Books: Half a Life Time Ago
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Elizabeth Gaskell >> Half a Life Time Ago
"You do. My--what is it I want you to be?"
"I tell you I don't know, and you had best be quiet, and just let me
go in, or I shall think you're as bad now as you were last night."
"And how did you know what I was last night? It was past twelve when
I came home. Were you watching? Ah, Susan! be my wife, and you
shall never have to watch for a drunken husband. If I were your
husband, I would come straight home, and count every minute an hour
till I saw your bonny face. Now you know what I want you to be. I
ask you to be my wife. Will you, my own dear Susan?"
She did not speak for some time. Then she only said "Ask father."
And now she was really off like a lapwing round the corner of the
barn, and up in her own little room, crying with all her might,
before the triumphant smile had left Michael's face where he stood.
The "Ask father" was a mere form to be gone though. Old Daniel Hurst
and William Dixon had talked over what they could respectively give
their children before this; and that was the parental way of
arranging such matters. When the probable amount of worldly gear
that he could give his child had been named by each father, the young
folk, as they said, might take their own time in coming to the point
which the old men, with the prescience of experience, saw they were
drifting to; no need to hurry them, for they were both young, and
Michael, though active enough, was too thoughtless, old Daniel said,
to be trusted with the entire management of a farm. Meanwhile, his
father would look about him, and see after all the farms that were to
be let.
Michael had a shrewd notion of this preliminary understanding between
the fathers, and so felt less daunted than he might otherwise have
done at making the application for Susan's hand. It was all right,
there was not an obstacle; only a deal of good advice, which the
lover thought might have as well been spared, and which it must be
confessed he did not much attend to, although he assented to every
part of it. Then Susan was called down stairs, and slowly came
dropping into view down the steps which led from the two family
apartments into the house-place. She tried to look composed and
quiet, but it could not be done. She stood side by side with her
lover, with her head drooping, her cheeks burning, not daring to look
up or move, while her father made the newly-betrothed a somewhat
formal address in which he gave his consent, and many a piece of
worldly wisdom beside. Susan listened as well as she could for the
beating of her heart; but when her father solemnly and sadly referred
to his own lost wife, she could keep from sobbing no longer; but
throwing her apron over her face, she sat down on the bench by the
dresser, and fairly gave way to pent-up tears. Oh, how strangely
sweet to be comforted as she was comforted, by tender caress, and
many a low-whispered promise of love! Her father sat by the fire,
thinking of the days that were gone; Willie was still out of doors;
but Susan and Michael felt no one's presence or absence--they only
knew they were together as betrothed husband and wife.
In a week, or two, they were formally told of the arrangements to be
made in their favour. A small farm in the neighbourhood happened to
fall vacant; and Michael's father offered to take it for him, and be
responsible for the rent for the first year, while William Dixon was
to contribute a certain amount of stock, and both fathers were to
help towards the furnishing of the house. Susan received all this
information in a quiet, indifferent way; she did not care much for
any of these preparations, which were to hurry her through the happy
hours; she cared least of all for the money amount of dowry and of
substance. It jarred on her to be made the confidante of occasional
slight repinings of Michael's, as one by one his future father-in-law
set aside a beast or a pig for Susan's portion, which were not always
the best animals of their kind upon the farm. But he also complained
of his own father's stinginess, which somewhat, though not much,
alleviated Susan's dislike to being awakened out of her pure dream of
love to the consideration of worldly wealth.
But in the midst of all this bustle, Willie moped and pined. He had
the same chord of delicacy running through his mind that made his
body feeble and weak. He kept out of the way, and was apparently
occupied in whittling and carving uncouth heads on hazel-sticks in an
out-house. But he positively avoided Michael, and shrunk away even
from Susan. She was too much occupied to notice this at first.
Michael pointed it out to her, saying, with a laugh, -
"Look at Willie! he might be a cast-off lover and jealous of me, he
looks so dark and downcast at me." Michael spoke this jest out loud,
and Willie burst into tears, and ran out of the house.
"Let me go. Let me go!" said Susan (for her lover's arm was round
her waist). "I must go to him if he's fretting. I promised mother I
would!" She pulled herself away, and went in search of the boy. She
sought in byre and barn, through the orchard, where indeed in this
leafless winter-time there was no great concealment; up into the room
where the wool was usually stored in the later summer, and at last
she found him, sitting at bay, like some hunted creature, up behind
the wood-stack.
