, almost hid a mouth of characteristic and beautiful outlines. He stood at the foot of the staircase, grasping a huge, crook-handled walking stick as tall as himself; and blissfully unconscious of, or indifferent to, the attention he was attracting from the inmates of the drawing-room, while he called again, in tones “not loud, but deep” —

“Dulcie, my dear, make haste!”

“That’s the bridegroom,” murmured a mild-faced maiden lady, quite an old resident at the hotel, since she had been there a fortnight. She addressed herself to a “new arrival,” seated by her side. “We call them ‘our bride and bridegroom.’ They came two days ago.”

“Why, he might be the father of half-a-dozen children,” quoth the newly arrived, a stout and genial widow, well on in middle life. “He a bridegroom!”

“I don’t know whether there has been a former marriage, but I rather imagine not. Oh, it is evidently a wedding tour!”

A boy of about ten came bounding downstairs in light leaps, clearing four or five steps at a time. He too had brown eyes, and a mass of tawny hair falling over a fine brow.

“She’s coming, uncle.”

“Would do for his son,” murmured the widow.

“Georgie dear,” called a small and eager voice from the landing above, “I’ll be down directly—in one moment. There’s a button off my boot, and I must sew it on.”

“All right,” responded Mr. Rutherford. “We’ll wait in front. Come, Leo!” and he strode out.

“He doesn’t look much like a ‘Georgie,’” softly said the new-comer to the maiden lady. “What a nice boy! But I don’t understand his presence if it is a wedding tour.”

“I don’t know that any one exactly understands. I fancy Mr. Rutherford is a man likely to do things in a fashion unlike everybody else. Perhaps he has adopted the boy. Here comes the bride.”

The lady, running swiftly downstairs, could hardly have been less than six or seven-and-twenty in age. She was as small and slim in make as her husband was tall and massive, and so fair in coloring that his tawny beard might almost be counted dark beside her smooth flaxen hair. The pale fringes to her blue eyes were unwontedly long and thick, and there was enough coloring in her cheeks to obviate insipidity. Her manner was marked by an eagerness amounting to flurry; and as she ran out of the front door she grasped a long stick, a rolled-up waterproof, a closed basket, a book, and a pair of gloves.

“Georgie, dear, I’m so sorry,” she was heard to say.

“All right,” responded Mr. Rutherford once more. “Hadn’t you better give me some of your paraphernalia?”

“Oh, yes—oh, thank you, dear! It’s only this book—Trench’s Poems, you know. You said you would read me some of it. Will it go into your pocket? And Leo said I must be sure to take my stick. And I thought we might want my cloak to sit on, if the grass should be damp. And in case of being late for lunch, it is best to have some biscuits and a sandwich or two, because then we shall not feel so hurried.”

“Anything else?” asked George, with an expressive intonation.

Mrs. Rutherford looked up, her anxious little fair face breaking into a smile.

“Now you are laughing at me, Georgie, dear.”

“Not at all. Always best to be prepared for emergencies. Well, come along, both of you. We shall not be back, at this rate, till—”

“Midnight,” suggested Leonard.

“No; dinner.”

“Lunch won’t matter, now we have something with us,” said Dulcibel, beginning to subside from her flurry. “You are going to show me your favorite valley, are you not, dear? Oh, don’t! I can easily carry the basket, please.”

“Give it to me. Here, Dulcie—I mean what I say. Leo will take your waterproof. If you can carry yourself there and back it will be as much as you are equal to.”

“I am sure I can. I feel equal to anything to-day.”

“Equal to anything” meant, as her husband knew by experience, equal to four or five miles, the latter part performed distressfully. Twenty or thirty miles were nothing to him. In her own home, before marriage, Dulcibel Lloyd had counted two miles an arduous undertaking, but George Rutherford was getting her slowly into training. They had been married just seven months, so it was not precisely a case of the honeymoon. In one sense they might be said to be still on their wedding trip, however. Dulcie had not yet seen her husband’s home, extensive alterations in it making a prolonged absence necessary.

They were by no means in one of the more mountainous parts of Wales. The hotel stood outside a small village, on the verge of a wild moor; the name of the village containing the liquid double “l,” as did the names of many villages near. Undulating hills lay around in all directions, showing autumn tints; and two or three mountains, attaining the respectable height of two thousand feet or more, were visible at a little distance.

George Rutherford had been to the spot a few years earlier, and he retained warm recollections of his visit. He was anxious now to display the charms of the place to his wife and nephew.

The walk to his favorite valley was fair enough, and the valley proved to be fairer still. Dulcibel would not attempt to learn the name, which had a softly indefinite sound like running water, perplexing to Saxon ears.

“I want to see what you like, but I don’t care what it is called,” she protested. “It will always be ‘Georgie’s Valley’ to me. I dislike having to talk consonants; and what is the use?”

George laughed, and gave in.

The valley lay level and green, with rounded well-clothed hills surrounding, and a wide stream or small river partly skirting it. The stream had to be crossed by a “shaking bridge” of local celebrity, a somewhat narrow structure of planks bound strongly together with wire, the whole depending on chains, and showing a singular elasticity, for it vibrated and swung at every step.

Dulcibel shrank back at first, absolutely refusing to cross or to let her companions cross. It was “dangerous,” she said; something would give way, or somebody would be giddy and tumble in. But George mercilessly strode to the centre and stood there, keeping the bridge in motion, with evident enjoyment of its undulations, and Leonard dashed merrily over. Dulcibel was fain to summon up her courage, and consent to be led across by her husband’s strong hand, growing absolutely white with fear.

“I shall enjoy nothing with the thought of having to go back,” she averred, tremulously, on the other side.

George looked down on her with a strong, tender pity, and said softly—

“O thou of little faith!”

“Georgie, dear, I’m very wrong—I’m always frightened at something,” she said, apologetically; “but you know it is my way.”