Books: Half a Life Time Ago
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Elizabeth Gaskell >> Half a Life Time Ago
"Thou wilt not bide in the same house with him, say'st thou? There's
no need for thy biding, as far as I can tell. There's solemn reason
why I should bide with my own flesh and blood and keep to the word I
pledged my mother on her death-bed; but, as for thee, there's no tie
that I know on to keep thee fro' going to America or Botany Bay this
very night, if that were thy inclination. I will have no more of
your threats to make me send my bairn away. If thou marry me,
thou'lt help me to take charge of Willie. If thou doesn't choose to
marry me on those terms--why, I can snap my fingers at thee, never
fear. I'm not so far gone in love as that. But I will not have
thee, if thou say'st in such a hectoring way that Willie must go out
of the house--and the house his own too--before thoul't set foot in
it. Willie bides here, and I bide with him."
"Thou hast may-be spoken a word too much," said Michael, pale with
rage. "If I am free, as thou say'st, to go to Canada, or Botany Bay,
I reckon I'm free to live where I like, and that will not be with a
natural who may turn into a madman some day, for aught I know.
Choose between him and me, Susy, for I swear to thee, thou shan't
have both."
"I have chosen," said Susan, now perfectly composed and still.
"Whatever comes of it, I bide with Willie."
"Very well," replied Michael, trying to assume an equal composure of
manner. "Then I'll wish you a very good night." He went out of the
house door, half-expecting to be called back again; but, instead, he
heard a hasty step inside, and a bolt drawn.
"Whew!" said he to himself, "I think I must leave my lady alone for a
week or two, and give her time to come to her senses. She'll not
find it so easy as she thinks to let me go."
So he went past the kitchen-window in nonchalant style, and was not
seen again at Yew Nook for some weeks. How did he pass the time?
For the first day or two, he was unusually cross with all things and
people that came athwart him. Then wheat-harvest began, and he was
busy, and exultant about his heavy crop. Then a man came from a
distance to bid for the lease of his farm, which, by his father's
advice, had been offered for sale, as he himself was so soon likely
to remove to the Yew Nook. He had so little idea that Susan really
would remain firm to her determination, that he at once began to
haggle with the man who came after his farm, showed him the crop just
got in, and managed skilfully enough to make a good bargain for
himself. Of course, the bargain had to be sealed at the public-
house; and the companions he met with there soon became friends
enough to tempt him into Langdale, where again he met with Eleanor
Hebthwaite.
How did Susan pass the time? For the first day or so, she was too
angry and offended to cry. She went about her household duties in a
quick, sharp, jerking, yet absent way; shrinking one moment from
Will, overwhelming him with remorseful caresses the next. The third
day of Michael's absence, she had the relief of a good fit of crying;
and after that, she grew softer and more tender; she felt how harshly
she had spoken to him, and remembered how angry she had been. She
made excuses for him. "It was no wonder," she said to herself, "that
he had been vexed with her; and no wonder he would not give in, when
she had never tried to speak gently or to reason with him. She was
to blame, and she would tell him so, and tell him once again all that
her mother had bade her to be to Willie, and all the horrible stories
she had heard about madhouses, and he would be on her side at once."
And so she watched for his coming, intending to apologise as soon as
ever she saw him. She hurried over her household work, in order to
sit quietly at her sewing, and hear the first distant sound of his
well-known step or whistle. But even the sound of her flying needle
seemed too loud--perhaps she was losing an exquisite instant of
anticipation; so she stopped sewing, and looked longingly out through
the geranium leaves, in order that her eye might catch the first stir
of the branches in the wood-path by which he generally came. Now and
then a bird might spring out of the covert; otherwise the leaves were
heavily still in the sultry weather of early autumn. Then she would
take up her sewing, and, with a spasm of resolution, she would
determine that a certain task should be fulfilled before she would
again allow herself the poignant luxury of expectation. Sick at
heart was she when the evening closed in, and the chances of that day
diminished. Yet she stayed up longer than usual, thinking that if he
were coming--if he were only passing along the distant road--the
sight of a light in the window might encourage him to make his
appearance even at that late hour, while seeing the house all
darkened and shut up might quench any such intention.
Very sick and weary at heart, she went to bed; too desolate and
despairing to cry, or make any moan. But in the morning hope came
afresh. Another day--another chance! And so it went on for weeks.