"What are ye gone for, lad, and me seeking you everywhere?" asked
she, breathless.
"I did not know you would seek me. I've been away many a time, and
no one has cared to seek me," said he, crying afresh.
"Nonsense," replied Susan, "don't be so foolish, ye little good-for-
nought." But she crept up to him in the hole he had made underneath
the great, brown sheafs of wood, and squeezed herself down by him.
"What for should folk seek after you, when you get away from them
whenever you can?" asked she.
"They don't want me to stay. Nobody wants me. If I go with father,
he says I hinder more than I help. You used to like to have me with
you. But now, you've taken up with Michael, and you'd rather I was
away; and I can just bide away; but I cannot stand Michael jeering at
me. He's got you to love him and that might serve him."
"But I love you, too, dearly, lad!" said she, putting her arm round
his neck.
"Which on us do you like best?" said he, wistfully, after a little
pause, putting her arm away, so that he might look in her face, and
see if she spoke truth.
She went very red.
"You should not ask such questions. They are not fit for you to ask,
nor for me to answer."
"But mother bade you love me!" said he, plaintively.
"And so I do. And so I ever will do. Lover nor husband shall come
betwixt thee and me, lad--ne'er a one of them. That I promise thee
(as I promised mother before), in the sight of God and with her
hearkening now, if ever she can hearken to earthly word again. Only
I cannot abide to have thee fretting, just because my heart is large
enough for two."
"And thou'lt love me always?"
"Always, and ever. And the more--the more thou'lt love Michael,"
said she, dropping her voice.
"I'll try," said the boy, sighing, for he remembered many a harsh
word and blow of which his sister knew nothing. She would have risen
up to go away, but he held her tight, for here and now she was all
his own, and he did not know when such a time might come again. So
the two sat crouched up and silent, till they heard the horn blowing
at the field-gate, which was the summons home to any wanderers
belonging to the farm, and at this hour of the evening, signified
that supper was ready. Then the two went in.
CHAPTER II.
Susan and Michael were to be married in April. He had already gone
to take possession of his new farm, three or four miles away from Yew
Nook--but that is neighbouring, according to the acceptation of the
word in that thinly-populated district,--when William Dixon fell ill.
He came home one evening, complaining of head-ache and pains in his
limbs, but seemed to loathe the posset which Susan prepared for him;
the treacle-posset which was the homely country remedy against an
incipient cold. He took to his bed with a sensation of exceeding
weariness, and an odd, unusual looking-back to the days of his youth,
when he was a lad living with his parents, in this very house.
The next morning he had forgotten all his life since then, and did
not know his own children; crying, like a newly-weaned baby, for his
mother to come and soothe away his terrible pain. The doctor from
Coniston said it was the typhus-fever, and warned Susan of its
infectious character, and shook his head over his patient. There
were no near friends to come and share her anxiety; only good, kind
old Peggy, who was faithfulness itself, and one or two labourers'
wives, who would fain have helped her, had not their hands been tied
by their responsibility to their own families. But, somehow, Susan
neither feared nor flagged. As for fear, indeed, she had no time to
give way to it, for every energy of both body and mind was required.
Besides, the young have had too little experience of the danger of
infection to dread it much. She did indeed wish, from time to time,
that Michael had been at home to have taken Willie over to his
father's at High Beck; but then, again, the lad was docile and useful
to her, and his fecklessness in many things might make him harshly
treated by strangers; so, perhaps, it was as well that Michael was
away at Appleby fair, or even beyond that--gone into Yorkshire after
horses.
Her father grew worse; and the doctor insisted on sending over a
nurse from Coniston. Not a professed nurse--Coniston could not have
supported such a one; but a widow who was ready to go where the
doctor sent her for the sake of the payment. When she came, Susan
suddenly gave way; she was felled by the fever herself, and lay
unconscious for long weeks. Her consciousness returned to her one
spring afternoon; early spring: April,--her wedding-month. There
was a little fire burning in the small corner-grate, and the
flickering of the blaze was enough for her to notice in her weak
state. She felt that there was some one sitting on the window-side
of her bed, behind the curtain, but she did not care to know who it
was; it was even too great a trouble for her languid mind to consider
who it was likely to be. She would rather shut her eyes, and melt
off again into the gentle luxury of sleep. The next time she
wakened, the Coniston nurse perceived her movement, and made her a
cup of tea, which she drank with eager relish; but still they did not
speak, and once more Susan lay motionless--not asleep, but strangely,
pleasantly conscious of all the small chamber and household sounds;
the fall of a cinder on the hearth, the fitful singing of the half-
empty kettle, the cattle tramping out to field again after they had
been milked, the aged step on the creaking stair--old Peggy's, as she
knew. It came to her door; it stopped; the person outside listened
for a moment, and then lifted the wooden latch, and looked in. The
watcher by the bedside arose, and went to her. Susan would have been
glad to see Peggy's face once more, but was far too weak to turn, so
she lay and listened.
