Emma Orczy

Lord Tony's Wife Emma Orczy

The road along which the two cavaliers were riding was unspeakably lonely and desolate-an offshoot from the main Bath to Weston road. It had been quite a good secondary roadonce. The accounts of the county administration under date 1725 go to prove that it wascompleted in that year at considerable expense and with stone brought over for thepurpose all the way from Draycott quarries, and for twenty years after that a coach used toply along it between Chelwood and Redhill as well as two or three carriers, and of coursethere was all the traffic in connexion with the Stanton markets and the Norton Fairs. Butthat was nigh on fifty years ago now, and somehow-once the mail-coach wasdiscontinued-it had never seemed worth while to keep the road in decent repair. It hadgone from bad to worse since then, and travelling on it these days either ahorse or afoothad become very unpleasant. It was full of ruts and crevasses and knee-deep in mud, as thestranger had very appositely remarked, and the stone parapet which bordered it on eitherside, and which had once given it such an air of solidity and of value, was broken down invery many places and threatened soon to disappear altogether. The country round was as lonely and desolate as the road. And that sense of desolationseemed to pervade the very atmosphere right through the darkness which had descendedon upland and valley and hill. Though nothing now could be seen through the gloom andthe mist, the senses were conscious that even in broad daylight there would be nothing tosee. Loneliness dwelt in the air as well as upon the moor. There were no homesteads formiles around, no cattle grazing, no pastures, no hedges, nothing-just arid wasteland withhere and there a group of stunted trees or an isolated yew, and tracts of rough, coarse grassnot nearly good enough for cattle to eat.