Peggy understood her young mistress's sorrow full well, and respected
it by her silence on the subject. Willie seemed happier now that the
irritation of Michael's presence was removed; for the poor idiot had
a sort of antipathy to Michael, which was a kind of heart's echo to
the repugnance in which the latter held him. Altogether, just at
this time, Willie was the happiest of the three.
As Susan went into Coniston, to sell her butter, one Saturday, some
inconsiderate person told her that she had seen Michael Hurst the
night before. I said inconsiderate, but I might rather have said
unobservant; for any one who had spent half-an-hour in Susan Dixon's
company might have seen that she disliked having any reference made
to the subjects nearest her heart, were they joyous or grievous. Now
she went a little paler than usual (and she had never recovered her
colour since she had had the fever), and tried to keep silence. But
an irrepressible pang forced out the question -
"Where?"
"At Thomas Applethwaite's, in Langdale. They had a kind of harvest-
home, and he were there among the young folk, and very thick wi'
Nelly Hebthwaite, old Thomas's niece. Thou'lt have to look after him
a bit, Susan!"
She neither smiled nor sighed. The neighbour who had been speaking
to her was struck with the gray stillness of her face. Susan herself
felt how well her self-command was obeyed by every little muscle, and
said to herself in her Spartan manner, "I can bear it without either
wincing or blenching." She went home early, at a tearing, passionate
pace, trampling and breaking through all obstacles of briar or bush.
Willie was moping in her absence--hanging listlessly on the farm-yard
gate to watch for her. When he saw her, he set up one of his
strange, inarticulate cries, of which she was now learning the
meaning, and came towards her with his loose, galloping run, head and
limbs all shaking and wagging with pleasant excitement. Suddenly she
turned from him, and burst into tears. She sat down on a stone by
the wayside, not a hundred yards from home, and buried her face in
her hands, and gave way to a passion of pent-up sorrow; so terrible
and full of agony were her low cries, that the idiot stood by her,
aghast and silent. All his joy gone for the time, but not, like her
joy, turned into ashes. Some thought struck him. Yes! the sight of
her woe made him think, great as the exertion was. He ran, and
stumbled, and shambled home, buzzing with his lips all the time. She
never missed him. He came back in a trice, bringing with him his
cherished paper windmill, bought on that fatal day when Michael had
taken him into Kendal to have his doom of perpetual idiocy
pronounced. He thrust it into Susan's face, her hands, her lap,
regardless of the injury his frail plaything thereby received. He
leapt before her to think how he had cured all heart-sorrow, buzzing
louder than ever. Susan looked up at him, and that glance of her sad
eyes sobered him. He began to whimper, he knew not why: and she
now, comforter in her turn, tried to soothe him by twirling his
windmill. But it was broken; it made no noise; it would not go
round. This seemed to afflict Susan more than him. She tried to
make it right, although she saw the task was hopeless; and while she
did so, the tears rained down unheeded from her bent head on the
paper toy.
"It won't do," said she, at last. "It will never do again." And,
somehow, she took the accident and her words as omens of the love
that was broken, and that she feared could never be pieced together
more. She rose up and took Willie's hand, and the two went slowly
into the house.
To her surprise, Michael Hurst sat in the house-place. House-place
is a sort of better kitchen, where no cookery is done, but which is
reserved for state occasions. Michael had gone in there because he
was accompanied by his only sister, a woman older than himself, who
was well married beyond Keswick, and who now came for the first time
to make acquaintance with Susan. Michael had primed his sister with
his wishes regarding Will, and the position in which he stood with
Susan; and arriving at Yew Nook in the absence of the latter, he had
not scrupled to conduct his sister into the guest-room, as he held
Mrs. Gale's worldly position in respect and admiration, and therefore
wished her to be favourably impressed with all the signs of property
which he was beginning to consider as Susan's greatest charms. He
had secretly said to himself, that if Eleanor Hebthwaite and Susan
Dixon were equal in point of riches, he would sooner have Eleanor by
far. He had begun to consider Susan as a termagant; and when he
thought of his intercourse with her, recollections of her somewhat
warm and hasty temper came far more readily to his mind than any
remembrance of her generous, loving nature.
And now she stood face to face with him; her eyes tear-swollen, her
garments dusty, and here and there torn in consequence of her rapid
progress through the bushy by-paths. She did not make a favourable
impression on the well-clad Mrs. Gale, dressed in her best silk gown,
and therefore unusually susceptible to the appearance of another.