"How is she?" whispered one trembling, aged voice.
"Better," replied the other. "She's been awake, and had a cup of
tea. She'll do now."
"Has she asked after him?"
"Hush! No; she has not spoken a word."
"Poor lass! poor lass!"
The door was shut. A weak feeling of sorrow and self-pity came over
Susan. What was wrong? Whom had she loved? And dawning, dawning,
slowly rose the sun of her former life, and all particulars were made
distinct to her. She felt that some sorrow was coming to her, and
cried over it before she knew what it was, or had strength enough to
ask. In the dead of night,--and she had never slept again,--she
softly called to the watcher, and asked -
"Who?"
"Who what?" replied the woman, with a conscious affright, ill-veiled
by a poor assumption of ease. "Lie still, there's a darling, and go
to sleep. Sleep's better for you than all the doctor's stuff."
"Who?" repeated Susan. "Something is wrong. Who?"
"Oh, dear!" said the woman. "There's nothing wrong. Willie has
taken the turn, and is doing nicely."
"Father?"
"Well! he's all right now," she answered, looking another way, as if
seeking for something.
"Then it's Michael! Oh, me! oh, me!" She set up a succession of
weak, plaintive, hysterical cries before the nurse could pacify her,
by declaring that Michael had been at the house not three hours
before to ask after her, and looked as well and as hearty as ever man
did.
"And you heard of no harm to him since?" inquired Susan.
"Bless the lass, no, for sure! I've ne'er heard his name named since
I saw him go out of the yard as stout a man as ever trod shoe-
leather."
It was well, as the nurse said afterwards to Peggy, that Susan had
been so easily pacified by the equivocating answer in respect to her
father. If she had pressed the questions home in his case as she did
in Michael's, she would have learnt that he was dead and buried more
than a month before. It was well, too, that in her weak state of
convalescence (which lasted long after this first day of
consciousness) her perceptions were not sharp enough to observe the
sad change that had taken place in Willie. His bodily strength
returned, his appetite was something enormous, but his eyes wandered
continually; his regard could not be arrested; his speech became
slow, impeded, and incoherent. People began to say that the fever
had taken away the little wit Willie Dixon had ever possessed and
that they feared that he would end in being a "natural," as they call
an idiot in the Dales.
The habitual affection and obedience to Susan lasted longer than any
other feeling that the boy had had previous to his illness; and,
perhaps, this made her be the last to perceive what every one else
had long anticipated. She felt the awakening rude when it did come.
It was in this wise:-
One Jane evening, she sat out of doors under the yew-tree, knitting.
She was pale still from her recent illness; and her languor, joined
to the fact of her black dress, made her look more than usually
interesting. She was no longer the buoyant self-sufficient Susan,
equal to every occasion. The men were bringing in the cows to be
milked, and Michael was about in the yard giving orders and
directions with somewhat the air of a master, for the farm belonged
of right to Willie, and Susan had succeeded to the guardianship of
her brother. Michael and she were to be married as soon as she was
strong enough--so, perhaps, his authoritative manner was justified;
but the labourers did not like it, although they said little. They
remembered a stripling on the farm, knowing far less than they did,
and often glad to shelter his ignorance of all agricultural matters
behind their superior knowledge. They would have taken orders from
Susan with far more willingness; nay, Willie himself might have
commanded them; and from the old hereditary feeling toward the owners
of land, they would have obeyed him with far greater cordiality than
they now showed to Michael. But Susan was tired with even three
rounds of knitting, and seemed not to notice, or to care, how things
went on around her; and Willie--poor Willie!--there he stood lounging
against the door-sill, enormously grown and developed, to be sure,
but with restless eyes and ever-open mouth, and every now and then
setting up a strange kind of howling cry, and then smiling vacantly
to himself at the sound he had made. As the two old labourers passed
him, they looked at each other ominously, and shook their heads.
"Willie, darling," said Susan, "don't make that noise--it makes my
head ache."
She spoke feebly, and Willie did not seem to hear; at any rate, he
continued his howl from time to time.
"Hold thy noise, wilt'a?" said Michael, roughly, as he passed near
him, and threatening him with his fist. Susan's back was turned to
the pair. The expression of Willie's face changed from vacancy to
fear, and he came shambling up to Susan, who put her arm round him,
and, as if protected by that shelter, he began making faces at
Michael. Susan saw what was going on, and, as if now first struck by
the strangeness of her brother's manner, she looked anxiously at
Michael for an explanation. Michael was irritated at Willie's
defiance of him, and did not mince the matter.
"It's just that the fever has left him silly--he never was as wise as
other folk, and now I doubt if he will ever get right."
Susan did not speak, but she went very pale, and her lip quivered.
She looked long and wistfully at Willie's face, as he watched the
motion of the ducks in the great stable-pool. He laughed softly to
himself every now and then.
"Willie likes to see the ducks go overhead," said Susan,
instinctively adopting the form of speech she would have used to a
young child.
"Willie, boo! Willie, boo!" he replied, clapping his hands, and
avoiding her eye.
"Speak properly, Willie," said Susan, making a strong effort at self-
control, and trying to arrest his attention.
"You know who I am--tell me my name!" She grasped his arm almost
painfully tight to make him attend. Now he looked at her, and, for
an instant, a gleam of recognition quivered over his face; but the
exertion was evidently painful, and he began to cry at the vainness
of the effort to recall her name. He hid his face upon her shoulder
with the old affectionate trick of manner. She put him gently away,
and went into the house into her own little bedroom. She locked the
door, and did not reply at all to Michael's calls for her, hardly
spoke to old Peggy, who tried to tempt her out to receive some homely
sympathy, and through the open easement there still came the idiotic
sound of "Willie, boo! Willie, boo!"
CHAPTER III.
After the stun of the blow came the realization of the consequences.
Susan would sit for hours trying patiently to recall and piece
together fragments of recollection and consciousness in her brother's
mind. She would let him go and pursue some senseless bit of play,
and wait until she could catch his eye or his attention again, when
she would resume her self-imposed task. Michael complained that she
never had a word for him, or a minute of time to spend with him now;
but she only said she must try, while there was yet a chance, to
bring back her brother's lost wits. As for marriage in this state of
uncertainty, she had no heart to think of it. Then Michael stormed,
and absented himself for two or three days; but it was of no use.
When he came back, he saw that she had been crying till her eyes were
all swollen up, and he gathered from Peggy's scoldings (which she did
not spare him) that Susan had eaten nothing since he went away. But
she was as inflexible as ever.
"Not just yet. Only not just yet. And don't say again that I do not
love you," said she, suddenly hiding herself in his arms.
And so matters went on through August. The crop of oats was gathered
in; the wheat-field was not ready as yet, when one fine day Michael
drove up in a borrowed shandry, and offered to take Willie a ride.
His manner, when Susan asked him where he was going to, was rather
confused; but the answer was straight and clear enough.
He had business in Ambleside. He would never lose sight of the lad,
and have him back safe and sound before dark. So Susan let him go.
Before night they were at home again: Willie in high delight at a
little rattling paper windmill that Michael had bought for him in the
street, and striving to imitate this new sound with perpetual
buzzings. Michael, too, looked pleased. Susan knew the look,
although afterwards she remembered that he had tried to veil it from
her, and had assumed a grave appearance of sorrow whenever he caught
her eye. He put up his horse; for, although he had three miles
further to go, the moon was up--the bonny harvest-moon--and he did
not care how late he had to drive on such a road by such a light.
After the supper which Susan had prepared for the travellers was
over, Peggy went up-stairs to see Willie safe in bed; for he had to
have the same care taken of him that a little child of four years old
requires.
Michael drew near to Susan.
"Susan," said he, "I took Will to see Dr. Preston, at Kendal. He's
the first doctor in the county. I thought it were better for us--for
you--to know at once what chance there were for him."
"Well!" said Susan, looking eagerly up. She saw the same strange
glance of satisfaction, the same instant change to apparent regret
and pain. "What did he say?" said she. "Speak! can't you?"