Nor were Susan's manners gracious or cordial. How could they be,
when she remembered what had passed between Michael and herself the
last time they met? For her penitence had faded away under the daily
disappointment of these last weary weeks.
But she was hospitable in substance. She bade Peggy hurry on the
kettle, and busied herself among the tea-cups, thankful that the
presence of Mrs. Gale, as a stranger, would prevent the immediate
recurrence to the one subject which she felt must be present in
Michael's mind as well as in her own. But Mrs. Gale was withheld by
no such feelings of delicacy. She had come ready-primed with the
case, and had undertaken to bring the girl to reason. There was no
time to be lost. It had been prearranged between the brother and
sister that he was to stroll out into the farm-yard before his sister
introduced the subject; but she was so confident in the success of
her arguments, that she must needs have the triumph of a victory as
soon as possible; and, accordingly, she brought a hail-storm of good
reasons to bear upon Susan. Susan did not reply for a long time; she
was so indignant at this intermeddling of a stranger in the deep
family sorrow and shame. Mrs. Gale thought she was gaining the day,
and urged her arguments more pitilessly. Even Michael winced for
Susan, and wondered at her silence. He shrank out of sight, and into
the shadow, hoping that his sister might prevail, but annoyed at the
hard way in which she kept putting the case.
Suddenly Susan turned round from the occupation she had pretended to
be engaged in, and said to him in a low voice, which yet not only
vibrated itself, but made its hearers thrill through all their
obtuseness:
"Michael Hurst! does your sister speak truth, think you?"
Both women looked at him for his answer; Mrs. Gale without anxiety,
for had she not said the very words they had spoken together before?
had she not used the very arguments that he himself had suggested?
Susan, on the contrary, looked to his answer as settling her doom for
life; and in the gloom of her eyes you might have read more despair
than hope.
He shuffled his position. He shuffled in his words.
"What is it you ask? My sister has said many things."
"I ask you," said Susan, trying to give a crystal clearness both to
her expressions and her pronunciation, "if, knowing as you do how
Will is afflicted, you will help me to take that charge of him which
I promised my mother on her death-bed that I would do; and which
means, that I shall keep him always with me, and do all in my power
to make his life happy. If you will do this, I will be your wife; if
not, I remain unwed."
"But he may get dangerous; he can be but a trouble; his being here is
a pain to you, Susan, not a pleasure."
"I ask you for either yes or no," said she, a little contempt at his
evading her question mingling with her tone. He perceived it, and it
nettled him.
"And I have told you. I answered your question the last time I was
here. I said I would ne'er keep house with an idiot; no more I will.
So now you've gotten your answer."
"I have," said Susan. And she sighed deeply.
"Come, now," said Mrs. Gale, encouraged by the sigh; "one would think
you don't love Michael, Susan, to be so stubborn in yielding to what
I'm sure would be best for the lad."
"Oh! she does not care for me," said Michael. "I don't believe she
ever did."
"Don't I? Haven't I?" asked Susan, her eyes blazing out fire. She
left the room directly, and sent Peggy in to make the tea; and
catching at Will, who was lounging about in the kitchen, she went up-
stairs with him and bolted herself in, straining the boy to her
heart, and keeping almost breathless, lest any noise she made might
cause him to break out into the howls and sounds which she could not
bear that those below should hear.
A knock at the door. It was Peggy.
"He wants for to see you, to wish you good-bye."
"I cannot come. Oh, Peggy, send them away."
It was her only cry for sympathy; and the old servant understood it.
She sent them away, somehow; not politely, as I have been given to
understand.
"Good go with them," said Peggy, as she grimly watched their
retreating figures. "We're rid of bad rubbish, anyhow." And she
turned into the house, with the intention of making ready some
refreshment for Susan, after her hard day at the market, and her
harder evening. But in the kitchen, to which she passed through the
empty house-place, making a face of contemptuous dislike at the used
tea-cups and fragments of a meal yet standing there, she found Susan,
with her sleeves tucked up and her working apron on, busied in
preparing to make clap-bread, one of the hardest and hottest domestic
tasks of a Daleswoman. She looked up, and first met, and then
avoided Peggy's eye; it was too full of sympathy. Her own cheeks
were flushed, and her own eyes were dry and burning.
"Where's the board, Peggy? We need clap-bread; and, I reckon, I've
time to get through with it to-night." Her voice had a sharp, dry
tone in it, and her motions a jerking angularity about them.
Peggy said nothing, but fetched her all that she needed. Susan beat
her cakes thin with vehement force. As she stooped over them,
regardless even of the task in which she seemed so much occupied, she
was surprised by a touch on her mouth of something--what she did not
see at first. It was a cup of tea, delicately sweetened and cooled,
and held to her lips, when exactly ready, by the faithful old woman.
Susan held it off a hand's breath, and looked into Peggy's eyes,
while her own filled with the strange relief of tears.
"Lass!" said Peggy, solemnly, "thou hast done well. It is not long
to bide, and then the end will come."
"But you are very old, Peggy," said Susan, quivering.
"It is but a day sin' I were young," replied Peggy; but she stopped
the conversation by again pushing the cup with gentle force to
Susan's dry and thirsty lips. When she had drunken she fell again to
her labour, Peggy heating the hearth, and doing all that she knew
would be required, but never speaking another word. Willie basked
close to the fire, enjoying the animal luxury of warmth, for the
autumn evenings were beginning to be chilly. It was one o'clock
before they thought of going to bed on that memorable night.
CHAPTER IV.
The vehemence with which Susan Dixon threw herself into occupation
could not last for ever. Times of languor and remembrance would
come--times when she recurred with a passionate yearning to bygone
days, the recollection of which was so vivid and delicious, that it
seemed as though it were the reality, and the present bleak bareness
the dream. She smiled anew at the magical sweetness of some touch or
tone which in memory she felt and heard, and drank the delicious cup
of poison, although at the very time she knew what the consequences
of racking pain would be.
"This time, last year," thought she, "we went nutting together--this
very day last year; just such a day as to-day. Purple and gold were
the lights on the hills; the leaves were just turning brown; here and
there on the sunny slopes the stubble-fields looked tawny; down in a
cleft of yon purple slate-rock the beck fell like a silver glancing
thread; all just as it is to-day. And he climbed the slender,
swaying nut-trees, and bent the branches for me to gather; or made a
passage through the hazel copses, from time to time claiming a toll.
Who could have thought he loved me so little?--who?--who?"
Or, as the evening closed in, she would allow herself to imagine that
she heard his coming step, just that she might recall time feeling of
exquisite delight which had passed by without the due and passionate
relish at the time. Then she would wonder how she could have had
strength, the cruel, self-piercing strength, to say what she had
done; to stab himself with that stern resolution, of which the sear
would remain till her dying day. It might have been right; but, as
she sickened, she wished she had not instinctively chosen the right.
How luxurious a life haunted by no stern sense of duty must be! And
many led this kind of life; why could not she? O, for one hour again
of his sweet company! If he came now, she would agree to whatever he
proposed.
It was a fever of the mind. She passed through it, and came out
healthy, if weak. She was capable once more of taking pleasure in
following an unseen guide through briar and brake. She returned with
tenfold affection to her protecting care of Willie. She acknowledged
to herself that he was to he her all-in-all in life. She made him
her constant companion. For his sake, as the real owner of Yew Nook,
and she as his steward and guardian, she began that course of careful
saving, and that love of acquisition, which afterwards gained for her
the reputation of being miserly. She still thought that he might
regain a scanty portion of sense--enough to require some simple
pleasures and excitement, which would cost money. And money should
not be wanting. Peggy rather assisted her in the formation of her
parsimonious habits than otherwise; economy was the order of the
district, and a certain degree of respectable avarice the
characteristic of her age. Only Willie was never stinted nor
hindered of anything that the two women thought could give him
pleasure, for want of money.
There was one gratification which Susan felt was needed for the
restoration of her mind to its more healthy state, after she had
passed through the whirling fever, when duty was as nothing, and
anarchy reigned; a gratification that, somehow, was to be her last
burst of unreasonableness; of which she knew and recognised pain as
the sure consequence. She must see him once more,--herself unseen.