"He said he would never get better of his weakness."
"Never!"
"No; never. It's a long word, and hard to bear. And there's worse
to come, dearest. The doctor thinks he will get badder from year to
year. And he said, if he was us--you--he would send him off in time
to Lancaster Asylum. They've ways there both of keeping such people
in order and making them happy. I only tell you what he said,"
continued he, seeing the gathering storm in her face.
"There was no harm in his saying it," she replied, with great self-
constraint, forcing herself to speak coldly instead of angrily.
"Folk is welcome to their opinions."
They sat silent for a minute or two, her breast heaving with
suppressed feeling.
"He's counted a very clever man," said Michael at length.
"He may be. He's none of my clever men, nor am I going to be guided
by him, whatever he may think. And I don't thank them that went and
took my poor lad to have such harsh notions formed about him. If I'd
been there, I could have called out the sense that is in him."
"Well! I'll not say more to-night, Susan. You're not taking it
rightly, and I'd best be gone, and leave you to think it over. I'll
not deny they are hard words to hear, but there's sense in them, as I
take it; and I reckon you'll have to come to 'em. Anyhow, it's a bad
way of thanking me for my pains, and I don't take it well in you,
Susan," said he, getting up, as if offended.
"Michael, I'm beside myself with sorrow. Don't blame me if I speak
sharp. He and me is the only ones, you see. And mother did so
charge me to have a care of him! And this is what he's come to, poor
lile chap!" She began to cry, and Michael to comfort her with
caresses.
"Don't," said she. "It's no use trying to make me forget poor Willie
is a natural. I could hate myself for being happy with you, even for
just a little minute. Go away, and leave me to face it out."
"And you'll think it over, Susan, and remember what the doctor says?"
"I can't forget," said she. She meant she could not forget what the
doctor had said about the hopelessness of her brother's case; Michael
had referred to the plan of sending Willie to an asylum, or madhouse,
as they were called in that day and place. The idea had been
gathering force in Michael's mind for some time; he had talked it
over with his father, and secretly rejoiced over the possession of
the farm and land which would then be his in fact, if not in law, by
right of his wife. He had always considered the good penny her
father could give her in his catalogue of Susan's charms and
attractions. But of late he had grown to esteem her as the heiress
of Yew Nook. He, too, should have land like his brother--land to
possess, to cultivate, to make profit from, to bequeath. For some
time he had wondered that Susan had been so much absorbed in Willie's
present, that she had never seemed to look forward to his future,
state. Michael had long felt the boy to be a trouble; but of late he
had absolutely loathed him. His gibbering, his uncouth gestures, his
loose, shambling gait, all irritated Michael inexpressibly. He did
not come near the Yew Nook for a couple of days. He thought that he
would leave her time to become anxious to see him and reconciled to
his plan. They were strange lonely days to Susan. They were the
first she had spent face to face with the sorrows that had turned her
from a girl into a woman; for hitherto Michael had never let twenty-
four hours pass by without coming to see her since she had had the
fever. Now that he was absent, it seemed as though some cause of
irritation was removed from Will, who was much more gentle and
tractable than he had been for many weeks. Susan thought that she
observed him making efforts at her bidding, and there was something
piteous in the way in which he crept up to her, and looked wistfully
in her face, as if asking her to restore him the faculties that he
felt to be wanting.
"I never will let thee go, lad. Never! There's no knowing where
they would take thee to, or what they would do with thee. As it says
in the Bible, 'Nought but death shall part thee and me!'"
The country-side was full, in those days, of stories of the brutal
treatment offered to the insane; stories that were, in fact, but too
well founded, and the truth of one of which only would have been a
sufficient reason for the strong prejudice existing against all such
places. Each succeeding hour that Susan passed, alone, or with the
poor affectionate lad for her sole companion, served to deepen her
solemn resolution never to part with him. So, when Michael came, he
was annoyed and surprised by the calm way in which she spoke, as if
following Dr. Preston's advice was utterly and entirely out of the
question. He had expected nothing less than a consent, reluctant it
might be, but still a consent; and he was extremely irritated. He
could have repressed his anger, but he chose rather to give way to
it; thinking that he could thus best work upon Susan's affection, so
as to gain his point. But, somehow, he over-reached himself; and now
he was astonished in his turn at the passion of indignation that she
burst into.