The week before the Christmas of this memorable year, she went out in
the dusk of the early winter evening, wrapped close in shawl and
cloak. She wore her dark shawl under her cloak, putting it over her
head in lieu of a bonnet; for she knew that she might have to wait
long in concealment. Then she tramped over the wet fell-path, shut
in by misty rain for miles and miles, till she came to the place
where he was lodging; a farm-house in Langdale, with a steep, stony
lane leading up to it: this lane was entered by a gate out of the
main road, and by the gate were a few bushes--thorns; but of them the
leaves had fallen, and they offered no concealment: an old wreck of
a yew-tree grew among them, however, and underneath that Susan
cowered down, shrouding her face, of which the colour might betray
her, with a corner of her shawl. Long did she wait; cold and cramped
she became, too damp and stiff to change her posture readily. And
after all, he might never come! But, she would wait till daylight,
if need were; and she pulled out a crust, with which she had
providently supplied herself. The rain had ceased,--a dull, still,
brooding weather had succeeded; it was a night to hear distant
sounds. She heard horses' hoofs striking and splashing in the
stones, and in the pools of the road at her back. Two horses; not
well-ridden, or evenly guided, as she could tell.
Michael Hurst and a companion drew near: not tipsy, but not sober.
They stopped at the gate to bid each other a maudlin farewell.
Michael stooped forward to catch the latch with the hook of the stick
which he carried; he dropped the stick, and it fell with one end
close to Susan,--indeed, with the slightest change of posture she
could have opened the gate for him. He swore a great oath, and
struck his horse with his closed fist, as if that animal had been to
blame; then he dismounted, opened the gate, and fumbled about for his
stick. When he had found it (Susan had touched the other end) his
first use of it was to flog his horse well, and she had much ado to
avoid its kicks and plunges. Then, still swearing, he staggered up
the lane, for it was evident he was not sober enough to remount.
By daylight Susan was back and at her daily labours at Yew Nook.
When the spring came, Michael Hurst was married to Eleanor
Hebthwaite. Others, too, were married, and christenings made their
firesides merry and glad; or they travelled, and came back after long
years with many wondrous tales. More rarely, perhaps, a Dalesman
changed his dwelling. But to all households more change came than to
Yew Nook. There the seasons came round with monotonous sameness; or,
if they brought mutation, it was of a slow, and decaying, and
depressing kind. Old Peggy died. Her silent sympathy, concealed
under much roughness, was a loss to Susan Dixon. Susan was not yet
thirty when this happened, but she looked a middle-aged, not to say
an elderly woman. People affirmed that she had never recovered her
complexion since that fever, a dozen years ago, which killed her
father, and left Will Dixon an idiot. But besides her gray
sallowness, the lines in her face were strong, and deep, and hard.
The movements of her eyeballs were slow and heavy; the wrinkles at
the corners of her mouth and eyes were planted firm and sure; not an
ounce of unnecessary flesh was there on her bones--every muscle
started strong and ready for use. She needed all this bodily
strength, to a degree that no human creature, now Peggy was dead,
knew of: for Willie had grown up large and strong in body, and, in
general, docile enough in mind; but, every now and then, he became
first moody, and then violent. These paroxysms lasted but a day or
two; and it was Susan's anxious care to keep their very existence
hidden and unknown. It is true, that occasional passers-by on that
lonely road heard sounds at night of knocking about of furniture,
blows, and cries, as of some tearing demon within the solitary farm-
house; but these fits of violence usually occurred in the night; and
whatever had been their consequence, Susan had tidied and redded up
all signs of aught unusual before the morning. For, above all, she
dreaded lest some one might find out in what danger and peril she
occasionally was, and might assume a right to take away her brother
from her care. The one idea of taking charge of him had deepened and
deepened with years. It was graven into her mind as the object for
which she lived. The sacrifice she had made for this object only
made it more precious to her. Besides, she separated the idea of the
docile, affectionate, loutish, indolent Will, and kept it distinct
from the terror which the demon that occasionally possessed him
inspired her with. The one was her flesh and her blood--the child of
her dead mother; the other was some fiend who came to torture and
convulse the creature she so loved. She believed that she fought her
brother's battle in holding down those tearing hands, in binding
whenever she could those uplifted restless arms prompt and prone to
do mischief. All the time she subdued him with her cunning or her
strength, she spoke to him in pitying murmurs, or abused the third
person, the fiendish enemy, in no unmeasured tones. Towards morning
the paroxysm was exhausted, and he would fall asleep, perhaps only to
waken with evil and renewed vigour. But when he was laid down, she
would sally out to taste the fresh air, and to work off her wild
sorrow in cries and mutterings to herself. The early labourers saw
her gestures at a distance, and thought her as crazed as the idiot-
brother who made the neighbourhood a haunted place. But did any
chance person call at Yew Nook later on in the day, he would find
Susan Dixon cold, calm, collected; her manner curt, her wits keen.